Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics

Series · 106

books · 1992-2020

By Marc Howard Ross, Richard Snyder, Jeffrey Broadbent, and more

Books in series

Language Repertoires and State Construction in Africa

1992

The author of two previous books on African political culture, David Laitin turns in this book to the study of language planning in Africa and the role of language politics in the process of state formation. Written in an engaging style, the book takes the reader into the complex web of language use in Africa today, where the average citizen must employ a multitude of different languages for use in the home, at school, in the marketplace, and on the job. African state governments must confront a number of difficult questions concerning language, such as which language of many should be the official national language—if any—and which language should be used in schools. Decisions on these questions are shown to be an important part of the process of state formation, and by making comparison to European cases, Laitin asks whether the complexity of language use in Africa today is symptomatic of early state construction, and if so, whether states must move inevitably toward a common language as they develop. He uses the logic of game theory to argue that a common language is not the inevitable solution, and proposes that in Africa the optimal solution to the language problem will be what he calls a 3 + 1 outcome, which will allow for multiple language use.

Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal

1930-1985

1992

In most post-colonial regimes in sub-Saharan Africa, state power has been used to structure economic production in ways that have tended to produce economic stagnation rather than growth. In this book, Catherine Boone examines the ways in which the exercise of state power has inhibited economic growth, focusing on the case of Senegal. She traces changes in the political economy of Senegal from the heyday of colonial merchant capital in the 1930s to the decay of the neo-colonial merchant capital in the 1980s and reveals that old trading monopolies, commercial hierarchies and patterns of wealth accumulation were preserved at the cost of reforms that would have stimulated economic growth. Boone uses this case to develop an argument against analyses of political-economic development that identify state institutions and ideologies as independent forces driving the process of economic transformation. State power, she argues, is rooted in the material and social bases of ruling alliances.

The Comparative Political Economy of the Welfare State

1994

Comparative research is exploding with new methodological and theoretical approaches. In this book, scholars who are expert in each one of these methods provide the first comprehensive explanation and application of time-series, pooled, event history, and Boolean methods to substantive problems of the welfare state. Each section of the book focuses on a new method with a general introduction to the method and then two papers using the method to deal with analysis concerning welfare state problems in a political economy perspective. Scholars and graduate students concerned with methodology in this area will need this book to bring them up to date on proliferating methodologies.

Uncertain Boundaries

The Social and Political Construction of European Economies

2006

This book argues that European economies were not deregulated in the 1980s. While old, politically-centralized institutions have lost importance, institutional arrangements continue to shape economic behavior of peripheral actors. The book's importance lies not just in showing that the prevailing deregulation view is wrong as far as continental European countries are concerned, but especially in outlining an alternative pattern of "micro-social" regulation of their economies.

#11

The Puzzle of Strikes

Class and State Strategies in Postwar Italy

1995

Focusing on the strategic interaction among workers, employers, and the state, this book examines the temporal movement of postwar Italian strikes. Incorporating several theoretical approaches and based on many forms of empirical evidence (statistical, historical, ethnographic, and survey), The Puzzle of Strikes is unique in its broad concern with a variety of actors, theories, and forms of empirical evidence.

#12

Between States

Interim Governments in Democratic Transitions

1995

Between States is a two-part study compiled in one book. It is the first book to assess systematically the broad implications of interim governments in the establishment of democratic regimes and on the existence of states. Drawing on historical and contemporary democratization experiences, Shain and Linz, the principal authors, explore four ideal types of interim government: opposition-led provisional governments, power-sharing interim governments, incumbent-led caretaker governments, and international interim government by the United Nations. In the second part of this book, other contributors evaluate the subject further in extensive case studies.

#15

Comparing Policy Networks

Labor Politics in the U.S., Germany, and Japan

1996

The United States, Germany, and Japan, the world's three most powerful and successful free market societies, differ strikingly in how their governments relate to their economies. Comparing Policy Networks reports the results of collaborative research by three teams investigating the social organization and policymaking processes of national labor policy domains in the United States, Germany, and Japan during the 1980s. Through interviews with more than 350 key labor policy organizations in all three countries, the authors reveal similar conflict divisions between business and labor interests but also distinctive patterns within each nation.

#16

Challenging the State

Crisis and Innovation in Latin America and Africa

1996

The 1980s and 1990s posed great challenges to governments in Latin America and Africa deeply affected by economic and political crises that weakened their ability to encourage economic development and provide for effective governance. Using case studies of Mexico and Kenya this book shows how a decade of deep and sustained crisis also became a decade of innovations in ideas, policy directions, political coalitions, and government institutions. Merilee Grindle argues that political leadership and structures of political power, while frequently part of the problem of underdevelopment, are also part of the solution in building more efficient, effective and responsive governments.

#17

Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil

1996

This book is about politics in Brazil during the military regime of 1964-85 and the transition to democracy. Unlike most books about contemporary Brazilian politics that focus on promising signs of change, this book seeks to explain remarkable political continuity in the Brazilian political system. It attributes the persistence of traditional politics and the dominance of regionally-based, traditional political elites in particular to the manner in which the economic and political strategies of the military, together with the transition to democracy, reinforced the clientelistic, personalistic, and regional basis of state-society relations. The book focuses on the political competition and representation in the state of Minas Gerais.

#19

Heroic Defeats

The Politics of Job Loss

1996

Heroic Defeats is a comparative investigation of how unions and firms interact when economic circumstances require substantial job loss. Using simple game theory to generate testable propositions about when these situations will result in industrial conflict, Professor Golden illustrates the theory in a range of situations between 1950 and 1985 in Japan, Italy, and Britain. Additionally, the author shows how the theory explains why strikes over job loss almost never occur in postwar unionized firms in the United States.

#20

Contemporary Capitalism

The Embeddedness of Institutions

1997

This book argues that there is no single best institutional arrangement for organizing modern societies. Therefore, the market should not be considered the ideal and universal arrangement for coordinating economic activity. Instead, the editors argue, the economic institutions of capitalism exhibit a large variety of objectives and tools that complement each other and can not work in isolation. The various chapters of the book ask what logics and functions institutions follow and why they emerge, mature and persist in the forms they do.

#21

Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America

1997

This book addresses the current debate regarding the liabilities and merits of presidential government. Does presidentialism make it less likely that democratic governments will be able to manage political conflict? With the unprecedented wave of transitions to democracy since the 1970s, this question has been hotly contested in political and intellectual circles all over the globe. The contributors to this volume examine variations among different presidential systems and skeptically view claims that presidentialism has added significantly to the problems of democratic governance and stability.

#26

Political Parties, Growth and Equality

Conservative and Social Democratic Economic Strategies in the World Economy

1998

This book describes the contrasting economic strategies pursued by conservative and social democratic governments. The current literature on political economy maintains that, due to the globalization of the economy and each country's institutional structures, parties hardly affect the economy. Examining all advanced countries since the 1960s, Professor Boix shows instead that partisanship and electoral politics play a fundamental role in the selection of policies to generate long-term growth and economic competitiveness. The book reinvigorates the claim that democratic arrangements matter.

#27

Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism

1999

Capitalist democracies have always displayed considerable diversity in their key political and economic institutions, such as the organization of economic interest groups and private enterprises, the public sector and the welfare state, as well as political parties and social movements. This book asks whether the challenges of new technologies, citizens' preferences, and growing political and economic interdependence in the 1980s and 1990s force all polities to adopt similar institutional reforms. The authors argue that established arrangements have become difficult to sustain, but that countries choose unique trajectories of reform, not a common approach. The diversity among capitalist democracies persists in a new fashion.

#29

Post-Communist Party Systems

Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation

1999

Post-Communist Party Systems examines democratic party competition in four postcommunist polities in the mid-1990s, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Legacies of precommunist rule turn out to play as much a role in accounting for differences as the institutional differences incorporated in the new democratic rules of the game. The book demonstrates various developments within the four countries with regard to different voter appeal of parties, patterns of voter representation, and dispositions to join other parties in legislative or executive alliances. The authors also present interesting avenues of comparison for broader sets of countries.

#30

Policy, Office, or Votes?

How Political Parties in Western Europe Make Hard Decisions

1999

Leaders of political parties often have to choose among conflicting objectives, such as influence on policy, control of the government, and support among the voters. This book examines the behavior of political parties in situations where they experience conflict between two or more important objectives. The volume contains a theoretical introduction and case studies of party leaders in Germany, Italy, France and Spain as well as six smaller European democracies. Each case focuses on the behavior of one of several parties in situations of goal conflict, such as the "historic compromise" in Italy, the 1982 Wende in West Germany, the making of the new Swedish constitution in the 1970s, and the termination of the Austrian "black-red" grand coalition.

#31

Paths toward Democracy

The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America

1999

The question of whether democratization is an elite-led process from above or a popular triumph from below continues to be an area of contention among political scientists. Examining the experiences of countries that have provided the main empirical base for recent theorizing, namely, Western Europe and South America, this book delineates a more complex and varied set of patterns. The volume explores democratization through a comparative analysis that examines the role of labor in relation to elite strategies in both contemporary and historical perspectives.

#32

Reconstructing the State

Personal Networks and Elite Identity in Soviet Russia

2000

Why do some state building efforts succeed when others fail? Using newly available archival sources, this book presents a new explanation for the rise and subsequent collapse of the Soviet state. The study explains how personal networks and elite identity served as informal sources of power that influenced state strength. Reconstructing the State also offers new interpretations of how the weak Bolshevik state extended its reach to a vast rural and multi-ethnic periphery as well as the dynamics of the center-regional conflict in the 1930s that culminated in the Great Terror.

#33

Money, Markets, and the State

Social Democratic Economic Policies since 1918

2000

Money, Markets, and the State provides in-depth explanations behind the various successes and failures of the economic policies of social democratic governments in five Western European Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands. Dr. Notermans examines these economic systems from the inflation of the early twenties, through the Great Depression of the thirties, and then continues his analysis up to present-day mass unemployment. Drawing on a wide range of historical and statistical sources, Dr. Notermans argues that the fate of social democratic economic policy hinges critically on the political and institutional success of maintaining price stability.

#34

Pol Mobilzatn Europe Left 1860-1980

2000

In an in-depth comparative analysis, Stefano Bartolini studies the history of socialism and working-class politics in Western Europe. While examining the social contexts, organizational structures, and political developments of thirteen socialist experiences from the 1860s to the 1980s, he reconstructs the steps through which social conflict was translated and structured into an opposition, as well as how it developed its different organizational and ideological forms, and how it managed more or less successfully to mobilize its reference groups politically.

#35

Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions, and Market Reforms in Latin America

2001

Due to economic crises, labor parties followed economic policies that hurt labor unions during the 1990s, such as trade liberalization and privatization. This book explains why labor unions resisted on some occasions and submitted on others and what the consequences of their actions were by studying three countries: Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. The comparison between the experiences of the three countries and five different sectors in each country shows the importance of politics in explaining labor reactions and their effects on economic policies.

#37

Politics after Neoliberalism

Reregulation in Mexico

1997

During the past two decades, virtually all developing countries shifted from state-led to market-oriented neoliberal economic policies. This book analyzes fresh evidence from Southern Mexico about the effects of this global wave of policy reforms. The evidence challenges the widely held view that these reforms have set countries on a convergent path toward unregulated markets. The analysis shows that free-market reforms, rather than unleashing market forces, trigger the construction of different types of new regulatory institutions with contrasting consequences for economic efficiency and social justice.

#38

Public Support for Market Reforms in New Democracies

2001

Do people in new democracies that are undergoing market reforms turn against these reforms when the economic adjustment is painful? The conventional wisdom is that they will. According to "economic voting" models, citizens punish elected governments for bad economic performance. The contributors to this collection, in contrast, begin with the insight that citizens in new democracies may have good reasons to depart from the predictions of economic voting. They use state-of-the-art statistical techniques to analyze changes in aggregate support levels, as reflected in public opinion polls, in response to changes in inflation, unemployment, production, and wages. They find that public opinion of reforms does not always conform to the expectations of the economic voting model.

#39

Mandates and Democracy

Neoliberalism by Surprise in Latin America

1997

Does it matter when politicians ignore the promises they made and the preferences of their constituents? If politicians want to be reelected or see their party reelected at the end of their term, why would they impose unpopular policies? Susan Stokes explores these questions by developing a model of policy switches and then testing it with statistical and qualitative data from Latin American elections over the past two decades. She concludes that politicians may change policies because unpopular policies are best for constituents and hence also will best serve their own political ambitions.

#40

Unemployment in the New Europe

2001

The movement for European integration has yielded a European Union of fifteen states with a unified monetary system that will eventually embrace over 370 million people. If current trends continue, an average of one in ten of these people will be unemployed. This book is about unemployment and European unification. It examines the consequences of each and their interconnections. It presents general essays on Europe as a whole, on labor unions and on a variety of case studies including Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. Its central argument is that the European economy should be reformed but that it should retain many of its managed aspects and be wary of modeling itself on the United States. The book contributes to the literature on European politics, political economy, and comparative public policy.

#42

Clientelism, Interests, and Democratic Representation

The European Experience in Historical and Comparative Perspective

2001

This book charts the evolution of clientelist practices in several western European countries. Through the historical and comparative analysis of countries as diverse as Sweden and Greece, England and Spain, France and Italy, Iceland and the Netherlands, the authors study both the "supply-side" and the "demand-side" of clientelism. This approach contends that clientelism is a particular mix of particularism and universalism, in which interests are aggregated at the level of the individual and his family "particularism," but in which all interests can potentially find expression and accommodation in "universalism."

#47

Macroecon Pol Developed Democracies

2002

This book synthesizes and extends modern political-economic theory to explain the postwar evolution of macroeconomic policy in developed democracies. The chapters study transfers, debt, and monetary/wage policy-making and outcomes, stressing that participation enhances transfer policy responsiveness to inequality and vice versa, that policy-making veto actors retard fiscal policy adjustments, inducing greater long run debt-responses to all other political-economic stimuli, and that monetary policy's nominal and real effects depend, respectively, on the broader political-economic interest structure and on wage price bargainers' sectorial composition and coordination.

#48

Redeeming the Communist Past

The Regeneration of Communist Parties in East Central Europe

1998

This major study examines one of the most surprising developments in East Central European politics after the democratic transitions of 1989: the completely unexpected regeneration of the former communist parties. After the collapse of the communist regimes in 1989, these ruling communist parties seemed consigned to oblivion. However, confounding scholarly and popular expectations, all of the parties survived, with some even returning to power.

#49

Governing from Below

Urban Regions and the Global Economy

2002

Cities play a growing role in governing. This new role fits within a context that nation-states, global market forces and cities themselves continue to define. The analysis of this book focuses on how local efforts in the distinct European systems of France and Germany as well as American counterparts have provided for environmental quality and social inclusion alongside local economic development. Only in certain European settings has policy making at multiple levels accomplished all three objectives at once. In those settings, effective governance from below has relied on adequate support from higher levels of governments and a favorable position in the global economy.

#50

Legislative Politics in Latin America

2002

This theoretically inspired study explores legislative politics in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Instead of beginning with an assumption that these legislatures are either rubber-stamps or obstructionist bodies, the chapters provide new data and a fresh analytical approach to describe and explain the role of these representative bodies in these consolidating democracies. For each country the book provides three chapters dedicated, in turn, to executive-legislative relations, the legislatures' organizational structure, and the policy process.

#52

Stuffing the Ballot Box

Fraud, Electoral Reform, and Democratization in Costa Rica

1998

This pioneering study of electoral fraud and reform focuses on Costa Rica, a country where parties gradually transformed a fraud-ridden political system into one renowned for stability and fair elections by the mid-twentieth century. Lehoucq and Molina draw upon a unique database of more than 1,300 accusations of ballot-rigging to show that, independently of social structural constraints, parties denounced fraud where electoral laws made the struggle for power more competitive. They explain how institutional arrangements generated opportunities for several executives to assemble legislative coalitions to enact far-reaching reforms.

#55

Deliberate Discretion?

The Institutional Foundations of Bureaucratic Autonomy

2002

The laws that legislatures adopt provide a crucial opportunity for elected politicians to define public policy. But the ways politicians use laws to shape policy vary considerably across polities. In some cases, legislatures adopt detailed and specific laws in an effort to micromanage policymaking processes. In others, they adopt general and vague laws that leave the executive and bureaucrats substantial discretion to fill in the policy details. What explains these differences across political systems, and how do they matter? The authors address these issues by developing and testing a comparative theory of how laws shape bureaucratic autonomy. Drawing on a range of evidence from advanced parliamentary democracies and the U.S. States, they argue that particular institutional forms—such as the nature of electoral laws, the structure of the legal system, and the professionalism of the legislature—have a systematic and predictable effect on how politicians use laws to shape the policymaking process.

#57

Global Capital and National Governments

2002

This book examines the degree to which international financial markets affect governments' policy choices. It provides empirical evidence as to whether financial globalization creates pressures on governments of developed and developing nations to pursue similar policies and to reduce spending on social policies. The book suggests that financial globalization does not lead to a "race to the bottom" among governments, especially in developed nations. It deploys several types of evidence; the most unique are interviews and surveys of investment fund managers. It also compares contemporary government-financial market relations to those prior to World War I.

#58

Sustaining Abundance

Environmental Performance in Industrial Democracies

2003

Representing the first comprehensive study of its kind, this book evaluates the comparative performance of national environmental policies since the beginning of the modern environmental era. Unlike other comparative studies, it looks directly at the purpose of environmental policy: pollution reduction. Lyle Scruggs presents four major explanations of environmental performance which it evaluates through the comparative statistical analysis of data from seventeen affluent countries. The results often challenge conventional explanations of good performance.

#62

Race and Regionalism in the Politics of Taxation in Brazil and South Africa

2003

Evan Lieberman's analysis focuses on the politics of taxation as a way of understanding the development of governments. He compares Brazil and South Africa because of their They are upper-middle-income countries, and highly unequal—both in terms of income and racial status. Lieberman argues that different constitutional approaches to race (whether or not to grant equal citizenship to blacks) and federalism (whether to have it or not) shaped the organization of politics in the two countries, leading to the development of very different tax systems. The findings are based on extensive field research, large-scale national surveys, macroeconomic data, and various archival and secondary sources.

#63

Regressive Taxation and the Welfare State

Path Dependence and Policy Diffusion

1999

Political economists have viewed large public expenditures as a product of leftist government and the expression of a stronger representation of labor interest. The formation of governments' funding bases is a topic that has not been thoroughly explored, and this book sheds important new light on the issue of taxes and welfare. Beginning with a clarification of the development of postwar tax policies in industrial democracies, Junko Kato finds that the differentiation of tax revenue structure is path dependent upon the shift to regressive taxation. Kato challenges the conventional belief that progressive taxation leads to large public expenditures in mature welfare states.

#66

The Nationalization of Politics.

2003

Daniele Caramani describes the transformation of politics from an environment where voting behavior differs greatly between regions to one where it is homogeneous within nations. Looking at long-term evolution, spanning the mid-nineteenth century to the present, Caramani utilizes data on specific constituencies rather than on a national level. He demonstrates that a nation-wide homogeneous dimension emerged from national and industrial revolutions and replaced preindustrial territorial dimensions. His analysis is constructed along the lines of party families and reveals why countries currently exhibit different levels of homogeneity.

#68

Procedural Politics

Issues, Influence, and Institutional Choice in the European Union

2004

After developing an argument to determine when actors will try and reshape political rules, rather than operate within them, Joseph Jupille applies it to European Union (EU) integration and politics. Jupille demonstrates that the European Union is far more deeply rule-governed than is traditionally understood and, accordingly, reveals a much more complete picture of the role of rules in political life than is available in most existing research.

#71

Imagined Economies

The Sources of Russian Regionalism

2004

This book examines the economic bases of regional sovereignty movements in the Russian Federation from 1990–1993. The analysis is based on an original data set of Russian regional sovereignty movements and the author employs a variety of methods including quantitative statistical analysis, as well as qualitative case studies of Sverdlovsk and Samara oblasts using systematic content analysis of local newspaper articles. The central finding of the book is that variation in Russian regional activism is explained not by differences in economic conditions but by differences in the construction or imagination of economic interests; to put it in the language of other contemporary debates, economic advantage and disadvantage are as imagined as nations. In arguing that regional economic interests are inter-subjective, contingent, and institutionally specific, the book addresses a major question in political economy, namely the origin of economic interests. In addition, by engaging the nationalism literature, the book expands the constructivist paradigm to the development of economic interests.

#72

Courts under Constraints

Judges, Generals, and Presidents in Argentina

2004

This study offers a theoretical framework for understanding how institutional instability affects judicial behavior under dictatorship and democracy. In stark contrast to conventional wisdom, the central findings of the book contradict some assumptions that only independent judges rule against the government of the day. Set in the context of Argentina, the study uses the tools of positive political theory to explore the conditions under which courts rule against the government. In addition to shedding light on the dynamics of court-executive relations in Argentina, the study provides general lessons about institutions, instability, and the rule of law. In the process, the study builds a set of connections among diverse bodies of scholarship, including US judicial politics, comparative institutional analysis, positive political theory, and Latin American politics.

#76

Hamilton's Paradox

The Promise and Peril of Fiscal Federalism

2005

As new federations take shape and old ones are revived around the world, a difficult challenge is to create incentives for fiscal discipline. A key question is whether a politically-motivated central government can credibly commit not to bail out subnational governments in times of crisis if it funds most of their expenditures. By combining theory, quantitative analysis, and historical and contemporary case studies, this book provides a new perspective on why different countries have had dramatically different experiences with subnational fiscal discipline.

#77

Regional Economic Voting

Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999

2001

This study demonstrates that in a time of massive change characterized by the emergence of entirely new political systems and a fundamental reorganization of economic life, systematic patterns of economic conditions affecting election results at the aggregate level can in fact be identified during the first decade of post-communist elections in five post-communist Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. A variety of theoretical arguments concerning the conditions in which these effects are more or less likely to be present are also proposed and tested. Analysis is conducted using an original data set of regional level economic, demographic, and electoral indicators, and features both broadly based comparative assessments of the findings across all twenty elections as well as more focused case study analyses of pairs of individual elections.

#79

Crucibles of Political Loyalty

Church Institutions and Electoral Continuity in Hungary

2006

This book investigates one of the oldest paradoxes in political science: why do mass political loyalties persist even amid prolonged social upheaval and disruptive economic development. Drawing on extensive archival research and an original database of election results, this book explores the paradox of political persistence by examining Hungary's often tortuous path from pre- to post-communism. Wittenberg reframes the theoretical debate, and then demonstrates how despite the many depredations of communism, the Roman Catholic and Calvinist Churches transmitted loyalties to parties of the Right. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Church resistance occurred not from above, but from below. Hemmed in and harassed by communist party cadres, parish priests and pastors employed a variety of ingenious tactics to ensure the continued survival of local church institutions. These institutions insulated their adherents from pressures to assimilate into the surrounding socialist milieu. Ultimately this led to political continuity between pre- and post-communism.

#80

Candidate Strategies and Electoral Competition in the Russian Federation

Democracy without Foundation

2005

In the early 1990s, competitive elections in the Russian Federation signaled the end to the authoritarian political system dominated by a single political party. More than ten years and many elections later, a single party led by Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens to end Russia's democratic experiment. Russia's experience with new elections is not unique but it does challenge existing theories of democratic consolidation by showing that competitive elections cannot guarantee successful democratic consolidation. This book explores the conditions under which electoral competition contributes to democratic development by examining impact of elections on democratic consolidation.

#82

Age in the Welfare State

The Origins of Social Spending on Pensioners, Workers, and Children

2006

This book asks why some countries devote the lion's share of their social policy resources to the elderly, while others have a more balanced repertoire of social spending. Far from being the outcome of demands for welfare spending by powerful age-based groups in society, the 'age' of welfare is an unintended consequence of the way that social programs are set up. The way that politicians use welfare state spending to compete for votes, along either programmatic or particularistic lines, locks these early institutional choices into place. So while society is changing - aging, divorcing, moving in and out of the labor force over the life course in new ways - social policies do not evolve to catch up. The result, in occupational welfare states like Italy, the United States, and Japan, is social spending that favors the elderly and leaves working-aged adults and children largely to fend for themselves.

#83

Federalism, Fiscal Authority, and Centralization in Latin America

2002

This book explores the politics of fiscal authority, focusing on the centralization of taxation in Latin America during the twentieth century. The book studies this issue in great detail for the case of Mexico. The political (and fiscal) fragmentation associated with civil war at the beginning of the century was eventually transformed into a highly centralized regime. The analysis shows that fiscal centralization can best be studied as the consequence of a bargain struck between self-interested regional and national politicians. Fiscal centralization was more extreme in Mexico than in most other places in the world, but the challenges and problems tackled by Mexican politicians were not unique. The book thus analyzes fiscal centralization and the origins of intergovernmental financial transfers in the other Latin American federal regimes, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. The analysis sheds light on the factors that explain the consolidation of tax authority in developing countries.

#88

Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict

2007

Ethnic conflict often focuses on culturally charged symbols and rituals that evoke strong emotions from all sides. Marc Howard Ross examines battles over diverse cultural expressions, including Islamic headscarves in France, parades in Northern Ireland, holy sites in Jerusalem and Confederate flags in the American South to propose a psychocultural framework for understanding ethnic conflict, as well as barriers to, and opportunities for, its mitigation. His analysis explores how culture frames interests, structures demand-making and shapes how opponents can find common ground to produce constructive outcomes to long-term disputes. He focuses on participants' accounts of conflict to identify emotionally significant issues, and the power of cultural expressions to link individuals to larger identities and shape action. Ross shows that, contrary to popular belief, culture does not necessarily exacerbate conflict; rather, the constructed nature of psychocultural narratives can facilitate successful conflict mitigation through the development of more inclusive narratives and identities.

#89

State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace

2007

Does democracy reduce state repression as human rights activism, funding, and policy suggest? What are the limitations of this argument? Investigating 137 countries from 1976 to 1996, State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace seeks to shed light on these questions. Specifically, it finds that electoral participation and competition generally reduces personal integrity violations like torture and mass killing; other aspects of democracy do not wield consistent influences. This negative influence can be overwhelmed by conflict, however, and thus there are important qualifications for the peace proposition.

#90

The Architecture of Government

Rethinking Political Decentralization

2007

Since the days of Montesquieu and Jefferson, political decentralization has been seen as a force for better government and economic performance. It is thought to bring government 'closer to the people', nurture civic virtue, protect liberty, exploit local information, stimulate policy innovation, and alleviate ethnic tensions. Inspired by such arguments, and generously funded by the major development agencies, countries across the globe have been racing to devolve power to local governments. This book re-examines the arguments that underlie the modern faith in decentralization. Using logical analysis and formal modeling, and appealing to numerous examples, it shows that most are based on vague intuitions or partial views that do not withstand scrutiny. A review of empirical studies of decentralization finds these as inconclusive and mutually contradictory as the theories they set out to test.

#94

Selected Works of Michael Wallerstein

The Political Economy of Inequality, Unions, and Social Democracy

2008

Michael Wallerstein was a leader in developing a rigorous comparative political economy approach to understanding substantive issues of inequality, redistribution, and wage-determination. His early death from cancer left both a hole in the profession and a legacy that will surely provide the foundation for research on these topics. This volume collects his most important and influential contributions, organized by topic, with each topic preceded by an editorial introduction that provides overview and context.

#95

Party Competition between Unequals

Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe

2008

Why do some political parties flourish, while others flounder? In this book, Meguid examines variation in the electoral trajectories of the new set of single-issue green, radical right, and ethnoterritorial parties. Instead of being dictated by electoral institutions or the socioeconomic climate, as the dominant theories contend, the fortunes of these niche parties, she argues, are shaped by the strategic responses of mainstream parties. She advances a new theory of party competition in which mainstream parties facing unequal competitors have access to a wider and more effective set of strategies than posited by standard spatial models. Combining statistical analyzes with in-depth case studies from Western Europe, the book explores how and why established parties undermine niche parties or turn them into weapons against their mainstream party opponents. This study of competition between unequals thus provides broader insights into the nature and outcome of competition between political equals.

#97

Welfare and Capitalism in Postwar Japan

Party, Bureaucracy, and Business

2008

This book explains how postwar Japan managed to achieve a highly egalitarian form of capitalism despite meager social spending. Estevez-Abe develops an institutional, rational-choice model to solve this puzzle. She shows how Japan’s electoral system generated incentives that led political actors to protect, if only for their own self-interested reasons, various groups that lost out in market competition. She explains how Japan’s postwar welfare state relied upon various alternatives to orthodox social spending programs. The initial postwar success of Japan’s political economy has given way to periods of crisis and reform. This book follows this story up to the present day. Estevez-Abe shows how the current electoral system renders obsolete the old form of social protection. She argues that institutionally Japan now resembles Britain and predicts that Japan’s welfare system will also come to resemble Britain’s. Japan thus faces a more market-oriented society and less equality.

#98

Representation through Taxation

Revenue, Politics, and Development in Postcommunist States

2008

Social scientists teach that politicians favor groups that are organized over those that are not. Representation Through Taxation challenges this conventional wisdom. Emphasizing that there are limits to what organized interests can credibly promise in return for favorable treatment, Gehlbach shows that politicians may instead give preference to groups – organized or not – that by their nature happen to take actions that are politically valuable. Gehlbach develops this argument in the context of the postcommunist experience, focusing on the incentive of politicians to promote sectors that are naturally more tax compliant, regardless of their organization. In the former Soviet Union, tax systems were structured around familiar revenue sources, magnifying this incentive and helping to prejudice policy against new private enterprise. In Eastern Europe, in contrast, tax systems were created to cast the revenue net more widely, encouraging politicians to provide the collective goods necessary for new firms to flourish.

#100

Legislative Voting and Accountability

2008

Legislatures are the core representative institutions in modern democracies. Citizens want legislatures to be decisive, and they want accountability, but they are frequently disillusioned with the representation legislators deliver. Political parties can provide decisiveness in legislatures, and they may provide collective accountability, but citizens and political reformers frequently demand another type of accountability from legislators – at the individual level. Can legislatures provide both kinds of accountability? This book considers what collective and individual accountability require and provides the most extensive cross-national analysis of legislative voting undertaken to date. It illustrates the balance between individualistic and collective representation in democracies, and how party unity in legislative voting shapes that balance. In addition to quantitative analysis of voting patterns, the book draws on extensive field and archival research to provide an extensive assessment of legislative transparency throughout the Americas.

#102

Fiscal Governance in Europe

2009

This book presents a theoretical framework to discuss how governments coordinate budgeting decisions. There are two modes of fiscal governance conducive to greater fiscal discipline, a mode of delegation and a mode of contracts. These modes contrast with a fiefdom form of governance, in which the decision-making process is decentralized. An important insight is that the effectiveness of a given form of fiscal governance depends crucially upon the underlying political system. Delegation functions well when there few, or no, ideological differences among government parties, whereas contracts are effective when there are many such differences. Based on original research, the book classifies European Union countries from 1985 to 2004. Empirically, delegation and contract states perform better than fiefdom states if they match the underlying political system. Additional chapters consider why countries have the fiscal institutions that they do, fiscal governance in Central and Eastern Europe, and the role of such institutions in the European Union.

#103

The Market and the Masses in Latin America

Policy Reform and Consumption in Liberalizing Economies

2009

What do ordinary citizens in developing countries think about free markets? Conventional wisdom views globalization as an imposition on unwilling workers in developing nations, concluding that the recent rise of the Latin American left constitutes a popular backlash against the market. Andy Baker marshals public opinion data from eighteen Latin American countries to show that most of the region's citizens are enthusiastic about globalization because it has lowered the prices of many consumer goods and services while improving their variety and quality. Among recent free-market reforms, only privatization has caused pervasive discontent because it has raised prices for services like electricity and telecommunications. Citizens' sharp awareness of these consumer consequences informs Baker's argument that a new political economy of consumption has replaced a previously dominant politics of labor and class in Latin America. Baker’s research clarifies the sources of voters' connection to new leftwing parties and helps account for their leaders' moderation and nuanced approach to economic policy, embracing globalization while stalling or reversing privatization.

#104

The Political Economy of Trust

Institutions, Interests, and Inter-Firm Cooperation in Italy and Germany

2005

Trust and cooperation are at the heart of the two most important approaches to comparative politics rational choice and political culture. Yet we know little about trust s relationship to political institutions. This book sets out a rationalist theory of how institutions and in particular informal institutions - can affect trust without reducing it to fully determinate expectations. It then shows how this theory can be applied to comparative political economy, and in particular to explaining inter-firm cooperation in industrial districts, geographical areas of intense small firm collaboration. The book compares trust and cooperation in two prominent districts in the literature, one in Emilia Romagna, Italy, and the other in Baden-W rttemberg, Germany. It also sets out and applies a theory of how national informal institutions may change as a result of changes in global markets, and shows how similar mechanisms may explain persistent distrust too among Sicilian Mafiosi.

#105

Political Competition, Partisanship, and Policy Making in Latin American Public Utilities

2009

This book studies policymaking in the Latin American electricity and telecommunication sectors. Murillo’s analysis of the Latin American electricity and telecommunications sectors shows that different degrees of electoral competition and the partisan composition of the government were crucial in resolving policymakers’ tension between the interests of voters and the economic incentives generated by international financial markets and private corporations in the context of capital scarcity. Electoral competition by credible challengers dissuaded politicians from adopting policies deemed necessary to attract capital inflows. When electoral competition was low, financial pressures prevailed, but the partisan orientation of reformers shaped the regulatory design of market-friendly reforms. In the post-reform period, moreover, electoral competition and policymakers’ partisanship shaped regulatory redistribution between residential consumers, large users, and privatized providers.

#106

Voting for Policy, Not Parties

How Voters Compensate for Power Sharing

2009

This book proposes an institutionally embedded framework for analyzing voter choice. Voters, Orit Kedar argues, are concerned with policy, and therefore their vote reflects the path set by political institutions leading from votes to policy. Under this framework, the more institutional mechanisms facilitating post-electoral compromise are built into the political process (e.g., multi-party government), the more voters compensate for the dilution of their vote. This simple but overlooked principle allows Kedar to explain a broad array of seemingly unrelated electoral regularities and offer a unified framework of analysis, which she terms compensatory vote. Kedar develops the compensatory logic in three electoral parliamentary, presidential, and federal. Leveraging on institutional variation in the degree of power sharing, she analyzes voter choice, conducting an empirical analysis that brings together institutional and behavioral data in a broad cross section of elections in democracies.

#109

Latin American Party Systems

2010

Political parties provide a crucial link between voters and politicians. This link takes a variety of forms in democratic regimes, from the organization of political machines built around clientelistic networks to the establishment of sophisticated programmatic parties. Latin American Party Systems provides a novel theoretical argument to account for differences in the degree to which political party systems in the region were programmatically structured at the end of the twentieth century. Based on a diverse array of indicators and surveys of party legislators and public opinion, the book argues that learning and adaptation through fundamental policy innovations are the main mechanisms by which politicians build programmatic parties. Marshalling extensive evidence, the book’s analysis shows the limits of alternative explanations and substantiates a sanguine view of programmatic competition, nevertheless recognizing that this form of party system organization is far from ubiquitous and enduring in Latin America.

#110

The Politics of Welfare State Reform in Continental Europe

Modernization in Hard Times

2010

This book challenges existing theories of welfare state change by analyzing pension reforms in France, Germany, and Switzerland between 1970 and 2004. It explains why all three countries were able to adopt far-reaching reforms, adapting their pension regimes to both financial austerity and new social risks. In a radical departure from the neo-institutionalist emphasis on policy stability, the book argues that socio-structural change has led to a multidimensional pension reform agenda. A variety of cross-cutting lines of political conflict, emerging from the transition to a postindustrial economy, allowed governments to engage in strategies of political exchange and coalition-building, fostering broad cross-class coalitions in support of major reform packages. Methodologically, the book proposes a novel strategy to analyze lines of conflict, configurations of political actors, and coalitional dynamics over time. This strategy combines quantitative analyses of actor configurations based on coded policy positions with in-depth case studies.

#111

From the Ballot to the Blackboard

The Redistributive Political Economy of Education

2006

From the Ballot to the Blackboard provides the first comprehensive account of the political economy of education spending across the developed and developing world. The book demonstrates how political forces like democracy and political partisanship and economic factors like globalization deeply impact the choices made by voters, parties, and leaders in financing education. The argument is developed through three stories that track the historical development of first, its original expansion from the elite to the masses; second, the partisan politics of education in industrialized states; and third, the politics of higher education. The book uses a variety of complementary methods to demonstrate the importance of redistributive political motivations in explaining education policy, including formal modeling, statistical analysis of survey data and both sub-national and cross-national data, and historical case analyses of countries including the Philippines, India, Malaysia, England, Sweden, and Germany.

#112

Informal Institutions and Citizenship in Rural Africa

Risk and Reciprocity in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire

2006

This book challenges previous assumptions about institutions, social capital, and the nature of the African state by investigating the history of political and economic change in villages on either side of the Ghana–Cote d’Ivoire border. Prior to European colonial rule, these Akan villages had very similar political and cultural institutions. By the late 1990s, however, Lauren M. MacLean found puzzling differences in the informal institutions of reciprocity and indigenous notions of citizenship. Drawing on extensive village-based fieldwork and archival research, MacLean argues that divergent histories of state formation not only shape how villagers help each other but also influence how local groups and communities define citizenship and then choose to engage with the state on an everyday basis. She examines the historical construction of the state role in mediating risk at the local level across three policy political administration, social service delivery, and agriculture, highlighting the importance of the colonial and post-colonial state in transforming informal institutions.

#114

Post-Imperial Democracies

Ideology and Party Formation in Third Republic France, Weimar Germany, and Post-Soviet Russia

2010

This book examines the causal impact of ideology through a comparative-historical analysis of three cases of 'post-imperial democracy': the early Third Republic in France (1870-1886); the Weimar Republic in Germany (1918-1934); and post-Soviet Russia (1992-2008). Hanson argues that political ideologies are typically necessary for the mobilization of enduring, independent national party organizations in uncertain democracies. By presenting an explicit and desirable picture of the political future, successful ideologues induce individuals to embrace a long-run strategy of cooperation with other converts. When enough new converts cooperate in this way, it enables sustained collective action to defend and extend party power. Successful party ideologies thus have the character of self-fulfilling prophecies: by portraying the future polity as one organized to serve the interests of those loyal to specific ideological principles, they help to bring political organizations centered on these principles into being.

#118

Oil Is Not a Curse

Ownership Structure and Institutions in Soviet Successor States

2010

This book makes two central first, that mineral-rich states are cursed not by their wealth but, rather, by the ownership structure they chose to manage their mineral wealth and second, that weak institutions are not inevitable in mineral-rich states. Each represents a significant departure from the conventional resource curse literature, which has treated ownership structure as a constant across time and space and has presumed that mineral-rich countries are incapable of either building or sustaining strong institutions – particularly fiscal regimes. The experience of the five petroleum-rich Soviet successor states (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) provides a clear challenge to both of these assumptions. Their respective developmental trajectories since independence demonstrate not only that ownership structure can vary even across countries that share the same institutional legacy but also that this variation helps to explain the divergence in their subsequent fiscal regimes.

#119

Labor Rights and Multinational Production

2010

Labor Rights and Multinational Production investigates the relationship between workers’ rights and multinational production. Mosley argues that some types of multinational production, embodied in directly owned foreign investment, positively affect labor rights. But other types of international production, particularly subcontracting, can engender competitive races to the bottom in labor rights. To test these claims, Mosley presents newly generated measures of collective labor rights, covering a wide range of low- and middle-income nations for the 1985–2002 period. This book suggests that the consequences of economic openness for developing countries are highly dependent on foreign firms’ modes of entry and, more generally, on the precise way in which each developing country engages the global economy. The book contributes to academic literature in comparative and international political economy, and to public policy debates regarding the effects of globalization.

#120

Framing the Race in South Africa

The Political Origins of Racial Census Elections

2010

Post-apartheid South African elections have borne an unmistakable racial imprint: Africans vote for one set of parties, whites support a different set of parties, and with few exceptions, there is no crossover voting between groups. These voting tendencies have solidified the dominance of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) over South African politics and turned South African elections into racial censuses. This book explores the political sources of these outcomes. It argues that although the beginnings of these patterns lie in South Africa s past, in the effects apartheid had on voters beliefs about race and destiny and the reputations parties forged during this period, the endurance of the census reflects the ruling party s ability to use the powers of office to prevent the opposition from evolving away from its apartheid-era party label. By keeping key opposition parties white, the ANC has rendered them powerless, solidifying its hold on power in spite of an increasingly restive and dissatisfied electorate."

#121

Electoral Systems and the Balance of Consumer-Producer Power

2010

This book investigates the effects of electoral systems on the relative legislative and, hence, regulatory influence of competing interests in society. Building on Ronald Rogowski and Mark Andreas Kayser's extension of the classic Stigler-Peltzman model of regulation, the authors demonstrate that majoritarian electoral arrangements should empower consumers relative to producers. Employing real price levels as a proxy for consumer power, the book rigorously establishes this proposition over time, within the OECD, and across a large sample of developing countries. Majoritarian electoral arrangements depress real prices by approximately ten percent, all else equal. The authors carefully construct and test their argument and broaden it to consider the overall welfare effects of electoral system design and the incentives of actors in the choice of electoral institutions.

#122

Quiet Politics and Business Power

Corporate Control in Europe and Japan

2010

Does democracy control business, or does business control democracy? This study of how companies are bought and sold in four countries – France, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands – explores this fundamental question. It does so by examining variation in the rules of corporate control – specifically, whether hostile takeovers are allowed. Takeovers have high political they result in corporate reorganizations, layoffs, and the unraveling of compromises between workers and managers. But the public rarely pays attention to issues of corporate control. As a result, political parties and legislatures are largely absent from this domain. Instead, organized managers get to make the rules, quietly drawing on their superior lobbying capacity and the deference of legislators. These tools, not campaign donations, are the true founts of managerial political influence.

#124

Western Intervention in the Balkans

The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict

2011

Conflicts involve powerful experiences. The residue of these experiences is captured by the concept and language of emotion. Indiscriminate killing creates fear; targeted violence produces anger and a desire for vengeance; political status reversals spawn resentment; cultural prejudices sustain ethnic contempt. These emotions can become resources for political entrepreneurs. A broad range of Western interventions are based on a view of human nature as narrowly rational. Correspondingly, intervention policy generally aims to alter material incentives (“sticks and carrots”) to influence behavior. In response, poorer and weaker actors who wish to block or change this Western implemented “game” use emotions as resources. This book examines the strategic use of emotion in the conflicts and interventions occurring in the Western Balkans over a twenty-year period. The book concentrates on the conflicts among Albanian and Slavic populations (Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, South Serbia), along with some comparisons to Bosnia.

#126

The Political Construction of Business Interests

Coordination, Growth, and Equality

2012

Many societies use labor market coordination to maximize economic growth and equality, yet employers' willing cooperation with government and labor is something of a mystery. The Political Construction of Business Interests recounts employers' struggles to define their collective social identities at turning points in capitalist development. Employers are most likely to support social investments in countries with strong peak business associations, that help members form collective preferences and realize policy goals in labor market negotiations. Politicians, with incentives shaped by governmental structures, took the initiative in association-building and those that created the strongest associations were motivated to evade labor radicalism and to preempt parliamentary democratization. Sweeping in its historical and cross-national reach, the book builds on original archival data, interviews, and cross-national quantitative analyses. The research has important implications for the construction of business as a social class and powerful ramifications for equality, welfare state restructuring and social solidarity.

#127

Popular Movements in Autocracies

Religion, Repression, and Indigenous Collective Action in Mexico

2012

This book presents a new explanation of the rise, development, and demise of social movements and cycles of protest in autocracies; the conditions under which protest becomes rebellion; and the impact of protest and rebellion on democratization. Focusing on poor indigenous villages in Mexico's authoritarian regime, the book shows that the spread of U.S. Protestant missionaries and the competition for indigenous souls motivated the Catholic Church to become a major promoter of indigenous movements for land redistribution and indigenous rights. It also shows that the introduction of government-controlled multiparty elections and the spread of competition for indigenous votes led Leftist opposition parties to become major sponsors of indigenous protest and identities. The expansion of electoral competition in some regions eventually led opposition parties to institutionalize protest, but the withdrawal of civil rights and political liberties and the threat of regime reversion in others gave rise to radicalization. The book explains why the outbreak of local rebellions, the transformation of indigenous claims for land into demands for ethnic autonomy and self-determination, and the threat of a generalized social uprising motivated national elites to democratize. Drawing on an original dataset of indigenous collective action and on extensive fieldwork, the empirical analysis of the book combines quantitative evidence with case studies and life histories.

#129

Multi-Ethnic Coalitions in Africa

Business Financing of Opposition Election Campaigns

2012

Incumbent leaders in African countries typically keep themselves in power, winning election after election, by using state resources to enlist the support of politicians from other ethnic groups. It is less evident how opposition politicians can form the electoral alliances needed to compete against these entrenched incumbents. This book explains how the business-state relationship can influence coalition bargaining among opposition politicians representing different ethnic groups. It combines cross-national analyses of African countries with in-depth case studies of Cameroon and Kenya to show that incumbents actively manipulate financial controls and institutions in order to prevent members of the business community—the main funders of parties in poor countries—from supporting their opposition. It demonstrates that opposition politicians are more likely to build multiethnic coalitions once incumbents have lost their ability to blackmail the business sector through financial reprisals. Multiethnic Coalitions in Africa received the Best Book Award in 2013 from the African Politics Conference Group, an organized section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the African Studies Association (ASA). The book was also recognized in 2014 with an Honorable Mention for the Gregory Luebbert Prize for best book from the Comparative Politics section of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

#132

Globalization and Austerity Politics in Latin America

2013

In an age of financial globalization, are markets and democracy compatible? For developing countries, the dramatic internationalization of financial markets over the last two decades deepens tensions between politics and markets. Notwithstanding the rise of left-leaning governments in regions like Latin America, macroeconomic policies often have a neoliberal appearance. When is austerity imposed externally and when is it a domestic political choice? By combining statistical tests with extensive field research across Latin America, this book examines the effect of financial globalization on economic policymaking. Kaplan argues that a country’s structural composition of international borrowing and its individual technocratic understanding of past economic crises combine to produce dramatically different outcomes in national policy choices. Incorporating these factors into an electoral politics framework, the book then challenges the conventional wisdom that political business cycles are prevalent in newly democratizing regions. This book is accessible to a broad audience and scholars with an interest in the political economy of finance, development and democracy, and Latin American politics.

#133

Bankers, Bureaucrats, and Central Bank Politics

The Myth of Neutrality

2013

Most studies of the political economy of money focus on the laws protecting central banks from government interference; this book turns to the overlooked people who actually make monetary policy decisions. Using formal theory and statistical evidence from dozens of central banks across the developed and developing worlds, this book shows that monetary policy agents are not all the same. Molded by specific professional and sectoral backgrounds and driven by career concerns, central bankers with different career trajectories choose predictably different monetary policies. These differences undermine the widespread belief that central bank independence is a neutral solution for macroeconomic management. Instead, through careful selection and retention of central bankers, partisan governments can and do influence monetary policy – preserving a political trade-off between inflation and real economic performance even in an age of legally independent central banks.

#135

Hierarchical Capitalism in Latin America

Business, Labor, and the Challenges of Equitable Development

2013

This book argues that Latin America has a distinctive, enduring form of hierarchical capitalism characterized by multinational corporations, diversified business groups, low skills and segmented labor markets. Over time, institutional complementarities knit features of corporate governance and labor markets together and thus contribute to institutional resiliency. Political systems generally favored elites and insiders who further reinforced existing institutions and complementarities. Hierarchical capitalism has not promoted rising productivity, good jobs or equitable development, and the efficacy of development strategies to promote these outcomes depends on tackling negative institutional complementarities. This book is intended to open a new debate on the nature of capitalism in Latin America and link that discussion to related research on comparative capitalism in other parts of the world.

#137

Alien Rule

2013

This book argues that alien rule can become legitimate to the degree that it provides governance that is both effective and fair. Governance is effective to the degree that citizens have access to an expanding economy and an ample supply of culturally appropriate collective goods. Governance is fair to the degree that rulers act according to the strictures of procedural justice. These twin conditions help account for the legitimation of alien rulers in organizations of markedly different scale. The book applies these principles to the legitimation of alien rulers in states (the Republic of Genoa, nineteenth- and twentieth-century China, and modern Iraq), colonies (Taiwan and Korea under Japanese rule), and occupation regimes, as well as in less encompassing organizations such as universities (academic receivership), corporations (mergers and acquisitions), and stepfamilies. Finally, it speculates about the possibility of an international market in governance services.

#141

Networks and Institutions in Europe's Emerging Markets

2014

Do ties between political parties and businesses harm or benefit the development of market institutions? The post-communist transition offers an unparalleled opportunity to explore when and how networks linking the polity and the economy support the development of functional institutions. A quantitative and qualitative analysis covering eleven post-socialist countries combined with detailed case studies of Bulgaria, Poland and Romania documents how the most successful post-communist countries are those in which dense networks link politicians and businesspeople, as long as politicians are constrained by intense political competition. This combination allowed Poland to emerge with stable institutions while Bulgaria demonstrates that in developing economies intense political competition alone is harmful in the absence of dense personal and ownership networks. Indeed, as Romania illustrates, networks are so critical that their weakness is not mitigated even by low political competition. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Books Online and via Knowledge Unlatched.

#144

Nontaxation and Representation

The Fiscal Foundations of Political Stability

2014

Does oil make countries autocratic? Can foreign aid make countries democratic? Does taxation lead to representation? In this book, Kevin M. Morrison develops a novel argument about how government revenues of all kinds affect political regimes and their leaders. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Morrison illustrates that taxation leads to instability, not representation. With this insight, he extends his award-winning work on nontax revenues to encompass foreign aid, oil revenue, and intergovernmental grants and shows that they lead to decreased taxation, increased government spending, and increased political stability. Looking at the stability of democracies and dictatorships as well as leadership transitions within those regimes, Morrison incorporates cross-national statistical methods, formal modeling, a quasi-experiment, and case studies of Brazil, Kenya, and Mexico to build his case. This book upends many common hypotheses and policy recommendations, providing the most comprehensive treatment of revenue and political stability to date.

#147

Changing Course in Latin America

Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era

2014

This book explores the impact of economic crises and free-market reforms on party systems and political representation in contemporary Latin America. It explains why some patterns of market reform align and stabilize party systems, whereas other patterns of reform leave party systems vulnerable to widespread social protest and electoral instability. In contrast to other works on the topic, this book accounts for both the institutionalization and the breakdown of party systems, and it explains why Latin America turned to the Left politically in the aftermath of the market-reform process. Ultimately, it explains why this “left turn” was more radical in some countries than others and why it had such varied effects on national party systems.

#149

From Open Secrets to Secret Voting

Democratic Electoral Reforms and Voter Autonomy

2015

The expansion of suffrage and the introduction of elections are momentous political changes that represent only the first steps in the process of democratization. In the absence of institutions that protect the electoral autonomy of voters against a range of actors who seek to influence voting decisions, political rights can be just hollow promises. This book examines the adoption of electoral reforms that protected the autonomy of voters during elections and sought to minimize undue electoral influences over decisions made at the ballot box. Empirically, it focuses on the adoption of reforms protecting electoral secrecy in Imperial Germany during the period between 1870 and 1912. Empirically, the book provides a micro-historical analysis of the democratization of electoral practices, by showing how changes in district level economic and political conditions contributed to the formation of an encompassing political coalition supporting the adoption of electoral reforms.

#153

Information for Autocrats

Representation in Chinese Local Congresses

2015

This book investigates the new representation unfolding in Chinese local congresses. Drawing qualitative fieldwork and data analysis from original surveys of 5,130 township, county, and municipal congressmen and women and constituents, Melanie Manion shows the priorities and problems of ordinary Chinese significantly influence both who gets elected to local congresses and what the congresses do once elected. Candidates nominated by ordinary voters are 'good types', with qualities that signal they will reliably represent the community. By contrast, candidates nominated by the communist party are 'governing types', with qualities that reflect officially valued competence and loyalty. However, congressmen and women of both types now largely reject the Maoist-era role of state agent. Instead, they view themselves as 'delegates', responsible for advocating with local government to supply local public goods. Manion argues that representation in Chinese local congresses taps local knowledge for local governance, thereby bolstering the rule of autocrats in Beijing.

#155

Organized Violence after Civil War

The Geography of Recruitment in Latin America

2016

Nearly half of all countries emerging from civil conflict relapse into war within a few years of signing a peace agreement. The postwar trajectories of armed groups vary from organizational cohesion to dissolution, demilitarization to remilitarization. In Organized Violence after Civil War, Daly analyzes evidence from thirty-seven militia groups in Colombia, demonstrating that the primary driving force behind these changes is the variation in recruitment patterns within, and between, the warring groups. She documents the transition from war to peace through interviews with militia commanders, combatants and victims. Using rich ex-combatant survey data and geo-coded information on violence over fifty years of war, Daly explains the dynamics inside armed organizations and the strategic interactions among them. She also shows how the theory may be used beyond Colombia, both within the region of Latin America and across the rest of the world.

#156

The Political Logic of Poverty Relief

Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico

2016

Poverty relief programs are shaped by politics. The particular design which social programs take is to a large extent determined by the existing institutional constraints and politicians' imperative to win elections. The Political Logic of Poverty Relief places elections and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the poor. Would political parties possess incentives to target the poor with transfers aimed at poverty alleviation or would they instead give these to their supporters? Would politicians rely on the distribution of particularistic benefits rather than public goods? The authors assess the welfare effects of social programs in Mexico and whether voters reward politicians for targeted poverty alleviation programs. The book provides a new interpretation of the role of cash transfers and poverty relief assistance in the development of welfare state institutions.

#157

The Price of a Vote in the Middle East

Clientelism and Communal Politics in Lebanon and Yemen

2016

Clientelism and ethnic favoritism appear to go hand in hand in many diverse societies in the developing world. However, while some ethnic communities receive generous material rewards for their political support, others receive very modest payoffs. The Price of a Vote in the Middle East examines this key - and often overlooked - component of clientelism. The author draws on elite interviews and original survey data collected during his years of field research in Lebanon and Yemen; two Arab countries in which political constituencies follow sectarian, regional, and tribal divisions. He demonstrates that voters in internally-competitive communal groups receive more, and better, payoffs for their political support than voters trapped in uncompetitive groups dominated by a single, hegemonic leader. Ultimately, politicians provide services when compelled by competitive pressures to do so, whereas leaders sheltered from competition can, and do, take their supporters for granted.

#159

Rebelocracy

Social Order in the Colombian Civil War

2016

Conventional wisdom portrays war zones as chaotic and anarchic. In reality, however, they are often orderly. This work introduces a new phenomenon in the study of civil wartime social order. It investigates theoretically and empirically the emergence and functioning of social order in conflict zones. By theorizing the interaction between combatants and civilians and how they impact wartime institutions, the study delves into rebel behavior, civilian agency and their impact on the conduct of war. Based on years of fieldwork in Colombia, the theory is tested with qualitative and quantitative evidence on communities, armed groups, and individuals in conflict zones. The study shows how armed groups strive to rule civilians, and how the latter influence the terms of that rule. The theory and empirical results illuminate our understanding of civil war, institutions, local governance, non-violent resistance, and the emergence of political order.

#160

Institutions on the Edge

The Origins and Consequences of Inter-Branch Crises in Latin America

2017

Why does institutional instability pervade the developing world? Examining contemporary Latin America, Institutions on the Edge develops and tests a novel argument to explain why institutional crises emerge, spread, and repeat in some countries, but not in others. The book draws on formal bargaining theories developed in the conflict literature to offer the first unified micro-level account of inter-branch crises. In so doing, Helmke shows that concentrating power in the executive branch not only fuels presidential crises under divided government, but also triggers broader constitutional crises that cascade on to the legislature and the judiciary. Along the way, Helmke highlights the importance of public opinion and mass protests, and elucidates the conditions under which divided government matters for institutional instability.

#163

Exclusion by Elections

Inequality, Ethnic Identity, and Democracy

2017

Exclusion by Elections develops a theory about the circumstances under which 'class identities' as opposed to 'ethnic identities' become salient in democratic politics, and links this theory to issues of inequality and the propensity of governments to address it. The book argues that in societies with even modest levels of ethnic diversity, inequality invites ethnic politics, and ethnic politics results in less redistribution than class politics. Thus, contrary to existing workhorse models in social science, where democracies are expected to respond to inequality by increasing redistribution, the argument here is that inequality interacts with ethnic diversity to discourage redistribution. As a result, inequality often becomes reinforced by inequality itself. The author explores the argument empirically by examining cross-national patterns of voting behaviour, redistribution and democratic transitions, and he discusses the argument's implications for identifying strategies that can be used to address rising inequality in the world today.

#164

Forbearance as Redistribution

The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America

2017

Why do governments tolerate the violation of their own laws and regulations? Conventional wisdom is that governments cannot enforce their laws. Forbearance as Redistribution challenges the standard interpretation by showing that politicians choose not to enforce laws to distribute resources and win elections. Alisha Holland demonstrates that this forbearance towards activities such as squatting and street vending is a powerful strategy for attracting the electoral support of poor voters. In many developing countries, state social programs are small or poorly targeted and thus do not offer politicians an effective means to mobilize the poor. In contrast, forbearance constitutes an informal welfare policy around which Holland argues much of urban politics turns. While forbearance offers social support to those failed by their governments, it also perpetuates the same exclusionary welfare policies from which it grows.

#165

Who Speaks for the Poor?

2017

Who Speaks for the Poor? explains why parties represent some groups and not others. This book focuses attention on the electoral geography of income, and how it has changed over time, to account for cross-national differences in the political and partisan representation of low-income voters. Jusko develops a general theory of new party formation that shows how changes in the geographic distribution of groups across electoral districts create opportunities for new parties to enter elections, especially where changes favor groups previously excluded from local partisan networks. Empirical evidence is drawn first from a broadly comparative analysis of all new party entry and then from a series of historical case studies, each focusing on the strategic entry incentives of new low-income peoples' parties. Jusko offers a new explanation for the absence of a low-income people's party in the USA and a more general account of political inequality in contemporary democratic societies.

#166

Deadly Clerics

Blocked Ambition and the Paths to Jihad

2017

Deadly Clerics explains why some Muslim clerics adopt the ideology of militant jihadism while most do not. The book explores multiple pathways of cleric radicalization and shows that the interplay of academic, religious, and political institutions has influenced the rise of modern jihadism through a mechanism of blocked ambition. As long as clerics' academic ambitions remain attainable, they are unlikely to espouse violent jihad. Clerics who are forced out of academia are more likely to turn to jihad for two jihadist ideas are attractive to those who see the system as turning against them, and preaching a jihad ideology can help these outsider clerics attract supporters and funds. The book draws on evidence from various sources, including large-scale statistical analysis of texts and network data obtained from the Internet, case studies of clerics' lives, and ethnographic participant observations at sites in Cairo, Egypt.

#169

Votes for Survival

Relational Clientelism in Latin America

2018

Across the world, many politicians deliver benefits to citizens in direct exchange for their votes. Scholars often predict the demise of this phenomenon, as it is threatened by economic development, ballot secrecy and other daunting challenges. To explain its resilience, this book shifts attention to the demand side of exchanges. Nichter contends that citizens play a crucial but underappreciated role in the survival of relational clientelism - ongoing exchange relationships that extend beyond election campaigns. Citizens often undertake key actions, including declared support and requesting benefits, to sustain these relationships. As most of the world's population remains vulnerable to adverse shocks, citizens often depend on such relationships when the state fails to provide an adequate social safety net. Nichter demonstrates the critical role of citizens with fieldwork and original surveys in Brazil, as well as with comparative evidence from Argentina, Mexico and other continents.

#170

Homicidal Ecologies

Illicit Economies and Complicit States in Latin America

2018

Why has violence spiked in Latin America's contemporary democracies? What explains its temporal and spatial variation? Analyzing the region's uneven homicide levels, this book maps out a theoretical agenda focusing on three intersecting factors: the changing geography of transnational illicit political economies; the varied capacity and complicity of state institutions tasked with providing law and order; and organizational competition to control illicit territorial enclaves. These three factors inform the emergence of 'homicidal ecologies' (subnational regions most susceptible to violence) in Latin America. After focusing on the contemporary causes of homicidal violence, the book analyzes the comparative historical origins of weak and complicit public security forces and the rare moments in which successful institutional reform takes place. Regional trends in Latin America are evaluated, followed by original case studies of Central America, which claims among the highest homicide rates in the world.

#171

Why Bother?

Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests

2019

Why do vote-suppression efforts sometimes fail? Why does police repression of demonstrators sometimes turn localized protests into massive, national movements? How do politicians and activists manipulate people's emotions to get them involved? The authors of Why Bother? offer a new theory of why people take part in collective action in politics, and test it in the contexts of voting and protesting. They develop the idea that just as there are costs of participation in politics, there are also costs of abstention - intrinsic and psychological but no less real. That abstention can be psychically costly helps explain real-world patterns that are anomalies for existing theories, such as that sometimes increases in costs of participation are followed by more participation, not less. The book draws on a wealth of survey data, interviews, and experimental results from a range of countries, including the United States, Britain, Brazil, Sweden, and Turkey.

#173

Ideological Representation

Achieved and Astray: Elections, Institutions, and the Breakdown of Ideological Congruence in Parliamentary Democracies

2019

Ideological congruence is the term generally used in comparative politics for the representative relationship between the general preferences of citizens and the perceived and stated position of government. This study provides a systematic comparative assessment of success and failure in achieving ideological congruence in nineteen developed parliamentary democracies from 1996 through to 2017. It then deconstructs the processes through which elections can connect citizens and governments into the three major stages: citizens' votes in parliamentary elections; the conversion of those votes into legislative representation; the election of prime ministers by their parliaments and the appointment of cabinet ministers. Analyzing these three stages shows that average distance from the median citizen increases at each stage, with only a few remarkable recoveries once congruence begins to go astray.

#174

The Historical Roots of Political Violence

Revolutionary Terrorism in Affluent Countries

2019

Following the protest movements and radicalism of the late sixties, many affluent countries experienced lethal revolutionary terrorism. Groups like the Red Brigades in Italy and the Red Army Faction in Germany provoked political crises in their countries. Other affluent countries, however, did not experience this same kind of violence. This book offers a historical-comparative explanation of this cross-national variation, focusing on the development paths followed by countries during the interwar period. The countries that followed a non-liberal path (marked by anarchist terrorism, democratic breakdowns, civil wars, land inequality, non-liberal capitalism, and late industrialization) suffered lethal left-wing terrorism decades later. Terrorism is thus explained as a feature of the political and economic system. Drawing on several fields, including comparative politics, political economy, international relations, and historical sociology, this book offers novel hypotheses about the determinants of violent conflict.

#175

Information, Accountability, and Cumulative Learning

Lessons from Metaketa I

2019

Throughout the world, voters lack access to information about politicians, government performance, and public services. Efforts to remedy these informational deficits are numerous. Yet do informational campaigns influence voter behavior and increase democratic accountability? Through the first project of the Metaketa Initiative, sponsored by the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) research network, this book aims to address this substantive question and at the same time introduce a new model for cumulative learning that increases coordination among otherwise independent researcher teams. It presents the overall results (using meta-analysis) from six independently conducted but coordinated field experimental studies, the results from each individual study, and the findings from a related evaluation of whether practitioners utilize this information as expected. It also discusses lessons learned from EGAP's efforts to coordinate field experiments, increase replication of theoretically important studies across contexts, and increase the external validity of field experimental research.

#176

The Private Sector in Public Office

Selective Property Rights in China

2019

This book addresses the long-standing puzzle of how China's private sector manages to grow without secure property rights, and proposes a new theory of selective property rights to explain this phenomenon. Drawing on rich empirical evidence including in-depth interviews, a unique national survey of private entrepreneurs, two original national audit experiments and secondary sources, Professor Yue Hou shows that private entrepreneurs in China actively seek opportunities within formal institutions to advance their business interests. By securing seats in the local legislatures, entrepreneurs use their political capital to deter local officials from demanding bribes, ad hoc taxes, and other types of informal payments. In doing so they create a system of selective, individualized, and predictable property rights. This system of selective property rights is key to understanding the private sector growth in the absence of the rule of law.

#177

Who Wants What? Redistribution Preferences in Comparative Perspective

2019

Why do some people support redistributive policies such as a generous welfare state, social policy or protections for the poor, and others do not? The (often implicit) model behind much of comparative politics and political economy starts with redistribution preferences. These affect how individuals behave politically and their behavior in turn affects the strategies of political parties and the policies of governments. This book challenges some influential interpretations of the political consequences of inequality. Rueda and Stegmueller provide a novel explanation of how the demand for redistribution is the result of expected future income, the negative externalities of inequality, and the relationship between altruism and population heterogeneity. This innovative and timely volume will be of great interest to readers interested in the political causes and consequences of inequality.

#178

From Pews to Politics

Religious Sermons and Political Participation in Africa

2019

Does religion influence political participation? This book takes up this pressing debate using Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa as its empirical base to demonstrate that religious teachings communicated in sermons can influence both the degree and the form of citizens' political participation. McClendon and Riedl document some of the current diversity of sermon content in contemporary Christian houses of worship and then use a combination of laboratory experiments, observational survey data, focus groups, and case comparisons in Zambia, Uganda, and Kenya to interrogate the impact of sermon exposure on political participation and the longevity of that impact. Pews to Politics in Africa leverages the pluralism of sermons in sub-Saharan Africa to gain insight into the content of cultural influences and their consequences for how ordinary citizens participate in politics.

#179

Demanding Development

The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India's Urban Slums

2019

India's urban slums exhibit dramatic variation in their access to local public goods and services - paved roads, piped water, trash removal, sewers, and streetlights. Why are some vulnerable communities able to demand and secure development from the state while others fail? Drawing on more than two years of fieldwork in the north Indian cities of Bhopal and Jaipur, Demanding Development accounts for the uneven success of India's slum residents in securing local public goods and services. Auerbach's theory centers on the political organization of slum settlements and the informal slum leaders who spearhead resident efforts to make claims on the state - in particular, those slum leaders who are party workers. He finds striking variation in the extent to which networks of party workers have spread across slum settlements. Demanding Development shows how this variation in the density and partisan distribution of party workers across settlements has powerful consequences for the ability of residents to politically mobilize to improve local conditions.

#181

Regime Threats and State Solutions

Bureaucratic Loyalty and Embeddedness in Kenya

2020

The administrative state is a powerful tool because it can control the population and, in moments of crisis, help leaders put down popular threats to their rule. But a state does not act; bureaucrats work through the state to carry out a leader's demands. In turn, leaders attempt to use their authority over the state to manage bureaucrats in a way that induces bureaucratic behavior that furthers their policy and political goals. Focusing on Kenya since independence, Hassan weaves together micro-level personnel data, rich archival records, and interviews to show how the country's different leaders have strategically managed, and in effect weaponized, the public sector. This nuanced analysis shows how even states categorized as weak have proven capable of helping their leader stay in power. With engaging evidence and compelling theory, Regime Threats and State Solutions will interest political scientists and scholars studying authoritarian regimes, African politics, state bureaucracy, and political violence.

#182

Politics for Profit

Business, Elections, and Policymaking in Russia

2020

Businesspeople run for and win elected office around the world, with roughly one-third of members of parliament and numerous heads of states coming directly from the private sector. Yet we know little about why these politicians choose to leave the private sector and what they actually do while in government. In Politics for Profit, David Szakonyi brings to bear sweeping quantitative and qualitative evidence from Putin-era Russia to shed light on why businesspeople contest elections and what the consequences are for their firms and for society when they win. The book develops an original theory of businessperson candidacy as a type of corporate political activity undertaken in response to both economic competition and weak political parties. Szakonyi's evidence then shows that businesspeople help their firms reap huge gains in revenue and profitability while prioritizing investments in public infrastructure over human capital. The book finally evaluates policies for combatting political corruption.

#183

Votes, Drugs, and Violence

2020

One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis spanning more than two decades and multiple levels of government, Trejo and Ley show that electoral competition and partisan conflict were key drivers of the outbreak of Mexico's crime wars, the intensification of violence, and the expansion of war and violence to the spheres of local politics and civil society.

#184

How Insurgency Begins

Rebel Group Formation in Uganda and Beyond

2020

How and why do rebel groups initially form? Prevailing scholarship has attributed the emergence of armed rebellion to the explosion of pre-mobilized political or ethnic hostilities. However, this book finds both uncertainty and secrecy shrouding the start of insurgency in weak states. Examining why only some incipient armed rebellions succeed in becoming viable challengers to governments, How Insurgency Begins shows that rumors circulating in places where rebel groups form can influence civilians' perceptions of both rebels and the state. By revealing the connections between villagers' trusted network structures and local ethnic demography, Janet I. Lewis shows how ethnic networks facilitate the spread of pro-rebel rumors. This in-depth analysis of conflicts in Uganda and neighbouring states speaks to scholars and policymakers seeking to understand the motives and actions of those initiating armed rebellion, those witnessing the process in their community, and those trying to stop it.

#185

Inward Conquest

The Political Origins of Modern Public Services

2020

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modern states began to provide many of the public services we now take for granted. Inward Conquest presents the first comprehensive analysis of the political origins of modern public services during this period. Ansell and Lindvall show how struggles among political parties and religious groups shaped the structure of diverse yet crucially important public services, including policing, schooling, and public health. Liberals, Catholics, conservatives, socialists, and fascists all fought bitterly over both the provision and political control of public services, with profound consequences for contemporary political developments. Integrating data on the historical development of public order, education, and public health with novel measures on the ideological orientation of governments, the authors provide a wealth of new evidence on a missing link in the history of the modern state.

Authors

Elizabeth J. Zechmeister

Christian A. Davenport

Author · 2 books

Christian Davenport PhD is best known as a scholar of state repression/human rights violation, genocide, civil war, social movements and protest having written 8 books and approximately 50+ academic articles. While his work mainly concerns global patterns, he has also done research on specific countries as well including the United States (social movements, protest, protest policing and state repression, the Black Power Movement), Rwanda (genocide and civil war), India (untouchability) and Northern Ireland (the Conflict or Troubles). Innovative databases derived from archival sources as well as content analyses are affiliated with both sets of research. Davenport is generally viewed as being one of the founding scholars regarding the quantitative examination of state repression/human rights violation as well as one of the earliest scholars to engage in what has become an effort to explore sub-national, disaggregated, organizational as well as individual-level dynamics within conflict and contention. While most of his research has been concerned with explaining onset, variation and lethality, newer work has moved to explain termination as well as consequences/legacies/outcomes.

Not here much. Keeping track, such as I do, at The Story Graph. Beyond my political science work, writing Fate Music: Jerry Garcia Beyond the Grateful Dead

Daniel Treisman

Author · 3 books

Robert J. Franzese Jr.

Author · 1 books

Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca

Maria Victoria Murillo

Adam Michael Auerbach

Henry Farrell is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute Professor of International Affairs at SAIS, and 2019 winner of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology. Previously, he served as a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He works on a variety of topics, including democracy, the politics of the internet, and international and comparative political economy. He is author of Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Fight over Freedom and Security (with Abraham Newman, 2019) and The Political Economy of Trust: Interests, Institutions and Inter-Firm Cooperation (2009).