The impact of corruption charges on the electoral performance of parties is conditioned by specific institutional factors. This article shows the extent to which the effects of political corruption depend on the control that party leaders exercise over the ballot. It is argued that voters might abstain or support other lists if they cannot select individual candidates to revitalize the reputation of the political party. Employing data on judicial investigations in Italy from 1983 to 2013, we provide evidence of the role of electoral rules and intra-party xcandidate selection in shaping the relationship between corruption and voters’ behaviour. Parties implicated in corruption or related crimes experience a loss of votes when they compete under a closed list formula or when the candidate selection process is strongly centralized.
As a reaction to the erosion of political parties, citizens increasingly engage in participation independently from parties (such as boycotts, petitions and street demonstrations). Looking beyond the often-stated contradiction between party membership and these forms of non-institutionalized participation, we tried to determine whether party members participate in non-institutionalized participation as a complement or an alternative to their party membership activities. Based on the relative deprivation and civic voluntarism model, three party variables were selected: activity rate in the party, government status and ideological orientation of the party. The results of our analysis conducted on party members in 22 European countries show that the government status and the ideological position of a party have the largest effects on the propensity to participate in direct action. Activity rate does not have a significant effect, except a positive one for street demonstrations. In sum, direct action is not an alternative for dissatisfied party members, but rather a complement.
In this article, we analyse the mechanisms of agenda setting by focusing on the determinants of individual attitudes towards crime and investigating the role played by the media. After a brief literature review supporting the relevance of the selected topic of inquiry and the presentation of our analytical framework, we study the persuasion effects of mass media. More specifically, we investigate how TV exposure can shape individual perceptions of specific issues such as crime, and then focus on the effects of exposure to crime news on voting decisions. Using the Italian 2001 general election as an important case study of TV power concentration, we provide evidence that media-induced agenda setting enhanced the salience of the crime issue in voters’ minds during the 2001 Italian general election and contributed to the victory of the coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi. Interestingly, our results are partially driven by the switch of previous left-wing voters to voting for the centre right because of exposure to crime news.
On the question of how voters perceive party positions, much of the existing literature has not adequately considered the case of a multidimensional policy space. Since the ideological cues related to each issue differ in a policy space of multiple dimensions, it is possible that each individual favors different dimensional cues. To test this hypothesis, this paper focuses on Japan’s 2012 Lower House election, which took place in a two-dimensional policy space. An analysis of how voters position the three major parties relative to each other reveals that there is actually heterogeneity in the voter perception of the policy space. Further, using a mixed logit model, we find that demographic factors and political attitudes explain this heterogeneity.
Is making an explicit distinction between politically moderate devout Muslims and political radicals empirically valid? If yes, in what ways do political moderates differ from political radicals? By systematically examining cross-national Muslim attitudes, this article scrutinizes the distinctiveness of politically moderate and politically radical Islam against the weight of empirical evidence. By drawing from extant theoretical linkages, we conduct a confirmatory factor analysis of cross-national survey data from 13 Muslim-majority states to test the fit of two widely theorized factors—moderate and radical Islamism. The findings suggest that support for politically moderate Islam is distinctively different from support for politically radical Islam. This article makes two key contributions. First, this study introduces a systematic empirical operationalization of Political Islam, and a more nuanced measurement thereof for empirical research. Second, the findings help advance our understanding of the variation in politically divergent religious attitudes in the Islamic world.
Does more citizen participation necessarily improve the democratic quality and/or the effectiveness of government? What forms of participation have the potential to accomplish these goals? And, more important, how can these participatory mechanisms be integrated into traditional representative and bureaucratic governance practices, in order to grasp this potential? We discuss these questions in the article, building on theories and empirical evidence provided by both political science and public administration studies. The conclusion we reach is that participatory empowered mechanisms, such as popular initiatives and referendums, and public–private co-governance councils, have a clear potential to enhance the effectiveness and responsiveness of public governance. However, we also find that in order to secure these benefits and not compromise equality and accountability, the introduction of these mechanisms needs to come together with strong and highly representative legislatures, and with reforms that align the powers and increase the representativeness of interest groups.
Disability affects the lives of hundreds of millions across the world. People with disabilities often experience discrimination and unequal treatment. Sometimes the mere categorization of people into groups, that is, ‘healthy’ vs. ‘disabled’, is enough to trigger discriminatory behaviour against people with disabilities. Previous studies show that in general disabilities depress political participation. However, the effect of disability-based discrimination on participation has received little scholarly attention. We study how perceptions of discrimination affect three forms of political participation: voting; contacting politicians; and participating in demonstrations. Results show that disability decreases voting, especially when associated with perceptions of discrimination. The analysis points in the opposite direction when the other two forms of political participation are analysed. People with disabilities are more likely to partake in demonstrations and contact politicians than non-disabled. Thus, disability-based discrimination is not always a hindrance to participation. It sometimes further motivates people with disabilities to participate.
This article examines the attitudes of national political elites towards the EU and the recent politicisation of Europe in the Italian party system. Italian political elites have experienced some important transformations in the recent past as a consequence of the emergence of new parties, the re-alignment of other established parties and some structural transformations in their socio-demographic traits. This article shows that positive feelings towards the EU have survived the acute change to the composition of the political elites, and that support for Europe is still widespread. Variations are mainly differences in degree of support. Although opposition to the EU has emerged, this has not occurred in a linear way and remains dispersed, while a Eurosceptic camp able to challenge the mainstream pro-European conduct of the Italian elites is far from being in place.
Several studies have demonstrated a gap in support for the political system between electoral winners and losers. This research has generated a large stock of knowledge about the causes and effects of this winner–loser gap. However, we know little about the dynamics of the winner–loser gap over time. Drawing on a unique Swedish panel survey, this study investigates the stability of the winner–loser gap among Swedish voters over an electoral cycle of four years. The empirical analyses demonstrate a substantial consistency of the gap over time also when controlling for other determinants. The winner–loser gap thus seems to be a stable phenomenon rather than a short-lived election effect. The results are robust to different specifications and statistical techniques.
An extensive literature shows that economic globalization has a positive effect on gender equality. However, the effect varies greatly across countries and time. This article argues that social globalization – individuals’ exposure to external ideas, people, and information flows – and the changes in values associated with it – is a key boundary condition for the effect of economic globalization on women’s rights. While economic globalization opens up new opportunities for women, policy adaptation to these changes requires a social demand for efforts for change. Social globalization contributes to policy adaptation by exposing the public to alternative gender-role models, setting off a shift in values, which underlies support for gender equality. Results emerging from a time-series-cross-sectional analysis of 152 nations for the period 1990–2003 confirm that the positive effect of economic globalization on gender equality wanes at lower levels of social globalization. Further, multilevel-path-analyses models demonstrate how changes to individual-level values mediate the effect of globalization on individuals’ support for gender equality.
It is now more than three decades since various post-positivist approaches were introduced into the discipline of International Relations (IR) by scholars launching ‘massive attacks’ on positivism. However, many continue to express concern about the ‘marginalization’ of post-positivist scholarship within IR, while others discuss how and why ‘theoretical proliferation’ has come about in the field, convinced that IR is ‘a plural, and pluralist, field.’ Neither group, however, offers the empirical evidence needed to sustain its argument. To provide such evidence, this article undertakes an empirical investigation of the extent to which post- positivist research is practised in contemporary IR, examining publishing and teaching practices in American IR, and the rapidly emerging Chinese IR community. The findings of this investigation will be useful in broadening the debate about theoretical diversity in the discipline.
This study aims to contribute new insights into the way ‘political labour’ is divided in the household. I use data from a large-scale panel study, the Parent–Child Socialization Study 2012–2013, conducted among adolescents and both their parents in Belgium, to analyse the different ways in which family members engage in politics and influence each other’s political preferences. First, I analyse differences in political engagement between fathers, mothers and adolescents. Second, I present a full triadic structural equation model to measure the political influence that fathers, mothers and adolescent children exert on one another. The findings suggest that fathers are (still) more engaged in politics, but when it comes to preferences for political parties, both parents influence their partners and their adolescent children in equal measure.
To what extent do electoral institutions influence positions on same-sex marriage? Debates over same-sex marriage legislation have increased globally for the past 20 years, yet little research focuses on either debates in East Asia or the affect of electoral institutions. Using an original dataset on Taiwanese legislators and their public stances on same-sex marriage, this research finds that legislators elected under proportional representation (PR) are consistently more likely to support same-sex marriage laws than their counterparts elected in single-member districts (SMDs), even after controlling for partisanship. The results here not only highlight overlooked institutional influences on support, but also tie the broader literature on mixed-member systems to the growing research on same-sex marriage rights.
To establish an unambiguous source of accountability, a semi-presidential constitution can either allow the president to dominate government formation and dissolve the parliament without a prior vote of no confidence being passed or it can reverse the arrangement of these powers. Accordingly, Taiwan is an unusual case of semi-presidentialism because the president can unilaterally appoint the premier but cannot actively dissolve the parliament, so the electorate is seldom called upon to evaluate the responsibility of the constitutional agents in a snap election. Vote-trading theory offers a reasonable explanation for this puzzling situation by showing how seemingly unconnected issues can be voted on as a package. In Taiwan, the choice of presidential powers was complicated by the sovereignty issue, leading the reformers of the constitution to deny the legislature the power to confirm the president’s appointment of the premier in exchange for downsizing the Taiwan Provincial Government. This is exactly what vote-trading theory foresees: votes on different issues may be traded if no "pivot" finds the status quo to be his/her favorite option. By demonstrating how the linking of unconnected issues can obstruct institutional design, vote-trading theory expands our understanding of constitutional choice.
Do social media help individuals without organisational memberships to engage more in politics or do they only facilitate political participation for those already involved? We examine how social media use and organisational membership jointly affect participation. Comparative surveys in Hong Kong and Taipei reveal that information sharing and virtual political engagement on social media mobilised users to engage in collective political actions. The influence of social media on individual-based participation is conditional on organisational membership, as reflected by the number of organisations joined. Organisational membership moderates the relationship between social media use and political behaviours differently in Hong Kong and Taipei.
This article evaluates the effectiveness of two major European Union technical assistance programmes, IPR2 and IP Key, in shaping China’s regional intellectual property (IP) enforcement. It argues that although technical assistance programmes have been effective in influencing the national IP legal framework, it has been less successful in assisting regional policy enforcement. This is primarily the result of divergent economic priorities at the sub-national level. The article further assesses potential priorities for future IP technical assistance.
Exploration of gender and political ambition is a crucial endeavor in liberal democracies like the United States and in electoral democracies with unstable political rights and civil liberties. We use a mixed-methods approach to conduct a political ambition survey of participants in the 2007–2009 Pakistani Lawyers’ Movement. We tested eight hypotheses about gender and participation in the movement, whether participants considered running for office (nascent ambition), or have taken steps to run (expressive ambition). Contrary to US findings, among eligible males and females in Pakistan, our logit analysis shows that gender is not significant in explaining nascent ambition among men and women. Running for office has equally crossed women’s minds because of female executive role models and women’s reserved parliamentary seats. However, elite Pakistani women have lower levels of expressive ambition owing to higher costs women face when challenging informal norms about political participation.
Based on data from 16 Asian and 18 Latin American countries from 1996 to 2009, this article argues that corruption does indeed affect the distributive outcomes of government spending, but not necessarily in the expected direction. The incentives for bureaucrats and politicians to abuse their power during the budgetary process suggests that corruption should concentrate public funds in the hands of elites, exacerbating inequality. However, this should only be expected when corruption takes the form of looting (embezzlement). When it takes the form of cheating (vote-buying), it may actually reduce inequality as it involves resource distribution and building of clientelistic linkages. It is the level of political competition rather than regional differences that determines the distributional effects of corruption in Asia and Latin America. This article has profound implications for the study of corruption and policy outcomes, suggesting that the level of political competition is a key factor in determining the outcomes of corruption.
This study examines two prominent arguments underlying perceptions of corruption – Uslaner’s "inequality trap" thesis, according to which high inequality leads to low trust and thus greater corruption ad infinitum – and the unfairness theory. The perception of corruption was measured across 31 countries via the 2006 Role of Government module of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The findings indicate that, in line with the "inequality trap" thesis, countries with higher levels of income inequality evince a higher degree of perception of corruption and, in correspondence with the unfairness thesis, that people who believe that public officials treat them fairly are less likely to perceive corruption to exist. Combining these two explanations, we employed a multilevel model to examine whether the negative correlation between fair treatment and perceptions of corruption vary in accordance with the level of country income inequality. The results indicate that the link between these variables is weaker in less equal countries than in more egalitarian countries. In unequal countries, fairness does not matter quite so much for corruption perceptions.
What determines whether militaries will defect from authoritarian incumbents during regime crises? Variance in military behavior in the Arab Spring has given rise to a debate around this issue. This article highlights weaknesses of the dominant explanation and develops an alternative account of military behavior in ‘endgame scenarios’. If militaries are politicized institutions that play a major role in regulating access to power under authoritarianism, they are more likely to intervene during normal times, but less likely to defect during mass uprisings. I quantitatively test this argument against data on military coups between 1975 and 2000 drawing on a new variable that allows me to explicitly model the impact of major regime crises. I illustrate the emergence of different forms of political–military relations and their consequences in the Arab Spring by drawing on evidence from Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia.
There are already a number of good accounts of the impact of the recent 2008–2014 economic crisis on European democracies. However, no systematic assessments of how it has affected specific aspects of democracy have so far been carried out. We explore its impact on European democracies in several areas by adopting the ‘quality of democracy’ framework. Our analysis shows that the measures we employ capture the variation in quality during this ‘troubled’ period. The empirical analysis suggests that a shrinking of private and public resources due to an economic downturn prompts three reactions: (a) a general deterioration of the rule of law; (b) citizens become more sensitive about what governments deliver; and (c) detachment from the institutional channels of representation along with a choice to protest.
Political theorists and philosophers have recently directed their attention to understanding how individuals may become motivated to act as ethical cosmopolitans. A prominent theory – termed "thick cosmopolitanism" – argues that the realization one’s ingroup is responsible for causing harm to people in distant nations will increase cosmopolitan helping behavior. Additionally, thick cosmopolitanism suggests that guilt may explain this effect. This article presents the first experimental tests of these claims, and is the first research to use experiments to investigate cosmopolitan helping. Results demonstrate a substantial, but previously unrecognized, limitation to thick cosmopolitanism. Specifically, reminders of ingroup responsibility for causing harm not only increased individuals’ acceptance of responsibility and collective guilt, which indirectly enhanced cosmopolitan helping (Studies 1 and 2), but simultaneously increased dehumanization of the harmed outgroup, which indirectly diminished helping (Study 2). These conflicting processes resulted in no overall increase in cosmopolitan helping, contrary to the predictions of thick cosmopolitanism.
New indices measuring the quality of democracy constitute a significant innovation in comparative political science. They might, however, provide a biased perspective because they largely focus on macro-level criteria. Thus, the question is whether the measurement of the quality of democracy can be improved by complementing the evaluations of these indices with assessments based on individual-level survey data. Using data from 20 established democracies in the European Social Survey 2012 and the Democracy Barometer, we compare the understandings and evaluations of the quality of democracy underlying these two measurement approaches. We demonstrate that while the results coincide to a certain extent, individual-level data provide an important complementary perspective that adds to the validity of the measurement of the quality of democracy.
What are the main reasons behind the regulation of political parties by contemporary constitutional practices? This article presents a framework for analysis which identifies types of justifications and actors involved in the process of regulation and their further influence on the outcomes of constitutionalisation. The empirical focus is on the revelatory case of Luxembourg, which amended the constitution for the sole reason of giving parties constitutional status. The analysis suggests that the constitutional regulation of political parties depends on their current interests and power status. Additionally, the paper draws attention to the involvement of external actors and to the changing nature of contemporary constitutionalism.
Combining data from the sixth wave (2010–2014) of the World Values Survey (WVS) and the 2012–2013 Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) expert survey, this study looks at the link between the frequency of citizens’ informational use of traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio and TV) and the internet, and the accuracy of their perceptions of the electoral process, and investigates how this link varies depending on countries’ levels of press freedom. A multilevel analysis including data from 16 countries shows that the frequency of the use of traditional media has a significantly more positive effect on the accuracy of citizens’ perceptions of electoral integrity in countries with high levels of press freedom compared with countries with low levels of press freedom. The frequency of the use of the internet relates similarly to the accuracy of perceptions of electoral integrity in countries with high and low levels of press freedom.
Examining justice-level determinants of party dissolution decisions can reveal how high Courts may influence the public choice by constraining the representation of political ideologies. We argue that Constitutional Court justices strategically engage in politics through party dissolution cases, and justices ‘en garde’ act to guard the regime against anti-establishment ideologies. As a graveyard of political parties, Turkey is an appropriate case to study this claim. By introducing a unique dataset, we demonstrate that communist, religious and ethnic parties in Turkey with considerable public support are more likely to be dissolved by justices having an activist and pro-status quo ideological stance.
Regional party networks are an important instrument for democracy promotion organizations intent on helping build democratic party structures. The main goals of these networks are usually capacity-building and the provision of communication channels, but the affiliation with international donors also turns these networks into contested forums for the diffusion of global norms and values. This article will illustrate that these norm diffusion processes are subject to significant constraints as transnational party networks are shaped by the pre-existing norms and electoral self-interests of their constituent members. The article uses a case study of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats to argue that the diffusion of Western democratic norms through regional party networks is a multidimensional process that can be successful in building small fraternities of committed norm recipients, but faces severe limitations when it comes to transmitting these norms further on into local party organizations.
This article outlines the advantages of a deliberative democratic approach to ‘illiberal cultures’ and polarised debates in contemporary multicultural societies. In doing so, it draws on the insights of agonistic pluralism, and shows that a cross-fertilisation between certain variants of deliberative democracy and agonistic pluralism is both possible and desirable. Focusing particularly on the works of John Dryzek and William Connolly, the article highlights three normative criteria for polities to aspire to, if not fully achieve, to democratise the debates over illiberal cultural practices. These include: i) an expanded notion of inclusion underpinned by the principle of agonistic respect; ii) the presence of spaces that facilitate interaction and contestation among the multiple publics of a culturally contested issue; and iii) the generation of concrete outcomes based on discursive contestation among multiple publics. To illustrate how approximation to these criteria might look in practice, the article focuses on the example of the honour-killing debate in Britain.
While the definition of extended conceptions of democracy has been widely discussed, the measurement of these constructs has not attracted similar attention. In this article we present new measures of polyarchy, liberal democracy, deliberative democracy, egalitarian democracy, and participatory democracy that cover most polities in the period 1900 to 2013. These indices are based on data from a large number of indicators collected through the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. We present and discuss the theoretical considerations and the concrete formula underlying the aggregation of indicators and components into high level measures of democracy. In addition, we show how these measures reflect variations in quality of democracy, given the respective ideals, in 2012. In the conclusion scholars are encouraged to make use of the rich dataset made available by V-Dem.
We present a theory that addresses the question of why autocracies with a regime legitimation which ties the destiny of the members of the ruling elite, namely the nobility or ideocratic elite, to the survival of the autocracy, namely (ruling) monarchies and communist ideocracies, are more durable than other kinds of autocracies. Using logistic regression analysis and event history analysis on a dataset on autocratic regimes in the period 1946 to 2009, we are able to show that ruling monarchies and communist ideocracies are indeed the most durable autocratic regime types.
The importance of incumbent evaluations for voting and the existence of an incumbency effect are well-established. However, there is limited research on the effect incumbency has on voters’ engagement with election campaigns. This paper examines whether the use of incumbency as a cue when voting is associated with there being less interest in an election and whether campaign period attentiveness affects incumbent support. We consider these questions using data from the Toronto Election Study, a large-N, two-wave survey of Torontonians conducted around the time of the 2014 Toronto Municipal Election. We find that attentiveness, on its own, does not make voters more likely to support an incumbent or non-incumbent candidate. However, among individuals with high knowledge, attentiveness decreases the likelihood of supporting the incumbent, as opposed to a non-incumbent candidate.
Many international organizations deal with repeated items on their agendas. The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is no exception as many of its resolutions reoccur over time. A novel dataset on UNGA voting on repeated resolutions reveals considerable, but variable, amounts of change on resolutions by states over time. To shed light on underlying causes for voting (in)consistency, this paper draws on IR literature on negotiations and foreign policy changes to develop hypotheses on the role of domestic and international constraints. Our findings suggest that states with limited financial capacity cannot develop their own, principled, voting positions on all norms on the negotiation agenda. Consequently, these states can be more flexible in adjusting their voting position for reoccurring IO norms and are more prone to change their positions over time. Moreover, states with constrained decision-makers change position less frequently due to pluralistic gridlock. Finally, while large and rich states make a small number of purposive vote shifts, poor and aid-recipient states engage in ‘serial shifting’ on the same resolutions, a finding suggestive of vote-buying. The prevalence of position changes suggests that the international norm environment may be more fragile and susceptible to a revisionist agenda than is commonly assumed.
Although many African governments introduced provisions for subnational elections in the early 1990s, there is variation in the extent to which these reforms were implemented and sustained. Our inductive analysis of three post-conflict cases – Angola, Ethiopia and South Africa – suggests that one factor explaining this variation is elite discontinuity when an insurgent group wins power in the aftermath of conflict. Systems of subnational elections adopted by new governments with an extensive social base derived from an insurgency, as in South Africa and Ethiopia, have proved relatively robust. By contrast, in Angola, where there was no change of executive power after the conflict ended, routinised subnational elections have not been implemented. The identified causal mechanism is that, for the new governments in the first two cases, subnational elections served as opportunities to mobilise party support and to consolidate control by sidelining local elites aligned with the previous regime.
Since 1979, one in every six South American presidents has failed to complete his constitutional term. These ‘presidential failures’ occur when elected presidents are forced out of office but without compromising the democratic order. This article seeks to discover the factors that underlie presidential failures through a survival analysis of 65 South American presidencies between 1979 and 2012. We argue that ‘democratic stock’, assessed by taking a historical perspective on democracy, significantly affects presidential survival, a finding which has not been observed in previous studies. It is found that partisan support and democratic stock reduce the hazard of presidential failure. Surprisingly, inflation, executive–legislative power imbalances, party system fragmentation and presidential scandals have no significant effects. These findings offer new evidence for the ‘institutions vs. street’ debate by showing that, when institutional variables are accounted for, the effect of social mobilisations significantly weakens.
Do presidential campaigns matter outside the United States? We examine how public opinion responds to campaign events during Korean presidential campaigns. The fundamental variables of the election year influence vote intention before the campaign begins and substantially influence eventual vote choice. Campaign events assist voters to learn more about the fundamental variables – regionalism, party identification, and retrospective evaluations of the incumbent administration – and this leads to more informed intentions during the campaign. The results suggest that there is substantial congruence in the explanatory power of Holbrook’s ‘equilibrium’ theory and Gelman and King’s ‘enlightenment’ theory in presidential campaigns held in the US and in Korea.
The degree to which citizens perceive democratic political institutions as trustworthy indicates how well these institutions translate the citizenry’s interests into public policy and how effective and accountable they are seen to be. Low levels of public confidence in political institutions are an indicator of various political problems and are likely to raise concerns over democratic governance. Recent findings that trust in major political institutions has fallen over the last quarter of a century in many democracies have led scholars to examine individual and institutional factors associated with political confidence. Aiming to contribute to this burgeoning literature, this study investigates the impact of semi-presidentialism on public confidence in two major political institutions: the government and parliament. Testing our arguments in 29 democracies through a multilevel analysis, we have found that, compared to presidential and parliamentary systems, semi-presidentialism often generates dual-legitimacy problems, thereby reducing confidence in both government and parliament.
Recent studies show that the effects of electoral systems and ethnic cleavages on the number of parties in emerging democracies differ from those effects observed in more established democracies. Building on recent arguments maintaining that the quality of democracy improves with experience, we argue the reason for the differences in the findings between established and emerging democracies is that the effects of these variables on the number of parties differ according to a country’s experience with elections. To test this argument, we analyse party system fragmentation in 89 established and emerging democracies and the conditioning effects experience with elections have on the effects of district magnitude, ethnic cleavages and variables relating to the presidential party system. The results show that the effects of institutional and social cleavage variables differ substantially between emerging and established democracies, but these effects begin to approximate those seen in more established democracies with additional experience with elections.
China’s rapid economic development may have dramatic political effects. Modernization theory optimistically anticipates that sustained economic growth will cause increasing public demand for political liberalization and democratization. The degree of Chinese citizens’ political satisfaction with the current state of civil liberties and political rights affects China’s future political development. Empirical findings in this article show that most Chinese citizens show increased satisfaction with their civil liberties and political rights after an improvement in their well-being. Life satisfaction in the economic sphere has a positive spill-over effect on satisfaction with civic and political rights. Satisfaction with civil liberties and political rights is positively connected to satisfaction with the level of democracy in China. The findings do not support the predicted increased demand for liberalization and democratization arising from economic growth. Life satisfaction in economic, social, and individual spheres has a positive spillover effect to the political sphere, generating inflated satisfaction with limited civil and political rights as well as a relatively low level of liberal democracy.
Recently, economic accountability theory as a means by which to hold political leaders accountable in the industrialized world has been generalized in transitional democracies. The theory advances how mass publics in young democracies evaluate and assess the performance of chief executives based on sociotropic or pocketbook economic evaluations and the occurrence of pivotal political events. The study finds that self-placement on poverty among Filipinos and primordial assessments of hunger are predictors of presidential approval. Pivotal political events involving attempted coups, corrupt practices and executive level malfeasance are not likely to affect presidential approval ratings over time. Furthermore, changes in the national economy have no association with Philippine presidential approval ratings from 1986–2009. The results of the study suggest that political and economic theories of accountability as applied to the developing world should be reassessed by taking into account the non-institutionalization of party systems, strong executive structures, and the politics of personalism, patronage and patrimonialism.
There is increased interest in the connectivity of migrants with both their host-lands and their original homelands. This article brings a social movement perspective to bear on the issue of diaspora mobilization. Why do conflict-generated diasporas from the same original homeland and living in the same host-land mobilize in sustained versus episodic ways? This article focuses on the sustained mobilization of Bosnian Muslims versus the episodic mobilization of Croats and Serbs in the Netherlands in the early 2010s. I argue that a traumatic issue that binds three actors – diaspora, host-state, and home-state – is central to such mobilization. This issue is the failure of Dutch peace-keeping forces to protect the Srebrenica enclave in 1995. Migration integration regimes, threats from radical right parties, host-state foreign policy, and transnational influences can trigger episodic diaspora mobilization, but not sustain it.
While the International Relations literature has long debated whether or not economic sanctions are an effective foreign policy tool, it neglects to empirically examine the damage sanctions impose on target economies. This study presents two theoretical explanations about the impact of sanctions on target countries’ economies, and collects extensive empirical data to test such theoretical connections in three areas: international trade; foreign direct investment; and foreign portfolio investment. A cross-national, time-series data analysis of 133 countries during the period from 1970 to 2005 reveals that regardless of the number of senders, the type of sanctions or the level of anticipated costs to the target and the sender, economic coercion damages none of the economic conditions of the target. This finding suggests that if the objective is to maximize economic pain in the sanctioned country, a sanctioning country should think twice before choosing economic coercion as its primary non-military strategy.
Over the last several decades, elections and parties have become common features of most authoritarian regimes. While recent research on hybrid regimes has often focused on how dictators use these nominally democratic institutions to maintain their non-democratic rule, there is reason to suspect that electoral authoritarianism may pose particular threats to a regime’s stability. Theories of collective behaviour suggest that electoral authoritarian regimes might face higher levels of anti-regime mobilization since parties and elections can help regime opponents overcome collective action problems and coordinate their efforts to challenge incumbents. An analysis of 136 authoritarian regimes over the last several decades indicates that regimes that hold nominally competitive elections are characterized by higher levels of political unrest than those with no elections. Furthermore, election years serve as a focal point for mobilizing anti-regime activity. These findings imply that authoritarian rulers face a trade-off when instituting a system of regular elections; while legislatures, parties and elections provide numerous benefits to incumbents, they also increase the frequency of anti-regime protests and other disruptive, mass political action.
Do policymakers under financial and political distress make undesirable policy choices? This paper attempts to answer this question by studying the relationship between democratization and currency devaluation under speculative pressures. The central argument is that young democracies exhibit relatively high probabilities of succumbing to speculative attacks, as the political cost of economic adjustment needed for defense is relatively high for these nascent regimes. The paper further contends that this relationship is stronger when the regime can mobilize fewer resources to defend their currencies. To test these arguments, this paper uses monthly data for 117 countries from 1975 to 2008. The results from statistical analysis provide corroborative evidence for these arguments.
I analyze the changes to naturalization and jus soli legislation in EU28 states between 1992 and 2013, examining the links with the party composition of the cabinet in power. The direction, inclusive or restrictive, of the 104 changes to legislation analyzed, shows a variable but intelligible link to the left–right position and EU Parliament group affiliation of government parties. Distinguishing between EU15 states and post-1995 EU member states results in clearer links between politics and citizenship legislation change in the EU15, and also in less clear links in the post-1995 EU. Finally, a number of different analytical approaches all show limited evidence of the role of far-right xenophobic parties in influencing the direction of the legislation changes, suggesting that the origin of restrictive citizenship legislation could be found in the mainstream right rather than in the far right.
How do inter-state conflicts affect foreign investment flows to developing countries? Conventional wisdom says conflicts disrupt economic interactions. This article develops and tests two competing causal mechanisms of the wisdom by focusing on foreign investment flows to developing countries. The first hypothesis states that conflicts carry enduring risk to foreign investors, making conflict-prone countries persistently less attractive. The second hypothesis says that the risk of conflict is ephemeral, allowing foreign investment to recover during peace-time. A monadic analysis of 95 developing countries from 1980 to 2000 provides strong evidence for the enduring risk hypothesis. However, the finding is limited by both the level of conflict hostility and the ex post immobility of foreign investment. The enduring risk of conflicts is significant for both actual warfare rather than use of force, and foreign direct investment (FDI) rather than foreign portfolio investment (FPI). The finding is robust in a series of subsample analyses, which reflect the distinctive experiences of developing countries in the late 20th century.
Performance voting studies implicitly assume that voters know who the government is, and can thus judge office-holders retrospectively. Scholars have recently addressed the issue in a majoritarian electoral context. This study expands into looking at (1) knowledge of the government in a multiparty setting by (2) focusing on the sociodemographic determinants of that knowledge. Using a 2008 survey data from Finland, the study finds that ignorance of government composition is more widespread in a proportional electoral system with a coalition government. Only 38% of the respondents correctly identified the government. Those on the political left, and hence in parliamentary opposition, men, over 45 years old and those with a high socioeconomic status were more likely to correctly identify the government. The results suggest that most voters do not know what they need to know in order to vote retrospectively. The implications for government accountability are discussed.
Why do some countries tolerate dual citizenship while others do not? The answer concerns the interaction between regime type variation and international migration. Democracies with a relatively large migrant stock are more likely to tolerate dual citizenship than democracies with a low migrant stock. Meanwhile, democracies with relatively high emigration rates for the highly educated population are more likely to tolerate dual citizenship than democracies with low emigration rates of the highly educated. In authoritarian states, the opposite is the case: emigration of the highly educated and immigration both reduce the likelihood of dual citizenship toleration. These claims are supported by the evidence from a large n examination of contemporary cross-national data. Understanding dual citizenship helps us address larger questions about the significance of democracy and the nature and scope of nation states.
In an emerging democracy one of the most important components of democratic consolidation is the public’s attitude toward democracy. In this regard, emerging democracies in the East Asian region pose an interesting puzzle, because satisfaction with democracy is higher in authoritarian countries than in democratic countries. Scholars have praised Korean democracy as a miraculous case due to its successful democratic consolidation. Paradoxically, Korean democracy has shown weakness in dealing with rapidly increasing inequality after the International Monetary Fund economic crisis of 1997 and Korean citizens’ satisfaction with democracy has eroded. How does one explain these perplexing results? The empirical findings of this study indicate that citizens’ concerns about rapidly increasing inequality and dissatisfaction with the welfare regime were significantly related to their level of satisfaction with democracy. These results suggest that new democracies faced with similar economic challenges need to respond more competently to citizens’ demands for effective policy performance in order to achieve unwavering support for democracy.
Focusing on the effects of singular technical elements, electoral system research has neglected the question of whether specific systems are supposed to achieve overarching normative goals. Due to their importance for any polity, such principles of representation are widely assumed to be determined in the constitution. Therefore, a world-wide survey of constitutions presents a promising opportunity to study electoral systems’ general goals in a comparative manner. In providing such a survey and investigating the causes, contents and consequences of constitutional provisions, this analysis shows that constitutional embeddedness of the electoral system is contingent upon factors such as region (with constitutional principles especially typical in Europe and Latin America) and decision-context. Importantly, the ‘proportionality principle’ is much more prone to enter a constitution and receive increased protection than its antipode, the ‘majority principle’. Furthermore, mixed principles calling for a balance between aforementioned extremes exist, suggesting that mixed electoral systems are not always merely technical compromises. Finally, constitutional embeddedness seems to have a context-dependent effect on specific technical elements but generally leads to greater stability of the overall electoral system. The key implication for future research is that the normative principle-dimension of electoral systems has to be considered alongside their technical design.
This study offers a comprehensive investigation of the gender gap in political participation among 13 Muslim-majority nations using World Values Survey data and applying multilevel analyses. It reveals a substantial gender gap, with men being significantly more likely to be politically active compared to women. As suggested in studies on advanced Western democracies, this gap can be partly explained by gender differences in socioeconomic characteristics and political attitudes. Furthermore, our analysis shows major cross-national differences in the extent of the gender gap among Muslim-majority nations. In contrast to what we had expected, these cross-national differences cannot be explained by levels of state Islamisation, modernisation or societal gender equality. Implications of these findings and suggestion for further research are discussed.
This study considers the problem of suicide terrorism, government counterterror responses, and the mobilization of recruits in support of the contending parties. A model is developed that enables predictions as to what factors should be emphasized or de-emphasized by the forces protecting society. The article presents a linear mathematical analysis of the logical interrelationships involved in the confrontation and embeds the study within the framework of previous mathematical and empirical work on the subject. It is concluded that governments should avoid inflicting collateral damage on the general population in counterterrorist activities and should pursue policies (both in counterterrorist operations and otherwise) that contribute to the political quiescence of the populace.
This article explains why elite classes participate in religiously motivated peasant rebellions. This question is important because, although elite resources are required to overcome collective action barriers, extant research ignores why elites collaborate in religiously motivated peasant rebellions. The article compares the Moplah Rebellion in colonial India, the Cristero Rebellion in revolutionary Mexico, and the Chimurenga Rebellion in white-controlled Zimbabwe to test three common explanations for elite participation: low inequality between elites and peasants; moderate political repression or opportunity; and shared religious organizations with the peasantry. The findings demonstrate that elite cooperation is critically contingent on shared religion because it creates cross-class ideologies and lowers the costs of participation by elites. However, the effects of inequality of wealth and political opportunities are inconclusive. By doing so, the article introduces a theory of elite participation that can be tested and refined to understand ongoing religiously motivated rebellions in agrarian societies as disparate as Pakistan, Nigeria, and the Philippines.
Are democracies better at delivering material benefits to the poor? What would be a key mechanism to translate social demands for redistribution to more egalitarian outcomes in the developing world? Analyzing an unbalanced pooled time-series dataset for domestic government spending, welfare state generosity, and income inequality in the developing world from 1971 to 2008, we find that (partial) democracies promote higher levels of domestic government spending, but they are not associated with higher levels of welfare state generosity. Our results also indicate that in developing countries, welfare state generosity is related to more equality. However, domestic government spending does not have any significant impact on income inequality even in democracies.
In the past decade, a long list of studies has documented the positive relationship between democracy and social spending. Other studies have shown a negative relationship between ethnic fractionalisation and social spending. So far, the two strands of literature have developed independently of each other. In this article, we present a class-coalition argument that links them, arguing that ethnic fractionalisation influences the effect of democracy on social spending. We test the argument in a large-N study. In line with our expectations, the findings show that democracy leads to higher levels of social spending, but only in relatively homogenous countries.
This article contributes to the study of party regulation in contemporary Latin America in two main ways. Firstly, it identifies a so far overlooked process by which four countries (Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Peru) raised party-formation costs in the past decade, an unprecedented process in third-wave Latin American democracies. Secondly, it offers a tentative answer to the question of why this process took place in this specific set of countries. This answer brings to the fore the issues of political parties’ legitimacy and party fragmentation as sources of electoral reform. The article argues that the countries that passed these reforms are those in which the ruling political elites perceived increasing levels of fragmentation as a result of previous reforms that had opened up the political system. These prior reforms were enacted as a response to established parties’ loss of legitimacy. The findings support the more general distinction between reforms initiated due to legitimacy crises and reforms resulting from changing balances of power. In this way the article also contributes to the broader debate on the factors that explain different types of electoral reforms in Latin America.
This article presents a comparative analysis of the legal regulation of political parties as competitors in, and as entrants to, the electoral contest. Laws that regulate ballot access and the registration of political parties as ‘official’ electoral actors are examined in four established common law democracies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The article explores the ways in which these regulations are used to control the degree of party competition in each system, and how some specific laws might privilege some parties (for example, incumbents) over others. Specifically, the article analyses the role that the courts play as interpreters and adjudicators of these laws in different constitutional contexts – shaping the contours of party competition and legitimate political activity based on their understandings of constitutional freedoms, effective elections and governance arrangements, and particular normative conceptions of the role of political parties in modern societies.
Today there is a wealth of research on women’s legislative representation and the factors contributing to it. For example, proportional representation in large multi-member districts and an egalitarian political culture are commonly associated with high rates of women’s representation. However, in the developing world findings are less solid and there is little consensus on the salience of various explanatory variables (for example, political culture or electoral system type) on women’s descriptive representation. In this article, I explore the possibility that the divergent findings that characterise the discipline stem from the different dynamics at work in developed and developing countries. My results indicate that development by itself has a positive and significant impact on the percentage of female representatives. Development also interacts with other variables (for example, women’s participation in the workforce and quotas) in determining the level of women’s representation.
The party system in Malawi has been characterised by instability and fragmentation since the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1993. In part this instability is rooted in the legal framework regulating political parties as organisations and the functions that parties perform in a democracy. The article outlines the constitutional and legal framework of political parties. But more important is how regulation of functions such as candidate nomination, campaigning and representation in parliament interacts with the structure of the political system, leading to party system instability. Moreover, the effect of regulation of political parties and their activities is strongly influenced by ‘selective’ application of the formal regulations and weak party organisations. Formal rules meant to strengthen political parties have therefore not functioned as intended.
Building on the models developed by Boix, Acemoglu, and Robinson on the relationship between economic structures and regime change, we develop a theory that emphasises structural characteristics of societies and the effects of policy change in such circumstances. We posit that significant policy change in an unequal or asset-specific society induces coups against the incumbent political leader by the losing faction of the elites seeking to prevent or cut losses associated with the policy shifts. Our empirical analysis indicates that the risk of a coup rises considerably during a period of a significant policy change in a society with a skewed distribution of income and one dominated by asset-specific production, such as oil, mining, and agriculture.
The revolutions of the Arab Spring, in contrast to the liberal third wave of the 1970s to 1990s, rest on a more popular and traditionalist base. Critics often depict these currents as insular and even xenophobic in outlook. This article engages the literature on democratisation, framing, and social movement globalisation, and challenges that assumption. It draws on in-depth interviews conducted with Islamists and other activists in Cairo during April and May 2012. It argues that the pressures of globalisation and the opportunities of democratic transition are forcing traditionalists on to more cosmopolitan terrain. These cosmopolitan traditionalist activists draw on inspiration from other parts of the world and express solidarity with revolutionary movements elsewhere. Unlike liberal cosmopolitans, however, they ground their mode of tolerance and cooperation on substantive traditional values. While the pressures of globalisation may limit the ability of post-revolutionary regimes to deliver on social aspirations, this shift of ideological framing may pave the way for new traditionalist networks that cut across borders. As global political opportunity structures emerge and frustrations build up within nation-states, this cosmopolitan traditionalist bloc is likely to have the numbers and influence to reshape world order.
Western societies show varying reactions to the challenges of immigration. This is especially true with regards to voting rights for immigrants. This article shows that previous research has neglected generalized trust as a powerful predictor for different degrees of inclusiveness in this policy area. Elections are the gateways to the political decision-making processes in all democracies. For members of the host society, extending voting rights to noncitizens means granting members of an ‘out-group’ direct influence on their own lives. This requires a ‘leap of faith’ that is only possible at higher levels of generalized trust.
Although past research has found that news exposure correlates with strong partisanship, insights are based on single-country studies. Other studies have shown that cross-national variations in news systems correlate with turnout, but have not explored partisanship. The current study fills this gap by testing the strength of the relationship between news exposure and partisanship cross-nationally. We argue that the greater the political parallelism in news systems, the stronger the correlation between news exposure and partisanship and the smaller the gaps in partisanship between those most and least educated. Multivariate analyses of the cross-national European Social Survey find empirical support for both hypotheses.
Emerging regional powers, such as Brazil and India, are reshaping world politics. We conduct a game-theoretic analysis to examine how growing regional powers compete for influence against a global power, such as the United States, in different circumstances. If the global power regards dominant positions in different regions as strategic substitutes (complements), a stronger regional power in region A increases (decreases) the global power’s efforts to dominate in region B. For example, if Iran grows stronger, the United States should increase its efforts to secure energy resources in Central Asia as substitutes for Middle Eastern oil. Conversely, suppose the United States fails to create support for stringent intellectual property rights protection in Latin America because Brazil opposes new rules. In this case, we expect the United States to have fewer incentives to create support in other regions because intellectual property rights rules are most valuable when they constitute a complementary global standard.
We report empirical results related to trust and trustworthiness based on a representative web survey carried out in March 2011 in Japan. Although it initially was intended as a pilot, our survey is unique and unrepeatable because the massive Tohoku earthquake that hit Japan in spring 2011 occurred during the data-collection process and created a natural experiment. Apart from exploring changes originated by the disaster, the novelty of our approach lies in using a multipurpose questionnaire assembled by researchers with diverse interests from different academic areas that allows for exploring political and other social correlates of the economic concepts of trust and trustworthiness as measured by the game-theoretical trust game.
The functioning of the media as a public watchdog and as a neutral forum for society’s different perspectives is a model that is seen as vital in modern democracies. However, in societies with major social rifts these functions may conflict with one another and alter the media’s role. This work contributes to the theoretical discussion of the role of the media, through a study of the media in religious–secular conflict in Turkey and Israel. In recent years, religious parties’ electoral gains have challenged secular communities’ hold on the countries’ decision-making institutions. With the increase in religious–secular political tensions, the media on both sides have taken a central role, highlighting perceived dangers presented by the other side. As the media come to function as the vanguard of the opposing sides, the impact is twofold: loss of an important public watchdog and a deepening of societal rifts.
This article presents initial findings from one of the first comparative studies of women as foreign policy decision-makers in Western industrial systems. It begins with an overview of why political leaders matter to the conduct of contemporary international relations and what the existing literature tells us about women’s engagement in that domain. Next, we develop five propositions based on previous research, and evaluate them using longitudinal data from 10 established democratic systems. Analysing the public statements of appointees in the three countries with the most female elites, we report that women decision-makers were more likely to express pro-feminist rhetoric than the men who preceded or succeeded them; moreover, the most vocal pro-equality elites came from left-of-centre political backgrounds, and often had pre-recruitment experience in progressive parties or social movements. The discussion concludes with a brief look at promising directions for future research.
Outside lobbying is a key strategy for social movements, interest groups and political parties for mobilising public opinion through the media in order to pressure policymakers and influence the policymaking process. Relying on semi-structured interviews and newspaper content analysis in six Western European countries, this article examines the use of four outside lobbying strategies – media-related activities, informing (about) the public, mobilisation and protest – and the amount of media coverage they attract. While some strategies are systematically less pursued than others, we find variation in their relative share across institutional contexts and actor types. Given that most of these differences are not accurately mirrored in the media, we conclude that media coverage is only loosely connected to outside lobbying behaviour, and that the media respond differently to a given strategy when used by different actors. Thus, the ability of different outside lobbying strategies to generate media coverage critically depends on who makes use of them.
The literature on religion and international politics has expanded in reaction to the events iconically known as ‘9/11’, said to cast doubt on the ‘secularisation thesis’, which dominated the social sciences’ approach to religion until the 1980s. The four books under review begin by assessing the secularisation premise, before amassing data to demonstrate the ways in which ‘religion’ (however conceived) influences or is suppressed by governments, inflames or mediates conflicts, shapes voter attitudes and political cultures, and so on. With one exception, the authors devote little attention to defining ‘religion’ or to delineating what differentiates it from other categories such as ‘politics’, ‘culture’, or ‘ethnicity’. What ‘religion’ refers to, and how it relates to the ‘secular’, has been the subject of detailed, technical debate within the discipline of religious studies since 1962, but this literature is largely invisible in the four reviewed texts. The result is an enormous body of data which will overturn many enduring stereotypes; but whose usefulness is, in some cases, limited by the fact that the studies ultimately demonstrate that researchers tend to find what they go looking for.
In this article, we critically analyse the scholarly advocacy of nationalism recently offered by scholars such as Will Kymlicka, Neil MacCormick and David Miller. Their overall position is that basing nationality on culture rather than descent or religion would make nationalism compatible with liberalism. Synthesising nationalism and liberalism, according to this perspective, renders liberalism applicable in a world where nationalism is a reality, and addresses the flaws that communitarians have found in liberalism. Relying on earlier critiques of this position, we contend that the tacit character of national culture places political authority on a basis that is not universally visible and debatable. It accordingly conflicts with the strong constitutionalist element in liberalism. We argue, moreover, that the outlook offered by cultural nationalist authors seems to prize the determination of choice and deliberation by forces that cannot be reduced to verbal analysis. This new advocacy of nationalism thus suffers from some of the flaws that have made nationalism suspect to liberals since its inception.
This article examines how electoral outcomes nurture democratic sentiment. Elections generate winners and losers, and voters alter their beliefs in ways that are congruent with electoral choices. Yet, while winning and losing shape democratic sentiment, comparatively less is known about the intermediary influences through which this relationship flows. Analysing data from the Federal Republic of Germany, this article probes for contextually driven effects using cross-level modelling of German General Social Surveys (Allgemeine Bevölkerungs Umfrage der Sozialwissenschaften). Four hypotheses are tested at the individual level, with the results confirming the following. First, winners’ democratic sentiments remain firm in the context of electoral stalemate, but are mediated through their ideological proximity to the party for which they voted. Second, time conditions winners’ democratic sentiments, but in discrepant ways in the east and west of the country. There is no evidence that the western relationship has systematically weakened over a 20-year period. The eastern relationship, meanwhile, was especially strong following unification, but stabilised thereafter. In demonstrating that winners’ attitudes are influenced by political context and time, the article presents a more refined analysis and a more comprehensive account, and develops fresh lines of inquiry into the structure of mass democratic sentiment.
Does foreign aid affect domestic political unrest? ‘Selectorate’ models of political survival predict that foreign aid should lead autocratic governments, but not democratic ones, to restrict civil liberties. This requires investment in repressive capacity, which should in turn deter unrest. We thus argue that foreign aid should reduce unrest in autocracies but not in democracies. We find strong support for this hypothesis in a sample of 84 countries from 1970 through 2007, as well as evidence for our causal mechanism. Our results add to the mounting evidence that foreign aid has more desirable effects when targeted at democratic regimes.
Why do democratising nations make the constitutional choices they do? Conceiving democratic transition as a critical juncture, we propose a theory of constitutional choice. We place the degree of uncertainty at the centre of our theorising efforts to explain the relationship between constitutional bargains among competing political groups and the type of executive–legislative relations adopted during democratisation. We posit that parliamentarism is more likely to be adopted under high-uncertainty conditions, while presidentialism is more likely under low-uncertainty conditions. Identifying four factors that affect the level of uncertainty in the transition process, we examine how the choices of executive–legislative relations are made under strong influences of historical and geographic factors.
The theory and practice of democracy have moved on from the paradigm of electoral democracy to conceptualising alternative models that can facilitate democratic deepening in different contexts. Methodology should follow too. In this piece, I build on Morlino’s framework, which takes a step towards a pluralised assessment of democratic qualities but remains largely hinged on the electoral model of democracy. I suggest that Morlino’s heuristic tools can be further sharpened by incorporating a deliberative democratic criterion. I provide an empirical illustration through the Philippine case – a country that already exhibits formal features of electoral democracy but fails to translate democratic impulses into democratic deepening.
This study seeks to identify and test a mechanism through which the Internet influences public support in an authoritarian environment in which alternative information is strictly censored by the state. Through online discussions, web users often interpret sanctioned news information in directions different from or even opposite to the intention of the authoritarian state. This alternative framing on the Internet can strongly affect the political views of web users. Through an experimental study conducted in China, we find that subjects exposed to alternative online framing generally hold lower levels of policy support and evaluate government performance more negatively. This finding implies that even though the access to information on sensitive topics is effectively controlled by the government, the diffusion capabilities of the Internet can still undermine the support basis of the seemingly stable authoritarian regime.
Despite initial scepticism about their very existence, hybrid regimes have increasingly attracted scholarly attention. The rapid development of the debate, however, is in striking contrast with its often inconclusive results. The goals of this article are to identify the causes of this impasse and to seek a solution for it. In particular, the article focuses on a crucial point of contention: how to define hybrid regimes. The analysis shows why divergences on this issue hamper dialogue among researchers, as well as the accumulation of knowledge. We suggest shifting attention from regimes to institutions and propose a "consensus-sensitive" indicator to establish which regimes can be defined as hybrid regardless of disagreement on their conceptualisation. The new measure is used to replicate the contrasting results of two recent studies. The conclusion is that by going beyond conceptual barriers, we can successfully shed light on the "grey zone".
Previous research has found mixed evidence regarding the change of parliamentary voting behaviour following electoral reforms. But scholars have not analysed whether the mechanisms by which voting loyalty is elicited matter differently in such cases. Our article fills this gap by investigating the individual variation in voting loyalty across two legislative terms, using a sample of 26 high-stakes roll-call votes. Romania constitutes an ideal setting for such a study due to its recent shift from closed-list proportional representation to single-member districts. Multivariate ordinary least squares models (including all Members of Parliament and including only incumbents) test for the effect of parliamentary experience, party membership duration, parliamentary office, party hopping and district magnitude, while also accounting for demotion and a number of socio-demographic controls. Results indicate that socialisation is less important for Members of Parliament’s voting behaviour after reform, whereas signalling through voting dissent prior to party switching becomes more relevant.
Female gender and low income are two markers for groups that have been historically disadvantaged within most societies. The study explores two research questions related to their political representation: (1) ‘Are parties biased towards the ideological preferences of male and rich citizens?’; and (2) ‘Does the proportionality of the electoral system moderate the degree of under-representation of women and poor citizens in the party system?’ A multilevel analysis of survey data from 24 parliamentary democracies indicates that there is some bias against those with low income and, at a much smaller rate, women. This has systemic consequences for the quality of representation, as the preferences of the complementary groups differ. The proportionality of the electoral system influences the degree of under-representation: specifically, larger district magnitudes help in closing the considerable gap between rich and poor.
This study seeks to improve the current conceptualisation of partisanship and to provide empirical evidence about the nature of partisan identities in new democracies. Conventional theories suggest that partisan loyalties are grounded in social and group contexts, while ‘revisionist’ theories have emphasised the importance of the performance evaluations of political actors. This study argues that the nature of partisanship in newer democracies is more strongly influenced by the latter. By focusing on new Southern European democracies, this research confirms the importance of performance and retrospective evaluations as the basis of partisan loyalties. The impact of age and education is very weak, while ideological extremism displays a constant and significant effect. However, the nature of partisanship varies according to different party types, as voters of more ideological parties are less sensitive to short-term judgements.
Empirical research has shown how the role of institutions, civic culture, ethnic fractionalisation, the political economy, and demographic factors affect the stability of democracies, but none has explored the role of the military as an institution that can drastically influence the process of democratic consolidation. This led many scholars to notice how the study of comparative democratisation has been state-centric, but it has largely neglected the role of the military in determining post-transitional outcomes. Thus, this study takes on this challenge by examining the role of the military in the democratisation process more than 30 years after the third wave. The results suggest that highly politicised military structures among transitional states have a deleterious effect on the quality of democracy. More specifically, if the military has institutionalised its role in politics as being interventionist, the likelihood of democratic consolidation becomes difficult. The article highlights the importance of restricting reserved domains granted to the military in the transition process in order to strengthen prospects for democratic stability.
A major justification for bringing government "closer to the people" is that it improves the opportunities for and frequency of citizen participation in the political system. This article first reviews the major arguments for decentralisation and why it is credited with increasing participation. I then perform statistical analyses in 22 states with country-level decentralisation data and public opinion data drawn from the 2006 European Social Survey. The findings generally fail to support the conventional wisdom that decentralisation improves political participation.
Recent studies point to how resources such as diamonds have funded insurgency movements and how their geographic presence can foment the incidence but not necessarily the onset of civil wars. Such empirical studies are based on global models; however, we believe regional effects may be present. In order to address this, we disaggregate the empirical findings based on Africa as a region. By estimating a panel study of African states, we discover that those that are secondary diamond producers are not only vulnerable to domestic strife, but also prone to lower levels of economic growth, coup d’état episodes, and state failure—conditions that inhibit democratic state-building. We also find that secondary diamond-producing states in Africa are prone to both the onset and incidence of civil wars, a finding that diverges from previous empirical work. In asking how states may obviate this curse, we affirm a claim of state developmentalism: that in order to prevent collapse, states must harness the revenue potential of diffuse resources. The regulation and legitimisation of diamond production is an effective bulwark against the potential opportunity structures that such lootables may provide to warlords, insurgents, and military factions.
What are the predictors of rights guarantees at the level of individual countries? We examine this question within the context of what factors lead certain countries, but not others, to have legislation prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace between 1972 and 2002. In the theoretical framework, a combination of domestic forces (past inclusion of minorities, culture, and democratic conditions) and global trends (regulation by supranational bodies and globalization) predict guarantees of rights. To test the theory, generalized estimating equation time-series cross-sectional analyses are performed on data from 161 countries. The results, which are robust to changes in model specification and alternative measurement schemes, confirm our key hypotheses. We conclude by discussing the implications of this research for the study of rights generally.
Using an instrumental variable approach, we analyze survey data to untangle the relationship between social and political trust in contemporary China. We find strong evidence that political trust enhances social trust in China and the results are robust to a range of measures, including the generalized social trust question, as well as three contextualized trust questions. We also shed light on the impact of economic modernization on social trust. Our findings contribute to the general literature on trust and provide a better understanding of the complicated relationship between political trust and social trust. They also offer insight into the dynamics of trust production and reproduction in China and thus into China’s socio-political development.
This study aims to examine the effects of rationality and emotion on voter turnout. By applying the empirical implications of a theoretical models framework, I outline the relationship between rationality, emotion, and turnout and propose two hypotheses about the effects of party differential and emotion differential on turnout. The empirical test using data from American National Election Studies 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008 shows that both party differential and emotion differential exert significantly positive effects on turnout, which confirms that individual turnout decision is a function of both rationality and emotion. However, this study suggests that rationality plays a more important and consistent role in individual turnout decision than emotion, because the effect of emotion on turnout might be built on the appearance of charismatic candidates.
This article revisits one of the established hypotheses in the literature on European industrial relations. Focusing on the context in which wages are set via central coordination, the hypothesis explores why the wage-setting system often collapses and is replaced with sectoral or company-level bargaining. The answer revolves around the issue of wage costs, with the main claim being that the change (that is, de-coordination) occurs when employers are not satisfied with the performance of cost control. This article asserts that the hypothesis has only limited applicability. In particular, it holds only if central coordination remains a potential source of high wage costs. If the system turns to a reliable mechanism for wage moderation, which is true in the Eurozone countries, the hypothesis does not hold. Under this circumstance, employers will no longer consider de-coordination as a means of cost control. Instead, de-coordination can occur as a consequence of intra-union politics, as diverse union actors interact with each other in their response to the wage issue. The article will examine this new hypothesis of de-coordination in the context of three Eurozone countries in the 1990s and 2000s: Finland, Ireland, and Belgium.
In examining the relationship between Internet use and governance across different regime types, the article emphasizes the Internet’s potential to improve governance. Through a pooled time-series analysis of more than 170 countries with annual or biannual data from 1996 to 2010, we establish that countries with higher Internet penetration rates generally enjoy better, more stable governance, regardless of regime type. Our finding has both practical and theoretical implications. More practically, our results strongly entertain the possibility that the Internet improves access to information, accommodates pluralistic sources of information, and produces platforms for political discourse. Our findings also suggest that the Internet’s concomitant facility for reporting and scrutiny in the public sphere may encourage leaders to improve transparency and accountability. More empirically, the article introduces an additional variable to the good governance function, which should be included in future analyses.
This article investigates the interactive effects of ruling party stability and veto players on economic performance. We show that ruling party duration has an inverted U-shaped relationship with growth when the number of veto players is low, while it has a regular U-shaped relationship when there are more veto players. We find support for these contentions using time-series cross-section data on the economic growth of a sample of 66 democracies between 1975 and 2007.
Along with the mobilization of political support, repression is one of the two basic instruments dictators use to stay in power. Yet, there is no systematic investigation analyzing whether repression actually helps dictators retain power. This article fills this gap by addressing the simultaneous relationship between survival and repression. The results reveal that repression certainly increases the likelihood of dictators’ survival. Furthermore, this article also analyzes different types of authoritarian leader exit and repression. The article distinguishes between, on the one hand, nonviolent and regular exits and, on the other hand, violent and irregular exits as well as between political terror and restrictions on civil liberties. It argues that terror is effective against threats from organized groups, while restrictions on civil liberties essentially serve to prevent collective action. The empirical evidence confirms that political terror only reduces the likelihood of nonviolent and regular exits. Instead, restrictions on civil liberties are effective in deterring both sorts of threats.
While the topic of life satisfaction and its determinants has drawn increasing attention among political scientists, most studies have focused mainly on macro-level variables, and often overlooked the role of individuals’ attitudes vis-à-vis their governments. The present article attempts to fill this gap by examining whether citizens’ left–right self-placement and ideological distance from their governments exert an independent effect on life satisfaction. Utilizing a dataset spanning a quarter century and containing nearly 70,000 respondents, we demonstrate a curvilinear relationship between ideological orientations and happiness, with self-identified radicals on both ends of the spectrum happier than moderate citizens. Moreover, we show that while propinquity between self-position and government position contributes to happiness, this effect is highly mediated by individual locations along the left–right spectrum: centrists report higher levels of happiness the closer they are to their government, while the opposite is true for radicals. The normative implication of our findings is that moderate governments may present a comparative advantage in enhancing the overall level of happiness of their citizens.
There are many explanations for variation in political protest. However, they have not focused sufficiently on institutions and the influence the latter exert on protest. This article, by using multilevel analysis and cross-national survey data, suggests that political protest depends on the level of institutional decentralization. In fact, decentralization increases the number of state actors, implies a multiplication of access points to the political system, and provides greater chances of influencing the decision-making process. Furthermore, it is shown that the effect of mobilizing agencies, such as political parties and trade unions, also depends on the level of decentralization.
Why do policies often seem to converge across countries at the same time? This question has been studied extensively in the diffusion literature. However, past research has not examined complex choice environments, especially where there are many alternatives. This article fills this gap in the literature. I show how Fine and Gray’s Competing Risks Event History Analysis can be used to tease apart the causes of policy convergence. I apply the method to an examination of the reasons why, from the mid-1990s to 2007, many countries created independent deposit insurers. I find an interaction between international recommendations and regional peers’ choices, particularly in the European Union. However, convergence appears to slow under the particular conditions of a banking crisis, regardless of how well independence is promoted. Possibly due to electoral incentives, democracies seem to have been more likely to create independent insurers. Ultimately, I demonstrate how competing risks analysis can help enable future research on policy choices, complementing methods previously applied in political economy.
Through a conceptual and comparative analysis of 14 presidential interruptions in Latin America between 1980 and 2010, this article seeks to improve the current conceptualization of executive instability in presidential regimes and provide contingent answers to three debates: 1) ‘Do political institutions or pressure from below constitute the greater peril to presidential survival?’; 2) ‘Do presidential interruptions constitute a solution to an ongoing crisis, or further deepen the crisis?’; and 3) ‘Are presidential interruptions good or bad for democracy?’ The article argues that these questions have not been answered satisfactorily because the literature has assumed unit homogeneity, that is, that all interruptions are equal in terms of antecedents and aftermath, when in fact the cases of interruption demonstrate heterogeneity on these issues. This heterogeneity can be explained by two variables: the opposition’s primary motivation for challenging the president; and the degree of undemocratic behaviour demonstrated by the president and opposition during the crisis. Finally, based on these two variables, the article presents a typological map of crises and interruptions that helps define the scope conditions of the concept, captures the heterogeneity between the cases and seeks to provide a useful tool for future analysis of presidential interruptions.
This article assesses the validity of several alternative hypotheses explaining dual voting across electoral arenas in a decentralized polity. Based on data from three different electoral cycles in Catalonia, I find evidence that the evaluation of the regional candidates of the two main parties has the largest, most consistent impact on vote transfers between levels of government. Results also emphasize, although to a lesser extent, the role played by retrospective voting at the regional level and the impacts that government performance and approval levels regarding national leaders have on the likelihood of casting a dual vote. Altogether, these results not only speak to the dual-voting literature, but also to broader research on the consequences of the de-alignment of the electorate in advanced industrial democracies.
In contrast to most previous research on foreign-policy change, this article investigates how an individual decision-maker can have an impact on major changes in foreign policy. The article takes as its theoretical point of departure the concept of leader-driven change, which focuses on the determined efforts of a political leader to change policy. Empirically, the article investigates the change that occurred in Denmark’s foreign policy when its government decided to participate in the United Nations sanctions against Iraq in August 1990. The article finds that the foreign minister was the main initiator of the policy change, that his personal characteristics played a decisive role, and that the Gulf crisis created a window of opportunity for the foreign minister to initiate the change in policy. In implementing the policy change, however, the foreign minister could not act independently, since he needed the support of other political actors. On the basis of these empirical findings, the article suggests a new theory of foreign-policy change.
A member of the Honduran elite and elected president with a right-of-center platform in 2005, Manuel Zelaya soon came to be allied with Latin America’s bloc of radical left-wing governments – this being the first case of a post-democratization right-to-left policy switch in the region. The aim of this article is to assess the reasons that could have motivated Zelaya’s ideological turn. After a brief discussion of the Honduran political process, we review the literature about the issue of policy switching and proceed to an empirical analysis of the Honduran case. We find that the fragility of the country’s energy sector and the alliance with Venezuela in a context of international economic crisis and high oil prices could have triggered a causal mechanism in Honduras similar to the one caused by currency scarcity and international pressure pointed to by the literature as the leading cause for traditional left-to-right switches, which suggests that this case study could serve as a pattern-matching exercise to the general findings of currently accepted switch theory.