Volume 52, Number 4, July 2020

Maiah Jaskoski, Participatory Institutions as a Focal Point for Mobilizing: Prior Consultation and Indigenous Conflict in Colombia’s Extractive Industries

This article systematically analyzes how the participatory institution “prior consultation” indirectly gave Colombian indigenous communities a voice in five major hydrocarbon and mining conflicts by creating opportunities to organize around the institution. Mobilized indigenous groups did not express their concerns about extraction within the prescribed prior consultation meetings. Instead, they refused to be consulted, they challenged the lack of, or their exclusion from, prior consultation, and they preemptively achieved environmental protections. Variation in tactics is explained by (1) the stage of the planned extraction, (2) whether the state initially determined that a community was affected by the extraction, and (3) the degree of unity among affected communities. The article further highlights the role of Colombia’s Constitutional Court in interpreting and weighing the rights that underlie prior consultation procedures.

Marie-Eve Desrosiers, “Making Do” with Soft Authoritarianism in Pre-Genocide Rwanda

The article looks at Rwandans’ engagement with authoritarianism prior to the 1994 genocide and, more broadly, at life under “soft authoritarian” settings. It argues that Rwandans did not experience state-society relations under pre-genocide regimes as a vertical chain of authority, as is often contended. Instead, they spoke of a felt gap between national and local levels. Engagement with authority was predominantly local and experienced in an ambiguous, yet functional manner rather than simply as coercion. It was also experienced in a more varied manner than is often presumed. Indeed, local experiences of authority were commonly about “making do” with authoritarianism. This should lead scholars to question common frames of authoritarian verticality and the obedience/compliance which authoritarianism is presumed to foster. It should also lead scholars to question simple frames of resistance often proposed when studying authoritarian state-society relations.

Mariel J. Barnes, Divining Disposition: The Role of Elite Beliefs and Gender Narratives in Women’s Suffrage

Most accounts of franchise extension hold that elites extend electoral rights when they believe expansions will consolidate their political power. Yet, how do elites come to believe this? And how do elites make inferences about the political preferences of the disenfranchised? I argue that elites utilize the cue of “disposition” to determine the consequences of enfranchisement. Disposition refers to the innate characteristics of an individual (or group) that are believed to shape behavior and decision-making. Importantly, because disposition is perceived to be intrinsic, elites assume it is more stable and permanent than party identification or policy preferences. Using historical process-tracing and discourse analysis of primary documents, I determine that disposition was frequently and repeatedly used to either support or oppose women’s enfranchisement in New Zealand.

Onur Bakiner, Endogenous Sources of Judicial Power: Parapolitics and the Supreme Court of Colombia

Courts’ legal-constitutional authority, strategic interactions with elected branches, and ideational factors are acknowledged as rival theoretical frameworks of judicial power, i.e. courts’ legal and practical power to make and enforce decisions, including politically assertive ones. This article presents an alternative explanation for judicial power and assertiveness, arguing that judicial power can be endogenous to judicial processes, as legal-constitutional authority, strategic interactions, and ideational shifts are rooted in the unfolding of a judicialized political conflict. The article assesses the sources of judicial power by examining the Colombian Supreme Court’s rulings and off-bench activism during the parapolitics scandal, in the course of which the Court investigated about one-third of Congress. It finds the parapolitics process itself redefined the justices’ interests, self-perceptions, and, consequently, limits of jurisdiction.

David K. Ma, Explaining Judicial Authority in Dominant-Party Democracies: The Case of the Constitutional Court of South Africa

Why do authoritative constitutional courts sometimes thrive even in dominant-party regimes? This article identifies as a key determining factor the constitutional entrenchment of wealth redistribution via private corporate equity transfers. Since the policy threatens private capital, the dominant party would want to avoid massive capital flight by credibly committing to a restrained practice of indirect expropriation through an authoritative constitutional court that can apply a brake to the policy when it goes too far. The analysis is based on an in-depth case study of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The empirical research includes conducting an expert survey on judicial appointments that tests a crucial observable implication of the theory, as well as performing process tracing that involves interviewing South African business elites.

Paul Schuler and Mai Truong, Connected Countryside: The Inhibiting Effects of Social Media on Rural Social Movements

While much research focuses on social media and urban movements, almost no research explores its potentially divergent effects in rural areas. Building on recent work emphasizing the multidimensional effects of online communication on vertical and horizontal information, we argue that while the Internet may facilitate large-scale urban movements, it inhibits large-scale rural movements. Because social media increases vertical information flows between government and citizens, the central government responds quickly to rural protests, preventing such protests from developing into a large-scale movement. By contrast, social media does less to change the vertical information flows in urban areas. We explore the plausibility of our argument by process tracing the evolution of protests in urban and rural areas in Vietnam in the pre-Internet and in the Internet eras.

Jie Lu and Bruce Dickson, Revisiting the Eastonian Framework on Political Support: Assessing Different Measures of Regime Support in Mainland China

Easton’s framework for theorizing political support continues to be influential for pertinent research. However, due to the complexity of Easton’s arguments, there is some confusion on how to classify and measure political support in existing research. Building upon Easton’s arguments, we propose a two-dimensional cognitive framework to examine political support, which not only adequately captures Easton’s essential arguments but also effectively incorporates recent findings in cognitive psychology. Using the framework and multiple national surveys, we assess different instruments widely used to measure regime support in China. We clarify some confusion in the operationalization of political support, establish the salience of institutional settings in shaping its latent structure, assess key survey instruments of regime support, and offer guidelines on how to appropriately interpret related findings.

Şener Aktürk, Review Article, Comparative Politics of Exclusion in Europe and the Americas: Religious, Sectarian, and Racial Boundary Making since the Reformation

Based on a critical reading of three recent books, I argue that the exclusion of Jews and Muslims, the two major non-Christian religious groups in Europe and the Americas, has continued on the basis of ethnic, racial, ideological, and quasi-rational justifications, instead of or in addition to religious justifications, since the Reformation. Furthermore, I argue that the institutionally orchestrated collective stigmatization and persecution of Jews and Muslims predated the Reformation, going back to the Fourth Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III in 1215. The notion of Corpus Christianum and Observant movements in the late Middle Ages, the elective affinity of liberalism and racism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the divergence in religious norms at present are critically evaluated as potential causes of ethnoreligious exclusion.
Volume 52, Number 4, July 20202020-10-29T21:53:19+00:00

Volume 52, Number 3, April 2020

André Albuquerque Sant’Anna and Leonardo Weller, The Threat of Communism during the Cold War: A Constraint to Income Inequality?

Did the threat of communism influence income distribution in developed capitalist economies during the Cold War? This article addresses this question by testing whether income inequality in OECD countries was related to events linked to the spread of communism—revolutions and Soviet interventions—around the world. We argue that the threat of the spread of communism acted as an incentive for the elites and governments to keep economic inequality low. This article provides an empirical contribution to the recent literature on inequality, which highlights the role of domestic institutions but ignores the role of the Cold War in redistributing income. We find a robust relationship between income inequality and the distance to communist events. The results, reinforced by cases studied, suggest that the spread of communism fostered income redistribution deals between domestic elites and workers. Finally, we show that these effects were reinforced by strong unions and the presence of strong communist parties.

Besir Ceka and Pedro C. Magalhães, Do the Rich and the Poor Have Different Conceptions of Democracy? Socioeconomic Status, Inequality, and the Political Status Quo

In this study, we investigate how socioeconomic status is related to people’s commitment to liberal democracy. Based on sociological and psychological theories of social conflict and dominance, we argue that those who enjoy a more privileged position in the social hierarchy tend to develop stronger preferences for the existing social and political order. Conversely, people in underprivileged positions tend to be less supportive of that order. Hence, we expect the relationship between socioeconomic status and commitment to liberal democracy to be context-specific: positive in liberal democracies but negative in autocracies. Furthermore, we argue that income inequality amplifies these dynamics, widening the gap between low and high status individuals. We test our hypotheses using the fifth wave of the World Value Surveys.

Beth Rabinowitz, Ethnicity and Power in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do Colonial Institutions Still Matter?

It has been sixty years since the first sub-Saharan nation declared independence. Over the past three decades, the region has undergone significant changes. Though few, if any, would question that colonial histories shaped African societies, it is unclear to what extent these legacies continue to be relevant to contemporary inter-group relations. Does it still make sense to speak about colonial legacies? And if so, which ones? This article explores these questions by examining whether ethnic groups who were privileged during the colonial period are more likely to hold political power decades later. To do so, I conduct a multiple case study analysis of twenty-five sub-Saharan countries from which I create an original dataset of how ethnic groups were positioned during the latter stages of colonialism. With these data, I run auto-regressive logistical models correlating former colonial position to executive power since independence. I find that many of the assumptions made in the scholarship about the importance of colonial privilege are not supported by these models. However, colonial institutional legacies may still help us understand inter-group dynamics and be the source of contemporary political grievances.

Rasmus Broms and Bo Rothstein, Religion and Institutional Quality: Long-Term Effects of the Financial Systems in Protestantism and Islam

Religion is one of the most commonly cited explanations for cross-country variation in institutional quality. In particular, Protestantism, and the cultural values that follow from its doctrine, has been identified as particularly beneficial. Nevertheless, micro-level studies provide little evidence for religion producing norms and values conducive to good institutions. We propose an alternate explanation for the observed macro-level variation: historical systems for local religious financing, contrasting the medieval parish system in Northwestern Europe, where members collectively paid for and administrated religious services as public goods, with the Ottoman Empire, where such goods were normally provided through endowments from private individuals and tax collection was comparatively privatized. We argue that a legacy of collective financing and accountability in the former region created a virtuous cycle of high state capacity and low corruption, reverberating to this day as good institutions.

Olena Nikolayenko, Invisible Revolutionaries: Women’s Participation in the Revolution of Dignity

The article develops a typology of revolutions based upon women’s roles over the course of revolutionary struggle. In addition to the patriarchal and the emancipatory models, the study proposes a hybrid model of women’s participation in a revolution, characterized by the diversity and fluidity of women’s roles. According to the hybrid model, women’s involvement in a revolution can follow three different strategies: (1) acquiescence to a traditional gender-based division of labor, (2) appropriation of the masculine forms of resistance, and (3) mixing of diverse modes of action. Using the case of the 2013–2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, the empirical analysis demonstrates multifaceted forms of women’s activism. The study contributes to the literature by broadening the conceptualization of women’s participation in a contemporary urban revolution.

Aram Hur, Refugee Perceptions toward Democratic Citizenship: A Narrative Analysis of North Koreans

This article examines the informal dimension of political integration for refugees: how, after a lifetime of authoritarianism, do they make sense of their newfound democratic citizenship? I identify the perceptual lenses that refugees use through a narrative study of North Korean refugees in South Korea. Discourse analysis of thirty-one personal narratives and twenty paired debates on topics about democratic citizenship reveals a surprising phenomenon. For refugees who feel co-national identification with South Koreans, a deeply communal script of duty to the nation—socialized in the authoritarian North—is extended toward South Korea, framing new democratic roles such as voting as a matter of obligation. Those who lack such identification tend to rely on an instrumental approach instead, with implications for divergent integration trajectories.

Mohammad Ali Kadivar and Vahid Abedini, Electoral Activism in Iran: A Mechanism for Political Change

Scholars of electoral authoritarianism contend that elections make autocratic regimes more durable, while scholarship on democratization states that authoritarian elections can lead to electoral revolutions and regime change. In this article, we argue that these two lenses occlude smaller instances of activism during election periods and the influence that this activism has on bringing about gradual political change. To build our argument, we draw on two presidential elections held in Iran in 2009 and 2013. We show how grassroots activists use elections to abort gains made by hardliners, push centrist and moderate candidates toward more reformist and democratic stances, promote issues that would otherwise be considered beyond the pale of formal regime politics, and encourage solidarity and opposition coalition building.

Didi Kuo, Review Article, Democratization and the Franchise

Understanding why elites extend the franchise is one of the central questions in comparative politics. However, most theories fail to account for subsequent extensions of voting rights to once-excluded groups, including women, racial and religious minorities, and the poor. This article reviews three new books in comparative politics that focus on the struggle for voting rights and representation in the first-wave democracies. These books challenge classic assumptions and show that democratization is punctuated by ongoing struggles over inclusion that continue to this day. Together, these books contribute to debates over modernization theory, democratic responsiveness, and the use of the United States as a case in comparative analysis.
Volume 52, Number 3, April 20202020-04-05T19:49:40+00:00

Volume 52, Number 2, January 2020

Dina Bishara, Legacy Trade Unions as Brokers of Democratization? Lessons from Tunisia

The Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) emerged as a major player in the country’s transition from authoritarianism. Existing explanations—focusing on authoritarian legacies, the degree of trade union autonomy from the state, and labor’s material incentives to support democratization—do not sufficiently account for the high-profile nature of the union’s political role in Tunisia’s transition. Instead, as this article argues, the importance of unions’ pre-authoritarian legacy is key to understanding the role of unions in the transition from authoritarian rule. If unions enter the regime formation stage with a history of political struggle and with strong organizational capacities, they are more likely to develop a degree of internal autonomy that makes it difficult for authoritarian incumbents to disempower them. The article employs a historical institutional approach and draws on fieldwork and interviews with labor activists in Tunisia.

Jose Fernandez-Albertos and Alexander Kuo, Selling Austerity: Preferences for Fiscal Adjustment during the Eurozone Crisis

What explains individual preferences for austerity during the eurozone crisis? To what extent are such preferences affected by the specific content of austerity policies or EU-related factors? To address these questions, we present new data and embedded experiments that test theories of austerity preferences, from a survey of a crisis-hit country, Spain. We find little support for austerity as conventionally measured, but such support can increase if specific reasons or benefits are made salient. The endorsement by the EU has no effect on austerity support, but support for spending wanes when tax increases and concerns about fiscal commitments to the EU are made salient. The results help understand how unpopular policies such as austerity might be sometimes palatable to large segments of the general public.

Paasha Mahdavi and John Ishiyama, Dynamics of the Inner Elite in Dictatorships: Evidence from North Korea

How does the circle of inner elites evolve over time in dictatorships? We draw on theories of authoritarian power-sharing to shed light on the evolution of politics in North Korea. Given challenges in collecting individual-level data in this context, we employ web-scraping techniques that capture inspection visits by the dictator as reported by state-run media to assemble network data on elite public co-occurrences. We test the durability of this network since Kim Jong-un’s rise to power in December 2011 to find suggestive evidence of elite purging. Our findings contribute to the broader literature on authoritarian elite dynamics and to subnational studies on power-sharing in communist states. Importantly, our approach helps bring the study of North Korean politics more firmly in the mainstream of political science inquiry.

Wendy Pearlman, Host State Engagement, Socioeconomic Class, and Syrian Refugees in Turkey and Germany

Refugees’ preflight class interacts with host state policies to shape refugees’ post-displacement class trajectories. This interaction affects whether refugees of different backgrounds experience mobility over time and how refugees of various backgrounds disperse over space. “Selective engagement” hosts that leave refugees to self-settle accentuate stratification insofar as refugees with capital can attain entrepreneurial success, poor refugees lack protection from further impoverishment, and middle-class professionals have both the means and motivation to try to migrate elsewhere. “Interventionist engagement” hosts lessen the gap between rich and poor both by attracting middle-class refugees and by imposing integration programs that further compress all refugees toward the middle. Demonstrating these arguments, analysis of Syrian refugees in Turkey and Germany illustrates a diaspora’s class-remaking in ways not attributable to displacement alone.

Daniel C. Mattingly, Responsive or Repressive? How Frontline Bureaucrats Enforce the One Child Policy in China

How do authoritarian states implement policies that curb individual freedom? In this article, I examine the implementation of the One Child Policy in China, which has had an enormous impact on Chinese society and yet has received little attention from political scientists. I argue that the success or failure of the policy hinged on using frontline bureaucrats to infiltrate society. Important theories suggest that bureaucratic penetration may increase bureaucrats’ responsiveness to citizens and decrease implementation of the law. Drawing on a unique dataset and natural experiment, I show the opposite to be true in China: a one standard deviation increase in bureaucratic penetration lowers over-quota births by 2 to 7 percentage points. There is suggestive evidence that bureaucrats leverage their social embeddedness to control society. The article shows how frontline bureaucrats beyond the police, military, or ruling party are key agents of repression and political control.

Caitlin Andrews-Lee, The Politics of Succession in Charismatic Movements: Routinization versus Revival in Argentina, Venezuela, and Peru

Scholars suggest that charismatic movements must institutionalize to survive beyond the death of the founder. Yet charismatic movements around the world that have maintained their personalistic nature have persisted or reemerged. This article investigates the conditions under which politicians can use their predecessors’ charismatic legacies to revive these movements and consolidate power. I argue that three conditions—the mode of leadership selection, the presence of a crisis, and the ability to conform to the founder’s personalistic nature—shape successors’ capacity to pick up their forefather’s mantle and restore the movement to political predominance. To demonstrate my theory, I trace the process through which some leaders succeeded while others failed to embody the founder’s legacy across three charismatic movements: Argentine Peronism, Venezuelan Chavismo, and Peruvian Fujimorismo.

Alexander Lee, Incumbency, Parties, and Legislatures: Theory and Evidence from India

Incumbent legislators in some developing countries are often thought to face an electoral disadvantage relative to challengers. This article traces this effect to high levels of centralization within the political parties and governments of these countries. In political systems dominated by party leaders, legislators face substantial formal and informal constraints on their ability to influence policy, stake positions, and control patronage, which in turn reduce their ability to build up personal votes. This theory is tested on a dataset of Indian national elections since 1977, using a regression discontinuity design to measure the effects of incumbency. Candidates less affected by centralization—those from less-centralized political parties and from parties not affected by restrictions on free parliamentary voting—have a low or non-existent incumbency disadvantage.
Volume 52, Number 2, January 20202020-01-23T18:49:09+00:00

Volume 52, Number 1, October 2019

Nimmi Gowrinathan and Zachariah Mampilly, Resistance and Repression under the Rule of Rebels: Women, Clergy, and Civilian Agency in LTTE Governed Sri Lanka

Civilians living in areas of rebel control have a variety of tools through which they may challenge rebel rule. While studies have examined how civilians violently resist the rule of armed groups, few have examined non-violent challengers. By examining instances of non-violent opposition to rebel rule by civilians living under rebel control in “Eelam,” the areas of Sri Lanka controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, this article develops a conception of agency that reveals far more about the civilian/rebel relationship. Drawing on original interviews with key participants, we focus on two modes of “oppositional agency” in which women and clergy non-violently challenged the rebel government regarding its detention and recruitment practices, with some success.

Danielle Resnick, The Politics of Crackdowns on Africa’s Informal Vendors

Crackdowns on informal vendors are a common form of violence against the poor in many cities in developing countries. This article uses a media events database to examine crackdowns of informal vendors in Accra, Dakar, and Lusaka from 2000 to 2016. During this period, Accra demonstrated consistently high levels of violence towards vendors, while violence increased in Dakar and decreased in Lusaka. The article argues that these trends are driven by differences in political decentralization for municipal authorities, variations in their administrative mandates over vending, and the degree of influence vendors hold as an electoral constituency. Through a structured comparison of the governance of informal vendors across multiple cities, the article demonstrates how state violence manifests through everyday battles over access to public space.

Carla Alberti, Populist Multiculturalism in the Andes: Balancing Political Control and Societal Autonomy

Radical populists in the Andes have combined a populist program and a multicultural agenda. However, while populism centralizes power in the hands of the leader and emphasizes the unity of the people, multiculturalism grants cultural rights that strengthen societal autonomy, generating an inherent tension between these two modes of incorporation. How are populist governments able to combine unity and fragmentation as well as centralization and autonomy? This article develops the concept of populist multiculturalism, focusing on the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia, which has supported autonomy rights while simultaneously curtailing their implementation. Specifically, it examines the implementation of indigenous autonomous governments and prior consultation and the relationship between indigenous organizations and the ruling party. The article also extends this concept to Ecuador and Venezuela.

Sarah J. Hummel, Sideways Concessions and Individual Decisions to Protest

Sideways concessions to protest are policy reforms that decrease grievance among potential protesters, without being directly linked to the stated demands of the protest. By avoiding both the backlash effect of repression and the inspirational effect of direct concessions, they are theoretically powerful tools for quelling unrest. This article evaluates the effectiveness of sideways concessions at reducing individual mobilization potential using a survey experiment conducted in Kyrgyzstan in October 2015. The evidence shows sideways concessions are effective among respondents who were dissatisfied with the government and not optimistic about the future of the country. The article also demonstrates the plausibility of these results in other settings, drawing on observational data from the 2014 Gezi Park protests in Turkey and the 2013 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine.

Jeffrey W. Paller, Dignified Public Expression: A New Logic of Political Accountability

Research on political accountability emphasizes elections and popular control, but often neglects how ordinary people hold their leaders to account in the context of daily life. Dominant scholarly approaches emphasize the logic of electoral sanctioning and removal, missing the importance of mutual respect between representatives and citizens. This article introduces a new logic of democratic accountability based on the social practices, daily political behaviors, and public deliberation between representatives and citizens. Using urban Ghana as a study site, this article uncovers the mechanisms through which a theory based on respect works in practice. By reconciling theories of political representation with deliberative democracy, the article places the voices of urban Ghanaians in conversation with Western political thought to broaden understandings of accountability in African democracies.

Candelaria Garay and Maria Marta Maroto, Local Health Care Provision as a Territorial Power-Building Strategy: Non-Aligned Mayors in Argentina

What explains variation in local health services? Comparative scholarship highlights economic factors, electoral competition, and partisanship to account for service disparities. Employing an original data set and qualitative case studies of health service provision in thirty-three metropolitan municipalities in Argentina between 1995 and 2015, we find that mayors are likely to provide more services when they are not aligned with the governor. Unable to access the discretionary resources and electoral support from governors that aligned mayors enjoy, non-aligned mayors exploit automatic provincial revenue-sharing health transfers, which reward municipalities that provide more services and have more infrastructure, in order to build territorial power. These findings highlight the importance of non-alignment and the conditions under which formula-based transfers encourage local service provision.

Tomila Lankina and Alexander Libman, Soviet Legacies of Economic Development, Oligarchic Rule, and Electoral Quality in Eastern Europe’s Partial Democracies: The Case of Ukraine

Can economic development retard democracy, defying expectations of classic modernization theorizing? If so, under what conditions? Our article addresses the puzzle of poor democratic performance in highly urbanized and industrialized post-communist states. We assembled an original dataset with data from Ukraine’s local and national elections and constructed district- (rayon) and region- (oblast) level indices of electoral quality. Regions and districts that score higher on developmental indices also score lower on electoral quality, including in Ukraine’s Western regions conventionally considered more democratic than the predominantly Russian-speaking Eastern regions. We explain these outcomes with reference to the peculiarities of Soviet industrial development, which facilitated the emergence of “oligarchs” in territories housing Soviet-era mega-industries. Our research contributes to comparative debates about the links between economic development and democracy.

Maya Tudor and Adam Ziegfeld, Social Cleavages, Party Organization, and the End of Single-Party Dominance: Insights from India

When do electorally dominant parties lose power in democracies? Drawing on the experiences of India’s states during the period of Indian National Congress dominance, we argue that single-party dominance is less likely to endure under two conditions: first, when one of the opposition parties possesses a longstanding and robust party organization and, second, when there is a single social cleavage dividing the political class into two main cleavage groups. Both conditions contribute to the demise of a dominant party system by encouraging a previously fragmented opposition to consolidate behind one large party capable of challenging the dominant party. We provide support for our argument with evidence from across India’s states and with more in-depth case studies of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh.
Volume 52, Number 1, October 20192020-01-23T18:42:29+00:00

Volume 51, Number 4, July 2019

Sharan Grewal and Steve L. Monroe, Down and Out: Founding Elections and Disillusionment with Democracy in Egypt and Tunisia

Which electoral losers become the most disillusioned with democracy following the first free and fair elections? Exploiting surveys before and after founding elections in post-Arab Spring Egypt and Tunisia, we find that the most disillusioned losers were those residing in areas where the losing parties were strongest. We argue that expectations matter. Losers whose parties are strong locally tend to overestimate their popularity nationally and thus become more disillusioned after the first elections. Beyond these attitudinal results, we find that these areas witnessed a greater increase in support for candidates from former autocratic regimes in subsequent elections. These findings clarify subnational variation in electoral losers’ attitudes towards democracy. They suggest that decentralization may keep otherwise disillusioned losers invested in democracy.

Andrei Zhirnov and Mariam Mufti, The Electoral Constraints on Inter-Party Mobility of Candidates: The Case of Pakistan

This article investigates the electoral constraints on the inter-party mobility of candidates. We argue that the prevalent mode of interactions among candidates, voters, and parties in local, district-level electoral markets shapes the strategic constraints faced by potential party switchers. We suggest that strong linkages between voters and political parties reduce the market value of the candidates outside of their political parties, thereby constraining their inter-party mobility. These expectations are evaluated using candidate- and district-level data from Pakistan from 1988–2013. The results show that the strength of voter-party linkages in an electoral district, as measured by the lack of electoral volatility and the extent of straight-ticket voting in national and provincial elections, has a positive effect on the propensity of candidates to switch parties.

Eduardo Dargent and Madai Urteaga, The Power of the Seed: Timing, Quick Structural Change, and Genetically Modified Crop Regulations in the Andes

Regulation concerning GM crops around the world range from total prohibition to full openness and state-wide promotion. The Andean countries in Latin America provide an interesting setting to analyze the possible causes for this variation. Despite having similar conditions to plant GM crops, Colombia and Bolivia allow GM crop cultivation, while Ecuador and Peru do not. Interestingly, Evo Morales, Bolivia’s leftist president, could not ban GM crop production, and Alan Garcia (2006–2011) in Peru, despite his pro-GM stance, failed to adopt a permissive regulation. We argue that two factors explain these divergent outcomes regarding GM seed sowing and reform efforts in Andean countries: (i) the time in which regulatory measures were attempted, and (ii) the quick structural change that GM seeds generate once introduced into a country.

Carolyn E. Holmes, The Politics of “Non-Political” Activism in Democratic South Africa

Twenty years after the first democratic elections in South Africa, organizations representing key voting constituencies—youth and the economically marginalized—are becoming major forces of opposition to the ANC-led government while explicitly framing their activities as non-political. They prefer instead to talk in terms of “rights” and “activism.” Drawing from fieldwork and online publications of three opposition organizations—#RhodesMustFall, Abahlali baseMjondolo, and Afriforum— this article argues that the abandonment of “politics” is more than rhetorical positioning. By framing their actions as non-political, these groups engage in a deep-seated critique of the possibilities presented by democratic politics and a lack of perceived efficacy or legitimacy of institutionalized contestation. Perhaps more importantly, it means that opposition politics are occurring in an environment without institutional incentives for cooperation.

Adnan Naseemullah, Violence, Rents, and Investment: Explaining Growth Divergence in South Asia

Why have growth rates diverged between India and Pakistan since the 1990s? This article argues that differences in perceptions of political instability through the locations of political violence in the two countries have impacted growth through investment decisions. In Pakistan, kidnapping and terrorism in major cities has led to the domination of rent-implicated investment, thus limiting growth. In India, by contrast, political violence in the periphery or targeting minorities remains socially distant to the perspectives of investors, leading to more productive investments, and thus higher growth. The article provides a new set of explanations for differences in growth among middle-income countries by highlighting political instability and the salience of violence, the demand for rents as investments, and the limits of institutional explanations for growth outcomes.

Konrad Kalicki, Security Fears and Bureaucratic Rivalry: Admitting Foreign Labor in Japan and Taiwan

To remain competitive in the global marketplace, states have increasingly been forced to supplement their domestic labor resources with foreign manpower. However, their admission policies for low-skilled workers exhibit puzzling cross-national variation. What determines this policy divergence among advanced economies that share many structural and institutional properties? This article offers a statist explanation. It argues that this variation is, at base, caused by two interrelated factors: the state’s perception of security risks involved in admitting particular ethno-national groups of labor migrants and inter-ministerial bargaining over policy authority within the state apparatus. This argument is developed through a comparison of the contrasting and empirically underexplored cases of foreign labor policy formation in Japan and Taiwan.

Collin Grimes and David Pion-Berlin, Power Relations, Coalitions, and Rent Control: Reforming the Military’s Natural Resource Levies

Levies imposed on the export earnings of natural resource producers provide the armed forces with sizeable off-budget revenue not subject to oversight or scrutiny. Why do some nations succeed at reforming or eliminating these levies, while others do not? This article argues that outcomes have to do with the balance of coalition strength between civilians and the armed forces. In the contemporary period, the military can no longer go at it alone, relying on tactics of coercive intimidation. Like civilians, it must find political party allies who can compete legislatively on its behalf. How coalitions congeal, come unraveled, or fail to develop is assessed through a small-N comparative study of Ecuador and Chile.

David Andersen, Review Article, Comparative Democratization and Democratic Backsliding: The Case for a Historical-Institutional Approach

In light of the alleged democratic recession in recent years, comparative democratization research is now taking a turn to more party-political, agency-centered, and historically contingent explanations of democratic backsliding. I review three recent books that represent this trend to varying degrees. Based on a historical-institutional approach, I assess whether the theoretical propositions of these books are fruitful for explaining the gradual backsliding to competitive authoritarianism and illiberalism in recent decades. I find that the propositions in How Democracies Die in particular risk leading to excessively voluntarist conclusions that are insensitive to historical path dependencies. The other two books better capture the ways in which domestic institutional legacies have shaped democratic backsliding around the globe. I end the review by specifying two models that explain backslidings as institutional responses to 1) international “exogenous” shocks or 2) “endogenous” demands unleashed by dynamics of the democratic transition itself. I show that these two models provide a more comprehensive understanding of a diverse set of the most infamous recent backslidings in the United States, Venezuela, Hungary, and Turkey.
Volume 51, Number 4, July 20192019-09-08T01:38:25+00:00
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