Political scientists have historically viewed smallholder farmers in low-income countries as lacking the capacity to collectively oppose adverse policies. This article argues that they can if they are able to attribute price distortions to government action. Apart from direct taxes, however, this is likely to occur only when traders inform smallholders of unfavorable policies. When traders are also significantly harmed by a price-distorting policy (e.g., by an export ban), they are motivated to use their networks and financial resources to inform farmer protest. When traders can pass on price distortions to farmers (as with low export taxes), they will not. The article probes this argument through a controlled comparative case analysis of export bans and taxes on raw cashew nuts in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.

Authoritarian leaders frequently send mixed messages about law. While official rhetoric typically emphasizes obeying law, leaders have proven willing to sidestep the law when it proves inconvenient. We explore the impact of this duality on the attitudes of Russian citizens, drawing on three rounds of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. To identify the separate effects of cohort, age, and survey year, we use existing estimates of a function relating age to the predisposition to form new attitudes. Our results indicate that one factor driving Russians’ attitudes on law-abiding is the strength of the Kremlin’s messaging on the importance of obeying the law especially in their formative years. This effect would have been strongest for the oldest Russians. Yet, ceteris paribus, more years lived in Russia lead to declines in law-abiding attitudes. The net result of these two effects is that older Russians profess greater law abidingness. Putin’s emphasis on obeying the laws on the books has left its mark in the increasing prevalence of law-abiding attitudes.

Why do most authoritarian regimes installed by populist chief executives not become full-scale, repressive dictatorships? As explanation, scholars argue that populist leaders base their rule on charismatic appeal and voluntary mass support; therefore, they do not need harsh coercion, which would undermine their popular legitimacy. While corroborating this argument, I highlight a crucial complementary factor: populist chief executives find it difficult to marshal large-scale political repression. After all, their insistence on personalistic autonomy and unconstrained predominance creates tension with the military institution, the mainstay of organized coercion. Due to this inherent distance, most populist rulers lack the dependable military support to sustain the imposition of harsh autocracy. I substantiate these arguments with relevant cases from contemporary Latin America, especially Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Peru.

Speechmaking is a vital resource for legislators and holds particular importance for women lawmakers, who frequently constitute a numerical minority and face constraints on their political influence. We argue that formal and informal institutions, district characteristics, and issue priorities shape women’s speech participation. Analyzing twenty-eight years of speeches from Chile’s Chamber of Deputies, we first show that women’s speeches constitute a small share of all speeches, directly corresponding to their numeric representation. Proportionally, however, women are over/under-represented in speechmaking across different policy areas. After controlling for various factors correlating with gender, including committee assignments, tenure, and district characteristics, women’s relative participation is similar to men’s in most topics but exceeds men’s in areas that disproportionately affect women’s lives, reflecting their commitment to substantive representation.

How do facilitating mechanisms affect the share of women in parliament? Specifically, is there an ideal combination of quota types and facilitating mechanisms that leads to greater female representation in parliament? This research uses a comprehensive dataset covering 186 countries in 2021 to provide a global landscape of the gender quota types and their facilitating mechanisms. Employing the OLS regression, we identified positive associations between placement mandates and strong sanctions and women’s parliamentary presence in legislative candidate system. In contrast, financial incentives under the reserved seat system showed a negative association. Our country-level analysis reveals that female aspirants face multifaceted challenges, suggesting that multiple issues should be addressed for financial incentives to effectively improve female representation.

Research in conflict studies comparing nonviolent and violent collective action has gained widespread attention due to the counterintuitive finding that nonviolent movements succeed more often than armed movements. However, rising repression and authoritarianism worldwide, alongside declining success rates for protest movements, highlight the need to further theorize and test the conditions under which nonviolent action succeeds. This article distills the different logics by which excluded minorities are advantaged or disadvantaged in nonviolent action. It also reviews three new books that advance the field of movement effectiveness in the short and long runs, and that demonstrate that success is context-dependent, with few characteristics universally conferring advantage or disadvantage. We conclude by outlining areas for future research, including the role of digital technologies.

Under what conditions do land transfers occur under land reform? Theories of land redistribution focus on demand-side explanations for land transfers where the state allocates land in exchange for support from voters or rural elites. In this article, I argue that land transfers under market land redistribution are driven by supply-side characteristics of landholders. Using the case of South Africa’s sugar sector, I show that landholders chose to sell their land via redistribution when they had the economic incentive to preserve existing state-support frameworks and had collective capacity from centralized institutions. To understand when and why land redistribution occurs, one must pay attention to the landholders’ relationship to the state and their internal sectoral organization. In some cases, landholders may have an incentive to redistribute their land.

This article sheds new light on the drivers of bureaucratic resilience in the face of presidential attacks, an understudied but politically salient topic. Scholars have long shown how political advocacy can protect bureaucracies from presidential attacks on policy regulation. We argue, however, that advocacy is insufficient to defend bureaucracies against attacks on policy implementation, which occurs largely outside the formal political arena. Through a case study of Brazil’s successful Covid-19 vaccination campaign, we call attention to two additional forms of support for agencies under attack—resource provision and social activism—that come into play during the implementation phase of policy. In conjunction with political advocacy, resource provision and social activism bolster bureaucracies under attack by filling in where other forms of support fall short.

What factors predispose an individual to engage in protest? Previous studies argue pre-existing social institutions provide the social capital and resource mobilization that facilitate collective action and protest movements, but less work has examined how this social capital and resource capacity develops. Utilizing more than 200,000 individuals surveyed across eighteen Latin American countries from the years 2002 through 2018, this study finds institutional decentralization by the Catholic Church is positively associated with individual propensities to engage in protest. Catholic decentralization is theorized to overcome free rider problems and enable the development of grassroots social capital and resources that empower collective action.

Governments’ compliance with high court decisions is a critical factor affecting judicial independence, power, and legitimacy. Under what conditions do citizens tolerate incumbent non-compliance with apex court decisions? Some theories yield predictions that government supporters will be more tolerant towards non-compliance, while others assert that citizens may value judicial review irrespective of their political preferences. Although the underlying logic of both arguments is plausible, the contexts that shape citizens’ non-compliance preferences are not well identified. Focusing on the moderating effect of elite behavior and contextual factors, we demonstrate that supporters of incumbent governments are more tolerant of government non-compliance in the years following high-profile shows of interbranch attacks or government disregard of high court decisions, and in environments where the media is lacking independence.

Cooperation with supportive societal organizations has been shown to help states implement policies. This article demonstrates that opposed organizations can also play this role, lending their resources in exchange for inducements (induced coproduction). Whether these organizations accept those inducements is a function of their preferences regarding the policy’s goals and implementation process. Inducements can overcome opposition to the latter but are less likely to respond to concerns about the former. Examining the subnational implementation of an education reform in Mexico, I show that opposition to goals predicts which teachers’ union locals rejected offered inducements. A paired comparison of two most similar Mexican states illustrates how opposition to goals results in a rejection of inducements (Oaxaca), as well as how induced coproduction results in implementation (Coahuila).

A vast scholarship shows that social movements can play pivotal roles in bringing about policies that benefit marginalized groups. However, the role of social movements in entrenching those policies—ensuring they take root—remains insufficiently studied. We set a research agenda for the study of how social movements shape policy entrenchment by calling attention to three commonly used strategies—occupying state bureaucracies, engaging in pressure and persuasion tactics, and building alliances with political parties—and analyzing the relationships among them. We illustrate these strategies through short case studies of social movements that achieved significant change benefitting marginalized groups in Latin America: the health movement in Brazil, the unemployed workers’ movements in Argentina, and peasant and indigenous movements in Bolivia.

In autocracies, why are certain bureaucrats more heavy-handed in their use of force than others during repression? In this article, we propose an incentive-compatible theory that explains the uneven compliance of bureaucrats in repressive campaigns. We argue that bureaucrats from less trusted backgrounds tend to implement repressive tasks more fervently to credibly display loyalty and bolster their career prospects. We provide evidence for our theory using China’s Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957–1959), a repressive campaign launched by Mao Zedong against alleged critics of his rule. We find that officials who were former undercover partisans, a faction considered untrustworthy by Mao, tended to prosecute more “rightists” in their jurisdictions and imposed harsher penalties on them. This study contributes to the literature by revealing the motivations of coercive agents.

A rich literature examines the determinants of income inequality. Less is known about the distribution of income composition, or the extent to which different socio-economic groups hold different sources of income. This article explores the drivers of income composition inequality
(ICI). Contrary to recent studies, which show that the composition of government has ceased to shape redistribution and income inequality dynamics, this article posits that left-wing parties are associated with lower income composition inequality. We test this expectation with data from thirty European countries between 2003 and 2017. Our results suggest that the polarization between capital and labor income holders declines under left-wing governments. We establish that this is mainly because left-wing parties seek to broaden access to capital income.

Which autocratic elites are more likely to be punished after being removed from office? Purges are an important tool of autocratic survival, helping dictators to eliminate potential rivals. However, expulsion is not always the end for victims, as some also suffer detention or execution. Although we have compelling theories on why certain elites are purged, we still lack strong understanding of why punishments may differ. Using individual-level data on autocratic elites from communist Eastern Europe between 1917–1991, I find evidence that military and internal security elites are more likely to be detained than civilians, owing to the higher coup risk they pose. Internal security elites are also more likely to be executed than other elites, due to long-term threats of their professional knowledge.

Since the 1990s, seventeen African states have added a second chamber to their legislatures. This sudden trend is puzzling for two reasons. First, bicameral legislatures have decreased by 33 percent worldwide. Second, although upper houses often aim to improve democratic representation, descriptive statistics suggest these institutional changes were not due to democratic or representative pressures. The changes occurred primarily in hybrid regimes. What explains this resurgence of bicameral legislatures in Africa? I argue that incumbents introduce a second chamber when the opposition has sufficient power in the lower chamber to contain the executive branch. I adopt a mixed-methods approach combining statistical analysis and two case studies of Côte d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe. I find that African incumbents have created a second chamber to (1) weaken the legislature as a whole and the opposition in particular and (2) manage intra-party dissent.

Extant theories posit that political conflict affords favorable circumstances for successful party building. However, crises do not necessarily engender the emergence of new parties with the capacity to integrate discontent. In this in-depth analysis of Chile, we show how lowering barriers to entry inadvertently precluded the development of a national political organization. We describe the nature of new political actors who emerged from the cycle of protest that erupted in October 2019. Our analysis shows that the traits of the umbrellas of lists of independents conditioned the ability of emerging actors to aggregate demands of different districts. The Chilean case illustrates how a cycle of protest can engender new, electorally successful political actors but does not assure these actors’ capacity to legitimate the political process.

Research in comparative politics on informal institutions can be grouped into analysis of norms and values within government institutions and studies of self-governance in communities that are relatively isolated from states. Three recent books by Nadya Hajj, Shelby Grossman, and David Skarbek advance this research agenda by showing that self-governance can be significant even in contexts where the state is present, including refugee camps, markets in urban settings, and in prisons. They also offer abundant insights into how to overcome challenges with measuring and analyzing informal institutions. Rather than prioritize private or public governance, the authors see these as imperfect alternatives that invite analysis of why private governance works better in some contexts than in others for communities seeking to improve their lives in challenging circumstances.

Can religious leaders who oppose state violence reduce its use? Communal elites, such as religious leaders, may oppose human rights violations. This article argues that these leaders, part of institutions embedded in local communities and with influence based on traditional power, reduce repression when they oppose dictatorships. The argument’s main implication is tested in Argentina during the Dirty War of its 1976–1983 military dictatorship, using original archival data on the country’s Catholic bishops. Opposed bishops are associated with reduced disappearances and killings. A variety of evidence is consistent with opposed bishops taking two types of actions to resist repression: assisting likeminded local agents and participating in human rights advocacy campaigns. The findings point to the importance of influential civil society actors in reducing state violence.

Under what circumstances do ethnoracial groups become programmatically differentiated? This article argues that ethnoracial programmatic differentiation results from major transformations in groups’ access to state power. Access to state power conditions ethnoracial groups’ perceptions of the state and their support for state-centric programmatic policies. As historically-excluded groups gain access to power, and historically-advantaged ones lose theirs, programmatic differentiation increases, the product of shifting relationships with the state. I evaluate this argument using survey data from the Andean region and demonstrate that ethnoracial groups have become programmatically differentiated where the indigenous have recently gained political power, but not elsewhere despite widespread structural inequalities and extensive indigenous organizational capacity. The findings shed light on why ethnoracialized preferences vary across contexts in unexpected ways.

Bolivia prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and passed a ground-breaking gender identity law. These laws had little support among voters and passed along with heteronormative measures. Why did activists succeed in proposing and passing legislation that most voters did not support? Why were Bolivia’s advances in LGBTQ+ rights accompanied by heteronormative laws? We argue that parties with deep ties to social movements are more likely to advance legislation that expands LGBTQ+ rights than other parties and that contradictory laws emerge where both organized religion and LGBTQ+ activists are party constituents. We describe how Bolivian trans activists leveraged their access to ruling party legislators, using interviews with activists and officials, and briefly discuss the cases of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Colombia.

How does manipulation of primary elections affect the selection of women candidates for parliament? The underrepresentation of women in politics is a well-researched global phenomenon. However, as most work focuses on general elections, we overlook the disadvantages that women face in the selection process. Specifically, primary elections often provide ample room for manipulation. We argue that manipulation skews electoral contests in favor of candidates with material and inter-personal resources, who are more likely to be men. We collect unique data via on-the-ground observation of 119 primary election rounds (featuring 316 aspirants) in Malawi’s 2019 parliamentary election and interview candidates to shed light on hitherto uninvestigated internal party primaries. We show that while women running in free and fair primaries were more likely to win nominations than men, their chances were substantially reduced where primaries were flawed. The quantitative findings are corroborated by qualitative accounts of the gendered effect of primary-day manipulation in party primaries. The results have implications for debates on descriptive representation, electoral integrity, and political parties.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea occurred after twenty years of relative peace and the apex (and failure) of pro-Russian sentiments within Crimea. Annexation is surprising for Putin’s willingness to pursue such risky actions, but also because it required elite support within Crimea. This article uses process tracing to test ethnonationalism in explaining support for Russia’s annexation against a rival explanation focusing on the role of criminality and crime (financial-criminal incentive structure). By exposing how and which elites defected in Crimea, the article demonstrates that elite breakage and realignments occurred within a financial-criminal incentive structure to motivate engagement in annexation. In turn, this article discusses its broader implications for understanding Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and the politics of conflict, nationalism, and the wider former Soviet Union.

This article explores how and why substate nationalism shapes support for redistribution. An experiment embedded in an original survey reveals that in Spanish regions with extensive substate nationalist mobilization, preferences for redistribution vary based on the proposed boundaries of redistribution. In this context, individuals have preferences regarding where redistribution will occur, and not just on how much there will be. The results provide the first micro-level evidence for how preferences for redistribution depend on the geographic boundaries of a proposed policy and why mobilized group identities interact with those preferences to determine support for redistribution. The findings suggest that substate nationalist mobilization has significant implications for policy preferences beyond secession.