Volume 36, Number 1, October 2003

Does an informal institution grant police wide latitude to use lethal force in Argentina and Brazil? Evidence from extensive fieldwork and a sample of police homicide prosecutions in Buenos Aires and São Paulo indicate that an informal institution is at work in cases involving the killing of a victim perceived as a violent criminal but not in more routine cases of excessive use of force. In the latter cases, the problem is more properly characterized as a failure of the system to gather the requisite information to support a prosecution.

Brazilian political institutions have been the subject of intense debate. A more pessimistic view argues that the electoral and party systems constrain effective policymaking, while a more optimistic one sees Brazilian presidents as relatively unimpeded. However, this debate has taken place with little reference to the most critical area in evaluating institutional performance: public policy. Neither view accounts satisfactorily for the outcome of the privatization of the Brazilian telecommunications system. Instead, noninstitutional factors, especially public opinion and the quality of individual leaders, are critical in explaining policy results. More systematic cross-sectoral and cross-national studies of policy outcomes are needed to understand better the impact of political institutions.

The nexus between regime type and development has long preoccupied scholars of the political economy of development. Investigation of this relationship has generally taken place at the cross-national level of analysis. In a world now dominated by a development strategy that seeks to empower local governments and community groups, an understanding of the development consequences of the local political environment is essential. This article examines the municipal development legacy of Mexico’s principal demand-based poverty alleviation program of the early 1990s, the National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL). Examination of PRONASOL project outcomes across distinct local electoral environments provides strong support for the proposition that characteristics of local electoral regimes play an important role in the success or failure of the decentralized development strategy.

Do individual-level attitudes play a significant role in sustaining democratic institutions at the societal level? In a recent article in Comparative Politics, Seligson argued that the strong aggregate-level correlations Inglehart found between political culture and stable democracy were spurious because there are no individual-level correlations between political culture and overt support for democracy. Seligson’s analysis exemplifies the sort of cross-level fallacy he attributes to Inglehart: he equates individual-level support for democracy with the presence of democratic institutions. However, individual-level support of democracy is only weakly linked with societal-level democracy. Democracy currently has a positive image almost everywhere, but favorable opinions are often superficial. Unless they are accompanied by more deeply rooted orientations of tolerance, trust, and participation, chances for effective democracy are poor.

Political scientists tend to draw a sharp distinction between personalized and institutionalized patterns of rule and to assume that personalization indicates low levels of institutionalization. This view is based on a narrow procedural definition of institutions that makes more sense in democratic than in authoritarian settings. While democratic institutions consist largely of procedures that constrain the executive’s despotic power, authoritarian institutions consist primarily of organizations that enhance the regime’s infrastructural power over political opposition. The practical significance of this distinction can be seen in the personalization of power in Malaysia. An aspiring autocrat ironically took advantage of highly institutionalized political organizations to enhance his personal power, even while maintaining the regime’s resilience in the face of pressures for democratization.

Comparative political economy has reached a moment of theoretical synthesis in which a series of incremental theoretical developments has coalesced into a new paradigm. The theoretical framework of the varieties of capitalism approach to political economy establishes a space for rigorous institutional analysis. It can compellingly explain why distinct national varieties of capitalism exist and how institutions interact to reinforce these varieties. Nonetheless, the varieties of capitalism approach needs to be supplemented by a much greater emphasis on political contestation and the uneven, conflictual, and interdependent development of national capitalisms. Not simply better institutional theory, but also a better institutional theory of capitalism is required.