Volume 36, Number 4, July 2004

Conditionality has had negative effects on neoliberal reform in Africa, and scholars now contend that governmental commitment to reforms, rather than conditionality, yields success. This article explores the dilemmas of commitment and the complexity of success in two highly praised reformers to establish a benchmark against which to judge reform in other countries. Commitment is a protracted negotiation between the state and social actors. Furthermore, even in successful cases, restructuring is the product of a dynamic interaction between institutional legacies and the policy choices of engaged agents and results in varied trajectories. Lastly, new alliances and fissures generated by structural change may undermine reform success over time.

In the 1990s presidents Menem of Argentina and Cardoso of Brazil reduced their countries’ chronic inflation rates to close to zero. Not since 1944 in Argentina and 1937 in Brazil had inflation stayed so low for so long. How did these leaders succeed where so many had failed? Models of the political economy of reform, which focus on crisis, the electoral calendar, wars of attrition, party control of veto points, or the enhanced credibility of left-wing converts to neoliberalism, do not provide convincing explanations. Success depended instead on other particular tactical choices. The article identifies the stakeholders impeding reform and analyzes Cardoso’s and Menem’s tactics to marginalize some while coopting others.

Recruitment, electoral contestation, political socialization, interest aggregation, and organizational resources of political parties have contributed to the consolidation of democratic processes in Ghana. Despite a turbulent political history, including several long military regimes, a two-way cleavage has evolved into a virtual two party system that advances consolidation processes. Elections over four republics have remained highly competitive, and governance has alternated almost equally between the two sides of the cleavage. Their shared dominance over forty-four years has significantly strengthened their command of recruitment, socialization, and interest aggregation. While organizational resources remain weak, a strong electoral commission and robust media have added managerial heft and extensive public exposure. On balance, democratic consolidation processes, and perhaps system consolidation, are well along.

Democracy is generally defined as a combination of procedures and inclusiveness, but inclusiveness has presented a challenge for comparative historical theories of democratization since they operationalize their dependent variable with universal adult male suffrage as the standard of inclusiveness. Raising the bar to include women is an important first step in revamping theories of democratization, but it is also necessary to incorporate gender and race as categories of analysis even when the group being enfranchised is white working class men. Two additional variables, transnational activism and historical timing, are important for theories of democratization.

The applicability of rational choice models is dependent upon the levels of stability and certainty in the political area. This point can be demonstrated through an analysis of the politics of preserving electoral systems, in particular, through a critique of a rational choice analysis of Israel. The very nature of the arenas in which electoral reform was adopted in the 1990s, in Israel and other established democracies, and the nature of the proposed reforms make this subject unsuitable for study through the rational choice paradigm. An alternative analysis of Israel and an alternative approach that can incorporate these inherent complexities would be more appropriate.

A first generation of studies of the causes and consequences of decentralization and federalism viewed decentralization as a simple zero-sum transfer of authority from the center to subnational governments, drew upon the assumptions of welfare economics and public choice theory, and employed blunt measures of expenditure decentralization and federalism. More detailed pictures of decentralization and federalism that help explain the growing disjuncture between theory and cross-national evidence can be obtained by defining several alternative forms of federalism and fiscal, policy, and political decentralization, then measuring them and exploring interrelationships across countries and time. This approach points the way toward a second generation of more nuanced empirical research that takes politics and institutions seriously.