Volume 39, Number 4, July 2007

This article compares ethnic competition in the labor market and ethnic violence in Belfast, Chicago, and Johannesburg after World War I using Bonacich’s split labor market theory of ethnic antagonism. Augmented by an analysis of the dominant groups’ power in the workplace and the state, the theory proves quite robust in explaining postwar labor market outcomes in shipbuilding (exclusion), meatpacking (displacement), and gold mining (caste building). However, it remains inadequate in explaining interethnic violence, such as the Belfast workplace expulsions (1920), the Chicago race riot (1919), and the Rand Revolt (1922), which exceeded the bounds of the labor market. The split labor market approach is valuable in explaining segmentation but not as a general theory of ethnic antagonism.

Why do German Social Democrats opt for more corporate governance liberalization than the Christian Democrats, although in terms of the distributional outcomes of such reforms the situation should be reversed? This empirical puzzle seems to contradict insights from comparative political economy and the varieties of capitalism approach, in particular. Social Democrats and trade unions adopted their liberal attitude to company regulation after World War II. In the 1970s competition policy was introduced to make Keynesian macroeconomic policy work. Since the 1990s labor favored shareholder-oriented reforms because they helped employee representatives in conflicts over managerial control. The analysis has implications for partisan theory, institutional complementarity, and conflict models in comparative political economy.

Studies of federalism ascribe a central role to coercion in the birth and death of federations. In contrast, the role of force almost completely disappears when the focus shifts to the management of federations. However, in conditions faced by many federal hybrid regimes, the institutions said to manage federal relations’ political parties, constitutions, and judiciaries’ often are too weak to fulfill this role successfully. Thus, control coercion may play an important role in resolving center-subunit disputes. Securing control over coercive power has been a prominent feature of federal relations in post-Soviet Russia. Despite the weakness of coercion as a mechanism of regulating the federal bargain, certain modes of organizing force may assist federal stabilization, at least until parties and courts develop a stronger capacity to play this role.

Corruption is a notorious companion of the postcommunist economic transition, and it has had an adverse effect on business. Does corruption also inhibit collective action among postcommunist firms? Based on an analysis of survey data on membership in business associations in twenty-five postcommunist countries, and controlling for other factors affecting group membership, firms’ perception of bureaucratic corruption is positively associated with membership. This finding is quite surprising, given the conventional understanding of business-state relations. Causal mechanisms linking bureaucratic corruption to association formation can be traced through the development of two business associations. Business associations attract their members by providing effective mechanisms to confront bureaucratic corruption.

Many sub-Saharan African countries are embarking on major changes in their property rights law with the goal of achieving more vigorous economic growth and alleviating poverty. Uganda has been at the forefront of these changes with constitutional change and a new land law. The Ugandan land law encapsulates recent efforts to formalize existing informal property rights. Implementation and enforcement of the 1998 Land Act are examined through paired case studies. There have been three major impediments to implementation: lack of capacity, corruption, and customary law. While the new land law has been necessary to change property rights, it has faced obstacles in its implementation that undermine secure property rights to land.

Review of three recent books on collective action and interest group activity in the European Union offers an opportunity to analyze the development of interest group studies in relation to European integration. A feasible research agenda can build on the works under review. Scholars can incorporate a sensitivity to the impact of collective action on democracy, particularly on citizens’ participation in their national and supranational polities. In this respect, EU interest group studies can be linked more clearly to questions developed by comparative political approaches elsewhere and thus become a mainstream aspect of EU research.