Volume 41, Number 1, October 2008

France’s policies toward its Muslim population are exceptionally restrictive compared to other western European states. The dominant combative secularist ideology, which aims to eliminate religion from the public sphere, is a major reason for French exceptionalism. Combative secularism is the result of historical ideological conflicts between anticlerical republicans and clerical monarchists and the victory of the former over the latter. Recently, combative secularists allied with opponents of immigrants and Islam to legislate the ban on wearing headscarves in public schools. Pluralistic secularists, who would allow the public visibility of religion, were unable to impede this policy.

Are ideological and institutional characteristics of party systems important predictors of economic policy change in postcommunist democracies? The weakness of far left economic parties is an important predictor of market reform. However, institutional and ideological concentration has a larger impact. In particular, the difference between ideological and institutional concentration most strongly predicts market reform. Party system ideological consensus in favor of market reform and on national identity facilitates economic liberalization, but party system institutional concentration has a counteracting, inhibiting effect. Thus, the widely noted tendency of multiparty coalitions to slow and compromise policy reforms is outweighed by the reform-inducing effect of more competitive party systems.

What political factors influence the allocation of economic patronage in democracies? Changing levels of party centralization can drive important changes in the allocation of state largess. When national parties are centralized, national party leaders control patronage and target benefits to particularly influential regions and industries. By contrast, when governing parties are decentralized, influential subnational party leaders advocate for their constituents and allocate patronage evenly through a national logroll. Evidence for these relationships is found by comparing India’s distribution process for industrial licenses and government finance under a decentralized Congress Party (1954–61) and a centralized Congress Party (1969–75).

How and where do participatory institutions contribute to the deepening of democracy? Substantial variation in the outcomes produced by participatory institutions is best explained by the incentives of elected governments to delegate authority and the capacity of civil society organizations to use contentious politics in and outside of these institutions. In eight cases of Brazil’s participatory budgeting program, two municipalities produced strong results; two other municipalities produced failed programs; and four municipalities produced mixed, somewhat contradictory results. Failed programs can have a pernicious effect on efforts to deepen democracy, while the most successful programs improve the quality of local democratic processes.

The many interrupted presidencies in third wave Latin American democracies are changing presidential regimes and to some extent reduce the perils of presidentialism in the region. The twenty cases of presidential interruptions demonstrate that Latin American presidentialism is becoming more flexible by adopting equivalents of such parliamentary procedures as no confidence votes and early elections. Linz argued that the independent survival and origin of the executive and legislative branches are the source of two major perils of presidentialism: rigidity and dual democratic legitimacy. Premature removals of presidents mitigate rigidity and reduce the perils of presidentialism.

Immigration and its challenge to national identities are unleashing political conflict throughout the world. Three of the founders of modern comparative politics—Samuel Huntington, Aristide Zolberg, and Jerry Hough—analyze this conflict in studies of the United States. Their books are exemplary. Although all are American, they each view America with a foreigner’s eye. They bring America back in to comparative analysis, not as a data point for cross-sectional statistical testing, but as a country study, in the best area studies tradition. Still, these books would have benefited from greater analytic rigor, as well as adoption of a cultural equilibrium model to analyze the dynamics between immigrants and dominant social groups, suggested by Hough but not fully realized.