Volume 44, Number 1, October 2011

Patterns of party system institutionalization have varied widely across regions. In postcommunist democracies, weak party system institutionalization exists at high levels along three dimensions—volatility of representation, party extinction, and incumbency disadvantage—despite sustained economic growth. In these cases, the effects of economic restructuring are critical to electoral outcomes. A sample of democratic elections from 1990 to 2006 shows that postcommunist countries whose reform strategies minimize increases in inequality have more institutionalized party systems.

Analysis of the state-building process in modern Europe rests upon the traditional assumption that monarchs were the central driving force behind the consolidation of power in the form of a centralized state. However, an alternative state-society account challenges the supposition that monarchs were always the centralizing group in early modern society. The formation of the modern European state was ultimately shaped by the state-building strategies adopted by societal elites who possessed certain forms of social power. This alternative understanding of the state-building process helps explain the puzzling developments surrounding the successful rise of Brandenburg-Prussia and the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the early modern period.

Why do countries with similar cultures and political institutions respond differently to international norms? The varied responses among East Asian democracies to the growing international movement to abolish the death penalty show that Japan has been the most resistant, while Taiwan and South Korea have moved closer to embracing the international human rights norm. The movement in these latter countries toward a moratorium on capital punishment has little to do with public opinion, which generally favors retaining the death penalty. Rather, it reflects specific domestic political contexts, especially the power and autonomy of the executive and the experience of a drastic regime change, that open the way for rethinking human rights norms.

What explains the use of selective and indiscriminate violence in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza from 1987 to 2005? Using microlevel data, an aggregated analysis indicates that areas of dominant but incomplete territorial control consistently experience more frequent and intense episodes of selective violence, providing support for Stathis Kalyvas’s theory on the logic of civil violence. Disaggregating the analysis by each zone of control and perpetrator, however, offers only mixed empirical support for Kalyvas’s predictions. While Palestinian-perpetrated violence is still consistent with theoretical expectations, Israel more frequently resorts to the use of selective violence where Palestinians exercise greater control. Such disconfirming evidence points to causal mechanisms previously unaccounted for and contributes to a more nuanced specification of the microfoundations of violence in civil conflict.

Scholars often recommend the implementation of participatory governance institutions to promote pro-poor policy outcomes. Incorporating civil society organizations into decision making should lead to increasing government responsiveness and accountability in addressing key social problems. Few scholars, however, have systematically tested this proposition across contexts. An assessment of the impact of municipal housing councils on the adoption of social housing programs in Brazil indicates that housing councils are associated with an increase in social housing program adoption across municipalities, regardless of whether a strong civil society is in place. This suggests that the act of incorporation into decision making is more important than the strength of civil society for producing pro-poor policy outcomes.

A principal approach to theorizing about economic reform in developing countries has been to assume that market-oriented policies have the properties of public goods, in that their benefits are widespread and their costs concentrated. This article reviews several books, one of them from the World Bank, that suggest that skepticism about these policies has entered the mainstream, calling into question this benchmark approach to reform. In the context of ongoing debate over which policies are best for developing countries, the review offers a framework for future study of reform, arguing that while past work has yielded important insights on how societal divisions and institutional characteristics affect reform, these insights now need to be combined with scholarship on how governments learn and form preferences about policies.