Volume 44, Number 2, January 2012

The events of the Arab Spring have suggested the necessity of rethinking the logic of authoritarian persistence in the Arab world. However, the internal variation in regime collapse and survival observed in the region confirms earlier analyses that the comportment of the coercive apparatus, especially its varying will to repress, is pivotal to determining the durability of the authoritarian regimes. At the same time, the trajectory of the Arab Spring highlights an empirical novelty for the Arab world, namely, the manifestation of huge, cross-class, popular protest in the name of political change, as well as a new factor that abetted the materialization of this phenomenon—the spread of social media. The latter will no doubt be a game changer for the longevity of authoritarian regimes worldwide from now on.

How does the strength of a state’s coercive apparatus under autocracy affect the likelihood of democratic transition? While a broad range of literature posits a negative link between repression and democracy, empirical models of the determinants of democratization rarely include measures that capture this relationship. An original panel dataset with a global scope from 1950?2002 enables an empirical assessment of whether coercive capacity is negatively associated with democracy. The dataset demonstrates that increased coercive capacity under autocracy has a strong, robust negative impact on both a country’s level of democracy as well as the likelihood of democratization. The analysis suggests that empirical studies of democratization should include measures of repression to account for the widely assumed link between coercive capacity and autocracy.

Much of the scholarly debate over Islam and democracy has centered on what has been referred to as the “inclusion-moderation hypothesis,” and whether democratic institutions are capable of incorporating hostile religious actors. To build on this debate, the concept of inclusion and the expectations about its political effects should be broadened to include the interaction between religion-state relationships and democratization processes in predominantly Muslim societies. Inviting ambivalently democratic religious actors into the public democratic space produces dynamics of both political moderation and religious change. The mechanisms of this theoretical model can be evaluated by tracing the evolution of two Islamist political parties in Algeria, the MSP-Hamas and Ennahda-Islah.

The changing nature of state-business relations in China can be analyzed in light of recent privatization experiences. Drawing on an analytical framework based on statist literature, the pervasive governance problems occurring during the privatization of local government-owned firms can be explained by two contributing factors. These are the state’s declining capacity to regulate the market and its reduced autonomy from emerging elites. Consequently, local states were transformed from those in which there was “embedded autonomy” to those with a “clientelistic” form. Thus, the conventional wisdom that local states have played a positive role in China’s economic development is subject to question. A more nuanced understanding of cronyism helps explain the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and capitalists.

Decentralization advances patronage politics in distinct ways. First, in decentralized states both central and local politicians distribute patronage to enhance their political support. Second, local elections reveal information to central leaders about the geographic distribution of electorally salient voters. Central leaders can use this information to target particularistic benefits to these voters. Third, elected local politicians have individual strategies to distribute patronage, in spite of or in addition to the clientelistic strategies of the political parties they represent. Evidence from India indicates that decentralization has contributed to more extensive distribution of patronage in decentralized states. Data from Indian states and villages illustrates the incentives at the state and local levels that shape the distribution of patronage.

Many theories attempt to explain European Union (EU) integration—the gradual and voluntary transfer of national sovereignty to the supranational level of governance—but few studies have addressed this phenomenon from a grassroots perspective. The books under review shed light on the human dimension of EU integration, utilizing sociological and ethnographic approaches. In particular, these recent studies show how sociological approaches to political science can breathe life into a debate that is oftentimes too academic and theoretically inconclusive. They address a number of questions about the future of Europe, including the extent to which EU citizens identify with Europe and the legitimacy of EU integration in the eyes of European citizens.