Volume 54, Number 1, October 2021

Governments throughout the world invoke human rights ideas to motivate policy reforms. What impact do rights-based frames have on the policy process? I argue that rights-based frames can generate new resources and institutional opportunities that restructure battles over public policy. These resources and opportunities can both initially legitimate state interventions that violate rights, while also creating openings to hold governments accountable for abuses committed by the state in the name of human rights. I develop this argument by analyzing a militarized security intervention in Bogotá, Colombia, which the local government framed as necessary to stop the commercial sexual exploitation of children—yet yielded new rights violations. This article reveals the material consequences of human rights discourses in battles over policing and urban planning.

To complain to and about government is an essential political act, with consequences for citizen-state relations. This article examines these dynamics in the policing sector, through a study of grievance redressal hearings in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The hearings provide a critical channel to justice for some of the most marginalized, including women. However, most participants become less satisfied following their hearings, as initial hopes are dashed against the constraints of local policing. The study highlights the promise and limits of formal complaints mechanisms, which can amplify citizens’ voices but—when coupled with an expectations gap—can also deepen grievances. Complaining, I argue, is a powerful but at times paradoxical form of voice, conditioned by citizens’ expectations and by state capacity.

Scholars of autocracies increasingly debate whether autocratic regimes promote their subordinates based on achievements, such as economic performance, and further a meritocratic system. This article argues that the extent to which autocratic regimes reward economic performance is not constant over the course of an autocratic regime’s lifespan but varies depending on the strategic goals of the regime and the regime’s ability to monitor its subordinates’ performance. We collect a new dataset on the careers of the regional leaders of the German Nazi Party, the Gauleiters, from 1936 to 1944, and a wealth of historical data sources from the regime. Using this, we show that better regional economic performance increased the chance of receiving a promotion before the outbreak of World War II but not after.

Why were most ethnic minority organizations in interwar Poland permitted and sometimes encouraged by the state, when the ruling titular ethnic group pursued discriminatory policies against the same minority groups, faced hostility from these groups, and had the capacity to repress their organizations? Current literature focuses on repression as the main strategy deployed by states to manage these relationships. This article, on the other hand, asks why states allow minority organizations to operate. Using the logic of divide and rule, this article demonstrates that, in the case of multi-ethnic states, a state may prefer a plurality of organizations representing a certain minority ethnic group, particularly if the group is restive, in order to ensure that a united opposition cannot legitimately threaten the state’s political survival.

Why are large-scale participatory institutions implemented in some countries but only adopted on paper in others? I argue that nationwide implementation of Binding Participatory Institutions (BPIs)––a critical subtype of participatory institutions––is dependent on the backing of a strong institutional supporter, often a political party. In turn, parties will only implement BPIs if they place a lower value on the political costs than on the potential benefits of implementation. This will be true if: 1) significant societal demand exists for BPI implementation and 2) the party’s political opponents cannot take advantage of BPIs for their own gain. I test this theory through two detailed case studies of Venezuela and Ecuador, drawing on 165 interviews with key national-level actors and grassroots activists.

The regulator’s existence under authoritarianism is a precarious one. They must carefully address the regime’s desire for safer food, stable financial markets, and cleaner air without antagonizing politically favored firms or generating social unrest. At the same time, they face reputational pressures from their international counterparts to implement global best practices at home. This article highlights how enterprising officials have quietly sought to expand their authority in the context of an authoritarian regulatory state. By focusing on aviation, financial services, food safety, and environmental protection in China, I highlight how agencies, responding to domestic bureaucratic competition and embeddedness in global networks, have led to the emergence of four distinct types of regulatory authority: regulatory command, subversion, coordination, and ensnarement.

Most non-democratic regimes engineer elections such that regime change is effectively impossible via the ballot. However, many of these elections see high turnover of politicians at the subnational level, often through competitive processes that occur within ruling parties. This is the case for President Yoweri Museveni’s dominant National Resistance Movement (NRM) in Uganda, the ranks of which have been decimated by intra-party competition at each election throughout its three decades in power. This competition includes high levels of voter participation in mass primaries and general elections and is particularly acute in the rural southern areas where Museveni’s simultaneous presidential candidacy draws most support. Based on qualitative data from the 2016 elections, this article investigates the relationship between this local, intra-party competition and Museveni’s survival, building a theory that local competition in electoral authoritarian regimes can provide an outlet for accountability politics by redirecting widespread voter frustrations away from a regime and towards expendable local politicians.

I characterize modern social scientific studies of the state as comprising three generations: society-centered, state-centered, and the state-in-society approach. I then discuss how recent books by James Scott, David Stasavage, and Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson advance the literature by taking the entire history of human political development into account. Lastly, I build on recent contributions in the field to propose what I call a “State-in-Society 2.0” framework, in which state-society linkages through elite social networks shape the strength and form of the state. The framework provides a potentially promising analytical perspective that sheds new light on the “meso-temporal” dynamics that link broad historical trends in state-society relations with state development outcomes in a variety of cases.