Volume 54, Number 4, July 2022

We present a systemic threat theory to explain the introduction of Proportional Representation (PR). If facing a revolutionary threat, incumbents agree to enact electoral reforms such as PR to secure the stability of the parliamentary system, even if this could imply their own personal electoral loss. We argue that the theory can help explain the largest wave of PR adoptions in history, namely in the years immediately after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Incumbents came to over-estimate the true revolutionary threat in Europe. Simultaneously, reformist parliamentarian socialists came to push for PR to weaken the radicals within their party. Incumbents and reformist socialists could therefore support the same system. We test this using qualitative and quantitative data from Norway’s adoption of PR in 1919.

We know little about repression’s effects on opposition party mobilization under electoral authoritarianism. I argue that targeted repression of opposition leaders has both direct negative effects on mobilization and indirect effects on activist and voter support. However, party organizations and ideological leadership can adapt to mitigate targeted repression’s effects. In Germany, from 1878–1890 the social democratic party was banned and its leaders were expelled from their home districts. I estimate difference-in-differences models that leverage variation in expulsion timing and frequency to estimate their effects on electoral outcomes. Expulsions caused declines in social democrats’ electoral support. However, their effects diminished with each additional expulsion and after the first election post-expulsions, as local party organizations adapted to maintain mobilization in electoral districts despite targeted repression.

This article examines how “iteration”—the dynamic updating of a research design in the course of conducting a study—contributes to making fieldwork a powerful form of inquiry. Considering epistemic disagreement on the utility and acceptability of iteration and drawing on published work, our own experiences, and an original survey and interviews, we contend that iteration is a core aspect of field-based inquiry because such work often examines areas for which theory or empirical knowledge is underdeveloped and requires reacting as the research environment evolves. We demonstrate why iteration is challenging, consider the analytic risks it poses, and offer a framework to help scholars iterate in analytically productive ways. We conclude by outlining the implications for the discipline of embracing and being transparent about iteration.

Do oil busts destabilize petrostates? This article asserts that existing political resource curse theories overpredict the likelihood of instability during oil busts because they overlook petrostates’ agency. It argues that, by employing the “petrostates’ toolkit”—a collection of strategies for mitigating the negative consequences of low oil prices—most oil producers can survive even prolonged oil busts. Through within-case comparisons of thirty petrostates’ political stability before and after the 2014 oil price collapse, it finds that most petrostates were more or equally stable during the bust than before it. The article also presents a case study showing how Saudi Arabia used the petrostates’ toolkit to remain politically stable after the 2014 collapse. The article concludes that petrostates are not “over a barrel” during oil busts.

Research on repression has primarily focused on its destructive potential, namely how violence serves to eliminate threats. This article proposes an alternative role for repression: to build popular support. I argue that repression builds support for an autocratic regime when it targets groups perceived as dangerous. I refer to this phenomenon as a legitimation strategy of repression, which aims to gain the support of civilian bystanders beyond eliminating threats. To test the argument, I present a case study of state repression in Egypt after the 2013 coup. I explain how repression against the Muslim Brotherhood helped build popular support for the new regime. My findings contribute to scholarship on authoritarianism and repression by demonstrating the oft-overlooked role of civilian bystanders in shaping state violence.

Why do mortgage subsidies vary across countries? Until the 2000s, the U.S. and Germany provided large-scale subsidies for homeownership. Yet, their paths diverged when they faced deep economic crises at that time. While the U.S. doubled down on government support by quasi-nationalizing its mortgage market, Germany retrenched homeowner subsidies. This article argues that growth regimes shape coalitional logics that explain these contrasting outcomes. In the U.S. demand-led regime, where housing is key to growth, a bipartisan coalition entrenched mortgage subsidies to stimulate household credit and consumption. Germany’s export-led regime, where housing is less central to growth, produced a broad-based coalition that retrenched homeowner subsidies to boost competitiveness. Detailed case studies contrast the quasi-nationalization of U.S. government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) with the retrenchment of the German “homeowner subsidy” (Eigenheimzulage).

What is the relationship between institutional favoritism, economic well-being, and political trust? Due to the role that East Bank tribes played in supporting the monarchy during the state’s formative years, Jordan has institutionalized a type of political discrimination that privileges East Bank Jordanians over Palestinian Jordanians. An empirical examination of the political institutions of the state reveals that such discrimination remains pervasive. It was subsequently theorized that institutional favoritism’s impact on political trust is conditional on income due to the greater salience of group identity among individuals with lower incomes. Regression analyses of survey data reveal a consistent negative correlation between political trust and income among East Bank Jordanians. There is little evidence of a substantively meaningful unconditional relationship between national origin and political trust.

Why do states target some civilians with collective punishment while coopting others with material goods during an ethnic civil war? This article examines how the Turkish government calibrated its repression and cooptation policies towards the Kurdish population during the counterinsurgency of the 1990s. In contrast to the situational conflict dynamics emphasized by the civil war literature, we explain the distribution of cooptation and repression with the state’s identity policy: government policies were more punitive in areas that displayed strong Kurdish linguistic/political identity, or high tribal concentration, while they were more cooptative where the government had fostered a Sunni-Muslim Kurdish identity. The study is based on a novel dataset that includes information about displacement, tribal concentration, and violent events from archival sources.