Two views on the impact of church-state relations on civil society draw competing conclusions. According to the first view, state support of religion encourages faith-based social capital by providing vital resources for religious organizations. In contrast, the competing view holds that state support of religion crowds out religious civic engagement, as responsibilities are transferred from citizens to the state. Based on a sample of twenty-four European countries and combining a wide range of church-state indicators with survey data, it is evident that state support of religion does not foster faith-based social capital. Rather, overwhelming evidence shows that government involvement in religion weakens religious membership, volunteering, and donations.

The core idea inspiring democracy is to empower people. To measure democracy in ways that capture its empowering nature, one must focus on popular rights and take into account rule of law as a state quality that makes these rights effective. Based on this premise, an index of “effective democracy,” tested for 150 states, best represents the empowering nature of democracy because it most clearly captures democracy’s embedding in empowering conditions in the wider society. Effective democracy is shown to be most firmly embedded in (a) empowering socioeconomic conditions that make people capable of practicing democracy and (b) empowering sociocultural conditions that make them willing to do so. People empowerment appears to be a unity of empowering societal conditions and empowering regime characteristics.

Three related arguments can be made about the autonomy drives that have gathered strength in the last decade in the most economically vibrant subnational regions in Bolivia and Ecuador. First, based on analysis of the actions and actors associated with each, these phenomena are classifiable as “conservative autonomy movements.” Second, the disjuncture between the concentration of political power in national capitals and economic power in vibrant subnational regions explains why these movements emerged in Bolivia and Ecuador but not elsewhere in Latin America and why they have emerged now and not earlier in each country. Third, the mobilizing structures that these twin movements draw on, as well as the framing choices that each has made, account for the greater strength of the autonomy movement in Bolivia.

The current theoretical debate about the heightened role of Latin American technocrats centers on their autonomy from other sociopolitical actors, especially their political superiors, international financial institutions, and business interests. Assessment of the independence técnicos wield, based on an in-depth analysis of the work of economic experts in Colombia and Peru, shows that a “technocratic autonomy” perspective best accounts for the activity of experts in these countries. Two crucial factors explain this autonomy: (1) technocrats’ use of expertise to enhance and maintain their influence; and (2) the mutual balance among powerful stakeholders, who prefer technocratic independence to control of economic policy by a competing actor.

A transitional polity in the third wave of democratization may adopt many western institutional forms, yet its minority and disadvantaged groups may continue to face greater obstacles in addressing environmental injustice issues than those in more mature democracies. In a recent case in Taiwan, residents in a disadvantaged community were initially unaware of or reluctant to acknowledge the environmental harms that had been inflicted upon them. They were not mobilized until policy entrepreneurs from outside the community began to press the issue on their behalf by gaining their trust and support and by navigating various political and policy institutions, which at the same time were undergoing democratic transformations toward more inclusiveness. The case illustrates the interactions of identity politics and social movement leadership in the context of changing political opportunity structures.

Political scientists typically study how formal institutions work, yet many of the most interesting political phenomena being investigated today involve informal institutions. The books under review represent advances in an emerging research program on informal politics and the state. They address several important questions, including (1) when does informality undermine the state, and when does it compensate for deficiencies in the state? (2) what are the historical roots of the mechanisms by which informality interacts with the state? (3) what are the sources of cohesion that enable actors to pursue goals informally? and (4) how does the relationship between informal politics and the state change over time? Informal politics is found to be consequential even in the presence of “strong” states, and can sometimes interact with the state in unexpected ways. The theoretical issues raised by these works have broader implications for how informality should be conceptualized and studied within comparative politics.

Since 1978 when Juan Linz posited his fears about the “perils of presidentialism,” presidential democracies have been less likely to break down. Nonetheless, presidents continue to confront challenges. Between 1978 and 2006, 30 percent of all democratically elected presidents worldwide faced serious efforts to remove them from office, and 12 percent were forced out before their terms ended. While scholars have explored the sources of these crises, focusing on their effects is equally important. If such crises have profound consequences, then even with regime collapse not at issue, presidentialism would remain associated with normatively bad outcomes. Yet if challenges or failures have minimal effects, then early presidential exit may represent an underappreciated equilibrating mechanism. The evidence indicates that the challenges and falls in Latin America cause only superficial and ephemeral damage to democratic governance.

In emerging African democracies, why do judiciaries experience high levels of government interference in some contexts and not in others? Original research conducted in five commonwealth African countries reveals that conventional strategic approaches do not effectively account for patterns of executive interference with the courts in the African cases. An alternative theoretical framework, focusing on the extent to which leaders face acute personal insecurities and the extent to which the courts represent a threat to power holders, proves more effective.

The model of labor politics—social democracy (quasi-revolutionary, evolutionary), insurrectionism (bolshevism, anarchism-syndicalism), or moderate syndicalism—that emerges as dominant in an industrializing society depends on the choices made by labor elites in response to their case-specific environment of labor inclusion. By developing a systematic account for the interaction between elite agency and constraining environment, this theoretical proposition overcomes both theoretical and empirical limitations of prior structural and overly deterministic approaches. An empirical analysis for all industrialized polities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveals that variation in labor inclusion correctly predicts the outcome in seventeen out of twenty cases, representing a significant increase in predictive power over prior approaches.

Oil consumption has varied significantly among democracies, but scholars have not systematically studied the political determinants of this variation. What effects do political institutions have on a democratic country’s propensity to consume oil? Other things being equal, more centralized national political institutions facilitate the adoption of policies that lower oil intensity. A time-series, cross-sectional analysis of all democracies since the first oil shock in 1973, using an error correction model to separate short- and long-term effects and to correct for the nonstationarity of the dependent variable, provides strong support for a link between numerous veto players and slower reductions in oil intensity along with weaker support for the influence of party decentralization.

The literature on legislative recruitment has existed largely independently of the literature on party clientelism in new democracies. The Romanian data on parliamentary representation can be used to show how the study of recruitment practices improves scholars’ understanding of clientelistic exchanges between political parties and resource-rich constituencies. The findings point to considerable differences in recruitment patterns in new and established democracies, which can be traced to parties and interest groups’ calculus of payoffs under different types of political regimes.

Until now, no academic study has explored the extent and nature of antimonarchism in the British House of Commons. In a statistically representative survey sample, 44 percent of all Members of Parliament identified themselves as “republicans,” nearly twice the share in the British public at large. However, 86 percent called this a personal opinion only. While there may not be a groundswell of active republicanism in the Commons, a substantial group of sympathetic MPs exists who might be willing to seize on a future public crisis in the monarchy in order to effect reforms. Lacking party leadership support, republican MPs are not optimistic about change in the short-to-medium term.

The tradition of historical political sociology has produced highly sophisticated explanations of variations in national political regimes. However, a series of false debates has interfered with further progress. Whereas the various hypotheses in conflict within historical political sociology are substantially more similar than it seems, the outcomes explained are actually different. Even the most antagonistic perspectives—neo-Marxism and neo-Weberianism—have two theoretical underpinnings in common—a conceptual framework centered on the notion of power and an explanatory logic that views national political regimes as local adaptations to a universal transformation in the organization of power. Rather than opposite explanations of the same aggregate outcome, they should be understood as mutually independent hypotheses about the different components of political regimes.

Comparative scholarship conceives of party systems nationally. This has created a situation of conceptual and measurement incompleteness in the study of party systems. The effects of subnational variations in party competition on national politics and the quality of democracy cannot be understood if subnational party systems continue to be erased from the theoretical mapping of party politics. The concept of “federalized party systems” denotes systems composed of national and subnational party subsystems. Its value for the comparative and longitudinal study of party politics can be demonstrated through an analysis of Argentina’s federalized party system.

A decade after Mexico’s watershed 2000 election, Mexicans are disillusioned with democracy and distrustful of politicians, parties, and parliament. Evidence from an original survey, Desencanto Ciudadano en México, indicates that Mexicans’ definitions of democracy play an important role in shaping how satisfied they are with it. Those holding a “substantive” definition of democracy emphasizing socioeconomic improvement tied to redistribution are significantly less satisfied with democracy than “liberal” democrats, who stress rights, or “electoral” democrats, who emphasize procedures. Citizen expectations of democracy are an important but missing ingredient in studies of political disillusionment. Dissatisfaction is worrisome because of its impact on political behavior. The disenchanted vote less, are less involved civically, and engage more in legal and illegal protest.

Many studies suggests a harsh trade off, referred to as the “the new liberal dilemma,” between diversity and immigration and social capital. However, the relationship between immigrant status and trust can be better gauged by considering three interaction variables. First, informal neighbor interaction cushions the negative immigrant effect. Second, a similar role is played by fair treatment by public authorities. Third, no such cushioning interaction occurs from organizational participation. Overall, the results encourage a contingent stance about diversity and social capital. The “minority culture of mistrust” can wither away as a consequence of positive experiences of social interaction and institutional fairness. Because these have a particularly positive impact among immigrants, the trust gap between immigrants and others may, under the right circumstances, be closed at high levels of these variables.

Until now, few studies have focused on states’ increasing extension of voting rights to citizens residing abroad. It is particularly striking that the right to vote from abroad has often been extended not only by democracies or transitional regimes but by authoritarian states as well. The cases of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia help explain this phenomenon. These North African experiences demonstrate that while authoritarian states often appropriate the language of citizenship, the extension of voting rights by these states has implications different from those in democratic settings. In authoritarian contexts, expanding the franchise is aimed at increasing sovereignty over expatriates with resources to be tapped or at reinforcing security through a different means of monitoring communities abroad.

Throughout the Middle East, Islamists, leftists, and other ideological streams are forming coalitions in opposition to their authoritarian regimes. Yet little research has been conducted on the conditions under which these cross-ideological coalitions fail or succeed. Three cases of successful coalition building and one case of failed coalition building in Jordan indicate that cross-ideological coalitions are initiated in the context of external threat and facilitated by organizational forms that ensure the members gain or maintain their ability to pursue their independent goals. Most important, in contrast to other studies, these cases show that the plentifulness of recruits impedes cooperation. Rather than alleviating competition, an abundance of potential recruits increases competition and hinders cross-ideological cooperation.

The processes surrounding the elaboration of democracy in Muslim societies can be examined via a comparative consideration of three West African countries: Senegal, Mali, and Niger. Departing from analyses that ask whether democracy can be established in Muslim societies, the key question is how the democratic question is framed and discussed in such religious contexts. The launching of African democratic experiments in the 1990s provoked significant negotiation and discussion both within religious society and between religious groups and the secular elite about the desired substance of democracy. These processes have gradually empowered Muslim majorities to challenge and nuance the agenda presented at the transitions, but this is a direct outcome of the democratic process itself.

How do military forces respond (or not respond) to mass protests during moments of constitutional crisis, when civilian opposition movements attempt to force elected officials from power before the end of their terms of office? Even in democracies, militaries deliberate about whether to obey orders to repress the opposition, balancing the costs of repression—the likelihood that they will face prosecution for human rights abuses or experience internal schisms—against the cost of disobeying the executive. The dominant strategy for militaries during moments of crisis is quartering—remaining confined to the barracks—and refusing to take sides. This finding is confirmed by contrasting military actions during three constitutional crises in Latin America—Argentina in 2001, Venezuela in 2002, and Bolivia in 2003.

Following the series of leftist victories in Latin America, scholars have focused on explaining how the left reached power but have overlooked the study of the left in government. Why have Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela adopted statist economic policies, while Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay have adhered to market orthodoxy? Three accounts—executive strength, drastic economic crises, and rentier state theory—are insufficient. Instead, differences in party system institutionalization best explain variation in economic policies. Institutionalized party systems make it more likely that leftist governments conduct piecemeal reforms, while inchoate party systems are conducive to significant economic transformations. This view is illustrated with cross-national evidence and case studies of Chile and Venezuela.

What factors enhance or inhibit social movement effectiveness when challenging the state? A comparison of anti-U.S. base protests in Italy and Ecuador demonstrates how ideational and institutional factors interact to produce an elite consensus on foreign policy issues. This consensus, or lack thereof, functions as a political barrier or opportunity for social movements. In Italy a foreign policy consensus favoring the sustenance of an Atlantic alliance constrained the efforts of Italian activists to block the expansion of an air base in northern Italy. Conversely, in Ecuador the absence of any clear consensus regarding U.S.-Ecuador relations enabled activists to penetrate the state and alter elite discourse on U.S. bases, resulting in the closure of the Manta Air Base.

Countries around the world have established quotas for women and minorities in electoral politics. The normative arguments often made to justify such measures generate three hypotheses—selection, hierarchy, and competition—which do not account for empirical patterns in how, where, and when groups receive guarantees. Working inductively, this article proposes an alternative explanation highlighting the importance of two types of repertoires of group representation: historical practices with regard to group recognition and transnational influences in the form of international pressure and information sharing. These hypotheses are evaluated via case studies of four countries where proposals have been made for both women and minorities, revealing that quotas are the product of vivid struggles over what kinds of identities deserve recognition.

Social capital, defined as a combination of generalized trust and access to social networks, has become a key concept in the social sciences in recent decades because it correlates with normatively desirable qualitative features of liberal democracy. The academic debate on social capital in the last fifteen years reflects a crucial theoretical dichotomy between the cultural/historical approach, which views social capital as an independent variable embedded in culturally and historically determined networks of civic engagement, and the institutionalist approach, which conceptualizes social capital as an intervening variable influenced by formal institutional structures of the polity, in conjunction with other variables, such as equality and homogeneity. Notwithstanding this theoretical controversy, both approaches find strong evidence that social capital contributes to improving the performance of democratic institutions and democracy at large.

Countries around the world have established quotas for women and minorities in electoral politics. The normative arguments often made to justify such measures generate three hypotheses—selection, hierarchy, and competition—which do not account for empirical patterns in how, where, and when groups receive guarantees. Working inductively, this article proposes an alternative explanation highlighting the importance of two types of repertoires of group representation: historical practices with regard to group recognition and transnational influences in the form of international pressure and information sharing. These hypotheses are evaluated via case studies of four countries where proposals have been made for both women and minorities, revealing that quotas are the product of vivid struggles over what kinds of identities deserve recognition.

The links between migration and security are understudied, and the empirical content of the immigration literature tends to be limited to case studies of western democracies. The conventional wisdom holds that democracies adopt liberal immigrant admissions policies. However, the opposite should be expected: dictatorship, along with economic development and large-scale security threats, tends to increase immigration. In immigration policymaking, officials’ hands are not tied by supposed economic or demographic necessities or by domestic or international norms. The theory proposed in this article explains contemporary cross–national variation in and macrohistorical patterns of immigration policymaking. Econometric findings show that dictatorship and large-scale threats tend to increase migrant stocks and inflows, and that there is much more per capita migration into rich dictatorships than rich democracies.

When and why can constitution-making processes be expected to produce an institutional framework that formally serves constitutionalism? Based on a simple and general typology of constituent processes that captures their legal/political character and dynamic nature, constitution-making processes controlled by one cohesive and organized political group (unilateral) can be distinguished from processes controlled by at least two different political groups (multilateral). A sample of eighteen Latin American countries from 1945 to 2005 shows that multilateral constitution-making tends to establish institutional frameworks consistent with constitutionalism.

Brazilian presidents have expanded the authority of the Supreme Court since democratization to improve governance and facilitate the policy pursuits of electoral winners. This conclusion contradicts insurance theories of judicial reform, which argue that incumbents promote judicial power when they foresee an electoral defeat in order to constrain future majorities. In contrast, analysis of judicial reform in Brazil suggests that powerful courts are not antithetical to the interests of elected governments, and that even politicians who expect to remain in office may find it beneficial to support and promote independent judicial authority. As observed in Brazil, a court that is institutionally subject to politics may provide incumbents with benefits that exceed the costs usually associated with judicial review.

Two common strategies for maintaining military loyalty-individual incentives and ethnic preference-produce very different outcomes for defection of government troops when a rebellion arises outside the military. Since a strategy of individual incentives rests on a continuous judgment of regime strength, a rebellion can provoke a self-fulfilling prophecy that the regime will collapse. An ethnic preference policy identifies soldiers as loyal or disloyal based on group identity and gives those soldiers strong incentives to act accordingly. A rebellion by the out-group might generate out-group defection, but not in-group defection. Focusing on information about preferences, these outcomes are illustrated through a comparison of rebellions in Syria, Jordan, and Iran.

Not only is the global economy in crisis, but so too is the social democratic response to it. These crises necessitate a reappraisal of the record of social democracy and a rethinking of core aspects of its project—including its party-based and parliamentary orientation, its geographical and historical scope, and its coalition of interests. In different ways, each of the works under review suggests a creative “re-vision” of social democracy, whether referring to welfare state development in the global periphery, institutional change in the global core, or corporate governance worldwide.