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.

What accounts for the “colored revolutions” of the former Soviet Union? Analysis of postcommunist political economies reveals that states that underwent reform saw the emergence of a new capitalist class whose interests sometimes put them at odds with the regime. Following fraudulent elections, business elites played an active role in financing mobilization and signaling mass discontent, which undermined regime support and hastened regime change. Countries that did not privatize failed to develop an independent capitalist class and therefore faced smaller and weaker oppositions. This argument is demonstrated by analyzing mass protests that toppled regimes in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, and by the negative cases of Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. It has implications for the study of hybrid regimes, social movements, and postcommunist political development.

Most empirical studies of corruption rely on data using perceptions of corruption as a proxy for actual corruption. While this approach might be appropriate for advanced democracies, it is less effective for hybrid regimes. In these regimes corruption allegations are often used in political battles, raising public perceptions of corruption and thus reflecting the degree of political competition rather than actual corruption. The data on public perceptions of corruption in Russian regions produced by Transparency International and the Information for Democracy Foundation (INDEM) shows that higher levels of political competition and press freedom along with lower economic development appear as the key variables contributing to higher public perceptions of corruption in Russian regions.

The effects of party system features and election rules on ideological representation can be seen in parliamentary elections in Western democracies over a fifty-year period. “Distortion” is short-term representation failure—the distance between the median voter and the legislature or government immediately after the election. Electoral choice and left-right positions of parties (from the manifesto data) can be used to estimate median voter positions. The number of parties, party polarization, and the election rules all independently affect ideological distances. But party system polarization seems to be the predominate factor shaping distortion of governments’ relationship with the median voter. Examining the effects of party systems under different election rules helps clarify the causal connections between legislative and government levels.

On the basis of an in-depth study of the Swiss Vocational Education and Training (VET) system—an extreme case among collectivist regimes—the employer’ constellation and the elites of the public education administration affect patterns of institutional change. If large firms are the dominant actors and collaborate with elites in the public education administration, institutional change follows a transformative pattern. If small and medium firms are in a strong position and have the power to influence public elites according to their interests, self-preserving institutional change results. With reference to causal mechanism of institutional change in VET systems, developments in the international political economy and Europe are important intervening factors in patterns of institutional change.

Taxation is partly a game of credible commitment. Data for eighteen OECD countries show that partisan turnover systematically affects the long-run equilibrium mix of taxes and services. When partisan turnover is low, more right-wing influence permanently increases corporate tax revenue and the corporate share of pre-tax income; more left-wing influence, by contrast, permanently increases consumption tax revenue and social spending. When turnover is high, even powerful partisans do not increase taxes that disproportionately affect their supporters. When partisans tax their own supporters, they raise more revenue, even when we account for some plausible benefits. The theoretical conjectures are consistent with the pattern of partisan behavior within countries, not just between them.

Despite myriad explanations for government spending levels, few studies have included considerations of party system institutionalization. This is surprising since the level of party system institutionalization should significantly affect policymaking. Weakly institutionalized systems, that are characterized by loose ties with societal groups, higher volatility levels, and poorly developed internal organizations, should result in lower public goods but higher parochial goods spending. In contrast, more institutionalized systems should result in more public goods spending as these systems try to appeal to broader swaths of the population. Time-series cross-sectional analyses, with three different spending measures as dependent variables, show that institutionalized party systems significantly influence spending patterns.

While democracy is widely expected to control corruption, by commonly used yardsticks democratic India has done no better than China at checking corruption, and may have fared worse. Important aspects of corruption in India reflect institutional and political shortcomings of its democracy. Differentiating among types of corruption, and among the kinds of monopolies they embody, helps account for that contrast. Further, in the absence of economic development, democracy may have particular vulnerabilities to corruption, as economic development involves not just resources but also institutions protecting opportunities and assets while restraining excesses and abuses. Thus, prospects for reform in a poor democracy are not encouraging, even by comparison to liberal authoritarian regimes.

The relationship among economic contexts, political institutions, and the dynamics of national policymaking can be examined through an analysis of contemporary French and German labor market reform. Economic austerity and the failure of earlier policymaking models have led to qualitative shifts in the incentives facing governments and interest groups. These shifts have produced new bargaining patterns—”competitive interventionism” in France and “conflictual corporatism” in Germanywithin formal institutional stability. These changes have implications for understanding national models of capitalism and institutional change and require rethinking the relationship between formal institutions and the dynamics of bargaining across economic and historical contexts.

After introducing pharmaceutical patents in the 1990s, Brazil subsequently adjusted the patent system to ameliorate its effects on drug prices, while Mexico introduced measures that reinforce and intensify these effects. The different trajectories are due to the nature of the actors pushing for reform and the patterns of coalitional formation and political mobilization. In Brazil government demand for expensive, patented drugs made health-oriented patent reform a priority. The existence of an autonomous local pharmaceutical sector allowed the Ministry of Health to build a supportive coalition. In Mexico government demand made reforms less urgent, and transformations of the pharmaceutical sector allowed patent-holding firms to commandeer a reform project. The existence of indigenous pharmaceutical capacities can broaden the political coalitions underpinning health reforms.

Since the 1980s, Mexico has transformed its social protection system through the partial retrenchment of contributory social insurance and the expansion of noncontributory social assistance. By comparing social insurance and social assistance policies under Presidents Salinas (1988-1994), Zedillo (1994-2000), and Fox (2000-2006), these apparently contradictory patterns of welfare change can be explained. Economic and political liberalization created pressure for policy change and shifted the political capacity of domestic political actors, while existing welfare institutions shaped the politics of welfare. As a result, new social assistance institutions were layered alongside reformed social insurance institutions, which reflected recent changes in the economic and political context.

Democratic attitudes toward regimes consist of at least two types of attitudes: liberal and delegative. The notions that delegative democratic attitudes exist and affect institutional confidence are evident in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Salvadorans and Nicaraguans with delegative attitudes give greater support to the judiciary and legislature than persons with liberal democratic and authoritarian attitudes. No such difference exists in the institutional assessments of Costa Ricans. In new democracies, the institutional support expressed by delegative democratic persons cannot be reliably interpreted as support for the judiciary or the legislature because delegative support reflects support for the regime rather than for the institution.

How do people in authoritarian societies respond to the introduction of semicompetitive elections? Conventional wisdom suggests that once elections are introduced into an authoritarian society, people will quickly grasp the newly available opportunity to pursue their interests. The responses of people in rural China to the introduction of village elections seem to be different from what this conventional model assumes. Many peasants hesitated to vote when elections were available for the first time in their political lives. A two-stage political learning model captures people’s responses to electoral reform, and survey data collected from China at both the individual and village levels in 2002 examine the model’s validity.

Why do Latin American countries exhibit stark differences in their ability to protect citizens from falling into poverty? Analysis of poverty levels measured by ECLAC in eighteen countries shows that political factors-including the democratic record, long-term weight of left-of-center parties in the legislature, and investment in human capital-are significant and substantively important determinants of poverty. These findings contribute to the growing literature that emphasizes the importance of regime form, parties, and policies for a variety of outcomes in Latin America, despite the weaknesses of democracy and the pathologies of some parties and party systems in the region.

Latin American countries pursue a variety of reforms to reduce and prevent violent crime, ranging from new penal codes to restructured police forces. The most promising and popular approach to crime reduction is community-oriented policing which, in contrast to most forms of traditional policing, seeks to empower citizens by building police-community partnerships. Similar reforms in two cities in Brazil and four in Honduras show that community policing will be most effective where executive and security officials engage with social groups, either through direct contact with civil society or through state institutions that address the concerns of highly violent poor areas.

The accountability of state institutions and rulers is a defining feature of democracy. The police form a key state institution that is targeted for reforms to improve its accountability. The surprising case of increased police accountability in Bogotá, Colombia demonstrates the importance of the political strategy of lateral reform, which successfully mitigated obstacles to police accountability to the state and society. Lateral reform is a sequence of policies that strategically alter the societal context in which reforms take place to increase public support for and participation in reform processes over time. This strategy may strengthen the hand of politicians seeking to increase the accountability of recalcitrant state institutions.

The nature and efficacy of specific tactics used by Chinese protesters challenge the conventional wisdom that ordinary people in an authoritarian regime must resort to disruption to obtain bargaining power. An expanded view of mediating mechanisms of protest efficacy includes two dimensions: means (disruption/persuasion) and routes (direct leverage/third-party leverage). In addition to resorting to disruption, Chinese protesters frequently employ tactics to activate three nondisruptive mechanisms: persuasion, publicity, and elite advocacy. While these “troublemaking” tactics can be easily confused with disruption, they work according to a different logic. The efficacy of a wide variety of tactics in China suggests the interactions of elites and subordinate classes are often more nuanced and reciprocal than disruption theory assumes.

Why do states with converging economic policies in southern Asia have diverging educational policies? Variations in the structure of domestic support for political elites in India, Pakistan, and Malaysia show that the state’s role in social provisioning during reforms was differently interpreted and implemented despite economic growth in all three countries. Indian and Pakistani elites, who are more dependent on clientelist networks and religious organizations seeking to provide their own schooling, face incentives to privatize education. In contrast, Malaysia’s government relies on horizontal networks of support, is hostile towards Islamic groups, and therefore faces incentives to increase the public provision of education. Differing incentives construct policies that enable or contain the growth of religious extremism.

This article gauges the impact on comparative politics of the methodological turn in political science through a review of four recent books on the role of comparative historical analysis in the subfield. Two volumes-one edited by James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer and the other edited by Henry Brady and David Collier-defend the accomplishments and strengths of comparative historical analysis. In contrast, the book by Barbara Geddes advocates a scientific approach combining rational choice theory with regression. The article includes a discussion of the interviews conducted by Gerardo Munck and Richard Snyder with prominent comparativists and questions whether strategies of inference should be our most pressing concern.