The establishment of constitutionalism—defined as widespread adherence to democratic rules and procedures—is a key factor determining a country’s success in institutionalizing democracy. Constitutionalism helps make democracy work, and a framework can be established for analyzing the relationship between constitutions and constitutionalism. Applying this framework to seventeen “third wave” democracies in Latin America, Southern, and Eastern Europe, the findings indicate a relationship between constitutional dispersal of power, system performance, and constitutionalism. They also suggest a new approach to the question of what makes democracies endure.

As Latin America has moved leftward, why have the governments of Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay pursued moderate, gradual change, whereas their counterparts in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have proceeded with considerable economic and political radicalism? Comparative analysis and case studies of Brazil and Bolivia indicate that backlash against market reform and the differential strength of party institutions do not satisfactorily explain this striking difference. Instead, natural resource rents and commodity booms and busts play a crucial role. The unearned windfalls produced by bonanzas inspire risk-acceptance among political leaders and common citizens, which can prompt ideological radicalism and political confrontation. This argument, based on a novel, cognitive-psychological microfoundation, contributes to theories of the rentier state and the “resource curse.”

Mexico’s Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI), a former electoral authoritarian party, obligated its federal deputy candidates to campaign actively for elections that were almost impossible to lose. Canvassing under electoral authoritarian conditions allowed the hegemonic party to gather information on its local leaders and citizens and to distribute selective, excludable resources to mobilize voters. The PRI’s deputy candidates were forced to manage, organize, and run their own campaigns in “candidate-managed” campaigns. Despite large margins of victory, the PRI had to deal with significant district variation in electoral popularity, while the corporatist sectors had far less coverage than once believed.

Comparative democratization scholars have devoted almost no attention to how property rights regimes shape the dynamics of electoral competition. This oversight is particularly problematic in African studies. In sub-Saharan Africa the absence or weakness of secure property rights regimes in the countryside can have powerful consequences for multiparty dynamics. Land can become a patronage resource in ways that ignite destabilizing redistributive conflicts and threaten minority rights. By ignoring the design and character of underlying property regimes—or by assuming that the rules governing property are fixed, neutral, or essentially liberal in character—analysts have overlooked a fundamental source of illiberalism in many of Africa’s multiparty systems. Côte d’Ivoire, where land politics have contributed to system-wide political breakdown, serves as a case in point.

If elections and civil liberties are the principal institutionalized mechanisms of democratic governance, and if naked coercion is the centerpiece of hard authoritarianism, what allows a soft authoritarian system to survive? The cement of soft authoritarian rule is the ability of elites to frame the political debate, thereby defining the political agenda and channeling political outcomes. The contrast between the strengthening of soft authoritarianism in Kazakhstan and the erosion of soft authoritarianism in Kyrgyzstan shows that soft authoritarianism is effective when it succeeds in making good use of the state’s means of persuasion, although coercion remains a part of the ruling elite’s arsenal. This perspective implies a need to conceptualize soft authoritarian rule in dynamic, rather than static, terms.

In this paper we consider the uses political scientists have made of agent-based modeling (ABM) and the challenges associated with designing research at differing levels of complexity. We propose a typology of ABM research designs—investigating abstractions, testing theories comprised of ensembles of simple variables, or implementing virtualizations of complex situations. Our illustrations are drawn from work done on problems pertaining to the evolution of collective identities and norms and to their contribution to collective action. By increasing the visibility of research design questions and clarifying the choices and opportunities associated with them, we seek to expand the scope of responsible methodological uses of ABM techniques and render the increasing variety of that work accessible to wider audiences.

France’s policies toward its Muslim population are exceptionally restrictive compared to other western European states. The dominant combative secularist ideology, which aims to eliminate religion from the public sphere, is a major reason for French exceptionalism. Combative secularism is the result of historical ideological conflicts between anticlerical republicans and clerical monarchists and the victory of the former over the latter. Recently, combative secularists allied with opponents of immigrants and Islam to legislate the ban on wearing headscarves in public schools. Pluralistic secularists, who would allow the public visibility of religion, were unable to impede this policy.

Are ideological and institutional characteristics of party systems important predictors of economic policy change in postcommunist democracies? The weakness of far left economic parties is an important predictor of market reform. However, institutional and ideological concentration has a larger impact. In particular, the difference between ideological and institutional concentration most strongly predicts market reform. Party system ideological consensus in favor of market reform and on national identity facilitates economic liberalization, but party system institutional concentration has a counteracting, inhibiting effect. Thus, the widely noted tendency of multiparty coalitions to slow and compromise policy reforms is outweighed by the reform-inducing effect of more competitive party systems.

What political factors influence the allocation of economic patronage in democracies? Changing levels of party centralization can drive important changes in the allocation of state largess. When national parties are centralized, national party leaders control patronage and target benefits to particularly influential regions and industries. By contrast, when governing parties are decentralized, influential subnational party leaders advocate for their constituents and allocate patronage evenly through a national logroll. Evidence for these relationships is found by comparing India’s distribution process for industrial licenses and government finance under a decentralized Congress Party (1954–61) and a centralized Congress Party (1969–75).

How and where do participatory institutions contribute to the deepening of democracy? Substantial variation in the outcomes produced by participatory institutions is best explained by the incentives of elected governments to delegate authority and the capacity of civil society organizations to use contentious politics in and outside of these institutions. In eight cases of Brazil’s participatory budgeting program, two municipalities produced strong results; two other municipalities produced failed programs; and four municipalities produced mixed, somewhat contradictory results. Failed programs can have a pernicious effect on efforts to deepen democracy, while the most successful programs improve the quality of local democratic processes.

The many interrupted presidencies in third wave Latin American democracies are changing presidential regimes and to some extent reduce the perils of presidentialism in the region. The twenty cases of presidential interruptions demonstrate that Latin American presidentialism is becoming more flexible by adopting equivalents of such parliamentary procedures as no confidence votes and early elections. Linz argued that the independent survival and origin of the executive and legislative branches are the source of two major perils of presidentialism: rigidity and dual democratic legitimacy. Premature removals of presidents mitigate rigidity and reduce the perils of presidentialism.

Immigration and its challenge to national identities are unleashing political conflict throughout the world. Three of the founders of modern comparative politics—Samuel Huntington, Aristide Zolberg, and Jerry Hough—analyze this conflict in studies of the United States. Their books are exemplary. Although all are American, they each view America with a foreigner’s eye. They bring America back in to comparative analysis, not as a data point for cross-sectional statistical testing, but as a country study, in the best area studies tradition. Still, these books would have benefited from greater analytic rigor, as well as adoption of a cultural equilibrium model to analyze the dynamics between immigrants and dominant social groups, suggested by Hough but not fully realized.

Despite decades of economic and political liberalization in Latin America, corporate governance among large domestic firms shows remarkable continuity along many dimensions. Most of the largest firms, or business groups, are still widely diversified, closely held, and family controlled. These continuities challenge most theorizing on corporate governance in developed countries and on globalization more generally. A better way to explain stability is to focus on persistent incentives for and advantages of group governance. The core incentives derive largely from endemic volatility and shallow stock markets. Once formed, groups benefit from preferential access to capital, information, and policy. Complementarities among family control, concentrated ownership, and multisectoral diversification further bolster business group resilience.

Examination of abortion policy in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina allows for control of religion, level of development, and (with the exception of Italy) democratic history. Woman’s right to choose to control her body is measured not only by laws on abortion but also by interpretation, access, and policy outcomes to determine how well countries have dealt with reproductive health and abortion in practice. There are three groups with distinct levels of reproductive rights and policies. Public opinion and women’s social, economic, and political position do not explain this variation. Rather, the key factors are, first, class divisions and the differential mobilization of the Catholic church and feminists and, second, their relative influence on right and left politicians and the executive.

Recent findings on radical right parties indicate that their organizational structure is an important variable in their electoral performance. However, they do not explain variation in party organization. The legacies of previous far right organization, particularly from the postwar period, strongly influence the ability of radical right parties to build strong organizations. In Flanders, where far right political parties and organizations persisted after World War II and possessed some political and social legitimacy, radical right parties possessed a structural backbone. In Wallonia, where the far right was decimated after the war and consisted only of fringe elements, radical right parties were unable to build functioning party organizations. More attention should be paid to historical legacies and organizational factors in explaining the trajectories of radical right parties in Europe.

In the discussion of the sources of social capital, it has been stressed that generalized trust is built up by the citizens themselves through a culture that permeates the networks and organizations of civil society. This approach has run into conceptual problems, and empirical evidence has provided only mixed support. An alternate approach is to highlight how social capital is embedded in and linked to formal political and legal institutions. Not all political institutions matter equally, however. Trust thrives most in societies with effective, impartial, and fair street-level bureaucracies. The causal mechanism between these institutional characteristics and generalized trust is illustrated in a cross-national context.

A puzzling aspect of the 1992-95 Bosnian war–the intra-Muslim civil war in northwestern Bosnia–can highlight the role of local elites in capturing important interaction effects between micro-level economic incentives and macro-level ethnic cleavages in civil wars. During civil wars where the broader conflict is cast in macro-ethnic terms, economic incentives can still seriously affect intragroup behavior. Ethnic group unity can be undermined by the presence of charismatic local elites who can guarantee the survival of their local constituents, while providing access to micro-level economic payoffs.

Views on contemporary Russian politics can be divided into two broad groups. The failed democratization school asserts that the transition in Russia is over and that the country has failed to establish the rudiments of a liberal democracy. The democratic evolutionist approach insists that the system remains fluid and dynamic and that the undoubted shortcomings in the quality of Russia’s postcommunist regime can be resolved within the framework of the existing constitutional order. Key issues for future research include problems of class and economic power and their relationship to the political order, diverse forms of elite aggregation and competition, the interaction of geopolitics and democratization, and long-term problems of national and state development.

Small firms in the Portuguese pharmacy sector have adjusted remarkably well to regional economic integration, in contrast to the response of other small retailers to the challenges of political and economic liberalization. It is possible for old sectors of small firms to adjust to globalization and preserve individual ownership through an extended politics of sectoral defense. Key strategic elements and institutional preconditions make this politics possible. The article draws on field research on the pharmacy and food retail sectors in Portugal and theoretical analyses on neocorporatism, the third Italy, and varieties of capitalism.

Does proportional representation produce greater minority representation than single member districts? This question can be studied through the ethnic background of legislators elected in the two tiers of the mixed electoral system in Russia. In general, there is no significant difference in the level of minority representation in proportional representation and single member district contests. However, electoral systems have different effects for different ethnic groups. Proportional representation does not provide increased minority representation in party systems devoid of ethnic parties. Moreover, the relationship between minority representation and electoral system is conditioned by the minorities’ demographic and cultural characteristics.

Ethnofederalism has been blamed for secessionism in the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, yet it is also touted as an important way of preventing ethnic conflict. Indeed, ethnofederalism is a double-edged sword, potentially generating both centrifugal and centripetal dynamics. Which way it ultimately cuts depends not only on context and institutions, but also on the undertheorized factor of leadership strategy. A focused process-tracing comparison of four time periods in the most challenging case of Ukraine, each corresponding to a different Soviet leadership strategy, confirms the theory and challenges the common wisdom that secessionism was inexorably rising in the USSR during the year of its disintegration.

Governments in postcommunist Europe are not slaves to their institutions, unable to extend their time in office beyond the constraints imposed by their institutional arrangement. Cabinet duration is tied to performance in office, characterized by economic success. Duration models show that governments in postcommunist Europe are similar to those in western Europe, even though some states lack party institutionalization and strong partisan attachments. Institutional arrangements, including the effective number of parties in government and the type of government, combine with economic performance to affect the survival rates of postcommunist governments.

Historically, faith-based organizations made important contributions in the field of social provision, but with the advent of the modern welfare state their role diminished dramatically. Why has there been renewed interest in the United States and Britain in publicly funded faith-based social provision. Despite significant differences between the two countries, their governments have endorsed strikingly similar faith-based initiatives that have institutionalized the relationship between the state and faith-based organizations. The emergence of faith-based initiatives is one component of welfare state restructuring, more specifically, a response to the growing problem of minority social exclusion in urban areas.

Contrary to many expectations, both capital and labor in China seem to have come to accept–and even support–Chinese Communist rule. Recent works by Bruce Dickson, Mary Gallagher, and Yongshun Cai help to explain why. Simultaneously, the findings of scholars outside of China suggest that the larger answer lies in China’s combination of state-led late development and socialist past. Unlike in earlier developers, the emergence of capitalism in China has brought both greater economic inequality and new forms of dependence on the state. Further, as in postsocialist Russia and East and Central Europe, Chinese citizens show a preference for socialist economic values. Consequently, for both rising and declining sectors, China’s economic reform has created disincentives to oppose the authoritarian political status quo.

Barrington Moore, Jr., argued that a vigorous and independent bourgeoisie is a necessary, if insufficient, condition for democracy. This article addresses this thesis through a comparative analysis of class formation in Southeast Asia. Colonial era state policies towards immigrant Chinese merchant minorities shaped the diverging capacities and inclinations of capitalist classes in the region to assert themselves in political life and to assume control over state power. The variegated identities and strengths of the capitalist classes of Southeast Asia have prefigured enduring authoritarian rule in most countries in the region over the past several decades, while enabling democratic rule in the Philippines, Thailand, and, in recent years, Indonesia.

This article identifies and proposes a framework to explain the responses of Latin America’s Roman Catholic churches to a new strategic dilemma posed by religious and political pluralism. Because the church’s goals of defending institutional interests, evangelizing, promoting public morality, and grounding public policy in Catholic social teaching cut across existing political cleavages, church leaders must make strategic choices about which to emphasize in their messages to the faithful, investment of pastoral resources, and alliances. The article presents a typology of episcopal responses based on Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico and explains strategic choices by the church’s capacity to mobilize civil society, its degree of religious hegemony, and the ideological orientations of Catholics.

As Mexico continues to democratize amid an unprecedented wave of migration, the increasing levels of migration have affected the political attitudes and behaviors of those left behind. Municipal and individual level data strongly attest to the process of disengagement among citizens in high migration municipalities from the national political system as a transnational community comes to the fore. High migration municipalities exhibit lower voter turnout rates, and individuals in high migration areas report lower levels of political efficacy, participate less in politics, and rely more on participation in local community groups than their counterparts in less migratory towns.

Governments can provide investment subsidies to private business to stimulate growth and production. Rent seeking by politicians has threatened the success of this strategy especially in developing countries like Turkey. Particularistic allocation of these subsidies by politicians has been a concern, but the influence of electoral incentives on these particularistic exchanges has not been systematically analyzed. Responsibility sharing and credit claiming mechanisms under coalition governments are expected to give different electoral incentives to politicians. Investment subsidies in Turkey between 1992 and 1997 reveal that districts where the coalition partner that is not in control of distributing subsidies is strong have received a relatively smaller number of subsidies.

What is the significance of distinguishing trust in government’s commitment from trust in its competence in understanding the relationship between political trust and political participation? Chinese farmers have more trust in the central government’s commitment to protect their rights and interests than in its capacity to do so. Trust in the center’s competence carries more weight than trust in its commitment in accounting for the propensity to petition. Petitioning tends to weaken trust in the center’s capacity as well as trust in its commitment. Distrust in the center’s commitment enhances the propensity to engage in more assertive forms of political participation.

Initial scholarly exuberance over the global spread of bills of rights and judicial review has given way to a spate of studies that bemoan the trend as fundamentally antidemocratic. This review offers an empirically informed critique of these new, more skeptical studies. It highlights ways in which selection and tenure rules for high court judges vary across cases, describes a number of institutional mechanisms designed to mitigate judicial supremacy in different countries, and offers examples of the ways that some new constitutionalist countries have sought to facilitate popular access to courts and to charge courts with protecting popular interests. More comparative work on the effects of this variation on political practice and policy outcomes would be welcome.