Three models of economic policymaking—the politics of bargaining, the politics of expertise, and the politics of purpose—can explain why Swedish governments made low inflation the primary objective of macroeconomic policy ten to fifteen years later than most other advanced democracies. Major economic policy shifts are caused by the disintegration of established norms regarding the purpose of political authority. Neither structural economic change nor the introduction of new economic ideas made Swedish governments give up the defense of full employment. They gave up its defense only after the norms of Sweden’s political culture changed in the late 1980s.

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 widespread assumption that redundancy necessarily leads to inefficiency is incorrect. Parallel bureaucracies can contribute to more efficient and effective policy outcomes, and their absence can lead to wasteful and unproductive attempts at policy implementation. In China, institutional arrangements and interbureaucratic competition over overlapping jurisdictions explain why copyright enforcement, where redundancy is absent, is poor and trademark enforcement, where redundancy is present, has been successful. These findings provide an alternative framework to study policy implementation and suggest future Chinese compliance patterns with World Trade Organization rules and prospects for the rule of law in China.

Did India’s democratic regime moderate the politics of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during its tenure in office from 1996 to 2002? The centrist logic of India’s plurality rule electoral system, parliamentary form of cabinet government, and semiconsociational federal party system compelled the BJP to moderate its official ideological position after 1996. However, the BJP circumvented these institutional constraints in various realms, manipulated the terms of discourse to its partisan advantage, and shifted the political center of gravity to the right. Institutional theories have both strengths and weaknesses in explaining the prospects and assessing the dangers of militant ethnic-religious nationalism.

Brazil’s federal courts have played an increasingly important public policy role since Brazil’s return to democracy in the mid 1980s. This article evaluates the effects of a specific constitutional review mechanism, the direct action of unconstitutionality, on public policy. Institutional location is important. Institutional rules and mechanisms produce veto points that enable veto players effectively to delay public policies in areas in which they might otherwise have little or no leverage over a policy.

For much of the past two decades, students of democracy have operated under the spell of civil society. A new and extensive body of literature, however, suggests the limits of this evocative concept in explaining the making and maintenance of democratic regimes. Despite its recent popularity, civil society remains mired in conceptual confusion regarding what the term is meant to represent. More important, the theoretical agenda underpinning the civil society revival lacks much of a foundation in real-life politics. A central problem is the tendency to treat civil society’s effects on politics in isolation from the political context.

Populism is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, due in part to its diverse organizational expressions. The different organizational subtypes of populism in both partisan and civic arenas are influenced but directly determined by structural and institutional conditions. A comparison of Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela demonstrates that contemporary populist figures are associated with widely varying levels of sociopolitical organization. Since popular organization is an instrument to counterbalance elite power resources, greater partisan and civic organization is likely as conflict intensifies between populist leaders and elite opponents.

Core members of a Nicaraguan mothers’ organization remained active in it even when official organizational goals lost immediacy and institutional support with the war’s end and regime change. The nonmaterial benefits of emotional support, collective identity, and empowerment can explain this participation paradox. Material benefits have limited explanatory value, as they were distributed nonselectively. Intangible benefits develop in the process of collective action. Recognition of these benefits helps explain individual motivations as well as organizational longevity. Collective action can benefit both the individual and democracy due to its potential to empower citizens.

The antiglobalization organization Attac has been successful in France but has failed in Sweden. The political process model, which includes factors such as organizational strength and political opportunity structure, can be applied to explanations of Attac’s success or failure. However, this model can not fully explain the differing fortunes of Attac in France and Sweden. The political process model needs to be amended to pay more attention to public opinion as a factor explaining the impact of challenging groups.

Social inclusion is important in peacebuilding. Fostering gender equity faces many challenges under conditions of protracted ethnic conflict. Northern Ireland offers an opportunity to examine more fully how gender equity is infused into democratic transitions from ethnic conflict. Three factors are crucial to women’s participation in peace processes and democratic transitions: the structure of political opportunities and availability of resources; women’s ability to use the human and organizational resources they had already developed in civil society; and the responsiveness of political parties to gender inclusion.

Studies of mass partisanship in Russia frame an interesting puzzle: the unexpectedly high levels of party attachments in the first two election cycles stagnated or even declined in subsequent elections. Mass-level explanations of nascent partisanship fail to account for this pattern of behavior. As a corrective to these arguments, party organizations should be incorporated as an actor in theories of partisanship. To what extent were Russian party organizations capable of projecting coherent issue positions during the electoral period? Although the mean issue positions of some parties were remarkably stable over time, the shifting structure of the party system coupled with high levels of disagreement within party organizations undermined their capacity to build ties to voters.

If ever there was a binary opposition, Niall Ferguson and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri are it. Despite their many differences in their recent books, they are equally confused about empire. The four books under review are riddled with contradictions that stem from their authors’ inability to come to grips with the concept of empire. As a result, they prove the very opposite of what they intended to prove. How have such books garnered such large readerships, and how should serious students of comparative politics proceed in studying empire? Students of empire can draw on an enormous, serious literature and research agenda.

Ethnic cleavages have significantly influenced electoral volatility in Latin America, but not in the way that theories of social cleavages and electoral volatility would predict. The failure of the traditional political parties in Latin American to represent the indigenous population adequately has led indigenous people gradually to shift their votes away from these parties, resulting in high levels of electoral volatility in indigenous areas. This argument is explored through a national-level analysis of the determinants of electoral volatility in Latin America as a whole and a provincial-level analysis of the causes of electoral volatility in Bolivia.

What causal factors drive the diffusion of policy innovations across countries? Bolivia’s decision to adopt the Chilean model of pension privatization was not imposed by powerful external forces; even in a poor, aid-dependent country, domestic decision makers had considerable latitude. Policymaking was also not driven by the symbolic quest for international legitimacy, but rather by the pragmatic goal to resolve clear, widely recognized problems. Most important, problem solving did not comply with ideal-typical standards of comprehensive rationality; instead, policymakers relied on cognitive shortcuts, especially the heuristics of availability, representativeness, and anchoring, that facilitate decision making but risk distortions and biases in judgment.

Why do different export platforms appeal to different types of investors? The origins of investment in the Dominican Republic’s export processing zones can be traced to two features of their regional environments: the nature of the region’s relationship to the world market and the power of the region’s indigenous capitalist class. The first predicts whether zones will lure investors; the second, who will invest in them. Thus, the traditionally integrated sugar growing southeast and tobacco, cocoa, and coffee growing north feature successful zones, while the traditionally isolated import-substituting and subsistence agricultural regions to the south have unsuccessful ones. The traditionally foreign-dominated southeastern zones are dominated by foreigners, while the traditionally domesticated northern zones are dominated by Dominicans.

Scholars of decentralization have explained degrees and patterns of intergovernmental conflict with William Riker’s classic argument that centralized, disciplined party systems with high degrees of national-subnational concordance in partisan loyalties are able to limit such conflict. Democratic Spain challenges this argument. It mixes a centralized political party system and highly disciplined national organizations with a decentralized and decentralizing state. While subnational interests fail to aggregate with the party system and the national parliament, they organize in the poorly institutionalized arena of intergovernmental distributive conflict. Regional governments defend their interests in bilateral relations with the center that undermine national partisan and legislative attempts to control the decentralization process.

Despite a fundamental shift in China since 1978, elements of continuity persist. The concept of path dependence can be refined by distinguishing two levels on which policy is made and implemented: tactical and programmatic/strategic. Path dependence is lodged in institutional practices, not necessarily in the content of particular programs. This formulation offers a way to account for continuity amid change and a means of extending the concept of path dependence to polities where continuity occurs outside of the democratic electoral accountability of politicians to constituents. Recent Chinese unemployment insurance and poverty alleviation programs illustrate this argument.

All states struggle to construct controversial facilities that focus costs asymmetrically on local communities while providing benefits to the larger population. The policy instruments employed by state agencies and their plasticity under citizens’ pressure vary widely; some bureaucracies remain wedded to older coercive tools, while others develop new ones that alter citizen preferences. The five books under review address the issue of the state’s handling and management of contentious civil society. They show how authorities relate to opposition and underscore the need to analyze states in terms of flexibility and rigidity, rather than strength or weakness.

When and how do businesspeople act collectively? Manufacturers mobilized in Morocco but remained politically dormant in Tunisia in response to nearly identical incentives and challenges from global markets. New economic conditions created cleavages in the business class in both countries, but these cleavages were only politicized to the extent that producer groups mobilized. The ability to generate a cohesive class identity, which arose in response to perceived threats from other producer factions, was critical for successful business collective action. These findings call into question key assumptions in theories of collective action and introduce a new approach to globalization and domestic politics.

Financial sector reform in sub-Saharan Africa differed cross-nationally in the 1990s. The differences are traceable in part to variations in the strength and autonomy of private capital in each country. One register of the differences is concentration and ownership structure in the commercial banking sector. Variation in banking structure in African countries can be analyzed according to a typology; each system tends to produce a characteristic pattern of banking sector reform (or nonreform). A variety of transitions to the market can be traced in Africa, and they are contributing to continuing differentiation across states.

Authoritarian renewal followed the initial phase of democratic reform in Africa in the early 1990s. Most studies of authoritarian restoration analyze the hijack of democratic transition in formal political institutions like elections, parliaments, and the judiciary. However, incumbent authoritarian elites also resort simultaneously to cultural and symbolic strategies. Cultural performances enacted by incumbent authoritarian elites, like presidential tours in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, contributed to the restoration of authoritarian rule by disseminating signals that strengthened ruling elites’ positions and weakened prodemocracy forces.

During the 1980s macroeconomic crises and globalization pressures brought Latin American governments, both conservative and populist, to implement market-oriented reforms. Despite policy convergence, sectoral policies, which concentrate their effects on core supporters but are not salient for the median voter, could still be used to demonstrate partisan policymaking. Labor-linked parties used labor market regulation to keep labor supporters when facing political uncertainty despite regional convergence toward labor market deregulation. Incumbent labor-linked parties used labor reforms to keep labor allies because their effects were concentrated on formal workers who were already organized and had previous partisan alliances but did not change the preferences of the median voter.

How do English language instruction policies relate to economic strategies geared toward export growth. Historically, economic pressures for English instruction were evident in Singapore, Ireland, and Puerto Rico, but language curricula have not been uniformly adapted to the requirements of export-led industrialization. Language curricula have been adopted as a result of dominant party consolidation, nation building, and interest group politics, as well as the implementation of an economic strategy for which English proficiency is an important component. Language policies have been adapted to the requirements of an export-oriented economic policy in different ways and to different degrees.

The war on terrorism has led the American government to make noteworthy changes in the balance it strikes between national security and the protection of personal privacy. These changes include a loosening of statutory constraints upon surveillance activities, a diminution of executive accountability, and a redefinition of the functions of agencies typically involved in intelligence gathering. This shift, while a serious cause of concern, has not yet undermined fundamental rights protections in the U.S. A comparison of internet surveillance policy in the U.S. and Great Britain is used to assess the arguments of five recent books about the USA Patriot Act.

While the anchoring or encapsulation of the vote in social cleavages can serve as an important source of electoral stability in party systems, a simple determinist socioeconomic model is inadequate in explaining varying levels of interbloc volatility. An explanation of electoral volatility must also take into consideration the role played by political elites in crafting key political institutions that channel parties’ programmatic offerings and mobilize voters. Initial decisions by elites to establish mass-based cleavage parties, as compared with organizationally thin electoralist parties, help account for the extent to which parties impose significant institutional constraints on subsequent patterns of electoral behavior.

In the Elf Aquitaine scandals the informality of French politics prevented control agencies from preventing corruption. A principal-agent approach and lessons drawn from political economy applications of network theory show how individuals nested informal groups in formal associations to conceal criminal activities and engage in corruption. In contrast to studies of corruption in developed countries, policy dysfunction is not explained as a failure of formal institutions. Rather, concentration on informal institutions applies methods commonly used to explain corruption in developing countries. The nested network enabled unscrupulous executives at Elf to enrich themselves and other officials in both Europe and Africa.

It is widely thought that oil and democracy do not mix. Rentier states need not tax their citizens, thus breaking a crucial link between citizens and their governments and dimming the prospects for democracy. The link between rentierism and democracy is examined using a cross-regional dataset. Particular attention is paid to the possibility that there are both positive and negative effects of rentierism on democracy. Consistent support is not found for the notion that there is a net negative effect of rentierism on the prospects that a country will be democratic. Instead, democracy scores in the surrounding region are strongly correlated with a country’s own democracy score.

The separation of religion and state in western democracies and the Middle East is examined using five measures from the Religion and State dataset: the official relationship between religion and the state, the comparative treatment of different religions, discrimination against minority religions, regulation of the majority religion, and religious legislation. The results show that, while all the these factors are more prevalent in the Middle East, all of them are also present in at least some western democracies. Also, all western democracies except for the U.S. have at least some of these five forms of government entanglement with religion. These results imply that the U.S. separation of religion and the state is the exception for liberal democracies rather than the rule and that religious democracy, including Islamic democracy, is possible.

Decentralization’s welfare effects on economic reform are dependent upon crucial political conditions that are left unanalyzed in the conventional theories of fiscal and market-preserving federalism. This lacuna can be addressed only if decentralization is disaggregated along its different political and economic dimensions and the combined effect of the two dimensions is then reanalyzed. Certain political dimensions provide linkage mechanisms between regional and national politicians, making economic reform self-enforcing. Three such mechanisms — of authority, institutions, and personnel — are identified and used to compare India’s and China’s reform trajectories.

Many new democracies and perhaps even some older democracies do not appear to be functioning as democracies should. Politicians ignore public opinion, go back on their campaign promises, and are not held accountable at elections. The five books under review chart a new research program that addresses these issues. They attempt to measure the presence of responsiveness, mandates, and accountability and explain their causes. This new agenda might be termed the quality of democracy, and it constitutes the next step in research on democratization.