In seminal events, not only policy but also the political processes through which policy evolves undergo dramatic, fundamental change. Seminal events are as important as they are uncommon. Why do they occur, and how comparable are they across political systems? These questions are answered through instances where government attempts to build large-scale dam projects were reversed after they aroused opposition and in the process gave birth to modern environmental movements. Two cases in the United States and Australia are a heuristic through which to analyze the case of Dujiangyan in China. The Chinese case parallels the other two and fits within Schattschneider’s notion of “expanding the sphere,” suggesting that this framework is not limited by regime type. Substantively, the Chinese state may be fundamentally changing the ways it governs itself.

Several influential scholars have argued that organized labor is a consistent champion of democracy and that consequently strong labor movements make democratic outcomes more likely. Evidence from Latin America calls this argument into question. Organized labor has frequently supported nondemocratic regimes. In a comparative analysis of nine countries in Latin America, variation in labor support for democracy after 1945 hinged on two factors, the nature of their partisan alliances and the perceived regime alternatives.

A growing portion of tax policy in postcommunist Europe is driven by external factors relating to regional and global economic integration. The EU accession process and global competition for capital have largely determined tax policymaking and the development of capitalist tax regimes in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Eurostat data, OECD and EU reports, and interviews with political and bureaucratic officials support these conclusions. Recent trends in taxation in postcommunist Europe provide a striking example of the declining economic policy autonomy of states, in this case, newly autonomous states with a great sensitivity to issues of national sovereignty.

Why did India’s parliament repeatedly fail to enact the women’s reservation bill, which would have reserved one-third of legislative seats for women. Explanations cite poor drafting of the bill, caste politics, weaknesses of the women’s movements, and, simply, patriarchy. However, these explanations need to be supplemented by a comparative approach that draws on an expanding number of cross-national studies of gender quotas. These studies point to the important role of political parties and the electoral system, but in combination with the negative consequences of India’s “exceptional” democratic development.

Do transitions by pact restrict access to the political system and thus reduce the quality of democracy? A comparison of legislator continuity in Spain, where democracy was established by pact, and Argentina, which had a transition by collapse, demonstrates that, while Spain had greater continuity, continuity did not compromise the quality of democracy. The mode of transition shapes internal party rules, specifically candidate selection procedures, which influence the degree of continuity in nascent democratic regimes. A second comparison of the pacts in Spain, Colombia, and Venezuela demonstrates that transitions by pact vary with respect to how pacts are enforced, with potentially significant implications for the quality of democracy.

In 1969, in “Six Books in Search of a Subject or Does Federalism Exist and Does It Matter,” William Riker reached rather bleak conclusions concerning scholarship about federalism. This review looks at recent books on federalism to see if Riker’s verdict still applies. These books show that federalism indeed exists, so the aim is to evaluate current scholarship to see if federalism matters through four dimensions: democratic participation, representation, and accountability; the representation and accommodation of territorially based ethnic, cultural, and linguistic differences; public policy and governmental effectiveness; and the design of federal institutions.

In analyzing the international dimension of democratization, there are two sources of international influence: leverage, or governments’ vulnerability to western pressure, and linkage, or the density of economic, political, organizational, social, and communication ties between particular countries and the West. Although both leverage and linkage raise the cost of authoritarianism, linkage contributes more consistently to democratization. Extensive linkage contributes to democratization even under unfavorable domestic conditions. Where linkage and leverage are low, external democratizing pressure is minimal, and domestic forces predominate. Where linkage is low but leverage high, external pressure is intermittent and partially effective. Slovakia, Mexico, Russia, and Zambia are examined.

Since 1978 forty percent of elected presidents in South America have been challenged by civilian actors trying to force them to leave office early. Twenty-three percent have fallen through impeachment and resignations. Challenged presidents were more likely to pursue neoliberal policies, be personally implicated in scandal, and lack a congressional majority than unchallenged presidents. The presence or absence of large street protests demanding their removal from office were crucial in determining their fates. Presidential falls confound several core assumptions about presidential regimes: that presidential terms are firmly fixed, that populations can not withdraw presidential mandates, and that political conflict in presidentialism results in democratic breakdown.

Why do some new democracies face an extreme degree of political polarization? Many see polarization as driven by preexisting ethnic, religious, or ideological cleavages. This article argues that polarization results from the short-term, interest-driven strategies of social movements and political parties. The development of political polarization in Zimbabwe over four years demonstrates the connection between actors’ strategies and the broader process of political change. Polarization is used by political parties to mobilize constituencies and build organizations. Parties creatively reshape the boundaries of conflict, but they also set in motion processes over which they have little control.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a direct relationship exists between greater wealth and higher democratic participation. However, an original database compiled for fifty-three governments in two states in northern India, including interviews with over 2,000 village residents, shows that information, education, and gender are more important for democratic participation, while wealth and social status matter relatively little. Policies that enable people to educate and inform themselves better should help raise poor people’s stakes in democracy.

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.

The new transnationalism studies the regular interactions between state and nonstate actors across national boundaries aimed at shaping political and social outcomes at home, abroad, and in the emerging sphere of global governance. What is new about the new transnationalism, and why should comparativists be concerned? First, a contemporary analysis of what used to be called domestic and international politics must include a systematic recognition of transnational influences. Second, comparativists have a great opportunity to apply their characteristic methods and theories to the study of transnational actors and emerging spheres of transnational governance.

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.