Fernando Limongi

Bio: Fernando Limongi is an academic researcher from University of São Paulo. The author has contributed to research in topics: Democracy & Legislature. The author has an hindex of 24, co-authored 71 publications receiving 12605 citations. Previous affiliations of Fernando Limongi include Yale University & Fundação Getúlio Vargas.

Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990

Abstract: Introduction 1. Democracies and dictatorships 2. Dynamic of political regimes 3. Political regimes and economic growth 4. Political instability and economic growth 5. Political regimes and population Conclusion.

Modernization: Theories and Facts

Abstract: What makes political regimes rise, endure, and fall? The main question is whether the observed close relation between levels of economic development and the incidence of democratic regimes is due to democracies being more likely to emerge or only more likely to survive in the more developed countries. We answer this question using data concerning 135 countries that existed at any time between 1950 and 1990. We find that the level of economic development does not affect the probability of transitions to democracy but that affluence does make democratic regimes more stable. The relation between affluence and democratic stability is monotonic, and the breakdown of democracies at middle levels of development is a phenomenon peculiar to the Southern Cone of Latin America. These patterns also appear to have been true of the earlier period, but dictatorships are more likely to survive in wealthy countries that became independent only after 1950. We conclude that modernization need not generate democracy but democracies survive in countries that are modern.

Democracy and Development

Abstract: Is economic development conducive to political democracy? Does democracy foster or hinder material welfare? These two questions are examined by looking at the experience of 135 countries between 1950 and 1990. Descriptive information, statistical analyses, and historical narratives are interwoven to gain an understanding of the dynamic of political regimes and their impact on economic development and other aspects of material welfare. The findings, several most surprising, dispel any notion of a trade-off between democracy and development. Economic development does not generate democracies but democracies are much more likely to survive in wealthy societies. Political regimes have no impact on the growth of total national incomes, while political instability affects growth only in dictatorships. Per capita incomes grow faster in democracies since population increases faster under dictatorships. In general, political regimes have more of an effect on demography than on economics.

Political Regimes and Economic Growth

Abstract: Arguments that relate regimes to growth focus on property rights, pressures for immediate consumption, and the autonomy of dictators. While everyone seems to agree that secure property rights foster growth, it is controversial whether democracies or dictatorships better secure these rights. The main mechanism by which democracy is thought to hinder growth is pressure for immediate consumption, which reduces investment. Only states that are institutionally insulated from such pressures can resist them, and democratic states are not. The main argument against dictatorships is that authoritarian rulers have no interest in maximizing total output. These views are summarized in turn.

Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence

Abstract: This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in which economic development gives rise to cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely. The authors present a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions - and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.

Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work

Abstract: List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Preface and Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 PART I: VETO PLAYERS THEORY 17 One: Individual Veto Players 19 Two: Collective Veto Players 38 PART II: VETO PLAYERS AND INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS 65 Three: Regimes: Nondemocratic, Presidential, and Parliamentary 67 Four: Governments and Parliaments 91 Five: Referendums 116 Six: Federalism, Bicameralism, and Qualified Majorities 136 PART III: POLICY EFFECTS OF VETO PLAYERS 161 Seven: Legislation 165 Eight: Macroeconomic Policies 187 PART IV: SYSTEMIC EFFECTS OF VETO PLAYERS 207 Nine: Government Stability 209 Ten: Judiciary and Bureaucracies 222 Eleven: Veto Players Analysis of European Union Institutions 248 Conclusion 283 Bibliography 291 Index 309

Does Oil Hinder Democracy

Abstract: Some scholars suggest that the Middle East's oil wealth helps explain its failure to democratize. This article examines three aspects of this “oil impedes democracy” claim. First, is it true? Does oil have a consistendy antidemocratic effect on states, once other factors are accounted for? Second, can this claim be generalized? Is it true only in the Middle East or elsewhere as well? Is it true for other types of mineral wealth and other types of commodity wealth or only for oil? Finally, if oil does have antidemocratic properties, what is the causal mechanism?The author uses pooled time-series cross-national data from 113 states between 1971 and 1997 to show that oil exports are strongly associated with authoritarian rule; that this effect is not limited to the Middle East; and that other types of mineral exports have a similar antidemocratic effect, while other types of commodity exports do not.The author also tests three explanations for this pattern: a “rentier effect,” which suggests that resource-rich governments use low tax rates and patronage to dampen democratic pressures; a “repression effect,” which holds that resource wealth enables governments to strengthen their internal security forces and hence repress popular movements; and a “modernization effect,” which implies that growth that is based on the export of oil and minerals will fail to bring about die social and cultural changes that tend to produce democratic government. He finds at least limited support for all three effects.

What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good for

Abstract: This paper aims to clarify the meaning, and explain the utility, of the case study method, a method often practiced but little understood. A “case study,” I argue, is best defined as an intensive study of a single unit with an aim to generalize across a larger set of units. Case studies rely on the same sort of covariational evidence utilized in non-case study research. Thus, the case study method is correctly understood as a particular way of defining cases, not a way of analyzing cases or a way of modeling causal relations. I show that this understanding of the subject illuminates some of the persistent ambiguities of case study work, ambiguities that are, to some extent, intrinsic to the enterprise. The travails of the case study within the discipline of political science are also rooted in an insufficient appreciation of the methodological tradeoffs that this method calls forth. This paper presents the familiar contrast between case study and non-case study work as a series of characteristic strengths and weaknesses—affinities—rather than as antagonistic approaches to the empirical world. In the end, the perceived hostility between case study and non-case study research is largely unjustified and, perhaps, deserves to be regarded as a misconception. Indeed, the strongest conclusion to arise from this methodological examination concerns the complementarity of single-unit and cross-unit research designs.