A "New York Times" Notable Book for 2011 A "Globe and Mail" Best Books of the Year 2011 Title A "Kirkus Reviews" Best Nonfiction of 2011 title Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today's developing countries with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world. Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling "The End of History and the Last Man "and one of our most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today's basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work, "The Origins of Political Order" begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of the rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution. Drawing on a vast body of knowledge history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents."

Francis Fukuyama, “The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution”

In 2015, Comparative Political Studies embarked on a landmark pilot study in research transparency in the social sciences. The editors issued an open call for submissions of manuscripts that contai...

Can Results-Free Review Reduce Publication Bias? The Results and Implications of a Pilot Study:

Endogeneity is a serious challenge for leadership research. To overcome the problem, researchers increasingly rely upon experimental designs, such as laboratory and field experiments. In this paper, we argue that natural experiments — in the form of standard natural experiments, instrumental variable, and regression discontinuity designs — offer additional opportunities to infer causal relationships. We conduct a systematic, cross-disciplinary review of 87 studies that leverage natural experimental designs to inquire into a leadership topic. We introduce the standard natural experiment, instrumental variable, and regression discontinuity design and use topic modeling to analyze which leadership topics have been investigated using natural experimental designs. Based on the review, we provide guidelines that we hope will assist scholars in discovering natural exogenous variations, selecting the most suitable form of natural experiment and by mobilizing appropriate statistical techniques and robustness checks. The paper is addressed to leadership and management scholars who aim to use natural experiments to infer causal relationships.

/pdf/natural-experiments-in-leadership-research-an-introduction-1z29u0eq26.pdf

Natural experiments in leadership research: An introduction, review, and guidelines

In this article, we use an experimental survey design to explore how the tactical choices of social movements affect public opinion about whether the government should negotiate with the movement and the bargains that should be struck once negotiations begin. In doing so, we test competing theories about how we should expect the use of tactics with varying degrees of extremeness—including demonstrations, occupations, and bombings—to influence public opinion. We find that respondents are less likely to think the government should negotiate with organizations that use the tactic of bombing when compared with demonstrations or occupations. However, depending on the outcome variable and baseline category used in the analysis, we find mixed support for whether respondents think organizations that use bombings should receive less once negotiations begin. The results of this article are generally consistent with the theoretical and policy-based arguments centering around how governments should not negotiate with...

/pdf/banners-barricades-and-bombs-the-tactical-choices-of-social-35rgvh335l.pdf

Banners, Barricades, and Bombs: The Tactical Choices of Social Movements and Public Opinion

Fighting or supporting corruption? The role of public sector audit organizations in Brazil

To enhance government accountability, reformers have advocated strengthening institutions of “horizontal accountability,” particularly auditing institutions that can punish lawbreaking elected offi...

/pdf/can-politicians-police-themselves-natural-experimental-3s7emkf49q.pdf

Júlio Canello

Papers

Can Politicians Police Themselves? Natural Experimental Evidence From Brazil’s Audit Courts