Showing papers in "World Politics in 1993"
TL;DR: The authors suggest that policies generate resources and incentives for political actors, and they provide those actors with information and cues that encourage particular interpretations of the political world, and that these mechanisms operate in a variety of ways, but have significant effects on government elites, interest groups, and mass public.
Abstract: As governmental activity has expanded, scholars have been increasingly inclined to suggest that the structure of public policies has an important influence on patterns of political change. Yet research on policy feedback is mostly anecdotal, and there has so far been little attempt to develop more general hypotheses about the conditions under which policies produce politics. Drawing on recent research, this article suggests that feedback occurs through two main mechanisms. Policies generate resources and incentives for political actors, and they provide those actors with information and cues that encourage particular interpretations of the political world. These mechanisms operate in a variety of ways, but have significant effects on government elites, interest groups, and mass publics. By investigating how policies influence different actors through these distinctive mechanisms, the article outlines a research agenda for moving from the current focus on illustrative case studies to the investigation of broader propositions about how and when policies are likely to be politically consequential.
1,708 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that parliamentarianism is a more supportive constitutional framework due to the following theoretically predictable and empirically observable tendencies: its greater propensity for governments to have majorities to implement their programs, its ability to rule in a multiparty setting, its lower propensity for executives to rule at the edge of the constitution and its greater facility in removing a chief executive if he or she does so, and its lower susceptibility to a military coup.
Abstract: A fundamental political-institutional question that has only recently received serious scholarly attention concerns the impact of different constitutional frameworks on democratic consolidation. Little systematic cross-regional evidence has been brought to bear on this question. This article reports the findings of the analysis of numerous different sources of data, all of which point in the direction of a much stronger correlation between democratic consolidation and the constitutional framework of pure parliamentarianism than between consolidation and pure presidentialism. The systematic analysis of these data leads the authors to conclude that parliamentarianism is a more supportive constitutional framework due to the following theoretically predictable and empirically observable tendencies: its greater propensity for governments to have majorities to implement their programs, its greater ability to rule in a multiparty setting, its lower propensity for executives to rule at the edge of the constitution and its greater facility in removing a chief executive if he or she does so, its lower susceptibility to a military coup, and its greater tendency to provide long party-government careers, which add loyalty and experience to political society. In contrast, the analytically separable propensities of presidentialism also form a highly interactive system, but they work to impede democratic consolidation by reducing politicians' degrees of freedom.
569 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the history of the German Democratic Republic during the 1989 revolution and found that large-scale flights of citizens to the Federal Republic of Germany combined with increasingly powerful mass demonstrations in the major cities to bring down the communist regime.
Abstract: The revolutionary events of 1989 in Eastern Europe took a special shape in the German Democratic Republic: large-scale flights of citizens to the Federal Republic of Germany combined with increasingly powerful mass demonstrations in the major cities to bring down the communist regime. This conjunction of private emigration and public protest contrasts with the way these distinct responses to discontent had been previously experienced, primarily as alternatives. The forty-year history of the German Democratic Republic thus represents a particularly rich theater of operation for the concepts of “exit” and “voice,” which the author had introduced in his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970). The events of 1989 are scrutinized in some detail as they trace a more complex pattern of interaction than had been found to prevail in most previous studies.
370 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the political and economic consequences of short-term capital flows, i.e., those arising from the purchase or sale of financial instruments with maturities of less than one year.
Abstract: T HE movement of capital across national borders has long raised sensitive political questions. Whatever the benefits, international investment complicates national economic management. Most research on this subject has focused on the causes and consequences of foreign direct investment. Less studied, but no less important, are short-term capital flows-those arising from the purchase or sale of financial instruments with maturities of less than one year. In contrast to investments in plant and equipment, short-term flows are highly sensitive to interest rate differentials and exchange rate expectations. Indeed, the mere announcement of a change in economic policy can trigger massive capital inflows or outflows, undermining the anticipated benefits of the new policy. For this reason, most governments regularly resorted to various types of controls on short-term capital movements in the decades following World War II. In recent years, however, the world has witnessed a remarkable shift away from the use of capital controls. In country after country, governments have abolished controls and dismantled the bureaucratic machinery used to administer them. And in the rare instances where governments have fallen back on controls, their temporary nature has usually been emphasized. This general trend toward liberalization has stimulated a growing body of research on the political and economic consequences of capital mobility.' In this article, our principal aim is to address
300 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the conditions under which states will cooperate to impose economic sanctions are of both theoretical and practical interest, and the success of cooperation depends on the credibility of these issue-linkages.
Abstract: The conditions under which states will cooperate to impose economic sanctions are of both theoretical and practical interest. Generally, when sanctions are used, one state takes the lead in organizing and imposing them. Other states have incentives to free ride on the “leading sender's” efforts. To gain cooperation, the leading sender uses tactical issue-linkage in the form of either threats or side payments. The success of cooperation depends on the credibility of these issue-linkages. The use of high-cost sanctions and international institutions raises the potential for high audience costs if the leading sender reneges. These policies thus indicate credible commitments. Data on ninety-nine cases of post-1945 economic sanctions show that costly measures coincide with high levels of international cooperation.
181 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the timing and nature of an emerging Pacific economic regime within a framework that extends existing understandings of regime formation, including the dynamic nature of states' strategic incentives, as they change from a pattern characterized by extreme hegemony toward one exhibiting features of a more balanced power distribution.
Abstract: The timing and nature of an emerging Pacific economic regime are examined within a framework that extends existing understandings of regime formation. One analytic level is provided by the dynamic nature of states' strategic incentives, as they change from a pattern characterized by extreme hegemony toward one exhibiting features of a more balanced power distribution. Cultural underpinnings of regime values is another. Together, these explain features of Pacific regime formation that otherwise appear anomalous: its delayed emergence, its central internal tensions, and its weakness.
135 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that a high degree of relative state autonomy and ideology, while necessary, was not sufficient to explain fully the change from import-substitution industrialization to an open, free-market economy in Chile.
Abstract: This article argues that a high degree of relative state autonomy and ideology, while necessary, was not sufficient to explain fully the change from import-substitution industrialization to an open, free-market economy in Chile. A comparison across three distinct policy periods in authoritarian Chile reveals that shifting coalitions of businessmen and landowners, with varying power resources, also played an important part in the outcome. This approach does not seek to vitiate other interpretations of economic change in Chile and elsewhere. The question is not so much which factor is most important, but how and when the different factors matter.
133 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the influence of cognitive and institutional factors in shaping state behavior was explored. And the relevance of this new ideology to policy debates, particularly during the early years of the Gorbachev era, depended crucially upon the efforts of individual policy entrepreneurs and open policy windows.
Abstract: This article explores the influence of cognitive and institutional factors in shaping state behavior. In particular, the author examines their role in the Gorbachev foreign policy revolution, developing an analytic framework that integrates domestic and international sources of state behavior. While it is dear that a new ideology of international affairs—one developed and conveyed by Soviet specialists—played a critical role in shaping Gorbachev's “new thinking,” its ability to influence policy was at different times constrained or magnified by institutional and political variables. Moreover, the relevance of this new ideology to policy debates, particularly during the early years of the Gorbachev era, depended crucially upon the efforts of individual “policy entrepreneurs” and open policy windows. How wide these windows opened was, in turn, partly a function of the USSR's international environment.
123 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study focusing on three dimensions of EC telecoms reform is presented, focusing on how the Commission of the EC led in organizing collective action, and the conditions under which international organizations can exercise leadership to organize collective action.
Abstract: The member states of the European community are not just liberalizing telecommunications but are cooperating extensively in the sector. Breaking with a past dominated by rigid national monopolies (the PTTs), EC states in the 1980s undertook collective action in research and development, planning future networks, setting standards, and opening markets. This article seeks to explain telecoms liberalization and cooperation in Europe. Two conditions are necessary for international collective action to emerge. The first is policy adaptation at the national level, such that governments are willing to consider alternatives to pure unilateralism. In telecommunications, technological changes induced widespread policy adaptation in EC states. This adaptation was a necessary prerequisite for European cooperation. The second necessary condition is international leadership to organize the collective action. This paper extends the analysis of international leadership by outlining the conditions under which international organizations can exercise leadership to organize collective action. The case study, focusing on three dimensions of EC telecoms reform, shows how the Commission of the EC led in organizing collective action.
115 citations
TL;DR: The authors construct a model that is useful for all three phases of the Quebec nationalist movement and that can say something about nationalism and political mobilization more generally, and construct a new model of mobilization that can provide a more satisfactory account.
Abstract: The central argument of this article is straightforward. (1) The contemporary Quebec nationalist movement has moved through phases of mobilization, demobilization, and remobilization. (2) Interpretations of Quebec nationalism do not successfully explain all three phases. (3) A new model of mobilization can provide a more satisfactory account. The goal is to construct a model that is useful for all three phases and that can say something about nationalism and political mobilization more generally.
77 citations
TL;DR: The legacies of the authoritarian regimes of South America for the contemporary consolidation of democracy have been examined in this article, where the economic policies and political strategies pursued by military regimes preserved, altered, or destroyed the clientelistic and corporatist networks of mediation between state and society prevailing at the onset of authoritarianism, as well as those constructed upon the representative base of programmatic political parties.
Abstract: This article focuses on the legacies of the authoritarian regimes of South America for the contemporary consolidation of democracy. In particular, it considers their lasting effects on the region's informal networks and formal institutions of political representation. It questions several assumptions made by the literature on regime transition and democratic consolidation in South America about political culture, institutional reform, and electoral realignment: taken together, these assumptions are misleading about how much and what kind of political change has occurred in Latin America as a result of authoritarian rule. To understand how the challenges of democratic consolidation have been shaped, the article proposes instead to examine how the economic policies and political strategies pursued by military regimes preserved, altered, or destroyed the clientelistic and corporatist networks of mediation between state and society prevailing at the onset of authoritarianism, as well as those constructed upon the representative base of programmatic political parties.
TL;DR: In Eastern Europe as in the Third World, a crucial dilemma is reconciling public demands for access to decision-making with sufficient executive autonomy for coherent economic management as discussed by the authors, which is a challenge in Eastern Europe.
Abstract: Two sets of Third World nations can shed light on the politics of economic transformation in Eastern Europe. First, there are nations that pursued particularly vigorous reforms in the 1980s. They shared three key political features: popular consensus that basic reforms were imperative; antireform groups largely in disarray or suppressed; and substantial executive autonomy in economic management. The first of these features is clearly present in Eastern Europe; the second is questionable; and the third is present but precarious and probably temporary. Second and also relevant to Eastern Europe is the growing group of Third World nations seeking to consolidate political openings simultaneously with major economic reforms. Economic and political liberalization conflict with, yet are crucial for, each other. Proposals that they be sequenced are unrealistic. In Eastern Europe as in the Third World, a crucial dilemma is reconciling public demands for access to decision making with sufficient executive autonomy for coherent economic management.
TL;DR: In this article, two sets of books that explore the origins and dynamics of Southeast Asia's growth and economic transformation are reviewed. But the authors point out weaknesses in both approaches and to areas where the two approaches can be fruitfully synthesized.
Abstract: This essay reviews two sets of books that explore the origins and dynamics of Southeast Asia's growth and economic transformation. One set of books utilizes a structuralist framework and emphasizes the role of the state in creating a (now) powerful capitalist class. The other set of books utilizes an institutionalist framework to explain how new patterns of private/public sector collaboration have resulted in rapid economic growth. The authors point to weaknesses in both approaches and to areas where the two approaches can be fruitfully synthesized. They also offer suggestions for future research.
TL;DR: The role of ideas about both the foreign and the domestic scene, as well as the role of a network of specialists that helped put these ideas on the national agenda was explored in this article.
Abstract: Studies explaining the end of the cold war and change in Soviet foreign policy tend to emphasize the role of the international system: decision makers “learned lessons” about the international system, and this learning brought about Soviet accommodationist policies. Such systemic and cognitive learning approaches tend, however, to mask the political and highly contingent nature of the policy changes. To understand these changes, one must explore how certain ideas got placed on the political agenda and how others were forced off.This essay stresses the role of ideas about both the foreign and the domestic scene, as well as the role of a network of specialists that helped put these ideas on the national agenda. Ideas alone cannot explain any one outcome. They must be understood in terms of the political process by which they are selected. Ideas are more likely to be implemented and epistemic communities are more likely to be influential under three conditions: (1) access to the leadership, (2) salience of the ideas to the leadership, and (3) the ability of the leadership to control the political agenda.One critical example of great change in foreign policy was the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. This study examines the interplay of ideas and politics over time and explains how the decision to withdraw was implemented and why it occurred when it did. It focuses on (1) the mobilization of an epistemic community before Gorbachev came to power, (2) massive personnel changes within Soviet institutions in the 1980s, and (3) the empowerment of the epistemic community once Gorbachev had consolidated his power.
TL;DR: This article analyzed conflicts in the 1980s over the decentralization of bargaining between labor and capital in Sweden and Germany and highlighted the role of institutional arrangements that mediated common pressures to enhance plant-level flexibility.
Abstract: This article analyzes conflicts in the 1980s over the decentralization of bargaining between labor and capital in Sweden and Germany. The analysis highlights the role of institutional arrangements, some of them previously “dormant” politically, that mediated common pressures to enhance plant-level flexibility. Whereas the drive for plant flexibility in Sweden contributed to the demise of traditional bargaining arrangements, similar pressures in Germany were more successfully accommodated within its “dual” system. In both cases, institutional links among different levels and arenas of bargaining shaped the strategic interactions of labor and capital in ways that either complicated (Sweden) or facilitated (Germany) the search for compromise within traditional bargaining institutions. While confirming the central role of institutions in explaining cross-national variation in outcomes, the analysis also adds a dynamic element to institutional analysis, highlighting how changing substantive interests of political actors interact with preexisting institutions to produce distinctive patterns of stability and change.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compare the predictions of Marxist, moral economy, and rational-choice theories concerning collective actions by workers in Egypt in the period since the 1952 Free Officers coup, and conclude that a moral economy perspective is best able to explain the nature and frequency of these protests.
Abstract: After comparing the predictions of Marxist, moral economy, and rational-choice theories concerning collective actions by workers in Egypt in the period since the 1952 Free Officers coup, this article concludes that a moral economy perspective is best able to explain the nature and frequency of these protests. The supporting evidence is the correlation between labor protest and violations of workers' feelings of entitlement, as manifest in declining real wages or disruptions to established patterns of wage differentials. The targeting of state institutions, combined with the fact that workers have eschewed actual production stoppages in favor of symbolic protests, indicates a view of reciprocal rights and obligations between themselves and the state. The latter reinforces the moral economy by combining significant concessions with its repressive response to labor protests. Marxism proves unable to explain the largely defensive and reactive nature of labor protest, while rational-choice theory is reduced to efforts to quantify workers' reactions to this repression.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: This article explored the usefulness of economic theories of dynamic contracting to understand international financial innovation in the 1920s and interpreted the founding of the Bank for International Settlements as an important effort to overcome the problems of contract enforcement and information asymmetries in international lending that had contributed to capital market inefficiencies.
Abstract: One of the concerns of international political economy in the past several years has been to theorize about the conditions conducive to the development of international cooperation and institutionalization. This article explores the usefulness of economic theories of dynamic contracting, which are essentially functionalist in nature, to understand international financial innovation in the 1920s. It interprets the founding of the Bank for International Settlements as an important effort to overcome the problems of contract enforcement and information asymmetries in international lending that had contributed to capital market inefficiencies as the 1920s drew to a close. Dynamic contracting theories suggest reasons why borrowers and lenders have a strong interest in developing cooperative international institutions that help establish a borrower's credibility. This approach is supplemented with a multilateral bargaining model between debtor, private lenders, and creditor governments to explain international financial innovation during the interwar years. The evidence suggests that the BIS was created primarily to enhance Germany's incentives to repay its debts and that it was part of a deal between private creditors and creditor governments to reduce and commercialize German reparations. By looking not only at interstate bargaining but also at public'private bargaining, it is possible to understand the paradox of cooperative international institutional development in a period otherwise marked by conflict.
TL;DR: This article explored the usefulness of economic theories of dynamic contracting to understand international financial innovation in the 1920s and interpreted the founding of the Bank for International Settlements as an important effort to overcome the problems of contract enforcement and information asymmetries in international lending that had contributed to capital market inefficiencies.
Abstract: One of the concerns of international political economy in the past several years has been to theorize about the conditions conducive to the development of international cooperation and institutionalization This article explores the usefulness of economic theories of dynamic contracting, which are essentially functionalist in nature, to understand international financial innovation in the 1920s It interprets the founding of the Bank for International Settlements as an important effort to overcome the problems of contract enforcement and information asymmetries in international lending that had contributed to capital market inefficiencies as the 1920s drew to a close Dynamic contracting theories suggest reasons why borrowers and lenders have a strong interest in developing cooperative international institutions that help establish a borrower's credibility This approach is supplemented with a multilateral bargaining model between debtor, private lenders, and creditor governments to explain international financial innovation during the interwar years The evidence suggests that the BIS was created primarily to enhance Germany's incentives to repay its debts and that it was part of a deal between private creditors and creditor governments to reduce and commercialize German reparations By looking not only at interstate bargaining but also at public'private bargaining, it is possible to understand the paradox of cooperative international institutional development in a period otherwise marked by conflict
TL;DR: In this article, a review essay of four recent books on democratic transitions is written from the standpoint of contemporary South African politics, and each of the books takes the Schumpetarian model of democratic politics for granted, and in the course of evaluating them the author explores the advantages and limitations of that model for thinking about the prospects for democracy in South Africa.
Abstract: This review essay of four recent books on democratic transitions is written from the standpoint of contemporary South African politics. Each of the books takes the Schumpetarian model of democratic politics for granted, and in the course of evaluating them the author explores the advantages and limitations of that model for thinking about the prospects for democracy in South Africa. He concludes that the Schumpeterian model diverts attention from questions that should concern promoters of democracy. The most important such questions deal with the internal structure of political parties, public organizations, and civil institutions.
TL;DR: The five-year-old Palestinian uprising, the intifada, was the first of many mass mobilizations against nondemocratic rule to appear in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the former Soviet Union between 1987 and 1991 as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The five-year-old Palestinian uprising, the intifada, was the first of many mass mobilizations against nondemocratic rule to appear in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the former Soviet Union between 1987 and 1991. Although the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is seldom included by the media or by social scientists in their treatments of this putative wave of “democratization,” many studies of the uprising are available. Although largely atheoretic in their construction of the intifada and in their explanations for it, the two general questions posed by most of these authors are familiar to students of collective action and revolution. On the one hand, why did it take twenty years for the Palestinians to launch the uprising? On the other hand, how, in light of the individual costs of participation and the negligible impact of any one person's decision to participate, could it have occurred at all? The work under review provides broad support for recent trends in the analysis of revolution and collection action, while illustrating both the opportunities and the constraints associated with using monographic literature as a data base.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a model of divergent learning and suggest the new concept of "borrowing" to explain the instrumental use of foreign economic models by rival Soviet politicians.
Abstract: Attempts at economic reform in the late Gorbachev years suffered from a critical lack of consensus among top leaders on the desired direction of change. As the crisis worsened, top leaders did not band together but instead fell back upon their underlying organizational interests, adopting new economic programs largely to promote their own political constituencies. This article critiques the “collective learning” literature that has been applied widely to explain the Gorbachev reforms, and it suggests a typology to account for its strengths and weaknesses in both foreign and domestic policy settings. In examining the politics of the late Soviet economic crisis, it proposes a model of divergent (rather than collective) learning and suggests the new concept of “borrowing” to explain the instrumental use of foreign economic models by rival Soviet politicians.