Showing papers in "World Politics in 2006"
TL;DR: The power resources approach, underlining the relevance of socioeconomic class and partisan politics in distributive conflict within capitalist economies, is challenged by employer-centered approaches claiming employers and cross-class alliances to have been crucial in advancing the development of welfare states and varieties of capitalism.
Abstract: The power resources approach, underlining the relevance of socioeconomic class and partisan politics in distributive conflict within capitalist economies, is challenged by employer-centered approaches claiming employers and cross-class alliances to have been crucial in advancing the development of welfare states and varieties of capitalism. Theoretically and empirically these claims are problematic. In welfare state expansion, employers have often been antagonists, under specific conditions consenters, but very rarely protagonists. Well-developed welfare states and coordinated market economies have emerged in countries with strong left parties in long-term cabinet participation or in countries with state corporatist institutional traditions and confessional parties in intensive competition with left parties.
561 citations
TL;DR: Zhang et al. as discussed by the authors find that none establishes a convincing link between political or fiscal decentralization and China's economic success, and suggest an alternative view of the reform process in which growth-enhancing policies emerged from competition between promarket and conservative factions in Beijing.
Abstract: Many scholars attribute China's market reforms and the remarkable economic performance they have fostered in part to the country's political and fiscal decentralization. Political decentralization is said to have stimulated local policy experiments and restrained predatory central interventions. Fiscal decentralization is thought to have motivated local officials to promote development and harden enterprises' budget constraints. The locally diversified structure of the prereform economy is said to have facilitated liberalization. Reexamining these arguments, the authors find that none establishes a convincing link between political or fiscal decentralization and China's successes. They suggest an alternative view of the reform process in which growth-enhancing policies emerged from competition between promarket and conservative factions in Beijing.
313 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the etiology of endogenous institutional change lies in the informal coping strategies devised by local actors to evade the restrictions of formal institutions, and that with repetition and diffusion, these coping strategies may take on an institutional reality of their own.
Abstract: Under certain circumstances, the etiology of endogenous institutional change lies in the informal coping strategies devised by local actors to evade the restrictions of formal institutions. With repetition and diffusion, these informal coping strategies may take on an institutional reality of their own. The author calls the resulting norms and practices adaptive informal institutions because they represent creative responses to formal institutional environments that actors find too constraining. Adaptive informal institutions may then motivate elites to reform the original formal institutions. This contention is illustrated by three major institutional changes that have occurred in the course of China's private sector development since the late 1970s—the legalization of private enterprise, the admission of capitalists into the Chinese Communist Party, and the amendment of the state constitution to promote the private economy.
285 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the effect of specific federal traits (fiscal decentralization, fiscal transfers, and political co-partisanship) are conditional on a society's income level and ethnic composition.
Abstract: Both policy-makers and scholars have turned their attention to federalism as a means for managing conflicts between central governments and subnational interests. But both the theoretical literature and the empirical track record of federations make for opposing conclusions concerning federalism’s ability to prevent civil conflict. This paper argues that the existing literature falls short on two accounts: First, it lacks a systematic comparison of peaceful and conflict-ridden cases across federal states; second, many studies seem to suggest that there is one optimal mix of decentralization and centralization, while others acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all federal solution but leave this without further theorizing. Our argument is that the “peace-preserving” effect of specific federal traits—fiscal decentralization, fiscal transfers, and political co-partisanship—are conditional on a society’s income level and ethnic composition. The argument is tested across 22 federal states from 1978 to 2000.
199 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that the combined timing and content of the introduction of mass literacy was responsible for generating the national standards and comparisons that either sustained the legitimacy of communist party rule or led to its rapid and complete demise during the collapse of communist regimes.
Abstract: As communist regimes collapsed in the years 1989–91, communist parties and leaders exited power in roughly half the cases. The causes and the impact of this variation have generated considerable controversy. The authors show that the combined timing and content of the introduction of mass literacy was responsible for generating the national standards and comparisons that either sustained the legitimacy of communist party rule or led to its rapid and complete demise during the collapse of communist regimes. Mass literacy explains more of the patterns of the communist exit than do structural, modernization, or communist legacy accounts, and it provides a clear and sustained causal chain.
181 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the unintended gendered consequences of employment protection and vocational training systems are explored and a micrologic of skill investment by workers and employers is developed to identify the mechanism by which specific skills become disadvantageous for women.
Abstract: This article explores the unintended gendered consequences of employment protection and vocational training systems. It develops a micrologic of skill investment by workers and employers to identify the mechanism by which specific skills become disadvantageous for women. The central claim of the article is that institutions that encourage male investment in specific skills exacerbate occupational sex segregation. The article finds that coordinated market economies, because of their robust institutional protection of male skill investments, are generally more sex segregating than are liberal market economies. The empirical section provides cross-sectional analyses of advanced industrial countries.
157 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used the positions of the delegates of the EU's constitutional convention to examine bargaining in a setting with few formal rules, and they found that actors closer to the status quo hold a stronger bargaining position and that actors from larger member states are neither more likely nor less likely to win at the negotiating table than are actors from smaller states.
Abstract: In spite of the recent failure of two referendums, the drafting of a constitution for the second biggest economic power in the world, the European Union (EU), remains a major event in the history of European integration. Whether the constitution or a revised version of it will come into force or not, several important questions emerge. How did an increased number of twenty-five member states reach a conclusion, whereas a lower number of fifteen had failed at previous intergovernmental attempts? In particular, how did the constitutional convention differ from previous intergovernmental conferences (igcs) at which the EU exclusively bargained its treaty documents in the past? How can one explain the outcomes of the convention, which proposes redistribution of power and resources among twenty-five or more member states? This article uses the positions of the delegates of the EU's constitutional convention to examine bargaining in a setting with few formal rules. The authors use theoretical insights from a spatial model and new survey data to determine the implicit voting rule used at the convention. They find that the convention differed from previous igcs because the convention was governed by consensus, whereas previous EU bargains on treaties had always required unanimous support. The level of consensus was higher than simple majority rule but lower than unanimity. Since this threshold impacted who won and who lost at the convention, the authors also examine the sources of bargaining power, such as delegates' distance to the status quo, distance to the median, population size, and domestic constraints. The results confirm several findings in the EU bargaining and two-level game literature, for example, that actors closer to the status quo hold a stronger bargaining position and that actors from larger member states are neither more likely nor less likely to win at the negotiating table than are actors from smaller states. The findings on the irrelevance of domestic constraints also indicate why the popular votes in France and the Netherlands failed.
143 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that a focus on external influences is a growth area for good conceptual work only if it addresses the union of foreign and domestic influences, rather than treating them as stylized alternative explanations, and that outside actors should be considered as striving to influence the choices of existing domestic actors with whom they can be seen to form a kind of informal coalition.
Abstract: There has been a recent explosion of interest in the external influences on the political and economic transformations of postcommunist states. This article consolidates several analytical advances in this literature and distills three main functions of external actors, namely, to lengthen the time horizons ofpostcommunist politicians, to expand the circle of interested reformers, and t o deter opponents of reform. The article argues that a focus on external influences is a growth area for good conceptual work only if it addresses the union of foreign and domestic influences, rather than treating them as stylized alternative explanations. The central point is that outside actors should be considered as striving to influence the choices of existing domestic actors with whom they can be seen to form a kind of informal coalition. At bottom, outsiders do best through a combination of strategies: strengthening domestic actors already committed to their approach, winning over new domestic actors to their priorities, and preventing the unconvinced from obstructing reforms.
135 citations
TL;DR: This article examined mediation in conflicts using both a game-theoretic model and a quantitative analysis and found that mediation that targets asymmetric information is a highly effective form of conflict management.
Abstract: This article examines mediation in conflicts using both a game-theoretic model and a quantitative analysis. The game-theoretic model suggests that mediator effectiveness rests primarily on the ability of third parties to provide critical information about the disputants' reservation points. The empirical analysis finds that mediation that targets asymmetric information is a highly effective form of conflict management. Moreover, the results suggest that mediation outperforms other forms of third-party intervention, including those that entail coercion. Both the model and quantitative analysis indicate that impartial mediators will generally outperform biased ones. Along with providing new information on conflict management, the quantitative analysis also has broader implications for IR theory. The results provide empirical support for the rationalist claim that asymmetric information is one of the root causes of war.
135 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present evidence that electoral institutions affect the geographic distribution of both candidate electoral support and government resources, and highlight the connection between institutions and geographic patterns of representation, showing that Japanese representatives competing in multimember SNTV districts had more geographically concentrated electoral support than those competing in SMDs.
Abstract: This article presents evidence that electoral institutions affect the geographic distribution of both candidate electoral support and government resources. The author exploits two electoral reforms in Japan to identify the effect of institutional incentives: (1) the 1994 electoral reform from a multimember single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system to a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system with a single-member district (SMD) component and a proportional representation component; and (2) the 1925 electoral reform from a predominantly SMD system to a multimember SNTV system. Using several new data sets, the two main findings of this article are that (1) Japanese representatives competing in multimember SNTV districts had more geographically concentrated electoral support than those competing in SMDs and that (2) intergovernmental transfers appear to be more concentrated around Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) incumbents' home offices under the multimember SNTV system than under the MMM system. The findings in this article highlight the connection between institutions and geographic patterns of representation.
110 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that leader effects were extremely large, in many cases accounting for over one-third of all variation in the outcomes of the national discussions in the country of Sao Tome and Principe.
Abstract: Despite a widespread trend toward the adoption of increasingly participatory approaches to political decision making in developing countries, there is little or no evidence that these practices in fact return the benefits attributed to them. This article investigates one specific worry—that participatory decision-making processes may be vulnerable to manipulation by elites. The authors report on a field experiment, drawing on a unique nationwide experiment in democratic deliberation in Sao Tome and Principe in which the discussion leaders were randomly assigned across meetings. The randomization procedure provides a rare opportunity to identify the impact of leaders on the outcomes of group deliberations. They find that leader effects were extremely large, in many cases accounting for over one-third of all variation in the outcomes of the national discussions. These results have important implications for the design of such deliberative practices. While the total effect of leadership cannot be assessed, it may still be possible to observe when leader influence occurs and to correct for leader effects in comparisons of outcomes across deliberations.
TL;DR: This paper conducted a statistical analysis of all interstate wars from 1900 to 2003 and found no evidence that signatories of The Hague or Geneva Conventions intentionally kill fewer civilians during war than do nonsignatories.
Abstract: Do the international laws of war effectively protect civilian populations from deliberate attack? In a statistical analysis of all interstate wars from 1900 to 2003 the authors find no evidence that signatories of The Hague or Geneva Conventions intentionally kill fewer civilians during war than do nonsignatories. This result holds for democratic signatories and for wars in which both sides are parties to the treaty. Nor do they find evidence that a state's regime type or the existence of ethnic or religious differences between combatants explains the variation in civilian targeting. They find strong support, however, for their theoretical framework, which suggests that combatants seek to kill enemy civilians when they believe that doing so will coerce their adversaries into early surrender or undermine their adversaries' war-related domestic production. The authors find that states fighting wars of attrition or counterinsurgency, states fighting for expansive war aims, and states fighting wars of long duration kill significantly more civilians than states in other kinds of wars.
TL;DR: This paper reviewed four recent books that bring democracy's first wave "back in" to mainstream political science, concluding that it was marked by its own share of concessions and uncertainties, indicating the enduring relevance of Europe's democratization for contemporary cases.
Abstract: How was democracy achieved in nineteenth-century Europe? This article reviews fours recent books that bring democracy's first wave "back in" to mainstream political science. By launching an important two-way interchange between earlier and subsequent waves of democratization, the books address three core questions: what prompts democratic openings; who are the most important actors in the push for democratization; and once undertaken, how is democracy secured. The four works offer different and at times competing answers to these questions, but all suggest that democracy's first wave was neither exceptional nor inevitable. Instead, it was marked by its own share of concessions and uncertainties, indicating the enduring relevance of Europe's democratization for contemporary cases.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the impact of geographical proximity to the West and of Western aid on democracy in Russia's regions and advanced a geographic incrementalist theory of democratization, finding that the EU shows commitment to democratic reform particularly in, but not limited to, regions located on its eastern frontier.
Abstract: The article examines the impact of geographical proximity to the West and of Western aid on democracy in Russia's regions and advances a geographic incrementalist theory of democratization. Even when national politicians exhibit authoritarian tendencies, diffusion processes and targeted foreign aid help advance democratization at the subnational level in postcommunist states and other settings. The authors make this case by conducting process-tracing case studies of democratic institution building in two northwestern border regions and statistical analysis of over one thousand projects that the European Union carried out in Russia's localities over fourteen years. They find that the EU shows commitment to democratic reform particularly in, but not limited to, regions located on its eastern frontier. Over time, this, as well as diffusion processes from the West, positively affects the democratic trajectory of the respective regions even if they had been more closed to begin with compared to other regions.
TL;DR: In a survey of 660 businesspeople conducted in Russia in 2005, this paper found that the original sin of an illegal privatization is difficult to expunge and, contrary to a "Coasian" view of privatization, property rights transferred through a legally questionable privatization are seen as illegitimate long after privatization.
Abstract: Are property rights obtained through dubious means forever tainted with original sin, or can right holders make their ill-gotten gains legitimate by doing good works? This is a critical question for developing and transition countries, where privatization is often opaque and businesspeople may receive property, but remain unwilling to use it productively due to concerns about the vulnerability of their rights to political challenge. Using a survey of 660 businesspeople conducted in Russia in 2005, the author finds that the original sin of an illegal privatization is difficult to expunge. Contrary to a “Coasian” view of privatization, property rights transferred through a legally questionable privatization are seen as illegitimate long after privatization. Busi-nesspeople, however, can improve the legitimacy of property rights by doing good works, such as providing public goods and using their assets well. Finally, managers who provide public goods for their region are more likely to invest in their firms than those who do not. This suggests a possible political rationale for the provision of public goods by privatefirms.Thesefindingshave implications for studies of privatization, property rights, and business-state relations in transitions and developing countries.
TL;DR: The authors investigates whether democratic states enfranchise their aliens in response to international, transnational, or domestic factors, finding that political parties and judiciaries affect opportunities for aliens in ways the existing scholarship fails to explain.
Abstract: Why would democracies extend to aliens a right they historically have reserved for citizens—the right to vote? Some scholars argue that transnational movements and global norms increasingly moderate how states treat their aliens. If so, this is important evidence of a change in the meaning and content of sovereignty. This article investigates whether democratic states enfranchise their aliens in response to international, transnational, or domestic factors. While the article finds little support for transnational or systemic arguments, it also finds that political parties and judiciaries affect opportunities for aliens in ways the existing scholarship fails to explain. These findings suggest that both comparative and IR scholarship need to revisit their explanations for contemporary citizenship politics in democracies.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that when ethnic federations undergoing democratization promote or discourage regional secessionism, the incentives of regional leaders shift, forcing them to react to local constituency in order to retain office.
Abstract: Do ethnic federations undergoing democratization promote or discourage regional secessionism? This article argues, based on evidence from the Russian Federation, that when democratization produces a transfer of political accountability from center to region, the incentives of regional leaders shift, forcing them to react to local constituencies in order to retain office. If these constituencies desire autonomy, regional leaders must respond, making separatism not merely an opportunistic strategy but a necessary one for their own political survival. Democratization, then, can transform administrative regions into electoral arenas. However, the case of Russia also demonstrates that regional demands for autonomy are not inevitable and may dissipate after they have begun. Popular support for nationalism and separatism varied significantly among Russia's sixteen ethnic republics in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period. This variation is explained by showing that mass nationalism, contrary to conventional wisdom, is neither a latent attribute of federal regions, nor a simple function of natural resource endowments, nor something summoned into existence by the manipulations of regional leaders. Rather, it is argued that increasing competition for jobs in the Soviet Union's failing economy allowed particular issues articulated by nationalist leaders to resonate with ethnic populations. Through the framing of issues of ethnic economic inequality, nationalist leaders were able to politicize ethnicity by persuading people to view their personal life chances as dependent on the political fate of their ethnic community. Thus, secession in democratizing ethnic federations can be best understood by directing attention toward the origins of popular support for nationalism and the role that support plays in the elite contest for power within subfederal regions.
TL;DR: This article examined how repression in semiauthoritarian regimes affects collective action by comparing antiwar protests during Russia's first (1994) and second (1999) Chechen wars and found that despite the Kremlin's increasingly heavy hand, antiwar actions have grown in size and frequency over the course of Putin's tenure.
Abstract: This article examines how repression in semiauthoritarian regimes affects collective action by comparing antiwar protesting during Russia's first (1994â96) and second (1999â) Chechen wars. Vladimir Putin's creeping authoritarianism acts as a "natural experiment" where we can study collective action before, during, and after the introduction of restrictive measures. Two key findings emerge. First, despite the Kremlin's increasingly heavy hand, antiwar actions have grown in size and frequency over the course of Putin's tenure. Second, the movement's failure to replicate its Yeltsin-era success in forcing a peace, albeit temporary, in Chechnya is due to organizational culture, not state repression. Indeed, the antiwar movement's prevailing cultural norms have undercut mobilization by locking activists into using symbolic appeals that ring hollow among Russians. Activists are thus unable to wield latent antiwar sentiment as a cudgel to entrap the Kremlin into reversing course. This argument is supported by a protest data set, primary documents, interviews, and participant observation.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used the positions of the delegates of the EU's constitutional convention to examine bargaining in a setting with few formal rules, and found that actors closer to the status quo hold a stronger bargaining position and that actors from larger member states are neither more likely nor less likely to win at the negotiating table than are actors from smaller states.
Abstract: In spite of the recent failure of two referendums, the drafting of a constitution for the second biggest economic power in the world, the European Union (EU), remains a major event in the history of European integration. Whether the constitution or a revised version of it will come into force or not, several important questions emerge. How did an increased number of twentyfive member states reach a conclusion, whereas a lower number of fifteen had failed at previous intergovernmental attempts? In particular, how did the constitutional convention differ from previous intergovernmental conferences (iGCs) at which the EU exclusively bargained its treaty documents in the past? How can one explain the outcomes of the convention, which proposes redistribution of power and resources among twenty-five or more member states? This article uses the positions of the delegates of the EU's constitutional convention to examine bargaining in a setting with few formal rules. The authors use theoretical insights from a spatial model and new survey data to determine the implicit voting rule used at the convention. They find that the convention differed from previous IGCs because the convention was governed by consensus, whereas previous EU bargains on treaties had always required unanimous support. The level of consensus was higher than simple majority rule but lower than unanimity. Since this threshold impacted who won and who lost at the convention, the authors also examine the sources of bargaining power, such as delegates' distance to the status quo, distance to the median, population size, and domestic constraints. The results confirm several findings in the EU bargaining and two-level game literature, for example, that actors closer to the status quo hold a stronger bargaining position and that actors from larger member states are neither more likely nor less likely to win at the negotiating table than are actors from smaller states. The findings on the irrelevance of domestic constraints also indicate why the popular votes in France and the Netherlands failed.