;Blair, Graeme (University of California, Los Angeles),Christia, Fotini (Massachusetts Institute of Technology),Weinstein, Jeremy M. (Stanford University, California)
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Leaders of political parties often have to choose between conflicting objectives, such as influence on policy, control of the government, and support among the voters. This book examines the behaviour of political parties in situations where they experience conflict between two or more important objectives. The volume contains a theoretical introduction and case studies of party leaders in Germany, Italy, France and Spain as well as six smaller European democracies. Each case focuses on the behaviour of one of several parties in situations of goal conflict, such as the 'historic compromise' in Italy, the 1982 Wende in West Germany, the making of the new Swedish constitution in the 1970s, and the termination of the Austrian 'black-red' grand coalition. In their conclusions, the editors discuss how such leadership decisions can be understood and examine the causes of different choices among party leaders.
This book focuses on some of the most important political-economic changes in advanced industrialized countries over the past two decades, namely, the sharp rise in unemployment in some countries and the growth of inequality in others. Using a variety of methodological approaches, the essays provide different pieces to this puzzle and explain how economic outcomes may be linked to macroeconomic policies and wage bargaining practices. Focusing on the experiences of northern European countries, the book also explores the intersection of partisan politics, the international economy, and nationally specific institutions.
Why do some governing parties limit their opportunistic behaviour and constrain the extraction of private gains from the state? This analysis of post-communist state reconstruction provides surprising answers to this fundamental question of party politics. Across the post-communist democracies, governing parties have opportunistically reconstructed the state - simultaneously exploiting it by extracting state resources and building new institutions that further such extraction. They enfeebled or delayed formal state institutions of monitoring and oversight, established new discretionary structures of state administration, and extracted enormous informal profits from the privatization of the communist economy. By examining how post-communist political parties rebuilt the state in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, Grzymala-Busse explains how even opportunistic political parties will limit their corrupt behaviour and abuse of
This eminently readable 1994 collection of high-quality, country-specific essays on Third World politics provides, through a variety of well-integrated themes and approaches, an examination of 'state theory' as it has been practised in the past, and how it must be refined for the future. The contributors go beyond the previously articulated 'bringing the state back in' model to offer their own 'state-in-society' approach. They argue that states, which should be disaggregated for meaningful comparative study, are best analysed as parts of societies. States may help mould, but are also continually moulded by, the societies within which they are embedded. States' capacities, further, will vary depending on their ties to other social forces. And other social forces will be capable of being mobilised into political contention only under certain conditions. Political contention pitting states against other social forces may sometimes be mutually enfeebling, but at other times, mutually empow
Just when Japan and the United States are both caught up in a major debate over the effectiveness of their governments this volume offers new explanations of their comparative strengths and weaknesses. Why can Japan keep building nuclear power plants while it is has a hard time building an information superhighway? Why is the opposite the case in the United States? Will political reform change public policy in Japan? Would it make a difference in the United States? This volume explains why and how. This is one of the few volumes on the two countries that offers detailed studies of value to policy makers plus scholars and students of comparative policy, comparative foreign policy, and comparative economic policy. It can serve the needs of courses dealing with both politics and economics.
In an in-depth comparative and long-term analysis, first published in 2004, Daniele Caramani studies the macro-historical process of the nationalization of politics. Using a great wealth of data on single constituencies in seventeen West European countries, he reconstructs the territorial structures of electoral support for political parties, as well as their evolution since the mid-nineteenth century from highly fragmented politics in the early stages toward nation-wide alignments. Caramani provides a multi-pronged empirical analysis through time, across countries, and between party families. The inclusion in the analysis of all the most important social and political cleavages - class, state-church, rural-urban, ethno-linguistic and religious - allows him to assess the nationalizing impact of the class cleavage that emerged from national and industrial revolutions, and the resistance of preindustrial cultural factors to national integration. Institutional and socio-economic factors a
This book examines the causal impact of ideology through a comparative-historical analysis of three cases of 'post-imperial democracy': the early Third Republic in France (1870–86); the Weimar Republic in Germany (1918–34); and post-Soviet Russia (1992–2008). Hanson argues that political ideologies are typically necessary for the mobilization of enduring, independent national party organizations in uncertain democracies. By presenting an explicit and desirable picture of the political future, successful ideologues induce individuals to embrace a long-run strategy of cooperation with other converts. When enough new converts cooperate in this way, it enables sustained collective action to defend and extend party power. Successful party ideologies thus have the character of self-fulfilling prophecies: by portraying the future polity as one organized to serve the interests of those loyal to specific ideological principles, they help to bring political organizations centered on these princ
Stuffing the Ballot Box is a pioneering study of electoral fraud and reform. It focuses on Costa Rica, a country where parties gradually transformed a fraud-ridden political system into one renowned for its stability and fair elections by the mid-twentieth century. Lehoucq and Molina draw upon a unique database of more than 1,300 accusations of ballot-rigging to show that parties denounced fraud where electoral laws made the struggle for power more competitive. They explain how institutional arrangements generated opportunities for executives to assemble legislative coalitions to enact far-reaching reforms. This book also argues that nonpartisan commissions should run elections and explains why splitting responsibility over election affairs between the executive and the legislature is a recipe for partisan rancour and political conflict. Stuffing the Ballot Box will interest a broad array of political and social scientists, constitutional scholars, historians, election specialists and
This book argues that the post-1970 rise in international capital mobility has not contributed to the retrenchment of developed welfare states. Nor has globalization reduced the revenue-raising capacities of governments and undercut the political institutions that support the welfare state. Rather, institutional features of the polity and the welfare state determine the extent to which the economic and political pressures associated with globalization produce welfare state retrenchment. In systems characterized by electoral institutions, social corporatist interest representation and policy-making, centralized political authority, and social insurance-based program structures, pro-welfare state interests are favored. In nations characterized by majoritarian electoral institutions, pluralist interest representation and policy-making, decentralization of policy-making authority, and liberal program structure, the economic and political pressures attendant on globalization are translated
Why did the nation-state emerge and proliferate across the globe? How is this process related to the wars fought in the modern era? Analyzing datasets that cover the entire world over long stretches of time, Andreas Wimmer focuses on changing configurations of power and legitimacy to answer these questions. The nationalist ideal of self-rule gradually diffused over the world and delegitimized empire after empire. Nationalists created nation-states wherever the power configuration favored them, often at the end of prolonged wars of secession. The elites of many of these new states were institutionally too weak for nation-building and favored their own ethnic communities. Ethnic rebels challenged such exclusionary power structures in violation of the principles of self-rule, and neighboring governments sometimes intervened into these struggles over the state. Waves of War demonstrates why nation-state formation and ethnic politics are crucial to understand the civil and international war
Indigenous people in Latin America have mobilized in unprecedented ways - demanding recognition, equal protection, and subnational autonomy. These are remarkable developments in a region where ethnic cleavages were once universally described as weak. Recently, however, indigenous activists and elected officials have increasingly shaped national political deliberations. Deborah Yashar explains the contemporary and uneven emergence of Latin American indigenous movements - addressing both why indigenous identities have become politically salient in the contemporary period and why they have translated into significant political organizations in some places and not others. She argues that ethnic politics can best be explained through a comparative historical approach that analyzes three factors: changing citizenship regimes, social networks, and political associational space. Her argument provides insight into the fragility and unevenness of Latin America's third wave democracies and has br
The end of the Cold War demonstrated the historical possibility of peaceful change and seemingly showed the superiority of non-realist approaches in International Relations. Yet in the post-Cold War period many European countries have experienced a resurgence of a distinctively realist tradition: geopolitics. Geopolitics is an approach which emphasizes the relationship between politics and power on the one hand; and territory, location and environment on the other. This comparative study shows how the revival of geopolitics came not despite, but because of, the end of the Cold War. Disoriented in their self-understandings and conception of external roles by the events of 1989, many European foreign policy actors used the determinism of geopolitical thought to find their place in world politics quickly. The book develops a constructivist methodology to study causal mechanisms and its comparative approach allows for a broad assessment of some of the fundamental dynamics of European secur
This book examines and evaluates various private initiatives to enforce fair labor standards within global supply chains. Using unique data (internal audit reports and access to more than 120 supply chain factories and 700 interviews in 14 countries) from several major global brands, including NIKE, HP and the International Labor Organization's Factory Improvement Programme in Vietnam, this book examines both the promise and the limitations of different approaches to actually improve working conditions, wages and working hours for the millions of workers employed in today's global supply chains. Through a careful, empirically grounded analysis of these programs, this book illustrates the mix of private and public regulation needed to address these complex issues in a global economy.
Nearly half of all countries emerging from civil conflict relapse into war within a few years of signing a peace agreement. The postwar trajectories of armed groups vary from organizational cohesion to dissolution, demilitarization to remilitarization. In Organized Violence after Civil War, Daly analyzes evidence from thirty-seven militia groups in Colombia, demonstrating that the primary driving force behind these changes is the variation in recruitment patterns within, and between, the warring groups. She documents the transition from war to peace through interviews with militia commanders, combatants and victims. Using rich ex-combatant survey data and geo-coded information on violence over fifty years of war, Daly explains the dynamics inside armed organizations and the strategic interactions among them. She also shows how the theory may be used beyond Colombia, both within the region of Latin America and across the rest of the world.
Why are some places in the world characterized by better social service provision and welfare outcomes than others? In a world in which millions of people, particularly in developing countries, continue to lead lives plagued by illiteracy and ill-health, understanding the conditions that promote social welfare is of critical importance to political scientists and policy makers alike. Drawing on a multi-method study, from the late-nineteenth century to the present, of the stark variations in educational and health outcomes within a large, federal, multiethnic developing country - India - this book develops an argument for the power of collective identity as an impetus for state prioritization of social welfare. Such an argument not only marks an important break from the dominant negative perceptions of identity politics but also presents a novel theoretical framework to understand welfare provision.
Secure property rights are central to economic development and stable government, yet difficult to create. Relying on surveys in Russia from 2000 to 2012, Timothy Frye examines how political power, institutions, and norms shape property rights for firms. Through a series of simple survey experiments, Property Rights and Property Wrongs explores how political power, personal connections, elections, concerns for reputation, legal facts, and social norms influence property rights disputes from hostile corporate takeovers to debt collection to renationalization. This work argues that property rights in Russia are better seen as an evolving bargain between rulers and rightholders than as simply a reflection of economic transition, Russian culture, or a weak state. The result is a nuanced view of the political economy of Russia that contributes to central debates in economic development, comparative politics, and legal studies.
This book argues that Latin America has a distinctive, enduring form of hierarchical capitalism characterized by multinational corporations, diversified business groups, low skills and segmented labor markets. Over time, institutional complementarities knit features of corporate governance and labor markets together and thus contribute to institutional resiliency. Political systems generally favored elites and insiders who further reinforced existing institutions and complementarities. Hierarchical capitalism has not promoted rising productivity, good jobs or equitable development, and the efficacy of development strategies to promote these outcomes depends on tackling negative institutional complementarities. This book is intended to open a new debate on the nature of capitalism in Latin America and link that discussion to related research on comparative capitalism in other parts of the world.
