Positions of power
The Churches' Bans on Consanguineous Marriages, Kin-Networks and Democracy
Jonathan Schulz
Yale Working Paper, November 2016
Abstract:
This paper highlights the role of kin-networks for the functioning of democracy: countries with strong extended families as characterized by a high level of cousin marriages exhibit a weak rule of law and are more likely autocratic. To assess causality, I exploit a quasi-natural experiment. In the early medieval ages the Church started to prohibit kin-marriages. Using the variation in the duration and extent of the Eastern and Western Churches’ bans on consanguineous marriages as instrumental variables, reveals highly significant point estimates of the percentage of cousin marriage on an index of democracy. An additional novel instrument, cousin-terms, strengthens this point: the estimates are very similar and do not rest on the European experience alone. Exploiting within country variation of cousin marriages in Italy, as well as within variation of a ‘societal marriage pressure’ indicator for a larger set of countries support these results. These findings point to a causal effect of marriage patterns on the proper functioning of formal institutions and democracy. The study further suggests that the Churches’ marriage rules - by destroying extended kin-groups - led Europe on its special path of institutional and democratic development.
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Reassessing the Quality of Government in China
Margaret Boittin, Greg Distelhorst & Francis Fukuyama
Stanford Working Paper, November 2016
Abstract:
How should the quality of government be measured across disparate national contexts? This study develops a new approach using an original survey of Chinese civil servants and a comparison to the United States. We surveyed over 2,500 Chinese municipal officials on three organizational features of their bureaucracies: meritocracy, individual autonomy, and morale. They report greater meritocracy than U.S. federal employees in almost all American agencies. China's edge is smaller in autonomy and markedly smaller in morale. Differences between the U.S. and China lessen, but do not disappear, after adjusting for respondent demographics and excluding respondents most likely to be influenced by social desirability biases. Our findings contrast with numerous indices of good government that rank the U.S. far above China. They suggest that incorporating the opinions of political insiders into quality of government indices may challenge the foundations of a large body of cross-national governance research.
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Inequality, Economic Development, and Democratization
Christian Houle
Studies in Comparative International Development, December 2016, Pages 503–529
Abstract:
Although multiple theories suggest that economic development and inequality somehow affect democratization, these claims have received only limited empirical support. I contend that much of the confusion stems from the implicit assumption held by the literature that development and inequality affect democratization independently of one another. In this paper, I argue that the effect of income distribution on democratization is in fact contingent on the income level: in middle-income countries inequality fosters democratization; in rich countries, however, it harms democratization. Using a data set covering almost all autocracies between 1960 and 2007, I find evidence consistent with my hypothesis.
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Corruption and Political Stability: Does the Youth Bulge Matter?
Mohammad Reza Farzanegan & Stefan Witthuhn
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study shows that the relative size of the youth bulge matters in how corruption affects the internal stability of a political system. Using panel data covering the 1984–2012 period for more than 100 countries, we find that the effect of corruption on political stability depends on the youth bulge. Corruption is a destabilizing factor for political systems when the share of the youth population in the adult population exceeds a critical level of approximately 20%. The moderating effect of the youth bulge in the stability–corruption nexus is robust, controlling for country and year fixed effects, a set of control variables that may affect internal political stability, an alternative operationalization of the youth bulge, corruption, and a dynamic panel estimation method.
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Andrew Little
Games and Economic Behavior, March 2017, Pages 224–232
Abstract:
I develop a theory of propaganda which affects mass behavior without necessarily affecting mass beliefs. A group of citizens observe a signal of their government's performance, which is upwardly inflated by propaganda. Citizens want to support the government if it performs well and if others are supportive (i.e., to coordinate). Some citizens are unaware of the propaganda (“credulous”). Because of the coordination motive, the non-credulous still respond to propaganda, and when the coordination motive dominates they perfectly mimic the actions of the credulous. So, all can act as if they believe the government's lies even though most do not. The government benefits from this responsiveness to manipulation since it leads to a more compliant citizenry, but uses more propaganda precisely when citizens are less responsive.
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Friederike Sadowski, Héctor Carvacho & Andreas Zick
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
While conducting a survey in Egypt in the summer of 2013, we were interrupted by the ouster of President Morsi, but continued afterward, resulting in a unique sample set. With these data, we were able to investigate, with a quasi-experimental design, the impact of the ouster, a major turning point in the Egyptian revolution, on the attitudes of Egyptians regarding political participation, the role of religion in politics, and Islamist ideology. After the ouster, overall willingness to participate in politics, whether in form of demonstrations, voting, or strikes, declined. Regarding the role of religion in politics, participants favored less involvement of religion in politics after the ouster. The attitude towards jihadism facet of Islamist ideology changed slightly from strong disagreement to disagreement. Besides the ouster, a factor generally affecting the political attitudes was education: the more highly educated individuals were the more willingness they showed to become politically active. Another factor was the general religious orientation: the more religious individuals were the more important for them was religion for politics. However, the religious orientation had no effect on the attitude towards Islamist ideology.
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Colonial Legacy, Polarization and Linguistic Disenfranchisement: The Case of the Sri Lankan War
Paul Castañeda Dower, Victor Ginsburgh & Shlomo Weber
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We introduce a new ethnolinguistic polarization measure that takes into account the impact of historical factors on intergroup relations in Sri Lanka. During the colonial era, intergroup relations changed considerably due, in part, to the uneven spread of the English language on the island and its role in British governance. Accordingly, our measure is sensitive to regional differences in English language acquisition before independence. By using a data set on victims of terrorist attacks by district and war period during the protracted war in Sri Lanka, we find that our measure is more strongly correlated with the number of victims, and is associated with 70% more victims, on average, than is a polarization measure based on the context-independent linguistic distances between groups. Thus, the historical underpinnings of our measure illustrate in a quantitative manner the relevance of history for understanding patterns of civil conflict.
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Of terrorism and revenue: Why foreign aid exacerbates terrorism in personalist regimes
Andrew Boutton
Conflict Management and Peace Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
States hosting terrorist groups often receive foreign aid from donors who have an interest in reducing the level of terrorism in these countries. However, existing work is inconclusive on the question of whether such aid is effective at bringing about favorable counterterrorism outcomes. Aid scholars argue that the political structure of the recipient regime is an important determinant of development aid effectiveness. I apply this logic to the topic of counterterrorism aid and argue that the effects of foreign aid on terrorism will be conditional on recipient political incentives. In particular, personalist dictatorships are unique in their reliance upon external sources of revenue with which to keep their regimes afloat. Thus, rents from foreign aid encourage these regimes to become counterterrorism “racketeers”, offering their services in exchange for a fee. But rather than fixing the problem, they perpetuate it, as their survival is conditional upon a perpetual security threat. Using a variety of data on regime type, terrorist attacks, and terrorist group duration, I find that in personalist regimes, US aid significantly increases levels of terrorist activity. This paper contributes to the literature linking foreign aid and terrorism by considering domestic politics as an important determinant of counterterrorism aid effectiveness.
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The Economic Origins of Conflict in Africa
Eoin McGuirk & Marshall Burke
NBER Working Paper, January 2017
Abstract:
We study the impact of plausibly exogenous global food price shocks on local violence across the African continent. In food-producing areas, higher food prices reduce conflict over the control of territory (what we call “factor conflict”) and increase conflict over the appropriation of surplus (“output conflict”). We argue that this difference arises because higher prices raise the opportunity cost of soldiering for producers, while simultaneously inducing net consumers to appropriate increasingly valuable surplus as their real wages fall. In regions without crop agriculture, higher food prices increase both factor conflict and output conflict, as poor consumers turn to soldiering and appropriation in order to maintain a minimum consumption target. We validate local-level findings on output conflict using geocoded survey data on interpersonal theft and violence against commercial farmers and traders. Ignoring the distinction between producer and consumer effects leads to attenuated estimates. Our findings help reconcile a growing but ambiguous literature on the economic roots of conflict.
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Refugees, Economic Capacity, and Host State Repression
Thorin Wright & Shweta Moorthy
International Interactions, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does hosting refugees affect state repression? While there have been numerous studies that examine the link between refugees and the spread of civil and international conflict, an examination of the systematic links between refugees and repression is lacking. We contend that researchers are missing a crucial link, as the dissent-repression nexus is crucial to understanding the development of armed conflict. Drawing upon logics of the relationship between refugees and the spread of conflict as well as economic capacity, we argue that increased numbers of refugees leads to increased repression. We contend that willingness to increase repression when hosting refugees is in part conditional on a host state’s economic capacity. We argue that, on the whole, the greater the population of refugees in a host state, repression becomes more likely. That said, we argue that increased economic capacity will moderate this relationship. We find empirical support for both predictions.
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Economic Breakdown and Collective Action
Neal Caren, Sarah Gaby & Catherine Herrold
Social Problems, forthcoming
Abstract:
While social movement scholarship has emphasized the role of activists in socially constructing grievances, we contend that material adversity is a reoccurring precondition of anti-state mobilization. We test the effect of economic decline on the count of large-scale, anti-government demonstrations and riots. Using multiple sources of newspaper reports of contentious events across 145 countries during the period 1960-2006, we find a statistically significant negative relationship between economic growth and the number of contentious events, controlling for a variety of state-governance, demographic, and media characteristics. We find that the effect is strongest under conditions of extreme economic decline and in non-democracies. These findings highlight the need for social movement scholars to take seriously the role of economic performance as an important factor that enables mobilization.
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Autocratic Rule and Social Capital: Evidence from Imperial China
Melanie Meng Xue & Mark Koyama
George Mason University Working Paper, November 2016
Abstract:
This paper studies the consequences of autocratic rule for social capital in the context of imperial China. Between 1660-1788, individuals were persecuted if they were suspected of subversive attitudes towards the autocratic ruler. Using a difference-in-differences approach, our main finding is that these persecutions led to an average decline of 38% in the number of charitable organizations in each subsequent decade. To investigate the long-run effect of persecutions, we examine the impact that they had on the provision of local public goods. During this period, local public goods, such as basic education, relied primarily on voluntary contributions and local cooperation. We show that persecutions are associated with lower provision of basic education suggesting that they permanently reduced social capital. This is consistent with what we find in modern survey data: persecutions left a legacy of mistrust and political apathy.
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Amy Liu
Democratization, forthcoming
Abstract:
What explains minority language recognition? Why are some governments more responsive than others to minority linguistic demands? While there are reasons to believe democracies – as protectors of civil liberties – are generally more likely to recognize minority demands, I argue only those without a sizable majority extend such recognition to the highest levels. This is because the dominance of one large linguistic group electorally impedes a democratic government’s ability to grant such benefits to the smaller ones. I test this argument by using a newly constructed measure of minority language recognition. This variable identifies whether a minority language is used in public education, and if so, it differentiates between instruction of and instruction in a minority language. I find that while democracies are indeed more likely to acknowledge minority languages, the effects are conditional: only those without a majority are able or willing to accommodate minorities to the fullest extent. Otherwise, when there is a tyranny of the majority, democracies behave no differently than their dictatorial counterparts. The results – robust to different measurements of majoritarian politics – hold important implications for our understanding of democracy and its ability to satisfy demands in divided societies.