Dictatorial
Media Disruption and Revolutionary Unrest: Evidence From Mubarak's Quasi-Experiment
Navid Hassanpour
Political Communication, Winter 2014, Pages 1-24
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom suggests that universal lapses in media connectivity — for example, disruption of Internet and cell phone access — have a negative effect on political mobilization. On the contrary, I argue that sudden and ubiquitous interruption of mass communication can facilitate revolutionary mobilization and proliferate decentralized contention. A dynamic threshold model for participation in network collective action is used to demonstrate that full connectivity in a social network can hinder revolutionary action. I exploit a decision by Mubarak's regime to disrupt Internet and mobile communication during the 2011 Egyptian uprising to provide an empirical test for the hypothesis. An interrupted time series inference strategy is used to gauge the impact of media disruption on the dispersion of the protests. The evidence is corroborated using historical, anecdotal, and statistical accounts. In line with the theory, the results of a survey among Egyptian protesters show a significant decline in the percentage of participation in Tahrir Square as a fraction of total participation across Cairo on the first day of media disruption.
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Erasmus Kersting & Christopher Kilby
European Economic Review, April 2014, Pages 125–143
Abstract:
This paper uses Freedom House ratings to assess the impact of foreign aid on democracy. We employ an interval regression to account for Freedom House's method of rating countries. A cross-sectional analysis examining the long run effect of aid on democracy in 122 countries between 1972 and 2011 finds a significant positive relationship that survives various tests for endogeneity. A short run annual panel analysis of 156 countries between 1985 and 2011 explores whether aid operates through leverage and conditionality. We present evidence that i) donors allocate aid in response to democratization and ii) recipient countries respond to this incentive for democratic reform. Our identification strategy relies on the reduced importance of democratization in the allocation of aid to geopolitically important countries.
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Income, inequality, and the stability of democracy – Another look at the Lipset hypothesis
Florian Jung & Uwe Sunde
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies the endogenous emergence of political regimes, in particular democracy, oligarchy and mass dictatorship, in societies in which productive resources are distributed unequally and institutions do not ensure political commitments. The political regime is shown to depend not only on income levels, but, in particular, on resource inequality. The main results imply that under any economic environment a distribution of resources exists such that democracy is the political outcome. This distribution is independent of the particular income level if the income share generated by the poor is sufficiently large. On the other hand, there are distributions of resources for which democracy is infeasible in equilibrium regardless of the level of economic development. The model also delivers results on the stability of democracy. Variations in inequality across several dimensions due to unbalanced technological change, immigration or changes in the demographic structure affect the scope for democracy or may even lead to its breakdown. Among other historical examples, the results are consistent with the different political regimes that emerged in Germany after its unification in 1871.
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Perverse Complementarity: Political Connections and the Use of Courts among Private Firms in China
Yuen Yuen Ang & Nan Jia
Journal of Politics, April 2014, Pages 318-332
Abstract:
Using survey data of over 3,900 private firms in China, we examine whether — and how — political connections promote or undermine the use of formal legal institutions. We find that politically connected firms are more inclined than nonconnected firms to use courts over informal avenues of dispute resolution. Furthermore, by comparing the effects of political connections on dispute-resolution patterns across regional institutional environments, we find that “know-who” (political influence over adjudication) dominates “know-how” (knowledge of navigating courts) in linking political connections to the use of courts. Contrary to canonical theories that predict the declining significance of connections following the expansion of courts, our study suggests that informal networks and formal laws are more likely to share a relationship of perverse complementarity in transitional and authoritarian contexts. Political connections are positively linked to the use of legal procedures, and the primary mechanism behind the link is “know-who” over “know-how.”
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Xin He
Law & Social Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Housing demolition has been one of the major sources of social conflict in contemporary China. Drawing on evidence collected in fieldwork investigations, this article examines the pressure of protest-supported housing demolition litigation and its impacts. It finds that under the pressure of litigation, the courts have devised coping mechanisms to constrain the housing demolition authorities, and that social change angling toward more transparency and accountability has occurred. The article argues that this change is made possible as the maintenance of social stability has become not only the paramount concern of the regime, but also the performance assessment criterion for local officials and judges. The findings deepen our understanding of the causes and consequences of judicial empowerment in China and shed light on the dynamics of judicial politics in other regimes.
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Ecology, Trade, and States in Pre-Colonial Africa
James Fenske
Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming
Abstract:
State capacity matters for growth. I test Bates' explanation of pre-colonial African states. He argues that trade across ecological boundaries promoted states. I find that African societies in ecologically diverse environments had more centralized states. This is robust to reverse causation, omitted heterogeneity, and alternative interpretations of the link between diversity and states. The result survives including non-African societies. I test mechanisms connecting trade to states, and find that trade supported class stratification between rulers and ruled. I underscore the importance of ethnic institutions and inform our knowledge of the effects of trade on institutions.
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Are democratic sanctions really counterproductive?
Christian von Soest & Michael Wahman
Democratization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that sanctions have a negative impact on the level of democracy in targeted authoritarian countries. This runs counter to substantive comparative literature on democratization which finds that economic stress is connected with regime collapse and democratic liberalization. To solve this puzzle, we focus on the effects of “democratic sanctions” (those that explicitly aim to promote democracy) which have become the most common type of sanction issued against authoritarian states. We introduce a new data set of imposed sanctions in the period 1990–2010 that clearly separates sanctions according to the explicit goal of the sender. Our cross-sectional time-series analysis demonstrates that although sanctions as a whole do not generally increase the level of democracy, there is in fact a significant correlation between democratic sanctions and increased levels of democracy in targeted authoritarian countries. A fundamental mechanism leading to this outcome is the increased instability of authoritarian rule as democratic sanctions are significantly associated with a higher probability of regime and leadership change.
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How Aid Targets Votes: The Impact of Electoral Incentives on Foreign Aid Distribution
Ryan Jablonski
World Politics, April 2014, Pages 293-330
Abstract:
Despite allegations that foreign aid promotes corruption and patronage, little is known about how recipient governments' electoral incentives influence aid spending. This article proposes a distributional politics model of aid spending in which governments use their informational advantages over donors in order to allocate a disproportionate share of aid to electorally strategic supporters, allowing governments to translate aid into votes. To evaluate this argument, the author codes data on the spatial distribution of multilateral donor projects in Kenya from 1992 to 2010 and shows that Kenyan governments have consistently influenced the aid allocation process in favor of copartisan and coethnic voters, a bias that holds for each of Kenya's last three regimes. He confirms that aid distribution increases incumbent vote share. This evidence suggests that electoral motivations play a significant role in aid allocation and that distributional politics may help explain the gap between donor intentions and outcomes.
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Mikhail Balaev
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The author examines how time delayed effects of economic development, education, and gender equality influence political democracy. Literature review shows inadequate understanding of lagged effects, which raises methodological and theoretical issues with the current quantitative studies of democracy. Using country-years as a unit of analysis, the author estimates a series of OLS PCSE models for each predictor with a systematic analysis of the distributions of the lagged effects. The second set of multiple OLS PCSE regressions are estimated including all three independent variables. The results show that economic development, education, and gender have three unique trajectories of the time-delayed effects: Economic development has long-term effects, Education produces continuous effects regardless of the timing, and Gender equality has the most prominent immediate and short-term effects. The results call for the reassessment of model specifications and theoretical setups in the quantitative studies of democracy.
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The Political Origins of Transparency
Daniel Berliner
Journal of Politics, April 2014, Pages 479-491
Abstract:
Transparency has been hailed as the key to better governance, yet political actors have many reasons to resist transparency. This article studies one prominent transparency policy, Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, which have been passed by over 80 countries. By institutionalizing transparency, FOI laws increase the costs for political actors to use public office — and public information — for private gain. Why have so many states passed FOI laws despite this? I argue that, in competitive political environments, FOI laws can create benefits for political actors as well as costs. Uncertainty over future control creates incentives for incumbents to pass FOI laws in order to ensure their own future access to government information and to credibly commit to future transparency. Event-history-model results show that FOI law passage is more likely when opposition parties pose more credible challenges to incumbents and when recent turnover in executive office has been frequent.
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Election Fairness and Government Legitimacy in Afghanistan
Eli Berman et al.
NBER Working Paper, March 2014
Abstract:
International development agencies invest heavily in institution building in fragile states, including expensive interventions to support democratic elections. Yet little evidence exists on whether elections enhance the domestic legitimacy of governments. Using the random assignment of an innovative election fraud-reducing intervention in Afghanistan, we find that decreasing electoral misconduct improves multiple survey measures of attitudes toward government, including: (1) whether Afghanistan is a democracy; (2) whether the police should resolve disputes; (3) whether members of parliament provide services; and (4) willingness to report insurgent behavior to security forces.
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Political Devolution and Resistance to Foreign Rule: A Natural Experiment
Jeremy Ferwerda & Nicholas Miller
MIT Working Paper, February 2014
Abstract:
Do foreign occupiers face less resistance when they increase the level of native governing authority? Although this is a central question within the literature on foreign occupation and insurgency, it is difficult to answer because the relationship between resistance and political devolution is typically endogenous. To address this issue, we identify a natural experiment based on the locally arbitrary assignment of French municipalities into German or Vichy-governed zones during World War Two. Using a regression discontinuity design, we conclude that devolving governing authority significantly lowered levels of resistance. We argue that this effect is driven by a process of political cooptation: domestic groups that were granted governing authority were less likely to engage in resistance activity, while violent resistance was heightened in regions dominated by groups excluded from the governing regime. This finding stands in contrast to work that primarily emphasizes structural factors or nationalist motivations for resistance.
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Economic Origins of Democratic Breakdown?
Dan Slater, Gautam Nair & Benjamin Smith
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
From Aristotle to Acemoglu and Robinson, scholars have argued that democracy possesses powerful redistributive impulses, and imperils itself accordingly. This article challenges the validity of the redistributive model of democratic breakdown in the postcolonial world – the only cases where democracies have collapsed since World War II – because its assumptions regarding state power are questionable or even inapplicable in postcolonial settings. Our correlative analysis of cross-sectional time series data from 139 countries between 1972 and 2007 indicates that, contrary to the expectations of the redistributive model, redistributive taxation is negatively associated with the incidence of military coups and the likelihood of democratic breakdown. Furthermore, authoritarian takeovers do not appear systematically to result in reduced redistribution from the rich. More fine-grained historical evidence from Southeast Asia – a region where the redistributive model should be especially likely to hold true – further affirms that authoritarian seizures of power are neither inspired by successful redistributive policies nor followed by their reversal. Taken together, these quantitative and qualitative data offer significant support for our central theoretical claim: contemporary democratic breakdowns have political origins in weak states, not economic origins in class conflict.
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The Provision of Insurance? Judicial Independence and the Post-tenure Fate of Leaders
Brad Epperly
Journal of Law and Courts, Fall 2013, Pages 247-278
Abstract:
Leading explanations of judicial independence argue political competition incentivizes those in power to create independent courts as insurance against uncertain futures. While much work addresses the role competition plays, little analyzes the fundamental assumption that courts provide political insurance. I offer an original hypothesis as to how independent courts provide insurance against post-tenure punishment and test this using data on the post-tenure fate of leaders from 1960 to 2004. Results show independence is associated with significantly higher probabilities of unpunished post-tenure fate. The article builds on and extends existing political insurance explanations and offers the first test of one of their critical assumptions.
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Roland Hodler & Paul Raschky
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We complement the literature on distributive politics by taking a systematic look at regional favoritism in a large and diverse sample of countries, and by employing a broad measure that captures the aggregate distributive effect of many different policies. In particular, we use satellite data on nighttime light intensity and information about the birthplaces of the countries' political leaders. In our panel of 38,427 subnational regions from 126 countries with yearly observations from 1992 to 2009, we find that subnational regions have more intense nighttime light when being the birth region of the current political leader. We argue that this finding provides evidence for regional favoritism. We explore the dynamics and the geographical extent of regional favoritism, and show that regional favoritism is most prevalent in countries with weak political institutions and poorly educated citizens. Further, foreign aid inflows and oil rents tend to fuel regional favoritism in weakly institutionalized countries, but not elsewhere.
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The Primacy of the Local: Identifying Terrorist Hot Spots Using Geographic Information Systems
Stephen Nemeth, Jacob Mauslein & Craig Stapley
Journal of Politics, April 2014, Pages 304-317
Abstract:
Despite the wide range of studies focused on the causes of terrorism, most use the state as the unit of analysis. Doing so, however, overlooks important variation that occurs within the state. Our research seeks to determine the causes of domestic terrorism through a more refined unit of analysis. We do this by using the PRIO-GRID cell structure spatially merged with a geocoded version of the GTD dataset. We then perform a Getis-Ord Gi* hot spot analysis to uncover those local areas most prone to domestic terrorism. Our results indicate the following attributes increase the likelihood of terrorism: mountainous terrain, close proximity to a state capital, large population, high population density, and poor economic conditions. When testing between regime types, we find that factors such as population, economic conditions, and the number of ethnic groups are significant only in democracies, while distance to capital is significant only in autocracies.
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Defending democracy with international law: Preventing coup attempts with democracy clauses
Jacob Wobig
Democratization, forthcoming
Abstract:
In recent decades many regional inter-governmental organizations have adopted agreements committing all member states to maintain democratic governments, and specifying punishments to be levied against member states that revert to authoritarianism. These treaties have a surprisingly high enforcement rate – nearly all states subject to them that have experienced governmental succession by coup have been suspended by the relevant IGO(s). However, relatively little is known about whether these treaties are deterring coups. This article offers an original theory of how these international agreements could deter coups d’état, focusing on the way that a predictably adverse international reaction complicates the incentives of potential coup participants. An analysis of the likelihood of coups for the period of 1991–2008 shows that states subject to democracy were on average less likely to experience coups, but that this finding was not statistically significant in most models. However, when restricting the analysis to democracies, middle-income states with democracy clauses were significantly less likely to experience coup attempts. Moreover, the African democracy regime appears to be particularly effective, significantly reducing the likelihood of coup attempts for middle-income states regardless of regime type.
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Revisiting Economic Shocks and Coups
Nam Kyu Kim
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article revisits the oft-cited relationship between economic shocks and coups. According to conventional wisdom, economic recessions trigger coups. However, existing empirical studies have not consistently produced supporting evidence for that relationship. This article claims that this is partly because existing studies have not differentiated transitory from permanent shocks to the economy. Two different economic shocks could have different effects on coups. Moreover, existing studies have not sufficiently addressed measurement error in gross domestic product (GDP) data. To overcome these problems, I use exogenous rainfall and temperature variation to instrument for economic growth. Instrumental estimates demonstrate, consistently across four different GDP per capita growth measures, that a decrease in GDP per capita growth rates, induced by short-run weather shocks, significantly increases the probability of a coup attempt. Conversely, noninstrumental variable estimates vary according to different GDP measures, and are close to zero, consistent with previous findings.
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The inequality–conflict nexus re-examined: Income, education and popular rebellions
Henrikas Bartusevičius
Journal of Peace Research, January 2014, Pages 35-50
Abstract:
The impact of inequality on the outbreak of intrastate armed conflicts or civil wars has recently attracted considerable interest in conflict research. In contrast to previous studies that have focused on inequality in the total population (vertical inequality), recent studies have analysed inequality between certain groups of people (horizontal inequality), and found that inequality significantly increases the likelihood of conflict onset. However, most of the recent studies on the inequality–conflict nexus have focused on conflicts fought between ethnic groups. The relation between inequality and other (non-ethnic) categories of conflicts has attracted less attention. The present study aims to address this gap: it implements a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relation between inequality and popular rebellions, a subset of conflicts where mobilization transcends ethnic boundaries and hostilities involve popular participation. Based on a sample of 77 popular rebellions and new global data on vertical inequality in income and education, this study shows that inequality significantly increases the likelihood of popular rebellion onset. In addition, the study reveals that inequality proxies (income and education Gini indices) outperform proxies of the absolute level of income (GDP per capita) in the model of popular rebellion onset, suggesting that it is relative, not absolute, well-being that ultimately motivates people to rise up in arms.
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Buying War Not Peace: The Influence of Corruption on the Risk of Ethnic War
Natascha Neudorfer & Ulrike Theuerkauf
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article presents robust findings for the positive effect of corruption on the risk of ethnic civil war, using binary time-series-cross-section data that cover 87 to 121 countries (per year) between 1984 and 2007. Following a grievance-based explanation of violent intrastate conflict, we argue that corruption increases the risk of large-scale ethnic violence, as it creates distortions in the political decision-making process which lead to a deepening of political and economic inequalities between different ethnic groups. The positive effect of corruption on the risk of ethnic civil war is robust to various model specifications, including the interaction between corruption and natural resource wealth.
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Geography, Outcome, and Casualties: A Unified Model of Insurgency
Sebastian Schutte
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study introduces a theoretical model of how insurgency develops as a function of reactive mobilization. The theory extends a classic distance-decay model by incorporating Kalyvas’ typology of violence. It implies that geographic conditions crucially determine the accuracy of applied violence and thereby its public perception, which in turn determines the actors’ ability to mobilize. As a first test of these effects, I propose a new geographic indicator that expresses the spatial accessibility of a country’s population for both central governments and peripheral insurgent movements. Two empirical implications of the theory are tested with a large-N data set on outcomes and casualties in insurgencies. The new indicator is significantly associated with both military outcomes and the number of casualties in insurgencies since 1970 and strengthens statistical predictions.
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Which Democracies Will Last? Coups, Incumbent Takeovers, and the Dynamic of Democratic Consolidation
Milan Svolik
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article develops a change-point model of democratic consolidation that conceives of consolidation as a latent quality to be inferred rather than measured directly. Consolidation is hypothesized to occur when a large, durable, and statistically significant decline in the risk of democratic breakdowns occurs at a well-defined point during a democracy's lifetime. This approach is applied to new data on democratic survival that distinguish between breakdowns due to military coups and incumbent takeovers. We find that the risk of an authoritarian reversal by either process differs both in its temporal dynamic and determinants. Crucially, new democracies consolidate against the risk of coups but not incumbent takeovers, suggesting that distinct mechanisms account for the vulnerability of new democracies to these alternative modes of breakdown.
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Popular Protest and Elite Coordination in a Coup d’état
Brett Allen Casper & Scott Tyson
Journal of Politics, April 2014, Pages 548-564
Abstract:
Elites face a daunting coordination problem when contemplating a coup. Citizens, who desire political reform, face a similar coordination problem when contemplating protest. Since elites and citizens interact with the same leadership, these coordination problems are invariably linked. We develop a model which exploits this link to isolate an informational mechanism connecting popular protests and coups. Protests aggregate citizen information and provide elites with a public signal which helps them coordinate in a coup. We show that elites “overreact” to protest as a consequence of its publicity, and we provide a microfounded explanation as to why elites use protests to facilitate coordination. Our model also suggests that protests in countries with media freedom better facilitate elite coordination. To test this, we examine how media freedom affects the relationship between protests and coups. The empirical analysis shows the effect of protests on coups is exacerbated in countries where media is free.
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Ran Tao et al.
International Political Science Review, March 2014, Pages 237-253
Abstract:
Using an instrumental variable approach, we analyze survey data to untangle the relationship between social and political trust in contemporary China. We find strong evidence that political trust enhances social trust in China and the results are robust to a range of measures, including the generalized social trust question, as well as three contextualized trust questions. We also shed light on the impact of economic modernization on social trust. Our findings contribute to the general literature on trust and provide a better understanding of the complicated relationship between political trust and social trust. They also offer insight into the dynamics of trust production and reproduction in China and thus into China’s socio-political development.
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Do return migrants transfer political norms to their origin country? Evidence from Mali
Lisa Chauvet & Marion Mercier
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper explores the link between return migration and political outcomes in the origin country, using the case study of Mali. We use electoral and census data at the locality level to investigate the role of return migration on participation rates and electoral competitiveness. First, we run OLS and IV estimations for the 2009 municipal election, controlling for current emigration and using historical and distance variables as instruments for return migration and current emigration. Second, we build a panel dataset combining the 1998 and 2009 censuses and the electoral results for the municipal ballots of those two years to control for the potential time-invariant unobservable characteristics of the localities. We find a positive impact of the stock of return migrants on participation rates and on electoral competitiveness, which mainly stems from returnees from non-African countries. Finally, we show that the impact of returnees on turnout goes beyond their own participation, and that they affect more electoral outcomes in areas where non-migrants are poorly educated, which we interpret as evidence of a diffusion of political norms from returnees to non-migrants.
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Why Are Women Less Democratic Than Men? Evidence from Sub-Saharan African Countries
Cecilia García-Peñalosa & Maty Konte
World Development, July 2014, Pages 104–119
Abstract:
A substantial literature has examined the determinants of support for democracy and although existing work has found a gender gap in democratic attitudes, there have been no attempts to explain it. In this paper we try to understand why females are less supportive of democracy than males in a number of countries. Using data for 20 Sub-Saharan African countries, we test whether the gap is due to individual differences previously ignored or to country-wide characteristics. We find that controlling for individual characteristics does not offset the gender gap, but our results indicate that the gap is eroded by high levels of human development and political rights.
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Not by the Sword Alone: Soft Power, Mass Media, and the Production of State Sovereignty
Camber Warren
International Organization, January 2014, Pages 111-141
Abstract:
Scholars of civil conflict have long recognized the importance of state strength in the suppression of nascent insurgencies. However, previous empirical investigations have generally focused on the material and coercive dimensions of state power, obscuring the critical role played by the generation of widespread voluntary compliance through processes of political communication, that is, the production of “soft power.” In contrast, in this article I focus on a factor — mass communication technology — that can enhance state capacity only by strengthening the state's ability to broadly and publicly disseminate political messages. I argue that the enhanced capacities for large-scale normative influence generated by mass communication technologies can be expected to produce substantial barriers to the mobilization of militarized challenges to state rule, by strengthening economies of scale in the marketplace of ideas. Utilizing newly compiled cross-national data on mass media accessibility in the post–World War II period, I show that densely constituted mass media systems dramatically reduce the probability of large-scale civil violence, thereby providing new evidence for the fundamental importance of nonmaterial state capacities in the suppression of internal armed conflicts.