Toppling
Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Erica Frantz
Journal of Democracy, October 2016, Pages 159-171
Abstract:
Eleven of the world’s 55 dictators are 69 years old or older and are in varying stages of declining health. At first blush, this paints a hopeful picture for democracy scholars who have documented a slow but steady authoritarian resurgence. Yet this article reveals that the advanced age of 20 percent of the world’s autocrats offers little hope for a reversal of this trend. Rather than creating a space for change, the passing of these leaders will likely leave in place the resilient autocratic systems they created and reinforced. While most leadership transitions generate opportunities for regime change, this article demonstrates that death in office is not one of them.
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Did the Creation of the United Nations Human Rights Council Produce a Better 'Jury'?
Adam Chilton & Robert Golan-Vilella
University of Chicago Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
In 1946, the United Nations (UN) created a body comprised of member states known as the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to promote international human rights. The CHR was consistently plagued with accusations that it was a bad “jury” because its members frequently had abhorrent human rights records. To remedy this problem, in 2006 a reform eliminated the CHR and replaced it with a new body with modified membership rules known as the Human Rights Council (HRC). It is not clear, however, whether the 2006 reform was effective. Using data on the human rights practices of all members of the UN and the relevant bodies from 1998 to 2013, we evaluate whether the 2006 reform helped fix the CHR’s membership problem. We find that the human rights records of the members of the HRC are better on average than the records of the CHR’s members were, but that the human rights records of the members of the HRC still are worse than the average UN member not on the HRC.
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Economic Threats or Societal Turmoil? Understanding Preferences for Authoritarian Political Systems
Steven Miller
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do some individuals prefer to be governed in an authoritarian political system? One intuitive answer is that citizens prefer authoritarian rule when the economy and society are in turmoil. These are common explanations for democratic backsliding, and the emergence and success of authoritarian leaders in the twentieth century. Which of these explanations better explains preferences for authoritarian rule? Both types of threat coincide in small samples and high-profile cases, creating inferential problems. I address this by using three waves of World Values Survey data to look at individual-level preferences for different forms of authoritarian government. Using multiple macroeconomic and societal indicators, I find that economic threats, especially increasing income inequality, better explain preferences for authoritarian government. I conclude with implications for understanding the emergence of support for authoritarianism in fledgling democracies.
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Why Not Taxation and Representation? A Note on the American Revolution
Sebastian Galiani & Gustavo Torrens
NBER Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
Why did the most prosperous colonies in the British Empire mount a rebellion? Even more puzzling, why didn't the British agree to have American representation in Parliament and quickly settle the dispute peacefully? At first glance, it would appear that a deal could have been reached to share the costs of the global public goods provided by the Empire in exchange for political power and representation for the colonies. (At least, this was the view of men of the time such as Lord Chapman, Thomas Pownall and Adam Smith.) We argue, however, that the incumbent government in Great Britain, controlled by the landed gentry, feared that allowing Americans to be represented in Parliament would undermine the position of the dominant coalition, strengthen the incipient democratic movement, and intensify social pressures for the reform of a political system based on land ownership. Since American elites could not credibly commit to refuse to form a coalition with the British opposition, the only realistic options were to maintain the original colonial status or fight a full-scale war of independence.
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National Personality Traits and Regime Type: A Cross-National Study of 47 Countries
Joan Barceló
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Domestic theories of democratization emphasize the role of values, interests, and mobilization/opportunities as determinants of regime change. This article takes a step back and develops a model of national personality and democratization to ascertain the indirect effect of national personality traits on worldwide variation of regime type. In particular, I theorize that personality traits influence a country’s regime type by shaping citizens’ traditional and self-expression values, which, in turn, influence the establishment and consolidation of democratic institutions. Data from McCrae and Terracciano’s assessment of the five-factor model from 47 countries allow me to assess this hypothesis empirically. Results reveal that countries whose societies are high in Openness to experience tend to have more democratic institutions, even after adjusting for relevant confounders: economic inequalities, economic development, technological advancement, disease stress, climate demands, and methodological characteristics of the national sample. Although the effect of Extraversion on a country’s democratic institutions is also significantly positive, the inclusion of confounders weakens the reliability of this association. In an exploration of the mechanisms of these associations, a mediation analysis shows that the relationship between national Openness and democratic institutions is channeled through secular and especially self-expression national values. The same analysis with the effect of Extraversion on democracy indicates that the association between this trait and democracy is only channeled through national self-expression values but not national secular values. In short, this article constitutes a first step toward a more complete understanding of the cross-cultural psychological roots of political institutions.
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Human Rights and the Individual: Cross-Cultural Variation in Human Rights Scores, 1980 to 2010
Wade Cole
Social Forces, December 2016, Pages 721-752
Abstract:
This study analyzes patterns of cross-cultural variability and convergence in two categories of human rights: bodily integrity (protection from torture, extrajudicial killing, and other forms of physical repression) and civil liberties (the freedoms of expression, assembly, movement, and religion). Countries are delineated into twelve cultural zones based primarily on predominant religious tradition and secondarily on geographical region. The core hypothesis predicts that respect for bodily integrity rights, which seeks to protect biological beings from physical harm, will vary less across cultures than respect for civil liberties, which empowers social and cultural entities to be self-determining agents. Individuals’ capacity for pain and suffering is thought to be universal, but conceptions of the bounded and autonomous actor are culturally constructed and hence variable across cultures. Statistical analyses support this hypothesis: compared with civil liberties scores, cross-cultural variation in bodily integrity scores is much lower and also less durable in the presence of control variables. Moreover, whereas civil liberties scores are substantially higher in Western countries than in the rest of the world, cross-cultural variability in bodily integrity scores is gradational rather than polarized.
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Guns and Butter? Fighting Violence with the Promise of Development
Gaurav Khanna & Laura Zimmermann
Journal of Development Economics, January 2017, Pages 120–141
Abstract:
There is growing awareness that development-oriented government policies may be an important counterinsurgency strategy, but existing papers are usually unable to disentangle various mechanisms. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we analyze the impact of one of the world's largest anti-poverty programs, India's NREGS, on the intensity of Maoist conflict. We find short-run increases of insurgency-related violence, police-initiated attacks, and insurgent attacks on civilians. We discuss how these results relate to established theories in the literature. One mechanism consistent with the empirical patterns is that NREGS induces civilians to share more information with the state, improving police effectiveness.
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Political Philosophy, Executive Constraint and Electoral Rules
Timothy Yu-Cheong Yeung
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper explains the choice of electoral rule by the difference in the ease of implementing targeted transfer. By modeling the choice of electoral rule as a decision by the ruling rich-elite party before universal suffrage is enacted, this paper predicts that a loose constitutional constraint on targeted transfers is conducive to the adoption of proportional representation. To complete the theory, this work argues that the British empiricism and the Continental rationalism have their own views concerning the role and the power of a state, leading to differential levels of constraints on redistribution. Thus the theory explains why Anglo-Saxon countries tend to maintain majoritarian electoral rule. Employing the event history analysis with the two-stage-residual-inclusion approach, this work shows that countries with poorer executive constraints are more likely to adopt proportional representation. Meanwhile, we find evidence supporting that countries with British origin have been associated with tighter constraint upon the executive.
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The democratic dividend of nonviolent resistance
Markus Bayer, Felix Bethke & Daniel Lambach
Journal of Peace Research, November 2016, Pages 758-771
Abstract:
Research suggests that nonviolent resistance (NVR) campaigns are more successful in deposing dictators than armed rebellions. However, ousting dictators is only the first step in the process of democratization. After deposing an autocratic regime, societies enter a transition phase where they must learn to consolidate the gains of democracy and bargain about the new rules of the democratic regime. But even if free, fair, and competitive elections are held, indicating a successful transition to democratic rule, uncertainty about its stability remains salient. In the period that follows, either democracy survives and proves to be resilient, or an autocratic backslide occurs. In this article, we analyze the effect of NVR campaigns on the survival of democratic regimes. Building on the literature on modes of transitions and nonviolent resistance, we argue that those democratic regimes that come into being as a result of a NVR campaign are less prone to democratic breakdown. The main mechanism which produces this effect is that the organizational culture of NVR campaigns spills over to the subsequent democratic regime fostering conditions favorable for democratic survival. We test the effect of NVR campaigns on democratic regime survival using survival analysis and propensity score matching. The results show that democratic regimes that experience NVR during the transition phase survive substantially longer than regimes without NVR.