Any nation so conceived
Democracy and the Class Struggle
Adaner Usmani
American Journal of Sociology, November 2018, Pages 664-704
Abstract:
Why do societies today distribute political power more equally than before? Most scholars believe that this transition is explained by the rise of capitalism but have long disagreed about why it mattered. The author argues that dominant models fail to capture why capitalist development helps key actors win what they seek. Drawing on comparative and historical work, the author introduces a model of the democratic transition that centers on the concept of disruptive capacity. He collects data on employment structures for much of the modern period to study democratization over the same period. In cross-national regressions, the author finds evidence that the disruptive capacity of nonelites drives democratic gains, and the finding that landlord capacity stymies it is reproduced. Counterfactual exercises show that slightly more than half of the democracy gap between the developing and developed world can be explained by the fact that late development bolstered landlords while handicapping nonelites.
The Fates of Third-Wave Democracies
Scott Mainwaring & Fernando Bizzarro
Journal of Democracy, January 2019, Pages 99-113
Abstract:
This article offers the first comprehensive analysis of the outcomes of third-wave democratic transitions. It charts where democracy broke down, stagnated, advanced, and eroded, and it investigates the initial starting conditions associated with democratic deepening and breakdown. The findings are sobering: Among the 91 new democracies that (by our count) emerged from 1974 to 2012, 34 experienced breakdowns, often in short order. In 28 cases, democracy stagnated after transition, usually at a fairly low level, and in two more it eroded. Democracy advanced relative to the starting point in only 23 cases. Few countries have succeeded in creating robust liberal democracies. Regimes that started off with a higher level of liberal democracy, that were geographically surrounded by democracies, and that experienced better rates of economic growth were less likely to break down. Regimes that started off with a lower per capita GDP and those that experienced lower economic growth, as well as regimes that started off with a higher level of liberal democracy, were less likely to deepen democracy.
British colonialism and democracy: Divergent inheritances and diminishing legacies
Alexander Lee & Jack Paine
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Did British colonial rule promote post-independence democracy? We provide evidence that the relationship follows a strong temporal pattern. Former British colonies were considerably more democratic than other countries immediately following independence, but subsequent democratic convergence has largely eliminated these differences in the post-Cold War period. Existing theories expounding superior British culture or alternative colonial institutions cannot account for divergent inheritances and diminishing legacies. To explain the time-varying pattern, we analyze European powers' varying policy approaches to decolonization as well as changes in the international system. Britain more consistently treated competitive democratic elections as a prerequisite for gaining independence, leading to higher initial democracy levels. However, nascent democracies that lacked deep-rooted societal transformation faced challenges to democratic consolidation because of Cold War superpower competition. Later shifts in the international system toward promoting democracy further contributed to convergence by destabilizing colonially rooted dictatorships.
Do sanctions lead to a decline in civil liberties?
Antonis Adam & Sofia Tsarsitalidou
Public Choice, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we examine the effect of US-imposed sanctions on the civil liberties of the targeted countries for the 1972-2014 period. To deal with the problem of selection and to control for the pre-sanction dynamics, we use a potential outcomes framework, which does not rely on the selection of matching variables and has the further advantage of uncovering the effect of the treatment on the outcome variable over time. What we find is that sanctions result in a decline in civil liberties, measured either by the Freedom House civil liberties index or by the Cingranelli and Richards empowerment rights index. The results are robust across various specifications.
ViEWS: A political violence early-warning system
Håvard Hegre et al.
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article presents ViEWS - a political violence early-warning system that seeks to be maximally transparent, publicly available, and have uniform coverage, and sketches the methodological innovations required to achieve these objectives. ViEWS produces monthly forecasts at the country and subnational level for 36 months into the future and all three UCDP types of organized violence: state-based conflict, non-state conflict, and one-sided violence in Africa. The article presents the methodology and data behind these forecasts, evaluates their predictive performance, provides selected forecasts for October 2018 through October 2021, and indicates future extensions. ViEWS is built as an ensemble of constituent models designed to optimize its predictions. Each of these represents a theme that the conflict research literature suggests is relevant, or implements a specific statistical/machine-learning approach. Current forecasts indicate a persistence of conflict in regions in Africa with a recent history of political violence but also alert to new conflicts such as in Southern Cameroon and Northern Mozambique. The subsequent evaluation additionally shows that ViEWS is able to accurately capture the long-term behavior of established political violence, as well as diffusion processes such as the spread of violence in Cameroon. The performance demonstrated here indicates that ViEWS can be a useful complement to non-public conflict-warning systems, and also serves as a reference against which future improvements can be evaluated.
The Effects of Across-Regime Interpersonal Contact on the Support for Authoritarian Regimes
Andreas Stegmann
Center for Monetary and Financial Studies Working Paper, November 2018
Abstract:
What shapes the ideology of individuals in non-democratic societies and how do changes in such attitudes affect outcomes during democratic transitions? This paper investigates the effects of a policy that had a large impact on individuals' value systems in a non-democratic regime. In 1972, the East German Communist regime agreed to a policy that facilitated visits by West Germans. I implement a spatial regression discontinuity design that exploits geographic variation in the level of travel restrictions across East German districts. First, I find that districts with fewer travel restrictions received indeed more visits from West Germany. Second, I find that during the democratic transition, districts with fewer travel restrictions: (i) exhibited more protest and lower electoral support for the Communist regime; (ii) displayed a value system less aligned with the one promoted by the East German regime; (iii) expressed greater demand for democracy. The evidence suggests that interpersonal, across-regime contact is a powerful way to change attitudes of citizens living under non-democratic regimes, and that these changes can have important consequences for the way in which democratic transitions unfold.
Is There a Resource Curse for Private Liberties?
Simon Wigley
International Studies Quarterly, December 2018, Pages 834-844
Abstract:
Scholarship on the political resource curse overwhelmingly focuses on whether oil wealth hinders the transition to democracy. In this note, I examine whether it oil wealth negatively affects the private rights of the individual. I argue that petroleum-rich governments are subject to less pressure to protect freedom of movement, freedom of religion, the right to property, and freedom from forced labor. In addition, they can use the windfall at their disposal to finance the enforcement of laws that restrict those rights. Based on a panel of 162 countries for the years 1932-2003, I find that petroleum wealth is negatively associated with private liberties. Using mediation analysis, I also find that most of the impact of oil wealth on private rights arises independently of its impact on the level of democracy. This indicates that the scope of the political resource curse extends beyond representation.
A persuasive peace: Syrian refugees' attitudes towards compromise and civil war termination
Kristin Fabbe, Chad Hazlett & Tolga Sınmazdemir
Journal of Peace Research, January 2019, Pages 103-117
Abstract:
Civilians who have fled violent conflict and settled in neighboring countries are integral to processes of civil war termination. Contingent on their attitudes, they can either back peaceful settlements or support warring groups and continued fighting. Attitudes toward peaceful settlement are expected to be especially obdurate for civilians who have been exposed to violence. In a survey of 1,120 Syrian refugees in Turkey conducted in 2016, we use experiments to examine attitudes towards two critical phases of conflict termination - a ceasefire and a peace agreement. We examine the rigidity/flexibility of refugees' attitudes to see if subtle changes in how wartime losses are framed or in who endorses a peace process can shift willingness to compromise with the incumbent Assad regime. Our results show, first, that refugees are far more likely to agree to a ceasefire proposed by a civilian as opposed to one proposed by armed actors from either the Syrian government or the opposition. Second, simply describing the refugee community's wartime experience as suffering rather than sacrifice substantially increases willingness to compromise with the regime to bring about peace. This effect remains strong among those who experienced greater violence. Together, these results show that even among a highly pro-opposition population that has experienced severe violence, willingness to settle and make peace are remarkably flexible and dependent upon these cues.
Coup-Proofing in the Shadow of Intervention: Alliances, Moral Hazard, and Violence in Authoritarian Regimes
Andrew Boutton
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does the anticipation of external support affect dictators' domestic political behavior? We lack a convincing explanation for why authoritarian leaders often attempt to consolidate power in ways that heighten the risk of violence and endanger the regime. Adapting the moral hazard framework from the alliance literature, I argue that the anticipation of military support from allies lowers the potential costs of regime purges. This reduces the incentives for dictators to govern inclusively, encouraging more aggressive coup-proofing actions and generating a higher risk of retaliatory violence. Using new data on elite purges in authoritarian regimes, I find that defensive alliances increase the propensity of dictators to aggressively consolidate power. In addition, these types of alliances lead to purges of more powerful elites, which, in turn, increase the likelihood of post-purge large-scale violence. By contrast, forms of external support that entail less commitment by the patron do not have these effects. I provide an overview of the origins of the 1998-1999 civil war in Guinea-Bissau to complement the novel empirical results and to illustrate the causal logic of the argument in the context of West African alliance politics.
The geography of natural resources, ethnic inequality and civil conflicts
Christian Lessmann & Arne Steinkraus
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study whether the spatial distribution of natural resources across different ethnic groups within countries causes spatial inequality and the incidence of armed conflict. By providing a theoretical rent-seeking model and analysing a set of geo-coded data for mines, night-time light emissions, local populations and ethnic homelands, we show that the spatial distribution of resources is a major driving factor of ethnic income inequality. Moreover, a spatially unequal distribution of natural resources induces rent-seeking behaviour and thus increases the risk of civil conflicts. Consequently, we extend the perspective of the resource curse to explain cross-country differences in income inequality and the onset of civil conflicts.
The Differential Effects of "Democratic" Institutions on Dissent in Dictatorships
Ae sil Woo & Courtenay Conrad
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do some dictatorships face dissent while others do not? In this article, we argue that nominally democratic institutions created to co-opt the dictatorial opposition have different effects on the likelihood of elite and collective dissent. By providing concessions through the creation of parties and legislatures, dictators reduce the probability of elite mobilization (via a coup) against the regime. For everyday citizens, the creation of nominally democratic institutions has the opposite effect, increasing citizen grievances and helping citizens overcome the collective action problem associated with dissent. We find empirical support for our expectations: nominally democratic institutions are negatively associated with the likelihood of coups and positively associated with the likelihood of collective dissent. Our findings suggest that the creation of "democratic" institutions may sometimes threaten dictatorial rule rather than insulate it.
US Democracy Aid and the Authoritarian State: Evidence from Egypt and Morocco
Erin Snider
International Studies Quarterly, December 2018, Pages 795-808
Abstract:
A recent study commissioned by the United States Agency for International Development to assess the effectiveness of its spending on democracy in its programs worldwide found that such aid works-with the sole exception of programs in the Middle East. What explains this exception? I argue that previous studies on democracy aid pay insufficient attention to the fact that such programs often develop as negotiated deals. Because authoritarian regimes may choose how to accept assistance, democracy aid may reward economic interests tied to incumbent regimes. I explore these dynamics through case studies of US democracy programming in Egypt and Morocco.