Follow the Leader
Political equality and quality of government
Roberto Ezcurra & Izaskun Zuazu
Kyklos, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between political equality and quality of government. Our hypothesis is that political equality fosters access to inclusive education and ultimately promotes good governance. We empirically test this hypothesis using data for 145 countries with different levels of economic development. In order to overcome potential endogeneity problems, our identification strategy exploits the variation in political equality in geographically neighbouring countries by means of spatial econometric techniques. The results reveal a positive and statistically significant effect of political equality on the quality of government. This implies that countries where political power is more evenly distributed tend on average to have higher levels of institutional quality. In fact, this result is not affected by the inclusion in the analysis of a substantial number of controls that may be correlated with both political equality and quality of government, including the extent of democracy and the degree of economic inequality. In fact, the observed link between political equality and governance remains robust to alternative measures of quality of government, estimation techniques, and other sensitivity checks. Our estimates also show that education acts as a transmission channel linking political equality and quality of government.
Long Soviet Shadows: The Nomenklatura Ties of Putin Elites
Maria Snegovaya & Kirill Petrov
Johns Hopkins University Working Paper, November 2021
Abstract:
In recent years, studies of Putin-era elites have focused primarily on the role of siloviki in Russia's ruling class. In this paper, we propose to bring the focus back on the analysis of the elite continuity within the Soviet regime. By compiling a dataset of the elites in the late Putin regime, we explore their ties to the Soviet class of political managers. We track their professional, family, and educational backgrounds to discover that the percentage of Putin-regime elites with Soviet nomenklatura origin constitutes approximately 60% of the elites whom we identify through positional and reputational approaches. The majority of the Putin-regime elites have ties in the middle and lower, rather than the top, ranks of nomenklatura. We also find that the share of those with nomenklatura backgrounds in Putin-era elites in 2010 and 2020 is significantly higher than the share of siloviki. These results reflect a noticeable continuity between the Soviet-era and Putin-regime elites thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet system. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the analysis of Putin's Russia. This often-ignored characteristic helps deepen our understanding of the continuity between the Soviet and Putin systems such as the adoption of similar governing structures, reproduction of repressive trends, as well as the regime's increased reliance on clientelist patronage networks as a basis for career mobility.
Survival of the Weakest: Why the West Rules
David Levine & Salvatore Modica
Washington University in St. Louis Working Paper, December 2021
Abstract:
We study a model of institutions that evolve through conflict. We find that one of three configurations can emerge: an extractive hegemony, a balance of power between extractive societies or a balance of power between inclusive societies - the latter being most conducive to innovation. As extractive societies are assumed to have an advantage in head to head confrontations we refer to this latter possibility as the survival of the weakest. Our contention is that the reason that the West "rules" can be traced back to two events both taking place in China: the invention of the cannon, which made possible the survival of the weakest in Europe; and the arrival of Genghis Khan, which led to the survival of the strongest in China.
Who fakes support for the military? Experimental evidence from Tunisia
Kevin Koehler, Sharan Grewal & Holger Albrecht
Democratization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Surveys around the world report exceptionally high levels of support for the military. This is particularly relevant for countries in transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, where militaries can play a vital role for democratic consolidation or autocratic backsliding. Given the sensitive nature of the issue, we suspect that figures indicating strong support for the military are at least partly driven by sensitivity bias. We explore this possibility through list experiments in two nationally representative surveys in Tunisia. We find that misreporting of support for the military in Tunisia is substantial, with respondents overreporting positive attitudes by 40-50 percentage points. Moreover, misreporting is not random, but instead varies systematically by incumbency, with supporters of governing parties misreporting support for the military to a significantly higher degree than opposition supporters or non-voters. Our results suggest that public opinion researchers should be wary of using direct questions to measure support for the military.
The Right Accounting of Wrongs: Examining Temporal Changes to Human Rights Monitoring and Reporting
Daniel Arnon, Peter Haschke & Baekkwan Park
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars contend that the reason for stasis in human rights measures is a biased measurement process, rather than stagnating human rights practices. We argue that bias may be introduced as part of the compilation of the human rights reports that serve as the foundation of human rights measures. An additional source of potential bias may be human coders, who translate human rights reports into human rights scores. We first test for biases via a machine-learning approach using natural language processing and find substantial evidence of bias in human rights scores. We then present findings of an experiment on the coders of human rights reports to assess whether potential changes in the coding procedures or interpretation of coding rules affect scores over time. We find no evidence of coder bias and conclude that human rights measures have changed over time and that bias is introduced as part of monitoring and reporting.
Democracy, Autocracy, and Sovereign Debt: How Polity Influenced Country Risk on the Peripheries of the Global Economy, 1870-1913
Coşkun Tunçer & Leonardo Weller
Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article tests the influential democratic advantage hypothesis - that democratic governments have historically borrowed more cheaply than autocratic governments - in the context of the first financial globalization, from circa 1870 to 1913. We construct indicators of political regime types, then regress government bond spreads of 27 independent capital-importing countries on them. In contrast with the mainstream literature, the results suggest that democracies were associated with higher country risk. Our findings indicate that autocratic regimes had a significant advantage: democracies paid 5.7 percent more on their debt than autocracies, controlling for several financial and political variables. This gap is the equivalent of 35.4 percent of the negative effect defaults had on credit costs. Our conclusions hold when allowing for different definitions of political regime type and bond spreads. The correlations identified also find support in qualitative evidence, according to which creditors favored autocracies for being politically more stable than democracies.
The duration of political imprisonment: Evidence from China
Christoph Valentin Steinert
Conflict Management and Peace Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Chinese regime is well known for the large-scale detention of dissidents and ethnic minorities. However, little is known about the fates of Chinese political prisoners. This study investigates determinants of the duration of political imprisonment in China. I argue that the duration of political imprisonment is shaped by (a) the perceived threat of individuals' actions, and (b) their ethnic and religious identities. Drawing on the Chinese political prisoner database, I investigate predictors of the duration of political imprisonment with survival models. Since preceding actions shape detention times, I hand-code each prisoner's criminalized actions that led to incarceration. The evidence suggests that the Chinese regime conditions the duration of political imprisonment on prisoners' demands and their collective action potential. The findings further demonstrate that ethnic Uyghurs and Tibetans are imprisoned significantly longer than non-minority political prisoners. Additional analyses demonstrate that ethnic Uyghurs are also significantly more likely to die in prison.
Can Courts in Nondemocracies Deter Election Fraud? De Jure Judicial Independence, Political Competition, and Election Integrity
Cole Harvey
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many nondemocracies hold multiparty elections while also adopting institutions of de jure judicial independence; yet there is debate over how nondemocratic courts can affect election integrity. This paper argues that increased de jure independence creates incentives for opposition recourse to the courts, which reduces election fraud due to greater legal exposure for election-manipulating agents and the ruling party. However, this effect occurs only when competition is low and the ruling party has limited incentive to intervene. These predictions are distinct from those of prior work, and they are supported by an analysis of cross-national election-year data from 1945 to 2014. Preprocessing techniques are used to reduce concerns about endogeneity and confounding. The results show that principal-agent dynamics can occur in manipulated elections even when incumbents remain in office, challenge the centrality of protest risk as a deterrent to manipulation, and offer a framework for predicting when de jure reforms translate to behavioral independence.
Coup d'état and a democratic signal: The connection between protests and coups after the Cold War
Taku Yukawa et al.
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
What connection exists between protests and coup attempts? Although recent studies have revealed that the former incites the latter, they generally do not consider international factors. We contend that post-Cold War nonviolent protests have promoted coup attempts. With sentiment in the international community turning against coups following the end of the Cold War, coup organizers have had to portray their actions as democratic. Launching a coup attempt during ongoing nonviolent protests became a convincing method to prove democratic bona fides. This is because the international community favors nonviolence, and it signals that the emerging regime will not have extreme preferences and will keep order. Conversely, the international community does not regard violent protests as legitimate, and staging a coup attempt during violent protests will not enable a military to claim legitimacy. This argument is tested through statistical analysis and by using the 2011 Egyptian coup as a case study. As expected, the results indicate that the impact of protests on coup attempts varies depending on (1) whether those protests are violent or nonviolent, and on (2) the period. Specifically, only the nonviolent protests in the post-Cold War era prompt coup attempts meaningfully.
External Support and Persistent Authoritarianism in the Middle East
Daniel Baissa & Melani Cammett
Harvard Working Paper, January 2022
Abstract:
Explanations for persistent authoritarianism in the Middle East invoke a plethora of domestic and international factors. Building on existing research, we propose that external economic aid and small arms transfers are crucial for shoring up authoritarian regimes, in part by facilitating domestic repression and patronage. Non-parametric machine learning techniques, which remove researcher bias in model building and detect complex interactions between variables, as well as causal mediation analysis and logistic and instrumental variables regressions, support our arguments, particularly via the repression channel, and enable us to benchmark them against multiple accounts using a large dataset of 17 Middle Eastern countries from 1962 to the eve of the Arab uprisings. Other prominent explanations are negligible when accounting for these forms of aid. These findings advance research on the politics of foreign aid and on Middle Eastern authoritarianism and indicate that external support sustains regional dictators largely through sticks rather than carrots.
Blood is Thicker Than Water: Elite Kinship Networks and State Building in Imperial China
Yuhua Wang
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
A long tradition in social sciences scholarship has established that kinship-based institutions undermine state building. I argue that kinship networks, when geographically dispersed, cross-cut local cleavages and align the incentives of self-interested elites in favor of building a strong state, which generates scale economies in providing protection and justice throughout a large territory. I evaluate this argument by examining elite preferences related to a state-building reform in eleventh century China. I map politicians' kinship networks using their tomb epitaphs and collect data on their political allegiances from archival materials. A statistical analysis demonstrates that a politician's support for state building increases with the geographic size of his kinship network, controlling for a number of individual, family, and regional characteristics. My findings highlight the importance of elite social structure in facilitating state development and help to advance our understanding of state building in China-a useful, yet understudied, counterpoint to the Eurocentric literature.
Subnational Elections and Media Freedom in Autocracies: Diffusion of Local Reputation and Regime Survival
JunHyeok Jang
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
What is the effect of subnational elections on autocratic regime survival? The existing literature suggests that holding subnational elections help foster autocratic regime stability. I argue that the benefit of subnational elections for regime survival is conditional on a lack of media freedom: As the level of media freedom increases, the positive influence of holding subnational elections on regime survival decreases. This is because subnational elections provide local politicians with opportunities to build good reputations, and when good reputations formed at the local level spread to other jurisdictions via relatively free media, citizens can use them as a focal point to coordinate against the regime. Using the quantitative analysis of Time-Series Cross-Sectional data, I find empirical support for my theory.