For your country
Lisa Blaydes & Christopher Paik
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Holy Land Crusades were among the most significant forms of military mobilization to occur during the medieval period. Crusader mobilization had important implications for European state formation. We find that areas with large numbers of Holy Land crusaders witnessed increased political stability and institutional development as well as greater urbanization associated with rising trade and capital accumulation, even after taking into account underlying levels of religiosity and economic development. Our findings contribute to a scholarly debate regarding when the essential elements of the modern state first began to appear. Although our causal mechanisms — which focus on the importance of war preparation and urban capital accumulation — resemble those emphasized by previous research, we date the point of critical transition to statehood centuries earlier, in line with scholars who emphasize the medieval origins of the modern state. We also point to one avenue by which the rise of Muslim military and political power may have affected European institutional development.
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Representation and Consent: Why They Arose in Europe and Not Elsewhere
David Stasavage
Annual Review of Political Science, 2016, Pages 145-162
Abstract:
Medieval Western Europeans developed two practices that are the bedrock of modern democracy: representative government and the consent of the governed. Why did this happen in Europe and not elsewhere? I ask what the literature has to say about this question, focusing on the role of political ideas, on economic development, and on warfare. I consider Europe in comparison with the Byzantine Empire, the Abbasid Caliphate, and Song Dynasty China. I argue that ultimately Europe's different path may have been an accident. It was produced by Western Europe's experience of outside invasion that replaced the Western Roman Empire with a set of small, fragmented polities in which rulers were relatively weak. Small size meant low transaction costs for maintaining assemblies. The relatively weak position of rulers meant that consent of the governed was necessary. I also suggest how these conclusions should influence our understanding of democracy today.
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The Two Sides of Magna Carta: How Good Government Sometimes Wins Out Over Public Choice
Richard Epstein
International Review of Law and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines two rival interpretations of Magna Carta. It rejects the view that Magna Carta is largely a special interest deal between the King and the Barons, and defends the proposition that by and large it works as a public-regarding document that did much to cure the defects of the feudal and judicial systems they had evolved under King John. A clause-by-clause analysis of the document, dealing with such matters as tenurial succession, marriage, courts and judicial procedures, debtor and creditor arrangements, and property rights and liberties shows that Magna Carta exhibited a high degree of technical excellence. By constantly referring back to ancient customs, Magna Carta introduced sensible reforms, some of which were peculiar to the feudal system, but others of which carry over to similar problems today. The durability of the Magna Carta is justified by its political and legal achievements.
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Is Information Power? Using Mobile Phones and Free Newspapers during an Election in Mozambique
Jenny Aker, Paul Collier & Pedro Vicente
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
African elections often reveal low levels of political accountability. We assess different forms of voter education during an election in Mozambique. Three interventions providing information to voters and calling for their participation were randomized: an information campaign using SMS, an SMS hotline for electoral misconduct, and the distribution of a free newspaper. To measure impact, we look at official electoral results, reports by electoral observers, behavioral and survey data. We find positive effects of all treatments on voter turnout. However, only the distribution of the free newspaper led to more accountability-based participation and to a decrease in electoral problems.
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Electoral Handouts as Information: Explaining Unmonitored Vote Buying
Eric Kramon
World Politics, July 2016, Pages 454-498
Abstract:
Why is vote buying effective even where ballot secrecy is protected? Most answers emerge from models of machine politics, in which a machine holds recipients of handouts accountable for their subsequent political behavior. Yet vote buying is common in many contexts where political party machines are not present, or where parties exert little effort in monitoring voters. This article addresses this puzzle. The author argues that politicians often distribute electoral handouts to convey information to voters. This vote buying conveys information with respect to the future provision of resources to the poor. The author tests the argument with original qualitative and experimental data collected in Kenya. A voter's information about a candidate's vote buying leads to substantial increases in electoral support, an effect driven by expectations about the provision of clientelist benefits beyond the electoral period. The results, showing that the distribution of material benefits can be electorally effective for persuasive reasons, thereby explain how vote buying can be effective in the absence of machine politics.
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The return of the prodigy son: Do return migrants make better leaders?
Marion Mercier
Journal of Development Economics, September 2016, Pages 76–91
Abstract:
This paper describes the relationship between political leaders' migration experience and the evolution of democracy during their leadership. We build up an original database on the personal background of 932 politicians who were at the head of the executive power in a developing country over the 1960–2004 period. These data reveal the existence of a positive correlation between the fact that leaders studied abroad and the change in the score of democracy in their country during their tenure, for leaders who reach power in initially autocratic settings. This correlation notably appears to be driven by leaders who studied in high-income OECD countries. The main finding, confirmed by various robustness tests, adds up to the recent literature on the effects of the characteristics of political leaders. It also suggests a new channel through which migration may shape development and politics in the sending countries — namely, the political elites.
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Xuyun Tan et al.
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Corruption has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies, but it is widespread throughout the world. There is a question, however, as to whether corruption is endorsed as an outcome of a legitimate hierarchy and meritocracy. To address this issue, the present study examines the associations between meritocratic ideology and the indicators of corruption by performing two empirical studies with correlational and experimental designs. In Study 1, all variables were measured with scales, and the results demonstrated that meritocratic ideologies were negatively associated with corruption perception but positively associated with corrupt intention. In Study 2, meritocratic ideology was manipulated, and the results demonstrated that compared with the low meritocratic-ideology condition, the participants primed by the high meritocratic-ideology condition reported a lower corruption perception but higher corrupt intention. In both studies, the findings suggest that the meritocratic ideology that motivates people to maintain and bolster the current hierarchical structure and meritocracy leads to the endorsement of corruption. The present study explores the roles of meritocratic ideology in the perception and intention of corruption, extends the scope of the predictive power of system justification theory to corruption beyond mere injustice-related aspects of disadvantage, and also provides suggestions for interpreting and fighting against corruption.
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Ignacio Lago, Carlos Lago-Peñas & Santiago Lago-Peñas
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objectives: This article relies on data from two samples of 47 and 49 European countries from 1950 through 2011 and 1,980 and 1,960 football domestic leagues, respectively, to explore to what extent political regimes affect the competitive balance in domestic football (soccer) leagues.
Methods: We run OLS cross-sectional regressions comparing democracies and nondemocracies and pooled cross-sectional time-series analyses conducted on the 13 countries that have experienced a transition to democracy after 1950.
Results: We find that the percentage of league competitions won by the most successful club in the country is substantially lower in democracies than in nondemocracies. Democratic transitions trigger pressures to increase the competitive balance in football leagues.
Conclusions: The link between nondemocracies and specific teams breaks when a country experiences a transition to democracy and the economic liberalization that takes place in transitions to democracy disperses resources and generates competition among descending and ascending teams.
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Reconciling after civil conflict increases social capital but decreases individual well-being
Jacobus Cilliers, Oeindrila Dube & Bilal Siddiqi
Science, 13 May 2016, Pages 787-794
Abstract:
Civil wars divide nations along social, economic, and political cleavages, often pitting one neighbor against another. To restore social cohesion, many countries undertake truth and reconciliation efforts. We examined the consequences of one such effort in Sierra Leone, designed and implemented by a Sierra Leonean nongovernmental organization called Fambul Tok. As a part of this effort, community-level forums are set up in which victims detail war atrocities, and perpetrators confess to war crimes. We used random assignment to study its impact across 200 villages, drawing on data from 2383 individuals. We found that reconciliation had both positive and negative consequences. It led to greater forgiveness of perpetrators and strengthened social capital: Social networks were larger, and people contributed more to public goods in treated villages. However, these benefits came at a substantial cost: The reconciliation treatment also worsened psychological health, increasing depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder in these same villages. For a subset of villages, we measured outcomes both 9 months and 31 months after the intervention. These results show that the effects, both positive and negative, persisted into the longer time horizon. Our findings suggest that policy-makers need to restructure reconciliation processes in ways that reduce their negative psychological costs while retaining their positive societal benefits.
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War, Inflation, and Social Capital
Sergei Guriev & Nikita Melnikov
American Economic Review, May 2016, Pages 230-235
Abstract:
We use weekly data from 79 Russian regions to measure the impact of economic shocks and proximity to war in Ukraine on social capital in Russian regions. We proxy social capital by the relative intensity of internet searches for the most salient dimensions of pro-social behavior such as "donate blood", "charity", "adopt a child" etc. This measure of social capital is correlated with a survey-based measure of generalized social trust. Our search-based measure of social capital responds negatively to the spikes of inflation and positively to the intensity of the conflict in Ukraine (controlling for region and week fixed effects).
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Global Power Movements, Uncertainty and Democracy in the Middle East
Selin Guner
New Global Studies, April 2016, Pages 27–48
Abstract:
Studies that examine global determinants of democracy mainly focus on factors such as global conflict, strength of global community, international organizations and the impact of democratic neighbors. This paper logically extends the global approach by considering the impact of global power shifts on democratization in the Middle East. In this paper, it is argued that global uncertainty raised by power shifts in the system is likely to impact authoritarian elite behavior leading to their concession to share political power. This article specifies the assumptions, hypothesis and the causal mechanism through which power shifts might impact democracy in the Middle East. To test the hypothesis, this article uses cross-country panel data and fixed effects GLS regression models on 878 observations, 20 countries ranging from 1815 until 2004. To clarify the argument, examples of democratization process in Iran and Turkey as well as recent 2011 Middle East uprisings are also discussed as illustrative evidence. The results support the argument that global power transfers have short term and long term impacts on democratization in the Middle East.
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Media, Protest Diffusion, and Authoritarian Resilience
Haifeng Huang, Serra Boranbay-Akan & Ling Huang
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do authoritarian governments always censor news about protests to prevent unrest from spreading? Existing research on authoritarian politics stresses the danger that information spread within the society poses for a regime. In particular, media and Internet reports of social unrest are deemed to threaten authoritarian rule, as such reports may incite more protests and thus spread instability. We show that such reasoning is incomplete if social protests are targeted at local officials. Allowing media the freedom to report local protests may indeed lead to protest diffusion, but the increased probability of citizen protest also has two potential benefits for the regime: (1) identifying and addressing more social grievances, thus releasing potential revolutionary pressure on the regime; (2) forcing local officials to reduce misbehavior, thus reducing underlying social grievances. For authoritarian governments whose survival is vulnerable to citizen grievances, allowing the media to report social protests aimed at local governments can therefore enhance regime stability and protect its interests under many circumstances. We construct a game-theoretic model to analyze the problem and illustrate the argument with examples from China.
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Are Coups Really Contagious? An Extreme Bounds Analysis of Political Diffusion
Michael Miller, Michael Joseph & Dorothy Ohl
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Protests and democratic transitions tend to spread cross-nationally. Is this true of all political events? We argue that the mechanisms underlying the diffusion of mass-participation events are unlikely to support the spread of elite-led violence, particularly coups. Further, past findings of coup contagion employed empirical techniques unable to distinguish clustering, common shocks, and actual diffusion. To investigate which events diffuse and where, we combine modern spatial dependence models with extreme bounds analysis (EBA). EBA allows for numerous modeling alternatives, including diffusion timing and the controls, and calculates the distribution of estimates across all combinations of these choices. We also examine various diffusion pathways, such as contagion among trade partners. Results from nearly 1.2 million models clearly undercut coup contagion. In comparison, we confirm that more mass-driven political events robustly spread cross-nationally. Our findings contribute to studies of political conflict and contagion, while introducing EBA as an effective tool for diffusion scholars.
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Elite Capture: How Decentralization and Informal Institutions Weaken Property Rights in China
Daniel Mattingly
World Politics, July 2016, Pages 383-412
Abstract:
Political decentralization is often argued to strengthen political accountability by bringing government closer to the people. Social and civic institutions at the local level, such as lineage associations, temples, churches, or social clubs, can make it easier for citizens to monitor officials and hold them accountable. This article argues that strong social institutions also empower local elites who may use their informal influence to control their group and capture rents. Drawing on evidence from case studies of Chinese villages, the article shows that lineage group leaders who become village officials use their combination of social and political authority to confiscate villagers’ land. Evidence from a survey experiment suggests that endorsement of a land confiscation plan by lineage elites elicits greater compliance with property seizures. A national survey indicates that when a lineage leader becomes a village cadre, it is associated with a 14 to 20 percent increase in the likelihood of a land expropriation. The findings demonstrate how informal institutions and local civil society can be tools of top-down political control.
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The Arc of Modernization: Economic Structure, Materialism, and the Onset of Civil Conflict
Tyson Chatagnier & Emanuele Castelli
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
The onset of intrastate conflict has two requisite conditions: that prospective insurgents have an incentive to rebel, and that the state lacks the capacity to deter such a rebellion. We outline a simple rationalist argument grounded in gains from economic growth — to both individual income and state revenue — to argue that modernization has the potential to affect the likelihood of civil conflict through both of these conditions. The shift away from a rent-seeking economy affects opportunity costs for rebellion by increasing the cost of recruitment, broadening the time horizon for gain, and decreasing looting possibilities. On the state side, modernization increases state military, economic, and institutional capacity, allowing governments to deter rebellion. We construct an index of modernization from World Bank data and apply a strategic model to explore the effect of modernization on both states and rebels simultaneously. We find that the modernization process describes an arc that may increase the likelihood of unrest in the early stages, but has long-term stabilizing effects.
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Unsafe Havens: Re-Examining Humanitarian Aid and Peace Duration after Civil Wars
Philip Martin & Nina McMurry
MIT Working Paper, March 2016
Abstract:
Does humanitarian aid delivered in the aftermath of civil conflict increase the risk of conflict resumption? And if so, under what conditions? In contrast to previous work that focuses on the terms of civil war resolution, we argue that humanitarian aid is most likely to play a de-stabilizing role when armed groups have access to territorial safe havens, either inside the country where the fighting has taken place or in cross-border refugee camps. We illustrate this argument with the cases of Liberia (1989-1997) and Sudan (1983-2005), and then test the theory using a panel dataset of civil war ceasefires between 1989 and 2004. Our results support the argument that the effect of humanitarian aid on ceasefire stability is conditional on the ability of rebel organizations to control territory and access cross-border refugee populations.
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When Do States Take the Bait? State Capacity and the Provocation Logic of Terrorism
Brian Blankenship
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
A prominent theory holds that groups may use terrorism in order to provoke governments into undertaking repression that alienates the population. However, virtually no studies have addressed the central puzzle of this provocation logic: why states would actually fall into this trap, if doing so can backfire. This study seeks to address this puzzle by suggesting conditions under which states would respond to terrorism with repression. I argue that states with limited bureaucratic capacity are more prone to using repression after terrorist incidents, as their ability to selectively crack down is inhibited by their more limited capability for controlling, monitoring, and collecting revenue from their populations and for collecting intelligence on suspected terrorists. Using a cross-national analysis with data from 1981 to 2011, I find it is low-capacity states which are most likely to respond to terrorism with repression, while constraints on executive authority have no clear effect.