Liberators
Can You Hear Me Now? How Communication Technology Affects Protest and Repression
Darin Christensen & Francisco Garfias
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Spring 2018, Pages 89-117
Abstract:
Commentators covering recent social movements, such as the Arab Spring, commonly claim that cell phones enable protests. Yet, existing empirical work does not conclusively support this contention: some studies find that these technologies actually reduce collective action; many others struggle to overcome the selection problems that dog observational research. We propose two mechanisms through which cell phones affect protests: (1) by enabling communication among would-be protesters, cell phones lower coordination costs; and (2) these technologies broadcast information about whether a protest is repressed. Knowing that a larger audience now witnesses and may be angered by repression, governments refrain from squashing demonstrations, further lowering the cost of protesting. We evaluate these mechanisms using high-resolution global data on the expansion of cell phone coverage and incidence of protest from 2007 to 2014. Our difference-in-differences estimates indicate that cell phone coverage increases the probability of protest by over half the mean. Consistent with our second mechanism, we also find that gaining coverage has a larger effect when it connects a locality to a large proportion of other citizens.
The New Public Address System: Why Do World Leaders Adopt Social Media?
Pablo Barberá & Thomas Zeitzoff
International Studies Quarterly, March 2018, Pages 121–130
Abstract:
The growth of social media — and, in particular, Twitter and Facebook — has led scholars to study its effects on mass behavior and protest. But leaders are also active on social media. They use their accounts to communicate with domestic and international audiences. By the end of 2014, more than 76 percent of world leaders had an active presence on social media. What explains variation in their adoption and use of social media? We look at several different potential hypotheses: higher income per capita and internet penetration (modernization), social pressure, level of democratization, and geographic spread of adoption (diffusion). We find strong support that (1) increased political pressure from social unrest and (2) higher levels of democratization correlate with leader adoption of social media platforms. Although our findings are correlational, they reveal that institutional and political pressures are related to social media adoption and the political communication of world leaders.
A short history of constitutional liberalism in America
Roger Congleton
Constitutional Political Economy, June 2018, Pages 137–170
Abstract:
American liberalism emerged before the most famous European liberal intellectuals put their pens to paper. It was grounded partly on liberal ideas that were in the air before those works were written, but mostly on the attractive communities generated by liberal institutions and policies. American liberalism is empirically, rather than theoretically, grounded. This paper uses excerpts from colonial and constitutional documents to demonstrate the long history of liberal institutions in the territories that became the United States. American liberalism is an evolutionary rather than an intellectual phenomenon.
Authoritarian Gridlock? Understanding Delay in the Chinese Legislative System
Rory Truex
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Legislative gridlock is often viewed as a uniquely democratic phenomenon. The institutional checks and balances that produce gridlock are absent from authoritarian systems, leading many observers to romanticize “authoritarian efficiency” and policy dynamism. A unique data set from the Chinese case demonstrates that authoritarian regimes can have trouble passing laws and changing policies — 48% of laws are not passed within the period specified in legislative plans, and about 12% of laws take more than 10 years to pass. This article develops a theory that relates variation in legislative outcomes to the absence of division within the ruling coalition and citizen attention shocks. Qualitative analysis of China’s Food Safety Law, coupled with shadow case studies of two other laws, illustrates the plausibility of the theoretical mechanisms. Division and public opinion play decisive roles in authoritarian legislative processes.
The Pre-2011 Roots of Syria’s Islamist Militants
Line Khatib
Middle East Journal, Spring 2018, Pages 209-228
Abstract:
Islamist militancy is not a new phenomenon in Syria; indeed, many of the groups active since the outbreak of the popular uprising in 2011 have existed since the early 2000s. The emergence of these Islamists and the Islamization of the Syrian conflict can primarily be traced to the earlier foreign policy of the regime of Bashar al-Asad, of which harboring and collaborating with Islamist militants was an integral part. The outcome of this policy was the rise of a radical and apocalyptic type of Islamist movement that the regime cannot effectively control and that is at odds with Syria’s more ecumenical and intellectual Islamic tradition.
The Pathology of Hard Propaganda
Haifeng Huang
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Authoritarian governments often impose crude and heavy-handed propaganda messages on society. Is such hard propaganda effective in sustaining authoritarian rule? With an original survey experiment featuring messages from China’s ongoing propaganda campaign, this study finds that hard propaganda can backfire and worsen citizens’ opinions of the regime, while at the same time signaling the state’s power and reducing citizens’ willingness to protest. Thus, hard propaganda can deter dissent and help maintain regime stability in the short term, but it can also decrease regime legitimacy and aggravate the government’s long-term prospects, especially when its power and control capacity do not keep up with propaganda.
“Thugs-for-Hire”: Subcontracting of State Coercion and State Capacity in China
Lynette Ong
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using violence or threat of violence, “thugs-for-hire” (TFH) is a form of privatized coercion that helps states subjugate a recalcitrant population. I lay out three scope conditions under which TFH is the preferred strategy: when state actions are illegal or policies are unpopular; when evasion of state responsibility is highly desirable; and when states are weak in their capacity or are less strong than their societies. Weak states relative to strong ones are more likely to deploy TFH, mostly for the purpose of bolstering their coercive capacity; strong states use TFH for evasion of responsibility. Yet the state-TFH relationship is functional only if the state is able to maintain the upper hand over the violent agents. Focusing on China, a seemingly paradoxical case due to its traditional perception of being a strong state, I examine how local states frequently deploy TFH to evict homeowners, enforce the one-child policy, collect exorbitant exactions, and deal with petitioners and protestors. However, the increasing prevalence of “local mafia states” suggests that some of the thuggish groups have grown to usurp local governments’ autonomy. This points to the cost of relying upon TFH as a repressive strategy.
Voting Behavior and Public Employment in Nazi Germany
Stephan Maurer
Journal of Economic History, March 2018, Pages 1-39
Abstract:
This article analyzes whether the German National Socialists used economic policies to reward their voters after coming to power in 1933. Using newly-collected data on public employment from the German censuses in 1925, 1933, and 1939 and addressing the potential endogeneity of the NSDAP vote share in 1933 by way of an instrumental variables strategy based on a similar party in Imperial Germany, I find that cities with higher NSDAP vote shares experienced a relative increase in public employment: for every additional percentage point in the vote share, the number of public employment jobs increased by around 2.5 percent.
Testosterone and Repression in Non‐Democracies: Evidence from a Sample of Russian Governors
Vladimir Kozlov, Alexander Libman & André Schultz
Kyklos, May 2018, Pages 244-278
Abstract:
The paper examines the role of testosterone‐driven aggressive behavior in the politics of non‐democratic regimes and, in particular, its influence on the extent of repressiveness of these regimes. To measure testosterone exposure, we apply the facial width‐to‐height metric (fWHR) – a standard proxy widely used in the psychological literature – and look at a sample of Russian regional governors. We find a positive relationship between the fWHR of the governor and the level of repression in his region. Testosterone‐related behavior is, however, more widespread among younger governors and among governors with shorter tenure in office. Thus, the paper contributes to the recent trend of integrating insights of behavioral economics in political economics research.
Bypass Aid and Unrest in Autocracies
Matthew DiLorenzo
International Studies Quarterly, March 2018, Pages 208–219
Abstract:
Scholars and policymakers argue that donors can pursue development goals without bolstering autocratic regimes by bypassing recipient governments and channeling aid through intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations. However, I argue that bypass aid can subsidize government transfers to citizens and thus reduce popular resistance to autocrats. By providing goods and services that benefit individuals under the status quo, bypass aid may affect citizens’ willingness to challenge an incumbent regime. In particular, aid may lower the concessions that an autocrat needs to make to, on the one hand, deter unrest or, on the other hand, increase the opportunity costs of political resistance. As such, aid may have political effects regardless of whether or not recipient governments have managerial control over aid. Statistical tests show that bypass aid is associated with less frequent domestic unrest in autocracies. To address potential endogeneity, I use an original data set that records instances in which governments are suspected of, or actually caught, misusing aid to proxy for the distribution of aid across channels.
International Conflict, International Security Environment, and Military Coups
Nam Kyu Kim
International Interactions, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do some countries repeatedly experience military coups while others seem immune? Are countries more prone to military coups when faced with external threats? The answers to these questions still remain contested: While several scholars hold that countries facing external threats are more vulnerable to coups, others argue that such countries are actually more secure from coups. I argue that by failing to distinguish between immediate and acute threats, caused by wars and militarized conflicts, and chronic threats from a state’s international security environment, the existing literature ignores the possibility that these two types of external threats differently affect the likelihood of coups. I propose that wars and militarized conflicts, infrequent and often short lived, decrease coup propensity, while a threatening security environment increases coup risk. I find strong supporting evidence that the presence of chronic international threats increases the likelihood of coups while acute international conflicts lower that likelihood.
Indirect Colonial Rule Undermines Support for Democracy: Evidence From a Natural Experiment in Namibia
Marie Lechler & Lachlan McNamee
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article identifies indirect and direct colonial rule as causal factors in shaping support for democracy by exploiting a within-country natural experiment in Namibia. Throughout the colonial era, northern Namibia was indirectly ruled through a system of appointed indigenous traditional elites whereas colonial authorities directly ruled southern Namibia. This variation originally stems from where the progressive extension of direct German control was stopped after a rinderpest epidemic in the 1890s, and, thus, constitutes plausibly exogenous within-country variation in the form of colonial rule. Using this spatial discontinuity, we find that individuals in indirectly ruled areas are less likely to support democracy and turnout at elections. We explore potential mechanisms and find suggestive evidence that the greater influence of traditional leaders in indirectly ruled areas has socialized individuals to accept nonelectoral bases of political authority.
Revisiting democratic civil peace: Electoral regimes and civil conflict
Henrikas Bartusevičius & Svend-Erik Skaaning
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The debate on democratic civil peace has centered on three general claims: democracies have a low risk of civil conflict, autocracies have the same low risk of conflict as democracies, and hybrid regimes have the highest conflict risk. We re-evaluate these claims, emphasizing that previous studies have focused on the aggregate categories of regimes, neglecting the role of particular institutional features. We propose focusing on the electoral qualities of regimes, which constitute the core of democracy, and argue that constraints on electoral contestation generate incentives for opposition to use force. Building on this framework, we distinguish between five regime types according to their electoral features – non-electoral autocracies, single-party autocracies, multi-party autocracies, minimalist democracies, and polyarchies – and specify hypotheses regarding the probability of conflict onset in each. In a global statistical analysis spanning 1817–2006 and employing the new Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (LIED), we find that polyarchies, characterized by unconstrained contestation, have a lower probability of conflict than any other regime type (although minimalist democracies are only slightly more prone to conflict). Subsequently, we find that single- and multi-party autocracies, characterized by non-competitive elections, are more peaceful than non-electoral autocracies. Our analysis also reveals two factors that are particularly associated with civil peace: the presence of (any form of) elections and minimal electoral competition. Overall, our study underscores the importance of focusing on the central attributes of democracy and sheds new light on the relationship between particular regime features (or types) and civil conflict, thereby contributing to the growing efforts in conflict research to disaggregate political regimes.
Alternation through Death: Is Gerontocracy an Equilibrium?
Raul Magni Berton & Sophie Panel
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to minimalist theories of democracy, the reason why civil conflicts are less frequent in democracies is that opposition parties can reasonably expect to win the next elections: they then prefer to wait than to rebel. In dictatorships, waiting until the dictator dies is generally much costlier. This waiting time, however, is considerably shortened when the dictator is old. Therefore, the risk of domestic conflict should decrease along with the age of autocratic leaders. Based on 160 countries from 1960 to 2008, our empirical analysis shows that the leader’s age decreases the likelihood of violent rebellion in dictatorships, but not in democratic regimes.
Contesting Commercialization: Political Influence, Responsive Authoritarianism, and Cultural Resistance
Lori Qingyuan Yue, Jue Wang & Botao Yang
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We develop theory on how a contentious moral market can develop, and we test it with data from a study of the commercialization of Buddhist temples in China from 2006 to 2016, as local government officials try to boost the local economy by transforming temples into tourist enterprises that charge admission fees. The practice is resisted by monks and the public such that the central government, which values public appearances of social justice, is pressured to support their resistance to local officials’ economic demands. Using a data panel of 141 temples, we show that temples’ admission fees are significantly related to the pressure that local government officials face to develop the economy. We also find that resistance to the fees exploits a factional political structure, as the monk-led movement leverages the influence of one political clique that is highly concerned with public appearances of social justice to resist the request of another. In addition, bottom-up channels such as the Internet and marketized media help the public voice its grievances, coordinate collective action, and therefore align with and mobilize the central government to override local government. The contentious view enhances our understanding of how resistance can be possible and effective, especially in an authoritarian regime.