Political Investment Cycles in Democracies and Autocracies

Extant research has shown considerable interest in whether host countries’ political uncertainty impedes foreign direct investment (FDI). Building upon the scholarly consensus on the adverse impact of political uncertainty on FDI, this article demonstrates that the extent to which investment climates are unpredictable varies cyclically, on the basis of election timing in democracies and leadership turnover in autocracies. The empirical results show that in presidential democracies, FDI tends to slowly increase after an executive election and then decline as the next executive election nears. However, I find that an electoral investment cycle is not found in parliamentary democracies where election timing is irregular, less predictable, and endogenous to domestic economic conditions. I also find that a similar political investment cycle exists in autocracies not through electoral cycle but through leadership tenure cycle. The level of FDI inflows tends to be relatively low early in autocrats’ tenure when political uncertainty is high and rise as autocratic leadership tenure increases over time but eventually wane again as autocratic leadership is destabilized in the late period of power transition. The findings indicate the existence of heterogeneous political investment cycles, depending on regime type.     

Political actors,preferences and election rule re-design in Russia and Ukraine

Institutional designers, international organizations and post-Soviet political actors have directed considerable attention to the design and conduct of elections in postcommunist states. This article explores the nature of electoral system re-design by investigating the motives and interactions of legislators, parties and presidents. Following the veto players literature, the analysis focuses on the determinants of policy stability and change. The process of institutional re-design is evaluated in two cases: the successful introduction of the Law on Political Parties in Russia and unsuccessful attempts at major election reform in Ukraine. The article shows that the outcomes of policy reform processes in these 'superpresidential' systems were not solely determined by presidential preferences. Rather, to fully understand election system re-design, it is critical to evaluate the preferences of all relevant veto players.     

Economic Policy,Political Constraints,and Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries

As foreign direct investment (FDI) has become increasingly important in the world economy, a large body of literature has emerged regarding the determinants of FDI flows. Some scholars argue that democracy attracts FDI through the mechanism of political constraints, which reduce the risk of negative policy changes. However, the value of policy stability should be conditional on the attractiveness of contemporary FDI-relevant policies. I therefore propose a theoretically more comprehensive argument: political constraints are attractive to investors when the host country policy environment is FDI-friendly, because these political constraints reduce the probability of negative policy changes in the future. When the policy environment is hostile to FDI, on the other hand, political constraints will have little positive effect, and, to the extent they indicate that FDI-relevant policies are unlikely to improve, may even deter FDI. This argument helps explain why the positive relationship between democracy and FDI seems to emerge after a global shift toward FDI-friendly polices. I find robust empirical support for the argument in tests covering more than 100 developing countries from 1970 to 2014, indicating significant effects using a variety of policy and political constraint measures.     

Political Risk: The Institutional Dimension

The argument developed in this paper is that the political arrangements and institutions that help leaders stay in office are not necessarily the ones that promote economic growth and prosperity. Indeed political leaders can remain in office more securely by rewarding the groups that keep them in power with privileged access to public resources. The net result is that the leadership remains in office but at the price of poor economic performance. It is not that the consequences of mismanaging the economy are unforeseen; rather the increased chances of an economic crisis are an acceptable price to pay if it means avoiding a political crisis which challenges the leaders' hold on power. Political survival, not peace and prosperity, is what determines the choice of policies. In this way bad economics can be good politics. The principal hypothesis addressed is that the smaller the size of the winning coalition the more the leadership depends on distributing private goods to the coalition members in order to purchase their loyalty, and, therefore the greater is the level of political risk. The ultimate effects of coalition size and the corruption attending the competition for private goods are the reduction of foreign direct investment per capita. These hypotheses were tested in a three stage least squares (3SLS) simultaneous estimation. The results generally supported the theoretical expectations.     

Credibility and Flexibility: Political Institutions,Governance, and Foreign Direct Investment

This article argues that the relationship between political institutions and foreign direct investment is both nonlinear and conditional upon status quo policies. The empirical analysis demonstrates an inverted U-shaped relationship between political institutions and foreign direct investment in developing countries, with four veto players being the most attractive institutional arrangement. Countries with too few or too many veto players are not favored because of either high policy uncertainty or high policy rigidity. In addition, the benefits and costs of credibility and flexibility vary in good times and hard times. The benefits of maintaining status quo tend to outweigh the costs in countries with good initial regulatory environment. The costs of maintaining status quo tend to outweigh the benefits when countries are more vulnerable to exogenous shocks.     

The Political Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment: A Firm-Level Analysis

Many large-N cross-national studies claim to show that political institutions and phenomena determine where foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. In this article, I argue that these studies tend to overemphasize statistical significance and often neglect to assess the explanatory or predictive power of their theories. To illustrate the problem, I estimate variations of a statistical model published in an influential article on “Political Risk, Institutions, and FDI.” I find that none of the political variables that the authors consider accounts for much of the variation in aggregate FDI inflows. To ensure that this underwhelming result is not driven by misspecification or measurement error, I leverage a large firm-level data set on the investment location decisions of thousands of multinational firms. Using nonparametric machine-learning techniques and out-of-sample tests, I show that gravity variables can help us develop very accurate expectations about firm behavior but that none of the 31 “political determinants” of FDI that I consider can do much to improve our expectations. These findings have important implications because they suggest that governments retain some room to move in the face of economic globalization.     

EU-China relations and the limits of economic diplomacy

This paper addresses a key problem in EU-China economic relations: the capacity of the EU to exert leverage through its economic diplomacy in the context of key economic trends, policy dilemmas, and processes of governance. The paper begins by identifying key elements of the EU’s economic diplomacy and their relationship to key functions: deliberation, representation, communication, and negotiation. It continues by reviewing key trends and challenges in EU-China economic relations, in terms of trade, finance/investment, and broader issues of economic performance, with special reference to the problems emanating from the current economic turbulence both in the EU and in the broader global political economy. It then identifies a number of key policy dilemmas for the EU in areas such as trade defense/trade promotion, environment/development, security/commercial priorities, investment/sovereignty, and explores these in terms of three key concepts: orientation, coordination, and effectiveness. In pursuing this analysis, the paper relates these trends and dilemmas to attempts to govern EU-China economic relations: public/private, bilateral/multilateral, and regulatory/political. In the final section of the paper, these efforts are evaluated in the context of the EU’s economic diplomacy, with relation to key actors, processes, and outcomes and to the key functions of deliberation, representation, communication, and negotiation.     

When Private Talk Becomes Public Political Expression: Examining a Practice-Field Hypothesis of Youth Political Development

Previous research indicates the importance of interpersonal communication in the political socialization process. Investigations of political talk have mostly been restricted to frequency, and the theorizing of its effects centered on cognitive outcomes such as knowledge and ideological identification. This study examined the part played by private political talk in promoting expressive forms of political participation among adolescents. Recent survey panel data from Swedish 13–18-year-olds were analyzed. Results showed that frequency of private political talk predicted the extent of public political expression even when self-selection and previous levels of political expression were accounted for. Data offered some support for an expected interaction of private political talk and political interest in predicting public expression. The overall findings are consistent with the theoretical idea that political talk offers adolescents opportunities to enact participation in safe settings, and that this is a mechanism that can explain why talking about politics is favorable for political development during adolescence.     

Political parties and democratization in South Korea: The mass public and the democractic consolidation of political parties

This study examines the growth of popular support for a competitive multi‐party system as an indicator of democratic consolidation in South Korea. Using a national sample survey conducted in November 1993, it demonstrates that the South Korean mass public has been very slow to develop affective, behavioural, cognitive and evaluative links to political parties which, however, constitute an integral channel for representing its preferences in the policy‐making process. Contrary to the tenets of the neo‐corporatist and other theoretical models, this study finds that the failure of political parties to democratize their performance has been, and remains, a major factor inhibiting the development of popular support for a democratic party system. Based on this and other findings, we would predict much continuing difficulty and uncertainty in the process of consolidating South Korean political parties into a fully democratic party system.     

Federal Institutions and Multinational Investors: Federalism,Government Credibility,and Foreign Direct Investment

Political risk is an important factor in the decision to invest abroad. While the investment potential might be lucrative, there is always the risk that the host government will expropriate the profits and assets of the foreign investor. Political institutions, however, can serve as constraints on the actions of political actors in the host country. We argue that federal structures lower political risk. Joint-reputational accountability in overlapping political jurisdictions increases the likelihood that investment contracts will be honored. Empirical analyses of cross-sectional time-series data for 115 countries, from 1975–1995, are used to study how political institutions affect foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. After controlling for the effect of relevant economic and political variables, we find that both democratic and federal institutions help attract FDI, although the additive effect of democracy and federalism is small. This is not surprising; democratic systems already have low political risk; they do not need the additional credibility that the federal system provides to attract FDI. In contrast, we expect that federal structures significantly improve the trustworthiness of less democratic states. Empirically, we find that less democratic countries with federal political systems attract some of the highest levels of FDI.     

Rethinking Ethical Journalism in the Worsening Socio-Economic and Political Crisis in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article reviews the practice of ethical journalism in Zimbabwe. It reports on a study that engaged with both public and private journalists through in-depth interviews, to rethink ethical journalism in the worsening socio-economic and political situation in Zimbabwe. The study used thematic analysis informed by the communal approach or sociology of journalism ethics to analyse journalists’ perspectives. Several factors were found to be causes for unethical journalism practice, namely, political interference; poor economy; corruption; biased editorial policies; political activism; and interests of media owners or funders. The findings of the study reflect parallelism or antagonism between the public and private media in Zimbabwe. Therefore, the article calls for a common view based on the communal approach. It argues that social responsibility must be the norm in the face of corruption and economic challenges. An independent media body should be appointed by the Zimbabwean government to preside over the public media as the first step towards ethical journalism.     

印度政治现代化发展历程探析

印度政治现代化经历了两个主要演进时期。从独立至20世纪70年代末,印度逐步确立了西方议会民主制的政治现代化模式,但也体现出某些东方威权体制的特征。20世纪70年代末至今,印度政治现代化模式经历了深刻的发展和变化,东方威权体制特征日渐削弱和消解,民主政治进入了新阶段,但传统宗教因素也被激活。印度政治现代化进程在传统与现代相互作用、延续与变革彼此交织中向前迈进。     

Political institutions and FDI inflows in autocratic countries*

ABSTRACT

Why do some autocratic countries attract more foreign direct investment (FDI) than others? Surprisingly, few studies have explored the considerable variation in FDI inflows to non-democratic countries. In this article, I argue that non-democratic countries with seemingly democratic political institutions, such as elected legislatures, attract more FDI inflow than others. This is because these institutions can (1) reduce the transaction costs of investment activities due to the relative transparency of the policy-making process, and (2) act as veto players, making the existing market-friendly policy changes difficult, and thus, promising a more stable investment environment. My empirical results support the main expectation that autocratic countries with legislatures attract more FDI than other autocratic countries, and the institutions’ effects are conditionally modified by the quality of market protecting institutions.     

Burnt into the Brain: Towards a Redefinition of Political Culture

The current US administration has made the promotion of ‘political and economic freedom’ overseas a cornerstone of its foreign policy doctrine. The underlying notion that human beings all over the world can be chiefly motivated by a desire for personal liberty seems a noble but hardly realistic ideal. Such motivation is fostered by processes of social modernization and individualization. These changes are linked not only to structural transformations and the spread of new values and ideas, but also to the gradual rewiring of the brains of individuals involved in them. New findings in neuroscience point to clear parallels between changes in social and personality structures (individualization, self-discipline, sense of agency, time orientation, trust, and the like), and modified patterns of brain wiring in individuals. The cultural changes sometimes seen as a precondition for democratization and democratic consolidation are therefore likely to be slow and to escape deliberate political orchestration. Moreover, diffuse processes of brain rewiring conducive to democratic political development, which can be seen as creating favourable neurocultural preconditions for democracy, may be hampered by the rapid spread of the market economy over new regions and areas of life in both developing and Western countries. These processes can be studied by the new sub-field of political science called neuropolitics, to be consolidated over the next few years.     

泰国立宪君主政治权威兴衰的过程、原因与趋势

本文采用“政治体制-社会结构-经济形态”层级式互动框架,对泰国立宪君主政治权威兴衰的过程、原因与趋势进行了分析。指出,泰国立宪君主政治权威的发展变化,主要取决于跨越式发展进程中结构性失衡引起的新旧利益集团的政治权力竞争与妥协。20世纪60年代以来,泰国立宪君主政治权威复兴的根本原因在于军人集团与王室-保皇派从冲突到结盟的政治关系转变。从长期来看,新资本集团的政治崛起将使得王室-保皇派再次被边缘化。     

冷战后中国对东南亚国际政治行为的基本特征

国际政治行为是国际行为主体在特定国际利益基础上,围绕着国际政治权力的获得和运用、国际政治权利的获得和实现而展开的一系列活动。它主要包括:国际政治参与、国际政治斗争,国际治理等。中国对东南亚诸国的国际政治行为呈现如下特征:总体政治行为以体制内参与为主,少有大的冲突;国际政治参与的通道初步建立,但制度与机制体系尚需完善;区域治理已初见成效,但范围与深度仍需拓展;政治行为主体正趋向多元化;行为动机的建构主义特征增强;国际政治行为更加强调独立自主和以国际法及“和平共处五项原则”为准则。     

The Effects of Political Risk on Different Entry Modes of Foreign Direct Investment

Although numerous studies document the effect of political institutions on foreign direct investment (FDI), few works in the political economy literature have investigated the link between political institutions and the mode of entry chosen by investors, be it mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, or greenfield investments. Using panel data for 111 developing countries covering 1980–2006, we find that countries with political institutions that uphold good governance tend to attract higher levels of mergers and acquisitions, as opposed to joint ventures and greenfield investments, because such institutions help to mitigate the special risks faced by merger and acquisition investors. Our findings provide a nuance for understanding the different effects of political institutions based on the particular mode of entry.     

当代俄罗斯民众的政治意识与政治稳定关系考察

考察政治意识与政治稳定的关系,需要广泛参与意识和政治合法性的支撑,政治意识与政治参与率息息相关,俄罗斯公民的政治参与率在不同时期有不同的特点。俄罗斯社会中有庞大的不参与群体存在是俄罗斯维护政治稳定的不利因素。俄罗斯公民政治意识的发展受制于其历史传统、现实国情以及时代使命的具体条件,也是当前俄罗斯国情发展的必然结果,基本上能够满足俄罗斯目前维护稳定的需要。     

Political Strategies of External Support for Democratization

Political strategies of external support to democratization are contrasted and critically examined in respect of the United States and European Union. The analysis begins by defining its terms of reference and addresses the question of what it means to have a strategy. The account briefly notes the goals lying behind democratization support and their relationship with the wider foreign policy process, before considering what a successful strategy would look like and how that relates to the selection of candidates. The literature's attempts to identify strategy and its recommendations for better strategies are compared and assessed. Overall, the article argues that the question of political strategies of external support for democratization raises several distinct but related issues including the who?, what?, why?, and how? On one level, strategic choices can be expected to echo the comparative advantage of the "supporter." On a different level, the strategies cannot be divorced from the larger foreign policy framework. While it is correct to say that any sound strategy for support should be grounded in a theoretical understanding of democratization, the literature on strategies reveals something even more fundamental: divergent views about the nature of politics itself. The recommendations there certainly pinpoint weaknesses in the actual strategies of the United States and Europe but they have their own limitations too. In particular, in a world of increasing multi-level governance strategies for supporting democratization should go beyond preoccupation with just an "outside-in" approach.     

Advances and Opportunities in the Study of Political Communication,Foreign Policy,and Public Opinion

We review contemporary research at the intersection of political communication and foreign policy, highlighting four themes: 1) new, more realistic and psychologically-nuanced approaches that account for limited information and issue framing; 2) the question of whether the flow of communication between the state and the public is best conceived as a closed system, or one that is open to outside influences such as foreign elites; 3) how variations in political or governmental structures, patterns of media access or ownership, and other institutional factors can alter the relationships between foreign policy and communication processes; and 4) whether or not it is useful to distinguish between foreign and domestic policymaking when analyzing the role of political communication. We also suggest avenues for further research in each section and conclude by summarizing these opportunities for continued theoretical development.