Portents of Pluralism: How Hybrid Regimes Affect Democratic Transitions

The original studies of competitive authoritarianism and hegemonic authoritarianism inspected the occurrence of hybrid regimes during the 1990s but stopped short of testing their propensity for democratic change. This article assesses the causal effects of hybrid regimes, and the post–cold war period itself, on regime breakdown and democratization. Using a dataset of 158 regimes from 1975 to 2004, and a discrete measure for transitions to electoral democracy, I find that competitive authoritarian regimes are not especially prone to losing power but are significantly more likely to be followed by electoral democracy: vigorous electoral contestation does not independently subvert authoritarianism, yet it bodes well for democratic prospects once incumbents are overthrown.     

精准脱贫的可持续性：一个概念性分析框架

实现可持续脱贫是落实新时代党中央"脱真贫、真脱贫"要求的新指向,更是推进乡村振兴战略的重要基础。基于可持续生计理论、可持续发展理论和可行能力理论的分析视角,通过对国内外关于可持续脱贫相关研究的梳理,阐释了精准脱贫的可持续性在风险防范、经济效益、社会公平和能力提升等四个层面的基本内涵,其内涵有机构成了"经济—社会—生态—文化—能力"等五维复合系统。从外部环境的脆弱性、贫困治理政策体系存在的不足、脱贫农户可持续生计能力欠缺等方面分析了影响精准脱贫可持续性的多维因素。基于内外协调与系统性治理的视角,从"建立动态风险预警机制,提高抵御外部脆弱性的防控能力;完善贫困治理政策体系,强化脱贫效果的整体性和发展性;培育贫困治理内生动力,提升脱贫农户的可持续生计能力"等层面,提出提升精准脱贫可持续性的路径选择。     

The Institutional Basis of Intercommunal Order: Evidence from Indonesia's Democratic Transition

When authoritarian regimes break down, why does communal violence spike and why are some locations more prone to violence than others? To understand violence during transitions, it is necessary to understand what sustains order when regimes are stable. While existing theories attribute order to formal or informal security institutions on their own, I argue that intercommunal order obtains when formal and informal security institutions are aligned. During authoritarian breakdowns, the state's coercive grip loosens, exposing mismatches between formal and informal institutions and raising the risk of communal violence. Formal‐informal mismatches emerge in communities accustomed to heavy state intervention since they will have developed more state‐dependent informal security institutions. I apply an instrumental variables approach on a nationwide dataset of village‐level data to show that prior exposure to military intervention, proxied by the distance to security outposts, led to Indonesia's spike in violence during its recent democratic transition.     

Measuring Liberal Democratic Performance: an Empirical and Conceptual Critique

Liberal democratic performance is understood as the delivery of liberal democratic values, and not as regime longevity or government efficacy. Measuring it is a matter of how far liberal democratic governments achieve in practice the values they endorse in principle.
It is recognized that the performance of liberal democratic governments varies widely. But extant attempts to measure this variation suffer problems of reliability and validity, and the object of measurement is often unclear.
By defining the range of liberal democratic values we demonstrate that performance is multidimensional and that trade-offs across different values can create distinct performance profiles. The narrow gauge of the extant meaures – usually of just one or two values – is often disguised by single scales that masquerade as summary performance indicators.     

制度体系视野下的民主政治

从制度体系看民主政治,是推进国家治理现代化、促进中国特色社会主义民主政治科学发展的一个重要视角,具有重要的方法论意义。民主是一套把各相关元素有机地组合在一起,体现“主权在民”或“人民当家作主”原则的制度体系。从制度体系的角度能够更加准确地把握中国民主政治建设的特殊性,也标示了进一步完善中国特色社会主义民主政治的根本方向。     

The Ladder of Abstraction: A Framework for the Systematic Classification of Democratic Regime Types

This article argues that classificatory problems such as parochialism, misclassification, degreeism and conceptual stretching underpin the classification of democratic regime types. This is due to the safeguarding of the parliamentary/presidential dichotomy as a framework for the classification and comparison of democratic types of regime. Drawing upon Giovanni Sartori's ladder of abstraction, types of democratic regime are classified as part of a hierarchy of concepts. This approach enables scholars to avoid classificatory pitfalls as it facilitates the methodological expansion of the conceptual framework for the classification of democratic regime types. Therefore, democratic regime types are more conducive to systematic comparative research.     

Rational and Compassionate Information Processing: A Conceptual Framework for Authentic Dialogue

Authentic dialogue is a key component of deliberative democracy. Public administration scholars and practitioners have focused on institutional settings for authentic dialogue, but they have paid less attention to behavioral aspects, especially the emotional component, of authentic dialogue. The author proposes a conceptual framework for authentic dialogue that highlights the three dimensions of its social‐behavioral foundation: epistemic, social, and compassionate information processing motivation. The article reviews the discourse on authentic dialogue in public administration and provides a conceptual framework for authentic dialogue, with a discussion of the three behavioral dimensions, their relationships, and their effects. This framework may be used in empirical analysis of authentic dialogue and the design of institutions for deliberative democracy.     

Administrative Accountability in the ‘Westminster’ Democracies: Towards a New Conceptual Framework

Understandings of administrative accountability in the “Westminster” democracies remain too closely linked to the institutional arrangements through which accountability has traditionally been exacted in these countries. This has prevented a full appreciation of the nature and extent of changes which have been under way for some time. The article argues that a refined concept of accountability and five subordinate “conceptions” of accountability, corresponding to distinctive sets of institutional arrangements, are needed to comprehend the relevant changes. The identification of multiple options for administrative accountability, in turn, raises questions about how the different accountability systems are to be chosen and combined to maximize accountability without impairing administrative effectiveness.     

Models of Executive Politics: a Framework for the Study of Executive Power Relations in Parliamentary and Semi–presidential Regimes

The study of executives politics has been characterized by dichotomous country–specific debates about whether there is, for example, prime ministerial or cabinet government. Recent work has established new terms for these debates leading to more pluralistic conceptualizations of executive politics. Nevertheless, this work has not created the conditions for rigorous cross-national comparison. This article establishes a framework to compare executive branch power relations. It identifies six models of executive politics comprising a comprehensive set of ways in which power may be distributed amongst chief executives, cabinets, ministers and bureaucrats. On the basis of this framework it is argued that it is necessary to engage in empirical observation to determine which models of government occur and to identify the reasons why these models emerge.     

Political Budgeting: A Framework for an Institutional Analysis of Swedish National Accounts

Budget making within the public sector may be approached by means of a systems analysis. The processes and results of budget making may be identified as a system, consisting of variables and relationships. The system of political budgeting is a conceptual framework for a quantitative analysis of basic budget facts concerning inputs, processes and outputs. The article outlines the framework and applies it to the public sector in Sweden on the basis of data derived from Swedish national accounts.     

预防化解多元治理主体利益冲突的制度架构

多元主体协同治理是当前社会治理实现由共治到善治的应有之义,是实现治理体系和治理能力现代化的重要形式。建立健全一套完整、畅通、高效、无缝隙的预防化解多元治理主体利益冲突的制度体系,才能更有效地推进社会治理由共治实现善治,突破单边权力失灵的困境。当前适合中国实际的预防化解多元治理主体利益冲突的制度体系主要包含灵活的主体参与制度体系、严格的过程监督制度体系及完善的利益保障制度体系三个维度。     

Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Democratic Governance in Australia: A Problem of Institutional Design?

This paper is a preliminary attempt to evaluate changing patterns of democratic governance, at least in Westminster-style parliamentary settings, and possibly more generally. It has two specific purposes: first, to propose a paradigm for evaluating the empirical evolution of democratic governance; and second, to illustrate the explanatory potential of this paradigm through a mini-case study of changing patterns of governance in one particular polity. The conceptual framework is drawn from March and Olsen's eponymous study (1995) from which polar ('thick' and 'thin') forms of democratic governance are derived. Four conjectures about its evolution are then explored. First, in its mass party phase, the pattern of democratic governance approximated the 'thick' pole. Second, the subsequent evolution of democratic politics has been in the direction of the 'thin' (minimalist or populist) pole. Third, the cause of this shift was a failure to adapt political institutions to changing citizen identities, which was masked by the ascendancy amongst political elites of the neo-liberal account of governance. Fourth, the paper considers the means by which democratic governance might be renewed. The approach is applied to explain changes in Australian politics over recent decades.     

民主的思想谱系及其有效运行的分析框架

民主的思想谱系聚焦于观念史的视角,探究民主话语在不同时期的兴衰演进,从柏拉图到托克维尔皆以谨慎的姿态看待民主,究其原因在于对"多数人暴政"的担忧,不受法治约束的民主会导向"极权式的民主"。民主的运转需要法治来维护,这体现了治理能力发展的内在要求。民主思想的历史光谱为理解民主制度建设提供了可资参考的镜像,注重法治与效率的国家能力建设,维护公众权利,回应公众诉求,促进公共性的有机成长构成深入推进民主有效运行的基本框架。     

The Difficult Art of Classifying Regimes: The Case of Paraguay

This article deals with the difficult art of classifying political regimes. Such classifications are important since they lay the ground for a central field of research in political science, namely the causes and consequences of regime changes. The article focuses on Paraguay. which has experienced a process of transition from authoritarian to democratic rule over the past five years. Four criteria of democracy are used to evaluate the state of democracy in this country in early 1994: competitive elections and universal suffrage. broad and autonomous political participation. political freedoms and accountability of elected organs. The investigation of the Paraguayan case highlights the problems involved in using a dichotomous regime variable in empirical research. Paraguay is a democracy when it comes to freedom of speech, but hardly in term of the political situation in the countryside. It also demonstrates that the widely used Schumpeterian definition of democracy is risky in the sense that it may conceal more than it reveals about the regime under study. Finally, the article sheds light on the need for in-depth case studies for the classification of political regimes.