The Renovation of Old Institutions: State Governors and the Political Transition in Mexico

The process of political transition in Mexico has fostered several institutional transformations in the political system. Such changes do not modify the system's design, but they do reactivate some basic institutions and forgotten powers that affect the operation of the political system as a whole. The state governors have undergone one of the most relevant transformations: they have gained more autonomy and have forged a new relationship with the federal executive. This essay analyzes the different actions governors have taken depending on their partisan origin. While the PAN governors focus on administrative and financial issues, the PRI governors have developed the most important political challenges to the president's authority.     

Causes and Consequences of Political Clientelism: Mexico's PRD in Comparative Perspective

PRD politicians and officials widely use clientelism to structure their relationships with citizens. This is due not only to the entrenchment of clientelism in Mexican politics or to high rates of poverty and inequality, but also to the limited institutionalization of democratic rules inside the party. The last stems largely from the party's electoral strategy in its formative years, and has resulted in uncontrolled factional battles that play out through clientelism. The Brazilian PT faced external and internal conditions quite similar to those of the PRD, but its early focus on organization building and policy change allowed it to avoid clientelism to a greater degree. This analysis problematizes the trend of using minimalist definitions that assume clientelism to be nondemocratic because these approaches result in conceptual stretching and decreased explanatory power.     

Building a Following: Local Candidates' Political Careers and Clientelism in Argentine Municipalities

Why do some candidates prefer to use clientelistic strategies to mobilize voters while others do not? Building on existing explanations that highlight the importance of voters' demand for particularistic goods and parties' capacities to supply goods and monitor voters, this article focuses on candidates' political careers. It argues that how candidates begin mobilizing voters to participate in rallies and elections becomes crucial in explaining their preferences to use clientelism. Candidates who receive a salary based on their ability to mobilize voters—paid party activists—are more likely to use clientelism than candidates who are not paid for their political work, unpaid party activists.     

Political Ideology,Public Policy and Human Development in India: Explaining the Gap Between Gujarat and Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Four decades ago the Indian states of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu had identical scores on the human development index. Both states have since experienced similar rates of economic growth and Gujarat has received more foreign investment, but Tamil Nadu has witnessed much stronger advances in human development. What explains this divergence? Through comparative historical, statistical and public policy analysis and interviews, we conclude that the implementation of government policies as a manifestation of political ideology and the quality of public administration have played a defining role in explaining Gujarat’s more lopsided and Tamil Nadu’s more balanced human development trajectories. Our findings suggest that a more egalitarian ideology and higher quality of public administration have been crucial to Tamil Nadu’s success in simultaneously improving human and economic development.     

Models of Clientelism and Policy Change: The Case of Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes in Mexico and Brazil

Clientelist systems vary, and this variation influences the adoption and evolution of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. We find that vertically integrated, corporatist clientelism in Mexico and more locally oriented, bossist clientelism in Brazil differentially shape the choices of governments to turn piecemeal, discretionary CCTs into more expansive and secure benefits.     

Model Citizens of the State: The Jews of Turkey during the Multiparty Period

The Palestinian Arab National Movement: volume II From Riots to Rebellion 1929–1939 by Y. Porath. London: Frank Cass, 1977. Pp. 414, index. £16.00.

The Origins of Zionism by David Vital. Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1975. Pp. xvi+396, bibl., index. £4.95 (paperback) 1980.     

The Poverty of Democracy: Neoliberal Reforms and Political Participation of the Poor in Mexico

Twenty years after governments across Latin America began implementing neoliberal reforms in earnest, concern is growing about their impact on the quality of democracy in the region. This article examines this issue in the case of Mexico by exploring how patterns of political participation, especially among the rural and urban poor, have changed since the implementation of free market reforms. It asks whether the institutional innovations associated with free market reforms make it easier or more difficult for the poor to participate in Mexico's political process. The answer is not encouraging. Despite democratic openings, the new linkages between the state and citizens established as a result of the transition to a free market development model stifle the voice of the poor not through the threat of force or coercion, but by creating obstacles and disincentives for political mobilization that affect the poor more severely than other groups.     

Explaining the Reversed Gender Gap in Political Consumerism: Personality Traits as Significant Mediators

Research on political consumerism documents a persistent reversed gender gap, as women boycott and buycott products more often than men. Previous efforts to explain the reversed gender gap rely on classical theoretical models developed to illuminate gender differences in political participation in general. Accounting for socio‐economic and situational factors as well as socialization leaves a significant amount of the reversed gender gap unexplained, though. Adhering to recent empirical evidence of personality as an important factor influencing political behavior, we argue that gender differences in personality traits could provide an alternative explanation to account for gender disparities in political consumerism. We use original survey data specially designed to measure political consumerism in Switzerland, which also include the Big Five model of personality. We find empirical evidence that gender differences in personality traits, in particular agreeableness, explain a significant portion of the reversed gender gap in political consumerism.     

Clientelism: factionalism in the allocation of public resources in Iraq after 2003

This article examines clientelism in Iraq as a case study of one form of corruption. Iraq is an unusual case of corruption, because a key feature of Iraq's corrupt environment is an institutionalised factional political system based on sectarian quotas. The article explores the many links between clientelism and political factionalism, discussing whether clientelism arose because of factionalism, or whether factionalism merely determines the ways that clientelism currently operates in Iraq. Using fieldwork data, the findings show there are two distinct levels of clientelism in Iraq, both of which are linked to political factions: the individual level and the organisational level. First, clientelism at the individual level entails the elites of many political factions regarding ‘money politics’ as a means of influence in Iraq/Kurdistan by buying people's affiliations and thereby governing people. Second, clientelism at the organisational level entails that the spoils of political office are shared out among the elites of the political factions in a proportionate fashion. The article concludes that clientelism is a form of political rather than economic corruption; and that while there may be some immediate value in clientelism, its long-term harm outweighs its short-term value.     

Clientelism and Social Funds: Evidence from Chávez's Misiones

The latest president in Latin America to adopt social funds on a large scale as an integral part of his government program has been Hugo Chávez Frías of Venezuela. Based on the literature on clientelism and social funds in Latin America, this article finds that Venezuela's latest experiments with social funds were influenced by political variables. It uses empirical data from the distribution of resources for some of the subnational misiones programs to show how, given increased levels of electoral competition and weak institutional constraints, the government used these funds clientelistically, even while distributing oil income to the very poor. Chávez's misiones served two very different purposes: to manipulate the political context and to distribute funds directly to the low-income population.     

State Socialism in Australian Political Thought: A Reconsideration

In understanding the origins of conventional tenets in political thought, we should attend to cross‐spectrum analysis of usage. Taking state socialism as an instance, this paper argues that the practice of treating it historically either as an element within a radical tradition (by Labour historians) or as a discredited part of a socialist agenda (by liberals) ignores the ways in which it was it was deployed across the political spectrum. Outsiders (such as the Webbs and Métin) skewed the record, describing the pragmatic accommodations they saw as “socialism without doctrines”, unconscious of the debates amongst Australian political elites. We need to explore anew where ideas came from, how they were taken up and adapted in the Australian context (by all sides) and the circumstances that determined their duration within everyday discourse.     

Political Entrepreneurs and Neoliberal Reform in Mexico: The Salinas Requisa of the Port of Veracruz

This essay extends the discussion on the politics of reform by identifying specific political strategies that allow policymakers to implement difficult economic reforms in the context of an increasingly democratic and contentious policymaking environment. Analyzing the policymaking strategy of Mexican president Carlos Salinas (1988-94) in his efforts to reorganize the Port of Veracruz, it identifies the element of political entrepreneurship as essential to the long-term success of Salinas's port policy. When compared with the mixed record of many of Salinas's other reforms and the authoritarian manner in which they were implemented, the port policy stands out both for its successful outcome and for Salinas's concerted political efforts to implement it. Even in the context of an authoritarian policymaking regime, an effective political strategy is an important element in achieving the long-term goals of market-based reforms.