Federalism and low-maintenance constituencies: Territorial dimensions of economic reform in Argentina

How does the territorial distribution of political and economic resources within national polities influence politics and policy making? This article examines the electoral dynamics of market reform in Argentina between 1989 and 1995. It provides insights into the way that the distribution of economic and institutional resources in federal systems shapes policy making and coalition building options for reformist governments. The electoral viability of the governing Peronist Party during the economic reform period was facilitated by the regional phasing of the costs of market reform. Structural reforms were concentrated primarily on economically developed regions of the country, while public spending and patronage in economically marginal but politically overrepresented regions sustained support for the governing party. Statistical analyses contrast patterns of spending and public sector employment in “metropolitan” and “peripheral” regions of the country during the reform period, as well as the social bases of electoral support in those regions. A conceptual distinction between “high-maintenance” and “low-maintenance” constituencies is also introduced to shed light on the dynamics of patronage spending in contexts of market reform.     

Building Support for the Asad Regime: The Syrian Diaspora in Argentina and Brazil and the Syrian Uprising

ABSTRACT

Brazil and Argentina are hosts to two of the largest populations of Syrian descent in Latin America. While Syrian immigrants and their descendants have usually defined their identities based on broad Arab nationalistic references, creating and affiliating themselves to Syrian-Lebanese and/or Arab institutions, the ongoing civil war in Syria has triggered an unprecedented mobilization around specifically Syrian issues. Most diasporic organizations have shown an unconditional support for the Ba?thist regime. This article aims at understanding the political mobilization of the Syrian diaspora in Argentina and Brazil, as well as unveiling how Bashar al-Asad's government has tried to build on their support.     

Varieties and crises of neoliberal globalisation: Argentina,Turkey and the imf

Argentina and Turkey are two important ‘emerging market countries’ that experienced a major economic crisis during the same year. Focusing on the period leading up to the respective 2001 crises in the two countries, this article attempts to place the two experiments in historical perspective and provide an understanding of the common elements as well as the diversity of the neoliberal restructuring process in semi-peripheral settings. The article also attempts to identify some of the key mistakes made by the imf, which was, in part, responsible for the crises experienced. A central conclusion is that ‘new’ or unconsolidated democracies find themselves particularly vulnerable when they are suddenly and prematurely exposed to financial and capital account liberalisation. The outcome is a highly fragile, debt-led growth path with costly consequences. Indeed, although both countries have managed to accomplish impressive recoveries in the post-crisis period, given their past trajectories and the heavy debt burden that they face, it is too early to say that the recovery process will be translated into sustained and crisis-free growth. The regional environment in which the two countries find themselves might be particularly important in this context, with the powerful EU anchor a possible important advantage in the Turkish context.     

Varieties of Subnational Undemocratic Regimes: Evidence from Argentina and Mexico

This article analyzes concept formation and its empirical and theoretical implications for the study of subnational undemocratic regimes. The paper argues that extant conceptualizations of subnational political regimes, which generally draw on a strategy of “conceptual expansion” have important drawbacks for the study of subnational undemocratic regimes (SURs). To overcome these shortcomings, the article claims for a strategy of “conceptual separation” that disaggregates political regimes into two orthogonal dimensions, i.e., the access to and the exercise of state power. Drawing on original evidence from Argentina and Mexico, the article demonstrates that the strategy of conceptual separation helps researchers to (1) avoid truncation of the universe of cases for analysis, (2) obtain new and more precise information about the actual magnitude of the uneven territorialization of democracy, (3) recognize the existence of two ideal type domains of SURs: patrimonial and bureaucratic, and (4) gain more analytic leverage to identify the causal mechanisms that explain regime continuity within and across SUR types. In-depth case studies of the state of Puebla (Mexico) and the province of San Luis (Argentina) demonstrate empirically the workings of the mechanisms that account for regime continuity in bureaucratic-like SURs. The article also demonstrates the potential of distinguishing between SUR types for the study of SUR origins and SUR change.     

权威主义的终结与中国政治的渐进发展

1949年以来,中国政治经历了以权威主义为重要特征的发展阶段。在权威主义时代,领导人个人的意志和判断在很大程度上决定着党和国家的发展方向,政治发展跌宕起伏,具有极大的不稳定性。随着权威主义领导人的离去,中国逐步过渡到后权威主义时代。在后权威主义时代,领导人的政治基础和权力效应相对薄弱,决策的科学化、民主化成为主要趋势。政治的渐进发展将成为检验政治发展健康与否的重要标志。     

Promoting Democracy and Promoting Authoritarianism: Comparing the Cases of Belarus and Slovakia

Although scholars have made great progress over the last few years studying the international dimension of democratisation, questions remain about this complex relationship, especially about the understudied area of external promotion of authoritarianism. This article seeks to develop more refined understanding of specific mechanisms linking one type of external involvement, financial assistance, to regime change. Financial assistance can increase the capabilities of either pro-democratic or pro-authoritarian elites and therefore contribute to regime change. These mechanisms are examined by looking at democracy assistance in Slovakia and Belarus and Russia's support for authoritarianism in Belarus.     

State Bureaucracy in Indonesia and its Reforms: An Overview

New Public Management (NPM) as a part of neoliberalism has increasingly become a global phenomenon and has transcended national boundaries, irrespective of whether they are English-speaking countries or non-English-speaking countries. This label of public management has not been interpreted and implemented in a single language, but has been adapted and implemented based on the contextual condition of given nations in terms of their socio-culture, history and formation, ideological inclination, and polity system. This article aimed at providing support to the above supposition, taking Indonesian public governance reforms as an example. The review of Indonesian reforms on public governance is expected to enrich the proliferation of international reforms on public governance in terms of how NPM has been travelling global and has been recontextualized in the existing values of Indonesian people.     

Persuasion and Predation: The Effects of U.S. Military Aid and International Development Aid on Civilian Killings

ABSTRACT

Powerful states frequently employ foreign aid to pursue international security objectives. Yet aid's effectiveness will be undermined if it exacerbates the effects of conflict on civilians within recipient states. This article investigates how international development aid and U.S. military aid influence recipient governments' incentives and ability to target civilians. U.S. military aid has a persuasion effect on state actors, which decreases a recipient state's incentives and necessity to target civilians. Development aid flows, however, trigger a predation effect in some environments, exacerbating civilian targeting. An analysis of aid flows in 135 countries on civilian killings between 1989–2011 provides support for both the persuasion and predation effects associated with aid.     

Mass terror and the court: The Military Collegium of the USSR

Apart from its role in the Moscow show trials during 1936 – 38, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court under V.V. Ul'rikh also tried some 40,000 ‘enemies of the people’ behind closed doors, sentencing most of them to death. These pseudo-trials of no more than a few minutes took place in prisons or NKVD offices in Moscow or (through the Collegium's assizes) provincial centres. There was no serious investigation of the evidence, and the court turned a blind eye to apparent cases of torture. The judges personally attended executions, occasionally even participating in them. The punishments had been determined beforehand by the political leadership under Stalin by way of lists, with the Military Collegium only ‘legalising’ the sentences. The defendants originated from the Soviet elite. The aim of this article is to throw more light on this side of the Collegium's activities, mainly based on archival sources. The article suggests that this quasi-legal procedure was adopted by the leadership under Stalin, in preference to purely administrative measures, because it was considered to be less likely to endanger the elite's loyalty.

We did not break the law, did not sign just like that. These are lies. Ul'rikh gave reports. There was a court, an indictment, there were sentences: everything as it should be, everything according to the law (Lazar' Kaganovich interviewed by G.A. Kumanev in Kumanev 1999 Kumanev, G. A. 1999. ‘Dve besedy s L.M. Kaganovichem’. Novaya i noveishaya istoriya, 2: 101–122.  [Google Scholar], p. 116).     

比较日韩权威主义发展模式——从小泽一郎和卢武铉说起

本来,日本的小泽一郎与韩国的卢武铉两人是没有什么可以拿来比较的,但是,最近,由于两人的秘书和家属分别受贿而导致两人一个辞职一个自杀,引起风波,让我们对这两件看似毫不相干的事件背后所包含的深层含义产生了兴趣。本文旨在从政治文化的角度分析比较日韩两国以东方传统为背景的权威主义发展模式的特点和弊端,提出东亚国家在发展过程中所面临的共同问题,目的是抛砖引玉,唤起人们的进一步注意和思考。     

The Military Coups in Fiji: Reactive and Transformative Tendencies

Abstract

Since 1987 there have been six coups altogether in Fiji. The article examines the reactive and transformative nature of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, hereafter referred to as Fiji military, and coups and their impact on the small multi-cultural country of 850,000 people. The coups in Fiji have to be seen in the light of the two separate but related developments, namely the historical dynamic interplay between politics and ethnicity and secondly, how the military itself has evolved as a state institution and how it perceived its role in the modern state system. Although the military is modelled along the lines of a praetorian institution, its perceived role has often shifted from being guardian of indigenous Fijian interests to protector of the multi-ethnic state. The interventionist tendency of the military was largely in response to the way in which the interplay between politics and ethnicity had played a part in creating discord and tension. All the six coups in Fiji were linked and need to be understood in relation to each other. The 2006 coup was the most politically transformative as some of the most powerful institutions were weakened and reconfigured and a new order created under the guise of a ‘clean-up campaign’.