Latin America's Fledgling,Fumbling Democracies

By a small majority, Latin Americans are disposed toward preferring democracy over other forms of government, and for now almost all leaders in the region hold office from elections not military coups. Still, most Latin Americans quite correctly do not believe democracy has generally served their interests, that is, produced the jobs, houses, food, justice, and opportunities more and more people tell pollsters they want for themselves and their families. Personal observations and many studies, by the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and others, confirm Latin America's unequaled inequalities and in many respects virtual economic stagnation as far as most people are concerned. The problem is not mainly bad individual leaders or foreign predators, as is often charged, but incompetent governance generally and the inability or refusal of Latins themselves to match their desires with the protracted effort needed to achieve their aspirations. Institutions and paternalistic thinking that go back for centuries persist in adapted forms and today are not only not producing for the majority but dragging Latin America farther and farther behind more successfully reforming countries, particularly in Asia. Latins have it in their power to change things, if they will.     

Disputes, Democracies, and Dependencies: A Reexamination of the Kantian Peace

Militarized interstate disputes are widely thought to be less likely among democratic countries that have high levels of trade and extensive participation in international organizations. We reexamine this broad finding of the Kantian peace literature in the context of a model that incorporates the high degree of dependency among countries. Based on in-sample statistical tests, as well as out-of-sample, predictive cross-validation, we find that results frequently cited in the literature are plagued by overfitting and cannot be characterized as identifying the underlying structure through which international conflict is influenced by democracy, trade, and international governmental organizations. We conclude that much of the statistical association typically reported in this literature apparently stems from three components: (1) geographical proximity, (2) dependence among militarized interstate disputes with the same initiator or target, and (3) the higher-order dependencies in these dyadic data. Once these are incorporated, covariates associated with the Kantian peace tripod lose most of their statistical power. We do find that higher levels of joint democracy are associated with lower probabilities of militarized interstate dispute involvement. We find that despite high statistical significance and putative substantive importance, none of the variables representing the Kantian tripod is associated with any substantial degree of predictive power.     

Information, institutions and constitutional arrangements

This paper develops a theory of optimal institutional structure for staggered-term (overlapping generations) organizations such as legislative bodies. Our model is a simple stochastic game of multi-principal, multi-agent dynamic relationships. Our results emphasize two key features that are determined by legislative founders at the “constitutional moment”. First, they will agree to institute a mechanism that endows (imperfectly informed) legislators with information about the history of play. Second, we provide conditions in which legislative founders will be indifferent to the structure of legislative procedures.     

Clientelism, Credibility, and the Policy Choices of Young Democracies

This article identifies for the first time systematic performance differences between younger and older democracies and argues that these are driven by the inability of political competitors to make broadly credible preelectoral promises to voters. Younger democracies are more corrupt; exhibit less rule of law, lower levels of bureaucratic quality and secondary school enrollment, and more restrictions on the media; and spend more on public investment and government workers. This pattern is exactly consistent with the predictions of Keefer and Vlaicu (n.d.) . The inability of political competitors to make credible promises to citizens leads them to prefer clientelist policies: to underprovide nontargeted goods, to overprovide targeted transfers to narrow groups of voters, and to engage in excessive rent seeking. Other differences that young democracies exhibit, including different political and electoral institutions, greater exposure to political violence, and greater social fragmentation, do not explain, either theoretically or empirically, these policy choices .     

Institutional Context, Cognitive Resources and Party Attachments Across Democracies

e-mail: jdh39{at}columbia.edu e-mail: gck2001{at}columbia.edu e-mail: ell2002{at}columbia.edu This paper develops and tests arguments about how national-levelsocial and institutional factors shape the propensity of individualsto form attachments to political parties. Our tests employ atwo-step estimation procedure that has attractive propertieswhen there is a binary dependent variable in the first stageand when the number of second-level units is relatively small.We find that voters are most likely to form party attachmentswhen group identities are salient and complimentary. We alsofind that institutions that assist voters in retrospectivelyevaluating parties—specifically, strong party disciplineand few parties in government—increase partisanship. Theseinstitutions matter most for those individuals with the fewestcognitive resources, measured here by education.     

Rising to the Top: Gender,Political Performance,and Party Leadership in Parliamentary Democracies

Party leaders are the main actors controlling campaign strategies, policy agendas, and government formation in advanced parliamentary democracies. Little is known, however, about gender and party leadership. This article examines gendered leadership patterns across 71 political parties in 11 parliamentary democracies between 1965 and 2013. It shows that men and women have different access to, and experiences in, party leadership and that these gendered political opportunity structures are shaped by parties' political performances. Women are more likely to initially come to power in minor opposition parties and those that are losing seat share. Once selected for the position, female leaders are more likely to retain office when their parties gain seats, but they are also more likely to leave the post when faced with an unfavorable trajectory. Together, these results demonstrate that prospective female leaders are playing by a different (and often more demanding) set of rules than their male counterparts.     

Security Providers: Obstacles to Effectiveness in Democracies

To usefully discuss security, one must analyze the security providers states utilize to enhance international and domestic security. These are the armed forces, police, and intelligence agencies. This paper analyzes the implications of democratization on the requirements—posited as strategies, resources, and coordination institutions—these providers require in order to achieve the goals civilian leaders set for them. In analyzing case studies of how nations implement six different tasks, it becomes clear that the absence, or weakness, in any of the requirements leads to serious weakness in implementation. Two findings from the case studies are particularly important for policy. First, presidents, who are elected directly and for fixed terms, may ignore or even abolish institutions, including national security councils, that are created to coordinate policy. Second, as civilians are in control, if they lack clear incentives they are not willing to provide the necessary requirements for the security providers.     

Corruption, Political Allegiances, and Attitudes Toward Government in Contemporary Democracies

Using surveys conducted in sixteen mature and newly established democracies around the globe, this study examines the effect of corruption on people's attitudes toward government. The analysis demonstrates that citizens in countries with higher levels of corruption express more negative evaluations of the performance of the political system and exhibit lower levels of trust in civil servants. However, the results also show that the negative effect of corruption on evaluations of the political system is significantly attenuated among supporters of the incumbent political authorities. These findings provide strong and systematic evidence that informal political practices, especially those that compromise important democratic principles, should be considered important indicators of political system performance. Moreover, they imply that, while corruption is a powerful determinant of political support across widely varying political, cultural, and economic contexts, it does not uniformly diminish support for political institutions across all segments of the electorate.     

Coalition Government,Legislative Institutions,and Public Policy in Parliamentary Democracies

Most democracies are governed by coalitions, comprising multiple political parties with conflicting policy positions. The prevalence of these governments poses a significant question: Which parties' electoral commitments are ultimately reflected in government policy? Recent theories have challenged our understanding of multiparty government, arguing that the relative influence of coalition parties depends crucially on institutional context. Specifically, where institutions allow credible enforcement of bargains, policy should reflect a compromise among all governing parties; where such institutions are absent, the preferences of parties controlling the relevant ministries should prevail. Critically, empirical work has thus far failed to provide direct evidence for this conditional relationship. Analyzing changes in social protection policies in 15 parliamentary democracies, we provide the first systematic evidence that the strength of legislative institutions significantly shapes the relative policy influence of coalition parties. Our findings have implications for our understanding of coalition government, policymaking, and electoral responsiveness.     

Politics and Unemployment in Industrialized Democracies

This paper provides an empirical appraisal of the influence ofpolitics on the evolution of unemployment rates in 13industrialized democracies (12 European Union countries andthe U.S.) from 1960 to 1999. We conduct new tests ofopportunistic and partisan business cycle models, using richerdata and more general specifications than previous studies. Incontrast to most previous studies, we pay particular attentionto the importance of labor market structure in conditioningthe influence of politics on unemployment. We also investigatethe relationship between political stability and economicstability. The results suggest the existence of partisan effects, withhigher unemployment rates prevailing under ``right'' partiesthan ``left'' parties. There is more support for ``rational''partisan models that embody transient partisan impacts thanfor models with permanent effects. We find evidence that unionpower is associated with higher average unemployment rates,but that centralized bargaining institutions tend to lowerunemployment rates. The evidence also suggests that morefragmented coalition governments are associated with higherunemployment rates than single party governments.     

Voter ideology in Western Democracies, 1946– 1989

Abstract. We propose a measure of voter ideology which combines party manifesto data compiled by Budge, Robertson, Heari, Klingemann, and Volkens (1992) and updated by Volkens (1995), with election return data. Assuming the comparability and relevance of leftright ideology, we estimate the median voter position in 15 Western democracies throughout most of the postwar period. The plausibility of our assumptions, and therefore the validity of our measure, is supported by the results of several validity tests. With this new measure we are able to make crossnational comparisons of voter ideology among these countries as well as crosstime comparisons within individual countries. We discuss the potential application of our measure to various debates in political science.     

Abortion Policy in Western Democracies: A Cross-National Analysis

This article provides a comparative analysis of abortion policies for 21 countries in Western Europe and North America. First, after briefly discussing the historical evolution of abortion attitudes and policies, a typology of current abortion laws is presented. Second, the mode of determining abortion policy is compared — judicial (Germany, Canada), legislative (Britain, France), and direct democracy (referenda in Italy, Ireland). Third, the question of abortion policy implementation is considered. In other words, does the legal status of abortion really make a difference regarding the pattern of availability and use of abortion services? Fourth, potential explanatory variables (left-wing party strength, feminism, Catholicism) regarding the content and process of abortion policies is evaluated.