When do electoral institutions trigger electoral misconduct?

Drawing on two complementary mechanisms, this article explores the question of whether electoral institutions and conditions of electoral competition create incentives to promote electoral misconduct in young or developing democracies. The first mechanism explains how majoritarian institutions like disproportional electoral systems are more likely to trigger electoral fraud than consensus electoral institutions like proportional representation. However, for this mechanism to be activated, the incumbent must feel effectively threatened by the opposition. To better understand the way this mechanism works, the electoral history of the country also needs to be taken into consideration. Democracies which have a historical record of running clean elections are less likely to experience fraud than countries with a history of electoral misconduct. I test these theoretical claims using a dataset that contains relevant information for 323 parliamentary elections in 59 new or developing democracies in the period between 1960 and 2006. The empirical analysis shows a strong and robust empirical support for the two mechanisms.     

Investors,turbulence, and transition: Democratic transition and foreign direct investment in nineteen developing countries

Do profit‐seeking foreign direct investors value a country's transition to democracy? If they do, they should vote with their pocketbooks, resulting in a post‐transition increase in foreign direct investment flows. This study attempts to uncover links between transition to democracy and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, In doing so, it addresses existing arguments about connections between democracy and investor behavior. The regions examined have not only experienced democratic transitions, they also account for the majority of the increasing flow of FDI to the developing world. This research employs time‐series cross‐sectional (TSCS) economic and political data, using ordinary least squares with panel corrected standard errors. The central finding is that transition to democracy has a negative effect on FDI. Secondarily, political instability and higher levels of democracy also deter foreign direct investors.     

Ownership and conditionality in IMF-supported programs: Back to Per Jacobsson’s time

Using a historical case study this article provides an example of how heterogeneity of interests within a government may affect the interplay between country ownership of reforms and conditionality in IMF-supported programs. The case study also highlights how pro-reformers’ preferences may be conditional on reforms advancing their personal agendas. This suggests a new issue to be addressed by formal models of conditionality. Two main themes emerge from the analysis: (a) the importance of a clear hierarchy to unify heterogeneous interests among decision makers; and, (b) a flexible country-tailored approach to conditionality can contribute to domestic ownership of reforms.

Does faith limit immorality? The politics of religion and corruption

Critically considering scholarship relating religiosity to ethical behaviour, we contend that religion is systematically related to levels of corruption, and that the nature of this relationship is contingent on the presence of democratic institutions. In democracies, where political institutions are designed to inhibit corrupt conduct, the morality provided by religion is related to attenuated corruption. Conversely, in systems lacking democratic institutions, moral behaviour is not tantamount to staying away from corrupt ways. Accordingly, in non-democratic contexts, religion would not be associated with decreased corruption. Time-series cross-sectional analyses of aggregate data for 129 countries for 12 years, as well as individual level analyses of data from the World Values Surveys, strongly corroborate the predictions of our theory. The correlation of religion with reduced corruption is conditional on the extent to which political institutions are democratic.     

Political Context and the Consequences of Naming and Shaming for Human Rights Abuse

Does being named and shamed for human rights abuse influence the amount of foreign aid received by the shamed state? Recent research suggests that the impact of public censure may depend on the political relationship between donor and recipient. We argue that donors deriving a direct political benefit from the aid relationship (such as a military advantage or the satisfaction of a domestic political audience) will ignore or work against condemnation, but donors with little political interest in the recipient (who give aid for symbolic or humanitarian reasons) will punish condemned states. We also argue that the size of prior aid packages can be used as a holistic measure of the donor’s political interest in the aid relationship because mutually beneficial aid packages are subject to a bargaining process that favors recipients with more to offer. We find that condemnation for human rights abuse by the United Nations is associated with lower bilateral aid levels among states that previously received small aid package, and with equal or higher bilateral aid to states already receiving a great deal of aid. The source of shaming also matters: We find that public shaming by human rights NGOs is not associated with decreased aggregate bilateral aid.     

U.S. Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy: Building Strong Relationships by Doing It Right!

Foreign aid policies cannot be more successful than their implementation, which inherently involves people and institutions. But people have their own interests and cultural frameworks, and institutions are inevitably grounded in culture and politics. Inattention to the agendas of individuals involved on both sides of foreign aid to Central and Eastern Europe played a major role in its shortcomings. A recent court decision holding two Harvard university scholars guilty of defrauding the U.S. government while running a flagship project to reform the Russian economy underscores the pitfalls in outsourcing traditional functions of government to small, well-connected groups that are not fully accountable in serving the public interest. Drawing on the author's experience studying informal systems and networks over several decades, this article illuminates the importance of foreign policy and aid relationships—how they are set up, who wins and who loses, and how their lack of accountability can contribute to the derailment of nation-building and constructive relations among countries.     

人的安全保护与民主转型 ——基于阿富汗战争的考察

一些国家在由非民主体制向民主体制转型的过程中,往往遭遇各种暴力与冲突。由于人的安全得不到保障,新政府的信誉与合法性因此受到质疑,从而损害了民主转型的前景。阿富汗就是这方面的典型例子,特别是2009年的总统大选表明,恶劣的安全状况已经影响到民主的运作和信誉,这体现了一个困扰许多处于转型过程中的国家的困境：没有人的安全,就没有可靠的民主;转型中的发展中国家很容易在一种失序、动荡的过渡期中反复纠缠,民众的不安全与无效的政府成为一对相互催生的恶瘤。西方的武力干预容易推翻一个旧政权却很难塑造一个强有力的新政权,其造成的权力真空加剧了人的安全与民主转型之间的紧张。民主的价值不容否定,但民主应该在一个稳定的安全基础上去构建,无视人的安全去追求民主,可能反过来有损于真正的民主进程。人的安全视角表明：安全在价值序位上是高于民主的,也是民主生成的前提性条件;有一个能够保证人的安全的有效政府,是国家顺利实现民主转型的关键。     

Remittances and varieties of democratization in developing countries

ABSTRACT

How do remittances affect democratization in developing countries? In this paper we reconcile divergent findings in the literature by examining the effect of remittances on procedural and liberal democracy in developing countries at various stages of their democratic development. Remittances are primarily sent to middle-class individuals and bypass government control. Yet, governments in countries receiving remittances want to tax this remittance income. Government officials therefore need to incentivize participation of the middle class in the formal economy by reducing the threat of expropriation. Improving procedural democracy, which assures citizens of improved property and rule of law protections, is one way to accomplish this. We argue that this relationship should only be present in mixed regime types, with the democratizing effect of remittances waning as the country’s level of democracy or autocracy strengthens. Further, we expect elements of liberal democracy, such as civil rights and equality under the law, to remain unchanged in all remittance-receiving countries. The middle class and governing elite are less incentivized to improve liberal democracy to limit the power and mobilization capacity of the poor and prevent increased redistribution. We test our theory on a dataset of developing countries from 1975 through 2011.     

转型时期俄罗斯政治制度探析

俄罗斯实行宪政民主制度,要求有一部至高无上的宪法。并在宪法范围内推行民主制度,经过几年的改革,目前俄罗斯宪政制度的框架已基本建立起来。俄罗斯政治制度的最大特点是其过渡性,目前的民主化进程正处于由高度集权政治向民主政治过渡阶段——权威政治的初始阶段,要建立起真正现代意义上的民主政治制度还有漫长的道路要走。     

Divisions within post-2011 Tunisia’s secular civil society

Popular and academic discourses frame civil society as a key factor that prevented Tunisia from following the unfortunate path of other “Arab Spring” states. But while such discourses tend to portray it as a monolithic political force, Tunisian civil society comprises a diverse range of different types of actors with different backgrounds, interests, views and approaches towards activism. Drawing upon interviews with Tunisian activists, this article maps a range of tensions within Tunisian secular civil society along these lines and sets out to explain their origins. Notably, it identifies a generational division between those activists that started to engage in the late 2000s or during and after the 2011 ouster of Ben Ali and those who were already active before. This division is based on a range of factors, including a sense of entitlement to the leadership of post-2011 Tunisian civil society on both sides, a lack of mutual respect for and trust in each other as well as differences regarding practices and priorities of civil society engagement.