Bowling the state back in: Political institutions and the creation of social capital

Abstract. While some studies have revealed that social capital is shaped within civil society, the role of political institutions in forming social capital has not yet been clearly shown. This article, therefore, tries to evaluate the politico-institutional foundations of social capital measured in terms of associational life in Switzerland. The purpose is to apply Putnam's method of comparing subsystems to the Swiss cantons. The empirical analyses show that government structures are strongly associated with social capital. More specifically, the availability of direct democracy promotes a lively associational life. In addition, consensus democracy and decentralized political structures contribute to social capital. In this vein, the access points of the politico-institutional structure constitute a feasible 'top-down' path to breaking out of the vicious circle of distrust, disengagement and weak democracy.     

The Political Economy of Unmediated Democracy: Italian Austerity under Mario Monti

This article explores the political economy of reform under the technocratic government of Mario Monti. Unlike the technocratic governments of the 1990s, the Monti interregnum was an experiment in unmediated democracy, in which a government is actively supported neither by political parties nor by encompassing social groups. Italian political leaders adopted unmediated democracy because of the underlying interest group conflicts in the Italian political economy. Unmediated democrats such as Monti can impose bitter medicine on a stalemated society when it is in a stage of acute crisis, but the passage of longer-term reforms requires a social coalition to support those reforms beyond the critical stage of crisis. Thus the government implemented budget cuts, but liberalisation and institutional reform stalled in the face of opposition. Italy is unlikely to be durably reformed by a government that is not anchored to society through political parties or interest groups.     

Still a ‘Male Business’? Explaining Women’s Presence in Executive Office

This article aims to account for cross-national and over-time variation in women’s participation in cabinets. Specifically, it focuses on some key political factors which have not been tested yet, such as the effectiveness of party gender quotas. Previous literature has mainly centred on structural variables, such as the degree of democratisation and economic development. Using an original longitudinal cross-sectional sample of 23 advanced industrial democracies, this article provides new evidence that some important political factors should be considered. It finds that countries with a specialist system have a higher percentage of women in cabinet than generalist systems, left-wing parties in government appoint more women, women are more likely to receive a ministerial post when the governing party has adopted gender quotas, and an increasing number of women in parliament boosts women in cabinet. Furthermore, the article shows that these political variables perform differently through time, and that political factors have become more relevant in recent decades.     

The dynamics of racial exclusion and expulsion: racist politics in western Europe

Abstract. The concept of political racism is necessarily more specific than the more universal concepts of racism used in social science outside the sphere of politics. Thus, despite the common tendency to explain political racism using theories developed to account for other forms of racism, one turns most profitably to a range of political factors operating differently in time and/or location in order to arrive at the most thorough understanding of the expression of political racism. However, that does not deny the relevance of certain theories of more general racism in recognizing those circumstances that predispose to political racism. Some major theories in sociology and social psychology that might be applicable to political racism are described and their respective usefulness is assessed on the basis of available evidence about support for political racism in four west European countries.     

Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in Africa

This article draws on data from over 35,000 respondents in 22 public opinion surveys in 10 countries and finds strong evidence that ethnic identities in Africa are strengthened by exposure to political competition. In particular, for every month closer their country is to a competitive presidential election, survey respondents are 1.8 percentage points more likely to identify in ethnic terms. Using an innovative multinomial logit empirical methodology, we find that these shifts are accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the salience of occupational and class identities. Our findings lend support to situational theories of social identification and are consistent with the view that ethnic identities matter in Africa for instrumental reasons: because they are useful in the competition for political power.     

The Local Political Business Cycle

Although local political leaders have fewer policy instruments available than national politicians, they nevertheless engage heavily in the creation of political business cycles, i.e. they try to locate and time the costs and benefits of government policies in such as way as to optimize voter support. The study, which is based on data from the four Nordic countries and Italy and France, shows that expenditures tend to grow faster the closer the local election, while political action to increase local taxes is generally taken only in mid-term years. If one wants to predict how local tax rates and expenditures change, it is as important to know the number of years' to the next election as it is to know the change in the fiscal capabilities of local governments.     

British Political Science and Comparative Politics

The internationalization of political science makes it especially difficult to identify a distinctive British approach to comparative politics. While there is certainly evidence of a distaste for cross-national comparison in Britain, this is no more marked than in other countries. In fact, on the evidence of a survey of major journals, Britons make relatively heavy use of the comparative method. British comparative research is less likely to use statistical indicators and methods than that found in other countries. Apart from this, the distinctions between comparative politics here and elsewhere are more matters of style and less matters of substance.     

Citizenship,Multiculturalism and Cross-National Muslim Minority Public Opinion

Do institutions of citizenship shape public opinion among Muslims in the West? Pitched debates about the future of multiculturalism give strong theoretical reason to think that institutions would cause cross-national variation in minority opinion. Institutions set rules for national integration and communal recognition and send signals regarding social views of diversity. Testing these theorised links, however, requires two steps. First, careful conceptualisation of citizenship, both in individual and communal dimensions, categorises states’ citizenship regimes. Second, unique cross-national polling of Muslim minorities in France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States permits analysis of the relationship between institutions and minority political attitudes. Findings demonstrate strong institutional effects on attitudes. However, these effects vary depending on the question asked. Institutions impact on cross-national variation in opinion regarding national identification and women’s place in society. There is no evidence of institutional roots of support for suicide terrorism.     

Intra-Party Politics and Public Opinion: How Candidate Selection Processes Affect Citizens’ Satisfaction with Democracy

Scholars often mention the centrality of parties for the democratic political system. Indeed political parties are indispensable institutions for the linkage between state and society, and should not remain absent in any comparative analysis of citizens’ political attitudes. Yet, only rarely do scholars study how parties shape people’s opinion about democracy. This article seeks to amend this lacuna and examine empirically how party level characteristics, specifically the nature of a party’s candidate selection procedure, relate to the level of satisfaction with democracy among citizens. The authors constructed a cross-national dataset with data on the selection procedures of 130 political parties in 28 country-sessions to examine whether citizens that vote for democratically organized parties are more satisfied with the way democracy works in their country. Additionally, this relationship is examined more closely in Israel and Belgium, two countries where candidate selection procedures show substantial variation and where politicians have made a strong claim for intraparty democratization. Both the cross-national as well as the country-specific analyses indicate that democratic candidate selection are indeed associated with greater satisfaction with democracy.     

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.     

Globalization and the Strengthening of Democracy in the Developing World

Scholars and policy makers have long assumed that trade and financial liberalization encourages developing countries to become more democratic; yet no one has developed formal hypotheses about the causal relationship between globalization and democracy. This article shows that these two trends are indeed related, but not necessarily in the direct manner that has commonly been postulated. Combining theories of embedded liberalism and conflict-based theories of democracy, the model presented here depicts the process that affects decisions to strengthen democracy as trade and capital flows increase. I argue that increasing exposure to international export and financial markets leads to improvements in democracy if safety nets are used simultaneously as a strategy for providing stability and building political support. Empirical evidence is provided by econometric analysis covering 59 developing countries for the time period 1972–97.     

Political budget cycles and election outcomes

This paper addresses two empirical questions. Is fiscal policy affected by upcoming elections? If so, do election-motivated fiscal policies enhance the probability of re-election of the incumbent? Employing data for 65 democratic countries over 1975–2005 in a semi-pooled panel model, we find that in most countries fiscal policy is hardly affected by elections. The countries for which we find a significant political budget cycle are very diverse. They include ‘young’ democracies but also ‘established’ democracies. In countries with a political budget cycle, election-motivated fiscal policies have a significant positive (but fairly small) effect on the electoral support for the political parties in government.     

Political budget cycles and media freedom

This paper examines the effects of elections on the conduct of central governments' fiscal policies. To do so, it uses a unique panel database that includes disaggregated spending and revenue series at the central government level for multiple countries over the 1975–2010 period. Examining political environments under which incumbent governments generate political budget cycles (PBCs), and comparing the relative importance of factors influencing cycles, we identify media freedom as the factor that plays the most critical role. This result provides a micro-foundation for rational opportunistic models for PBCs that rely on asymmetry of information about politicians' competence, and also offers a way to relate different conditioning factors of PBCs, including fiscal transparency and the maturity of democracies. Further, we show that the election-year rise in budget deficits under low media freedom is primarily driven by an increase in the current, not capital, component of public expenditure.     

Policy Preferences and Political Distrust: A Comparison of Norway, Sweden and the United States

Many modern democracies have experienced a decrease in citizen support for government in recent decades. This article examines attitudes toward public policy as a plausible theoretical explanation for this phenomenon. The connection between public policy and support for the political regime has received considerable academic attention in the United States. Yet very little comparative work has examined whether citizens' policy preferences are related to a decline in diffuse support across different political systems. This article offers a clearer, more concise theoretical specification of the hypothesized relationship between public evaluations of policy outputs and support for the political regime. After specifying the theoretical concerns more succinctly, the article analyzes data from Norway, Sweden and the United States for the quarter century from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The analysis reveals that shifts in evaluations of foreign policy and race-related policies help explain change in political trust for all three countries despite differences in the political systems. Moral issues, such as abortion, however, have no impact on political trust in any of the countries.     

Local Government Innovation and Revealed Ideas of Political Legitimacy: a Comparative Study between the United States and China

This study constructs a typology of innovation from the winning nominations of local government innovation award programs in the US and China, two countries with histories of subnational policy innovation, to reveal what types of policy initiatives local officials believe will improve governance in each country. I argue that improving governance is important as it serves as a main source of modern political legitimacy, regardless of regime type. To analyze if ideas of good governance differ by regime type, I classify local government innovation into six thematic areas, and then examine how each of these are expected to improve governance and thus contribute to political legitimacy. In China, I find that the predominant local innovations are in the area of governance and management, which demonstrate that government officials believe that reforming the democratic governance process will solve governance problems and enhance political legitimacy. In the United States, however, economic, social, cultural, and environmental areas occupied a larger proportion of government innovation, illustrating that local officials pay more attention to enhancing political legitimacy through improving the performance and quality of government services. This analysis shows that ideas of good governance, as revealed by local government innovation awards, differ across these two regime types. Although government officials in both regimes desire improved governance as a way to enhance political legitimacy, what that means in each country differs.     

Death Penalty: The Political Foundations of the Global Trend Towards Abolition

The death penalty is like no other punishment. Its continued existence in many countries of the world creates political tensions within these countries and between governments of retentionist and abolitionist countries. After the Second World War, more and more countries have abolished the death penalty. This article argues that the major determinants of this global trend towards abolition are political, a claim which receives support in a quantitative cross-national analysis from 1950 to 2002. Democracy, democratisation, international political pressure on retentionist countries and peer group effects in relatively abolitionist regions all raise the likelihood of abolition. There is also a partisan effect, as abolition becomes more likely if the chief executive’s party is left wing-oriented. Cultural, social and economic determinants receive only limited support. The global trend towards abolition will go on if democracy continues to spread around the world and abolitionist countries stand by their commitment to press for abolition all over the world.

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Political business cycles and macroeconomic credibility: a survey

There is clear evidence that government popularity and election performance is affected, in part, by economic performance, suggesting that governments may manipulate the economy to political advantage. Simple models incorporating adaptive expectations which allowed the government to exploit this relationship were developed in the 1970s, but fell out of fashion with the advent of new-classical economics. However, modern theories of the political business cycle, which are closely related to the macroeconomic policy game literature, assume rational expectations, and lead to forms of political business cycle, driven by the existence of uncertainty of one type or another. The international evidence suggests that some aspects of the theories apply, although definitive conclusions are – as we might expect – hard to come by.     

The Political Foundations of Trust and Distrust: Reforms and Protests in France

This article argues that the high level of protest activity in France is, at least partly, the result of distrust between the government and the trade unions, and that such distrust is inevitable in a society where unions are sometimes strong enough to mobilise against the government but not confident in their own future strength. This trust problem can be overcome if governments are willing to make institutional changes that commit them to future policies, but such political engineering is costly and unstable, which explains why governments sometimes prefer open confrontation. The empirical part of the paper analyses four French social and labour market reform initiatives in the 1990s and 2000s, demonstrating that the ideas developed in this article help to explain important features of contemporary French policy-making.     

Social Capital and Political Trust in Finland: An Individual-level Assessment

Political trust has in previous studies mainly been associated, either positively or negatively with a set of political variables, such as subjective knowledge of and interest in political issues, political efficacy, national pride, post-materialist values and corruption permissiveness. More recently, it has been debated whether or not indicators of social capital also have an impact on political trust. It has been argued that social capital helps to sustain civic virtues and that lack of it will create democratic problems like political dissatisfaction and declining political participation. While trends in social capital seem stable and high at the aggregate level in Finland, the level of political trust has varied to a much larger degree. In this article, indicators of social capital, political variables and social background variables are set against the Finns' trust in politicians and the parliament as well as their satisfaction with democracy. The analysis shows that social capital, as defined by a set of variables comprised of interpersonal trust and voluntary organisational activism, does not, en bloc, prove to be a powerful predictor of political trust. However, when the social capital items are examined as single factors, interpersonal trust seems to have strong impact on all levels of political trust, while the influence of voluntary organisational activity is less evident.     

The Civic,Economic, and Political Consequences of Pentecostalism in Russia and Ukraine

In contemporary Russia and Ukraine, Pentecostalism carries with it commitments to civic engagement and democracy, strong bonds of social capital, and the embracing of an entrepreneurial spirit. In this article, the authors analyze the origins of Pentecostalism in Russia, Soviet methods of repression, and Pentecostal survival strategies. Continuing, the authors examine the political efficacy of Pentecostals, their civic commitments, their embracing of the free market, and the strength and nature of social capital among them. While the authors conclude that it is too soon to conclude that Pentecostalism will bring about democracy, civil society, and free markets in Russia and Ukraine, they argue that Pentecostalism is proving itself a popular choice in the contemporary religious marketplace and that choice is not without significant civic, economic, and political consequences.