Political liberty and social development: An empirical investigation

Liberty is not only economic; it is political. Whether the economic system promotes social development is one question. Whether the political system promotes social development is another question. The empirical investigations indicate that for the world political liberty has a small, though significant relationship with the level of social development.By investigating groupings of alternative economic systems, it is clear that global policies to increase political liberty will not necessarily bring about desired results. In the Socialist, Mixed Socialist, and Capitalist-Statist countries political liberty appears to have virtually no relationship with social development. An increase in political liberty without an increase in economic liberty is even associated with lower levels of social development.     

Cognitive links between economic grievances and political responses

Changes in the economy are associated with changes in support for the incumbent President (or members of his party) at the aggregate level but not generally at the individual level. That is, thepersonal impact of economic hardships has only rarely been linked to individual political responses. This paper finds again that various indicators of personal economic grievances are not in general associated with either economic policy preferences or support for President Carter. However, some rare circumstances in which the personal impact of economic grievances did have more power were identified, specifically when voters blamed the President for their economic hardships. Support was also found for Kinder and Kiewiet's (1979) notion that collective judgments about the health of the economy, rather than one's personal economic situation, drive political responses.     

National Competitive Advantage and the Roles of Economic and Political Freedom: Evidence from Hong Kong

The equivocal interrelationships betweeneconomic performance and the institutionsof, respectively, economic and politicalfreedom are examined using data from firmsoperating in Hong Kong, an economy whereboth an erstwhile paramount internationalbusiness reputation for competitiveness andthe institutional basis on which it waspredicated have come into question inrecent years. It is hypothesized that (i)both economic and political freedomdeclines will be associated with a proxyfor future economic performance,competitiveness decline, but that (ii) thecorrelation of economic freedom declineswith competitiveness decline will bemediated by political freedom declines. Hierarchical regression analyses tend tosupport these hypotheses, although resultsvary by firm origin.     

Economic Crisis and Levels of Political Participation in Europe (2002–2010): The Role of Resources and Grievances

This article examines the effect of the recent economic crisis on political participation levels in Europe. As the civic voluntarism model and grievances theory predict different effects of economic downturn on political participation, the crisis provides a unique context to evaluate the explanatory power of these two theories. It is found that, when investigating a period of eight years (2002–2010), economic growth is positively associated with non-institutionalised political participation, which is in line with the civic voluntarism model. However, when focusing on the changes in political participation that occurred between 2008 and 2010 it is found that rising unemployment is associated with rising levels of non-institutionalised political participation, suggesting that grievance theory is especially useful in exceptionally negative conditions as suddenly imposed grievances can lead to various forms of protest behaviour. The article argues that these shock experiences can lead to momentary peak periods of mobilisation.     

The Politics of Latin America’s Investment and Other Links with China: Contextualizing the Region’s Cash Chasing while Racking Richer Research Rewards

There are three positions about the impact of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from China on the policies of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries: the “Wealth is Power” camp, which associates political power with Chinese economic lures; the “Conditionalist” camp, which contends the international and domestic economic and political context determines the specific political effect of Chinese outward FDI (OFDI); and the “Politics is Power” camp, which believes no dramatic political changes have resulted from the economic stimuli of Chinese OFDI (COFDI) and associated economic lures. Case studies herein on Brazil and China, Argentina and China, Ecuador and China, and the Caribbean and China support the Conditionalist camp, albeit to differing degrees and for different reasons. Case studies herein on COFDI in Argentina and in Colombia also deepen our knowledge about the drivers of COFDI. They challenge those asserting that COFDI in LAC is driven purely by political motives. This piece also reviews and critiques the state of the literature on COFDI in LAC and suggests a pathway for moving to the next level. It specifically recommends researchers work to cumulate knowledge by asking similar kinds of questions across cases, exploit theory, and work on variable conceptualization and operationalization.

     

The hazard rate of political regimes

We present a preliminary study on the stability of political regimes. In a longitudinal data set we study the effect of some observable economic and political conditions on the hazard rate of different types of political regimes. We find that economic development has a stabilizing effect in countries with democratic political institutions, but rich autocracies do not show a lower hazard rate than less developed autocracies. While the stability of autocracies is not affected by their degree of economic development, it is greatly associated with the degree of popular discontent. Widespread discontent with leaders in autocratic regimes highly increases their hazard rate. This relationship is much weaker for regimes with democratic institutions. We also find a non-monotonic time dependence pattern for the hazard rate of political regimes. Political regimes are found to be at an increasing risk of collapse during the first years, with their hazard rates reaching a peak around the fourth year.     

Reforms in Uzbekistan

Marking a significant break with his repressive and insular predecessor Islam Karimov, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev appears committed to an ambitious agenda of economic and political reform. How feasible it will be remains unclear. But Uzbekistan's economic modernisation and increasing political openness could have huge implications for economic growth and political stability across Central Asia.     

Democracy and Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis

Despite a sizeable theoretical and empirical literature, no firm conclusions have been drawn regarding the impact of political democracy on economic growth. This article challenges the consensus of an inconclusive relationship through a quantitative assessment of the democracy-growth literature. It applies meta-regression analysis to the population of 483 estimates derived from 84 studies on democracy and growth. Using traditional meta-analysis estimators, the bootstrap, and Fixed and Random Effects meta-regression models, it derives several robust conclusions. Taking all the available published evidence together, it concludes that democracy does not have a direct impact on economic growth. However, democracy has robust, significant, and positive indirect effects through higher human capital, lower inflation, lower political instability, and higher levels of economic freedom. Democracies may also be associated with larger governments and less free international trade. There also appear to be country- and region-specific democracy-growth effects. Overall, democracy's net effect on the economy does not seem to be detrimental.     

Campfire decision-making and strategic management: A politics and leadership approach to economic development

Privatization is recommended unconditionally by some scholars as the optimal means for achieving economic development. While privatization can be helpful medicine, it provides no universal cure for all the ills associated with low economic growth. A country's economic and political institutions are intertwined. Mandating privatization without being mindful of both political and economic consequences to such a policy can bring undesirable consequences during and after policy implementation. This paper proposes that to enhance the likelihood of economic growth a leader should blend economics with politics. Sensitive political leadership can stimulate a bonding among citizens, a bonding which can generate the commitment to risk by investing personal savings, to work the long hours which much precede the rewards, and often to be satisfied by a job well done rather than with material reward. Analogous to the chief executive officer of a successful corporation, the effective political leader involves stakeholders, steers decision processes, takes reasonable risks, encourages private investment, and rations public resources according to national priorities. Collective decision-making guided by the political leader, who also acts as a strategic manager during implementation, is offered as a model for development.     

Digital Restructuring: Gender,Class and Citizenship in the Information Society in Canada

‘Digital restructuring’ denotes a phenomenon integral to but also distinct within economic and political restructuring broadly conceived. The concept of restructuring can be modified with ‘digital’ to forefront the important technological dimension of global restructuring, as well as to indicate developments associated with the new ‘information economy’. Digital technology and digitization have been integral to the scope and speed of the global economic and political restructuring of recent decades. They have constituted the technological conditions for some of the more characteristic aspects of this process; from the flexiblization or outright shedding of labour, to the mobility of production and capital and the globalization of trade and financial markets. This paper seeks to debunk much of the corporate and state mythology of digital restructuring currently in circulation by drawing upon the analyses of digital technology and restructuring advanced by critical scholars and progressive social movements, and to highlight the dangers to progressive political movements and discourses posed by the very nature of these representations.     

Economic globalization, job insecurity and the populist reaction

A striking change in the political party systems of many established democracies in recent years has been the rise to electoral and political prominence of right-wing populist parties. Moving beyond the usual anti-statism and racism attitudinal explanatory foci, this article posits that popular support for these parties is associated with the job insecurity that populist party leaders have attributed to deepening international economic integration, or economic globalization. The conceptualization of job insecurity is discussed and its expected relationship to the mercantilism of right-wing populist parties clarified. The hypothesis is tested in the specific context of support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party in the 1998 election to the Australian federal House of Representatives. The article concludes with a consideration of the wider implications of its findings.     

Imposing Procedural Constraints on State Administrative Agencies: An Empirical Investigation of Competing Explanations

Scholars have offered different explanations for administrative procedures. One general approach stresses the importance of normative theory as a determinant of institutional choice, while two other perspectives emphasize the interests and political influence of pressure groups and legislators. To test these models, this study uses comparative state data to predict the adoption of three types of administrative procedures-legislative rule review, procedural requirements opening up the rulemaking process to public participation, and economic impact analysis. The findings suggest that factors associated with the adoption of one kind of administrative requirement may not be associated with the use of others. The analysis also suggests that, while ideology, political culture, and party competition intermittently affect the adoption of particular administrative procedures, they do not always have the kinds of effects that are suggested by the traditional state policy making literature.     

Economic liberalisation,market institutions and labour rights

What effect do pro‐market economic policies have on labour rights? Despite significant debate in policy and academic circles about the consequences of economic liberalisation, little is known about the labour rights effects of pro‐market policies. Extant literature has focused only on the possible outcomes of market‐liberalising policies, such as trade and investment flows, rather than directly assessing market‐friendly policies and institutions. Moreover, this line of research has found mixed results on how these outcomes influence labour conditions. To provide a comprehensive assessment of this linkage, this article combines data on five distinct policy areas associated with economic liberalisation with data on labour rights for the period 1981–2012. The results indicate that pro‐market policies – except the ones involving rule of law and secure property rights – undermine labour rights. Thus while there are some positive economic and political outcomes associated with market‐supporting policies, economic liberalisation comes at the cost of respect for labour rights.     

Farmer Representation in Australia: Avenues for Changing the Political Environment

This paper focuses on changes in the way Australian farmers have sought to influence their political environment. A taxonomy of avenues for change is constructed and used to illustrate the broad transitions in the way farmers have engaged with the formal political process. It is argued that Australian farmers have proceeded from parliamentary/electoral through militant/sectoral forms of action, and are currently pursuing sectoral action supplemented by promotional and consultative actions. Using the New South Wales Farmers' Association (NSWFA) as an example, we show how these changes in political engagement relate to a number of trends in the economic and political environment, for example economic deregulation, electoral change, administrative change, the declining economic significance of agriculture and the increasing impact of sociopolitical movements. These trends and perceived inadequate responses by sectoral interest groups and political parties have also led to rural people experimenting with alternative political avenues such as new 'populist' movements, rural summits and social movements such as Landcare and Women in Agriculture. The significance of Landcare as an avenue for renewal of rural identity and new forms of rural governance is briefly outlined.     

Accepting the Bargain? An Experimental Study of Political Rights, Economic Development and Support for Government in Rural China

All governments are dependent upon a degree of political support and legitimacy. Some authoritarian countries, like Singapore and China, have staked this legitimacy on an “authoritarian bargain” in which residents exchange their political rights for economic growth and development. However, this bargain is complicated in the Chinese countryside, where rural residents have been granted a key political right – the right to participate in the election of their local leadership. In this paper, we ask whether rural residents have accepted the authoritarian bargain, and base their political support solely on economic development, or whether rural residents also consider their political rights when evaluating government. Based on an experimental study conducted in rural China, we find that rural residents place equal importance on their political rights and economic development when assessing their support for government.     

Political Institutions and Economic Performance: The Effects of Accountability and Obstacles to Policy Change

Numerous analyses have been conducted on how political institutions affect economic performance. In recent years the emphasis has been on a causal logic that emphasizes institutional obstacles to policy change, such as those presented by multiple veto points. This has especially been the case when it comes to the important question of how political institutions influence governments' responses to exogenous economic shocks. We make the case for a substantial broadening of focus and show that when it comes to a major type of exogenous shock, a forced exchange-rate devaluation, variations in the breadth of accountability of the chief executive are more robustly associated with the post-shock growth recovery than variations in obstacles to policy change. We first argue that the size of the winning coalition will be positively associated with growth recoveries following forced devaluations. We then use a newly developed measure of the size of the winning coalition to test our claim. Our statistical analysis is based on a study of the responses of 44 countries to forced exchange-rate devaluations in the late 1990s.     

Economic influences on presidential popularity among key political and socioeconomic groups: A review of the evidence and some new findings

This paper analyzes presidential popularity among important political and socioeconomic groups in the United States from 1965 to 1980, making use of the Gallup Poll indicators of support for the incumbent president among the main socioeconomic, regional, generational, sexual, and racial groups, and among Democratic, Republican, and independent voters. The analysis allows fully for both economic and noneconomic influences on incumbent popularity and includes in an integrated rational model underlying partisan orientations. The conclusions suggest the strong importance of partisanship, with the public's political response to the economy depending largely on the political affiliation of the incumbent president. Beyond this, we find economic predictors generally are more important than any of the systematic political or cyclical predictors tested here, with unemployment the single most important influence on presidential popularity. For all presidents, macroeconomic conditions have greater political significance than do the government's redistributive policies designed to influence economic well-being. And with minor exceptions, the economy's political importance is equally strong for all economic classes in American society.     

Politics and Economic Growth

Traditional growth theory viewed economic growth as a resultant of economic factors, in particular capital investment. Development economics implied a broader approach, emphasizing social structure change and human capital. Finally, it was also hinted that political factors could influence the rate of change in the development of the economic system. Testing various theories of economic growth we find that institutional sclerosis is the basic political factor that is related to the process of economic growth. The next step is to analyse how political structures and public policy have an impact on the basic factor in economic growth, viz. investments.     

Political sources of growth: A critical note on measurement

This note critically reviews the research on the link between political systems and economic growth. Empirical attempts to capture this patent relationship have been met with mixed success. We conclude that the political variables used in these studies, i.e., democracy and political instability, do not adequately reflect the ‘investors problem’. We suggest that a political variable that encompasses all kinds of potential discretionary state interventions would be more effective in explaining cross-country differences in economic growth.     

Economic grievances and political protest

How do economic grievances affect citizens’ inclination to protest? Given rising levels of inequality and widespread economic hardship in the aftermath of the Great Recession, this question is crucial for political science: if adverse economic conditions depress citizens’ engagement, as many contributions have argued, then the economic crisis may well feed into a crisis of democracy. However, the existing research on the link between economic grievances and political participation remains empirically inconclusive. It is argued in this article that this is due to two distinct shortcomings, which are effectively addressed by combining the strengths of political economy and social movement theories. Based on ESS and EU-SILC data from 2006–2012, as well as newly collected data on political protest in 28 European countries, a novel, more fine-grained conceptualisation of objective economic grievances considerably improves our understanding of the direct link between economic grievances and protest behaviour. While structural economic disadvantage (i.e., the level of grievances) unambiguously de-mobilises individuals, the deterioration of economic prospects (i.e., a change in grievances) instead increases political activity. Revealing these two countervailing effects provides an important clarification that helps reconcile many seemingly conflicting findings in the existing literature. Second, the article shows that the level of political mobilisation substantially moderates this direct link between individual hardship and political activity. In a strongly mobilised environment, even structural economic disadvantage is no longer an impediment to political participation. There is a strong political message in this interacting factor: if the presence of organised and visible political action is a decisive signal for citizens that conditions the micro-level link between economic grievances and protest, then democracy itself – that is, organised collective action – can help sustain political equality and prevent the vicious circle of democratic erosion.