Foreign Direct Investment,Regime Type,and Labor Protest in Developing Countries

We explore the relationship between FDI, regime type, and strikes in low‐ and middle‐income countries. We argue that FDI produces social tensions and opportunities for protest that can result in higher levels of industrial conflict. However, the effect of FDI is moderated by regime type. While democracies tend to have higher levels of protest overall, they are better able than authoritarian regimes to cope with the strains arising from FDI. We cite two reasons. First, political competition forces regimes to incorporate workers, which shifts conflict from industrial relations to the political arena. Second, democracies provide workers with freedom of association rights, which facilitate institutionalized grievance resolution. We test the argument using a new dataset of labor protest in low‐ and middle‐income countries for the period 1980–2005.     

Institutional Characteristics and Regime Survival: Why Are Semi‐Democracies Less Durable Than Autocracies and Democracies?

Previous studies report that semi‐democratic regimes are less durable than both democracies and autocracies. Still, mixing democratic and autocratic characteristics need not destabilize regimes, as three highly plausible alternative explanations of this correlation remain unaccounted for: (a) semi‐democracies emerge under conditions of political instability and social turmoil; (b) other regime characteristics explain duration; and (c) extant democracy measures do not register all regime changes. We elaborate on and test for these explanations, but find strikingly robust evidence that semi‐democracies are inherently less durable than both democracies and autocracies. “Semi‐democracies are particularly unstable political regimes” should thus be considered a rare stylized fact of comparative politics. The analysis yields several other interesting results. For instance, autocracies and semi‐democracies are equally likely to experience “liberalizing” regime changes more specifically, and once accounting for differences in degree of democracy, there is no robust evidence of differences in duration between military and single‐party regimes.     

The compensation hypothesis goes east: FDI and welfare state demand in postcommunist countries

While existing research provides evidence that globalisation sparks citizen demand for the welfare state in wealthy Western democracies, less is known about how globalisation affects public demand for welfare elsewhere. This study explores the link between globalisation and welfare preferences in postcommunist countries by examining workers at multinational corporations (MNCs). These workers have previously been found to have lower levels of job security, even in Western Europe. Additionally, in the postcommunist context, MNC employment also frequently offers better opportunities than other available jobs. This combination of risk and benefit creates higher demand for social insurance (such as unemployment insurance) because MNC workers have both higher job insecurity and higher costs of job loss (if the benefits of MNC employment make it difficult to find an equally good job). Original survey data from Ukraine shows that MNC workers experience greater insecurity and are paid more than other workers. They also express preferences for more expansive welfare programmes, prioritising those related to labour market insurance. This pattern of MNC workers’ experience and preferences is confirmed in cross-national survey data from 30 peripheral economies, demonstrating that the compensation hypothesis has wider application than previously shown.     

Going,going, . . . gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe

This article offers an overview of levels of party membership in European democracies at the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century and looks also at changes in these levels over time, comparing party membership today with figures from both 1980 and the late 1990s. While relying primarily on the direct and individual membership figures as reported by the parties themselves, the fit of the data with survey data is explored and it is concluded that the two perform well in terms of convergent validity. The differences between large and small democracies are examined, as well as old and new democracies, and it is found that levels of party membership are related to both the size and age of the democratic polity in question. Finally, the implications of the patterns observed in the membership data are discussed, and it is suggested that membership has now reached such a low ebb that it may no longer constitute a relevant indicator of party organisational capacity.     

The Contingent Diffusion of Parliamentary Oversight Institutions in the European Union

What explains the variation in institutional adaptation of national parliaments to European integration? Whereas the existing literature has mainly focused on domestic conditions, this article explains institutional adaptation to integration by focusing on inter‐parliamentary diffusion. The argument draws on ‘learning’ mechanisms of diffusion on the demand side and on ‘emulation’ mechanisms on the supply side. Parliamentary demand for external inspiration is related to uncertainty about functional oversight institutions, and the selection of sources to perceptions of similarity and success. Demand arises in new European Union member parliaments and young democracies that then turn towards culturally alike countries and old democracies. Using spatial econometrics, support is demonstrated for the argument in the article while ruling out alternative diffusion mechanisms such as spatial proximity and learning from Scandinavian frontrunners once links along cultural similarity and democratic experience are controlled for. The results underline the limits of the ‘isolated polity’ approach in the comparative study of institutions in Europe's closely integrated political system, while also showing that, even in this favourable environment, diffusion pathways are contingent on the mechanisms generating demand among policy makers and shaping their selection of sources for external information.     

Public attitudes toward economic conditions and their impact on government behavior

This article reviews extant studies of the impact of economic conditions on government electoral behavior in the Western democracies. Three conclusions are reached: (1) in representative democracies there exists a consistent relationship between the economic situation and citizen evaluation of government; (2) the proposition that governments are interested in achieving their selfish goals in elections fares well compared with the competing proposition that governments are interested in the state of the economy as such; and (3) governments and voters are not the only actors in politico-economic decisions: bureaucracies and interest groups may make government incapable of changing its policies quickly in the face of stiff resistance from this multitude of other actors. Their inclusion in relevant models is a necessary next step in research designed to understand better the functioning of modern democratic societies.This paper was written while the author was at GSIA, Carnegie-Mellon University.     

Digital Politics in Western Democracies: A Comparative Study

Satisfaction with democracy is driven by the two mechanisms that affect citizens’ income: the market and the state. When people consider that the levels of economic growth and redistribution are sufficient, they are more satisfied with the performance of democratic institutions. This relationship is moderated by personal income: since low-income citizens are more sensitive to changes in personal economic circumstances than high-income citizens, they give more weight to economic perceptions and opinions about redistribution. In this paper evidence is found of this conditional relationship in survey data from 16 established democracies. The results offer a rich characterisation of the state and market-based mechanisms that affect satisfaction with democracy.     

State‐targeted grievances and resources: Protest participation during economic downturns in Latin America

This article analyzes the determinants of protest participation in Latin America. Whereas most research emphasizes grievances over resources, or vice versa, this article explains protest participation as the interaction between individuals' state‐targeted grievances and material resources. I argue that grievances and availability of material resources interact and fuel protest among individuals whose income falls close to the middle of the income distribution, but not among the poor or the rich. Whereas the scarcity of resources mitigates the politicization of grievances among the poor, the relative abundance of resources and alternative channels of political influence produces the same effect among the rich. Analysis of survey data from Latin American democracies provides strong support for these arguments.     

Cooking the books: Bureaucratic politicization and policy knowledge

Accurate knowledge about societal conditions and public policies is an important public good in any polity, yet governments across the world differ dramatically in the extent to which they collect and publish such knowledge. This article develops and tests the argument that this variation to some extent can be traced to the degree of bureaucratic politicization in a polity. A politicized bureaucracy offers politicians greater opportunities to demand from bureaucrats—and raises incentives for bureaucrats to supply—public policy knowledge that is strategically biased or suppressed in a manner that benefits incumbents reputationally. Due to electoral competition, we suggest that the link between bureaucratic politicization and politicized policy knowledge will be stronger in democracies than in autocracies. A case analysis of Argentina's statistical agency lends credence to the underlying causal mechanism. Time‐series cross‐sectional analyses confirm the broader validity of the expectations and show that the relationship is present only in democracies.     

Government Alternation and Patterns of Competition in Europe: Comparative Data in Search of Explanations

Government alternation is a fundamental component of any efficient democracy and it could be seen both as an empirical proof (in democracy there is government alternation) or as an ideal pattern of competition (in democracy there should be government alternation). However, to what extent do democracies work according to such an ideal pattern? A Government Turnover Index (GTI) is provided to answer this question with respect to 524 governments in 22 European contemporary democracies since World War II. As suggested by the data and by the GTI, there is not necessarily a link between democratic competition and government alternation, although some democracies are more likely to experience it. It is therefore necessary to direct the analysis towards some systemic factors which may favour or hinder government alternation (such as the party system structure and the institutional framework).     

Constituency Service in Multi-level Democracies

What are the patterns of legislator responsiveness to constituents in multi-level democracies, and what explains them? Previously, comparative research has been hampered by a lack of theory and a lack of data. The article first theorizes how constituency service may be explained by conventional arguments, such as electoral motivations and role orientations. It then considers how regionalization specifically might affect service responsiveness. Using data from the PARTIREP survey of legislators in eight multi-level democracies and six unitary democracies, the article demonstrates that national legislators devote less time to constituency service in multi-level than in unitary democracies; and that regional legislators devote more time than national legislators in multi-level democracies. While conventional arguments are important, the specific effects of regionalization are also significant in determining service responsiveness, establishing an agenda for future research of constituency service as a significant area in the study of multi-level democracy.     

Progressive tax policy and informal labor in developing economies

Governments in many industrializing democracies face difficult policy trade‐offs. Liberalization and informality have placed electoral pressure on them to expand noncontributory social spending. However, governments in developing democracies face constraints when attempting to finance this expansion. In some countries, the informal labor market is very large, thereby undermining the revenue that can be collected through income tax. We argue that this has given rise to a paradoxical situation. Left governments in developing democracies with large informal labor markets have a strong electoral incentive to expand welfare regimes to previously excluded outsiders, but to fiscally underwrite this expansion, they have increasingly been forced to fund their redistributive strategies via a regressive policy instrument, indirect consumption taxation. We examine this argument for a sample of 17 Latin American countries between the years 1990 and 2016. Our results suggest that labor informality forces left governments to turn to indirect taxation.     

A Boom with Review: How Retrospective Oversight Increases the Foreign Policy Ability of Democracies

In the ongoing debate concerning whether democracies can carry out effective national security policy, the role of transparency costs has received little attention. I argue for a more nuanced understanding of how some democracies that possess specific investigative institutions, such as national security–relevant freedom of information laws, legislative oversight powers, and press freedoms, are able to avoid the problems of which democracy skeptics warn. Using a new dataset on national security accountability institutions in democracies within a Bradley‐Terry framework, I find that national security oversight mechanisms raise the probability that a democracy wins international disputes as well as increasing the expected number of enemy casualties, as compared to democracies that lack effective oversight. Contra previous theories of foreign policy efficacy, I find that the chances for democratic foreign policy success are maximized when competitive elections are linked to institutions that increase the retrospective revelation of previously classified information.     

Political competition and de facto judicial independence in non‐democracies

This article investigates the role of political competition in explaining de facto judicial independence in non‐democratic regimes. It argues that the electoral, political insurance explanation popular in the study of courts in democracies also offers explanatory power in the autocratic context, despite popular wisdom otherwise: due to the relatively greater risks of losing power in non‐democracies, electoral competition is highly salient when present. This is examined via hierarchical and fixed effects models that show competition strongly associated with increased levels of independence. This relationship is robust to alternative model and data specification, and has strong out‐of‐sample predictive accuracy.     

Better than Nothing: How Policies Influence Political Participation in Low‐Capacity Democracies

A growing body of policy feedback work demonstrates that citizens' experiences with public policy influence the way they participate in politics. Most of this work takes place in advanced industrial democracies, but the nuances of policy design influencing participation in advanced democracies are often irrelevant for those in low‐capacity democracies. This study extends the policy feedback framework to address how policies might “feed back” differently in low‐capacity countries with uneven basic service delivery. In low‐capacity democracies, the most salient distinction is between those who have access to basic state‐provided services and those who do not. Using original data collected in Zambia, it demonstrates that those who have even marginal access to state services have higher levels of political engagement and political participation than those without access, indicating that imperfect extension of services may help boost democratic citizenship in developing countries.     

Income inequality,electoral systems and party polarisation

This study analyses why income inequality and party polarisation proceed together in some countries but not in others. By focusing on the relationship between income inequality, the permissiveness of electoral systems and party polarisation, the study offers a theoretical explanation for how the combination of income inequality and permissive electoral systems generates higher party polarisation. After analysing a cross‐national dataset of party polarisation, income inequality and electoral institutions covering 24 advanced democracies between 1960 and 2011, it is found that a simple correlation between income inequality and party polarisation is not strong. However, the empirical results indicate that greater income inequality under permissive electoral systems contributes to growing party polarisation, which suggests that parties only have diverging ideological platforms due to greater income inequality when electoral systems encourage their moves towards the extreme; parties do not diverge when electoral systems discourage their moves towards the extreme.     

Why Don't Housing Choice Voucher Recipients Live Near Better Schools? Insights from Big Data

Housing choice vouchers provide low‐income households with additional income to spend on rental housing in the private market. The assistance vouchers provide is substantial, offering the potential to dramatically expand the neighborhoods—and associated public schools—that low‐income households can reach. However, existing research on the program suggests that housing choice voucher holders live in neighborhoods with schools that are no better than those accessible to other households with similar incomes. Households, in other words, do not seem to spend the additional income provided by the voucher to access better schools. In this analysis we rely on a large‐scale administrative data set to explore why voucher households typically do not live near to better schools, as measured by school‐level proficiency rates. We combine confidential administrative data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development on 1.4 million housing choice voucher holders in 15 states, with school‐level data from 5,841 different school districts, to examine why the average housing voucher holder does not live near to higher‐performing schools than otherwise similar households without vouchers. Specifically, we use the large‐scale administrative data set to test whether voucher holders living in areas with good schools nearby and slack housing markets move toward better schools when schools become salient for them—that is, when their oldest child becomes school eligible. We take advantage of the thick sample of households with young children provided through our administrative data to implement both a household fixed effects and a regression discontinuity design. Together these analyses shed light on whether voucher households are more likely to move toward better schools when schools are most relevant, and how market conditions shape that response. We find that families with vouchers are more likely to move toward a better school in the year before their oldest child meets the eligibility cutoff for kindergarten, suggesting salience matters. Further, the magnitude of the effect is larger in metropolitan areas with a relatively high share of affordable rental units located near high‐performing schools and in neighborhoods in close proximity to higher‐performing schools. Results suggest that, if given the appropriate information and opportunities, more voucher families would move to better schools when their children reach school age.     

Guaranteed Rotation in Office: A ‘New’ Model Of Democracy

Although once a classic democratic ideal, rotation in office is nowadays seen more as a natural consequence of competitive elections than a goal in its own right. But this article proposes that a strict rota, with each group taking a turn in office, might be preferable to ordinary electoral democracy in certain sorts of countries: nascent democracies, divided societies with persistent minorities and failed one‐party democracies. Ways are suggested of combining intraparty democracy with interparty rotation.     

Economic Threats or Societal Turmoil? Understanding Preferences for Authoritarian Political Systems

Why do some individuals prefer to be governed in an authoritarian political system? One intuitive answer is that citizens prefer authoritarian rule when the economy and society are in turmoil. These are common explanations for democratic backsliding, and the emergence and success of authoritarian leaders in the twentieth century. Which of these explanations better explains preferences for authoritarian rule? Both types of threat coincide in small samples and high-profile cases, creating inferential problems. I address this by using three waves of World Values Survey data to look at individual-level preferences for different forms of authoritarian government. Using multiple macroeconomic and societal indicators, I find that economic threats, especially increasing income inequality, better explain preferences for authoritarian government. I conclude with implications for understanding the emergence of support for authoritarianism in fledgling democracies.