Why accommodate minorities asymmetrically? A theory of ideological authority insulation

Tensions between regionalist claimants and state-wide governments remain the primary source of violent conflicts. Existing theories cannot systematically explain why and when state-wide governments accede to such claims. Building on the partisan approaches developed so far, a theory of ideological authority insulation is constructed in this article. It is argued that the willingness of state-wide parties to transfer authority to specific territorial entities is predominantly informed by ideological proximity to those entities. In a nutshell, the dominant conflict dimension in a country superimposes partisan rationales on the territorial dimension. A new dataset has been compiled with roughly 4,300 region-cabinet dyads between 1945 and 2015, including electoral data, party positions and regional ‘centres of gravity’. Using panel rare-events regressions, it is found that ideological proximity systematically explains the accommodation of minority demand controlling for alternative explanations from the partisan and ethnic conflict literature. The empirical evidence therefore supports adding ideological insulation and superimposition to the toolbox of partisan and conflict researchers. Additionally, the findings encourage the application of arguments from the conflict literature in established democracies and the testing of insights from partisan researchers in less democratic environments.     

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS: EXPLAINING PERCEPTIONS OF WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF INFLUENCE

The notion that public managers influence organizational performance is common in public administration research. However, less is known about why some managers are better at influencing organizational performance than others. Furthermore, relatively few studies have systematically examined managerial influence and scholars have yet to investigate either quantitatively or systematically managerial influence in the White House. Utilizing original survey data collected from former White House officials who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton administrations, this study applies empirical public management theory to examine for the first time the key determinants that shape perceptions of chief of staff managerial influence. The findings demonstrate how several core concepts in public management theory help explain the dynamics that drive perceptions of managerial influence, thereby providing a new contribution to the literature on public management.     

Balancing Competing Demands: Position Taking and Election Proximity in the European Parliament

Parties value unity, yet members of parliament have incentives to deviate from the party line. This article examines how members of the European Parliament (EP) respond to competing demands from national parties and European party groups. We examine ideological shifts within a single parliamentary term to assess how election proximity affects party group cohesion. Our formal model of legislative behavior suggests that when EP elections are proximate, national party delegations shift toward national party positions, thus weakening EP party group cohesion. Our Bayesian item‐response analysis of roll calls in the 5th EP supports our theoretical predictions.     

CRIME,FEAR, AND MENTAL HEALTH IN MEXICO

This article examines the effect of exposure to criminal violence on fear of crime and mental health in Mexico, a country that has experienced a dramatic rise in violent events resulting from the operation of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). Data are drawn from more than 30,000 respondents to a national longitudinal survey of Mexican households. We use fixed‐effects models which allow us to control for time‐invariant individual and municipal characteristics affecting both exposure to violence and mental health. The results indicate a substantial increase in fear and psychological distress for individuals living in communities that suffered a rise in the local homicide rate even when exposure to other forms of victimization and more personal experiences with crime are taken into account. Because DTO killings occur in response to factors external to a specific neighborhood, they generate fear and psychological distress at a larger geographical scale. They also seem to create a generalized sense of insecurity, leading to increased fear of other types of crimes. We examine the effect of large surges in homicide and the presence of military and paramilitary groups combatting DTOs as these conditions may approximate those in conflict zones elsewhere in the world. We also explore differences in the relative sensitivity to homicide rates between sociodemographic groups.     

WHY DO LOCAL GOVERNMENTS PRIVATIZE THE PROVISION OF WATER SERVICES? EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM SPAIN

Why do some local governments privatize water services, while others opt for public management? Economic literature has been unable to demonstrate that private management is more efficient than public management, so there must be other reasons that lead governments to privatize the service. But what are they? This paper presents the results of a study that analyses the factors behind the privatization of water services with data from 741 municipalities located in the South of Spain over a period dating from 1985 to 2006. A discrete choice model analyses the influence of each factor on the likelihood of privatization. One of the novelties of this paper is that we take the value of the explanatory variables at the time when water services are privatized. Among our findings, it is worth highlighting the importance of the size of municipalities, their financial burden and the neighbouring effect.     

Europe,Land of Anguish and Nostalgia

Three years into the protracted Eurocrisis “all choices are ugly,” as former British prime minister Tony Blair comments. Indeed, the high cost of bad options is prompting some to question whether Europe is worth saving the euro. Along with Tony Blair, the former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi as well as two of the best financial minds around—Nouriel Roubini and Mohamed el‐Erian—warn of the dire consequences of a euro breakup. One of France's most prominent philosophers, André Glucksmann, wonders whether the idea of a united Europe—a reaction to the horrors of World War II—can hold everyone together in the future when peace is the norm.     

Headquarters of Terrorists Is “Virtual Ummah”

Though anti‐American terrorism springs these days as much from Yemen and the “virtual ummah” as from Afghanistan, President Obama has nontheless further committed US troops to stabilizing a country well‐known as the graveyard of empires. What can the only Muslim country that belongs to NATO offer by way of advice? How best can the US keep its focus on the terrorist threat despite its diversion in Afghanistan? Turkey's former envoy to Afghanistan and two of Europe's leading experts on Islamist terrorism offer their views.     

From chasing populists to deconstructing populism: A new multidimensional approach to understanding and comparing populism

This paper challenges some widespread theoretical assumptions and practices in the study of populism and proposes a new multidimensional approach to generate and analyse data on this latent construct. Rather than focusing on categorising subjects as populists or not, it recommends reaching a better understanding of what populism is, the salience and relative weight of its attributes and how they interact creating an inner populist logic. Despite the increasing media and academic attention, historical discrepancies in how to conceptualise and operationalise populism have hindered cumulative progress in the literature. Initially most efforts were devoted to the study of specific movements, without a clear comparative angle, and the concept of populism was often conflated with that of nationalism. When the literature started to pay more attention to the analysis of the attributes associated with populism serious disagreements emerged concerning its true essence. Populism has been conceptualised as an ideology, a cynical strategy, a performative style and a discursive logic of articulation. The disputes between these competing interpretations have arguably slowed down the generation of comparative data. Although this article is meant to be a critique of the current state of the field and a call to make it pivot into a slightly different direction, it does not adopt an iconoclast stance and largely tries to reconcile the different existing research traditions – ideational, discursive, performative and strategic. It shows that their efforts are to a great extent complementary but mostly operating on different rungs of the ladder of abstraction. This paper argues that shifting from minimal definitions into a multidimensional approach may stimulate the generation of comparative data on a wider range of attributes and facilitate the identification of degrees and varieties within populism. This paper develops a new analytical framework which deconstructs populism into five dimensions: (1) depiction of the polity, (2) morality, (3) construction of society, (4) sovereignty and (5) leadership. These dimensions, that synthesise the most influential conceptualisations of populism, are empirically and theoretically interconnected and encompass ideational, discursive and performative attributes suggested in the literature. These dimensions are in turn composed of lower order attributes forming a multilayered network structure. This multidimensional framework provides a heuristic template that can be adapted and operationalised in diverse ways depending on the hypotheses, type of data and subjects of the analysis. Some examples of how to turn these dimensions into variables to capture supply- and demand-side populism are introduced. Future empirical research could help map and better understand the network of interactions and intersections among these dimensions and attributes. This could be the key to settle some of the current conceptual debates about populism and its varieties.     

Multilevel governance and women's legislative representation

Research shows that electoral systems, gender quotas and a country's socio-economic development affect women's legislative representation (WLR). Less attention is paid to the effects of the rise of regional political arenas and multilevel politics on WLR. Due to less costly and competitive electoral campaigns, women can have easier access to regional legislatures. We argue that this relationship is mitigated by the distribution of competences between the different levels of the political system and that decentralization's effect on WLR at the regional level is dependent on the regions’ political power. To test this, we use an original dataset on WLR in 383 regional parliaments in 19 European countries from 1970 to 2018. Results of the three-level models show that more political authority vested into regions leads to a lower level of WLR in the legislatures of the more politically powerful regions in comparison with not only the regions possessing less authority but also with the national parliament. Possible explanations for this effect, such as the attractiveness of these positions to the mostly male political elite and, consequently, increased costs and competitiveness of electoral campaigns, are suggested.