Organizing to rule: structure,agent, and explaining presidential management styles in Africa

Recent studies of comparative presidentialism have emphasized the importance of informal relationships between presidents and other political actors in explaining how presidents build governing coalitions. What has generally been under-investigated in the literature is how the characteristics of “presidents as agents” impact how they interact with other political actors – in particular, how presidents relate to their cabinets in terms of turnover and inclusiveness. We hypothesize that presidents who were former rebel leaders will behave very differently from presidents that do not have such backgrounds. To test our hypotheses, we collected data from 36 countries that are classified either as presidential or semi-presidential systems in Africa with 93 individual presidential administrations from 1990 to 2009. We found that presidents who were former rebel leaders were less likely to have major cabinet turnovers than other presidents. However, former rebel leaders did not have less politically inclusive cabinets (at least in partisan terms) but did have less ethnically inclusive cabinets than presidents with other backgrounds. The results suggest that agent characteristics, that is, the previous experiences of the president as a decision maker, are as important as the structural constraints he or she faces.     

Promise and Performance: An Evaluation of Journals in International Relations

What kind of international relations research gets published in the field's most recognized journals? Who are its authors? This study investigates the subject matter, methodology, and origin of recent research published in top international relations journals, building on earlier work that has investigated the contents of journals. This study investigates the contents of three international relations journals— International Studies Quarterly , International Organization , and World Politics — which have been consistently ranked as the top three journals in international relations. Data are for the ten most recent completed volume years, 1995–2004. This study finds that international relations scholarship in these three journals focuses on a relatively narrow range of subjects and is produced by a rather homogeneous group of scholars.     

New Institutional Arrangements for Rural Development: The Case of Local Woolgrowers' Associations in the Transkei Area,South Africa

Until recently, smallholder farmers in the Transkei area had very limited access to a profitable market outlet for their wool. In response, the South African wool industry built shearing sheds, managed by a local association that sells directly to the brokers. This article investigates the effect of joint wool marketing through the shearing shed on the farmers' revenue from wool. A three-step regression model of the revenue from wool indicates that the farmers selling through the shearing shed obtain better financial results as compared to those who use alternative channels. This analysis shows how new institutional arrangements may contribute to economic development.