Does Workplace Experience Enhance Political Participation? A Critical Test of a Venerable Hypothesis

Several schools of thought claim that citizens can develop their democratic skills at the workplace. Here I focus on the hypothesis put forward by Carole Pateman and by Sidney Verba and colleagues that state that by practicing civic skills and democratic decision-making at the workplace, citizens become more active in politics. I test the hypothesis with a nationally representative panel survey of the Swedish population. My findings contradict previous empirical research as no impact on political participation was discovered. I argue that the effects may have been overestimated in prior studies because the tests were based on cross-sectional data: insufficient care was taken with a number of significant methodological problems. The study points to the importance of using panel models when investigating the causes of political participation.

Why Do Experienced Challengers Do Better than Amateurs?

Politically experienced challengers are more successful in seeking political office than amateurs. The relationship is found so regularly that political experience has become the standard ex ante indicator of challenger quality in studies of American elections. Despite this, little work has investigated why experienced challengers are so successful. Many scholars attribute the relationship to inherent differences between experienced challengers and amateurs: experienced challengers have stronger electoral skills and greater access to material resources. I argue that these differences play a role, but an indirect one. Rather, experienced challengers are lead by both their resource advantage and the high amount of risk they are exposed to in seeking office to run in races in which their party has a good chance of winning. Thus, the direct cause of the experienced challengers’ success is self-selection into winnable races. Empirical analysis supports the self-selection model over a model in which resources directly lead to success.

Lessons of Russian in Afghanistan

The experience of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan (1979–1989) is considered through the prism of institutional transfers. Afghanistan has a long history of attempts to implement Muslim, Soviet and Anglo-Saxon institutional designs. Most of them have failed. This failure can be attributed to the lack of ‘elective affinity’ between traditional and new institutions imported from more developed countries. It is argued that a careful examination of the degree of elective affinity must precede any attempt of institutional transfers. An analysis of Ph.D. dissertations defended by Afghan students at Soviet and Russian universities complements logical arguments and references to historical facts.

Comparing Putin’s and Brezhnev’s Policies toward the Middle East

This article compares Moscow’s and Washington’s foreign policies toward the Middle East in 1982 and 2008. In 1982, Moscow and Washington each had a distinct set of friends and foes. In 2008, Washington still has a distinct set of friends and foes, but Moscow has relatively good relations with all governments and most major opposition movements in the region—the only exceptions being Al Qaeda and its affiliates. It is argued that Putin’s policy toward the Middle East is not really aimed at displacing the U.S. in the region, but protecting Russia and Russian interests from Al Qaeda and its allies. Indeed, a continued American presence in the region serves to protect Russian interests in the region.

Why Is the Estate Tax so Controversial?

There are some social issues whose significance for society nobody would seriously question but which nevertheless receive only scarce attention in sociological research. One of these is the bequest of private wealth from one generation to the next. It is currently estimated that about 550 billion dollars are transferred annually in the United States, amounting to more than 4% of the American gross national product (Havens and Schervish 1999). Not only is this a huge amount of wealth that changes ownership, but the bequest of wealth speaks to some of the core questions of sociological scholarship.

Close But Not Close Enough

The authors comment on an earlier aritice in Society by Eugene Goodheart and offer a novel hypothesis about the origins of religion.

War and Peace in Space and Time: The Role of Democratization

Democratization reduces the risk of war, but uneven transitions toward democracy can increase the probability of war. Using country-level data on democratization and international war from the period 1875–1996, we develop a general additive statistical model reassessing this claim in light of temporal and spatial dependence. We also develop a new geopolitical database of contiguities and demonstrate new statistical techniques for probing the extent of spatial clustering and its impact on the relationship between democratization and war. Our findings reaffirm that democratization generally does reduce the risk of war, but that large swings back and forth between democracy and autocracy can increase war proneness. We show that the historical context of peace diminishes the risk of war, while a regional context plagued by conflict greatly magnifies it.