State Power and the Economic Origins of Democracy

Recent comparative politics scholarship on regime change has not taken state capacity seriously. Prominent works on the relationship between democracy and economic inequality center on the expectation by economic elites that democratization will lead to economic redistribution. But state capacity is necessary for redistribution, and where extractive capacity is lacking, rational economic elites should not fear that suffrage expansion would lead to effective redistribution, nor should the masses expect to gain economically from democratization. State capacity thus acts as a scope condition for the effect of inequality on regime outcomes. This prediction is confirmed through replication and extension of the analysis in Boix (2003), with the addition of the presence of a regularly implemented national census as a proxy for state capacity. In strong states, the effect of inequality on regime change is confirmed. But where the state is weak, inequality is shown to have no effect on regime outcomes. Thus, including state capacity in theories of regime change calls into question general claims about the “economic origins” of dictatorship and democracy.     

Debating Palestinian strategy in the al-Aqsa intifada

Violent confrontation broke out between Israel and the Palestinians in late September 2000. The precursors were clear, and neither side expressed surprise at the turn of events. The situation was one of asymmetry and contiguity between the two sides: modes of control exercised by Israel included the stationing of Israeli troops deep within areas of Palestinian rule and the encirclement of Palestinian cities by Israeli army bases. This article asks whether, in light of this situation, the Palestinian leadership and other Palestinian groups at any point developed a clear strategy for military action, and examines the consequences of any strategy, or lack of one, for the outcome of the confrontation.     

FRAMEWORKS FOR CONCEPTUALISING TERRORISM

Terrorism has been situated—and thereby implicitly also defined—in various contexts such as crime, politics, war, propaganda and religion. Depending on which framework one chooses, certain aspects of terrorism get exposed while others are placed ‘outside the picture’ if only one framework is utilised. In this article five conceptual lenses are utilised: 1. terrorism as/and crime; 2. terrorism as/and politics; 3. terrorism as/and warfare; 4. terrorism as/and communication; and 5. terrorism as/and religious fundamentalism.     

Der Mensch denkt und die Institution lenkt: Zur Reformfähigkeit von Staat und Gesellschaft am Beispiel der deutschen Arbeitsmarktpolitik

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Voting Counts: Participation in the Measurement of Democracy

The measures of democracy commonly used in empirical research suffer notable limitations, primarily the exclusion of participation. As a result, quantitative studies may undervalue the effect of democracy on important social outcomes or misinterpret the aspect of democracy responsible for that effect. We respond by introducing and validating two variants of a new indicator, the Participation Enhanced Polity Score (PEPS), which augments institutional factors with the breadth of citizen participation. We demonstrate, using statistical evidence on democratic persistence, basic needs fulfillment, and gender equality, that no measure of democracy can be considered an accurate representation of its basic character without directly including participation as a core component. Bruce E. Moon is professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is the author ofThe Political Economy of Basic Human Needs (Cornell University Press. 1991) and two editions ofThe Dilemmas of International Trade (Westview Press, 1996, 2000). Jennifer Harvey Birdsall is a researcher for a NGO in Geneva, Switzerland. She received her B.A. in international relations and economics from Lehigh University and her M.S. in global affairs from Rutgers University-Newark. Sylvia Ciesluk is pursuing an M.A. at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She received her B.S. in economics from Lehigh University. Lauren M. Garlett is a geography teacher at Bellamy Middle School in Chicopee, Massachusetts. She received both her B.A in international relations and her M.Ed. in secondary education from Lehigh University. Joshua J. Hermias is associate director of the Global Young Leaders Conference in Washington, D.C. He received his B.A. in economics from Lehigh University and his M.A. in international development from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. Elizabeth Mendenhall is pursuing a Masters in International Affairs (MIA) in economic and political development at Columbia University. She received a B.A. in international relations at Lehigh University. Patrick D. Schmid is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Lehigh University. He received both his B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Lehigh University. Wai Hong Wong is a research associate at FactSet Research Systems. He received his B.A. in international relations and economics at Lehigh University. We are grateful for the helpful suggestions of Frank Davis, Bill Dixon, Chaim Kaufmann, Rajan Menon, Pamela Paxton, Larry Taylor, and the anonymous reviewers.     

Gleichheit und Effizienz auf dem Arbeitsmarkt

Keines der idealtypischen Modelle des Wohlfahrtsstaates befriedigt als richtungsweisende Vision für die Reform des Geschlechtervertrages. In Ländern, die dem liberalen Modell nahe kommen, gehen die bemerkenswerten Gewinne der Frauen in der Geschlechtergleichheit auf dem Arbeitsmarkt zunehmend zulasten gering verdienender Frauen und Familien. Im konservativen Modell ist vor allem die mangelnde Flexibilität der Beschäftigungsverhältnisse, die hohe vertikale Segregation zuungunsten der Frauen und die geringe Nutzung des weiblichen Humankapitals zu beklagen. Die Kosten des sozialdemokratischen Modells sind in erster Linie in der hohen horizontalen Segregation des Arbeitsmarktes zu suchen. Diese ernüchternde Bilanz fordert zu einer grundsätzlicheren Analyse der institutionellen Bedingungen gerechter und effizienter Arbeitsmarktorganisation heraus. Der Beitrag zeigt, dass die Möglichkeiten zur Verbesserung der Wettbewerbssituation der Frauen auf Arbeitsmärkten nicht ausgeschöpft werden. Häufig lassen sich die Bedingungen eines fairen Wettbewerbes auf Arbeitsmärkten aber auch durch eine konsequente Antidiskriminierungspolitik nicht herstellen. Aufgrund der faktisch nach wie vor einseitigen Verteilung familiärer Verpflichtungen erfüllen vor allem Frauen die Bedingung der Angebotselastizität nicht. Andere Spielregeln müssen dann institutionalisiert werden, um Anreize zur effektiven Kooperation zu schaffen. Neben dem Wettbewerb werden deshalb drei weitere Spielregeln der Gerechtigkeit identifiziert: Solidarität, Chancengleichheit und egalitäre Gleichheit. Für alle vier Spielregeln werden konkrete Beispiele für eine zukunftsweisende Gleichstellungspolitik entwickelt.     

Explaining health care system change: problem pressure and the emergence of "hybrid" health care systems

In this article, we will further the explanation of the state's changing role in health care systems belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We build on our analysis of twenty-three OECD countries, which reveals broad trends regarding governments' role in financing, service provision, and regulation. In particular, we identified increasing similarities between the three system types we delineate as National Health Service (NHS), social health insurance, and private health insurance systems. We argue that the specific health care system type is an essential contributor to these changes. We highlight that health care systems tend to feature specific, type-related deficiencies, which cannot be solved by routine mechanisms. As a consequence, non-system-specific elements and innovative policies are implemented, which leads to the emergence of "hybrid" systems and indicates a trend toward convergence, or increasing similarities. We elaborate this hypothesis in two steps. First, we describe system-specific deficits of each health care system type and provide an overview of major adaptive responses to these deficits. The adaptive responses can be considered as non-system-specific interventions that broaden the portfolio of regulatory policies. Second, we examine diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) as a common approach for financing hospitals efficiently, which are nevertheless shaped by type-specific deficiencies and reform requirements. In the United States' private insurance system, DRGs are mainly used as a means of hierarchical cost control, while their implementation in the English NHS system is to increase productivity of hospital services. In the German social health insurance system, DRGs support competition as a means to control self-regulated providers. Thus, DRGs contribute to the hybridization of health care systems because they tend to strengthen coordination mechanisms that were less developed in the existing health care systems.     

Elite Philanthropy in Israel

The paper presents the findings of a study on elite philanthropy in Israel. The study aimed to describe and analyze the scope of elite philanthropy, which has been affected by the growth and relative stability of the Israeli economy. The study also aimed to shed light on the demographic characteristics of elite philanthropists, their motives for giving, preferred target populations and areas of interest for donations, the value of donations, and the channels and mechanisms through which donations are made. The findings revealed that the average percentage of donations out of the philanthropists’ total earnings was not lower than the percentage found among philanthropists in other Western countries. In the paper, we clarify the meaning of elite philanthropy in the context of Israeli society and the role of elite philanthropists in promoting social programs. We discuss the philanthropists’ sense of obligation to “give back” to the society which enabled them to become wealthy.     

Does Compulsory Voting Increase Support for Leftist Policy?

Citizens unequally participate in referendums, and this may systematically bias policy in favor of those who vote. Some view compulsory voting as an important tool to alleviate this problem, whereas others worry about its detrimental effects on the legitimacy and quality of democratic decision making. So far, however, we lack systematic knowledge about the causal effect of compulsory voting on public policy. We argue that sanctioned compulsory voting mobilizes citizens at the bottom of the income distribution and that this translates into an increase in support for leftist policies. We empirically explore the effects of a sanctioned compulsory voting law on direct‐democratic decision making in Switzerland. We find that compulsory voting significantly increases electoral support for leftist policy positions in referendums by up to 20 percentage points. We discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of the policy consequences of electoral institutions.