Local Context and Democratization in Mexico

While democratization is often seen as a national-level process, we argue that there is important scope for local effects. Through analysis of Mexican public opinion data collected on the eve of that country's historic 2000 elections, we demonstrate that local context greatly affects evaluations of the legitimacy of the system, and these evaluations, in turn, help to shape the willingness of citizens to engage with the system. Citizens are more willing to participate in politics if they think the process is fair, and direct evidence of the fairness of the system is provided by the local political context. This local connection, then, becomes critical in the process of individuals becoming, in Almond and Verba's classic term, "participatory" citizens (1963).     

Leader Influence and Reputation Formation in World Politics

The study of reputation is one of the foundational topics of modern international relations. However, fundamental questions remain, including the question of to whom reputations adhere: states, leaders, or both? We offer a theory of influence‐specific reputations (ISR) that unifies competing accounts of reputation formation. We theorize that reputations will adhere more to actors who are more influential in the relevant decision‐making process. We employ two survey experiments, one abstract and one richly detailed involving a U.S.‐Iran conflict, to evaluate ISR. We find evidence of large country‐specific reputations and moderately sized leader‐specific reputations. Consistent with the theory of influence‐specific reputations, leader‐specific reputations are more important when leaders are more influential.     

RISE OF THE DISLOYAL: INCREASING RESENTMENT IN NORTH KOREA

Why has loyalty to the Kim Family Regime and the Worker’s Party diminished over the past twenty years despite a rise in the average standard of living, greater social mobility, and a regime policy of benign neglect towards marketization? Unthinkable in the Kim Il Sung era, the increase in expressions of resentment toward the North Korean authorities represents a shift in the ideology, behavior, and motivation of the population. Four critical factors have heightened tensions between state and society in North Korea, leading to a reduction in loyalty among the general population. The author considers the impact of labor mobilizations, the declining importance of party membership, the influence of foreign media, and the rise of rent seeking and extractive policies. While all play a role, it is important and possible to identify the primary cause. Extractive policies and rent-seeking position the regime and the people in a directly adversarial relationship. All tiers and agencies of the government have become complicit in efforts to siphon off profits, control market actors through crony capitalism, rent seek, over-regulate, and compete against private market actors, causing the residents to express frustration and resentment towards a government that does not have their interests at heart.