Power Sharing and Inclusive Politics in Africa's Uncertain Democracies

Power‐sharing agreements have been widely used in Africa as paths out of civil war. However, the research focus on conflict mitigation provides an inadequate guide to recent cases such as Kenya and Zimbabwe. When used in response to flawed elections, pacts guaranteeing political inclusion adversely affect government performance and democratization. Political inclusion in these cases undermines vertical relationships of accountability, increases budgetary spending, and creates conditions for policy gridlock. Analysis using three salient dimensions highlights these negative effects: Origin distinguishes extra‐constitutional pacts from coalitions produced by more stable institutions, function contrasts postwar cases from scenarios where the state itself faces less risk, and time horizon refers to dilemmas that weigh long‐term costs versus short‐term benefits. The conclusion suggests that the drawbacks of inclusive institutions can be moderated by options such as sunset clauses, evenhanded prosecution of human rights violations, and by strengthening checks on executive authority.     

SENTENCING HOMICIDE OFFENDERS IN THE NETHERLANDS: OFFENDER,VICTIM, AND SITUATIONAL INFLUENCES IN CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT*

Empirical investigations of criminal sentencing represent a vast research enterprise in criminology. However, this research has been restricted almost exclusively to U.S. contexts, and often it suffers from key data limitations. As such, an examination of more detailed international sentencing data provides an important opportunity to assess the generalizability of contemporary research and theorizing on criminal punishment in the United States. The current study investigates little-researched questions about the influence of prosecutorial sentencing recommendations, victim/offender relationships, and extralegal disparities in sentencing by analyzing unique data on the punishment of homicide offenders in the Netherlands. The results indicate that offender, victim, and situational offense characteristics all exert important independent effects at sentencing and that prosecutorial recommendations exert powerful influences over judicial sentences. The article concludes with a discussion of future directions for comparative sentencing research across international contexts.     

Reorienting Regulation: Pollution Enforcement in Industrializing Countries

This special issue aims to set a course for future inquiry on regulatory enforcement in industrializing countries. With examples from major countries including Brazil, China, and Indonesia, the articles develop four cross-cutting themes: (1) how enforcement and its institutional context vary geographically and temporally, (2) how enforcement is affected by deficiencies in regulatory capacity and autonomy, (3) how civil liability regimes interact with enforcement, and (4) the relationship between enforcement and regulatory instrument choice.     

Models of Municipal Budget Allocation: Empirical Data from Spanish Municipalities

The present work empirically analyzes diverse budgetary theories (incrementalism, garbage can, rational) in municipal cost programs, paying special attention to the utility of financial information in decision making. The sample analyzed corresponds to a set of Spanish city councils in the period 1996–2004, and the econometric methodology used is a dynamic panel data model. The main conclusion reached is that the budgetary allocation of municipal costs does not follow a random path; incrementalism is of particular importance, together with financial information variables. The utility of budgetary indicators is reflected in the fact that municipal managers adopt rational elements, although incrementalism remains the habitual behavior.     

Silent Racism and Intellectual Superiority in Peru

Abstract — Historically, racism as it is understood in South Africa or in parts of the Southern United States has not existed in Peru. The absence or at least the existence to a lesser degree of this type of tension grants us a superiority over our northern neighbours. In Peru, emancipation of slaves was relatively easy. This is not to say that there do not exist prejudices against Indians, cholos , and blacks, however these prejudices have not been sanctioned by the law and they have, more than a profound racial feeling, an economic, social and cultural character. Colour does not prevent an aborigine, mestizo , or Negroid from occupying high positions if they can accumulate wealth or achieve political success. Notwithstanding these fortunate cases, there is an enormous distance between the pongos [serfs] of a highland hacienda … and those highly cultured and refined Limeños, who routinely travel to Europe. This distance is neither racial, nor based on place of origin, rather it corresponds to what can be termed an historical state of things (Jorge Basadre, 1964:4686).     

Political socialization,political gender gaps and the intergenerational transmission of left-right ideology

While left and right are the main terms to distinguish political views in Western Europe, the family socialization of citizens has mainly been studied in terms of partisan preferences rather than identification with these ideological blocks. Therefore, this study investigates the intergenerational transmission of left-right ideological positions in two European multiparty systems. To investigate expectations regarding gendered patterns in political socialization, ideological transmission between mothers, fathers, daughters and sons are analyzed, making use of German and Swiss household data. The results underline the relevance of the family in the transmission of political ideology in multiparty systems, showing high contemporary parent–child concordance in ideological positioning in line with classic work in political socialization. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the gender-generation gap in political ideology is consequential for this process. Young women consistently place themselves on the left of men across all combinations of parental ideology, which indicates that the gender-generation gap trumps other gendered patterns in intergenerational transmission. Consequently, daughters are less likely than sons to take over their parents’ rightist positions, while parent–son transmission is equally large on the left and the right. This also means that left-leaning parents have a general advantage over right-leaning parents in having their ideological identification reproduced by their daughters. The study highlights the importance of differentiating between the transmission of left- and right-wing ideology in political socialization processes. Moreover, it demonstrates that the distinction by offspring gender is imperative when studying the intergenerational transmission of traits that display gender differences within and between parental and offspring generations. The findings point at the active role of especially female offspring in the political socialization process, as they seem to be more strongly impacted by influences outside the family that sustain generational processes of further gender realignment.     

From Family Feud to Organised Crime: The Cultural Economy of Cannabis in Northeast Brazil

Abstract — Traditional family feuding and banditry as well as envy-inspired violence associated with capitalised irrigation have been intensified by the introduction of cannabis farming and organised crime in the Sertão of Northeast Brazil to the point that today the cannabis producing zone is one of the most violent places in the world. These three interrelated forms of contemporary violence arose, respectively, in the pre-1940 frontier setting, in the 1940 to 1980 period of rapid Brazilian industrialisation which depressed peasant sectors and stimulated the rise of capitalised irrigation and in the post-1980 period of economic stagnation and social-political crisis in Brazil which depressed consumer markets and induced the State to liberalise foreign trade policy to the detriment of periphery regions like the Northeast.