Final Test for MPhil - Comparative Government

TERMS - Parliamentarism

"A parliamentary regime in the strict sense is one in which the only democratically legitimate institution is parliament; in such a regime, the government's authority is completely dependent upon parliamentary confidence." (Linz - 52)

TERMS - Populism

A highly contested term, but the main definition used is the one by Mudde and Kaltwasser (2008) - Populism can be defined as a 'thin-centered ideology' which focuses on a distinction between 'the pure people' and a 'corrupt elite,' and advocates for the protection of popular sovereignty at all costs. This means that populism rarely exists in a 'pure' form, but instead is always manifesting itself in combinations with other concepts that allow it to better survive.

TERMS - Party System Collapse

Morgan (2011) - parties will collapse when they fail to fulfill their primary role in democracy - linking society to the state. This happens when a party system faces challenges to its core linkage strategies and when institutional and environmental constraints limit its ability to appropriately respond to such challenges. The result is a decline in linkage followed by collapse. In contrast, those systems that survive lack either systematic threats to their linkage profile, or institutional constraints on their response to those threats.

NATURAL RESOURCES - Frankel, Jeffrey A. "The Natural Resource Curse: A Survey." NBER Working Papers Series 15836 (March 2010): 3-36.

Countries rich in oil and natural resource consistently fail to grow as rapidly as those without - a phenomenon known as the Natural Resource Curse. - "Many African countries such as Angola, Nigeria, Sudan, and the Congo are rich in oil, diamonds, or other minerals, and yet their peoples continue to experience low per capita income and low quality of life." Overall, there are six arguments about how this process could function. (1) Commodity prices on world markets should change in the long-run - some here argue that natural resource prices are inelastic, and thus will decline relative to income over time; others argue that supply for natural resources is fixed and thus their value will increase over time. Overall, evidence on both sides of this argument is fairly weak. (2) Natural resources may crowd out other sectors of growth like manufacturing - it would seem that specializing in oil exports decreases the need to have manufactured exports, which decreases incentives for industrialization. (3) world prices on energy and other commodities can be volatile - this argument says that the volatility of energy and resource prices (not their long term trends) are what make them harmful for growth, since volatile prices make investments and stable capital stocks much more difficult, and can lead to accidental over-investment. (4) high wealth in government institutions may decrease the need for the rule of law or strong systems of taxation needed for good governance - resource rich countries seem to have less of an interest in promoting equality and less of an interest in taxation than non-resource rich ones. This is a thesis supported by Engerman and Skoloff as it applies to the Americas. Further, authors have consistently found a relationship between oil wealth/natural resource wealth and more sustainable authoritarianism, along with weaker systems of taxation. (5) natural resources may lend themselves to armed conflict - the availability of a valuable resource that has no capital mobility makes the incentive for violent seizure of it more likely, and increases the odds of war. (6) changes in commodity prices could create macroeconomic instability via high spending and unnecessary costs - the methods of economic growth can have endogenous effects on macro and microeconomic policies and institutions, such as financial markets, income redistribution, social safety nets, property rules, and tax systems. Indeed ,it is well documented that fiscal policy tends to be procyclical in resource heavy countries, leading to over-spending in upcycles and forced cuts in down-cycles. This is especially problematic when up-cycles lead to the creation of public sector jobs that are hard to cut in down-cycles. This article concludes that mineral wealth can be a double edged sword conveying both benefits and costs but not necessitating economic and/or political underdevelopment.

TERMS - Valence Voting

Defined most clearly by Clarke (2009) - "In the world of valence politics, voters make choices primarily on the basis of their evaluations of rival parties' likely ability to deliver policy outcomes in issue areas characterized by broad consensus. A classic example of a valence issue is the economy." This is drawn from the works of Stokes (1992).

PARTIES - Herbert Kitschelt, Kirk A. Hawkins, Guillermo Rosas, and Elizabeth Zechmeister, "Patterns of Programmatic Party Competition in Latin America," in Latin American Party Systems, ed. Herbert Kitschelt, 14-58 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Parties are a key aspect of democratic accountability and effect the ability of political systems to be responsive to the public throughout Latin America. A key aspect of parties is their ability to resolve coordination and collective action problems amongst politicians. These parties can then become programmatically structures if they compete for citizens' support via differing policy packages and implement valence goods (as opposed to club goods [somewhat targeted] or clientelistic goods [highly targeted]) upon obtaining office. In this model, parties serve as the agents within a principal-agent relationship with voters. If all parties do this it leads to programmatic party structuration (PPS) within the party system. There are many other forms of party linkages with voters (including linkages based on descriptive collective identities, on clientelistic benefits, and on charismatic leadership), but programmatic linkages represent an important normative baseline of how parties are supposed to function in highly functional democracies since they allow for the highest level of government responsiveness and long-term planning. Further, party institutionalization is important for increasing programmatic party platforms and citizen-politician linkages - since both are difficult without the collective action, long-term time horizons, and ideological distillation created by parties, along with the ability of institutionalized parties to give voters a sense of who, and what, they are voting for. This kind of institutionalization can be dangerous if it ossifies a party, or leaves them with an inability to adapt, but is otherwise a key aspect of democratic development. This institutionalization is both possible and real, despite some scholars' views of it as an ideal type. Voters will embrace programmatic parties when voting for them become a low-cost affair - and this will only happen when political actors have the capability to create programmatic parties (material and cognitive resources, with the demand and capacity to supply clientelistic goods decreasing with affluence), the opportunity to create such linkages (through iterated election cycles over long periods of time which allow for adaptive learning shielded from shocks), and when both actors and voters understand the political stakes behind successful partisan alignments. These conditions are more likely in politically centralized, professionalized, and free market societies. They also require politicians to clearly communicate about, deliver on, and achieve performance through their policies. All of this plays out in Latin America, where countries that adopted import substitution industrialization (ISI) tended to develop inclusive welfare states for urban masses, but exclusive ones for rural populations - this helped develop a clear political divide with high stakes that facilitated institutionalized party formation that survived the collapse of ISI.

RACE - King, Desmond, and Rogers Smith. "'Without Regard to Race:' Critical Ideational Development in Modern American Politics." The Journal of Politics 76, no. 4 (October 2014): 958-971.

The conservative coalition in the U.S. has succeeded over the past decades, where the progressive coalition has faltered, because of the successful 'critical ideational development' (a special kind of critical juncture) by the G.O.P. of repurposing 'color-blind' rhetoric for the maintenance of racial inequality. This outlook has allowed for a strong and cohesive coalition for Republicans (combining libertarianism with racial conservatism) that has spilled over into other policy areas, whereas Democrats have lacked a similar unifying ideology, and have been divided over the question of race-conscious policies and material equality. "Color-blind advocates proved far more effective than race-conscious ones in associating their policies with imagery that gave their positions broad appeal" (960) Ideational innovation occurs only insofar as (1) political ideas succeed in resonating with ingrained identities and interests, (2) these ideas frequently repurpose old ideas for new ends, (3) ideational reforms occurs via the the forming of advocacy coalitions via 'coordinative discourse among political leaders' and through the creation of mass support via 'communicative discourses', (4) the reformulation of ideas is aided by common cultural images associated with established identities. - all of this allows ideational innovation to slowly reshape coalitions and political landscapes. Color Blindness in the 1960s was only one of many strategies pursued by the left in the goal of creating racial equality - it was a brick in the wall of progress But republicans seized on colorblindness as a way of making racial conservatism seem alligned with the civil rights movement and a 'post-racial' world - and allowed issues like states rights to be disassociated with segregation - This focus on excluding racial quotas snowballed into a focus on excluding all racially conscious policies all together, under the guise of 'true' equality - All of this empowered a conservative movement with a deep opposition of any recognition of racial inequality or difference, supported through the language of colorblindness Meanwhile, a liberal coalition based around race consciousness and material equality between the races was harder to coalesce, as many saw attempts at explicitly equalization as only temporary solutions and not compatible with long term American ideals. Republicans were advantaged by the great simplicity of color-blind rhetoric compared to the complicated nature of race conscious solutions and their nuances. Further, color-blindness fits within a broader philosophical outlook among republicans embracing the ethos of personal responsibility. This has helped push race out of the mainstream of American political contestation

TERMS - Natural Resource Curse

The frequent phenomenon of countries with abundant access to natural resources having lower levels of growth and development (Frankel, 2010)

DEMOCRACY - Philippe Schmitter, "The Influence of the International Context Upon the Choice of National Institutions and Policies in Neo-Democracies," in The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas, ed. Laurence Whitehead, 26-50 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

This article adds a condition to Whitehead's argument that IR influences democratization via coercion, control, and consent, noting that conditionality is also an essential aspect of this relationship. These four dimensions can be mapped onto a matrix divided by the basis of action (whether it is coerced or voluntary) and the number of actors (which is either unilateral or multilateral). Unilateral coerced democratization can be classed as control, unilateral voluntary democratization can be classed as contagion, multilateral coerced democratization can be classed as conditionality, and multilateral voluntary democratization can be classed as consent. Conditionality can be defined as the deliberate use of coercion (via attaching specific conditions on the distribution of benefits to recipient countries) on the part of multilateral institutions (like the IMF and EU) These concepts can be linked together via four different hypotheses explaining the link between IR and democratization: 1) Inverted Kantianism - the argument that interconnected and globalized trade leads to exchanges between citizens that increase their demand for democracy (with the key example being Ostpolitik between West and East Germany). However, the lack of democratization in countries in Latin America that have long traded with the U.S., and the lack of interconnectedness by Eastern European countries when they democratized seems to repudiate this theory. Still, it may be argued that while goods can be controlled, the flow of media and information across borders makes democracy far more appealing for the people of the world (although the effect of this, as seen in Latin America, is again limited). 2) Events - major unforeseen events in both domestic and international relations can force regime change and cause democratization - this is seen in war, in decolonization, and in the collapse of the USSR. 3) Waves - the evidence of temporal clustering in the emergence of democracies is clear and strong, with the current and fourth wave being by far the most global and extensive - this could be contributed to the spread of ideas and contagion alone, or it could be contributed to consent with the growth and increased legitimacy of international and non-governmental organizations dedicated to democratization. 4) Stages. Phases, and Sequences - Democratization is started by a quick transition but then only maintained via a long consolidation - it would seem international intervention is more influential in the process of consolidation than transition (in part because of the speed of the transition, and because once the transition is over the avenues of influence are much more clear). This leads to conditionality, as international organizations use the fulfillment of political goals as a stipulation for a country receiving aid, credit, or other international goods. This can both help politicians argue their hands are tied in adhering to democratic norms and encourage a focus on democratization. We see conditionality more and more as the importance of groups like the EU grows. Meanwhile, the collapse of the USSR means that these conditions are often the only conditions for entering the international scene.

TERMS - Pluralism

Often identified as the negative pole of populism, it focuses on "the maintenance of cultural heterogeneity and diversity and the protection of minority interests. This can be a threat to democracy if it undermines the ability to form a coherent body politic." - Plattner (2010).

VOTING - Green, Donald, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler. "Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters." New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Partisanship, as seen in the U.S., is remarkably durable - with voters remaining loyal to a party through recessions, wars, and other major policy changes and failures. Thus, any changes in party affiliation will tend to be slow and gradual. Further, party identity (even dating back decades into the past) is a far stronger predictor of voting patterns than typical markers of identity like gener, religion, or class. The one exception to this is race, which is a powerful determinant of voting patterns in the U.S. This view of party identity, as stubborn and central, contrasts with the typical view of voting as a rational weighing of competing options. Instead, partisan loyalties form early in life and then grow increasingly attached to those loyalties both via their identity and the views they adopt on policy positions - "Partisan identities are enduring features of citizens' self-conceptions. They do not merely come and go with election cycles and campaign ephemera" (5) In this way, party loyalty functions like religious belief systems. Indeed, evidence supports the fact that partisan identity for adults has very little relationship to unfolding political or economic events. This is not because of the ability of voters to ignore information that conflicts with their views and focus on information that conforms with them. Instead, voters are capable of assimilating new information about parties without 'changing the team they root for,' in part because one identifies strongly with that team. "Social identification involves comparing a judgment about oneself with one's perception of a social group. As people reflect on whether they are Democrats or Republicans (or neither), they call to mind some mental image, or stereotype, of what these sorts of people are like and square these images with their own self-conceptions. In effect, people ask themselves two questions: What kinds of social groups come to mind as I think about Democrats, Republicans, and Independents? Which assemblage of groups (if any) best describes me?" (8) Thus, a key issue for democrats and republicans is how they identify themselves with reference to group stereotypes for the two parties. However, partisanship can still matter in some contexts - most importantly, in contexts where the 'identity' stereotype associated with a party suddenly and dramatically changes (as seen with Democratis embracing civil rights from Truman onwards). But these effects play out very very slowly, and Truman faced little penalty for his choice. - "In effect, gradual changes in perceptions about which regional and racial groups "go with" each party caused a sea change in the way Southerners and blacks defined themselves in relation to the parties." (13) This view of party identity seems to apply beyond the U.S. as well, for many developed democracies.

POPULISM - Cas Mudde and Critobal Rovira Kaltwasser, "Populism," in The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, ed. Michael Freeden and Marc Sears, 493-512 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Populism can be defined as a 'thin-centered ideology' which focuses on a distinction between 'the pure people' and a 'corrupt elite,' and advocates for the protection of popular sovereignty at all costs. Historically, the literature has identified three types of populism: (1) agrarian populism, seen in Russian and the U.S. at the turn of the nineteenth century, (2) socio-economic populism, which is seen in Latin America in the mid-twentieth century, (3) xenophobic populism, which is seen in Europe in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Populism is best defined as an 'ideational approach to politics.' - Populism is a 'thin-centered' ideology pitting the people versus elites and promoting the expression of the general will. It is thin-centered because it severs itself from wide ideational contexts and "offers neither complex nor comprehensive answers to the political questions that societies generate" - thus, populism attaches itself to, and is assimilated into, other 'ideological families.' "This means that populism can take very different shapes, which are contingent on the ways in which the core concepts of populism—the people, the elite, and the general will—appear to be related to other concepts, forming interpretative paths that might be more or less appealing for different societies." (498) This means that populism rarely exists in a 'pure' form, but instead is always manifesting itself in combinations with other concepts that allow it to better survive. The negative pole of populism can be either elitism (which sees society and divided between elites and the masses and believes the elites and inherently more fit to rule) or pluralism (which views society as highly diverse and with overlapping views and belief systems, and believes good politics works to compromise and find consensus from these myriad views). All ideologies have core and peripheral concepts to them. Populism has three core concepts (1) the people - a very vague term that can refer to the people as sovereign (a base for political power), the common people (a unified and noble mass with coherent values and traditions), and the people as a nation (which captures the unique founding myths and cultures of whole political communities that set them apart from others, usually with a distinction between those who belong to this community, and those who do not). (2) the elites - elites are morally distinguished from the people in populism, since they are corrupt and the people are pure. The elites are usually defined on the basis of power, they are usually defined as an economic class with 'special interests,' and they are often defined in a national sense that distinguishes them from the people not just morally but ethnically. (3) the general will - this is where populists gain their legitimacy: from the pure, ultimate, and incontestable authority of the people within a democracy, which gives such leaders an unimpeachable sense of legitimacy and places any threat to populism as a threat to democracy itself. This lends itself to the promotion of measures of direct democracy like plebiscite and referendums. This idea of the general will also creates an image of a cohesive mass of people, which stigmatizes any views or groups that fits outside of this 'general will.' Populism can be combined in various ways with democracy, nationalism, and gender. (1) Democracy - populism relies on democratic legitimacy to support itself, by promoting a supposedly suppressed general will. Thus, populism is usually essentially democratic but opposed to liberal nationalism since it opposes any limits on the will of the people, whether these limits come from existing laws or in the name of protecting minorities. (2) Nationalism - populism can be but need not be linked with nationalism, although the recently nativist populism of Europe is especially nationalist in nature. (3) Gender - populism is often machismo in nature and is often supported primarily by men.

POPULISM - Kurt Weyland, "Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin America," Comparative Politics 34, no. 1 (October 2001): 1-22.

Populism is a contested concept within political science. There are three different forms of definitions in political science: cumulative ones (which combine the attributes of all definitions and say all attributes must be present), additive ones (which combine elements from definitions and say at least one must be present), and redefinitive ones (which work to reconceptualize the concept via a synthesis of the existing works). Early cumulative theories of populism focused on Latin American experiences and often linked populism to different stages of development and transitions to modernity - thus populism was part of a broader historical process and one associated with the rise of mass participation in politics. But this outlook was quickly discredited in the 1980s and 1990s with the populism arising in contexts that otherwise didn't fit this developmental model. This has led to increased debate over definitions of populism, with many focusing on minimalist, classical conceptions as a better alternative. This approach focuses on the central domains of populism, and not on its historical development based on class or economics. Instead, it focuses on a political definition of populism, seeing populism as a system of 'domination, not distribution.' Under this view, the key goal of populist leaders is to win and exercise power, and the economic and social policies they pursue are simply products of this goal. Thus, populism is a political strategy which is deployed by a political actor to help win and exercise power. Political power can come from individuals, informal groupings, or formal organizations, and can be based on either numbers (votes, mass support) or special weight (economic power or military power). Populism is thus a political strategy by an individual leader based on support from a mass of followers, where that support is fluid and unorganized. Thus, populists rely on otherwise unorganized masses for continued support and to bail them out when they fail. Thus, populism is often seen via the following process: "A charismatic leader wins broad, diffuse, yet intense support from such a largely unorganized mass by "representing" people who feel excluded or marginalized from national political life and by promising to rescue them from crises, threats, and enemies. The leader appeals to the people for help in his heroic effort to regenerate the nation, combat the privileged groups and their special interests, and transform the "'corrupt" established institutions." The fluid and unstable nature of populist basis make them rely on high levels of charisma. Leaders often turn to institutionalize this relationship through a party, which can then in turn limit populism via the institutionalization of the party and its ability to check its leader. If populism fails to develope institutionalized support, it will fail. If it succeeds at developing institutionalized support, it will transform into something else. Thus populism is always transitory.

TERMS - Motivated Reasoning/Skepticism

Taber and Lodge (2006) - "Voters tend to argue against, and critically assess, views that contrast with their own, while uncritically accepting views that align with their own (evidence of a disconfirmation bias). They also seek out information that confirms their pre-existing view points when given a choice over what information to look for (evidence of a confirmation bias)." - This tends to be an unconscious process, with voters trying to be objective and fair

TERMS - The Normative Thesis - Human Rights Hypothesis (Judiciary)

This is what Hirschl (2004) refers to as evolutionary theories. It covers theories focused on the growth of human rights rhetoric after WWII. Tate and Vallinder (1995) argue that the spread of international human rights treaties made having strong courts more important as a display of a country's democratic legitimacy on the international stage. In this sense, the judicialization of politics is, in part, performance politics.

AUTHORITARIANISM - Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Although the Third Wave saw democracy spread all over the world, its institutions were often set up to be highly skewed in order to maintain authoritarianism - the competition was 'real, but unfair' - in these competitive authoritarian regimes. Among these regimes, there are two key factors that determined if they eventually democratized or not: 1) ties to the west, with strong economic/political/social ties and cross-border flows (of goods, capital, people, or information) increasing the odds of democratization, and 2) the strength of governing party and state organizations, with weaker governing structures leading to higher odds of collapse. What distinguishes competitive authoritarian regimes from democratic ones is how level the playing field is between incumbents and the opposition. These regimes allow real opposition and competition, they just limit the comparative advantage of that competition contrasted with the incumbents. Here, elections are competitive but not fully free and fair, civil liberties are nominally guaranteed and partially respected, and the playing field is tiled via the abuse of state institutions, and limits to the oppositions' ability to organize. The three key tools of tiling the playing field are: 1) disparate access to resources; 2) disparate access to the media; 3) disparate access to the law. Competitive authoritarianism is a post-Cold War phenomenon, with governments trying to appeal to U.S. notions of democracy in order to gain access to its resources. Thus, "formal democratic institutions" allowed countries to position themselves "favorable in the international contest for scarce development resources." Usually, competitive authoritarian regimes failed to democratize - 15 out of 35 cases democratized, while 20 either transitioned to new forms of authoritarianism or maintained their competitive authoritarian regime. There are three steps to the argument made here: 1) Where links to the west were strong, competitive authoritarian regimes democratized because they were highly supervised; 2) where links were low, state and government structures were key, with organized and cohesive structures decreasing threats to the regime and collapse; 3) the state's vulnerability to western democratizing pressure was often decisive, meaning those states that had an ability to blunt such pressure often survived for longer. Thus, high-linkage = democratization, low-linkage and low-organization = collapse, low-linkage and high-organization = maintenance. Coalitions in competitive regimes are often the most rational means of opposition parties maintaining access to the resources needed to survive. There are two key elements of international influence on competitive authoritarian regimes: 1) western leverage (a country's vulnerability to external democratizing pressure and bargaining power with the west - this is often insufficient on its own to force democratization); 2) linkages to the west (the density of political, economic, social and organizational ties to the west, and its cross-border flow of goods, capital, services, people, and information). linkage increases the democratizing impact of leverage in 3 different ways: 1) it improved external monitoring by increasing information flows, 2) linkage increases the odds Western states will actually use their leverage for democratization, 3) linkage increases the domestic impact of international pressure by increasing internal pressure and opposition - meaning abuse triggers far more resistance because people realize what is at stake. The two key factors for internal organizational capacity are the state and the party - both of which can be measured in terms of scope and cohesion - "whereas strong states help coerce and suppress opposition and permanent movements for change, strong parties allow incumbents to manage intra-elite conflict, mobilize support, and gain legitimacy through elections"

VOTING - Clarke, Harold, David Sanders, Marianne Stewart, and Paul Whiteley. Political Choice in Britain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Britain has seen a decline in class voting and voter turnout in elections, gradually since the 1970s and more dramatically since the 1990s. In spite of this,the basis of how people vote in britain has not changed, but has remained focused on valence issues rationally considered by the individual and assessed as metrics of competence for competing parties The sociological model has long focused on fixed social characteristics as defining voting patterns in a fairly stable way that ossifies over time and is expressed in strong partisan loyalties through which the world is filtered. This means that social structures will define political ones, and the latter will only change slowly with the former. This view has, however, been critiqued by the decline of class voting throughout the UK since the 1970s The individual rationality framework contrasts with the sociological framework, and focuses on each individual's rational choice within the electoral context aimed at maximizing the personal benefits from voting. This can take the form of identifying with the party closest to you within a uni-dimensional issue space - or of aligning yourself with a partisan identity to decrease the costs of filtering political information. These models, however, underplay the non-rational motives that often drive human action and thinking. A valence model - structured by the heuristics and cognitive shortcuts used to make electoral choices - may offer the best of both worlds - " In our view, the most important factor underlying electoral choice is valence—people's judgements of the overall competence of the rival political parties. These judgements, in turn, are arrived at through two principal and related shortcuts: leadership evaluations and party identification." (9) "Following Fiorina (1981) and others who have conceptualized partisanship in terms of an individual rationality approach, we view party identification as a store of accumulated information about political parties. Partisan attachments are frequently updated on the basis of a voter's assessment of the parties' political and economic performance, and these updated attachments inform electoral choice." (9) If valence models are correct, and not sociological ones, you should see higher levels of partisan volatility among individuals - "Analyses presented in Chapter Six show that, since the early 1960s, there has been considerable individual-level instability in party identification in Britain... Analyses also show that partisanship can be effectively modelled as a response to judgements about party leader performance and economic evaluations. Taken together, these findings suggest that partisanship in Britain corresponds closely to the characterization provided by the valence politics model." (14)

PARTIES - Herbert Kitschelt and Daniel M. Kselman - "Economic Development, Democratic Experience, and Political Parties' Linkage Strategies," Comparative Political Studies 46, no. 11 (2012): 1453-84.

Clientelism tends to increase, not decrease, as countries move from low to intermediate levels of development and democratization. Thus, there is a curvilinear relationship with economic development and clientelism Less developed countries are more likely to face high levels of political uncertainty, which will make both clientelistic, and especially programmatic linkages difficult to credibly maintain. Programmatic appeals require ex-post credibility because the benefits are delayed and indirect and thus require a faith in the capacity of the party to implement them once in office. This is true, only to a slightly lesser degree, for clientelism, which requires mechanisms and monitoring and enforcement for the exchange of political support for material benefits, which requires an extensive organizational infrastructure in turn. Clientelism is feasible with medium-term time horizons, programmatism only with long-term ones. Younger Democracies are more likely to face institutional and regime change, as well as greater levels of party system volatility, all of which make ex-post credibility either for clientelism or programmatism incredibly difficult, not to mention the development of clear policy platforms. Lower levels of economic development also make the focus on small-scale and short term material benefits more appealing because of the focus on day-to-day subsistence, as well as because of the instability inherent to regimes in volatile economic systems. What's more, higher levels of economic volatility correspond with higher reliance on outside intervention, which lowers the capacity to have autonomy over policy making, limiting party commitment. In this context, one-shot clientelism coupled with strategies grounded in things like charisma or ethnicity are likely to be the most successful. But as development happens, long-term economic progress will be easier to tie promises of the state too, the state bureaucracy will offer more employment options, and sudden shocks will be less debilitating, making full scale clientelism more feasible. As a country become highly developed both supply and demand will shift toward programmatism, with voters having transcended the need for short term material exchanges through clientelism and increasingly in search of the state level stability produced via programmatism, like a social security net. Finally, if a country has experiences more transitions in regime type, it is more likely to default to clientelism over programmatism.

TERMS - The Legalist Framework (Judiciary)

Courts are independent arbiters of the law than simply act as 'umpires' to legal questions and statutory disputes. Williams (2017) provides an example of such thinking in his work on the British courts. As Williams argues, these courts are motivated by the legal context they act within - their rulings are responses to the vagueness of British law and their general understanding of good governance, not policy imperatives. Seen in the popularization of originalism and textualism in American law (Scalia, 1998).

DEMOCRACY - Phillip Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, "What Democracy Is... and Is Not," Journal of Democracy 2, no. 3 (1991): 75-88.

Democracy does not consist of a single unique set of institutions, but is a diverse number of practices that produce a variety set of effects. Democracy can be defined as a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives. A regime or system of governance is the patterns that determine access to public office, the characteristics of the actors admitted to such access, the strategies that actors use to gain access, and the rules that dictate publicly binding decisions - such systems must be institutionalized by written law and a written constitution. These rules and forms are all bundled together and can then be labelled a democracy or subdivided into other subtypes A democracy consists of the following 6 components: 1) the public realm (the collective norms and choices that or binding of society and backed by state coercion - these are relaxed in liberal democracies [which may err on the side of too little control] and extended in social-democracies [which may err on the side of too much]); 2) citizens (only democracies have citizens, and increasingly democracies require universal, fair, and egalitarian standards of citizenship); 3) competition (competition via faction is seen as a necessary evil of democracy, with parties vying for voters and providing them aggregated policy alternatives through free, regular, and fair elections); 4) majority rule (this should include protections for minority rights via means like a bill of rights, federalism, or consociationalism); 5) cooperation (the voluntary making of collective decisions that are binding on the whole and the respect of those decisions by adversaries and fellow democratic competitors - this functions most effectively through civil society which gives the state a means of resolving conflict and controlling behavior without the use of force, and serves as a means of improving the quality of citizens); 6) representatives (as democracies continue to grow in size, and their bureaucratic capacity grows with them, the need to balance this ability with the proper representation of elected officials is essential - building up this robust representation takes time, and cannot be rushed). Procedures that make democracy possible: first and foremost are restriction on its own government and strict adherence to the rule of law - otherwise, there are nine procedural conditions for a democracy to exist (building on Dahl's work): 1) control over government decision about policy is constitutionally vested in elected officials, 2) elected officials are chosen in frequent and fair elections, 3) practically all adults have the right to vote, 4) practically all adults can run for office, 5) citizens have a right to express themselves politically without danger of punishment, 6) citizens have a right to seek alternative sources of information, which are protected by the law, 7) citizens can form independent associations or organizations like interest groups, 8) popularly elected official are able to exercise their constitutional powers without being overridden by unelected officials (whether officially or informally), 9) the polity must be self-governing and free from outside restraints. Finally, democracies must have actors who accept defeat and don't try to bar their competition from fair democratic participation and who respect the outcome of opposition leadership when fairly elected - this is what Dahl called the 'democratic bargain.' This bargain must function within the accepted rules of the political game, and which takes time to develop. How democracies differ - There are 11 dimensions along which democracies can differ without becoming more or less democratic: 1) consensus (the amount of agreement among citizens), 2) participation (how active the citizenry is), 3) access (how equally the government weighs different preferences), 4) responsiveness (leaders don't always follow their citizens, but can be held to account), 5) majority rule (not everything has to be approved by election), 6) parliamentary sovereignty (the legislature may not be the final authority in the law), 7) party government (how parties are organized) , 8) pluralism (the multiplicity of voluntaristic groups in society), 9) federalism (the levels of autonomy within the system of government) , 10) presidentialism (there may not be a singular and nationally elected executive), 11) checks and balances (branches of government need not be balanced against each other). What democracy is not - there are four key things democracies aren't - 1) they aren't necessarily more economically efficient than other regimes, 2) they aren't necessarily more administratively efficient than other regimes, 3) they aren't likely to be more orderly, consensual, stable or governable than autocracies, but instead open to contestation, 4) they will have more open societies, but not necessarily more open economies.

TERMS - The Social/Normative Framework (Judiciary)

Epp (1998) argues that the impetus for a 'rights revolution' within different judicial bodies has been the creation of a support structure in the surrounding legal system, that helps finance, organize, and advocate for piece-meal legal advancements. Teles (2008) shows the specific example of the rise of the Federalist Society in the U.S., which was able to create an incredibly influential network of members via a strong institutional culture, boundary maintenance, and their promotion of conservatism as a driving legal philosophy. Hilibink (2012) argues that norms of judicial assertiveness and acceptable judicial action have a major impact on the way judges act. When the legal system and its social networks promote a more active judicial system, it can embolden judges even in the face of high risks, and when the legal culture discourages judicial intervention, it can enfeeble judges even in permissive systems (see Spain and Chile). Gonzalez-Ocantos (2016) says that judges think and operate within a system of rigidified norms and expected standards of legal argumentation, and that forms of legal argument that fit outside of these norms will be almost impossible to implement. With a key example of human rights reforms in Latin America, Gonzalez-Ocantos argues that actors outside the judiciary have to engage in pedagogical intervention and changes in court personnel to create new legal standards of acceptable action.

TERMS - The Strategic/Economic Framework

Epstein and Knight (1998) argue that justices make strategic and policy maximizing choices based on their goals, the predicted actions of others, and the institutional constraints of their place on the court. Similarly, Esptein, Knight, and Shvetsova (2001) argue that courts have to respond to the 'tolerance intervals' of other political actors, and build up trust, to institutionalize their independence. In contrast, Helmke and Staton (2011) argue that courts will be incentivised to make politically dangerous decisions early on to establish their reputation for independence. A prominent proponent of this outlook in the United States is Richard Posner, whose book, How Judges Think (2008), emphasizes the economic model of judicial decision making. An interesting iteration of this argument is made in the historical case for foreign policy influences on civil rights decisions in the U.S. in Dudziak's Cold War Civil Rights (2000).

JUDICIARY - Helmke, Gretchen and Jeffrey Staton."The Puzzling Judicial Politics of Latin America: A Theory of Litigation, Judicial Decisions, and Interbranch Conflict." in Courts in Latin America, ed Gretchen Helmke and Julio Rios-Rigueroa, 306-27. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Existing strategic models do a poor job of explaining judicial action in Latin America, where judges often face politically motivated attacks, and yet continue to engage in risky and bold decision making and continue to amass popular legitimacy (as displayed by rising levels of litigation). Again and again, Latin American judges are acting contrary to the court, even in strategic environments that should disincentivize such actions. This work adopts a new strategic model to explain this. In this model there are four players - the government, the court, and two potential litigants. The government implements an agenda, which is then responded to by a litigant claiming its unconstitutional. If the court agrees, the government can either accept that decision (resolving the issue) or push back by implementing a different policy or trying to replace the court. The government decides whether it is worth doing so based on the odds of facing backlash from the public. In this context, courts will invite political conflict if it helps convey critical information about them. Because court decisions show how permissive / partisan / independent a court is, their decisions signal to the litigants and government how to act. Thus, when there are high levels of uncertainty both about the courts preferences and the public's reaction to government defiance of the court, clashes between the two are likely. Independent and expansive courts will want to signal early on their independence so that litigants will continue to bring cases, and governments will be unsure about the repercussions of judicial repression. Making judicial seats more independent and the costs of changing them higher will make government intervention less likely. The danger of court actions is similarly reduced over time via iterated games and the repeated display of preferences. This means young courts will likely face a high risk environment requiring clashing with the government if they want to establish their long term legitimacy and independence - they have the clear this hurdle of a potential political purge to establish themselves .

TERMS - Identity Voting

Green, Palmquist, and Schickler (2002) - partisan loyalties form early in life and then grow increasingly attached to those loyalties both via their identity and the views they adopt on policy positions - "Partisan identities are enduring features of citizens' self-conceptions. They do not merely come and go with election cycles and campaign ephemera" (5) In this way, party loyalty functions like religious belief systems. "In effect, people ask themselves two questions: What kinds of social groups come to mind as I think about Democrats, Republicans, and Independents? Which assemblage of groups (if any) best describes me?" (8) Supported by Achen and Bartles (2016) - "Religious, ethnic occupational, and other affiliations all range from nominal to central in people's lives.... We have argued that voters choose political parties, first and foremost, in order to align themselves with the appropriate coalition of social groups. Most citizens support a party not because they have carefully calculated policy positions that are closest to their own, but rather because 'their kind' of person belongs to the party." (307) - The view of voters as myopic and retrospective Another version of this model that has grown increasingly in repute over recent years is the idea that strict social divides like class and religion are what always structure voting - the decline in class voting across Europe has put this in doubt (Elff, 2007).

VOTING - Evans, Geoffrey and James Tilley. "The Depoliticization of Inequality and Redistribution: Explaining the Decline of Class Voting." The Journal of Politics 74, no. 4 (October: 2012): 963-76.

In Britain, the decline of class voting since the 1980s is not due to a decline in the salience of class for people, but instead a decline in the supply of salient political choices concerning issues of inequality and redistribution. As parties offer less diversity of choice on these issues, voters shift their identity to match the options provided. The issue wasn't demand for class based parties, but a lack of supply. Thus, "the politics of class influences class voting, not vice versa." This finding is affirmed using British survey data stretching from 1983 to 2010. Many left-leaning parties like the Labour party in England shifted their ideological appeal from their traditional base to a more 'catch-all' approach aimed at capturing a wider constituency. This decreased the class distinction of the parties and thus the supply of class-based voter identities for citizens in the UK. "Ideological convergence weakens the strength of the signals from parties to voters and the motivation for choosing parties as a result of interests derived from class position is reduced—and vice versa for polarization." If class identity was declining, and not just supply for class based voting, we'd expect divergences on support for redistribution and policies addressing inequality (left-right values) to become less distinct between different classes. Instead, we see these values still just as divided between voters in England, supporting the view that they are simply less relevant for modern party choice - "the relationship between class position and values remained relatively unchanged: the latter simply mattered much less for party choice." (974). The data shows a robust trend of declining class divides between the two parties in the UK (especially during the 1990s), with voters highly aware of the decreasing ideological differences between the two parties and thus using class as less of a factor in deciding between them.

VOTING - Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

It has long been assumed that religious identity is declining in the modern world, but this view is coming increasingly under attack - This book developed a revised secularization theory that focuses on people's sense of existential security. It argues that feelings of vulnerability are key for driving religious belief, and feelings of security key for driving its decline among some groups. Those societies with high levels of security and post-materialist values have seen the importance of religious fade. This leads to two trends: (1) the population of advanced industrial societies are increasingly secular across the board, (2) the world as a whole has a higher number of traditionally religious people than ever before and they are growing as a net contributor to the world's population. This is in part because increasing secularization is closely tied to declining fertility rates. Many explanations have tried and failed to account for secularization - including thesis focused on an enlightenment era loss of faith and superstition, ones focused on the functional role of religion declining with the emergence of the welfare state, and ones focused on a decline of competition within the 'free market of religion' due to the secularization of the state. This theory instead focuses on levels of existential security in different societies as the driving force behind secularization (or the lack thereof). However, the cultural influences of religious cultures continue to impact even highly secure societies, if the form of this influence is no longer explicitly tied to church attendance or faith but instead cultural tenets. This work also theorizes that declining religious identity should translate to religion becoming far less important as a marker of voting preferences. And that the decline in religiosity should also be linked to demographic decline. Low-religion societies will invest heavily in the individual and in high education and welfare, increasing the focus on each child in a family, while poorer religious societies will value large and traditional families with high fertility and high child mortality. Relevance to parties: "In European countries where the Protestant and Catholic populations were once strongly "pillarized" into segmented party and social networks, exemplified by the Netherlands, the religious-based "pillars" have lost much of their relevance for electoral behavior. Also in Western Europe, religious dealignment appears to have eroded denominational identities as a social cue guiding patterns of partisanship and voting choice." This trend is not seen in the U.S.

JUDICIARY - Gonzalez-Octanos, Ezequiel. Shifting Legal Visions: Judicial Change and Human Rights Trials in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Judges and prosecutors function in highly bureaucratized environments that resist innovation and that have dominant cultural/professional norms about acceptable thinking and conduct. This limits the problem solving templates judicial systems see as available for problems. For new modes of judicial thought to emerge, there has to be a concerted shift in legal culture that makes those new modes seem legitimate, important, and defensible. This is seen with the rise of human rights litigation in Latin America. Human rights advocates, with strong legal teams and public interest groups, were able to effectively use pedagogical intervention and changes in court personnel to create new legal standards of acceptable action which made more permissive interpretations of the law in human rights cases more acceptable, despite a strong positive culture in Latin American courts. This interpretation of judicial decision making thus prioritizes perceptual schemas, reinforcing social and professional norms, and sociological institutionalism, as opposed to rationalism based on fragmented power, as the main way that judges conceptualize their work and normalize their actions. These legal preferences and schemas have political implications, and thus the way they can be shaped or reformed can have a huge impact on issues of political salience like human rights.

JUDICIARY - Tate, Neal C., and Torbjorn Vallinder. The Global Expansion of Judicial Power: The Judicialization of Politics. New York: New York University Press, 1995.

Judicial bodies making policy decisions that have either traditionally or normatively been left to legislatures is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. This is due to both international and domestic factors. Internationally, the spread of democracies through Eastern Europe and Latin America, and the rise of democracies in more and more previously authoritarian regimes, is resulting in a growing reliance on strong judiciaries. Further, politicians and political scientists are increasingly influenced by the American school of political thought, which normalizes strong and independent judiciaries. Finally, the spread of international human rights conventions and courts has increased the normative importance of adopting judiciaries as a show of democratic legitimacy. Domestically, there is growing distrust of governments, politicians, and bureaucrats throughout Europe and the United States, which has led to increased faith in the bodies that judge and limit them. Further, courts are seen as an important institutional safeguard against authoritarian backsliding in new democracies (whether this view is justified or not). All of this results in a global system of politics increasingly dominated by the judiciary - the judicialization of politics.

JUDICIARY - Ginsburg, Tom. "The Global Spread of Constitutional Review." in The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, ed. Gregory Caldeira, Daniel Kelemen, and Keith Whittington, 81-95. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Judicial review has its origins in the American judicial system, but has spread throughout the world in three waves (the first being the American founding, drawing on judeo-christian thought, Lockean norms, and a written constitution; the second being the growth of judicial review after WWII, especially in post-facist and decolonizing countries, as promoted by international human-rights standards; and the third coming with the fall of the USSR and the spread of constitutional courts in post-communist regimes and other developing nations). This spread of constitutional review stems from a mutually reinforcing dynamic between ideology and institutions. This approach combines demand side theories for this growth (focused on common law conceptions of limited governance, on the spread of popular- and human-rights ideologies after WWII, on the needs for mediation in federalist systems, and on a need to check growing bureaucracies in the modern world), and supply side theories (focused on institutional factors, like political fragmentation requiring third party mediation, the need for minorities existing government to entrench their legal protections, and the need for a bailout mechanisms in gridlocked systems).

JUDICIARY - Williams, Matthew. "Legislative Language and Judicial Politics: The Effects of Changing Parliamentary Language on UK Immigartion Disputes." The British Journal of Political and International Relations 19, no. 3 (2017): 592-608.

Legalism best explains the change in British courts' rulings on immigration after the 1990s. The British government is increasingly losing cases on immigration, and many see this as an example of judicial activism. But legislation from parliament on immigration has become increasingly couched in indeterminate and permissive language as a result of unpredictable immigration patterns since WWII. This both leaves the interpretation of the laws more opaque, and opportunities for challenging the laws more open. The result is that judges are more likely to default to an interpretation that limits government power and discretion, in line with legal norms of natural justice and restrictive power, which dictate the government should generally not rule in its own favor when determining the extent of indeterminate powers. A statistical review of the indeterminacy of language within British legislation affirms this interpretation.

TERMS - The Institutional Thesis - The Insurance Hypothesis (Judiciary)

Minority Insurance Some argue that minority political groups or disempowered political parties will seek to create a judiciary to help protect their interests and rights once they are out of government - this is what Hirschl (2004) refers to as the 'electoral markets' hypothesis. "Judicial review... is a solution to the problem of political uncertainty at the time of constitutional design. Parties that believe they will be out of power in the future are likely to prefer constitutional review by an independent court, because the court provides an alternative forum for challenging government action. Constitutional review is a form of political insurance that mitigates the risk of electoral loss. On the other hand, stronger political parties will have less of a desire for independent judicial review, since they believe they will be able to advance their interests in the post-constitutional legislature." (Ginsburg, 90) Elite Insurance Hirschl (2004) argues that elites will look to insulate their policy priorities from majoritarian politics via courts, when they feel that their hold on power is threatened. Thus, politicians will tie their own hands in order to tie the hands of their political rivals and to lock in an advantageous status quo via the judiciary. This desire is reinforced by economic elites looking to limit government regulation, and judicial elites looking to enhance their status.

PARTIES - John H. Aldrich, Why Parties: The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

Parties are an essential aspect of working democracies. Elections allow voters to hold individual politicians accountable, but political decisions are only ever made collectively. Thus, parties serve as a means of reconciling this discrepancy by aggregating political accountability and policy goals into large groups. This book argues that political parties are the creation of politicians, who see the parties as key towards achieving their goals. This will only happen within the electoral, legislative, and executive institutional context that creates incentives for the creation of such parties. Finally, this book argues that historical settings matter for party development, both in terms of whether they are the only means of mass mobilization (compared to parties just starting today) and because of institutional path dependencies that set in after parties are established. Previously popular views of parties have seen them as diverse coalitions serving to aggregate many varied interests into a collective of shared political goals; have focused on the 'responsible party thesis,' arguing that parties exist as idealized vehicles for policy commitments and policy development both in and out of office, giving voters a choice in their governance; and have finally focused on them as vehicles of competition always aimed at winning elections and functioning within a high competitive system that resembles a free market. This paper offers an argument that combines this views, arguing that politicians create and lead parties not just to win office, but to take action once in office, and that this choice is shaped by the historical context of the institutions they act within Political parties are lead by politicians and fueled by the resources of donators and volunteers. Voters are not part of parties, but instead are the 'consumers' that parties target for votes. The rational choice account of party formation argued for here claims that parties help solve problems that existent institutions otherwise can't solve, which fall into three categories: (1) the problem of ambition and elective office seeking - parties serve to regulate the competition for office which inevitably will have greater demand (politicians) than supply (offices); (2) the problem of making decisions for the party and for the polity - parties thus solve collective choice problems among politicians and give them a means of uniting policy goals and maintaining majorities; (3) the problem of collective action - winning office requires mobilizing voters and parties help both increase awareness of candidates, turn out voters, and provide access to resources. Thus, parties are tools of politicians to help them win more - and once parties are created its pretty impossible to function without them.

VOTING - Gerber, Alan S, and Gregory A Huber. "Partisanship, Political Control, and Economic Assessment." American Journal of Political Science 54, no. 1 (January 2010): 153-73.

Partisans rate the economy more favorably when their party is in power. Looking at panel data from the 2006 elections in the United States, when there was a sudden an unexpected shift in power, this paper finds a "large and statistically significant partisan difference in how economic assessments and behavioral intentions" were revised right after the Democrats unexpectedly won Congress. This is evidence of that fact that partisanship significantly shapes understandings of economic competence. This bias in partisan assessments of one's own parties economic performance may be simply due to high levels of confidence about the quality of one's own party over others, or it may be due to things such as divergent evaluative criteria (different voters focusing on different factors of the economy), partisan cheerleading (where voters simply express support for a candidate via their views of the economy), selective perception (where partisans process information in a biased manner), or selective exposure (in which partisans experience different economic realities because of different exposure to information and communal assessments). "The very short period between the panel waves makes it highly implausible that the divergent change in partisan economic assessments was due to (1) a sudden change in real economic experiences that happens to be correlated with partisanship, (2) sudden changes in the information streams about the economy that happen to be correlated with partisanship, or (3) partisan bias in the incorporation of a burst of new information about the economy itself." "We find that preelection partisanship has a large and statistically significant effect on how respondents react to the outcome of the November 2006 election. Immediately after the election, Democrats are more optimistic than they were the previous month about both the nation's and their own household's economic future, report increases in their planned consumption, and are happier than they were before it. Republicans react in nearly mirror fashion. These findings are robust to numerous alternative statis- tical specifications. Additionally, we find evidence that expectations of state economic performance are similarly affected by the outcome of state gubernatorial elections." (154) Thus, the difference in perceptions of the economy seems to be due simply to differences in partisan identity and faith in one's party, and these views spill over into economic activity (like planned consumption and reported levels of happiness and security). These changes are both pocketbook and sociotropic

PARTIES - Noam Lupu, "Party Brands and Partisanship: Theory with Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Argentina," American Journal of Political Science 57, no. 1 (January 2013): 49-64.

Partisanship is part of a social identity, but because the program (and thus identity) of parties change, the levels of support for parties can change as well. This fits within a branding model of partisanship, whereby people categorize themselves into identity groups they think they resemble, and will support parties that align with these identities. When parties have clear identity boundaries, these attachments will be strong, but when party identities are more fluid or weaker, the attachments will be more tepid. In this paper, this theory is tested by presenting voters in Argentina with a survey about party brands. The survey presented voters with either: a list of parties and logos (the baseline); a list of parties, logos, and party platforms (which was supposed to increase a sense of brands); a list of party alliances and coalitions (which was supposed to muddle a sense of party brends); and a mix and match treatment with all the information (which was supposed to cancel out the effects). The surveys were found to impact party identity in the expected ways. This shows that party brands are learned over time and party attachment is based on these brands. When the brands are seen as undermined or changing, attachments can change too. This is most true for younger voters, with less calcified views of party identities

PARTIES - Scott Mainwaring and Mariano Torcal, "Party System Institutionalization and Party System Theory after the Third Wave of Democratization," in The Handbook of Party Politics, ed. Richard Katz and William Crotty: 204-27 (London: Sage Publications, 2005).

Party system institutionalization - defined by the stability of interparty competition, the legitimacy of parties, and the depth of party roots (anchoring) in society - is key for understanding party systems. Institutionalization leads to established, clear, stable, and widely accepted expectations about behavior, practice, and organization within the party system. The main parties and actors are stable in institutionalized systems. Systems can also de-institutionalize as seen in Italy in the 1990s, and institutionalization is a spectrum not a binary. In general, pre-1978 democracies are far more institutionalized than post-1978 ones. This is because for pre-1978 democracies, parties were essential for the political organization of society, whereas post-1978 parties built on pre-existing identities and were able to use TV and popular media to build coalitions outside of party structures. This manifests in two empirical regularities: in post-1978 democracies, lower levels of anchoring (i.e. more volatility) by parties leads to less programmatic appeals by parties and lower levels of ideological linkage; and without programmatic parties, candidates tend to appeal to voters through more personalistic means (which are fundamentally juxtaposed to institutionalized parties). The consequence of both of these is that low levels of institutionalization is bad for electoral accountability, and that such systems are more vulnerable to anti-party politicians rising to power like Hugo Chavez. Low levels of institutionalization are bad for both democratic stability and democratic accountability.

PARTIES - Kenneth Roberts, Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Party systems in Latin America have been highly volatile over the past decades, especially after the party readjustments caused by market liberalization in the 1990s after a long period of state protectionism and import substitution, and the subsequent left-ward shift that followed in response. This book argues that the political stability of modern latin American countries was a product of their political alignments during the market-oriented transitions of the 1980s and 1990s, and that this impacted the nature of leftist parties that rose up in response. Under this view, the 1990s transition was a critical juncture essential in shaping modern political outcomes and calls for social welfare in Latin American countries. ""Divergent outcomes, I argue, were shaped by three basic causal factors or independent variables: (1) the character of national party systems during the era of state-led development; (2) the depth and duration of economic crises during the transition to neoliberalism; and (3) the political orientation of leading market reformers and their opponents in each country. This third factor largely deter- mined whether structural adjustment would align or de-align party systems along a left-right axis of programmatic competition." (Roberts - 5) "Market reforms that were led by conservative, pro-business par- ties or leaders, and consistently opposed by a major party of the left, aligned party systems programmatically. Such reform alignments channeled societal dissent against market orthodoxy toward moderate and institutionalized par- ties of the left, stabilizing partisan competition in the post-adjustment era. Alternatively, reforms that were imposed by labor-based populist or center- left parties de-aligned party systems programmatically, leaving opponents of the reform process without effective representation in established institutions. Such opposition was thus channeled into anti-systemic forms of social and electoral protest that spawned new populist or leftist movements, with highly destabilizing consequences for party systems in the post-adjustment era." (Roberts - 6) A sudden switch by the left from import substitution to liberalism lead to 'bait and switch' politics that weakened party brands and decreased party loyalties and thus harmed competition by making it harder for parties to link societal interests to meaningful programmatic alternatives. Stable partisanship relies on strong linkages to voters and strong cleavages between parties - the 1990s critical juncture undermined both for leftist parties in charge. Further "In some countries, party systems were reconfigured by the rise of a mass- based, labor-mobilizing populist or leftist party with organic linkages to workers (and sometimes peasant) movements during the statist era. In others, elite- controlled parties remained electorally dominant and incorporated lower classes primarily through vertical patron-client linkages. These "elitist" and "labor- mobilizing" (LM) party systems were embedded in distinct developmental matrices or "varieties of capitalism" (Hall and Soskice 2001), with more extensive lower-class organization and more ambitious state-led development typically being associated with the LM cases.... These characteristics created a formidable and highly destabilizing set of adjustment burdens for LM party systems during the transition to neoliberalism - in particular, the political costs of severe and often prolonged economic crises, the social dislocations attendant to market restructuring, the discrediting of statist policies and interventionist practices that historically pro- vided parties with programmatic linkages to labor and popular constituencies, and the demise of mass-based organizational models in both civil and political society." (Roberts, 7-8) Programmatism is more likely to create strong class identities, clientelism more likely to blur them. The lack of party loyalty in Latin America leads to campaigning over valence issues. Further, the failure of parties leads politicians to rely more on charismatic and populist appeals to create reliable basis of support, since parties fail to provide these and are distrusted by voters.

TERMS - The Institutional Thesis - The Mediation Hypothesis (Judiciary)

Political Mediation Shapiro and Stone Sweet (2002) (specifically Stone Sweet) provide the theory of triadic dispute resolution (TDR) whereby courts arise as a means of mediating conflict between competing parties, and are institutionalized by the state as a means of ensuring the resolution of competing interests and imperfect norms within the state. The causal logic: the need for mediation → reliance on arbitration → creation of new rules and norms → creation of a reinforcing and self-perpetuating normative environment. This resembles the logic behind political theory on social contracts, whereby yielding power and decision making capacity to another actor allows for insurance against arbitrary actions: you sacrifice potential short term gains for long term security. Some scholars, like Shapiro (1981), argue that judicial review is incentivised in federalist systems where the conflict between different levels of political power and the law requires arbitration in the form of a court (Ginsburg, 2004). This logic similarly applies to systems with a greater separation of powers and thus higher odds of political fragmentation between the different branches of government, which makes the judiciary harder to control, and thus more powerful (this is hypothesized to happen in presidential systems more than parliamentary ones) (Ferejohn, Rosenbluth, and Shipan, 2009). Economic Mediation This is what Hirschl (2004) refers to as the institutional-economic framework (or the functionalist framework), which sees judiciaries as tools of resolving collective action problems through the enforcement of contracts. This is a prerequisite to economic growth. Examples of this logic abound in the literature on economic development, where many authors argue that it was the need for enforceable contracts that helped lead to the development of European states and strong institutions (including the means of enforcement within those systems as epitomized by the judiciary) (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, 2001; North and Thomas, 1973).

JUDICIARY - Hanretty, Chirs. "The Decisions and Ideal Points of British Law Lords." British Journal of Political Science 43 (September 2012): 703-16.

Rational models of judicial decision making work poorly for British Law lords, whose actions are poorly predicted by a one-dimensional policy ranking like those used to position judges in the U.S. Thus, although the evidence that judges are rational political actors in other countries is fairly persuasive, the Law Lords don't appear to judge politically. This is both because of unique features of dissent within the British legal system, and because the British constitution allows for few opportunities of policy seeking by judges. Judges are not at the top of the judicial hierarchy and can easily be overruled by parliament, which makes their primary motivation avoiding being overruled, as opposed to pursuing political goals as many judges do. Indeed, the only thing usefully measured by the Law Lord's voting patterns is their attitudes about the usefulness of dissent, which can be traced to other aspects of the Lord's identities (mainly if they are from 'traditional' backgrounds of english law and private schools or 'non-traditional' background like Scotich law or state schools in England).

VOTING - Inglehart, Ronald F. "Changing Values Among Western Publics from 1970 to 2006." West European Politics 31, no. 1-2 (January-March, 2008): 130-46.

The changing values of western political systems is behind a shift in voting, as increasingly levels of security is leading to a focus on post-materialism and a backlash against such a focus by older generations. This is confirmed by cohort analyses, comparisons of rich and poor countries, and examination of the actual trends observed over the past 35 years. The defining political change in most of the western world has been the shift of younger voters towards post-industrialism because of their feeling of security (material security no longer feels like a higher priority, as it does for those growing up before WWII), which has fueled the rise of cultural movements aimed at equality and the shifting of the left to address cultural issues instead of economic ones (a process that has pushed the older, working class, and white generation to the right as they feel their values left behind, and focus more on cultural protection). Indeed, when surveyed, those who were over 65 had materialist values at 12x the rate of those who had post-materialism values in the age cohort, while the majority of people under 25 value post-materialism over materialism. But these younger cohorts seem to be holding on to these values as they age. This is seen in the growing dominance of post-materialists as a share of the population in both Western Europe and the U.S., where they now make up a majority. The post-materialist thesis helps explain the link between wealth and democracy, since the values of democracy are more likely to be prioritized over material gains by people with high levels of security.

NATURAL RESOURCES - Ross, Michael L. "Review: The Political Economy of the Resource Curse." World Politics 51, no. 2 (January 1999): 297-322.

The evidence of the resource curse seems fairly abundant but its mechanism is still unclear - ""Three-quarters of the states in sub- Saharan Africa and two-thirds of those in Latin America, the Caribbean, North Africa, and the Middle East still depend on primary commodities for at least half of their export income." (298) Broadly the explanations for the resource curse fall into three categories: cognitive explanations (which claim that resource booms produce a type of short-sightedness among policymakers [there is little overall support for this outlook]), societal explanations (which argue that resource exports tend to empower sectors, classes, or interest groups that favor growth-impeding policies, especially via the empowerment of client networks or interest groups [although illustrations of this thesis are usually limited to the same five cases: South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil]), and state-centered explanations (which argue that resource booms tend to weaken state institutions, especially its ability to extract and deploy resources or resist the demands of interest groups/rent seekers [however, the proof of this concept with case studies is again, limited, and sometimes the arguments are so complicated and overlapping - as with Karl - that they are impossible to test]). Two other explanations that can be added to this is one focusing on state-owned enterprises in developing states, and one focused on the inability to enforce property rights within resource dependent regimes. The three dominant economic explanations for the resource curse have focused on long-term primary commodity prices on global markets, price fluctuations in resource markets, and the loss of investment in other important industries and aspects of the economy. All of these explanations have proven limited when addressed more carefully however. This turns the attention to governments, and why they fail to successfully manage resources and mediate potential harms. The two explored explanations for the resource curse that seem promising are: (1) the existence of state owned enterprises to manage natural resources, which are often huge resource sucks and which have also tended to decrease budget constraints within the government, leading to fiscal laxity and high levels of corruption. And (2) the resource curse undermines the ability to protect property rights. This can be explained in two ways - first, resource curses may be caused by a failure of property rights since they make the development of any other kind of industry incredibly difficult but resources are constantly available and thus become the default. Second, where the rule of law is weak, criminal gangs and militias gaining rents from the resources are more likely, which makes extortion, monopoly rents, and extralegal rent seeking all more likely - "The result would be a violent form of the resource curse, in which the rise of resource industries indirectly leads to further destabilization of property rights and hence the decline of non resource industries" (321)

VOTING - Elff, Martin. "Social Structure and Electoral Behavior in Comparative Perspective: The Decline of Social Cleavages in Western Europe Revisited." Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 2 (June 2007): 277-291.

The idea that social cleavages are on a decline throughout Europe is exaggerated - looking at data from seven countries between 1975 and 2002, this article shows that while class voting has unambiguously declined, religious/secular voting divides have remained stable. Social cleavages like class and religion used to be at the center of voting models but have increasingly been relegated in recent work. There is a widely attributed view that social divides are declining as the defining cleavages of politics, and consequently, party loyalty is becoming more volatile. This article argues that, while class voting has declined, the current theories focused on cognitive mobilization (growing education levels and media access which makes voters more independent of parties and value change (growing post-materialism due to rising security levels, a la Inglehart) are incapable of fully explaining it. Growing knowledge of self-interest will decrease social cleavage based voting only so far as this voting is counter to one's self-interest, which it likely isn't since it protects a group most representative of one's interests, values, and place in life. Further, value changes and post-materialist values are generally a poor predictor of changes in the levels of class voting within a society, and a poor predictor of who will support labor parties. Class voting is not wholly irrelevant either, with most manual workes still supporting labor parties and the difference "in support for labor parties between manual workers and the salariat and the self-employed [being] at least twenty percentage points in most countries." (280) While there has been declines in class voting, there are mixed and not universal This gap is even larger on religious issues, with support for religious parties being divided between church goers and non-church goers by "some forty to sixty precentage points in five of the seven countries studied." (280) "My main argument is that changes in the electoral relevance of social cleavages—insofar as they have actually occurred—are unlikely to be aspects or consequences of an irreversible, large-scale, long-term process of social change. Rather, it is only natural to attribute cross- country variations in the development of class and religious-secular voting to contingent political choices of parties about which social groups to appeal to." (289)

JUDICIARY - Shapiro, Martin and Alec Stone Sweet. On Law, Politics, and Judicialization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

The judiciary fits within society as a tool for triadic dispute resolution (TDR) according to Stone-Sweet. Under this model, the triad - with two contracting parties and a dispute resolves - constitutes a primal social institution that shapes governance. Triads are introduced as a way to mitigate the competing incentives of dyadic (two-party) interactions, which are unable to accommodate conflict. Triads guarantee reciprocity between competing actors and help create rules of action that can then foment normative path dependencies. There are five steps to this process. It starts with dyadic interactions and a dyadic normative environment → which leads to conflict requiring a triadic mediator → which leads to deliberation and a reliance on norms and compromise to resolve the dispute → which leads to the creation of norms and triadic rules for dispute resolution → which leads to a reinforcing cycle of triadic dispute resolution when it is seen as advantageous to the dyadic actors. This cycle results in the production of more and more rules and precedent, which then lock dyadic actors into norms of action and interaction. Triadic relationships can take the form of either consensual TDR (with voluntary consent to the decision of the mediator by both parties) or compulsory TDR (with the imposition of mediation on sometimes unwilling parties - a form that approximates the role of the judiciary). Because consensual TDR relies heavily on norms of reciprocity and self-interest, it is unstable. Thus, when actors still have a need to dispute resolution, but consensual TDR proves inadequate, they are likely to implement and enforce compulsory TDR. Thus, because of the inherently limited nature of information and normative overlap in complicated modern societies, one of the essential roles of the state is to institutionalize coercive TDR through courts and legislatures. This is demonstrated in the rise of judiciaries in the French Fifth Republic and between states in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

PARTIES - Herbert Kitshelt, "The Formation of Party Systems in East Central Europe," Politics & Society 20, no. 1 (March 1992): 7-50.

The nature of the party system will be shaped by the constitutional structures they function within - but early on, political actors will not fully understand these institutional constraints and incentives, and thus early parties will not act in equilibrium. When looking at post-communist party formation, this article argues that institutions initially had little impact on the party system and party strategies, and instead "the economic institutions and resources that the deceased communist systems bequeathed to the democratic successor regimes" were the key shapers of political interest. There are three central dimensions that shape political cleavages within a society - "(1) rules specifying who is a player admitted to the institutions, (2) rules of the game players are expected to follow, and (3) the assets players are endowed with in order to participate in the game." (11) - Thus, the three defining problems of electoral politics are issues of citizenship, procedures of participation, and resource distribution This leads to a division between authoritarian and libertarian political models. More authoritarian democracies favor narrow democracy with hierarchical decision making, while more libertarian one's favor a broad scope of participation, social justice, and redistributed wealth. Libertarian models will advocate for more inclusive definitions of citizenship, which will increase more uncertainty into the distribution of political power. They will argue for more participatory input, which will increase uncertainty over the distributive payoffs of political participation and the distribution of wealth. In contrast, authoritarian party systems will prefer the maintenance of the status quo. Thus, in eastern europe, where the status quo was a non-market society, those who advocated for market liberalization also advocated for broader cosmopolitanism and inclusive politics. This is in direct contrast to western parties where the right defends free markets and the left tries to regulate them. This work argues that increased economic development increases voter preferences for libertarian and participatory claims, because more development leads to more affluence, free time, political sophistication, education, and individualism, all of which decrease the threat of changes to the status quo. In less developed economies, in contrast, the security of authoritarian forms of politics, with hierarchical models of decision making and protection of the status quo is preferred. Thus "Where economic development is relatively advanced (especially in the Czech federation of Czechoslovakia), more parties will concentrate on the market-libertarian end of the competitive space. Where industrialization is less advanced, more parties will be clustered around nonmarket-authoritarian ('populist') positions. Thus Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria, as well as Slovakia, Slovenia, or Croatia at the subnational level, are likely to generate strong parties that are further located toward the authoritarian/nonmarket segment of the competitive space. At the nonmarket/authoritarian extreme, we encounter Romania and Albania and, at the subnational level, Serbia and other southern provinces of Yugoslavia." (20) The more authoritarian a country's politics are, the more likely it is to rely on particularist nationalism for legitimacy. Support for liberal politics in post-communist regimes will be shaped, "not [by] their past location in the collapsing socialist economy but [by] their ability to convert the resources and capabilities that they controlled under the old regime into new resources and capabilities in what they expect to become the new socioeconomic regime. My guiding hypothesis is that those individuals and groups who are confident that they will succeed in converting their assets into valuable resources in a capitalist market society will support parties with liberatiran-promarket outlooks." (24) Thus you can map opposition to liberalization based on the distribution of skills in a post-communist country's workforce. More authoritarian parties are more likely to be clientelistic too because they cater to the economically insecure.

JUDICIARY - Epstein, Lee, Jack Knight, and Olga Shvetsova. "The Role of Constitutional Courts in the Establishment and Maintenance of Democratic Systems of Government." Law and Society Review 35, no. 1 (2001): 117-64.

There are competing views about whether European court systems are unconstrained actors (who issues decisions irrespective of strategic considerations because of their place as final decision makers on constitutional issues) or constrained actors (who work to accommodate the interests and actions of competing political forces). Looking at the example of Russia, this article crafts a strategic model of court action. In this model, political actors all have ideal points on policy issues, and 'tolerance intervals' around those ideal points of policy variations they are willing to accept without attacking the court. Political actors will have larger tolerance intervals is a case is less salient, if there is authoritative precedent on the issue, if the court's ruling is close to the public's preferences, or if the public has great trust in the court. Courts will want to issue rulings that fall within the tolerance intervals of the major political actors in a regime, and the more they do so early on, the greater their legitimacy will be and the larger the tolerance intervals will become. On the other hand, if a Court fails to rule within the tolerance intervals of political actors, those actors will resist those rulings or try to overturn them, and overtime the Court will lose power and legitimacy. This means, early on, courts should focus on accepting cases that fall within the tolerance intervals of all political actors, to help establish their legitimacy and increase their ability to rule on more controversial issues in the future. This model helps explains the issues faced by the early Russian court under Yeltsin.

JUDICIARY - Hirschle, Ran. Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

There are three models that try to explain the rise of the judiciary - an evolutionist model, a functionalist one, and an institutional-economic one. The evolutionist model focuses on judicialization as an inevitable outcome of political development - most commonly focusing on the growth of international human rights standards after WWII and the increased need for minority protections within technocratic and bureaucratized democracies. The functionalist model looks at the judiciary as an outgrowth of the pressure within the political system - theorizing of the judiciary as a means for efficient legal transformation and contract enforcement, or as a solution to chronically decentralized, fragmented, or deadlocked political systems. The institutional-economic model sees judiciaries as a means of mitigating collective-action concerns and allowing for the enforcement of commitments - placing the judiciary as a corner piece of modern economic development. All of these approaches are flawed however, because they fail to explain the timing of judicial empowerment and underemphasize the agency of political actors. Instead, this article argues for a strategic approach via the hegemonic preservation thesis. This approach argues that judicial empowerment is intimately connected to the political struggles happening within a regime, and that judicial empowerment can only be understood in the context of situations where political power-holders would want to limit their own power and flexibility. This leads to a thin and a thick hypothesis. The thin hypothesis focuses on 'electoral markets' and argues that political parties will empower a judiciary when they think they will lose power and want to limit the incoming group. Thus, when political power holders have a long time horizon, judiciaries are less likely to become powerful actors. The thick hypothesis - known as the 'hegemonic preservation' hypothesis - argues that judicialization is the product of strategic interplay between threatened political elites trying to protect their power by insulated policy making within the judiciary, economic elites who will promote a strong judiciary to enhance liberal markets, and judicial elites who will want to increase their own political influence and reputation. Thus, politicians differ to courts when they fear that their political powers are threatened by majoritarian politics, and want to insulate their priorities from public decision making.

VOTING - Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Mary Stegmaier. "Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes." Annual Review of Political Science, no. 3 (2000): 183-219.

There is a robust amount of evidence supporting an economic model of voting, with voters rewarding or punishing governments at the ballot box for the economic performance, and generally valuing economic performance over other factors in their assessments of politicians. Over 300 articles and books have now been published in support of this proposition. When looking at the U.S., presidential popularity functions and vote functions both seem to be tied to economic performance for the country writ large. Three variables are considered in the literature on economic evaluation - target (whether a voter focuses on pocketbook/egotropic concerns or sociotropic ones), time (whether the voter looks to the economic past, retrospectively, or the economic future, prospectively), and context (whether economic targets are linked to explicit policies or not) Overall, the evidence seems to be that voters are sociotropic, not egotropic (at least in the U.S.), with presidential voting being sociotropic and the president's economic performance affecting congressional parties as well Economic outcomes (income, inflation, and employment) also serve as predictors of vote share and popularity levels in French elections as well (with the effect being mediated by coalitional governments or ones divided between two parties for the presidency and prime ministership). Economic voting effects have also been discovered for both Britain and Denmark - again functioning mostly under sociotropic models (although the evidence for Denmark is less clear). Aggregated studies are a little less clear, showing that economic voting only happens when there is a clear target, the target is sizable, and there are only a limited number of viable alternatives. Thus, the economic-polity link is especially strong when one government has clear control. Economic judgements are thus the leading cause of changing voter loyalty, not changes in party attachments, which are far less volatile.

VOTING - Rudolph, Thomas J. "Who's Responsible for the Economy? The Formation And Consequences of Responsibility Attributions." American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 4 (October 2003): 698-713.

This article investigates who American citizens hold responsible for the economy (the Presidency or Congress) and on what basis they make such judgements. The basic model of a 'mechanical' response by citizens to economic downturns has increasingly become refuted, as nuances of responsibility attribution have increasingly been recognized. The key to any kind of judgement and political decision around economics is assessments of responsibility. We would expect responsibility attribution for the government to decrease for people aware that there is a divided system of government in place (congress and the Presidency split). We would also expect that citizens give credit to institutions controlled by their own party when their economic conditions improve, whereas they give blame to institutions controlled by the other party when their economic conditions decline. Further, ideological conservatism may decrease the amount people credit (or dis-credit) the government for economic conditions because of stronger support for unregulated markets and limited government intervention. Overall, citizens seem to blame congress for poor economic conditions more than the president, and often attribute economic conditions to issues beyond governmental control like business practices. Further, there is evidence democrats do attribute more credit to their party and blame to the opposing party, but the same doesn't hold true for Republicans, who primarily blame the private sector for economic issues. Finally, people do attribute less blame to a president or congress when the government is divided. When responsibility is given to one of the two parties, the effect on their electoral outcomes is significant.

NATURAL RESOURCES - Smith, Benjamin. "Oil Wealth and Regime Survival in the Developing World, 1960-1999." American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2 (April 2004): 232-246.

This article uses time-series data from 107 developing states between 1960 and 1999 to test the effects of oil wealth on regime failure, political protest, and civil war - " I find that oil wealth is robustly associated with increased regime durability, even when controlling for repression, and with lower likelihoods of civil war and antistate protest. I also find that neither the boom nor bust periods exerted any significant effect on regime durability in the states most dependent on exports, even while those states saw more protests during the bust. In short, oil wealth has generally increased the durability of regimes, and repression does not account for this effect." (232) "I suggest that the persistence of authoritarian regimes in oil-rich states long after the bust of the 1980s—after access to patronage rents had dropped off dramatically—suggests that leaders in many of these states invested their windfall revenues in building state institutions and political organizations that could carry them through hard times." (232) - Thus the focus on repression by authoritarian regimes is misplaced. Theories about oil states can be divided into the three R's - rentier states, repression, and rent-seeking. The rentier state thesis argues that resource rich state are able to chanel resources from oils into redistribution, but lack strong bureaucratic capacities or state institutions for gaining revenues, and also lack any kind of incentive for public representation because of the lack of taxation. This will lead to weakness during bust period in the global economy when state resources dry up. The repression thesis, promoted by Ross and Bellin, argues tha oil revenues make it possible for regimes to invest in repressive apparatuses to undermine social opposition - Ross finds that oil wealth is correlated with military spending and authoritarianism {worth checking - 2001 article} and Bellin finds that oil rents help these countries avoid international pressure and interventions.. The rent-seeking thesis argues that oil revenues create incentives for potential levels and state-breakers via the attractive set of spoils available for the taking, and also increase the odds of social conflict because of the resentment over inequality resulting from the distribution of such rents. The findings of this analysis are that oil-rich states are stable, not prone to war, not prone to protest, and not particularly repressive (although oil wealth is negatively related to democracy) - they are also not very vulnerable to booms and busts. "Oil wealth only exerts a significant negative effect on the intensity of civil war in a given year in the model that includes a five-year rather than one-year lagged dependent variable. This finding contradicts the "oil-as-spoils" thesis in which greater re- source wealth is held to provide an incentive for rebels to launch rebellion aimed at seizing production facilities." (240) "One plausible conclusion from this finding is that repression is behind the lower levels of protest in oil-rich states, especially since democracy ap- pears to increase relative levels of protest. To investigate the independent effects of repression, I replaced democ- racy's quadratic with the dummy for highly authoritarian regimes and reestimated the models. Highly authoritarian regimes actually experienced considerably higher levels of protest than did others, and repression lowered the ex- pected number of protests. However, it did not reduce the effect of oil wealth. In any case, it appears that mechanisms other than repression drive the relative respite from protest that oil-rich states enjoy." (241)

TERMS - Branding Model of Partisanship

This is a model of party loyalty whereby people categorize themselves into identity groups they think they resemble, and will support parties that align with these identities. When parties have clear identity boundaries, these attachments will be strong, but when party identities are more fluid or weaker, the attachments will be more tepid.

TERMS - The Institutional Thesis - The Gridlock Hypothesis (Judiciary)

This view focuses on the judiciary as a means for states to deal with gridlocked legislatures and veto players that entrench the status quo. In this sense, the judiciary acts as a pressure-release valve on a political system with competing players and incentives. They allow for a resolution to impasses that aren't resolvable through traditional political means. A prominent example of this can be seen in the U.S. civil rights movement, where the Warren Court created civil rights policy change that wasn't feasible within the political system. "Fragmentation also creates the potential for political gridlock as institutional veto players make it difficult to shift policies from the status quo. In turn, this expands the space for judicial policy-making. When the political system cannot deliver policies because of gridlock, those who seek to advance particular interests will turn to the courts to obtain those policies. Constitutional review is a particularly entrenched form of judicial policy-making that may be utilized in such instances." (Ginsburg, 90)

PARTIES - Alan Ware, Political Parties and Party Systems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

This work defines parties as institutions that (a) seek influence in a state, often by attempting to occupy positions in government and (b) usually consists of more than a single interest in the society and so to some degree attempts to 'aggregate interests.' - This definition focuses on the centrality of the state as the center of political activity, notes that being in government is usually important for influence, shows parties as non-exclusive to libaral democracies, makes it possible to distinguish parties from pressure groups (most of the time), and avoids the misleading assertion that parties are necessarily united by shared principles and opinions Party systems are distinct from parties, and constitute patterns of competition and cooperation between the different parties in that system... as important as competition is the cooperation - formal, informal, and implicit - that is part of any party system. Studies of parties have been split into three realms - the sociological (which focuses on the social phenomena that undergird any political phenomenon), the institutional (which claims political competition is mediated by the institutions it exists within), and the competitive (which sees competition as the only important motivator for parties interacting as self-interested agents in a free market for votes). " Parties arose from two sources: (1) from within an existing legislature (as in the case of the British Conservatives), and (2) by the mobilization of social groups and classes that had no representation in such legislatures and which sought to defend their own interests (one example being that of the British Labour party)." - Here the rise of mass franchise was essential in the formation of the first major parties in both the U.S. and Europe

VOTING - Key, V. O., and Milton Cummings. The Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting - 1936-1960. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1966.

Victory in an election does not signify as popular ratification of a candidates outlook on policy issues, but simply a reflection of that candidate in contrast to the other ones. People make judgements based on individual outlooks and understandings, but political identities are also formed early in life and are a strong pull on people's rational understandings of issues. Identity is a central aspect of electoral politics. "Given knowledge of certain characteristics of a voter—his occupation, his residence, his religion, his national origin, and perhaps certain of his attitudes—one can predict with a high probability the direction of his vote." This fact governs how politicians run campaigns, and how they run the government once elected. Politicians feed the people what they believe the people are most likely to respond to, which is not necessarily those things most likely to produce good governance. Overall, however, we can trust the electorate to be rational and responsible - "In American presidential campaigns of recent decades the portrait of the American electorate that develops from the data is not one of an electorate strait-jacketed by social determinants or moved by subconscious urges triggered by devilishly skillful propagandists. It is rather one of an electorate moved by concern about central and relevant questions of public policy, of governmental performance, and of executive personality" (7-8) A key measure of voter responsiveness to the government is movement across voter lines (or stand-pat). There are three types of voters at each election - the standpatters (the largest component, those who cast their ballots for candidates in the same political party), the switchers (a much smaller, but still considerable, group of people changing party support), and new voters (those just entering the electoral marketplace). From 1940-1960, switching was fairly common, making up about 1/5th of the electorate on any given election cycle. The new-voters make up another additional 1/5th of voters in every new election.

VOTING - Taber, Charles S. and Milton Lodge. "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs." American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 3 (July 2006): 755-769.

Voters are biased information processors, and this article seeks to highlight that point and isolate the mechanism of motivated skepticism as an explanation for it. When experimental subjects were presented with arguments about affirmative action and gun control and asked to evaluate them, they found the evidence for the point of view that aligned with their preexisting beliefs more persuasive (evidence of a prior attitude effect). Voters tend to argue against, and critically assess, views that contrast with their own, while uncritically accepting views that align with their own (evidence of a disconfirmation bias). They also seek out information that confirms their pre-existing view points when given a choice over what information to look for (evidence of a confirmation bias). All of this provides strong critiques of the view that citizens can objectively assess and integrate information from their environment into opinions that they form based on a rational weighing of the options - instead, voters seems to entrench their existing beliefs through the biased filtering of information. "On reading a balanced set of pro and con arguments about affirmative action or gun control, we find that rather than moderating or simply maintaining their original attitudes, citizens— especially those who feel the strongest about the issue and are the most sophisticated—strengthen their attitudes in ways not warranted by the evidence." (755-6) The premise behind this is the view that all human reasoning is motivated and will always, consciously and unconsciously, be underlied by a desire for belief preservation. This should lend itself to opinion polarization, as favorable views are integrated an unfavorable ones always critically rejected. Importantly, this is a process that people are largely unaware of, since all of us try to be objective and fair, but are simply unable to be. These affects are stronger for those with stronger initial attitudes, and more political sophistication (since higher education on politics = a higher ability to rationalize away issues). This may be a perfectly rational way of processing information when you already believe yourself to have well considered and throughout views.

TERMS - Economic Model of Voting

Voters punish or reward parties based on their economic performance, and make rational judgement about which parties best deliver on economic goods - this fits within the valence voting model and is sociotropic in nature, not egotropic (Lewis-Beck and Stegmeyer, 2000) - Responsibility attribution is a key factor mediating this effect (Powell, Binghan, Whitten, 1993; Hellwig, 2001)

JUDICIARY - Ferejohn, John, Frances Rosenbluth, and Charles R. Shipan. "Comparative Judicial Politics." In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, ed. Carles Boix and Susan Stokes, 727-48. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009).

What are the causes of judicial independence? There are two types of judicial review - statutory review (focused on the enforcement of existing law and regulatory agencies) and judicial review (focused on constitutionality and legislative legitimacy). For both types, judicial independence is most directly impacted by the amount of control the legislature has over the constitution of court. The more likely a legislature is to reconfigure the court or override its ruling, the more likely justices are to accommodate the legislature's preferences in their decision. This is reflected in the different types of judicial systems adopted throughout the world. In countries with presidential democracies with high levels of fragmentation, the courts tend to be more independent, except at times of high cohesion across the branches of government. Conversely, parliamentary institutions (as seen in 'old europe') are generally less likely to have strong and independent judiciaries than divided presidential democracies. The exception to this trend are countries emerging from authoritarian regimes, who invest in stronger judiciaries out of a distrust of their political systems. Overall however, the key determinant of a country's judicial system is the coherence of its political system.

PARTIES - Octavio Amorim Neto and Gary Cox, "Electoral Institutions, Cleavage Structures, and the Number of Parties," American Journal of Political Science 41, no. 1 (January, 1997): 149-74.

What determines the number of parties that compete in a polity? This paper argues that approaches that focus on election laws that structure coalitional incentives, and approaches that focus on preexisting social cleavages can be combined. It presents the hypothesis that "The effective number of parties in a polity should be a multiplicative rather than an additive function of the permissiveness of the electoral system and the heterogeneity of the society." "The effective number of elective or legislative parties in a polity can be thought of as the end product of a series of decisions by various agents that serve to reduce a large number of social differences, or cleavages, to a smaller number of party-defining cleavages.4 There are three broad stages to consider in this process of reduction: the translation of social cleavages into partisan preferences; the translation of partisan preferences into votes; and the translation of votes into seats." (NC - 152) Many institutionalist models of parties ignore the fact that party formation is a key step in understanding the shape parties take in society. " A polity will have many parties only if it both has many cleavages and has a permissive enough electoral system to allow political entrepreneurs to base separate parties on these cleavages. Or, to turn the formulation around, a polity can have few parties either because it has no need for many (few cleavages) or poor opportunities to create many (a strong electoral system). If these claims are true, they would rule out models in which the number of parties depends only on the cleavage structure, or only on the electoral system, or only on an additive combination of these two considerations." (NC - 155) Interactive regressions confirm that: the effective number of parties appears to depend on the product of social heterogeneity and electoral permissiveness, rather than being an additive function of these two factors" (166-7) "In particular, elections that are both held under more permissive rules (runoff rather than plurality) and occur in more diverse societies (with a larger effective number of ethnic groups) are those that tend to have the largest fields of contestants for the presidency." (167)

NATURAL RESOURCES - Karl, Terry Lynn. The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

What explains the challenges of translating oil wealth into successful development? Here, institutional development is as, if not more important, than economic conditions. Economics shape institutions, and are shaped by them, and thus there is constant interaction between economic development and social and political factors. "Briefly stated, my general argument is as follows. Commodity-led growth induces changes in prevailing notions of property rights, the relative power of interest groups and organizations, and the role and character of the state vis-a-vis the market. These institutional changes subsequently define the revenue basis of the state, especially its tax structure. How these states collect and distribute taxes, in turn, creates incentives that pervasively influence the organization of political and economic life and shapes government preferences with respect to public policies. In this manner, long-term efficiency in the allocation of resources is either helped or hindered, and the diverse development trajectories of nations are initiated, modified, and sustained." (7) Here, the key argument is that the economic and political conditions within a country impact the range of choice available to policy makers, which then limits future choices and options. Choices are thus embedded in institutions and historical contexts. This often leads to very rigid institutions of decision making that are highly resistant to change. It matters is a state relies on taxes for revenue or the sale of a primary good or another means (like foreign aid) - "these different sources of revenues, whatever their relative economic merits or social import, have a powerful (and quite different) impact on the state's institutional development and its abilities to employ personnel, subsidize social and economic programs, create new organizations, and direct the activities of private interests." (13) Many developing states rely on the sale of primary exports commodities and the collection of foreign loans and aid as opposed to any form of internal taxation - ""The consequence... is the absence of the coherent and highly institutionalized central bureaucracies that Eurocentric perspectives almost inevitably assume as points of departure." (13) There are three key actors within a society - the state (the permanent organizational structure binding collective choices in a given area), the regime (the process of choosing and determining the crucial actors within the state and where legitimate decisions come from), and the government (the actors within that regime, like politicians and military personnel, who occupy such positions at any given time). Revenue sources most distinctly impact the jurisdiction (score and degree) and authority (ability to penetrate society) of the state. ""Different sources of revenues from commodities have distinctive impacts on the scale of the state, its degree of centralization and decentralization, the coherence of public bureaucracies, the types of organizations adopted, the patterns of policymaking, and even its symbolic images." Oil rich states and mining rich states have incredibly high and concentrated levels of wealth, and corresponding resistance to any kind of restructuring of the state apparatus as more and more people become reliant on it for resource rents. Choices for the use of natural resources profits in such countries thus become highly limited by their history of resource based development.

PARTIES - Jana Morgan, Bankrupt Representation and Party System Collapse (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011).

What led Venezuela's party system to collapse, despite strong development and oil wealth? What allows some party systems to survive challenges while others collapse from them? These are driving questions for this work, which focuses on party system collapse. Party system collapse has major consequences for democracy by undermining the accountability, interest aggregation, and governability inherently vested in parties within democracies. This book argues parties will collapse when they fail to fulfill their primary role in democracy - linking society to the state. This happens when a party system faces challenges to its core linkage strategies and when institutional and environmental constraints limit its ability to appropriately respond to such challenges. The result is a decline in linkage followed by collapse. In contrast, those systems that survive lack either systematic threats to their linkage profile, or institutional constraints on their response to those threats. Parties adopt three major strategies in responding to threats to linkage: programmatic appeals, interest incorporation, and clientelism. The mixture of these make up a party's linkage profile. This book focuses in particular Venezuela, where strong party linkages existed prior to 1980, but where it declined thereafter because parties became frozen by the competing demands of state-led growth and international pressures toward neoliberalism. This combined with an ideological convergence between the parties created by inter party agreements limited party responsiveness to the crises and discredited the entire party system. As the social structure of Venezuela changed due to economic challenges in the 1990s, parties remained based on the old social structures of the country and thus failed to adapt. Meanwhile, declining economic prosperity limited the ability of parties to resort to clientelism or patronage. Thus, by 1998, programmatic representation, interest incorporation, and clientelism were all failing. In the wake of this failure, Hugo Chavez rose to power. Party systems can change without collapsing - either through system-maintaining changes or system-transforming changes. Here, party collapse can be understood as system-transforming change combined with party deterioration and decay. ""The cases that fully satisfy the definition of collapse are detailed in table 2.3. They are Bolivia (2005), Colombia (2002), Italy (1994), and Venezuela (1998)." (Morgan - 29) "Different linkage profiles are placed at risk by distinct kinds of challenges. For instance, a party that utilizes policy-based appeals to attract supporters would not necessarily be affected by changes in the size of the electorate, whereas a party dependent on clientelism would be seriously threatened by exponential growth in the number of voters" (47) Programmatic linkages fail when parties don't adapt to policy failures or respond to crises and leave voters without good policy choices. This can be worsened by international constraints. Incorporation based linkages can fail when social identities are transformed and reshaped or the relationship between different social classes is (especially if neglected groups suddenly gain power). Clientelistic linkages fail when demand can no longer be satisfied (whether it's because of economic crisis, bureaucratic professionalization, or growing population) and government performance is otherwise low.

VOTING - Hellwig, Timothy T. "Interdependence, Government Constraints, and Economic Voting." The Journal of Politics 63, no. 4 (November, 2001): 1141-1162.

When thinking about political responses to economics, it is essential to also consider that way those economics are shaped by globalization and economic interdependence - "Using cross-sectional individual-level data, it is found that accounting for exposure to the world economy dampens the strength of domestic economic bases of popular support." (1141) The central finding that citizens vote against the government when the economy is bad has been supported again and again. But this article shows that this effect needs to take into consideration the levels of economic openness and interdependence within a society. The literature over economic voting is divided over sociotropic assessments and pocketbook ones, and also retrospective assessments or prospective ones. A key consideration here is the degree to which globalization has limited the capacity of modern governments to control their own economic policies and outcomes - "I take the position that governments today can no longer pursue optimal levels of domestic economic performance over the long term. Greater factor mobility and changes in the organization of advanced capitalism have made maintaining a desirable mix of low unemployment and stable prices through fiscal and monetary policy levers prohibitively difficult" (1145) - this should decrease the amount voters hold such politicians accountable. Thus, the thesis of this work can be summarized as: ""The greater the trade openness, the more dependent the state's economy on the external environment, the less control the government has over the health of its national economy, and, therefore, the less likely it should be that citizens tie their electoral support to economic conditions" (1157) This effect is more pronounced for voters consistently exposed to the global economy - and less pronounced for public employees or unionized employees - who are more insulated from globalization. - " While the decline of traditional class voting is difficult to dispute, the results here suggest that social alignments may be re-emergent,based on a group's relation to the global economy." (1158)

NATURAL RESOURCES - Smith, Benjamin. Hard Times in the Lands of Plenty: Oil Politics in Iran and Indonesia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011.

Why do some oil rich regimes survive boom and bust related political shocks, while others collapse during them? The key to answering this question is assessing when a country gained access to oil as a major export. When rulers got access to oil rents impacts how those rulers utilize those rents. Here, a crucial issue is the timing on the initiation of 'late development', which is the set of policies used by the state to explicitly nurture private sector capital and labor, and the use of interventionist policies like the creation of state-owned industrial enterprises and state-granted monopolies. Late development also includes industrialization, and is generally a process of 'catch-up' used by governments in need of modernization. If oil-riches are discovered after the process of late development, then rulers will have built robust coalitions and state institutions to manage the difficult process of late development, which includes both massive revenue collection and social control. In contrast, when oil-riches are discovered before the process of late development, leaders can rely on patronage and wealth to fulfill the process without building strong coalitions, and need not rely on creating strong (and difficult) institutions for local control. Thus, the access to resources provided at the onset of late development affects the options available to leaders when revenue shortages and political challenges result from oil busts and booms. Countries that managed to develop good coalitions and strong institutions prior to discovering oil wealth will manage these crises much better. This is seen in the contrast between protests in Iran in the 1970s (which brought down the regime) and those in Indonesia in the 1970s (which Suharto's New Order was able to weather). Indonesia had succeeded and developing state institutions, especially the ability to tax, prior to the introduction of oil wealth, while Iran had failed to do so and thus lacked tools of social control or fiscal rebalancing. This is a representative example of how oil wealth can either bolster or undermine state institutions. The key factor for oil is thus how rulers succeed at incorporating it into their domestic political economy - "Oil export revenues are not like taxes or conditional foreign aid because, in nearly all cases, they accrue directly to the state and are highly flexible or discretionary. Because no process of accountability structures their use, oil revenues are a tremendous political resource that, in most exporting countries, finds its way into the hands of a very few individuals in mostly authoritarian regimes." (7) This can be a damning process if there are not strong coalitions or institutions within a state, or a strengthening one if there are, which allow oil wealth to be filtered through pre-existing strong political structures. "All else being equal, oil wealth tends to produce regimes that are more rather than less durable, and regimes in oil-rich countries face significantly lower risk of collapse than those in oil-poor countries. I also find that sub-regime change indicators of political instability—political protests and civil conflict—occur at signifi- cantly lower levels in states dependent on oil exports." (10) "The most important conclusion to emerge from this book is that the presence of oil wealth cannot be determinative on its own—how and, most important, when it is introduced is critical." (14) -- "This finding—that late-arriving oil can bolster a carefully built coalition in an authoritarian regime—has gloomy implications for those interested in democracy promotion and consolidation. In essence, it predicts long life spans for some of the most visible dictatorships in the developing world" (193-4)

TERMS - Authoritarianism

Linz (2000) - authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are scored on their degree/type of political pluralism, and the degree to which such regimes are based on political apathy/demobilization and limited controlled mobilizations. Authoritarian regimes have pluralistic (not monistic) centers of power, a depoliticized population, and a multitude of 'mentalities' instead of a central ideology.

TERMS - Stationary Bandit Model

The "stationary-bandit" hypothesis advanced by Levi (1981) and Olson (1993). In sum, rulers (either individuals or groups), put in power by conquest or election, establish state apparatuses to extract wealth from the societies they govern. Accordingly, to maximize wealth-extraction rulers: (1) Construct elaborate bureaucracies to collect revenue from as many constituencies as possible; (2) Ensure domestic tranquility to encourage productive behavior among the populace; (3) Maintain a military to repel external invasions (4) Neutralize all other social organizations that might compete with wealth extraction by the rulers.

TERMS - Rational Choice Model of Party Formation

The rational choice account of party formation argued for here claims that parties help solve problems that existent institutions otherwise can't solve, which fall into three categories: (1) the problem of ambition and elective office seeking - parties serve to regulate the competition for office which inevitably will have greater demand (politicians) than supply (offices); (2) the problem of making decisions for the party and for the polity - parties thus solve collective choice problems among politicians and give them a means of uniting policy goals and maintaining majorities; (3) the problem of collective action - winning office requires mobilizing voters and parties help both increase awareness of candidates, turn out voters, and provide access to resources. (Aldrich, 1995)

AUTHORITARIANISM - Milan W. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

There are two conflicts fundamental to authoritarian politics - the problem of authoritarian control, which is conflict between those who rule and those who are ruled; and the problem of authoritarian power-sharing, which is conflict between those who rule and those they share power with. Historically, the vast majority of dictators (271 out of 303) have been removed via other regime insiders, and not popular uprisings. Two factors fundamentally shape how dictators try to address these issues: 1) dictators inherently lack an independent authority with the power to enforce agreements among political actors; 2) violence is an ever-present and ultimate arbiter of conflicts in authoritarian politics. Thus, authoritarianism is defined by issues in controlling issues with power-sharing the popular discontent within the "dismal conditions" of authoritarian politics. Resistance to a dictator is difficult because it is such a high risk environment - this interaction between dictators and power-sharers takes two forms: (1) contested autocracy, with a balance between dictator and allies, with the allies capable of threatening rebellion, and (2) established autocracy, with dictators acquiring so much power they can no longer be credibly threatened by their allies. The secrecy and lack of transparency within elite circles increases their instability, which is an important incentive in the creation of parties and other formal decision making bodies (like politburos) - these institutions can alleviate 'monitoring problems' associated with authoritarian power sharing in two important ways - by establishing formal rules and decision making protocol which increase transparency and the exchange of information, and by decreasing the odds of unnecessary escalation via misperceptions. This process is seen in the apparatus of the Communist party of China. Such institutions only work if consistently reinforced and backed by credible threats of force. The masses can also pose a threat to dictators, and can usually be handled either via repression or co-optation. Here, repression is the far more risky strategy because it relies on a very strong military and security apparatus to succeed, which then poses a new threat to the regime in its own right. Thus, dictators have to carefully balance the need for a repressive capacity and the need to keep the military from gaining too much power or leverage. Still, repression is often cheaper and simpler than co-optation, and thus often defaulted to. Parties can be an effective tool of co-optation and power sharing for regimes for regimes. Such parties usually require (1) a hierarchical assignment of services and benefits (whereby members have to 'serve their time' before getting access to benefits), (2) political control over appointments, and (3) selective recruitment and repression (which exploits natural career aspirations to foster a stake in the regime). The need to manage both the public and power sharing helps explain the rise of hybrid regimes - "many nominally democratic institutions - especially legislatures, parties, and even some elections - serve distinctively authoritarian ends: They help dictators resolve the problems of power-sharing and control. Whereas legislatures serve to represent the diversity of political interests in democracies, their role in dictatorships is to enhance the stability of authoritarian power-sharing by alleviating commitment and monitoring problems among authoritarian elites. Whereas parties in democracies coordinate the political activities of like-minded citizens, regime parties under dictatorship serve to co-opt the most capable and opportunistic among the masses in order to strengthen the regime." (12-3) All of this means that parties contribute to the longevity and stability of authoritarian regimes, allowing them to survive 2-3 times longer. "Rather than fora for political exchange, authoritarian parties are better thought of as incentive structures that encourage sunk political investment by their members" (163) - This co-optation via sunken costs applies to both elites and the public and is aimed at those already ideologically in support of the party, since they are the easiest to co-opt. The conflicts inherent within authoritarianism are impossible to perfectly manage with institutions because commitments can always be backed out of and violence is always a latent threat

POPULISM - Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

There is a long lasting issue within the literature in populism on reconciling the individual level support for populism and the national trends it represents (the ecological fallacy). A clearer conception of the supply and demand side aspects of populism is needed. Macro-level explanations have focused on modernization (although isolating when globalism began, what it entails, how it can explain regional variation in populism, and why only some of the 'losers' of modernization vote for populists is very difficult), crises (which is again a difficult concept to isolate and evidence of responses to economic or 'trust' crises so far being mixed at best), ethinc backlash (but again, evidence is mixed here, with rates of immigration not being especially strongly related to populist voting), and authoritarian legacy (which fails to explain the lack of populism in some post-communist countries and the excess of it in some democratic ones). Micro-level explanations have focused on individual attitudes and personalities, with common explanations being populist radical right attitudes (which is an endogenous argument mostly based on correlation, and which fails to explain why some non-extreme-right people vote populist and vice versa - although there is strong support for personal support of nativism as a key driver of populism), and having high political resentment or insecurity (although evidence that economic insecurity or fears about crime fuel populism is limited). Overall, the electorate that votes for the far right tends to be fairly diverse, and these parties seem to draw votes from both protest voters and genuine supporters. So what explains why some populist parties fail and others succeed? A key aspect of supply side factors for populist parties are the external supply-side factors, which are the Political Opportunity Structures (POS) that parties exist within. These POS's include the institutional, political, cultural, and media context of party competition which explain party success. Institutional Context: Populist parties are limited by the political system they function within, with first-past-the-post and two-tier majority systems leading to runoffs and two-candidate races that limit the appeal of extreme populist candidates. In contrast, systems of proportional representation are more favorable to populism. Political context: the interaction between the populist radical right and other parties in the system is important for their success since it dictates how much room for growth there is. When existing parties have declining legitimacy, increasing volatility, or decreasing programmatic appeals to popular sentiments, populist parties are more likely to succeed. When the majors parties converge, it tends to help populist parties too. Issue ownership is also key, with the potential for populist party issues to be subsumed by mainstream conservative parties, like with Thatcher in the UK. Cultural context: some countries (like the Balkans) seem to have political cultures that are open to the expression of nativist views, while others (like Germany and Poland) have strong stigmas surrounding radical right politics dating from the Holocaust. Especially important here is the issue of stigmatization, because it decreases the willingness of politicians to invest their careers in the party and will decrease public support for it, both of which are self-reinforcing. In contrast, countries with strong nativist political cultures will support the rise of the populist right. The Media: the media can be highly critical of the radical right, but need not be, and in countries where there is a more mainstream radical right media, populist issues will likely become subsumed by mainstream conservative parties. The media can also give populists an advantage since media coverage tends to skew towards the extreme and shocking. Internal supply side factors are also key to populist party success - these factors are: 1) Party ideology: it is damaging to be linked to the ideology of past extreme right parties in Europe, but the effect of ideology varies depending on the country's context. 2) Party leadership: party leadership is both external (electoral success) and internal (institutional and organizational success). Good populist parties usually need charismatic leaders and strong institutions to support them, but these things are rarely compatible since charisma is antithetical to institutionalization, and thus leaders can't be tamed. 3) Party organization: this is especially important for sustaining party success after a breakthrough - many populist parties suffer from extreme disorganization. Those that succeed have a grass-roots basis and local strongholds. There tends to be high levels of ideological conflict within the ranks of populist parties however (not all are ideologues) In general, those things that tend to help party breakthrough tend to limit party longevity.

TERMS - Presidentialism

Linz (199) - "In presidential systems an executive with considerable constitutional powers-generally including full control of the composition of the cabinet and administration-is directly elected by the people for a fixed term and is independent of parliamentary votes of confidence. He is not only the holder of executive power but also the symbolic head of state and can be removed between elections only by the drastic step of impeachment." (Linz - 52)

VOTING - Powell Jr., G. Bingham and Guy D. Whitten. "The Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context." American Journal of Political Science 37, no. 2 (May 1993): 391-414.

Cross-national aggregated analyses of voting patterns don't seem to support the economic voting thesis. This article uses multivariate analyses of 102 elections in 19 industrialized democracies to show that the ideology of the government, its electoral base, and the clarity of its political responsibility are all key factors in influencing the impact of economics on voters. Put more simply, the context within which voters make their choice influences how factors like economics play into their thinking This paper presents four mediating conditions expected to impact how voters assess economics: (1) relative performance on the international stage (this thesis does not meet levels of statistical significance when tested), (2) swings in voter support from election to election, with big surges being followed by a regression to 'normal' voting (taking this into account does improve the accuracy of the models predictions) (3) how strong the opposition seems to be within the government and thus how responsible the incumbents can be conceptualized as for bad economic performance - known as 'clarity of responsibility' and the opportunity for politicians to 'diffuse responsibility.' Factors that should contribute to this are lower levels of party cohesion within the government, a higher number of inclusive committees within the legislature, having a bicameral system with opposition in one of the houses, the existence of a minority government, and the existence of coalition governments (these factors do seem to decrease the penalty for poor economic performance for parties) (4) the ideological position of the government and how it corresponds with usual expectations about the party's issues with unemployment and inflation. The stereotype is that the left should be more concerned with keeping unemployment low and the right with keeping inflation low (and sure enough, it seems only right-wing governments are punished for high inflation rates and only left-wing ones for high unemployment, although these results aren't statistically significant).

PARTIES - Shaheen Mazaffer, James Scarritt, and Glen Galaich, "Electoral Institutions, Ethnopolitical Cleavages, and Party Systems in Africa's Emerging Democracies," The American Political Science Review 97, no. 3 (August 2003): 379-90.

Ethnopolitical cleavages affect party formation - with ethnopolitical fragmentation leading to fewer parties and ethnopolitical concentration leading to more, while both interact with the other electoral institutions in place within a country. This article draws on a data analysis of party systems within modern Africa to argue that social cleavages and electoral institutions are not mutually exclusive determinants of party systems. It draws on a constructivist view of ethnic identity, focuses on the interaction of ethnopolitical cleavages with the social, economic, and political circumstances it exists within - showing that ethnic groups can be constructed depending on the costs of group incorporation and the costs of sustaining group solidarity against competing loyalties. Ethnicity, like electoral systems, can serve as a structure for information and strategic coordination, and they are appealing mechanisms for doing so in developing democracies where other institutions of coordination and information spreading are lacking. Because high levels of ethnic fragmentation makes concentrated ethnic appeals unlikely to yield major electoral victories, large levels of fragmentation encourage a lower number of parties, which encompass wide spanning ethnic coalitions. This can be counteracted by very concentrated ethnic populations that form clear voting blocks in regions, although this is less common. These trends interact with both the district magnitude in an area (which shapes the size of coalitions needed to win majorities) and if there are presidential elections (which often become a means of lesser Presidential candidates wielding their influence for patronage returns for their constituencies). All of this interacts with the constructivist nature of ethnic coalitions too, which consequently tend to be rather fragmentary and flexible, except where highly concentrated. All of this results in an electoral systems with a paradoxical mix of high levels of volatility and low levels of party fragmentation. The overall stability of these coalitions however bodes well for African democracy.

TERMS - Dutch Disease

Frankel (2010) - "The Dutch Disease, resulting from a commodity boom, entails real appreciation of the currency and increased government spending, both of which expand nontraded goods and service sectors such as housing and render uncompetitive non-commodity export sectors such as manufactures. If and when world commodity prices go back down, adjustment is difficult due to the legacy of bloated government spending and debt and a shrunken manufacturing sector."

TERMS - State

In political science, however, the State is best be summarized as a fusion of functional and institutional elements that combine to form a unified entity. These elements are: (1) A distinct set of institutions manned by specified personnel. (2) A "centre"--either geographic or structural--from which these institutions project authority. (3) A defined territory over which the centralized institutions govern. (4) A monopoly over binding rule-making backed by the threat of violence (Mann 1984; Tilly 1992).

PRES & PAR - Chaisty, Paul, Nic Cheeseman, and Timothy Power. Coalitional Presidentialism in Comparative Perspective: Minority Presidents in Multiparty Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Minority presidentialism is becoming an increasingly predominant form of government, both because presidentialism is increasing, and the number of parties within presidential systems is increasing. This increase in parties is in part a result of the democratization process, as dominant/authoritarian parties lose their monopolies over power. Further, although minority governments offer several disadvantages for presidents, they have access to five distinct 'tools' that can be used to manage coalitions: 1) control over agenda-setting, 2) control over cabinet positions, 3) control over party powers, 3) control over the budgetary process, 5) control over more informal exchanges of favors. The use of these tools however is often highly personalized and ad hoc within each presidential regime, with minority presidents acting as cost-minimizers aiming to maximize returns from the use of their toolbox.

TERMS - The Ideological Framework (Judiciary)

Segal and Spaeth (2002) - An attitudinal model that focuses on the interaction of facts (situations) and attitudes (political opinions) in producing Supreme Court decisions. They demonstrate this with the example of search and seizure cases in the U.S. Supreme Court.

TERMS - The Normative Thesis - Big Brother Hypothesis (Judiciary)

Shapiro, Hirschl (2004) both note the argument that the rise of modern judicial review stems from a demand for checks on the increasingly omnipotent role of technical bureaucracy in successful democracies. Thus, with more effective administrative states comes an increased demand for some independent check on government power. A stronger judiciary gives the citizenry a stronger basis for challenging a technocratic government. Tate and Vallinder (1995) discuss the growth of the U.S. judiciary after Watergate, and the growth of European judiciaries as distaste with parliaments and the political systems increased. The waves of judicialization, first in post-fascist Europe after WWII and then in post-communist Europe after the 1990s supports a view of the judiciary as a means of restoring faith in governance and the protection of rights for formerly tyrannical political actors. In this case, they are a means of restoring faith in the durability of democracy (Ginsburg, 2006; Ferejohn, Rosenbluth, and Shipan, 2009). "Italy and Germany seem to have adopted constitutional courts partially in response to "a deep distaste for the dismal past" (Merryman and Vigoriti 1966-7) and to guard citizens against the possibility of a political hijacking of the sort that Mussolini and Hitler had been able to pull off" (Ferejohn, Rosenbluth, and Shipan, 739-40

TERMS - The Normative Thesis - U.S. Centered Hypothesis (Judiciary)

Some of the earlier literature on this topic focuses on the judiciary as a U.S. institution exported to the rest of the world. Ginsburg (2006) outlines a view of powerful courts as stemming from a unique American culture based on Judeo-Christian norms, a written constitution, Lockean logic, and positivism, all of which combined to create an ideological opening for judicial review. This ideological potential was then realized in Marbury v. Madison (1803), when strategic relations related to political balancing, federalism, and free-trade incentivised it. This model was then exported throughout the world, and to a variety of different political systems. This was a process enhanced by U.S. hegemony in the post-WWII, post-Cold War context, when many countries were adopting new democratic political systems (Ginsburg, 2004).

TERMS - Spatial Model of Voting

Spatial models of voting (pioneered by Anthony Downs [1957]) focus on individuals developing viewpoints on the polarizing issues within the electorate and then aligning with the party that best matches their positions on those issue sets (especially the issues they identify as most important to them). "Unlike valence issues, in the case of position issues there is widespread disagreement among both voters and parties on the desirability of different policy goals." (Clarke, 2009). - This view relies on a rational calculation by the voter

VOTING - Clarke, Harrold. Performance Politics and the British Voter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Valence models of voting focus on voters judgements of competence and performance based on widely held views about the correct aims of governance (a good economy, well-funded and functioning public services, strong foreign policy and domestic security/tranquility, access to housing and transport, etc.). Under this model, voters will vote for whichever party best delivers on these ends. In this context, party leaders and party platforms are cost-saving heuristic devices used to help voters make quick judgements of different parties and their policies. ""In the world of valence politics, voters make choices primarily on the basis of their evaluations of rival parties' likely ability to deliver policy outcomes in issue areas characterized by broad consensus (Stokes, 1963, 1992). A classic example of a valence issue is the economy." Valence issues are at the heart of a huge swath of political debate in most modern democracies. Spatial models of voting (pioneered by Anthony Downs) focus on individuals developing viewpoints on the polarizing issues within the electorate and then aligning with the party that best matches their positions on those issue sets (especially the issues they identify as most important to them). "Unlike valence issues, in the case of position issues there is widespread disagreement among both voters and parties on the desirability of different policy goals." (16) This paper examines the decline of the labour party in Britain between 2001 and 2005 and the relatively low levels of turnout in the country at that time. This book also advocates for a model of voter decision based on individual rationality (and not identity or group membership) and valence considerations (instead of positional ones). Indeed, this book argues that valence judgements explain more than voting choices, but also turnout decisions. In the lead up to the 2005 election, Labour had advantages on the valence issues of economics and public services. However, they were deeply hurt by the valence issue of the invasion of Iraq Summary of key framework for this book: "Both positional (or spatial) and valence (or performance) theories of voting behaviour can be seen as specific cases of a more general utility-maximization model. The key idea is that the expected utility a person gets from voting for a particular party is a combination of two things: the utility derived from being closer to that party on a given set of important issues (the positional/spatial component); and an assessment of the probability that the party can deliver effective performance in relation to that issue set (the valence/performance component).... If voters assess the delivery probabilities of two different parties as identical, then they will decide between the parties on purely positional grounds. If they assess the spatial positions of the two parties as identical, then they will decide between them on purely valence grounds. If parties' delivery probabilities are identical and positions are identical, voters will be indifferent and, ceteris paribus, they will abstain... The clear implication is that, within this general framework, rational voters can, in principle, be exclusively 'spatial' in their calculations, exclusively 'valenced', or a combination of the two. An important part of our argument is that, empirically, it is the valence part of the calculation that tends to predominate. The reason is simple - the issues that matter for most people most of the time are valence issues and parties, like voters, have the same preferences on these issues." Within this context, voters function as 'cognitive misers,' using information heuristics to make political decisions based on party platforms, party attachments, and images of party leaders Valence judgements affect not just voting, but voter turnout, and overall feelings of satisfaction with a country's democracy Key critiques of the spatial model are that relevant policy spaces aren't necessarily uni-dimensional, they aren't fixed over time but manipulated by the parties, and voters may not have a common point of reference on what the key issues actually are. While both spatial and valence issues will play a role, valence considerations will thus play a far more prominent one.

STATES & STATE-BUILDING - Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

States include empires and city-states - the key question is how the form of national states came to dominate the international system - key to this question are cities (centers of capital) and states (centers of coercion) The key thing that differentiates europe from the rest of the world was the density of its political network that lead to competition and the creation of numerous well-defined states In getting ready for war, states had to be able to extract resources from their populations, which helped develop the administrative structures of states - but the options open to leaders in extracting taxes were highly influence by the organization of social classes within the state. Nation states became the dominant form of state because it was the form best able to field large armies and best centered around a city that provided capital and commercial activity Capital tended to concentrate and accumulate in cities, while coercion tended to do so in states Places with highly productive cities had to have highly productive agriculture and well developed transport systems The issue with wielding coercion is it tends to accumulate territory and populations, which then require administration, and the costs of coercion require funding which means a good system of taxation - states took many approaches to trying to balance the competing demands of coercion, administration, and extraction - with empires taking tribute, cities fragmenting sovereignty, and national states creating centralized administrative structures One of the key flaws of empires and city states is that they left much power to local power holders, which made the centralization of power and maintenance of administrations harder The key default of national states was the sheer burden of creating a centralized state bureaucracy - but this became harder and harder to avoid as war became more and more expensive The general trend is that war forced states to create administrations that could handle the growing demands of staying alive - states went from relying purely on extraction (patrimonialism) to relying on loans (brokerage) to relying on massive state administrations (nationalization) to more specialized state functions (specialization)

JUDICIARY - Segal, Jeffery Alan, and Harold Spaeth. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

The attitudinal model of judicial decision making focuses on judicial decision making as a product of judicial ideological attitudes - incorporating aspects of realism, behavioralism, psychology, and economics in doing so. Realism holds that judges are always socially situated and the law always vague and variable, meaning that decisions will simply reflect a judges opinion and desires, shrouded in the language of precedent and doctrine. Behavioralists argue that judges are motivated by their own preferences. Psychologists argue that judges can be placed on an ideal scale based on their ideological preferences and that, similarly, judges will form attitudes and value judgments about issue areas which will then shape their attitudes towards those issues. And economists argue that judges make decisions based on the strategic interaction of their policy goals, the rules that structure the 'game' of their actions (i.e. the law and norms that regulate their docket and their interaction with other branches, along with their independence from political actors and powers of judicial review), and the situations they encounter (i.e. the decisions open to judges based on the merits of the question at hand). This model is affirmed in the case of search and seizure decisions by the Supreme Court, which show the interaction between facts (the situations of the search) and attitudes (the political orientation of the justice) as defining factors in dictating how a decision comes out.

JUDICIARY - Teles, Steven Michael. The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

The federalist society has been a beacon of right-wing influence within the American judicial system. In large part, the success of the organization stems from its firm 'boundary maintenance' - the ways it has worked to limit its official scope of activity beyond its networking and debating roles as a civil society, while allowing its vast web of influential members and donors to influence politics and the law through much more direct lobbying. If the organization did what all of its members do, it would lose its ability to provide such a cohesive community to conservative jourists. In this sense, the society provides a public good by investing human capital into conservative ideals and producing cultural and social capital through distinguished conservative leaders who have helped reshape American legal thinking. It has succeeded also by drawing on the vast financial resources of its members, by maintaining a steady group of leaders with little turnover, and by providing a compelling critique of the progressive tendencies of traditional legal organizations like the ABA that have normatively bolstered its importance as an institution. The result of its growth as a society has also been to create a positive feedback loop on encouraging the open expression and proud defense of previously ostracized conservatives views.

POPULISM - Linda Bos, Wouter van der Brug, and Claes H. de Vreese, "An Experimental Test of the Impact of Style and Rhetoric on the Perception of Right-Wing Populist and Mainstream Party Leaders," Acta Politica 48, no. 2 (2013): 192-208.

The effects of populist communications strategies vary between lower-educated and more politically-cynical people, with such people being more susceptible to populist appeals, when measured using a large-N experimental sample of Dutch voters. This study focuses on two key communication strategies of populist leaders - populist rhetoric (which is focused on anti-establishment appeal, anti-elitism, and celebration of the heartland) and populist style (which is more easily adopted by mainstream politicians and which involved portraying oneself as a reluctant politician steeped in ordinariness and working to prevent the corruption of the community you love). This study tests is populist rhetoric and/or populist style have an impact on the lower-education and the more politically cynical, who have often been theorized to be more susceptible to populism because of greater levels of economic insecurity, less exposure to a 'tolerance building education,' more desire to see 'common-men politician', and more distrust of the political establishment. The experiment was run via presenting respondents with news items about different political leaders (one right wing, one left wing), where populist rhetoric and style were present or not present, and asking them to assess the legitimacy of the politicians. The findings were: (1) populist tools decreased the legitimacy of the left-wing politician for most participants, but had no impact on the legitimacy of the right-win leader, (2) lower-educated voters were more likely to see the right-wing leader as more legitimate after using populist tools, (3) highly-cynical voters were more likely to see the right-wing leader as more legitimate after using populist tools. "The results show that using a populist style does positively affect the perceived legitimacy of right-wing populist party leaders, but only for the lower educated, the politically cynical and the less politically efficacious." (204) These effects, however, were only seen for populist style and not populist rhetoric.

PARTIES - Herbert Kitschelt, "Linkages Between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities," Comparative Political Studies 33, no. 6 (August 2000): 845-79.

The focus in the parties literature has been overwhelmingly on programmatic party linkages, but this oversimplifies the types of linkages parties have. Parties are typically seen as either aiding collective action (by pooling resources and information for candidates) or social choice (by making political decision making, ideology formation, and accountability much easier for voters as information misers). Different types of parties result from if such parties succeed at solving none, one, or both of the issues of collective action and social choice. When neither collective action nor social choice is addressed, leaders are likely to rely on charismatic authority with little policy coherence. When politicians address social choice, but not collective action it leads to legislative caucuses and factions (which are limited to competitive oligarchies with restrictive suffrage). When politicians address collective action but not social choice, this leads to clientelism, either through the rich buying special interest or partie buying votes via a reciprocal exchange of goods. It is only when parties build on both that programmatic linkages become possible. However, this should not lead to the conclusion that clientelism is personalistic in a way programmatism isn't or that clientelism undercuts accountability - since clientelistic governance can create very strong levels of accountability and responsiveness. In general though, these forms of party linkages are mutually exclusive with one another. Within the literature, there are five dominant theoretical frameworks that explain this different linkages: 1) socioeconomic modernization (which argues programmatism will naturally arise out of development); 2) State formation and political democratization (which argues the timing of democratization relative to state industrialization and professionalization effects how parties mobilize voters); 3) Democratic Institutions (which argues electoral laws and executive-legislative arrangements are key for party formations, with presidentialism promoting clientelism); 4) political economy and democratic linkages (access to large nationalized/regulated industries by the state increase the odds of clientelism); 5) Political ideology and ethnocultural cleavages (strong ethnocultural divisions lend themselves to clientelism and club goods). Finally, it is worth noting th clientelism may serve as an alternative to the welfare state for less developed economies and as a means of appeasing citizens over high levels of inequality.

JUDICIARY - Hilbink, Lisa. "The Origins of Positive Judicial Independence." World Politics 64, no. 4 (October 2012): 587-621.

There is an important difference between formal judicial autonomy and independent judicial behavior (positive independence). What explains positive judicial independence? The frequency of occasions where judges act assertively in high risk scenarios (Italy, India, Tanzania), or timidly in low-risk ones (Costa rica, France, Israel), provide doubt about strategic theories focused on political fragmentation. Instead, a successful theory of judicial action has to consider judges attitudes and social circumstances - judges differ on their understanding of their function within a democratic system, and this impacts how independent they are willing to be. Thus, norms of judicial assertiveness will impact judicial independence, and increases in independence will rely on a reshaping of those norms. This can be seen in the examples of Spain and Chile: in Spain, strong norms of judicial independence within legal institutions lead to resistance against Franco in spite of high risks and costs associated with such dissent; in contrast, in Chile, even after the liberalization of the political system, the judiciary remained placid and unwilling to assert its independence until the norms of the political system shifted. Thus, the norms transmitted through legal systems and judicial hierarchies about what judges ought to do and when they ought to assert themselves are crucial to understanding the actions of judges.

TERMS - Integrated Framework (Race)

These arguments seek to integrate aspects of the social, economic, and political in explaining rising levels of racial polarization. The most prominent examples of this are the work of Gest (2016) and Gest, Reny, and Mayer (2018), which argue that a confluence of changing demographics, economic decline, and political displacement have led to feelings of marginalization and deprivation among lower-class whites, who feel their status in society declining in comparison to its historical norms. This subsequently provides a strong impetus for supporting nativist and populist right-wing parties. Counter-Arguments: Ideas like 'nostalgic deprivation' are very hard to capture and empirically prove (Gest, Reny, Mayer). These frameworks may lack some of the parsimony of other theories, and are harder to apply across cases.

JUDICIARY - Epp, Charles R. The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998.

Traditional explanations for the expansion of rights (the rights revolution) focus on judicial independence (as seen with the Warren Court), rights-promoting cultures (as seen in the U.S.), and formal constitutional bills of rights (which have proliferated globally since WWII) - but these fall short, even if providing pieces of the puzzle. Instead, this work argues that material support and a support structure are key to allowing a rights revolution to take place. Because litigation requires a huge amount of resources, only societies with strong support structures consisting of rights-advocacy lawyers, organizations, and finances, will be able to sustain rights advances through consistent and well-funded litigation. The environment for such a support structure can be enhanced by a bill of rights, a strong culture or rights, and by independent judges, but isn't a necessary result of any of those. The rise of support structures can thus be seen in societies preceding the rise of rights themselves, as these structures help propel rights issues into high courts and to build up precedent. This process can be seen in the U.S., Canada, India, and Great Britain between 1960 and 1990.

PARTIES - Noam Lupu and Rachel Beatty Riedl, "Political Parties and Uncertainty in Developing Democracies," Comparative Political Studies 46, no. 11 (2012): 1339-1365.

Uncertainty - the imprecision with which political actors are able to predict future interactions - affects party systems, especially in developing democracies, and is expressed through regime uncertainty, economic uncertainty, or institutional uncertainty. This is essential to understanding the volatility and weak programmatic appeals of parties in much of the developing world. New democracies with weaker institutional legacies face high levels of institutional uncertainty and more consistent threats of democratic reversals, and subsequently the parties within these democracies change their strategic calculations in formulating party platforms. This uncertainty can be regime uncertainty (a fear of authoritarian reversals, which undermines faith in the longevity of political institutions), economic uncertainty (the instability of developing economies placed within a broader global economy and subject to the influence of international actors), and institutional uncertainty (where a disconnect between formal and informal norms and institutions can lead to uncertainty about which prevails in different contexts, and where a lack of party reputations decreases the costs of reneging on commitments). This uncertainty can lead parties to form more flexible organizations reliant on less programmatic mobilization apparatuses (like clientelism), and can also lead to them to rely on flexibility to respond to quickly changing economic conditions. In both cases, higher uncertainty leads to a higher need for party flexibility which leads to less institutionalization. Further, a fear of future reversals placed a higher emphasis on immediate political gains (and their resultant access to resources) as opposed to sustainable voting blocks that promise access in an uncertain future. This is worrisome because the parties that develop early on may prove sticky to democratic norms in the future.

JUDICIARY - Epstein, Lee and Jack Knight. The Choices Justices Make. Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1998.

Why do Supreme Court justices change their votes following their conference on the issues? Justices are, more than anything, motivated by their policy preferences. But they seek to implement these preferences strategically - taking into account the preferences of their colleagues and the restraints of their institutional position. This strategic account has three steps. First, justices are motivated to attain certain policy goals and will take the actions that best realize these goals in specific contexts. Second, justices are strategic in how they approach these goals through their interactions with their colleagues - basing their actions off of the predicted actions of others (most prominently, their fellow justices and the other branches of government). Third, justices make these strategic choices in an institutional context which shape their decisions (including who gets to speak first and write opinions in cases, what the precedent is, and how their expectations are shaped by lifetime tenure).

NATURAL RESOURCES - Hertog, Steffen. "Deying the Resource Curse: Explaining Successful State-Owned Enterprises in Rentier States." World Politics 62, no. 2 (April 2010): 261-301.

Why have some gulf governments been able to create highly-successful state-owned-enterprises (SOEs)? Two factors help explain this: the absence of a populist-mobilizational history, and substantive regime autonomy in economic policy-making. SOEs are usually seen as huge resource drains and sucks on countries, especially countries that are heavily reliant on resource rents. However, many of these corporations in the gulf have been particularly successful, in stark contrast to the SOEs in Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, and Venezuela, which have mostly produced white elephants and have been huge wastes of resources. SOEs succeed, this article argues, when they are relatively autonomous in their daily functions, insulated from political and bureaucratic predation, and function with a coherent set of high-level principles within the political regime. The conditions needed for this to occur are: 1) a lack of populist-mobilizational history of economic development, and 2) substantial decisional autonomy of the regime leadership from interest groups within the state and society. SOE management that allows large interference by the state turns the SOEs into political tools used for employment, rent seeking, regional development, and other considerations, all of which cripple the companies and leads to huge losses for the government which are floated because the SOEs are seen as too important to be allowed to fail - "in all six non-Gulf cases SOEs are unprofitable, are overstaffed, suffer from corruption, lack managerial autonomy, are politicized, carry huge social overhead, and often cannot set their prices freely." Gulf SOEs have been uniquely autonomous of the state bureaucracy, decreasing opportunities for corruption and allowing for managerial autonomy. This decreases excessive obligations and rent-seeking within them. A key variable is economic populism - the use of economic resources to mobilize support from what are perceived as previously marginalized classes, newly recruited as a support base for the regime, which gives economic policy a strong redistributional component and thus assumes state resources as part of the nation-building exercise (whether it is through the funding of social programs, the redistribution of profits, or the creation of employment). These kids of movements have directly undermined the autonomy and efficiency of SOEs and have instead redirected them for political goals. This process has taken place in Algeria, Iran, Libya, and Venezuela. Gulf SOEs, have, in contrast, been highly hierarchical, pro-business, and politically conservative, with any state distribution being separated from their operations. But what explains Nigeria and Indonesia's SOE failure, where populist mobilization is also lacking? Or the failure of Kuwait's SOE? Here regime autonomy and freedom from state and social interest groups in the central factor. Gulf SOEs lack government interference and are free from a strong civil society with organized interest groups. Thus, Gulf monarchies are highly stable because they can balance regime based patronage with highly efficient centers for growth, in a strictly hierarchical state, while the one democratically inclined country in the Gulf, Kuwait, has suffered from the lack of autonomy and hierarchy in its SOE.

DEMOCRACY - Jose Cheibub, Jeniffer Gandhi, and James Raymond Vreeland "Democracy and Dictatorship Revisited," Public Choice 143, no. 1 (April 2010): 67-101.

From Abstract: "We argue that differences across regime measures must be taken seriously and that they should be evaluated in terms of whether they (1) serve to address important research questions, (2) can be interpreted meaningfully, and (3) are reproducible. We argue that existing measures of democracy are not interchangeable and that the choice of measure should be guided by its theoretical and empirical underpinnings" Democracies can be defined as regimes in which governmental offices (both the executive and legislature) are filled as a consequence of contested elections, with a viable opposition that has a chance of winning office. This entails: 1) Ex ante uncertainty - the outcome of the election is not known before it takes place, 2) Ex post irreversibility - the winner of the electoral contest actually takes office, 3) Repeatability - elections that meet the first two criteria occur at regular and known intervals. Thus a regime is a democracy if: 1) the chief executive is chosen by popular election (directly or indirectly), 2) the legislature is popularly elected, 3) there is more than one party competing for election, 4) alternation in power takes place under identical rules to those that brought the incumbent to office. There are two main ways of measuring democracy - Freedom House (FH) Scores and POLITY Scores. These differ in three ways: 1) Their conception of democracy: While this article focuses on institutions within democracy, both POLITY and FH scores include some measure of the outcome of their operation, with FH including metrics of 'freedom' and 'democracy' and POLITY looking at the strength of the executive - but these authors argue such normative views of democracy are harmful as metrics of democracy 2) Their Coding and Aggregation Rules - this article argues that there are four rules for something to be a democracy (listed above), all all of these conditions need to be met for something to qualify. FH varies in its coding from year to year and codes in a very subjective way, aggregating a variety of metrics into an arbitrary total score. Similarly POLITY has unclear rules that often overlap (like measures of violence and competition), and its data is neither clearly ordinal or categorical. 3) Their type of measurement - Further, while FH and POLITY rely on polychotomous classification of regimes, more dichotomous ones avoid vagueness and uncertainty about what qualifies as a democracy. Types of democracies - A democracy can be parliamentary, semi-presidential, and presidential - it is presidential if the government is not responsible to the legislative assembly, it is parliamentary if it is responsible to the legislative assembly but lacks a head of state elected to a fixed term of office, and mixed if it is both responsible to the legislative assembly and has a head of state in a fixed and elected term of office. Types of Dictatorships - dictatorships can be assessed by what their leading coalition is made up of (and thus, consequently, where their main threat of overthrow comes from) - a monarchy has an inner sanctum of family and kin networks along with consultative councils; a military dictatorship has an inner sanctum made up of the military and service branches; a civilian dictator has an inner sanctum that is made up of a regime party which is more involved in broader society. The variety of measures used to classify and quantify democracy have huge consequences in the findings of studies that rely on them - with many findings being obviated by changing measurements

AUTHORITARIANISM - Robert Mattes and Michael Bratton, "Learning About Democracy in Africa: Awareness, Performance, and Experience," American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 1 (January 2007): 192-217.

"Conventional views of African politics imply that Africans' political opinions are based either on enduring cultural values or their positions in the social structure. In contrast, we argue that Africans form attitudes to democracy based upon what they learn about what it is and does. This learning hypothesis is tested against competing cultural, institutional, and structural theories to explain citizens' demand for democracy (legitimation) and their perceived supply of democracy (institutionalization) with data from 12 Afrobarometer attitude surveys conducted between 1999 and 2001. A multilevel model that specifies and estimates the impacts of both individual- and national-level factors provides evidence of learning from three different sources. First, people learn about the content of democracy through cognitive awareness of public affairs. Second, people learn about the consequences of democracy through direct experience of the performance of governments and (to a lesser extent) the economy. Finally, people draw lessons about democracy from national political legacies." The key factor shaping African views of democracy is their own experiences and learning concerning the regimes content and consequences. This helps understand how democracies can becomes consolidated in Africa, since consolidation occurs only when "all significant elites and an overwhelming proportion of citizens see democracy as 'the only game in town.'" this article argues that "democracy has a low probability of breakdown where two conditions are met, namely that large majorities of citizens demand democracy as their preferred political regime, and judge that their leaders have internationalized and followed democracy's rules" (193) this article argues that thinking about democracy in Africa is shaped by three things: 1) accounts of the delivery of political goods and the prevailing economic conditions, 2) learning about democracy by drawing lessons from comparisons with previous authoritarian regimes or even from the longer politicallegacy of the postcolonial period, 3) and by developing intrinsic attachments to democracy that are quite independent of any consideration of performance

STATES & STATE-BUILDING - Dan Slater, "Can Leviathan be Democratic? Competitive Election, Robust Mass Politics, and State Infrastructural Power," Studies in Comparative International Development 43, no. 3-4 (December, 2008): 252-72.

A central challenge for all governments is how to reconcile accountable government with effective government - this is especially difficult in the post-colonial world where democracy has struggled in states without existing infrastructures in place - thus the question is how to create 'democratic leviathans' This shows the fundamental disconnect between European literature on democracy and the East Asian experience with democracy Competitive national elections can incite the development of a strong state infrastructure by 1) catalyzing the construction of mass ruling parties which can deliver goods and increase pressure on the state, 2) energizing state registration of marginal populations, 3) fostering centralized intervention in local authoritarian enclaves. But this only happens when there is 'robust mass political mobilization' Parties provide citizens with broader social and economic rights and give them a voice to demand infrastructural changes - they also create incentives for registering with the government because of the promise of representation This process is demonstrated in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines In Malaysia, the post WWII era lead to peasant mobilizations and counter mobilization by elites which lead to large and competitive parties for national elections. These parties helped with the local provision of goods In Indonesia there were competitive elections before the Suharto regime and efforts by Suharto to legitimize his rule lead to mass mobilization and registration of the country in a way that expanded its state infrastructure, which then spilled over into other administrative tasks In the Philippines, national elections in the wake of rural rebellions (Huk) gave the government the impetus to take control over local power holders and force fair elections upon them Such effects should be seen anywhere elections are competitive, even if not democratic

DEMOCRACY - Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).

A key condition for democracy is a continuing 'responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals.' - But the word democracy is an ideal type for a government this is completely or almost completely responsive to all of its citizens, which allows all citizens to be unimpaired in 1) formulating preferences, 2) signifying those preferences to each other and the government through individual/collective action, 3) having their preferences equally weighed by the government. This includes eight guarantees that must be met for these conditions to be true: 1) freedom to form and join organizations, 2) freedom of expression, 3) the right to vote, 4) eligibility for public office, 5) right of political leaders to compete for support and compete for votes, 6) alternative sources of information, 7) free and fair elections, 8) institutions for making government policies dependent on votes and other expression of preference. These eight preferences constitute two somewhat different theoretical dimensions of democratization: 1) contestation (how government enables opposition, public contestation, and political competition), 2) inclusiveness (how much the population can participate in controlling and contesting the government). Both of these are necessary to some extent for democracy, and either alone is not sufficient for democracy. These two dimensions can create a matrix by which we can think of four different regime types: a closed hegemony (low inclusiveness, low contestation), a competitive oligarchy (low inclusiveness but high contestation), an inclusive hegemony (high inclusiveness and low contestation), a polyarchy (high inclusiveness and high contestation). Polyarchy is the term for real world regimes attempting to approximate the ideal type of democracy - "Polyarchies, then, may be thought of as relatively (but incompletely) democratized regimes, or, to put it in another way, polyarchies are regimes that have been substantially popularized and liberalized, that is, highly inclusive and extensively open to public contestation." - Democracy is the idea, polyarchy the practice. The move towards polyarchy leads to more individuals and organized groups in opposition to the government and contestation of it - this leads incumbents to fear conflict with, and displacement by, these groups (and vice versa for the groups), which further leads both to seek to deny the other opportunities for power and participation. This phenomenon leads to three axioms about governments tolerating opposition: 1) the likelihood a government will tolerate opposition increases as the costs of toleration decrease; 2) the likelihood a government will tolerate opposition increases as the costs of suppression also increase; 3) the more the costs of suppression exceed the costs of toleration, the greater the chance for a competitive regime.

STATES & STATE-BUILDING - Jeffery Hebst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

A key issue with state building in Africa is the low density of people throughout the continent - which makes controlling populations hard; the high variety in ecology - which makes universalizing administrative control hard; and the geographic obstacles to travel - which makes the projection of power over distances hard This contrasts directly with the European experience, where population was dense and land scarce, and thus war was over territory and borders. This war helped lead to the development of strong states with centralized administrations and control. All of this was built off of large cities central to a creator trading network and administrative system In contrast, the cities formed in Africa during colonization were small, isolated from most of the state, and administratively weak, existing only to serve the colonizers and lacking the infrastructure to reach the periphery. As a result, a strong urban-rural divide sprang up after decolonization, with African political parties only serving urban interests and ignoring the disorganized and hard to access rural population of their states. These 'uncaptured' peasants, in turn, don't associate with their state's government Thus, many African leaders struggle to exert control over their whole territory, an issue only made worse by the economic and infrastructural impediments of the region - the wars that arise aren't wars for land but wars for people and wealth Thus, the experience of state building and control in Africa is very different from that in Europe In Africa, borders are hyper-respected because they provide a means of legitimizing the scope of political control that doesn't exist in practice - they provide protection for states from international intervention as well and are reinforced by other mechanisms of legitimacy like national currencies and citizenship regulations - they are enforced more than ever because they serve to decrease competition over territory and delegitimize self determination However, the lack of control over African state has lead to growing state failure and the rise of private security forces - this requires an embrace of alternatives to the IR faith in sovereign nation states as the only valid political unit - Instead, there should be an embrace of alternatives to the nation state, a recognition of the lack of sovereignty in some of these states, and a recognition of new nation-states / local systems and subunits of autonomous political control

RACE - Hajnal, Zoltan and Jeremy Horowitz. "Racial Winners and Losers in American Party Politics." American Political Science Association 12, no. 1 (March, 2014): 100-18.

A key question is if the strong racial divide in U.S. politics translates to different outcomes for Republican and Democratic presidential administrations. Overall, Democratic presidencies are associated with significantly higher levels of well being for racial minorities in the U.S. (with Black Americans, in particular, benefiting from Democratic administrations under measures of income levels, poverty levels, the unemployment rate, and criminal justice issues). Crucially, these periods of well-being don't seem to come at the cost of white Americans, who also fare well under Democratic administrations (although less so than Republican ones). These results also show the unique influence of the presidency (and its partisan orientation) on the prevalence of racial inequality in the U.S. "If Democrats had been in power over the entire period we examine, much of America's racial inequality may well have been erased." (102) These results hold even with a wide variety of robustness checks, including differences in economic growth between the regimes.

TERMS - Semi-Presidential/Hybrid Regimes

A mix of presidential and parliamentary regime types - They contain both a popularly elected chief executive—the head of state—and an executive that is "...subject to the confidence of the legislature"—the head of government. (Shugart 2008, p. 349). This can take the form of Premier-Presidentialism, where the legislature retains exclusive authority over the survival of the executive, which emerges from its ranks, and where popularly elected executive may only dissolve the legislature, triggering elections. (Shugar & Carey, 1992). It can also take the form of Presidential-Parliamentary systems, where a popularly elected executive selects members of cabinet who are then confirmed or rejected by the legislative majority. The survival of the cabinet is therefore dependent on both the confidence of the legislative majority and the head of state, making this closer to a pure presidential system than a parliamentary regime

TERMS - Thick vs. Thin Conceptions of Democracy

A thick conception of democracy is one that includes several variables and seeks to categorise nation-states as being different shades of democracies, or non-democracies. POLITY IV is the classic example, as it codes each country in the world on a scale of -10 to 10 based on how democratic they are. A thin conception of democracy seeks to categorise countries dichotomously; as democracy, or not, with typically fewer variables considered in its definition. Alvarez et al. (1996) and Przeworski et al. (2000) are both classic examples of this; in both assessments, countries are either democracies, or dictatorships

DEMOCRACY - Guillermo O'Donnell, "Why the Rule of Law Matters," Journal of Democracy 15, no. 4 (January, 2004): 32-46.

A true democracy requires a democratic rule of law that ensures "political rights, civil liberties, and mechanisms of accountability which in turn affirm the political equality of all citizens and constrain potential abuses of state power." - The rule of law is thus linked with many of the pillars of democracy, and is essential for protecting those pillars A minimal definition of the rule of law is "that whatever law exists is written down and publicly promulgated by an appropriate authority before the events meant to be regulated by it, and is fairly applied by relevant state institutions including the judiciary" - The law must be fair and must be equally applied if it is to be the rule of law and not rule by law. Within civil or common law the legal system aims at, but never achieves completeness, and no one is above the law - further, the legal system is in service of a greater social order that defines, specifies, and makes predictable human interactions An entire state must submit to the law for there to be the rule of law- this law must 1) uphold political rights, freedoms, and guarantees of democracy, 2) uphold civil rights for everyone, 3) establish networks of responsibility and accountability for both public and private agents of all power levels, ensuring their ability to be held in check by controls. All democracies have three types of accountability - 1) vertical electoral accountability from elections, 2) societal accountability, exercised by interest groups and individuals mobilizing for their interests and making demands on the state for redress and accountability, 3) horizontal accountability, when properly authorized state institutions act to prevent, redress, or punish the presumably illegal actions (or inactions) of public officials - the first form of accountability is required for democracy, the second two vary significantly Another key factor is the effectiveness of the legal system at bringing beneficial order to social relations - something that is aided by the authority conveyed by many overlapping and equally accountable institutions Citizens are never subjects but instead the basis of the power upon which they are judged There are many areas in which the rule of law can falter - these include flaws in the existing law; flaws in the application of the law; flaws in the relations between state agencies and ordinary citizens; flaws in access to the judiciary and to fair process; and flaws due to sheer lawlessness. The objective measures of the rule of law can be found across five dimensions of democratic states (each dimension is expanded on in the article): the legal system, the state and government, the courts and auxiliary institutions; the social context; and civil and human rights.

POPULISM - Marc F. Plattner, "Populism, Pluralism, and Liberal Democracy," Journal of Democracy 21, no. 1 (January 2010): 81-92.

Although support for modern democracy is very high, support for its specific manifestation within each country is much lower, with political discontent increasingly widespread. Democracy is not just majoritarianism, but also the protection of minority rights and adherence to rule of law, as manifested in the ideal of liberal democracy. Thus, there is a tension in democracy between the empowerment of the people and the check on their liberties in the name of protecting minority rights and the law. This means increasing majoritarianism is not a salve for democracy, but a corruption of it. This compromise in liberal democracy ensures majorities in democracies consistently feel partly thwarted by the political system, and minorities partly neglected. Populism results when this balance of interests falls on the majority side through a sudden increase in power, and the majority seeks to increase control via excessive democratization. In contrast, pluralism results when power falls to the minority side and self-government is undermined, along with social cohesion. Under this view, both populism and pluralism are latent concepts always somewhat present in democracy, it is just their accentuation that proves to be problematic. Under this view, populism is a view of democracy not wedded to liberalism or constitutionalism. It favors the will of the people over a corrupted elite, but wants to enact this will with as few checks and delays as possible (which leaves individual rights and procedural 'niceties' left behind). This lends itself to ideas of the 'people' that are exclusionary, and thus to nativism and hostility to immigration. Thus, populism is often a threat to democracy, but sometimes a corrective when democracy moves too far away from the people. The other pole of populism is pluralism, which focuses on the maintenance of cultural heterogeneity and diversity and the protection of minority interests. This can be a threat to democracy if it undermines the ability to form a coherent body politic. These two tendencies - pluralism and populism - are inherently at odds with each other, and thus in most functional democracies end up cancelling each other out.

DEMOCRACY - Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, "Transitions From Authoritarian Rule," in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies, ed. Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, 15-36 (Baltiomre, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

Authoritarian regimes in the post-1945 world have a legitimation problem - whereas they could justify themselves after WWI as an alternative to the economically failing democracies of the world, today they lack normative support and thus can only bill themselves as 'building' towards democracy or lie about the extent of their democracy - this opens a space for their actual critique and eventual reform. In this context, we can think about hard-liners and soft-liners within authoritarian regimes. Hard-liners are those who genuinely believe that authoritarianism is the best form of government and who will likely continue to think this way even after democratization. Soft-liners are those who see a need for electoral legitimacy for the regime and thus are open to democratic reforms. Both groups have divisions within their ranks, and while hard liners are likely to be dominant early in an authoritarian regime, the need for an eventual transition towards less oppressive governance will create space for soft-liners. All authoritarian transitions result from divisions within the regime itself, and largely stem from two phenomena - a defeat in international war (especially if it's to a democracy), or a mass mobilization of people at home. Transitions are also more likely during times of regime failure when dissatisfaction is high and the impetus for mobilization plentiful - in contrast, while times of stability make a transition more seemly, they also make opposition to reform easier and cohesion within governance more likely. Once democratization has begun, there is a constant fear by liberalizers that it will be cut short by a coup - this leads them to 'play coup poker,' where liberalizers try to get the opposition out of the government to play by the rules during the transition through the threat of a return to authoritarianism if they do not, but the threat of the coup undermines these efforts since a crackdown would mean both the soft-liners and opposition would be punished equally, which incentivises a full buy-in to democratization by the soft-liners to avoid any kind of coup - thus, those who threaten a coup early on are those working against it later in the transition. The citizenry has to be mobilized for any transition, and thus there is an inverted U of citizen involvement during democratization, with citizens oppressed and forced out of involvement at first, and then hyper mobilized for the transition, and then voluntarily less involved once living in a free society. It is right when mobilization is highest that the threat of a coup and a reinforced authoritarianism are also highest, and thus when both soft-liners and opposition alike have to gamble by doubling down on democratization. Because authoritarianism requires extreme repression, the transition away from it will often require reconciliation and golden parachutes for those involved so there aren't strong incentives for coups and resistance by those fearing a reckoning over their past acts (even if this feels unjust) - ideally a regime would persecute the worst wrong doers while leaving the military apparatus feeling safe. A key aspect of transitioning to democracy is getting the army to accepts a role subservient to the government - something that's very difficult when they are used to being leading figures. Thus, the importance and entrenchment of the military in politics and oppression is a key factor in determining the ease of democratization. New democracies should be very careful not to alienate of threaten the military, while also placing them below civilian elected officials

STATES & STATE-BUILDING - Lise Morje Howard, "Kosovo and Timor-Leste: Neotrusteeship, Neighbors, and the United Nations," The Annals of the American Academy Academy of Political and Social Science 656, no. 1 (Nov., 2014): 116-35.

Both Timor-Leste (TL) and Kosovo were recipients of neo-trusteeship rebuilding efforts, but such efforts succeeded in TL and failed in Kosovo. This article tries to explain why. The common thinking (promoted by Fearon and Laitin) is that neotrusteeship systems are effective in aiding states to rebuild after collapse, but only in the context that it has been lead by a neighboring state with a strong stake in the outcome and not the UN This article contests this thinking. Kosovo's neotrusteeship was lead by its neighbors and the EU, but the structure of its governance and leadership after the conflict has been highly complex and constantly shifting, with no clear hierarchy or command structure. There have also been major disputes over Kosovo's state as a sovereign nation and the establishment of parallel administrative structures within the state for the different ethnic groups, which makes overall stability almost impossible and attributes to the very high crime rates and very low levels of economic development. In contrast, TL has had a much more centralized system of neotrusteeship, led by the UN, which has been highly successful, in part because it excluded self-interested neighbors. Thus, having centralized control in these situations does much to make the rebuilding more successful.

PRES & PAR - Power, Timothy and Mark Gasiorowski. "Institutional Design and Democratic Consolidation in the Third World." Comparative Political Studies 30, no. 2 (April 1997): 123-55.

Existing studies which argue that presidentialism is more unstable than parliamentarism (such as Linz's, Mainwaring's, and Stepan and Skach's work) suffer from selection bias issues in their data sets. This article aims to avoid those shortfalls by looking at third world countries and excluding micro-states. This data shows far less support for the thesis that presidentialism is inherently unstable, less support for the idea that multiparty presidentialism is unstable, and more support for the idea that multipartism provides representation to more diverse societies and is more sustainable.

TERMS - Party De-aligment

Concept explored by Kenneth Roberts (2012), whereby party identities become less clearly delineated and detached from their linkages to citizens (as seen with the liberalization of economies by left-leaning parties in Latin American in the 1990s) and this leads to declining party loyalty and faith in existing parties, and thus increased resort to extreme parties and charismatic leaders, reflected in populism.

DEMOCRACY - Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1947).

Democracy can be defined as "that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote." There are seven reasons that this definition of democracy is preferable to one that focuses on the decision making power and process of citizens: 1) It provides an efficient and reasonable criterion by which to distinguish democratic government from non-democratic ones (definitions that focus on carrying out the will of the people for the good of the people can apply to effective autocracies too) 2) This theory leaves more room for recognizing the vital fact of leadership - this means we can account for 'manufactured will' amongst the electorate as well 3) This theory does not overlook genuine group-wise volitions - rather this theory shows these volitions as they are, movements that wait to be called to life by political leaders who turn them into political factors - collective group volitions are activated by leaders 4) This theory can be usefully compared to competition in the economic sphere - it thinks of democracy as a mode of political struggle nad competition via elections 5) This theory clarifies the relationship between democracy and individual freedom - democracy need not bring more individual freedom, but the competition for votes requires a higher freedom of discussion and press at a minimum 6) The primary function of the electoral is not just making the government, but evicting it - thus, the only control the electorate has over their representatives is the ability to not elect them. 7) This theory sheds light on the difference between will by the majority of the people and will by the people in the whole, since the former is only a poor approximation for the latter - "the principle of democracy... merely means that the reins of government should be handed to those who command more support than do any of the competing individuals or teams."

DEMOCRACY - Juan L. Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crises, Breakdown, and Reequilibration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

Democracy entails "the freedom to create political parties and to conduct free and honest elections at regular intervals without excluding any effective political office from direct or indirect electoral accountability" - Democratic regimes allow for the legal and equal opportunity to express opinions and be protected from the state's interference of those opinions No regime breaks down simply because of bad founding conditions - they require certain political processes after their founding to breakdown - "The hypothesis here is that all the regimes under study had a reasonable chance at survival, but that certain characteristics and actions of relevant actors - institutions as well as individuals - decreased the probability of such development" "We feel that the structural characteristics of societies - their actual and latent conflicts - constitute a series of opportunities and constraints for the social and political actors, both men and institutions, that can lead to one or another outcome. We shall start from the assumption that those actors have certain choices that can increase or decrease the probability of the persistence and stability of a regime. Undoubtedly, the resulting actions or events tend to have a cumulative and reinforcing effect that increases or decreases the probability of survival of democratic politics." The level of support and legitimacy given to social, economic, and political systems within a country will dictate how stable that country is and how in danger its democracy may be in the long run - the more support for the social order and economic/political apparatus, the better.

DEMOCRACY - Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Ziblatt, "The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond," Comparative Political Studies 43, no. 8-9 (Aug., 2010): 931-68.

Democracy is not an all at once transition but a slow and drawn out development that advances in fits and stops with crises and results from conflict across a variety of social nexuses like class, religion, and ethnicity. Parties in particular, however, have been essential for the emergence of democracy in Europe. Modern studies of democracy suffer from numerous pitfalls, including an assumption that democratization functions the same across a variety of unique state contexts (and doesn't have multiple causal pathways, which are shaped, in part, by the history and learned experiences of past democratization movements); a lack of focus on microfoundations which highlight the importance of strategic interactions (and, in particular, parties, and their incentives for political success) to the rise of democracy; and finally, a resort to circular causality around the correlates of democratization and democracy itself, which ignore how complicated and drawn out a process democratization is and how important historical path dependencies and critical junctures can be. Thus, this article argues for an approach to the study of democracy focused on the establishment of institutional arrangements following episodes of institutional change and build upon them. There are three major trends that have also been overlooked in current studies of democracy: 1) the importance of non-class factors in democratization, including religion, church-state relations, and ethnicity, which all were important in shaping identity beyond thinking about class; 2) the role of ideas and ideational transfer in molding democartic institutions, which makes both the adoption of models from other national contexts more appealing, and a normative focus on 'iconic events' (like the French Revolution or Fall of the Berlin Wall) in making decisions about institutions more understandable; and 3) the autonomous role played by political parties in the development of democracy in Europe, which shows how parties aggregated a variety of competing interests and concerns to shape European democracies through their incentives to incorporate social change for their own good

POPULISM - Margaret Canovan, "Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy," in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, ed Yves Meny, et. al, 25-43 (Blackingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).

Democracy is riven by the paradox that, because it cannot possibly represent all of the interests of those it claims to, it relies on ideology in order to communicate its politics to the people, even though such ideology is systematically misleading. Thus, to bring the people into democratic politics, politics has to be obscured by ideology and thus made less transparent. Ideology bridges the gap between politics and the people by giving people a mental road map with which to conceptualize political life. This manifests in populism, because while democratic politics functions on the basis of inclusion, representation, mediation, and contestation, it is portrayed in a way that shows politics as a universalistic representation of the voice of an authentic and unified people (a misleading view that is nonetheless necessary, and which promotes populism). Populists argue that politics needs to be returned to the control of the people, which taps into the central ideology of democracy. Further, the view of the 'people' within a democracy inherently lends itself to a conception of 'us' and 'them', both in the distinction between the people and elites and between the nation and outsiders. In this way, populism appeals to the most basic and simplistic understanding of democracy, as seen in the idea of referendums. "Thus, the heart of populist protest is the nature of democracy itself, and the contradiction that lie at its heart - the gap between bringing the people into politics and taking politics to the people. Populism makes all of this coherent by making the people a bounded and clearly defined entity with a coherent set of interests and a direct stake in the control of the government." (42-3)

AUTHORITARIANISM - Juan J. Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000).

Democracy is the 'negative pole' of all non-democracies, and can be distinguished from authoritarianism, totalitarianism, sultanism, and racial democracy in turn. Here, sultanistic regimes can be defined are regimes with arbitrary and tyrannical rule exercised by an individual and his clients with the help a praetorian guard, with the aim of the state being private instead of public. Racial democracy can be defined as dual societies, with one sector of society imposing its rule on another, while allowing its own members to participate in democratic rule making - there is thus a paradox of democracy combined with racial domination. Meanwhile, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are scored on their degree/type of political pluralism, and the degree to which such regimes are based on political apathy/demobilization and limited controlled mobilizations. A country can be defined as a democracy when "it allows the free formulation of political preferences, through the use of basic freedoms of association, information, and communication, for the purpose of free competition between leaders to validate at regular intervals by nonviolent means their claim to rule" - restrictions on rights, on minorities, on party competition, and on regular transitions all disqualify a country from being democratic. It is very rare for nondemocracies and quasi-democracies to succeed in transforming into democracies, meaning the line between non-democracy and democracy is fairly rigid one that is usually not crossed through slow change but only via violent breaks. A regime is totalitarian if it has a clear ideology, a simple mass party/mobilization organization, and concentrated power in an individual and/or a small group of collaborators without any form of peaceful accountability. - In totalitarian regimes, "citizens participation in and active mobilization for political and collective social tasks is encouraged, demanded, rewarded, and challenged through the party system" In contrast, authoritarian regimes have pluralistic (not monistic) centers of power, a depoliticized population, and a multitude of 'mentalities' instead of a central ideology.

POPULISM - Peter Mair, "Populist Democracy vs. Party Democracy," in Democracies and the Populist Challenge, ed Yves Meny, et. al, 81-97 (Blackingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).

Democracy requires a balance between the people and the constitution - but there is a growing fear that the constitution and the formal structures of government are overpowering the people within modern democracies. This is reflected in growing discontent and declining participation in politics throughout Europe, and government's increasing bureaucratization and depoliticization. Normally, the political party plays the essential role of binding the constitutional side of democratic governance with the popular side. Parties were mediators between the voters nad government, and served to aggregate interests and distribute resources. But political parties are in decline in much of the west. This is caused by (a) a change in party identity, with the previous dividing lines of parties (especially around class) fading in the modern era, (b) a change in the function of parties, with the mass institutionalization of democracy in europe meaning parties are no longer needed for voter mobilization or interest articulation (which can be handled by the media), but instead primarily needed to act as procedural filters on the political process, helping with recruitment, filtering of candidates, and organizing of legislature. Thus, populism arises as an alternative to parties used to link an undifferentiated and depoliticized electorate with a neutral and non-partisan government. Populism can take two forms - it can be a form of protest (a resistance to a political elite that seems increasingly out of touch with the people they are supposed to represent), or a form of linkage (a tool for democracy in a system where parties are no longer prominent and thus representation is lacking. Populism as a form of linkage involves (1) partyless democracy where partyness no longer serve representative needs and competition between them no longer represents political interests, (2) appeals that are directed to the people writ large and not particular groups of voters, (3) and a government that serves the national popular interest rather than sectional interests. Populism as a form of linkage will arise out of indifference to democracy, populism as a form of protest out of distrust of democracy. Thus, populist democracy can most simply defined in its current form as 'popular democracy without parties' This process is seen in New Labour in Britain, where the appeal of the party was to the people writ large, with increased reliance on plebiscitarian techniques, and the party acted as the government write large. The 'new way' was meant to overcome traditional party divisions

DEMOCRACY - Nancy Bormeo, "On Democratic Backsliding," Journal of Democracy 27, no. 1 (2016): 5-19.

Democratic backsliding falls into six categories, which have varied over time. Whereas open-ended coups d'etat were common before the Cold War, they are now outnumbered by promissory coups. Similarly executive coups are being replaced by executive aggrandizement, and election-day fraud is being overtaken by long-term strategic harassment and manipulation. When backsliding is dramatic and sudden, it leads to breakdown and authoritarianism, when it is slower it often leads to quasi-democratic hybrid systems. Since the cold war, old forms of backsliding have becoming increasingly uncommon since the Cold War - classic coups are increasingly rare, and even when they happen they are increasingly unsuccessful, executive coups or 'self-coups' are also less common, and election day fraud and clear malpractice has declined significantly since 1990. In contrast, backsliding has taken a more subtle and nuanced form in recently years - to begin with, promissory coups, which frame the ouster of the government as a defense of democracy, and promise to hold elections in the near future, have become 85% more common since 1990, and have proven highly effective tools at consolidating authoritarianism while never actually holding elections; executive aggandiaement is also increasingly common, whereby executives slowly chip away at checks to their power and often increase their mandate via legal means like referenda or legislative support - an approach often coupled with popular policy enactments in order to decrease public resistance; finally, election manipulation has become far more strategic, with subtle forms of election rule changes, limits to voter registration, and 'tiltings of the playing field' limiting fair competition in ways that are harder to call out and check. These forms of authoritarianism are harder to check because they are both less overt and more likely to be backed by popular support. These trends are in part a result of the promotion of democracy internationally which has made a country appearing to be a democracy increasingly essential, meanwhile the rise of executive aggrandizement is a rational response to the growing polarization of politics in many parts of the world, which necessitates more decisive executive action to avoid gridlock.

AUTHORITARIANISM - Andreas Schedler, "Elections Without Democracy: The Menu of Manipulation," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (April, 2002): 36-50

Elections are just as often a form of authoritarian control as of democratic governance - especially since the third wave of democratizations, many electoral authoritarian regimes have arisen which hold elections and feign at democratic legitimacy while yielding no political control. This article presents a four fold typology that captures most of the variation in regime types - electoral democracy, electoral authoritarianism, liberal democracy, and closed authoritarianism. Electoral democracies have successful and fair elections, but lack the markers of democracy beyond that like rule of law, democratic constitutionalism, political accountability, and bureaucratic integrity (which liberal democracies have). Similarly, electoral authoritarianism hold elections but with no genuine threat to their dictatorial power, while closed authoritarianism holds no elections at all. A key distinction between electoral democracy and authoritarianism is the idea of social choice under conditions of freedom and equality - there are seven conditions needed for regular elections to be democratic: 1) empowerment - they allow citizens to exercise their power; 2) freedom of supply - there are multiple alternatives to chose from; 3) freedom of demand - the ability to form opinions off of freely available information; 4) inclusion - universal suffrage; 5) insulation - secret ballots shielded from outside pressure; 6) integrity - votes are counted completely and neutrally and weighed equally; 7) irreversibility - the winners assume office and can complete their terms. Authoritarian regimes can attack any of the 7 links in this chain to undermine the electoral process all together. Indeed, each and every one of these processes is subject to interference by authoritarians in different ways. Electoral authoritarian regimes make up ⅔ of all autocracies and are the most common regime type in the world. Their different forms are affected by the internal balance between their military, citizenry, and the international community.

DEMOCRACY - Jose Cheibub, et. all, "What Makes Democracies Endure?" Journal of Democracy 7, no. 1 (1996): 39-55.

If a country is to maintain a democracy it needs the following conditions: democracy, affluence, growth with moderate inflation, declining inequality, a favorable international climate, political learning and parliamentary institutions; This findinging is based on counting instances of survival and death of political regimes in 135 countries between 1950 and 1990. 1) Democracy - the idea that development under authoritarianism can segue into democratization lacks any evidentiary support. Indeed, levels of development are poor predictors of democratic transitions writ large. 2) Affluence - However, wealth is a very good predictor of a democracies ability to survive, with richer democracies having far better odds of surviving (with $1000 in per capita income corresponding to 8.5 years of life, compared to 100 years for $4000 in per capita income). The more economically developed a democracy, the more stable, full stop. Indeed, at a certain level of wealth, no democracy has ever failed. 3) Growth with Moderate Inflation - poor countries can maintain democracy if they have growth with moderate inflation. In contrast, economic downturns are dangerous for poor democracies, leading to a 1 in 4 chance of regime change. 4) Declining Inequality - having shrinking inequality also makes the predicted length of a regime much longer. 5) A Favorable International Climate - the international conditions surrounding a democracy predict its survival better than development - the more democracies there are in a region, and the more there are in the world, the more likely democracy is likely to survive in a new context 6) Political Learning - having a history of democracy and democratic collapse decreases the odds of a democracy surviving because the lessons of how to overthrow a democracy last longer than the lessons of how to build one. 7) Parliamentary Institutions - the higher levels of gridlock and instability within presidential systems (especially multipartite presidential systems) makes them more prone to collapse, with parliamentary democracies lasting over 50 years longer than presidential ones, even when controlling for income and development levels - the prevalence of presidentialism can likely be explained by its relationship with military rule (22 / 28 regimes emerging from military dictatorships chose presidentialism) A key conclusion from all of this is that poverty, especially low growth poverty and high inequality poverty, is a trap that makes democratization almost impossible - this can be partially checked by good institutions, but not wholly.

RACE - Dancygier, Rafaela M., and David Laitin. "Immigration into Europe: Economic Discrimination, Violence, and Public Policy." The Annual Review of Political Science 17 (2014): 43-64.

Immigrants can be excluded from the labor market and subject to more animus if the initial reactions to them are more severe (and violent) and thus they are more likely to form into enclaves. Thus, initial reactions to immigrants shape their integration into the community and economy, which shape native responses to them. Citizenship status and demographic makeup may be key to the response of nations to immigration influxes. Native prejudice and other factors lead to the exclusion of immigrants from labor markets to create forced suboptimal returns and net costs to the economy - a trend that is especially concerning with immigration levels still rising. There may be a strong overlap between economic and political explanations for opposition to immigrants. For one, rising levels of immigration may lead to increased concerns about immigration by locals, which can lead to cultural 'statistical' stereotypes when immigrants invest less in human capital accumulation during economic down turns. Immigrants gaining economic advantages and being economically rooted can also be prevented by immigrant-native violence and immigrant-state (i.e. police) violence. This violence will encourage immigrants to self-segregate and stick within their ethnic enclaves, which will exclude them from the labor market more, and only reinforce fears and stereotypes. It is thus hard to tell whether the economically excluded donkey proceeds the culturally biased cart, or vice versa. Still, it would seem that discrimination leads immigrants to take a different approach to market integration and to self-isolate in ethnic enclaves, which subsequently shapes native reactions against them. Granting citizenship status to immigrants helps them with economic and cultural assimilation by increasing the ease of integration into the work force. The more diverse an immigrant population is within a country, the less likely it is to form enclaves and thus the less threatening it is likely to seem to the public.

AUTHORITARIANISM - Thomas Pepinsky, "Economic Crisis and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes: Indonesia and Malaysia in Comparative Perspective," (New York: Cambridge University Press: 2009).

In the 1990s debt crises, Indonesia reformed, embraced democracy and liberalization, whereas Malaysia remained insular and resisted democratization and liberalization. This book explores the root of that divergence, and argues that the political coalitions within each country (and whether those coalitions hold fixed, mobile, or both forms of capital) was key to the approach it took to economic collapse. When regimes are united they will always choose policy that protects the interests of their supporters in times of crisis and this will allow a consolidation of support around the regime, but when regimes are divided, it can lead to muddled responses to the economic crisis and a political crisis as a result. - "When supporters have mutually incompatible preferences over adjustment policies, adjustment policies appear incoherent, and political coalitions are fundamentally unsustainable. When preferences are compatible, regimes adopt their supporters' favored policies, crush their opponents, and survive." (2-3) Soeharto's New Order regime in Indonesia was divided between a variety of groups with contradictory preferences and capital holdings (both mobile and fixed capital), which made cohesive policy impossible and led to regime collapse. Whereas Malaysia's regime was cohesive and had similar capital investments, and thus the regime was able to take a coherent reform approach that allowed it to maintain strong support and power. Thus, the key to stability in regimes is the ability of the regime to provide favorable policies to its support groups during times of protest (4) A key assumption behind this argument is that a regime's supporters will abandon their support without material incentives to maintain it. Thus, in times of economic crisis, managing the interests of their coalition is the key concern of authoritarian regimes. Ideology is only peripheral is the support such a regime will receive. Instead, what is key is the policy approach the regime takes when faced with a twin crises of currency devaluation and systemic insolvency in banking. This approach clashes with the 'crisis' approach taken by Greene in that Greene focuses on when resources run out for regimes, whereas here the focus is on how coalition make different demands that are either achievable or incompatible for rulers during times of crisis This approach emphasis the economic foundations of authoritarian rule and how that rule is rooted in the economic interests of their coalitions and the policies they take to uphold those interests

STATES & STATE-BUILDING - Diana Rodriguez-Franco, "Internal Wars, Taxation, and State Building," American Sociological Review 81, no. 1 (Feb., 2016): 190-213.

Internal wars can help state building by building up the capacity of the government to tax its population (and especially its elites) - although the ability of external wars to build up tax capacity is acknowledged, the ability to internal wars to do so is not An internal war can help a state build up its tax capacity when the war creates solidarity among elites - this can occur because the wars threaten the security interests of the elite, because they increase the dependence of the elites of the state, or because they stimulate patriotism in elites. In other words, internal war can create new incentives for elites to accept paying taxes, which can allow a state to build up its tax infrastructure overall. These effects only hold, however, so long as elites don't choose to invest their resources in private armies instead of the state itself. These effects also require that a state has a minimum fiscal/military capacity and relies on taxation as a significant source of revenue for the state {which seems to be seriously problematic assumptions} This hypothesis can be confirmed with the cases of Colombia, Malaysia, and Singapore Colombia: escalating violence in the civil war lead elites to embrace a wealth tax as their way of supporting the state - this tax continued to have popularity because it saw immediate results, was supported by a conservative leader, and was matched by increased taxes on other classes as well - this lead to a huge increase in the tax capacity of the Colombian state overall {this case seems to lack any response to the problem of the counterfactual, however} Malaysia: conflict from the communist party after WWII lead to the elites to feel they were under attack and to embrace more taxation from the state in return for stronger defense - this then spurred taxation reform that allowed for more progressive taxation in the long run Singapore: Growing radicalism among the working class lead the British to implement progressive taxation which massively increased the tax infrastructure and got support from the elites {Big issue with these conclusions is all three states examined had at least moderate state administrations prior to the conflict - Malaysia and Singapore because of colonization, Colombia as a product of earlier development}

PRES & PAR - Mainwaring, Scott. "Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy: The Difficult Combination." Comparative Political Studies 26, no. 2 (July 1993): 198-228.

It is the combination of multipartism and presidentialism that makes presidential democracies more volatile. While presidential systems do suffer from an inability to handle major crises, higher odds of gridlock, and a tendency towards individualism and populism because of direct popular elections, these alone do not explain its instability. Multipartism, specifically, is dangerous in presidential systems because, in contrast to parliamentary systems, presidential ones don't have the tools for dealing with legislative deadlock, which is more likely when there are more than two parties. Further, two party systems help keep ideologically radical parties out of the system via higher barriers of entry - meaning multiparty systems are more likely to suffer from such radicalism. Finally, presidential systems lack the tools needed to maintain coalitions because of the differences in cabinet assignments, legislative support, and term limits, all of which leave the president with more unstable policy coalitions.

TERMS - Totalitarianism

Linz (2000) - A regime is totalitarian if it has a clear ideology, a simple mass party/mobilization organization, and concentrated power in an individual and/or a small group of collaborators without any form of peaceful accountability. - In totalitarian regimes, "citizens participation in and active mobilization for political and collective social tasks is encouraged, demanded, rewarded, and challenged through the party system"

TERMS - One-Party Rule

Magaloni and Kricheli (2010) - There are two types of one party regimes - single-party regimes (which proscribe opposition parties' participation in elections) and dominant party regimes (which permit the opposition to compete in multiparty elections that usually do not allow alternation in political power). One party regimes now make up 57% of authoritarian regimes and 33% of global regimes. One party rule has two key advantages - a bargaining function, which allows mediation with elites, and a mobilizing function, which allows for the mobilization of the populace. This roughly corresponds with Schedler's (2002)definition of electoral authoritarianism, which are regimes that "hold elections and feign at democratic legitimacy while yielding no political control." It also corresponds with Levitsky and Way's (2010) Definition of Competitive Authoritarianism, which are electoral systems functioning on a fundamentally uneven playing field - where competition is real but unfair.

AUTHORITARIANISM - Guillermo O'Donnell, "Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies," in The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies, ed. Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond, and Mark Plattner (Boulder: Lynee Reinner, 1999)

Many countries in Latin America and Eastern Europe have polyarchies that have weak of intermittent horizontal accountability - there are free and fair elections with an open exchange of ideas (vertical accountability) - but inchoate party systems, poorly defined public policy, sudden policy reversals, and fears of government corruption all limit the effectiveness of democracy. Polyarchies are a combination of three historical currents - democracy, liberalism, and republicanism, which all clash and coexist with each other. Democracy involves the procedures of free choice and association seen in elections, liberalism the idea that some rights should not be encroached upon by any power, republicanism the idea that there is a civic obligation to discharge public duties and serve the public interest when in government roles. All three of these need to be balanced for democracy to be successful and the rule of law stable, and too much of any one of them is problematic (excessive liberalism is laissez-faire oligarchic rule, excessive democracy is majoritarianism, and excessive republicanism is paternalistic rule by elites.) The mixing of these three currents leads to a wide variety of democracies in the world. Part of the problem is that many new democracies, like those in Latin America, have inherited a ready made legal and constitutional structure for democracies but have implemented that structure without the underlying normative expectations and modes of action that are needed to make them efficacious. Specifically, there is often a lack of horizontal accountability, whereby state institutions consistently check themselves and uphold their obligations to the public good and the rule of law. Indeed, it is often seen as a regular part of democracy for public officials to personally benefit from their posts. This tendency also shows itself in executives trying to enact their mandate by bypassing the restraints of the state - Thus, the 'good conscience' of trying to uphold the public mandate leads the executive to wholly disregard liberal and republican constraints and try to eliminate any checks to its power. There are two forms of failures of horizontal accountability: encroachment - the unlawful encroachment by one state agency on the authority of another; and corruption - the unlawful advantages public officials obtain for themselves and their families. Democracies with vertical accountability but little republicanism or liberalism often have checks on corruption (via electoral transparency) but not on encroachment.

Terms - Multipartism

Multiparty presidential democracies - where a presidential democracy has more than two dominant parties that consistently compete for and win votes - are identified by Mainwaring (1993) as especially dangerous towards democracy because they increase the odds of polarization and deadlock and decrease the odds of coalition building.

TERMS - Rule of Law

O'Donnell (2004) - A true democracy requires a democratic rule of law that ensures "political rights, civil liberties, and mechanisms of accountability which in turn affirm the political equality of all citizens and constrain potential abuses of state power." - The rule of law is thus linked with many of the pillars of democracy, and is essential for protecting those pillars. A minimal definition of the rule of law is "that whatever law exists is written down and publicly promulgated by an appropriate authority before the events meant to be regulated by it, and is fairly applied by relevant state institutions including the judiciary" - The law must be fair and must be equally applied if it is to be the rule of law and not rule by law.

TERMS - Horizontal Accountability

O'Donnell (2004) - All democracies have three types of accountability - 1) vertical electoral accountability from elections, 2) societal accountability, exercised by interest groups and individuals mobilizing for their interests and making demands on the state for redress and accountability, 3) horizontal accountability, when properly authorized state institutions act to prevent, redress, or punish the presumably illegal actions (or in-actions) of public officials - the first form of accountability is required for democracy, the second two vary significantly. O'Donnell (1999) - There are two forms of failures of horizontal accountability: encroachment - the unlawful encroachment by one state agency on the authority of another; and corruption - the unlawful advantages public officials obtain for themselves and their families. Democracies with vertical accountability but little republicanism or liberalism often have checks on corruption (via electoral transparency) but not on encroachment.

PRES & PAR - Linz, Juan L. "The Perils of Presidentialism." Journal of Democracy 1, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 51-69.

Parliamentarism is, on balance, more conducive to stable democracy than presidentialism. There are a variety of issues inherent to presidentialism: 1) the president acts as both head of state and chief executive, which makes the head of state a politically polarizing figure, not a uniting one; 2) both the president and the legislature have competing democratic mandates; 3) the fixed terms of office make it difficult to adjust to bad governance and make presidentialism excessively rigid; 4) the direct election of presidents combined with their fixed terms both lend themselves to populist thinking within the office, and make losses to feel more high-stakes for political opponents; 5) the gap between the symbolic authority endowed to the president, and the limits on their authority created by the other branches, encourage presidents to resort to extra-constitutionalism to fulfill their mandates. The benefits of parliamentarianism are well demonstrated with the democratic transition in Spain.

PRES & PAR - Carey, John M. "Competing Principals, Political Institutions, and Party Unity in Legislative Voting." American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 1 (January 2007): 92-107.

Parties in parliamentary systems tend to be more unified when they win a majority, and tend to lose less because of disunity. In contrast, parties in presidential systems tend to see no boost in floor unity and no gain in cohesion when they win the presidency. This is because when there is more than one actor (principal) who controls resources that can influence legislator's votes within a party, the party is more likely to become divided. The separation of powers within presidentialism leads to multiple, competing actors influencing a party, whereas the unity of parliamentary systems avoids this problem. Further, separate direct elections for the presidency creates paths for political success outside the typical realm of party discipline.

TERMS - Party Institutionalization

Party system institutionalization - defined by the stability of interparty competition, the legitimacy of parties, and the depth of party roots (anchoring) in society - is key for understanding party systems. Institutionalization leads to established, clear, stable, and widely accepted expectations about behavior, practice, and organization within the party system. (Mainwaring & Torcal, 2006). Four factors were particularly important for explaining the level of institutionalization, including adaptability, coherence, complexity, and autonomy (Huntington, 2006)

POPULISM - Kenneth Roberts, "Market Reform, Programmatic (De)alignment, and Party System Stability in Latin America," Comparative Political Studies 46, no. 11 (2012): 1422-1452.

Party volatility in Latin America can be linked to the critical juncture of market liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s, as countries transitioned from import substitution industrialization (ISI). Market reforms that were adopted by conservstive leaders allowed leftist parties an opportunity to coherently oppose them, and strengthened the party system. But market reforms that were adopted by liberal leaders lead to a decline in clear party identities (dealignment) and programmatic distinctions, which decreased voter allegiance and led to the rise of radical left counter movements heavily steeped in charismatic and populist leadership. "In some countries, neoliberal critical junctures aligned party systems programmatically, stabilizing the electorate and providing institutional channels for the articulation of societal dissent from market orthodoxy. In much of the region, however, these critical junctures dealigned party systems by generating uncertainty about parties' programmatic commitments. This uncertainty eroded programmatic linkages between parties and voters and channeled dissent into anti-system forms of social and political protest." (Roberts - 1424) Different types of parties were better able to weather the transition to neoliberalism as well, with parties more reliant on labor-mobilization and mass-based participation on the left having a harder time incorporating market reforms into their system, compared with more elitist parties with top-down and clientelistic links to patrons. Parties require coherent and stable policy platforms to recruit stable voting basis, and it was precisely the process of liberalization that made such consistency for left leaning parties impossible. Ironically, it was left leaning parties that often had the biggest advantage in liberalizing because right-wing parties were more likely to face significant opposition from the left. There are thus three broadly differentiable trends that occured because of the critical juncture of market liberalization in Latin America - there were a) junctures that helped align party systems programmatically (which happened when conservatives lead the reforms and liberals resisted it - this was seen in Brazil, Chile, and the Dominican Republic), b) junctures that helped dis-align party systems (which happened where liberals lead the reforms and conservatives were in the opposition - this was seen in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela), and c) junctures that had a neutral effect on party systems (where conservatives lead the reforms and no strong party on the left existed to offer opposition - this is seen in Colombia, Guatemala, and Panama). In dealigned party systems, support for new parties surged to massive levels after dealignment.

RACE - Inglehart, Ronald, and Pippa Norris. "Trump and the Populist Authoritarian Parties: The Silent Revolution in Reverse." American Political Science Association 15, no. 2 (June 2017): 443-454.

People support populist-authoritarian movements because of a cultural backlash against the post-materialism of the late 20th century, but support for these groups have been growing so much recently because of the growing insecurity among white workers caused by stagnating wages, the decline of manufacturing, and the rise of economic inequality. This was sparked, in part, by the post-materialist diversion of politics away from economic issues. The post-materialist change was caused by the growing levels of security amongst the post-WWII generation, which lead to a shift in values and priorities (in a largely liberal direction) compared to those raised in insecurity prior to WWII who are more prone to authoritarianism. There are two key questions for the rise of populism - 1) what motivates people to support populist far-right movements? 2) why is populist far-right support so much higher today than it was several decades ago in high-income countries? This paper argues that the answer to the first question is largely driven by the cultural backlash fueled by the rise of post-materialism after WWII, while the second question is answered by the growing levels of income inequality and economic insecurity (coupled with rising immigration) that faces working class whites in Europe and the U.S., which has reversed feelings of security and thus paused the decline in materialist and authoritarian sentiments throughout the West. Thus, growing economic insecurity and demographic change is fueling cultural insecurity, which is at the root of populism. Postmaterialism was 'its own gravedigger' in the sense that the rise of post-materialism lead the left to shift its voting base to the middle class and highly educated, and largely abandon the sentiments of the working class of issues of economics and immigration. This lead to a xenophobic and authoritarian backlash by those who worried their 'values' were being left behind, with cultural issues increasingly defining politics instead of economic ones. Consequently, less and less focus was placed on issues of redistribution and less being done to address inequality on both the right and left, which made economic inequality and the deprivation it causes only more salient for the far-right and more likely to be funnelled into nativism. Grading populist support along economic variable reveals little, but grading it along 'five cultural factors' "such as anti-immigrant attitudes and authoritarian values", such values were highly predictive of support (446)

POPULISM - Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, "The Ambivalence of Populism: Threat and Corrective for Democracy," Democratization 19, no. 2 (April 2012): 184-208.

Populism can both be a threat and a corrective to democracy. In particular, when looking at Dahl's conception of democracy, populism can be thought of as a threat to the democratic notion of public contestation (because it defines any opposition to itself as opposition to the people and the general will) but a corrective to the democratic notion of inclusiveness (because it includes groups left out of governance and disadvantaged by the status quo - this is seen in Latin America). The view of populism as a democratic corrective focuses on its efforts to give voices to groups otherwise left out of politics and to force elites to change their policies to match popular demands. This fits more within a radical conception of democracy than a liberal one. Liberal views of populism see it as a democratic pathology that arises in specific political and economic contexts and thus is a reaction to 'malfunctioning' democratic rule. This is seen most predominantly in more structuralist arguments about the rise of populism in Latin America. But this argument is also applied to modern Europe and the idea of 'modernization losers' and increasingly unrepresentative political parties. Some in this view argue that the supply side factors don't matter for populism, since they are universal, and that all that matters is if/when demand arises within a country. {I think this last sentence is maybe a persuasive view}. Under this view, populism tried to bypass traditional democracy via the empowerment of the people. This view, however, overlooks the idea that the people are the fundamental basis of political power within a democracy and have a right to set new boundaries when power isn't serving them. Radical views of populism, in contrast, see it as essential to democracy, not a pathology. Here, if the establishments of government are failing in their representation, this leads to an aggregation of demands by the public which then are integrated into governance via populism, which pits the people and their demands versus a demonized 'establishment' and looks to replace that establishment. "In this view, populism is the normative ideal of a radical democratic project which tries to aggregate different demands" (191) The minimal approach to populism (the one advocated for here) sees it as a form of democratic ambivalence. This sees the interaction between populism and democracy as contingent and not clear cut, and relies on Weyland's definition of populism (see up above). Under this view, populism in Europe is a way to fill the chasm that is growing between the governed and governors, and is neither good nor bad but a natural reaction to declining representation in governance. Parties in Europe are increasingly failing to engage with ordinary citizens, as seen with declining turnout, party membership, and growing voter volatility.

PRES & PAR - Cheibub, Jose Antonio. Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Presidentialism is more unstable than parliamentarism, but this is not because of intrinsic features of presidential democracies. There is no strong relationship between any of the characteristics of presidentialism and their eventually collapse. Presidential systems don't undermine the incentives for coalition building because minority parties can still gain from the policies produced by coalitions in presidential systems, even if excluded from office. This is affirmed by the fact that minority and coalitions governments are frequent occurrences in successful presidential systems. Instead, presidentialism is more prone to collapse because it has been adopted in countries inherently more prone to democratic collapse in the first place - those countries that were previously ruled by military dictatorships. It is this nexus between militarism and presidentialism that causes its instability, nothing else. And this nexus arises more out of the historical coincidence of when presidential democracies arose in the Cold War than out of any inherent feature of presidential regimes that appeal to military leaders.

RACE - Ivarsflaten, Elisabeth. "What United Right-Wing Populists in Western Europe? Re-Examining Frievance Mobilization Models in Seven Successful Cases." Comparative Political Studies 41, no. 1 (January 2008): 3-23.

Public grievances are crucial for the rise of new political movements, but the mechanisms for such grievances leading to the rise of right-wing populists are disputed. While some right-wing populist parties utilize economic grievances (a feeling of growing insecurity and anger of globalization), or grievances over political disillusionment (a feeling of lost sovereignty and bloated/corrupt governments), the single uniting focus of all successful right-wing populist parties are grievances over immigration. These findings are done looking at data from the European Social Survey and party platforms from 2002-3 across all right-wing parties in Europe. Grievances are essential for mobilizing new support for parties within a political system, and thus identifying which grievances are isolated by parties as important provides clear perspective on what unites the far right in Europe. This study looks at far rights parties in Austria, Flanders, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Norway. Overall, economic grievances gave no mobilization advantages to the populist right, along with issues over distrust of the EU or opposition to environmental regulation. All of these issues were more successfully mobilized by major right wing parties on the left and right. Meanwhile, "no populist right party was successful without mobilizing grievances over the immigration crisis better than all major parties of the left and right" (14) Indeed, overall, immigration policy preferences are a "close to perfect predictor of not voting for the populist right" - this is because those with liberal immigration policy preferences have "close to a zero probability of voting for the populist right" (15-7) - "For voters with very restrictive immigration policy preferences, the probability of voting for the populist right is somewhere between 15% and 20%." (17)

RACE - Fields, Barabara Jeanne. "Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America." New Left Review 181, (1990): 95-118.

Race is an ideology in the United States that still structures much of society - it provides the map through which the terrain of daily social life is navigated. This ideology was largely a result of the efforts by America's founders and settlers to reconcile the idea of political equality with the system of slavery, a reality itself stemming from the different treatment of European immigrants (who came voluntarily and brought with them established concepts of rights, which gave them a 'residuum of power,' and who had fixed terms of labor) and African immigrants (who came involuntarily and lacked the historical protections of Europeans, and had indefinite terms of labor). This ideology took a while to develop however, and was only enshrined once it was clearly incentivised by the economics of labor, the resistance of subjugation by European servants, their ability to resettle and establish independent economic lives in the lands of the west, and consequently established systems of law and custom that helped protect white rights in opposition to black rights (a legal edifice in part erected in response to Bacon's rebellion). All of this led to the construction of race as a result of economic incentives, creating an ideological road map for the navigation of daily life and privileges, which then became assumed as a natural part of the social world This ideology became the necessary supplement to the exercise of force over Black Americans in the United States because it forces racial subjugation into a subject of routine, constantly enforced and reinforced through daily actions that reenact the hierarchies it purports are natural and just. "Race explained why some people could rightly be denied what others took for granted: namely, liberty, supposedly a self-evident gift of nature's God. But there was nothing to explain until most people could, in fact, take liberty for granted—as the indentured servants and disfranchised freedmen of colonial America could not." (114) - Thus the creation of strong established political rights and the growth of the political community in the U.S. was the root cause of the creation of racial identity there

RACE - Hainmueller, Jens, and Daniel J. Hopkins. "Public Attitudes Toward Immigration." The Annual Review of Political Science 17 (2014): 225-49.

Self-interest/economic explanations for rising xenophobia fare far more poorly than explanations that focus on overarching and symbolic concerns about shifts in a nation's culture and society, often propelled by ethnocentrism and perceptions around assimilation. Where economics does have an effect on voters, it is through national anxiety about the state of the economy and not individual self-interest. Opposition to immigration on the far right is not well correlated with economic circumstances, and instead seems to be motivated by sociotropic concerns about the cultural impacts of immigration writ large, with a specific concern about threats to national identity. This thesis gains much more support than ones that focus on pocket-book concerns and the idea that immigrants will shift resource distribution away from people and thus cause animus out of self-interest. Peoples level of support for immigration don't seem to vary based on how much the immigrants skill levels overlap with their own - further proof of culture and values being the driving force behind these trends. Meanwhile, sociotropic assessments of the economy and cultural concerns like those surrounding language acquisition and ethnic homogeneity are very strong predictors of immigration views. Opposition to immigration can also be triggered by particularly salient events. There is mixed evidence on if personal exposure to immigrants, or changing sizes of immigrant groups within one's own community, is related to opposition to them

STATES & STATE-BUILDING - Robert H. Bates, Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010).

Specialists in violence who aligned themselves with cities were able to gain an advantage through capital and thus create a strong state and a good fighting apparatus The growth of new cities lead to demand for agriculture and better trade networks, which lead to an increase in the value for rural lands. As lands became more profitable, families hired more hands to protect their property, which led to competing private violence between elites - a process which culminated in the combination of economic and military power for specific families and a feudalistic system. Thus most successful at military force formed into monarchies. The costs of war lead monarchies to ally themselves with cities to access the capital in cities - but because cities were hard to conquer and their capital mobile, monarchs had to 'seduce' the cities by increasing growth in them through protection (market protectionism), procurement (access to low cost goods and food), and empowerment (a certain right of self governance) Local violence caused by individual fighting proved expensive, and thus justice proved increasingly profitable. Thus, people increasingly demanded systems of justice that could deliver quick verdicts that would prevent growing costs. Monarchs enforced this justice and peace via the repression (because of the king's clear power advantage) and enticement (by forcing local power holders into reliance on the crown) Monarchs also increased access to revenue by yielding control over public policy (their main bargaining chip) with the creation of parliaments and empowerment of those parliaments - this was especially true as commerce and industry increased and tax evasion became easier. Parliaments were seen as a way of legitimizing lending to governments by decreasing the risk of such loans. After WWII, developing country's rulers are able to look abroad for funds for the state, and thus have no need to build up institutions within the state to secure revenues, which leads to seriously underdeveloped political institutions. Rulers no longer needed to seek funding from the people and were no longer incentivized to increase the functioning of the state

TERMS - State Building

State-building is the process in which a political entity enshrines itself as the paramount rule-making institution within a given territory (Mann 1984; Migdal 1988). States achieve their monopoly on rule-making by co-opting, dominating, or neutralizing competing sources of social organization (Bates 2010; Ertman 1997; Mann 1984; Migdal 1984).

POPULISM - Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig, "Global Competition and Brexit," American Political Science Review 112, no. 2 (2018): 201-218.

Support for Brexit was higher in regions of Britain hit harder by economic globalization. This paper traces this phenomenon to surging imports from China over the past three decades causing a divergence in economic performance between different regions of the country. Those exposed to this shock have seen a decline in industry and employment. Thus, the 'losers' of globalization are left feeling displaced by this import shock and respond with support for more populist measures. The impact of such import shocks, more importantly, is sociotropic, not purely personal and economic (pocket-book), with people in affected regions responding similarly. Further, individual attitudes towards immigration are systematically worsened by the import shock, while not being systematically related to the actual levels of immigration within a region - pointing to sociotropic feelings of economic distress as a driving cause animus towards immigrants. There are three mechanisms through which the import shock may have increased support for Brexit - (1) the vote for Brexit could have been an anti-incumbent vote, with the 'losers' of globalization sending a message to the incumbent government and expressing their discontent with the government's approach through a generalized opposition to them; (2) a vote for Brexit can be seen as protectionist backlash by voters aware of globalization's role in their economic decline and thus seeking to 'take back control' of their economy; (3) a vote for Brexit could be tied ot immigration, with areas more concerned about immigration (perhaps because of economic decline) being more likely to support it. This findings of this paper support import shocks as decisive in the referendum, showing that if they hadn't happened the results would have been likely reversed. The results are further both highly statistically and substantively significant. Meanwhile, the inflow of immigrants within a region is a poor predictor of support for Brexit. Thus, 'globalization without compensation' should be key to understanding populism in the West right now - "The inability of governments to set up effective compensation policies for the "left behind" of globalization might have led to a crisis of embedded liberalism, breeding isolationism and neo nationalism." (217)

TERMS - Polyarchy

Term used by Dahl (1971) to refer to democracies in the real world - those governments with high levels of contestation and inclusiveness - which are striving for democracy. Under this view, democracy is an ideal type definition which cannot be achieved, with polyarchy being the real world manifestation of it.

TERMS - Fiscal Military Model

The "fiscal-military" theory developed by Bates (2010), Hinze (1906), Ertman (1997), Mann (1984), and Tilly (1985; 1992). It argues that emergent settled-societies turned to martial forces to protect their increasing wealth from the dangers of domestic anarchy and foreign pillaging (Bates 2010; Tilly 1992). In turn, to pay for their services, the populace accedes to taxation to pay for the protecting forces. But the recurring threat of geopolitical conflict requires an increasingly well-armed military. Thus, increases in state-revenues are needed, and gained through further taxation, land-appropriation, or conquest. Consequently, the state apparatus grows to collect further revenue from new sources (Tilly 1985). The nascent state also assumes the role as regulator of domestic disputes to prevent internal conflict that would threaten the local economy (Bates 2010). Laws delineate acceptable behaviors and threaten violence to keep people in line.

RACE - Stepan, Alfred, and Juan Linz. "Comparative Perspectives on Inequality and the Quality of Democracy in the United States." Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 4 (December 2011): 841-855.

The U.S. is (and has consistently been) uniquely unequal for a developed democracy. This is because of a mixture of five factors that make the U.S. political system majority constraining and thus equalizing reform especially hard to pass: 1) the unique number of veto players in the U.S. (four), which limits the capacity for status-quo shifting policies. Very few other countries have more than two veto players. 2) the structure of the Senate, which is deeply malapportioned 3) the disproportionate power of the Senate (aided by the filibuster, its appointment powers, and veto power over House bills), 4) the 10th Amendment's reservation of rights to the states, 5) the difficulty of the U.S. system of constitutional amendments. The process of racial disenfranchisement in the south was sanctioned by law (state constitutions) and uniquely enforced through the consistent and systematic inaction of the federal government. Even today, the U.S. remains unique is how unequal it is in almost all regards. The massive impediments to effective policy change in the U.S. is reflected in its deficiency welfare programs. This is in spite of the massive demand for inequality reducing measures in the U.S. public. U.S. federalism increases this problem by decreasing the federal government's prerogative on key social programs and fuelling a race to the bottom on corporate tax rates (and thus state revenues).

RACE - Marx, Anthony W. "Race-Making and the Nation-State." World Politics 48, no. 2 (January 1996): 180-208.

The U.S., South Africa, and Brazil all started with similar racial divisions and histories of slavery. In both the U.S. and South Africa, attempts to build the nation state after the civil war and Boer War led to efforts by the government to appease a divided (and armed) white population - forcing a strategy of white unification via black degradation. In contrast, Brazil lacked such a strong division and a dominant threat of force from one of its racial groups, and had no civil war to end slavery, so was able to avoid the racial construction of their nation and instead embrace and ethos of racial diversity (with remaining inequality). Ironically, however, it was the institutional aspect of discrimination that allowed for the racial solidarity needed to resist it in the U.S. and South Africa. Referring to the post conflict equilibriums - "Agreement on a racially defined "other" as a common enemy defined and encouraged white unity. Thus, the same issue of race that had exacerbated prior conflict was used to heal it, as racial domination gradually transformed a potential triadic conflict among white factions and blacks into a more manageable dyadic form of "white over black"" (182) - Thus, the reinforcement of norms of 'racial domination' and of unified racial identity were a means of "reinforcing and consolidating the nation state" for both the U.S. and South Africa The unintended effect of the racial domination in both the U.S. and South Africa was a promotion of black protest which eventually destabilized the state and forced reform, meanwhile, Brazil faced no such threat from strongly segregationist policies and racial conflict was avoided (even if other forms of inequality were rampant). Economic propositions for the end of discrimination fall short because they fail to explain how South Africa maintained aparthied for decades after it became a signficant source of pressure on their international trade relationships and businesses after 1948, the state pursued apartheid despite the tremendous cost of regulation and the manifold inefficiencies. Throughout, white workers' demands for privilege were met" (189-90) Similarly, labor movements in the U.S. were willing to sacrifice the benefits of stronger advocacy for maintained racial segregation, showing that cultural and political distinctions, not economic benefits, were at the heart of discrimination. The origins of the different racial responses in these three states came from the bargains of the states in trying to keep the nation together after emancipation / faced with a free black population. Once coalitions were formed around white-alliances at the cost of black subjugation, it created path dependencies of racial domination difficult to break with without concerted social opposition

AUTHORITARIANISM - Dan Slater, Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

The central question behind authoritarianism is why elites are prone to act collectively in some political systems more than others? The ability of an authoritarian regime to survive and succeed is completely dependent on 'elite collective action.' Different levels of elite coordination correspond with different levels of contentious politics within a state, which is a key determinant of what kind of state emerges. The key thesis of this book is that consistent contentious politics with the populous help make elites feel threatened and encourages them to coalesce around the construction of a more powerful state that can better protect them - when a wide range of elites feel threatened in their property, privileges, and persons by contentious politics, they form pacts and support institutional bullworks against popular resistance. Thus, collective fear among elites driven by 'permanent and difficult' threats to their power and safety are an essential feature in creating good institutions in authoritarian states. This is the process of ordering power, whereby coalesced elites can create effective systems of state control and development. "As an especially sturdy foundation for elite collective action, protection pacts facilitate the formation of powerful states, well-organized parties, cohesive militaries, and durable authoritarian regimes - all at the same time." (6) Elites are the key issue in most authoritarian regimes, and figuring how to tame them is the essential question - while monetary incentives can be important in this end, they can also be fleeting - thus collective and shared fear is a much more effective mechanism. The variations in type and timing of contentious politics within a state are thus key determinants of its success. The two key factors that make the type of contentious politics more likely to result in cohesion among elites are if it 1) is seen as endemic and not episodic and 2) is seen as involving unmanageable levels of mass mobilization (this is most likely with class conflicts in urban areas that exacerbate communal tensions, since class conflict is most likely to result in redistributive demands which are feared by all elite equally). The key factor that makes the timing of contentious politics more likely to result in elite cohesion is if its onset is prior to an effort to creat an authoritarian leviathan - since if it is before, it can be used as an impetus for creating effective state institutions, whereas if it is after, such a focus on strengthening the state will be harder to justify. Strong coalitions for a state are made up of four groups - 1) state officials (including the military and police), 2) economic elites, 3) the middle class, and 4) communal elites (such as religious figure heads). Having all of these elites in a cohesive coalition allows for the creation of durable institutions that allow elites to coordinate behavior and express their interests (like bureaucracies, parties, and militaries). Without such a cohesive ruling apparatus, the state is likely to fail. "If a regime is founded in the absence of endemic and unmanageable conflict, it can never become a protection pact - any subsequent conflicts will as likely turn elites against the incumbent regime for its failure to provide protection as it will incite them to seek collective shelter under its continuance. But the inverse does not hold true. A regime born as a protection pact may gradually lose its protective logic as the threats of yesterday fade into the distant past." (19) - in contexts where protective pacts have faded, well enforced norms of action within regimes and remaining institutions can help maintain the government This thesis is demonstrated in southeast Asia, where Malaysia and Singapore succeeded at creating elite cohesion around opposition to a Chinese ethnic lower class, resulting in successful states (a case of domination); where Thailand, The Philippines, and Vietnam faced intermittent and manageable threats to elites which lead to 'flimsy' state institutions and little elite cohesion (a case of fragmentation); and where Burma and Indonesia faced regional rebellions, which enabled the states military instead of elite coalitions and thus lead to the building of militarized state (a case of militarization).

STATES & STATE-BUILDING - Joel Midgal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

The high optimism around state design after WWII has proven misbased and Euro-centric The post-war paradigm saw international organizations promoting the European nation state form as the only form for states and state building - this came with the European assumption that state easily do, and always should, provide the 'rules of the game' for society, regulating all parts of life - Indeed, the complete control of social life is part of the ideal-type definition of the state The need for the state to control social rules is rooted to its efforts for survival - states that controlled social rules could mobilize their people for war and taxes and administrative goals thus had an advantage - thus, laws, courts, and the police served to regulate the social life of populations so that people's behavior could be subordinated into the desired paths of the state But new states have struggles to assert social control - this is in part because such efforts are often resisted by all the other organizations that shape social life in human communities and give people a logic by which to live and survive through symbolic configurations- thus, one of the key struggles of current states is gaining a monopoly on this element of social control The international community has normalized such control because it is assumed in the west - in new states such control is indicated across three factors: 1) compliance (where people follow the rules), 2) participation (where people participate in the state), and 3) legitimization (where people believe in the state's rules and its right to make them) Many new societies are weblike in their social construction, however, with many local leaders also constructing social rules - social control is dispersed and non-centralized - yet these states are trying to squeeze these complicated social systems into a European model of legitimacy and sovereignty

DEMOCRACY - Laurence Whitehead, "Three International Dimensions of Democratization," in The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas, ed. Laurence Whitehead, 1-24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

The international context surrounding democratization is often overlooked, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of the world's democracies stem from the era of the Cold War, WWII, and decolonization There are three main headings under which international influence aid democratization: 1) Contagion - This is the most simplified and least explanatory of the headings and focuses merely on the fact that democracy tends to cluster in certain geographic areas, showing a phenomenon of contagion from one country to another that is remarkably powerful in predicting the place of states. This would seem to stem from the fact that the expectations of citizens, and choice of governments, is highly influenced by the experience of neighbors. This stems in part from the high level of success associated with the worlds leading democracies in the US, Japan, and Western Europe. 2) Control - This view democratization as something carefully administered and implemented from abroad, which the key example of the U.S. trying to stem the spread of castro-ism in central america and their efforts to ensure non-Soviet regimes in decolonized states (although their record in either case is far from perfect) - still, "almost ⅔ of the democracies of the world exist because of acts of imposition or intervention from without" - this helps explain the contagion phenomenon via international realms of influence and intervention from different states (areas under U.S. influence saw the spread of democracy since such democracy was key to U.S. legitimacy, areas under Soviet influence the spread of autocracy). Further, for European powers, democratization was seen as a means of de-escalation and self-protection during decolonization processes. 3) Consent - But what do domestic actors and groups think of such democratization - while there is international pressure for democratization, successful democratic regimes require positive support and involvement from civil and political society. While this is a more inherently domestic process, it is influenced by international considerations in four ways: 1) territorial limits, which often require negotiation and international mediation when being formed and thus promote processes of popular consent, 2) international structures of consent - where regional blocs of successful democratic states provide support and incorporation for democratizing neighbors, incentivizing their democratic growth, as seen in the EU, 3) National democratic actors - early on in democratization processes, international actors can provide legitimacy to democratic factions within polities, but eventually have to withdraw to give them the necessary autonomy to function, and 4) international demonstration effects - which is the fact that international demonstrations of democracy deeply influence popular preferences for their own government, and that there has been a massive spread in the desire for a free life associated with democracies All of this serves to show that democratization is impossible in a purely 'domestic' sense in the modern world. Any explanation not focused on early Europe and the U.S. that ignored issues of control over sovereignty misses a huge amount of explanatory power. The most famous example of this is Eastern Germany's move towards democratizations, which was deeply international. Democratization, further, is a very slow and drawn out process often relying on international support and subject to backsliding - this process includes the transition to a new form of governance itself; the institutional design of the new 'rules of the game'; the social foundations of political, civil and economic support for the new regime; the creation of norms that dictate acceptable action (and which are especially shaped by international thinking); and popular sovereignty, whereby the people are entrusted with their own institutions - thus, in almost every way, democratization is a both domestic and international phenomenon.

AUTHORITARIANISM - Eva Bellin, "The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective," Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (2004): 139-57

The key question for this article is why the Middle East and North Africa have been so singularly resistant to democratization? There are five common explanations for this phenomenon: 1) Civil society is weak and an ineffective champion of democracy in this region; 2) the economy is state controlled which makes it ahrd for autonomous powers to counter the state; 3) poverty, illiteracy, and inequality are rampant which makes cohesion by the masses difficult and support for democracy by elites fleeting; 4) the region is geographically isolated from democracy's epicenter; 5) the culture of Islam distinguished the region and makes it inhospitable to democracy. But these approaches focus on the wrong question - the question isn't why democracy never consolidated in this region, but why it was never even initiated in the first place, which is what makes the region unique. The key factor in repressing any attempts at democracy is the power of the state, since a strong, coherent, and effective state apparatus has an almost insurmountable power - thus, what makes the ME and NA unique is not their lack of prerequisites for democracy but the robustness of the authoritarianism in the region and the capacity of the state's coercive apparatus to suppress democratic initiatives. It is important to note here that the capacity and will of a state are two different things. There are four key variables that determine how robust a state's coercive apparatus is: 1) A state's coercive apparatus is more robust when it has better fiscal health; 2) a state's coercive apparatus is more robust when it successfully maintains international support networks; 3) a state's coercive apparatus is more robust when it is less institutionalized (in the sense that institutionalization makes the military more rule-governed, predictable, and meritocratic [and often as a result more open to reform]); 4) a state's coercive apparatus is more robust when it has to face lower amounts of popular mobilization. The ME and NA rank highly in all four of these measures of state coercive capacity. First, few of these states have faced economic collapse, and export revenues have allowed for protected funds for security apparatuses. Second, the region ha unique levels of international support because the region profited massively from the competition of the Cold War via patronage from both superpowers, something that continued with the U.S. after the Cold War. Third, most militaries in the region are patrimonial and poorly institutionalized, which makes them less open to reform. Fourth, popular mobilization in the region remains weak, with few cross-class coalitions, since liberalization is historically identified with colonialism in the region and because there is an ideologically rich alternative to liberal democracy in Islamist ideology. And fifth, there exists a credible threat that motivates states in building up their security apparatus and trying to ensure their coercive strength remains uninhibited, in the form of Israel.

PRES & PAR - Samuels, David J. and Matthew S. Shugart. Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers: How the Separation of Powers Affects Party Organization and Behavior. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

The separation of powers in a presidential system allows for an electoral divergence between their legislative and executive voter basis, in a way that is impossible in parliamentary systems. Thus, parties and party politics differ substantially under different constitutional formats, with presidential systems leading to 'presidentialized' political parties. Presidential parties have separate origin (they face competing incentives in the electoral arena) and separate survival (they both have fixed, but variant terms), both of which undermine incentives for party cohesion and decrease unified leadership. This undermines a party's ability to delegate and enforce coordinated action. In contrast, parliamentarized parties avoid these issues because they have cohesive electoral and accountability processes. Presidentialized parties will rarely occur in parliamentary systems, and vice-versa. Prominent examples of presidentialized parties are Lula de Silva's success as a presidential candidate in Brazil, in spite of his parties failure in congressional elections, and Margaret Thatcher's ouster as Prime Minister in the United Kingdom, in spite of her success in the electorate.

TERMS - Democracy

The two most common definitions are the procedural ones - the first outlined by Shumpeter (1947) as "that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote." and the second outlined by Dahl (1971) including the two dimensions of 1) contestation (how government enables opposition, public contestation, and political competition), 2) inclusiveness (how much the population can participate in controlling and contesting the government). However, the definitional literature on this term is obviously very vast and half the works from this week are just about defining it.

RACE - Gest, Justin. The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2016.

The white working class in both the U.S. and U.K. are suffering from a sense of marginalization and deprivation, caused by the gap between their expectations of social and political status, and the reality of that status during an era of globalization, demographic shifts, and political realignment. This is reflected in the rise of post-traumatic cities throughout the U.S. and the U.K., where the sense of deprivation and status loss for the working class white population is especially severe. There are dominant narratives of white working class resentment that focus on economics (the decline of manufacturing and effects of globalization) on morality (whites clinging to the unfair advantages of their race, especially the white working class), or on demographics (the decline in racial homogeneity in both Europe and the U.S. since WWII). The establishment of white privilege throughout history has made such privileges 'the natural order of things' and makes disturbances to it feel like an unfair denial. This feeling of being demoted from the center of a country's economy, society, and politics, leads to resentment expressed as populism. "white working class people are consumed by their loss of social and political status in social hierarchies, particularly in relation to immigrant and minority reference groups. Their politics are motivated and pervaded by a nostalgia that reveres, and seeks to reinstate, a bygone era." (16)

TERMS - Clientelistic Party Linkages

There are clientelist linkages, which rely on high levels of institutional capacity but low levels of ideological coherence. Here, parties "invest in administrative-technical infrastructure but not in modes of interest aggregation and program formation... [creating] bonds with their following through direct, personal, and typically material side payments." As Kitschelt outlines, these party linkages can function either through a rent-seeking mechanism, whereby rich individuals purchase influence through campaign contributions, or via a goods-distribution mechanism, where a wider variety of benefits are distributed to voters in exchange for votes (Kitschelt [2000], 849). Either way, the need to monitor commitments and exchanges ensures clientelism relies on a high level of institutional capacity, while the focus on material exchanges limits ideological coherence (K&K, 1458).

DEMOCRACY - Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

There are four main paths of political development - 1) from non-democracy to democracy via gradual consolidation and development (seen in the UK, with the process of industrialization and the growth of the middle class), 2) from non-democracy to democracy with intermittent collapses and attempts at re-establishing democracy (as seen with Argentina, where threatened elites have constantly undermined efforts at reform to aid the working class), 3) stable non-democracy caused by success as creating a relatively egalitarian and prosperous society (as seen in Singapore, where the state used industrialization to gain dominating control over the state), and 4) stable non-democracy caused by the maintenance of extreme inequality and exploitation and the use of violence to suppress movements towards equality (as seen in apartheid South Africa, where exploitative economies were maintained via mass systems of oppression that became self-sustaining). The argument of this work starts from a conception of a two-tiered society - with the rich on one end, opposed to redistribution, and the poor on the other, in favor of redistribution, making it an inherently conflictual relationship. Democracy will arise depending on the interaction of these social groups in their attempts to gain influence and power. This relationship can then be imposed onto a view of democracy as a regime that aims to benefit the majority of the populace, and non-democracy as a regime that aims to benefit the elites. This conflict between elites and the people is over two forms of power - de-facto power (natural power derived from brute force or sheer advantages) and de-jure power (power via the law and politics). Institutions are the means by which groups protect their current power for the future. The masses usually have de-facto power because of their mere size, but are unable to utilize it because of collective action problems and institutions that stratify the power of the elites. But when the masses are able to mobilize around their defacto power, elites will seek to make concessions around institutions and de jure power (such as expanded franchise) in order to placate them and their redistributive demands. Thus, democracy arises when elites make concessions around political power to avoid revolutionary threats from the people, and when those concessions are then enshrined in institutions. There is strong evidence that democratization has historically occurred when there are high levels of social conflict and the threat of revolution. Democracy will sustain itself when elites don't fear about sudden losses of de facto power and feel the need to solidify their power through violent acts (like coups) - such fear is most likely with sudden political shifts that seem threatening, such as the government moving too far left too quickly. There are, overall, seven different factors that help make democracy both more likely and more sustainable once it arises : 1) civil society - which organizes the masses and focuses their power; 2) shocks and crises - which can mobilize the masses but also enable elites for a coup; 3) sources of income and compositions of wealth - with landed elites having more stable income and thus being less susceptible to challenges and more resistant to democratization; 4) political institutions - with better checks on majoritarianism making democracy more palatable for elites; 5) inter-group identity - higher inequality increases the odds of mass mobilization but also increases the stakes of redistribution for elites, meaning it encourages rapid but fleeting democratization, with medium levels of inequality being ideal for sustained democratization; 6) the middle class - which can help fuel democratization by giving more power to the masses and lessen its threat to elites by giving the masses less interest in redistribution; 7) globalization - which makes capital flight easier and thus redistribution less threatening for elites (as long as wealth isn't based on large natural endowments or land within the country) - further, globalization makes repression more costly because it undermines trade

TERMS - Identitarian Party Linkages

There are identitarian linkages, which rely on low levels of institutional capacity but high levels of ideological coherence. This form of party linkage fits within the model of 'social-identity' formulated by both Lupu (2013) and Achen and Bartles (2016). Under this framework, voters form attachments to parties, not based on clear understandings of their policy platforms, but instead based on how parties serve to uphold their salient identities and the associated identitarian ideals - usually within societies with clear "ethnic, racial, occupational, [or] religious" divisions/hierarchies that parties can organize to protect (Achen and Bartles, 299). In this context, parties have a simple organizational task, since their constituencies are already delineated by salient markers of a voter's identity. However, they have to adopt clear messaging that appeals to these markers and programs that promise to promote the social ideals of these groups.

DEMOCRACY - Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 1967).

There are three routes to modernity: 1) a bourgeois revolution - this was the route taken by England, France, and the U.K. and combines capitalism with parliamentary democracy after a series of revolutions; 2) a conservative revolution - this was the route taken by Germany and Japan, and is also capitalist but with a strong revolutionary surge that passes through reactionary political forms culminating in fascism; 3) a peasant revolution - this is the route taken by communist nations and which involves revolutions originating among the peasants. "These stages are successive and historical and thus the steps taken by one country change the dimensions of the problem for the next country that takes the same or similar steps" Democracy aims (imperfectly) at doing three things: 1) checking arbitrary rulers, 2) replacing arbitrary rulers with just and rational ones, 3) allowing the population to participate in the making of rules Certain pre-industrial contexts are more favorable to democratization than others - in particular, Western Feudalism was far more favorable to democracy - in contrast, royal absolutism systems that have managed to survive for long periods of time are ill suited for modernization and democratization Key conditions for a democracy include an aristocracy with some balance between itself and the crown and the capacity for autonomous action, as well as the rise of a bourgeois revolution - when countries don't have an emergent bourgeois, it makes democracy (as in Russia and Germany) very difficult, since the articroacy becomes too powerful and can suppress democratization. Indeed, a key predictor of democratization is how the aristocracy of a country responded to the need for more taxes - if they did so by pursuing commercial gains (as in England, or partially in France) this was highly favorable to democracy, if they did so by relying more on serfdom on traditional extractive institutions (as in Eastern Europe) this was highly unfavorable to democracy and much more favorable for mass peasant revolts and insuent communism - similarly, where the landed upper class held down the labor force on the land in a stymied industrialization, it opened the door for fascism. Thus, there were three key factors that encouraged democratization: 1) the relationships of the landed upper classes to the monarchy, 2) their response to the requirements of production for the market, 2) the relationship between the landed upper class and town dwellers (i.e. the bourgeoisie), who can band together to overthrow autocratic rule to protect elite political interests and bourgeoisie economic and cultural ones - this combines for the following four step road map for democratization: 1) The development of a balance to avoid too strong a crown or too independent a landed aristocracy; 2) A turn toward an appropriate form of commercial agriculture, either on the part of the aristocracy or the peasantry; 3) The weakening of the landed aristocracy; 4) The prevention of an aristocratic-bourgeois coalition against the peasants and workers; 5) A revolutionary break from the past. These developments depended heavily on the 'taming of the agrarian sector' - "indeed, the English experience tempts one to say that getting rid of agriculture as a major social activity is one prerequisite for successful democracy. The political hegemony of the landed upper class had to be broken or transformed." -- Peasants had to become farmers producing for markets and the landed upper class either had to be subsumed within the commercial class or discarded by revolution

AUTHORITARIANISM - Beatriz Magaloni and Ruth Kricheli, "Political Order and One-Party Rule," Annual Review of Political Science, no. 13 (2010): 123-43

There has been a recent and massive increase in the prevalence of one-party autocracies in the world, which have now become the most common form of authoritarianism. There are two types of one party regimes - single-party regimes (which proscribe opposition parties' participation in elections) and dominant party regimes (which permit the opposition to compete in multiparty elections that usually do not allow alternation in political power). One party regimes now make up 57% of authoritarian regimes and 33% of global regimes. They also last longer than other types of dictatorships, have fewer coups, better security, and higher growth rates. One party regimes have two key advantages over other authoritarian regimes: 1) a bargaining function, whereby the party helps dictators bargain with elites and minimize potential threats to stability - this functions through three potential mechanism: (a) psuedodemocratic institutions allow autocrats to give voice to different groups in society, bargain with opponents, and make policy concessions, decreasing stress on institutions, (b) partis can allow dictators to effectively and efficiently distribute rents and economic incentives, and (c) parties can allow dictators to make credible commitments to power sharing, which placates elites who expect to gain benefits through the institutionalization of the party and who can use the party to punish the dictator, and which gives the dictator a means of gathering information on opposition to their rule; 2) a mobilizing function, whereby the party helps dictators mobilize mass support - here, the party can (a) be an effective means of distributing rents and economic goods to citizens, creating a "market of privileges that are allocated based on degrees of loyalty" and where disloyal citizens are punished via economic exclusion, (b) be an effective means of gauging public opinion towards the party and displaying public support for them, reinforcing the image of party invincibility, and (c) be an effective means of reducing coups by increasing the number of people with something to lose from a regime change, and giving the government the ability to mobilize citizens in support if a coup seems likely. There are two important challenges to the current literature on one party rule - 1) the functionalist challenge, which argues that the current literature fails at explaining why dictators rely on parties instead of other institutional features that could serve the same function; 2) the endogeneity challenge, which points out that autocrats might use ruling parties under certain conditions, which also effect regime survival prospects, meaning that correlations between one party rule and political/economic performance is a mistaken one. Responding to these challenges make it necessary to look at the origins of one-party systems - here, there are four historical pathways - 1) the military, which military autocrats create parties to mobilize the masses and counterbalance threats; 2) anarchy, where one-party systems are established after periods of war or civil disunity; 3) from democracy, where a democracy collapses into a single party system; and 4) from another form of one party rule, where liberalization or anti-liberalization lead to modifications of existing regimes Looking at a vast survey of one-party regimes, this article comes to three conclusions: 1) one-party dictatorships are frequently established in the ruins of other dictatorships, 2) the transitions from one dictatorship to another are the most common type of regime transition, and 3) one party regimes are the least likely to transform to democracy after their collapse The rise of one party autocracies after the Cold War may be because the end of the Cold War required states to show some degree of democratization, both the appease the U.S. and to be given access to the global economy. All dictators are faced with the guns versus votes dilemma, whereby bestowing too much power on either the military or the population makes him vulnerable to resistance by either.

PRES & PAR - Elgie, Robert. "From Linz to Tsebelis: Three Waves of Presidential/Parliamentary Studies?" Democratization 12, no. 1 (2005): 106-22.

There have been three waves of thinking within the field of presidentialism and parliamentarism: the first wave began with Linz's seminal article in 1990 and focused on the impact of regime type on the success of democracy; the second wave began shortly after Linz's article and added additional explanatory variables (like party systems and leadership powers) to additional outcome variables (like the quality of governance, not just its longevity); the third wave focuses less directly on presidentialism and parliamentarism, and instead integrates these systems into broader social science frameworks like the 'principle/agent' framework and the focus on 'veto' players. Wave 1 is epitomized by Linz, Wave 2 by Mainwaring, Wave 3 by Tsebelis and Strom.

DEMOCRACY - Ben Ansell and David Samuels, Inequality and Democratization: An Elite Competition Approach (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

There is a common perception that democratization always favors redistribution because it empowers the poor who represent the median voter, who will always want to take over property for their own good (this is known as redistributivist theories) - but this is misbased, and democratization is actually favorable to property rights because it promotes a stable rule of law and accountability. In this sense, the rise of democracy is about fear of the autocratic state, and not fear of the poor. Historically, unequal countries have tended to democratize earlier than equal ones. This book argues this is because democratization happens primarily when politically enfranchised, but rising economic groups, seek to rein in the power of autocratic elites with the ability to expropriate their income and assets. Thus, democracy arises out of a clash between existing elites (and their political power, but declining economic power) and a rising properitied middle class (and their political exclusion, but growing economic influence). Thus, property and democracy are very compatible, and taxation is what motivates representation. An important implication of this theory is that high levels of land inequality will stimy democracy because they will limit the ability of a middle class to rise up, while high levels of income inequality will usually result from the growth of the middle class, and will actually encourage the emergence of democracy because this groups is excluded from governance. Under this theory, the median voter is typically politically inert because they are far poorer than the middle class and lack the influence to effectuate democratization, unlike the rich middle class. Indeed, there is strong evidence that pre-industrial societies have very low levels of inequality because of the vast size of the peasantry, while industrializing societies more prone to democratization have much higher income inequality because of the success of the middle class. Thus, growing income inequality, when it follows economic development, facilitates regime change. An example of this phenomenon is China and the UK in the 1950s - China had low inequality because of its concentrated poverty, while the UK had high inequality because of industrialization, but it was the UK that democratized and China that sank into autocracy. In the 1800s, late democratizers (or non-democratizers) like Germany, Russia, Peru, Chile, and Java all had low levels of inequality which lends support to this thesis.

PRES & PAR - Svolik, Milan. "Authoritarian Reversals and Democratic Consolidation." American Political Science Review 102, no. 2 (May 2008): 153-68.

There is a difference between democratic regimes that survive because they are consolidated, and ones that survive because of favorable circumstances, even though they are unconsolidated. By distinguishing between these two types of regimes, you can gain better insight into what helps a regime consolidate versus what simply helps it survive even when unconsolidated. Svolik finds that the stability of unconsolidated regimes is dependent only on economic recessions. In contrast, the odds that a regime consolidates is based on its economic development, whether it is presidential or parliamentary, and whether it has a military authoritarian past. Those regimes with lower levels of development, a presidential system, and/or a military authoritarian past are less likely to consolidate than others. Presidentialism in particular has a negative effect on consolidation because it is more susceptible to the factors that lead to democratic reversals (mainly, economic recessions).

STATES & STATE-BUILDING - Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

There were three key factors in defining state formation in Europe - 1) Political Regimes, 2) the timing of state infrastructures, and 3) the independent influence of strong representative assemblies The association with bureaucracy and absolutism is a false one - state instead can be classified into four categories along two dimension - regime type (which is divided between absolutist and constitutional) and infrastructure (which is divided between bureaucratic and patrimonial) Regime types varied based on how strong/weak representative institutions were, since they served to constrain the ruler - only strong assemblies could resist efforts by rulers to monopolize power - crucially, two-chamber systems with representatives from a wide variety of groups encouraged cooperation across a variety of interests and received support from local power structures which helped resist royal power grabs, whereas 'tricurial' assemblies based on elites were easily self-divided by the monarch who could pit the privileges and protections of one group against another - these elites were also isolated from local power and thus lacked a forum for resistance Those states with early roman foundations had more clearly defined elites and thus were more likely to be 'tricurial,' whereas state founded later were subdivided between smaller territorial units which leant itself to two-chamber systems and stronger local governments State infrastructures varied based on timing - states that had to build up infrastructure before 1450 lacked the experience to do so effectively, the technology to do so efficiently, and the labor force to do so cheaply, all of which gave advantages to states that didn't face geopolitical conflict (and thus didn't have to build up state structures) until after 1450 State parliaments could mediate the effects of the timing of geopolitical conflict, which helps explain the outliers of England (which had early conflict but a good bureaucracy) and Poland/Hungary (which had late conflict but a bad bureaucracy) - both had strong national representative bodies which were able to redirect the form of government away from some of its tendencies - the only difference was patrimonial tendencies arose before parliament in England (so parliament checked them), whereas they arose after parliament in Poland/Hungary (which embraced them)

POPULISM - Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig, "The Trade Origins of Economic Nationalism: Import Competition and Voting Behavior in Western Europe," American Journal of Political Science 62, no. 4 (October, 2018): 936-53.

This article looks at the impact of globalization on electoral outcomes in 15 western countries between 1988-2007, specifically looking at exposure to Chinese imports within regions. It finds that at the district level, strong import shocks lead to (1) more support for nationalist and isolationist parties, (2) an increased support for radical-right parties, (3) a general shift rightward of the electorate. These effects are sociotropic in these communities. Thus, it would seem that globalization is a key source of nationalism and far-right populist throughout democracies in Europe and the U.S., with economic nationalism being an alternative to trade liberalism and redistribution that instead focuses on the exclusion of 'outsiders' and ousting of corrupt elites. Globalization also limits the appeal of lef-twing parties because higher capital mobility, declining tax revenues, and more liberalized state economies are all antithetical to left-wing populist solutions, which primarily depend on redistribution and the extension of social welfarism. This leaves economic nationalism, coupled with protectionism and lower taxes, as a more appealing model for those left behind by globalism. Further, the insecurity caused by the losses of globalism lend themselves more to ethnocentrism and anti-minority sentiments, which make the multiculturalism of the left less appealing. "Electorates tilt in a more protectionist and isolationist direction when exposed to stronger shocks... [further] in response to the import shock, the electorate tends to abandon mainstream social-democratic parties and favor parties that propose economic nationalism... Overall, this body of empirical evidence points to a general shift towards nationalist, isolationist, and conservative policy platforms in response to the import shock." (C&S2 - 945)

STATES & STATE-BUILDING - Ato Kwamena Onoma, "Transition Regimes and Security Sector Reforms in Sierra Leone and Liberia," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 656, no. 1 (Nov., 2014): 136-53.

This article looks at the specific context of post-war reconstruction in Sierra Leone and Liberia and asks why such reconstruction was so much more successful in the former than in the latter? Both countries had significant foreign intervention after their local civil wars, but only effort in Sierra Leone worked because such efforts reflected the distribution of power on the ground and allowed for all power holders to be involved in the post peace process. This lead to more moderate aims with more widespread support which were much more successfully implemented. In Liberia, there government did not reflect local power balances and worked to exclude certain local power holders seen as 'unsavory,' and as a result the attempted reforms were overly ambitious and lacked local support when they were implemented. Thus, even it if seems unsavory, including all actors in a civil conflict in the post-war system of reconstruction helps moderate aims, increase support and local legitimacy, and increase the odds of sustained peace - even if it comes at the cost of justice for some of the bad acts of the parties involved - Never underestimate the power of golden parachutes and local consultations

AUTHORITARIANISM - Larry Diamond and Leonard Morlino, "The Quality of Democracy: An Overview," Journal of Democracy 15, no. 4 (October 2004): 20-31

This essay aims to outline key definitional aspects of the quality of democracy - overall, there are eight major aspects that impact the quality of democracy: freedom (access to political, civil, and socioeconomic rights), rule of law (fair and consistent treatment by an independent jury and via clear and well established laws), vertical accountability (the ability to hold leaders to account for their actions), responsiveness (the degree to which citizens are satisfied with their government and see it as legitimate), equality (equal access to the same rights and protections by all citizens and groups), participation (the right of all adults to participate - especially to vote - in their democracy), competition (regular and fair competition between a variety of political parties), and horizontal accountability (the ability of state institutions to check each other and counterbalance each other). These elements overlap and are interdependent. At a minimum, democracy involves universal suffrance; recurring, free, competitive, and fair elections; more than one serious political party; and alternative sources of information. With this base line, the quality of democracy can be defined via the procedures of democracy (rule of law, participation, horizontal accountability and vertical accountability), its substance (respect for civil and political freedoms and pursuit of equality), or its responsiveness (its ability to aggregate citizen demands into government action). The rule of law is the base upon which every other dimension of democratic quality rests - it is not something that can be bought or forced via training. "the linkages among the different elements of democracy are so densely interactive and overlapping that it is sometimes difficult to know where one dimension ends and another begins" - Thus, a democracy failing in one of these regards is likely failing in others too. "A high-quality democracy thus does not rate infinitely high on every measure of democtratic quality, but instead represents a balancing of virtues that lie in tension."

TERMS - Economic/Self-Interest Framework (Race)

This framework argues that economic change and self-interest are the essential factors in driving opposition to immigration and racial polarization over recent years. Prominent arguments within this framework are: 1) Opposition to immigration is caused by concerns about competition for wages, especially among low-skill workers (See works cited in Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014) 2) Rising levels of economic inequality lead to a growing sense of insecurity, which drives greater numbers of people to support populist right-wing parties (Inglehart and Norris, 2017) 3) Import shocks caused by globalization lead people to support right-wing populism more frequently (Calantone and Stanig, 2018). Counter-Arguments: Some states, like South Africa, have maintained racial discrimination despite it leading to massive economic costs (Marx, 1993). It may be cultural prejudice and violence against immigrants that drives them into a suboptimal economic context (Dancygier and Laitin, 2014). There seems to be little empirical support for the view that economic self-interest or industry employment are the primary predictors of support for populist / xenophobic parties (Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014).

TERMS - Political/Partisan Framework (Race)

This framework argues that the key factors leading to growing racial polarization and support for the rights are political institutions and coalitions. It can broadly be divided into two different strains of argumentation: Political institutions: Some scholars argue that deeply flawed political institutions help perpetuate racial inequality by undermining majority governance (Stepan and Linz, 2011). Meanwhile, other scholars argue that racial ideologies are crafted by the state in an attempt to resolve conflicts over the nation and allow for political stability (Marx, 1993). Political parties: Other scholars argue that unique aspects of the partisan makeup of a country are crucial for understanding their levels of racial division (King and Smith, 2015), (Hajnal and Horowitz, 2014). Counter-Arguments: While these theories work well for countries with long histories of racial inequality like the U.S., they are less useful for countries that are only recently seeing a rise in racial tensions and identities (like much of Western Europe). These theories struggle to explain why countries with constant institutions (like the U.S.) may have seen such a prominent rise in racial polarization over the past couple of decades.

TERMS - Cultural/Social Framework (Race)

This framework isolates recent social and cultural change as the mechanism for growing racial tensions in the United States and Europe. Prominent strands of this argument include: 1) Massive demographic changes caused by immigration (especially in Europe) have led to an increased sense of crisis surrounding national cultures, which sparks support for right-wing parties and xenophobia (Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014) (Ivarsflaten, 2008). 2) Sudden changes in the demographic makeup of an individual's neighborhood or a sense that immigrants aren't assimilating to local culture can trigger a sense of anxiety in individuals (Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014). 3) Older generations have a backlash to post-materialism expressed in a desire to defend the national culture (Inglehart and Norris, 2017). Counter-Arguments: Arguments focused on cultural outlooks about immigrants suffer from endogeneity problems (Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014). This argument seems to be more applicable to immigration in Europe than the Black-White divide in the U.S.

POPULISM - Kirk Hawkins, Scott Riding, Cas Mudde, "Measuring Populist Attitudes," Political Concepts 55 (January 2012): 1-34.

This paper uses survey data from the United States (both nationwide and in Utah) to try to identify what kinds of people hold populist attitudes. It finds that populist views are rather common across the country, and correlate strongly with individual-level attributes like ideology, partisanship, education, wealth, immigration views, and gender. This supports the view of populist attitudes as a "latent disposition activated by political context." (2) Here, populism is seen as a 'thin-centered' ideology, meaning it is a set of ideas and not a material phenomenon (standing in opposition to pluralism), that is represents a number of basic assumptions about the world that can be latched on to other platforms and programmatic views, and that it should not just be reduced to a certain personality type (although some citizens may be in environments that render populism more meaningful and may be more disposed to it in the first place). The questions asked in the surveys used in this study were 4 used to measure populist outlooks and 3 used to measure pluralist outlooks, and four used to measure support for elite lead and/or unchecked systems of governance, with people ranking each of the statements on a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree For both surveys it was found that the "bulk of respondents agree (strongly or mildly) with all four populism questions... Thus, the affinity for populist discourse seems to be quite high across both Utah and the United States as a whole." This is coupled with a support of pluralism however. Overall, conservatives are more populist than liberals (particularly strong conservatives), the less-educated are more populist than the more-educated, the lower income are more populist than the higher income, partisan identities don't affect populist tendencies, and those more opposed to immigration and more populist than those more open to it. Populism didn't seem to vary by age or gender. In general, the ideologically more radical, more conservative, more third-party, poorer, less-educated, and more xenophobic are the most likely to be populist.

AUTHORITARIANISM - Kenneth F. Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico's Democratization in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

This party explores what contributes to the rise, maintenance, and fall, of single-party authoritarianism (defined as systems with meaningful, but manifestly unfair, elections)- the main focus is on the PRI in Mexico, which ruled from 1929 to 2000 in spite of regular elections with competition from opposition parties. The key to understanding dominant party equilibriums is resource endowments - this book argues that dominant parties remain control via two key advantages - the incumbents resource advantages, and the incumbents ability to raise costs of participation for the opposition. These resource advantages are created via control over the public sector and politicization of the public democracy, which allows the diversion of public goods towards campaign ends. "Dramatic resource advantages allow the incumbent to outspend on campaigns, deploy legions of canvassers, and, most importantly, to supplement policy appeals with patronage goods that bias voters in their favor." Such resource advantages are easier the more that state-owned businesses control the economy (meaning privatization, in turn, limits incumbent financing and that economic and political monopolies are mutually reinforcing). What's more, dominant parties punish candidates who affiliate with opponents by forcing them to forgo material advantages and fruitful careers - thus, partially all career oriented politicians join dominant parties, leaving only strong ideologues to form opposition parties. The consequence is that opposition parties are more ideologically extreme, less in touch with the common people, and thus less able to amass significant support. What's more, such parties lack patronage resources to build up voter bases, lack the capital for clear marketing and strong volunteer networks, and lack the resources for strong national coordination, all of which reinforces their fringe and extreme positions. The PRI in Mexico dominated via the tilted resource field created by their control of the state, facing only fleeting opposition by ideological extreme parties. It wasn't until state control over the economy decreased and patronage networks for the PRI disappeared that other parties began to make gains, especially when these parties began to moderate themselves. This helps explain why opposition parties still exist in single party systems - because they are formed by ideologues on the outskirts of the political system, acting on principle. States have three mechanisms for controlling opposition parties - fraud, resource advantages, and repression of the opposition - all of these work in tandem to push opposition parties to the extreme via limited opportunities for legitimate competition (although fraud is expensive, risky in that it can undermine legitimacy, and unnecessary with resource advantages, meaning it is only a tool of last resort). It is only when opposition parties transform into catch-all parties that they threaten this system. Because dominant parties want to win large and consistent majorities, they will typically be centrist parties that try to have a wide spanning appeal Thus, the three main pillars of this theory are: 1) opposition parties in dominant-party systems should be niche oriented, even when there are incentives to be catchall; 2) this ideological polarity among opposition parties will decrease effective cooperation between them; 3) the incumbent party should have dramatic resource advantages that give it a tilted playing field in electoral competition, and which is only threatened when such resources dry up. These pillars are affirmed in four case studies - Taiwan (a Dominant Party Authoritarian Regime [DPAR] where the dominant party [KMT] was ousted from power after its resource base diminished following privatization in the 1990s, allowing otherwise extreme opposition parties to rise to power and moderate); Malaysia (a DPAR where the dominant party [UMNO] maintained a grip on power and resources by resisting liberalization in the 1990s and selectively repressing opposition by the already ideologically extreme opposition); Japan (a Dominant Party Democratic Regime [DPDR] which maintained party dominance for the LDP through huge resource advantages [especially via the control of the state bureaucracy an clientelistic relationships with private industry]); and Italy (a DPDR which saw the dominant party (DC) lose power after its mass public patronage scheme was disrupted by high inefficiency and corruption caused over such mass distribution of political appointments as political cutbacks). "Despite the predictions of existing theory, 16 countries on four continents had dominant parties during the 20th century and, by century's end, 11 had transformed into fully competitive democracies with turnover." (297)

DEMOCRACY - Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

This study uses a procedural definition of democracy, defining it, as Schumpeter does, as 'the selection of leaders through competitive elections by the people they govern.' This definition can be combined with a view of democracy involving the dimensions of contestation and inclusion outlined by Dahl. Normative and idealistic views of democracy shouldn't be part of defining it. Democracy has spread through the world in waves, in three discrete periods where there was a massive growth in democratization and liberalization, followed by a reversal of such democratization. The first wave was from 1827-1926, and was started by the U.S. and French revolutions and eventually encompassed Switzerland, the UK, Italy, Argentina and others. This was followed by the first reversal from 1922-1942, with the huge spread of authoritarianism and totalitarianism between the World Wars, especially in the most newly established of the democracies from the first wave. The second wave was from 1943-1962 and included the Allied occupation of Europe and Asia and the process of decolonization in much of the world. This was followed, from 1958-1975, by the second reversal, which was most clearly seen in Latin America with a huge peak in authoritarian governance, but also echoed in Asia and Africa, where recently decolonizing states often fell to authoritarianism - this was the most extreme of the reversals with over 38 governments resulting from coups. The third wave started in 1974 with the Portuguese revolution and encompassed over 30 countries throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia - it culminated in the collapse of the USSR Despite this two steps forward, one back approach, it is still important to distinguish democracies from dictatorships for four key reasons: 1) democracies are closely associated with individual freedoms, which are a positive social value; 2) while democracies can be unruly, they are rarely violent and change is usually incremental and non-revolutionary; 3) democracies don't historically fight wars against each other which means more democracies denote more international peace; 4) U.S. foreign policy and influence in particular is tied to the spread of democracy and its dominance within the global system.

POPULISM - Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, "Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash," HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series (September, 2016).

While the dominant thesis on the rise of populism has focused on economic insecurity, cultural insecurity and backlash provides a more convincing framework for explaining the phenomenon. Populism is expanding massively through Europe right now - "Across Europe, as we will demonstrate, their average share of the vote in national and European parliamentary elections has more than doubled since the 1960s, from around 5.1% to 13.2%, at the expense of center parties.3 During the same era, their share of seats has tripled, from 3.8% to 12.8%." (2) Most explanations of populism can be grouped into demand side arguments - focused on public opinion - supply side arguments - focused on party strategies - and institutionalist arguments - focused on the electoral and constitutional rules of the game. This article focuses on the demand side, and argues that populism is the result of a broader backlash to progressive cultural change that rebukes the post-materialist revolution from the 1970s, as seen in the concentration of populist sentiments among older, white, undereducated, and religious men whose 'traditional' values are the most likely to feel displaced and whose traditional privilege and status is most likely to feel threatened. Immigration is likely to play into this by making societies feel increasingly multicultural and with fluctuating values. When measuring the cultural values associated with this backlash (anti-immigrant attitudes, mistrust of global and national governance, support for authoritarian values, and left-right ideological self placement), all of them were strongly and consistently related to populist support. In contrast, measures of economic inequality and deprivation - which focuses on the impact of globalization, and would predict high levels of populist support amongst unskilled workers, the unemployed, those without college degrees, and those most exposed to immigration - prove inconsistent in predicting populist support levels This cultural backlash thesis is supported by the increased focus on cultural issues within party politics int he US and Europe, and declining prominence of class as a predictor of partisanship.

RACE - Gest, Justin, Tyler Reny, and Jeremy Mayer. "Roots of the Radical Right: Nostalgic Deprivation in the United States and Britain." Comparative Political Studies 51, no. 13 (2018): 1694-1719.

White conservatives in the U.S. and U.K. are more prone to support the 'Radical Right' because of their sense of nostalgic deprivation: the gap in their perceptions between their current status and their historical status. This aligns with the view of whiteness as a valuable set of privileges, assumption, and assets in its own right (Cheryl Harris). This paper uses surveys to measure people's levels of support for sentiments of nostalgic deprivation, and then the predictive power of those sentiments for support for the Radical Right. Nostalgic deprivation can be understood in economic terms (inequality), political terms (disempowerment) or social terms (stigmatization or value change) - all of which tie into the expectations of whiteness (and the privileges it entails) for those living in the U.S. and Europe. "Nearly six in 10 White adults in both the United States and Britain feel that they have lost political power." (1703) Meanwhile, every measure of senses of social, political, and economic deprivation made conservative voters more likely to support the radical right.

TERMS - Charismatic Party Linkages

there are personalist linkages, which have low levels of both institutional development and ideological coherence. Here, voters support politicians based on "personality characteristics of candidates, devoid of programmatic or ideological content." As such, party development and coherence tend to be weak and tenuous (M&T, 204-5, 216). As Roberts notes, politicians who rely on the appeal of their personalities try to "disarticulate political programs" that would be polarizing or decrease their appeal (Roberts, 29-30). Consequently, personalist linkages undermine parties as effective tools of representation and accountability, since there are no coherent methods of evaluating purely charismatic leadership (M&T).

TERMS - Programmatic Party Linkages

there are programmatic party linkages, which have high levels of institutional capacity, and high levels of ideological coherence. In many ways, programmatic linkages are the ideal type of party linkages, since they facilitate systems of accountability and policy production more directly than other forms of linkages (Kitschelt et. all, 21). As Kitschelt and Kselman outline, programmatic linkages rely on "non-contingent exchanges" whereby politicians provide policy packages to "constituency categories... but without parties targeting the benefits only to their voters." (Kitschelt and Kselman [K&K], 1454). In this context, it is the success of policy delivery, and the ideological appeal of policy platforms, that dictates whether voters continue to support parties once in office (Kitschelt et. all, 15-6). Although programmatic party linkages are difficult to arrive at, Mainwaring and Torcal note that they tend to be resilient once established (M&T, 211).