Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041523x16969585493955
Dmitrii Kofanov
This article reviews four recent books providing new perspectives on the sources of authoritarian durability and addressing the issues of intra-elite power-sharing and control of the masses. One of the main lessons derived from this research is that contingent sequences of historical events and rules of conduct mutually accepted by elites can play a greater role in the stability of a ruling coalition than a sheer balance of power prioritized by the rational choice approach. Another important takeaway is that increasingly refraining from repression, authoritarian rulers seek to project the image of their competence and indispensability. Apart from misinformation and censorship, during economic and political crises, leaders of competitive authoritarian regimes may deliver anti-democratic rhetoric and policies catering to genuine demands of the masses.
{"title":"Sources of Authoritarian Resilience: New Perspectives on Power-Sharing and Popular Support","authors":"Dmitrii Kofanov","doi":"10.5129/001041523x16969585493955","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041523x16969585493955","url":null,"abstract":"This article reviews four recent books providing new perspectives on the sources of authoritarian durability and addressing the issues of intra-elite power-sharing and control of the masses. One of the main lessons derived from this research is that contingent sequences of historical events and rules of conduct mutually accepted by elites can play a greater role in the stability of a ruling coalition than a sheer balance of power prioritized by the rational choice approach. Another important takeaway is that increasingly refraining from repression, authoritarian rulers seek to project the image of their competence and indispensability. Apart from misinformation and censorship, during economic and political crises, leaders of competitive authoritarian regimes may deliver anti-democratic rhetoric and policies catering to genuine demands of the masses.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135103970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041523x16866724784852
Ling-Show Chen
Why are perennially entrenched institutions so hard to reform? This article proposes a theory of institutional rebound based on China's reforms to break the three "iron-institutions" in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). I argue that reforms triggered the rise of informal institutions, which impeded further reforms and made old rules rebound. When SOE cadres had denser political connections, they actively manipulated the rules to maintain privileges. When managers and workers had fewer political resources, they used performative resistance to delay reforms and penalize reform advocates. The pressure to complete reforms drove cadres to first target the powerless, replacing them with cronies, before having to move to the more powerful. The article combines in-depth interviews, secondary sources, and topical modeling of newspaper and journal articles across three decades.
{"title":"Institutional Rebound: Why Reforming China’s State-Owned Enterprises Is so Difficult","authors":"Ling-Show Chen","doi":"10.5129/001041523x16866724784852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041523x16866724784852","url":null,"abstract":"Why are perennially entrenched institutions so hard to reform? This article proposes a theory of institutional rebound based on China's reforms to break the three \"iron-institutions\" in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). I argue that reforms triggered the rise of informal institutions, which impeded further reforms and made old rules rebound. When SOE cadres had denser political connections, they actively manipulated the rules to maintain privileges. When managers and workers had fewer political resources, they used performative resistance to delay reforms and penalize reform advocates. The pressure to complete reforms drove cadres to first target the powerless, replacing them with cronies, before having to move to the more powerful. The article combines in-depth interviews, secondary sources, and topical modeling of newspaper and journal articles across three decades.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70700931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041523x16964369022295
Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos, Carlos Melendez
What determines the vote in referenda: issue-preferences or second-order considerations? Scholars suggest issue-voting is stronger in salient elections. Based on survey data collected during Chile’s constitutional referendum, the article challenges this argument. An innovative conjoint experiment allows us to estimate if different elements of the constitution sunk the proposal. Coupled with vote choice models, results indicate that second-order considerations played a more important role than the literature predicts. We argue this is because studies mostly study referenda on European integration in parliamentary systems. Unlike European integration, the constitutional proposal was not a cross-cutting “issue,” but one tied to the incumbent. Presidentialism exacerbated government/opposition dynamics, such that the incumbent’s popularity significantly affected vote choice. We discuss why this is similar to what transpired in other Latin American countries and draw lessons for participatory democracy.
{"title":"Rethinking the Role of Issue-Voting in Referenda: Conjoint and Vote Choice Analyses of Preferences for Constitutional Change in Chile","authors":"Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos, Carlos Melendez","doi":"10.5129/001041523x16964369022295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041523x16964369022295","url":null,"abstract":"What determines the vote in referenda: issue-preferences or second-order considerations? Scholars suggest issue-voting is stronger in salient elections. Based on survey data collected during Chile’s constitutional referendum, the article challenges this argument. An innovative conjoint experiment allows us to estimate if different elements of the constitution sunk the proposal. Coupled with vote choice models, results indicate that second-order considerations played a more important role than the literature predicts. We argue this is because studies mostly study referenda on European integration in parliamentary systems. Unlike European integration, the constitutional proposal was not a cross-cutting “issue,” but one tied to the incumbent. Presidentialism exacerbated government/opposition dynamics, such that the incumbent’s popularity significantly affected vote choice. We discuss why this is similar to what transpired in other Latin American countries and draw lessons for participatory democracy.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136307525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041523x16939348061923
Federico Fuchs
This article proposes that the specific conditions under which collective action happens in informal markets generate a non-linear relation between organizational density (the number of organizations representing a single constituency) and effective claim-making around common objectives, unlike the expectations of standard theories tailored to organizational activity in the formal sector. Informal workers’ capacity to demand resources from the government is best served by intermediate levels of organizational density, when organizations experience enough competition to make them responsive to their constituencies, but not so much that internal strife undermines their effectiveness in securing shared objectives. To test this argument, I leverage a mixed-methods approach to examine the case of informal workers’ organizational behavior in public and street markets in Mexico City.
{"title":"Competition, Cooperation, and Influence in the Informal Economy: Interest Representation in Informal Markets in Mexico City","authors":"Federico Fuchs","doi":"10.5129/001041523x16939348061923","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041523x16939348061923","url":null,"abstract":"This article proposes that the specific conditions under which collective action happens in informal markets generate a non-linear relation between organizational density (the number of organizations representing a single constituency) and effective claim-making around common objectives, unlike the expectations of standard theories tailored to organizational activity in the formal sector. Informal workers’ capacity to demand resources from the government is best served by intermediate levels of organizational density, when organizations experience enough competition to make them responsive to their constituencies, but not so much that internal strife undermines their effectiveness in securing shared objectives. To test this argument, I leverage a mixed-methods approach to examine the case of informal workers’ organizational behavior in public and street markets in Mexico City.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135649835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041523x16726700420784
Jessica Zarkin
What explains the militarization of public safety? Despite its failures, police militarization remains a popular policy. Existing scholarship has mainly focused on the police adopting military weapons and tactics but has neglected a silent but consequential type: the appointment of military members as police chiefs. Whereas the conventional wisdom points to partisanship and violence as key drivers, I argue that the militarization of police leaders responds to political motives. Based on a novel data set on 5,580 appointments in Mexico and repeated event history analysis, I find evidence of a top-down militarization sequence. Mayors are more likely to appoint military chiefs when upper levels of government and peers embrace a militarized security strategy. I further illustrate how coercive pressures and strategic incentives drive this sequence.
{"title":"The Silent Militarization: Explaining the Logic of Military Members’ Appointment as Police Chiefs","authors":"Jessica Zarkin","doi":"10.5129/001041523x16726700420784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041523x16726700420784","url":null,"abstract":"What explains the militarization of public safety? Despite its failures, police militarization remains a popular policy. Existing scholarship has mainly focused on the police adopting military weapons and tactics but has neglected a silent but consequential type: the appointment of military members as police chiefs. Whereas the conventional wisdom points to partisanship and violence as key drivers, I argue that the militarization of police leaders responds to political motives. Based on a novel data set on 5,580 appointments in Mexico and repeated event history analysis, I find evidence of a top-down militarization sequence. Mayors are more likely to appoint military chiefs when upper levels of government and peers embrace a militarized security strategy. I further illustrate how coercive pressures and strategic incentives drive this sequence.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70700333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041523x16838209215405
Heather Ba, Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Yu Bin Kim
We argue that authoritarian regimes engage in subnational propaganda targeting in pursuit of political survival. Drawing on an original dataset of propaganda collected inside North Korea, we show that the regime tailors messaging to elites and masses differently. We outline a schema of strategies and themes that authoritarian regimes utilize when crafting propaganda, theorize variations in their use, and test these variations empirically, using qualitative analysis, regression, and text analysis. We demonstrate that the North Korean regime targets Pyongyang-based elites with co-optational messages promising economic benefit, while the masses receive mobilizational messages focused on agricultural productivity. North Korean propaganda also legitimates the regime differently based on audience: messages to elites reassure them of their privileged status but messages to the masses remind them of why their sacrifices are necessary.
{"title":"Authoritarian Audiences: Theory and Evidence for Subnational Propaganda Targeting in North Korea","authors":"Heather Ba, Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Yu Bin Kim","doi":"10.5129/001041523x16838209215405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041523x16838209215405","url":null,"abstract":"We argue that authoritarian regimes engage in subnational propaganda targeting in pursuit of political survival. Drawing on an original dataset of propaganda collected inside North Korea, we show that the regime tailors messaging to elites and masses differently. We outline a schema of strategies and themes that authoritarian regimes utilize when crafting propaganda, theorize variations in their use, and test these variations empirically, using qualitative analysis, regression, and text analysis. We demonstrate that the North Korean regime targets Pyongyang-based elites with co-optational messages promising economic benefit, while the masses receive mobilizational messages focused on agricultural productivity. North Korean propaganda also legitimates the regime differently based on audience: messages to elites reassure them of their privileged status but messages to the masses remind them of why their sacrifices are necessary.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70700782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041523x16801041950603
Naosuke Mukoyama
Recent scholarship on resource politics has found that the “resource curse” is largely specific to the Persian Gulf states in which British oil interests ensured the survival of small states. However, this does not present the entire picture of the relationship between oil and sovereignty. I argue that oil was also involved in the process in which the region protected by colonial powers was divided into certain states out of many possible territorial arrangements, creating states that would otherwise not exist. Based on extensive archival research, I show that when nine Gulf sheikhdoms negotiated under Abu Dhabi’s initiative to create a federation, (1) oil production during the colonial period and (2) the protectorate system led Qatar and Bahrain to reject it and achieve sovereignty separately.
{"title":"Colonial Oil and State-Making: The Separate Independence of Qatar and Bahrain","authors":"Naosuke Mukoyama","doi":"10.5129/001041523x16801041950603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041523x16801041950603","url":null,"abstract":"Recent scholarship on resource politics has found that the “resource curse” is largely specific to the Persian Gulf states in which British oil interests ensured the survival of small states. However, this does not present the entire picture of the relationship between oil and sovereignty. I argue that oil was also involved in the process in which the region protected by colonial powers was divided into certain states out of many possible territorial arrangements, creating states that would otherwise not exist. Based on extensive archival research, I show that when nine Gulf sheikhdoms negotiated under Abu Dhabi’s initiative to create a federation, (1) oil production during the colonial period and (2) the protectorate system led Qatar and Bahrain to reject it and achieve sovereignty separately.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70700406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041523x16745900727169
Christoph Dworschak
Does civil resistance work? Research emphasizes the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance over violent resistance in achieving campaign goals, with the seminal study Why Civil Resistance Works (WCRW) by Chenoweth and Stephan being the main point of reference to date. I revisit this pivotal finding in three steps. First, I reproduce WCRW’s results on nonviolent effectiveness. Second, I discuss how cases may have been overlooked due to a streetlight effect. Third, I quantify the results’ sensitivity using simulations. I find that WCRW’s main findings on nonviolent effectiveness are highly sensitive to variable selection, under-coverage bias, bootstrapping, and omitted variable bias. As a routine reference in scholarship and the public discourse, assessing the robustness of WCRW’s findings is relevant to practitioners and researchers.
{"title":"Civil Resistance in the Streetlight: Replicating and Assessing Evidence on Nonviolent Effectiveness","authors":"Christoph Dworschak","doi":"10.5129/001041523x16745900727169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041523x16745900727169","url":null,"abstract":"Does civil resistance work? Research emphasizes the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance over violent resistance in achieving campaign goals, with the seminal study Why Civil Resistance Works (WCRW) by Chenoweth and Stephan being the main point of reference to date. I revisit this pivotal finding in three steps. First, I reproduce WCRW’s results on nonviolent effectiveness. Second, I discuss how cases may have been overlooked due to a streetlight effect. Third, I quantify the results’ sensitivity using simulations. I find that WCRW’s main findings on nonviolent effectiveness are highly sensitive to variable selection, under-coverage bias, bootstrapping, and omitted variable bias. As a routine reference in scholarship and the public discourse, assessing the robustness of WCRW’s findings is relevant to practitioners and researchers.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70700504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041522x16352603126875
Diana Kapiszewski, L. MacLean, Benjamin L. Read
This article examines how “iteration”—the dynamic updating of a research design in the course of conducting a study—contributes to making fieldwork a powerful form of inquiry. Considering epistemic disagreement on the utility and acceptability of iteration and drawing on published work, our own experiences, and an original survey and interviews, we contend that iteration is a core aspect of field-based inquiry because such work often examines areas for which theory or empirical knowledge is underdeveloped and requires reacting as the research environment evolves. We demonstrate why iteration is challenging, consider the analytic risks it poses, and offer a framework to help scholars iterate in analytically productive ways. We conclude by outlining the implications for the discipline of embracing and being transparent about iteration.
{"title":"Dynamic Research Design: Iteration in Field-Based Inquiry","authors":"Diana Kapiszewski, L. MacLean, Benjamin L. Read","doi":"10.5129/001041522x16352603126875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041522x16352603126875","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how “iteration”—the dynamic updating of a research design in the course of conducting a study—contributes to making fieldwork a powerful form of inquiry. Considering epistemic disagreement on the utility and acceptability of iteration and drawing on published work, our own experiences, and an original survey and interviews, we contend that iteration is a core aspect of field-based inquiry because such work often examines areas for which theory or empirical knowledge is underdeveloped and requires reacting as the research environment evolves. We demonstrate why iteration is challenging, consider the analytic risks it poses, and offer a framework to help scholars iterate in analytically productive ways. We conclude by outlining the implications for the discipline of embracing and being transparent about iteration.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70698287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.5129/001041522x16420169882963
Philip A. Martin, A. Miller
In the past decade, political violence research has been deeply shaped by the “ethnopolitical exclusion” model of conflict, a research tradition that emphasizes the group-level mechanisms connecting ethnic identity to conflict processes. This review article examines three recent books that represent a new wave of scholarship that studies how different social, political, and institutional processes give rise to ethnically-organized violence. These works make several notable contributions. They move beyond static, structuralist approaches for understanding the emergence of ethnic “grievances” and focus attention on the dynamic processes and state policies that amplify or curb the political salience of ethnic appeals. They also shed new light on the nuanced role that ethnic demographic distributions play in the onset and termination of intrastate conflict.
{"title":"Review Article Ethnicity and Violence in Weak States: Understanding the Mechanisms","authors":"Philip A. Martin, A. Miller","doi":"10.5129/001041522x16420169882963","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5129/001041522x16420169882963","url":null,"abstract":"In the past decade, political violence research has been deeply shaped by the “ethnopolitical exclusion” model of conflict, a research tradition that emphasizes the group-level mechanisms connecting ethnic identity to conflict processes. This review article examines three recent books that represent a new wave of scholarship that studies how different social, political, and institutional processes give rise to ethnically-organized violence. These works make several notable contributions. They move beyond static, structuralist approaches for understanding the emergence of ethnic “grievances” and focus attention on the dynamic processes and state policies that amplify or curb the political salience of ethnic appeals. They also shed new light on the nuanced role that ethnic demographic distributions play in the onset and termination of intrastate conflict.","PeriodicalId":47960,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70698931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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