American Journal of Political Science最新文献

In his seminal work on the political economy of dictatorship, Ronald Wintrobe posited the existence of a “dictator's dilemma,” in which repression leaves an autocrat less secure by reducing information about discontent. We explore the nature and resolution of this dilemma with a formalization that builds on recent work in the political economy of nondemocracy. When the regime is sufficiently repressive, and the dictator's popularity correspondingly unclear to opposition as well as autocrat, the ruler faces two unattractive options: He can mobilize the repressive apparatus, even though there may be no threat to his rule, or he can refrain from mobilizing, even though the danger may be real. Semicompetitive elections can ease the dilemma through the controlled revelation of discontent. Paradoxically, the manipulation of information through such non-repressive means can allow for more rather than less repression.

We consider the Levellers' conception of equality relative to their contemporaries during the Civil War(s) period. We compile a corpus of hundreds of seventeenth−century pamphlets and combine this with novel word embedding techniques trained on millions of Early Modern English documents to make statements about word “meanings.” We focus on understanding of the phrase “peers and equals” (and its variants). We provide quantitative and qualitative evidence, in line with extant literature, that the Levellers—John Lilburne specifically—had a prevailing interest in equality in a way that is different to that expressed by other groups of the time. But contrary to current scholarship, we show that the Levellers and Lilburne were animated primarily by a particular institutional manifestation of legal equality: their interest in parity or the status of peers primarily pertained to the jury.

I present a formal model of candidate evaluation in a context where voters within some group or political party learn information about to what extent various in-group candidates (such as a slate of primary candidates) are disliked by an out-group or opposing party. Thus, a voter's candidate evaluation is based in part on how they process information about which of their own candidates provoke particularly strong distaste from the out-group. I show that exposure to information about out-group distaste can cause voters to make misleading inferences about candidate characteristics, causing them to sometimes systematically prefer lower competence candidates. These effects are stronger for certain kinds of low-information voters, and for more ideologically motivated voters. The model can thus explain under what conditions voters will support politicians who particularly aggrieve the opposition. This can also create secondary incentives for politicians to signal incompetence.

Religious establishment today often takes a multifaith form, whereby multiple religions are supported in different ways and to different degrees. In order to contribute to the development of a normative framework for assessing practices and regimes of multifaith establishment, this article recommends the concept of “social alienation.” Initially, social alienation is defended as a negative normative criterion to determine when specific establishment practices are unacceptable. This criterion is compared favorably with approaches that evaluate establishment practices by reference to an ideal of public reason or according to whether they convey an expressive harm, as well as with similar approaches based on a purely subjective understanding of alienation. Subsequently, it is also argued that addressing social alienation can support a case for multifaith religious establishment regimes that support or recognize minority religions, since it is often unequal establishment practices that socially alienate, not establishment as such.

Ezrow, Lawrence, Michele Fenzl, and Timothy Hellwig. 2024. “Bicameralism and Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science 68(3): 1089–1105.

In the section “Policy Responsiveness within Bicameralism,” the text, in the first column before the first full paragraph on page 1098, is incorrect. It reads, “This finding is consistent with the power symmetry hypothesis.” In fact, the finding is consistent with the power asymmetry hypothesis. Accordingly, the text should read: “This finding is consistent with the power asymmetry hypothesis.” We apologize for this error.

We assess the phenomenon of partisan temporal selective avoidance, or individuals dynamically altering their news consumption when news is negative toward their in- and out-party. Using nine months of online behavioral data (27,648,770 visits) from 2,462 Americans paired with machine learning classifications, we examine whether changing daily news sentiment toward in- and out-party (macro-level) and exposure to articles negative toward in- or out-party during one's browsing session (micro-level) influence news use. We test if partisans change their consumption of (a) news overall, (b) partisan outlets, (c) hard versus soft news, and (d) individual articles. We find support for partisan temporal selective news avoidance; partisans alter the volume, type, and source of news because of changing news sentiment. On the macro-level, partisan asymmetries emerge, and on the micro-level negative news about either party reduce news browsing length while increasing hard news and negative news visits for both Democrats and Republicans.

Despite Confucian democrats’ successful attempt in establishing Confucian democracy as a normatively plausible ideal, little has been said regarding its institutional design. However, to the extent that Confucian democracy involves some synthesis between a formally democratic regime and substantively Confucian ends, it has to ask for a more specific choice among various possible democratic institutional frameworks, so as to make sure that the exact form of the former is conducive to the realization of the latter. This article addresses such a question by presenting semi-parliamentarianism as an appropriate institutional framework for designing Confucian democracy. My central claim is that compared with other types of constitutional structure, a semi-parliamentarian bicameral one is more likely to simultaneously advance Confucian democrats’ dual commitments to benevolent government and deep harmony. The article thus contributes to both the “institutional turn” in democratic theory and the “meritocracy versus democracy” debate in contemporary Confucian political theory.

Do populist ideas travel across borders? Anecdotal evidence suggests as much, yet so far we lack a systematic assessment of whether diffusion takes place, and if so under which conditions. We argue that context similarity enables the diffusion of populism among parties as it eases the adaption of populist framing of perceived grievances into the local context. Using a dyadic approach, we analyze diffusion effects among 923 parties in 67 countries from 1970 to 2018. We find that similar levels of political and economic exclusion foster learning from and emulating other parties abroad. We also uncover conditional effects for learning from other parties facing similar levels of income inequality or public sector corruption that hinge on a cultural prescreening. Combined, our results have important implications for a better understanding of diffusion processes in general and the spread of populist ideas around the globe in particular.

Housing shortages and rising rents have increased demands for affordable housing. In this paper, we examine whether electoral constraints can undermine local politicians' incentives to build public housing. Empirically, we draw on the full-count census of all housing built in Germany, data on 19,685 local elections between 1989 and 2011, and an original survey. Using a difference-in-differences design, we demonstrate that incumbents are not rewarded, but rather experience moderate electoral losses after constructing new public housing. We then show that these losses are not primarily driven by homeowner opposition or native–foreigner competition. Instead, electoral punishment is largest in economically disadvantaged municipalities with relatively affordable housing, as voters prioritize spending in other local policy areas that are crowded out by public housing. Survey evidence demonstrates that electoral constraints emerge when voters' short-term spending preferences conflict with municipalities' long-term goals to provide affordable housing.

Two of the founding principles of representative governments—the independence of elected representatives and popular accountability—are notoriously in tension. The more independent representatives are, the less citizens can exercise control over them. This article defends an institutional proposal—semi-directed mandates—aiming to capture the main concerns of both advocates and critics of imperative mandates and to strike a better balance between independence and accountability than the one usually prevailing in contemporary representative governments. The proposal consists of (i) asking candidates or parties to put forward key priorities before the election; (ii) allowing voters to give a more specific mandate to their representatives, and (iii) allowing them to revoke the mandate in case of betrayal of key promises unless they can offer convincing justifications for departing from their mandate. More flexible than the traditional imperative mandate, this proposal also preserves the benefits of a partial division of political labor. It, therefore, seems better suited to the typical circumstances of mass democracies.