American Journal of Political Science最新文献

Models of agenda setting are central to the analysis of political institutions. Elaborations of the classical agenda-setting model of Romer–Rosenthal have long been used to make predictions about policy outcomes and the distribution of influence among political actors. Although the canonical model is based on complete and perfect information about preferences and policy outcomes, some extensions relax these assumptions to include uncertainty about preferences and reversion points. We consider a different type of uncertainty: incomplete knowledge of the mapping between policies and outcomes. In characterizing the optimal agenda setting under this form of uncertainty, we show that it amends substantively the implications of the Romer–Rosenthal model. We then extend the model dynamically and show that rich dynamics emerge under policy uncertainty. Over a longer horizon, we find that agenda control suppresses the incentive of legislators to experiment with policy, leading to less policy learning and worse outcomes than are socially efficient.

Does the organization of the assembly affect whether governments deliver policy that reflects the public's changing preferences? Cross-national analyses of public opinion and policy outputs for policies concerning welfare and immigration show that governments respond to shifts in public opinion in systems with a dominant chamber but not where bicameralism is strong. Our theory's emphasis on the distribution of power between chambers further explains differences within bicameral systems: constraints on policy change mean that responsiveness is weaker where power is equally distributed between chambers but more robust where power is concentrated in the lower house. Evidence from institutional change in Belgium, where the fourth state reform shifted power away from the senate and disproportionately toward the lower house, provides corroborating evidence that policy becomes more responsive when constitutions concentrate legislative power. This study's findings have implications for our understanding of how bicameralism matters for government responsiveness to public opinion.

Recent political developments worldwide have focused attention on the fraying of political norms, often understood as informal restraints on opportunistic behavior. We present a model to study how norms of restraint interact with institutional checks and balances. In the model, an election determines which party holds office in each period over an infinite horizon. Each period presents the majority party with an opportunity to modify a status quo policy. However, informal norms and formal institutional barriers limit its ability to do so by providing soft and hard constraints to policymaking, respectively. We show that political cooperation can be easier to sustain in political systems with fewer checks and balances, when political norms are sufficiently stringent. Under optimal norms, increasing polarization makes norms easier to uphold, while also reducing welfare. Finally, norms maintained by minority parties are less sustainable, and voter optimal norms require minority concessions to achieve greater electoral competitiveness.

We study the role of perceived threats from other cultures induced by terrorist attacks and criminal events on public discourse and support for radical-right parties. We develop a rule which allocates Twitter users to electoral districts in Germany and use a machine-learning method to compute measures of textual similarity between the tweets they produce and tweets by accounts of the main German parties. Using the exogenous timing of attacks, we find that, after an event, Twitter language becomes on average more similar to that of the main radical-right party, AfD. The result is driven by a larger share of tweets discussing immigrants and Muslims, common AfD topics, and by a more negative sentiment of these tweets. Shifts in language similarity are correlated with changes in vote shares between federal elections. These results point to the role of perceived threats from minorities on the success of nationalist parties.

The presence of large cities increases the probability of authoritarian breakdown, but the literature has offered little empirical insight as to how challenges to authoritarian rule develop in urban space. I develop a theory of cities as complex sociopolitical spaces that are difficult to govern, particularly in the absence of democratic institutions. This complexity makes both co-optation and coercion difficult, meaning the very tactics that authoritarian cities use to control discontent can become its proximate cause. Using a large, city-financed housing project in Moscow targeted at rewarding regime supporters, I utilize a Bayesian semi-parametric model to demonstrate that even a seemingly well-targeted co-optive exchange contributed to a surprising defeat for the regime in a subsequent municipal election. My results suggest that the relative illegibility of cities plays an important part in the development of opposition to authoritarian rule.

This article explores a distinctive approach to parliamentarism advanced by key figures from India's founding period in response to their anxieties about concerns about the masses’ backwardness alongside a commitment to democratic self-rule. Both orientations, one democratic and the other, suspicious of the peoples’ political capacities, existed alongside each other in tension, generating a dilemma: how could the seemingly backward masses facilitate the overthrow of their backwardness in a democratic process? The thinkers studied in this article responded, I argue, with a pedagogical conception of parliamentarism, which viewed parliament and legislators as bearing the function of preparing the masses for democratic citizenship. Their approach represented a critical departure from the ideal of a deliberative legislative assembly at the apex of the lawmaking process, while avoiding strategies of exclusion historically associated with parliamentarism.

In a well-ordered society, democratic officials face an assurance problem. They want to ensure that others will act reasonably when they do the same. According to political liberals, public reason can solve this problem, but the details of how assurance is generated are unclear. This article explains the assurance mechanism in political liberalism. Apart from public reason, mutual assurance is also provided by a long-term record of civic deeds. By performing civic deeds over time, officials signal their reasonableness to each other. This record of civic deeds is costly to unreasonable officials and thus represents a reliable way to differentiate trustworthy fellows from others. The article also shows that a recent critique of political liberalism, which argues that public reason is merely cheap talk and thus political liberalism fails to provide mutual assurance, misses the point. It overlooks that assurance is created through talks and deeds together.

The political appointment of bureaucrats is typically seen as jeopardizing development by selecting worse types into the bureaucracy or by depressing bureaucratic effort. I argue that political appointments also affect outcomes through a third, less studied channel, namely, by changing how bureaucrats work. Patronage provides connections between bureaucrats and politicians, and thereby grants access to material and nonmaterial resources, enhances monitoring, facilitates the application of sanctions and rewards, aligns priorities and incentives, and increases mutual trust. Political appointments can thus enhance bureaucrats’ accountability and effectiveness, not just for rent-seeking purposes but also, in certain conditions, for public service delivery. I test this theory using data on Brazilian municipal governments, leveraging two quasi-experiments, two original surveys of bureaucrats and politicians, and in-depth interviews. The findings highlight the countervailing effects of connections on bureaucratic governance in the developing world.

Can staying minorities who evade ethnic cleansing affect political outcomes in resettled communities? After World War Two, three million ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, but some were allowed to stay, many of them left-leaning antifascists. We study quasi-experimental local variation in expulsion policies, a result of the surprising presence of the U.S. Army, which indirectly helped antifascist Germans stay. We find a long-lasting footprint: Communist party support, party cells, and far-left values are stronger today where antifascist Germans stayed in larger numbers. Postwar German Communist elites appear to be behind this effect along with the intergenerational transmission of values among active party members.

Classic and modern theories of rebel warfare emphasize the role of resource endowments. We demonstrate that intelligence gathering, made possible by these endowments, plays a critical role in determining specifics of how rebels launch complex attacks against better equipped government forces. We test implications of a theoretical model using highly detailed data about Afghan rebel attacks, insurgent-led spy networks, and counterinsurgent operations. Leveraging quasi-random variation in opium suitability, we find that improved rebel capacity is associated with (1) increased insurgent operations; (2) improved battlefield tactics through technological innovation, increased complexity, and attack clustering; and (3) increased effectiveness against security forces, especially harder targets. These results show that access to capital, coupled with intelligence gathering, meaningfully impacts how and where rebels fight.