American Journal of Political Science最新文献

We show that current levels of democracy in Africa are linked to the nature of its independence movements. Using different measures of political regimes and historical data on anticolonial movements, we find that countries that experienced rural insurgencies tend to have autocratic regimes, while those that faced urban protests tend to have more democratic institutions. The association between the type of independence movement and democracy is statistically significant for the post-Cold War period and robust to a number of potential confounding factors and sensitivity checks. We provide evidence for causality in this relationship by using an instrumental variables approach and a difference-in-differences design with fixed effects. Furthermore, we adjudicate between two potential mechanisms and find support for a behavioral path dependence hypothesis. Urban protests enabled participants to develop norms of peaceful political behavior, which provided cultural bases for liberal democracy. In contrast, armed rebellions generated behavioral patterns that perpetuated political exclusion and the use of violence as a form of political dissent.

Where cross-border sanctuaries enable rebels to marshal external support, classical theories of counterinsurgency extol the strategic value of border fortification. By sealing borders, counterinsurgents can erode transnational militants’ resources, degrading the quality of rebellion. Extending resource-centric theories of conflict, I posit a fortification dilemma inherent in this strategy. Externally supplied rebels can afford conventional attacks and civilian victimization. When border fortifications interdict their foreign logistics, insurgents compensate by cultivating greater local support. In turn, rebels prefer more irregular attacks and cooperative relations with civilians. Hence, counterinsurgent border fortification trades off reduced rebel capabilities for greater competition over local hearts and minds. I test this theory using declassified microdata on border fortification and violence in Iraq. Results highlight the central link between border control and cross-border militancy, and show how governments can contest the transnational dimensions of civil wars, such as external rebel sponsorship.

Currently, almost all polities that allow for jury trials deprive people with felony convictions of their right to serve as jurors on criminal trials. Against these exclusionary practices, we contend that there are epistemic and political reasons to enable (and not merely allow) convicted felony defendants to serve as jurors. These reasons are derived from the ideal of peer judgment, which we take to be deeply ingrained in and relevant for ensuring fair jury-judgment practices. In this article, we construct an account of peer judgment understood as equal subjection to coercive law, spell out the epistemic dimension of this account, and use it to argue that there are stronger reasons for having people with felony convictions serve as jurors, as compared to average, noncriminalized citizens. Our peer-judgment argument is meant to both weaken and outweigh current justifications for excluding people with felony convictions from jury service.

In the original publication of Lupu and Peisakhin (2017), we miscoded one of the dependent variables in our analysis. Our measure of turnout is a factored index of two items from our survey asking about participation in the March 2014 referendum and the September 2014 local elections. Our survey instrument coded these two variables differently so that the turnout index is actually reversed, with higher values corresponding to individuals who were less likely to participate. This error was an oversight on our part—we incorrectly presumed that our instrument had used the same value labels for yes/no responses.

The result of this error is that the effect of turnout throughout the article is inverted. The magnitude and statistical significance of the effect remains unchanged. Corrected versions of Figures 2 and 5 from the original article can be found here:

As a result of this correction, we find mixed results regarding the effect of ancestor victimization on political engagement: while victimization reduced turnout in the two elections we examined, it increased respondents’ willingness to participate.

The article's main claim is that ancestor victimization strengthens ingroup attachment and animosity toward the perpetrator within families that experienced more state repression. We demonstrated how the mechanism behind this effect is the transmission of victim identities across multiple generations. The set of findings at the core of the original article is unaffected.

In measuring how victim identities affect political participation, one of the variables we examined was turnout in two 2014 elections. The other relevant variable was willingness to participate in other political activities, like protests and petitions. We found that ancestor victimization increases willingness to protest (this result is unchanged). Owing to the coding error, we reported that descendants of victims are more likely to turn out to vote when they are, in fact, less likely to do so.

In 2014, Crimean Tatar leaders urged their community to boycott the Russia-backed elections that followed the region's annexation. It makes sense that those with stronger group attachments (the descendants of more intensely victimized families) would have been more likely to heed the call for a boycott, and therefore, less likely to turn out, and we presented our incorrect positive result as somewhat surprising. As a result, the revised finding on political participation is in some ways more consistent with our core argument. At the same time, given their animosity toward Russian authorities, it also makes sense that the descendants of victims would be more willing to participate in protests and petitions in the future.

We have revised the supporting information and replication dataset to correct this error. We are grateful to Austin Wang for bringing it to our attention.

One of the most consistent findings on UN peace operations (UNPOs) is that they contribute to peace. Existing scholarship argues this is because UNPOs' peacekeeping troops solve the security dilemma that inhibits combatant disarmament and prevents their political leaders from sharing power. We argue that existing scholarship's focus on peacekeeping troops overlooks UNPOs’ role in enabling governments to implement redistributive power-sharing reforms contained in peace agreements, along with their broader peace processes. While peacekeeping troops can help belligerents refrain from violence, military force alone cannot explain how political elites implement redistributive reforms that threaten their status. We argue that UNPOs that have predominant peacebuilding (as opposed to peacekeeping) mandates help sustain political elites’ commitment to implementing peace agreement reforms and, thus, contribute to inclusive peace (increased political inclusion and reduced violence). We test our argument using a data set on UNPO mandates and original fieldwork on three sequential UNPOs in Burundi.

This study offers experimental tests of the “personal vote” in an era of heightened partisanship and polarization. Using three national surveys, we randomly present information about a hypothetical legislator's voting record, committee assignment, and district-oriented work. After evaluating the legislator, respondents are presented with information about a challenger running on a nationalized message. Respondents, especially out-partisans, report much greater satisfaction with the legislator when told about his district-oriented activities, but increased willingness to vote for the legislator is more limited and mostly reserved for independents. In varying information about the legislator's voting record, we also find scant evidence that bipartisan legislators are better at securing a personal vote. In two experimental extensions, we show that our findings generalize to evaluations of real senators, and that nationalizing elections is one possible way that opponents can thwart incumbent efforts at winning the votes of independents and out-partisans through traditional district-oriented appeals.

The political utility of ethnicity is typically attributed to the ease with which it can be observed. However, ethnic visibility is not universal, and I argue that its variation has political implications; namely that more visible group members support ethnic parties at higher rates because they have the most to gain (or lose) from ethnopolitical competition. Using original data from Malawi, I find that individual-level ethnic visibility is indeed strongly associated with ethnic party support. I provide further evidence that visibility induces party support instrumentally by shaping expectations about others’ ability to correctly infer ethnic belonging. I also show that the theory generalizes to the group level, with more visible ethnic groups across Africa being more likely to vote ethnically. These results qualify a central assumption in instrumental theories of ethnic politics—that ethnic identities are always visible—and help explain variation in the success of ethnic political mobilization.