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This paper uniquely builds on previous research on cross-national democracy and income inequality. The refinement of multivariate cross-sectional time-series models that explain variation in both democracy and income distribution has proceeded to the point of incorporating variables that represent cross-national economic structure. These variables include ordinal scales of economic openness as published by the Fraser Institute and the Heritage Foundation and interval-level measures of governmental economic activity such as public sector size. However, given issues regarding the limited time frame and reliability and validity of the economic openness variables, and the limited country coverage of public sector spending variables, one can question the applicability of the findings of these models to a broad swath of developing countries over a lengthy time period. Developing countries tend to be less well-represented in these cross-national models. Yet the most interesting over-time variation on income distribution, democracy, and openness is in the developing world. I propose to make the case for proxying economic openness and governmental economic activity through a measure of economic development such as GDP per capita or energy consumption per capita. This will considerably broaden the developing country coverage and time frame of the study. Additionally, transitions toward capitalist development in developing countries can be more fully examined. I will use Heckman selection models of economic development to test whether or not the democracy-income inequality relationship changes across development levels. The resulting paper will be a unique advance on better accounting for cross-country, cross-development variation in income inequality, democracy, and capitalism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the informational activities of Africa’s civil society organisations, the new information communication technologies (ICTs) are largely perceived to offer unprecedented plurality that challenges the hitherto excessive powers and influence of the continent’s ruling elites. Before the advent of ICTs, many African leaders tightly controlled information dissemination ? allowing only the dominant political views. Based on interviews in Kenya and Zambia, this paper examines the perceptions that in Africa the impact of ICTs is, ironically, disproportionately greater than their overall spread, and that the libertarian ICTs as impetus to the third wave of democratisation shift the balance of power between states and citizens, especially in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature surveys how democracy changes the government?s spending priorities in Latin America. This paper extends study to the Asian-Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) to evaluate how specific democratic procedures ? elections and legislative fragmentation ? affect military and civilian allocations. It also considers how the sequence and rules of the budgetary process affect results. The analyses of government spending in South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore from the 1960s to 2000 reveal two important findings. First, the budgetary process significantly influences how the effects of elections and legislative fragmentation are manifested; indeed, the effects of elections and legislative fragmentation on the government?s spending priorities are clear and robust only when the sequence and rules of budget making are modeled. Second, democracy does not affect government spending separately from elections and legislative fragmentation in South Korea and Taiwan ? it has a distinct effect only on spending in Singapore. These findings add nuances and new perspectives to the study of democracy?s effects on the government?s military and civilian allocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the role ideas play in understanding how and why the dominant economic development model among developing countries transitioned from economic nationalism to neoliberalism over the last two decades. Relating this process to the agent-structure dynamic found in constructivism, I argue that international society is an important source of states’ preferences over economic policy. International society is embodied by norms constitutive of international society and thereby teach (socialize) developing countries how to be in good economic standing in the global economy. Thus, throughout time we see the pervasive adoption of economic development models at the national level that have been institutionalized in the international structure. Most recently, this process has been manifested in the trend toward neoliberal economic policies among developing countries. Through a case study of Brazil’s transition in the 1990s from economic nationalism to neoliberal economic policy, I draw out the dynamics and sequence of this agent-structure process. The constitutive effects of discourse are apparent as epistemic communities socialize political leaders and as political leaders engage in a domestic campaign to sell the efficacy of these ideas by drawing on norms institutionalized in both the international and national structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does the relationship between democracy and income inequality look like in the developing world? This paper examines recent work that specifies a nonlinear relationship between democracy and income inequality in multivariate models across world regions and time (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006, Burkhart 1997, Houle 2009). The majority of the literature has generally specified a linear relationship between inequality and democracy / democratization (Barro 1999, Boix 2003, Bollen and Jackman 1985). The more recent evidence suggests the nonlinear relationship, either in an inverted U-shaped curve or a more subtle logarithmic shaping, to be more representative and promising. However, the literature has not tested the relationships across the various regions of the developing world, rather within one or two (e.g. Huber et al. 2006 in Latin America), or divided the time frame across eras (pre-and post-Cold War, for instance, or decades from the 1960s onward). I will evaluate this relationship in a fully-specified nonrecursive model with the latest comparative income inequality data from the UNUWIDER project and the Standardized World Income Inequality Database from Solt (2009) across regions and time periods. This exercise, hopefully, will be an illuminating exercise for the purposes of determining the relationship's stability, or lack thereof, in the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freedom of Information (FOI) laws have diffused rapidly across the globe, and have been hailed for strengthening democracy and civil society. By 2008 they had been passed by seventy-four countries, including forty-four in the developing world. This paper finds that FOI laws also have an economic impact, increasing FDI inows in developing countries. FOI laws can impact FDI by leading to increased transparency, greater policy credibility, or by serving as a highly visible signal to investors. Using a panel study of developing countries over the years 1985 to 2008, I find that FOI laws increase FDI inows, but only once they have been in effect for several years. I also find that the effects of FOI laws are greater, and take effect sooner, where the rule of law is high. These findings reect the importance of implementation and enforcement for FOI laws to alter domestic political incentives and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many forms of environmental degradation first increase, then level off and decrease as national income grows. Does this mean poorer countries have to grow rich before they can improve their environmental performance? This paper argues that integration into the international system in combination with democratic forms of government mitigates this dilemma. This argument is tested on panel data for 115 developing countries in 1970-2000. The empirical analysis shows that IGO membership, one important manifestation of political integration into the international system, reduces air and water pollution in democracies and autocracies. Moreover, democracy amplifies the positive integration effect with respect to SO2 emissions, but less with respect to CO2 emissions and water pollution. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental causal aspiration of international environmental policymaking and associated social movements is to bring about change in the policies and institutions that shape human-environment interactions. Yet the transformation toward more sustainable resource use also requires a measure of stability in the new institutional arrangements, to ensure cumulative institutional strengthening across multiple political administrations, to undertake policy experimentation and lesson learning, to build social constituencies, and to tackle management problems (e.g., forestry, fisheries, watershed management) that require stewardship over long time horizons. Institutional stability is an especially acute concern in the chronically unstable political and economic environments of developing and transition economies. This paper takes stock of the state of our knowledge about institutional stability and change in different national settings, drawing on disparate research literatures on policy agenda-setting and implementation, social revolution and state-building, institutional economics, democratic consolidation, and common-pool resource regimes. The goal is to produce an analytic framework that can facilitate cumulative, cross-national research on the evolution of institutions for environmental management. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking beyond the conventional debate whether FDI will favor democracy or autocracy, the paper aims to tackle an important but largely unexplored question: Why some foreign investors favor democracy whereas others prefer autocracy? The central argument is that both democratic and authoritarian regimes have their comparative institutional advantages to attract certain types of foreign investors. Political institutions have systematic influence on the patterns that FDI flows into developing countries. FDI patterns refer to three dimensions of FDI activities--capital intensity, export intensity, and technological intensity. Democracy is able to make more credible policy whereas autocracy is able to respond more flexibly. Foreign investors' vulnerability to expropriation risks will affect their preferences for more credible or more flexible policy. Foreign investors tend to invest in capital-intensive and market-seeking projects in countries that are able to make long-term credible policy, other things being equal. Foreign investors tend to invest in labor-intensive and export-oriented projects in countries that are able to respond more flexibly to foreign investors, other things being equal. The data analysis provides evidence that supports the hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy was dominated by the strategic need to contain communism. Human rights and democracy were of secondary importance. In the post-Cold War period, the promotion of human rights and democracy rose in prominence as foreign policy concerns. In the spirit of Andrew Pierre, who once characterized arms transfers as foreign policy writ large, this study questions whether the transfer of U.S. arms mirrors America’s foreign policy goals. To what extent do U.S. arms transfers reflect a concern for human rights and democracy? As a foreign policy instrument, do U.S. arms transfer patterns reflect a transition between Cold War and Post-Cold War worlds? To address these questions, this study will examine the empirical linkage between U.S. foreign policy goals and arms export agreements with developing countries for the years 1981-2002. A Heckman model will be used to estimate the determinants of arms at the initial selection stage and the subsequent amount stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and when do politically influential interest groups influence national economic policymaking? A well elaborated formal political economy literature suggests that macroeconomic and public policy outcomes vary when opposed partisan coalitions?representing, for example, either business or labor?come to control the executive and other high policymaking positions. Yet existing partisan models have not always traveled well when applied to developing country and historical cases, arguably because most such models assume that the underlying political system is an advanced industrial democracy. Opportunistic models of political economy also present problems when applied outside the OECD. I propose a model that accommodates political variation along two dimensions. First, politically dominant partisan coalitions may be either rightist/conservative or leftist/developmentalist. Second, the scope of national political participation may be low, medium, or high. The result is six types of national political regimes, each of which generates strong incentives to incumbent leaders to prefer certain types of national economic policies. Appendix I outlines the application of this framework to predicting choices of national financial architectures across historical and developing country cases. Appendix II sketches a research design focusing on policies for national financial ?reform? in Brazil and India from the early nineteenth century to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, we have seen a proliferation of economic crises in the developing world. These crises have had disastrous effects on national economies as entire banking sectors collapsed, currencies depreciated and millions fell below the poverty line. At different points in history, economic crises have led to democratic breakdown or to democratic transition. These periods corresponded roughly with Samuel Huntington’s waves of democracy. However, the literature has insufficiently addressed how economic crises affect regime change in these third wave democracies. I argue that while financial crises may engender regime change in authoritarian countries, in third wave democracies, one will not see economic crisis generating a regime change but instead a regime shift. I define regime shift as a movement among alternatives within the democratic structure. For example, if the right is in power when an economic crisis hits, one may see left and far-left parties making substantial gains in the next election. In order to test this hypothesis, I will use multivariate analysis through employing the most similar systems case study methodology. I chose the three cases of Turkey, Poland and the Philippines to ensure sufficient geographic variation. In addition, these countries vary in terms of how their democratic transition took place (i.e. controlled from above vs. spurred from below). I believe this choice of cases is significant, for it refutes the argument that the regime shift phenomenon is region specific. The results of this study suggest that a robust correlation exists between economic crisis and regime shift. This analysis can strongly affirm two factors: first, third wave democracies are not collapsing in the wake of economic crises. Second, during economic crises, incumbents are typically rejected in favor of alternatives to the status quo. In Turkey, far right and Islamic parties made substantial gains during the three economic crises. In Poland, the Solidarity party was defeated during each economic crisis in favor of the former communist SLD. In the Philippines, the establishment presidential candidate was rejected in favor of the most anti-establishment candidate on the ticket. These findings will, I hope, make a contribution to the literatures on economic crises and democratic transitions. Most notably, it will show that the third wave democracies are not reverting back to authoritarianism when they hit rough periods. Instead, they are showing the first signs of democratic consolidation by holding their leaders accountable for policy failures. They are choosing from the systemic parties available, rather than rioting. This shows that they have faith in the democratic institutions of government to rectify their problems. For third wave democracies, this is a promising finding indeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study that attempts to sort out the conflicting expectations about the effects of financial globalization on democracy by studying the links between different types of foreign capital and the level of democratization in the developing countries. It cites the effect of foreign aid in the form of foreign aids on democratization efforts in authoritarian regimes. It discuss the theoretical links between different forms of foreign capital and level of democratization.

This paper looks at the ways in which Turkey’s security discourses have been shaped by and have, in turn, shaped the transformation Turkey has gone through in recent years. Whereas the ‘Eurosceptics’ have underlined the need for a broad security agenda by making references to ‘globalised security’, while seeking to reshape practices in defence of ‘national security’, the ‘pro-EU’ actors have opened up Turkey’s definition of ‘national security’ for debate thereby sawing the seeds of an alternative security discourse. This is a significant departure from the earlier discourse of pro-EU actors who had refrained from using ‘security speak’ and sought to make the case for European Union membership on purely economic (welfare) and political (democracy) grounds. The point being that during the 1990s pro-EU actors in Turkey found the best way to bring about political change in Turkey as that of securitising economic issues and pointing to the economic costs of the existing conception of ‘national security’. The paper falls into three parts. Part 1 looks at the ‘traditional’ discourse on security (the discourse of politicians and civilian-military bureaucrats) that has prevailed during the republican era. Part 2 seeks to identify the 1990s changes in Turkey’s security discourses by focusing on the debates on the European Union membership. Part 3 suggests that a two-step strategy (first securitisation, then desecuritisation) might be the way out of the security dilemmas faced by developing countries like Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization is frequently identified as having profound consequences for processes of governance on different levels and in different policy areas. Foreign and international state, non-state and hybrid actors seek to influence domestic policy making. Western scholars have identified fundamental changes and upheavals in developed countries that lead to a shift of decision-making power away from the nation state (the center) towards other actors or networks of actors. This shift has been called "decentration" - a term emphasizing the shifts of power in the public as well as the private spheres, thus allowing for an evaluation of the micro-level of governance. Departing from the notion of decentration this paper analyzes the "pluralization" of actors and its consequences for the nexus between state and society. It traces the development of a state-society nexus in developed countries and in Brazil as a country of the "second world" (Khanna), and focuses on questions of accountability and legitimacy. In this paper I advance the argument that unlike in developed countries the pluralization of actors in developing countries presents less of a threat than an opportunity to the state-society relationship. In Brazil the pluralization of domestic actors increases the inclusion of traditionally excluded members of society, while the internationalization of actors creates leverage over the national government. These developments have the potential to deepen democracy and to strengthen the notions of legitimacy and accountability in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the collapse of communism civil society gained prominence as the most crucial element for establishing and sustaining democracy. A strong civil society is seen as important for a robust liberal democratic order not only in the post communist countries but also in the so-called ?third world?. In its ?social capital? variation it is seen as a solution to the political apathy and the liberal dilemma of atomistic individualism facing advanced democracies. Cohen and Arato (1992) , argue that the concept of civil society is the primary locus for the expansion of democracy and rights. Multilateral international organizations increasingly rely on civil society organizations as ?partners? in development. Hence civil society is assigned a key role in promoting/sustaining/establishing good governance, reducing poverty and supporting a liberal/neoliberal economic order. It is seen as a panacea for the ?ills? plaguing the developing nations of the world. Leading universities have established research centres dedicated to research on civil society , and multilateral aid agencies incorporate the normative ideals of civil society in their policies. Hence, the task of establishing\strengthening of civil society, as the case may be, in developing countries has become an important part of their mission.The importance assigned to civil society, as a normative ideal and a political reality, makes it a highly contested concept. In this paper I will analyze the academic and policy discourse surrounding civil society, using historical and theoretical insights. The objective of the exercise is to analyze the role, if any, played by academics in shaping the ?civil society? debate and influencing policy. Academics and scholars have an important role to play here, both as supporters and dissenters, initiating dialogue and debate in areas which are seen as ?end of history? or ?end of theory?. The civil society debate takes a polemic turn , as accusations of eurocentrism and imperialism on the one hand and the incapacity of certain societies to have civil society on the other, are bandied back and forth. Prevalence of persistent poverty, inequality and political as well as social turmoil in the developing, as well as the developed part of the world, beseech scholars to uncover the anomalies and disconnect between theory and reality. The paper seeks to analyze the role played by academics engaged in International Studies, focusing specifically on the ?civil society? debate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explored the use of security in the third world state, in this case Colombia (2002-2006) in which security discourse is applied in a context in which insecurity comes from within the ‘national state’ but is permeated by the macro discourses of the Western State system (Ayoob, 1995). According to Huysmans (1998) security is a discursive order. Security is also deeply tied to identity formation (Campbell, 1998), and nation building (Tilly, 1974), and as such security is an essential dimension of state consolidation. Alvaro Uribe won the presidency by deploying a strong discourse on security. Four years latter, Uribe’s results were mixed; however, Uribe won a second term by an even larger margin of votes by once again promoting security as the main responsibility of the Colombian state. I argue that analyzing Uribe’s security discourse through Foucauldian lenses can offer important theoretical and empirical insights on the Colombian case. First by determining the conditions of its emergence; second, by showing how a local discourse on security draws but is not over-determined by the global narratives of the post 9/11 world. This analysis can produce a nuanced understanding of the consequences of the discourse on security for the Colombian democracy, by showing how security is contested, validated and transformed from within and from outside the state in Colombia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades Mexico has experienced democratic transition and economic modernization, while significantly increasing its volume of foreign direct investment (FDI) and manufactured exports. Despite these accomplishments, Mexico continues to confront high rates of unemployment, poverty, and sluggish economic growth. This study seeks to understand why democracy and free markets have not produced better results for economic development in Mexico. Traditional explanations juxtapose the tensions between policy choices and economic outcomes. This paper differs in that it explains the shortcomings of export-led growth in Mexico as a product institutional norms rather than bad policy. It will pursue migration as an aspect of the problem. I conclude that the continuity of corporatist institutions in the Mexican political economy has led to inefficient or dysfunctional patterns of economic development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michel de Certeau’s astute conceptualisation of ordinary peoples’ practices of everyday life, non-elite cultural (re)production, and his focus on democratic research ethics provides an empiric-conceptual bridge between three, nominally separate domains for broaching issues around democracy - as a political ideal, set of norms, interventions and contestations in a so-called global information age. Namely: postcolonial critiques of western (mainstream/critical) political paradigms; constructivist approaches to theorising technology; post-Marxist projects for “Radical Democracy” as proposed by Laclau & Mouffe (1985) and then furthered by Hardt & Negri (2000, 2003). Significant revisions of overlapping “essentialist apriorisms” such as these, in their bids to decentre the western/male/privileged gaze in democratic politics and knowledge-production, tend to under-theorise and under-research Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Even whilst affirming their formative role in key socio-political mutations and other-globalization contestations, these projects are still carried along by an undertow of technological determinism. The eloquent, complex - and antagonistic - ways in which non-western, non-elite Internet practitioners (re)articulate democratic practice on and through the Internet in particular are then overlooked. The paper develops these theoretical claims, substantiating them with material taken from participant-observer research into Internet discussion forums for Pacific Island communities; their diasporic populations particularly. In these cyberspaces people debate the very meaning and application of democratic practices for small island developing states faced with “global” imperatives. The topic at hand is ongoing political dissent in the Kingdom of Tonga; as a specific case but also with respect to postcolonial politics in the Pacific region at large. A closer look at what "democratic principles" are at stake, and for whom in these discussions’ thematic content and how these mesh with the formal, participatory features of these everyday (cyber)spatial practices puts some conceptual flesh and empirical muscle-tone on postcolonialist and post-Marxist politics for (un)democratic cybertimes. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do governments in developing economies respond to increased import competition? Do they pursue `efficiency' and reduce spending to make domestic businesses more competitive or, as others have hypothesized, does increased import competition obligegovernments to increase spending on public services as a form of `compensating' the domestic constituency? This paper answers these questions, by specifying more carefully the societal preferences toward government public service spending in the face of openness. We argue that the government's response to openness is an interactive function of domestic political institutions, specifically the size of the constituency to which politicians must appeal to stay in power, the economy?s terms of trade volatility, experience with openness, and economic diversification. The three economic factors are argued to shape the degree to which increased import competition exacerbates uncertainty among citizens, both capitalists and labor, which leads them to demand government intervention. Political democracies, which require leaders to satisfy the preferences of a large portion of society, respond to increased openness by increasing their spending on public services. Non-democratic leaders, by contrast, can survive in office by simply satisfying economic elites who favor lower public services spending and lower taxes; in these societies, increased openness leads to reduced public services spending. We test our claims on a sample of developing countries from 1960-2002 using an error-correction model. The econometric results are supportive of our hypotheses. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant theories traditionally assert that democracy is more likely to fail in multi-ethnic countries, particularly in the developing world. When ethnic divisions become politicized, elections turn into a zero-sum game in which competing ethnic parties vie for control of the state. Under these conditions, bargaining and compromise allegedly become impossible and lead to the breakdown of the democratic process. Yet, breakdown is empirically rare in the world?s multi-ethnic democracies. As such, existing theories appear to be excessively pessimistic about the durability of democracy in divided societies. This paper offers a theory of democratic stability in multi-ethnic states. We explore the conditions under which breakdown or stability occur after multi-ethnic party systems hold elections. Democracy is shown to be a stable equilibrium in cases where multiple shifting alliances are possible such that no single ethnic group is able to form a permanent electoral majority. Further, even in cases where a single group does form a permanent majority, democracy may continue as a stable equilibrium as long as the costs of defection for the minority party are greater than the benefits. We test our model of democratic breakdown/stability with a number of elections from multi-ethnic party systems in the developing world. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many scholars are examining various alternative determinants of democracy and democratization in developing countries (LDCs), relatively little attention is paid to the impact of Major Powerâ€"in particular, the United Statesâ€"pressure on their success ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of studies have noted that democracies are more likely to adopt a floating exchange rate commitment. Several causal mechanisms may be responsible for this correlation, but few have been rigorously tested as hypotheses. I test the possibility that democracies float more often because elected leaders fear that broken exchange rate commitments will lead to a tougher re-election campaign for incumbents. Floating exchange rates are more attractive for elected leaders because they involve no formal commitments. I test this hypothesis with comparisons of electoral results in developing countries to see if elected leaders face a lower likelihood of re-election after a significant devaluation. I also provide statistical tests that show that the degree of electoral competitiveness influences the length of time a developing country spends with a fixed exchange rate. I discuss the possibility that this dynamic is partly responsible for the “fear of floating” where several developing countries have formally declared a floating exchange rate but in practice allow little movement in their exchange rate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an emerging reality of a two-tiered world, with Western countries enjoying economic prosperity and democratic empowerment while many Third World countries suffering from abject poverty and political repression. In analyzing this phenomenon, we should refrain from seeing either the West or the Rest as a homogenous entity with uniform development. In fact, the West in the early modern period experienced a growing divide between old-regime France and Spain on the one hand and the Dutch Republic and England/Britain on the other. If the problem of underdevelopment is a transhistorical one, we may be in a better position to identify the diagnosis. And if France and Spain could eventually catch up with the Dutch Republic and England then – just as some newly industrialized countries have caught up with Western countries now, we may develop a better cure for those states that are stuck at the bottom tier. Many scholars and policymakers argue that trade promotion is the key to economic development and that economic growth is the foundation for democratic transition. This view can be traced to the Enlightenment belief that trade is the source of prosperity, liberty, and power. I argue that this view is grossly inadequate for even the Western trajectory. I contend that trade’s effects on development and constitutionalism are shaped by two interacting factors: the nature of the ruler-trader alliance and the degree of state-capacity. In my preliminary analysis, I first trace trade expansion and alternative paths in the West. I then draw lessons from the West for the Rest. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second half of the twentieth century saw cyclical increases in the number of democracies worldwide as well as a rise in the number and intensity of ethnic rebellions. Some researchers link these two trends, suggesting that democratization unleashes ethnic tensions and gives rise to ethnic-based rebellion. This research examines the conditions under which democracy and democratization affect ethnic rebellion. In examining ethnic rebellion, I employ a variety of theories: elite persuasion, political opportunity, competition, modernization, and internal colonialism theories are all tested for their utility in explaining cross-national variation in ethnic rebellion. I find that democratization is associated with future reductions in ethnic rebellion, which supports political opportunity theory. I also find an interaction between the level of development and the level of democracy in affecting ethnic rebellion. In more developed countries, the level of democracy is positivelyassociated with rebellion. In less developed countries, the level of democracy is negatively associated with ethnic rebellion. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do developing countries that allow greater political freedoms and respect for labor rights attract more foreign direct investment than nondemocracies with poor labor records? Recent research suggests that developing countries that permit better collective labor rights and democratic polities attract greater investment, but this linkage has yet to be tested using labor’s bargaining power to measure its effects on foreign direct investment in developing countries. Using a 24 country time-series cross sectional panel data set, this analysis uses a new measure of labor bargaining power in developing counties and finds that multinational corporations are investing more in countries where labor has minimal organizing potential and less bargaining strength. Multinational corporations are sensitive to the stability associated with a quiet labor force, and can be more sensitive to labor’s potential to organize and negotiate better wages. Contrary to conventional wisdom, labor inputs and the potential for work stoppages are costs that multinationals are not willing to bear. Findings from this analysis contribute to the debate on the “racing to the bottom” or “climbing to the top” role of multinationals in North-South relations. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exists a positive relationship between the quality of life and democracy. The more democratic a country is, the higher quality of life it enjoys. This positive relationship between democracy and the quality of life is believed to exist because democratic governments, which are formed with consent from the public, respond to public needs and are held accountable otherwise. Given low barriers to political entry and exit, democratic governments have strong incentives to introduce welfare-enhancing policies in order to stay in power and deliberately invest public resources in them. Public health is one of those welfare-enhancing policies. Democratic governments tend to take responsibility for providing health care for their population at a minimum or above levels, which results in longer life expectancy, low infant mortality, fewer outbreaks of infectious diseases, and so on. Nonetheless, this role of democratic governments in public health has been under pressure. Whereas provision of quality public health is expensive and thus becomes a cause of budget deficits as part of social spending in many Western democratic countries, capital mobility and intense international competition, which drives ?race to the bottom?, constrain democratic governments? ability to provide public health through deficit spending or raising taxes. In that regard, developing countries do not appear to be exempt; rather, this problem can be more complicated for them, especially the ones that democratized in the 1990s. Whereas democratized developing countries need to meet people?s expectation of increased welfare spending and to invest in public health as a way of building human capital for economic development, the onset of globalization that coincided with their democratization could already be curbing government spending on public health. The governments of democratized developing countries are caught between domestic demands and international pressure. Therefore, we propose a study of the determinants of public health spending and resultant quality of life (public health) in developing countries. Especially this study will focus on comparing public health in East Asia and Eastern Europe on the ground that they were democratized approximately same time, similarly developed, and faced pressure from globalization. Various political and economic factors will be tested as determinants of public health in a two-staged regression model (2SLS), and this study will be further innovative by attempting to explicitly measure globalization pressure with regional competition. Due to the similar level of economic development, these countries are equally desirable candidates for foreign direct investment from the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. Since these countries are likely to compete against one another for inward foreign direct investment, government spending on public health can be determined by regional competition to a certain degree. With this operationalization of globalization pressure, this study will also be indirectly testing the argument mounted against globalization as driving ?race to the bottom?. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do democratic developing economies differ from authoritarian ones in their ability to reform ?inefficient? social welfare pacts in the face of globalization? We hypothesize that institutional diversity is the underlying causal mechanism that generates greater 'welfare path dependency' in democratic regimes than in authoritarian ones. We test this hypothesis using data for 59 developing countries over the period 1972-1997. Findings from this analysis establish that more democratic less developed countries (LDCs) experience welfare patterns that reflect an underlying portfolio structure. One implication is that drastic social reforms can only be achieved at the expense of political freedoms. Drawing from the seminal work of Charles Lindblom (1959, 1965, 1977), we argue that authoritarian LDCs face greater opportunities (and incentives) to implement substantial changes to their welfare regimes because of the lack of institutional constraints on the chief executive?s decision-making. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on anti-terror laws in the third world. It notes that the goals of promoting democracy and fighting terrorism are at odds with one another as the government uses anti-terrorist rhetoric to restrict civil liberties and strengthen security measures. It cites the concerns raised by the U.S. Patriot Act about its provision for enhanced surveillance, information sharing and indefinite detention. It examines the involvement of the U.S. in the development of anti-terror legislation in the third world.