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This paper presents a new panel dataset measuring non-market coordination in OECD countries across several spheres of the political economy. The paper uses the dataset to test hypotheses about the origins and maintenance of non-market coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and empirically test transportation and communication infrastructure as important elements of international political economy and more specifically as important determinants of interstate trade. This paper is part of a larger research program which has developed a quantitative measure for these two forms of infrastructure for each state in the international system from 1840 until 1993. More specifically, this paper will examine two research questions: 1)What makes states more or less likely to build transportation and communication infrastructure? 2)How does transportation and communication infrastructure influence interstate trade? I will argue that the construction and development of infrastructure should play an important role in shaping the trade relations between states in the international system. These systems reduce transportation costs and coordination difficulties, thereby reducing the costs of goods and increasing profits, ceteris paribus. My findings support these claims; more transportation and communication infrastructure do increase the amount of bilateral trade between states. In addition, I argue that regime types, resources, and state population also play an important role in shaping how much transportation and communication infrastructure a state possesses. My findings indicate that there are significant regime and resource relationships at work in the construction of communication infrastructure. However, it initially appears that transportation infrastructure is largely determined by its previous values, and is largely unaffected by political or resource decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a preliminary exploration into the intersection of economics, religion, and politics with regards to development issues in Indonesia. In specific, this paper’s hypothesis is that the Indonesian government often acts through and with religious organizations (and not as much or in the same ways as with secular civil society organizations) for economic and social development. The paper includes several sections: 1) Introduction and thesis. 2) Literature review: definition of civil society, how religious organizations fit into “civil society,” information about the political role of civil society, types of civil society organizations in Indonesia, and the extent to which civil society is really “outside” of governmental control (i.e., autonomy issues). 3) Background information about non-governmental organizations and information about their potential role in democratization processes. 4) Background for religious organizations: types of religious organizations in Indonesia and what they do. Special attention is given to Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah (two of the largest and arguably most influential groups in Indonesia). 5) The nature of the relationship between the Indonesian government and civil society. 6) Information about religious organizations and economic development. Questions: a. Do religious organizations have a comparative advantage over secular organizations in supporting economic and social development? b. What does the government get in return for supporting (or controlling) religious organizations? c. Likewise, what do religious organizations obtain for supporting the government? 7) Conclusion and recommendations for future research. Each section by no means provides an exhaustive description or explanation of the topic, but rather instead serves to offer a general framework from which to start analyzing the aforementioned thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic voting has been one of the enduring themes of political science for several decades (Dorussen et al. 2002: xxiii). A lot of literature on economic voting has examined how macroeconomic conditions shape election outcomes in western democracies and evinces that incumbents are rewarded or punished for their economic performance. (Jacobson, 1991: 33). Surprisingly, however, very few studies have examined if electorates of new democracies also assign the responsibility of economic performance to incumbents. One reason for the limited scope of the research is related to a conventional belief that electorates in the Third World are not “highly informed, policy-oriented economic voters” (Dorussen et al. 2002: 2). This paper is one of very few cross-national macro level studies on economic voting in the Third World. Even though there have been a couple of case studies based on survey data, cross-national studies analyzing elections in new democracies are very rare. This paper analyzes 70 legislative elections and 50 presidential elections in 35 new democracies. Using Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSEs) estimation method, this paper tests three controversial hypotheses: first, that economic conditions shape election results in new democracies (the economic voting hypothesis); second, that the economic impact on the vote share of incumbent parties is constrained by the level of institutional clarity that affect electorates’ perception of incumbents’ responsibility for economic performance (the clarity hypothesis); third, the economic impact also depends on other economic and socio-political conditions that affect the relative importance of economic issues in elections of new democracies (the relative importance hypothesis). The expansion of the research on economic voting to new democracies provides us important clues to the features of transitional societies because “economic voting as a mechanism of democratic accountability” is a useful indicator of democratic consolidation (Dorussen et al. 2002: 2). As Richard Rose (1999) argued, a fully democratic regime “must be accountable to the electorate” (p. 35). Therefore, research on the conditions under which electorates realize democratic accountability through economic voting may improve our understanding of the democratization processes in the Third World. Analyzing an original dataset, this study shows that the economic voting function is not consistent in new democracies and is strongly constrained by economic and socio-political conditions. Except for some poor countries, voters did respond to economic performance of incumbents in presidential elections. Furthermore, this paper shows that political contexts, which influence voters’ perceptions of incumbents’ responsibility for economic performance, were also important determinants of the economic voting function in new democracies; the bicameral system and the proportional electoral system reduce economic voting function. Lastly, the relative importance of economic issues determined by the level of economic development, ethnic fractionalization and the level of democracy also affected the economic voting function. However, the effect of economic conditions on the voting share of incumbent parties in legislative elections was very limited. No robust evidence that corroborates economic voting theory was found in the analysis of legislative elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The era of globalization has created a context where state authority has been undercut and local forces have been empowered. In Africa, the reduction in authoritarian regimes and the emergence of globalization and democratization worked to reveal cleavages along ethnic and religious lines. At the same time, the global economy and structural adjustment reforms have created dramatic economic disparities between and within African nations that are historically linked in ethnic and cultural ways. West Africa experienced some of these tumultuous changes and some of them can be attributed to the instability associated with democratic reform in regions that have had very little experience with the concept. Regional integration in West Africa has been heavily debated topic due to the wide range of institutional, legal and infrastructural barriers that divide the countries that comprise the sub-region. Massive profit making opportunities are salient in instances where economic and political disparities between neighboring countries are present. It is oftentimes profit making opportunities by political elites that fuel opposition to the cause for regional integration. The application of Shari’a (Islamic law) in the Hausa region of Northern Nigeria has dramatically changed the quotidian life in the region. In an attempt to eliminate what is determined to be societal ills, some states have adopted Shari’a and subsequently outlawed activities such as drinking, prostitution and gambling in addition to less controversial habitudes such as praise singing and integration of the sexes in public places. The neighboring country of Niger, which has a large Hausa population as well, has, by contrast, been reticent to base its legal codes on Qur’anic law, which is due in large part to the political legacy of the French colonial government. Niger’s reluctance to mimic Northern Nigeria’s lead has rendered it a safe haven for Nigeria’s outlawed vices and as bars, brothels and informal casinos were shut down in Nigeria, the same establishments were opened in Niger. The activities that have been transferred across the border to Niger have provided a made a substantial economic impact on Niger’s border towns. The movement of illicit activities from Nigeria to Niger serves to demonstrate a case of counter regional integration. Rather than bringing together the two states it forces them further apart. Niger ostensibly uses its status as a secular state as a comparative economic advantage vis a vis a the religious reform carried out in Nigeria. This paper will examine how changes in regional Nigerian politics have had a profound on politics and the economy of Niger. The paper will also look at how the changes in Niger have brought about a strengthening of neo-patrimonialism in instances where rent-seeking possibilities arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Given the recent history of scandals involving financial intermediaries, governing officials have increased scrutiny of rating agencies, such as Moody’s and S&P, to ensure that they are providing accurate information to investors, the public and governing officials. This paper argues that rating agencies have incentives to assign ratings based, in part, upon positive network externalities accruing to both raters and states. Rating agencies seek a reputation of competence and credibility at least equal to that of their rivals or else they will be at a competitive disadvantage. This suggests that there should be significant convergence in the bond ratings by different agencies. We theorize that the level of convergence between ratings agencies is contingent upon the consensus to use joint credit ratings from the dominant firms. First, we hypothesize that additional rivals in a small market create a stronger incentive for firms to protect their reputation, and thus make ratings that tend to converge with those of their rivals. This paper uses data from Moody’s and S&P state government general obligation bond ratings from 1970 to 2002. Unlike most other bond rating research, we use an interval indicator of bond ratings, average yield spread, to test several propositions. We use a variety of time series techniques to test the hypotheses that competitive pressures in financial intermediary markets result in converging ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been little consensus about whether economic crises affect regime stability. Unfortunately, there is also little research directly testing these possible effects. Research that can be found in regard to this topic focuses mainly on whether economic crisis foster regime change, but they do not usually discuss the extent or degree that these regimes might be affected by crisis. In addition, while some authors examine the direction of regime change (democratization or democratic breakdown) they do not account for changes in these directions that do not result in a full transition or breakdown. This paper will explore the more specific role played by economic crisis in fostering regime change. First, the effects of economic crisis and other structural variables on general regime change are tested. Second, this paper considers the factors influencing the direction and degree of regime change. In addition, this paper uses economic crisis to bridge the gap between mobilization theories that rest on the idea of political opportunities and those that point toward relative deprivation. Economic crisis can affect both political opportunities and the quotidian. On the one hand, economic crises may present an opening in the political opportunity structure that may give rise to regime change in general and perhaps influence the magnitude of this change. On the other hand, theories of relative deprivation and disruption of the quotidian would suggest that economic crises may increase levels of discontent and thus result in greater mobilization against the regime, thus affecting regime change. The findings of this paper suggest that economic crisis is significantly related to the degree of regime change, thus greater crises produce changes of greater degree. In addition, this paper finds that economic crisis has different effects (in both degree and direction) according to regime types (democracy versus autocracy) and GDP per capita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese economy has witnessed significant liberalization and drastic change since 1978. But the economic reform process is strongly influenced by the legacy of the planned economy that employed a centralized administrative system. The author uses the case of Chinese telecommunications reform to study the change of governmental role, the introduction of competition in public-service sectors, and the influence of interest groups in the reform process. The telecommunications industry in China has experienced unprecedented growth since the 1990s. By June 2002, China had surpassed the United States and become the number one in the world in the numbers of both fixed-line and mobile phone subscribers. Behind this progress is the far-reaching reform of the Chinese telecommunications administrative system and market restructure. Being an element in the national economy and political system, telecommunications reform reflects the marketization process of China in the past two decades. More importantly, telecommunications reform has become a model for ongoing or forthcoming reforms in other public and monopolistic industries, such as electric power, petrochemical, civil aviation and railroad systems. In this paper, the author elucidates the evolution of Chinese telecommunications reform from the perspectives of market restructure and regulatory reform. The paper leads to conclusions on the success and limitations of China’s telecommunications reform, on why progress has been achieved in such a specific manner, and on the prospects of further reform in monopolistic sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the beginning of the post-Cold War period, many observers regarded East Asia as being “ripe for rivalry.” Despite pessimistic views, many financial cooperative arrangements among ASEAN plus Three (China, Japan, and South Korea) countries has been formed to facilitate policy coordination and to prevent another crisis from negatively affecting East Asia. .x000d.This paper examines uneven developments of two regional cooperative arrangements--Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) and regional surveillance cooperation--among East Asian countries. Why had some regional financial cooperative arrangements such as CMI been successful while others such as regional surveillance cooperation went nowhere? What determines the different levels of East Asian financial cooperation? Among others, this paper takes seriously two primary factors--domestic implementation capacity and costs of financial cooperation--to explain both initiation and development of regional cooperation. This paper argues that East Asian countries had difficulties to pursue deeper financial cooperation due to lack of strong demands, uneven distribution of policy implementation capacities, and high sovereignty costs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of municipal policy-makers in a decision that is of central importance to the local economy and also to major international business interests. The paper examines whether the local decision-makers are forced to adopt policy positions that are favourable to business interests, as is argued in some of the globalization literature, and whether the municipality is capable of influencing this decision-making. The case study examined is the reform of the Detroit River border crossing between Canada and the United States and the local actor is Windsor City Council. The conclusion reached is that, to some extent, the municipality is capable of adopting positions that run counter to some of the major business interests. While the municipality is actively engaged in the policy-making process it is necessary to avoid overstating the extent of municipal influence, however. Participation is not necessarily influence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do policymakers impose sanctions despite the strong doubts about their success among scholars? Are sanctions just a symbolic way of showing threats irrespective of their outcomes or are there different explanations of the predominantly failed outcomes? More generally, what explains the outcomes of economic sanctions? In this paper, I seek to answer these questions. Methodologically, I try to unify the theory and statistical test of sanctions' outcomes. From a simple crisis bargaining model, I derive the perfect Bayesian equilibrium probabilities of each outcome. Then, I estimate the parameters that represent the outcomes using the equilibrium results of the model (Signorino 2003, Lewis and Schultz 2003). Substantively, the results suggest interesting implications regarding the determinants of sanctions' outcomes. First, the evidence does not support the claim that the sanctions are just a different version of cheap talk, by which the incumbents can have benefits regardless of the outcomes. Second, the dyadic relationship between the sender and target significantly affects the outcomes of sanctions. Finally, neither target's political nor economic characteristics is statistically significant. I conclude from the results that it is international or systemic factors that determine the outcomes of sanctions rather than the domestic factors of sender (e.g. the symbolic politics) or target (e.g. the political institution or the trade dependence). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the multiple sources of disequilibria?group, institutional, and individual?that account for the evolution of the coal policy subsystem over the course of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an intellectual history and critique of one of the most naturalized notions in American political and economic life: the right to private property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries with a rich natural resource endowment are more likely than others to suffer from low average economic growth, non-democratic forms of government, and civil conflict. The idea of a resource curse is put to a new test by examining whether such curse also extends to the quality of a country's regulations and its level of corruption. Previous research found a positive relationship between natural resource exports and perceived corruption. Based on a theoretical framework, interactive linear regression models are specified and estimated using a sample of 78 countries from all six populated continents. The data are drawn from well-known publicly available sources. Whether or not there is a regulatory quality and corruption resource curse appears to depend on a country's regime type, yet this finding is not robust to changes in model specification. The paper makes a contribution by showing how the introduction of theoretically justified controls can invalidate the claim of a corrupting influence of Mother Nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper employs the distribution of heights within male populations and between males and females in pre-historic, agrarian and industrial societies to measure inequality and to examine its economic and political sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rogers Smith suggests that political communities characterize their common lives in terms not only of economic and political interests, but also through ethically constitutive stories. I suggest in this paper that groups within political communities also may characterize their interests in terms of ethically constitutive stories. I apply this conception to both sides of the same-sex marriage controversy, showing how each side might tell and ethically constitutive story that supports its position. I then consider the particularistic and universalistic characteristics of each story, suggesting that by Smith's standards of pushing for more universalistic interpretations of ethically constitutive stories, the proponents of same-sex marriage offer a more convincing story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical testing of propositions developed in the New Institutional Economics has provided convincing evidence that neoclassical economic growth theory incorrectly assumes away the role of political institutions in growth and development. Findings of convergence between poorer and richer countries are stronger after controlling for indexes of institutional quality. Nevertheless, shortcomings exist with this work. First, there is an underlying assumption that the same growth model applies to all countries regardless of their current circumstances. Second, the tendency to measure institutional quality with broad indexes obscures the possibility that different facets of political institutions matter in different ways depending on country conditions. This paper adopts a framework proposed by Pritchett (2003) in which countries fall into one of six different growth states, each of which is assumed to have a unique underlying growth model. It tests the proposition that transitions between these growth states are governed in part by different aspects of political institutions. The tests support the notion that the effect of political institutions on economic growth and development is conditional on a country’s circumstances. In particular, three aspects of state strength are considered: state legitimacy, administrative capacity, and the ability to contain civil unrest. State legitimacy is important for the transition away from poverty, while high levels of administrative capacity are more useful in distinguishing the advanced industrial economies from the rest. Low levels of civil unrest are associated with periods of rapid growth. A fourth institutional form, the degree to which a country is democratic, does not appear to be particularly helpful in supporting growth in poorer countries in that it is associated with a higher probability of economic implosion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an account of one of the crucial differences in the economic structures of the Balkans and the former USSR, on the one hand, and East Central Europe and the Baltic states, on the other hand. This difference lies in the fact that the former economies remain politically-subordinate while the latter have become politically-relativized. In the politically-subordinate economies of the Balkans and most of the former USSR, firms remain subject to the arbitrary, unconstrained, and hierarchical intervention of those actors in society who have direct access to the organized use of force. These actors specifically consist of high-level state officials and organized crime syndicates. This phenomenon is institutionally manifested in the politico-economic arrangement of neopatrimonialism. By contrast, the politically-relativized economies of East Central Europe and the Baltic states are comprised of firms which, on the whole, have become much more free from the arbitrary control of high-level state officials and organized crime groups. Which of these outcomes emerged in the post-communist period depended on the interaction of specific policy strategies pursued by post-communist leaderships and the particular structural conditions these countries inherited from the communist era. In any given country, the state-socialist system, itself a politically-subordinate economy, had the potential to give way under conditions of political liberalization to either a neopatrimonial politically-subordinate economy or a politically-relativized economy. The state-socialist system was replaced by a politically-relativized economy where there occurred (1) political liberalization; (2) the rise to power under conditions of political liberalization of a revolutionary counter-elite; and (3) the successful and complete implementation of neoliberal economic policies. In East Central Europe and the Baltic states, the combination of these three factors had the unintentional effect of irreparably weakening the formal-institutions and patron-client structures of the communist-era political class. They also had the inadvertent result of institutionalizing bureaucratic norms at the highest levels of the state apparatus. The result was the replacement of the state-socialist politically-subordinate economy with politically-relativized economies. Neoliberal economic policy programs thereby resulted in the establishment of politically-relativized economies, but succeeded in doing so only by virtue of the particular institutional context in which they were pursued and the effects they had on those institutional arrangements. In the Balkans and the rest of the former USSR, however, political liberalization took place without the simultaneous emergence of a counter-elite that carried through a neoliberal economic program. Consequently, in the latter countries the formal-institutional structures of the nomenklatura-dominated one-party state were destroyed while the informal patron-client networks of this political class remained intact. As a result, the politically-subordinate economy of state socialism survived in a new, neopatrimonial format. These varying trajectories taken by post-communist countries are analyzed through case studies of post-Soviet Estonia and Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists have long recognized that time-series-cross-section (TSCS) data typically correlate across time and space. Today, standard social-science practice is to model dynamics (i.e., temporal dependence) directly, typically with lags of the dependent variable, but to address spatial dependence solely by applying panel-corrected (robust) standard-errors (PCSE), thereby treating spatial dependence as a nuisance (Beck and Katz’s 1996 terminology). However, regardless of the analyst’s substantive interest in these relationships, direct modeling of spatial dependence (plus PCSE perhaps) enhances efficiency and is required for unbiased and consistent estimates of the coefficients on non-spatial regressors and any associated hypothesis tests or confidence intervals. Whereas analysts less interested in spatial relations per se will understandably wish to employ simple proxies for more complicated diffusion processes, those directly interested will prefer more sophisticated modeling techniques for estimating the dyadic patterns of diffusion in their data. Our broad project uses Monte Carlo experiments to evaluate the performance of several simple and sophisticated estimators under three important types of spatial correlation (the more-complex being spatial analogues to estimators devised for dynamic panel models: e.g., Hsiao 1986; Baltagi 1995) and develops a set of techniques and guidelines to help analysts diagnose, characterize, and gauge various sorts of spatial correlation, and to choose and interpret appropriate estimators based on their objectives. This paper leverages globalization and capital taxation as substantive venue to start such methodological explorations. Many academic and casual observers argue that the dramatic post-1970s rise in international capital mobility and the steadily upward postwar trend in trade integration, by sharpening capital’s threat against domestic governments to flee purportedly excessive and inefficient taxation, has forced and will continue to force welfare-/tax-state retrenchment and tax-burden shifts away from more-mobile capital (especially financial capital) and toward less-mobile labor (especially manual labor). Several important recent studies of the international and comparative political economy of policy change over this period challenge such claims. We review several such arguments and offer a preliminary evaluation, specifying empirical models directly from fully-developed theoretical models (e.g., Persson & Tabellini 2000, ch. 12) that, unlike these and other previous efforts, embody the spatial relationships central to such diffusion processes. Specifically, we introduce a spatial error-correction model, explain how it derives directly from the theoretical model and reflects directly the diffusion process central to that theoretical argument, and estimate it from data on capital taxation and political-economic conditions in 12 OECD countries, 1966-96. The results support a strong, but not total, constraining/diffusion effect of capital mobility on domestic autonomy in taxation. The constraining/diffusion effect varies across pairs of countries and over time in ways easily explained substantively by the political-economic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Latin American Left parties have adjusted to the constraints presented by neoliberalism in some very similar ways, and in particular, by supporting market-oriented economic positions more enthusiastically than in the past. The actual positions taken depend primarily on economic constraints. The extent of the change depends rather on the party?s previous position and, therefore, how far the parties have to shift to reach the new position. They compensate for support of market economics by continuing to defend policies of social adjustment run by the state, especially in defense of core social support bases like labor and peasants. Finally, all of these parties embraced the extension of democracy and human rights, albeit to different degrees. The addition of these other dimensions of ideological placement explain why general Left-Right positions are still more strongly associated with past placement rather than with economic or political constraints. for market solutions? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wendover, Utah and West Wendover, Nevada are adjoining cities in the Bonneville Salt Flats of the Great Basin Desert, located far from other communities and separated only by the state line. That state line has created significant disparities in public services and economic conditions between the two cities. Because Nevada allows gambling and has a more favorable tax climate, West Wendover has been growing rapidly and able to provide its citizens with well-financed and modern facilities and public services, while Wendover, Utah has declined precipitously in the meantime. This situation has led to a proposed consolidation and alteration of the state line. Such a consolidation, without precedent, will require significant action on behalf of the federal government, the states, counties, and both municipalities. This paper examines the full range of legal, political, economic, and social issues involved in such a change in jurisdiction and assess the multiple ways in state and local authority and state and local identity are both legally and culturally constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is considerable agreement that economic conditions affect electoral outcomes, there is less agreement as to exactly how. Scholars have spent a great deal of effort exploring the links between economics and vote choice but have generally ignored the potential that economic perceptions could also affect the likelihood of voter abstention. I explore that possibility in this paper. First, I develop a theory of how economic perceptions affect the likelihood of abstention. I argue that the relevant factors in this relationship are one?s retrospective and prospective judgments of the economy and the ideology of the respondent and government. Hypotheses are generated and tested using national election survey data from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. The results show that economic perceptions have an effect on the likelihood of electoral abstention. This effect is mediated by the ideology of the respondent and party and appears to be weakened in situations of greater coalitional complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have set uniform conditions under which member states are allowed to adopt protection measures, such as safeguard and anti-dumping measures, the states? use of these provisions significantly differs among OECD countries. In particular, Japan?s application of these measures deviates substantially from other advanced economies in three respects: (1) the infrequency with which it uses GATT/WTO protectionist provisions; (2) regional biases in the targets of these measures; and (3) its increasing recourse to safeguard provisions instead of anti-dumping measures after 1995. In contrast to dominant claims that a government resorts to international rules for the purpose of enhancing its credibility or to shift blame in order to appease domestic interest groups, I argue that the pattern of Japan?s choice of one policy instrument over another can be explained by different distributional implications of the three policy instruments. This paper introduces a new data set on Japan?s trade policy choices between 1980 and 2001. The data set covers 103 commodity cases that (1) suffered from a rise of imports and (2) were granted one of three protectionist instruments by the Japanese government?domestic subsidies, voluntary export restraints and the GATT/WTO legal protectionist measures. The data set is analyzed using a conditional logit framework. Conditional logit allows for a government?s utility to vary not only across the commodity cases and time periods, but also across the three policy alternatives. The results of the conditional logit estimation support the distributional hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the probability of reelection of the incumbent party and its economic performance. Contrary to Cheibub and Przeworski (1999) I will show that the vote does function as an instrument of accountability for economic outcomes. Powell and Whitten (1993) argued that only in institutional contexts where clarity of responsibility is high, would one be able to observe economic voting. Although I find an impact on the electoral outcomes by ideological and institutional variables, this effect is mixed. Independent of the clarity of responsibility context, I find that the better the economic performance of the incumbent party, the higher its probability of reelection. This relationship holds for parliamentary and presidential regimes. The size of the effects of economic growth rates and inflation on the incumbent’s probability of reelection will depend on whether it was inflation or growth the major economic problem faced by the incumbent party. But no matter the size of the effect, bad performance in any of these variables will be punished. Voters, contrary to conventional wisdom, are sophisticated when judging economic performance. When necessary, they take the past into account when judging incumbent’s performance. Other times, they vote myopically. The difference between short versus long-term judgments depends on what type of economic variable they are evaluating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disciplines of economics and political science offer two distinct explanations of tax policy in subnational governments. Microeconomic theory holds that both the type of taxes subnational units employ and the amount of revenue they collect are constrained by inter-jurisdictional competition over mobile capital and labor. As a result, economists predict that the tax policies of subnational governments will be conditioned by the actions of their competitors. Political science, on the other hand, treats subnational units as independent political systems, arguing that their revenue policies will reflect the outcomes of local electoral competition. This paper tests these rival hypotheses in the context of the American states. Using data for forty-seven states from 1968 to 2000, I estimate the determinants of annual changes in state direct revenues per capita across a number of categories of taxation. My estimation strategy employs a modified spatially lagged econometric model based upon Anselin (1988) and Beck and Gleditsch (2003). Overall, I find evidence that supports both the market and political competition hypotheses. Taxes that fall on capital or specific consumer goods such as gasoline, tobacco, and alcohol appear to be more responsive to the actions of neighboring (or competitor) states than state-level electoral outcomes. Conversely, taxes on labor as well as the general sales tax respond to partisan politics, but not inter-jurisdictional competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few years, much interesting research in this recent tradition on structural factors and economic performance have been done. Among structural factors, natural-resource intensity is one of the most important factors that affect rules’ incentives and policy choices. The main economic arguments on the negative association between resource intensity and economic growth might also include sloth effects; lack of externality in contrast to manufacturing; Dutch disease that pull resources out from manufacturing sector to agriculture and mining sectors and hence leads to de-industrialization. In this paper I argue that natural-resource intensity affects economic performance also through affecting rulers’ incentives. For those rulers want to secure financial resources for their personal wealth and distribute to their followers, high natural-resource intensity induce rulers to firmly control the production and marketing of natural resources by some measures such as market boards rather than providing more efficient public goods to increase national wealth. The benefits of the latter typically need longer time to materialize and are normally more unpredictable at the beginning than the former. The resources curse are however likely to be more salient in authoritarian regime than in democratic regimes. The reason for the structural difference is most likely due to the fact that in democracies political leaders are required to gain the support of a majority of voters to stay in power. Abundant natural-resource revenues are sufficient for autocrats to allocate to their supporters but are not sufficient to please a majority of voters in democracies. In contrast, when levels of natural-resource intensity is low, both regimes are likely to perform well for there are not too many resources available to allocate to their supporters and the only way for leaders in both regimes to increase wealth for themselves or to reward supporters is by pursuing economic development. We can also explore the issue from another angle; namely, whether the effects of regime types on economic performance vary according to levels of natural-resource intensity. Higher levels of democracy are likely to have positive effects on economic performance only when natural-resource intensity is high. When natural-resource intensity is low, there is no reason to believe one type of regime outperform the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data sufficiently recent to include the spectacular rise and fall of crude oil prices in 2008, this paper tests the relationship between crude prices and the exchange rate value of the U.S. dollar, then considers the implications for the makers of monetary policy. The results demonstrate, first, a significant long term relationship between the dollar's value and the price of oil, and second, that oil price has the stronger impact on the dollar than does the dollar on oil. These quantitative results generally support the conclusions of Amando and Norden (1997), Chaudhuri and Daniel (1998), Chen and Chen (2007), and Coudert et al. (2007); however, a state of interdependence between the variables is most likely. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new theory about the effect of foreign aid on economic growth and tests this theory using new data on 195 countries for the years between 1946-2005. The model includes two types of coup-plotters who differ with regard to their ability to achieve economic growth. Foreign donors give aid to coup-makers only if the coup took place in a geostrategically important country. Aid to important countries attracts the bad type of coup-makers to the political arena and results in coups with economically bad consequences. I hypothesize that the end of the Cold War changed aggregate coup numbers and their economic effects by rendering many countries unimportant. As a result it is not profitable anymore for the bad types to stage coups in these countries. Among the coups we observe in the post-Cold War period a bigger proportion is made by the good type of coup-makers and this leads to a better average economic effect of coups. The implication is that the drop in coup numbers and their less negative impact can be reversed as countries regain their importance due to the War on Terror or China's desire for raw materials. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the choices that citizens make between sources when seeking information on familiar and unfamiliar issues. We use Anthony Downs’ hypothesis that individuals will be forced to specialize in a few sources because of limited resources for collecting and assimilating information. We also examine the effects of socioeconomic status on the choice and number of sources used. Using a national telephone survey, we define the price structure for media reliance by examining the percentage of voters who rely heavily upon individual medium for information on familiar and unfamiliar issues. We uncover strong evidence that information reliance clusters parsimoniously into four categories or dimensionsâ€"personal relationships, mass media, leaders, and the internetâ€"regardless of voter familiarity with issues. Such specialization appears to reflect an implicit pricing schema associated with reliance upon specific medium, with voters shopping for their information at set price levels. In sum, Downs’ argument about specialization in information sources is supported by our factor analysis; however, there is little evidence that socio-economic status affects media reliance, contrary to his contention. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuous goal of the agricultural policy community throughout its history has been to support or enhance the economic well being of agricultural producers. Clearly, in the short-term, ethanol production has been an economic benefit. Interestingly this benefit did not come directly from initiatives and actions taken within the agricultural community. The ethanol initiative was in significant part a gift to agriculture from the energy policy community. By 2007, corn based ethanol was a well-established industry that had been created by federal policy. The central question that this paper investigates is how the agricultural policy community, as reflected in Senate hearings, changed its policy design strategies because of the need to move from advocacy for an industry to defense of an industry. The design language of the 1979 hearings was predominately that of advocacy (seeking support for a commercial biofuels industry). The design language of the 2007 Hearings was predominately defensive (concerned with protecting an industry that existed because federal policies provided formal production goals, domestic subsidies, and barriers to imports). These design strategies addressed challenges from the political context. In 1979, governmental agreement that national energy problems needed to be addressed led to efforts to identify alternative energy policies that provided the agriculture community with long-term support in an era of low corn prices. External and internal criticism of the corn based ethanol industry in 2007 led to a different policy design strategy. The agriculture community developed rationales that defended corn-based ethanol production in a political context characterized by national energy problems and high corn prices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous quantitative studies in the field of international relations have analyzed the relationship between economic interdependence and conflict. A strong empirical consensus has emerged that commerce promotes peace. However, the literature still faces an important challenge: While inter-state armed conflict decreased in the post Cold War era of globalization, intra-state conflict continues to remain at a significant level. Apparently, the pacifying effect of trade interdependence does not translate into a robust similar effect on the domestic level. Drawing on the Correlates of War Project Trade Dataset(Version 2.0), the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset (Version 4-2008), the Polity IV Annual Time-Series 1800-2007 Dataset, the Center for Systemic Peace's Coup d'etat events 1960-2006 Dataset and the World Development Indicators Online Database, this paper develops an explanation for this observation, arguing that international trade has diverging distributional consequences on different types of societies. The implication is that country specific outcomes are dependent on economic interdependence's interaction with domestic institutional factors - namely regime type. Binary-Cross-Sectional-Time-Series Analysis reveals a bell-shaped relationship between the interaction of trade and regime type and domestic armed conflict: Highly autocratic and highly democratic countries appear to be most capable of using benefits from international trade to uphold and enhance domestic stability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measures of perceptions of the future state of the economy have fed a plethora of studies on the impact of economic conditions on vote choice, but it is hard to tell what these questions measure under the standard phrasing. Specifically, when respondents are asked about the future state of the economy in pre-election surveys (while the winner of the election is unknown), it is unclear if respondents provide an assessment of the future state of the economy under their preferred party, under the likely winner, under the current incumbent, or some other alternative. This paper seeks to explain what is contained in the answers to the standard prospective economic evaluation question. Evidence from the 2005 British Election Studies (BES) suggests that individuals answer this question with an assessment about the future state of the economy under their preferred party: the incumbent if they prefer that party, or a challenger when they prefer that party and think it is also the likely winner of the election. These findings stress the need to replace the current question with a battery of questions that capture the future state of the economy if each one of the parties competing were to win the election. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine how the flow of low wage immigrant workers as an economic shock across European Union countries affects domestic welfare provisions. Focusing on the context of EU labor market integration, we present theoretical models and empirical results that explain how the flow of low wage immigrants from less developed to developed EU member states affects the unemployment provisions in immigrant recipient states. We argue that the dynamics between external economic pressures brought by market integration and domestic welfare policy changes are more complex than what liberal political economy theory anticipates. When analyzing the effects of these shocks on unemployment policy, we contend that this relationship involves multiple forcesâ€"domestic political issues, globalization, and EU integrative pressures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider the political economy of cultural production situated within the post-Fordist model of capital accumulation. Both blues and hip hop emerged during key moments of crisis in capital accumulation and the ambivalent location of blacks in agricultural (Blues) and industrial (hip hop) transition. In each moment spatial transition, migration, and cultural production become sites of survival, resistance, meaning-making, and worlding. Part of a larger 17 city project on black wealth, I am most concerned with how black political theory and feminist political theory help us explore black political economy and the politics of cultural production. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial event studies are increasingly used to make inferences about political phenomenon. Recent studies applying this methodology to legislative studies suggests that the identity of the majority party in the chambers of the U.S. Congress has a statistically and economically significant effect on asset prices. However, this interpretation relies on an implicit assumption of strong-form market efficiency. This paper documents one potential obstacle to this interpretation: investor overreaction. I posit a political asset pricing model that generates investor overreaction. Using data on firms' campaign contributions and financial performance surrounding the unexpected change in the Senate's majority party in 2001, I find evidence consistent with the hypothesis of overreaction. Generally, the model and empirical findings cast doubt on inferences about political phenomenon drawn from financial event studies and, specifically, the conclusion that a strong-party theory of government explains legislative outcomes in the U.S. Congress. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communitarians and civically minded democratic theorists alike have long argued for small communities and fellow-feeling based on actual interaction. What these thinkers have lacked is a political economy to match their political theory; they fail to think about what sort of economic and political structures might be required to create a space for such interaction. This paper suggests that the local food movement and its emphasis on local control, production and consumption of food, as well as the preservation of traditional foodways, provides such a political economy. It connects the growing urban studies literature on local food and farmer’s markets with current work in democratic theory, attempting to describe the sort of changes in American federalism required to invigorate a politics of local food systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the body of literature on the "clarity of responsibility" and the "incumbent alternatives for dissent" by investigating the effects of economic conditions on individual vote choice in Korea and Taiwan, nations where voters have experienced one-party dominant systems. Particularly I examine the significance of both lifetime economic experience and short-term economic conditions in Korean and Taiwanese elections. I maintain that in a society where one-party dominates individual political preferences are shaped not by short-term economic conditions but rather by individual economic experience with a dominant party. I also argue that lifetime economic experience determines individual vote choice when the succession of leadership within a dominant party is clear. Finally, once voters experience both the dominant and opposition parties in power, they vote based on their evaluations of short-term economic conditions. To test my arguments, I analyze recent presidential elections in Korea and Taiwan to study the effects of lifetime economic experience and short-term economic conditions on individual vote choice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the "social factory" in postwar Italian Marxism as separately formulated by Panzieri and Tronti. The concept is contextualized in the wave of struggles in the "hot autumn" of 1969 and subsequent rise of autonomia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates preferences for government activity (left-right positions), the effect of economics and government activity on these preferences and their effect on election outcomes ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the public attitudes about corruption, health care, and other socio economic issues during the 2007 Parliamentary elections campaign. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the political sustainability of China's social security program, which is challenged by an aging population and a pay-as-you-go financing that will put increasing economic strains on workers and political strains on government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of national wealth on states' diplomacy, distinguished from those of political variables such as power and democratic institutions. In doing so, I build a game-theoretical model with two diplomatic options - threat and exchange. The results are summarized as follows. First, national wealth weakly increases the likelihood of exchange and weakly decreases that of threat diplomacy. Second, national wealth weakly enhances the credibility of threat. Lastly, national wealth weakly increases the likelihood of achieving a diplomatic victory in crisis bargaining. The empirical analyses confirm some of the observable implications derived from the game-threotical model. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper sets out to explain the emergence of social pacts in Western Europe since the 1980's. We criticize the dominant institutional political economy approach, arguing that pacts reflect party responses to electoral volatility and competition. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that the economic consequences of separation, divorce, and widowhood are strikingly different for men and women. While women on average experience a substantial decrease in incomes and living standards after transitions out of marriage, men often experience only small losses or even moderate gains. Recent work in political economy suggests that this difference in the economic consequences of marital dissolution leads to gendered redistributive and political preferences. After leaving marriage women should become more left-wing and men more right-wing. So far, however, credible causal inferences about the political consequences of marital dissolution do not exist. In this paper, we use data from the British Household Panel Survey in combination with a matching estimator to estimate the effects of transitions out of marriage on policy preferences and vote choice in British General Elections. We show that marital dissolution causes a large decline in turnout, but in contrast to previous research we find that it has no systematic effect on policy preferences and vote choice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How heterogeneous are the beliefs of citizens in a given state? Are citizens' views more diverse in some states than in others? While a number of methods exist for estimating the average liberalism of a state's population, there is no general method for estimating the heterogeneity of citizens' views. This paper provides a method to answer this question. In addition to providing this new measure, we make two additional contributions to the literature. First, we demonstrate that demographic variables are a poor proxy for opinion diversity, and actual opinion measures should be used whenever possible. Second, we illustrate how our measure problematizes much of the conventional wisdom about red and blue states. Together, our results show that the diversity of state opinion is both descriptively important and useful for solving a variety of substantive puzzles. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining Ukraine's administrative divisions (oblasts), this paper attempts to explain corruption variation using political, economic and cultural dimensions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to analyze the institutional economics of co-operation and the political economy of trust. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although more exacting theories and demanding research designs by political scientist have expanded our knowledge regarding the political factors that generate or hinder economic growth, several important deficiencies remain with respect to our study of growth. Perhaps greatest among them is the failure to recognize, and hence explain, the presence of identifiably different strategies governments use to generate economic growth. Both economic theory and observation, however, suggest that there are different strategies at governments’ disposal to produce growth. On the one hand, many governments emphasize the role of technological innovation and augmenting productivity in their strategy to generate economic growth. In contrast, many countries turn to a strategy of factor accumulation to instigate growth. Despite these observed variations, few scholars produce hypothesis explaining the determinants of these variations. The paper proposed here investigates the political determinants of a country’s strategy of growth. More specifically, I state the question that serves as the focus of this paper thus. What are the political variables that condition whether a county will emphasize factor accumulation or technological innovation to spur growth? The argument I propose to gain leverage on this question develops from three propositions. First, I contend that the set of policies typically analyzed in studies of economic growth differ on the continuum of whether they generate that growth via accumulating factors or augmenting innovation. Secondly, these two broad growth strategies differ according to the predictability and speed of their results on the economy as well as the ease with which the selectorate can attribute economic outcomes to specific government actions. Finally, I suggest that a set of political institutions and relationships condition government time horizons, policymakers’ risk propensities, and the ease with which the selectorate attributes economic outcomes to specific government actions. It follows then, that these institutions and relationships condition the country’s growth strategy by providing incentives for leaders to pursue certain types of growth strategies instead of others. I test my central hypotheses with panel data for over 100 advanced and developing economies between the years 1975 and 1997. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This panel focuses on the inner workings of the international economic interdependence - military conflict nexus that so far, mostly because of their analytical complexity, did not recieve attention in the literature despite their acknowledged importance. The paper by Ward and Rao in the panel develops a refined model of international commerce that explictly takes into account the interdepdency of international commerce, which utilizes a bilinear random effects model to represent statistical depdencies that often chracterize trade data. The paper by Barbieri explores the question of whether trading states are more peaceful that other states while incorporating a measure of economic freedom into the analysis. The paper by Gartzke uses a game theoretica model to evaluate two signalling explanations of liberal peace, which are based on audience costs and interdependence, respectively. The paper by Li and Reuveny investigates the effect of disaggregated trade on militarized interstate conflict, a topic of research that has been repeatedly called for in the trade and conflict literature, but so far recieved limited attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we will examine the relationship between economics and the fortunes of parties participating in their national government, and in European Parliamentary Elections from 1979 to 1999. Within national political environments, elections to the European Parliament can be labeled second order elections. As such, they offer an opportunity for citizens to express their dissatisfaction (or satisfaction) with the current government without having to risk a substantial change in their national governments. Studies of second order elections in the United States (elections to the House of Representatives and Senate when there is not a concurrent Presidential election) have demonstrated a pronounced anti-incumbent trend and provided some evidence of economic voting. In U.S. elections, the timing of second order elections relative to first order elections is fixed by the constitution. Thus, although analysts have been able to develop accurate models of the relationship between the economy and the fortunes of incumbent parties in these second order elections, they have been unable to assess the impact of the timing of these elections relative to first order elections. In Europe there is considerable variation in the timing of second order elections relative to first order elections. In this paper, we will evaluate (appropriately adapted) models of second order elections with European data, taking into account the additional variable of the timing of second order elections relative to first order elections. This will allow us to make interesting new inferences about second order elections in general as well as examine the impact that various factors have on elections to the European Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]