Search

The field of economic voting in post-communist countries is small but growing. To date, though, most analyses have examined but a single election or a single country (although there are a few important exceptions). As a result, most studies generally focus on the question, “How has the economy affected the vote for the parties that contested this particular election?” This is not to say that the authors do not have a priori expectations, but they are by and large couched in the particular circumstances of that country and tend to remain more implicit than explicit. The same holds for the role of the economy in other general studies of voting in post-communist countries. My paper moves beyond country-specific approaches to understanding the effect of economic conditions on election results by searching for broader, more general models that can be applied in any post-communist country. Moreover, I take the additional step of directly linking the models I propose to the existing literature on the effects of economic conditions on election results in established democracies, while at the same time modifying them to take account of the realities of the post-communist context. In this manner, I hope to make theoretical contributions both to our understanding of the interaction between economic factors and electoral outcomes in post-communist countries and the general economic voting literature. In the paper, I introduce and compare two such general models. The Referendum Model, which builds off the main strand of the economic voting literature, predicts that Incumbent parties will benefit from stronger economic conditions, while the Transition Model, derived from a secondary strand of the economic voting literature focusing on party type, predicts that New Regime parties will benefit from stronger economic conditions and Old Regime parties will benefit from weaker economic conditions. Using an original data set of regional-level economic, demographic, and electoral variables and a novel method of comparative analysis, I test these models across the 20 national presidential and parliamentary elections that took place between 1990-99 in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Across numerous empirical tests, consistently stronger evidence is found to support the Transition Model than the Referendum Model. These findings should be of interest to students of elections and voting in post-communist countries, those concerned with economic voting more generally, and scholars interested in the methodological challenges of conducting comparative analysis in new democracies. Moreover, they have interesting implications for current debates regarding the relationship between elections and representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross sectional time series analysis shows that land based economic resources are associated with authoritarian regimes while a large manufacturing sector is associated with democratic regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I develop and test a simultaneous equation model of corporate lobbying in democratic capitalism. Using data on 31 countries, my results show that business? informational and structural privileges jointly affect the early stages of policy formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the beginning stages of the twenty-first century, China, Russia and India are all transforming their economies and, to some extent, their political systems to play an active political role in this globalized world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applies economic conception of substituiton to FP - generates formal/econometric models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies constitutional economics to regional integration in the area of prudential supervision of banking activity and tests its predictions against data on cross-border banking and data from interviews with relevent public officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative tests of the hollowing-out thesis, and discussion of how capital mobility may affect exchange rate regime policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study evaluates implementation of Community Development Block Grant in 20 states, and evaluates grant administrators' perceptions regarding why $ is/is not utilized for economic development activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussion of the results of a survey of 220 Missouri municipalities with a population of greater than 2000. This survey, conducted in the Spring of 2004, is the third in a series of surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we report on an information-class-structural analysis of opinion dynamics in the United States. We examine 30 years of different time series to assess the extent to which public opinion dynamics are more democratic or more elite in character, looking at the breadth of mass responsiveness to economic and political trends. Our results show that, for the most part, the information class structure is more egalitarian than much of current theory would suggest. With certain exceptions, broad-gauged political and economic trends and events get disseminated fairly widely in the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops a unifying theory of party merger based on an industrial organizational framework and on the theory of the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a potential explanation of the role of threats in the environments ranging from international negotiations to negotiations among or within firms. The study of blackmail has received little attention from economists. A defining feature of successful blackmail is that the threat must be credible.

I estimate both the tactical and indirect-economical and political-effects of rough terrain on civil conflict onset. Rough terrain is significant more for its effects on state capacity rather than the tactical considerations of insurgents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Economy: Do they get it Right? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from socialism to capitalism affected the lives of about 1.65 billion people in 30 countries. It was one of the most important economic events of the twentieth century, along with the socialist experiment and the Great Depression. The transition problems created a crucial experiment for different economic schools, paradigms, or research programs. The results of policy advice given to transitional countries have been particularly humbling for some economists and remain a subject of controversy. In Transition and Economics: Politics, Markets, and Firms (2001) G.Roland focused his attention on a stylized fact that “transition policies have delivered unexpected failures (Russia being one of the most spectacular ones) as well as unexpected successes (China being the best example)” (p. xviii). However, from the perspective of a new information paradigm articulated in the 1970-90s, most consistently by J. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics (2001), both the failures and the successes could be predicted. Stiglitz provided intellectual guidance with practical advices to Chinese economists and government officials in developing the strategy and policies of economic reforms in China. From this perspective, I think that it is more intellectually promising to contrast the old neoclassical paradigm, the “Washington consensus,” and their “big bang” strategy in Russia and many other former Soviet republics with the information paradigm and its gradualist strategy in China, Hungary, Slovenia or semi-gradualist one as in Poland, and not with the developed “after the fact” so called “evolutionary-institutionalist perspective” (Roland, pp. 330-331, 336-39). The information paradigm turned out to be more successful than the standard economic paradigm in a wide variety of empirical applications, theoretical explanations and predictions. The resulting change in the worldview of many economists was so profound that the “break with the past” was defined as an “intellectual revolution” (Stiglitz, 2000, p. 1448) or “revolution in, or more exactly, around economics” (Fine, 2001, p. 9). Logically, the standard competitive paradigm represents a simpler, narrower, and more restrictive case of the new economic paradigm. The new information theoretical paradigm is much broader, or, in Popper’s words, a “better and roomier theoretical framework,” which relaxes many fundamental assumptions in our traditional economic thinking (1970, p.56). However, the repeal of the old “universal economic laws” and fundamental theorems, or basic conceptual definitions is only a denial of their historical (for all times) and logical (in all contingencies) generality rather than proof of the unscientific or “mythical” character of traditional economics. Transforming to a market economy does not entail a withering away of the state but a redefinition of its role. What guidance has economic science offered on this matter? The information paradigm has not only enriched and changed the answers to traditional economic questions; it has led to new questions being posed. In its practical applications the information paradigm was much more successful then the old standard paradigm. The evolution towards the information paradigm represents progress and growth of knowledge in economics and political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the body of literature in political violence, and the rhetoric of many parties of the conflict, time-series models of the troubles in Northern Ireland by White(1993) and Thompson(1989) have found no evidence that economic conditions effect the intensity, sources or direction of violence. I show that several methodological flaws exist in previous models. They fail to address the discrete, count nature of the data, the contagion present from aggregation over time, and the underdispersal of deaths. However, the key problem, acknowledged by the authors themselves, is that all measures of unemployment aggregate Protestant and Catholic unemployment rates. Clearly, Republican paramilitary violence should be caused chiefly by the Catholic unemployment rate rather then the aggregate unemployment rate. Possibly also Loyalist violence may be a result of the Protestant unemployment rate. However, little historical data exists on disaggregated rates of unemployment, thus previous studies forced to use aggregate measures have found no connection between economic conditions and the incidences of violent death. Using a model that combines methods of Multiple Imputation to recover missing data(King Honaker Joseph Scheve 2001) and the model of Ecological Inference(King 1997) I show how to estimate the disaggregated unemployment rates by religion from the available data. Unemployment is shown to be a leading cause of violence by Republican factions in Northern Ireland. I also estimate the effectiveness of the various security forces (RUC, UDR, British Army) in lowering the death rate. I show these forces have differential effectiveness depending on both the sectarian source and target of violence using a model of probabilistically distributed lags appropriate for time-series event count data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a model of democratic transitions in a society with two ethnic groups and two economic groups. When do politics revolve around ethnic as opposed to economic cleavages, and how does this affect the possibilities of a successful democratic transition? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have most of the governments in Latin America increased social spending in the 1990s despite a weakening of organized labor under globalization? I argue that the increase in social spending in Latin American countries is explained by policy makers’ desire to achieve the simultaneous goals of economic growth and social equity under globalization. The current dominant literature on comparative political economy in the OECD countries claims that leftist governments linked to a strong labor power are more likely to expand social spending in order to compensate the “new political constituencies,” who are supposed to be adversely affected by globalization. Unlike in the advanced industrial economies, however, such leftist power does not seem to explain the change in social spending in Latin America. More specifically, globalization contributes to an expansion of the informal sector and the consequent de-alignment of traditional left-labor alliance. In this context, a more plausible explanation is that the policy makers, regardless of partisanship, are more inclined to increase social spending, particularly human capital expenditures, to improve the skill level of labor force aiming at enhancing economic efficiency. Using a time-series cross-sectional panel data set for 13 Latin American countries from 1980 to 1997, this study presents the following findings. First, globalization measured as trade openness and capital account liberalization does affect the change in social spending. Second, the spending increase attributable to enhancing human capital expenditures is not aimed at compensating the expanding informal sector, which is supposed to exert electoral pressure as the “new political constituencies.” Instead, it reflects the policy makers’ economic concern for achieving both economic growth and social equity, which have been considered an unsolvable trade-off in the region. Third, partisan politics matters less than in the advanced industrial countries. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that economic rather than political logic works behind the increase in social spending in Latin American countries under globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bringing together democratic theory and international political economy literatures, I begin with the thesis that economic globalization is undermining the embedded liberalism of the post WWII era. Embodied in the Keynsian welfare state, embedded liberalism held out democratic avenues for disaffected groups to hold political actors responsible for suffering induced by market forces. Transformations in the global economy, however, constrain the options available to governments and curtail avenues of democratic accountability. Some have argued that the market itself can provide an adequate alternative. This view is deeply flawed. Drawing from the economic theory of Hayek and Friedman, I discuss how markets can operate as accountability mechanisms. I then turn to Karl Polanyi to discuss how markets that become disembedded from social contexts induce severe consequences for society and the environment. These consequences exceed what markets alone can account for. What’s more, as Habermas has observed, the system logic of markets is incompatible with the deliberative contexts in which democratic decision-making takes place. To propose markets as the solution to democratic deficits is to miss the point that it is the substitution of markets for social regulation that generates many of the problems in the first place. It is also to ignore the ways markets undermine the very spaces in which legitimate solutions can be determined. Somehow the effects of market accountability need to be accounted for. For this, there can be no substitute for forms of democratic deliberation that are themselves not reducible to market pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on economic voting states that voters punish (reward) politicians for weak (strong) economic performance at the polls. These studies have focused on how voters use past economic information such as past economic growth, levels of inflation and unemployment to make voting decisions. We argue that rational, forward looking voters should care more about future economic prospects than past economic performance. We argue that stock markets are the tool that can provide valuable information to voters on the future prospects of the economy. We propose to empirically examine how stock market returns from 1980-2003 in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States affected voting patterns in legislative and executive elections using regression analysis. We test if: 1) voters use stock market performance to evaluate incumbent competence and 2) if voters differentiate between stock market movements due to domestic factors or international factors (world stock price movements). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between economic interdependence and international conflict is a topic that has been studied and debated in earnest for decades. While realist scholars have argued that interdependence increases the probability of international conflict, liberal thinkers have contended that it reduces the incidence of international conflict. More recent studies suggest that the true relationship is a more nuanced story than either of these opposing claims purport. Such research finds that economic interdependence simultaneously increases and decreases the incentives to engage in interstate conflict; it increases the costs of conflict but it also increases the opportunity for conflict and the number of instruments available with which to use against one’s opponent. I seek to apply this theoretical debate to the specific case of US-China bilateral relations, by exploring what effect increasing economic interdependence has had on this important relationship. In particular, has it encouraged, discouraged, had no impact on, or had a more complex relationship with conflict between the two countries? After addressing the theoretical debate and presenting a qualitative overview of the nature of economic interdependence between the US and China, I will put forward my own hypothesis that growing economic interdependence has indeed decreased conflict in the US-China relationship. I will assert that when conflict has been initiated it is more likely to have originated from the US side, which is less sensitive and less vulnerable to changes in economic transactions. When threats have been credible, the opponent has been likely to acquiesce. When threats have not been credible the initiator has been more likely to back down. The likelihood that either one partner will acquiesce or the other will back down, means that peaceful settlement is always a more likely outcome than escalation. However, economic interdependence should have a stronger effect on Chinese than on US behavior, given China’s more profound sensitivity and vulnerability. In order to test these hypotheses, I am conducting a time series analysis of the impact of economic interdependence on conflict in US-China relations from 1978-2000. My independent variables are measures of bilateral trade (total trade, exports to partner country, exports to partner as a percentage of total exports). My dependent variables are measures of conflict as classified by the World Event/Interaction Survey (WEIS) Project and weighted by Vincent (1979). Preliminary results of the statistical work done to-date on this project are largely consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of my hypothesis that, in the US-China relationship, growing economic interdependence has led to a reduction of tensions. In addition, as expected, China’s behavior seems to be more constrained by economic dependence than is the US’. However, the US has been more likely to initiate conflict as Chinese sensitivity has increased (seemingly using trade as a weapon) than I had anticipated. Therefore, my early results are not wholly consistent with my hypotheses and give some credence to the claim that asymmetrical dependence may promote conflict. The conclusions that can be drawn from these findings are relevant to both theory and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research shows that the level of economic and cultural threat is influential to public opinion toward immigration. Although the hypothesis looks plausible, there is no empirical research for testing it at the national level. By using 1994 General Social Survey data and selected demographic data from 1990 census, I examine relevant hypothesis and suggest more elaborated effects of economic and psychological factors on immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macro-level scholars show that collective public opinion is informed and responsive. At the micro-level, however, researchers find that citizens’ political perceptions are neither accurate nor impartial. To resolve this micro-macro paradox, I propose a novel theory of aggregation that predicts both systematic micro-level misperception and macro-level rationality. To test the theory, I examine partisans? and nonpartisans? perceptions of national economic conditions from 1980-2002. At the micro-level, I find that partisans ? especially those who pay careful attention to politics ? are more likely than nonpartisans to offer extreme evaluations of the economy. Next, moving to the macro-level, I show that this bias is persistent in the aggregate. Relative to actual economic conditions in each year, partisans? evaluations are biased in a manner that supports their partisan affiliation, whereas nonpartisans? evaluations are closely aligned with actual features of the economy. Finally, I show that even though they are biased, partisans? perceptions are surprisingly sensitive to perturbations in the economy. This occurs because the effects of partisan bias are approximately constant over time, making partisan bias a non-factor in longitudinal analysis. Altogether, my analyses show that economic reality drives partisans? dynamic perceptions in spite of severe systematic bias at the micro-level. . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical literature examining the impact of IMF programs on macroeconomic performance has focused on the relationship between IMF programs on the balance of payments, current account, inflation, and long-run economic growth of borrower countries. Less studied is the impact of IMF programs on international capital markets. Are International Monetary Fund agreements and the conditions associated with these loans perceived as positive by multinational investors? Utilizing a selection model for 70 countries from 1970-1998, I find that IMF agreements, even after controlling for the factors that lead countries to be under IMF agreements, lead to lower levels of foreign direct investment. Countries that sign IMF agreements, ceteris paribus, attract 25 percent less FDI inflows than countries not under IMF agreements. This finding suggests that multinational investors perceive involvement by the IMF in domestic economies as negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations increasingly finds itself in operations that seek to build or re-build the institutions of a state, but the challenges it faces in such state-building activities are enormous - those arising from a lack of conceptual clarity on the aim of state-building, those resulting from the transformed strategic environment, and those operational and strategic challenges inherent to the complex task of state-building. I focus in this paper on a fourth one which is hardly discussed in the literature in this context. The financial aid offered to states can have a huge impact on the probability of post-conflict re-building efforts. This paper aims at filling this gap in the empirical literature on the UN by investigating empirically the relationship between the quality of governments that emerge once foreign military occupations end in a large cross-section of countries and the aid received from the UN for the purpose of state-building. To assess government performance I use measures of political freedom, human rights violations, size of government, economic growth, level of corruption, and government accountability. The analysis is conducted on all cases of foreign military occupations post-1945. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have made important contributions to our understanding of civil war, yet clear causal mechanisms remain contested. This paper uses the Colombian case to adjudicate between competing explanations for civil war and to clarify the causal mechanisms that drive conflict within the state. Collier and Hoeffler (2004) use highly aggregated macro-level data to suggest potential causes of civil war, finding several economic variables to be significant predictors of conflict onset. Fearon and Laitin (2003) use a similar model and methodology but argue that a weak state is the cause of conflict onset. A difference between the models is the mechanism through which resource dependence affects insurgency. This paper examines these competing concepts of natural resource dependence and insurgency, and compares the expectations of these models to the reality of the Colombian case. By looking at one case in detail, this study highlights mechanisms that macro-level studies of civil war are unable to pinpoint with certainty. The findings suggest that resource predation is a better explanation for civil war than is state weakness in Colombia, and the effects of drug predation are significantly different than those of other natural resources. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper Abstract.x000d..x000d.During the 1990s, Latin America experienced major privatization programs, which shifted the provision of provision of utility services from the public to the private sector. This trend peaked by 1997, and fell steadily ever since. By 2001, the political situation that favored privatization began to fade away. Several factors began to turn against private ownership of public utilities, leading to the re-nationalization of several companies in Argentina, Bolivia, and Venezuela and the renegotiation of concession contracts in other countries. The paper aims at identifying the political and economic factors that have led to the demise of private participation in public utilities and the resurgence of economic nationalism in selected Latin American countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper is about the variance of Corporate Responsibility - the voluntary engagement of business for social and environmental ends above legally mandated minimum standards - in contemporary capitalism. As a universal script with negligible costs, CR is an ideal candidate for isomorphism and norm diffusion. Surprisingly, CR has been institutionalized at very different times in otherwise similar affluent countries during the past decades. Why? A variety of quantitative and qualitative evidence shows that the timing of the rise of CR is correlated with the erosion and decline of the post-war compromise and ‘embedded liberalism.’ Varieties of Capitalism with low levels of institutionalized solidarity are prone to CR; the more political economies approach this market-liberal ideal through liberalization, privatization and deregulation, the more they are prone to engage in CR. In demonstrating that CR and neo-liberalism tend to spread in tandem, the paper contributes to the growing literature on trans-national private authority regimes and challenges the received wisdom that Corporate Responsibility constitutes a ‘re-embedding’ of global liberalism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic institutions such as property rights are regularly characterized as the fundamental cause of material prosperity. Much less attention is devoted to understanding the origins of secure property rights. Only recently have theoretical models attempted to explain the political conditions that affect the emergence of strong property rights systems. This paper provides the first empirical test of one recent argument focusing on the role of political replacement of leaders. Specifically, the paper describes non-monotonic effects of the likelihood of political replacement on the strength of property rights. Then, drawing on data that measure the turnover of leaders in democratic and autocratic regimes, the paper creates a new measure of the likelihood of political replacement. Finally, the paper evaluates the impact on property rights using cross-sectional and panel data. The findings suggest that property rights are more secure when the likelihood of democratic political replacement is highest and extra-constitutional replacement is lowest. The conclusion contextualizes these results in terms of contemporary political economy theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion that the careful design and engineering of formal political institutions could help mollify group conflict in a society that might otherwise be prone to it is, for obvious reasons, an encouraging one. Although scholars may not always agree with one another about the most desirable forms for these formal institutions to take, most scholars do agree that the formal political institutions in a new democracy and the incentives they offer to political elites competing for power in a new environment can have profound consequences for that country's democratic endurance (or lack thereof). In this paper, I consider the nature of a much less "formal" institution which receives too little attention in the literature on democracy in divided societies: language regimes. I argue that language regimes are too little understood in comparative politics and that efforts to rectify this might lead to an enhanced disciplinary understanding of democratic transition and democratic endurance, particularly in diverse societies. This paper first introduces the concept of "language regime" and articulates its importance for the study of democratic regime change in comparative politics. It then develops a basic framework for understanding the political economy of language regime change and illustrates the usefulness of this framework using the case of language regime change in the post-apartheid South Africa. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have struggled to explain stability and change in public resource allocation. What ultimately matters to most citizens, however, are the effects of such budgetary patterns on organizational performance. In this paper, we investigate this relationship between patterns of resource allocation and organizational performance. Using time-series data on local school budgets and examination scores from more than 40,000 students, the analysis lends empirical support to the more or less implicit proposition underlying much literature on incrementalism, namely that stable budget decisions have a beneficial effect on organizational outcome. In that way this paper not only renews the old interest in budget incrementalism, but also raises a new set of questions in studying the performance of public organizations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the political-economy of human well-being. Current research indicates democracy decreases infant mortality while other research indicates there is no impact from democracy on child mortality. This paper reconciles these conflicting results. The argument here is that both literatures are correct: While democracy does not directly influence child mortality it does, however, indirectly influence it by increasing female literacy which is a fundamental determinant of child mortality. In this sense, democracy acts as a catalyst to lowering child mortality and can within certain bounds be thought of as a causal determinant of child mortality. To test this hypothesis a cross-section regression analysis is employed. The regression results indicate that in a bivariate specification democracy lowers child mortality, but when female literacy is added to the regression the impact of democracy disappears and becomes statistically insignificant. Complementing the regression results, several case-study comparisons illustrate the impact of democracy on female literacy and through female literacy its indirect impact on child mortality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transitional justice (e.g., trials, truth commissions, and reparations for past state-sponsored violence) has occurred throughout the world since the mid-1970s. While a corresponding literature has grown around the topic, little attention has been paid to the political economy of this phenomenon. Of the few scholars who address this issue, Jon Elster contends that where more pressing economic concerns prevail and new democracies face hard economic constraints, they are unlikely to adopt costly transitional justice mechanisms. This approach has led some to explain the difference in levels of commitment to transitional justice in countries transitioning from Communism in the former Soviet Union and those transitioning from authoritarian rule in Latin America. This hypothesis, however, has never been empirically tested. The purpose of this paper is to do exactly that. It asks: does the economic health and international integration of a country help us to determine its adoption or dismissal of transitional justice mechanisms? The results of this inquiry have important implications in understanding the implementation (if any) of transitional justice mechanisms. To unravel these questions, we use the Transitional Justice Data Base that our team has developed. The data used in this paper include all countries that have transitioned to democracy from 1974 through 2003. We find that countries with healthier economies are more likely to adopt transitional justice mechanisms. Contrary to our hypothesis, however, economically integrated countries are less likely to adopt transitional justice mechanisms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it has been suggested that preferences may be endogenous to institutional structures and that economics seeks to inculcate positive values toward market institutions, much work remains to be done in conceptualizing what such learning may be composed of and how it might occur. This paper represents an attempt to outline an interdisciplinary approach to piecing together this long-standing social science puzzle. Much can be gleaned by revisiting the participatory democratic tradition of Carole Pateman and Edward Greenberg, and examining the link between democratic theory and economics. It is suggested in particular that the debatable failure of democratic theorists’ predictions to come to fruition can be explained by insights drawn from radical economists working in the heterodox tradition as well as critical social scientists engaged with critical realism and questions of ontology. When one discards economists’ assumption of given, exogenous preferences, one is free to critique Milton Friedman’s defense of prediction and proposed irrelevance of realistic assumptions. More importantly, however, one is compelled to explain why such regularities that exist in the social world do in fact exist. Implicit ontological commitments (of a propositional nature), or the connotative meaning of workplace involvement practices, are advanced as the sort of knowledge that worker-citizens are likely to acquire in their interaction with work. The question becomes one of determining what sort of learning is occurring and what sort of processes of preference formation may be at work. This, in turn, has implications for basic ideas in social science, including power, beliefs, values, intentionality, and the like; for methodological premises related to holism and individualism; and, for the prospects of democratic theory. The explanation advanced here is intended to lay the theoretical foundation for future work that can begin to empirically delineate the mechanisms by which such learning may occur. The purpose of this paper is simply to describe key ideas of the larger text, their relationship to democratic theory, and some provisional “findings.” ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the role of economic "risk" (of foreign and domestic origin) in the development of the welfare state. It combines models drawn from the economics, political science and sociology literatures on welfare state development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at developing a critique of Orthodox IR theory i.e. Realism, Neo-Realism and Neo-Liberalism by using a materialist ecofeminist perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines political and economic factors, which contributed to a sudden rise of left-wing parties in South Korea [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains differences in capital inflow and outflow regulation in developing countries. A cross sectional time series analysis demonstrates that interest group preferences vary over these dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that different growth patterns entail distinct state-society relations. Those differences contribute to different income thresholds of democratic transitions and democratic consolidation, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at whether uses of military force divert media coverage away from adverse economic conditions and toward the use of force situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and examines a theory that explains the relationship between the environmental sustainability of socio-economic structures and violent conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper analyzes the dramatic dismemberments of the pilot state economic agencies in three "Bureaucratic Nonliberal Capitalist Countries"?Korea, China, and Japan?and compares the transformations of states? economic roles in three cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper re-analyses the relationship between economic performance, democratization and political stability across 90 political regimes (1945-1990), by including international context variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many observers view regional integration in West Africa as the only way to reverse the region?s economic marginalization in the global economy. This paper examines the viability of West Africa?s state-driven institutional approach to integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of party promises on policy-making activities and economic outcomes and the subsequent impact of these factors on the electoral fortunes of incumbents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks why volatile rates of economic growth exist and vary among different democracies and what is the role of democratic institutions in this empirical finding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus in this paper is on whether the way leaders end their tenure in office has an effect on the levels of economic growth in their country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the issue of unbalanced economic development among the EU members against the backdrop of ?neo-realists? theoretical proposition on state concerns about "relative achievement of gains" as a possible obstacle to cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks to measure the degree to which governments lose their credibilty in maintaining low-inflation when they either choose, or are forced, to move from a rigid exchange rate to a more flexible one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the variation in both the origins and settlement practices of infringements of EU law by testing conventional political economic and comparative institutional variables in a first-of-its-kind database of over 1200 violations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]