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At the turn of the twenty-first century, why did country after country in the developing world open their economies to the global market? This paper argues that increases in democracy were more likely to lead to trade liberalization when governments violated workers' basic rights to act collectively. Democracy empowered pro-trade domestic groups and therefore had the potential to lead to trade liberalization, but respect for labor rights empowered protectionist labor unions to launch protests and strikes that hampered such reforms. This paper supports these arguments with a multimethod approach that combines quantitative analysis of data from 126 developing countries from 1985 to 2010 with qualitative case studies of Argentina and Mexico. In general, the empirical evidence suggests that democracy and labor repression often worked together to facilitate the process of trade liberalization in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggesting that leader transitions increase the probability of war termination is based on the assumption that leader change is exogenous. However, the exogeneity of leader change needs to be tested, not assumed. This paper uses a bivariate discrete survival model to test the exogeneity of leader change and correctly estimate its partial effect on war termination. The paper extends the analysis by estimating a competing risks model of types of leader transitions. The evidence shows that leader change in large coalition systems never increases the probability of war termination, while leader change in small coalition systems never reduces the probability of war termination. In short, leader transitions in autocratic systems are more likely to bring interstate war to an end than leader transitions in democratic ones. The study also shows that the marginal effect of leader change fades away as the war progresses, and that war has negative duration-dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transnational dimensions of low-level conflict and state repression. In this regard, special emphasis is placed on the role of political regimes. Drawing on a simple model, we argue that democracy has opposing effects on conflict intensity. On one hand, democracy satisfies demand for political participation and thus reduces conflict potential, while, on the other hand, we highlight that domestic democracy may spur dissatisfaction and conflict abroad, which, in turn, may induce conflict spillovers. As a result, the net effect of democracy on low-level conflict and state repression is ambiguous and depends on the level of democracy in the neighborhood: We predict that democracy is more pacifying in democratic environments and may spur conflict in autocratic environments. By the symmetry of the model, we also predict that democratic environments are more pacifying for democratic countries and may spur conflict in autocracies. Empirical evidence using panel data on different types of low-level conflict and state repression for 160 countries in the period from 1950 to 2011 supports these hypotheses. Additionally, two case studies illustrate the mechanisms of our model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on the effects of international migration on democratic institutions in sending countries focuses on how emigration changes the civic and democratic values of those left behind. Little attention has been given to how the additional income provided by migrant remittances alters the incentive structure of the political actors involved and how this will affect political outcomes. This paper develops a voting model that accounts for the effect of higher income through remittances and shows that its expected effects on voter turnout patterns differ in important ways from those of improved civic values. Taking these predictions to the data, it is shown that, for the case of Mexican municipal elections over the year 2000-2002 period, the empirical evidence strongly supports the notion that international remittances had a positive effect on electoral competitiveness in Mexico by reducing the clientelistic power of the formerly dominant state party ( Institutional Revolutionary Party). This result is robust to the use of instrumental variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jensen, Nathan M. (2013) Domestic Institutions and the Taxing of Multinational Corporations. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12015 © 2013 International Studies Association Political scientists have examined how domestic politics and the competition for international capital affect the setting of national tax rates. In this paper, I explore how political institutions, specifically the level of democracy, affect firm-level taxation across the world. I argue that electoral competition leads democratic governments to higher levels of taxation on firms. Using a data set on firm tax payments on the foreign affiliates of US multinational corporations from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, I show that there are large variations within countries on the tax burdens faced by firms that are not explained by national tax rates. I find evidence that the mobility of the specific investment project, the types of spillovers these investments provide to a community, and attributes of the parent firm are all important determinants of taxation. While firm-level factors clearly affect corporate taxation, I argue that democratic institutions limit the offering of tax incentives and generate electoral benefits to policing tax avoidance by multinational corporations. After controlling for parent firm and foreign affiliate-level factors, I find that democratic countries generate as much as 26% more tax revenues from multinational corporations relative to authoritarian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do democracies and autocracies intervene militarily in different types of civil conflict? In contrast to the existing literature that makes no distinction between military interventions undertaken by democracies and those by autocracies, I argue that democracies and autocracies are likely to intervene in different types of civil conflict. Specifically, I find that an increase in the rebel capabilities and the existence of an ethnic tie between the rebel group and the third-party state will increase the probability of a military intervention favoring the rebel group only when a third-party state is democratic. The evidence also shows that an autocracy is more likely to intervene when there are lootable natural resources such as secondary diamonds in a civil conflict, but there is no effect of lootable resources on a democracy's intervention decision. The analytical framework in this paper can apply to other types of military behaviors and would provide a more accurate picture of the effect of regime type on foreign policy choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While almost a decade old, Ted Hopf’s observation that the democratic peace is an observation in search of a theory still holds validity. In particular, the mechanisms behind the democratic peace are poorly understood, making it difficult for scholars to provide a compelling explanation. Underappreciated in the existing work is the role of identity and the importance this has for driving the democratic peace. With a focus on developing a dyadic democratic peace mechanism and using a case study approach, this paper utilizes the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework to examine how identity plays out in the US response to the Indian and Iranian nuclear programs. It finds that in fact identity does play an important role in how security policy is constructed. In policy terms, if the democratic peace does rely on identity to trigger the constraining norms that limit the escalation of conflict to violence, it is unlikely the democratic peace can be spread by force and it is possible that states nominally democratic can be excluded from the community of democracies if their behavior or significant other aspects of their perceived identity are at variance with the accepted democratic identity standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research examining the effect of regime type on conflict has focused on the democracy/autocracy continuum expounded in the political philosophies of liberal thinkers such as Kant and Schumpeter. While this concentration has yielded impressive results (democratic peace), it seems plausible that other conceptions of regime type may yield similar success. This paper examines the philosophy of Machiavelli and develops a measure of his“imperial regimes.” These states, which can either be democratic or autocratic, should exhibit an increased propensity to initiate international conflict. Testing this contention in Renaissance Italy (1250–1494) and the modern international system (1920–1992), this paper finds strong empirical support. Machiavelli's views illuminate key differences between democracies and autocracies that have been previously overlooked. Thus, it deepens rather than replaces our conception of how domestic institutions affect international conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do multiparty cabinets in parliamentary democracies produce more extreme foreign policies than single-party cabinets? Our paper argues that particular institutional and psychological dynamics explain this difference. We test this argument using a global events data set incorporating foreign policy behaviors of numerous multiparty and single-party governments. We find that more parties and weak parliaments promote extremity in coalitions, but parliamentary strength has the opposite effect for single-party governments. This study challenges existing expectations about the impact of democratic institutions on foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military leaders, policymakers, and academics have long debated the relative merits of volunteer versus conscript armies. They also have studied the possible effects of eroding resolve among mass publics in democratic states during wartime. In this paper, we use battlefield casualty data from the population of interstate wars to compare theories of property takings and domestic institutions. We find conscription, like other non-market-based property takings, to be a wasteful means of mobilizing military manpower. Volunteer armies suffer far fewer casualties than their conscripted counterparts. We also find that this effect compounds when interacted with regime type. Volunteer democratic armies suffer especially few casualties. Finally, we find that democratic societies are willing to bear the costs of large-scale commitments to maintaining state sovereignty and survival when targeted by authoritarian states, at times in the face of certain defeat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consideration of the effects of domestic politics on international conflict behavior often consists simply of contrasting democracies with non-democracies. One notable exception is work that links economic performance and the use of force. This link has often been addressed through use of a diversionary perspective. In this paper, we argue that more important than the alleged incentive to pursue a rallying effect when times are bad are domestic political and economic factors affecting leaders’ constraints, representing some of the costs to pursuing adventurous foreign policies. We examine three sources of constraints on democratic leaders: the willingness of the constituency to support the use of force internationally; the macroeconomic preferences of the party’s constituency; and an interaction of those preferences with the state of the economy. We find that in developed democracies, the political orientation of the government is a significant factor affecting the likelihood of international conflict initiation. Specifically, right governments are more likely to initiate interstate disputes; economic conditions have a significant but lesser impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inferences about counterfactuals are essential for prediction, answering “what if” questions, and estimating causal effects. However, when the counterfactuals posed are too far from the data at hand, conclusions drawn from well-specified statistical analyses become based on speculation and convenient but indefensible model assumptions rather than empirical evidence. Unfortunately, standard statistical approaches assume the veracity of the model rather than revealing the degree of model-dependence, so this problem can be hard to detect. We develop easy-to-apply methods to evaluate counterfactuals that do not require sensitivity testing over specified classes of models. If an analysis fails the tests we offer, then we know that substantive results are sensitive to at least some modeling choices that are not based on empirical evidence. We use these methods to evaluate the extensive scholarly literatures on the effects of changes in the degree of democracy in a country (on any dependent variable) and separate analyses of the effects of UN peacebuilding efforts. We find evidence that many scholars are inadvertently drawing conclusions based more on modeling hypotheses than on evidence in the data. For some research questions, history contains insufficient information to be our guide. Free software that accompanies this paper implements all our suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many statistical studies in international relations investigate the claim that democracies do not fight one another. Virtually all of these studies employ a single-equation design, where the dependent variable measures the presence or absence of a dyadic militarized interstate dispute (MID). A separate group of studies argues that conflict affects democracy and that its effect could be positive or negative. By and large, these two bodies of literature have not incorporated one another's insights. We argue that democracy and dyadic conflict affect each other significantly and that statistical models that ignore the reciprocal nature of these effects may make incorrect inferences. To test this argument, we develop a simultaneous equations model of democracy and dyadic conflict. Our sample includes all the politically relevant dyads from 1950 to 1992. We find that dyadic military disputes reduce joint democracy and joint democracy reduces the probability of MIDs. Compared with the single-equation estimates in the literature, the absolute effect of joint democracy in our paper is smaller while in relative terms, the effect is similar in size. The effect of joint democracy on MID involvement is considerably smaller for noncontiguous countries than for contiguous ones. The effects of a number of control variables in the MID equation are also found to differ from those reported previously in single- equation–based studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguments and debates about politics are activities central to a democracy. Understanding arguments according to common frames of reference is not a straightforward task but demands much critical intelligence and skill. To aid in evaluating and criticizing arguments, we present in this paper a quasiformal analytical methodology that uses a graphical scheme synthesized from the work of Toulmin and others. Arguments are analyzed into sets of propositions structurally linked by support, attack, and ‘warranting’ relations. This method had advantages over others, since it is well-adapted to informal reasoning and since it helps identify implicit principles of argumentation (warrants), unsupported claims, circularities in reasoning, lines of possible attack, and structural relations between sub-arguments. Anyone can use the graphical template of argument elements and relations as a guide in analyzing political (or other) arguments for a variety of critical purposes. In this paper, we apply the method to a debate about the strategic window of vulnerability, a debate chosen for its continuing political relevance and the richness of its argument structure. We present graphs and their verbal interpretations, and we hope to encourage others to use this method in their own critical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies show that democracies are no better than autocracies in terms of women's legislative representation. This finding seems counterintuitive because democracies are more politically inclusive and foster greater respect for civil and political rights, compared to autocracies. We revisit the relationship between democracy and women's legislative representation by considering the interaction between democracy and global norms of gender equality in politics. We argue that democracies are better able than autocracies to translate a global norm of gender-balanced political representation into actual domestic practices. Further, we contend that the effect of democracies also depends on the external normative pressure. Using a time-series cross-sectional dataset covering 147 countries from 1951 to 2013, our analysis shows that the more democratic a country is, the more responsive it is to global norms promoting gender equality in politics. It also demonstrates that the effect of democracy on women's representation strengthens, as global normative pressure for women's inclusion in politics grows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether democracy and other major characteristics of political institutions have any significant consequences for private investment. I isolate three political determinants that may affect property rights and private investment: political freedom, political instability, and policy uncertainty. The major findings in this paper can be characterized as follows: Political freedom promotes private investment, particularly through the channel of improving human capital formation. Political instability, as measured by the variability of political freedom, has a negative effect on private investment. Finally, policy uncertainty, as measured by the variability of government capacity, adversely affects private investment. These findings have been tested rigorously through using variables controlling for both domestic and international conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unidimensional measures of democracy fail to account for the complex and varied nature of political systems. This article disaggregates the concept of democracy and proposes a multidimensional conceptualization to account for this variation in institutional configurations. Three theoretically informed dimensions are featured: participation, electoral contestation, and constraints on the executive. The three dimensions constitute a cube covering all regime types, in which we place countries using V-Dem data from 1789 to 2019. This cube of democracy patterns reveals several interesting observations. We trace historical patterns of democratization and discuss how countries across the world have taken different paths at different times. Our conceptualization shows that political systems with a similar score along a unidimensional scale are often quite distinct. In addition, across the globe for 200 years, certain configurations of political institutions rarely occur. Furthermore, our approach reveals interesting patterns of regime convergence and divergence over time. Finally, we show that the typical pathways to democracy have changed since 1789. This multidimensional conceptualization ultimately opens up new avenues for research in which institutional variation and change can be studied in greater detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlling immigration has become a central political goal in advanced democracies. Politicians across the world have experimented with a range of policies such as foreign aid in the hopes that aid will spur development in migrant origin countries and decrease the demand for emigration. We argue that internal policy tools are more effective, in particular, the use of policies that allow temporary migrants short-term access to host country labor markets. These policies provide migrants an opportunity to obtain higher wages, which, in turn, increases remittances back to home countries. This increase in financial flows to households decreases subsequent demand for migration into destination countries. We test this argument using data on migration to the United States and find that an increase in remittances from the United States decreases subsequent demand for entry in that country. Controlar la inmigración se ha vuelto un objetivo político central de las democracias avanzadas. Los políticos de todo el mundo han experimentado con un abanico de políticas, como la asistencia en el extranjero, con miras a que la ayuda fomente el desarrollo en los países de origen de los migrantes y reduzca la demanda de emigración. Sostenemos que las herramientas de política interna son más efectivas: en particular, el uso de políticas que permiten a los migrantes temporales el acceso a corto plazo a los mercados laborales del país de destino. Estas políticas brindan a los migrantes la oportunidad de obtener salarios más altos, lo que, a su vez, aumenta las remesas a los países de origen. Este aumento del flujo económico hacia los hogares reduce la subsecuente demanda de migración hacia los países de destino. Evaluamos este argumento con información de migraciones a EE. UU. y observamos que el aumento de las remesas desde EE. UU. disminuye la demanda de ingreso al país. Le contrôle de l'immigration est devenu un objectif politique central dans les démocraties avancées. Des politiciens du monde entier ont expérimenté toute une série de politiques telles que l'aide étrangère dans l'espoir que cette aide stimule le développement des pays d'origine des migrants et réduise la demande d'émigration. Nous soutenons que les outils de politique intérieure sont plus efficaces, en particulier, le recours à des politiques qui dotent les migrants temporaires d'd'un accès à court terme aux marchés du travail du pays d'accueil. Ces politiques donnent l'opportunité aux migrants d'obtenir des salaires plus élevés, ce qui, à son tour, augmente les fonds qu'ils transfèrent vers leurs pays d'origine. Cette augmentation des flux financiers vers leurs foyers dans leurs pays d'origine diminue la demande ultérieure de migration dans les pays de destination. Nous avons mis cet argument à l'épreuve à l'aide de données sur la migration vers les États-Unis et nous avons constaté qu'une augmentation des transferts de fonds en provenance des États-Unis diminuait la demande ultérieure d'entrée dans ce pays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature at the intersection of global norms and transnational advocacy typically equates target states' foreign constituencies with those exerting normative pressure on the states in question on behalf of their domestic constituencies. Another type of foreign constituency remains undertheorized: foreign nationals as rights claimants who make normative claims against target states, such as victims of colonization seeking redress or refugees demanding their rights protection. I argue that states, including robust democracies otherwise well socialized into global norms, respond differently to compliance pressures from these two types of foreign compliance constituencies. In what I call dual norm dynamics, states may regress in their norm practices when it comes to foreign claimants while at the same time deepening their normative commitments to the international community as a whole. In an unintended consequence of norm diffusion, norm regress in target states for foreign claimants may occur as a result of successful transnational norm advocacy on their behalf. To demonstrate the empirical utility of dual norm dynamics, I look at the transnational redress movement for Korean "comfort women." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic states sometimes engage in covert interventions--sometimes involving forcible regime change--against other democracies. Critics charge that these interventions raise doubts about the robustness of the "democratic peace." I argue that they require analysts to rethink some aspects of democratic-peace theory. Democratic states base their behavior toward other democracies on expectations about the future trajectory of their regimes: whether, and to what extent, those states will likely remain democratic in the future. When they expect democracy to persist, the constraints of the democratic peace operate. But when democracies expect another state's democratic character to break down, or decay, they prove more willing to engage in covert forcible regime change. I test my dynamic version of democratic-peace theory by examining US efforts to forcibly depose Iran's Mohammed Mossadegh (1953) and Chile's Salvador Allende (1970-1973). The framework developed here helps to resolve a longstanding anomaly for the democratic peace--secret interventions between democracies--while also providing policymakers with a clearer sense of the stakes associated with covert democracy promotion and subversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist mobilization, crucial for advancing women's human rights, has increased in all world regions since 1975. However, we do not know enough about the global impact of this mobilization because we lack adequate databases to explore the ways that feminist mobilization interacts with other factors that enhance and limit women's rights, such as democracy, intergovernmental processes, and transnational, regional organizing. Our ability to explore these questions is obstructed by a lack of data on the global south and measures that focus on formal organizations. This project remedies these gaps, developing an improved measure of feminist mobilization that encompasses autonomous, domestic feminist mobilization in 126 countries, 1975–2015, enabling us to track global and regional trends. Using regional comparisons and statistical analysis, we use this new measure to reveal new patterns and complexities in feminist mobilization. We discern distinct regional patterns in such organizing that defy facile predictions of global convergence and suggest a central role for UN processes advancing women's rights. Our analysis also points to the importance of transnational feminist networks and democratization as factors enabling and strengthening feminist mobilization. We conclude by suggesting some fruitful avenues for exploring relationships between feminist movements, international institutions, and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does political accountability in democracies affect leaders' incentives for international cooperation? We consider how term limits should affect international environmental agreement (IEA) participation. Pursuing environmental protection as a public good coincides with the political survival incentives of democratic leaders. Term limits decouple leaders' policy priorities from their political survival incentives, discouraging IEA participation. However, prioritization of environmental concerns increases with economic development. As such, the effect of term limits on IEA participation should be strongest in rich democracies. We test these arguments using data from the International Environmental Agreements Database from 1970 to 2011. Democratic leaders, particularly in rich democracies, sign fewer IEAs when freed from the reelection motive. We also consider the potential that term limits could favor IEA participation if doing so aligns with a leader's preferences. This potential should be greatest in poor democracies where citizens place less emphasis on environmental protection, though we find little evidence for this expectation. The findings have important implications for understanding the determinants of IEA participation and the political accountability–international cooperation relationship. Whereas some argue that electoral incentives that cause leaders to favor present over future concerns undermine environmental cooperation, our results suggest that political accountability in democracies can promote treaty participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jensen, Nathan M. (2013) Domestic Institutions and the Taxing of Multinational Corporations. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12015 © 2013 International Studies Association Political scientists have examined how domestic politics and the competition for international capital affect the setting of national tax rates. In this paper, I explore how political institutions, specifically the level of democracy, affect firm-level taxation across the world. I argue that electoral competition leads democratic governments to higher levels of taxation on firms. Using a data set on firm tax payments on the foreign affiliates of US multinational corporations from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, I show that there are large variations within countries on the tax burdens faced by firms that are not explained by national tax rates. I find evidence that the mobility of the specific investment project, the types of spillovers these investments provide to a community, and attributes of the parent firm are all important determinants of taxation. While firm-level factors clearly affect corporate taxation, I argue that democratic institutions limit the offering of tax incentives and generate electoral benefits to policing tax avoidance by multinational corporations. After controlling for parent firm and foreign affiliate-level factors, I find that democratic countries generate as much as 26% more tax revenues from multinational corporations relative to authoritarian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global capitalism seems to be placing democracy, especially liberal democracy, under considerable stress. Support for populism has surged, especially for extreme right parties with populist and authoritarian programs. Inequality, insecurity, and interdependence—all associated with globalization—have grown globally and appear to be key sources of stress. New technologies spread readily by globalization are also a force for destabilization. Do these international forces pose existential challenges to democracy? Liberal democracy rests on a foundation of political equality among citizens; it requires free and fair elections, competition among programmatic parties, political legitimacy from public support, and institutional constraints on executive power and majority rule. Is the rise global capitalism eroding all of these key elements? If so, what can be done about it? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do autocratic powers like China evoke negative attitudes from the citizens of some countries but not from others? Factors like economic and security threat are of course part of the answer, but this study finds that ideational factors exert a distinct effect. Drawing from social theories of the democratic peace and international relations more broadly, it observes that governments and their citizens form communities along ideological lines, which most prominently includes differences in liberal democracy. This argument implies that people within the liberal community tend to view authoritarian powers like China as having a harmful influence on the world. Furthermore, democratic citizens will evaluate China from the standpoint of liberal democratic norms. Because liberal norms are not just about having multiparty, electoral institutions, people's opinions on China could vary even if its single-party political system does not change. Three empirical studies drawing from cross-national observational data, two original survey experiment, and a difference-in-differences analysis of historical polls confirm that liberal democracy affects foreign perceptions about China. The findings advance debates about soft power, democracy and public opinion, and the role of ideology in international society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in authoritarian politics and democratic breakdown has fueled a revival in scholarship on coups d'état. However, this research is held back by the fact that no global coup dataset captures theoretically salient information on the identity of coup-makers, their goals, and the relationship between the coup leaders and the ruling regime. We introduce the Colpus dataset, new global data on coup types and characteristics in the post–World War II era. These data introduce a typology of coups, measurement strategy, and coding procedures to differentiate between whether coups seek to preserve existing ruling coalitions (leader reshuffling coups) or significantly alter ruling coalitions (regime change coups). We show trends in coup types across time and space. Finally, we demonstrate that poverty—an established determinant of coups—only predicts regime change coups. Colpus data will be of use to scholars of political instability and conflict, regime change, leadership accountability, the political economy of democracy and dictatorship, and related topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop and test a theory of the supply side of third-party conflict management. Building on model of mediation, which shows that bias enhances mediator credibility, we offer three complementary mechanisms that may enable mediator credibility. First, democratic mediators face costs for deception in the conflict management process. Second, a vibrant global democratic community supports the norms of unbiased and nonviolent conflict management, again increasing the costs of deception for potential mediators. Third, as disputants' ties to international organizations increase, the mediator's costs for dishonesty in the conflict management process rise because these institutions provide more frequent and accurate information about the disputants' capabilities and resolve. These factors, along with sources of bias, increase the availability of credible mediators and their efforts to manage interstate conflicts. Empirical analyses of data on contentious issues from 1816 to 2001 lend mixed support for our arguments. Third-party conflict management occurs more frequently and is more successful if a potential mediator is a democracy, as the average global democracy level increases, and as the disputants' number of shared International Organization (IO) memberships rises. We also find that powerful states serve as mediators more often and are typically successful. Other factors such as trade ties, alliances, issue salience, and distance influence decisions to mediate and mediation success. Taken together, our study provides evidence in support of Kydd's bias argument while offering several mechanisms for unbiased mediators to become credible and successful mediators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does regime type affect the poor? Are certain types of regimes better at translating economic growth into consumption for the world's least privileged citizens? We propose an alternative measure of transfers to the poor that is nearly universally available and innately captures distribution: average daily calorie consumption. In sharp contrast to the consumption of material goods or the accumulation of wealth for which humans have shown no upper bound on their ability to achieve, biological limits make it impossible for a small number of individuals to consume most of a nation's calories. Democracies and hybrid regimes-which combine elements of autocracy and democracy-are better at translating economic growth into total calorie consumption than autocracies and perform strikingly similarly in this regard; democracies outperform both hybrid regimes and autocracies, however, in converting growth into higher quality calories from animal sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have argued that unequal socioeconomic distribution constitutes a threat to democratic survival. However, the evidence in support of this claim has been contradictory. We argue that this inconsistency derives from the literature’s assumption that income inequality will adequately reflect the conditions under which demands for radical redistribution will emerge and trigger antidemocratic elite reactions. We argue instead that when developmental context is taken into consideration, absolute forms of distribution, like basic needs deprivation, are better indicators of these conditions. When needs deprivation exists in the face of enhanced economic development, citizens will not only notice deprivation more readily, but also, given the greater social surplus, deem it more unacceptable, provoking radical demands for redistributive justice. This combination of development and continuing basic needs shortfalls, a condition that we refer to as regressive socioeconomic distribution, will threaten democratic survival. Using event history analysis on a sample composed of all democracies from 1961 to 1995, we confirm that regressive socioeconomic distribution increases the risk of breakdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on research that applies the policy deference model to high court decision-making during external war, we propose that conflict intensity, political government's preference on liberalization, and the gender of appellant impact the manner in which courts follow policy deference during internal war in transitioning countries. Contextually, we argue that shifts in women's roles and gender relations during internal conflict in transitioning societies condition the manner in which civilian courts make decisions on civil and political rights cases. During external war in advanced democracies, policy deference infers that courts will rule more conservatively on civil and political rights cases. Using habeas corpus cases as a representation of civil and political rights' protection from El Salvador's civil war period (1980–1992) and two measures of conflict intensity, our findings indicate that the court's decision-making process deviates from conventional expectations derived from the policy deference model in three ways: (1) conflict intensity solely affects the court's decision-making on habeas corpus cases involving men; (2) the political government's choice for political liberalization affects the court's decision-making on both women and men cases; and (3) gender conditions the manner in which policy deference applies in a society that is experiencing societal change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the variation in sexual violence perpetrated by state-security forces? Prior research has suggested sexual violence is an explicit strategy of violence. More recent work has suggested sexual violence in certain contexts acts as a tolerated practice. I argue that the type of regime institutions influences the perpetration of sexual violence by deterring behavior of individuals and providing pathways to accountability. Authoritarian regimes in general have weaker institutional accountability compared to democracies. Institutions in personalist regimes in particular are geared toward preservation of personal power, rather than accountability for the regime. Regimes with higher accountability will experience lower sexual violence, while those with lower accountability experience higher perpetration. Moreover, the gendered nature of regime institutions influences perpetration of sexual violence where masculine institutions predominate. I test these predictions using cross-national data on the incidence of sexual violence, during both peace and conflict. The results suggest that personalist regimes, and especially regimes with weaker female empowerment or higher levels of corruption, experience more sexual violence. This analysis links political institutions to the toleration of sexual violence by state-security forces, underscoring the importance of institutional structure and behavior in the perpetration of sexual violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite decades of research, there is no consensus on the relationship between democratic institutions and risk of civil war. We alleviate measurement issues and theoretical ambiguity in much existing work by theoretically and empirically unpacking core features of democracy and their relationship to civil war. We distinguish between institutions that impose vertical constraints on leaders from the population at large, and institutions that allow various groups, including non-incumbent elites, to place horizontal constraints on leader behavior. Both types of democratic institutions, we argue, help leaders overcome commitment problems related to potential agents of rebellion, thus reducing civil war risk. This is particularly so when these institutional mechanisms reinforce each other. Using precise institutional indicators from Varieties of Democracy, we disentangle and separately measure the dimensions of interest. Both vertical and (especially) horizontal constraints mitigate civil war risk, but only clearly so when both types of constraining institutions co-exist in so-called liberal democracies. Absent constraints from a capable parliament or independent judiciary, improvements to the freeness and fairness of elections do not mitigate civil war onset. Malgré des décennies de recherche, il n'existe aucun consensus sur la relation entre les institutions démocratiques et les guerres civiles. Nous atténuons les problèmes de mesure et l'ambiguité théorique de nombreux travaux existants en analysant les caractéristiques fondamentales de la démocratie et leur relation avec les guerres civiles dun point de vue théorique et empirique. Nous distinguons les institutions qui imposent des contraintes verticales aux dirigeants par le biais de la population globale de celles qui permettent á divers groupes, y compris aux élites qui ne sont pas au pouvoir, dimposer des contraintes horizontales pour le comportement des dirigeants. Nous soutenons que ces deux types d'institutions démocratiques aident les dirigeants á surmonter les problèmes dengagement liés aux agents rebelles potentiels, réduisant ainsi le risque de guerre civile. Cela est particulièrement vrai lorsque ces mécanismes institutionnels se renforcent mutuellement. Nous nous appuyons sur des indicateurs institutionnels précis issus de V-Dem pour dégager et mesurer séparément les dimensions dintérêt. Les contraintes verticales et horizontales atténuent toutes deux le risque de guerre civile, mais uniquement lorsque les deux types dinstitutions contraignantes coexistent dans des démocraties dites libérales. En l'absence de contraintes émanant dun parlement compétent ou d'un système judiciaire indépendant, les améliorations apportées á la liberté et á l'équité des élections n'atténuent pas le risque de déclenchement de guerre civile. A pesar de las décadas de investigación, no hay consenso sobre la relación entre las instituciones democráticas y el riesgo de una guerra civil. Minimizamos los problemas de medición y la ambiguedad teórica en gran parte del trabajo existente desentrañando de manera teórica y empírica los rasgos fundamentales de la democracia y su relación con la guerra civil. Realizamos una distinción entre las instituciones que imponen restricciones verticales a los líderes de la población en general y las instituciones que permiten a varios grupos, incluidas las elites no tradicionales, imponer restricciones horizontales al comportamiento de los líderes. Sostenemos que ambos tipos de instituciones democráticas ayudan a los líderes a enfrentar los problemas de compromiso relacionados con los posibles agentes de la rebelión a fin de reducir el riesgo de una guerra civil. Esto es particularmente cierto cuando dichos mecanismos institucionales se refuerzan entre sí. Mediante indicadores institucionales precisos de variedades de democracia (Varieties of Democracy, V-Dem), esclarecemos y medimos por separado las dimensiones de interés. Tanto las restricciones verticales como las horizontales minimizan el riesgo de una guerra civil, pero solo cuando ambos tipos de instituciones restrictivas coexisten en lo que conocemos como democracias liberales. En ausencia de las restricciones de un parlamento competente o de un poder judicial independiente, las mejoras en la libertad e imparcialidad de las elecciones no reducen la posibilidad de que se desate una guerra civil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does regime type affect the likelihood of negotiated settlements that end civil conflicts? A limited number of previous studies have offered divergent theories and mixed findings about whether democracy is an asset or a liability. I draw these disparate findings together and present a novel theory on why leaders under fully democratic and autocratic regimes may have a particularly difficult time in peacemaking, and how leaders in anocratic (hybrid) regimes are more likely to be successful in reaching negotiated settlements. Thus, I hypothesize that the relationship between regime type and the likelihood of conflict-resolution is inverted U-shaped. I test this hypothesis using data on all internal conflicts between 1946 and 2014, and find empirical support. The findings suggest that even if anocracies are more prone to the outbreak of civil wars as has been proposed by previous studies, they are also better at settling these conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does backlash from consolidated democracies affect the behavior of liberal international institutions? We argue that liberal international institutions have incentives to appease their democratic critics. Liberal institutions rely on democratic support for their continued effectiveness and can accommodate democratic critics at a lower legitimacy cost than non-democratic challengers. We examine this theory in the context of the European Court of Human Rights using a new dataset of rulings until 2019 and a coding of government positions during multiple reform conferences. Combining matching and a difference-in-differences design, we find strong evidence that the Court exercises restraint towards consolidated democracies that have criticized the Court in multilateral reform conferences by rendering fewer violation judgments against these states. We find some evidence that governments have also recently appointed more deferential judges. The findings suggest that backlash can affect liberal international institutions even without membership exit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article, David Blagden (2019) critiques our research published in the International Studies Quarterly (LeVeck and Narang 2017a), in which we draw on the well-known "wisdom of crowds" phenomenon to argue that, because democracies typically include a larger number of decision makers in the foreign policy process, they may produce fewer decision-making errors in situations of crisis bargaining. As a result, bargaining may fail less often. Blagden's critique focuses on two supposed flaws: first, that "[d]emocracies may have a larger number of more diverse policymakers, of course, but this relationship is not necessary," and second, that "weighing against the superior ability of large groups to average towards accurate answers, meanwhile, is a substantial drawback of larger groups: the diminishing ability to take and implement decisions" due to additional veto players. In this article, we demonstrate the ways in which we believe Blagden's critique to be misguided in its approach to social science inquiry. In particular, we argue that much of his critique requires that we reject two hallmarks of scientific inquiry: the use of stylized facts in theory building; and the use of comparative statics to generate testable hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom dictates that democracies are reliable in upholding their international commitments. However, this assertion is at odds with democratic behavior in sovereign borrowing where democracies have sometimes imposed considerable losses on foreign creditors. Why do some democracies choose to renege on extremely large portions of their sovereign debt during economic crisis? This article argues that costs incurred by creditors are dependent on how the borrowing state's electoral system aggregates competing domestic economic interests. Internationally oriented economic interests prefer to minimize creditor losses since sizeable debt reductions are more likely to compromise access to foreign credit. Conversely, workers and domestic-oriented economic interests prefer to maximize losses faced by foreign creditors in order to ease the costs of austerity at home. By shaping the political incentives of policymakers, I argue that democracies with candidate-centric electoral systems should be associated with sovereign defaults that are less costly for foreign creditors. Under these electoral systems, governments hold incentives to cater primarily to internationally oriented economic interests that are best able to overcome the costs of collective action. Statistical evidence from 53 sovereign debt restructurings between 1978 and 2012 supports the main argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that substantial natural resource wealth leads to more restrictive low-skill immigration policy in advanced democracies. High-value natural resource production often crowds out labor-intensive firms that produce tradable goods. When these proimmigration business interests disappear due to deindustrialization, also known as the Dutch Disease, the proimmigration coalition weakens in domestic politics. Without strong business pressure for increased immigration, policy-makers close their doors to immigrants to accommodate anti-immigrant interests. Using a newly expanded dataset on immigration policy across twenty-four wealthy democracies, I find that oil-rich democracies are more likely to restrict low-skill immigration, especially when their economies are exposed to foreign competition in international trade. The results supplement the voter-based theories of immigration policy and contribute to an emerging literature on the political economy of natural resources and international migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, numerous countries have engaged in financial reform, prompting widespread interest in the sources of this development. Virtually all of the studies conducted on this topic, however, have focused on explaining neoliberal policy adoption in the financial sector, without addressing whether the adopted reforms actually generate neoliberal economic outcomes. This gap in the literature is important because many policy reforms are not implemented or enforced. In this article, we conduct one of the first studies of the conditions under which de jure financial reforms are implemented, yielding de facto financial liberalization. We argue that democracy inhibits de facto financial reform when society at large is dissatisfied with government. Under these circumstances, democratic officials may be tempted to announce but not to follow through on financial policy liberalization or be unable to follow through, either fearing or facing opportunistic political opposition from legislative or partisan veto players who either represent or seek the electoral support of interest groups harmed by implementing financial reforms. Based on an analysis of ninety countries from 1980–2005 corroborated by a series of illustrative case studies, we find considerable support for this argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on international election observation shows that observation reduces fraud, encourages participation, and boosts confidence in the election. However, this conventional account misses the negative, violence-inducing potential of observer criticism. This is the first study examining how observer criticism influences post-election violence. Democracy depends on the loser's consent, and the willingness of election losers to be governed by the winners can be influenced by observer criticism. When reputable observers criticize the credibility of an election, they can encourage losers to challenge the result. Observer criticism strengthens the electoral loser by legitimizing a challenge and serving as a focal point for mobilization. Using data on post-election violence in thirty-eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa since 1990, I show that internationally condemned elections are more likely to turn violent than not-condemned elections. These results are robust to various control variables (including observer presence and election fraud) and accounting for potential selection, spuriousness, endogeneity, and omitted variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research suggests that European rule negatively affected political and economic development in their colonies. But did outcomes improve after colonial rule ended? Studying post–World War II independence cases, we statistically examine consequences of postwar decolonization—which includes both colonial autonomy and independence—for democracy, internal conflict, government revenue growth, and economic growth using two-way fixed-effects models. We find that democracy levels increased sharply as colonies gained internal autonomy in the period immediately before their independence. However, conflict, revenue growth, and economic growth did not systematically differ before and after independence. Accounting for varieties of colonial institutions or for endogenous independence timing produces similar results. Except for democratic gains, the overall findings—juxtaposed with existing research—suggest that, although European colonial empires created deleterious long-term effects, decolonization exhibited less pronounced political consequences than sometimes thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on international human rights law suggests that the beneficial effects of treaties depend on the strength of democratic political institutions. However, democracies are, by definition, compliant with many provisions in treaties that protect civil and political rights. Additionally, theories of compliance derive from a focus on civil and political rights rather than on other rights, so we lack a good understanding of whether predictions hold for other kinds of rights. We examine compliance with the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which protects rights that are distinct from those that characterize democratic governance. To measure compliance, we create a new indicator of women's rights that offers several advantages over existing indicators. We examine the conditional effect of CEDAW using models that allow for heterogenous treaty effects. This helps to adjudicate between theories that expect treaties to be most effective in highly democratic countries and those that expect them to be most effective among partial democracies. Our findings do not support either expectation and suggest that effectiveness does not depend on democracy, at least in the case of CEDAW. This points to the need to enrich existing theories of ratification and compliance by accounting for differences in the nature of the rights protected by different treaties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that espouse democratic commitments suspend the membership of some states that backslide on those commitments, while leaving that of others intact? We argue that a combination of geopolitical factors and institutional rules help explain this inconsistent pattern. Remaining member states insulate geopolitically important states—particularly those with large endowments of oil resources—from suspension. Institutional factors, such as voting rules and the size of the IGO, create veto points that reduce suspensions. Using an original global data set of IGO suspensions and charter commitments from 1980 to 2010, we find strong support for our argument. We test a key assumption of existing scholarship that claims IGOs serve as credible-commitment devices for political reform and democratization. We show that once a state becomes an IGO member, it can often remain in the IGO even after violating its democratic commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the height of the Cold War, major democratic arms suppliers have claimed that they take into consideration the human rights records of existing and potential purchasing states. After the Cold War, supplier policies suggested an increased focus on matters of human rights. But do their records match their rhetoric and their formal policies? We examine the arms transfer patterns of the four major democratic suppliers between 1976 and 2009. We argue that, if practice matches policy, then democratic suppliers should not transfer weapons to states violating human rights. However, because the global interests of these suppliers shift over time, we expect some transfers of major weapon systems to states that violate human rights, but not of the types most implicated in human rights abuses. Thus, we build on the existing arms transfer literature by disaggregating exports based on weapons type. The ordered logits we run for each major democratic supplier from 1976 to 2009 show that the major democratic suppliers generally do not account for human rights violations in the importing state, with the one exception being the United States transfer of land weapon systems. This research is important not only to arms and human rights research, but to foreign policy scholars in general. The patterns of supply and the continued preference of states to provide major conventional weapons to states with poor human rights records reveal important policy priorities for these democratic states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]