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

: Social movement scholars generally view movements as existing outside of government, and even interest group scholars, who acknowledge the revolving door between interest groups and government, have only explored how previous government experience influences outside lobbying. This paper examines feminist activists while they work for the government bureaucracy using historical documents and in-depth interviews with 40 government employees who were also activists in the women's movement. Feminist activists can be found within the federal government bureaucracy throughout the second wave of the women's movement from 1965-2000. This paper asks the question of how their access to government positions and their activism was affected by changes in presidential administrations. Social movement scholars focusing on political opportunities have generally argued that movements have greater access under sympathetic presidents. This paper explores that claim by asking three questions about feminist activists who work for the federal government: 1) when do these activists enter government service (that is, which presidential administrations gave feminist activists greater access to government positions); 2) what happens to bureaucrats who are feminist activists when an administration hostile to feminism takes over; and 3) does location within the bureaucracy influence the degree to which feminist activists must respond to presidential administrations? The results suggest that feminist bureaucrats below the appointment level often remain in hostile administrations. Several case studies explore how their activism changes under hostile administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first in a series of papers that investigate whether certain patterns of elite interaction reinforce or undermine democracy. In this paper, we compare actors bargaining across series of crises in stable democracies and new democracies. Do actors learn to cooperate across time, as the crisis unfolds? How can elite interaction lead to crisis resolution and a stronger democracy? We began our investigation by focusing on elite behavior in four countries: two stable democracies (Italy and India) and two countries that successfully transition from autocracy to democracy (Mali and Portugal). In particular, we followed actors bargaining during crises where the government has incomplete information and the opposition is working to change the political system from within, rather than trying to overthrow it. We found that crises are more likely to be resolved if the government shows its willingness to negotiate with the opposition, in two ways. First, the crisis is more likely to be resolved to the extent that the government makes a non-zero offer to its opponent. Any concession, no matter how small, shows the opposition that the government is willing to enter into negotiations. Second, the government learns with which type of opponent it is negotiating, based on whether the opposition accepts or rejects its offer. If the government?s offer is rejected, the crisis is more likely to be resolved if the government counters by increasing its offer, even by a small amount. Again, this action shows the opposition that the government is willing to continue to negotiate. In future papers, we will expand our research from four to twelve countries. First, this widening of the sample will allow us to compare across five types of countries: stable democracies, cases that experience a transition to democracy, unstable countries, cases that experience a transition to autocracy, and stable autocracies. Second, we will compare actors bargaining during crises not only within the system, where elites are demanding reforms, but also crises against the system, where the opposition is trying to overthrow the government. The final paper in this series will give us a fuller understanding to how elite interaction can reinforce or undermine democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few years have witnessed a minor explosion literature in political theory seriously considering the problems of designing constitutions in the light of democratic ideals, including works with both domestic and trans-national ambitions. This paper explores the theses that a) three importantly different methodological approaches can be discerned in the literature, b) that the three approaches have complementary strengths and weaknesses, and c) that a modified approach can draw on the strengths while avoiding most of the weaknesses. Serially examining and critically evaluating ‘imaginative institutional reaction’ (e.g., Levinson (2006) or Sabato (2007)), ‘rational optimization’ (e.g., Vermeule (2007)), and ‘Aristotelian comparativism,’ (e.g., Lutz (2006)), the paper concludes that a comparative approach is recommended, but that it ought dispense with an Aristotelian orientation in favor of reference to the ideal of constitutional democracy understood as regulative ideals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isaiah Berlin’s value pluralism has tended to be understood as being perfectly compatible with the Rawlsian conception of liberal democracy, whereby individual rights and liberties mediate but do not discriminate between competing conceptions of the good life. This has facilitated the development of ‘thick’ theories of liberal democracy, where the liberal democratic state is conceptualized as needing to have a rich variety of basic conditions (such as a set number of individual rights, reasonable levels of social and economic equality, and the like) so as to ensure that each member of the polity is able to pursue his or her own conception of the good life. This paper will re-examine Berlin’s value pluralism and argue that the implications of value pluralism are much more subversive to the liberal democratic project than has commonly been assumed, as it forces us to question the inviolability of precisely those facilitating and mediating conditions. But contrary to what some of Berlin’s detractors have argued, confronting the full implications of value pluralism â€" as this paper will try to show â€" facilitates the development of a liberal democratic theory more attune to its own core values. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines democracy as an international norm, and the problems encountered establishing it in Africa. The paper argues that each country's unique characteristics act as filters through which international norms are implemented. Uganda is used as a case study to generate hypotheses that can be untilized to study ways in which democracy is defined, or ways in which its institutions are adopted.Three hypotheses that we can use to explain democracy in Uganda are presented in this paper. First, it is hypothesized that countries with a history of violent ethnic conflicts are more likely to prefer no-party/one-party democracy. Second, it is suggested that the meaning of democracy in African countries is defined by the dominant elite faction. Third, it is hypothesized that African leaders who are capable of providing security are more likely to succeed in framing a norm differently from the international standards. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By making the spread of democracy a foreign policy goal, the U.S. is assuming that external factors influence the process of democratization. This paper examines this assumption more closely, looking at how the international system, and specifically conflict within the international system, affects the spread of democracy both regionally and globally. A number of studies have documented a relationship between democracy and the international system both spatially and temporally. Although these studies pose a number of explanations for temporal and spatial trends, none of them test their hypothesized causal mechanism. They only provide evidence of aggregate trends at the global and regional levels. This paper seeks to go beyond analysis at the aggregate level to test one of the hypothesized casual mechanisms, namely emulation. Drawing on Waltz's argument that competition in an anarchic environment leads states to emulate the most successful states in the system, I argue that the success of democracies in the international system prompts other states to emulate them. According to Waltz the driving force of emulative behavior is conflict and so a test of this mechanism begs the broader question: What is the impact of international conflict on the likelihood that a state will become a democracy? I test three sets of hypotheses. The direct emulation hypothesis suggests that states should imitate their competitors: thus nations that have lost wars to democracies should democratize. The indirect emulation hypothesis posits that nations should imitate the most successful states in the system: thus the likelihood of a democratic transition should be a function of the United States relative power and the regime type of the most militarily powerful state in a country's region. The socialization hypothesis predicts that countries imitate states they interact with on a more amiable level: thus states with democratic allies should be more likely to democratize. I use a logit estimator to test these hypotheses. Contrary to Waltz's expectations, I find that emulation prompted by military conflict does not play a major role in the democratization process, with one exception. I find some evidence indicating that countries are more likely to undergo democratic transitions if the most powerful country in their region is democratic. The more powerful the leading country, the greater the influence of its regime type on the likelihood that a country in its region will experience a democratic transition. Thus, if the leading country is a democracy, the more powerful it becomes the more likely countries in the region will democratize. If the leading country is an autocracy, the more powerful it becomes the less likely countries in the region will democratize. I also find support for the socialization hypothesis: the more democratic allies a state has the more likely it is to undergo a democratic transition. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the centrality of bureaucracy to the democratic theory of Jurgen Habermas, both as a means for recasting and defending this theory, and as prescriptive of a model useful for conceiving a more democratic type of administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with an aspect of European political culture that is vital for the legitimacy of democracy. On the basis of data from the 1999 European Value Survey the attitudes of Europeans towards democracy is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper moves beyond aggregate cross-sectional tests of a central hypothesis in the literatures and examines instead if democracy might influence growth differently depending upon the regional political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to fill an empirical void in the literature that treats the relationship between transition to democracy and economic growth. Most studies in this area examine the impact of a state?s level of democracy on its economic prospects. Few studies have addressed the impact of democratization itself on economic performance. We use an interrupted time series technique to study the link between democratization and economic growth in 22 countries that experienced transitions to democracy during ?The Third Wave? of democratization. Our findings show that transition to democracy has an inconsistent impact on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What characteristics make an external actor, such as an international organization or a foreign government, more or less likely to listen to the claims of a political group within another state? Must such claimant groups be unified and legitimate, both in the eyes of their supporters and as accords with international ideas of democratic representativeness? Under what conditions do the internal organizational characteristics of a group make its claims more or less credible? This paper examines the ways in which the degree of factionalization and the democraticness of a group seeking self-determination affects the international community’s perceptions of this group and the legitimacy of their claim for self-determination. Using the Minorities at Risk dataset as well as targeted qualitative comparisons, I test whether self-determination claimant groups are more likely to receive political support from international organizations--and tacit support for the validity of their claims--when the group displays the underlying tenets of democratic governance: representation, adherence to peaceful conflict resolution, and tolerance toward other minority groups. Understanding what drives the international response to self-determination claims helps us understand what impact sub-state or non-state actors have on the international relations of states and how domestic politics and international relations connected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hallmark of democratic systems of governance is the requirement that bureaucrats reveal private policy-relevant information they hold when they make public decisions. Equally important are procedures that require bureaucrats to reveal information they collect about the private sector that has important implications for public health and safety. This paper examines the determinants of the discretionary choice in political systems to impose information-revelation requirements on agencies to provide that information to the public. I argue that in making this choice systems balance democratic preferences for disclosure, the institutional design of revelation procedures, and political responsiveness to core constituencies. I test hypotheses about this balancing act in the case of state-level compliance with federal requirements to expand the public’s right-to-know in environmental policy. I estimate a bivariate probit model of the choice to adopt right-to-know, and the choice to impose significant fees to support that institutional design. I find that constituency characteristics drive institutional design and fiscal support for that design, but that fiscal support is also supported by broad environmental characteristics. Together, disclosure, procedure, and constituency balance and support one another in the institutional design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines India’s and Pakistan’s experiences with democratic transition and consolidation. The main questions are: 1) How do India and Pakistan differ in terms of democracy both historically and currently and why? 2) What can be said of the future prospects for democracy and what factors will continue to play a role in aiding or inhibiting it? To answer these questions, Freedom House Surveys available from the 1970’s onward are used to analyze historical trends and the current context. Also utilized are Purdue Political Terror Scales to assess levels of violence. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the U.S. State Department provide data on political and personal freedom. Government documents and court rulings shed light on basic rights. To ascertain income inequality, the United Nations Development Program’s Gini Index data is analyzed. All data go back as far as possible through the most recent year available. Findings suggest that Pakistan and India, though once part of the same system, have divergent democratic histories and futures. India is a consolidated but illiberal democracy. Indian elites and citizens have a philosophical commitment to democracy and politics are generally governed by democratic rules and procedures. However, citizens’ civil liberties are continually encroached upon by the state and even democratic procedures are prone to periodic lapses. Pakistan is currently an authoritarian military state and historically has not adhered to basic democratic procedures. Prospects for democracy are grim in Pakistan because of the entrenchment of Islamic rule, the pervasive military influence, a weak civil society, and lack of democratic cultural norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists have studied the causes of democracy for decades, and despite these scholars? valiant efforts, there is still little known about what causes the transition to democracy or stability in newly established democracies. One possible reason for this lack of knowledge is the failure of many political scientists to use, or even consider, political culture in systematic studies of democratization. Although almost all political scientists admit political culture plays a role in the democratization process, there has been virtually no empirical work done on the relationship between political culture and the transition to democracy. The following paper seeks to fill this void in the literature by empirically testing the relationship between Mary Douglas? theory of culture and consolidation of democracy. Using Douglas? theory, one can predict that a country undergoing consolidation of democracy should have an increase in the number of individualist and hierarchical cultures and a decrease in the number of egalitarian and fatalist cultures. These predictions are tested using with an OLS regression model, where democracy is regressed on political culture. From the data gathered from a sample of twenty-three countries, there seems to be strong support of the predictions made by the theory, but as pointed out, there are some problems to be solved through future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not Open For Discussion: A Psychological Account of Democratic Deliberation. Emily H. Hoechst Georgetown University ehoechst@mac.com Deliberative democracy involves exposure to otherness in ways a non-deliberative practice does not. Because deliberative democracy brings participants into direct contact with the views of others, it brings to the fore issues of recognition and identity, separation and relation, freedom and coercion. Deliberative politics is therefore uniquely risky because it requires self-reflection, articulation of one’s reasons, and exposure to criticism These requirements will often evoke anxiety, a response which in and of itself is problematic for the deliberative framework. What makes deliberative participants anxious is not just that they may lose the argument, cause, or vote. It is also the prospect of being personally rejected; of losing intersubjective affirmation from others. Rawls and Habermas have both developed theoretical mechanisms designed to alleviate this kind of anxiety. Both theorists are keenly aware of the psychological position of the other in politics. My argument in this paper is that both Rawls and Habermas rely upon a problematic psychology in structuring their deliberative contexts, one that actually may exacerbate conflict in deliberation, making it more difficult than it needs to be. The models of Piaget and Kohlberg (and Mead, for Habermas) all argue for a postconventional or abstract mode of moral reasoning, one that treats individuals as universal bearers of rights deserving of respect. My critique of this psychology, and the democratic theory that flows from it, is twofold: (1) Based on the psychological theory of D.W. Winnicott and Jessica Benjamin, I argue that Rawls and Habermas, while claiming to support an intersubjective understanding of deliberation, actually remain caught within an intrapsychic psychology. Rawls and Habermas both favor recourse to “the moral point of view.” What intersubjective psychology suggests is that such formulations can produce the undesirable consequence of complementary thinking; those who disagree are now not only “different” but also somehow “less moral,” an unnecessarily binary (either/or) way of thinking. Benjamin in particular suggests a different psychological framework, based loosely on Hegel, which allows difference to exist in a deliberative setting, even if the setting becomes more contentious as a result. (2) Based on the recent literature on the politics of recognition (such as Taylor, Honneth, and Markell) I argue that Rawls’ and Habermas’ deliberative settings are unresponsive to issues of identity and reciprocity. Both theorists engage in a kind of cognitive bracketing for political purposes which is (a) impossible, according to Arendt, and/or (b) undesireable under circumstances that seek more deliberative participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As pointed out by Quinn and Woolley (2001), survey data suggest that, in democracies, economic instability is one of the major fears of citizens. The authors showed that democracies differ from autocracies in that democracies produce stable growth. Their main explanation is that “the mechanisms of democratic competition and the preferences of voters lead democracies to select away from very low and very high growth and away from high volatility”. The aim of this paper is to test that explanation through cultural dimensions of Hofstede (1980). Since, after all, that is the cultural characteristics that shape the degree of democracy. Hofstede conceptualized culture in terms of meanings; he therefore studied it by assessing the values of people. Cultural-level, rather than individual-level, factor analyses (using country mean scores) produced four factors; “individualism,” “power distance,” “masculinity,” and “uncertainty avoidance”. According to Hofstede, “individualism stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose; everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family only,” and “collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty”. In Hofstede’s view, “Power Distance indicates the extent to which a society accepts the fact that power in institutions and organisations is distributed unequally” while Masculinity expresses the extent to which the dominant values in society are “masculine”-that is, assertiveness, the acquisition of money and things, and not caring for others, the quality of life, or people. Finally, Uncertainty Avoidance indicates the extent to which a society feels threatened by uncertain and ambiguous situations and tries to avoid these situations by greater career stability, establishing more formal rules, not tolerating deviant ideas and behaviors, believing in absolute truths and the attainment of expertise. Using regression analysis for testing a specification adopted by Quinn and Woolley to which the above mentioned four cultural dimensions were added, we found that the only variables that affect statistically significantly the volatility of economic growth are (i) individualism dimension, (ii) volatility of government expenditures and (iii) investment expenditures. Our sample covers 43 countries (containing both industrialized and developing countries) for which Hofstede’s cultural dimensions data are available. The interesting point is that due to the multicollinearity between democracy and individualism variables, the former is not statistically significant. Putting it differently, individualism as a cultural dimension that shapes the degree of democracy is much more important in explaining variations in the economic growth stability. Direction of the relationship confirms our a priori expectations, i.e. as individualism scores of countries increase economic growth becomes less volatile. Our explanation for this is that the self-regulating markets go hand in hand with self-interest individuals and harmony between the two is realized through political competition, i.e. democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indices of democracy typically identify democracy with the set of institutions of government which have evolved in ?Western? representative political systems. But on the basis of this specific democratic model these indices produce an ?institutional fallacy? in measuring ?democratic quality?, because they fail to take into account the respective (societal, institutional) context. In this paper we propose a new concept and a new index based on this argument. We apply a minimal definition of democracy, which is based on the logic of individuals? self-determination. Our index takes into account the context and the degree of effective participation. We define the contextual attributes and the different possible institutional opportunity structures to ensure effective participation. We deduce assumptions about the causal relationship between context their effect on the optimal mixture of opportunity structures. We conclude with first considerations regarding the concrete operationalization and measurement of the respective elements of our model. We end with a short qualitative illustration (in German language) of the democratic quality of three European countries to exemplify our concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scholarly debate over sovereignty at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 has focused on whether the American political system is best understood in federal or national terms. Instead of pursuing this question, this paper asks the more fundamental question of whether the United States Constitution is grounded on a single, coherent theory of sovereignty. An analysis of Madison’s Notes on the Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787, treating delegates individually and across time, illustrates that the Founders were committed to a single, multidimensional theory of sovereignty. The theory is multidimensional in that it separates sovereignty into two distinct concepts, principle sovereignty (the authority from which power is drawn) a derived sovereignty (the exercise of power). This theory relies on a principle/agent relationship which is created to deal with the practical problems associated with popular sovereignty. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borderline democracies are political systems in transition, which have made tremendous progress in their democratic development, experienced some reversals on the way, and have arrived at an important historical juncture that will determine the future path of democratization. A borderline stage of democracy means that a democratic regime is still fragile and vacillating. To maintain a steady democratic advancement, such regimes may benefit from political science theories and the practices of other democratic regimes. This paper builds upon the relevant Western literature on democracy and applies it to the case of Russia. Russia represents a nascent democracy with unique cultural attributes and an adequate legislature and democratic institutions (the constitution, elections, and the constituency base). These institutions and written laws, however, lack full practical implementation and need further strengthening by grassroots movements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Connolly is one of the foremost exponents of the trend of "Left Nietzscheanism." In this paper, I critique Connolly's appropriation of Nietzsche both hermeneutically and normatively, and suggest the outlines of a liberal alternative. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that previous literature has focused too narrowly on the institutional limitations to democratic responsiveness, to the neglect of the cultural-identity concerns raised in democratic theory. I provide and test a framework for conceptualizing identity, and noting its determinants, which takes into account a variety of factors previously addressed in the literature on EU support. Eurobarometer survey data is utilized in a multi-level model, allowing for the simultaneous consideration of both individual-level and state-level theories of identity formation. Identity development is found to be primarily influenced by diffuse elements of policy support and latent socialization mechanisms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper problematizes arguements which suggest that post-communist states should strive towards liberal and procedural democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s understanding of the virtues proper to citizens of a free society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the decline in Democratic macropartisanship among men and women to better understand the dynamics underlying macropartisanship and the gender gap. Analysis is conducted on yearly time series of macropartisnhip, 1953- 2003. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the theory and practice of participatory democracy in recent, current, and future contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the paradoxical endurance of non-consolidated non-performing democracies focusing on the identification of factors contributive to social consent (or political absenteeism) that fill the gap between the stage of institutionalization of a non-consolidated democracy and that of fully consolidated democracies. It utilizes the understanding that consolidation requires the routinization of and a normative commitment to democracy (Diamond 1999), and proposes that to secure democratic continuity the incomplete fulfillment of those requirements demands consummate performance legitimacy, the absence of which must be mitigated by counterbalancing factors. The plausibility of this framing of the endurance of non-consolidated non-performing democracies is tested by examining Brazil's democratic regime. The findings support the instrumentality of the framework of analysis and suggest that counterbalancing factors allowing democratic endurance may in fact preclude consolidation and substantive socioeconomic advances. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the origins of development-promoting property rights institutions. Specifically, I focus on democracy and veto players as key political foundations of property rights institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the interdependencies between policy areas: how do positions on one issue constrain the choice of positions on other issues? Expert survey data from established democracies is used to explore this question. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the interactive effect of direct democracy and racial diversity on social trust. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has emerged challenging the conventional wisdom that competitive congressional districts are good for democracy. These theories are novel, counterintuitive and generally focused on aspects of representation and responsiveness. This paper critiques this literature on these grounds and develops an argument that competitive districts have numerous advantages that have been overlooked by this more recent scholarship. More specifically, competitive districts foster greater civic engagement by voters and media and serve to check corruption. Furthermore, non-competitive, homogenous districts rely on primary competition to ensure representation, when evidence suggests primary elections are hardly competitive and give strong advantages to incumbents. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies largely validate the link between direct democracy and increased responsiveness. This paper provides an extended critique of the methodological assumptions underpinning these findings, and presents an alternative approach. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideological congruence between median voter and the government changes substantially from one decade to the next, especially in the SMD systems of Western democracies. These changes are closely linked to changing levels of party system polarization. When the large parties are close to the median voter, any outcome creates congruent governments. When they diverge, governments are usually much further away. In the PR systems, too, some depolarization of the party system contributes to greater ideological congruence, although the connections are more complex, and cross-system differences are more diverse than in the SMD systems. This paper describes the changing levels of party system polarization from 1946 through 2003, explicating the positions of political party families and tracing the implications for ideological congruence. Under conditions of relative ideological consensus, whether of leftist or center-right orientation, there is little difference in the congruence levels of SMD and PR electoral systems. The most recent decade seems to be such a period. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both democracy and state capacity have been linked to improvement on development indicators in low-income countries. This paper tests the proposition that the combination of these characteristics is especially effective for fostering development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralization, Political Participation, and Democratic Consolidation in Indonesia By Anies Baswedan In this paper I will investigate the interrelationships between decentralization, political participation, and democracy. It will focus on two central questions: First, how do decentralization, electoral system, and local democracy effect local political participation? Second, how do participation, decentralization and electoral system deepen and consolidate democracy? In the wake of a deep and prolonged economic crisis that swept Indonesia, rapid horizontal and vertical political reforms took place. These reforms intended to democratize the political system and focused on both the national politics as well as the sub-national politics. At the national level, reforms took place on the institutional design regarding party system, electoral system, and relationship between branches of government. At the sub-national levels, reforms were undertaken on the institutional design of local politics and governance, as well as their relationships with the national government. These reforms represent significant changes from an authoritarian style of political system into a more democratic system. However, the claim that Indonesia is moving toward democratic consolidation deserve further investigation. This paper intend to assess this claim. An assessment would be helpful to understand and to enrich comparative politics literature on how the early stages of reforms effects democratic consolidation and also to make sure that these reforms are in the direction of democratic consolidation for the world’s largest Muslim country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I’m interested in looking at the conditions under which the emergence of a second dimension in politics would cause the parties on the conventional left-right scale to change their positions from the one they would have taken were they to engage in a competition against each other in one dimension only (in other words, would they converge/diverge towards the center). My focus will be on parliamentary democracies and coalition formation under proportional representation. One can also view this paper in the light of the following: Is there a reason to believe that the fall of the Berlin Wall also marked the end of conventional left-right politics, and hence the ‘‘end of ideologies’’? Or is it that with the new world order, and the wave of globalization in the 1990’s that brought other salient issues to the political arena in many parts of the world (such as nationalism, ethnic, religious, and environmentalist movements) and induced left and right politics to readjust to the new agenda in a strategic effort to win votes? The methodology I propose to study this question draws on two lines of research. The first one is on bargaining in parliamentary democracies in multi-dimensional policy space (see for example Baron and Diermeier, 2001; Diermeier and Merlo, 2000). In this literature, the party positions are given as fixed, whereas I study what happens when we introduce flexibility of pre-election readjustment. Then there is a very recent literature on endogenous party formation in two-dimensional policy space that seems to be an off-shot of citizen-candidate models (see Cantillon, 2001; Levy, 2002). To this line of modeling, I add coalition building, which I believe is a more realistic way of studying parliamentary democracies. One of the most natural extensions of the paper is to consider different representation systems in parliamentary democracies such as a run-off system versus proportional representation with threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twelve years after the Velvet Revolution and ten years after the Velvet Divorce, Slovakia is finally en route to stable democracy. Why did it take longer for the eastern part than for the western part of former Czechoslovakia to leave the transition phase and enter the consolidation phase of democracy? Why was Slovakia temporarily disqualified from the first group of EU candidates and what were the primary reasons that enabled the former outsider to catch up with its neighbors and become one of the leading candidates for next year’s EU enlargement? The purpose of this paper is to give an in-depth analysis of Slovak politics. In the explanatory part of the paper, I will put an emphasis on political actors and argue that they, more than anything else, help explain why the country is now successfully stabilizing its democracy. I will also acknowledge the external factors, mainly the role the EU and NATO have played in helping Slovaks institutionalize their democracy. I will conclude with a guardedly optimistic account of democracy’s future prospects in this Central European country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and empirically tests the impact of political institutions (presidentialism, federalism and proportional representation) on the stability of democratic regimes. The paper first introduces a complete model describing how the underlying distribution of assets and preferences across individuals shapes the choice of the type of political regime (democracy vs dictatorship). It then examines how different constitutional frameworks modify that choice. To test the model, the paper employs survival analysis techniques in a data set that covers all sovereign nations from 1850 to 1999. Holding the structural or economic parameters of the model constant, the paper shows that (1) proportional representation does not seem to foster democratic consolidation over any other electoral rule; (2) presidentialism may reduce the chances of democratization, but only under certain conditions (an economy with concentrated fixed assets) and for reasons not considered in the literature -- it bolsters the rent-seeking capacity of politicians; and (3) federalism, and particularly a system of sovereign nations, appears as the best solution to political conflict: as wealthy nations split or establish credible safeguards from poor areas, the chances of democracy increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study demonstrates that a positive relationship exists between the number of veto points in an institutional system and existing measures of democracy: higher numbers of veto points are associated with a higher quality of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicians desire to ensure reelection can undercut democracy when they bias the system in their favor. A game theoretic model, statistical tests, and narrative evidence are used to explore this tendency toward monopoly and biasing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to a number of changes in the landscape of contemporary politcs, it is no longer possible to represent and aggregate the interests, opinions, and values of the citizens through simple (territorially-based) electoral mechanisms. Here we formulate seven theoretical issues that should be addressed in any new theory of democratic representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the social responsibilities of lawmakers in a representative democracy. The lack of adequate mapping of the roles of lawmakers and the orthodox way of structuring the subject make a series of patterned assumptions that artificially limit the prospects for a plausible theory of lawmaking. Philosophers of representation envisioned a complex relationship between the electorate and elected. What is often taken for granted is that the delegate and trustee accounts provide a way of describing the basic terrain.

That and why 'democracies don't fight one another' has become an important justification for imposing democracy in Iraq and elsewhere. Reasonably simple computational models show the tenuous grounds on which these claims rest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic autonomy requires a public space in which the demos can reflect, participate, and deliberate. Yet, the circulation of spectacular media imagery has penetrated the public space of democracy challenging the politics of autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of the reasons leading Tocqueville to prefer the term "democracy" and of the several meanings conferred on this term in his analysis of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the efficacy of U.S. states as laboratories of democracy. It offers a thought experiment in which the national government gave each state funds to design, test and evaluate programs to solve social problems. It analyzes the capability of states to design and implement successful policy innovations. It claims that though the states tirelessly tinker with their policies, it does not seem that they are effective laboratories of democracy.

Legitimacy of democracy is problematic without the support of the citizenry. This research will investigate the hypothesis that citizen satisfaction will increase after the adoption of a Mixed-Member Electoral system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of accurate policy representation for system legitimacy in new and established democracies. Although policy representation has long been the focus of scholarly research on democratic policies, very little is known of whether and how accurate policy representation contributes to citizen attitudes towards their political system.

Indices of democracy identify democracy with Western representative systems. They produce an institutional fallacy in measuring democratic quality, because they ignore the respective (societal, institutional) context. We develop and test a new index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades significant parts of the world have embarked on a democratic path. At the start of the 1980’s, authoritarian regimes dominated throughout Central America, the Caribbean and South America. A decade later with the exception of Mexico, Cuba and Haiti, the entire region had begun to embrace democratic norms. The change that began at the level of the nation-state was increasingly reflected by support from regional and international institutions. Although long a supporter of democracy, the Organization of American States began to strengthen mechanisms designed to sanction undemocratic actions. The OAS also devoted increased resources to election monitoring. Strengthened support for democracy at the regional level has occurred at an uneven pace to say the least. With several important caveats, there appears to be growing evidence to support the claim that an international regime supportive of democracy or IRSD, is emerging in the Western Hemisphere. In this work, I attempt to bridge the gap between regime theory at the systemic level and the spread of democratic norms throughout the hemisphere. I examine the empirical support for such a claim by focusing on the cases of Peru 1992 and 2000, Guatemala 1993, Dominican Republic 1994 and Paraguay 1996. All of these countries experienced varying threats to nascent democracy throughout the 1990’s. I utilize realist, liberal and social constructivist theoretical approaches to explain the strengths and weaknesses of the regime in each of the cases. In some of the cases, the presence of an international democratic regime appears to have influenced the outcome, while in the remaining cases competing concerns minimized its influence [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]