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Recent literature has employed the principal-agent framework to conceptualize parliamentary democracy as a chain of delegation running from voters via elected representatives and the Prime Minster with his or her cabinet to civil servants. Empirical cases deviate from this ideal type in various ways, one of which is the presence of external constraint institutions such as strong presidents, constitutional courts, independent central banks, audit institutions, and ombudsmen. While the comparative literature has studied the institutional powers of these institutions, it has paid little attention to the question of whether external officeholders have incentives to use these powers to constrain the cabinet. The paper argues that we have to analyze both institutional powers and incentives for their use to obtain an unbiased estimate of the effective constraint we can expect from officeholders external to the parliamentary chain of delegation. I propose to measure the incentives dimension via the mode of selecting external officeholders and develop the "Incentives to Constrain Index" to capture the likelihood that such officeholders have incentives to constrain the cabinet. Analyzing original data on five external constraint institutions in 25 European democracies the paper shows major variation in these incentives both across offices and countries. Furthermore, I demonstrate that institutional powers and incentives for their use are also empirically independent dimensions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper is concerned with how a political science inquiry may gain by taking seriously public discussions that occur outside formal deliberative settings as the mortar from which politics is fashioned. Specifically, I examine how we might understand the public discourses of gurus in contemporary Gujarat and Gandhi in colonial India as types of political deliberation that reflect and shape the politics of their times. I juxtapose the deliberative style of gurus with an earlier historical mode of deliberation used by Gandhi, to depict two distinct exemplars of deliberation, both of which invoke religion to talk about politics. I argue that the discursive activities of Gandhi and the gurus produce two divergent conceptions of the Hindu subject and Indian polity that do important political work for authorizing radically different political projects. By focusing on gurus as political deliberators who participate in the production of an exclusionary political consensus within the prominent space they occupy in Gujarat's civic life, the paper elucidates how the discursive processes and civic spaces that social scientists consider to be constitutive of democracy have become implicated in a non-democratic politics of exclusion and marginalization in Gujarat today. Finally, the comparison between Gandhi and the gurus leads me to raise important questions about the possibilities and limits of deliberative politics and its contradictory relationship with democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much recent research demonstrates that the structural conflict between the propertied and the poor in non-communist authoritarian states affects the likelihood, timing, and outcome of democratization. In highly unequal societies, democratization has a strongly redistributive effect.The effect of transition in postcommunist democracies was quite different. Given the absence of private property in most means of production, the deliberate policies of wage compression, the widespread availability of income-support mechanisms, and the importance of collective consumption funds in such social goods and services as housing, healthcare, education, transportation, cultural goods and recreation, both income and consumption differentials were narrow compared with democratic capitalist societies at similar development levels. The transition, therefore, brought substantial increases in aggregate income inequality to the post-communist countries, with some post-communist countries reaching levels higher than those of some West European countries.Much political economy literature suggests that democratization is expected to make government more responsive to wider segments of society, more inclined to supply universal collective goods and services such as security of person and property, health care, education, and infra-structure, as well as to provide some minimum level of social insurance against the hazards of catastrophic income loss. These public goods and services should foster productive behavior on the part of economic agents, and thus growth, as well as the mitigation of extremes of poverty and inequality.However, collusion in rent-extraction by post-transition elites might be consistent with high rates of economic growth under some circumstances. If the elites take advantage of the new institutional environment of a post-communist state and capture control over productive assets for themselves, they might well use them to increase their own incomes, yielding rapid aggregate growth the benefits of which are concentrated in a narrow elite. The institutional advantages of democratization and property rights might be restricted to those holding monopolies over property, and not broadly shared. Their policies would lead to higher growth rates after an initial period of disorganization was overcome. But the benefits of the growth would be distributed unequally. An oligarchic democracy would complement an oligarchic form of capitalism. This paper examines the effects of the dual political and economic transition on income inequality trends, taking Russia's subnational regions (the subjects of the federation) as the units of observation. Noting that the regions differed widely both in their starting conditions and in the increase in income growth and differentiation as a consequence of the transition, it seeks to identify the political mechanisms that explain variation in income and inequality growth following the transition. Using both direct and instrumental measures of democracy by region, the paper finds evidence consistent with the "oligarchic democracy" model. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to a long held belief in post-authoritarian Taiwan in the omnipotence of democracy to ensure the island's autonomy in the face of China, this paper argues that toward the end of the second Chen Shui-bian administration the 'marginal utility' of Taipei's use of democracy in garnering international sympathy has been drastically decreasing; recent examples include its failure to persuade major members of the 'liberal democratic community', the United States in particular, to support or at least acquiesce in its proposed referendum on joining the United Nations under the name of Taiwan held alongside the presidential election in March 2008. The underlying reason, however, is not found in the blame game between Taipei and Washington as to whether the United States is bowing to Chinese pressure at the expense of Taiwan's democratic deepening, or Taiwanese ruling elites' tactic of mobilising mass support is unnecessarily provocative which could end up drawing the US into an unwanted conflict with China. Rather, this paper suggests that the quarrel is indicative of the emergence of a new standard of civilisation based on the degree of democratic-ness in world politics. While mainstream security discourse in Taiwan has been deeply embedded in the binary structure of a democratic, peace-loving Taiwan versus an authoritarian, war-like China, in urging Taiwanese leaders to 'responsibly' strike a balance between promoting their political values and protecting their people's vital interests, senior US officials too unwittingly reproduce the rhetoric of democracy as civilisation. Unable to comprehend the operation of this civilised/barbarian trope in which Taiwan as a 'maturing' democracy (meaning potentially trouble-making) has been located between the West and the rest for the purpose of strategic appropriation, Taipei mistakenly believes that it has occupied the moral high ground vis-a-vis the great powers to 'go it alone' as seen in the UN referendum. ..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]

The paper adopts a rational-institutional approach to explain why federal and unitary institutional designs influence the level of state coercion and targeting practices of police in democratic states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate claims that the forces of globalization undermine individuals? attachment to nation-states by combining cross-national survey data and indicators of globalization in a multi-level modeling framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the political agenda vary across time and space? This paper provides evidence that both the number and the nature of the fundamental conflicts that underpin political competition differ in advanced industrial democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can a quantitative relationship between corruption and democracy be demonstrated? This paper studies the quantitative relationship between democracy and corruption and its consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common good is an ambiguous notion. All those who found democratic governments argue that they are creating governmental structures that will benefit the common good. But what is the common good? The Declaration of Independence argues that British governance of the American colonies did not provide for the common good, and used this as a justification for revolution and independence. The Constitution of 1787 is a document intended to create a governmental structure to promote the common good. But there were two schools of thought at the time of ratification of the Constitution. Federalists argued that the Constitution was the best governmental structure by which the common good could be achieved. Anti-Federalists argued that the Constitution would impede the achievement of the common good. Did both groups define the common good in the same manner? This paper explores the common good in early American thought, using the Federalist and Anti-Federalist perspectives to survey the notion of the common good. It also explores philosophical and political conceptualizations of the common good and analyzes whether the Federalists and Anti-Federalists used the notion of the common good in a philosophical or political fashion to further their cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Greens' founders sought 25 years ago to repeal Michels' iron law of oligarchy as a grass-roots democratic party. This paper considers whether the Greens have fallen prey to the iron law, and the implications. [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]

This paper tests the relationship between treatment of minorities and trust in democratic nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between property rights and democracy? This paper attempts to historicize this question through a close examination of the way property rights shaped the governance of nineteenth-century American municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the politics of land reform in South Africa, Brazil and Zimbabwe to illustrate the unique dynamics of land reform processes initiated from different directions in society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the results of a set of interviews on parties and political finance conducted by the National Democratic Institute in 2003 with over 400 political civil and party leaders and elected officials in 22 emerging democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how new democratic elites deal with bureaucracies inherited from authoritarian past. It is argued that both old regime trends and new regime agendas explain differences in timing and scope of administrative reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will examine the trajectory that derailed Nepal's newly crafted democratic process and faced the country with a widespread Maoist insurgency that claim to be effectively controlling more than half of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a discussion of three questions central to the practice of indigenous autonomy in southern Mexico. Why did the federal government grant it? Is it consistent with liberal democratic principles? Does it benefit indigenous Mexicans? [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]

This paper relaxes the informational assumptions of Weingast's (1997) model of democratic stability by applying the solution concept of quantal response equilibrium (QRE). Case studies of The American Colonies, Mexico, and China illustrate the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work in post-Soviet states suggests support for democratic values legitimizes democratic institutions. This paper builds on this literature and links it with support for socioeconomic gender equality using survey data gathered in Ukraine. [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]

My paper analyzes four American debates in representation and democratic theory: the ratification debate, Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lippman-Dewey "debates," and contemporary debates over deliberative democracy. [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]

This paper focuses on the impact of local initiative elections on a particular area of policy that is characterized by minority tyranny. Elected officials, sports commissions, economic elites and the media routinely endorse and pass legislation for public funding of sports stadia. The range of beneficiaries is narrow, has access to legislators, and is well-funded while the taxpayers are a dispersed majority. Yet the combination of the small scale of cities and the institutional tool of the referendum allows opponents to overcome the financial resources of the minority and problems of collective action. Original case studies of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and San Francisco sports stadia referenda constitute case study evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observers of democracy have long worried that it has the potential to degenerate into rule by the poor. Yet this has never happened in the United States. Is this because the U.S. has a relatively egalitarian class structure, or are there other reasons to be considered? For some of the ancient Greeks, democracy was a form of class rule, and the concern that poor majorities would threaten property rights has surfaced and resurfaced in democratic political thought ever since, including in the thinking of the American Federalists. In response to this concern, Aristotle suggested that an ideal democracy (or polity) would have a large middle class, and Alexis de Tocqueville believed that American democracy worked in part because there were no extremes of wealth here. However, if we wish to understand why democracy in America has never been a vehicle for rule by the poorer classes, class structure alone does not offer us an adequate explanatory framework. Ironically, the thinker who gives us the best clue as to why democracy does not become a vehicle for rule by the poor is Adam Smith, who understood the powerful grip that the dream of upward mobility can have on “poor men’s sons,” and who was aware of the peculiar admiration for the rich that seems to go with this dream. In short, what Smith recognized is power of ideology, culture, and class consciousness. The dream of upward mobility has had a powerful grip on the American imagination since at least the Jacksonian era, and today, according to one study, nearly 40 percent of all Americans believe that they either are in the top 1 percent of wealth-holders, or that they will be within their lifetimes. Under these circumstances, the concern that democracy will become rule by the poor seems moot—to say the least. But does not, then, a new concern arise? If such a large proportion of Americans identify themselves not just with the wealthy but with the extremely wealthy, how can the political interests of the non-wealthy be adequately represented? The dream of upward mobility would seem to cause citizens to vote not their own class interests, but the interests of a class of which they believe they will be a member some day. This paper traces the history of democratic thought about the implications of class structure for democracy. It then focuses on the rise of liberal populism in the United States in the early 19th century, and examines the continued power of the ideology of upward mobility. It considers explanations for the continued grip of this ideology on the American imagination, and it raises concerns about the future shape of democracy under these circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the case for supermajority rules under one form of deliberartive democracy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier research has demonstrated that there are significant differences in the determinants of the number of political parties in a system as a function of experience with democracy. In short, institutions have greater explanatory power in established democracies, and social cleavages appear more important in newer democracies. Yet existing work fails to distinguish among three rival interpretations for this pattern: that institutional effects are learned, that high levels of wealth break up patronage systems based on social cleavage patterns, and/or that differences in the social context within which democracy develops determine the number of parties. This paper employs a new data set to test these competing hypotheses in both cross-sectional and time-series, cross-sectional analyses. Preliminary evidence suggests that the length of experience with democracy per se is the most important determinant of the dynamics of party systems, providing support for the institutional learning hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is paper for panel #31033 on National Identity organized by Zachary Elkins. Nation-states include, to varying degrees, citizens that ?stand out? due to place of birth, ethnicity, language, and/or religion. We investigate whether these ?distinctive? citizens manifest an attachment to the state equal to that of more ?central? citizens. Using cross-national surveys, we measure national attachment among a nation-state?s ?distinctive? and ?core? population and then seek to uncover the conditions under which national attachment is universalized. We construct a model of national attachment with individual- and country- level predictors as well as a set of interaction terms that test whether various country-level factors condition the effect of ?distinctiveness.? These interactions suggest that distinctive citizens? attachment to the nation-state decreases as the size of the distinctive population increases, and, somewhat surprisingly, as the level of economic inequality increases. We find no evidence that democratic institutions affect the views of distinctive citizens, though there is some evidence that federalism helps mitigate the effect of distinctiveness. These results have particular implications for state-building and democratic consolidation in multi-ethnic states. [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]

In this paper, we examine differences in the electorates in the November 2002 general and October 2003 recall elections in California. The recall election provides a unique opportunity for scholars to examine the impact of direct democracy on participation, as well an election in which the increase in coverage of politics reduces the costs of gathering political information. Using data from the statewide voter file, we find that the recall brought younger, less experienced, less partisan, and less residentially stable voters to the polls. Yet these were not the youngest, least experienced, or least stable voters in the state. Instead, the recall engaged those at the middle levels of political interest and experience, particularly among occasional voters who move in and out of the electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that two important causes of international integration are given insufficient weight in the integration literature. First, poor countries seek to integrate with rich countries in order to secure budgetary transfers, import improved political institutions and increase political stability, increase the inflow of foreign capital, and secure large gains in market access for their firms. Second, rich countries integrate with poor countries when political instability in the poor country generates significant negative externalities for the rich country. An important determinant of whether those negative externalities will accrue is the relative geographic proximity of the countries. Because the benefits of integration with rich countries tend to be large for poor countries, and because democracy tends to be a prerequisite of integration with rich countries, credible prospects for integration increase the likelihood of democratization. For those countries for which dictatorship prevents beneficial integration, the opportunity cost of dictatorship is relatively high. Hence, their pro-democracy forces are more likely to successfully organize, attract political support, and establish democracy. I apply the argument to the case of EU expansion and regime type variation in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). I argue that a country?s geographic proximity to the EU core determines the credibility of its EU membership prospects, while credible membership prospects increase the likelihood of democratization. I claim that data from CEE are consistent with this argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Panel 031028 submitted by Jeffrey Church In the Platonic dialogues, Socrates often appears to speak as a critic of democracy. Recently, however, two political theorists (Villa [2001], Wallach [2001]) have suggested, on the contrary, that Socrates represents an exemplary form of democratic political practice. To see whether Socrates is or might be a model for us, we have to discover what kind of political practice he engaged in. In Plato’s Gorgias Socrates claimed to be the only person practicing the true art of politics in Athens at his time. That claim is paradoxical, because Socrates also said that he could not and did not speak or act effectively in public. In the paper I propose to present a reading of the Gorgias to show what Socrates meant by the “true art of politics.” Only on that basis can we determine whether he represents an understanding of politics or a kind of practice we ought to adopt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the history of political thought, there is a discernible tradition that has long made a distinction between the form and spirit of government. This decisively European (particularly French) tradition is best represented by Montesquieu, but also includes the likes of Hegel, Rousseau and Tocqueville. The central claim of this tradition is that types of governments have both a universal and a particular form. The constitutional (institutional and procedural forms) should be particular to contexts, but should still embody the universal principles that define the form, as that designates the type of government—e.g. a democracy as opposed to a monarchy. Yet, they suggest that for the constitutional form or type to be meaningful and descriptive of the society/country, it is necessary that the principles that underlie this type of government be evident in the mores, manners, and behavior (the spirit) of its people. In other words, the forms are a) only as meaningful and accurate as a description and, more importantly, b) only likely to be successful to the extent that they become embodied in the spirit of the people. In this paper, I will first fully develop the core arguments of this tradition in political thought. As I reconstruct the core content of this tradition, I will trace it through each of theorists cited above. Then, I will argue that this tradition has its orgins in Aristotle, who argued that the legislator should model the educative process after the fact that the sociological evolution of the individual is based first on nature, then on habit, and finally on reason. After having reconstructed this tradition and demonstrated its connection to Aristotelian thought, I will then suggest that the spirit/form tradition is a valuable theoretical tool. I argue that the spirit/form tradition establishes criteria by which a political scientist can: a) Evaluate the stability of a regime type within a country b) Evaluate the legitimacy of a government within a country and c) Suggest what alternative types of government might be better suited for a country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although nowadays a large number of regimes are formally democratic, democracy doesn?t work equally well in every place. Often, those groups who wielded power under the old authoritarian regime manage to continue wielding it under democracy, thus bypassing democratic mechanisms for government responsiveness. This paper focuses on one of the most common tactics used to subvert democratic contestation, namely electoral corruption. Electoral corruption is a common phenomenon and it can have decisive consequences in the outcome of elections, yet we don?t currently have a clear theoretical account of its workings. The standard view, implicit in most of the existing literature, is that electoral corruption makes most sense in close elections, when altering the vote count at the margin is most likely to change the outcome. While this view is adequate in some cases, it nevertheless fails to account for some of the main stylized facts about electoral corruption. For one thing, corruption is common even when elections aren?t close. Second, while the literature argues that perpetrators of electoral corruption should try to keep it secret, it is often surprisingly public. I develop a simple theory of electoral corruption that challenges the standard view. I pay special attention to the role that expectations play on the behavior of voters, a critical issue that the standard view largely ignores. Using simple models I show that under certain conditions that are particularly relevant to developing countries, a powerful ruler or ruling group may have incentives to engage in more electoral corruption than merely winning would require, to engage in such actions not only during and after the election but also before it, and to publicize rather than hide its corrupt activities. These findings may at first seem counterintuitive, yet they square well with both historical and survey evidence for a variety of countries and time periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public officials, administrators, and scholars may agree that direct democracy complicates direct and efficient policy-making, but the tenor of their agreement often be varies. While some praise direct democracy in local government and the increasing number of initiatives, referenda, and recalls others suggest we have gone to far, binding the hands of local officials to do anything to promote local growth and prosperity. The case of Chestnut Street in a small, rural Mid-west city offers lessons that help illuminate issues surrounding (and the arguments for and against) direct democracy in local government policy making. The case revolves around the planning and authorization of paving a small section of road in the city involving the interaction of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches in conjunction with direct citizen involvement. This paper explores the impact of direct democracy on local government and the ensuing interaction between the three branches of government. It brings the issues down from the general focus on these issues to where the rubber meets the road (literally) in local governments, where citizen legislators, professional administrators, neighbors, and local judges connect to forge the future of municipalities. Governments need to be more acutely aware of the interplay between the three branches because the citizens are becoming more active or at least more informed Recognizing the integration of the legislative, executive and judicial elements of local policy making will improve the content as well as the process of making collective decisions in municipal contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the relationship, in Juergen Habermas’ work, between communicative action and the social relations of production in a capitalist economy. At chief issue will be the distinction Habermas has repeatedly drawn between labor (and the material reproduction of society generally) and interaction (and communicative action generally). I will consider the critiques made of this distinction made by such writers as Nancy Fraser and William Scheuerman, as well as in more recent contributions by John Sitton and Bob Cannon. Drawing on these sources, I will examine the way in which Habermas’ recent writings on Discourse Ethics and Deliberative Democracy acknowledge the abstraction of his moral philosophy from material issues, while nonetheless attempting to show the material power of the norms of reciprocity and openness inherent in all communicative action, and realizable in institutional form via a series of translations through law and democratic deliberation. While acknowledging the sophistication and depth of Habermas’ contribution to moral philosophy and democratic theory, I will argue that the path he charts from the counter-factual norms of discourse ethics through to the empirical reality of contemporary liberal democratic societies remains uncertain and tentative, involving as it does a still uncharted (or at least under-theorized) leap between justification and application. Furthermore, between justification and application, lies the reality (often acknowledged, but rarely confronted, by Habermas) of material inequality and social stratification, attendant upon capitalist modernity. However, the architectonic structure of Habermas’ social theory, which separates lifeworld from system and labor from interaction, renders this reality theoretically invisible. Hence, I will contend that by holding the material apart from the symbolic, Habermas establishes his theory of communicative action as a de-materialized account of claims and counter-claims, leaving his conceptualization of autonomous individuation through linguistic interaction thin and deprived of a more than cognitive contextualization. Further, by holding the sub-systems of administration and economy apart from the lifeworld (perhaps the most consistently controversial aspect of Habermas’ social theory), Habermas severs the very connection between the everyday contexts of interaction and the realm of economic production, thus carrying the material/symbolic split over to a higher level of abstraction. Finally, I will argue that what this abstract divide leaves behind as the excluded middle is important not only from the view point of Habermas’ critics, but for the internal logic of his argument itself. For example, the material lacuna, once revealed, can be shown to fall in the center of Habermas’ oft-made argument for the co-originality of private and public autonomy. By leaving the social relations of economic production to the side, Habermas in fact threatens to short-circuit this dialectical relationship between public and private autonomy. This, in turn, leaves the socio-political applicability of Discourse Ethics, and thus the normative foundations of Habermasian Critical Theory, in great doubt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A core principle of democratic theory is the notion that the government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. This principle is modified in a representative democracy in which elected elites function as a safeguard against the possibly capricious will of the majority. Popular sovereignty is further circumscribed by the institution of judicial review, in which judges – who may or may not be popularly elected – are empowered to nullify laws enacted by popularly elected officials. An even more direct challenge to democratic principles occurs when judges rule on the validity of legislation enacted by the people themselves via the initiative and/or referenda process (allowed by 26 states). The extant evidence makes clear that statutes and constitutional amendments enacted through the initiative are frequently contested in court (Emrey 2002). This begs the question, however, of how judicial behavior in such instances compares with the behavior of judges with regard to legislation duly passed by legislative bodies. In this paper, we use a hierarchical modeling strategy to examine this question by analyzing and comparing the exercise of judicial review by state high courts with regard to both direct legislation and republican lawmaking. In doing so, we offer some useful insights on a crucially important but often overlooked aspect of judicial decision making at the state level, and in the process enhance our understanding of (actual or potential) countermajoritarian behavior on the part of such judicial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I will argue in my paper that if we aspire to liberal democratic principles of legitimacy, toleration should be considered a political value to be embraced not only by the religious but also by the secular. In the countries where religious manifestations in the public life is on the rise, the conflict between the religious and secular forces tend to dominate the politics in a dreadful way; since most secular views are represented by political elites, the state establishment is pulled into conflict and rendered a party among other. Strong secular bias of the political regime and the resentment it creates among the citizens of faith, influence the dispositions of religious views and their manifestations in public life in ways that are inimical to the development of a democratic culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The domestic politics of challenging states is thought to convey information to target states about the credibility of deterrent threats. This paper analyzes a model similar to Schultz (1998 and 2001) of two parties in electoral competition in the context of an international crisis. The content and quality of the inferences the target can draw from the domestic politics of the challenging state are shown to be a function of the relative popularity of the parties prior to the international crisis and thus a function of the state of the economy and candidate locations on domestic issue dimensions. Several conclusions are drawn: (1) lack of support from a democratic opposition signals that an unpopular government is more likely to follow through on a threat; (2) oppositions sometimes support bluffs of unpopular governments; (3) unpopular oppositions sometimes fail to support government policies they believe will be quite popular. A case study of U.S. politics prior to the War of 1812 illustrates some of the dynamics predicted by the model. The opposition Federalists were consistently opposed to war with England even when it appeared the war might be popular. The most plausible explanation is that opposition along this important issue dimension provided the Federalists with their only chance at influence on national politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The democratic transition and consolidation literatures recognize the key role that civil society plays in the consolidation and deepening of electoral democracy. As a corollary, societies with a weak civil society will have a difficult time consolidating an already vulnerable democracy. This then begs the question, how can civil society be encouraged to grow? Civil society can be encouraged to develop indirectly through a variety of mechanisms including funding for civil society organizations and tax deduction laws that create legal incentives. However, in some Mexican states controlled by the PAN, state governments have tried to create civil society directly by establishing neighborhood committees to mediate between government and society. The neighborhood committees are intended to build consensus about desired infrastructure projects, petition the government accordingly, and mobilize resources to pay for projects. This paper seeks to determine whether these committees are a successful government led creation of civil society or merely a different form of the same government control that has plagued organization life in Mexico’s past? This study proposes a survey of, and selected interviews with, the presidents of Tijuana’s neighborhood communities. Controlling for income and service levels, the study examines democratic practices within the committees, links to other civil society organizations, and their relationships with the PAN lead government. [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]

This paper is an empirical examination of the well studied but curiously still misunderstood relationship between democracy and war. In my opinion, this state of affairs is the result of four defects in how we think about the nature of conflict participation in general and about how democracy fits into that story in particular. First, we have too often employed the singular notion of conflict participation when we should instead be looking at the separate notions of the propensity to start wars and the propensity to reciprocate challenges which lead war. Second, we have overlooked how differences in the expected costs of war can disproportionately affect the decisions for war. While low cost wars will tend to fall under the radar of societal actors, high cost wars will attract not only not only the vocal minority but will also draw in a large proportion of the silent majority as well. Third, we have tended to focus on the perceived uniqueness of democratic conflict when we should be focusing on how democracy affects the general, universal patterns of conflict participation. Fourth and finally, we have too often resorted to explanations that are, at best, linked or related to democracy. This is problematic since it draws attention away from democracy as an explanatory factor. After all, if there is anything to the relationship between democracy and conflict, our analyses should not overlook the possibility that there is something inherent in democracy that is driving that relationship. I address these issues by constructing a explanation of democratic conflict frequency based on the simple fact that, all else being equal, democracies have a greater number of political actors. From this, I am able to make two deductions. First, democracies will face a greater range of political pressure, from full resistance against to full support for war, than will nondemocracies. Second, democracies will be more sensitive to high-costs wars but will be virtually equally sensitive to low-cost wars as nondemocracies. Putting these two arguments together, I conclude that while there will be little difference at the low end of the conflict cost scale, at the high end democracies will start fewer high-cost wars and will more readily respond to challenges that lead to high-cost wars. Using both two-by-two contingency tables and multivariate regressions which takes into account a host of controls (including polity type; institutional strength; major power status, geography and alliances), I test the hypotheses above for the period from 1816 to 1992. Given the amount of data available, I find general support for the model of democratic conflict participation outlined above. Moreover, while I find evidence of a democratic peace at the low end of the conflict cost scale, in the face of high cost wars, such patterns are overwhelmed by the effects of democracy described above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of deliberation in democracy has been a central interest for recent political theorizing. An important concern that is raised about deliberation is the potential for deliberation to replicate existing social inequality. The ideal for deliberation is that all participants would be treated with respect, and that all ideas and arguments would be given appropriate consideration. However, there are clearly reasons to fear that the actual dynamics are likely to differ significantly from this ideal. While proponents of increasing the role of citizens in political deliberation have outlined the principles required to guide deliberation, critics - including some who are sympathetic to the ideals of deliberative democracy - have pointed out a need for better accounts for how those principles may be undermined by problems of power. This paper builds from contemporary social theory, particularly the work of Anthony Giddens, to suggest a theory of power and structuration that can be used to characterize the dynamics of deliberation. By viewing any deliberative setting as an intersection of different structuring forces that are only partially realized, we can see how different dimensions of social power shape a deliberative situation without fully determining it. This also provides insight into how the dynamics of deliberation can be reshaped more fully in accord with principles of social equality and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been growing interest in the prospects for democracy in the Middle East. The Arab world is the only region to be virtually untouched by the Third Wave of democratization, and since the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and the U.S. war in Iraq, the prospects of democracy within this region have increasingly preoccupied both academics and policymakers. Recent scholarship, in an attempt to move beyond cultural explanations of the lack of democratic institutions in the Middle East, has explored the relationship between the nature of authoritarianism and political change. Most of this research, however, has attempted to shed light on this relationship by using comparative case studies. In addition, these studies tend to be informed by only one theoretical framework, and thus do not integrate other important explanatory variables. This paper attempts to address some of these shortcomings. In particular, we consider which combination of structural characteristics within the Middle East is most conducive to regime change in general, and democratization more specifically. These structural conditions include both traditional variables such as modernization, oil rent and ethnic fractionalization, as well as more recently introduced factors such as the nature of Middle Eastern authoritarianism (i.e. Sultanism, Dynasticism, etc.). To explore these relationships, we combine case studies with statistical analysis to gain a more nuanced understanding of these processes over time. Moreover, we draw on different theoretical traditions to provide a more complete account of the relationship between structural characteristics and regime change and democratization. Our findings suggest that the explanations of regime change and democratization in the Middle East are much more complex than many scholars suggest. [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]