484 research outputs found
The Strategic Shuffle: Ethnic Geography, the Internal Security Apparatus, and Elections in Kenya
For autocrats facing elections, officers in the internal security apparatus play a crucial role by engaging in coercion on behalf of the incumbent. Yet reliance on these officers introduces a principalâagent problem: Officers can shirk from the autocratâs demands. To solve this problem, autocrats strategically post officers to different areas based on an areaâs importance to the election and the expected loyalty of an individual officer, which is a function of the officerâs expected benefits from the president winning reelection. Using a data set of 8,000 local security appointments within Kenya in the 1990s, one of the first of its kind for any autocracy, I find that the presidentâs coethnic officers were sent to, and the oppositionâs coethnic officers were kept away from, swing areas. This article demonstrates how state institutions from a countryâs previous authoritarian regime can persist despite the introduction of multiâparty elections and thus prevent full democratization.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136510/1/ajps12279_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136510/2/ajps12279.pd
Explaining Myanmar's Regime Transition: The Periphery is Central
In 2010, Myanmar (Burma) held its first elections after 22 years of direct military rule. Few compelling explanations for this regime transition have emerged. This article critiques popular accounts and potential explanations generated by theories of authoritarian âregime breakdownâ and âregime maintenanceâ. It returns instead to the classical literature on military intervention and withdrawal. Military regimes, when not terminated by internal factionalism or external unrest, typically liberalise once they feel they have sufficiently addressed the crises that prompted their seizure of power. This was the case in Myanmar. The military intervened for fear that political unrest and ethnic-minority separatist insurgencies would destroy Myanmarâs always-fragile territorial integrity and sovereignty. Far from suddenly liberalising in 2010, the regime sought to create a âdisciplined democracyâ to safeguard its preferred social and political order twice before, but was thwarted by societal opposition. Its success in 2010 stemmed from a strategy of coercive state-building and economic incorporation via âceasefire capitalismâ, which weakened and co-opted much of the opposition. Having altered the balance of forces in its favour, the regime felt sufficiently confident to impose its preferred settlement. However, the transition neither reflected total âvictoryâ for the military nor secured a genuine or lasting peace
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Strong armies, slow adaptation: civil-military relations and diffusion of military power
Why are some states more willing to adopt military innovations than others? Why, for example, were the great powers of Europe able to successfully reform their military practices to better adapt to and participate in the so-called military revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries while their most important extra-European competitor, the Ottoman Empire, failed to do so? This puzzle is best explained by two factors: civil-military relations and historical timing. In the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of an institutionally strong and internally cohesive army during the early stages of state formationâin the late fourteenth centuryâequipped the military with substantial bargaining powers. In contrast, the great powers of Europe drew heavily on private providers of military power during the military revolution and developed similar armies only by the second half of the seventeenth century, limiting the bargaining leverage of European militaries over their rulers. In essence, the Ottoman standing army was able to block reform efforts that it believed challenged its parochial interests. Absent a similar institutional challenge, European rulers initiated military reforms and motivated officers and military entrepreneurs to participate in the ongoing military revolution
The Third wave in globalization theory
This essay examines a proposition made in the literature that there are three waves in globalization theoryâthe globalist, skeptical, and postskeptical or transformational wavesâand argues that this division requires a new look. The essay is a critique of the third of these waves and its relationship with the second wave. Contributors to the third wave not only defend the idea of globalization from criticism by the skeptics but also try to construct a more complex and qualified theory of globalization than provided by first-wave accounts. The argument made here is that third-wave authors come to conclusions that try to defend globalization yet include qualifications that in practice reaffirm skeptical claims. This feature of the literature has been overlooked in debates and the aim of this essay is to revisit the literature and identify as well as discuss this problem. Such a presentation has political implications. Third wavers propose globalist cosmopolitan democracy when the substance of their arguments does more in practice to bolster the skeptical view of politics based on inequality and conflict, nation-states and regional blocs, and alliances of common interest or ideology rather than cosmopolitan global structures
Modern Electronic Techniques Applied to Physics and Engineering
Contains reports on seven research projects.Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) OEMsr-26
Political parties and democratic consolidation in post-communist societies
Political parties have a central role to play in democratic consolidation, yet we know comparatively little about how effectively they represent social cleavages in newly emerging democracies. Using the LipsetâRokkan framework, this article examines the role of parties in articulating social cleavages in 14 established and 6 emerging democracies using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems datasets. The results show that the social cleavages in the emerging democracies are similar to those of the established democracies, with religion and class predominating. Parties appear to be less effective in representing social cleavages in the emerging than in the established democracies
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