“Nation State” or “State Nation”?: Conceptual Reflections and Some Spanish, Belgian and Indian Data

human development, culture

Semi-presidentialism and democratic performance

There is a long-standing and widespread consensus that semi-presidentialism is bad for democratic performance. This article examines whether there is empirical evidence to support the arguments against semi-presidentialism. Examining countries that incompletely consolidated and yet not autocratic, we identify the relationship between democratic performance and the three main arguments against semi-presidentialism – the strength of the presidency, cohabitation and divided minority government. We find that there is a strong and negative association between presidential power and democratic performance, but that cohabitation and divided minority government do not have the negative consequences that the literature predicts

Estados em vias de integração e de desintegração

In the above article, the authors present the following thesis: multi-ethnic federations in transition from authoritarian regimes to democracy have a much better chance of maintaining its political unity if the initial elections during such transitional period are all-union elections as opposed to regional or provincial elections. The thesis is argued thru the comparative analysis of the Spain, ex URSS and Yugoslavia cases.Neste artigo os autores levantam a seguinte tese: os países constituídos por federações multiétnicas, em processo de transição de autoritarismo para a democracia, têm maior probabilidade de manter sua união política se as primeiras eleições e tomadas de voto, desse período transacional, forem eleições de caráter nacional (geral, de toda a União) ao invés de eleições regionais ou provinciais. A tese apresentada é defendida pela análise comparada dos casos de Espanha e de ex-União Soviética e Iugoslávia

Making embedded knowledge transparent: How the V-Dem dataset opens new vistas in civil society research

We show how the V-Dem data opens new possibilities for studying civil society in comparative politics. We explain how V-Dem was able to extract embedded expert knowledge to create a novel set of civil society indicators for 173 countries from 1900 to the present. This data overcomes shortcomings in the basis on which inference has been made about civil society in the past by avoiding problems of sample bias that make generalization difficult or tentative. We begin with a discussion of the reemergence of civil society as a central concept in comparative politics. We then turn to the shortcomings of the existing data and discusses how the V-Dem data can overcome them. We introduce the new data, highlighting two new indices—the core civil society index (CCSI) and the civil society participation index (CSPI)—and explain how the individual indicators and the indices were created. We then demonstrate how the CCSI uses embedded expert knowledge to capture the development of civil society on the national level in Venezuela, Ghana, and Russia. We close by using the new indices to examine the dispute over whether post-communist civil society is “weak.” Time-series cross-sectional analysis using 2,999 country-year observations between 1989 and 2012 fails to find that post-communist civil society is substantially different from other regions, but that there are major differences between the post-Soviet subsample and other post-communist countries both in relation to other regions and each other

Civic Participation in a Hybrid Regime: Limited Pluralism in Policymaking and Delivery in Contemporary Russia

Copyright © The Author(s). Published by Government and Opposition Limited and Cambridge University Press 2017. This article asks why the Russian government has developed new avenues for public participation in policymaking and delivery and assesses the extent to which these avenues introduce pluralism into these processes. Drawing on 50 interviews with individuals and citizens’ groups involved in either public consultative bodies or socially oriented NGOs, the article demonstrates the government’s desire to harness the knowledge and abilities of citizens and civic groups in place of state departments perceived to be bureaucratic and inefficient, while controlling and curtailing their participation. Arguing that these countervailing tendencies can be conceptualized as limited pluralism, a category elaborated by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, we show that citizens and civic groups are able to influence policy outcomes to varying extents using these mechanisms

Egypt’s 2011–2012 parliamentary elections: Voting for religious vs. secular democracy?

This study investigates whether individuals’ attitudes towards democracy and secular politics have any influence on voting behavior in Egypt. Based on data from a survey conducted immediately after the Egyptian parliamentary elections in January 2012, this study finds that Egyptians’ attitudes towards democratic governance were quite negative around the parliamentary elections, yet Egyptians still endorsed democracy as the ideal political system for their country. However, empirical findings suggest that support for democracy has a limited impact on electoral results. On the other hand, the main division in Egyptian society around the first free and fair parliamentary elections was the religious-secular cleavage. As people support secular politics more, they become significantly less likely to vote for Islamist parties. These results illustrate that preferences in regard to the type of democracy – either a liberal and secular or a religious democracy – were the main determinant of the historic 2012 elections in Egypt

Explaining the onset of cohabitation under semi-presidentialism

Semi-presidentialism – where the constitution provides for both a directly elected fixed-term president and a prime minister and cabinet collectively responsible to the legislature – is an increasingly common form of government. For many observers cohabitation is the Achilles heel of semi-presidentialism. This article aims to identify the conditions that are associated with the onset of cohabitation.We specify a number of hypotheses that predict the conditions under which cohabitation should occur.We then test our hypotheses on the basis of a new data set that records every case of cohabitation in all semi-presidential electoral democracies from 1989 to 2008 inclusive.We confirm that cohabi- tation is more likely to occur in countries with a premier-presidential form of semi-presidentialism and show that it is more likely to follow an election that occurs midway through a parliamentary or presidential term, and that when cohabitation follows a presidential election, it is likely to do so in a country where there is only a very weak president. Overall, we find that the conditions under which cohabitation is most likely to occur are also the ones where it is most easily managed. Thus, our findings imply that cohabitation is not likely to be as problematic as the existing literature would suggest

Military Entrepreneurs: Patterns In Latin America

Despite the recent shift to democratic regimes and market-based economies, in many Latin American countries the military retains important economic roles as owner, manager, and stakeholder in economic enterprises. Such military entrepreneurship poses a challenge to the development of democratic civil-military relations and, by extension, to the development of liberal democracy in the region. While scholars have noted this situation with concern, they have given little attention to distinguishing the different types of military entrepreneurship, which reflect distinct historical patterns and implications. This article identifies two major types of military entrepreneurs in Latin America: industrializers, determined to build national defense capabilities and compete for international prestige; and nation builders, seeking to promote economic development that can foster social development and cohesion. Case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Ecuador demonstrate important differences between these two types in their origins, paths, and political consequences