Comparative Political Studies RSS feed -- OnlineFirst Articles

The Political Economy of Technological Innovation and Employment

Huo, J., Feng, H. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:18:28 PST

Building on the varieties of capitalism thesis of comparative advantages in technological innovation, the authors theorize the effect of sociopolitical coordination from a dynamic perspective and then apply the dynamic theories to the political economy of employment, in comparison to the existing employment literature situated in a constant-technology context. Based on cross-sectional survey as well as pooled time-series aggregate data, the authors argue that new technologies not only increase productivity through process innovation but also generate rents through product innovation. By preventing opportunistic behavior between firms, sociopolitical coordination intensifies reciprocal sharing of innovation, which increases productivity returns but dilutes rents, leading to comparative advantage in process over product innovation. Because process innovation is labor saving but product innovation is employment friendly, interfirm coordination further leads to comparative disadvantage in job creation from innovation. In other words, the Anglo-Saxon employment creation advantage, currently identified on the static basis of noninnovative low-skill industries, is reinforced by a similar advantage from the dynamic perspective, based on strength in job-friendly innovation.

Death of the Partisan? Globalization and Taxation in South America, 1990-2006

Hart, A. — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:14:14 PST

Correcting the relative lack of attention to the revenue side of public finance, this article examines to what extent globalization constrains partisan tax policy. The author hypothesizes that political ideology is still a good predictor of taxation in the neoliberal era, advancing this argument against the prominent globalization thesis: that global economic pressures have supplanted political ideology as the driving force of revenue policy. Although research in developed democracies identifies a resilient link between partisanship and policy outcomes, the impact of the drastic neoliberal transition on partisan policy making in the developing world remains poorly understood. Using time-series cross-section data to evaluate partisan taxation in South America, the author finds that partisanship is a reliable indicator of tax revenue in the neoliberal era. Counterintuitively, however, the promarket Right generates more tax revenue than the interventionist Left. The author argues that this previously unexpected revenue gap is driven by ideological concerns for equity versus growth.

Political Scale and Electoral Turnout: Evidence From the Less Industrialized World

Remmer, K. L. — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:50:40 PST

This article attempts to bring the politics of scale back into the study of comparative politics. Explicitly focusing on the question of electoral turnout in the less industrialized world, it explores the impact of variations in community size relative to other influences on citizen participation. The findings, which draw on both aggregate and individual-level data at the subnational level of analysis, offer considerable evidence that electoral participation declines with community size, but for reasons largely neglected by most prior literature on electoral turnout. The central theoretical conclusion is that future comparative research needs to address the role of political scale more directly and systematically.

Personality and Political Tolerance: The Limits of Democratic Learning in Postcommunist Europe

Hinckley, R. A. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:38:00 PDT

Can all citizens learn political tolerance through engagement in democratic politics? The lack of direct experience with democratic processes may account for a portion of the tolerance gap between mass publics in established and new democracies and suggests optimism about trends in tolerance within postcommunist Europe. Yet learning tolerance may be limited to individuals who are psychologically open to disagreement. Testing the conditional effect of political activism with the 1995 World Values Survey and a 1996 to 2000 Russian panel series reveals that the benefits of political activism are limited by psychological dogmatism and that dogmatists tend toward intolerance over time.

Do Ethnic Parties Exclude Women?

Holmsten, S. S., Moser, R. G., Slosar, M. C. — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:40:33 PDT

Do parties that represent ethnic minorities tend to exclude women? There are several reasons to think that this may be the case. First, the comparatively smaller size of ethnic parties could exclude women, especially under proportional representation. Second, the subcultures of many ethnic minorities are often more patriarchal than the majority culture, and thus parties representing such groups may include fewer women. Finally, an ideological fixation on ethnicity within ethnic parties may marginalize subminorities within the target group. Using a new crossnational data set, the authors examine the degree to which ethnic parties represent women, controlling for party size, electoral systems, gender quotas, ideology, and democratic development. Findings show that ethnic parties, particularly those appealing to a religious minority, tend to elect fewer women, but only under proportional representation electoral systems.

Institutional Constraints on Profligate Politicians: The Conditional Effect of Partisan Fragmentation on Budget Deficits

Wehner, J. — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:06:31 PDT

The literature on the common pool resource problem in budgeting has thus far not explored the likely interaction between size fragmentation (the number of decision makers) and procedural fragmentation (the structure of the process in which they interact). The argument put forward in this article is that the effects of these two types of fragmentation should not be additive, but multiplicative, because theory suggests that the impact of size fragmentation on fiscal policy is conditional on the extent of procedural fragmentation. Using panel data for 57 countries over the period of 1975 to 1998, the author empirically investigates this interaction in the legislative context and finds strong evidence that partisan fragmentation is associated with higher deficits only when it is not moderated by limits on parliamentary amendment authority.

Making Reconstruction Work: Civil Society and Information after War's End

Kage, R. — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:30:37 PST

This article develops and tests a general framework for explaining variations in the extent of postwar reconstruction. Existing studies point to the importance of economic resources and a coherent state apparatus in promoting effective reconstruction. This study argues that because reconstruction inherently requires coordination between numerous societal actors as well as between state and society, a full explanation for the extent of reconstruction must examine the linkages among those actors, especially civil society. By generating greater amounts of information, a more vibrant civil society leads to (a) better identification of needs, (b) more efficient implementation, and (c) more effective monitoring. Statistical analyses of newly assembled data from 46 Japanese prefectures lend support to the propositions advanced in the article.

The Political Economy of Authoritarian Single-Party Dominance

Greene, K. F. — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:27:30 PST

Why do authoritarian dominant parties, once established, continue to win elections or lose power? Employing a time-series cross-national analysis of election outcomes and two country case studies, the author shows that dominant parties endure despite poor economic performance, voter demand for new parties, and sufficiently permissive electoral institutions. Instead, the author demonstrates that dominant parties continue to win when they can politicize public resources, and they fail when privatizations put the state’s fiscal power out of their reach. The argument has implications for the fate of dominant parties, transitions to democracy in competitive authoritarian regimes, and the study of incumbency advantages and electoral fairness in comparative politics.

New Structuralism and Institutional Change: Federalism Between Centralization and Decentralization

Erk, J., Koning, E. — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:27:30 PST

This article aims to contribute to the debate on institutional change by introducing social structure as the basis for theorizing about the direction of such change. The empirical context is the long-term trends of federal institutional change in the federations of the industrialized West (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States). It is the authors’ contention that institutions change in order to reach a better fit with the underlying linguistic structure. The direction for institutional change in federal systems with territorially based linguistic heterogeneity is decentralizing, for homogeneous ones the direction is centralizing. The argument is based on the growing importance of language as the provider of democratic space. It is through the less formalized interest group politics that the underlying linguistic base finds its way into influencing the direction of institutional change.

Decentralization and the Development of Nationalized Party Systems in New Democracies: Evidence From Latin America

Harbers, I. — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:27:30 PST

The extent to which a party system is nationalized—with nationalization being defined as the degree to which major political parties obtain similar vote shares throughout the national territory—has considerable consequences for political representation, public policy making, and even the survival of democracy. Yet, so far there is little empirical evidence about the conditions that promote or inhibit the development of nationalized party systems in new democracies. Using electoral data from 89 elections in 16 Latin American democracies, this article provides a systematic analysis of the effect of decentralization on party system nationalization. The results show that political decentralization and fiscal decentralization inhibit the development of nationalized party systems, thus suggesting that a trade-off exists between decentralized governance and party system nationalization. These results are robust when controlling for ethnolinguistic fractionalization and characteristics of the electoral system.