Democratic Regime Types Research Articles

Bayesian model averaging approach of the determinants of foreign direct investment in Africa

The possibility of misinforming policy direction is undoubtedly high when factors determining foreign direct investment (FDI) are haphazardly selected owing to the diverse nature of the underlying FDI theories, thus leading to model uncertainty. To resolve the econometric and policy concerns, this study re-investigates the determinants of FDI for 53 African economies for which comprehensive data are available using the Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) technique over the period, 1984–2018. Interestingly, unlike the previously conducted studies on FDI determinants, variables such as gross fixed capital formation, trade openness, exchange rate, secondary school education, democratic regime type and mobile subscriptions per 100 people take preeminent positions over other explanatory variables for the continent. However, government consumption expenditure, inflation, GDP per capita, capital openness and credits to the private sectors constitute the major deterring factors of FDI into the continent. These variables altogether remain the substantive predictors of FDI into African continent out of the 23 explanatory variables used. Similarly, differences are observed in the determinants of FDI across the regions of the continent. Thus, assuming the general policy framework to region specific concerns may not be efficient policy menu to attracting foreign capital flows. In light of the preceding, understanding the salient African-wide determinants as well as each region's idiosyncratic details regarding the determinants hold a promising path to tread in attracting foreign direct investment.

Covid (in)equalities: labor market protection, health, and residential care in Germany, Sweden, and the UK

Abstract How have differently institutionalized welfare regimes dealt with the Covid-19 crisis? In particular, how have they confronted the social and economic inequalities exposed by the virus? Taking three European countries—Germany, Sweden, and the UK, corresponding broadly to conservative-continental, social democratic, and liberal regime types—this paper tracks the virus response in the areas of income and employment protection and health and residential care. With attention paid to issues of “capacity” and the institutional arrangements in each case, we find that institutional histories in Germany and Sweden permitted a certain recidivistic reliance on established practices in the areas of employment and social protection. In sum, certain social and economic inequalities were mitigated as these countries set aside recent trends toward “liberalization” and mobilized longer-standing institutional capacities to protect some groups, although by no means all. Evidence of this trend is less clear in the health and residential care sectors, where Germany had existing capacity, allowing its older population to weather the crisis in better order than its counterparts in Sweden and the UK. In the UK, welfare liberalization has led to increased social and economic inequalities and funding reductions in health and residential care—all of which have reduced the country’s ability to deal with severe crisis. The Covid response in this case was agile, but also chaotic, with little being done to ameliorate the positions of the most vulnerable groups.

Policing Protest in Russia

As Russia’s post-communist regime descends deeper into authoritarianism, protest politics has become a regular feature of the political landscape. As such, President Putin increasingly faces the “dictator’s dilemma”: How much coercion to deploy against protesters without incurring a social backlash against the regime? That question more generally is now part of analytical consideration in comparative scholarship on social movements and contentious politics. This article contributes to the comparative discussion, first, through an elaboration of an original conceptual typology of protest-policing strategies, applicable to democratic and authoritarian regime types. Second, the article applies this conceptual scheme to Russia to illustrate the variant protest-policing strategies employed during the post-communist period. The research explains how Putin’s authoritarian regime responded to the challenge of the dictator’s dilemma by enacting protest-policing reforms. Inspired by policing trends in the Western democracies, these reforms entail a shift from confrontation-based to containment-based tactics. The article shows variation and adaptation in the way protesters were policed across Russia’s transition from unconsolidated democracy to consolidated authoritarianism. Finally, the article suggests the consequences of protest-policing reform for the ruling regime.

Diffusion and the choice of democratic government system at the time of democratisation

While significant research has been conducted on both the diffusion of democracy and the various democratic government systems (parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential), the diffusion of individual democratic government systems has rarely been addressed. Therefore, this article examines whether diffusion explains why countries have established different types of government systems at the time of democratisation. Previous studies on democratic regime types have found that the establishment of democratic government systems is spatially and temporally clustered, which could indicate that democratic regime types are diffused. Inspired by diffusion studies, we test the hypothesis that the density of a particular democratic government system in a network positively affects the probability that a country in that network established the same form of democratic government system at the time of democratisation. We test this assumption through empirical analysis, using 121 cases of democratisation in which a democratic system of government was established at the time of independence or after a period of autocracy. Using logistic regression, this paper explores the connection between the choice of government system at the time of democratisation and the composition of democratic government systems in seven networks of countries: geographic neighbourhood, regional, continental, global, cultural, post-colonial and post-autocratic. The results indicate empirical support for our hypothesis; therefore, we conclude that the choice of government system at the time of democratisation is influenced by conditions in other countries.

Presidents and Cabinet Payoffs in Coalition Governments

As a key consequence of government formation negotiations among executive and legislative actors, portfolio allocation offers a window to understand the impact of constitutional design and presidential prerogatives on cabinet dynamics across democratic regime types. This article uses Shugart and Carey’s emphasis on the implications of regime distinctions and institutional variation in presidential powers for executive-legislative relations as a starting point for an examination of the extent to which presidents influence government formation outcomes in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems. Many presidents in these political systems have some influence on government formation, which enables them to shape cabinet composition. Yet, whether these powers advantage presidential parties in reaping more cabinet spoils than their proportional share has yet to be investigated. Using data on 442 government formation situations in 23 European parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies during 1945–2015, this study finds that parties of strong presidents generally, or presidents formally empowered to choose a formateur, are more likely to be advantaged in the allocation of cabinet seats than their peers who are not allied with the head of state.

Explaining Peaceful Change without Democracy: The Case of the Sino-Soviet Security Community

Some scholars have claimed that democratic regime type needs to be treated as a necessary precondition for the formation of a pluralistic security community. This essay argues that one should not overestimate the explanatory power of linking the democratic peace proposition to the study of security communities. Democratic values, norms, institutions, and practices may certainly facilitate the formation of a security community, but it is by no means the only or even most plausible path to assure dependable expectations of peaceful change. While a number of authors have of late made similar claims, what is not settled is why non-democracies can form security communities. The findings in this essay advance scholarship on this issue by showing that the same causal logics commonly attributed exclusively to democratic security community formation are also present in the formation of non-democratic security communities. The study adds empirical evidence to this argument by developing a historical case study of the Sino-Soviet relationship. In sum, the findings demonstrate that (1) democracy is not a necessary (though facilitating) precondition for the development of a pluralistic security community and (2) a pluralistic security community may form between autocratic regimes based on the causal logical nexus of non-democratic norm externalization, ideological coherence, a common Other (normative logic) and autocratic domestic institutional constraints (institutional logic).

Outlawing war is not enough to promote international peace: The ambivalence of liberal interventionism

Abstract:Why has interstate war declined and why do states refrain from territorial conquests in the post-Second World War order? The 1928 Peace Pact cannot account for these remarkable developments. This article argues that outlawing war is not enough to promote international peace. International Relations debates on the influence of weapons of mass destruction, democratic regime types and political cultures on interstate behaviour provide further important insights into the delegitimation of certain types of war. Since the 1990s, a changing character of war and warfare has emerged that is especially promoted by democratic states. How democratic states have justified their military use of force and how they have conducted their military interventions has a strong and ambivalent impact on the liberal world order.

The self-selection of democracies into treaty design: insights from international environmental agreements

Generally, democratic regime type is positively associated with participating in international environmental agreements. In this context, this study focuses on the legal nature of an agreement, which is linked to audience costs primarily at the domestic level that occur in case of non-compliance and are felt especially by democracies. Eventually, more legalized (“hard-law”) treaties make compliance potentially more challenging and as democratic leaders may anticipate the corresponding audience costs, the likelihood that democracies select themselves into such treaties decreases. The empirical implication of our theory is that environmental agreements with a larger share of democratic members are less likely to be characterized by hard law. Results from quantitative analyses strongly support our argument, shed new light on the relationship between participation in international agreements and the form of government, and also have implications for the “words-deeds” debate in international environmental policy-making.

Diffusion of e‐government and e‐participation in Democracies and Autocracies

AbstractInternet based technology constitutes one of the most important policy innovations in the last decades. Its diffusion has been rapid, widespread and sustained. The increase has raised questions about its drivers. The article focuses on an aspect of this dynamic that has been neglected so far: the variance between and among democracies and autocracies and their respective subtypes. Moreover, the majority of studies tackles the diffusion of e‐government techniques, excluding the important array of e‐participation. Our analysis thus offers a broader and more differentiated account of the adoption of online tools by governments. The findings indicate that the adoption of e‐government and e‐participation techniques varies substantially between and among democratic and autocratic regime types as well as over time and in kind.

It Is All about Political Incentives: Democracy and the Renewable Feed-in Tariff

Demand for renewable energy is booming. Scholars often attribute this success to feed-in tariffs (FITs), which mandate that energy utilities pay a premium to renewable electricity producers and guarantee grid access for them. Why have so many countries, including least-developed ones, adopted these policies? We hypothesize that democratic governments have political incentives to adopt the FIT because it improves environmental quality, promotes rural development, and distributes electricity generation profits from large utilities to independent producers. We analyze global data on FIT adoption, 1990–2012, and we find that the association between democratic regime type and FIT adoption overwhelms all other covariates. The effect is specific to the FIT and does not exist for renewable portfolio standards or public competitive bidding for renewable energy contracts. Consistent with theories of distributive politics, among democracies, institutional malapportionment in favor of rural political constituencies f...

Domestic Terrorism and Democratic Regime Types

Using logistic regression on the 36 democracies studied in Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy, we find statistically significant correlations between the index of consensus democracy and a higher incidence of fatal domestic terror incidents in the period 1985–2010. We further find that the risk of fatal terrorist attacks is almost six times higher in majoritarian democracies than in their consensus counterparts, and that this indicator is stronger than factors such as economic development and a large youth population and levels of urbanisation.

Do rights at home boost rights abroad? Sexual equality and humanitarian foreign policy

Does women’s empowerment strengthen global good citizenship? We test theories of democratic foreign policy and feminist international relations that suggest that more deeply democratic countries with greater gender equity will be stronger international human rights promoters. First, the direct empowerment of women as policymakers and civil society constituencies may shift states’ incentives and ability to pursue international human rights initiatives. Second, greater sexual equality may lead to feminist socialization of the wider society to promote human rights values. We test these predictions by measuring the relationship between five different measures of sexual equality and a country’s propensity to support 30 international human rights outcomes, including legal commitments, humanitarian assistance, and sanctions, controlling for previously established contributing factors such as level of development and democratic regime type. We find that more sexually equal countries are more likely to support international commitments to constrain state violence against individuals, international measures to combat gender and sexual orientation discrimination, and more and higher quality development assistance. However, sexual equality appears to yield less benefit for more costly human rights initiatives: yielding sovereignty to international legal institutions, promoting economic rights through concessionary trade policies, or adopting diplomatic sanctions against pariah states. These effects are stronger in democratic states, where citizen empowerment translates more readily into foreign policy, and are also found in a sample that excludes the Western powers.

Democratic Accountability and Diversionary Force

Agreement on which democratic regime types are prone to use diversionary force has yet to materialize in the embryonic empirical literature on the subject. Nor has consensus emerged on the theoretical approach that best explains the diversionary tendencies of different democratic political systems. By separating out benevolent and belligerent diversionary military missions, we begin to offer some clarity to this mixed empirical literature. In zero-inflated Poisson estimates of fifty-six democracies from 1950 to 2004, we find compelling evidence that a theoretical framework emphasizing leader accountability best explains democratic diversionary behavior. More accountable democratic executives (leaders of majoritarian, weak-party majority, and minority governments) appear significantly more likely to use diversionary force than counterparts with less accountability (especially in coalition governments). Democratic leaders also seem to use benevolent military force for diversionary purposes more often than belligerent force, though they still use the latter in specific contexts.

Asymmetrical Constraints on Democratic Regime Types: A Comparative Study

In two recent retrospectives – marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of Transitions From Authoritarian Rule – Philippe Schmitter and Guillermo O’Donnell argue that the easy spread of democracy in the latest decades has much to do with its bare-bones character. Based on these interventions and on other recent contributions, we pose three interrelated propositions: First, structural factors today impact the level of democracy more when it is understood in a relatively ‘thin’ (minimalistic) way than when it is understood in a relatively ‘thick’ (maximalistic) way. Second, this asymmetrical pattern has been on the increase over the latest decades. Third, the years 1989-91 constitute a crucial breaking point in this respect. Even though these – or very similar – claims are frequently put forward in the literature, they have not been subjected to a systematic, large-N empirical appraisal yet. We do so by employing a two-step approach. In the first step, we test the extent to which a set of structural factors have different scales of effects on thin and thick types of democracy differently today. Second, based on a somewhat cruder measurement of thin and thick types of democracy, we expand the analysis to the whole period of the third wave, using a sliding series of OLS-regressions. These analyses, covering virtually all countries from 1973 and onwards, corroborate all the three propositions.

More Rights, Less Power: Labor Standards and Labor Markets in East European Post-communist States

This paper examines changes in labor markets and labor rights for 13 post-communist states of East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union. It focuses on the simultaneous pressures to increase the flexibility of labor markets and improve labor standards in the years since the collapse of communism. Comparative measures and patterns of both de jure and de facto standards and flexibility are presented, and the roles of key institutional promoters of change are analyzed. I find that a combination of democratic regime type and European Union accession has pulled East European states toward the strengthening of collective labor rights. The effect is strongest on the states that joined the EU in 2004, weaker for those joining in 2007, while the three post-Soviet, non-accession states remain significantly more labor-repressive. Labor market flexibilization has been a more uniform trend in the post-communist region. In the context of this project’s inter-regional comparisons, contemporary Eastern Europe has the strongest labor rights. At the same time, the decline of trade unions and limits of collective bargaining in most post-communist states undermine the effectiveness of transposed EU legislation and bargaining institutions in empowering labor. As shown by the exceptional case of Slovenia, strong unions are necessary to fully enforce rights.

The Importance of Being Quasi-Democratic - the Domestication Of International Human Rights in American and Arab Politics

The paper builds on a comparative treatment of the politics of contestation and incorporation of human rights law in the United States, Morocco and Tunisia to highlight the salience of international law's democratic legitimacy problems of popular representation and mobilization. The author shows that Morocco enjoyed the most sustained and broadest recent mobilisation of these cases in the domestic extension of international human rights norms. This finding suggests four conclusions. First, democratic legitimacy problems for international law are similar across more and less democratic regime types. Second, the democratic legitimacy problem allows states to use populist appeals to justify their internal deviations from international legal norms. Third, international human rights norms stand the best possibility of mitigating these legitimacy concerns and permeating domestic practice when they have a basis in a pattern of contestation that engages more than a narrow elite, and which might therefore be called quasidemocratic. Fourth, these points demonstrate the imperative of comparing the political processes for the domestic incorporation of international law across different spaces and regime types.

East Asian Welfare Regimes: Testing the Hypothesis of the Developmental Welfare State

AbstractFollowing the three welfare regimes constructed by Esping‐Andersen, many scholars have addressed the question of whether there may be a further type of regime, differing from the categories of liberal, conservative and social democratic, pertaining to other parts of the world. Discussion has centred largely on East Asia and, in particular, on the notion of the developmental/productivist welfare regime. Yet these discussions have been based more on conceptual classification than empirical analysis. This article attempts to fill in the gap, with reference to the developmental characteristics of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. A set of 15 indicators is developed for the factor and cluster analysis of 20 countries, based on data from the 1980s and 1990s. The results indicate the existence of a new group, consisting of Taiwan and South Korea, which is distinct from Esping‐Andersen's three regimes – unlike Japan, which remains a composite of various regime types. Regime characteristics peculiar to the cases of Taiwan and South Korea include: low/medium social security expenditure, high social investment, more extensive gender discrimination in salary, medium/high welfare stratification, a high non‐coverage rate for pensions, high individual welfare loading, and high family welfare responsibility. When compared with Esping‐Andersen's three regimes, the East Asian developmental regime shows similarity with his conservative model, in respect of welfare stratification, while the non‐coverage of welfare entitlements is similar to his liberal model. There is virtually no evidence of any similarity between the developmental welfare regime and Esping‐Andersen's social democratic regime type.

Korporatism och bostadsregimer

Housing has been described as “the wobbly pillar under the welfare state”. Unlike the other three pillars - education, health and social security - housing is largely a market commodity modified by subsidies and regulation. This makes it a potentially fruitful welfare sector to examine the interplay between market interests and policymaking. This article considers the relationship between rental housing and the welfare state interms of regime theory. Rental housing systems are divided into two types: dualist (profit rental market and residual public poor housing sector) and unitary (not-for-profit integrated into the market). Taking Esping-Andersens Three Worlds of Welfare thesis as a starting point, no Nordic social democratic regime type can be identified for housing, but in relation to classic corporatist theory, unitary rental markets are clearly associated with corporatist societies. The discussion concludes with a consideration of sector regimes in general and housing regimes in particular. It is concluded that theories of power should be more widely applied to housing, and that housing can provide an invaluable empirical laboratory for refining our understanding of both sector regimes and welfare regimes.

The Ladder of Abstraction: A Framework for the Systematic Classification of Democratic Regime Types

This article argues that classificatory problems such as parochialism, misclassification, degreeism and conceptual stretching underpin the classification of democratic regime types. This is due to the safeguarding of the parliamentary/presidential dichotomy as a framework for the classification and comparison of democratic types of regime. Drawing upon Giovanni Sartori's ladder of abstraction, types of democratic regime are classified as part of a hierarchy of concepts. This approach enables scholars to avoid classificatory pitfalls as it facilitates the methodological expansion of the conceptual framework for the classification of democratic regime types. Therefore, democratic regime types are more conducive to systematic comparative research.

Presidentialized Parties

Scholars have devoted substantial research to political parties, but comparativists have not explored how presidentialism and parliamentarism differently affect party development, organization, and behavior. The parties' literature developed from explorations of European parliamentary systems, in which constitutional structure is not an independent variable, or from the U.S. case, in which the presidentialism is sometimes not related to party development. The result is a serious gap in the literature. In this article, the author argues that the institutions of presidentialism generate incentives for parties to organize and behave differently than they would otherwise under parliamentarism. The author explores the consequences for party behavior of a shift from pure parliamentarism to semipresidentialism in France in 1958 and Israel in 1992. Given the paucity of research on how the separation of powers creates “presidentialized parties,” the argument suggests scholars rethink parties' actual role in both within presidential systems as well as across democratic regime types