Incumbent Elites Research Articles

Autocratization as Ethnocratization? How Regime Transformations toward Autocracy Deteriorate Ethnic Relations

When a country becomes more autocratic, does it affect the relations between ethnic groups in a systematic way? Cross-national and case-based research witnesses how autocratization (the opposite of democratization) is becoming increasingly prevalent, particularly in societies where ethnic relations are politicized and polarized. However, we still lack sufficient knowledge on how autocratization might have an impact on ethnic relations. The paper advances previous autocratization and ethnic studies. It hypothesizes that if a country autocratizes, this further deteriorates its ethnic relations (ethnocratization). It substantiates this claim through a mixed-method design. It starts with a longitudinal analysis at the ethnic group-level, to demonstrate how ethnic discrimination and domination are more probable during autocratization episodes. Next, it examines a collection of international reports on the predicament of ethnic majorities and minorities in countries undergoing autocratization episodes, to identify two causal mechanisms as the main incentives and justifications of the incumbent (and autocratizing) elites: ideological legitimation and authoritarian experimentation. This research encourages scholars on autocratization and ethnic studies to join their efforts, to investigate how democracy and ethnic inclusion can decline in parallel and, thus, to show the reasons why they should advance together.

El Zaím: Youth, Authority, and Syrian Nationalism in the Mahjar, 1938–1944

This article explores Antun Saʿadeh’s campaign to establish the Syrian Social Nationalist Party among Syrian and Lebanese migrants in the Americas. Diasporic press sources from Argentina and Brazil indicate that the Syrian Nationalists continued to foreground Saʿadeh as a figure whose authority derived in part from a youthful following. The support of the young distinguished him from other leaders, or zuʿamāʾ, and in particular from the late-Ottoman notables whose command over anti-imperial politics was increasingly contested in the 1930s and 1940s. Syrian Nationalist recruitment in South America, and subsequent polemics with local public figures that it inspired, revealed ambivalences in this narrative of a transformative youth politics. The relationship between young nationalists and the leaders who claimed to galvanize them was both celebrated and called into question. These anxieties coincided with doubts about the contributions of mahjar print culture and associational life to nationalist mass movements. In this way, youth rhetoric reflected a transnational middle-class reckoning with interwar popular politics. In tracing the mobility of a political imaginary that pitted youthful nationalists against incumbent elites, the paper proposes a new reading of the politics of notables framework itself as one among several forms of interwar middle-class worldmaking.

스포츠 트레이너의 커뮤니케이션 스타일이 부상선수의 재활동기 및 회복탄력성에 미치는 영향

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of sports trainer’s communication style on the rehabilitation period and resilience of injured players. For this study, a questionnaire was distributed to 125 incumbent elite sports players and analyzed according to the procedure. As a result of the study, it was confirmed that the rehabilitation trainer’s communication style had a statistically significant effect on the rehabilitation and resilience of injured athletes. Specifically, the trainer’s cooperative, professional, and controlled communication styles had a positive or negative effect on the injured athlete’s taskoriented motivation, change-oriented motivation, duty-oriented motivation, and external motivation, respectively. In addition, as a result of analyzing the relationship between the trainer’s communication style and the injured player’s resilience, it was confirmed that the cooperative and professional style had a positive effect on control, positivity, and sociability. Based on these research results, this study aims to examine in depth the relationship between trainers and injured players from a social scientific perspective, and to compose a new curriculum by adding and reinforcing related social science contents to the qualifications and curriculum of rehabilitation trainers. discussed about.

Twenty-First Century Military Multilateralism: “Messy” and With Unintended Consequences

The current century has witnessed several high-profile Western military interventions in developing countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali/West Africa are well-known examples. All three were initiated unilaterally by the US or France but were soon supplemented with multilateral missions which operated in parallel with the unilateral intervention force, giving them a “messy” appearance. In the three cases, the foreign policy decision-makers in the US and France reacted mainly to domestic stimuli, most evidently in the case of the US, where revenge for 9/11 was a strong motive. Like-minded partners in NATO and troops from developing countries shared the burdens of the US and France and gave legitimacy to the military interventions. The consequences of the interventions were not that they contributed to stability. Rather they supported the incumbent elites, as they were able to avoid launching economic and political reform. The lack of reform undermined the prospects for stability.

The Political Reception of Innovations

Why do some societies embrace innovative technologies, policies, and ideas, while others are slow to adopt, or even resist, them? We focus on features of an innovation that are expected to affect the incumbent elite's economic activities, and hence the elite's reaction. The elite can choose whether to appropriate the innovation for itself; encourage its adoption; tax, regulate, or limit or block it. Six features of the innovation affect the elite response: i) whether it is easy to replicate; ii) whether it complements or competes with the elite's sources of income; iii) whether its impact is broad or narrow; iv) whether it is loca- tion-dependent, and v) concealable; vi) whether it requires large xed costs. Some of these factors have been considered in other work; here we assess them together. We provide illustrative evidence of the relevance and generality of the model to understand the fate of a variety of innovations.

How biased media generate support for the ruling authorities: Causal mediation analysis of evidence from Russia

If a medium has a monopoly in covering political news and daily distorts the news in favor of the ruling autocrat, how large will the persuasion effect be? Through which channels will such persuasion operate most? Working with a representative sample of the Russian population, I use a causal mediation analysis to explore whether (1) frequency of exposure and/or (2) reliance on biased reporting mediate the link between how people voted for incumbent elites and how they evaluate these elites in the present. Perceiving explicitly biased information as credible transmits a large and robust effect from voting to evaluation, while frequent exposure to this information produces an insignificant mediating effect. Another important finding is that the effect of perceived news credibility overrides the effect of previous electoral support: Accepting state propaganda as credible information converts people into regime supporters even if they did not support these elites at previous election.

The dark side of regionalism: how regional organizations help authoritarian regimes to boost survival

ABSTRACT The international dimension of authoritarian resilience is receiving increased attention by scholars of comparative politics and international relations alike. Research suggests that autocratic states exploit regionalism to boost domestic regime security. This article explains how membership in regional organizations can help to strengthen survival chances of autocratic incumbent elites. It argues that membership provides additional material, informational, and ideational resources to autocratic incumbents that can be used to boost domestic survival strategies vis-à-vis internal and external challengers. The article provides qualitative case-based evidence to show how autocratic incumbents in Zimbabwe, China, and Bahrain have benefited from the involvement of regional organizations during moments of political instability to strengthen legitimation, repression, co-optation, and international appeasement strategies. The article thereby provides the first encompassing explanation linking regionalism and authoritarian survival politics that is applicable across regions and different types of authoritarian regimes.

Economic Diversification and Institutional Quality\u2014Issues of Concentrated Interests

Recent research has provided broad accounts of what high institutional quality is; bureaucrats should be impartial and recruited on merit, public power should not be used for private gain, there should be rule of law, and property rights should be secure. Many scholars argue the reason why, in spite of this knowledge, recent institutional reforms have had limited success is that improvements are not in the interest of incumbent elites. Constraining elites is, therefore, crucial for institutional improvements. In this article, I argue that economic diversification functions as one such constraint on elite behavior, affecting their ability to form collusive coalitions. When the economy is concentrated to a few sectors, elite interests are more uniform making it easier for them to organize. However, as the economy becomes more diverse, collusion becomes harder and elites must settle for impartial institutions more often. I test the theory using cross-national time series data covering the last 25 years; the results corroborate the theory, as the economy of a country becomes more diverse, institutions become more impartial.

Corporatist coalitions as agents of civil society: The politics of student and labour unions in Iran

ABSTRACT Authoritarian states often establish membership-based associations to channel popular grievances and to engage in mass mobilization. Across the MENA, state-controlled, ‘corporatist’ associations frequently co-exist alongside less state- controlled and more pluralist networks and associations. Scholars argue that such heterogeneity in the modes of state control explains authoritarian adaptiveness and resilience. Can corporatist associations contribute to the expansion of civil society and democratization? I focus on one mechanism by which corporatist union leaders might become agents of civil society: coalition-formation between corporatist associations. Using the case of labour and students unions in the Islamic Republic of Iran during the 1990s and early 2000s, I argue that threats and political opportunities can incentivize corporatist associations to ally against allied incumbent elites. In turn, such coalitions can prefigure broader alliances with civil society. The article concludes with a brief review of recent mobilizations in the Middle East and North Africa structured around coalitions between state-controlled associations and civil society.

Capital Cities, Conflict, and Misgovernance

We investigate the links between capital cities, conflict, and the quality of governance, starting from the assumption that incumbent elites are constrained by the threat of insurrection, and that the latter is rendered less effective by distance from the seat of political power. We show evidence that (i) conflict is more likely to emerge (and dislodge incumbents) closer to the capital, and (ii) isolated capitals are associated with misgovernance. The results hold only for relatively nondemocratic countries and for intrastate conflicts over government (as opposed to territory)—exactly the cases where our central assumption should apply. (JEL D72, D74, O17, O18, R12)

Conquering and coercing: Nonviolent anti-regime protests and the pathways to democracy

Recent research finds an association between nonviolent protests and democratic transitions. However, existing scholarship either does not specify the pathways through which nonviolent protests bring about democratization or conduct systematic empirical analyses demonstrating that the specified pathways are operative. This article proposes four pathways through which nonviolent anti-regime protests encourage democratic transitions, emphasizing their ability to directly conquer or indirectly coerce such transitions. Most simply, they can conquer democratic reforms by directly overthrowing authoritarian regimes and installing democracies. They can also coerce democratic reforms through three additional pathways. Nonviolent anti-regime protests can coerce incumbent elites into democratic reforms by threatening the survival of authoritarian regimes. They also increase the likelihood of elite splits, which promote negotiated democratic reforms. Finally, they encourage leadership change within the existing authoritarian regime. Following leadership change, nonviolent movements remain mobilized and are able to coerce democratic concessions from the regime’s new leaders. Our within-regime analyses provide robust empirical support for each pathway. We show that nonviolent anti-regime protests conquer democratic reforms by ousting autocratic regimes and replacing them with democracies. Nonviolent anti-regime protests also coerce elites into democratic reforms by threatening regime and leader survival. These findings highlight the importance of protest goals and tactics and also that nonviolent anti-regime protests have both direct and indirect effects on democratization.

Hollowing Out the State: Franchise Expansion and Fiscal Capacity in Colonial India

Studies of fiscal capacity have emphasized slow-moving structural and historical factors to explain variations in tax institutions. The cooperation of political elites, however, is crucial for building and maintaining robust tax institutions. This paper argues that political elites may weaken fiscal capacity in anticipation of new groups coming to power. One such instance occurred in the Colonial Indian provinces, where incumbent political elites hollowed out tax capacity in anticipation of franchise expansion. Why did this happen? In societies with hierarchical social orders, such as the caste system in India, incumbent elites are able to use the threat of de-segregation and a social-status cleavage to form anti-tax coalitions. Using a historical dataset from 1914-1925 and novel micro-level measures of land tax collection, tax avoidance, and the size of the bureaucracy, the paper demonstrates that fiscal capacity declined after franchise expansion in the districts with higher levels of inter-caste status inequality.

An economic theory of foreign interventions and regime change

AbstractI construct a theory of foreign interventions in which a home country's main trade partner may influence the course of regime change. The foreign country intervenes in support of the group that draws the largest gains from trade, since such a group is willing to concede most in trade agreements. But interventions are more than offset by the domestic political system, which supports in power the group that concedes least (economic nationalism). I allow for geopolitical competition between the main trade partner and a second foreign country as well as for domestic ideological preferences over the two and look at how geopolitical competition interacts with the economic mechanism described above. My results help interpret some of the patterns of Western interventions in the 20th century and the role of economic nationalism in regime change. Furthermore, they help explain why the Cold War strengthened the West's preference for incumbent elites, even when the oppositions did not have a strong communist ideology. I provide detailed historical evidence in favour of my arguments.

Russian politics and the Soviet past: Reassessing Stalin and Stalinism under Vladimir Putin

Evidence drawn from the intersection of historical memory and politics in Russia underline not only on-going framing battles over the Soviet past. The evidence suggests that the Kremlin is unwilling to develop and impose on society historical narratives which promote chauvinism, hypernationalism, and re-Stalinization. Although such an agenda has some support among incumbent elites and in society, it remains subordinate in terms of political influence as of early 2016. Instead, the regime is now extending support to groups in society and the political establishment which favor a critical assessment of the Soviet era, including Stalinism. This emerging criticism of the Soviet past serves a number of important goals of the leadership, including re-engagement with the West.To this end, the Kremlin recently approved new history textbooks critical of the Soviet past as well as a significant program that memorializes the victims of Soviet repressions. Yet the regime is unlikely to usher in thorough de-Stalinization which would threaten its power. Instead, the Kremlin is attempting to assemble a grand narrative that approves, as well as criticizes – in different measures – each of the regimes that existed in the 20th century (tsarist, communist, and post-communist). This incipient narrative constitutes a form of bricolage, which involves the retrieval and reassembly of diverse, often conflicting, elements to solve a problem. Here the problem is the long-standing, divisive issue of how to evaluate the history of 20th century Russia and its different regimes. The Kremlin now seeks to knit together the diverse identities of these regimes through the unifying historical thread of the Russian state. This act of bricolage also seeks to reconcile the contradictions within each regime: elements of the new narrative can be expected to condemn the inhumanity of Stalin and Stalinism while other facets will extol industrialization and the Great Patriotic War as the achievements of Russian-led Soviet society. From this perspective, neither re-Stalinization nor de-Stalinization is likely to occur in Putin's Russia. Nevertheless, if recent initiatives remain in place, critical assessments of Soviet foreign and domestic policies will become increasingly commonplace.

A reação da elite política incumbente na abertura democrática brasileira

RESUMOEste artigo analisa um dos possíveis canais através dos quais as elites incumbentes alinhadas com a ditadura brasileira foram capazes de reter o seu poder político durante a democratização na década de 1980. Com base em dados do PNAD e resultados de eleições legislativas, verificamos primeiro que os eleitores analfabetos que viviam nos estados que foram dominados pelo partido de elite durante a ditadura tinham uma probabilidade maior de se registar para votar do que aqueles que viviam em outros estados. Investigamos então se esta correlação positiva representa uma reação das elites incumbentes a fim de manter o seu poder político através da manipulação do eleitor ou se representa uma reação destes eleitores, a fim de tirar o poder das oligarquias. Constatamos que, em estados dominados pelo partido de elite, os analfabetos apresentaram maior probabilidade de estarem politicamente desinteressados e desinformados. Nossos resultados sugerem que uma reação politicamente motivada a partir desta população é implausível.

Reframing the foodscape: the emergent world of urban food policy

Cities are becoming key transition spaces where new food governance systems are being fashioned, creating ‘spaces of deliberation’ that bring together civil society, private actors, and local governments. In order to understand the potential of these new urban food policy configurations, this paper draws on urban political ecology scholarship as a critical lens to analyse governance-beyond-the-state processes and associated postpolitical configurations. Taking Bristol and Malmö as empirical case studies, the paper illustrates the different paths that cities are taking as they strive to fashion more sustainable urban foodscapes. The analysis highlights the contested nature of “sustainability” in transition studies and explores whether concerted action on the part of civil society and municipal government is capable of creating more inclusive food narratives. Although progressive political currents can be neutralised by incumbent elites, as theorists of the ‘postpolitical city’ have argued, these cities also show that the food system is a highly contested battleground in which the themes of sustainability and justice can help to mobilize progressive forces and open up a range of new political possibilities.

Structural adjustment comes to Europe: Lessons for the Eurozone from the conditionality debates

This article argues that the Economic Adjustment Programmes (EAPs) that came with loans to peripheral Eurozone members Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and now Cyprus, are very similar to the loans with conditionality, also known as Structural Adjustment Programs, that international financial institutions used as a policy tool in the 1980s and 1990s. It defines structural adjustment programs and then shows how Eurozone rules plus the EAPs resemble them. It then canvasses the literature evaluating structural adjustment in the developing world in order to formulate expectations for its performance in Europe. The conclusions from the large literature on structural adjustment policies suggest that the EAPs will: be badly implemented; be neutral or bad for growth; be bad for equity and the poor; have unpredictable policy consequences; and will allow incumbent elites to preserve their positions. Preliminary evidence from the four peripheral countries confirms that the same problems are afflicting EAPs.

Structural Adjustment Comes to Europe: Lessons for the Eurozone from the Conditionality Debates

This article argues that the Economic Adjustment Programmes (EAP) that came with loans to peripheral Eurozone members Greece, Ireland, and Portugal are very similar to the loans with conditionality, also known as Structural Adjustment Programs, that international financial institutions have used as a policy tool in the 1980s and 1990s. It defines structural adjustment programs and then shows how Eurozone rules plus the Economic Adjustment Programmes resemble them. It then canvasses the literature evaluating structural adjustment in the developing world in order to formulate expectations for its performance in Europe. The null hypotheses from the large literature on structural adjustment policies suggest that the EAPs will: be badly implemented; be neutral or bad for growth; be bad for equity and the poor; have unpredictable policy consequences; and will allow incumbent elites to preserve their positions. Preliminary evidence from the three peripheral countries confirms that the same problems are afflicting EAPs.

Non‐linear geographics and the economics of transition and democratization1

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of geography on the transition process in authoritarian political regimes, and to investigate the nature of the links between political change, economic reforms and geographical location. A simple model of transition and democratization is presented wherein we show that the effectiveness of repression by the incumbent elite is a negative function of the distance to the ‘free world’. In consequence, geography has conflicting effects on shifts in political power. This article provides a rationale for the counterintuitive fact that the first authoritarian country to start a transition process towards democratization is not necessarily the one nearest to the free world.

Politics in the Origins: The Making of Corporate Law in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

The growing recognition of the role of law in financial and economic development has generated significant disagreement about what determines the structure and content of legal institutions in the first place. Legal traditions and local politics have emerged in the literature as the most likely sources of legal development, but the relationship between these two forces remains largely unexplored. This Article investigates the determinants of legal evolution by examining the development of corporate laws in Brazil since the early nineteenth century. Contrary to standard views, foreign commercial law models were neither forcefully imposed by Portuguese colonizers nor followed automatically due to language or cultural affinity with the French legal tradition. Brazilian lawmakers deliberately picked and chose among the laws of different civil and common law jurisdictions, and substantially altered their essence in order to best fit the interests of incumbent elites. Politics mattered from the outset, while legal family considerations were not a significant constraint to early transplant decisions. This Article also suggests that selective legal transplants and local adaptations were one of the channels through which elites periodically recreated inefficient institutions over time.