Distribution Of Political Power Research Articles

Democracy and policy stability

We explain stable growth performance in democracies by characterizing political systems in terms of the distribution of political power across groups, and show when the qualities of policy alternatives are uncertain, greater democracy (decentralization of authority) leads to more stable policy choices. We empirically test this mechanism by creating measures of the inter-temporal variability in fiscal and trade policies. In an array of specifications (cross-sectional, panel with fixed-effects, matching models, instrumental variables, difference-in-difference), we show that policy choices are significantly more stable over time in democracies. This mechanism explains a large part of the negative link between democracy and output volatility.

Political Economy in a Changing World

We provide a general framework for the analysis of institutional dynamics in an environment in which payoffs and political powers change stochastically. Assuming that economic and political institutions as well as individual types can be ordered, and preferences and the distribution of political power satisfy natural “single-crossing” (increasing differences) conditions, we prove existence of a pure-strategy Markov voting equilibrium, provide conditions for its uniqueness, and present a number of comparative static results. We then use this framework to study the dynamics of political rights and repression in the presence of threats from extremist groups and the dynamics of collective experimentation.

THE UNACCOUNTABLE CENSUS: COLONIAL ENUMERATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SOMALI PEOPLE OF KENYA

AbstractIn 2010, the Kenyan government annulled national census results due to concerns that Somalis in the country had been over-counted. This article traces the genesis of this recent demographic dispute, which held important implications for the distribution of political power. It shows that African leaders inherited long-standing practices laid down by the colonial state, which was unable to obtain a reliable count of the number of people in Kenya or render its Somali subjects into a countable, traceable population. In regions where expansive Somali networks had long predated British rule, colonial authorities only loosely enforced the concept of a permanent population. By yielding to this reality, colonial officials developed governance techniques that should not be mistakenly portrayed as state ‘failures’. These policies call into question the applicability of James C. Scott's concept of ‘legibility’ to Kenya. They also suggest that recent demographic controversies cannot be reductively blamed on ‘illegal’ immigration.

Resource rents, balance of power, and political stability

We study the association between natural resource rents and internal political stability, highlighting the importance of the distribution of political power as a mediating factor. We present a simple theoretical model demonstrating that increased rents are likely to be positively associated with the internal stability of a powerful incumbent while destabilizing a less powerful incumbent. Our empirical analysis confirms this prediction. Employing panel data for more than 120 countries from the period 1984–2009, our estimation results demonstrate that resource rents can promote political stability but only when political power is sufficiently concentrated. Indeed, if the incumbent is sufficiently weak, rents fuel instability. Our main results hold when we control for the effects of income, quality of institutions (rule of law, democratic accountability and corruption), persistence of political stability, time-varying common shocks, country fixed effects, possible endogeneity of rents and power balance to political stability, and various additional covariates. Our analysis departs from the existing literature by emphasizing not (only) the type of government, but rather the strength of government, as a key determinant of the impact of resource rents on political stability. This analysis sheds light on current political transformations and reconfigurations in the resource rich Middle East and North Africa.

The Political Economy of Fiji: Past, Present, and Prospects

The present in terms of the level of economic development in Fiji can be explained by the past, and particularly the distribution of political power and resources some 140 years ago. The prominent role of the traditional chiefs, the Methodist Church, and ethnicity in the political economy of Fiji dates back to the earliest days of colonisation with ramifications for the coups of the past, the politics of the present, and the prospects for economic development. A spike in emigration of Indo-Fijians since the first coup d’état of 1987 is rapidly changing the ethnic composition of the population and with it the political economy of Fiji. The fourth constitution (in four decades) promulgated in 2013 is an attempt to break free from divisive politics of the past. If successful, then the prospects for a peaceful and prosperous Fiji are healthy.

Power-Sharing in Bahrain: A Still-Absent Debate

Bahrain was among the first Arab Spring countries in which mass protests arose in February 2011. The authoritarian monarchy, which excludes vast segments of society from fair political and economic participation, opted for the use of force to suppress the mainly peaceful demonstrations, but it could not expunge the protests by a popular movement that continues to exist to this day. The power struggle is occurring along a Sunna-Shia divide that interconnects with regional sectarian tensions. This article investigates power-sharing arrangements as an option to deal with such deep divisions. It outlines the historical background of the sectarian tensions in Bahrain and the rudimentary forms of power-sharing that have existed there in the past. It then analyses the current debate between the regime and the opposition regarding the distribution of political power. While the reality still seems to be far removed from a power-sharing solution, we nevertheless recommend power-sharing as a feasible way out of the current stalemate.

Campaign Finance and American Democracy

This article considers the vast academic literature on campaign finance regulation in the United States, drawing on the fields of political theory, American politics, election law, constitutional law, and economics. The scholarly treatment of campaign finance regulation has become increasingly focused on fundamental questions about democratic governance and democratic values, and it has generated profound debates about participation, representation, free speech, political equality, liberty, and the organization and distribution of political power in government and society. This article reviews the original debate about campaign finance regulation and traces its evolution in both political theory and constitutional law, identifying current areas of inquiry and new directions in research. In particular, the article focuses on corruption, political equality and representation, electoral exceptionalism, and the post–Citizens United landscape. It also surveys empirical findings from political science and economics.

Language policy-making in multilingual education: mass media and the framing of medium of instruction

In some settings, medium of instruction (MOI) policies in multilingual education break out into public debates in mass media involving politicians, business leaders, government officials, parents, and school children. These public discussions of MOI often index struggles over the distribution of political power and economic resources, and issues such as national cultural identity, national security, equity, and social justice. Although there is a vast scholarly literature on framing and media effects, very little research has examined the role of mass media in MOI policy-making. Specifically, how do mass media shape the policies that are adopted in multilingual contexts? This article reports on a comparative analysis of the coverage in major newspapers of two important MOI controversies in multilingual education: mother tongue versus English MOI in Hong Kong and the continuing discussion of the role of English and Spanish in Arizona. Using the conceptual frameworks of representation theory, legitimization theory, and framing, I identify the major components of the ideological framing of MOI policy in these contexts, the political agendas implicit in media texts about MOI, and the implications for language policy research and practice.

Del cómo y el cuándo las elecciones comenzaron a tener sentido. Algunas consideraciones sobre la pluralidad política en San Luis Potosí, 1991-2012

El artículo tiene por objetivo mostrar algunas características del cambio político en el estado de San Luis Potosí durante el periodo 1991-2012. Consideramos que una parte capital del proceso de dicho cambio ha girado en torno a la realización de las elecciones que de forma paulatina, y no sin algunos sobresaltos o retrocesos, han permitido que a partir del ejercicio del sufragio los ciudadanos configuren una distribución del poder político crecientemente competida. Se analizan las elecciones de gobernador, diputados y Ayuntamientos durante el periodo mencionado. El acento del estudio está en la identificación de los distintos ganadores en los distintos cargos de representación a lo largo del tiempo. Como resultado de ello, se identifica una diversidad de fenómenos que son discutidos a lo largo del documento. Para el objetivo de este artículo, el fenómeno más relevante tiene que ver con el incremento de la competencia electoral en la entidad que se reflejó en una distribución del poder político compleja y cambiante. En el estado se edificó un andamiaje de reglas e instituciones que fueron conduciendo las distintas pulsiones políticas de la sociedad por la ruta democrática. Tal situación trajo como resultado que las preferencias partidistas de los ciudadanos pudieran expresarse de forma más genuina que en el pasado y ello permitió que la evaluación que los electores hicieron de una diversidad de elementos, entre ellos del funcionamiento de sus gobiernos y de las expectativas generales en las distintas campañas por los candidatos, definiera el sentido de sus votos.

Resource Rents, Power, and Political Stability

We study the association between resource rents and political stability, highlighting the importance of the distribution of political power as a mediating factor. We present a simple theoretical model showing that increased rents are likely to be positively associated with the stability of a powerful incumbent while destabilizing a less powerful incumbent. Our empirical analysis confirms this prediction: Using panel data for more than 120 countries from 1984-2009, our results show that rents can promote political stability, but only when the political power is sufficiently concentrated. Indeed, if the incumbent is sufficiently weak, rents fuel instability. Our main results hold when we control for time varying common shocks, country fixed effects and various additional covariates.

Bones of Contention: The Political Economy of Height Inequality

Human osteological data provide a rich, still-to-be-mined source of information about the distribution of nutrition and, by extension, the distribution of political power and economic wealth in societies of long ago. On the basis of data we have collected and analyzed on societies ranging from foraging communities to the ancient Egyptian and modern European monarchies, we find that the shift from hunting and gathering to complex fishing techniques and to labor-intensive agriculture opened up inequalities that had discernible effects on human health and stature. But we also find that political institutions intervened decisively in the distribution of resources within societies. Political institutions appear to be shaped not only by economic factors but also by military technology and vulnerability to invasion.

Revealed Political Power

When is a polity biased? Consider an “outsider” who observes policy data but observes neither citizens’ preferences nor the underlying distribution of political power. He views political power as if it were derived from wealth‐weighted voting, where the weights determine the wealth bias. Positive weights favor the rich whereas negative ones favor the poor. We show that any policy data is rationalized by any wealth‐weighted system. However, policy and polling observations together imply explicit bounds on the set of rationalizing biases. Accumulated data narrows this band. The inferential model is consistent with models of political competition for campaign contributions.

REVEALED POLITICAL POWER

When is a polity biased? Consider an “outsider” who observes policy data but observes neither citizens’ preferences nor the underlying distribution of political power. He views political power as if it were derived from wealth-weighted voting, where the weights determine the wealth bias. Positive weights favor the rich whereas negative ones favor the poor. We show that any policy data is rationalized by any wealth-weighted system. However, policy and polling observations together imply explicit bounds on the set of rationalizing biases. Accumulated data narrows this band. The inferential model is consistent with models of political competition for campaign contributions.

Inequality and Personal Income Taxation

Why does personal income taxation (PIT) remain relatively low in many developing countries despite a period of democratic advancement and rapid economic growth? This stylized fact is hard to reconcile with standard political economy models of taxation that expect democratic regimes to bring about redistribution in countries that suffer from high inequality. This article argues that the details of political institutions are key to understand why PIT remains low in many developing and unequal countries. In particular, we show how legislative malapportionment may prevent the use of personal income taxes as a major revenue source by skewing the distribution of political power across groups. Malapportionment is usually not exogenous but the result of design by those with political power at the transition or reform moment. As such, it depends on the structure of political and economic power in society. Based on a sample of more than 50 countries between 1990 and 2007, this article finds that (a) countries with historically more unequal distributions of wealth and income tend to systematically present higher levels of legislative malapportionment and (b) higher levels of malapportionment are associated with lower shares of personal income taxes in GDP.

Constituency of peoples in the constitutional system of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Chasing fair solutions

The constituency of peoples as a collective political right of ethnic communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats) was provided as a constitutional category by the Washington and Dayton Peace Agreements. On the one hand, institutional guarantees for equal status of ethnic groups, which make the essence of constituency, can indeed help to decrease the insecurity and tensions among them and secure the removal of obstacles during the distribution of political power. On the other hand, it is difficult to foresee the consequences of institutionalized ethnic equality on the individual equality of the members of the different groups. In that sense, there is a real risk of identification of the collective ethnic identity with individual identity, and limitation of individual rights to collective political rights of ethnic groups, which is the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina in post-Dayton period. By its decision in the Sejdic-Finci case, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that Bosnia and Herzegovina, taking into account all its specificity, should find a “lucky” combination of civil and ethnic constitutional model.

People, technology and spaces: towards a new generation of social movements

Editors' note This paper reflects the activist experience of its author, Philip Thigo of the Nairobi-based Social Development Network (SODNET), one of a new generation of agencies that are seeking to deploy new communication technology for socially emancipatory purposes. The paper makes three very strong claims concerning the political effects of social movement activists deploying ICT. Firstly, it argues that in Kenya, the use of ICT by civil society agencies has helped to open up and enlarge new kinds of political space – ‘self-created spaces’. These spaces offer new kinds of political possibilities in contrast to the organised and managed spaces occupied by more institutionalised and officially registered ‘non-government organisations’. These spaces are new, because popularly accessible communication technologies have opened up public domains for civil politics where no such space existed previously; they constitute fresh domains that are not managed or regulated by authority. Thigo's second major claim is that these new spaces are arenas that can accommodate a new type of politics. The communicative network that groups such as Ushahidi and Huduma have embedded within the communities in which they are active facilitate quite novel configurations of collective action. These permit the political effectiveness of less organised groups, they broaden the social range of political expression, and they give equality to different voices – through such instruments as crowd-sourcing. These voices can now be heard unmediated by the traditional aggregating agencies such as political parties or the notables and patrons who often profess to speak for communities. Indeed, in enabling the bypassing of conventional channels of patron–client relations, the new technologically networked social movements embody a really formidable challenge to the existing distribution of political power. However, the sources of political power may be relocating in other ways too. The third claim that can be derived from Thigo's argument is that popular deployment of communication technology is also opening up novel prospects for advancing the state's capacity. The official Kenyan Open Data Initiative described in this paper is an unprecedented effort by an African government to provide information about its functions and resources available to citizens. It doing so it represents an important extension of government functionality. Of course, the state's deployment of information technology can add considerably to its repressive capacity but it can also extend its distributive effectiveness and its moral authority. To be sure, movements such as Huduma and Ushahidi are primarily concerned with empowering poor and rightless groups. However, in their chosen strategy of ‘constructive engagement’, Thigo's people-centred ICT networks might also significantly transform and enlarge the bases of African state power.

Book Reviews

Harry de Gorter of Cornell University reviews, “Political Power and Economic Policy: Theory, Analysis, and Empirical Applications” by Gordon C. Rausser, Johan Swinnen, and Pinhas Zusman. The EconLit abstract of this book begins: “Analyzes the links between political economics, governance structures, and the distribution of political power in economic policy making. Discusses public policy—the lens of political economy; the Nash solution to the bargaining problem; the Harsanyi solution to the bargaining problem; political-economic analysis; normative political-economic analysis; dynamic political-economic analysis; political power, ideology, and political organizational structures; political power, influence, and lobbying; constitutional prescription and political power coefficients; the political economy of commodity market intervention; the political economy of public research and development; a political-economic analysis of redistributive policies and public good investments; interest groups, coalition breaking, and productive policies; policy reform and compensation; political-economic analysis of land reform; political-economic analysis of water resource systems; the political economy lens on quality and public standard regulations; political-economic analysis in transition economies; the power of bureaucracies—the European Commission and EU policy reforms; political econometrics; the political econometrics of the Israeli dairy industry; flexible policy instruments given a political-power distribution; estimating statistical properties of power weight; and the role of institutions in the joint determination of political economic resource transactions and political economic seeking transfers. Rausser is Robert Gordon Sproul Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Swinnen is Professor of Economics and Director of the LICOS Institute for Institutions and Economic Performance at the Catholic University of Leuven and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies. The late Zusman was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Index.”

International Political Economy, Global Financial Orders and the 2008 Financial Crisis

The 2008 financial crisis triggered the most severe global economic downturn since the Great Depression. The crisis has provoked soul-searching among economists, yet international political economy (IPE) scholars have been relatively sanguine. We argue that IPE has strayed too far away from studying the geopolitical and systemic causes and consequences of the global economy. IPE must explain the generation and transformation ofglobal financial orders.Both the distribution of political power and the content of economic ideas will shape any emergent global financial order. A Kuhnianlife-cycle frameworkof global financial orders permits a systemic approach to global finance that integrates the study of power and social logics into our understanding of markets.

Political Economy in a Changing World

We provide a general framework for the analysis of the dynamics of institutional change (e.g., democratization, extension of political rights, or repression of different groups), and how these dynamics interact with (anticipated and unanticipated) changes in the distribution of political power and in economic structure. We focus on Markov Voting Equilibria, which require that economic and political changes should take place if there exists a subset of players with the power to implement such changes and who will obtain higher expected discounted utility by doing so. Assuming that economic and political institutions as well as individual types can be ordered, and preferences and the distribution of political power satisfy natural single crossing (increasing differences) conditions, we prove the existence of a pure-strategy equilibrium, provide conditions for its uniqueness, and present a number of comparative static results that apply at this level of generality. We then use this framework to study the dynamics of political rights and repression in the presence of radical groups that can stochastically grab power and the dynamics of collective experimentation over institutions.

Elecciones sin Turno: los comicios a diputado de 1879

This paper deals with the Spanish elections to the Congress of Deputies, 1879. Held under Martinez-Campos government, they were the first experience with the new electoral law of 1878 and the return of limited suffrage. Taking place when the parties «turno» and «encasillado» were not yet institutionalized, those elections have specific features that differentiate them from sucessive elections. The most important are: a smaller government intervention, increased competition and proselytizing compared with Constituents «Cortes» of 1876, and a limited incidence of fraud and corruption. With unpublished documents of archives, press intensive study and using comparison and theories of electoral modernization through competition and «nacionalization» process of nineteeth-century politics, the author attempts to reopen debates about whether the elections had not been able to provide an alternative to the «prerrogativa regia», especially in determining the distribution of political power.