Political Regime Change Research Articles

‘Bringing the outside in’: illustrations from Haiti and Mali for the re-conceptualization of democracy promotion

This article is about the conceptualization of democracy promotion in political science. It argues that democracy promoters in aid-dependent states do not influence the change and stability of political regimes mostly ‘from without’, as typically assumed in academia. Instead, it mainly takes place ‘within’ the supported political system. Empirical findings from democracy assistance in Haiti and Mali challenge the typical conceptualization and shed light on factors that have been dismissed so far. By scaling-up these findings, the article concludes that a change of perspective from a static to a dynamic, process-oriented, and context-sensitive understanding of democracy promotion on the one hand, and the integration of findings from academic research on political regime change and development research on the other, would generate a conceptualization of the phenomenon that could help discover how democracy promotion works. Finally, empirical illustrations suggest that the incorporation of donors' formal and informal institutions into the supported political system, and the dense interaction between donors and local actors during democracy promotion, are likely to undermine democratization in aid-dependent states.

Political regime change, economic liberalization and growth accelerations

We examine whether the type of political regime, regime changes, and economic liberalization are related to economic growth accelerations. Our results show that growth accelerations are preceded by economic liberalizations. We also find that growth accelerations are less likely to happen the longer a political regime—be it a democracy or an autocracy—has been in place, while (a move toward) more democracy according to the Polity IV dataset reduces the likelihood of growth accelerations.

Time boundaries and landscape change: collective farms 1947-1994

The paper explores time boundaries in landscapes on the example of collectivization of Estonian agriculture after the Second World War. It argues that changing political regimes leave their imprint also in landscape, causing temporal boundaries. These temporal boundaries work as screens that influence our understanding of the past landscapes. The paper explores the transparency of these boundaries in the context of landscape change and continuity and tries to explain the essence of landscape change, combining different approaches to landscape.

Cultural Performance and Political Regime Change

The question about how culture shapes the possibilities for successful democratization has been a controversial issue for decades. This article maintains that successful democratization depends not only on the distribution of political interests and resources, but to seriously challenge a political regime, the advocates of democracy require cultural legitimacy as well. Accordingly, the central question is how democratic ideas are connected to the broader culture of a social community. This issue will be addressed in the case of South Korea. The Minjung democracy movement challenged the military regime by connecting democratic ideas concerning popular sovereignty and human rights with cultural traditions. The dissidents substantiated democratic values by (1) articulating an alternative concept of political representation against the authoritarian regime, (2) increasing the cultural resonance of their concept by linking democratic ideas to traditional narratives and practices, (3) developing a rich dramaturgical repertoire of collective action, and (4) mobilizing public outrage by fusing the above three elements within historical situations.

Oligarchs, political regime changes, and firm valuation1

AbstractThis paper examines the impact of a regime shift on the valuation of politically powerful oligarch firms. Focusing on the Yeltsin–Putin regime shift in Russia, we find that the valuations of oligarch‐controlled firms are significantly higher under the Putin regime than under the Yeltsin regime after controlling for industry and time effects. The findings suggest that the increasing cost of extracting private benefits outweighs the reduction in the value of political connections following the political regime change. The results are also consistent with changes in the risk of state expropriation. Our results indicate that effects driven by the political regime change complement the traditional view that increased ownership concentration improved the performance of Russian oligarch firms.

History Remaking and Cultural Identity: Subjectivity Transformation in Taiwan's Visual Culture

Political intervention and ideology can control and influence the formation of cultural characteristics and subjectivity. Stability and authenticity of cultural characteristics, therefore, are temporary and ever-shifting like a perpetually bouncing molecule in space. Taiwan is a typical example: its geographic location determines its fate. From the inception of human civilization, the Taiwan Strait has become the sea corridor and Taiwan the midway station, linking the South Pacific with Japan, and the island's proximity to mainland China has made it a convenient destination for Chinese pioneers. Since the rise of maritime exploration in the seventeenth century, Taiwan was colonized by European countries such as Portugal and Spain, followed by the Qing dynasty, which in 1683 formally claimed the island as part of its territory. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, Taiwan was ceded to Japan to become its colony. Following World War II the Nationalist Government of China reclaimed Taiwan, and the island eventually became its sole sovereign territory. Chinese culture became mainstream, naturally replacing Japanese colonial culture on the island. During the period of Nationalist-governed Taiwan, the island represented orthodox Chinese culture, establishing Taiwan's subjectivity. Local consciousness had begun to ferment in the 1970s, and the pace quickened when postmodern ideas were introduced the following decade. After violent political struggles and regime changes, Taiwan's nation status, cultural roots and identity have all experienced drastic transformation resulting in further ambiguity. This article focuses on four aspects: the dismantling of the grand narrative, reconstructing new historical concepts, consolidating Taiwanese characteristics, and the mutual benefits and conflicts between internationalization and localization, to elucidate ongoing anxieties about Taiwan's characteristics, subjectivity and ideology. Dismantling of the grand narrative focuses on how modernist theories of the nationstate influenced postwar Taiwan culture and historical identity. During the postmodern era this framework was dismantled; postmodern theories became the backbone of Taiwan's local consciousness movement, which in turn triggered the reexamination and recreation of Taiwanese history and culture. This early stage of cultural reformation deeply influenced artists' sense of belonging and engendered transformation in the iconography and concepts of Taiwan's visual arts. Reconstruction of Taiwan's historical concepts focuses on extracting lost, unfamiliar, unrelated cultural elements to weave a complete and persuasive historical iconography. Conflict naturally arose during this process of forced elimination of memories and implantation of new ”memories.” Taiwan's social movements are laden with this sort of conflict. They use visual arts to propagate ideology and strengthen points, and while this style of visual images often belonged to media propagation of popular culture, it demonstrates that Taiwan's visual culture shifted along with ideological changes. The inevitable, unavoidable tug-of-war ensued during the reformation of Taiwan history and cultural identity.

Oligarchs, Institutional Change, and Firm Valuation: Russian Evidence

This paper examines the impact of a regime shift on the valuation of politically powerful oligarch firms. Focusing on the Yeltsin-Putin regime shift in Russia, we find that the valuations of oligarch-controlled firms are significantly higher under the Putin regime than under the Yeltsin regime after controlling for industry and time effects. The findings suggest that the increasing cost of extracting private benefits outweigh the reduction in the value of political connections following the political regime change. The results are also consistent with changes in the risk of state expropriation. Our results indicate that effects driven by the political regime change complement the traditional view stating that increased ownership concentration improved the performance of Russian oligarch firms.

Politics, Instability, and International Investment Flows

We analyze the role of political instability for the composition of foreign investment, whether it takes the form of a majority- or minority-owned investment. We focus on the instability generated by the change of the party in power rather than on the risk of changes of political regime or expropriation risk associated with this change. In majority-owned establishments, a foreign investor retains the control and enjoys fewer agency problems, while for minority-owned investments or joint ventures domestic partners of a foreign investor can lobby the government for preferential arrangements, such as firm-specific tax breaks. Political instability decreases the payoff of political connections in the future and decreases the attractiveness of minority-owned investments. The implications of our model are supported by empirical tests.

Information Revolutions and the Overthrow of Autocratic Regimes

This paper presents a model of information quality and political regime change. If enough citizens act against a regime, it is overthrown. Citizens are imperfectly informed about how hard this will be and the regime can, at a cost, engage in propaganda so that at face-value it seems hard. The citizens are rational and evaluate their information knowing the regime's incentives. The model makes three predictions. First, even rational citizens may not correctly infer the amount of manipulation. Second, as the intrinsic quality of information available becomes sufficiently high, the regime is more likely to survive. Third, the regime benefitsfrom ambiguity about the amount of manipulation, and consequently, as it becomes cheaper to manipulate, the regime is also more likely to survive. Key results of the benchmark static model extend to a simple dynamic setting where there are waves of unrest.

Long term changes in social metabolism and land use in Czechoslovakia, 1830–2000: An energy transition under changing political regimes

Industrialisation goes along with sweeping changes in society's interrelations with its environment. The transition from an agrarian to an industrial society leads to fundamentally new patterns in social metabolism, a process which has been described as socio-metabolic transition. This paper investigates this transition for the case of the current Czech and Slovak Republics and presents a dataset on the development of key variables related to social metabolism during the last 170 years. The dataset includes time series data on the extraction of biomass and fossil fuels, energy consumption and land use. Combining data on Bohemia and Moravia (1830–1915) with data on Czechoslovakia (1918–1992) and the Czech and Slovak Republics (1993–2002), the study covers a period of consecutive political and institutional changes. It includes the feudal regime of the late period of the Habsburg Empire and its disintegration with WWI, the short period of the Czechoslovak Republic in the interwar period, the era of a planned economy under a communist regime, the collapse of this regime and the subsequent turn towards a market economy and European integration in the 1990s. The period was characterized by economic and physical growth. It saw a doubling of population and a growth in GDP by a factor 20. Domestic energy consumption (DEC) increased by a factor 10 and the share of biomass in DEC declined from more than 98% to less than 20%. All in all the observed changes closely resemble the characteristic path of the socio-metabolic transition as observed in other Western European economies. Major political and economic changes did not result in fundamental alterations of the socio-metabolic transition until the mid-20th century. The communist era (1945–1989) was characterized by rapid physical growth and changes in the energy and land use system very similar to those of other Western European economies in the same period, however leading to DEC values substantially higher than those of other European countries at around 300 GJ/cap in the mid-1980s. The disturbances caused by the Velvet Revolution resulted in short term turbulences in social metabolism and structural adaptations, and around the year 2000, the Czech and Slovak Republics show biophysical features very similar to those of other Western European countries.

Mapping ‘Hybrid Regimes’: Regime Types and Concepts in Comparative Politics

This article addresses the conceptual challenges involved in mapping political regimes. The first section offers a critique of regime typologies that adopt a uni-dimensional approach to differentiating between political regimes. The second section shows why a two-dimensional typology is better grounded in liberal democratic theory as well as for analytically grasping the empirical variation between political regimes and regime change. The penultimate section proposes a classificatory scheme on the basis of a clear set of defining attributes of the two constitutive dimensions of liberal democracy – electoralism and constitutionalism. Equipped with this two-dimensional classificatory device the article proceeds in the last section to propose a regime typology with four main types of regime: democratic, constitutional-oligarchic, electoral-autocratic, and authoritarian. This provides a conceptual map in which the categories and subcategories developed by the literature on hybrid regimes can be located and analytically related to each other. The last section further divides the category of democratic regimes into four subtypes: liberal, constitutional, electoral, and limited.

Psychopathology of Schizophrenia in Ljubljana (Slovenia) From 1881 To 2000: Changes in the Content of Delusions in Schizophrenia Patients Related To Various Sociopolitical, Technical and Scientific Changes

Clinical observations and research have found the content of delusions in schizophrenia to be sensitive to sociopolitical and cultural factors. The aim of this retrospective case-note study was to determine changes in the frequencies of various contents of delusions in schizophrenia patients over time. A total of 120 records of first-time admission schizophrenia patient at Ljubljana's psychiatric hospital in the period from 1881 to 2000 were randomly selected. Information was taken from each record to fill out a form specially created for this study. The frequencies of delusions with regard to their content in various time spans were compared. A marked increase in two delusional themes--persecution and self-reference--was found after the change of political regime (1941-2000) in Slovenia. After the spread of radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s in Slovenia, there was an obvious increase in delusions of outside influence and control as well as delusions with technical themes. A striking increase in the percentage of Schneiderian first-rank symptoms was found after the spread of Schneider's ideas in the 1950s. Sociopolitical changes and scientific and technical developments have a marked influence on the delusional content in schizophrenia.

Learning from the Golden Age of Czechoslovak Animation: The Past as the Key to Unlocking Contemporary Issues

Can Czech animators resurrect the Golden Age of Czech animation or will they succumb to the changes of an open market economy? The post-1989 privatization of animation studios and subsequent withdrawal of government funding are commonly considered as one of the most significant factors contributing to the current decline of Czech animated films. This article argues that a number of additional factors associated with the post-1989 change of political regime have impacted on Czech animation production. These factors include: (1) the change of themes due to the removal of the communist regime as the common antagonist; (2) the fragmentation of the Czech audience due to the importation of animated films from the west and new methods of distributing content; and (3) economic censorship pressuring artists and producers to ensure financial success. In examining the history of the Czech animation industry during and after the communist regime, the authors present an outline of the conditions of the Prague Spring in 1968, during which the Czech animated films further elevated their international reputation and experienced exponential growth. In contrast to these conditions, this article highlights the contemporary issues that are affecting Czech animation studios today.

Nouakchott

Created ex nihilo prior to independence (1958), Nouakchott is both a city of uncontrolled urban growth (especially given the combined influence of the end of nomadic life and the great draughts) and the seat of all trappings of power, designed to symbolise the State, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Presently, Nouakchoot is primarily a city that must resolve two major problems, notably with the help of the urban development program of the World Bank: environmental risk and tenure. This is also within a context that has witnessed the arrival of petroleum in the capital city and a change in political regimes due to recent democratic elections.

Literary Alternatives to Rational Choice: Historical Psychology and Semi-Detached Marriages

Literary Alternatives to Rational Choice:Historical Psychology and Semi-Detached Marriages Regenia Gagnier In The Insatiability of Human Wants: Economics and Aesthetics in Market Society, I traced a broad cultural shift during the second half of the nineteenth century from an Enlightenment conception of Reason as the mind's ability to understand and improve the world to rationality as the individual's chosen path towards a goal irrespective of the quality of the choice.1 Under this shift, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful as universal or collective consensus, sensus communis, would give way to individual choice as Taste, or mood, or lifestyle. The goal of Rational Choice theory is not the particular substantive end or product but rather the formal mapping or modelling that leads to a desired end (whatever it is) in the form of subjectively ranked preferences. In these mappings and rankings, any attempt to comment on the quality of revealed preference is typically labelled "paternalism," and the preferences are "revealed" by the choices. Any constraints on choice are typically left to one side as "exogenous." While Rational Choice theory was colonising most social science disciplines, when I published my book in 2000 it had received no other attention in literary and cultural criticism. Yet two philosophers in particular have used literature, specifically nineteenth-century fiction, to reflect on the limits of Rational Choice theory. In Poetic Justice (1995), Martha Nussbaum found that Rational Choice was inadequate to human experience in its reduction of quality to quantity; aggregation to total or average utility without concern for distribution; sum-raking or maximizing procedure; conception of self-interest as motivation; and exogenous preferences as simply given rather than socially mutable.2 Nussbaum proposed literature as an alternative that allowed us to assess quality of life and that through sympathetic imagination involved [End Page 23] the reader in the assessment. Reading literature, she thought, gave us a basis of sympathy with each individual life and a state of judicious spectatorship essential to human flourishing. In Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (1999) and Ulysses Unbound (2000) Jon Elster argued that the main value of art is emotional, not cognitive nor perceptual, and that the emotions matter "because many forms of human behaviour would be unintelligible if we did not see them through the prism of emotion." In his more recent Closing the Books (2004), he considers how transitional justice, or retribution and reparation after a change of political regime, may be shaped by the immediate urgency of emotion and by the decay of emotion over time.3 For Elster, the interaction between emotions and incentives is more complex than most cost-benefit models, and he called for an "historical psychology" that would include anthropology, sociology, and neurobiology, plus fiction for a "fine-grained understanding of real-life emotional phenomena."4 In claiming that the "main value of art is emotional not perceptual nor cognitive,"5 Elster, and to a lesser extent Nussbaum, endorsed a dualism only too acceptable to social scientists. Interestingly, when Elster lists the disciplines to be consulted in historical psychology—anthropology, sociology, neurobiology—he does not then include literary criticism, but rather "fiction." Yet the first three are disciplines; their objects are human kinds, society, the body. The last, fiction, is the object or field of the discipline of literary or cultural studies. Elster should have written anthropology, sociology, neurobiology, and literary and cultural studies or humankind, society, the nervous system, and literature, but not three disciplines plus raw fiction, the object of a discipline. This article proposes a less dualistic historical psychology, in which reason is not the province of science and emotion not that of literature, and in which we are not asked to choose between what Elster sees as "the economic imperialism" that explains emotions by the Rational Choice paradigm and the "cultural-studies imperialism" that sees emotions as endlessly malleable social constructions.6 C. Wright Mills argued as early as The Sociological Imagination (1959) that the genre of biography joined historical change and social structure within the dynamics of particular lives and that only biography could make available to us the detailed processes of historical change.7 It is well...

Contingent Political Capital and International Alliances: Evidence from South Korea

Though prior research has suggested that a company's ties to political networks have only a positive value or no value, this study examines whether political network ties can also be a significant liability for companies. Analyzing South Korea as a representative emerging economy, I find that being tied through elite sociopolitical networks to the regime in power significantly increased the rate at which South Korean companies formed cross-border strategic alliances, but also that being tied through elite sociopolitical networks to the political enemies of the regime in power significantly decreased that rate. Results show that an unexpected change in political regime could quickly change a political liability into an asset and that network ties continued to be important determinants of cross-border alliance activity as South Korea proceeded with liberalization. The present study sheds further light on the so-called dark side of embeddedness by focusing on who is negatively targeted by having the “wrong friends” at the wrong time. Just as positive ties can lead to favor exchange and other benefits for companies, negative ties can lead companies to be the victims of discrimination, resource exclusion, and even occasional expropriation and sabotage between rival sociopolitical networks.

Revolutionaries' cemeteries in Berlin: memory, history, place and space

ABSTRACTIn Germany, the Revolutions of 1848 and 1918/19 resulted in the martyrdom of opposition leaders and constituents, whose burial sites in Berlin became key sites of memory and commemoration for the working-class movement. Political turbulence and regime change throughout the twentieth century has resulted in contestation over the meaning and use of these places; a trajectory illustrating the dynamic, reciprocal relationship between popular memory and official history, and the interplay between representation, place-based associations and spatial relations in constituting social meaning in the urban landscape.

Managing Globalization: Lessons from China and India

Managing Globalization: Lessons from and India. Edited by David A. Kelly, Ramkishen S. Rajan, and Gillian H. L. Goh. Singapore: World Scientific, 2006. Pp. 481. and India, two fastest-growing and most populous nations in the world, have been attracting greater attention from experts and policy-makers in recent years. This book brings together various contributions by Chinese and Indian scholars for the Inaugural Conference of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore in April 2005. Topics cover a wide range of issues, including that of the economy, social security, national security, and ethnicity and identity. Since this is a compilation of papers, the editors do not necessarily always draw any particular conclusion for readers. However, it undoubtedly provides plenty of analyses, information, and viewpoints on both and India, and is expected to trigger further discussion by scholars and policy-makers concerned. Having said so, the following are some observations primarily focusing on the economic aspects of and (not necessarily on social and political aspects). Firstly, we should bear in mind that although both economies attract attention equally, each has been developing under different socio-economic conditions and political regimes. For example, their economic models and development patterns are quite different in terms of the role played by the private sector and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the economy, industrial structures, language, and education. As the editors have suggested and perhaps many agree, that is why and can play complementary roles as non-rivals in the world market. Many would also agree to the China and (sometimes referred to as 'Chindia') approach rather than China versus India approach. could learn from in terms of the governance of the private sector, laws, and regulations that ensure fair and competitive market environment, and India's various international aspects, while could learn from China's FDI policy and infrastructural investment policy for instance. From such viewpoint, it is quite fascinating to compare and highlight which development path may fit other developing regions in order to increase their economic performance. Perhaps there is no universal development model and each region could follow either or or somewhere in between, taking into account its own conditions and development stage, but a comparative study of China's and India's development path will surely provide many less developed regions with a good basis for working out their own development strategy. For example, depending on the development stage, a country with a command economy or market economy could decide which strategy would be the more effective approach to move its economy forward, or how to assess the effectiveness of government intervention in the market-based experiences of both and India. Secondly, in connection with the above, perhaps many people will try to find the answer as to which development path will be more sustainable in the long run. In this connection, the implications of environmental degradation, energy constraints, and lack of governance in the private sector as well as in the government sector to the current globalization trend could be accorded more attention. In addition, if we look at each economy per se, it is a matter of concern whether India's development of relying specifically on the services and IT industry will really be sustainable, and whether the external and investment driven economy in will also be sustainable in the long run. Or to ensure sustainability, which should come first: economy or political makeup, for example, China's restructuring of one-party dominated political regime or India's change in its complicated salad bowl society, both of which might become political and social factors affecting the further development of each economy. …

Flatter world and thicker walls? Blogs, censorship and civic discourse in China

The Internet simply because it exists in China will not bring democracy to China. It is a tool, not a cause of political change. So far, the Chinese government has succeeded through censorship and regulation in blocking activists from using the Internet as an effective political tool. Likewise, blogs may be a catalyst for long-term political change because they are helping to enlarge the space for collaboration and conversation on subjects not directly related to political activism or regime change. However their role in China is more likely to involve political evolution—not revolution.

Falling Walls and Mending Fences: Archaeological Ethnography in the Limpopo*

In this article I take my lead from the sentiments expressed by one of my colleagues in South Africa National Parks – a young, black woman who seeks a radical revisioning of archaeology and anthropology in the new South Africa. She wants to see archaeology labour in the service of a newly emergent and more equitable nation, to perform a remedial and therapeutic service that actively counteracts the centuries of colonial oppression and apartheid erasures that have deeply affected the production of the past and thus future possibilities. Given this particular historical conjuncture, archaeology (like all historical disciplines) is being called upon to do double work, a dual project that seeks to address and redress the past and, through the accounts provided, make possible new understandings of identity in present and future social settings.1 This dual mandate has been willingly embraced by a younger generation of scholars, yet the deeply political valences of South African archaeology continue to be staunchly avoided by others. To begin, I offer a brief outline of my research in Kruger National Park, followed by a description of two very different field projects based around the archaeological site of Thulamela and the various stakeholders and agendas continually being brought into play. This leads into a discussion of the wider impacts of heritage work in terms of local identities and tensions and suggests that recognition and reparations around such contested landscapes continue to be fraught, despite protean political rhetoric and regime change. Throughout I hope to lay some groundwork for a hybrid practice I refer to as archaeological ethnography – a traversing of two distinct, but necessarily enmeshed subfields. * A great many people deserve thanks for making this project possible. First, thanks to Heidi Hansen for facilitating our research and the staff at People and Conservation in Skukuza and Pretoria, particularly Sibongile Van Damme, Edgar Neluvhalani and Johan Verhoef. We are indebted to Thanyani Madzhuta for working with the team at Thulamela and in Pafuri generally. David Khoza at Punda Maria also facilitated our visits and interviews outside the park. We acknowledge the support of Scientific Services at Skukuza as well as the personnel who made daily research possible. Our interpretive officers, Eric Makuleke and Leonard Luula, were invaluable to our work. We acknowledge the time and expertise of our interviewees at Musunda, Benndemutale, and Tshikuya. Invaluable logistical support came from the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand and we particularly acknowledge Ben Smith, Geoff Blundell and Thembi Russell. As always, I owe a personal intellectual debt to Glynn Alard, Martin Hall, Nick Shepherd, and Lindsay Weiss. Many of the people cited in this article remain anonymous to protect their identities within their respective communities and organisations. I thank the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University in New York for their financial support. 1 G. Farred, ‘The Not-Yet Counterpartisan: A New Politics of Oppositionality’, The South Atlantic Quarterly Special Issue. After the Thrill is Gone: A Decade of Post-Apartheid South Africa, 103, 4 (2004), pp. 589–605. I would love to see archaeologists rebuilding not from a technical point of view, but rebuilding from a spiritual point of view. I don't want to leave that for the domain of anthropologists. I am thinking of a verse in the Bible that says, there is a time and season for everything, and there is a time to cast away, and a time to rebuild stones. That verse reminds me of archaeology and the role that archaeologists play when they cast away stones so that they can find things – all sorts of things. And, once they have found understandings, or a sense of that history, they build those tools together. That is the challenge for archaeologists for the history of South Africa.2 2 Interview, South Africa National Parks (SANP) employee, Skukuza, 13 March 2005.