Type Of Political Regime Research Articles

When do autocracies start to liberalize foreign trade? Evidence from four cases in the Middle East and North Africa

ABSTRACT This paper argues that within autocracies the beginning of IMF-friendly trade and capital account reforms is highly contingent on the ability of alternative policy regulations to provide respective regimes with domestically needed amounts of convertible foreign exchange. A longitudinal comparison of four countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan) between the 1960s and the early 1990s in the Middle East and North Africa region shows a historical sequencing of reforms. Before the implementation of orthodox policy change, foreign exchange scarcity was managed primarily by rising restrictions, accumulation of debt and a number of unilateral country-specific strategies, including broader economic openings (infitah) and selective capital account liberalizations. However, IMF-friendly reforms only became a political option after the failure of these alternative policies and the simultaneous drying up of unconditional finance. These findings complement recent debates about the rush to free trade in at least two aspects. First, they point to distinct causal mechanisms depending on the type of political regime (e.g., autocracy versus democracy), explaining the beginning of trade and capital account liberalizations among developing nations. They specify, second, one important contextual condition in regard to the effectiveness of IMF surveillance power.

Birds of a feather: Evidence on commonality of corruption and democracy in the origin and location of foreign investment in Russian regions

We examine the effects of subnational variations in corruption and democratization on the location decisions of foreign investors in Russian regions using firm-level panel data for the period 1996–2007. We link these effects to the level of corruption and type of political regime in the country of origin of a foreign investor. We find a relationship between attributes of foreign investors' home countries and attributes of the regions in which investment takes place: foreign investors from less corrupt and democratic countries tend to invest in less corrupt and more democratic Russian regions, whereas those from more corrupt and non-democratic countries tend to invest in more corrupt and less democratic regions. An inference is that, in Russian regions with high corruption and with autocratic government, foreign direct investment appears driven by the personal interests of controlling regional political elites who collaborate for mutual gain with foreign investors from corrupt and autocratic countries. Our results suggest a general conclusion that origin and location of foreign investment are linked by common political culture.

La definición del territorio en las leyes y políticas ambientales nacionales entre 1973 y 2010

Este artículo elabora un análisis diacrónico de las leyes y políticas nacionales de Argentina en materia ambiental entre la década de 1970 y la primera década de 2000 en Argentina, en tanto las mismas constituyen instancias de cristalización de una definición estatal del territorio. Se sostiene que la definición del territorio y el ambiente están estrechamente ligadas a las características del régimen político imperante, a sus percepciones ideológicas o doctrinarias y a la mayor o menor gravitación de las líneas conceptuales predominantes en la escena internacional. A tales efectos el artículo distingue en las cuatro décadas sometidas a análisis la existencia de cinco momentos diferenciados, correspondientes a otras tantas experiencias de gobierno asentadas en específicas constelaciones de fuerzas. El análisis permite concluir que es posible identificar, en las leyes y políticas definidas como ambientales por el por el propio estado nacional, ciertos sedimentos generales que estructuran la definición del territorio como también determinadas pautas de relación entre sociedad, naturaleza y estado

How Tyranny Paved the Way to Democracy: The Democratic Transition in Ancient Greece

Considerable scholarly work has examined the transition to democracy. In this paper, we investigate a path to democracy that is very different from that typically described. During the Archaic period (800–500 BCE), many Greek poleis (city-states) replaced aristocracies with a more narrow governing institution—an autocrat known as the tyrant. Yet as classical scholars have noted, many of the poleis where tyrants reigned in the Archaic period became among the broadest democracies in the subsequent Classical period (500–323 BCE). We analyze a data set of ancient Greek political regime types and review the history of the best-known Archaic period tyrants in order to explore why a transitory narrowing of power—Greek tyranny was a transitory institution—can set the stage for democratization. We briefly consider other historical and modern examples. Our paper shows why an understanding of progress toward democracy requires recognizing the potential importance of nonmonotonic transition paths.

The 1989 Revolutions in Retrospect

Reminding us of the failure of academia to predict the East European revolutions, and the challenges presented by the latter to the theories of revolution, the essay claims that in order to understand why the exit from communism comprised so many varied modes, one should take a ‘path-dependence’ diachronic and synchronic comparative perspective. Based on this dual approach and a set of variables, the essay advances a typology of East European revolutions and argues that the issues regarding the type of political regime, the development of civil society and its way of interacting with the state are of paramount importance for comprehending how the ‘negotiated revolutions’ in Central Europe came about. Finally, the significance of the Central European civil society strategy under late communism for the era of globalisation is addressed.

Mongolian Sexuality: A Short History of the Flirtation of Power with Sex

This paper describes a brief history of sexuality in Mongolian society as related to the various types of political regime that dominated the course of the last century. Based on the assertion that sexuality is subject to change, the central argument of the paper is that, by looking at the nature of sexual practices and values, it is possible to describe the very nature of political power that is one of the important drivers to bring about such changes.

Which State, Which Nation? States and National Identity in Europe, South America, and the United States Compared, 1750-1930

For almost two centuries substantial research in Sociology, Political Science, History and anthropology has focused on the state, the nation, nationalism, and national identity. Despite a very remarkable amount of knowledge and intelligent theorizing a number of questions need revisiting and more encompassing comparative work is needed. Here, I offer an argument that involves three areas seldom, if ever, compared: Western Europe, South America, and North America (particularly the United States). The period spans from the sixteenth century to the 1930s but I specially focus on the epoch that starts in the 1750s. The length of the period under scrutiny allows testing correlations among variables over long periods of time. First, I revisit the concept of “nation” and stress that nations are intellectual constructs as much as they are cultural and imagined ones. Second, I emphasize the state’s conceptualizing of the nation as a key independent variable connected to the construction of national identity. Third, I bring some findings of the philosophy of language to bear upon the ways states conceptualize nations and construct their public discourse in relation to national identity. Fourth, I argue that rather than other important factors such as the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic characteristics of the national community, the construction of national identity depends upon the modernization of bureaucracies (in Max Weber’s sense) and the characteristics of the civil service. I am particularly interested in the way modern bureaucracies institutionalize meaning. Finally, I suggest that the terms “nation-state” and “national-state” have contributed more to a theory of the state than to a theory of the connections between states and nations. I therefore redefine these terms and add a third concept (‘state-nation’) in order to better capture the relations between states and nations in the regions compared. I identify the relation between states and nations as one of codependency and I claim that different types of codependency are connected to the consolidation of different types of political regimes. During the last two and a half centuries codependency between states and nations has progressively augmented, despite the ups and downs of globalization, different types of international conflict, and changes in the global economic cycle.

Tax Abandonment, Political Regime Type and Rice Export Growth in Thailand

Tax Abandonment, Political Regime Type and Rice Export Growth in Thailand

Classifying political regimes revisited: legitimation and durability

This article presents a new typology and a new dataset of political regimes (1946–2010). The classification presented is based, in theoretical terms, on the distinctive patterns of legitimation exhibited by the political regimes. To demonstrate the usefulness of the classification, I explore the extent to which the classification and its theoretical foundation, namely the pattern of legitimation, helps to explain the durability of different political regime types. I compare the results and explanations with those of Geddes and Hadenius and Teorell in order to clarify the differences made by the use of the presented classification.

Inequality and instability: a study of the world economy just before the Great Crisis

Chapter 1. The Physics and Ethics of Inequality 1. The Simple Physics of Inequality Measurement 2. The Ethical Implications of Inequality Measures 3. Plan of the Book References Chapter 2. The Need for New Inequality Measures 1. The Data Problem in Inequality Studies 2. Obtaining Dense and Consistent Inequality Measures 3. Grouping Up and Grouping Down 4. Conclusion References Chapter 3: Pay Inequality and World Development 1. What Kuznets Meant 2. New Data for a New Look at Kuznets' Hypothesis 3. Pay Inequality and National Income: What's the Shape of the Curve? 4. Global Rising Inequality: the Soros Super-bubble as a Pattern in the Data 5. Conclusion References Appendix: On a Presumed Link from Inequality to Growth Chapter 4. Estimating the Inequality of Household Incomes 1. Estimating the Relationship Between Inequalities of Pay and Income 2. Finding the Problem Cases: A Study of Residuals 3. Building a Deep and Balanced Income Inequality Data Set 4. Conclusion References Chapter 5. Economic Inequality and Political Regimes 1. Democracy and Inequality in Political Science 2. A Different Approach to Political Regime Types 3. Analysis and Results 4. Conclusion References Appendix I: Political Regime Data Description Appendix II: Results Using Other Political Classification Schemes Chapter 6. The Geography of Inequality in America, 1969 to 2007 1. Between-Industry Earnings Inequality in the United States 2. The Changing Geography of American Income Inequality 3. Interpreting Inequality in the United States 4. Conclusion References Chapter 7: State-Level Income Inequality and American Elections 1. Some Initial Models Using Off-the-Shelf Data for the 2000 Election. 2. New Estimates of State-Level Inequality and an Analysis of the Inequality-Elections Relationship over Time 3. Inequality and the Income Paradox in Voting 4. Conclusion References Chapter 8. Inequality and Unemployment in Europe: A Question of Levels 1. An Inequality-based Theory of Unemployment 2. Region-based Evidence on Inequality and Unemployment 3. Inequality and Unemployment in Europe and America 4. Implications for Unemployment Policy in Europe References Appendix. Detailed Results and Sensitivity Analyses Chapter 9. European Wages and the Flexibility Thesis 1. The Problem of Unemployment in Europe: A reprise 2. Assessing Wage Flexibility Across Europe 3. Clustering and Discriminating to Simplify the Picture 4. Conclusion References Appendix A: Cluster Details Appendix B: Eigenvalues and Canonical Correlations Appendix C: Correlations between Canonical Scores and Pseudoscores Chapter 10: Globalization and Inequality in China 1. The Evolution of Inequality in China through 2007 2. Finance and the export boom, 2002 to 2006 3. Trade and capital inflow in post-WTO China 4. Profit and Capital Flows into Speculative Sectors 5. Conclusion References Chapter 11. Finance and Power in Argentina and Brazil 1. The Modern Political Economy of Argentina and Brazil 2. Measuring Inequality in Argentina and Brazil 3. Sources of Data 4. Pay Inequality in Argentina 1994-2007 5. Pay Inequality in Brazil 1996-2007 6. Conclusion References Chapter 12. Inequality in Cuba After the Soviet Collapse 1. Data on Pay in Cuba 2. Evolution of the Cuban Economy 1991 - 2005 3. Cuban Pay Inequality by Sector 4. Cuban Pay Inequality by Region 5. Conclusion References Chapter 13: Economic Inequality and the World Crisis Bibliography

Political Institutions and Their Historical Dynamics

Traditionally, political scientists define political institutions deductively. This approach may prevent from discovery of existing institutions beyond the definitions. Here, a principal component analysis was used for an inductive extraction of dimensions in Polity IV data on the political institutions of all nations in the world the last two centuries. Three dimensions of institutions were revealed: core institutions of democracy, oligarchy, and despotism. We show that, historically and on a world scale, the dominance of the core institutions of despotism has first been replaced by a dominance of the core institutions of oligarchy, which in turn is now being followed by an increasing dominance by the core institutions of democracy. Nations do not take steps from despotic, to oligarchic and then to democratic institutions, however. Rather, nations hosting the core democracy institutions have succeeded in historically avoiding both the core institutions of despotism and those of oligarchy. On the other hand, some nations have not been influenced by any of these dimensions, while new institutional combinations are increasingly influencing others. We show that the extracted institutional dimensions do not correspond to the Polity scores for autocracy, “anocracy” and democracy, suggesting that changes in regime types occur at one level, while institutional dynamics work on another. Political regime types in that sense seem “canalized”, i.e., underlying institutional architectures can and do vary, but to a considerable extent independently of regime types and their transitions. The inductive approach adds to the deductive regime type studies in that it produces results in line with modern studies of cultural evolution and memetic institutionalism in which institutions are the units of observation, not the nations that acts as host for them.

Democracy, national responsibility and climate change justice

Nations are regularly considered the main bearers of responsibility for climate change. Accordingly, the differences between nations are crucial in understanding how responsibilities should be distributed. In this account, I examine the relevance of differences in type of political regime to this end. The claim defended here is that democratic institutions are constitutive of the conditions for when members of nations can be held responsible as a collective for the outcomes affecting the climate. The implications of this account are demonstrated, first, in relation to claims of historical responsibility and, second, in relation to the burdens assigned to Annex I countries by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The analysis shows why democratic institutions – at present and in the past – are essential in order to conclude that the members of a nation share responsibility for the harm caused by the aggregate greenhouse emissions of their nation. In connection to this analysis, we also show why responsibility for the costs of climate change is sometimes justly placed on authoritarian nations.

Freedom of information legislation and its impact on press freedom: A cross-national study

This empirical study examines the effect of the Freedom of Information legislation on press freedom by analyzing cross-sectional data at the national level of aggregate indicators across 191 countries in 2010. The prediction by two-stage least square regression found that the impact of the legislation on press freedom is determined by control of corruption, the type of political regime (democratic or authoritarian regime), and the level of national economy. For recent adopters of the legislation, it could be no more than a legislative luxury. As the legislative effect on press freedom is mostly limited to less corrupt, advanced industrial democracies, the workings of the legislation require political and economic prerequisites.

Law and Justice in Post-Soviet Russia: Strategies of Constitutional Modernization

The relationships between notions of law and justice – the central argument in political debates of transition periods. The law is defined in contemporary political science as a special form of social organization which represents itself as a value, norm and fact. The complex interpretation of law as a multidimensional phenomenon is possible only if these three competing parameters are taken into consideration. Another side of the problem is the definition of justice as an ideal, norm or historical tradition. Our purpose in this article is to reconstruct on the basis of cognitive and information theory approach some basic parameters of law and justice in the process of searching solutions for fundamental problems of transitional Post-Soviet period. Among them are: the conflict of law and justice in current Russian political reality; social equality and new property relations; national identity and system of government; the form of government and the type of political regime; legitimacy and legality of political transformation; effectiveness of law. The establishment of a new constitutional order is simultaneously the result and the main premise of this transformation. At the focus of our approach is the comparison between conservative, liberal and pragmatic strategies of legal and constitutional transformation.

Dispute Settlement Mechanisms in Preferential Trade Agreements

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have increased dramatically in the past several decades and play an important role in the global economy. Dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs) in these international agreements significantly influence their functioning. In this article, the authors seek to understand what factors determine the legal arrangements of these mechanisms. The authors argue that the confluence of domestic political regime type, emulation incentives, and the development of the multilateral trade regime determines their legal dimension. Using a data set of PTAs between 1957 and 2008, the authors show that (1) democracies are more likely than autocracies to prefer moderately strict DSMs, (2) trading partners increasingly emulate each other by adopting similar legal templates, and (3) the recent trend against legalistic mechanisms is largely driven by the development of the multilateral trade regime. Their findings have important implications for the design of international institutions by highlighting the importance of member-specific as well as macro-level factors.

Global Migration and Political Regime Type: A Democratic Disadvantage

An indicator of globalization is the growing number of humans crossing national borders. In contrast to explanations for flows of goods and capital, migration research has concentrated on unilateral movements to rich democracies. This focus ignores the bilateral determinants of migration and stymies empirical and theoretical inquiry. The theoretical insights proposed here show how the regime type of both sending and receiving countries influences human migration. Specifically, democratic regimes accommodate fewer immigrants than autocracies and democracies enable emigration while autocracies prevent exit. The mechanisms for this divergence are a function of both micro-level motivations of migrants and institutional constraints on political leaders. Global bilateral migration data and a statistical method that captures the higher-order dependencies in network data are employed in this article.

The Weberian Foundations of Modern Elite Theory and Democratic Elitism

Max Weber's portrayal of modern elites shows clear proximity to theory, modem elite perspective, and democratic elitism. This portrayal - stressing power concentration in the state apparata, legitimacy of rule, centrality of leadership groups, and the capacity of these groups to form cohesive power actors - anticipates many central themes in the work of contemporary theorists, such as John Higley, whose theoretical attention focuses on patterns of integration and consensus as the key elite variables. Higley's seminal studies, especially those linking such integration and consensus with political outcomes and regime types, combine the classical elite-theoretical heritage with the Weberian supplements, the latter stressing the variable internal structure of ruling minorities that form in modern nation states. The Weberian perspective and theoretical model have been substantiated, elaborated and extended in research undertaken by John Higley and his collaborators.

Political Regimes and Taxation

A growing body of literature suggests that political regime type matters in determining taxation. However, research on the relationship of political regimes to taxation yields mixed results. To what extent does the democratic or authoritarian character of the polity impact on the level of taxation? The paper investigates the relationship between political regimes and tax-to-GDP ratio, using a panel dataset of 131 countries and covering the period 1990-2008. Findings suggest that the character of the polity affects taxation, but there is no linear trend in favour of democracy. Rather, the results indicate a U-shaped relationship between polity and tax ratio.

Political Freedom, Corruption, Public Institutions, and Economic Growth: A Global Analysis Since the Fall of the Soviet Union

Over the past few decades, the level of globalization and economic interdependence among nations has continued to rise. Given this rise of interdependence among nations one wonders whether or not political regime type has any influence on a country’s economic growth. Do democracies promote higher economic growth than non democracies? Or is regime type an irrelevant factor neither promoting nor hindering economic growth? If the effects of regime type on economic growth are not well understood, how can foreign policy makers seek to promote democracy throughout the world? The relationship between democracy and economic growth has been a hotly debated topic for many decades, but despite a sizable amount of theoretical and empirical literature there still has been contradictory conclusions drawn regarding the impact of democracy on economic growth. In this paper, I explore the arguments concerning the positive and negative effects of political freedom on economic growth. Also, I explore the arguments put forth by some scholars that political freedom itself does not produce economic growth; rather, they argue it is other intervening variables that lead to economic growth. I address this complex relationship through the lens of Twenty-first Century Growth Theory and develop an operational model using a fixed-effects pooled cross-sectional times-series from 1990-2009. I find that political freedom, low levels of corruption, and the presence of quality institutions contribute to economic growth. Also, counter-intuitive to my expectations, I find that economic volatility contributes to economic growth, but in unexpected ways.

National lenses on a global news event: determinants of the politicization and domestication of the prelude to the Beijing Olympics

This article utilizes a 14-country comparative data set and analyzes how different countries' television news has covered the events and controversies surrounding the Beijing Olympics in the months before the Summer Games. Conceptually, the focus is on the notions of domestication and politicization. However, rather than simply illustrating the presence of these phenomena, the analytical interest resides mainly in uncovering their “determinants”. More specifically, following the arguments that the mainstream news media are generally power dependent on the one hand and have a strong local orientation on the other, it was hypothesized that a number of relationships exist between degrees of domestication and politicization in television news in different countries and the countries' social, cultural, and political characteristics. The empirical results show that the degree of domestication can be explained by a country's level of participation in the Olympic Games and the size of the country's ethnic Chinese population. The degree of politicization, meanwhile, can be explained by the type of political regime and the country's economic relationship with China. The implications of the findings are discussed.