http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/csd_symposium_dd/rss Recent eScholarship items from Symposium: Democracy and Its Development 2005-2011 Sat, 12 Sep 2026 23:08:10 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4kf1t5pb <p>I analyze the effect of inequality on growth over different time-frames. In a large cross-country dataset for the period 1950-2007 I find evidence of a short-run (5-year periods) and medium-run (10-year periods) inverse-U relationship between inequality and growth. In the long-run (20-year periods), however, inequality has a negative effect on growth in poor countries, and a positive effect in rich ones. Finally, in the 37-year period (1970-2007) higher inequality is associated with a lower rate of growth. Thus, while some (but not much) inequality is good for growth, the negative effect of inequality on growth becomes dominant over longer time-frames.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4kf1t5pb Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000 Grijalva, Diego F. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0fg580b9 <p>Using a new dataset of Italian publicly traded companies between 1994 and 2008, this paper aims to quantify the value of different types of political connections. Conducting an event study on stock returns, we examine how the stocks of connected companies perform before and after the politicians to whom they are connected are either elected to Parliament, or appointed as government ministers. First, we check whether political connections in general lead to abnormally positive returns. Then, we ask whether political connections have a different effect on stock returns, depending on whether companies have politicians themselves (direct connection) or some of their relatives (indirect connection) among their administrators. Finally, we test the hypothesis that connections are effective only when the politicians are members of the governing coalition. Contrary to most studies, political connections are not always associated with positive stock returns. Taking stock performance... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0fg580b9 Tue, 7 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000 Asquer, Raffaele Calderoni, Federico https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8r6956r4 <p>I argue that the vision of “self-enforcing” democratization found in, for example, Przeworski (1992) and Acemoglou and Robinson (2007)—wherein democracy represents an organic balance of power between society’s actors, arrived at through a potentially long process of political give and take—is relevant for understanding an important difference between the modal democracies born during and after the Cold War. Given the logic of the self-enforcing democratization literature, and the evidence of an increased incidence of “electoral authoritarianism” in the Cold War period, I demonstrate that we should expect a much smaller estimated impact of the presidential risk factor after the Cold War than during it, even if presidentialism’s effect on breakdown remains constant.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8r6956r4 Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Terry, William C. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7mt1k2mk Rethinking Capital Mobility and Democratization: The Size of Political Regimes and Endogenous Capital Mobility https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7mt1k2mk Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Wong, Stan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/72t8c2q5 <p>Despite its conceptual centrality to research in comparative politics and the fact that a single measure—the Laakso-Taagepera index (LT)—is nearly universally employed in empirical research, the question of what is the best way to “count” parties is still an open one. Among other alleged shortcomings, LT has been criticized for over-weighting small parties, especially in the case of a one-party majority. Using seat-shares data from over 300 elections, I have calculated LT as well as an alternative measure (BZ) which employs normalized Banzhaf scores rather than simple party seat shares, as weights. The Banzhaf index is a voting power index which calculates a party’s voting power as a function of its coalitional potential. Though the two measures are highly correlated, I identify three particular party constellations in which the differences between LT and BZ are systematic and statistically significant. In all of these cases, and especially in the case of a one-party majority,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/72t8c2q5 Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Kline, Reuben https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6p280460 <p>I test seven explanations the function of gender in parliamentarian support for abortion policy by comparing the differences in attitudes between women and men national and European parliamentarians across 15 democracies in Western Europe. I consider the influence of the social policy environment of a parliamentarian’s nation, women’s autonomous access to resources in a parliamentarian’s nation, the mass orientations of a parliamentarian’s nation, the party family to which the parliamentarian belongs, the ideology of the parliamentarian, the institutional design elements of the parliamentarian’s nation, and the gender composition of the representational body in which the parliamentarian resides.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6p280460 Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Alexander, Amy C. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g09w9vd <p>Both major contenders in Peru’s 1931 presidential contest made populist mobilization a centerpiece of their political strategies. Never before had a candidate for national office so completely flouted traditional channels of political power and so thoroughly staked his political aspirations on the mobilization of support from non-elite segments of the population. This paper asks: Why did these two candidates pursue novel populist strategies at this particular historical juncture? The first part of the paper identifies the conditions that encouraged Peruvian politicians to pursue populist mobilization in 1931; it also explains why populist mobilization had never before been undertaken in Peru. An adequate explanation of populist mobilization, however, must also trace the social processes by which objective conditions translate into the selection of specific lines of action by political leaders. The second part of this paper thus assesses the socially-conditioned strategic vision... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g09w9vd Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Jansen, Robert S. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5qm7k5m6 <p>This research analyzes institutions of governance because institutions can constrain or augment the preferences of decision-makers. The objective of this study is to model an important class of regional institutions, namely metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). MPOs are responsible for implementing United States Federal transportation policy at the local level in all areas with a population of 50,000 or more. The primary mission of the MPO is to engage in transportation planning to meet requirements for the receipt of federal funds that number in the hundreds of billions of dollars.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5qm7k5m6 Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Ensch, John L https://escholarship.org/uc/item/45m96584 <p>Since 1989 Poland has been considered a leader in economic reform, but did the process of transition from a planned economy to a free market model make its people happier? A look at the life satisfaction levels reported in the World Values Survey shows that the answer is no. The disruptive effects of transition on marriage rates, as well as the increased unemployment and withdrawal from the labor force seem to have mattered more for the happiness of Poles than the recovery in terms of GDP per capita. People over thirty and those less educated are the ones who suffered the most and this led to an increase in life satisfaction inequality. Overall, there is not a significant difference in the levels of subjective well-being of women and men. However, while both genders report lower levels in 1999 compared with 1990, the difference between the two dates is only significant in the case of men. For them, only after considering the changes in marital and employment status the decrease... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/45m96584 Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Angelescu, Laura https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3q4347n4 <p>We adopt a definition of state capacity that focuses on policy implementation and propose to measure the construct by examining the proportion of total tax revenue from income taxes. We make three major contributions in this paper. First, unlike other scholars, we focus explicitly on income tax collection rather than looking at overall tax collection. Second, we demonstrate the construct validity of our measure. Third, we compare our measure to the most commonly used indicator for state capacity, tax/GDP, to demonstrate the construct validity of that measure and how ours performs better for our large sample of cases.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3q4347n4 Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Weller, Nick Ziegler, Melissa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2s0537b6 <p>This article seeks to contribute to the literature on democratization by examining the media’s causal relationship to political liberalization. First, I briefly review the major theoretical research regarding democratization and the media. I then provide an account of why media freedom contributes to democratic development. Specifically, I highlight two causal mechanisms, The Civil Society Function and The Opposition Function. The Civil Society Function, most often carried out in the print media, describes the media’s role in facilitating a public sphere in which elites can communicate. In contrast, in accordance with The Opposition Function, the media furthers political liberalization by increasing the public’s awareness of alternative political candidates. Because of its vast distribution, the broadcast media best performs The Opposition Function. The case of Mexico is examined to provide a concrete illustration of each of these functions of the media in relation to democratization.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2s0537b6 Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Cohn, Molly https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0nc919pw <p>The paper traces the historical unfolding of the Islamization strategy during Mubarak’s reign. It examines and compares the practices constituting this strategy and the State’s reaction to it. The relational approach adopted in this study gives weight to structured agency through analyzing how ideational and organizational levels interact. It evaluates the political efficacy of counter-hegemony as a political strategy, bringing to the forefront its practical, as well as its theoretical limitations.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0nc919pw Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Kandil, Hazem https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0h3856mf The Role of Political Parties in Electoral Competition https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0h3856mf Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Suarez Serrato, Juan Carlos https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0bv942dz <p>I develop the theory of power laws and allude to their prevalence elsewhere in the scientific world. I use actual data on US special interest groups to identify a broad, empirical regularity in the distribution of their lobbying expenditures, which naturally gives rise to a spatial model of the lobbying process. I discuss the policy implications of these findings and stress the superiority of this approach in describing aggregate special interest behavior relative to the stylized, strategic workhorse models in this field. Supplemental mathematical background is provided in two appendices.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0bv942dz Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 Maheshri, Vikram https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9bd3z1x7 <p>The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a democratizing regime in Russia during the 1990s raise several questions about the contours of Russian political space: Do Russians have structured beliefs that motivate political behavior? Is there any ideology guiding Russian mass political beliefs? How has seventy years of Communist Party rule affected Russian political attitudes? Based on an analysis of the 1995-1996 and 1999-2000 Russian National Election Studies, I argue that an attitudinal belief system structured along an attachment to values inculcated through the communist experience is present in the Russian political mind. This belief system appears to be a legacy of the communist past and continued to play a motivating role in Russian political behavior throughout the first postcommunist decade. Moreover, attachment to these values has a greater effect on vote choice than do standard socioeconomic indicators.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9bd3z1x7 Sun, 29 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000 Lussier, Danielle https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8mp6c1th <p>In this essay I offer a sharply revisionist account of Taiwan’s transition to democracy, based upon an empirically derived neo-Weberian class-analytic framework. My analysis reveals that the conventional accent on the middle class was largely misplaced. Instead, the true heroes in the struggle for democracy, even in prosperous, placid Taiwan, were the island’s urban and rural working classes, although proper recognition of this fact requires us to look beyond the politics of the workplace. While the better-educated middle classes in fact displayed the highest normative affinity for democratic values, as the primary beneficiaries of the State they were also among the most politically conservative sectors in society. In contrast, working class support for the opposition was driven primarily by a generalized sense of disaffection with the existing social order, although its lack of a coherent agenda also proved consequential for the opposition’s mobilizational strategy and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8mp6c1th Sun, 29 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000 Yang, David D. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t30r2gc <p>Mixed compensatory systems (some call them “mixed-member proportional systems”), are praised for combining "the best of both worlds.” Yet, we know fairly little about their outcomes in practice. We still lack a genuine model that explains how many compensation seats are needed for the outcome to be proportional. Without this knowledge we will neither be able to estimate how many parties we expect to compete and to win representation in parliament under mixed compensatory systems; a key question of comparative research on electoral systems and party systems. This paper provides a quantitative model that shows under which conditions a mixed compensatory system might lead to proportional vote-seat conversion.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t30r2gc Sun, 29 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000 Bochsler, Daniel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4gd0s7t3 <p>This paper considers the origins and conceptualizations of social capital, particularly the effects of interpersonal trust and participation in voluntarily associations on support for democracy. In so doing, the study introduces a “two-step process” proposition, suggesting that while a causal relationship exists between social capital and democratic support, this link is mediated by intervening variables in the form of knowledge and skills resulting from trust and participation. Empirical tests are conducted on survey data from seven countries covered by the East Asian Barometer to examine the validity of this hypothesis.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4gd0s7t3 Sun, 29 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000 Jou, Willy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2xk9z1rx <p>Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of political competence and the political field have not been used widely in studies of political life in the United States. But these concepts offer a more theoretically grounded and coherent way of understanding how people in this country do and do not engage with politics than most conventional approaches to political participation. I argue that Bourdieu’s notion of “political competence” (1979:126; 1984:405-6) allows us a much more full understanding of the ways that disenfranchised people relate to the political process. I use analyses of the full (1978 – 2004) General Social Survey to do three things: first, to challenge commonly accepted renditions of the causes of the “don’t know” response to political questions; second, to explore the relationship between “don’t know” response and income and education; and finally to argue that don’t know response is indicative of low “political competence” – not simply a lack of resources or knowledge.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2xk9z1rx Sun, 29 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000 Laurison, Daniel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4f57v3j9 <p>The peer-reviewed papers gathered here are representative of the work presented at the first graduate student conference organized by the Center for the Study of Democracy, in February 2005. The conference focused on the development of democracy to better understand the fundamentals of the process. The conference drew submissions from Ph.D. candidates from seven schools in the Southern California area, covering a range of disciplines, methodologies, geographic concentrations and substantive questions about democratic development in the "established" democracies, consolidating democracies, or democratic transitions.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4f57v3j9 Fri, 1 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000 Bandelj, Nina McGann, Anthony J. Uhlaner, Carole J https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6qw5r2rc <p>This paper estimates the incumbency effects in elections to state legislatures in India. I use the Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) technique to overcome the bias that arises in previous empirical methodologies. RDD exploits the comparability of winners and losers in closely fought elections to net out the effect due to incumbency. Using a large dataset on legislative elections of 25 Indian states between 1975 and 2003, I find that incumbent candidates are at a significant disadvantage as compared to non-incumbents. Variation in incumbency effects across Indian states can be explained in part due to differences in degree of competitiveness of elections and in levels of public good provision.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6qw5r2rc Wed, 15 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000 Uppal, Yogesh https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8k85d37z <p>This article examines the impact of city size on electoral competition for city council office. Models from election systems design are applied in the municipal contest in order to evaluate the impact of government structure as an intervening variable. Results show that city size matters even after electoral structure and socio-political diversity have been taken into account. District magnitude has a pronounced impact on electoral fragmentation, to the effect that each additional seat being contested adds two “effective” candidates to the race. Incumbency effects, election timing, and other institutional boundaries are also shown to be relevant factors conditioning electoral fragmentation.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8k85d37z Mon, 6 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000 Latner, Michael https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0q49x9d7 <p>If the media is biased towards conflict, candidates and issues raised negatively will receive more news coverage. I test this hypothesis using a new data set from the 2000 California election. Preliminary results show negative campaigning increases press coverage.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0q49x9d7 Tue, 31 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000 Asay, Garrett R. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dc1z62z <p>This paper examines how different the two Korean national union federations create and consolidate union democracy according to their organizational characteristics and how the difference in union democracy between these two federations affects movement activities of their local unions. The Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), which has cooperated with the authoritarian state power and hegemony of capital, rarely challenges the fundamentals of the capitalist system and seldom encourages the full democratic participation of its members. In contrast, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), a group of independent unions which is familiar with a wide range of political radicalism, always challenges the hegemony of global capitalism. Compared to FKTU-affiliated unions, KCTU-affiliated unions, which have been historically more involved in 'insurgent political practices,' have developed internal democracy, especially participatory democracy. In addition, the KCTU and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dc1z62z Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000 Choi, Inyi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3m15p7xv <p>Spain reformed the law regulating campaign expenditure in the first half of the nineties. Political parties represented in Parliament claimed that the aims of the reforms were equity and the control of public expenditure in a time of recession. However, the new regulations helped the parties to attain more ‘self-serving’ objectives (i.e., to solve their financial problems by shifting campaign costs to public budgets and improve their credibility, damaged badly by the fund raising scandals reported by the media). A principal outcome of the new campaign regulation was to establish an effective cap to electoral expenditure. This would have not been feasible in the seventies or eighties. Subsequently, the parties confronted a situation of parametric choice, trapped in a prisoner’s dilemma in which each party had to spend more in order to prevent the others from obtaining electoral advantage. But in the nineties, the two largest parties, ridden with problems of soaring electoral... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3m15p7xv Thu, 12 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000 Caselles, Joaquin Artes Viñuela, Enrique García