World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.a908773
Lars-Erik Cederman, Luc Girardin, Carl Müller-Crepon
{"title":"Nationalism and the Puzzle of Reversing State Size","authors":"Lars-Erik Cederman, Luc Girardin, Carl Müller-Crepon","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.a908773","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a908773","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Having increased for centuries, territorial state size began to decline toward the end of the nineteenth century and has continued to do so. The authors argue that processes triggered by ethnic nationalism are the main drivers of this development. Their empirical approach relies on time-varying spatial data on state borders and ethnic geography since the nineteenth century. Focusing on deviations from the nation-state ideal, the authors postulate that state internal ethnic fragmentation leads to reduction in state size and that the cross-border presence of dominant ethnic groups makes state expansion more likely. Conducted at the systemic and state levels, the analysis exploits information at the interstate dyadic level to capture specific nationalist processes of border change, such as ethnic secession, unification, and irredentism. The authors find that although nationalism exerts both integrating and disintegrating effects on states' territories, it is the latter impact that has dominated.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135605512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.a908772
Milan W. Svolik
{"title":"Voting Against Autocracy","authors":"Milan W. Svolik","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.a908772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a908772","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: When and how do voters punish politicians for subverting democracy? To investigate the role of the public in democratic backsliding, I develop a conceptual framework that differentiates among three mechanisms: vote switching, backlash, and disengagement. The first mechanism entails defection by voters from a candidate who undermines democracy to one who does not; the latter two mechanisms entail transitions between voting and abstention. I estimate the magnitude of each mechanism by combining evidence from a series of original survey experiments, traditional surveys, and a quasi-experiment afforded by the rerun of the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election, in which the governing party, akp, attempted to overturn the result of an election that it had lost. I find that although vote switching and backlash contributed to the akp's eventual defeat the most, each of the three mechanisms served as a democratic check in some subset of the Istanbul electorate. Persuasion, mobilization, and even demobilization are all viable tools for curbing the authoritarian tendencies of elected politicians.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"128 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135605392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.a908774
Junyan Jiang, Kinman Wan
{"title":"Democracy and Mass Skepticism of Science","authors":"Junyan Jiang, Kinman Wan","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.a908774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a908774","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: Since the Age of Enlightenment, many thinkers and philosophers have viewed democracy and science as two aspects of modernity that reinforce each other. This article highlights a tension between the two by arguing that certain aspects of contemporary democracy may aggravate the mass public's anti-intellectual tendency and thus potentially hinder scientific progress. The authors analyze a new global survey of public opinion on science using empirical strategies that exploit cross-country and cross-cohort variations in experience with democracy, and show that less-educated citizens in democracies distrust science much more than do their counterparts in nondemocracies. Further analyses suggest that the increase in skepticism in democracies is not the result of greater religiosity or weaker scientific literacy; instead, it is more likely driven by a shift in the mode of legitimation, which reduces states' ability and willingness to act as key public advocates for science. These findings shed light on the institutional sources of science-bashing in many longstanding democracies.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135568932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.a908775
R. Daniel Kelemen, Tommaso Pavone
{"title":"Where Have the Guardians Gone? Law Enforcement and the Politics of Supranational Forbearance in the European Union","authors":"R. Daniel Kelemen, Tommaso Pavone","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.a908775","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a908775","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: Why would a supranational law enforcer suddenly refrain from wielding its powers? The authors theorize the supranational politics of forbearance—the deliberate underenforcement of the law—and explain how they arise from cross-pressures between prosecutorial discretion and intergovernmental policy-making. The article then traces why an exemplary supranational enforcer—the European Commission—became reluctant to launch infringements against European Union member states. While the Commission's policy-making role as engine of integration has been controversial, its prosecutorial role as guardian of the Treaties has been viewed as less contentious. Yet after 2004, infringements launched by the Commission plummeted. The authors demonstrate that the Commission's political leadership grew alarmed that aggressive enforcement was eroding intergovernmental support for its policy agenda. By reining in the bureaucrats managing enforcement and embracing conciliatory dialogues with governments, the Commission sacrificed its role as guardian of the Treaties to safeguard its role as engine of integration. The article's findings highlight the consequences of politicizing international institutions and the tradeoffs facing executives double-hatting as prosecutors and policymakers.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"126 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135605518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-06-28DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.a900710
N. Gaikwad, E. Lin, Noah Zucker
{"title":"Gender after Genocide: How Violence Shapes Long-Term Political Representation","authors":"N. Gaikwad, E. Lin, Noah Zucker","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.a900710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a900710","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:What are the legacies of violence on women's political representation? This article examines the long-term effects of a watershed conflict of the twentieth century: the Khmer Rouge genocide, during which 50–70 percent of Cambodia's working-age men were killed. Using original data on mass killings and economic and political conditions in Cambodian communes, the authors find that genocide exposure is positively associated with women's economic advancement and current-day indicators of women's representation in local-level elected office. The authors conduct in-depth, ethnographic interviews with genocide survivors to explore the mechanisms by which violence spurred women into elected office. A crucial finding emerges: In areas that suffered the genocide's worst killings, widows obtained economic autonomy, providing a template for the economic advancement of women in traditional households with surviving men. The shift in norms regarding the sexual division of labor and its transmission through intracommunal and intergenerational pathways allowed women to adopt larger public roles over time in communities more exposed to genocide violence.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"75 1","pages":"439 - 481"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66559393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-06-28DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.a900713
Erik Peinert
{"title":"Monopoly Politics: Price Competition, Learning, and the Evolution of Policy Regimes","authors":"Erik Peinert","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.a900713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a900713","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:In the long run, economic policy in advanced industrial states has historically alternated between favoring price competition and favoring the market power of domestic firms, across such disparate areas as antitrust, intellectual property, and trade. This article presents a theory of long-term policy change, based on the interaction of accumulating economic costs and staff turnover within the state, explaining multiple policy alternations during the twentieth century. Policy regimes of competition or market power endogenously generate diminishing returns, manifested as unintended economic costs intrinsic to competition or market power. And yet policy regimes endure because established cadres of government officials remain committed to existing policy approaches. Even as diminishing returns become apparent, it is only after the removal or circumvention of these established policymakers, through staff turnover and learning by uncommitted officials, that policy eventually changes course. The article supports this argument with extensive evidence from government archives in the United States and France.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"75 1","pages":"566 - 607"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42231853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-06-28DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.a900714
Yu Zeng, Junyan Jiang, Jie Li, Christian Göbel
{"title":"The Rise of Grassroots Civil Society under One-Party Rule: The Case of China's Homeowner Associations","authors":"Yu Zeng, Junyan Jiang, Jie Li, Christian Göbel","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.a900714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a900714","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Conventional wisdom holds that one-party regimes are intrinsically hostile to civil society because organized citizens can threaten the regime's political dominance. Contrary to this view, the authors argue that genuinely voluntary civil society organizations may be tolerated, or even actively promoted, by governments in a one-party system when those organizations can help to efficiently resolve intrasocietal distributional conflicts arising from economic modernization. Using China's homeowner associations (hoas) as a case, the article demonstrates that local authorities are more likely to promulgate policies that encourage the development of self-organized hoas when citizens frequently call upon the authorities to intervene and adjudicate their disputes with property development and management companies. An instrumental variables estimation suggests that the relationship is likely to be causal, and additional analyses on mechanisms reveal that citizens' complaints are most effective in eliciting pro-hoa policies when they are targeted at business rather than government actors. These findings highlight an important function of civil society organizations in street-level governance and offer a nuanced interpretation of how pluralistic elements may emerge in nonliberal systems.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"75 1","pages":"608 - 646"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47316101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-06-28DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.a900711
Katerina Tertytchnaya
{"title":"\"This Rally is Not Authorized\": Preventive Repression and Public Opinion in Electoral Autocracies","authors":"Katerina Tertytchnaya","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.a900711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a900711","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Does preventive repression dampen or does it bolster mass support for groups that dissent despite obstruction? Although a large literature recognizes the importance of preventive repression for authoritarian stability, we know very little about its effects on public opinion. To gain traction on this question, this article draws on evidence from unusually detailed data on unauthorized and authorized protests from Russia and an original survey experiment. The author shows that when authorities engage in preventive repression, such as when they deny protest authorizations, protesters' ability to generate support is compromised. Preventive repression also conditions the effect of nonviolent demonstrator tactics on public opinion. These effects, however, are contingent on citizens' attitudes about the law and the authorities. This article's findings—which provide one of the first causal tests of the mass opinion effects of preventive repression—expand our understanding of the consequences and audiences of repression and have implications for studies of authoritarian resilience.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"75 1","pages":"482 - 522"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46885263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-06-28DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.a900712
A. Carnegie, Richard Clark
{"title":"Reforming Global Governance: Power, Alliance, and Institutional Performance","authors":"A. Carnegie, Richard Clark","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.a900712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.a900712","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:A large literature analyzes the determinants of change in international institutions, focusing on the role of systemic political and economic shocks. However, this article considers this question also in more business-as-usual periods, asking when institutions of global governance reform and which states benefit from these changes. The authors argue that allies of international organizations (io)s' leading stakeholders benefit more than nonaligned countries; however, the authors also document that reforms sometimes contain concessions to nonallied members. This article theorizes that while io officials reward major stakeholders' allies in normal times, they provide concessions to nonallies during periods of poor io performance to prevent these states from disengaging. Analyzing an original data set of reforms at the World Bank between 1944 and 2018, paired with qualitative evidence, the article finds significant support for its hypotheses. The findings help to make sense of otherwise puzzling instances of power shifts within ios.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"75 1","pages":"523 - 565"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43860570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World PoliticsPub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1353/wp.2023.0006
Valentín Figueroa
{"title":"The Protestant Road to Bureaucracy","authors":"Valentín Figueroa","doi":"10.1353/wp.2023.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wp.2023.0006","url":null,"abstract":"After the seventeenth century, rulers across Europe attempted reforms to replace amateur administrators with professional bureaucrats. The success of administrative reforms hinged on whether rulers could compensate entrenched officeholders and recruit salaried employees. The author demonstrates that the extent to which these conditions were met at the time of reforms depended on whether states had experienced a Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. This article shows how the Reformation, which involved the expropriation of the Catholic Church’s assets, set in motion two processes. First, to finance their wars, Protestant rulers used revenue from confiscated assets instead of selling proprietary offices, leading to fewer venal officeholders who resisted administrative reforms. Second, expropriations made churches poorer and reduced the number of plum jobs in the clergy, incentivizing a reallocation of educational investments from religious knowledge to secular skills more useful for state administration. This distinctive Protestant developmental path hastened the demise of the patrimonial state. By 1789, the only major territorial states that were bureaucratic were Protestant.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135274953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}