We have limited knowledge of how the insecure environment characteristic of personalist dictatorships affects the behaviour of provincial leaders. In this article, we argue that such provincial leaders face a trade-off: either they can keep a low profile but remain vulnerable to the capriciousness of the ruler (the acquiescent strategy), or they can gamble and try to build a power base of their own as a defence against the whims of the dictator (the power-accruing strategy). Next, we specify three contextual conditions, each of which makes provincial leaders more likely to choose and succeed with a power-accruing strategy, which in turn allows them to rule their province with an iron fist. Finally, empirically, we illustrate our arguments through a number of example cases and an in-depth study of a contemporary, very powerful provincial leader in a personalist authoritarian regime: Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Chechen Republic within Vladimir Putin's Russia.

This article aims to provide an understanding of the dynamics of pension politics in South Korea with a particular focus on the role of bureaucrats. In order to explain the reforms, this research will closely examine how the expertise and legitimacy of civil servants, together with their institutional positioning, have affected their power and role in the policy-making process. This article will argue that bureaucrats, particularly the welfare bureaucracy, attained their major reform goals by associating and competing with other political actors in two major reforms.

The goal of ‘learning’ from peace processes is widely expressed in conflict resolution scholarship and practice but inadequately understood. This article investigates what kinds of knowledge can be learned from a peace process, the theoretical and methodological bases of such learning, and what impact it may have. The article begins with an interdisciplinary discussion of reasons to learn, the kinds of lessons proposed in the peace process literature and how theories of learning may be applied to a peace process. Following this is a case study of the sharing of the Northern Ireland peacemaking experience with other conflict-affected societies, especially through facilitated dialogues between decision-makers. This contributes to a comprehensive ideal model of learning from peace processes – something which, it is argued, may result in ‘transformative learning’ and a ‘policy paradigm shift’ towards de-escalatory conflict management. A definition of a peace process ‘lesson’ is offered to guide future research.

J-P. SARTRE HAS WRITTEN AT LENGTH ON THE QUESTION OF HOW THE myth of the French revolution is possible. The intelligibility, let alone the truth, of his answer need not detain us unduly. But the question is a good one. The past two centuries or so have indeed been the age of myth of the Revolution. As in philosophical logic, the definite article has distinctive and powerful implications and gives rise to very interesting problems. In this case, they are not merely logical, but also, and above all, moral, epistemic and political. The definite article seems to imply existence; and it also seems to imply uniqueness. Even more disturbingly, it seems to suggest, in this case, moral rightness and political authority. The Revolution is necessary, unique and inevitable, legitimate and authoritative. But to claim these traits, it must also be identifiable; and it can only be identified, hailed and revered, if it carries some manifest stigmata. But what are they? Can they not be counterfeited? Are there not peddlers of fake stigmata, or, worse still, of false theories concerning what constitutes the stigmata?

While there is significant anecdotal evidence that excluded political opposition parties in repressive states adopt the form of human rights organizations, there is little systematic research into this phenomenon. What does exist tends to be descriptive rather than theoretical in nature. This paper draws from collective action and resource mobilization literatures, arguing that excluded political elites respond to repression by searching for political opportunities both domestically and internationally, and then transform their organizations into units better able to take advantage of those opportunities. The politics of external funding push these organizations towards a human rights and democratization orientation. The article evaluates this argument through an analysis of human rights movements in politically repressive, post-Communist Uzbekistan and considers the impact of this phenomenon on democratization and civil society development.

THE TRANSITION FROM DICTATORSHIP TO DEMOCRACY IN Spain has been a fascinating experience ever since the Autumn of 1976, when the Ley de Reforma Politica (Law on Political Reform) was passed through the Francoist Cortes and later through a national Referendum. Setting aside the political virtuosity of the different players involved in this dramatic experiment, three aspects of the transition have been particularly important from the point of view of a sociological analysis of Spanish politics: first of all, the ideological moderation of the electorate, which would fulfil an essential prerequisite of democratic stability; secondly, the continuities with past political cleavages between Left and Right, in spite of a parenthesis of four decades of dictatorship; finally, the threat to the new democracy coming from the political violence of Basque separatists and from the activities of Francoist groups which are also active within the army. These three dimensions can be re-examined in the light of the results of the General Election of 1 March 1979, the first constitutional general election in Spain since 1936 and the second election since the death of Franco.

WHEN SWISS CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS SPECIAL ISSUE LIMIT themselves to the presentation of a picture of modern Switzerland and leave it to the public to decide whether they want to learn something from the Swiss experience, two problems remain unsolved. First, in Switzerland we have neglected to some extent the analysis of the structures and the processes of the political system. We know more about the history of our political institutions than we do about their actual functioning. Normative theory is better developed than empirical research. This leads to the second problem: as many questions concerning the mechanics of the system are not answered in a sufficiently clear way, interpretations of the Confederatia Helvetica differ considerably between various analysts.

AS A WAY OF REACHING IMPORTANT POLITICAL DECISIONS, THE referendum is usually regarded as a clumsy and unsatisfactory instrument and quite unimportant as a contribution to political democracy. Yet widespread demands for more participation ‘by the people’ have brought the referendum into new-found favour. Interest has been rekindled too by its application to the issue of membership of the European Community, with the clear possibility of directly comparing the referenda in the four countries involved. This new interest in the referendum comes at a time when many party systems, the traditional supports of a purely parliamentary democracy, appear to be in disarray, and there are signs of increasing volatility within electorates which can foreshadow basic realignments in party systems. Questions now are naturally being raised about the future ordering of democratic politics, and for this reason it seems justifiable to focus an examination of the referendum especially on the problem of political change.

There are few Chapters of the Federal Republic'S History that could be written without a prominent reference to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Since 1949 Christian Democratic chancellors have led German governments for no less than 37 years. Even when in opposition, the Christian Democrats - composed at the national level of the CDU and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU)1 - constituted more often than not the strongest parliamentary party group (Fraktion) in the Bundestag, such as after the federal elections of 1969, 1976 and 1980. Also at state level and in the Bundesrat, which represents the individual states (L-nder) in the national decision-making process, the Christian Democrats quite often held a dominant position justifying occasional remarks of a ‘CDU/CSU bias’ within the German party system.

The removal of barriers to international trade has been a powerful stimulus to economic growth in the post-war period. World trade has grown on average 2 per cent faster than GNP throughout this period. Countries which deliberately sought to make themselves competitive externally have grown much faster than countries which relied on their domestic market. By contrast, communist countries, where the system discouraged external trade, have fallen steadily behind. The consequence for most countries has been a steadily growing share of their economy which is exposed to international competition.

‘GOVERNMENTAL INSTABILITY: ITS CAUSES AND CURE’ HAS stimulated a growth industry in political science. Conferences, projects and published and unpublished works attest to its attraction as a research topic as well as its centrality for the democratic process. The volatility of electorates ranks high among the presumed causes of instability. The inability of cabinets to maintain legislative majorities, often attributed to the fickle nature of mass publics, is said to lead to ineffective government. Lack of effectiveness, in turn, results in voter disaffection, loss of legitimacy and increased volatility.

TWENTY YEARS OF BREAKDOWNS IN PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENTS; the replacement of competitive political systems by military-bureaucratic regimes throughout Asia and Africa; civil war in Vietnam; the disintegration of Nigeria and the perpetration of genocide in that country, have inspired pessimism among most observers about the future of democratic politics in the new states. It has been suggested that political scientists now turn their attentions to the question of ‘political decay’ as well as to the question of ‘political development’ and that political leaders in the new states concentrate upon building the instruments of political control before engaging in serious economic development and social mobilization, and before permitting political competition and political participation: for, it is argued, rapid increases in economic development, social mobilization, and political participation work against the building and maintenance of strong and stable political institutions in a developing society.

On 15 January 1966, a crisis-bound Nigerian government was overthrown by a swift military coup d'état. The Prime Minister of the Federal Republic and his powerful associate, the Federal Minister of Finance, were seized by soldiers in Lagos. Neither survived, although the death of the Prime Minister, who was not personally unpopular, may not have been premeditated. His political chief, the premier of the vast Northern Region, was killed in Kaduna, and the latter's ally, the premier of the Western Region, died violently in Ibadan. Their major opponents among Nigerian office holders, namely the President of the Republic and the premiers of the Eastern and Midwestern Regions, escaped death. The President was on leave outside the country; it is not clear whether the two surviving premiers were spared by design or mistake. In any case, the tendency in Nigerian politics with which the survivors had been identified did appear to have triumphed despite their personal losses of power.

In The Early 1970S, Dankwart Rustow Stressed The Centrality of national identity as a background condition for democratization. A recently emerging body of literature has raised this important issue again, opening it up for further discussion. Mark Thompson, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, for example, have highlighted the centrality of the national identity question (they use the term ‘stateness’) in their recent work. Henry Bienen and Jeffrey Herbst see the emergence of a sense of national identity as a prerequisite for democratization in Africa, thus confirming Rustow's idea of sequence. Ilter Turan supports Rustow's view on the role of national identity in his analysis of the cases of Iraq and the Central Asian republics, while James Putzel uses the macro variable of the national identity question to explain why democratic politics is more difficult in Indonesia, which faces the risk of disintegration, and in the ethnically-divided Malaysia, with its weak national identity, than in the Philippines where disintegration is not an issue.

THE DIVERSIFICATION IN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION AND the growth of the political system have increased the number of instances of decision-making and intensified the relations between social and political forces. Parties and pressure groups are not enough in themselves to channel the interests, ideologies, and stresses, originating in the social system, into the political system. Nevertheless, during the last forty years, other, less familiar channels have broadened considerably and of these it is what we call the consultative councils which have made the greatest impact. So much has their importance grown in recent years that they must be considered as a mechanism of systemic interaction, comparable in weight to those of the pressure groups or parties. The consultative councils have, in fact, become a major cog in the political system and any attempt to exclude them is doomed to failure.

Despite theoretical arguments suggesting the strong effects of presidential term limits and re-election on democracy, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence to evaluate them. We test both the effect on democracy of the existence of a consecutive re-election rule and of reforms introducing it for incumbent presidents. Using evidence from Latin American countries between 1945 and 2018, we test their relationship to both vertical and horizontal accountability. A synthetic control method is employed to account for the effect of term-limit reforms, and time-series cross-section models for modelling the association with the re-election rule. Both vertical and horizontal accountability as well as the quality of democracy are eroded by term-limit evasion reforms in most countries and strengthened in none between 1990 and 2018. Allowing presidents to run for re-election – relative to term-limited ones – is consistently associated with weak democratic outcomes.

Presidents and prime ministers who form gender-parity cabinets receive positive news coverage and public praise. Cabinet reshuffles, with less attention, may offer scope to decrease the numbers of female ministers. Although research on the gendered impact of reshuffles is sparse, some studies suggest that women's presence declines during reshuffles. This article explores the gendered dynamics of reshuffles that follow initial gender-parity cabinets, asking whether the reshuffle context affects the proportions of men and women in reorganized cabinet teams. Employing a comparative case study approach, the article analyses initial gender-parity cabinets and subsequent reshuffled cabinets in France and Spain across three different presidents and prime ministers. We find that gender parity functions as a concrete floor, sustained in cabinet reshuffles, unaffected by political shocks and party system changes, and without consequence for women's appointments to high-prestige ministerships.

COMPARATIVE POLITICS IS EVERYTHING – OR IT IS NOTHING. Superficially, these appear to be the only logical positions that can be maintained when considering the relationship of comparative politics to the various areas and divisions of the discipline of political science. The now old-fashioned use of the title to indicate either a small number of country studies loosely linked by structural comparison, or a somewhat broader field of institutional comparison, whatever the pedagogic arguments of coherence or convenience, possesses neither logical boundary nor scientific integrity. Yet once that treacherous one step further is taken in the directions of functional comparison, or, further, consideration of the ‘comparative method’ itself and the distinctions between comparative politics and, say, political theory, political sociology or political analysis disappear completely.

WHEREVER ONE TAKES A POSITION IN THE GREAT DEBATE between representative and participatory democrats it is clear that no democracy can function without the involvement of its citizens. What is at issue is the extent and nature of the citizen participation which is thought to be required if a democracy is to be worthy of its name. Whilst this is a fundamentally normative issue, the protagonists on both sides regularly cite evidence as to actual levels of participation and draw inferences from that evidence in support of their contentions.

On the one side are those who assert that in Britain ‘some of the spectators have begun to descend on to the field’; on the other are those who say that ‘the “grass roots” of politics seem shrivelled and starved of the nourishment of participation by the citizens’. For this reason, as Jane Mansbridge has said, ‘field studies of what happens to various ideals when people try to live by them could prove useful in clarifying a wide range of normative questions.

THE SWISS AND THEIR POLITICS: THIS TOPIC HAS ALREADY BEEN AND still is of concern to many citizens as well as to social scientists. Although it has been the subject of several studies, it has however never generated any empirical research using opinion polls. This has now been done. This study is part of a series based on the results of an opinion poll – the first in Switzerland – carried out in the spring of 1972. The survey was designed to elicit the Swiss citizens’ image of the country's democratic system as well as their attitudes toward important issues. It consisted of a questionnaire lasting about one hour and it was given to 1,917 male and female voters selected by scientific methods which guarantee their representativeness.