The disparities in per-capita wealth and national productivity that divide the United States and Latin America today have often been understood as results of institutional variations introduced during each region's period of imperial rule. According to this interpretation, path-dependent processes preserved institutions installed by Britain, Spain, and Portugal across the centuries, propagating their positive or negative economic effects, and eventually producing a marked “development gap” in the hemisphere. This article aims to improve this account by highlighting the direct and indirect economic effects of the success or failure of the political unions established after independence in both the United States and Latin America. It demonstrates that influential political theorists throughout the hemisphere understood the developmental advantages to be gained from unifying former colonies and employing the political authority newly at their disposal to abolish the stifling institutional legacies of European rule, suggesting that if Spanish America's unions had endured, or conversely, if the United States had collapsed, the two regions' economies might not have diverged as dramatically as they subsequently did. This illustrates an important contribution that the emerging subfield of “comparative political theory” can make to comparative political science in general, and to the new institutionalism in particular, by providing uniquely direct insight into the choices available to political actors in consequential moments of institutional genesis and change, and revealing the contingency of institutional variations that might otherwise appear inevitable.

We propose a new conception of monetary sovereignty that acknowledges the reality of today’s global credit money system. Today, the concept is predominantly used to denote states that issue and regulate their own currency. We reject that Westphalian understanding of monetary sovereignty. Instead, we propose a conception of effective monetary sovereignty that focuses on what states are actually able to do in the era of financial globalization. The conception fits the hybridity of the modern credit money system by acknowledging the crucial role not only of central bank money but also of money issued by regulated banks and unregulated shadow banks. These institutions often operate “offshore”, outside of a state’s legal jurisdiction, which makes monetary governance more difficult. Monetary sovereignty consists in the ability of states to effectively govern these different segments of the monetary system and thereby achieve their economic policy objectives.

Few transformations have been as important in American politics as the incorporation of African Americans into the Democratic Party over the course of the 1930s–60s and the Republican Party's growing association with more conservative positions on race-related policies. This paper traces the relationship between New Deal economic liberalism and racial liberalism in the mass public. A key finding is that by about 1940, economically-liberal northern white Democratic voters were substantially more pro-civil rights than were economically-conservative northern Republican voters. While partisanship and civil rights views were unrelated among southern whites, economic conservatives were more racially conservative than their economically liberal counterparts, even in the south. These findings suggest that there was a connection between attitudes towards the economic programs of the New Deal and racial liberalism early on, well before national party elites took distinct positions on civil rights. Along with grassroots pressure from African American voters who increasingly voted Democratic in the 1930s–40s, this change among white voters likely contributed to northern Democratic politicians' gradual embrace of civil rights liberalism and Republican politicians' interest in forging a coalition with conservative white southerners. In attempting to explain these linkages, I argue that the ideological meaning of New Deal liberalism sharpened in the late 1930s due to changes in the groups identified with Roosevelt's program and due to the controversies embroiling New Dealers in 1937–38.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is a powerful journalistic account of the oppression of women worldwide, and of the ways that some women and men have struggle against this oppression and discovered new forms of economic empowerment. The book—in its eleventh printing in less than a year, and with testimonials from the likes of Angelina Jolie and George Clooney—is also a publishing sensation. Half the Sky brings much attention to an important and timely topic, and it creatively combines narrative, analysis, and policy prescriptions, and so we invited three prominent scholars of gender inequality and development to reflect on the book's strengths and weaknesses: Ayelet Shachar, Uma Narayan, and Valentine M. Moghadam.

Guided by the thesis that fascism was the outcome of a dialectic of instrumental reason, I argue that Trumpism is the result of a dialectic of neoliberal reason. The 2008 crisis revealed that widely distributed consumption could no longer be sustained through escalating debt, as it had been since neoliberalizing reforms in the 1970s. Economic crisis has been interpreted through a culture market in which pseudo-individual consumers choose what hyperreal public they prefer and participate in pseudo-activity through social media. Retreat into insular hyperrealities and hostility to dissonant alternatives reinforce each other in an escalating logic generating partisan incivility and fake news. The de-democratization of the state through subservience to private interests and political dysfunction has combined with the consumer’s uncompromising mentality as a dissatisfied customer to channel politicization into populism. It aggregates negatively through shared dissatisfaction, driving escalating antagonism between technocratic responsibility and populist responsiveness. These escalating economic, cultural, and political contradictions heighten negative “freedom from” restraints while subverting positive “freedom to” relate meaningfully to the world. This intensifies anxieties and receptivity to authoritarianism as a self-defeating escape from neoliberal freedom. Trumpism exploits precarity, corrupts democratic norms, and licenses misdirected aggression. This neoliberal authoritarianism is inverted fascism. Trump’s presidency is more effect than cause.

More political scientists should engage in the debates surrounding regulation of communications networks, the infrastructure on which telecom, media, and Internet services ride. In 1990 there were 14 communications regulators worldwide, by 2007 there were 148. To fulfill World Trade Organization Agreement on Basic Telecommunications commitments, many countries aim to create regulatory agencies that are “independent.” What characterizes independence? Regulators are embedded in a political context that includes three main constituencies : other government institutions, industry, and consumers. Independent regulators are able to take action autonomously from other government institutions and industry while serving as advocates for consumers. In a survey of 18 countries, several traits emerge; a leader who cannot be dismissed arbitrarily, regulatory authority clearly distinct from policymaking, independent funding, minimal staff exchange between regulator and regulated firm, and dedicated support for consumers. It is usually easier for a regulator to be independent if operators are privatized. In a study of 4 countries, independent regulators follow decision-making procedures that give the public notice about proposed rule changes, opportunities to provide comments, and final decisions with explanation. Also, independent regulators have gift, conflict of interest, and post-employment rules, which set ethical standards and expectations for staff.

While scholars of African American political thought have done a remarkable job centering focus on black thinkers, they still largely frame their endeavor in reference to the geo-political boundaries of the U.S. nation-state, thereby ignoring the transnational and diasporic dynamics of black politics. The consequence is that alternative traditions of thought in the Americas—e.g., Caribbean traditions—are cast as irrelevant to questions of racial exclusion in U.S. political thinking. I seek to correct nation-centric perspectives on U.S. political thought and development by demonstrating the utility of the “transnational turn.” Drawing on the framework developed in C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins, I trace how an influential cohort of abolitionists in the antebellum United States looked to the Haitian Revolution as a model for the overthrow of slavery. Engaging the writings and speeches of David Walker, James Theodore Holly, and Frederick Douglass, I then argue that radical abolitionists operated in the same ideological problem-space as Haitian revolutionaries and adopted a specific model of revolution as much indebted to Haitian political thought as Anglo-American models of anti-colonial revolt. By implication, racially egalitarian movements and moments in U.S. political development cannot be adequately understood with exclusive reference to national traditions of thought.

Strong institutions and accountable governments are imperative for any country’s long-term prosperity. Yet the development of such institutions has presented a continuous challenge for many countries around the world. Using Russia as a case, this study brings attention to the unexpected negative impact of global interdependence and shows that institutional arbitrage opportunities have enabled economic actors to solve for institutional weaknesses and constraints in the domestic realm by using foreign institutions, thereby limiting the emergence of a domestic rule of law regime. We argue that such opportunities lower the propensity of asset-holders, normally interested in strong institutions at home, to organize collective action to lobby for better institutions. We demonstrate the main ways through which Russia’s capital-owners make use of foreign legal and financial infrastructures such as capital flight, the use of foreign corporate structures, offshore financial centers, real estate markets, the round-tripping of foreign direct investment, and reliance on foreign law in contract-writing and foreign courts in dispute-resolution.

I offer a conceptual framework for assessing the normative legitimacy of coercive disobedience—involving threats, disruption, force, and deceit—by social movements. A standard liberal view is that while coercion may be required to resist authoritarian regimes, it is illegitimate in a democratic state since it conflicts with majority rule and mutual respect. In restricting disobedience to a form of moral persuasion, this perspective neglects how social power and material interests can distort the conditions for open, fair deliberation. I offer a principled defense of coercive disobedience, not only in repressive states but in plausibly democratic societies. I argue that coercion can be justified on democratic republican grounds as a means to collectively contest objectionable forms of political domination. The use of coercion can be justified as a surrogate tool of political action for those who lack effective participation rights; as a remedial tool to counteract the dominating influence of powerful actors over the process of democratic will formation, and as a mobilizational tool to maintain participation and discipline in collective action. I conclude by proposing democratic constraints on the use of coercive tactics designed to offset the potential movements themselves become a source of arbitrary power.

In the wake of the Bush administration's use of executive power since 9/11, Abraham Lincoln's executive actions during the Civil War have received more attention than usual. Typically associated with the idea that constitutions should recede in favor of the rule of one during crisis situations, Lincoln's actions have been used on one side as the implicit and even explicit basis of presidential claims to increased power and on the other side as the example par excellence of what presidents should not do. Taking issue with this conventional interpretation and continuing the more recent scholarly recovery of Lincoln's profound concern for constitutionalism, I explicate the principles that guided Lincoln's use of executive power during the Civil War. By drawing out the importance of political necessity as the basis for “prerogative” over and against both popular approval and unlimited constitutional powers, I show how this principle also provides an alternative perspective and even an antidote to the current scholarly debate concerning whether constitutions are better preserved by “Jeffersonian” or “Hamiltonian” prerogative. Lincoln's example also shows us that we should not legalize, regularize, or institutionalize those powers that may be necessary to avert a crisis. Perhaps most importantly, Lincoln's statesmanship teaches us that constitutions can moderate and limit discretionary executive power only if the people learn an attachment to their Constitution that does not come naturally to them.Benjamin A. Kleinerman is assistant professor in the Department of International Studies at the Virginia Military Institute ([email protected]). His current research focuses on the relationship between executive power and constitutionalism. The author thanks Bernard J. Dobski, Steven Kautz, and M. Richard Zinman for commenting on earlier versions of this manuscript, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

In 2006, President Bush publicly stated that, in relation to the same-sex marriage issue, “activist judges” were thwarting the preferred policy of the elected representatives and the expression of popular will embodied in popular initiatives and constitutional amendments. Notwithstanding the philosophical discussion of the constitutionally assigned role of courts in the political system and the idea of judicial independence, President Bush's statement raises an interesting empirical question: In the case of same-sex marriage, have state and federal courts really acted in direct opposition to the expressed policy preferences of current or recent legislative majorities or overturned popular initiatives and constitutional amendments? Using evidence from state and federal legislative and judicial action around same-sex marriage primarily from the fifteen years preceding President Bush's 2006 statement, I argue that, with some rare exceptions, judges can not easily be identified as “activist” on the issue of same-sex marriage even if we assess their actions according to President Bush's criteria.

Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy. By Mark R. Warren; Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life. By Harry C. Boyte; Going Public. By Michael Gecan; and Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice. By Edward T. Chambers with Michael A. Cowan.

These are not easy times for democracy. In the face of multinational corporations, an increasingly corrupt and deceitful political system, mega-media conglomerates, and militaristic televangelists, it is easy to understand how some radical democrats succumb to a politics of the bullhorn. The objective of such politics is to hone the correct line and strategize ways to project it clearly, loudly, and righteously into the public arena. Yet the success of politics thus framed has been marginal in recent decades, and its democratic credentials questionable—if by democratic we mean a politics that engages a manifold people in the difficult reciprocities of active critical judgment, organizing, action toward common goods, more egalitarian distributions, and deepening acknowledgments of plural modes of being. Most Americans are Teflon to it.Romand Coles is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University ([email protected]). The author wishes to acknowledge helpful comments and criticisms from Susan Bickford, Kimberley Curtis, Jeffrey Isaac, Sanford Schram, and anonymous reviewers for Perspectives on Politics. Romand Coles is the author of Self/Power/Other: Political Theory and Dialogical Ethics, Rethinking Generosity: Critical Theory and the Politics of Caritas, and most recently Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy.

In 1960, E.E. Schattschneider noted that every change in the scope of political conflict has a bias; political conflicts that are localized tend to be highly restrictive, while nationalizing conflicts can draw in previously excluded groups. In contrast to this conventional wisdom, this paper suggests that the question of which venues are open to which interests is an empirical one.Lisa L. Miller is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University ([email protected]). The author would like to thank Frank Baumgartner, Regina Lawrence, Beth Leech, Michael McCann, and Marie Gottschalk, as well as the three anonymous reviewers, for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts.

Few contemporary political scientists would disagree that race has been a pivotal force in American politics since this country's founding. The magnitude and scope of its impact on current political life is, however, a matter of intense debate. Political theorists have conspicuously not been at the forefront of these race-specific discussions. This is not because political theory has ignored race per se. On the contrary, contemporary political theorists increasingly include race in their descriptive and normative analyses of democratic politics. Debates about identity politics, multiculturalism, the redress of invidious discrimination, and feminist discourse on intersecting social identifications have moved from the margin to the center of political theory and typically involve at least some attention to racial difference. But these discussions have for the most part not examined racial meaning in a sustained, focused manner. While there are exceptions, political theory, as a discipline, has not given theoretical priority to American race.See, for example, Balfour 2001; Appiah and Gutmann 1996; Young 1990.

Voting is a democratic virtue and an important mechanism for citizens to let their voices be heard. However, citizens do not participate in politics at equal levels, with consequences for their political power. While turnout gaps between different socioeconomic groups are well researched, the biggest gap in many Western European countries today has been overlooked: that between the children of immigrants (minority youths) and the majority population. I argue that existing theories fall short in addressing this gap because they do not attend to the distinctly political forces that shape citizens’ relationships to politics. Building on the policy-feedback literature, and analyzing seventy-one in-depth interviews with minority and majority youths in Denmark, I show that because these groups are targeted very differently in policy and political discourse, they have substantially different conceptions of politics and their status as citizens. Many minority youths react to anti-immigrant political messages by dissociating from politics, but I warn against interpreting their quiescence as political apathy. Instead, dissociating from politics can be a strategy to reclaim power over their self-understanding and can be experienced as empowering. These findings challenge classic conceptualizations of political engagement and open discussion about how to understand political behavior in increasingly diverse societies.

The substantial literature on mass violence, from ethnic cleansing to civil wars, has paid surprisingly little attention to the largest instance of mass violence in human history: the Holocaust. When political scientists have approached the subject, the trend has been to treat the Holocaust as a single case, comparing it—sometimes controversially—with other instances of genocide such as Rwanda or Cambodia. But historically grounded work on the destruction of European Jewry can help illuminate the microfoundations of violent politics, unpack the relationship between a ubiquitous violence-inducing ideology (antisemitism) and highly variable murder, and recast old questions about the origins and evolution of the Holocaust itself. After reviewing new trends in history-writing, I highlight opportunities for social-scientifically oriented research centered on the interaction of state power, local communities, and violent mobilization in five areas: military occupation, repertoires of violence, alliance politics, genocidal policymaking, and resistance. My conclusion addresses thorny issues of comparison, morality, and memory.

Women face more harassment and intimidation as politicians than men, but little is known about how this affects representation. I develop a theoretical framework for studying the gendered costs of political violence for descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation. Testing the framework using interview and survey data on Swedish women and men politicians, I uncover the costs of violence against politicians in all three dimensions empirically. Violence makes women more frequently than men consider leaving politics and enforces male-coded characteristics for political candidates, affecting prospects for gender-diverse descriptive representation. Substantive representation is harmed by violence silencing feminist debates and obstructing women politicians’ policy debate activities. Women’s symbolic representation is threatened by violence coercing women to decrease their visibility.

When work on the democratic peace first emerged it contributed to the revitalization of liberal thought and represented an important contribution to International Relations (IR). Yet innovation has been replaced by stagnation. Coding and correlation are debated ad infinitum, while little attention is given to growing economic inequality, voter alienation, a decline in traditional parties, rising populism and a wide array of related trends that raise serious doubts about the health of democracies at the center of the zone of peace. Yet if democratic institutions are not functioning as they are meant to, and norms of compromise are disappearing domestically, what hope can there be that these will facilitate cooperative behavior between democracies? Rather than promoting peace, could it be that capitalism in its contemporary neoliberal form is undermining or hollowing out democracy? The static understanding of democracy adopted by this research means that such questions have been largely overlooked. In response, I focus on two major changes impacting established democracies and consider their significance for democratic peace arguments: the decline of democratic institutions and culture, as well as how neoliberalism is reshaping the relationship between democracy and capitalism. In developing this argument, I propose that the template that the democratic peace research program offers for studying the world is emblematic of—and contributing to—a troubling contracting of our political vision. An excessive concern with methodological rigor, combined with a narrow understanding of what qualifies as valid research, has resulted in a body of scholarship that is remarkably sophisticated but has surprisingly little to say about democracy and its place in the world.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement arose to put a much-needed spotlight on police brutality and systemic racism. In two comprehensive studies, we sought to investigate the determinants of support for the BLM movement. First, in a systematic review 1,588 records were identified and findings from twenty-four studies (Npooled =27,691) were narratively synthesized along five categories relating to demographics, race, partisanship and ideology, discrimination and prejudice, and psychology. Second, we exhaustively examined the determinants of BLM support across thirteen probability-based nationally representative datasets (Npooled =31,779), finding thirty-seven common predictors for which individual meta-analyses were conducted to estimate the strength and robustness of their associations. Our results suggest a near perfect match between BLM opposition and positive attitudes towards political actors and institutions rooted in systemic racism in the United States. The present work contributes to a broad categorization of correlates of support for BLM across social, psychological, and political domains.

Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference. By Alberto Alesina and Edward L. Glaeser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 262 pages. $55.00 cloth

Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser's recent book, Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe, exemplifies the recent incursion of economists into the domains of political science and sociology. In thinking about welfare states, economists have traditionally been interested in their effects on the distribution of income and, above all, their implications for efficiency and growth. Alesina and Glaeser instead set out to explain why “Americans are much less willing to redistribute from the rich to the poor than Europeans” (2) or, in other words, why the American welfare state is so small by comparison to European welfare states. This, then, is a book about American exceptionalism in the realm of social policy, but Alesina and Glaeser's discussion also addresses the general problem of accounting for cross-national variation in the public provision of social welfare. Their project is to provide an account of the exceptional nature of the American welfare state that is consistent with and sheds light on differences among other welfare states as well. This makes for an audacious book that deserves critical scrutiny.Jonas Pontusson is Professor of Politics at Princeton University ([email protected]). This essay was written while I was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. I am most grateful to the foundation for its support. For comments on previous drafts, I am grateful to Ira Katznelson, Mary O'Sullivan, and Kenneth Sokoloff.