Federal states in which component regions are invested with distinct ethnic content are more likely to collapse when they contain a core ethnic region, a single ethnic region enjoying pronounced superiority in population. Dividing a dominant group into multiple federal regions reduces these dangers. A study of world casesfindsthat all ethnofederal states that have collapsed have possessed core ethnic regions. Thus, ethnofederalism, so long as it is instituted without a core ethnic region, may represent a viable way of avoiding the most deadly forms of conflict while maintaining state unity in ethnically divided countries.

Despite a sophisticated understanding of the impact of electoral institutions on macrolevel political behavior, little is known about the relationship between these institutions and microlevel legislative behavior. This article reviews existing claims about this relationship and develops a model for predicting how electoral institutions affect the relationship between parliamentarians and their party principals in the context of the European Parliament. The European Parliament is an ideal laboratory for investigating these effects, because in each European Union member state, different institutions are used to elect Members of European Parliament (MEPs). The results of this model, tested on four hundred thousand individual MEP vote decisions, show that candidate-centered electoral systems (such as open-list proportional representation or single-transferable-vote systems) and decentralized candidate-selection rules produce parliamentarians independent from their party principals. By contrast, party-centered electoral systems (such as closed-list proportional representation systems) and centralized candidate-selection rules produce parliamentarians beholden to the parties that fight elections and choose candidates: in the case of the European Parliament, the national parties.

This article argues that clans, informal organizations based on kin and fictive kin ties, are political actors that have a profound impact on the nature of posttransitional regimes and the potential for regime durability. The article first develops the concept of “clan” conceptually. It then develops several propositions about clan politics and explores them empirically in the context of the post-Soviet Central Asian cases. These cases suggest the limits of the prevailing transitions and institutionalist approaches; these theories cannot explain regime transition in the Central Asian cases because they focus on the formal level and ignore the crucial informal actors—clans—and the informal politics that shape these cases. The distinct mode of transition, new regime institutions, and leadership and elite ideologies evident at the formal level have a very short-term effect; withinfiveyears, these cases converge toward a pattern of informal, clan-based politics. By contrast, this article draws upon the insights of the early literature on political development as well as the state-society literature to develop an alternative framework for explaining the dynamic between clans and the regime. Clan networks and clan deals penetrate and transform the formal regime in several ways—by clan-based appointments and patronage, by stripping state assets to feed one's clan network, and by crowding out other mechanisms of representation. As they undermine formal institutions, clans create an informal regime best understood as “clan politics.”

Scholars have usually understood the problem of democratic consolidation in terms of the creation of mechanisms that make possible the avoidance of populist excesses, polarized conflicts, or authoritarian corporatist inclusion that undermined free politics in much of postwar Latin America. This article makes the case that, under contemporary liberal economic conditions, the nature of the challenge for democratization has changed in important ways. Earlier problems of polarization had their roots in the long-present statist patterns of economic organization. By contrast, under free-market conditions, democratic consolidation faces a largely distinct set of challenges: the underarticulation of societal interests, pervasive social atomization, and socially uneven political quiescence founded in collective action problems. These can combine to undermine the efficacy of democratic representation and, consequently, regime legitimacy. The article utilizes data from the Latin American region since the 1970s on development, economic reform, and individual and collective political participation to show the effects of a changing state-economy relationship on the consolidation of democratic politics.

Scholars have usually understood the problem of democratic consolidation in terms of the creation of mechanisms that make possible the avoidance of populist excesses, polarized conflicts, or authoritarian corporatist inclusion that undermined free politics in much of postwar Latin America. This article makes the case that, under contemporary liberal economic conditions, the nature of the challenge for democratization has changed in important ways. Earlier problems of polarization had their roots in the long-present statist patterns of economic organization. By contrast, under free-market conditions, democratic consolidation faces a largely distinct set of challenges: the underarticulation of societal interests, pervasive social atomization, and socially uneven political quiescence founded in collective action problems. These can combine to undermine the efficacy of democratic representation and, consequently, regime legitimacy. The article utilizes data from the Latin American region since the 1970s on development, economic reform, and individual and collective political participation to show the effects of a changing state-economy relationship on the consolidation of democratic politics.