Much of the literature on electoral politics in Africa has focused on one mechanism of electoral mobilization: reliance on shared ethnic identity between politicians and voters. On the contrary, the author argues that politicians pursue two distinct modes of nonprogrammatic electoral mobilization: (1) by directly relying on the support of voters from one's own ethnic background, and (2) by indirectly working through electoral intermediaries—local leaders who command moral authority, control resources, and can influence the electoral behavior of their dependents. Yet the power of local leaders varies greatly; hence the option to use electoral intermediaries is not available in all settings. The choice of electoral mobilization affects national electoral outcomes: by severing the direct link between politicians and voters, intermediaries reduce a campaign's reliance on shared identity and create cross-ethnic electorates. The evidence for this argument is based on original interviews with political leaders collected during fieldwork in Senegal and Benin during the 2006–7 electoral season, media coverage of elections, and a historical analysis of first mass elections in the 1950s.

This article examines the importance of regions in shaping world order. Reviewing two recent books that claim that the contemporary world order is an increasingly regionalized one, the author argues that regions matter to the extent they can be relatively autonomous entities. While both books accept that regions are social constructs, their answer to the question of who makes regions reflects a bias in favor of powerful actors. A regional understanding of world politics should pay more attention to and demonstrate how regions resist and socialize power—at both global and regional levels—rather than simply focusing on how powers construct regions. Power matters, but local responses to power, including strategies of exclusion, resistance, socialization, and binding, matter more in understanding how regions are socially constructed. The article elaborates on various types of responses to power from both state and societal actors in order to offer an inside-out, rather than outside-in, perspective on the regional architecture of world politics.

This study compares democratization in the postcommunist region (or the twenty-seven countries that emerged from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) in order to evaluate some of the assumptions and arguments in the literature on recent democratization in southern Europe and Latin America. Five conclusions are drawn, all of which challenge the received wisdom about democratization in southern Europe and Latin America. First, the uncertainty surrounding the postcommunist transitions to democracy varied significantly. This influenced, in turn, the strategies of transition and their payoffs. This also meant that the most successful transitions in the postcommunist context involved a sharp break with the old order. Second, popular mobilization often functioned to support the democratic project. Third, nationalist mobilization was also helpful, though this depended upon whether it began with the breakdown of authoritarian rule or had a longer history—with the latter compromising the democratic project. Fourth, if the timing of nationalist mobilization was critical for the success of democratization in those cases where such mobilization occurred, then the strength of the opposition was the key factor in the remaining cases. Finally, while democratic consolidation necessarily enhances the prospects for democratic sustainability, the failure to consolidate democracy does not necessarily threaten the continuation of democratic rule. Indeed, as in the Russian case, such a failure may prolong democratic rule. This suggests, in turn, that a key distinction must be made between the optimal conditions for democratization and optimal strategies.

During the past two decades, neopatrimonialism has become the convenient, all purpose, and ubiquitous moniker for African governance. The school of thought behind this research program, which the author refers to as the neopatrimonialism school, has produced an impressive literature on Africa. Its analysis informs policymakers and its language permeates media reportage on African states. While neopatrimonialism has long been a focus of development studies, in recent times it has assumed politically and economically exigent status. The school identifies causal links between neopatrimonialism and economic performance, and makes predictions drawing from what is referred to as the "logic of neopatrimonialism." Neopatrimonialism is said to account for trade policies, hyperinflation, economic stagnation, low investment in infrastructure, urban bias, andultimately, the lack of economic development in Africa. This article examines the empirical basis of predictions and policy prescriptions. It argues that while descriptive of the social practices of the states and individuals that occupy different positions within African societies, the concept of neopatrimonialism has little analytical content and no predictive value with respect to economic policy and performance.

This article argues that, beginning in the mid-1990s, there has been a transformation of immigrant integration policies in Western Europe, away from distinct “national models” and toward convergent policies of “civic integration” for newcomers and “antidiscrimination” for settled immigrants and their descendants. This convergence is demonstrated by a least-likely case comparison of the Netherlands, France, and Germany—states that had pursued sharply different lines in the past. The author fleshes out the conflicting, even contradictory logics of antidiscrimination and civic integration and grounds them in opposite variants of liberalism, an “old” liberalism of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity and a “new” liberalism of power and disciplining, respectively.

Theorists of ethnic conflict have argued that the physical separation of warring ethnic groups may be the only possible solution to civil war. They argue that without territorial partition and, if necessary, forced population movements the war cannot end and genocide is likely. Other scholars have counterargued that partition only replaces internal war with international war, that it creates undemocratic successor states, and that it generates tremendous human suffering. This debate has so far been informed by very few important case studies. This article uses a new data set on civil wars to identify the main determinants of war-related partitions and estimate their impact on democratization, on the probability that war will recur, and on low-level ethnic violence. This is the first large-N quantitative analysis of this topic, testing the propositions of partition theory and weighing heavily on the side of its critics. Most assertions of partition theorists fail to pass rigorous empirical tests. The article also identifies some determinants of democratization after civil war, as well as the determinants of recurring ethnic violence. These empirical findings are used to formulate an alternative proposal for ending ethnic violence.

The electoral rise of unorthodox parties (UOPs) in recent East European elections raises some puzzling questions about electoral dynamics in new democracies. Why did the power alternation of the mid-1990s not result in party-system consolidation, as suggested by some earlier studies, but instead give way to a much more chaotic environment in which established mainstream political parties lost considerable ground to new political formations based on personalist and populist appeals? Why did this reversal in Eastern Europe happen during a period of economic recovery, remarkable Western integration progress, and a broad acceptance of electoral democracy as the only game in town? This article suggests that these electoral dynamics can be explained by focusing on the interaction between protest voting and election sequence. While protest voting to punish unpopular incumbents has been a widespread but understudied practice since the collapse of communism, the beneficiaries of these protest votes have changed in recent elections. Whereas in the first two generations of postcommunist elections, disgruntled voters could opt for untried mainstream alternatives, in third-generation elections (defined as elections taking place after at least two different ideological camps have governed in the postcommunist period) voters had fewer untried mainstream alternatives, and therefore opted in greater number for unorthodox parties. This explanation receives strong empirical support from statistical tests using aggregate data from seventy-six parliamentary elections in fourteen East European countries from 1990 to 2006, survey evidence from twelve postcommunist elections from 1996 to 2004, and a survey experiment in Bulgaria in 2008.

Because of its parsimony and power, deterrence theory is the most important American theory of international relations. Yet it has many faults. The boundaries outside of which it does not apply are not clear; it does not tell how a state can change an adversary's motives; it does not deal with the use of rewards. Current scholarship of the third wave of deterrence theory, including George and Smoke's Deterrence in American Foreign Policy, has increased our knowledge by providing empirical evidence on when and how deterrence fails. Examination of the details of decision making reveals the ways in which attempts to deter can go wrong. Recent work stresses the role of each side's intrinsic interest in an issue, and argues that earlier formulations of the theory exaggerated the importance of commitment. The third wave also introduces a larger political element by focusing attention on states' goals and the context of their behavior.

As communist regimes collapsed in the years 1989—91, communist parties and leaders exited power in roughly half the cases. The causes and the impact of this variation have generated considerable controversy. The authors show that the combined timing and content of the introduction of mass literacy was responsible for generating the national standards and comparisons that either sustained the legitimacy of communist party rule or led to its rapid and complete demise during the collapse of communist regimes. Mass literacy explains more of the patterns of the communist exit than do structural, modernization, or communist legacy accounts, and it provides a clear and sustained causal chain.

Recent years have seen a surge of studies that examine the inclusion-moderation hypothesis with reference to political Islam: the idea that political groups and individuals may become more moderate as a result of their inclusion in pluralist political processes. Most of these interventions adopt one of three foci: (1) the behavioral moderation of groups; (2) the ideological moderation of groups; and (3) the ideological moderation of individuals. After a discussion of various definitions of moderate and radical, the concept of moderation, and the centrality of moderation to studies of democratization, the author examines the scholarship on political Islam that falls within each approach. She then examines several studies that raise questions about sequencing: how mechanisms linking inclusion and moderation are posited and how other approaches might better explain Islamist moderation. Finally, she offers a critical analysis of the behavior-ideology binary that animates many of these models and suggests some fruitful paths for future research.

The 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) changed the structure of the making of U.S. trade policy and made possible a dramatic reduction in tariffs. The authors demonstrate that the key institutional innovation in the RTAA was its mandate to lower tariffs through reciprocal agreements with foreign nations. The expansion of exports under the RTAA enhanced political support for increasingly lower U.S. tariffs. Evidence that export interests were positively associated with congressional votes for free trade supports this view.

In recent years immigrant rights have increasingly been examined in an international context. An important theme in these discussions has been the question of whether, and if so how, states are constrained in developing immigrant and immigration policies. Some scholars argue that states are constrained by international human rights standards, while others, skeptical of this position, focus on a wide range of arguments at the domestic level of analysis. The skeptics are right that those asserting the impact of international human rights standards on immigrant policy have not demonstrated their importance domestically. International norms and standards do not diffuse automatically or consistently across states, and there has been too little detailed process tracing to illustrate the mechanisms of norm diffusion and therefore to move beyond correlation. To do so requires attention to the domestic actors who mobilize international norms and to the specific domestic circumstances in which they operate. This article examines a hard case by studying the impact of international human rights standards on policies toward Koreans and more recent migrant workers in Japan. In this case international norms matter. But they do not matter in a mysterious or automatic way. Domestic actors use international norms in context-specific environments to back up and make arguments for which they have few domestic resources. This is not a story of international versus domestic politics, nor is it a story about a paralyzed state. State actors are actively involved in the process of integrating international standards domestically, and the author examines how those standards work their way into the political process.

China began to establish markets a quarter century ago, but only in the last decade has its government made a concerted effort to design new institutions to govern them. Hence, a “regulatory state” is emerging. The prevailing literature focuses on a seeming convergence of Chinas institutions with the dominant global model of the “independent regulator,” including the establishment of new regulatory commissions. Yet research on China's strategic industries—those in the infrastructure and financial services sectors—suggests that assumptions of convergence obscure key elements of a regulatory design characterized by continued state ownership (as opposed to privatization), maximization of the value of these assets, and active government structuring of these industries. Moreover, regulators in the existing party-state bureaucracy have relatively weak authority. This research cautions us to rethink dominant models of Chinese political economy so that we retain a place for the central state in directing market reform at the “commanding heights” of the economy.

The wide-ranging varieties of capitalism literature rests on a particular conception of banks and banking that, the authors argue, no longer reflects the reality of modern financial systems. They take advantage of the greater information regarding bank activities revealed by the financial crisis to consider the reality, across eight of the world's largest developed economies, of the financial power of banks to act as bulwarks against market forces. This article offers a market-based banking framework that transcends the bank-based/capital market–based dichotomy that dominates comparative political economy's consideration of financial systems and argues that future CPE research should focus on the activities of banks. By demonstrating how market-based banking increases market influences on the supply of credit, the authors highlight an underap-preciated source of financial market pressure on nonfinancial companies (NFCs) that can have a potential impact across the range of issues that the varieties of capitalism (VoC) literature has seen as differentiating national systems. This approach has implications in areas such as labor, welfare, innovation, and flexibility.

Of all the many changes of the world economy since World War II, few have been nearly so dramatic as the resurrection of global finance. A review of five recent books suggests considerable diversity of opinion concerning both the causes and the consequences of financial globalization, leaving much room for further research. Competing historical interpretations, stressing the contrasting roles of market forces and government policies, need to be reexamined for dynamic linkages among the variables they identify. Likewise, impacts on state policy at both the macro and micro levels should be explored more systematically to understand not just whether constraints may be imposed on governments but also how and under what conditions, and what policymakers can do about them. Finally, questions are also raised about implications for the underlying paradigm conventionally used for the study of international political economy and international relations more generally.

The study of international political economy is distinguished not only by its substantive focus but also by its continuing attention to cooperative, or at least rule-guided, arrangements. These cooperative arrangements are defined variously: as an open world economy by Robert Gilpin and Stephen Krasner, and as strong international regimes by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye. But in either case, the problems of cooperation and order are not approached simply as tactical alliances or as limiting cases of international anarchy. Instead, close attention is paid to the possibilities for rule making and institution building, however fragile and circumscribed they may be. By this view, the absence of a Hobbesian “common power to keep them all in awe” does not preclude the establishment of some effective joint controls over the international environment. Elaborating on this perspective, Brian Barry argues that “international affairs are not a pure anarchy in which nobody has any reason for expecting reciprocal relations to hold up. In economic matters, particularly, there is a good deal of room for stable expectations.”

The authors explore how modern autocrats win elections by inducing employers to mobilize their employees to vote for the regime and thereby subvert the electoral process. using two original surveys of employers and workers conducted around the 2011 parliamentary elections in russia, they find that just under one-quarter of employers engaged in some form of political mobilization. they then develop a simple framework for identifying which firms engage in voter mobilization and which workers are targeted for mobilization. firms that are vulnerable to state pressure—financially dependent firms and those in sectors characterized by asset immobility—are among the most common sites of workplace-based electoral subversion. the authors also find that workers who are especially dependent on their employer are more likely to be targeted for mobilization. By identifying the conditions under which workplace mobilization occurs in authoritarian regimes, the authors contribute to the long-standing debate about the economic bases of democratization. in addition, they explore an understudied means of subverting elections in contemporary autocracies: the use of economic coercion to mobilize voters. Moreover, their research finds that clientelist exchange can thrive in industrial settings and in the absence of deeply embedded political parties.

This article draws on the case of India to address the question of democratization by exploring the dynamic interplay of the formal, effective, and substantive dimensions of democracy. Fifty-three years of almost uninterrupted democratic rule in India have done little to reduce the political, social, and economic marginalization of India's popular classes. Within India the state of Kerala stands out as an exception. Democratic institutions have effectively managed social conflict and have also helped secure substantive gains for subordinate classes. Kerala's departure from the national trajectory is located in historical patterns of social mobilization that coalesced around lower-class interests and produced forms of state-society engagement conducive to democratic deepening. Contrary to much of the transition literature, this case suggests that high levels of mobilization and redistributive demands have democracy-enhancing effects.

The strong support that African presidents retain among voters of their own ethnicity, despite clear evidence of shirking and corruption, has prompted numerous empirical investigations into whether an incumbent's ethnicity or performance is more important to African voters. The model of vote choice underlying almost all of these studies is additive and implies that either coethnicity or good performance can increase a candidate's vote share. However, there is little theoretical justification for such a model. In the dominant theory of ethnic voting in Africa, coethnicity is a signal of better outcomes, indicating that ethnicity and performance are not separate considerations. Using an experiment that is designed to determine how Ugandan voters make choices, the author shows that the effects of coethnicity and good performance interact: neither attribute increases support for a candidate in the absence of the other. Though previous analyses indicate that, all else being equal, voters always prefer coethnics, this study demonstrates that coethnics only have an advantage when they are not shirkers. Additionally, though previous studies indicate that voters always prefer good performers, this analysis shows that voters are indifferent to the performance of non-coethnic candidates. The article provides evidence that this pattern is in fact a result of voters' beliefs that they will only receive future goods from coethnics, making a demonstrated ability to provide such goods relevant for the electability of coethnic candidates, but not for non-coethnics. Since a large number of African voters do not share the ethnicity of their incumbent, this finding has troubling implications for accountability of African leaders.

By pressuring governments to hold democratic elections and by becoming directly involved in the electoral process through technical assistance and funding or as election monitors, international actors now play a visible role in domestic elections and other democratic processes throughout the developing world. Although scholars have documented several macrolevel relationships between international-level variables and movement toward democracy, there has been little attention paid to the microlevel effects of international involvement in the democratization process. This article examines the effects of international election observation as a prominent form of international involvement in domestic elections and exploits a natural experiment in order to test whether international observers reduce election fraud. Using data from the 2003 presidential elections in Armenia, the article demonstrates that although observers may not eliminate election fraud, they can reduce election-day fraud at the polling stations they visit. The unusual advantage of experiment-like conditions for this study offers unique causal evidence that international actors can have direct, measurable effects on the level of election-day fraud and, by extension, on the democratization process.