Why do some governments—both in different countries and in regions within those countries—employ more workers than others? Existing theories focus on the level of economic development, political redistribution, and social insurance. But they raise additional puzzles and do not account for all evidence or for a global trend toward decentralization of public employment. The authors propose a new theory, inspired by Russia's recent experience, that locates one motive for subnational public employment growth in a political and fiscal game between central and subnational governments. In countries with weak legal systems, local and regional officials may deliberately set their employment levels beyond their fiscal capacity, prompting bailouts from the central government, which fears the political cost to it if wage arrears accumulate and provoke strikes. The authors model the logic of such brinkmanship, derive several propositions, and show that they—and the model's assumptions—fit empirical evidence from Russia in the 1990s. Deficiencies of that country's overstaffed, underequipped, irregularly paid, ineffective, and strikeprone public sector appear to result in part from a system of dysfunctional incentives created by the interaction of electoral pressures with the system of fiscal federalism. The authors suggest parallels with Latin American countries such as Argentina and Brazil.

This article proposes a model that provides a tool to gauge the preparedness of ethnic and other groups for political mobilization. It argues that successful ethnic mobilization requires a well-specified bundle of “mobilization prerequisites” that can be used to evaluate political and social movements in a variety of contexts. The model is applied to elucidate the East European Gypsy communities' modest success at ethnic political mobilization. The article assesses the explanatory power of the independent variables and explains Gypsy electoral politics and behavior.

One of the most influential arguments in international relations is that international institutions influence states' behavior by monitoring their compliance with treaties, which in turn facilitates reciprocity. Empirically, however, many treaty organizations are not mandated to monitor compliance. The article develops a parsimonious theoretical framework to address the empirical diversity of monitoring arrangements. By mapping strategic environments onto monitoring arrangements, it accounts for who detects noncompliance and who brings it to light. In particular, two factors—the interest alignment between noncompliance victims and their states and the availability of noncompliance victims as low-cost monitors—largely shape the organizational forms of information systems. This simple theory sheds light on a wide range of substantiveh/important treaty regimes.

This article examines the transformation of the Swedish model of economic regulation from an ideational perspective. While the majority of arguments about the decline of the Swedish model have focused on the role of structural factors, this article looks to illuminate the ideational factors that made possible both the emergence and the transformation of the Swedish model. The article details how, during the 1930s and 1940s, economic ideas provided the Swedish state and its trade union allies with the means to construct the institutions of the Swedish model. By the 1970s, however, Swedish business suffered diminishing returns to continued participation within these institutions and responded to labor's challenges by adopting a two-pronged strategy of withdrawal from and ideological contestation of labor's supporting institutions. The politics of ideas was key in this regard. During the 1980s Swedish business marshaled alternative economic ideas to contest and thus delegitimate existing institutions and the patterns of distribution they made possible. Swedish business thus began the process of overturning the Swedish model long before capital mobility or domestic inflation was ever a problem. By highlighting these factors, the article offers an explanation of the transformation of the Swedish model that stresses the centrality of ideational contestation for understanding institutional change in general.

Garrett Hardin's “tragedy of the commons” metaphor is commonly invoked to account for the unfortunate state of world fisheries. But the world s oceans are no longer a global commons and have not been so for the past two decades. Open-access regimes have persisted within many exclusive economic zones (EEZs) during this time, but coastal states' authority to regulate domestic fisheries has existed for more than a generation. Faced with the prospect of Hardin's tragedy, coastal states have had more than twenty years to devise institutional constraints that would prevent it. This article asserts that the dismal experience with EEZs is in large part attributable to distributive bargaining problems that arose within coastal states in the wake of EEZ extension. Moreover, the article argues that high levels of uncertainty that characterize the early stages of institutional development have exacerbated these problems. Finally, the article demonstrates how the variety of institutional designs and paths of institutional development that are observed in the cases of Iceland, Norway, and Atlantic Canada result from the different configurations of political power and political structure within each case. While the empirical discussion is focused upon property rights and fisheries, the theoretical discussion of bargaining and uncertainty has widespread application across comparative and international politics.

This article focuses on new democracies in Eastern Europe and addresses two questions about the translation of social cleavages into political oppositions. The first question concerns the translation of preexisting cleavages: does the evolution of new party systems influence the politicization of social conflicts? The second question concerns the translation of new social cleavages, that is, cleavages that emerge once a party system freezes: can a new social cleavage be politicized? To answer these questions, the article integrates a formalization of social cleavage theory with a game-theoretic model of a new party system. The first result is that translation of preexisting cleavages depends on which parties survive the early rounds of electoral competition. In fact, depending on which parties survive, the axis of political conflict can shift by 90 degrees. This implies that party systems in new democracies should be seen as important founding moments, during which political actors determine the long-term axes of political conflict. The second result is that once a party system freezes, the politicization of a new social cleavage is difficult. Indeed, it is possible that a new social cleavage will remain politically dormant. In the context of Eastern Europe, this result suggests that political salience of class conflict is likely to be low because competitive elections and political parties predate the entrenchment of propertyowning classes.

This article examines the capacity of Latin American labor-based parties to adapt to the challenges of economic liberalization and working class decline. It presents an organizational approach to explaining party change, highlighting the ways in which informal and weakly institutionalized structures may contribute to party adaptation. It argues that loosely structured labor-based parties, such as many mass populist parties, possess a distinctive advantage in adapting to environmental change. Though a source of inefficiency and even internal chaos, populist legacies such as fluid internal structures, nonbureaucratic hierarchies, and centralized leaderships yield a high degree of strategic flexibility. The argument is applied to the case of the Argentine Justicialista Party (PJ), a mass populist party that adapted with striking success to the socioeconomic changes of the 1980s and 1990s. The weakly institutionalized nature of Peronism's party-union linkage facilitated the dismantling of traditional mechanisms of labor participation, which resulted in the Pj's rapid transformation from a labor-based party into a predominantly patronage-based party. At the same time, the Pj's nonbureaucratic hierarchy and weakly institutionalized leadership bodies provided President Carlos Menem with substantial room for maneuver in developing and carrying out a radical neoliberal strategy that, while at odds with Peronism's traditional program, was critical to its survival as a major political force. The conclusion places the Peronist case in comparative perspective by examining the cases of five other Latin American labor-based parties.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the postcommunist transformation is the tremendous variation in rates of economic growth across countries. To account for these differences, this article develops an alternative to the J-curve and partial reform views that currently dominate discussions of the politics of economic reform. This approach treats economic performance as a political struggle between excommunist and anticommunist factions engaged in a war of attrition over economic and political resources. Using a pooled time-series analysis of economic growth across twenty-five postcommunist countries for the period 1990–98, it finds that political polarization between ex-communist and anticommunist factions has had a devastating effect on economic growth. Where these competing factions have had roughly equal power and have struggled over the economic rules of the game—as in Bulgaria or Ukraine—economic growth has been slow. In contrast, where either excommunist or anticommunist factions have dominated the political scene—as in Estonia or Uzbekistan—economic performance has been much better. In addition, economic growth has followed the electoral calendar in polarized countries. As elections approach and the odds of a change in economic policy increase, growth rates have plummeted in polarized countries. These findings have implications for studies of the postcommunist transformation, the political business cycle, and the politics of economic reform more generally.

Since the early 1980s privatization has spread in Latin America under both right-wing rulers and populist presidents. This regional convergence toward privatization seemed to announce the end of partisan policy-making. However, not all governments implement privatization in the same way even in the context of policy convergence. Technocrats propose similar policy options in countries where capital dearth creates pressures for convergence. Yet politicians build the electoral and government coalitions that make these policies possible, and their preferences shape the institutions chosen at implementation. The “bias” introduced by politicians depends on their prior beliefs and constituencies, which shape their institutional preferences. Beliefs about economic nationalism and state intervention influence the selection of regulations at the time of privatization, whereas coalition buildingwith political constituencies shapes the definition of selling conditions in privatized companies. This “political bias,” which is contingent on the privatizing government, explains that the regional policy convergence toward privatization did not extend to its implementation. That is, although politicians may be losing influence about whether to privatize, they still have a say in the choice of how to privatize. This article analyzes the impact of this “political bias” by focusing on the choice of regulatory institutions and selling conditions in five cases of privatization of electricity and telecommunications in Latin America.

Wage setting has been one of the most heavily studied institutions in the field of comparative political economy over the past two decades, and quantitative measures of wage-setting arrangements have played a major role in this research. Yet the proliferation of such measures in recent years presents researchers with a sizable array from which to choose. In addition, some scholars are rather skeptical about the validity and/or reliability of these measures. This article offers a survey and assessment of fifteen wage-setting measures. It attempts to answer questions about (1) how these indicators differ from one another in conceptualization and measurement strategy; (2) which are the most valid and reliable; (3) the strengths and weaknesses of measures of wage centralization versus those of wage coordination; (4) particular countries or time periods for which there are noteworthy discrepancies in scoring; (5) how sensitive empirical findings are to the choice of wage-setting measure.

The transition from communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy. Since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of the twenty-eight new states have abandoned communism, but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies. The remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidated “transitional regimes.” This article seeks to explain why some states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rule. In endorsing actorcentric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization, this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancien regime to new regime that can account for both democracy and dictatorship as outcomes. Situations of unequal distributions of power produced the quickest and most stable transitions from communist rule. In countries with asymmetrical balances of power, the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful. In countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage, democracy emerged. Conversely, in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage, dictatorship emerged. In between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime and its challengers was relatively equal. Rather than producing stalemate, compromise, and parted transitions to democracy, however, such situations in the postcommunist world resulted in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers. The regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated, unstable, partial democracies.

Most theories that seek to explain democratization look to changes in the economy as the precursor to significant political liberalization, locating the main causal factor in either severe economic crisis or rapid economic growth. In the Chinese context, by contrast, the Communist Party has extricated itself from the socialist social contract with the urban working class without losing its grip on political power. Moreover, China has maintained a rapid pace of economic growth for over twenty-five years without significant political liberalization. Comparative analysis of China's post-1978 reform policies yields insights both across types of socialist transition, comparing China with Eastern Europe and Russia, and across time, comparing China with other high-growth East Asian economies. A key factor in China's ability to reform the economy without sacrificing political control is the timing and sequencing of its foreign direct investment (FDl) liberalization. There are two key variables that are important to this comparative analysis: China's pattern of ownership diversification and China's mode of integration into the global economy. The article relates these two variables to the success of economic change without political liberalization, in particular, how FDI liberalization has affected relations between workers and the ruling Communist Party. “Reform and openness” in this context resulted in a strengthened Chinese state, a weakened civil society (especially labor), and a delay in political liberalization.

This article reviews the literature on the “smart sanctions” approach developed in the late 1990s in response to the failure of conventional sanctions and questions the efficacy of this instrument. Smart sanctions modify the conventional sanctions tool by targeting the culpable political elites by means of arms embargoes, financial sanctions, and travel restrictions and by cushioning vulnerable groups (children, women, the infirm, and the elderly) by exempting specified commodities such as food and medical supplies from embargoes. This two-pronged sanctions approach is designed to hit the real perpetrators directly and spare potential innocent victims, thus leading to the speedier change of sanctionee behavior. Although the special design of smart sanctions may seem logically compelling and politically attractive, this article argues that the numerous operational problems involved, combined with the intricacies of the political processes of the UN Security Council, will make a smart sanctions regime difficult to establish and enforce effectively.

The granting of autonomous status to minority populations has gained support among academics and practitioners alike as a way to solve, manage, and even preempt ethnic conflict. In spite of the enthusiasm for ethnofederalism, however, the provision of autonomy to minorities may actually increase rather than decrease the likelihood of conflict. Under certain political conditions, autonomy promotes the separate identity of the minority and increases its motivation and capacity to seek separation from the central state. This article presents a rudimentary theoretical framework identifying which qualities of autonomy solutions increase the likelihood of conflict. It discusses how autonomy relates to other factors conducive to conflict by studying minorities in the South Caucasus and examines the case of Georgia. In Georgia, there were five ethnic minority populations, two of whom—the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians—enjoyed autonomous status and were the only minorities to engage in armed conflict with the Georgian government. This article shows how autonomy, by empowering ethnic elites with control of statelike institutions and by enhancing factors such as leadership, economic viability, and external support, played a crucial role in the escalation of the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Conversely, the absence of autonomy mitigated separatist and secessionist sentiments among two of Georgia's other minority groups—Javakheti's Armenian and Kvemo Kartli's Azeri populations.

Recent research on federalism is extremely divided. While some tout the benefits of “market-preserving” federalism, others point to the fragmentation and incoherence of policy in federal states. This research bridges the divide by analyzing the political andfiscalstructures that are likely to account for the highly divergent economic experiences of federal systems around die world. To test these propositions, the authors use an original data set to conduct analyses of budget balance and inflation infifteenfederationsaround the world from 1978 through 1996. The empirical research suggests that the level of fiscal decentralization, the nature of intergovernmental finance, and vertical partisan relations all influence macroeconomic outcomes. The find- ings have broad implications for the widespread move toward greater decentralization and for the theoretical literatures on federalism and macroeconomics.

This article questions the prevalent argument that civil wars have fundamentally changed since the end of the cold war. According to this argument, “new” civil wars are different from “old” civil wars along at least three related dimensions—they are caused and motivated by private predation rather than collective grievances and ideological concerns; the parties to these conflicts lack popular support and must rely on coercion; and gratuitous, barbaric violence is dispensed against civilian populations. Recent civil wars, therefore, are distinguished as criminal rather than political phenomena. This article traces the origins of this distinction and argues that it is based on an uncritical adoption of categories and labels, combined with deficient information on “new” civil wars and neglect of recent historical research on “old” civil wars. Perceived differences between post—cold war conflicts and previous civil wars may be attributable more to the demise of readily available conceptual categories caused by the end of the cold war than to the end of the cold war per se.

This review article assesses the accomplishments and limitations of the best of recent research on democratization and democracy in Europe, South America, and post-Soviet Eurasia with regard to the challenge of theory building. Concerning the dependent variables of this literature, the article argues that the concepts of democratic transition, democratic consolidation, and democratic quality, as currently conceptualized, do not provide a clear focus for causal theorizing. It recommends, rather, that the proper subject matter of regime analysis should be the origins and stability of regime types and suggests how the semantic field of democracy studies could be clarified through a focus on the concepts of democratic transition and democratic stability. Relatedly, it argues that democracy scholars have made unwarranted use of aggregate and dichotomous measures and advocates instead the use of more disaggregate and nuanced measures. Concerning causal theories, the article shows that researchers have identified a range of potential explanatory factors and proposed suggestive complex causal models. Nonetheless, it also argues that democracy scholars have rarely formulated clearly specified general causal models and identifies some key pitfalls to be avoided as scholars tackle two key tasks: the development of thick and general theory and the definition of causal models. The conclusion raises the need to place theory building in context and argues that scholars must also turn their attention to the demanding challenges of data generation and causal assessment.

At the beginning of the 1990s, a wave of democratization raised new hopes for peace in Africa, but as the decade progressed, violent politics spread and formed two large arcs of conflict that weakened or even collapsed states could not contain. This review article examines five recent books that address the potential impact of identity politics on civil violence in Africa. Two of the authors—Donald Horowitz and Ted Gurr—address these issues in a global comparison, while the other three—Luis Martinez, Stephen Ellis, and Mahmood Mamdani—examine important African instances of protracted internal warfare, in Algeria, Liberia, and Rwanda, respectively. Is identity politics the primary instigator of disorder? What is die impact of a prolonged period of state crisis upon communal relationships? The volumes under review offer useful insights, but large questions remain.