Amidst the global trend of autocratization, it is important to understand how and why polyarchy varies inside countries that remain nominally democratic at the national level. Leveraging original data covering all 27 states of contemporary Brazil (1986–2022), we assess six hypotheses drawn from democratization and subnational regime studies. Against expectations of democratic convergence, four decades of national democratic rule have not flattened subnational disparities. We identify persistent differences between states, and suggest that the correlates of cross-state variation within a federal democracy are not dissimilar to those characterizing cross-national regime differences worldwide. Within Brazil, the territorial unevenness of polyarchy is associated with the positive influences of socioeconomic development, the presence of democratic neighbors, and the deleterious shadow of local authoritarian legacies.
This study investigates the environmental consequences of political business cycles in Vietnam’s one-party regime, which uniquely combines different elements of upward accountability to the Communist Party both at the stage of candidate selection at the National Congress and the National Assembly elections. Extending prior research on Environmental Political Business Cycles (EPBCs) that focuses predominantly on China, we leverage Vietnam’s distinct institutional context to examine whether and how political incentives linked to both the electoral cycle and intra-party review processes drive pollution cycles in authoritarian settings. Using satellite-based measurements of air pollution (PM2.5 and NO2) across electoral districts during three National Assembly election cycles, we find clear evidence of EPBCs, with pollution peaking during the mid-electoral calendar, coinciding with the candidate vetting process. Further, by integrating socio-demographic data on assembly members and firm-level panel data, we demonstrate that the intensity of EPBCs varies with the strength of local officials’ connections to central political leaders and business interests. These findings underscore the complex interplay between political incentives, institutional design, and environmental governance in Vietnam, offering new insights into the dynamics of EPBCs and broader authoritarian environmental governance challenges in Southeast Asia.
While social scientists have developed compelling accounts of the causes and processes of national social revolutions, the long-term outcomes of these phenomena remain undertheorized. This study examines political development in five post-revolutionary Southern African countries—Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe—following violent, mass-mobilizing “liberation struggles” for freedom from settler-colonial and white-minority domination, and the construction of more inclusive, equitable, nonracialist nations. Today, political and social structural legacies of the twentieth-century national revolutions are characterized by contrasting configurations of political regimes, structural inequalities, and national cleavages that constitute distinctive national sociopolitical orders. Moving beyond case-specific structuralist or voluntaristic accounts, this study offers a more adequate comparative-historical explanation of the divergent trajectories of political development in post-settler colonial Southern Africa. Departing from conventional approaches that emphasize the settler-colonial or conflict periods, it focuses on the “liberation reform period”—when revolutionary actors assumed state power and pursued varied reform approaches—as the critical juncture that set the countries on diverse path-dependent trajectories of political and social change that culminated in contrasting legacies of liberation. The analysis sheds light on how structure, agency, and historical contingency shape the outcomes of national-social revolutions and other contentious events. It rethinks path dependence in historical institutionalism as a more dynamic theory of both institutional persistence and change that is gradual, adaptive, and path-structured in nature as opposed to constant, open-ended, and path-independent institutional shift.
This study explores how revolutionary legacies strengthened regime legitimacy through government-invested infrastructure projects like rural electrification. Using GIS technology and historical archives, this study builds an original dataset on counties passed through by the Long March, an arduous strategic retreat by the remnants of Chinese Communist Red Army during the First Chinese Civil War. Findings indicate that counties traversed by four major Red Army forces during 1934–1936 (Long March Counties) were more likely to receive the central government’s prioritized support for rural electrification during the 1980s and 1990s. This relationship is likely causal after accounting for a quasi-experimental design exploiting neighbors of Long March Counties as placebos. Further analyses reveal that such preferential electrification operates through a region-based revolutionary legacy: revolutionary history attached to particular counties endowed them with enduring political recognition and symbolic significance, making them more likely to be prioritized for visible development support as a manifestation of the central government’s remembrance of revolutionary sacrifices and fidelity to revolutionary principles. These findings contribute to research on distributive politics and the long-term legacies of revolution by showing how revolutionary history continues to shape strategic policy resource allocation and post-revolutionary legitimacy.
This article examines why South Korea has failed to consolidate civilian control of its military despite decades of democratic development, illustrated by the 2024 martial law crisis. While scholarship often assumes robust civilian control in South Korea's mature democracy, we explain why the disconnect between formal democratic institutions and substantive civilian oversight has persisted for three decades. Building on Trinkunas’s framework, distinguishing between civilian control by containment and oversight, we extend this model by analyzing how transitional justice processes shape regime leverage and by reconsidering Huntington's objective control concept within the South Korean context. Through a case study spanning from democratization to the present, we demonstrate that South Korea successfully contained military intervention in politics but failed to develop civilian defense expertise necessary to progress to oversight. This failure created enduring vulnerabilities that allowed civilian leaders to privatize military power for partisan purposes. Our analysis reveals how formal democratic institutions without substantive civilian defense expertise can mask persistent civil-military weaknesses even in seemingly consolidated democracies. By illuminating the mechanisms through which civilian control can stagnate at the containment level, this study advances our understanding of democratic consolidation and highlights blind spots in democratization approaches that privilege electoral development over substantive civilian control.
In Central Asia, water is a vital yet contested resource, governed by institutions that often overlook the role of gender in shaping access, authority, and participation. This paper examines the gendered contours of water governance in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, where irrigation systems serve as both lifelines for agriculture and arenas of socio-political negotiation. Based on original qualitative methodology including interviews with women farmers, irrigation officials, and community leaders, this study explores how women experience and navigate exclusion from formal decision-making structures while simultaneously contributing to the everyday functioning of rural water systems. In both countries, informal negotiations, kinship ties, and gendered labor expectations shape how water is distributed and disputes are resolved. The findings suggest that water governance reforms remain incomplete without a critical gender lens that moves beyond representation and into redistribution of power and recognition. By foregrounding women’s situated knowledge and adaptive strategies, this research highlights the need for inclusive governance frameworks that account for both institutional design and social realities.
The international development debate is increasingly referring to the notion of the “social contract”. In this paper, we measure what governments give societies, a core element of social contracts. To enable social contract comparison across countries and over time, we develop indices to capture the three “Ps”: protection against internal and external threats, provision of social and economic services, and political participation . These indices are composed of indicators, which are mainly input variables to gauge the willingness of governments to deliver the three Ps. Subsequently, we calculate the values of 154 countries for the three indices around the year 2019. The results show that the indices are useful and valid. They highly correlate with each other and with other indicators such as per capita income and the Human Development Index. Yet, these correlations are not perfect, meaning that the indices are not another redundant development index. They add information and value. Finally, we make a first step in identifying patterns in the results. Countries in Latin America were doing comparatively well on average in terms of political participation in 2019. When controlling for per capita income, governments in sub-Saharan Africa, were delivering disproportionately more on average in terms of protection and political participation , but less so in terms of provision . Countries in the Middle East and North Africa fail mainly with regard to political participation .
Acts of violent state repression seem to have an indeterminant effect on the future of the opposition, in some cases creating an effective deterrent against future protests, and in others causing a dramatic escalation in resistance against the regime. This article takes a different approach, asking how some highly visible acts of state repression can be regarded as a “cracking event” (Della Porta 2020) that transforms structures and produces surprising political outcomes. The article uses the concept of critical event analysis to ask how two cases of civilian massacres in 20th century China and India set in motion contrasting event sequences that produced unanticipated turns in revolutionary nationalist politics: the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22) in India and the Northern Expedition (1926-7) in China. Process-tracing and counterfactual analysis of possible worlds establish that (1) the shootings were highly contingent events that could have been averted and (2) a subsequent causal chain of events produced a revolutionary turn in anti-colonial opposition in each case. An assessment of the necessary and sufficient causal properties of each repression episode shows that one was highly necessary and the other was highly sufficient in pushing the respective nationalist movements toward revolutionary strategies and tactics.
Why was Chile able to reform Santiago’s public bus transportation system, while Costa Rica’s Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM) still has not been able to do it? Relying on historical analysis and process tracing, this paper unpacks the dynamics between the instrumental and structural power enjoyed by bus operators and state capacity in permitting or inhibiting bus reforms. In the GAM, the growth of bus operators’ political and economic power went hand-in-hand with the weakening of state capacity, leading to a case of regulatory capture and the failure to adopt a bus reform, despite laws, public policies, and a pilot attempt. In Santiago, in spite of opposition, the constitutional power granted to the Executive allowed it to pass a bus reform in 2007 that had large societal, political, and economic impacts. Although challenges remain, the bus system gradually developed an institutional bureaucracy, constant negotiations with bus operators, and increased citizen participation. This paper contributes by shedding light on business power and bringing political economy perspectives to transportation research, historically approached as apolitical. Its theoretical framework highlights the importance of analyzing the interactions between business power and state capacity, as well as understanding how state autonomy and state embeddedness shape state capacity.
American Political Development (APD) scholars have long sought to escape notions of American exceptionalism—the view that the United States is qualitatively distinct in ways that limit the usefulness of comparative analysis. This article presents a comparative framework that reframes the issue of exceptionalism by distinguishing between two analytic logics: divergence and lack of convergence. The exercise consists of examining the U.S. divergence from cases with shared starting points in Latin America and assessing convergence—or its absence—with European cases that began from markedly different initial conditions. Viewed from these two lenses, the U.S. fits neither pattern of development neatly. It followed a different trajectory shaped by contingent historical choices and specific structural characteristics. However, treating the U.S. as a comparative case study proves analytically productive: it sharpens counterfactual reasoning, permits the transfer of comparative lessons, and revises interpretations of core theories of political development, including debates over institutional sequencing.
This study investigates how democratic satisfaction, economic evaluation, and crime victimization are associated with emigration intentions in Latin America. Departing from traditional models centered on economic and security push factors, we introduce a “democratic contract” framework that conceptualizes emigration intentions as a form of institutional disengagement linked to perceived failures in political, economic, and security domains. Drawing on 16 waves of Latinobarómetro survey data (2002–2024) across 16 countries, we find that lower democratic satisfaction, negative economic evaluations, and crime victimization are each significantly associated with a greater likelihood of seriously considering emigration. Two unexpected patterns emerge: democratic satisfaction is associated with lower emigration intentions even among crime victims, suggesting that perceived democratic legitimacy may buffer the psychological toll of insecurity; democratic dissatisfaction is most strongly associated with emigration intentions when paired with negative economic assessments, while this association weakens among economic optimists. Despite heterogeneity across countries, a general pattern emerges across institutional settings: multidimensional failures of the democratic contract coincide with higher emigration intentions. This study advances migration research by highlighting democratic performance as a central political dimension of emigration intent and points to the importance of democratic confidence in debates over migration pressures.
This article examines how economic elites and their business interest groups in South America use indirect communication tactics in digital media during constitutional change processes. Focusing on Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia, it argues that in pluralist liberal democracies business actors act more visibly and directly, while in hybrid regimes their participation is more discreet and subordinate. Using an exploratory quantitative design, the study analyses 106 media interventions through contingency tables, chi-square tests, Cramer’s V, and Categorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA). The repertoire of tactics, adapted from Binderkrantz’s (2005) model and validated by seven experts using Aiken’s V, enables comparison across countries and political regimes. Findings reveal significant associations between regime type, organisational size, and visibility. In Chile, large firms employed high-visibility tactics such as interviews, reinforcing their prominence in the public sphere. In Ecuador, SMEs achieved medium visibility without reaching major influence, while in Bolivia both large and small firms remained confined to low visibility, showing communicative marginality. The article contributes to elite and business interest group studies by showing how internal stratification and institutional environments shape communicative repertoires, and by highlighting visibility and media capture as key tools for understanding unequal political influence in Latin America.
What kind of authoritarian states are more effective in preventing the emergence of territorial contenders and establishing exclusive control over territories? Regime durability has long been a central subject of research in the study of authoritarian politics, and scholars have identified various factors that contribute to the survival of authoritarian regimes. However, less attention has been paid to why some authoritarian regimes are more successful than others in maintaining exclusive territorial control. The loss of exclusive territorial authority, often manifested in the rise of territorial contenders, poses significant threats to regime survival. To fill this gap, this article examines how regime origin affects authoritarian effectiveness in avoiding the rise of territorial contenders. The central argument is that regimes with violent origins are equipped with unique advantages preventing the emergence of such contenders, as hostile external environments heighten their incentive to pursue territorial consolidation to mitigate external threats, and high levels of centralization and strong organizational capacity inherited from wartime experience enable them to extract sufficient resources and use them to strengthen territorial control in remote areas. Results from quantitative analysis and case studies on the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Communist Party of Cuba provide evidence supporting this argument. This study not only contributes to the study of state territorial control but also deepens our understanding of the impact of authoritarian regime origins.
Scholars of mass incarceration in the United States often compare the extreme nature of U.S. imprisonment and other forms of state coercion to much less punitive forms in Europe. But it is not just harsh imprisonment, violent policing, and the death penalty that distinguish the U.S. from Europe. The United States also has relatively high rates of murder, distinctive political institutions, and a different origin story. This essay situates the U.S. within the Americas, home to eleven percent of the world’s population but more than a third of intentional homicides. State formation and state-building in the Americas emerged in a different time period and in the context of colonialism and slavery. The resultant political institutions are more fragmented and less effective at constraining violence in many forms than those in Europe. The essay offers a theoretical framework rooted in comparative political economy and historic institutionalism to shed light on the relationship between colonialism, state-building, and the monopoly of violence during key periods of state formation.
A large literature documents the developmental advantages of Protestantism over Catholicism, yet comparisons involving Eastern Orthodoxy remain scarce. This paper exploits an eighteenth-century natural experiment: the Habsburg-sponsored union that grafted Roman obedience onto the Romanian Orthodox rite, creating the Greek-Catholic Church. The new denomination rapidly established parishes, built schools, and trained a generation of clergy and lay intellectuals in Transylvania. Digitizing the full geography of its 1,211 parishes, I trace their effects on 3,181 contemporary localities. Instrumental variable estimation, using distance to the original episcopal seat in Alba Iulia, shows that villages with historical parish presence are today richer, host more firms, and produce more patents than otherwise similar places. Sequential g-estimation demonstrates that this premium is independent of the broader Habsburg institutional apparatus. By shifting the com-parison from Protestantism versus Catholicism to Catholic hybridity versus Eastern Orthodoxy, the findings highlight institutional adaptation as a source of long-run economic divergence.
Autocrats frequently employ co-optation to neutralize labor threats; yet, little is known about why this strategy succeeds in some cases and fails in others. I argue that the effectiveness of co-optation depends on its scope — whether it narrowly targets union elites or broadly incorporates union leaders and members. Using qualitative evidence and archival data from Tunisia and Morocco, I show how different co-optation strategies shaped unions’ internal organization, equipping them with distinct capacities for resistance during the Arab Spring. In Morocco, broad co-optation integrated labor into the state, weakening grassroots mobilization and bolstering regime control. By contrast, in Tunisia, selective co-optation of union elites inadvertently strengthened unions’ organizational capacity by fostering vertical accountability and facilitating labor opposition against authoritarian rule. This study advances research on co-optation by demonstrating how organizational responses to elite maneuvers can unintentionally empower labor movements. It challenges the common perception that elite co-optation weakens labor opposition, and instead highlights the dynamic and contested nature of authoritarian control.
Democracies increasingly use their militaries to prevent crime, as if they were police, fueling human-rights violations and raising the question of how soldiers perceive this mission’s risks. Recent scholarship helps answer this question by illustrating Brazilian Army soldiers’ concerns with the operational effectiveness and legal appropriateness of their crime-prevention mission to fight street gangs in Rio de Janeiro. The mission expanded in 2018, however, to include administering local law-enforcement agencies. This study undertakes an original analysis of officers’ theses at Brazilian Army schools, and secondary analysis of interviews with officers, to understand soldiers’ risk perceptions vis-à-vis the 2018 mission. The analysis suggests that violent legitimacy, or the extent of public acceptance regarding military force, is a distinct category of risk perception and is even more important than operational or legal concerns. The expansion of military policing, from combat to governance, thus elevates the degree to which soldiers worry about their institution’s image as an administrator of violence.
