Why do democracies differ in their capacity to activate accountability mechanisms in response to challenges to democratic institutions? This article argues that part of the answer lies in the internal organization of political parties. Existing research emphasizes horizontal, vertical, and diagonal accountability mechanisms as central to democratic resilience, but insufficiently theorizes the conditions under which these mechanisms are activated. We argue that party organization constitutes an important conditioning factor in accountability activation: by shaping elite incentives and capacities, it affects whether accountability mechanisms are mobilized early and institutionally or only late and crisis-driven. Using a deductive causal process-tracing design, the article compares Mongolia, South Korea, and Taiwan. The analysis shows that collegial party organization facilitates early horizontal accountability and preventive resilience in Taiwan; personalized party organization contributes to delayed accountability and reactive resilience in South Korea; and centralized-hierarchical party organization under recurrent dominant-party conditions contributes to episodic accountability and fragile resilience in Mongolia. The findings refine democratic resilience theory by identifying party organization as an important organizational condition shaping the sequencing of accountability.
This study examines the spatial interdependence in the relationship between demographic dividend, infrastructure readiness and sustainable development in African countries over the period 2000–2022. Using spatial econometric models, the findings reveals that demographic dividend in neighbouring countries generates negative spatial spillovers on sustainable development, suggesting potential competitive pressures and resource constraints across national boundaries. Senegal, South Africa, and Algeria are identified as particularly affected by these adverse spillovers. However, infrastructure readiness plays a significant moderating role, as its interaction with demographic dividend produces positive and statistically significant effect on sustainable development, including beneficial spillovers across neighbouring countries. The results further reveal substantial spatial interdependence in sustainable development outcomes across African economies, highlighting the importance of regional interconnectedness. Estimates of spatial marginal effects confirm that demographic and infrastructural conditions have implications beyond national borders, reinforcing the importance of accounting for cross-country dependencies in sustainable development strategies. The findings underscore the need for coordinated regional policies that strengthen infrastructure readiness while investing in human capital development, particularly education, healthcare, and skills acquisition. Such interventions are essential for harnessing Africa’s demographic potential and translating it into sustained and inclusive development outcomes.
How do enforcement practices shape contentious mobilization? While recent scholarship has shown that variation in rule enforcement matters for understanding important political outcomes, we know much less about how it affects the dynamics of contention. This article examines the relationship between enforcement and mobilization through a comparative analysis of informal settlement politics in Istanbul and Buenos Aires, drawing on fifteen months of fieldwork. I show that enforcement practices shape mobilization through two mechanisms: by influencing the formation of collective grievances and by structuring expectations about institutional incorporation. The article identifies three recurring pathways: strong enforcement of adverse rules can trigger reactive mobilization; legal exceptions can contain contention while orienting claims toward inclusion in existing institutional arrangements; and weak enforcement of favorable laws can generate proactive mobilization that pushes for strong implementation. The comparison also highlights the importance of historically layered enforcement trajectories. In Istanbul, mobilization against urban renewal unfolded in the shadow of a long history of incorporation through legal exceptions. In Buenos Aires, proactive mobilization in the 2000s emerged from the weak implementation of a progressive legal framework produced by earlier struggles against adverse enforcement. Together, the cases show that enforcement is a crucial but underexplored dimension of contentious politics.
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.
