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Political Competition (political + competition)
Selected AbstractsPolitical Competition in Weak StatesECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 2 2001Eliana La Ferrara In the developing areas, politics is often undemocratic, states lack a monopoly over violence, and politicians play upon cultural identities. To analyze politics in such settings, we develop a model in which politicians compete to build a revenue yielding constituency. Citizens occupy fixed locations and politicians seek to maximize rents. To secure revenues, politicians must incur the costs of providing local public goods and mobilizing security services. Citizens must participate, i.e. pay taxes; but can choose which leader to support. The model enables us to explore the impact of cultural identities and varying notions of military power. [source] Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in AfricaAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2010Benn Eifert This article draws on data from over 35,000 respondents in 22 public opinion surveys in 10 countries and finds strong evidence that ethnic identities in Africa are strengthened by exposure to political competition. In particular, for every month closer their country is to a competitive presidential election, survey respondents are 1.8 percentage points more likely to identify in ethnic terms. Using an innovative multinomial logit empirical methodology, we find that these shifts are accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the salience of occupational and class identities. Our findings lend support to situational theories of social identification and are consistent with the view that ethnic identities matter in Africa for instrumental reasons: because they are useful in the competition for political power. [source] Precarious Democratization and Local Dynamics in Niger: Micro,Politics in ZinderDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2001Christian Lund Literature on the African state often finds it hard to specify what is state and what is not. The closer one gets to a particular political landscape, the more apparent it becomes that many institutions have something of a twilight character. This article argues that studies of local politics in Africa should focus on how the public authority of institutions waxes and wanes and how political competition among individuals and organizations expresses the notion of state and public authority. This is explored in the context of contemporary political struggles in Niger, played out in three different arenas in the region of Zinder around 1999, as home,town associations, chieftaincies and vigilante groups all take on the mantle of public authority in their dealings with what they consider to be their antithesis, the ,State'. [source] THE NON-TRADED SECTOR, LOBBYING, AND THE CHOICE BETWEEN THE CUSTOMS UNION AND THE COMMON MARKETECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 3 2008CYRILLE SCHWELLNUS This paper models immigration policy as the outcome of political competition between interest groups representing individuals employed in different sectors. In standard positive theory, restrictive immigration policy results from a low-skilled median voter voting against predominantly low-skilled immigration. In the present paper, in contrast, once trade policies are liberalized, restrictive immigration policy results from anti-immigration lobbying by interest groups representing the non-traded sectors. It is shown that this is in line with empirical regularities from recent episodes of restrictive immigration legislation in the European Union. It is further shown that if governments negotiate bilaterally over trade and migration policy regimes, the equilibrium regime depends (i) on the sequencing of the international negotiation process and (ii) on the set of available trade and migration policy regimes. In particular, the most comprehensive and most welfare-beneficial type of liberalization may be rejected only because a less comprehensive type of liberalization is available. [source] ON THE ROLE OF THE PRIMARY SYSTEM IN CANDIDATE SELECTIONECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 2 2006MANDAR P. OAK How does the type of the primary system affect political outcomes? We address this issue by constructing a simple model that accounts for intra-party as well as inter-party political competition. Our model suggests that allowing non-partisan voters to participate in the primaries (i.e. a semi-open primary system) indeed improves the chances of a moderate candidate getting elected. However, this need not necessarily happen in the case of a completely open primary system. Under such a system there arise multiple equilibria, some of which may lead to a greater degree of extremism than the closed primary system. Thus, our model contributes to the current debate on the choice of primary systems from an analytical perspective and helps explain some of the empirical findings. [source] Inflation, Inflation Variability, and CorruptionECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 1 2004Miguel Braun We present a model where agents can inflate the cost of goods needed to start an investment project and inflation variability increases monitoring costs. We show that inflation variability can lead to higher corruption and lower investment. We document a positive relationship between corruption and inflation variability in a sample of 75 countries. The effect is robust to the inclusion of country fixed effects, other controls, and 2SLS estimation. The results are economically significant: a one standard deviation increase in inflation variance from the median increases corruption by 12 percent of a standard deviation and reduces growth by 0.33 percentage points. Our paper highlights a new channel through which inflation reduces investment and growth, thus bridging the perception gap over the costs of inflation between economists and the public. We also find evidence that political competition reduces corruption and that corruption is pro-cyclical. [source] Strategic Political Participation and RedistributionECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 1 2002Toke Skovsgaard Aidt The purpose of this paper is to study formation of support and opposition to redistribution. We analyze a society with two groups of citizens and a government. The government distributes income from one group to the other in response to political pressure. The interaction between the groups is modeled as a two-stage game. In stage 1, the groups decide if they want to be politically active. In stage 2, the active group or groups seek influence on the direction and size of the transfer. We demonstrate that supporters of redistribution are always politically active but that opposition is often absent. Moreover, when opposition is absent there is a strong tendency for underdissipation of the transfer, while political competition typically leads to overdissipation. [source] Laissez Fear: Assessing the Impact of Government Involvement in the Economy on Ethnic ViolenceINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2008David A. Steinberg Does government involvement in the economy promote ethnic peace, or does it contribute to ethnic violence? Two theories, grievances and opportunity, suggest that government involvement in the economy reduces ethnic violence. We present an alternative security-based logic that focuses on the role of economic rents in political competition. Our theory of insecurity predicts that free market economies reduce violent ethnic conflict by reducing fear and insecurity. We present statistical analyses, using data from the Minorities at Risk project and the Index of Economic Freedom, showing that government involvement in the economy increases ethnic rebellion. Our results suggest that the overall size of the public sector is less important than government interference with the market allocation mechanism. We conclude by discussing the policy implications of our findings. [source] Self-Restraint in Search of Legitimacy: The Reform of the Argentine Supreme CourtLATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2009Alba M. Ruibal ABSTRACT In 2003, the Argentine executive promoted a process of Supreme Court reform that entailed limiting presidential attributions in the selection of justices. Then the renewed court implemented changes to its internal procedures that increased its own accountability mechanisms. The literature on the politics of institutional judicial independence in Latin America has developed two explanatory models: one presents reforms as an insurance policy, the other as a consequence of divided government. Both perspectives conceive of reforms as a result of political competition and as a way to limit other actors, the future government in the first case, the party in power in the second. This study, by contrast, explains the Argentine reforms as movements of strategic self-restriction, designed to build legitimacy and credibility, for the government and the court, respectively, in a context of social and institutional crisis and pressure from civil society. [source] Judicial Performance and the Rule of Law in the Mexican StatesLATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2006Caroline C. Beer ABSTRACT What determines how judicial institutions perform? Prominent theoretical approaches, such as international political economy, institutional rational choice, social capital, and structural theories, suggest that international economic actors, political competition, political participation, and poverty may all be important forces driving institutional behavior. This study analyzes these various theoretical approaches and uses qualitative and statistical analysis to compare judicial performance in the Mexican states. It provides evidence to support the institutional rational choice hypothesis that political competition generates judicial independence. Poverty, political participation, and an export-oriented economy seem to influence judicial access and effectiveness. [source] Capturing Government Policy on the Left,Right Scale: Evidence from the United Kingdom, 1956,2006POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2009Armèn Hakhverdian The left,right scheme is the most widely used and parsimonious representation of political competition. Yet, long time series of the left,right position of governments are sparse. Existing methods are of limited use in dynamic settings due to insufficient time points which hinders the proper specification of time-series regressions. This article analyses legislative speeches in order to construct an annual left,right policy variable for Britain from 1956 to 2006. Using a recently developed content analysis tool, known as Wordscores, it is shown that speeches yield valid and reliable estimates for the left,right position of British government policy. Long time series such as the one proposed in this article are vital to building dynamic macro-level models of politics. This measure is cross-validated with four independent sources: (1) it compares well to expert surveys; (2) a rightward trend is found in post-war British government policy; (3) Conservative governments are found to be more right wing in their policy outputs than Labour governments; (4) conventional accounts of British post-war politics support the pattern of government policy movement on the left,right scale. [source] Th e Decision to Contract Out: A Study of Contracting for E-Government Services in State GovernmentsPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 3 2007Anna Ya Ni Government contracting, especially for information technology products and services, has accelerated in recent years in the United States. Drawing on the insights of privatization studies, the authors examine the economic and political rationales underpinning government decisions to contract out e-government services. This article tests the extent to which economic and political rationality influence governments' contracting decisions using data from multiple sources: a survey conducted by National Association of State Chief Information Officers, a survey by the National Association of State Procurement Officers, the Council of State Legislatures, and macro-level state data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Important factors affecting the state-level contracting decision are population size, market size, the competitiveness of the bidding process, the professional management of contracts, the partisan composition of legislatures, and political competition. Political rationales appear to play a major role in state contracting decisions. Some arguments associated with markets and economic rationality are clearly politically motivated. [source] The Alaska Permanent Fund: Politics and TrustPUBLIC BUDGETING AND FINANCE, Issue 2 2002Jonathan Anderson Trust funds are a particular way of governing resource flows. Governments use trust funds to bind policy decisions of future actors and remove resource flows from budget competition. The state of Alaska removed a portion of its oil revenues from political competition through the creation of the Alaska Permanent Fund. A unique feature of the Fund is that it pays annual dividends to Alaskan citizens, thus creating a citizen stake in the management of the Fund. Through this framework Alaskans have successfully protected a significant stream of revenue ($21 billion) from political demands. [source] Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in AfricaAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2010Benn Eifert This article draws on data from over 35,000 respondents in 22 public opinion surveys in 10 countries and finds strong evidence that ethnic identities in Africa are strengthened by exposure to political competition. In particular, for every month closer their country is to a competitive presidential election, survey respondents are 1.8 percentage points more likely to identify in ethnic terms. Using an innovative multinomial logit empirical methodology, we find that these shifts are accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the salience of occupational and class identities. Our findings lend support to situational theories of social identification and are consistent with the view that ethnic identities matter in Africa for instrumental reasons: because they are useful in the competition for political power. [source] Measuring Ethnic Fractionalization in AfricaAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2004Daniel N. Posner In most studies of the impact of ethnic diversity on economic growth, diversity is hypothesized to affect growth through its effect on macroeconomic policies. This article shows that most measures of ethnic diversity (including the commonly used ELF measure) are inappropriate for testing this hypothesis. This is because they are constructed from enumerations of ethnic groups that include all of the ethnographically distinct groups in a country irrespective of whether or not they engage in the political competition whose effects on macroeconomic policymaking are being tested. I present a new index of ethnic fractionalization based on an accounting of politically relevant ethnic groups in 42 African countries. I employ this measure (called PREG, for Politically Relevant Ethnic Groups) to replicate Easterly and Levine's influential article on Africa's "growth tragedy." I find that PREG does a much better job of accounting for the policy-mediated effects of ethnic diversity on economic growth in Africa than does ELF. [source] | |||||||||||||