Books in the Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics series

An explanation of the rise of social movements and cycles of protest in autocracies, the conditions under which protest becomes rebellion and the impact on democratization. Based on a pioneer dataset, the book explains why religion plays a crucial role in the creation of independent popular movements in authoritarian regimes.

Conflicts involve powerful experiences. The residue of these experiences is captured by the concept and language of emotion. Indiscriminate killing creates fear; targeted violence produces anger and a desire for vengeance; political status reversals spawn resentment; cultural prejudices sustain ethnic contempt. These emotions can become resources for political entrepreneurs. A broad range of Western interventions are based on a view of human nature as narrowly rational. Correspondingly, intervention policy generally aims to alter material incentives ('sticks and carrots') to influence behavior. In response, poorer and weaker actors who wish to block or change this Western implemented 'game' use emotions as resources. This book examines the strategic use of emotion in the conflicts and interventions occurring in the Western Balkans over a twenty-year period. The book concentrates on the conflicts among Albanian and Slavic populations (Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, South Serbia), along with some comparisons to Bosnia.

This is a 1994 collection of scholarly essays on state, society and politics in the Third World. The book is relevant to the growing 'state theory' literature in the social sciences and it puts forward a 'state-in-society approach' to the study of political development.

This 1997 book addresses the current debate regarding the liabilities and merits of presidential government. The contributors to this volume examine variations among different presidential systems and skeptically view claims that presidentialism has added significantly to the problems of democratic governance and stability.

This is a book about redistribution and inequality in political unions, a form of democracy that involves several levels of government and that encompasses about one third of the population living under democracy around the world.

This book examines and evaluates various private initiatives to enforce fair labor standards within global supply chains. Through careful, empirically grounded analysis, it illustrates the mix of private and public regulation needed to address these complex issues in a global economy.

Many claim that Africa's long-ruling incumbents are able to stay in power because opposition politicians are ethnically divided. However, the main challenge for opposition politicians is securing the money needed to build electoral coalitions. Financial reforms enable businesspeople to start providing money to the opposition without fear of punishment.

A new perspective on how the nation-state emerged and proliferated across the globe, accompanied by a wave of wars. Andreas Wimmer explores these historical developments using social science techniques of analysis and datasets that cover the entire modern world.

The democratization of the national government is only the first step in diffusing democracy throughout a country's territory. After a national government is democratized, subnational authoritarian 'enclaves' often continue to deny rights to citizens of local jurisdictions. Gibson explains how subnational authoritarianism is part of normal democratic politics.

Using cases from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, this book explores pacted transitions to democracy, in which outgoing autocrats strike deals with dissidents, offering them the opportunity to participate in free elections in exchange for amnesty for crimes perpetrated under the ancien regime.

The volume collects Michael Wallerstein's most important and influential contributions to research on issues of inequality, redistribution, and wage-determination in a comparative context. The volume is organized by topic, with each topic preceded by an editorial introduction that provides overview and context.

Pasotti examines how cities suffering for decades from poor government made a transition to brand politics to break a cycle of inertia and usher in reform. The theory of brand politics shows mayors emulating marketing mavericks; citizens support mayors' brands because they seek to become carriers of the same values.

This book proposes an institutionally embedded framework for analyzing voter choice. Voters, Kedar argues, are concerned with policy, and therefore their vote reflects post-electoral compromise (e.g. multi-party government), which dilutes their vote. This simple but overlooked principle allows Kedar to explain a broad array of seemingly unrelated electoral regularities.

Most studies of the political economy of money focus on the laws protecting central banks from government interference; this book turns to the overlooked people who actually make monetary policy decisions. Using formal theory and statistical evidence from dozens of central banks across the developed and developing worlds, this book shows that monetary policy agents are not all the same. Molded by specific professional and sectoral backgrounds and driven by career concerns, central bankers with different career trajectories choose predictably different monetary policies. These differences undermine the widespread belief that central bank independence is a neutral solution for macroeconomic management. Instead, through careful selection and retention of central bankers, partisan governments can and do influence monetary policy - preserving a political trade-off between inflation and real economic performance even in an age of legally independent central banks.

How were reforms that aimed to reduce electoral intimidation adopted? This book provides a micro-historical analysis of the adoption of reforms protecting voter autonomy. It shows that changes in district-level economic and political conditions led to the formation of an encompassing political coalition supporting these electoral reforms.

This book examines contemporary changes in labor market institutions in the United States, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

Examines the role of social networks in the efficient running of democratic market economies. This title is also available as Open Access.

Why do poor people often vote against their material interests? This puzzle has been famously studied within wealthy Western democracies, yet the fact that the poor voter paradox also routinely manifests within poor countries has remained unexplored. This book studies how this paradox emerged in India, the world's largest democracy.

Research on the economic origins of democracy and dictatorship has shifted away from the impact of growth and turned toward the question of how different patterns of growth - equal or unequal - shape regime change. This book offers a new theory of the historical relationship between economic modernization and the emergence of democracy on a global scale, focusing on the effects of land and income inequality. Contrary to most mainstream arguments, Ben W. Ansell and David J. Samuels suggest that democracy is more likely to emerge when rising, yet politically disenfranchised, groups demand more influence because they have more to lose, rather than when threats of redistribution to elite interests are low.

This book analyzes how increases in international trade, finance, and production have altered voter decisions, political party positions, and the types of public issues that parties focus on in postindustrial democracies.

Tying the Autocrat's Hands provides a comprehensive, empirical evaluation of legal reforms in contemporary China. Based on the author's extensive fieldwork and analyses of original data, the book tells a story in which foreign investors with weak political connections push for judicial empowerment in China, while Chinese investors struggle to hold on to their privileges.

Why are some places in the world characterized by better social service provision and welfare outcomes than others? In a world in which millions of people, particularly in developing countries, continue to lead lives plagued by illiteracy and ill-health, understanding the conditions that promote social welfare is of critical importance to political scientists and policy makers alike. Drawing on a multi-method study, from the late-nineteenth century to the present, of the stark variations in educational and health outcomes within a large, federal, multiethnic developing country - India - this book develops an argument for the power of collective identity as an impetus for state prioritization of social welfare. Such an argument not only marks an important break from the dominant negative perceptions of identity politics but also presents a novel theoretical framework to understand welfare provision.

To understand the political causes and consequences of inequality, this book digs deep into voters' attitudes to redistribution. It provides a novel explanation of how the demand for redistribution is the result of expected future income, the negative externalities of inequality, and the relationship between altruism and population heterogeneity.

This book presents an account of war settlement in Georgia and Tajikistan as local actors maneuvered in the shadow of a Russian-led military intervention. Combining ethnography and game theory with quantitative and qualitative methods, this book presents a revisionist account of the post-Soviet wars and their settlement.

This book is relevant to readers interested in the persistence of traditional institutions in the contemporary world, the possibility for democratic transitions in weak states, the calculus of voters in new democracies, and community-level development in poor countries.

This book shows that land redistribution - the most consequential form of redistribution in the developing world - occurs more often under dictatorship than democracy. It offers a novel theory of land reform and tests it using extensive original data dating back to 1900.

In Organized Violence after Civil War, Daly analyzes evidence from militia groups in Colombia, demonstrating the driving forces behind the post-war trajectory of armed groups. Using rich ex-combatant survey data and geo-coded information on violence the author explains the dynamics inside armed organizations and the strategic interactions between them.

Poverty relief programs are shaped by politics. The particular design which social programs take is to a large extent determined by the existing institutional constraints and politicians' imperative to win elections. The Political Logic of Poverty Relief places elections and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the poor. Would political parties possess incentives to target the poor with transfers aimed at poverty alleviation or would they instead give these to their supporters? Would politicians rely on the distribution of particularistic benefits rather than public goods? The authors assess the welfare effects of social programs in Mexico and whether voters reward politicians for targeted poverty alleviation programs. The book provides a new interpretation of the role of cash transfers and poverty relief assistance in the development of welfare state institutions.

This book explores local congressional representation in China. Drawing on original fieldwork and surveys, it demonstrates that the priorities and problems of ordinary Chinese influence who gets elected to local congresses and what congresses do once elected. It will appeal to those interested in China, authoritarianism, democratization, elections, and representation.