Download or read book The Dynamics of Democratization written by Nathan J. Brown and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explosive spread of democracy has radically transformed the international political landscape and captured the attention of academics, policy makers, and activists alike. With interest in democratization still growing, Nathan J. Brown and other leading political scientists assess the current state of the field, reflecting on the causes and diffusion of democracy over the past two decades. The volume focuses on three issues very much at the heart of discussions about democracy today: dictatorship, development, and diffusion. The essays first explore the surprising but necessary relationship between democracy and authoritarianism; they next analyze the introduction of democracy in developing countries; last, they examine how international factors affect the democratization process. In exploring these key issues, the contributors ask themselves three questions: What causes a democracy to emerge and succeed? Does democracy make things better? Can democracy be successfully promoted? In contemplating these questions, The Dynamics of Democratization offers a frank and critical assessment of the field for students and scholars of comparative politics and the political economy of development. Contributors: Gregg A. Brazinsky, George Washington University; Nathan J. Brown, George Washington University; Kathleen Bruhn, University of California at Santa Barbara; Valerie J. Bunce, Cornell University; José Antonio Cheibub, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Bruce J. Dickson, George Washington University; M. Steven Fish, University of California at Berkeley; John Gerring, Boston University; Henry E. Hale, George Washington University; Susan D. Hyde, Yale University; Craig M. Kauffman, George Washington University; Staffan I. Lindberg, University of Florida; Sara Meerow, University of Amsterdam; James Raymond Vreeland, Georgetown University; Sharon L. Wolchik, George Washington University

Download or read book Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class written by Francisco H. G. Ferreira and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-11-09 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After decades of stagnation, the size of Latin America's middle class recently expanded to the point where, for the first time ever, the number of people in poverty is equal to the size of the middle class. This volume investigates the nature, determinants and possible consequences of this remarkable process of social transformation. We propose an original definition of the middle class, tailor-made for Latin America, centered on the concept of economic security and thus a low probability of falling into poverty. Given our definition of the middle class, there are four, not three, classes in Latin America. Sandwiched between the poor and the middle class there lies a large group of people who appear to make ends meet well enough, but do not enjoy the economic security that would be required for membership of the middle class. We call this group the 'vulnerable'. In an almost mechanical sense, these transformations in Latin America reflect both economic growth and declining inequality in over the period. We adopt a measure of mobility that decomposes the 'gainers' and 'losers' in society by social class of each household. The continent has experienced a large amount of churning over the last 15 years, at least 43% of all Latin Americans changed social classes between the mid 1990s and the end of the 2000s. Despite the upward mobility trend, intergenerational mobility, a better proxy for inequality of opportunity, remains stagnant. Educational achievement and attainment remain to be strongly dependent upon parental education levels. Despite the recent growth in pro-poor programs, the middle class has benefited disproportionally from social security transfers and are increasingly opting out from government services. Central to the region's prospects of continued progress will be its ability to harness the new middle class into a new, more inclusive social contract, where the better-off pay their fair share of taxes, and demand improved public services.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development written by Carol Lancaster and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modernization theory : does economic development cause democratization? / Jose Antonio Cheibub and James Raymond Vreeland -- Dependency theory / James Mahoney and Diana Rodriguez-Franco -- Structuralism / Elliott Green -- Political development / Robert H. Bates -- The Washington Consensus and the new political economy of economic reform / Kevin Morrison -- Penury traps and prosperity tales : why some countries escape poverty while others do not / M. Steven Fish -- Culture, politics and development / Michael Woolcock -- Religion, politics and economic development : synergies and disconnects / Katherine Marshall -- Does inequality harm economic development and democracy? : accounting for missing values, noncomparable observations, and endogeneity / Christian Houle -- Ethnicity and development / Nic Cheeseman -- Civil conflict and development / Håvard Hegre -- The politics of the resource curse : a review / Michael L. Ross -- Taxation and development / Mick Moore -- How do governments build capabilities to do great things? : ten cases, two competing explanations, one large research agenda / Matt Andrews -- Leadership and the politics of development / Adrian Leftwich and Heather Lyne De Ver -- Colonialism and development in africa / Leander Heldring and James A. Robinson -- Investment and debt / Layna Mosley -- The role of the state in harnessing trade-and-investment for development purposes / Theodore H. Moran -- International financial institutions and market liberalization in the developing world / Stephen C. Nelson -- Foreign aid and democratization in developing countries / Danielle Resnick -- Organizing for prosperity : collective action, political parties, and the political economy of development / Philip Keefer -- Missing links in the institutional chain / Anirudh Krishna -- The comparative politics of service delivery in developing countries / Evan S. Lieberman -- Party systems and the politics of development / Allen Hicken -- Populism and political representation / Kenneth M. Roberts -- Africa's political economy in the contemporary era / Peter M. Lewis -- The politics of development in Latin America and East Asia / James W. McGuire -- Development and underdevelopment in the Middle East and North Africa / Melani Cammett -- Rethinking the institutional foundations of china's hypergrowth : official incentives, institutional constraints, and local developmentalism / Fubing Su, Ran Tao, and Dali L. Yang -- The politics of growth in South Korea : miracle, crisis, and the new market economy / Stephan Haggard and Myung-Koo Kang

Download or read book Explaining Collective Violence in Contemporary Indonesia written by Z. Tadjoeddin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-05-07 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tadjoeddin uniquely explores four types of violent conflicts pertinent to contemporary Indonesia (secessionist, ethnic, routine-everyday and electoral violence), and seeks to discover what socio-economic development can do to overcome conflict and make the country's transition to democracy safe for its constituencies.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Quality of Government written by Andreas Bågenholm and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 881 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research demonstrates that the quality of public institutions is crucial for a number of important environmental, social, economic, and political outcomes, and thereby human well-being. The Quality of Government (QoG) approach directs attention to issues such as impartiality in the exercise of public power, professionalism in public service delivery, effective measures against corruption, and meritocracy instead of patronage and nepotism. This Handbook offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of this rapidly expanding research field and also identifies viable avenues for future research. The initial chapters focus on theoretical approaches and debates, and the central question of how QoG can be measured. A second set of chapters examines the wealth of empirical research on how QoG relates to democratization, social trust and cohesion, ethnic diversity, happiness and human wellbeing, democratic accountability, economic growth and inequality, political legitimacy, environmental sustainability, gender equality, and the outbreak of civil conflicts. The remaining chapters turn to the perennial issue of which contextual factors and policy approaches—national, local, and international—have proven successful (and not so successful) for increasing QoG. The Quality of Government approach both challenges and complements important strands of inquiry in the social sciences. For research about democratization, QoG adds the importance of taking state capacity into account. For economics, the QoG approach shows that in order to produce economic prosperity, markets need to be embedded in institutions with a certain set of qualities. For development studies, QoG emphasizes that issues relating to corruption are integral to understanding development writ large.

Download or read book Freedom Repression and Private Property in Russia written by Vladimir Shlapentokh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study demonstrates how the emergence of private property and a market economy after the Soviet Union's collapse enabled a degree of freedom while simultaneously supporting authoritarianism. Based on case studies, Vladimir Shlapentokh and Anna Arutunyan analyze how private property and free markets spawn feudal elements in society. These elements are so strong in post-Communist Russia that they prevent the formation of a true democratic society, while making it impossible to return to totalitarianism. The authors describe the resulting Russian society as having three types of social organization: authoritarian, feudal and liberal. The authors examine the adaptation of Soviet-era institutions like security forces, the police and the army to free market conditions and how they generated corruption; the belief that the KGB was relatively free from corruption; how large property holdings merge with power and necessitate repression; and how property relations affect government management and suppression.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy written by Jeffery A. Jenkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 985 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook presents chapters that explore the causes and consequences of politics within economic history using social-scientific theory and methods.The first section summarizes the state of the field and provides an overview of the data and techniques typically used by HPE scholars. Subsequent chapters survey major HPE research areas in political economy, political science, and economics, as well as the long-run economic, political, and social consequences of historical political economy

Download or read book Rational Choice and Democratic Government written by Tibor Rutar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-22 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a range of data from across disciplines, this book explores a series of fundamental questions surrounding the nature, working and effects of democracy, considering the reasons for the emergence and spread of democratic government, the conditions under which it endures or collapses – and the role of wealth in this process – and the peaceful nature of dealings between democracies. With emphasis on the ‘ordinary’ voter, the author employs rational choice theory to examine the motivations of voters and their levels of political knowledge and rationality, as well as the special interests, incentives and corruption of politicians. A theoretically informed and empirically illustrated study of the birth and downfall of democracies, the extent of voters’ political knowledge and ignorance, the logic of political behaviour in both open and closed regimes, and the international effects of democratic rule, Rational Choice and Democratic Government: A Sociological Approach will appeal to scholars with interests in political sociology, political psychology, economics and political science.

Download or read book Issues in General Economic Research and Application 2011 Edition written by and published by ScholarlyEditions. This book was released on 2012-01-09 with total page 875 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issues in General Economic Research and Application: 2011 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ eBook that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about General Economic Research and Application. The editors have built Issues in General Economic Research and Application: 2011 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about General Economic Research and Application in this eBook to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in General Economic Research and Application: 2011 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.

Download or read book Institutional Transformations Polity and Economic Outcomes written by Sophia Gollwitzer and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper tests the theoretical framework developed by North, Wallis and Weingast (2009) on the transition from closed to open access societies. They posit that societies need to go through three doorsteps: (i) the establishment of rule of law among elites; (ii) the adoption of perpetually existing organizations; and (iii) the political control of the military. We identify indicators reflecting these doorsteps and graphically test the correlation between them and a set of political and economic variables. Finally, through Identification through Heteroskedasticity we test these relationships econometrically. The paper broadly confirms the logic behind the doorsteps as necessary steps in the transition to open access societies. The doorsteps influence economic and political processes, as well as each other, with varying intensity. We also identify income inequality as a potentially important force leading to social change.

Download or read book Institutional Reforms Governance and Services Delivery in the Global South written by Hamid E. Ali and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-24 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited book explores the link between institutional reforms, governance and services delivery in the Global South, mapping how and to what extent resource-poor governments deliver public services to their citizens. The book concludes that delivery of public services responsibly and efficiently remains largely unachievable because of weaker institutions and poor quality of governance in the Global South countries. Reforms to governance and institutions are generally considered fitting measures to overcome public service delivery challenges.

Download or read book Democratic Transitions in the Arab World written by Ibrahim Elbadawi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-05 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cross-country examination of authoritarianism and democracy in North Africa and the Middle East.

Download or read book Social Science and National Security Policy written by Janeen M. Klinger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how deterrence, coercion and modernization theory has informed U.S. policy, addressing why former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s famous description of the Vietnam War as the “social scientist’s war” is so accurate. By tracing the evolution of ties between social scientists and the government beginning in World War I and continuing through the Second World War and the early Cold War, the narrative highlights the role of institutions like the RAND Corporation, the Social Science Research Council and MIT’s Center for International Studies that facilitate these ties while providing a home for the development of theory. The author compares and contrasts the ideas of Bernard Brodie, Herman Kahn, Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Schelling, Gabriel Almond, Lucian Pye and Walt Rostow, among others, and offers a cautionary tale concerning the difficulties and problems encountered when applying social science theory to national security policy.

Download or read book How To Become A Modernized Country China Modernization Report Outlook 2001 2016 written by Chuanqi He and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modernization is a complex phenomenon in the world, and is termed as a development goal in some countries and regions. This book, the first of its kind, discusses how a country can become modernized. It takes a new approach to addressing core issues in the era of globalization from a Chinese perspective. It analyzes how to become a developed and modernized country, why are some countries developed while others are not, how many countries will rise and how many will fall, will China become a new modernized country in the 21st century, and so on. The author presents a summary of 15 annual reports of China Modernization Report from 2001 to 2016. The themes covered include: basic principles of modernization (modernization science, modernization theory and modernization evaluation), level-related modernization (world, international, national, regional and urban modernization), field-relative modernization (economical, social, cultural and ecological modernization) and sector-specified modernization (agricultural, industrial and service modernization) etc.The book further discusses the principles and methods of world modernization, as well as the trends in modernization in the world and the modernization strategy in China, based on theoretical studies and research by a Chinese team for more than 16 years. This research covered 131 countries and 96% of the world's population, with a time span of 300 years (from 1750 to 2050).

Download or read book Growth Miracles and Growth Debacles written by Sambit Bhattacharyya and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating book, Sambit Bhattacharyya presents a detailed account of the socio-economic processes that create broad variations in living standards across the globe. The author examines the world's economic history over the last five centuries, replete with growth miracles and growth debacles: growth in Britain was steady, yet China lost her early advantage; North America settler colonies performed significantly better than those of Asia and Africa; Australia and Argentina were notably similar at the start of the twentieth century but delivered strikingly different growth outcomes. The book argues that these differences in growth rate are best explained by an interplay of factors, namely economic, political and geographical. In conclusion it presents long-run comparative growth narratives for Africa, China, India, the Americas, Russia and Western Europe. Presenting a unique and original analytical framework to explain economic growth and decline, and bridging empirical growth literature and economic history, this book will prove a stimulating read for both academic and professional economists, and scholars of economic history and economic growth. Other social scientists including sociologists, political scientists and economic historians will also find the book to be of great value.

Download or read book Shock to the System written by Michael K. Miller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How violent events and autocratic parties trigger democratic change How do democracies emerge? Shock to the System presents a novel theory of democratization that focuses on how events like coups, wars, and elections disrupt autocratic regimes and trigger democratic change. Employing the broadest qualitative and quantitative analyses of democratization to date, Michael Miller demonstrates that more than nine in ten transitions since 1800 occur in one of two ways: countries democratize following a major violent shock or an established ruling party democratizes through elections and regains power within democracy. This framework fundamentally reorients theories on democratization by showing that violent upheavals and the preservation of autocrats in power—events typically viewed as antithetical to democracy—are in fact central to its foundation. Through in-depth examinations of 139 democratic transitions, Miller shows how democratization frequently follows both domestic shocks (coups, civil wars, and assassinations) and international shocks (defeat in war and withdrawal of an autocratic hegemon) due to autocratic insecurity and openings for opposition actors. He also shows how transitions guided by ruling parties spring from their electoral confidence in democracy. Both contexts limit the power autocrats sacrifice by accepting democratization, smoothing along the transition. Miller provides new insights into democratization’s predictors, the limited gains from events like the Arab Spring, the best routes to democratization for long-term stability, and the future of global democracy. Disputing commonly held ideas about violent events and their effects on democracy, Shock to the System offers new perspectives on how regimes are transformed.

Download or read book Leadership or Chaos written by Norman Schofield and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-08-03 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining elements of economic reasoning and political science has proven to be very useful for understanding the broad variation in economic development around the world. In a sense research in this field goes back to the Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith’s original plan in his Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations. Leadership or Chaos by Norman Schofield and Maria Gallego is intended as an advanced, self-contained text in political economy dealing with social choice. The theory and empirical analysis are used to examine democratic institutions and elections in the developed world, and the success or failure of moves to democratization in the less developed world. The book closes with a consideration of current quandaries with regard to political and economic stability and climate change and a discussion of the moral foundations of our society.