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We know much about "how democracies die": elites and masses become polarized, and norms of mutual toleration, forbearance, and institutional restraint erode. But why do elites feel free to undermine these guardrails of democracy? What are the sources of backsliding? Answers to these questions have focused on the impact of economic and cultural change, and on autocratic meddling. I consider another potential source of backsliding around the world: the impact of the reconfiguration of global politics after the Cold War and 9/11 on politics in the main prodemocratic actors that Samuel Huntington highlighted in his book The Third Wave: the United States, the European Union, and the Vatican. Today, the international context gives leaders in these global powers relatively weaker incentives to stand up for democracy, even in the face of aggressive meddling from Russia and China. Changes in international politics has left democracy with weaker ideational support in the global arena, potentially facilitating backsliding.

AbstractExisting measures of article and journal impact count citations that articles receive in other articles. Such metrics ignore citations that articles receive in monographs and edited-volume chapters. Counting article citations in books reveals that popular measures of article and journal impact discriminate against articles and journals that receive citations in books rather than (or in addition to) citations in other articles, thereby discriminating against the research contributions of scholars who publish such articles. Analysis of citation patterns over 25 years reveals that citations in books have declined in American politics research while citations in articles have increased; citations in both books and articles remain important in the other subfields. Findings suggest that political scientists should supplement indicators of journal impact based on citations in peer-reviewed articles with measures that account for the citations that published articles receive in books.

Scholars have devoted substantial research to political parties, but comparativists have not explored how presidentialism and parliamentarism differently affect party development, organization, and behavior. The parties' literature developed from explorations of European parliamentary systems, in which constitutional structure is not an independent variable, or from the U.S. case, in which the presidentialism is sometimes not related to party development. The result is a serious gap in the literature. In this article, the author argues that the institutions of presidentialism generate incentives for parties to organize and behave differently than they would otherwise under parliamentarism. The author explores the consequences for party behavior of a shift from pure parliamentarism to semipresidentialism in France in 1958 and Israel in 1992. Given the paucity of research on how the separation of powers creates "presidentialized parties," the argument suggests scholars rethink parties' actual role in both within presidential systems as well as across democratic regime types

Competition for executive-level offices can influence competition for legislative office, & federal institutions can provide an "opportunity structure" that shapes partisan competition. In Brazil, unlike in systems where the presidential election might drive congressional elections, electoral incentives are state-centered. Candidates for Congress focus on the gubernatorial race, not the presidential race. Specifically, the effective number of candidates competing in the gubernatorial race in each state (electoral district) determines the effective number of lists competing in congressional elections in each state in Brazil. In this article, I use OLS regression analysis of electoral data from Brazil's democratic elections to test this proposition. Regression analysis confirms that the effective number of candidates for governor, & not the effective number of candidates for president, drives the effective number of lists competing in the legislative election. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 42 References. Adapted from the source document.

A prominent question in comparative electoral studies concerns the so-called personal vote. Typically, scholars approach this question at a cross-national as opposed to a cross-party level. In this article, in contrast, the author focuses on the characteristics of parties, as opposed to the characteristics of electoral systems, as determinants of candidates' personal vote seeking. The author argues that a candidate's adoption of an individualistic or collective strategy depends largely on centralized or decentralized nomination control in his party, his party's alliance options, and his access to and control over funding and patronage. The author explores the Brazilian case, testing his claims at the national and district level using multiple regression analysis. Furthermore, he explains how one party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party, PT), has overcome the incentives of the electoral system.

An ugly manifestation of polarization is partisan dehumanization, a form of moral disengagement from and support for aggressive or even violent treatment of one's opponents. Brazil offers a useful case to explore the relative importance of in-group sympathy or out-group antipathy as sources of dehumanization, since its voters are polarized between supporters and opponents of a single party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party, PT). Using survey-experimental data from a convenience sample, we show that partisan dehumanization can stem from either in- or out-group bias. Both PT partisans, known as petistas, and PT opponents, known as antipetistas, dehumanize their opponents. For petistas, in-group favoritism drives dehumanization of their opponents. However, since the only thing that unites all antipetistas is their dislike for the PT, out-group animosity is the critical factor driving their dehumanization of petistas. We also find that dehumanization is associated with the intensity of positive or negative partisanship and perceptions of social and moral distance between opponents. However, perceptions of out-group threat and Social Dominance Orientation do not enhance dehumanization. Our findings contribute to understanding the roots of partisan dehumanization and polarization in Latin America and beyond.

Conventional wisdom holds that landed elites oppose democratization. Whether they fear rising wages, labor mobility or land redistribution, landowners have historically repressed agricultural workers and sustained autocracy. What might change landowning elites' preferences for dictatorship and reduce their opposition to democracy? Change requires reducing landowners' need to maintain political control over labor. This transition occurs when mechanization reduces the demand for agricultural workers, eliminating the need for labor-repressive policies. We explain how the adoption of labor-saving technology in agriculture alters landowners' political preferences for different regimes, so that the more mechanized the agricultural sector, the more likely is democracy to emerge and survive. Our theoretical argument offers a parsimonious revision to Moore's thesis that applies to the global transformation of agriculture since hisSocial Originsfirst appeared, and results from our cross-national statistical analyses strongly suggest that a positive relationship between agricultural mechanization and democracy does in fact exist.