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The invasion of Iraq and the subsequent laws of regime change were directed at the 'purification' of public sector employment. Such policies based upon removing transgressors from within the previous regime are commonly known as lustration. In Iraq, these were normatively presented as a required process for democracy building and victim recognition. However, in reality, lustration emerged problematically and essentially as a form of counter-insurgency aimed at removing those guilty of war crimes but also those opposed to neo-liberalism, federalism and the erosion of secularism. The misuse of laws of lustration was allied to external design and the relish of the new elite to use public resources to attempt state hegemony. Lustration, thus emerging as one of the few sites in which the new state could control and assert influence even if that led to new grievances and ethno-sectarian resentment.

Life-stories are usually seen as showing considerable coherence even where they include turning points. More recent work has in contrast noted that "living" or "small narratives" do not follow this rule but contrastingly enable the pondering of unresolved life-events helping to develop understanding. This potential is particularly valuable in contexts of fundamental regime-change where changes of the value-system, such as after transition from state socialism to democracy, pose considerable challenges to narrative coherence. The article suggests reconsidering the question of coherence in life-stories and draws on two examples of individuals who experienced life in East Germany and German unification to argue that struggles for coherence in the life-story can be indicative of the lack of wider shared frameworks for the understandings of national events and historical problems.

Abstract
Why did America's twenty-year war in Afghanistan fail to establish a self-sustaining non-Taliban government? Analysts have cited cultural obstacles in Afghanistan, bureaucratic inertia in Washington, and a lack of strategic commitment, in part because Iraq dominated national security policy. Such claims tend to draw evidence from Germany, Japan, and Iraq, places where the U.S. military achieved some measure of success establishing pro-American governments. The present article broadens the comparison to consider Afghanistan alongside Germany, Japan, Iraq, and two examples of post-Cold War regime-change success: Panama (1989–1990) and Haiti (1994–1995). The cases indicate that U.S. influence in the postwar environment has depended on the prospects for integrating old regime elites into the new government and on the strength of indigenous opposition forces. Both variables were unfavorable in Afghanistan, and they shaped the boundaries of political order—no matter how hard U.S. forces fought or how long they stayed.

IN PORTUGUESE POLITICAL HISTORY, CIVIL SOCIETY HAS TRADITIONALLY BEEN A MARGINALIZED ACTOR. EVEN THOUGH POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS WERE NOT FAVORABLE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A STRONG CIVIL SOCIETY FOR MOST OF PORTUGAL'S HISTORY, AN ORGANIZED CIVIL SOCIETY (ALTHOUGH STILL WEAK) IS EMERGING UNDER THE NEW DEMOCRATIC REGIME.

I construct a theory of foreign interventions in which the preferences of the foreign country over alternative local groups are determined by each group's international economic ties. In equilibrium, the foreign country supports the group with which it has the strongest ties, since this is most influenceable from the outside. However this is counterweighted by the tendency of the domestic political system to favour the least influenceable group. I allow for a noneconomic dimension of policy (geopolitics), and study how the saliency of this dimension may play in favor of the incumbent group. My results help interpret the economic rationale for many Western interventions in developing countries in the 20th century, and the role of economic nationalism in motivating the struggle for regime change. Furthermore, they help explain why the Cold War strengthened the West's preference for specific local groups. I provide detailed historical evidence in favor of my arguments.

Using an improved definition and indicator of growth accelerations, we examine whether political regimes, regime changes, and economic reform are related to growth accelerations. Our results show that economic growth accelerations are preceded by economic reforms. Furthermore, we find that growth accelerations are more likely to happen after the start of a new political regime.

Political regimes are stable most years, but sometimes they jump. The stable years are periods of political status-quo equilibrium. To break a status quo requires a triggering event. The paper is an attempt to identify and classify what close observers at the time thought were the triggering events in a sample of 262 larger regime changes between 1960 and 2015 in 170 countries. The sample consists of all changes in the Polity index with a numerical rating above 3 (i.e. of 4 or more). The source for the triggering events is country-relevant articles in The Economist. Triggering events are classified in a (2 x 2) table with four cells: (DP) domestic political, (DE) domestic economic, (XP) external political, and (XE) external economic, which remains empty. By far the most common is (DP), but the domestic political events prove to be very different. Thus, most jumps are exogenous in the perspective of development.

We examine whether the type of political regime, regime changes, and economic liberalization are related to economic growth accelerations. Our results show that growth accelerations are preceded by economic liberalizations. We also find that growth accelerations are less likely to happen the longer a political regime-be it a democracy or an autocracy-has been in place, while (a move toward) more democracy according to the Polity IV dataset reduces the likelihood of growth accelerations. Adapted from the source document.

This special issue critically interrogates the current practices of international 'peacebuilding interventions' and 'peace missions' to highlight the violence that inheres in their attempts to enforce socio-economic and political changes (such as regime change) from the 'outside'. As in the Latin adage: 'Si vis pacem, para bellum' ('if you wish for peace, prepare for war') the starting point of this special issue was the basic observation that these interventions and missions have little to do with peace but, rather, are violent from their outset. By combining conceptual analysis with case study articles, we hope that this special issue contributes to the on-going debate about how something normatively desirable -- 'building peace' -- has turned out so badly. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractSince the 1960s, intermittent social conflicts in Nigeria appear mostly linked to ethnic groups' differences. Considering the importance of regime change in social and political stability, this article critically analyses the historic and dynamic role of the core political executive elite in the political system's stability. The article argues that ethnic politics persist in Nigeria based on the nature of interactions between political institutions, institution‐builders, and society. It asserts a contradictory link between deep‐rooted elite interests and popular preferences in ways that undermine orientations towards democracy. The empirical focus is on the composite nature of the core political executive elite analysed through their ethnic and educational backgrounds. It is observed that, although ethnic shocks are variously motivated, the atypical shape and inequity in power and role distribution at the highest levels of executive office‐holding stand out as a salient source and target of antagonism by ethnic groups. This finding has a paradoxical implication: deep‐seated economic and political interests of the elite play a diversionary role from the real causes of ethnic conflicts in Nigeria.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Tables -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Regime Change during the Third Wave: From Dictatorship to Democracy and Back -- Part I: Inequality and Transitions to Democracy -- Chapter 1 Inequality and Transitions to Democracy -- Part II: Pathways to Democracy -- Chapter 2 Modeling Democratic Transitions: Distributive Conflict and Elite Processes / Teo, Terence -- Chapter 3 Distributive Conflict Transitions: Institutions and Collective Action -- Chapter 4 Elite- Led Transitions: International Factors and Politics at the Top -- Chapter 5 Transition Paths and the Quality of Democracy / Teo, Terence -- Part III: Reversions from Democratic Rule -- Chapter 6 Inequality, Development, and the Weak Democracy Syndrome / Teo, Terence -- Chapter 7 Pathways to Authoritarian Rule -- Chapter 8 Learning from Anomalies: Low- Income Survivors, Middle- Income Reverters -- Conclusion: Whither Democracy? -- References -- Index

This dissertation consists of three chapters, each representing a self-contained research paper in health economics. The first chapter formalizes a model which generalizes several political models of collective action and regime change. It considers the impact that an extremist party can have on the choices made by the population in choosing whether or not to take part in a revolt. This third party is usually a personal interest group that benefits from a revolution, or in some cases benefits from the current regime in power, and thus will try to persuade the general population into pursuing an action that is in the extremist's best interest. The paper presents several applications of the model with political and economic roots. These models add insight to revolutions in the present day as well as throughout history, particularly those aided by outside benefactors.(JEL codes: D5,D72,D91) In the second chapter, I study the effect that NCLB had on teacher turnover and compare it to the impact from state accountability systems that existed prior to the passage of NCLB. I find that, while state accountability systems have no significant effect on teacher turnover, teachers are 5 percentage points more likely to remain in the field following NCLB. The driving force behind this result is the year that a teacher earned his or her bachelor's degree. Receiving a bachelor's degree after 2002 makes an individual 27 percentage points more likely to stay in the field after NCLB was passed. I believe there is a self-selection process to explain this result, as after NCLB became law only those individuals who felt comfortable teaching under an accountability system earned their education degree and became a teacher. I find further evidence of this result by considering where the teachers earned their degrees. The state where a teacher earned their degree does not have a large effect on the likelihood of continuing to teach, regardless of whether or not that state had some kind of prior accountability system. This suggests that ...

Revolution, reform, and resilience comprise the respective fortunes of modern Iran, Turkey, and Egypt. Although the countries all experienced coups with remarkably similar ambitions, each followed a very different trajectory. Iran became an absolutist monarchy that was overthrown from below, Turkey evolved into a limited democracy, and Egypt turned into a police state.