Suchergebnisse

Introduction to Myanmar's Paradoxical Regime Change -- Myanmar's Trial and Error Praetorian Regime -- The Origins of Contemporary Myanmar -- The Evolution of Myanmar's Military Regime -- A Disciplined Society for a Disciplined Democracy -- The International Dimension of Myanmar's Regime Change -- Myanmar's Way to Democracy.

This article explores a hitherto overlooked consequence of regime change in Africa. It shows how the shift from one-party to multiparty rule in the region altered the kinds of ethnic cleavages that structure political competition and conflict. The article demonstrates how the different strategic logics of political competition in one-party and multiparty settings create incentives for political actors to emphasize different kinds of ethnic identities: local-level identities (usually revolving around tribe or clan) in one-party elections and broader scale identities (usually revolving around region, language, or religion) in multiparty elections. The argument is illustrated with evidence from the 1991 and 1992 regime transitions in Zambia and Kenya.

"Parties and Regime Change in Latin America" published on by Oxford University Press.

AS SCHOLARS ANALYZE THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET COMMUNIST SYSTEM, THEY MUST EXPLAIN HOW A POLITICAL SYSTEM THAT HAD EVERY APPEARANCE OF POTENCY IN 1985 BECAME INCREASINGLY INEFFECTIVE AND FINALLY DISINTEGRATED BY LATE 1991. TO DO SO, THEY MUST FOCUS ON THE NATURE OF POWER IN THE OLD SYSTEM AND ON THE PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATION. FOR THE LATTER, THE COMPARATIVE LITERATURE ON TRANSITIONS TO DEMOCRACY IS HELPFUL, ESPECIALLY ITS THESIS THAT REGIME CHANGE IS A PROCESS THAT DEVELOPS ITS OWN DYNAMIC IN WHICH THE INTENT OF LEADING ACTORS DIFFERS FROM THE RESULTS. IN ADDITION, THE TWO MOST TRADITIONAL CONCEPTS USED IN SOVIET STUDIES--NAMELY, TOTALITARIANISM AND POLITICAL CULTURE--ARE MORE EXPLANATORY THAT MIGHT BE EXPECTED.

This article takes as its point of departure the recent wave of contestations relating to colonial-era monuments in Europe. While the toppling of monuments has long been a part of political regime change, recent attacks on monuments need to be understood instead, not as celebrations of a change that has already occurred, but as attempts to affect 'mnemonic regime change' as part of a larger struggle for racial equality and social justice. Monuments are materialisations of larger narratives that operate within a broader culture of memory; at the same time, they have a particular role to play in mnemonic contestations since they offer a physical platform for public performances of adherence to, or dissent from, dominant understandings of collective identity and memory. Using insights from the field of cultural memory studies, this article illustrates these dynamics with detailed reference to the controversy around the Edward Colston statue in Bristol. It argues that its dramatic toppling in June 2020 was part of a much longer and slower two-track process whereby the narrative underpinning Colston was undermined and an alternative narrative of Bristol's complicity in the slave trade was unforgotten. It concludes by reflecting on the importance but also the limits of memory activism focussed on statues.

"This paper presents a model of information and political regime change. If enough citizens act against a regime, it is overthrown. Citizens are imperfectly informed about how hard this will be and the regime can, at a cost, engage in propaganda so that at face-value it seems hard. This coordination game with endogenous information manipulation has a unique equilibrium and the paper gives a complete analytic characterization of its comparative statics. If the quantity of information available to citizens is sufficiently high, then the regime has a better chance of surviving. However, an increase in the reliability of information can reduce the regime's chances. These two effects are always in tension: a regime benefits from an increase in information quantity if and only if an increase in information reliability reduces its chances. The model allows for two kinds of information revolutions. In the first, associated with radio and mass newspapers under the totalitarian regimes of the early twentieth century, an increase in information quantity coincides with a shift towards media institutions more accommodative of the regime and, in this sense, a decrease in information reliability. In this case, both effects help the regime. In the second kind, associated with diffuse technologies like modern social media, an increase in information quantity coincides with a shift towards sources of information less accommodative of the regime and an increase in information reliability. This makes the quantity and reliability effects work against each other. The model predicts that a given percentage increase in information reliability has exactly twice as large an effect on the regime's chances as the same percentage increase in information quantity, so, overall, an information revolution that leads to roughly equal-sized percentage increases in both these characteristics will reduce a regime's chances of surviving"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"The author introduces state and regime change in Central Asia as an example for social change in non-European societies. He criticizes the normative character of the concept of transition and relates the political changes in Central Asia to those in non-European societies such as Africa, the Middle East or Latin America, where concepts like personal rule, patrimonialism, or neo-patrimonialism can better explain the dominance of highly personalized and privatized post-colonial state structures, which, only in formal terms, established modern bureaucratic polities. The model of the bureaucratic development state is especially apt for explaining political change in Central Asia. Here the development problem appears to be fundamentally a political one and is, as such, linked to the question of how bureaucratic development state structures can be strengthened in order to overcome patrimonialism and the established primacy of politics in legal and administrative processes." (author's abstract)

We develop a dynamic game to provide with a theory of Arab spring-type events. We consider two interacting groups, the elite vs the citizens, two political regimes, dictatorship vs a freer regime, the possibility to switch from the first to the second regime as a consequence of a revolution, and finally the opportunity, for the elite, to affect the citizens' decision through concession and/or repression strategies. In this framework, we provide a full characterization of the equilibrium of the political regime switching game. First, we emphasize the role of the direct switching cost of a revolution (for the citizens) and of the elite's self-preservation options. Under the concession strategy, when the switching cost is low, the elite can't avoid the political regime change. She optimally adapts to the overthrow of their political power by setting the rate of redistribution to the highest possible level, thereby extending the period during which she has full control on resources. This surprising result actually illustrates the role of the timing of events in these situations of interaction between the ruling elite and the people. When the direct switching is high, the elite can ultimately select the equilibrium outcome and adopts the opposite strategy, i.e. she chooses the lowest level of redistribution that allows her to stay in power forever. The same kind of results are obtained when the elite relies on repression to keep the citizens under control. Next, the equilibrium properties under a mix of repression and redistribution are analyzed. It is shown that in situations where neither repression (only) nor redistribution (only) protect the elite against the uprising of citizens, a subtle mixture of the two instruments is sufficient to make the dictatorship permanent. Based on our theoretical results, we finally examine the reason for such a large variety of decisions and outcomes during the Arab Spring events.

We develop a dynamic game to provide with a theory of Arab spring-type events. We consider two interacting groups, the elite vs the citizens, two political regimes, dictatorship vs a freer regime, the possibility to switch from the first to the second regime as a consequence of a revolution, and finally the opportunity, for the elite, to affect the citizens' decision through concession and/or repression strategies. In this framework, we provide a full characterization of the equilibrium of the political regime switching game. First, we emphasize the role of the direct switching cost of a revolution (for the citizens) and of the elite's self-preservation options. Under the concession strategy, when the switching cost is low, the elite can't avoid the political regime change. She optimally adapts to the overthrow of their political power by setting the rate of redistribution to the highest possible level, thereby extending the period during which she has full control on resources. This surprising result actually illustrates the role of the timing of events in these situations of interaction between the ruling elite and the people. When the direct switching is high, the elite can ultimately select the equilibrium outcome and adopts the opposite strategy, i.e. she chooses the lowest level of redistribution that allows her to stay in power forever. The same kind of results are obtained when the elite relies on repression to keep the citizens under control. Next, the equilibrium properties under a mix of repression and redistribution are analyzed. It is shown that in situations where neither repression (only) nor redistribution (only) protect the elite against the uprising of citizens, a subtle mixture of the two instruments is sufficient to make the dictatorship permanent. Based on our theoretical results, we finally examine the reason for such a large variety of decisions and outcomes during the Arab Spring events.

We develop a dynamic game to provide with a theory of Arab spring-type events. We consider two interacting groups, the elite vs the citizens, two political regimes, dictatorship vs a freer regime, the possibility to switch from the first to the second regime as a consequence of a revolution, and finally the opportunity, for the elite, to affect the citizens' decision through concession and/or repression strategies. In this framework, we provide a full characterization of the equilibrium of the political regime switching game. First, we emphasize the role of the direct switching cost of a revolution (for the citizens) and of the elite's self-preservation options. Under the concession strategy, when the switching cost is low, the elite can't avoid the political regime change. She optimally adapts to the overthrow of their political power by setting the rate of redistribution to the highest possible level, thereby extending the period during which she has full control on resources. This surprising result actually illustrates the role of the timing of events in these situations of interaction between the ruling elite and the people. When the direct switching is high, the elite can ultimately select the equilibrium outcome and adopts the opposite strategy, i.e. she chooses the lowest level of redistribution that allows her to stay in power forever. The same kind of results are obtained when the elite relies on repression to keep the citizens under control. Next, the equilibrium properties under a mix of repression and redistribution are analyzed. It is shown that in situations where neither repression (only) nor redistribution (only) protect the elite against the uprising of citizens, a subtle mixture of the two instruments is sufficient to make the dictatorship permanent. Based on our theoretical results, we finally examine the reason for such a large variety of decisions and outcomes during the Arab Spring events.