Suchergebnisse

Authors who have studied the political authority wielded by a single party in different countries with non-totalitarian regimes have identified a 'cycle of domination' (Pempel, ed., 1990). Along the same lines, this analysis concentrates on the political institutions, resources and social divisions to identify the origins, challenges and continuance (or extinction) of the dominance of a single party in Mexico, India and Japan. Despite the significant differences between these nations, the origins of their cycles of one-party dominance share a linkage of party elites, State bureaucrats and private capital that guaranteed positions and resources in the form of patronage and cronyism. In addition to material resources, the use of ideology (for example, the dominant party portrayed itself as the embodiment of the nation's central aspirations and values) was also crucial in creating and subsequently maintaining the dominance of a single party in these countries. In all three cases, dominance also faced similar challenges in the form of a significant split in the party in power or in the emergence of an opposition capable of obtaining sufficient credibility regarding its capacity to govern. Finally, the framework of institutions, resources and social divisions also throws light on the extinction of the dominance of a single party in India and Mexico, as well as on its continuance in Japan. Adapted from the source document.

In this article, we defend the importance of the concept of 'stateness' in scholarly understanding of political democratization. We argue that because processes of political democratization in different spatio-temporal settings often share important similarities they are therefore comparable. We investigate this proposition by comparing the process of American political democratization with those of other liberal democracies, old & new. We review extant accounts of the historical process of American democratization -- including those addressing American exceptionalism, class structures, multiple traditions, social movements, & international pressures -- before presenting an alternative comparative account based on the idea of stateness. Attention to stateness problems defined along legal, bureaucratic, & ideological dimensions & derived from both the classic Weberian perspective on the state & the more recent 'third wave' of democratization theory help to place the long American experience of democratization in comparative perspective. This finding illuminates some of the common political challenges in the construction of liberal democracies, old & new. Adapted from the source document.