Suchergebnisse

Multiparty elections can reduce the likelihood of conflict and help dictators secure their rule, but when does a dictator create electoral institutions? Existing research finds that one of the major reasons regimes introduce multiparty elections is to gain information about opposition demands. This article builds on that argument to explain that a regime's finances determine whether or not it is able to benefit from creating electoral institutions. Dictators use the revenue of the regime to invest in different means of deterring opposition rebellion. A regime's first priority is to build repressive capacity, after which it invests in public spending to buy the support of its winning coalition. Regimes only benefit from multiparty elections when they have sufficient revenue to fund repressive capacity but lack the finances to also buy regime security through massive public spending. Low-revenue regimes cannot benefit from elections and high-revenue regimes do not need elections to help secure their rule. I test the implications of the argument for regime spending and the creation of multiparty electoral institutions using a global sample of dictatorships between 1972 and 2014. The results of the hypothesis tests indicate that as revenue increases regimes decrease their shares of spending on repressive capacity but increase shares of spending on the public. The results also indicate the probability that a regime introduces elections rises as revenue increases from a low level, but the probability declines as revenue increases from a high level. The study builds upon the literature for how regime resources and state capacity influence authoritarian strategies of political survival. The findings for spending patterns are consistent with recent research on late modern regimes, and the results for the emergence of electoral institutions are consistent with research that finds dictators must have sufficient resources to survive holding elections.

Public service delivery is an essential component of e-governance initiatives but the digital divide limits citizens' access to e-government services, especially in rural communities. The Digital India initiative launched Common Service Centers (CSCs) to mitigate the physical-digital divide issue. The privately operated local kiosks are meant to ensure easy access to digital government services in India's remote pockets. Although the literature indicates that females generally have lower perceptions and adoption rates of digital government, existing studies commonly assume women directly interact with government websites. We know little about gender-specific experiences of digital government through the user assisted and privately operated local kiosks. This survey study utilizes the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explore the gender-specific acceptance of public service through local kiosks in rural India. This paper argues that user-assisted kiosks help mitigate the gender digital divide by increasing the usefulness and ease of use of e-government, which improves rural women's acceptance and use of digital government services. This field research brings insights from the developing world while recording women's voices from underserved communities.

AbstractWhy do some informal institutions increase in prevalence while other informal institutions decline? We study why dowry deaths have increased with economic development in some Indian states but have decreased in others. We argue that when economic development is low, traditional institutions rather than state institutions govern behaviour. But as economic development increases to a high level, modern formal institutions replace traditional informal institutions. Women are increasingly exploited and murdered over dowry as incomes increase from a low level, but fewer deaths occur as incomes increase from a high level. We test this argument using a dataset of dowry deaths in years 2001–2011 for 32 Indian states and territories. Our paper contributes to understanding how exploitation through informal institutions rises and falls with economic development.

ABSTRACTHow can scholars conduct field research when there is limited access to the field? This article first identifies how limited and uncertain field access can affect field research and then provides recommendations to address these challenges. We focus on conducting field research in Japan because of our substantive expertise, but we believe that the problems and solutions outlined in this article are applicable to a broad range of countries. Our hope is that this article contributes to the developing literature on conducting research during times of emergency and to the larger literature on best practices for field research.