Suchergebnisse

AbstractWhat is the effect of increased electoral competition on patronage politics? If programmatic appeals are not credible, institutional reforms that move politics from an elite- to a mass-focused and more competitive environment increase patronage efforts. This leads to an overall surge and notable spike in discretionary state hiring in election years. The study tests this prediction in the context of Indonesia's decentralized education sector. The authors exploit the exogenous phasing in and timing of elections in Indonesian districts for causal identification. They find evidence of election-related increases in the number of contract teachers on local payrolls and increases in civil service teacher certifications, which dramatically increases salaries. These effects are particularly pronounced for districts in which the former authoritarian ruling party is in competition with new entrants.

How do natural resources and ethnic identity interact to incite or to mitigate
social conflict? This article argues that high-value natural resources can act as an
important catalyst for the politicization of ethnic, specifically indigenous identity,
and contribute to social conflict as they limit the malleability of identity frames
and raise the stakes of confrontations. We test this argument using unique subnational
data from Bolivian provinces. Drawing on Bolivian newspaper reports,
we code conflict events for all of the 112 provinces from 2000 to 2011. We
join this conflict data with information on local ethnic composition from the
census, the political representation of ethnic groups at the national level, as well
as geo-spatial information on gas deposits. Using time-series cross-sectional
count models, we show a significant conflict-promoting effect of the share of
indigenous people in provinces with gas reserves, but not without.

How do natural resources and ethnic identity interact to incite or to mitigate social conflict? This article argues that high-value natural resources can act as an important catalyst for the politicization of ethnic, specifically indigenous identity, and contribute to social conflict as they limit the malleability of identity frames and raise the stakes of confrontations. We test this argument using unique sub-national data from Bolivian provinces. Drawing on Bolivian newspaper reports, we code conflict events for all of the 112 provinces from 2000 to 2011. We join this conflict data with information on local ethnic composition from the census, the political representation of ethnic groups at the national level, as well as geo-spatial information on gas deposits. Using time-series cross-sectional count models, we show a significant conflict-promoting effect of the share of indigenous people in provinces with gas reserves, but not without.

This paper discusses the issue of possible reporting bias in media-based violent-event data and its relation to the role of communication technology in fostering collective action. We expand the work of Weidmann (2016), presenting several sensitivity analyses to determine the degree to which reporting bias may confound the relationship between communication technology and violence in a recent study that relies on event data for Africa. We find no strong evidence that suggests results on the positive relationship between communication technology and collective action in the study by Pierskalla and Hollenbach (2013) are wholly an artifact of reporting bias.

What are the causes and consequences of colonial rule? This introduction to the special issue "Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies" surveys recent literature in political science, sociology, and economics that addresses colonial state building and colonial legacies. Past research has made important contributions to our understanding of colonialism's long-term effects on political, social, and economic development. Existing work emphasizes the role of critical junctures and institutions in understanding the transmission of those effects to present-day outcomes and embraces the idea of design-based inference for empirical analysis. The four articles of this special issue add to existing research but also represent new research trends: increased attention to (1) the internal dynamics of colonial intervention; (2) noninstitutional transmission mechanisms; (3) the role of context conditions at times of colonial intervention; and (4) a finer-grained disaggregation of outcomes, explanatory factors, and units of analysis.

This paper investigates the role of state capacity for political violence. Most previous studies have suffered from inadequacies of country-level data, questionable validity of indicators or theoretical shortcomings. This paper aims at overcoming some of these challenges. We focus on one specific aspect of state capacity: the role of governmental manpower. We argue that its subnational effect on political violence follows a non-linear, inverted-U shape. We investigate this hypothesis in the context of southern Sudan, covering the period from 2006 to 2010. We use unique data on the geographical distribution of public personnel across 75 southern Sudanese counties. The data are matched with geocoded data on violent events as well as various socio-economic indicators. Our fixed-effects estimations indicate that particularly low or high levels of state capacity are associated with low levels of violence. Counties with intermediate numbers of state personnel experience the highest numbers of violent events. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd.]

This paper investigates the role of state capacity for political violence. Most previous studies have suffered from inadequacies of country-level data, questionable validity of indicators or theoretical shortcomings. This paper aims at overcoming some of these challenges. We focus on one specific aspect of state capacity: the role of governmental manpower. We argue that its subnational effect on political violence follows a non-linear, inverted-U shape. We investigate this hypothesis in the context of southern Sudan, covering the period from 2006 to 2010. We use unique data on the geographical distribution of public personnel across 75 southern Sudanese counties. The data are matched with geocoded data on violent events as well as various socio-economic indicators. Our fixed-effects estimations indicate that particularly low or high levels of state capacity are associated with low levels of violence. Counties with intermediate numbers of state personnel experience the highest numbers of violent events.

Exposure to violence can shape people's political and social perceptions. War-time effects on trust in state institutions are particularly relevant for political stability in the aftermath of violent conflict. If people distrust the state, they are less likely to endorse reform plans, will be less inclined to comply with state rules and regulations, and may uphold support for challengers of state authority. Our paper contributes to the understanding of the role of violence for trust in the national government. We use high-quality, geo-referenced survey data, joined with village-level information on civil war casualties, to estimate the effects of exposure to violence on political trust in Nepal. We find that exposure to violence matters for reducing trust in the national government. This association seems to be mainly driven by effects of violence at the outbreak of the conflict as well as at the end of the civil war period under investigation. These findings shed new light on the complex associations between exposure to violence and political trust.

This paper investigates the role of state capacity for political violence. Most previous studies have
suffered from inadequacies of country-level data, questionable validity of indicators or theoretical
shortcomings. This paper aims at overcoming some of these challenges. We focus on one specific
aspect of state capacity: the role of governmental manpower. We argue that its subnational effect
on political violence follows a non-linear, inverted-U shape. We investigate this hypothesis in the
context of southern Sudan, covering the period from 2006 to 2010. We use unique data on the
geographical distribution of public personnel across 75 southern Sudanese counties. The data are
matched with geocoded data on violent events as well as various socio-economic indicators. Our
fixed-effects estimations indicate that particularly low or high levels of state capacity are associated
with low levels of violence. Counties with intermediate numbers of state personnel experience
the highest numbers of violent events.