Suchergebnisse

Ghana has exhibited rather strong economic growth since the 1980s, but little transformation of the productive structure of its economy. The paper argues that ruling elites' policy choices are shaped by their political survival strategies. In turn, these strategies are shaped by (1) the characteristics of the ruling coalitions, which include a high degree of vulnerability in power, strong lower-level factions of the ruling coalition, and a substantial amount of fragmentation among the higher factions of the ruling coalition; (2) the weak capabilities and political influence of the nascent productive capitalists; and (3) easy access to financing for the state and the ruling coalition from foreign aid, mining and cocoa bean exports. As a result, ruling elites' policy actions did not prioritize the development of new productive sectors (or upgrading of old ones), but were geared towards delivering benefits to the higher and lower levels of the ruling coalition, as well as delivering a small amount of visible goods and services to as much of the population as possible in an effort to 'swing' voters their way at election time. Neither of these political survival strategies resulted in significant productive sector investments.

This paper deals with the problem of political clientelism in Serbia broadly defined as the selective distribution of benefits (money, jobs, information, a variety of privileges) to individuals or clearly defined groups in exchange for political support. The main objective is to explain why political clientelism is widespread in Serbia and which key factors determine its shape and intensity. The explanation is based on the analysis of historical factors of development of clientelism in Serbia, as well as on analysis of data from a recent research on informal relations between political and economic elites in Serbia and Kosovo. The paper concludes that clientelism and informality have represented one of the structuring principles of socioeconomic and political development of Serbian society under the conditions of weak formal institutions and socio-historical heritage of late modernization. On the other hand, since 2000 economic and political sphere in Serbia became more open and competitive which influenced change in the character of clientelism in Serbia - the increased rivalry among different clientelistic (sub) networks heightened the chance of opportunistic defection even at the top level, which made political power of patrons more tradable and the relation inside the power network less asymmetric.

Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Tanzania share a past and present as authoritarian states. Dominant parties are in power in Tanzania and Kazakhstan, while elections are competitive but not democratic in Kenya and Kyrgyzstan. Returns for political support (clientelism), and persecution of political adversaries and the electorate (repression), are key components in all four states. This dissertation provides an account of these features, and how and when dynamics of clientelism and repression have changed. Clientelism and repression are widely used to explain why states transition to a different regime type, suggesting that their presence or absence, degree or form, informs seminal changes. This dissertation turns such arguments around, instead investigating how changes in regime affect clientelism and repression, allowing an investigation of change within elites, society and the state. It looks at changes in clientelism and repression that did not lead to regime change, and at cases when clientelism and repression continue despite turnovers. Patterns where a more diverse set of actors than the incumbent are involved in repressive and clientelistic practices are investigated, and sub-concepts are developed in order to speak of these changes in more specific terms. This is investigated through careful empirical study and field work carried out in all four states. More than 300 people were interviewed during the course of several years. The perspective is historical, from the late Soviet era in Central Asia, and independence in East Africa. It tracks clientelism both within the elites (intra-elite clientelism), and aimed towards the general public (mass-elite clientelism). Changes in repression are also investigated, using an actor-centered approach regarding resources and operation.

Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Tanzania share a past and present as authoritarian states. Dominant parties are in power in Tanzania and Kazakhstan, while elections are competitive but not democratic in Kenya and Kyrgyzstan. Returns for political support (clientelism), and persecution of political adversaries and the electorate (repression), are key components in all four states. This dissertation provides an account of these features, and how and when dynamics of clientelism and repression have changed. Clientelism and repression are widely used to explain why states transition to a different regime type, suggesting that their presence or absence, degree or form, informs seminal changes. This dissertation turns such arguments around, instead investigating how changes in regime affect clientelism and repression, allowing an investigation of change within elites, society and the state. It looks at changes in clientelism and repression that did not lead to regime change, and at cases when clientelism and repression continue despite turnovers. Patterns where a more diverse set of actors than the incumbent are involved in repressive and clientelistic practices are investigated, and sub-concepts are developed in order to speak of these changes in more specific terms. This is investigated through careful empirical study and field work carried out in all four states. More than 300 people were interviewed during the course of several years. The perspective is historical, from the late Soviet era in Central Asia, and independence in East Africa. It tracks clientelism both within the elites (intra-elite clientelism), and aimed towards the general public (mass-elite clientelism). Changes in repression are also investigated, using an actor-centered approach regarding resources and operation.

Presenting Belize as an illustrative and critical case of clientelist democracy in the Commonwealth Caribbean, this thesis explores the origins of clientelist politics alongside the pre-independence birth of political parties, analyses its rapid expansion after independence in 1981 and assesses its implications for democratic governance. Based on qualitative research, including interviews with major political leaders, the thesis contends that, despite Belize's positive post-colonial reputation for consolidating formal democracy, the concurrent expansion of clientelism, as both an electoral strategy and a mode of participation, ranks high among the worrying challenges affecting the quality of its democracy. Although intense party competition in a context of persistent poverty is central to explaining the trajectory of clientelism in Belize, the Westminster model of governance, the disappearance of substantive policy distinctions among parties and the embrace of neoliberal economic policies fuelled its expansion. Small-state size and multi-ethnicity have also been contributing factors. Even though the thousands of monthly dyadic transactions in constituencies are largely rational individual choices with short-term distributive benefits, the thesis concludes that, collectively, these practices lead to irrational governance behaviour and damaging macro-political consequences. Political participation is devalued, public resources are wasted, governance reform becomes more difficult and political corruption is facilitated. As a parallel informal welfare system has become embedded, politicians and citizens alike have become trapped in a 'big game' of mutual clientelist dependency. A comparative analysis of post-independence political developments in other Commonwealth Caribbean states shows that the expansion of political clientelism in the context of competitive party politics is significantly path dependent. Besides contributing to the political historiography of modern Belize, this thesis demonstrates that national studies of small clientelist democracies can provide valuable insights into the ways in which informal political practices interact with a state's formal institutions to shape the quality of democracy itself.

Why do some authoritarian states have competitive elections? This study shows that whenever there is a balance of power between candidates, competitiveness will ensue. Electoral fraud is often widespread in autocratic states, but if no single candidate or party is in a position to monopolize electoral support the result will be competitive. The contribution here is to analyze the relative strength of all the actors involved in a parliamentary election and to show that electoral returns reflect the district level balance of power, even in autocracies. Three main sources of candidate-level electoral power are identified: state, market, and society. State affiliated candidates in authoritarian states perform well due to favorable treatment by state institutions. Market actors perform well due to financial resources. These actors arise when market reforms create a class of entrepreneurs that defend their interests by running for public office, often challenging state sanctioned candidates. The strength of candidates using social cleavages, here mainly 'clan' and ethnic, is found to be exaggerated in the literature. The study also confirms that competitiveness did not result from an active civil society. Competitive elections matter because they can severely destabilize the regime, as was the case in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. However, electoral competitiveness that is the result of an intra-elite balance of power should not be confused with democracy. This form of self-interested competitiveness where clientelism is pervasive and accountability mechanisms are weak is an affront to the democratic ideal. For those of us who advocate democracy and genuine political participation competitive authoritarian regimes can be used as an informative cautionary tale. Power matters, and especially so in authoritarian states. Understanding the logic behind competitive authoritarianism helps us revise strategies for lasting democratic reforms.

Since the Fourth Republic was inaugurated in 1993, politics in Ghana has been increasingly characterized by competitive clientelism. Ruling coalitions are characterized by a high degree of vulnerability in power due to a strong opposition party, by strong lower-level factions within the ruling coalition due to their importance in winning elections, and by a high degree of fragmentation among the ruling elite. These characteristics, combined with a weak domestic capitalist class and high inflows of foreign aid, have led the ruling elites across political parties to pursue and implement policies that have a short time horizon, that do not significantly shift the allocation of resources towards building productive sectors, and which are often plagued by problems of enforcement. The results have led to growth without economic transformation. In particular, the country has witnessed recurrent macroeconomic instability, a haphazard process of privatization of state-owned enterprises, and no serious attempt to build up productive sectors outside of cocoa and gold.

We study whether incumbents facing uncontested elections channel public spending towards co-partisan officials more than is the case of incumbents that are worried about their chances of re-election. To do so, we draw on data detailing capital transfers allocated by Spanish regions to local governments during the period 1995-2007. Using a regression discontinuity design, we document strong and robust effects. We find that, on average, a mayor belonging to the same party as that of the regional president obtains nearly twice the amount in grants as is received by a mayor belonging to an opposition party. This effect is much greater for regional incumbents that won the previous election by a large margin, but it disappears in the case of highly competitive elections. The effects estimated by difference-in-differences are not so great but they point in the same direction. Overall, the results are consistent with predictions that regional incumbents focus on obtaining the most votes possible when elections are strongly contested, while they seek to increase the number of aligned mayors when their position at the ballot box is not vulnerable.

Voter coercion is a recurrent threat to pro-poor redistribution in young democracies. In this study we focus on Mexico's paradigmatic Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. We investigate whether local mayors exploited POP to coerce voters, and if so, what effect these actions had on the municipal incumbent's vote. For identification of vote coercion, we exploit the fact that the so-called 'enlaces municipales'-a municipal liaison officer that under strict apolitical rules acted as the link between the municipal administration and POP-were discontinued in 2008, but then restored in 2010. Our empirical strategy relies on an innovative 'difference-in-differencesin-discontinuities' design, which allows us to compare how election results in competitive electoral districts before and after the discontinuation and restoration of enlaces differed between communities with and without POP. Overall, we find that in close elections, the discontinuation of enlaces increased the vote share to the incumbent by approximately 10.5 per cent, while their restoration decreased that vote share by 6.4 per cent. The results suggest that the discontinuation of enlaces created a rules-free environment that allowed local incumbents to coerce beneficiaries to achieve an electoral gain. A review of the existing ethnographic literature on the role of enlaces in POP's operations provides further evidence to support our findings. Our study underscores the importance of implementing clear and well-designed rules to prevent the political capture of social policies.

How do African governments respond to democratic electoral competition? Although the common perception is that African governments have sought to win elections by combining various types of electoral fraud, clientelism, and ethnic mobilization, I argue that democratic elections in Africa have also induced governments to compete for votes by providing basic services. One implication of this is a rural bias in the impact of democracy on basic health and education outcomes. Using individual-level data from 27 African countries, I investigate the theoretical claim that competitive elections create incentives for African governments to implement prorural policies in order to satisfy the rural majority. The results demonstrate that democratic elections significantly increase access to primary education and reduce infant mortality rates, but only for children in rural areas. As the argument expects, these effects are conditional on the level of urbanization.

Croatia remains largely left out of comparative studies of post-communism even though its political development after 2000 places it firmly within the group of European post-communist consolidated democracies. In this paper I analyse the case of Croatia by combining comparative frameworks that focus on concepts of democratisation and Europeanization. The analysis shows that Croatia in the 1990s belonged to the group of illiberal democracies with Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. They were characterised by postponed economic and political reforms, clientelism and corruption in government. This is primarily attributed to the absence of a competitive party system with alternations of parties in power. The concept of political party competition as developed by Grzymala Busse (2002, 2007) and Vachudova (2005) is however not sufficient on its own to explain democratisation trajectories, so it is complemented with Schimmelfennig, Engert and Knobel' s (2006) concept of political party constellation. According to their argument, in countries where both liberal and illiberal parties structure the party space, the tipping point for democratisation happens when all main parties adopt a liberal political practice. Croatia' s ' democratic turn' elections happened in 2000, after which the CDU initiated an internal reform into a pro-European Christian Democratic party. As a result, after 2000 Croatian political party space became dominantly liberal-oriented and pro-EU, jump-starting EU accession. Finally, the analysis suggests that post-communist countries need to democratize first in order for Europeanization of domestic political space to start taking place.

Defense Date: 05/06/2009 ; Examining Board: Sergio Fabbrini (University of Trento), Jonathan Hopkin (LSE), Michael Keating (EUI) (Supervisor), Peter Mair (EUI) ; This thesis undertakes an empirical exploration of multi-level party politics in Italy and Spain since the 1990s, with a particular focus on the regional level of party organisation and electoral competition. It finds that statewide parties have adopted different territorial strategies to confront the common challenge of multi-level coordination in a decentralised political system. Regional branches of statewide parties increasingly respond to the competitive pressures emerging from sub-national party systems, rather than the preferences of the national leadership, although the interests of national and regional elites may often coincide. Regional party systems in both countries are diverging in their structures of competition, not only from the national level but also from each other. This is closely related to the different types of electoral challenge posed by the main non-statewide parties in these regions. The methodological design consists of two national frameworks and four regional case studies, two in Italy (Campania, Lombardia) and two in Spain (Andalusia, Galicia). These are linked through the use of comparable empirical indicators over a similar timeframe. The national frameworks required the compilation of a new data-set on regional elections in Italy and Spain, a detailed analysis of party statutes and their evolution, and a full exploration of the secondary literature in different languages. The regional case studies required extensive archival analysis of the main national newspapers and their regional editions, reinforced by a series of in-depth interviews with political actors in all four regions. The case studies found strong empirical evidence concerning the distinctive character of presidentialism at regional level; the continued importance of clientelism in shaping political relations at subnational levels; the pursuit of autonomist strategies by regional branches of statewide parties; the variety of competitive strategies adopted by non-statewide parties; the role of regional arenas as battlegrounds for national factional disputes; and the importance of local coalition testing for subsequent coalitional choices at regional level. The comparative conclusions serve to consolidate these findings, as well as to reflect on further avenues for research in this rapidly developing field.

this article aims to reflect on how the 2011 and 2012 elections in Tunisia and Egypt can change our approaches to the Electoral Act. Against the background of political uncertainty, he questioned these elections 'not like the others' from two angles: it calls, first of all, not to confine itself to the functionalist readings which assign to the elections a decisive role both in reproducing authoritarian power relations and in regime change and democratisation; he then wondered about the possibilities, if not a revolution, of at least restoration or even inauguration of electoral sociology in these areas, where, for practical reasons (difficulties in accessing information and manipulation of results), but also more theoretical, it was only at its forefront. He compares how, despite the breakdowns introduced by the revolution, local electoral history can now influence candidacies, voting and its hermeneutics; and, in turn, looks at the innovations that can be identified in these elections that are more free and competitive than previous ones: changes in representation, restructuring of party organisations, metamorphosis of clientelism and leadership, or changes in electoral behaviour make it possible to identify not only legacies and declines between the old and the new regime, but also between 'street politics' and 'urn politics', between the 'people in revolution' and the 'electoral corps'. ; International audience ; this article aims to reflect on how the 2011 and 2012 elections in Tunisia and Egypt can change our approaches to the Electoral Act. Against the background of political uncertainty, he questioned these elections 'not like the others' from two angles: it calls, first of all, not to confine itself to the functionalist readings which assign to the elections a decisive role both in reproducing authoritarian power relations and in regime change and democratisation; he then wondered about the possibilities, if not a revolution, of at least restoration or even inauguration of electoral sociology in these ...

The characteristics of a political settlement allow us to analyse the dynamics of institutional and policy evolution and their associated developmental outcomes. Four phases in the evolution of the political settlement in Bangladesh are identified, corresponding to the periods of military government in Pakistan from 1958 to 1971, the dominant party rule of the Awami League from 1971 to 1975, authoritarian clientelism under military rulers operating formally multi-party democracies from 1975 to 1990 and competitive clientelist democracy from 1990 onwards. For each period, we look at the dominant institutional and policy characteristics and the ways in which the political settlement constrained or enabled development outcomes. The framework is then used to analyse the dynamics of three sectors that have played a critical role in driving or constraining development in the growth acceleration after 1980. The first is the garments and textile industry, which emerged during the clientelistic authoritarian period of the 1980s and has driven growth in exports since then. Growth in the sector took off when financing instruments emerged that could finance the 'learning' of the appropriate technological and organizational capabilities for achieving competitiveness. The financing was partly based on the rents created by the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA), and partly on a private financing arrangement between Desh and Daewoo, with institutional support from the government. The package created strong incentives and compulsions for high levels of learning effort. As the political settlement evolved, technological upgrading has become more difficult though it is happening at the level of individual firms. Second, we look at the electronics sector whose takeoff in the 2000s took place under a competitive clientelist political settlement. The external financing support available to the sector was much less significant and the takeoff depended on the leading role played by a nationalist enterprise that absorbed the risks of investing in learning-by-doing. Progress has been much slower compared to garments. The development of supportive policy for these sectors requires an understanding of both the importance of supporting learning with appropriate financing instruments and the requirement that these instruments should create strong incentives for putting in high levels of effort given the enforcement capabilities of the contemporary political settlement. Finally power generation is an example of an infrastructure sector where poor investment has constrained development. The problem here is not learning-by-doing but adverse incentives for investment that can be traced to an excessive reliance on private sector financing in a political settlement where long-term investments face significant political risks. This combination has resulted in only a few politically connected players bidding for projects with a focus on immediate 'procurement rents' rather than on the profits from future production. Conventional reform strategies focusing on transparency, competition and anti-corruption have not achieved results and the political settlement analysis can explain why. However, a strategy focusing on a long-term financing agency with a dedicated governance structure could change incentives sufficiently to enable improvements in power generation to be achieved even in the context of a competitive clientelist political settlement.

What motivates legislators in executive-dominated political systems in Africa to focus their attention on national rather than local activities? Scholars and policymakers argue that legislators in such systems have little incentive to participate in national-level politics, leading to parliaments that merely rubber-stamp the policies of the executive. Rather, time is allocated to local issues: providing services to constituents or simply engaging in clientelism and patronage politics.I question this conventional view and explore three specific questions central to representation and legislative politics in Africa. First, what do voters want from elected representatives in these systems? Second, what do these politicians actually do once in office? Third, why do parties in these contexts often choose processes that ignore the call of their elites and supporters for greater intra-party democracy, and what are the consequences?In answering these questions, I present a theoretical framework of voter preference for legislator attention as a time allocation problem, and test both my and other prominent theories using data that I gathered from my field and off-site dissertation research in Kenya, including a nationally representative survey experiment, an in-depth focus group discussion, tens of thousands of parliamentary debate transcripts, and the complete universe of 2017 Kenyan party primary aspirants records.I find that voters have sophisticated understandings of the legislators' role, and prefer some balance between local and national service. Moreover, I find that evidence for electoral connection: electorally secure politicians engage in more nationally oriented speeches, while vulnerable politicians engaged in more locally oriented speeches. Finally, I show that both the ruling and opposition parties are more likely to hold primary elections in party strongholds rather than competitive districts, and that the ruling party was much more likely than the opposition to hold primaries across all levels of partisan support. Taken together, these findings question the idea of African exceptionalism, and make important contributions to the study of legislative politics and politician accountability in Africa.