Suchergebnisse

Samuel Huntington once remarked that authoritarian societies are unable to produce great political scientists, that political science is closely linked to democracy, and that political scientists have a moral duty to promote political reform. Huntington did not, however, discuss in detail why authoritarianism cannot produce great political scientists. He also overlooked a number of other issues with regard to the relationship between regimes and political science. Through an examination of the case of China, this article confirms the main finding of Huntington's thesis through a discussion of why democracy is associated with political science and why authoritarianism does not produce great political scientists. The article, however, also points out the problems associated with Huntington's thesis on connections between regimes and political science. The article offers a number of causal mechanisms and constructive criticisms of Huntington's thesis.

A growing number of political scientists have recently advocated the theses that democracy has emerged as a universal value and that it is also becoming the universally preferred system of government. Do most people in East Asia prefer democracy to nondemocratic systems, as advocates of these Western theses claim? Do they embrace liberal democracy as the most preferred system as they become socioeconomically modernized and culturally liberalized? To address these questions, we first propose a typology of privately concealed political system preferences as a new conceptual tool in order to ascertain their types and subtypes without using the word "democracy". By means of this typology, we analyze the third wave of the Asian Barometer Survey conducted in 12 democratic and nondemocratic countries. The analysis reveals that a hybrid system, not liberal democracy, is the most preferred system even among the culturally liberalized and socioeconomically modernized segments of the East Asian population. Our results show that the increasingly popular theses of universal and liberal democratization serve merely in East Asia as prodemocracy rhetoric, not as theoretically meaningful propositions.

In this article we estimate the role of institutions in conjunction with physical capital stock, human capital stock, openness and liberalisation in economic growth of the four major economies of South Asia. We apply both time series and panel data analysis for estimation. The time series analysis shows that physical capital stock positively influences economic growth of the four major South Asian countries. The influence of the other factors varies across the countries in the long run. When we control for institutional quality, the speed of adjustment diminishes for every country. The panel data analysis shows that voice and accountability and regulation impart positive and significant influence while government effectiveness and rule of law imparts negative significant influence on PCGDP of the countries. The study shows the need for higher investment in human capital, physical capital. Additionally, the quality of institutions in South Asia needs attention, to sustain growth in future.

Targets are widely employed in environmental governance. In this paper, we investigate the construction of the 2 °C climate target, one of the best known targets in global environmental governance. Our paper examines this target through a historical reconstruction that identifies four different phases: framing, consolidation and diffusion, adoption, and disembeddedness. Our analysis shows that, initially, the target was science-driven and predominantly EU-based; it then became progressively accepted at the international level, despite a lack of broader debate among governments on the policy implications and required measures for implementation. Once the 2 °C target was endorsed at the level of the United Nations, the nature of the target changed from being policy-prescriptive to being largely symbolic. In this phase, the target became a disembedded object in global governance not linked to a shared agenda nor to coordinated and mutually binding mitigation efforts. The 2015 Paris Agreement marks the last stage in this development and may have further solidified the target as a disembedded object. In the final part of the paper, we suggest ways to overcome the current situation and to develop the 2 °C target into a fully fledged global environmental governance target.

Wind energy presents significant opportunity to provide a series of public goods. Drawing on the ideas of J.Q. Wilson and E. Ostrom, we compare options to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of deploying wind energy in two US states, Texas and Minnesota. Texas outperformed Minnesota in deploying wind energy technology despite Minnesota's ample wind and other natural advantages. To explain this gap in performance, we argue that Texas outperformed Minnesota because of a more fitting governance system and rules for determining (i) boundaries, (ii) cost and benefit allocation, (iii) conflict resolution, and (iv) rule revision. Our approach sheds an alternative yet overlooked lens upon the topic of wind energy development by focusing on how the concentration of power and authority in the hands of a few dominant public and private elites can lead to the successful deployment of a complex renewable technology under some circumstances.

This paper contributes to both corporate political activity (CPA) research and capabilities theory research by offering models that better describe the process that managers undertake to nurture a political capability. This is done through the interplay of four factors inherent in political actions, namely (i) corporate structure, (ii) firm-government linkages, (iii) political access and (iv) public policy pressure. Additionally, recognizing that political capability attainment is not a binary endeavor, I offer a political capability continuum to better categorize the magnitude by which differing firms allocate resources toward molding public policy. This paper adds to the scant literature on management-focused CPA research that integrates the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and political action research.

Why do autocratic regimes contain bureaucratic corruption in some economic sectors but allow it in other areas? This paper examines variations in governance outcomes and perceptions across firms in Morocco based on a survey of 659 businesses. Three factors explain better public services and control of corruption: the magnitude of potential rents that firms can exchange with the administration, the collective action capacity of the sector vis-à-vis the executive, and the taxability of the industry. Firms in sectors with low rent potential are more likely to coordinate, claim, and obtain better governance in exchange for taxes, whereas high-rent companies find it difficult to sustain effective pro-governance collective action. The findings shed light on business–state relations in autocratic political regimes that have to balance revenue raising goals, policy commitments to selected sectors, and incentives for grand corruption.