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| 1 |
ID:
100944
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Selectorate theory posits that leader accountability increases with the size of the winning coalition. Recent research contends that capitalism also increases leader accountability because leaders are more dependent on the public for revenue in more capitalist economies. The authors argue that extant tests of accountability arguments of interstate conflict initiation and targeting are flawed. Accountability theories of foreign policy expect leaders to selectively initiate disputes based on their probability of winning. Accountability arguments, then, expect a conditional relationship between the accountability mechanism and the balance of power. For example, if capitalism produces peace through accountability, then more capitalist states should be less likely to initiate militarized disputes as their power advantage decreases. The authors find that this is not the case. At the same time, the authors find robust support for selectorate theory's contention that larger winning coalitions are more selective about using military force. Political institutions induce accountability; capitalism does not.
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| 2 |
ID:
117049
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Firms may find competitive adjustment difficult because they are hamstrung by rigid labor market rules. However, such difficulties may also be caused by conflicts between strategic choices in the management of human capital and the opportunities and limitations created by a given regulatory framework. This latter possibility has been almost totally ignored in the debate regarding the urgency and content of labor market reforms in countries whose labor market institutions have been labeled as "rigid" by international experts. This article uses the results of qualitative interviews with Spanish employers to suggest that strategic choices may be far more important in determining the consequences of labor market institutions than is generally recognized. I show that these choices are often the result of beliefs about how labor market institutions should work. These findings suggest that supposedly "neutral" calls for greater efficiency in labor market institutions are really arguments about the relative appropriateness of different expectations regarding how firms should pursue adjustment, expectations that are directly related both to the relative balance of power between employers and workers and to the structure of their relationship. In other words, the phrase "politics of labor market reform" should be understood to refer not only to the political consequences of reforms but also to the inherently political nature of the reforms themselves.
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| 3 |
ID:
153260
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The central argument of this article is that constructivists in particular underestimate or even ignore the importance of the ‘real’ structural inheritance that shapes state (and the political elites that represent them) behaviour. Even though the future is indeterminate, some outcomes are decidedly more likely than others, especially where policymakers believe they inhabit a strategic universe of zero sum outcomes and where self-reliance and assertion remain important. I suggest that ‘critical realism’ offers a way of accounting for the institutional structures that shape international behaviour. The first half of this article makes the case for a critical realist approach. The second half illustrates the possible importance of this claim with reference to the contemporary geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.
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| 4 |
ID:
132327
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Neorealist and neoliberal institutionalist explanations for the state and future of the Arctic region dominate the Arctic debate in international relations. While both schools focus on different aspects concerning the current and future state of Arctic affairs - neorealism evokes a confrontational rush for the Arctic's resources, whereas neoliberal institutionalism propagates the necessary reform of the institutional system governing Arctic issues - both share the underlying assumption of significant and rising stakes towards Arctic commodities. However, this article argues that this debate has hitherto failed to substantiate the actual stakes of the main actors involved. Consequently, many studies make grandiloquent statements about prospects of cooperation and conflict and the appropriate institutional framework for the Arctic region, based on only limited empirical support. This article aims to fill this gap by analysing the Arctic oil and gas interests of the five Arctic littoral states (Russia, USA, Canada, Norway and Denmark/Greenland). The analysis shows greatly different levels of interests towards the High North among the Arctic states. The findings make it possible to make more credible statements about the likelihood of confrontation over Arctic resources and necessary institutional adjustments. The evidence shows that the often-evoked issue of geopolitical rush for Arctic resources is unlikely to eventuate. Nonetheless, there remain institutional challenges for the protection of the fragile Arctic ecosystem.
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| 5 |
ID:
155201
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| Summary/Abstract |
Ex-combatants who fought with the Salvadoran Army during El Salvador’s 1980–92 civil war often recall being ‘captured’, rather than recruited, suffering beatings and humiliation in the course of training, and fighting without a sense of purpose or direction. Those who served with rebel forces, by contrast, recall fatigue and frustration with new routines, but seldom hazing or abuse; most also recalled deep, ongoing instruction about the purpose and goals of the war. This comparison highlights the broad variation in armed groups’ formal institutions for socialization, a topic that political scientists have only recently begun to examine in depth. The Salvadoran case also emphasizes some shortcomings of the existing literature, which may elide the differing effects of different formal institutions, treat individual institutions as operating independently on combatant behavior, and/or fail to map complex causal processes intervening between institutions and behavior. This article takes as its starting point the observation that many armed group institutions – including recruitment, military training, political training, and disciplinary regimes – are components of the process known more generally as ‘combatant socialization’. Examining specific institutional processes associated with combatant socialization allows for the generation of more refined and specific theories of combatant socialization as both a causal variable and an outcome. At the same time, treating armed group institutions as related elements of a broader process, rather than as fully separate institutions, may also advance understandings of the effects of these institutions. I demonstrate that the implementation and content of formal institutions for socialization varied significantly both across and within groups in El Salvador; building on this analysis, I lay out several potential directions for comparative research.
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| 6 |
ID:
134440
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Foreign direct investment (FDI) is considered to be one of the most important forces of economic growth and globalization. Many ASEAN economies have only a small domestic market; they are heavily reliant on international trade and FDI. Recent studies on cross-border investment indicate the importance of domestic economic performance and institutional effectiveness (including government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and property rights protection) in attracting FDI. The result from a cross-national empirical analysis, in this study, also confirms the significant impact of macroeconomic performance and institutional factors on FDI flows into developing countries. In this paper, it is argued that, with the exception of Singapore, most ASEAN countries are afflicted with relatively poor institutions for good governance, with low government effectiveness, and poor regulatory quality and rule of law. This relatively poor institutional quality may exacerbate the effects of external threats. As higher economic growth and better economic integration in other regions may divert FDI flows into ASEAN countries, their appropriate response is to improve institutional quality so that the share of FDI will increase in the total FDI inflows. Improving the institutional environment among ASEAN member countries should, therefore, be an important goal of ASEAN economic integration.
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| 7 |
ID:
165155
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| Summary/Abstract |
East Asia has many distinctive features that set it apart from other comparable regions, not least attitudes to regional development and cooperation. Despite a growing number of regional initiatives in East Asia, however, they are generally distinguished by their ineffectiveness. It is entirely possible that ‘institutional balancing’, like its more well-known power balancing counterpart, is designed not to facilitate but to prevent something from happening. The sort of ‘multilateralism 1.0’ developed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has a lot to answer for in this regard: having established its own pattern of institutional effectiveness ASEAN's ‘leadership’ has caused it to be replicated under the new wave of ‘multilateralism 2.0’. Consequently, I suggest that not only is China very comfortable with the idea of a rather feeble and ineffective institutional architecture, but the USA is also unlikely to do anything to change this picture, especially under a Trump administration that is highly skeptical about the efficacy of multilateral institutions at the best of times.
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| 8 |
ID:
165204
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Over the past century, Australian foreign policy orders have been stabilised by the construction of ideas that have reduced uncertainty regarding national interests. Yet, such ideas have often evolved in ways that have engendered misplaced certainty, renewed instability, and crisis. To explain such shifts, I highlight the role of an Australian ‘pragmatic liberal tradition’, one which has enabled alternating tendencies to principled stability or technocratic hubris. In a tripartite model, I trace stages over initial ‘middle power’ efforts to construct ideas that lead states—and particularly great powers—to identify interests in cooperation, misplaced certainty in great power ties which obscures new challenges, and the construction of crises that impede or enable change. Empirically, I apply this framework to the construction, conversion, and crises of the ongoing ‘Reform order’. These span the initial Hawke-era middle power integration of US and regional ties, Howard-era misplaced certainty in US-styled neoconservative bandwagoning and neoliberal macroeconomic accommodation, and evolving constructions of the War on Terror and Global Financial Crisis. In the conclusion, I address theoretical and policy implications, highlighting the initial challenges that crises can pose for middle power leadership, and the subsequent scope for creativity.
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| 9 |
ID:
178881
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Somalia is a country of two realities: the internationally recognized Federal Republic of Somalia and the self-declared Republic of Somaliland. While the Federal Republic endures chronic instability and unrest, Somaliland has established security, economic growth, and a functioning government. This article argues that a significant contributing factor to this divergence is the radically different colonial regimes that ruled the two regions before their unification and independence in 1960. British rule in British Somaliland sought primarily to deny other empires control of the Protectorate and to trade livestock with the indigenous communities. Italy, however, engaged in a protracted and violent effort to establish a plantation colony in Italian Somaliland. Drawing from colonial-era sources and with a focus on the earliest years of imperial and Somali engagement, this article situates the long-run divergent trajectories of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland within the broader literature on colonial institutions and long-run economic development.
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| 10 |
ID:
140836
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| Summary/Abstract |
Official efforts to improve rural governance in China have been confronted with resistance not only from local leaders but, interestingly, from rural residents as well. Two problems have jointly prevented these efforts from being effective: agency problems associated with formal institutions that split the interests of village leaders against their community, and collective action problems facing rural residents who are unable to defend their interests through horizontal societal networks. These two problems, working in tandem, allow village leaders to, ironically, enhance their control without being subject to state supervision and popular pressure. Some recent progresses have helped bridge the formal and informal institutions for greater accountability of rural leaders, although persistent challenges suggest an uncertain future for rural governance.
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| 11 |
ID:
082032
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2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article revisits the electoral emphasis of hybrid regime studies, arguing instead that the impact of elections is structured by variations in prior political institutions, particularly the dismantlement or maintenance of a ruling party. Duration tests on 136 regimes indicate that ruling parties reduce the chance of regime collapse, while "electoral autocracy" has no significant effect. A paired comparison of Malaysia and the Philippines then shows how variations in party institutions propelled divergent courses of authoritarian dominance and democratization. During the late 1980s and 1990s, Malaysia's ruling party (UMNO) bound together otherwise fractious leaders, twice deflecting potent electoral challenges. By contrast, when Ferdinand Marcos abandoned the Nacionalista Party after 1972, he fueled the movement that would subsequently oust him. The efficacy of opposition parties Semangat '46 and United Nationalist Democratic Opposition (UNIDO) was thus heavily imbricated with the institutions of the regimes they challenged and less contingent on short-term electoral politics.
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| 12 |
ID:
095637
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| 13 |
ID:
121287
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2013.
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Spatial relationships are known phenomena in ecological studies that refer to the relationships between certain variables observed in different localities. Different mechanisms have been suggested to explain this phenomenon, such as the pollution displacement hypothesis, foreign direct investment, international trade, and strategic response of countries to transboundary pollution flows. This paper develops a new mechanism in the sense that environmental quality of countries spreads spatially to their neighbors through the spillover of the institutional quality of countries. To test this hypothesis, a panel data model is constructed that estimates the impact of the institutional quality of countries and their neighbors on their CO2 emission intensity of energy use using data for 129 countries over the period 1980-2007. The findings prove the existence of this mechanism at the global and regional levels.
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| 14 |
ID:
104929
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2011.
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A relationship exists for the liberalised Australian electricity supply industry between institutional structures and technological change. The traditional institutional framework has been based on centralised generation and a regulated vertically integrated monopoly structure. This paper investigates the issues of institutional and technological change using the social cost perspective (including externalities), and focuses on the imperatives of greenhouse gas emission reductions.
An Australian context has been chosen for the paper, in light of a proposed price on carbon; be that via an emission trading scheme or carbon tax. The power generation sector is dominated by coal- and gas-fired power plants due to the large reserves of coal and gas available in Australia. If carbon pricing of up to AU$40/tCO2 is introduced then the merit order for dispatch changes but coal-fired power generation sources remain an option.
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| 15 |
ID:
071658
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| 16 |
ID:
178801
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| Summary/Abstract |
The end of the Cold War opened up new vistas for building a new
international order in Europe, free of dividing lines. The more so since
the liberal world order, which emerged due to the evolution of the global
order in the field of security, on the one hand, and the rules, norms, and
practices established within the community of Western countries in 1945-
1991, on the other hand, was formally the most successful combination of
the effects of such categories as the balance of power and international
institutions. At the global level, this combination for a long time made
it possible to avoid revolutionary situations that might have been
caused by utter dissatisfaction of one or several major powers with their
position. However, in Europe, where the institutional basis of international interaction was most developed, the rules of the liberal world order
brought about significant distortions in favor of one of the participants
in this interaction—the European Union, which acted as an instrument for
increasing individual capabilities of major Western European countries.
This happened because the factor of military capabilities was excluded
from the overall balance of power of the main actors. Since for a long time
after the end of the Cold War Russia was limited in all factors of power
except for the military one, its position in relations with the EU was weak,
which is why its interests and values were ignored in building an EU-led
European order. This eventually paralyzed the entire system of multilateral
interaction in Europe, which, along with the shift of the global center of
power competition towards Asia, considerably marginalized the European
space in global affairs.
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| 17 |
ID:
143551
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Will China be able to rebalance its economy, heavily tilted towards investment? Will it be able to increase the share of household consumption in GDP? Will it turn steeply growing social inequality around? Will urbanisation contribute to China’s rebalancing or will it add to the imbalances? Will China manage to bring pollution under control? Such variables will determine whether China can move beyond the middle-income trap and also affect its external relations. In addition, China’s rebalancing is a variable in global rebalancing. This article provides an introduction to the special issue.
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| 18 |
ID:
188432
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There is growing debate over whether China’s economic model can be managed within the rules of the multilateral trade system, a debate with major implications for international order. Critics argue that the China model is a systemic rival to the liberal trade order, a view that implies future decoupling. For those who reject the rivalry view, the default position is to propose more trade agreements with China, with the goal of driving liberal reforms in the country. This article engages the debate by contributing a conceptually informed and empirically supported analysis of China’s institutional development. Combining ‘second image’ insights with a comparative capitalism framework helps explain why nations evolve distinct varieties of market economy, which then shape their multilateral preferences. Applying these insights to China’s institutional development suggests two things: (1) the country is in transition to a socialist, rather than liberal, market economy, grounded in a fundamentally different legal and normative order; (2) the socialist market economy shapes Chinese preferences towards challenging the liberal trade order at a systemic level (i.e. over the rules of the game, rather than within them). Empirically, the article highlights two modes of systemic contestation by China that confirm the paper’s conceptual expectations.
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| 19 |
ID:
163261
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| Summary/Abstract |
Twentieth century institutions of global economic governance face a profound challenge adapting to the rise of emerging markets and, especially, China's rise. This is especially the case for the international tax regime, whose institutional home is the OECD and which is based on norms that favour capital exporting states. To understand the nature of the challenge posed by China, we focus on the country's engagement with a foundational norm of the international tax regime: the arm's length principle. We show that China's approach to tax cooperation is characterized by a set of apparent contradictions: conciliatory language hides an assault on the arm's length principle; a rhetoric of common cause with developing countries is contradicted by actions that maximize only China's own share of the tax ‘pie’; and a willingness to court the OECD based on the leverage gained from flirtation with outside options. In these respects, China increasingly appears to be using its market power to seek special privileges within international regimes, in ways that mirror the historical actions of the United States
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| 20 |
ID:
113719
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Why is the British Virgin Islands a bigger source of foreign direct investment into China than the USA, the European Union and Japan combined? Why is there 10 times more investment from China in the Caymans Islands than there is in the USA? This paper argues that these flows represent the efforts of Chinese and foreign investors to reduce governance and measurement transaction costs. Investors avail themselves of efficient institutions in offshore centers that are absent locally. These institutional attractions include the ease of raising capital on foreign stock markets, access to reliable courts, and more flexible and sophisticated financial products. Existing explanations of these capital movements, characterizing them as criminal money or tax arbitrage, are insufficient. Evidence is drawn from government statistics, private legal advice and interviews in offshore financial centers.
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