Conclusion

Homelands ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 197-212
Author(s):  
Nadav G. Shelef
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Domestic Political Institutions

This concluding chapter highlights the lessons from the empirical exploration of homelands and their contraction. It reevaluates how one identifies territorial partitions and reassesses the question of whether partitions can be used to resolve conflict. Partitions can succeed in resolving nationalist conflicts where beliefs about the homeland's extent change. While drawing a new border is usually not enough on its own, contexts in which evolutionary dynamics operate on homelands are more likely to experience such transformations. Partitions may therefore be more likely to contribute to peace where the society that lost access to part of its homeland is characterized by long-lasting domestic political contestation. To be successful, in other words, policy makers advocating partitions need to pay as much attention to creating or maintaining domestic political institutions that foster such contestation within the states on either side of the border as to where the particular line is drawn.

scholarly journals Urban Conflict, Rent Seeking, and Corruption Economic and Political Institutions in a Historical Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 96
Author(s):  
Marie-Christine THAIZE CHALLIER
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Rent Seeking ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
Abuse Of Power ◽  
Medieval France ◽  
Limiting Property ◽  
Urban Conflict ◽  
Commitment Problems

This paper is an empirical analysis to explore the relationships between urban conflict and both rent seeking and corruption. It examines social disturbances in medieval France through a sample of twelve towns examined over the period 1270-1399 in a real context of informational asymmetries, commitment problems, and issues indivisibilities. As regards the economic corruption class, it is found that townspeople rebel more often and more intensely against the extortion of funds carried out by policy makers than against the embezzlement of a part of these funds. As to the political corruption class, the findings highlight that abuse of power against municipalities is identified in more social unrest than influence peddling against these local institutions. Furthermore, it is shown that rent-seeking-related policies (like arbitrary actions limiting property rights, economic rules-based policies, and targeted political measures) have less influence on urban conflict than corrupt policies do. These findings produce insights that apply beyond the historical context and analysis of the paper. Situations presenting over-indebted towns despite overtaxed people disturb also modern democracies.

The Impact of Collective and Competitive Veto Points on Public Expenditures in the Global Age

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus M. L. Crepaz ◽  
Ann W. Moser
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Public Expenditures ◽  
Domestic Political Institutions ◽  
Global Age ◽  
Social Transfers ◽  
Veto Points ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

This study examines the determinants of public expenditures in advanced market economies by simultaneously assessing the impact of domestic political institutions and globalization. A distinction is made between collective veto points and competitive veto points, demonstrating that not all veto points have restrictive effects. It is shown that public expenditures are significantly and positively affected by collective veto points, whereas the oppositeis true for competitive veto points thereby indicating that not all veto points are created equal. In addition to veto points, the effects of globalization are also assessed revealing that globalization is exerting little reform pressures on the welfare state with strong evidence indicating that more globalization buoys public expenditures. Current disbursements and social transfers are both positively influenced by globalization. These findings suggest that domestic political institutions continue to shape policy trajectories in this purported global age.

scholarly journals The Comparative Politics of Climate Change

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Harrison ◽  
Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Economic Costs ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Government Action ◽  
Institutional Conditions ◽  
Change Leaders ◽  
Abatement Policies ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change

The authors use a comparative politics framework, examining electoral interests, policy-maker's own normative commitments, and domestic political institutions as factors influencing Annex 1 countries' decisions on Kyoto Protocol ratification and adoption of national policies to mitigate climate change. Economic costs and electoral interests matter a great deal, even when policy-makers are morally motivated to take action on climate change. Leaders' normative commitments may carry the day under centralized institutional conditions, but these commitments can be reversed when leaders change. Electoral systems, federalism, and executive-legislative institutional configurations all influence ratification decisions and subsequent policy adoption. Although institutional configurations may facilitate or hinder government action, high levels of voter concern can trump institutional obstacles. Governments' decisions to ratify, and the reduction targets they face upon ratification, do not necessarily determine their approach to carbon emissions abatement policies: for example, ratifying countries that accept demanding targets may fail to take significant action.

Floreas into Virágs: State Regulation of First Names in Dualist Hungary

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 107-127
Author(s):  
Ágoston Berecz
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Major Step ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
Administrative Division ◽  
Special Challenge

The Kingdom of Hungary instituted the civil registry of births, marriages, and deaths in 1894. While the new institution was both eulogized and criticized as a major step in the separation of church and state and toward the creation of a modern, secular Hungary, it also opened up a new path for nation building. In this exceedingly multilingual and multinational country, churches often acted as proxies of cultural and political institutions for the national minorities. In the present article, I examine the specifically nation-building aspects embodied in the new regulation for the official use of first names that accompanied Act XXXIII of 1894 on the civil registry, and focus particularly on Romanian first names. Due to their considerable mismatch with Hungarian first names, Romanian names posed a special challenge to policy makers, and for this reason they demonstrate some less obvious dimensions of the changes instituted in 1894. The geographic parameters of this investigation have been imposed by the spatial framework of a wider research project on the interconnections among language, nationalism, and social change in the eastern part of Dualist Hungary, a territory encompassing Transylvania, the easternmost counties of contemporary Hungary proper (according to the administrative division created in 1876), and the eastern two-thirds of the Banat. This framework enables me to make comparisons with other ethnolinguistic groups, notably Transylvanian Saxons and the Catholic Germans of the Banat.

Do Democratic Institutions Constrain or Inform? Contrasting Two Institutional Perspectives on Democracy and War

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
International Crises ◽  
Single Observation ◽  
Domestic Political Institutions ◽  
The Way

How do domestic political institutions affect the way states interact in international crises? In the last decade we have witnessed an explosion of interest in this question, thanks largely to the well-known claim that democratic states do not fight wars with one another. Work on the “democratic peace” has generated a number of theoretical arguments about how practices, values, and institutions associated with democracy might generate distinctive outcomes. Although the level of interest in this topic has focused much-needed attention on the interaction between domestic and international politics, the proliferation of competing explanations for a single observation is not entirely desirable. Progress in this area requires that researchers devise tests not only to support different causal stories but also to discriminate between them.

Democratic Institutions and Exchange-rate Commitments

1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Bernhard ◽  
David Leblang
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Rate ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Exchange Rate Regime ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Domestic Political Institutions ◽  
Fixed Exchange Rate ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Exchange Rate Arrangements ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Political Variables

Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, countries have been able to choose from a variety of exchange-rate arrangements. We argue that politicians' incentives condition the choice of an exchange-rate arrangement. These incentives reflect the configuration of domestic political institutions, particularly electoral and legislative institutions. In systems where the cost of electoral defeat is high and electoral timing is exogenous, politicians will be less willing to forgo their discretion over monetary policy with a fixed exchange rate. In systems where the costs of electoral defeat are low and electoral timing is endogenous, politicians are more likely to adopt a fixed exchange-rate regime. Consequently, differences in domestic political systems can help account for variations in the choice of exchange-rate arrangements. We test this argument using constrained multinomial logit and binomial logit on a sample of twenty democracies over the period 1974–95. Domestic political institutions have a significant effect on exchange-rate regime choice, even after controlling for systemic, macroeconomic, and other political variables.

Torture and the War on Terrorism

2019 ◽  
pp. 676-694
Author(s):  
Courtenay R. Conrad
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Review Literature ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Domestic Political Institutions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Strategy I

This chapter reviews scholarly theory and empirical results concerning the relationship between terrorism and government torture. It argues that terrorism and torture are forms of dissent and repression, respectively. Recognizing terrorism and torture as subsets of broader conceptualizations common in the literature on political violence provides insights into the conditions under which governments respond to opposition activity with violence (and vice versa) in the context of terrorism. Following a discussion of the literature on political violence, a summary is presented of the behavioral incentives—and disincentives—that government authorities face regarding the use of torture as a counterterrorism strategy. I also review literature about the mediating influence of domestic political institutions on the relationship between terrorism and torture, arguing that democracy does not always constrain—and sometimes incentivizes—government torture.

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