Most autocrats now hold unfair elections, yet how they compete in them and manipulate them differs greatly. How Autocrats Compete advances a theory that explains variation in electoral authoritarian competition. Using case studies of Tanzania, Cameroon, and Kenya, along with broader comparisons from Africa, it finds that the kind of relationships autocrats foster with supporters and external actors matters greatly during elections. When autocrats can depend on credible ruling parties that provide elites with a level playing field and commit to wider constituencies, they are more certain in their own support and can compete in elections with less manipulation. Shelter from international pressure further helps autocrats deploy a wider range of coercive tools when necessary. Combining in-depth field research, within-case statistics, and cross-regional comparisons, Morse fills a gap in the literature by focusing on important variation in authoritarian institution building and international patronage. Understanding how autocrats compete sheds light on the comparative resilience and durability of modern authoritarianism.

When and why do countries redistribute land to the landless? What political purposes does land reform serve, and what place does it have in today's world? A longstanding literature dating back to Aristotle and echoed in important recent works holds that redistribution should be both higher and more targeted at the poor under democracy. Yet comprehensive historical data to test this claim has been lacking. This book shows that land redistribution - the most consequential form of redistribution in the developing world - occurs more often under dictatorship than democracy. It offers a novel theory of land reform and develops a typology of land reform policies. Albertus leverages original data spanning the world and dating back to 1900 to extensively test the theory using statistical analysis and case studies of key countries such as Egypt, Peru, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. These findings call for rethinking much of the common wisdom about redistribution and regimes.

World Conqueror and World Renouncer is the first comprehensive and authoritative work on the relationship between Buddhism and the polity (political organization) in Thailand. The book conveys the historical background necessary for full comprehension of the contemporary structural relationship between Buddhism, the sangha (monastic order), and the polity, including the historic institution of kingship. Professor Tambiah delineates the overall relationship, as postulated in early Buddhism, between the monk's otherworldly quest on one side and the this-worldly ordinating role of the monarchy on the other. He also examines the complementary and dialectical tensions that occur in this classical relationship, the king's duty to both protect and purify the sangha being a notable example.

Democracies are in crisis. Can republican theory contribute to reforming our political norms and institutions? The 'neo-republican turn' has seen scholars using the classical republican tradition in reconstructing and developing a vision of public life as an alternative to liberalism. This volume offers new perspectives from leading scholars on how republicanism can help transform democratic theory and respond to some of its most pressing challenges. Drawing on this recent revival of republican political thought, its chapters reflect on such issues as the republican definition of freedom as nondomination and its relation to democracy and populism, the ideal of the common good, domination in the workplace and in the family, republicanism in a globalized world, and radical republican politics. It will appeal to researchers and students in political theory, political philosophy and the history of ideas, and anyone interested in gaining greater insight into the prospects and challenges of republican democracy in today's world.

From labor organizers to immigrant activists, from environmentalists to human rights campaigners, from global justice protesters to Islamic militants, this book shows how ordinary people gain new perspectives, experiment with new forms of action, and sometimes emerge with new identities through their contacts across borders. It asks to what extent transnational activism changes domestic actors, their forms of claim making, and their prevailing strategies. Does it simply project the conflicts and alignments familiar from domestic politics onto a broader stage, or does it create a new political arena in which domestic and international contentions fuse? And if the latter, how will this development affect internationalization and the traditional division between domestic and international politics?

This Element provides a critical review of existing literature on the role of ideas and institutions in the politics of public policy with the aim of contributing to the study of the politics of public policy. Because most policy scholars deal with the role of ideas or institutions in their research, such a critical review should help them improve their knowledge of crucial analytical issues in policy and political analysis. The following discussion brings together insights from both the policy studies literature and new institutionalism in sociology and political science, and stresses the explanatory role of ideas and institutions.

Why does corruption persist over long periods of time? Why is it so difficult to eliminate? Suggesting that corruption is deeply rooted in the underlying social and historical political structures of a country, Uslaner observes that there is a powerful statistical relationship between levels of mass education in 1870 and corruption levels in 2010 across 78 countries. He argues that an early introduction of universal education is shown to be linked to levels of economic equality and to efforts to increase state capacity. Societies with more equal education gave citizens more opportunities and power for opposing corruption, whilst the need for increased state capacity was a strong motivation for the introduction of universal education in many countries. Evidence for this argument is presented from statistical models, case studies from Northern and Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as a discussions of how some countries escaped the 'trap' of corruption.

The 2014 'Umbrella Revolution' in Hong Kong saw hundreds of thousands of demonstrators on the streets, the culmination of rising fears and frustrations about the loss of Hong Kong's core values - principally the rule of law - since 1997. Carol Jones examines how and why this resistance arose.

Why have some states in the developing world been more successful at facilitating industrialization than others? Challenging theories that privilege industrial policy and colonial legacies, this book focuses on state structure and the politics of state formation, arguing that a cohesive state structure is as important to developmental success as effective industrial policy. Based on a comparison of six Asian cases, including both capitalist and socialist states with varying structural cohesion, Tuong Vu proves that it is state formation politics rather than colonial legacies that have had decisive and lasting impacts on the structures of emerging states. His cross-national comparison of South Korea, Vietnam, Republican and Maoist China, and Sukarno's and Suharto's Indonesia, which is augmented by in-depth analyses of state formation processes in Vietnam and Indonesia, is an important contribution to understanding the dynamics of state formation and economic development in Asia.

Amel Ahmed brings new historical evidence and a novel theoretical framework to bear on the study of democratization. Looking at the politics of electoral system choice at the time of suffrage expansion among early democratizers, she shows that the electoral systems used in advanced democracies today were initially devised as exclusionary safeguards to protect pre-democratic elites from the impact of democratization and, particularly, the existential threat posed by working class mobilization. The ubiquitous use and enduring nature of these safeguards calls into question the familiar picture of democracy moving along a path of increasing inclusiveness. Instead, what emerges is a picture that is riddled with ambiguity, where inclusionary democratic reforms combine with exclusionary electoral safeguards to form a permanent part of the new democratic order. This book has important implications for our understanding of the dynamics of democratic development both in early democracies and in emerging democracies today.

Political behavior is the result of innumerable unnoticed forces and conscious deliberation is often a rationalization of automatically triggered feelings and thoughts. Citizens are very sensitive to environmental contextual factors such as the title "President" preceding "Obama" in a newspaper headline, upbeat music or patriotic symbols accompanying a campaign ad, or question wording and order in a survey, all of which have their greatest influence when citizens are unaware. This book develops and tests a dual-process theory of political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior, claiming that all thinking, feeling, reasoning, and doing have an automatic component as well as a conscious deliberative component. The authors are especially interested in the impact of automatic feelings on political judgments and evaluations. This research is based on laboratory experiments, which allow the testing of five basic hypotheses: hot cognition, automaticity, affect transfer, affect contagion, and motivated reasoning.

Asian business conglomerates have clearly been successful agents of growth, mobilizing capital, borrowing technology from abroad and spearheading Asia's exports. However, these firms have long had a number of organisational and financial weaknesses, including heavy reliance on debt, that make them vulnerable to shocks. Nowhere was this more true than in Korea, where the large corporate groups known as chaebol have dominated the economic landscape. This collection of essays by leading political scientists and economists provides a comprehensive look at the chaebol problem in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. The authors consider the historical evolution of the chaebol and their contribution to the onset of economic turmoil in 1997. The book analyses the government's short-run response to corporate and financial distress, and outlines an agenda for longer-term reform of the financial system, corporate governance and the politics of business-government relations.

This book presents a new explanation of the rise, development and demise of social movements and cycles of protest in autocracies; the conditions under which protest becomes rebellion; and the impact of protest and rebellion on democratization. Focusing on poor indigenous villages in Mexico's authoritarian regime, the book shows that the spread of U.S. Protestant missionaries and the competition for indigenous souls motivated the Catholic Church to become a major promoter of indigenous movements for land redistribution and indigenous rights. The book explains why the outbreak of local rebellions, the transformation of indigenous claims for land into demands for ethnic autonomy and self-determination and the threat of a generalized social uprising motivated national elites to democratize. Drawing on an original dataset of indigenous collective action and on extensive fieldwork, the empirical analysis of the book combines quantitative evidence with case studies and life histories.

Given the increased openness of countries to international trade and financial flows, the general public and the scholarly literature have grown skeptical about the capacity of policy-makers to affect economic performance. Challenging this view, Political Parties, Growth, and Equality shows that the increasingly interdependent world economy and recent technological shocks have actually exacerbated the dilemmas faced by governments in choosing among various policy objectives, such as generating jobs and reducing income inequality, thereby granting political parties and electoral politics a fundamental and growing role in the economy. To make growth and equality compatible, social democrats employ the public sector to raise the productivity of capital and labor. By contrast, conservatives rely on the private provision of investment. Based on analysis of the economic policies of all OECD countries since the 1960s and in-depth examination of Britain and Spain in the 1980s, this book offers a new understanding of how contemporary democracies work.

What is a focus group? Why do we use them? When should we use them? When should we not? Focus Groups for the Social Science Researcher provides a step-by-step guide to undertaking focus groups, whether as a stand-alone method or alongside other qualitative or quantitative methods. It recognizes the challenges that focus groups encounter and provides tips to address them. The book highlights three unique, inter-related characteristics of focus groups. First, they are inherently social in form. Second, the data emerge organically through conversation; they are emic in nature. Finally, focus groups generate data at three levels of analysis: the individual, group, and interactive level. The book builds from these three characteristics to explain when focus groups can usefully be employed in different research designs. This is an essential text for students and researchers looking for a concise and accessible introduction to this important approach to data collection.