The concept of identity has become increasingly prominent in the social sciences and humanities. Analysis of the development of social identities is an important focus of scholarly research, and scholars using social identities as the building blocks of social, political, and economic life have attempted to account for a number of discrete outcomes by treating identities as causal factors. The dominant implication of the vast literature on identity is that social identities are among the most important social facts of the world in which we live. Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott have brought together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to consider the conceptual and methodological challenges associated with treating identity as a variable, offer a synthetic theoretical framework, and demonstrate the possibilities offered by various methods of measurement. The book represents a collection of empirically-grounded theoretical discussions of a range of methodological techniques for the study of identities.

Combining international political theory and EU studies, Richard Bellamy provides an original account of the democratic legitimacy of international organisations. He proposes a new interpretation of the EU's democratic failings and how they might be addressed. Drawing on the republican theory of freedom as non-domination, Bellamy proposes a way to combine national popular sovereignty with the pursuit of fair and equitable relations of non-domination among states and their citizens. Applying this approach to the EU, Bellamy shows that its democratic failings lie not with the democratic deficit at the EU level but with a democratic disconnect at the member state level. Rather than shifting democratic authority to the European Parliament, this book argues that the EU needs to reconnect with the different 'demoi' of the member states by empowering national parliaments in the EU policy-making process.
Proposes an innovative republican account of international political justice, centred on securing non-domination between and within democratic states
Applies this theory to the EU, showing how a form of 'republican intergovernmentalism' both describes and can guide the integration process
Offers readers a demoicratic account of the EU's democratic legitimacy, capable of responding to Euroscepticism and Brexit

Reflecting a sea change in how empirical research has been conducted over the past three decades, Foundations of Agnostic Statistics presents an innovative treatment of modern statistical theory for the social and health sciences. This book develops the fundamentals of what the authors call agnostic statistics, which considers what can be learned about the world without assuming that there exists a simple generative model that can be known to be true. Aronow and Miller provide the foundations for statistical inference for researchers unwilling to make assumptions beyond what they or their audience would find credible. Building from first principles, the book covers topics including estimation theory, regression, maximum likelihood, missing data, and causal inference. Using these principles, readers will be able to formally articulate their targets of inquiry, distinguish substantive assumptions from statistical assumptions, and ultimately engage in cutting-edge quantitative empirical research that contributes to human knowledge.
Provides a rigorous and targeted mathematical introduction to the statistics underlying modern statistical methodology in the social and health sciences
Prepares readers to go on to advanced study in statistical methodology, including in causal inference, nonparametric statistics, and econometrics
Develops the fundamentals of 'agnostic statistics' - an approach that asks what can be learned about the world under minimal assumptions

Activists Forever? explores the consequences of political involvement on an individual's life. While much of the research in this area has focused on the motivations of entire protests groups, the editors of this volume propose an approach that focuses on actors. This book examines political involvement's socio-biographical effects, or the ways in which political commitment generates or modifies dispositions to act, think, and perceive, in a way that is either consistent with or in contrast to the results of previous socialization. The contents explore what political involvement leads to rather than what causes involvement. Using a variety of case studies, this collection of essays provides global coverage with a focus on participation in major protests in the 1960s and significantly broadens our understanding by looking outside the United States. These essays look at the lasting effects of activists' knowledge, connections, and symbolic capital on their future participation in politics, as well as their personal and professional lives.
Demonstrates the importance of hitherto undervalued topics in the study of the biographical consequences of activism
Expands the scientific boundaries of this field through an interdisciplinary approach and new methods of analysis
Provides new empirical examples of social movement outcomes from Europe, the United States, and Latin America

Authoritarian populist parties have advanced in many countries, and entered government in states as diverse as Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. Even small parties can still shift the policy agenda, as demonstrated by UKIP's role in catalyzing Brexit. Drawing on new evidence, this book advances a general theory why the silent revolution in values triggered a backlash fuelling support for authoritarian-populist parties and leaders in the US and Europe. The conclusion highlights the dangers of this development and what could be done to mitigate the risks to liberal democracy.

Focusing on the evolving relations between the state and market in the post-Mao reform era, Yongnian Zheng and Yanjie Huang present a theory of Chinese capitalism by identifying and analyzing three layers of the market system in the contemporary Chinese economy. These are, namely, a free market economy at the bottom, state capitalism at the top, and a middle ground in between. By examining Chinese economic practices against the dominant schools of Western political economy and classical Chinese economic thoughts, the authors set out the analytical framework of 'market in state' to conceptualize the market not as an autonomous self-regulating order but part and parcel of a state-centered order. Zheng and Huang show how state (political) principles are dominant over market (economic) principles in China's economy. As the Chinese economy continues to grow and globalize, its internal balance will likely have a large impact upon economies across the world.

Economic development requires secure contract enforcement and stable property rights. Normal majority-rule politics, such as bargaining over distributive and monetary policies, generate instability and frequently undermine economic development. Above Politics argues that bureaucracies can contribute to stability and economic development, but only if they are insulated from unstable politics. A separation-of-powers stalemate creates the conditions for bureaucratic autonomy. But what keeps delegated bureaucrats from being more abusive as they become more autonomous? One answer is the negotiation of long-term, cooperative relationships - that (when successful) typically bind subordinates to provide more effort in exchange for autonomy. Even more compelling is professionalism, which embeds its professional practitioners in professional norms and culture, and incidentally mitigates corruption. Financial examples are provided throughout the book, which ends with an analysis of the role played by professionalized bureaucracies during the Great Recession.

Military coups are a constant threat in Africa and many former military leaders are now in control of 'civilian states', yet the military remains understudied, especially over the last decade. Drawing on extensive archival research, cross-national data, and four in-depth comparative case studies, When Soldiers Rebel examines the causes of military coups in post-independence Africa and looks at the relationship between ethnic armies and political instability in the region. Kristen A. Harkness argues that the processes of creating and dismantling ethnically exclusionary state institutions engenders organized and violent political resistance. Focusing on rebellions to protect rather than change the status quo, Harkness sheds light on a mechanism of ethnic violence that helps us understand both the motivations and timing of rebellion, and the rarity of group rebellion in the face of persistent political and economic inequalities along ethnic lines.

Introduction: why don't electoral rules have the same effects in all countries?
1. When do the effects of electoral systems diverge from our expectations?
2. Mixed-member electoral systems: how they work and how they work for scholars
3. How democratic experience and party system development condition the effects of electoral rules on disproportionality and the number of parties: theory, measurement, and expectations
4. How democratic experience and party system development condition the effects of electoral rules on disproportionality and the number of parties: what we actually see
5. Political context, electoral rules, and their effects on strategic and personal voting
6. How democratic experience and party system development condition the effect of electoral rules on strategic defection
7. Social diversity, electoral rules, and the number of parties
8. How political context shapes the effect of electoral rules on women's representation 9. Conclusion: why and how political context matters for electoral system effects

This book presents a new theory for why democracies and dictatorships emerge and then either survive or collapse. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán analyze the survival of political regimes in Latin America since 1900, arguing for a theory of democratization situated between explanations that emphasize long-term structural preconditions and short-term decisions by specific leaders.
"Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America takes a comprehensive look at regime change in that region, explaining the surprising endurance of democracy there since the 1970s. Through a parsimonious yet comprehensive theory of democratization that is contrasted with other theories, Professors Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán provide analysis that will revive interest in these topics. Well organized and well written, this timely book will be of interest to scholars, analytically oriented lay readers, and policy makers alike." - William R. Keech, Research Professor of Political Economy, Duke University

In sub-Saharan Africa, property relationships around land and access to natural resources vary across localities, districts, and farming regions. These differences produce patterned variations in relationships between individuals, communities, and the state. This book captures these patterns in an analysis of structure and variation in rural land tenure regimes. In most farming areas, state authority is deeply embedded in land regimes, drawing farmers, ethnic insiders and outsiders, lineages, villages, and communities into direct and indirect relationships with political authorities at different levels of the state apparatus. The analysis shows how property institutions - institutions that define political authority and hierarchy around land - shape dynamics of great interest to scholars of politics, including the dynamics of land-related competition and conflict, territorial conflict, patron-client relations, electoral cleavage and mobilization, ethnic politics, rural rebellion, and the localization and "nationalization" of political competition.

Review
"This book does a masterful job of clarifying the centrality of taxation as a means to build both states and societies. Its analytic contribution is significant. It also offers an excellent set of case studies that demonstrate how government can improve revenue raising while also promoting the general welfare of the polity. The neat combination of theory and cases ensures that this exciting collective endeavor will shape both scholarship and policy-making for years to come."
Margaret Levi, Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies, University of Washington
"The news is in: how much and how states tax their populations makes a tremendous difference to how well those populations live. And more taxes can actually coincide with better lives. In a series of well crafted studies, Brautigam, Moore and Fjeldstad show exactly how taxation - from coercive to contractual - makes a difference to national well being."
Charles Tilly, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University
"Ranging across continents and political regimes, Brautigam, Fjeldstad, Moore and their colleagues provide lucid, dispassionate analysis of one of the most crucial issues in the contemporary political economy of development. Taxes are the cornerstone of any modern society, but for poor countries the capacity to tax can be the difference between chaos and development. This book skillfully dissects the ways in which global models have failed to serve the interests of poor countries and provides careful suggestions as to what actually works. Policy-makers and scholars alike should be grateful to have such a well-crafted, finely-balanced contribution to a topic too often mired in polemic and ideology."
Peter Evans, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
"The individual chapters are empirically rich, thoughtfully argued, and nicely contextualized in the broader political economy literature on taxation. This book serves as an extremely valuable introduction and overview to the main debates as they apply to the developing world."
Perspectives on Politics, Hilary Appel, Claremont McKenna College
Product Description
There is a widespread concern that, in some parts of the world, governments are unable to exercise effective authority. When governments fail, more sinister forces thrive: warlords, arms smugglers, narcotics enterprises, kidnap gangs, terrorist networks, armed militias. Why do governments fail? This book explores an old idea that has returned to prominence: that authority, effectiveness, accountability and responsiveness is closely related to the ways in which governments are financed. It matters that governments tax their citizens rather than live from oil revenues and foreign aid, and it matters how they tax them. Taxation stimulates demands for representation, and an effective revenue authority is the central pillar of state capacity. Using case studies from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, this book presents and evaluates these arguments, updates theories derived from European history in the light of conditions in contemporary poorer countries, and draws conclusions for policy-makers.

This accessible volume shines a light on how autocracy really works by providing basic facts about how post-World War II dictatorships achieve, retain, and lose power. The authors present an evidence-based portrait of key features of the authoritarian landscape with newly collected data about 200 dictatorial regimes. They examine the central political processes that shape the policy choices of dictatorships and how they compel reaction from policy makers in the rest of the world. Importantly, this book explains how some dictators concentrate great power in their own hands at the expense of other members of the dictatorial elite. Dictators who can monopolize decision making in their countries cause much of the erratic, warlike behavior that disturbs the rest of the world. By providing a picture of the central processes common to dictatorships, this book puts the experience of specific countries in perspective, leading to an informed understanding of events and the likely outcome of foreign responses to autocracies.

State capacity - the government's ability to accomplish its intended policy goals - plays an important role in market-oriented economic development today. Yet state capacity improvements are often difficult to achieve. This Element analyzes the historical origins of state capacity. It evaluates long-run state development in Western Europe - the birthplace of both the modern state and modern economic growth - with a focus on three key inflection points: the rise of the city-state, the nation-state, and the welfare state. This Element develops a conceptual framework regarding the basic political conditions that enable the state to take effective policy actions. This framework highlights the government's challenge to exert proper authority over both its citizenry and itself. It concludes by analyzing the European state development process relative to other world regions. This analysis characterizes the basic historical features that helped make Western Europe different. By taking a long-run approach, it provides a new perspective on the deep-rooted relationship between state capacity and economic development.

Political interest is the strongest predictor of 'good citizenship', yet hardly anything is known about it. For the first time in over three decades, here is a study explaining what political interest is, where it comes from, and why it matters. Providing the most thorough description available of political interest in four Western democracies this study analyzes large household panel data sets rarely used in political science to explain how interest develops in people's lives. In an accessible manner, the book's analytical approach pushes applied social scientists to consider how panel data can be used to better understand political behavior. It does so in a way that doesn't gloss over complexities, and explains them in straightforward language. Advanced statistical methods are presented informally, accompanied by graphical illustrations that require no prior knowledge to understand the methods used.

Growing protests in non-democratic countries are often seen as signals of regime decline. China, however, has remained stable amid surging protests. Playing by the Informal Rules highlights the importance of informal norms in structuring state-protester interactions, mitigating conflict, and explaining regime resilience. Drawing on a nationwide dataset of protest and multi-sited ethnographic research, this book presents a bird's-eye view of Chinese contentious politics and illustrates the uneven application of informal norms across regions, social groups, and time. Through examinations of protests and their distinct implications for regime stability, Li offers a novel theoretical framework suitable for monitoring the trajectory of political contention in China and beyond. Overall, this study sheds new light on political mobilization and authoritarian resilience and provides fresh perspectives on power, rules, legitimacy, and resistance in modern societies.
Presents a new view of political mobilization and authoritarian resilience
Provides a novel theoretical framework in which to monitor the trajectory of political contention in China and beyond
Proposes fresh perspectives on power, rules, legitimacy, and resistance in modern societies