Caroline Beer

Comparing nations and states - Human rights and democracy in India

Democracy and the protection of human rights generally go together, but not in India. India is an outlier in the cross-national research that aims to explain human rights performance. Using state-level subnational data and drawing on the approaches pioneered at the cross-national level, the authors examine the reasons for the outlier status. Their findings suggest that the aggregate whole-nation human rights and democracy scores misrepresent the political experience of much of India. The authors find that participation, political parties, and the level and nature of opposition threat help us understand the incidence of human rights violations within India.

Judicial Performance and the Rule of Law in the Mexican States

What determines how judicial institutions perform? Prominent theoretical approaches, such as international political economy, institutional rational choice, social capital, and structural theories, suggest that international economic actors, political competition, political participation, and poverty may all be important forces driving institutional behavior. This study analyzes these various theoretical approaches and uses qualitative and statistical analysis to compare judicial performance in the Mexican states. It provides evidence to support the institutional rational choice hypothesis that political competition generates judicial independence. Poverty, political participation, and an export-oriented economy seem to influence judicial access and effectiveness.

Peaceful Parties and Puzzling Personalists

Reiter and Stam advance the study of the conflict behavior of authoritarian regimes in two ways. First, they clearly demonstrate the importance of using directed dyad data sets for studying mixed pairs of political regimes. Second, they have refocused our attention on the question of decisional constraints and international conflict. This response examines the dispute patterns of a specific mixed pair of authoritarian regimes, single-party regimes, and personalist dictatorships. We find that single-party regimes are significantly less likely to start militarized disputes against personalist dictatorships than is true of other types of regime dyads. In contrast, personalist regimes are somewhat more likely to initiate militarized disputes against single-party regimes than is the norm for other regime dyads. These findings indicate that the relationships among specific types of authoritarian regimes may be as consequential as the relationships between democracies and authoritarian regimes of any type. They also indicate that we need to examine further the role that institutional constraints play in shaping the conflict behavior of authoritarian regimes.We thank Chris Butler for his comments and Dan Reiter for sharing his data.

Democracy, gender quotas, and political recruitment in Mexico

Do male and female legislators have different qualifications, experience, and backgrounds? If so, what are the main differences and what explains these differences? Are women more likely to rely on personal connections? Are well qualified women routinely passed over in favor of similarly qualified men? Do gender quotas and transitions to multiparty democracy affect the recruitment patterns of men and women? Do gender quotas lead to the recruitment of less qualified women? This article attempts to explain how informal gendered selection norms change over time using detailed data from over 500 Mexican Senators since 1964. The data provide evidence of discrimination in that to be successful, female senators need to have more legislative experience and more party experience than male senators. We also find evidence that traditional gender roles lead women to follow different paths to power. After the transition to democracy and the implementation of gender quotas, the importance of local legislative experience increased, discrimination against female aspirants declined, and a more diverse group of women entered the Senate. Our data show that women are no more likely than men to rely on personal connections to get into power.

Extending Rights to Marginalized Minorities: Same-Sex Relationship Recognition in Mexico and the United States:

What explains the extension of greater rights to traditionally marginalized minorities? This article compares the extension of legal equality to lebian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Mexico and the United States with a focus on the legal recognition of same-sex relationships. A national-level comparison of gay rights in Mexico and the United States presents a theoretical puzzle: most theories predict that the United States would have more egalitarian policies than Mexico, but in fact, Mexico has provided greater legal equality for LGBT people for a longer time than the United States. A subnational analysis of equal relationship rights in the United States and Mexico provides evidence to support social movement and partisan theories of minority rights. We find that religion plays a different role in Mexico than in the United States. The different findings at the national and subnational levels suggest the importance of subnational comparative analysis in heterogeneous federal systems.

Federalism, Fiscal Authority, and Centralization in Latin America

borrows theoretical insights from the international relations literature, particularly regarding the importance of norms. Indeed, this focus on norms is the most interesting of what Schwedler terms Faith in Moderation’s three dimensions for examining the political opportunity structure that impacts on movement (or lack thereof) toward moderation among Yemeni and Jordanian Islamists. These three dimensions include state managed political openings—i.e., the experiments in liberalization that have occurred in both Jordan and Yemen. Schwedler aptly notes the very real limits to these openings and how they serve the purposes of keeping political elites in power, but for her purposes a more inclusive public sphere allows her to test if this has had a moderating effect on Islamist parties. Particularly in Yemen, she finds, the continued monopoly on power by the regime means a strong incentive for Islamists to continue ongoing cooperation with the state rather than embrace pluralist coalition politics in concert with elements of the opposition. This leads into Schwedler’s second dimension, the internal group structure of Yemen’s Islah party and Jordan’s Islamic Action Front (IAF). Their differing reactions to a restructured public space allow her to show that the political field is more complex and multi-faceted than a moving (or “stalled”) point along a continuum between authoritarianism and democracy. While both Islah and the IAF engaged with a more open public sphere, their internal structures meant very different reactions to the opportunities it presented. Islah’s fragmented and hierarchical coalition left it somewhat paralyzed and, therefore, cautious in its cooperation with leftist and liberal groups. The IAF, on the other hand, “evolved from shunning cooperation with ideologically rival parties. . . . to engaging in sustained cooperative bodies with Leftists and liberals” (p. 116). The IAF’s more unified and democratic internal structures made it more liable to dynamically change in response to shifting opportunity structures. The Joint Meeting Group (JMG) ad-hoc coalition during recent elections in Yemen would indicate that Islah, too, may be more capable of such change than Schwedler indicates in Faith in Moderation. The JMG did include, after all, Islah in a coalition with Yemen’s socialist party as well as a number of smaller parties of differing ideological predispositions. In any case, accepting Schwedler’s characterization of the differing dynamics within Jordan and Yemen’s Islamist politics, why this variation? In answering her question, Schwedler intermingles her first two dimensions with a third, normative dimension—what she calls the “ideational dimensions of public political space.” It’s worth noting, first, her definition of moderation as “movement from a relatively closed and rigid worldview to one more open and tolerant of alternative perspectives” (p. 3). This is obviously a normative definition of moderation, as opposed to one focused on particular structural location or political behavior. This definition may strike some as overly broad but, to the contrary, Schwedler defines moderation in the only possible meaningful manner: the true question is not if a group takes a particular position (pushed by any number of circumstantial forces), but if there an acceptance of pluralism instead of an insistence that one group has a totalizing monopoly on political truth. Thus it makes sense for Schwedler to focus on the normative and, more precisely, on whether structural shifts in her first two dimensions have flowed out of and informed reconceptualizations of Islamist worldviews of what are “justifiable actions”—i.e., what is both imaginable and normatively legitimate. Jordanian Islamists, unlike their Yemeni counterparts, didn’t just enter into pluralist coalitions, but also substantively articulated an ideological worldview that shifted to include a democratic narrative as fully consonant with Islamism. Schwedler’s conclusion that Jordan’s Islamists have moderated while those in Yemen have not is revealing both to specialists in these countries, as well as those with a general interest in Islamism’s dynamics. These conclusions also feed into debates on broader questions regarding Islamists and circumstances in which they might accept a pluralist political playing field. Faith in Moderation is a distinctive contribution to the argument that the relation between Islamists and democratic pluralism is not fixed and that, indeed, Islamism itself is not a fixed project. Flowing out of that, we can both recognize the intolerance and immoderation of many Islamist groups and also be aware of the possibility (though not inevitability) both of their engaging in pluralist coalitionbuilding and normative moderation.

Federalism, Fiscal Authority, and Centralization in Latin America – By Alberto Diaz-Cayeros

borrows theoretical insights from the international relations literature, particularly regarding the importance of norms. Indeed, this focus on norms is the most interesting of what Schwedler terms Faith in Moderation’s three dimensions for examining the political opportunity structure that impacts on movement (or lack thereof) toward moderation among Yemeni and Jordanian Islamists. These three dimensions include state managed political openings—i.e., the experiments in liberalization that have occurred in both Jordan and Yemen. Schwedler aptly notes the very real limits to these openings and how they serve the purposes of keeping political elites in power, but for her purposes a more inclusive public sphere allows her to test if this has had a moderating effect on Islamist parties. Particularly in Yemen, she finds, the continued monopoly on power by the regime means a strong incentive for Islamists to continue ongoing cooperation with the state rather than embrace pluralist coalition politics in concert with elements of the opposition. This leads into Schwedler’s second dimension, the internal group structure of Yemen’s Islah party and Jordan’s Islamic Action Front (IAF). Their differing reactions to a restructured public space allow her to show that the political field is more complex and multi-faceted than a moving (or “stalled”) point along a continuum between authoritarianism and democracy. While both Islah and the IAF engaged with a more open public sphere, their internal structures meant very different reactions to the opportunities it presented. Islah’s fragmented and hierarchical coalition left it somewhat paralyzed and, therefore, cautious in its cooperation with leftist and liberal groups. The IAF, on the other hand, “evolved from shunning cooperation with ideologically rival parties. . . . to engaging in sustained cooperative bodies with Leftists and liberals” (p. 116). The IAF’s more unified and democratic internal structures made it more liable to dynamically change in response to shifting opportunity structures. The Joint Meeting Group (JMG) ad-hoc coalition during recent elections in Yemen would indicate that Islah, too, may be more capable of such change than Schwedler indicates in Faith in Moderation. The JMG did include, after all, Islah in a coalition with Yemen’s socialist party as well as a number of smaller parties of differing ideological predispositions. In any case, accepting Schwedler’s characterization of the differing dynamics within Jordan and Yemen’s Islamist politics, why this variation? In answering her question, Schwedler intermingles her first two dimensions with a third, normative dimension—what she calls the “ideational dimensions of public political space.” It’s worth noting, first, her definition of moderation as “movement from a relatively closed and rigid worldview to one more open and tolerant of alternative perspectives” (p. 3). This is obviously a normative definition of moderation, as opposed to one focused on particular structural location or political behavior. This definition may strike some as overly broad but, to the contrary, Schwedler defines moderation in the only possible meaningful manner: the true question is not if a group takes a particular position (pushed by any number of circumstantial forces), but if there an acceptance of pluralism instead of an insistence that one group has a totalizing monopoly on political truth. Thus it makes sense for Schwedler to focus on the normative and, more precisely, on whether structural shifts in her first two dimensions have flowed out of and informed reconceptualizations of Islamist worldviews of what are “justifiable actions”—i.e., what is both imaginable and normatively legitimate. Jordanian Islamists, unlike their Yemeni counterparts, didn’t just enter into pluralist coalitions, but also substantively articulated an ideological worldview that shifted to include a democratic narrative as fully consonant with Islamism. Schwedler’s conclusion that Jordan’s Islamists have moderated while those in Yemen have not is revealing both to specialists in these countries, as well as those with a general interest in Islamism’s dynamics. These conclusions also feed into debates on broader questions regarding Islamists and circumstances in which they might accept a pluralist political playing field. Faith in Moderation is a distinctive contribution to the argument that the relation between Islamists and democratic pluralism is not fixed and that, indeed, Islamism itself is not a fixed project. Flowing out of that, we can both recognize the intolerance and immoderation of many Islamist groups and also be aware of the possibility (though not inevitability) both of their engaging in pluralist coalitionbuilding and normative moderation.

Downsizing the State: Privatization and the Limits of Neoliberal Reform in Mexico and Democratization Without Representation: The Politics of Small Industry in Mexico

In what case do you like reading so much? What about the type of the downsizing the state privatization and the limits of neoliberal reform in mexico book? The needs to read? Well, everybody has their own reason why should read some books. Mostly, it will relate to their necessity to get knowledge from the book and want to read just to get entertainment. Novels, story book, and other entertaining books become so popular this day. Besides, the scientific books will also be the best reason to choose, especially for the students, teachers, doctors, businessman, and other professions who are fond of reading.