Thad Dunning

Improving Causal Inference: Strengths and Limitations of Natural Experiments

Social scientists increasingly exploit natural experiments in their research. This article surveys recent applications in political science, with the goal of illustrating the inferential advantages provided by this research design. When treatment assignment is less than “as if” random, studies may be something less than natural experiments, and familiar threats to valid causal inference in observational settings can arise. The author proposes a continuum of plausibility for natural experiments, defined by the extent to which treatment assignment is plausibly “as if” random, and locates several leading studies along this continuum.

Resource Dependence, Economic Performance, and Political Stability

In many resource-dependent states, elites may face an important trade-off between the economic benefits of diversification and the possibility for future political competition that diversification may engender. However, distinctive features of global resource markets and national political economies may make diversification more or less attractive to political elites. The author argues that in three cases which illustrate the equilibrium paths of the game-theoretic model developed here—postindependence Bostwana, Mobutu’s Zaire, and Suharto’s Indonesia—three variables influenced elites’ incentives for diversification and thereby shaped outcomes along the dimensions of political stability and economic performance: the world market structure for the resource, the degree of societal opposition to elites, and the prior development of the nonresource private sector. These countries’ varied paths from resource wealth to political and economic outcomes suggest the need for conditional theories of the resource curse.

Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting: An Experimental Study of Cousinage in Mali

Social scientists often attribute moderation of the political salience of ethnicity in ethnically diverse societies to the presence of cross-cutting cleavages—that is, to dimensions of identity or interest along which members of the same ethnic group may have diverse allegiances. Yet, estimating the causal effects of cross-cutting cleavages is difficult. In this article, we present experimental results that help explain why ethnicity has a relatively minor political role in Mali, an ethnically heterogeneous sub-Saharan African country in which ethnic identity is a poor predictor of vote choice and parties do not form along ethnic lines. We argue that the cross-cutting ties afforded by an informal institution called “cousinage” help explain the weak association between ethnicity and individual vote choice. The experimental research design we introduce may be useful in many other settings.

Fighting and Voting: Violent Conflict and Electoral Politics

Two recent research programs—one on the sources of democratic consolidation and another on the causes and consequences of violent conflict—have tended to evolve in relative isolation. The contributions to this special issue of Journal of Conflict Resolution help to bridge this gap, through explicit theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between fighting and voting. Armed conflict and electoral politics may be strategic substitutes, in that political actors may optimally choose to submit to the ballot box or instead attempt to impose their will by force; or they may be strategic complements, in that actors use violence to bolster their electoral aims, or use electoral returns as sources of information on underlying preferences that they exploit in armed campaigns. In either case, the distribution of popular support for contending parties can shape not only the incidence but also the type of armed conflict, and it can also influence the incentives of parties to invest in institutional mechanisms that mitigate commitment problems and help to bring violent conflicts to an end. The contributions to this issue illuminate these themes and demonstrate the value of bringing these separate research programs into closer dialogue.

Ethnic Quotas and Political Mobilization: Caste, Parties, and Distribution in Indian Village Councils

Ethnic quotas are often expected to induce distribution of material benefits to members of disadvantaged groups. Yet, the presence of an ethnic quota does not imply that political mobilization takes place along ethnic lines: Cross-cutting affiliations within multi-ethnic party organizations may lessen the tendency of politicians to target benefits to particular ethnic groups. In this article, we evaluate the impact of quotas for the presidencies of village councils in India, a subject of considerable recent research. Drawing on fine-grained information from surveys of voters, council members, presidents, and bureaucrats and using a natural experiment to isolate the effects of quotas in the states of Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Bihar, we find weak distributive effects of quotas for marginalized castes and tribes, but suggestive evidence of the importance of partisanship. We then use survey experiments to compare the influence of party and caste on voting preferences and expectations of benefit receipt. Our results suggest that especially when politicians have dynamic political incentives to allocate benefits along party lines, cross-cutting partisan ties can blunt the distributive impact of ethnic quotas.

Oil and the political economy of conflict in Colombia and beyond: a linkages approach

Empirical studies have found a strong positive association between dependence on petroleum exports and the incidence and duration of civil war, yet these analyses remain largely bounded within a national level of analysis. Our case study of Colombia suggests that the international and transnational dimensions of oil, in particular the role of foreign direct investment and the centrality of global geopolitics, have an important influence on resource conflict. Processes of conflict generated by local productive activities pose perceived and real threats to supply, generating new security arrangements that reshape the material and discursive strategies of local and transnational actors. The linkages and interactions between local, national and transnational actors are therefore crucial to understanding the relationship between oil and conflict.

From Transplants to Hybrids: Exploring Institutional Pathways to Growth

Within the study of economic growth and development, there is a consensus of sorts that “institutions matter.” However, decades after political scientists, sociologists, and dissident economists first suggested that institutions played a crucial role in promoting the explosive post-war economic growth of first Japan and then the East Asian “tigers,” the question of which particular institutions matter for growth, and exactly how they matter, is very much alive. We address this question in this special issue. The contributors to this volume, who approach the problem from distinct disciplines, all react against a pronounced tendency among some social scientists and development practitioners to search for universal “best-practice” institutions. Peter Evans, a sociologist, terms this type of thinking “institutional monocropping” and suggests that processes of “deliberative development” may offer a promising alternative to the imposition of institutional blueprints. Stephan Haggard, a political scientist, details the elusiveness of institutional formulas for balancing laissez-faire economics and state intervention or for solving the credible commitment problems highlighted by rational choice institutionalism, and suggests that, in the case of East Asia, multiple institutional conjunctures have proved felicitous for promoting growth. Gerard Roland, an economist who in his studies of the transition from socialism has been a leading critic of imposed institutional models, here provides a framework for understanding the failure of institutional transplantation and urges economists not to neglect the role of social norms and values. David M. Woodruff, a political scientist, undertakes a comparative study of corporate governance laws

Will the Digital Revolution Revolutionize Development? Drawing Together the Debate

This concluding article returns to the broad question that motivates this special issue ofStudies in Comparative International Development: Will the Digital Revolution constitute a revolution in development? In addressing this issue, we explore a number of common themes emphasized by the different contributions: the future of the North-South divide, the role of the state in promoting digital development, the transferability and adaptability of specific information and communication technologies, the challenges and potential benefits of controlling digital information, and the developmental effects of digitally enabled communities. We argue that the Digital Revolutions ultimate impact on development will depend on several key variables, including the extent to which these technologies foster within-country linkages among different sectors and socioeconomic classes; the degree to which new technological applications may be customized or transformed to advance local development; and the outcome of political contests between organized interests that are promoting different ways of organizing and governing the global digital economy. While it is difficult to fully assess a transformation while living in the midst of it, research on the social, political, and economic implications of the Digital Revolution will constitute an important agenda for development scholars in the years to come.

Endogenous Oil Rents

Oil rents may at times fall like “manna from heaven” into the fiscal coffers of the state. Yet politicians also make decisions that can increase or decrease the extent to which oil rents accrue to the central government. Though counterintuitive, various evidence suggests that politicians sometimes do not seek to maximize the state’s claim on rents. In this article, the author substantiates this observation with evidence from Venezuela and then develops a formal model of the relationship between electoral competition and rent choice. The author argues that the model can explain why politicians allowed the central government’s share of rents to decline in Venezuela beginning in the 1990s, even though a decline in rents plausibly contributed to the destabilization of Venezuelan democracy. The argument illuminates patterns of rent capture in other cases, whereas the model may be useful in many settings in which the gains from economic investment are realized over several electoral terms.

Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: Between Clients and Citizens: Puzzles and Concepts in the Study of Distributive Politics

Markets distribute goods. The drive to earn and to consume moves steel from Anshan to Minnesota, nannies from Brixton to Hampstead, and credit from Wall Street to Athens. Indeed, the movement of steel, nannies, and credit is in a sense what markets – for goods, services, and finance – are . Politics also distributes goods. Government programs channel cash, jobs, credit, and myriad other resources to citizens; elected officials mete out benefits to favored constituencies; and political parties distribute everything from leaflets to liquor in search of votes. And taxes and transfers redistribute income. The political distribution of goods is more controversial than is their distribution through markets. We expect markets to move valued resources across space and populations. But while few would object to all forms of political distribution, nearly all would object to some forms of it. In any democracy there is broad agreement (though not consensus) that political authority rightly transfers resources across generations by using tax proceeds to fund the education of children or protect of the elderly from penury. Agreement about redistribution through social welfare programs and insurance against social risk is also broad, though far from universal. However, other kinds of political distribution and redistribution – contracts that go to politically connected private firms, for instance, or cash payments in return for votes – are broadly reviled. Indeed, although some forms of political distribution are unquestioningly accepted, others are punishable with prison terms.