Zachary Elkins

On Waves, Clusters, and Diffusion: A Conceptual Framework

This article makes a conceptual and theoretical contribution to the study of diffusion. The authors suggest that the concept of diffusion be reserved for processes (not outcomes) characterized by a certain uncoordinated interdependence. Theoretically, the authors identify the principal sources of clustered policy reforms. They then clarify the characteristics specific to diffusion mechanisms and introduce a categorization of such processes. In particular, they make a distinction between two types of diffusion: adaptation and learning. They argue that this categorization adds conceptual clarity and distinguishes mechanisms with distinct substantive consequences.

Are Patriots Bigots? An Inquiry into the Vices of In-Group Pride

One view in the study of intergroup conflict is that pride implies prejudice. However, an increasing number of scholars have come to view in-group pride more benignly, suggesting that such pride can be accompanied by a full range of feelings toward the out-group. In this article, we focus on a substantively interesting case of in-group/out-group attitudes—national pride and hostility toward immigrants. We explore the relationship in two fundamental ways: first by examining the prejudice associated with various dimensions of pride, and second by embedding these relationships in a comprehensive model of prejudice. We find that national pride is most validly measured with two dimensions—patriotism and nationalism—two dimensions that have very different relationships with prejudice. While nationalists have a strong predilection for hostility toward immigrants, patriots show no more prejudice than does the average citizen.

On the Interpretability of Law: Lessons from the Decoding of National Constitutions

An implicit element of many theories of constitutional enforcement is the degree to which those subject to constitutional law can agree on what its provisions mean (call this constitutional interpretability). Unfortunately, there is little evidence on baseline levels of constitutional interpretability or the variance therein. This article seeks to fill this gap in the literature, by assessing the effect of contextual, textual and interpreter characteristics on the interpretability of constitutional documents. Constitutions are found to vary in their degree of interpretability. Surprisingly, however, the most important determinants of variance are not contextual (for example, era, language or culture), but textual. This result emphasizes the important role that constitutional drafters play in the implementation of their product.

Can Institutions Build Unity in Multiethnic States

We investigate whether political institutions can promote attachment to the state in multiethnic societies. Building on literatures on nationalism, democratization, and conflict resolution, we discuss the importance of attachment, understood as a psychological identification with, and pride in, the state. We construct a model of state attachment, specifying the individual-, group-, and state-level conditions that foster it. Then, using cross-national survey data from 51 multiethnic states, we show that, in general, ethnic minorities manifest less attachment to the states in which they reside than do majorities. Combining the survey data with minority group attributes and country-level attributes, we show that the attachment of minorities varies importantly across groups and countries. Our central finding is that federalism and proportional electoral systems—two highly touted solutions to ethnic divisions—have at best mixed effects. These results have implications for state-building and democratic consolidation in ethnically heterogeneous states.

Diffusion and the Constitutionalization of Europe

This article begins with a rather forceful defense of the explanatory role of formal institutions—and, in particular, constitutions—in the study of democratization. Important aspects of constitutions play a significant part in shaping the quality, type, and survival of institutional arrangements in new democracies. With this assumption, the article turns seriously to theories of constitutional design, any of which must grapple with the overwhelming prima facie evidence of constitutional diffusion. It is well known that constitutional ideas travel easily across contexts. However, scholars until now have lacked even basic empirical evidence regarding the patterns of constitutional similarity across time and space. This article introduces exactly this sort of evidence in the context of 19th-century Europe, employing a new data set expressly designed for such a purpose. The analysis uncovers a number of new insights regarding the spread of constitutional ideas in Europe, insights that disturb some of the classic narratives of democratization in these cases.

Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism

The presidential-parliamentary distinction is foundational to comparative politics and at the center of a large theoretical and empirical literature. However, an examination of constitutional texts suggests a fair degree of heterogeneity within these categories with respect to important institutional attributes. These observations lead us to suspect that the classic presidential-parliamentary distinction, as well as the semi-presidential category, is not a systemic one. This paper investigates whether the defining attributes that separate presidential and parliamentary constitutions predict other attributes that are stereotypically associated with these institutional models. The results lead us to be highly skeptical of the “systemic” nature of the classification. Indeed, the results imply that if one wanted to predict the powers of the executive and legislature, one would be better off knowing where and when the constitution was written than in knowing whether it was presidential or parliamentary.

The Content of Authoritarian Constitutions

“What is the difference,” went an old joke in the Soviet Union, “between the Soviet and U.S. Constitutions? The Soviet Constitution guarantees freedom of speech; the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom after speech.” The joke captures the common intuition about the function (or dysfunction, rather) of constitutions in authoritarian regimes. Many other examples abound: citizens of North Korea might be surprised to learn that they are guaranteed rights to free speech, assembly, and association, 2 while the Constitution of Niger guarantees each citizen the right to health and education, notwithstanding the fact that the country ranks 182 nd out of 182 countries rated by the Human Development Index. 3

The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy: Competing for capital: the diffusion of bilateral investment treaties, 1960–2000

Over the past forty-five years, bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have become the most important international legal mechanism for the encouragement and governance of foreign direct investment. Their proliferation over the past two decades in particular has been phenomenal. These intergovernmental treaties typically grant extensive rights to foreign investors, including protection of contractual rights and the right to international arbitration in the event of an investment dispute. We argue that the spread of BITs is driven by international competition among potential host countries - typically developing countries - for foreign direct investment. We design and test three different measures of competition. The evidence suggests that potential hosts are more likely to sign BITs when their competitors have done so. We also control for diffusion via coercion, social learning, and cultural networks. We find some evidence that coercion plays a role, but less support for learning or cultural explanations. Our main finding is that diffusion in this case is associated with competitive economic pressures among developing countries to capture a share of foreign investment. We are agnostic at this point about the benefits of this competition for development.

Do executive term limits cause constitutional crises

© Cambridge University Press 2012. In February 2010, Niger President Mamou Tandja was deposed in a coup, some six months after pushing through a constitutional referendum to allow himself to remain in office beyond his final five-year term. That same month, President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia found himself stymied by the Constitutional Court in his attempt to serve a third term. These leaders are hardly alone in attempting to remain in office beyond their initial allocated term: In recent years, term limits extensions have been an issue in many countries in Latin America (Carey 2009), Africa (Posner and Young 2007) and elsewhere. In many instances, such as the prominent case of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009, term limits seem to have been at the center of constitutional crises. This latest wave of term limit evasions invites a number of questions that we seek to address in this article. First, are term limit violations increasing in frequency? Second, what are the determinants of term limit violations? And third, what are the consequences of term limit violations, particularly with regard to crisis? Surprisingly, we have little evidence on any of these questions to date, notwithstanding normative claims that term limits ought to be part of the universal architecture of presidential democracy (Maltz 2007).

The weight of history and the rebuilding of Brazilian democracy

Nation-states, like their citizens, are dependent on their peers for cues about what passes for appropriate behavior. With respect to the evolution of political institutions, the result is the proliferation of political fads among certain clusters of countries, a process which scholars describe in terms of “waves”, “contagion”, “isomorphism”, and “refl ection”. The idea that the adoption of a practice by one actor would infl uence the probability of adoption by another (a useful defi nition of the concept diffusion1) is an intriguing metasubject of inquiry within a variety of disciplines and a variety