Zim Nwokora

The distinctive politics of campaign finance reform

This article presents a unified theory explaining several conflicting empirical observations in the politics of campaign finance. It identifies those circumstances that foster or frustrate the enactment of financing laws that increase the competitiveness of elections. I argue that the competitiveness of financing laws is a result of three strong incentives when they operate in differently structured party systems. First, lawmakers have an incentive to make laws to protect their incumbency from competitors. This incentive generally overwhelms the (weaker) incentive to enact popular, competition-enhancing reforms. Secondly, lawmakers, when they act through political parties, have an incentive to cooperate with rivals to reduce the costs of political defeats. Thirdly, lawmakers seek to enact reforms that are consistent with their normative goals. These incentives combine with several party system variables to determine when campaign finance reform is likely to occur and how it will impact on the competitiveness of elections.

Sartori reconsidered: toward a new predominant party system

Despite the success of his party systems theory, Giovanni Sartoris predominant party system is a type that is consistently avoided by party systems scholars, yet the reasons for this have been unclear. This article exposes the flaws in Sartoris predominant party system, but we also argue that it remains a useful concept and, consequently, that the literatures rejection of predominance and retreat to the cruder dominance notion is unnecessary. Instead, we amend predominance to ensure its coherence within Sartoris typology and consistency with his party systems theory. We show that our amendments improve the value of predominance as a category for empirical analysis of the effects of party systems.

Sceptical partisans: How citizens think about political finance

This article investigates how citizens form their opinions on political-finance issues. Two distinct mechanisms are elaborated. First, citizens may be ‘faithful followers’, adopting positions that reflect their partisan loyalties. Second, citizens may be ‘sceptical’ and lean against cues from their party leaders. Drawing on a survey of Australian attitudes to political finance, I assess the extent to which predictions from these theories are observed in reality. The evidence suggests that Australians interpret political finance as ‘sceptical partisans’, broadly sceptical of political elites, while retaining partisan loyalties that are triggered when two conditions are satisfied: the issue has obvious partisan implications, but encouragement of partisan impulses does not threaten the competitiveness of elections. 本文探讨了公民如何形成对政治献金的态度。学者们提供了两个不同的机制。首先，公民可以是“忠实的追随者”，选择反映其党派忠诚性的立场。其次，公民可以凭着其党派领导人的暗示，持怀疑的态度。笔者将澳大利亚人对政治献金的态度同以上理论假设做了比对。有证据表明，澳大利亚人视政治献金为“拉帮结伙”，大体上对政治精英心存怀疑，不过又保持其党派忠诚。只要满足两个条件，忠诚就会出现：话题有着明显的党派含义，但党派冲动并不威胁选举的竞争性。

Responsibility to Protect and Women, Peace and Security

In Responsibility to Protect and Women, Peace and Security: Aligning the Protection Agendas, editors Sara E. Davies, Zim Nwokora, Eli Stamnes and Sarah Teitt address the intersections of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle and the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. Contributions from policy-makers and academics consider both the merits and the utility of aligning the protection agendas of R2P and WPS. A number of actionable recommendations are made concerning a unification of the agendas to best support the global empowerment of women and the prevention of mass atrocities.

Development in Africa

The purpose of this article is to analyze Africa’s progress along the developmental path in the past few decades, to understand what factors were responsible for such success and to identify the risk factors that may compromise further development in the region in the years to come. We advance three basic claims: that Africa has experienced an almost unprecedented (by its standards) level of economic success in the first 15 years of the new millennium, that this success was made possible by a combination of domestic and supranational conditions, and that some of the enabling conditions that supported Africa’s growth and development in the new millennium may be disappearing. The study also suggests that while African countries may not be able to influence the global conditions on which their economic success depends, they do have the ability to influence the domestic conditions. This is why, we suggest, in addition to ensuring longer and healthier lives for their citizens, African countries should consolidate democracy and promote good governance.

Measuring party system change: a systems perspective

The term ‘party system’, explained Giovanni Sartori, refers to the pattern of interactions among relevant parties. That pattern can be represented as a type and treated as a proper unit of analysis. When ‘party system’ is defined in this way, it becomes clear that the scholarship lacks a direct measure of ‘party system change’. The Sartori approach to party system change is not the only legitimate way to understand this concept, but it does target an undoubtedly important feature of political systems – namely the stability of interactions among relevant parties. This article develops a new indicator, the index of fluidity, which measures the extent of such stability. Applying the index to Africa, we show that there is significant cross-national variation in fluidity and weak correlation between fluidity and (Pedersen) volatility.

Narratives of a Race How the Media Judged a Presidential Debate

The first debate in 2008 was a turning point in the presidential election campaign: a race that was close before the debate turned decisively in Obama’s favor following it. This article explores how the media reached their verdict that “Obama won.” We examine two aspects of this problem: how, in practice, the media reached this verdict and whether they made the right decision from a normative standpoint. Based on content analysis of debate transcripts, we argue that the media interpreted the debate by synthesizing three pre-debate narratives in roughly equal proportions. Crucially, two of these narratives favored Obama. We also find that the “Obama won” verdict was consistent with what we might expect had the debate been judged by a public-spirited umpire.

Introduction: The responsibility to protect: a principle for the women, peace and security agenda?

The responsibility to protect those at risk of sexual and gender based violence is not just part of a wider protection agenda - it is a fundamental sovereign obligation. This is one of the more notable, but often overlooked. In the first part of the book, the author explores the gaps and misperceptions between the R2P and WPS agendas. In the second chapter, Katrina Lee-Koo explores the progress of the Women Peace and Security agenda, affirmed in the international system through the passage of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1325 in 2000. In the third chapter, Lucy Hall and Laura J Shepherd argue that despite the broadened scope of the 2005 R2P definition compared to its 2001 ICISS predecessor, there is still a danger that R2P remains too limited in its remit for the WPS agenda. Keywords:Katrina Lee-Koo; Laura J Shepherd; Lucy Hall; United Nations Security Council; Women Peace agenda; women security agenda

Making Policy Choices in Uncertain Conditions

Review essay of Michael Heazle, Uncertainty in Policy Making: Values and Evidence in Complex Decisions (London: Earthscan, 2010), ISBN 978 1849710831; Roger A. Pielke, Jr, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), ISBN 978 05216 94810; Cass R. Sunstein, Worst-Case Scenarios (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), ISBN 978 06740 25103.

Book Reviews - Tom Conley, The Vulnerable Country: Australia and the Global Economy

Tom Conley’s The Vulnerable Country: Australia and the Global Economy provides a clear account of the relationship between global and domestic political economic processes in Australia. While the specific focus is upon the past three decades, the political economic transformations that took place during this period are situated within a much longer historical context. A political economy approach is explicitly acknowledged as the theoretical framework informing the book. For Conley, this means ‘that it is impossible to understand economic forces and developments, without considering political forces and developments’ (p. 14). This perspective allows Conley to tease out the political and social structures and interests that underpin the economic processes about which he writes. He does so with respect to: Australia’s economic and political relationships with other Asian nation-states; the place of finance within the Australian economy; Australia’s trading relationships; and industry policy in Australia. Conley also interrogates processes of microeconomic reform and the recent Australia boom with an eye to identifying ways in which ‘the success story of growth tends to override more disaggregated and less sanguine analyses of the social effects of globalization in Australia’ (p. 236). This is a useful corrective to many triumphalist accounts of the boom, which tend to ignore its uneven effects. The notion suggested in the book’s title, that the Australian economy is ‘vulnerable’ – whether because of its reliance upon commodity exports or capital imports – is not novel. Furthermore, the reference to ‘The Vulnerable Country’ in the title of this book doesn’t really do justice to its contents. Rather, the second half of its title, ‘Australia and the Global Economy’, is a more accurate indicator of what to expect from this book. In fact, the book is more descriptive than argumentative, and the theme of economic vulnerability is only thinly articulated throughout. The policy advocacy within the book, to the extent that it exists, is also rather weak, lacking detail and substantial justification. Nevertheless, although the book does suffer from the lack of a novel and strongly articulated argument, its strength lies in its drawing together of existing literature into a coherent, up-to-date overview of some of the major political economic changes in Australia, and to situate these within a global context. The breadth and clarity of this book mean that The Vulnerable Country should serve as a useful supplementary text for undergraduate or postgraduate courses on the global economy, international political economy or the Australian economy in an international context.