Political Research Quarterly current issue

Tocqueville as Critical Race Theorist: Whiteness as Property, Interest Convergence, and the Limits of Jacksonian Democracy

Tillery, A. B. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

This article demonstrates that there are affinities between Tocqueville’s commentary on race and race relations in Democracy in America and the core assumptions of the critical race theory movement. Tocqueville shares with critical race theorists the view that white privilege was endemic in American culture and shapes both jurisprudence and outcomes in democratic politics. Moreover, Tocqueville presages the criticalists’ arguments about the negative externalities of white privilege and interest convergence. The presence of these ideas in Tocqueville’s text undermines the consensus view in the political science literature that he failed to take racial inequality seriously in his analysis of America.

Measuring Changes in American Party Reputations, 1939--2004

Pope, J. C., Woon, J. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Scholars increasingly emphasize that party reputations are valuable electoral assets. The authors measure temporal change in the parties’ relative reputations across several distinct policy areas and find that each party tends to have advantages on certain issues but that the patterns are far from permanent. Democrats have strong advantages on social welfare issues, but Republicans have made some gains. Republican advantages on taxes and "law and order" have been weaker. The authors also find that party competition has strengthened impressions of the parties. Results support the notion that parties carry a collective—if occasionally transitory—reputation on a host of issues.

An Introduction to Crisp Set QCA, with a Comparison to Binary Logistic Regression

Grofman, B., Schneider, C. Q. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

The authors focus on the dichotomous crisp set form of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The authors review basic set theoretic QCA methodology, including truth tables, solution formulas, and coverage and consistency measures and discuss how QCA (a) displays relations between variables, (b) highlights descriptive or complex causal accounts for specific (groups of) cases, and (c) expresses the degree of fit. To help readers determine when QCA’s configurational approach might be appropriate, the authors compare and contrast QCA to mainstream statistical methodologies such as binary logistic regressions done on the same data set.

The Consequences of Rivalry: Explaining Insurgent Violence Using Fuzzy Sets

Metelits, C. M. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

The author presents a unique theory of insurgent group behavior using a fuzzy-set approach. In contrast to arguments that place the culpability of insurgent group violence toward noncombatants in the arena of natural resource endowments or the distinctive nature of contemporary conflicts, the author uses a component of qualitative comparative analysis to show that the presence of "active rivalry" is critical in determining the type of behavior insurgent groups will display with regard to local populations they claim to represent. The use of fuzzy-set analysis is uncommon in conflict studies yet proves to be a valuable alternative to standard statistical tests.

Getting to the Top: Career Paths of Women in Latin American Cabinets

Escobar-Lemmon, M., Taylor-Robinson, M. M. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Are presidential cabinets gendered institutions? This important question has been ignored for Latin America to date. In this article, the authors propose four benchmarks for evaluating whether presidential cabinets should be classified as gendered institutions. If they are we should observe (1) that there are differences in career length, continuity, and mobility between men and women; (2) that women receive feminine domain posts and men masculine ones; (3) that masculine ministries offer greater potential for upward mobility; and (4) that women must be better qualified than men to receive appointments. Using data from eighteen Latin American countries from 1980 to 2003, the authors analyze the degree to which cabinets conform to these criteria. They conclude that even though women are starting to gain appointments to high-profile and to masculine domain cabinet posts, the overall evidence supports the conclusion that there are gendered patterns to cabinet appointments.

Contentious Challenges and Government Responses in Latin America

Franklin, J. C. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

This article examines how seven Latin American governments responded to 827 contentious political challenges. The research goes beyond most previous research by considering four governmental responses: concession, repression, toleration, and the combination of concession and repression. The results show that challengers can increase their chances of winning concessions by making limited demands and utilizing nonviolent occupations and hunger strikes. Violent challenges are ineffective and tend to result in repression. Governments also tend to offer concessions under democratic regimes or when they have recently been criticized for human rights abuses while also receiving substantial foreign aid and investment.

Do Gender Quotas Foster Women's Political Engagement?: Lessons from Latin America

Zetterberg, P. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Gender quotas have been held to have more far-reaching consequences than increasing women’s political representation. Some scholars claim that they foster women’s overall political engagement. After elaborating a theoretical framework on how affirmative action policies to legislative bodies might be beneficial to constituents of the targeted group, the author tests this hypothesis on women in seventeen Latin American countries. Contrasting previous claims, the author shows that there is no general proof of attitudinal or behavioral effects. The analysis represents an initial attempt to theorize and use large-scale data to examine the more long-term consequences of quota policies on female constituents’ political involvement.

The Corruption-Enhancing Role of Re-Election Incentives?: Counterintuitive Evidence from Brazil's Audit Reports

Pereira, C., Melo, M. A., Figueiredo, C. M. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Traditional wisdom on the effect of re-election on incumbent performance is that first-term politicians refrain from rent extraction because they want to be re-elected. The authors find no evidence to support this belief. The corruption-reducing effects of re-election may be offset when the expected utility for rent extraction is very high. This occurs when the likelihood of detecting corruption is very low. Mayors who committed irregularities are less likely to be re-elected when this information is released in the electoral year only. Although citizens hold mayors accountable for bad behavior, they do not do so to the point of discouraging misbehavior.

Comparative Sources of Judicial Empowerment: Ideas and Interests

Woods, P. J., Hilbink, L. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Judicial Reform in Mexico: Political Insurance or the Search for Political Legitimacy?

Inclan Oseguera, S. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Judicial reform presents a paradox: What makes governing elites decide to grant power to an autonomous judiciary that will eventually curtail their own powers? The engagement of governing elites in judicial reforms is recently being explained as strategic moves to protect their interests when they can foresee a future loss of political control. Using the Mexican reform process of 1994-95, this work discusses the applicability of such perspective for this case and offers an alternative explanation based on the reformers’ need to legitimize their rule in a context marked by political competition and a discredited supreme court.

In Pursuit of "Contemporary Civilization": Judicial Empowerment in Turkey

Shambayati, H., Kirdis, E. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Turkey’s powerful Constitutional Court serves as an administrative attaché of state elites in overseeing the political arena and transforming the society. Looking at the courts as administrative agents suggests that the ruling elite might turn to courts not in an attempt to safeguard their immediate interests, but to transform the society by extending the reach of the state. The authors contend that in countries where the state pursues a civilizing mission, judicial empowerment is an attractive tool for defending the state against powerful segments of the society who might subscribe to different civilizing projects.

The Constituted Nature of Constituents' Interests: Historical and Ideational Factors in Judicial Empowerment

Hilbink, L. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Through an analysis of constitutional transitions in one democratizing case (Spain 1978) and one authoritarian case (Chile 1980), this article argues that judicial empowerment can be accurately explained only through reference to the historical and ideational context in which institutional designers operate. Historical and ideational factors—that is, shared experiences, beliefs, identities, ideologies, and interpretations of events and sequences of events at home or abroad—shape the way that political actors perceive their interests, formulate their strategies, and justify their decisions and are thus crucial to explaining when, why, and how institutional designers choose to empower courts.

Postmaterialist Social Constituencies and Political Triggers: Explaining Bill of Rights Genesis in Internally Stable, Advanced Democracies

Erdos, D. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

This article forwards a new postmaterialist trigger theory (PTT) of the origins of bills of rights in stable, advanced democracies. Socially, such projects are linked to the postmaterialist growth of "cultural left" forces such as civil libertarians and social equality seekers. Additionally, a focusing trigger providing an immediate political rationale for change is also generally required. This trigger determines the precise timing of any change and also influences its shape. Such a trigger need not be strategic or prospective in nature. Instead, political elites may embrace bill of rights genesis as part of a backward-looking "aversive" reaction to prior negative political experiences during opposition.

The Ideational Foundations of Israel's "Constitutional Revolution"

Woods, P. J. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

In the Israeli case, judicial empowerment has come primarily through judicial initiative rather than emerging from majoritarian institutions or strategic considerations relating to electoral politics. Justices with deep commitments to political-liberal rights engaged in a decades-long process of entrenching a political-liberal rights regime through jurisprudence. At the heart of this sea change in Israeli politics was a shift in ideas.

The Realist Turn in Comparative Constitutional Politics

Hirschl, R. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Interests, Ideas, and Institutions in Comparative Analysis of Judicial Power

McCann, M. W. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST

Where We Came from: Defining the Western Political Science Association: A Brief, Very Selective Organizational History Sampled from the Archives of the WPSA

Moulds, E. — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:35 PST