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- Volume 20, 2017
Annual Review of Political Science - Volume 20, 2017
Volume 20, 2017
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The Electoral Consequences of Corruption
Vol. 20 (2017), pp. 391–408More LessDemocratic elections have been assumed to play a crucial role in curbing corruption among public officials. Voters, due to their general distaste for corruption, are expected to sanction politicians who misuse public office for private gains. Yet, empirical evidence to date is mixed, and it often suggests that the electoral punishment of corruption is rather mild. Recently, political scientists have made great strides in understanding why corruption might be tolerated by voters. In this review, we identify three key stages—information acquisition, blame attribution, and behavioral response—that underlie a retrospective vote based on corruption. A breakdown of one or more of these stages may lead to a lack of electoral punishment of corruption. We also outline some areas for future progress, particularly highlighting the importance of voter coordination for understanding the extent to which corruption is punished at the ballot box.
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Labor Unions, Political Representation, and Economic Inequality
Vol. 20 (2017), pp. 409–432More LessDecades of research across several disciplines have produced substantial evidence that labor unions, on balance, reduce economic disparities. But unions are complicated, multifaceted organizations straddling markets and politics. Much of their equality-promoting influence occurs through their ability to reduce class-based inequity in politics and public policy. Declining unionization across much of the developed world is eroding workers’ bargaining power. Reduced economic leverage puts pressure on union solidarity and weakens labor-based political movements. Important research design problems and significant heterogeneity across unions, regions, countries, and time imply a continued need for more work.
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Coding the Ideological Direction and Content of Policies
Vol. 20 (2017), pp. 433–450More LessMany of the questions that are central to political science involve understanding either the causes or consequences of policy change. Scholars have relied on both data-driven and model-driven approaches to characterize the content and direction of policy. This review briefly describes several prominent measures from each approach, and it highlights important limitations that scholars continue to face in the hope of prompting continued contributions to this difficult, but essential, task.
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Wealth Inequality and Democracy
Vol. 20 (2017), pp. 451–468More LessWhat do we know about wealth inequality and democracy? Our review shows that the simple conjectures that democracy produces wealth equality and that wealth inequality leads to democratic failure are not supported by the evidence. Why are democracy and high levels of wealth inequality sustainable together? Three key features of democratic politics can make this outcome possible. When societies are divided along cleavages other than wealth, this can inhibit the adoption of wealth-equalizing policies. Likewise, voter preferences for the redistribution of wealth depend on the beliefs they form about the fairness of these measures, and some voters without wealth may feel that redistribution is unfair. Finally, wealth-equalizing policies may be absent if the democratic process is captured by the rich; however, the evidence explaining when, where, and why capture accounts for variation in wealth inequality is less convincing than is often claimed. This phenomenon is a useful avenue for future research.
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The New New Civil Wars
Vol. 20 (2017), pp. 469–486More LessPost-2003 civil wars are different from previous civil wars in three striking ways. First, most of them are situated in Muslim-majority countries. Second, most of the rebel groups fighting these wars espouse radical Islamist ideas and goals. Third, most of these radical groups are pursuing transnational rather than national aims. Current civil war theories can explain some of what is going on, but not everything. In this article, I argue that the transformation of information technology, especially the advent of the Web 2.0 in the early 2000s, is the big new innovation that is likely driving many of these changes. I offer a theory to explain why rebel groups, especially those in Muslim countries, have chosen to pursue a particular type of extreme ideology and goals. I then identify the six big implications this new information environment is likely to have for rebel behavior in the future. Innovations in information and communication technology are currently manifesting themselves in the rise of global Jihadi groups in the Muslim world, but we can expect them to be exploited by other groups as well.
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State Building in the Middle East
Vol. 20 (2017), pp. 487–504More LessThis review examines state building in the Middle East from a long-term, historical perspective. The Middle East's early transition to settled agriculture meant the region was home to many of the most sophisticated and best-developed states in the ancient world. As Middle Eastern states emerged from Late Antiquity, their fiscal and bureaucratic capacity enabled institutional forms not possible in Europe, including reliance on slave soldiers for the state military elite as well as state control of land that could be distributed to state servants in the form of temporary, revocable land grants. Because a landed gentry did not emerge as an influence-wielding social class in the Middle East until a relatively late date, religious elites—who served as important providers of public goods as a result of their control of Islamic charitable foundations—became key intermediaries between state and society. Core features of the institutions of Islam's classical period largely persisted until the decline of the Ottoman Empire with implications for the nation-state forms to follow.
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Information, Uncertainty, and War
Vol. 20 (2017), pp. 505–527More LessUncertainty about capabilities, intent, or resolve has long been linked to war. More recently, the bargaining model of war has established uncertainty, also referred to as asymmetric information, as one of the two major causes of costly conflict, the other being the dynamics of commitment in anarchy. A growing theoretical literature has made significant strides in fleshing out causal mechanisms and expanding our understanding of the role of information in conflict onset and how it relates to crisis bargaining and arms races. This article reviews these theoretical developments and describes current efforts to better understand the relationships between information, uncertainty, and war.
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Large-Scale Computerized Text Analysis in Political Science: Opportunities and Challenges
Vol. 20 (2017), pp. 529–544More LessText has always been an important data source in political science. What has changed in recent years is the feasibility of investigating large amounts of text quantitatively. The internet provides political scientists with more data than their mentors could have imagined, and the research community is providing accessible text analysis software packages, along with training and support. As a result, text-as-data research is becoming mainstream in political science. Scholars are tapping new data sources, they are employing more diverse methods, and they are becoming critical consumers of findings based on those methods. In this article, we first describe the four stages of a typical text-as-data project. We then review recent political science applications and explore one important methodological challenge—topic model instability—in greater detail.
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Trading in the Twenty-First Century: Is There a Role for the World Trade Organization?
Vol. 20 (2017), pp. 545–564More LessAs the World Trade Organization (WTO) begins its third decade, its future is uncertain. The initial expectation that the WTO would be the fulcrum for future international trade agreements has not been met. At best, its tenure has had mixed results. This review addresses the political consequences of WTO membership, focusing on the rules and norms of the regime and why they have become less functional over time; looks at the effectiveness of the WTO and the dispute settlement system in encouraging trade and compliance with agreements; and offers some general thoughts on the impact of shifting mass opinion on the virtue of trade agreements and other stumbling blocks the WTO faces.
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Police Are Our Government: Politics, Political Science, and the Policing of Race–Class Subjugated Communities
Joe Soss, and Vesla WeaverVol. 20 (2017), pp. 565–591More LessAgainst the backdrop of Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement, we ask what the American politics subfield has to say about the political lives of communities subjugated by race and class. We argue that mainstream research in this subfield—framed by images of representative democracy and Marshallian citizenship—has provided a rich portrait of what such communities lack in political life. Indeed, by focusing so effectively on their political marginalization, political scientists have ironically made such communities marginal to the subfield's account of American democracy and citizenship. In this article, we provide a corrective by focusing on what is present in the political lives of such communities. To redress the current imbalance and advance the understandings of race and class in American politics, we argue that studies of the liberal-democratic “first face” of the state must be complemented by greater attention to the state's more controlling “second face.” Focusing on policing, we seek to unsettle the mainstream of a subfield that rarely inquires into governmental practices of social control and the ways “race-class subjugated communities” are governed through coercion, containment, repression, surveillance, regulation, predation, discipline, and violence.
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Previous Volumes
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Volume 27 (2024)
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Volume 26 (2023)
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Volume 25 (2022)
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Volume 24 (2021)
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Volume 23 (2020)
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Volume 22 (2019)
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Volume 21 (2018)
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Volume 20 (2017)
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Volume 19 (2016)
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Volume 18 (2015)
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Volume 17 (2014)
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Volume 16 (2013)
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Volume 15 (2012)
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Volume 14 (2011)
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Volume 13 (2010)
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Volume 12 (2009)
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Volume 11 (2008)
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Volume 10 (2007)
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Volume 9 (2006)
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Volume 8 (2005)
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Volume 7 (2004)
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Volume 6 (2003)
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Volume 5 (2002)
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Volume 4 (2001)
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Volume 3 (2000)
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Volume 2 (1999)
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Volume 1 (1998)
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Volume 0 (1932)