Bücher der Reihe Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics

This book is relevant to readers interested in the persistence of traditional institutions in the contemporary world, the possibility for democratic transitions in weak states, the calculus of voters in new democracies, and community-level development in poor countries.

This book shows that land redistribution - the most consequential form of redistribution in the developing world - occurs more often under dictatorship than democracy. It offers a novel theory of land reform and tests it using extensive original data dating back to 1900.

This book presents an account of war settlement in Georgia and Tajikistan as local actors maneuvered in the shadow of a Russian-led military intervention. Combining ethnography and game theory with quantitative and qualitative methods, this book presents a revisionist account of the post-Soviet wars and their settlement.

This book analyzes how increases in international trade, finance, and production have altered voter decisions, political party positions, and the types of public issues that parties focus on in postindustrial democracies.

Why do poor people often vote against their material interests? This puzzle has been famously studied within wealthy Western democracies, yet the fact that the poor voter paradox also routinely manifests within poor countries has remained unexplored. This book studies how this paradox emerged in India, the world's largest democracy.

The fundamental question of political theory, one that precedes all other questions about the nature of political life, is why there is a state at all. This book describes the foundations of stateless societies, why and how states emerge, and the basis of political obligation.

Tying the Autocrat's Hands provides a comprehensive, empirical evaluation of legal reforms in contemporary China. Based on the author's extensive fieldwork and analyses of original data, the book tells a story in which foreign investors with weak political connections push for judicial empowerment in China, while Chinese investors struggle to hold on to their privileges.

Examines the role of social networks in the efficient running of democratic market economies. This title is also available as Open Access.

This book examines contemporary changes in labor market institutions in the United States, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

How were reforms that aimed to reduce electoral intimidation adopted? This book provides a micro-historical analysis of the adoption of reforms protecting voter autonomy. It shows that changes in district-level economic and political conditions led to the formation of an encompassing political coalition supporting these electoral reforms.

This book examines how labor policies were made in the US, Germany, and Japan during the 1980s.

Kaplan explores the effect of globalization on Latin American economic policy-making. It investigates why left-leaning politicians from countries with high poverty and wage inequality adopt market-oriented policies. A new form of austerity politics has surfaced where politicians signal their good governance with budgetary discipline yet simultaneously direct spending to supporters.

This book proposes an institutionally embedded framework for analyzing voter choice. Voters, Kedar argues, are concerned with policy, and therefore their vote reflects post-electoral compromise (e.g. multi-party government), which dilutes their vote. This simple but overlooked principle allows Kedar to explain a broad array of seemingly unrelated electoral regularities.

Pasotti examines how cities suffering for decades from poor government made a transition to brand politics to break a cycle of inertia and usher in reform. The theory of brand politics shows mayors emulating marketing mavericks; citizens support mayors' brands because they seek to become carriers of the same values.

Using cases from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, this book explores pacted transitions to democracy, in which outgoing autocrats strike deals with dissidents, offering them the opportunity to participate in free elections in exchange for amnesty for crimes perpetrated under the ancien regime.

This book examines and evaluates various private initiatives to enforce fair labor standards within global supply chains. Through careful, empirically grounded analysis, it illustrates the mix of private and public regulation needed to address these complex issues in a global economy.

What drives politics in dictatorships? Svolik explores two fundamental conflicts that shape the politics of dictatorships - the problems of authoritarian control and authoritarian power-sharing - and shows how they account for key outcomes in dictatorships, including their institutions and policies, as well as the survival of leaders and regimes.

Many claim that Africa's long-ruling incumbents are able to stay in power because opposition politicians are ethnically divided. However, the main challenge for opposition politicians is securing the money needed to build electoral coalitions. Financial reforms enable businesspeople to start providing money to the opposition without fear of punishment.

The democratization of the national government is only the first step in diffusing democracy throughout a country's territory. After a national government is democratized, subnational authoritarian 'enclaves' often continue to deny rights to citizens of local jurisdictions. Gibson explains how subnational authoritarianism is part of normal democratic politics.

A new perspective on how the nation-state emerged and proliferated across the globe, accompanied by a wave of wars. Andreas Wimmer explores these historical developments using social science techniques of analysis and datasets that cover the entire modern world.

This book examines the causal impact of ideology through a comparative-historical analysis of three cases of 'post-imperial democracy': the early Third Republic in France (1870-86); the Weimar Republic in Germany (1918-34); and post-Soviet Russia (1992-2008).

Using multiple methods and original data, this book develops a theory of everyday politics with respect to rules - procedural politics - and applies it to European Union integration and politics. It paints a much fuller picture of the role of rules in political life than is available in most existing work.

This is a book about redistribution and inequality in political unions, a form of democracy that involves several levels of government and that encompasses about one third of the population living under democracy around the world.

An explanation of the rise of social movements and cycles of protest in autocracies, the conditions under which protest becomes rebellion and the impact on democratization. Based on a pioneer dataset, the book explains why religion plays a crucial role in the creation of independent popular movements in authoritarian regimes.

Examining a broad range of countries, time periods and policy areas, Gingrich helps readers make sense of the complexity of market reforms in the industrialized world. The use of innovative multi-case studies and in-depth interviews with senior policymakers enriches the debate and brings clarity to this multifaceted topic.

Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism studies distributive politics: how parties and governments use material resources to win elections.

This book argues that alien rule can become legitimate to the degree that it provides governance that is both effective and fair. Governance is effective to the degree that citizens have access to an expanding economy and fair to the degree that rulers act according to the strictures of procedural justice.

In this provocative and wide-ranging book, Ken Kollman examines the histories of the US government, the Catholic Church, General Motors, and the European Union as examples of federated systems that centralized power over time. He shows how their institutions became locked-in to intensive power in the executive.

In sub-Saharan Africa, property relationships around land and access to natural resources vary across localities, districts and farming regions. These differences produce patterned variations in relationships between individuals, communities and the state. This book analyzes the politics of land and the use of natural resources in Africa.

The rules governing hostile takeovers have been fiercely contested since the 1990s, but such struggles rarely took place in parliaments. This book studies these political battles in four countries - France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.