jcp.gc.cuny.eduThe Journal of Comparative Politics

for: Home About Subscriptions Access Online Manuscript Submission Submissions Data Acknowledgements Welcome to the Journal of Comparative Politics Comparative Politics, an international journal presenting scholarly articles devoted to the comparative analysis of political institutions and processes,communicates new ideas and research findings to social scientists, scholars, students, and public and NGO officials. The journal is indispensable to experts in universities, research organizations, foundations, embassies, and policymaking agencies throughout the world. Read the journal online here . Welcome to the Journal of Comparative Politics Corby, Jennifer 2019-09-08T22:07:34+00:00 Volume 56, Issue 3 Pearce Edwards, Religious Leaders and Resistance to Repression: The Bishops Opposed to Argentina’s Dirty War Can religious leaders who oppose state violence reduce its use? Communal elites, such as religious leaders, may oppose human rights violations. This article argues that these leaders, part of institutions embedded in local communities and with influence based on traditional power, reduce repression when they oppose dictatorships. The argument’s main implication is tested in Argentina during the Dirty War of its 1976–1983 military dictatorship, using original archival data on the country’s Catholic bishops. Opposed bishops are associated with reduced disappearances and killings. A variety of evidence is consistent with opposed bishops taking two types of actions to resist repression: assisting likeminded local agents and participating in human rights advocacy campaigns. The findings point to the importance of influential civil society actors in reducing state violence. Mariana Giusti-Rodríguez, Shaping Ethnoracial Identities: State-Society Relations and Programmatic Differentiation in the Andes Under what circumstances do ethnoracial groups become programmatically differentiated? This article argues that ethnoracial programmatic differentiation results from major transformations in groups’ access to state power. Access to state power conditions ethnoracial groups’ perceptions of the state and their support for state-centric programmatic policies. As historically-excluded groups gain access to power, and historically-advantaged ones lose theirs, programmatic differentiation increases, the product of shifting relationships with the state. I evaluate this argument using survey data from the Andean region and demonstrate that ethnoracial groups have become programmatically differentiated where the indigenous have recently gained political power, but not elsewhere despite widespread structural inequalities and extensive indigenous organizational capacity. The findings shed light on why ethnoracialized preferences vary across contexts in unexpected ways. Calla Hummel and V. Ximena Velasco-Guachalla, Activists, Parties, and the Expansion of Trans Rights in Bolivia Bolivia prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and passed a ground-breaking gender identity law. These laws had little support among voters and passed along with heteronormative measures. Why did activists succeed in proposing and passing legislation that most voters did not support? Why were Bolivia’s advances in LGBTQ+ rights accompanied by heteronormative laws? We argue that parties with deep ties to social movements are more likely to advance legislation that expands LGBTQ+ rights than other parties and that contradictory laws emerge where both organized religion and LGBTQ+ activists are party constituents. We describe how Bolivian trans activists leveraged their access to ruling party legislators, using interviews with activists and officials, and briefly discuss the cases of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Colombia. Merete Bech Seeberg and Michael Wahman, How Does Primary Election Manipulation Affect the Selection of Women Candidates? Evidence from Malawi How does manipulation of primary elections affect the selection of women candidates for parliament? The underrepresentation of women in politics is a well-researched global phenomenon. However, as most work focuses on general elections, we overlook the disadvantages that women face in the selection process. Specifically, primary elections often provide ample room for manipulation. We argue that manipulation skews electoral contests in favor of candidates with material and inter-personal resources, who are more likely to be men. We collect unique data via on-the-ground observation of 119 primary election rounds (featuring 316 aspirants) in Malawi’s 2019 parliamentary election and interview candidates to shed light on hitherto uninvestigated internal party primaries. We show that while women running in free and fair primaries were more likely to win nominations than men, their chances were substantially reduced where primaries were flawed. The quantitative findings are corroborated by qualitative accounts of the gendered effect of primary-day manipulation in party primaries. The results have implications for debates on descriptive representation, electoral integrity, and political parties. Eleanor Knott, Ethnonationalism or a Financial-Criminal Incentive Structure? Explaining Elite Support in Crimea for Russia’s Annexation Russia’s annexation of Crimea occurred after twenty years of relative peace and the apex (and failure) of pro-Russian sentiments within Crimea. Annexation is surprising for Putin’s willingness to pursue such risky actions, but also because it required elite support within Crimea. This article uses process tracing to test ethnonationalism in explaining support for Russia’s annexation against a rival explanation focusing on the role of criminality and crime (financial-criminal incentive structure). By exposing how and which elites defected in Crimea, the article demonstrates that elite breakage and realignments occurred within a financial-criminal incentive structure to motivate engagement in annexation. In turn, this article discusses its broader implications for understanding Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and the politics of conflict, nationalism, and the wider former Soviet Union. Elissa Berwick, Beyond Secession: Substate Nationalism and Support for Redistribution in Spain This article explores how and why substate nationalism shapes support for redistribution. An experiment embedded in an original survey reveals that in Spanish regions with extensive substate nationalist mobilization, preferences for redistribution vary based on the proposed boundaries of redistribution. In this context, individuals have preferences regarding where redistribution will occur, and not just on how much there will be. The results provide the first micro-level evidence for how preferences for redistribution depend on the geographic boundaries of a proposed policy and why mobilized group identities interact with those preferences to determine support for redistribution. The findings suggest that substate nationalist mobilization has significant implications for policy preferences beyond secession. Volume 56, Issue 3 jmcorby 2024-02-05T21:28:17+00:00 Volume 56, Number 2, January 2024 Federico Fuchs, Competition, Cooperation, and Influence in the Informal Economy: Interest Representation in Informal Markets in Mexico City This article proposes that the specific conditions under which collective action happens in informal markets generate a non-linear relation between organizational density (the number of organizations representing a single constituency) and effective claim-making around common objectives, unlike the expectations of standard theories tailored to organizational activity in the formal sector. Informal workers’ capacity to demand resources from the government is best served by intermediate levels of organizational density, when organizations experience enough competition to make them responsive to their constituencies, but not so much that internal strife undermines their effectiveness in...