jcp.gc.cuny.eduThe Journal of Comparative Politics

-- Skip to content 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 Journal of Comparative Politics 2019-09-08T22:07:34+00:00 Volume 52, Number 2, January 2020 Dina Bishara, Legacy Trade Unions as Brokers of Democratization? Lessons from Tunisia The Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) emerged as a major player in the country’s transition from authoritarianism. Existing explanations—focusing on authoritarian legacies, the degree of trade union autonomy from the state, and labor’s material incentives to support democratization—do not sufficiently account for the high-profile nature of the union’s political role in Tunisia’s transition. Instead, as this article argues, the importance of unions’ pre-authoritarian legacy is key to understanding the role of unions in the transition from authoritarian rule. If unions enter the regime formation stage with a history of political struggle and with strong organizational capacities, they are more likely to develop a degree of internal autonomy that makes it difficult for authoritarian incumbents to disempower them. The article employs a historical institutional approach and draws on fieldwork and interviews with labor activists in Tunisia. Jose Fernandez-Albertos and Alexander Kuo, Selling Austerity: Preferences for Fiscal Adjustment during the Eurozone Crisis What explains individual preferences for austerity during the eurozone crisis? To what extent are such preferences affected by the specific content of austerity policies or EU-related factors? To address these questions, we present new data and embedded experiments that test theories of austerity preferences, from a survey of a crisis-hit country, Spain. We find little support for austerity as conventionally measured, but such support can increase if specific reasons or benefits are made salient. The endorsement by the EU has no effect on austerity support, but support for spending wanes when tax increases and concerns about fiscal commitments to the EU are made salient. The results help understand how unpopular policies such as austerity might be sometimes palatable to large segments of the general public. Paasha Mahdavi and John Ishiyama, Dynamics of the Inner Elite in Dictatorships: Evidence from North Korea How does the circle of inner elites evolve over time in dictatorships? We draw on theories of authoritarian power-sharing to shed light on the evolution of politics in North Korea. Given challenges in collecting individual-level data in this context, we employ web-scraping techniques that capture inspection visits by the dictator as reported by state-run media to assemble network data on elite public co-occurrences. We test the durability of this network since Kim Jong-un’s rise to power in December 2011 to find suggestive evidence of elite purging. Our findings contribute to the broader literature on authoritarian elite dynamics and to subnational studies on power-sharing in communist states. Importantly, our approach helps bring the study of North Korean politics more firmly in the mainstream of political science inquiry. Wendy Pearlman, Host State Engagement, Socioeconomic Class, and Syrian Refugees in Turkey and Germany Refugees’ preflight class interacts with host state policies to shape refugees’ post-displacement class trajectories. This interaction affects whether refugees of different backgrounds experience mobility over time and how refugees of various backgrounds disperse over space. “Selective engagement” hosts that leave refugees to self-settle accentuate stratification insofar as refugees with capital can attain entrepreneurial success, poor refugees lack protection from further impoverishment, and middle-class professionals have both the means and motivation to try to migrate elsewhere. “Interventionist engagement” hosts lessen the gap between rich and poor both by attracting middle-class refugees and by imposing integration programs that further compress all refugees toward the middle. Demonstrating these arguments, analysis of Syrian refugees in Turkey and Germany illustrates a diaspora’s class-remaking in ways not attributable to displacement alone. Daniel C. Mattingly, Responsive or Repressive? How Frontline Bureaucrats Enforce the One Child Policy in China How do authoritarian states implement policies that curb individual freedom? In this article, I examine the implementation of the One Child Policy in China, which has had an enormous impact on Chinese society and yet has received little attention from political scientists. I argue that the success or failure of the policy hinged on using frontline bureaucrats to infiltrate society. Important theories suggest that bureaucratic penetration may increase bureaucrats’ responsiveness to citizens and decrease implementation of the law. Drawing on a unique dataset and natural experiment, I show the opposite to be true in China: a one standard deviation increase in bureaucratic penetration lowers over-quota births by 2 to 7 percentage points. There is suggestive evidence that bureaucrats leverage their social embeddedness to control society. The article shows how frontline bureaucrats beyond the police, military, or ruling party are key agents of repression and political control. Caitlin Andrews-Lee, The Politics of Succession in Charismatic Movements: Routinization versus Revival in Argentina, Venezuela, and Peru Scholars suggest that charismatic movements must institutionalize to survive beyond the death of the founder. Yet charismatic movements around the world that have maintained their personalistic nature have persisted or reemerged. This article investigates the conditions under which politicians can use their predecessors’ charismatic legacies to revive these movements and consolidate power. I argue that three conditions—the mode of leadership selection, the presence of a crisis, and the ability to conform to the founder’s personalistic nature—shape successors’ capacity to pick up their forefather’s mantle and restore the movement to political predominance. To demonstrate my theory, I trace the process through which some leaders succeeded while others failed to embody the founder’s legacy across three charismatic movements: Argentine Peronism, Venezuelan Chavismo, and Peruvian Fujimorismo. Alexander Lee, Incumbency, Parties, and Legislatures: Theory and Evidence from India Incumbent legislators in some developing countries are often thought to face an electoral disadvantage relative to challengers. This article traces this effect to high levels of centralization within the political parties and governments of these countries. In political systems dominated by party leaders, legislators face substantial formal and informal constraints on their ability to influence policy, stake positions, and control patronage, which in turn reduce their ability to build up personal votes. This theory is tested on a dataset of Indian national elections since 1977, using a regression discontinuity design to measure the effects of incumbency. Candidates less affected by centralization—those from less-centralized political parties and from parties not affected by restrictions on free parliamentary voting—have a low or non-existent incumbency disadvantage. Volume 52, Number 2, January 2020 Journal of Comparative Politics 2020-01-23T18:49:09+00:00 Volume 52, Number 1, October 2019 Nimmi Gowrinathan and Zachariah Mamp...