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A new understanding of the causes and consequences of incomplete property rights in countries across the world.
Provides an innovative theory of regime transitions and outcomes, and tests it using extensive evidence between 1800 and today.
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 argues that - in terms of institutional design, the allocation of power and privilege, and the lived experiences of citizens - democracy often does not restart the political game after displacing authoritarianism. Democratic institutions are frequently designed by the outgoing authoritarian regime to shield incumbent elites from the rule of law and give them an unfair advantage over politics and the economy after democratization. Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy systematically documents and analyzes the constitutional tools that outgoing authoritarian elites use to accomplish these ends, such as electoral system design, legislative appointments, federalism, legal immunities, constitutional tribunal design, and supermajority thresholds for change. The study provides wide-ranging evidence for these claims using data that spans the globe and dates from 1800 to the present. Albertus and Menaldo also conduct detailed case studies of Chile and Sweden. In doing so, they explain why some democracies successfully overhaul their elite-biased constitutions for more egalitarian social contracts.
A rigorous and comprehensive account of recent democratic transitions around the world From the 1980s through the first decade of the twenty-first century, the spread of democracy across the developing and post-Communist worlds transformed the global political landscape. What drove these changes and what determined whether the emerging democracies would stabilize or revert to authoritarian rule? Dictators and Democrats takes a comprehensive look at the transitions to and from democracy in recent decades. Deploying both statistical and qualitative analysis, Stephen Haggard and Robert Kaufman engage with theories of democratic change and advocate approaches that emphasize political and institu...
Great cases are those judicial decisions around which the common law develops. This book explores eight exemplary cases from the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia that show the law as a living, breathing and down-the-street experience. It explores the social circumstances in which the cases arose and the ordinary people whose stories influenced and shaped the law as well as the characters and institutions (lawyers, judges and courts) that did much of the heavy lifting. By examining the consequences and fallout of these decisions, the book depicts the common law as an experimental, dynamic, messy, productive, tantalizing and bottom-up process, thereby revealing the diverse and uncoordinated attempts by the courts to adapt the law to changing conditions and shifting demands. Great cases are one way to glimpse the workings of the common law as an untidy but stimulating exercise in human judgment and social accomplishment.
In order to attract readers, it was not uncommon for magical texts of the 16th century to take on the name of a notable figure. Such is the case with The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus, whose secrets are, in fact, a compilation from a number of different sources by an anonymous author who was, according to editors Best and Brightman, probably one of Albertus Magnus' followers.
Rather than an unintended by-product of poor state capacity, weak political and legal institutions are often weak by design.
The late twentieth century witnessed the birth of an impressive number of new democracies in Latin America. This wave of democratization since 1978 has been by far the broadest and most durable in the history of Latin America, but many of the resulting democratic regimes also suffer from profound deficiencies. What caused democratic regimes to emerge and survive? What are their main achievements and shortcomings? This volume offers an ambitious and comprehensive overview of the unprecedented advances as well as the setbacks in the post-1978 wave of democratization. It seeks to explain the sea change from a region dominated by authoritarian regimes to one in which openly authoritarian regimes are the rare exception, and it analyzes why some countries have achieved striking gains in democratization while others have experienced erosions. The book presents general theoretical arguments about what causes and sustains democracy and analyses of nine compelling country cases.
6 Party Government and Responsiveness: James A. Stimson