Studies in Comparative International Development

Haider, Erum A.; Siddiqui, Niloufer A.

doi: 10.1007/s12116-024-09424-4pmid: N/A

How do voters in ethnically polarized settings evaluate coethnic candidates in an environment of hybrid provision of public goods, especially where such hybrid provision includes links to criminal actors? In numerous urban settings around the world, local public goods provision involves a complex mix of private vendors, state services, and criminal actors. This paper explores how voters in Karachi, Pakistan evaluate candidates making distinct claims to water provision. We present findings from a survey experiment of over 2000 Karachi residents surveyed in 2021–2022. We find that while voters generally prefer coethnic candidates regardless of their ability to provide water, a non-coethnic candidate’s access to the state water bureaucracy can decrease the coethnic advantage and increase the credibility of a non-coethnic candidate. This is particularly the case among voters least satisfied with their water supply and most reliant on private sources of water. However, contrary to literature that finds that criminality can signal competence or the likelihood of goods and services being directed to coethnics, ties to the illegal water mafia do not offer either coethnic or non-coethnic candidates any additional advantage.

Hakiman, Kamran; Sheely, Ryan

doi: 10.1007/s12116-023-09415-xpmid: N/A

The past two decades have witnessed the rapid diffusion of participatory planning models, including Community-Driven Development and Participatory Budgeting. Despite enormous funding outlays, studies paint a mixed picture about whether and when these programs “work” to improve welfare, governance, or social change. To better understand these questions, our paper takes an in-depth approach to understanding the sub-national application of a single participatory planning intervention implemented across Northern Kenya, using qualitative process tracing to understand the mechanisms operating across five counties. Our findings suggest the potential for participatory planning interventions to succeed is contingent on three factors which are insufficiently understood by both practitioners and academics. (1) At the institutional level, participatory planning interventions need to address genuine governance gaps by fulfilling functions that are not met by formal or informal institutions. (2) The rule-based design of participatory institutions often requires adaptation at the sub-national level in response to contextual factors, and the success of this adaptation mediates whether rules function as intended. (3) Ground-level implementers exercise far more discretion than officially recognized during implementation, suggesting they function as a poorly understood source of variation between and within programs.

Smidt, Hannah; Johansson, Jessica; Richter, Thomas

doi: 10.1007/s12116-023-09423-xpmid: N/A

Existing research shows that the activity of independent civil society organizations (CSOs) is an important ingredient of democratization and democratic consolidation. Yet, what happens when governments impose restrictions on CSO activity? This manuscript investigates how restrictions on CSOs affect the quality of horizontal accountability institutions like parliaments and courts. CSOs monitor and mobilize against violations of democratic norms. Thus, if governments impose restrictions on CSO activity, they may face fewer barriers (i.e., less scrutiny and criticism) to dismantling horizontal checks and balances. In addition, when restrictions prevent CSOs from supporting horizontal accountability institutions (e.g., with monitoring and expertise), the latter’s ability to control and constrain governments likely declines. Our large-N cross-country analysis supports this argument, suggesting that the imposition of restrictions on CSOs diminishes the quality of horizontal accountability institutions. We examine alternative explanations (i.e., prior autocratization trends and the authoritarian nature of governments) and offer qualitative evidence from Kenya and Turkey to illustrate the expected causal pathways. Our results imply that a crackdown on CSOs serves as a warning sign of deteriorating horizontal oversight.

Cheang, Bryan

doi: 10.1007/s12116-023-09413-zpmid: N/A

Developmental state scholars argue that through “embedded autonomy”, state activism can steer society towards positive outcomes without capture by private interests. This paper questions this claim through a case study of such activism in Singapore. It argues that not only may rent-seeking have been encouraged by Singapore’s use of industrial policy but that such a policy goes hand in hand with attempts by state actors to create an economic culture that legitimises such behaviour. The wider implication drawn is that mission-oriented state activism may require extensive cultural engineering to foster consensus over the relevant “missions”, but this level of social penetration also increases the risk of private interests capturing the state in less visible ways.

Tyburski, Michael D.

doi: 10.1007/s12116-023-09390-3pmid: 37360792

Do international remittances increase government tax income in developing economies? This study investigates remittances’ relationship to revenue within Latin American countries. The author builds on recent micro-level research by conceptualizing households with remittances as a transnational dispersed interest group in the political economy of taxation. Remittances increase recipients’ wealth and decouple their well-being from domestic economic processes. Together, these effects suggest that remittances generate tax preferences that align more closely with promarket tax policies offered by the political right while decreasing the value of social protection expenditures. The author hypothesizes that these effects lead remittances to boost tax revenue when the right governs, but not the left. However, shifts to the left limit remittances' effect on revenue by decreasing income from direct taxes on wealth. Results from time-series error correction models, an event-study analysis, and twostage least squares models support these expectations.

Fazekas, Mihály; Hellmann, Olli

doi: 10.1007/s12116-023-09412-0pmid: N/A

By now, most political systems around the world hold regular multiparty elections of different quality and type. However, we know relatively little about the effect of elections on corruption, especially in high-discretion, public procurement contracts implementing development aid. To address this gap in the literature, we employ unmatched comparisons and matching estimators to analyze a global government contracting dataset that provides an objective proxy for corruption: the incidence of single bidding in competitive markets. We find that, all things being equal, corruption risks increase in the immediate pre-election period: single bidding is higher by 1.3–6.1% points. We demonstrate that the corruption-enhancing effect of elections is stronger under conditions of (i) high electoral competitiveness, (ii) medium-level party institutionalization, and (iii) “localized collective goods” clientelism.

Zhu, Hongshen

doi: 10.1007/s12116-024-09429-zpmid: N/A

Despite the lack of electoral accountability, China has built an expanding welfare system that is set to include most citizens. Why does China defy the conventional prediction of an exclusive authoritarian welfare state? This paper looks at the critical time when China first established its social security system in the 1990s and argues that the state adopts a “threat-driven strategy” where the redistribution effort varies with the expected collective action of economic losers. Analyzing an original granular county-level dataset of China’s laid-off workers and social security taxation, the paper finds that a group of newly emerged economic losers, precipitated by state policy, drives the local states’ efforts to redistribute. In particular, the number of laid-off state-owned enterprise workers explains 46% of the variations in social security collection among non-state-owned enterprises. Instrumental variable estimation, with legacy state-owned enterprises established in historical contingencies as the instrument for laid-off workers, shows consistent results. Further analysis on mechanisms demonstrates that layoffs lead to an increase in SOE protests, which in turn foster greater redistribution.

Aytaç, Selim Erdem; Steinberg, David

doi: 10.1007/s12116-023-09399-8pmid: N/A

Currency crises are the most common type of financial crisis in recent decades, but little is known about how the public views these events. This paper argues that voters’ perceptions of their economic self-interests in general, and their employment prospects in particular, influence their attitudes about currency crises and preferred policy responses. We hypothesize that individuals with high degrees of job insecurity will be more concerned about currency depreciation, more opposed to orthodox policy responses such as raising the interest rate, and more supportive of unorthodox policy responses, such as intensifying capital controls. Data from nationally representative surveys in two countries experiencing currency crises recently—Argentina and Turkey—support our argument. A follow-up survey experiment in Turkey, which randomly primed some respondents about deteriorating labor market conditions, provides further evidence. Overall, the results show that concerns about the labor market have a strong and systematic influence on how voters respond to currency crises.

Bonvecchi, Alejandro; Clerici, Paula

doi: 10.1007/s12116-024-09448-wpmid: N/A

The literature typically argues that legislative influence on trade policy is scant and reactive because trade policymaking power is largely delegated to the executive. Bridging the literatures on political economy and legislative politics, we analyze legislative activity on trade taxes in a setting in which delegated powers reverted to the legislature after decades under executive jurisdiction: the Argentine Chamber of Deputies. Our findings reveal that delegation is the prevailing strategy, legislators intervene prompted by economic shocks, and the contents of their initiatives are contingent to the effects of shocks on local economies. When appreciation rages or devaluation is insufficient, legislators representing export-oriented economies submit liberalizing bills, and those representing inward-oriented economies submit protectionist initiatives. Otherwise, delegation remains the norm and legislators strategically employ declarative bills to signal their preferred policies.

Csata, Zsombor; Hlatky, Roman; Liu, Amy H.

doi: 10.1007/s12116-024-09430-6pmid: N/A