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1511. PolicyWatch #1266: Jordanian Islamists and Municipal Elections: Confirmation of a Problematic Trend?

Author:
David Schenker
Publication Date:
07-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Jordanians go to the polls tomorrow to elect nearly 1,000 local representatives and 92 mayors. On their own, these elections are of minimal interest to Washington: municipalities have small budgets, limited responsibilities, and scant independence from the central government. But the voting comes just a month after the Hamas takeover of Gaza, during a spike in the violence in Iraq, and a week after a landslide victory for the Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Turkish national elections. Adding to the significance of the Jordanian ballot is the fact that, after boycotting the 2003 contest, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood's political party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), will participate in this year's elections. A potential IAF victory highlights growing concern that Islamists are on a political roll throughout the Middle East, and that Jordan may be vulnerable.
Topic:
Democratization, Government, Islam, and Politics
Political Geography:
Iraq, Washington, Middle East, Gaza, and Jordan

1512. PolicyWatch #1262: How Supreme Is Iran's Supreme Leader?

Author:
Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji
Publication Date:
07-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Reports that Ayatollah Ali Meshkini has either died or is on the brink of death shed light on the nature of power in Iran. Meshkini is speaker of the Assembly of Experts -- a body that, despite its traditionally minor role in Iranian politics, is constitutionally empowered to not only elect a new Supreme Leader if the post becomes vacant, but also to dismiss a sitting leader. Current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei cannot be pleased that this body may now be headed by deputy speaker Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, a former president known to be a wily comeback artist. Although Khamenei has taken full advantage of the constitution to make the Supreme Leader the ultimate arbiter of Iranian politics, that could change depending on his health and Rafsanjani's scheming.
Topic:
Government, Political Economy, and Politics
Political Geography:
Iran and Middle East

1513. PolicyWatch #1256: Terrorist Attacks in the United Kingdom: More Faces of al-Qaeda

Author:
Simon Henderson and Michael Jacobson
Publication Date:
07-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
There are fast-moving developments in the British hunt for the terrorist cell that tried to set off two car bombs in central London on June 29. Two men were arrested after they tried to crash a vehicle loaded with flammable material into a Glasgow airport terminal on June 30. And a man and woman were arrested yesterday when their vehicle was stopped on the major highway between London and Scotland. Houses have been searched in several parts of Britain, and the number detained rose to eight today, including one in an undisclosed foreign country.
Topic:
Government, Intelligence, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Britain, United Kingdom, Europe, and Scotland

1514. PolicyWatch #1252: In the Wake of the Hamas Coup: Rethinking America's 'Grand Strategy' for the New Palestinian Authority

Author:
Robert Satloff
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Hamas's military takeover of Gaza is the sort of clarifying act of violence that should trigger, among all relevant parties, a period of reassessment. So far, however, it is not apparent that the Bush administration has taken a critical look at the policies that failed -- in the pre-Hamas period -- to help develop the Palestinian Authority (PA) into a truly effective, accountable, transparent government, or -- in recent months -- to impede Hamas's rise or strengthen the forces arrayed against it. Before Washington proceeds too far down the path of propping up President Mahmoud Abbas and resuscitating Fatah without reflecting on how U.S. action (or inaction) contributed to the current situation, the administration should revisit the basic principles underlying U.S. relations with the PA.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
America, Washington, Palestine, and Gaza

1515. PolicyWatch #1248: Hamas's Coup and the Challenges Ahead for Fatah

Author:
Mohammad Yaghi and Ben Fishman
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Hamas's victory in Gaza last week was a military coup of Fatah's security forces -- not a Palestinian civil war involving the majority of each faction's supporters. Fatah's armed forces collapsed in the face of a long-planned, well-executed campaign targeting the headquarters and leadership of the faction's security organizations. The coup and the grisly violence that accompanied it reveal much about Hamas's politics and long-term objectives as a movement.
Topic:
Political Violence, Government, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Middle East and Gaza

1516. Angolan Progress and Prospects: A Conference on Development and Reconstruction

Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
On May 9, 2007, a conference and celebration were held honoring Angola Day. The organizers and supporters were the Africa Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS), the Angolan Embassy, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S.-Angola Chamber of Commerce, with further sponsorship by an array of Angolan and international companies. The conference sought to share progress, challenges and opportunities facing Angola, now in its fifth year of peace following a brutal 27-year civil war. The celebratory nature of the event was not limited to the reception and cultural entertainment which took place at the WWICS that day, but also reflected the social, economic and political progress in Angola over these five years. For example, panelists in the conference shared information regarding an ambitious rehabilitation program of social infrastructure, steady economic growth, stabilizing political institutions and improved security conditions. They further cited specific opportunities for partnership with the United States, through international cooperation, private investment and increased trade. Scheduled to hold their first legislative and presidential elections since the end of the civil war in 2002, Angola is poised to become “a model of post-conflict democratic transition, and has the resources—human capital and natural endowments—to be a regional and global leader in world affairs” (Jendayi Frazer, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.
Topic:
Development, Government, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Angola, and Khartoum

1517. Drugs, Civil War, and the Conditional Impact of the Economy on Democracy

Author:
Michael Coppedge, Angel Alvarez, and Lucas González
Publication Date:
10-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Theorizing about the influence of modernization on democracy is once again in vogue. Nevertheless, this theme faces an important obstacle: the leverage of modernization hypotheses is generally modest. Key modernization variables, especially per capita GDP, almost always explain part of the variance in democracy, but rarely more than half. Also, as one can see in certain Latin American cases, economic growth sometimes has a negative impact on democracy. This paper argues that the impact of economic growth varies from country to country for systematic, not random, reasons. Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) in a cross-regional sample of 108 countries from 1978 to 1999, the paper shows that it is crucial to distinguish between the short- term effect of per capita GDP growth within each country and the cross-national effect of long-term growth. A distinct causal mechanism is at work at each level of analysis. More precisely, the paper identifies four factors that condition the impact of economic growth on democracy: the existing political regime, the democratic experience of each country, the frequency of civil war, and the importance of drug trafficking in the domestic economy. Although other factors probably also condition the effect of the economy on democracy and democratization, the model used in this paper explains 82 percent of the variance in the sample, which is substantially greater than what is typically found in other studies of democratization. Consequently, this paper shows that it is necessary to continue to refine hypotheses about the conditional effect of the economy in order to improve conventional explanations of variation in levels of democracy, whether within one country or in comparative perspective.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and War on Drugs
Political Geography:
Latin America

1518. The Quality of Democracy in Latin America: Another View

Author:
Daniel H. Levine and Jose E. Molina
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Studies of democracy in Latin America have gone beyond attention to transitions and consolidation to a concern with developing reliable comparative assessments of the quality of democracy. This requires conceptualization of democracy in multi-dimensional terms; quality of democracy is a continuum that varies along a range of related dimensions: electoral decision, participation, responsiveness, accountability, and sovereignty. Working with these dimensions, an index of quality of democracy in Latin America is developed that provides for comparison between countries and for a richer analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the quality of democracy within each country. Appropriate data include expert assessments, aggregate statistics, and opinion surveys.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Latin America

1519. The Quality of Democracy in Small South American Countries: The Case of Paraguay

Author:
Diego Abente Brun
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper addresses the issue of the low quality of democracy in Paraguay. It defines the quality of democracy in terms of regime performance rather than regime nature, i.e. not in terms of how intense or weak its democratic characteristic are, but rather in terms of how legitimate, effective, and efficacious the regime is. The theoretical argument rests on the need to shift from the prevailing agency- paradigm to a structural paradigm. Thus, it focuses on the socio-economic matrix of an invertebrate society lacking vigorous collective actors as the cause of the persistence of widely clientelistic parties. In turn, it sees the hegemony of these parties as the cause of the prevalence of an extreme particularistic, pork-barrel, and volatile pattern of public policy which has produced since the beginning of the transition twenty years of stagnation, high levels of poverty and profound popular disenchantment. It ends with a brief examination of the emergence of Fernando Lugo as a chiliastic upsurge that could tatter the clientelistic structure and describes the current moment as kairotic.
Topic:
Democratization and Government
Political Geography:
South America and Paraguay

1520. From Patronage to Program: The Emergence of Party-Oriented Legislators in Brazil

Author:
Frances Hagopian, Carlos Gervasoni, and Juan Andres Moraes
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper explains the unanticipated emergence of party - oriented legislators and rising party discipline in Brazil since the early 1990s. We contend that deputies in Brazil have become increasingly party - oriented because the utilities of party - programmatic and patronage - based electoral strategies shifted with market reforms, which created a programmatic cleavage in Brazilian politics and diminished the resource base for state patronage. Based on an original survey of the Brazilian Congress, we introduce new measures of partisan campaigns, party polarization, and the values legislators attach to party program and voter loyalty. Regression analysis confirms that deputies who believe voters value party program run partisan, programmatic campaigns, and those in polarized parties and those who believe voters are loyal to the party are willing to delegate authority to party leaders and do not switch parties. Party polarization and the proximity of deputies' policy preferences to their party's mean explain discipline on 236 roll - call votes in the 51st legislature (1999 – 2001).
Topic:
Government and Politics
Political Geography:
Brazil and South America