Dictatorships have dominated global politics for hundreds of years, from the pharaohs of Egypt to the absolute monarchs of Europe. Though democracy has since spread to much of the world, about 40% of today’s countries are still ruled by dictatorship. And yet, compared with democracies, we know very little about how dictatorships work, who the key political actors are, and where decision making powers lie. Political processes are opaque, and information is often intentionally distorted. Political survival depends not on maintaining the favor of voters, as in democracies, but on securing the backing of a considerably smaller coalition of supporters. The absence of a reliable third party to enforce compromises among key players means that power-sharing deals lack credibility, and the threat of forced ouster is omnipresent. Uncertainty pervades authoritarian politics.
Modern autocrats respond to this uncertain environment in a variety of ways. They use political parties, legislatures, elections, and other institutions typically associated with democracies to lessen their risk of overthrow. Despite the façade of democracy, these institutions are key components of most autocrats’ survival strategies; those that incorporate them last longer in power than those that do not. The specific ways in which autocratic institutions are used and the extent to which they can constrain leadership choices to prevent consolidation of power into the hands of a single individual, however, vary enormously from one dictatorship to the next. Better understanding the conditions that push autocracies down a path of collegial versus strongman rule remains a critical task, particularly given that the latter is associated with more war, economic mismanagement, and resistance to democratization.
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Autocracy
Erica Frantz
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Autocratic Regimes and Foreign Policy
Marianne Kneuer
The foreign policy of autocratic regimes reflects the research interest in the international behavior and decision making of domestic actors in nondemocratic regimes. The regime type (its nature, structure, leadership constellation, legitimation strategies, relation between leadership and public) thus is presumed to have explanatory power for the foreign policy actions and decisions of autocratic actors.
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Bahrain: The Army and the Dynamics of State-Society Relations
Laurence Louër
In contrast with some of its Gulf neighbors, Bahrain cannot develop a more socially embedded military institution that would be the engine of an inclusive nation-building process. This is because of the peculiar nature of its state–society relations, which are plagued by mutual distrust between the ruling Al Khalifa family, who hail from the country’s Sunni minority, and a great part of the Shia majoritarian population. As a result, the security apparatus, and the army in particular, recruits almost exclusively from the ruling family, its Sunni tribal allies, and foreigners. Totally insulated from the Shia society, the militaries never participated, nor will ever participate, in mass politics, which have been mostly driven by Shia-dominated protests. The noncompromise option taken by the incumbents following the mass protest of 2011 has entailed a shift toward a hard form of authoritarianism in which the security apparatus has emerged as a key actor of political control. The regime is increasingly militarized as the Al Khalifa militaries have acquired a growing weight in the politics of dynastic factionalism, with the militaries now being in crucial positions to influence not only the kingdom’s policies but also the internal balances within the ruling dynasty.
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Banking Regulation in and for Crisis
Lydie Cabane and Martin Lodge
This chapter deals with a case of radical regulatory innovation as a result of the financial crisis of 2007–2009. Since the financial crisis of 2007–2009, the question of how to manage banking crises has risen in prominence. The considerable financial, social, and political consequences of various governments’ rescue packages established demands for creating more orderly ways of dealing with bank failure, reducing the exposure of states and the taxpayer. Consequently, considerable institutional innovation over the 2010s has led to new banking crisis management mechanisms, including new organizations, new legal regimes, and a new profession, in particular in the European Union context. The emergence of an explicit European banking crisis management has to be understood within the context of different modes of transboundary crisis management and in relation to the various rationales and accounts of bank crisis management experiences. Before the financial crisis, the emerging European regime was characterized by an absence of formal crisis prevention and management powers. Since then, banking crisis management has witnessed the rise of new institutions that illustrate broader trends in crisis management, namely the growing importance of planning and preparation rather than actual firefighting. Besides, the banking crisis management regime is shaped by deep underlying tensions that are shared by multilevel crisis management regimes more generally. To explore these issues, this chapter sets out the rationale for regulating for “orderly failure,” provides for a brief account of the emergence of the EU’s Single Resolution Mechanism, before turning to unresolved, and arguably irresolvable tensions that exist in multi-level crisis management in the case of banking.
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The Banking Union in Europe
Lucia Quaglia
The banking union is considered to be one of the main steps in economic integration in the European Union. Given the rather recent establishment of this policy, academic research on the banking union does not have a long lineage, yet it is an area of bourgeoning academic enquiry. There are three main “waves” of research on the banking union in political science, which have mostly proceeded in a chronological order. The first wave of scholarly work focused on the “road” to banking union, from the breaking out of the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area in 2010 to the agreement on the blueprint for the banking union in 2012, explaining why it was set up. The second wave of literature explained how the banking union was set up and took an “asymmetric” shape, whereby banking supervision was transferred to the European Central Bank (ECB); however, banking resolution partly remained at the national level, whereas other components of the banking union, namely, a common deposit guarantee scheme and a common fiscal backstop, were not set up. The third wave of research discussed the functioning of the banking union, its effects and defects. The banking union has slowly brought about significant changes in the banking systems of the member states of the euro area and in government–business relations in the banking sector, even though these effects have varied considerably across countries.
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Belgium and the European Union
Edith Drieskens
Belgium is one of the six founding members of European integration, but it is often seen as a special one. In both policy and research, the country is widely known as the “heart of Europe.” It even sells itself to the outside world in this way. This metaphor has a double meaning, a literal and a figurative one. First, Belgium’s capital, Brussels, qualifies as the unofficial capital of the European Union. This meaning is strongly supported by facts, with the city hosting the most numerous and the most important institutions. The second meaning requires more detailed consideration. Indeed, and second, Belgium is perceived to be the most European of all European countries, even prepared to exchange sovereignty for supranationalism at any time and any price. A closer look at data, decisions, and developments shows, however, that while support for European integration is widespread, it is not omnipresent either in time or in place. Particularly in Flanders, the northern part of the country, support has been less obvious than elsewhere.
Indeed, to understand Belgium and/in the European Union, one also has to understand the functioning of Belgium as a federal state composed of communities and regions, thus as a system of multilevel governance. While it is not the only federation among European Union member states, it uniquely combines a wide variety of federal characteristics. Most importantly here, the gradual process of federalization that Belgium has experienced has given the federated entities a strong voice in European Union decision-making. Member states still need to speak with one voice, however, resulting in a complex system of coordination and representation. The possibilities and realities of this system have attracted quite a lot of scholarly interest. The same goes for the rather fundamental question of whether the European Union and federated entities should be seen as unintended partners in the hollowing out of the federal state or whether the opposite holds true and the European Union is coming to Belgium’s rescue. The jury is still out on this, though the answer seems to be growing more and more complex as time passes.
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Benin and Togo: Loyalist Stacking and Rival Security Forces
Julien Morency-Laflamme
Benin and Togo’s postcolonial histories have been shaped by the actions of military personnel. In both cases, governments were either placed into power or toppled by the military. This trend ended in Benin after 1991, when the military returned to the barracks. In Togo, as of 2020, Faure Gnassingbé’s government still relies on the armed forces to remain in power.
To understand this path divergence, it is necessary to look at the regimes that arose in 1967 in Togo and 1972 in Benin. After years of coup cycles and failed civilian or military governments, two leaders—Mathieu Kérékou in Benin and Étienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma in Togo—established stable military governments. In order to end coup cycles, both leaders put in place coup-proofing measures that profoundly influenced the composition of the armed forces of their respective countries. In Benin, the Kérékou government implemented a series of measures to heighten divisions among the armed forces and to preclude the coordination of rivals. In Togo, the Eyadéma government filled the army with those from the leader’s ethnic group and pushed out any rivals.
While both strategies were effective, as no successful coups were staged in either country after the early 1970s, they also influenced each government’s ability to rely on their armed forces to defend the standing regime. In Benin, the Kérékou government fell, as it could not rely on the armed forces to quell a civic resistance campaign, while in Togo, the Eyadéma government could count on military personnel to crush a similar campaign. Consequently, the 2020 Togolese government is still ruled by the Eyadéma clan and relies on ethnically stacked armed forces to maintain its power. In Benin, a new civilian government has started the process of reprofessionalizing the armed forces.
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Bolivia and the Challenges of a Plurinational Democracy
Waltraud Queiser Morales
Bolivia is in the process of consolidating 36 years of democracy amid important reforms and challenges. Despite a history of colonialism, racist oppression of the indigenous majority, and a national revolution and military reaction, the democratic transition to civilian rule and “pacted” electoral democracy among traditional political parties was established in 1982. The governments of pacted democracy failed to fully incorporate all of Bolivia’s citizens into the political process and imposed a severe neoliberal economic model that disproportionately disadvantaged the poor and indigenous. The constitutional popular participation reforms of 1994–1995 altered the party-dominated pacted democracy and opened up the political system to the unmediated and direct participation of indigenous organizations and popular social movements in local and national elections. Grassroots political mobilization and participation by previously marginalized and excluded indigenous groups and social movements, and the election of their candidates into office increased significantly. Indigenous and social movement protests erupted in the Cochabamba Water War in 2000 against the multinational Bechtel Corporation, and in the Gas War in 2003 against the export and exploitation of Bolivia’s natural gas. These mass demonstrations resulted in the turnover of five presidents in five years. The social and political agitation culminated in the game-changing, democratic election in December 2005 of Juan Evo Morales Ayma, as Bolivia’s first indigenous-heritage president.
In office for 14 years, longer than all previous presidents, Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism party launched the “Refounding Revolution,” and passed the new Constitución Política del Estado (CPE), the progressive reform constitution that established a multicultural model of plurinational democracy. The Morales-MAS administration provided unprecedented continuity of governance and relative stability. However, amid charges of interference, relations deteriorated with the United States. And disputes erupted over regional and indigenous autonomy, and extractive economic development in the protected lands of native peoples, especially over the proposed road through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (Territorio Indígena Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure, TIPNIS). These conflicts pitted highlanders against lowlanders, and divided indigenous organizations and social movements, and the government’s coalition of supporters. Contested term limits for the presidency created another acute and ongoing challenge. President Morales’s determination to run for re-election in 2019, despite constitutional restrictions, further tested the process of change and the resilience of Bolivia’s indigenous and social movement-based democracy.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina: Unifying Armed Forces in a Divided State
Danijela Dudley
Bosnia and Herzegovina emerged as an independent state in 1995 after a bloody civil war that accompanied the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The new state faced the task of democratizing its political system and constructing its civil–military relations in the context of postconflict reconstruction and reconciliation, while working within the challenging parameters established by the Dayton Peace Agreement. In order to maintain a unified state of Bosnia and Herzegovina but at the same time create conditions in which Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs could coexist, the international community, which directed the terms of the Dayton Peace Agreement, divided the state internally into two entities and allocated public offices equally among the three ethnic groups, creating thus a convoluted power-sharing structure which continues to dominate the country’s political developments. In addition, the terms of the peace agreement established an extensive presence of the international community to oversee and to a large extent dictate the country’s postwar reforms and implementation of various aspects of the peace agreement. As a result of the context in which it reached statehood, the terms of the peace agreement, and regional circumstances, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s civil–military relations since independence have been shaped by three factors: sustained ethnic divisions among the three constituent peoples; continued, and sometimes forceful, presence of the international community; and the country’s desire for international integration, particularly potential membership in the European Union and NATO.
For almost a decade after the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina lacked state-level defense institutions. In fact, the Dayton Peace Agreement allowed the three ethnic groups to maintain their wartime armed forces, leading to the maintenance of three separate militaries, each commanded and controlled by the corresponding ethnic group. Only after a decade of separate existence were the armed forces united and central institutions for their control established. This unification, however, would not have been possible without the international community’s actions and incentives. The continued presence of the Office of the High Representative, coupled with the country’s desire to satisfy the conditions of membership in the European Union and NATO, have led to the establishment of formal institutional structures for democratic civil–military relations and the unification of its ethnic-based armed forces into one military force. At the same time, while the armed forces have been unified and formal institutional structures for civilian control over the armed forces established, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s civil–military relations have yet to be classified as democratic because the formal powers of the civilian leadership have yet to be fully realized.
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Boundary Organizations: Intermediaries in Science–Policy Interactions
Anna Wesselink and Robert Hoppe
Scientific knowledge is often not used in policymaking, even when the aim of the research is to produce policy-relevant results and these are communicated clearly and timely. The problem of the discrepancy between scientific outcomes and usable knowledge for policymaking is often labeled “science–policy gap.” Boundary organizations “bridge” this gap. Boundary organizations are intermediary organizations that produce information that is useful in policymaking and at the same time qualify as scientific (here this includes all academic research, including humanities and social sciences). However, boundary organizations are not just “knowledge brokers” that reconcile a demand (by policy makers) for knowledge with the supply (by academics) of knowledge. The knowledge-brokering perspective on science–policy interaction assumes that parcels of knowledge produced by academics are transmitted unchanged to policy makers, along a linear pathway of knowledge transfer from academia to policy makers.
Several decades of close study of science–policy interactions has revealed that the production of policy advice cannot realistically be described in terms of clear boundaries between science and politics, nor can it be conceived as linear knowledge transfer leading to knowledge use. The production of policy-relevant information requires mutual engagement by scientists and policy makers in processes of knowledge co-production. Through the co-production process other concerns than purely scientific ones, such as political acceptability, are integrated in the result. Boundary organizations are sites where this co-production is institutionalized. Boundary organizations engage in quality and relevance assessments of existing scientific research and the production of policy advice reports, but also the design of innovative policy instruments and commissioning of new research and the evaluation of policy impacts of prior output. These activities are labeled “boundary work.” They are inherently tricky because they require a balancing act between scientific credibility and policy usefulness. Science and politics are normally demarcated spheres with different procedures and quality criteria. Boundary organizations endeavor to coordinate these apparently incompatible demands through boundary work.
Boundary organizations are often presented as “silver bullet” that will solve all frictions and frustrations in science–policy interactions. However, the extent to which boundary organizations can fulfill such expectations depends on several factors: the (inter)national political culture regarding the status and role of science in policymaking, the culture of the policy domain regarding the same, the characteristics of the policy problem itself, and the availability of boundary working skills. Conversely, in many cases the time-consuming and sensitive creation of boundary organizations is not necessary. By extension, it is not possible to define “best practice” on boundary organizations or boundary work. What works is highly context dependent, but also time-dependent, so changes with time.
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Bounded Rationality and Cognitive Limits in Political Decision Making
Brooke N. Shannon, Zachary A. McGee, and Bryan D. Jones
Bounded rationality conceives of people engaging in politics as goal oriented but endowed with cognitive and emotional architectures that limit their abilities to pursue those goals rationally. Political institutions provide the critical link between micro- and macro-processes in political decision-making. They act to (a) compensate for those bounds on rationality; (b) make possible cooperative arrangements not possible under the assumptions of full or comprehensive rationality; and (c) fall prey to the same cognitive and emotional limits or canals that individual humans do. The cognitive limitations that hamper individuals are not only replicated at the organizational level but are in fact causal.
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British Crisis Management in a European and Regional Context
John Connolly and Dominic Elliott
In a globalized world, national-level policymakers make decisions, often during times of crisis and uncertainty, which have implications for neighboring territories. Britain is an example of a nation state that has had to accommodate such a multi-level context in the management of crises. What is clear is that the processes of crisis management rely heavily on the effectiveness and strength of policy relationships at multiple levels of governance. Managing and coordinating crises in these contexts represents a challenge for national crisis managers as these complex governance landscapes produce uncertainties and can reveal ambiguities when it comes to identifying “who” is the dominant crisis manager. For example, the challenges of global health threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, highlight how modern governance arrangements breed vulnerabilities for states due to the interconnection of infrastructures and systems. The lack of clarity with regards to who is accountable for the performance of crisis management approaches within complex government environments open up windows of opportunity for blame and ideological games to take effect. Crisis management research highlights that the effectiveness of transnational crisis management depends on policy relationships within and between networks, including the extent to which national technocratic actors feature in the political decisions that affect crisis governance arrangements. Policy relationships themselves are also shaped by the contexts and dynamics of regional and territorial governance, Europeanization processes, and the internationalization of crisis management—all of which produce their own political tensions for the workings and autonomy of national crisis managers. Understanding such complexities is key for researching British crisis management processes.
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Bureaucracy in Latin America
John Polga-Hecimovich
The bureaucracy is a central body in the effective functioning of democracy and oversight of the rule of law, and knowledge of how public agencies interact with politics and effect policy implementation is crucial in understanding the “black box” of the state. However, this body of non-elected officials can only fulfill its mandate and achieve good governance if it meets certain conditions, such as technical expertise, a clear organizational hierarchy, meritocratic recruitment for personnel staffing, as well as political support, resources, and the autonomy to devise solutions based on expertise. Unfortunately for Latin America, its bureaucratic agencies have seldom enjoyed these conditions. Instead, public administration in the region has been characterized by patronage appointments, patrimonialism, and a weak capacity to execute public policies.
Yet this blanket depiction of the Latin American bureaucracy obscures a great deal more diversity—as well as the fact that Latin American bureaucrats and public agencies are more dynamic and responsive than they are often portrayed. To begin, the size and role of the public administration have evolved constantly throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, growing under statist development policies of the mid-20th century before shrinking under neoliberalism in the 1990s and again growing during the 2000s in some countries. Moreover, the quality of the bureaucracy to efficiently provide services and implement policy varies by country, over time, and even within countries among agencies. This means that there is also variation in the scope and quality of the bureaucracy’s chief functions of policymaking, regulation, and implementation. In fact, politicians and bureaucrats in the region have found a number of creative solutions to agency weakness. Moving forward, politicians can guarantee even better bureaucratic performance by addressing some enduring challenges, such as public sector corruption and an institutional setup that favors short-term policymaking.
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Bureaucracy, the Bureaucratic Politics Model, and Decision Making During Crisis
Hayden J. Smith
To understand how policy is made, one must understand not only the individuals who make the decisions, but also the role of bureaucratic politics and the goals of the institutions themselves. Graham Allison’s classic Essence of Decision created the bureaucratic politics model and was the catalyst for a rich research agenda on decision-making. Using Allison as a starting point, researchers have expanded the understanding of the role of bureaucracies in deliberation and decision-making, particularly during times of crisis. Typically, institutions fill the day-to-day “politics as usual” role of decision-making, but their actions during crisis, by definition an abnormal event, allow bureaucracies to pursue their own objectives by way of a new opportunity to exert influence and to reshape the power structure of the political landscape.
The research agenda on individuals and decision-making has also made great strides since the 1970s and helps to illuminate when the bureaucratic politics model has great explanatory power and when it is less useful. The level of influence bureaucracies have is dependent upon where they sit within the system and how they are utilized by the executive branch of government. Leaders, such as the President of the United States, hold a significant amount of power, and the ways in which they hold onto power, or allocate it to other actors, which is a function of their leadership style, can either empower or disempower bureaucracies. In other words, the importance of bureaucracies connected to the executive branch of government fluctuates with an individual’s personality characteristics and leadership style. Specifically, a leader’s personal need for power, their expertise, and their personal interest in policymaking, as well as their cognitive complexity, the amount of differing information they want and are capable of cognitively processing, influence the way in which the leader will delegate decision-making. Leaders like Lyndon B. Johnson relied heavily upon expert advisers and allocated decision-making to lower-level agencies. Alternatively, some leaders (e.g., Richard Nixon) have experience, particularly in foreign policy, and believe they are their own expert adviser; thus, they are involved in nuanced decision-making and rely upon only a very small number of advisers (in Nixon’s case, just Henry Kissinger).
A common normative criticism of bureaucratic politics, and group decision-making in general, is the collective cognitive conformity, commonly known as groupthink. The general assumption is that individuals within a group will seek conformity and avoid the conflict caused by raising alternatives during policy deliberation. However, bureaucratic politics mitigates groupthink by bringing in a greater number of actors with differing goals and perspectives, making deliberation more open. Again, this is significantly influenced by how the leader utilizes advisers and their respective bureaucracies. Where Kennedy was very open-minded and actively sought various perspectives during the Cuban missile crisis, George W. Bush created an insulated decision-making environment after 9/11 and leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
As society continues to change, particularly with regard to reliance upon technological adaptations, such as nuclear energy, new crises will occur. These crises will require the cooperation of more bureaucracies and occasionally new bureaucracies. Through these crises, bureaucracies will compete for political influence, and the power structure of the political landscape will inevitably change and affect policy decision-making.
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Burkina Faso: Military Responses to Popular Pressures
Daniel Eizenga
Burkina Faso’s military holds an important place in politics. It has intervened in Burkina Faso’s politics, temporarily taking power seven times, first in 1966 and most recently in 2015. Military officers have long held many of the most prominent political offices, and military coups d’état have been the most common method of transferring political power in Burkina Faso. Military interventions have typically addressed moments of political failure and widespread civil unrest. Political agitation from different groups in civil society has pressured every government that has come to power, and the government’s ability to manage these popular pressures has been a key feature in the military’s relationship with any given regime. This was particularly the case in the 1980s, when ideological divisions within the military resulted in four coups d’état, but it was also of consequential importance during Burkina Faso’s 2014–2015 political transition.
The 27-year rule of Blaise Compaoré set in motion a process of institutional reform that expanded civilian authority over the administration of the military. However, it also saw the rise of preferential treatment for certain units of the military, in particular the presidential guard, which provided protection to the regime during moments of civil unrest until 2014. The gradual liberalization of the political system culminated in unprecedented civil unrest in 2014, and Compaoré was ousted from power in what is commonly referred to as a popular insurrection. The political transition following the events of 2014 led to the first peaceful transfer of power between civilian governments in Burkina Faso’s history and marked a potential shift in the military’s relationship with politics. The military’s political role in Burkina Faso often has been dictated by popular pressures on the political system, but gradual democratic reforms during the 1990s and 2000s helped to inculcate norms of civilian control over the military. While much remains to be seen about the future of Burkina Faso’s military in politics, the opportunity for the country’s political institutions to manage popular pressures on its government may indicate a new era of civilian governance and at least the possibility of reducing the military’s interference in politics.
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Cambodia: Armed Forces Under Personalized Control
Paul W. Chambers
The evolution of Cambodia’s armed forces has been incremental yet highly disjointed, reflecting the country’s post–World War II history itself. At the same time, there has been a legacy of military authoritarianism in Cambodia. Using the framework of historical institutionalism, this chapter looks at the evolution of Cambodia’s armed forces across time. The chapter points to a 1979 critical juncture which affected the military’s organizational history. It also stresses that especially since 1997 the armed forces has become increasingly concentrated under the personalized control of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The military in 2020 appears as a mechanism of Hun Sen’s, doing his bidding and following his preferences.
As such the armed forces in Cambodia should be viewed as an interventionist military that has acted as the junior partner in an asymmetrical relationship with Hun Sen. With Hun Sen’s 2018 appointment of his son Hun Manet to command the army, concurrent with being deputy supreme commander of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, it appears as though the military is becoming even further centralized under the Hun family. As a result, although civilian control over the military technically exists in Cambodia today, it is not an institutionalized, accountable form of control, but rather an unofficial, tool of violent power for the Prime Minister.
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The Capacity of Decentralization to Promote Democracy and Development in Africa
Amy R. Poteete
The multifaceted nature of decentralization, democracy, and development renders relationships among them ambivalent and conditional. It is certainly possible to decentralize in ways that foster local democracy and improvements in socioeconomic well-being. The empirical record, however, is mixed, and not only because the phenomena of interest have multiple dimensions and are open to interpretation. Whatever its form, decentralization is inherently political. In the African context, the extent and form of decentralization has been influenced by international support, the challenges of extending state authority in relatively young multi-ethnic states, and, increasingly, electoral considerations.
By the 1980s, the broad consensus in the constructive developmental role of a strong central state that had characterized the immediate postwar period gave way to a growing perception of statist approaches as impeding democracy and, especially, development. For some, decentralization implied an expansion of popular participation that promised greater sensitivity to local knowledge and more responsiveness to local concerns. Others saw decentralization as part of a broader agenda of scaling back the central state, reducing its role, its size, and its costs. Yet others saw decentralization as part of a strategy of achieving sustainable natural resource management or political stability in post-conflict societies. By the early 1990s, a wide variety of international organizations were promoting decentralization and providing both financial and technical support for decentralization reforms.
In the African context, political decisions about whether and how to decentralize reflect the continued salience of ethno-regional identities and non-state authorities, especially traditional or customary leaders. Incumbents may decentralize because they hope to consolidate their political position by crowding out or co-opting rivals, depoliticizing conflicts, or deflecting blame to subnational actors. Indeed, reforms made in the name of decentralization often strengthen the political center, at least over the short to medium term. Whether it attempts to co-opt or sideline them, decentralization interacts with and may reinforce the salience of ethno-regional identities and traditional authorities. To the extent that democracy presumes the equality of all citizens, regardless of ascribed status or identity, the reinforcement of ethno-regional identities and unelected authorities threatens democracy.
The international spread of decentralization reforms coincided with the increasing prevalence of multiparty elections. In countries that hold elections, electoral considerations inevitably influence political interests in decentralization. Central government incumbents may view decentralization as a way to keep voters happy by improving access to and the quality of public services, as a form of political insurance, or as strengthening rivals. Whether incumbents and challengers view decentralization as a threat or an opportunity depends on not only the form of decentralization under consideration, but also their estimations of their competitiveness in elections at various levels (national, regional, local) and the interaction between the spatial distribution of electoral support and the electoral system. Electoral dynamics and considerations also influence the implementation and consequences of decentralization, perhaps especially when political rivals control different levels of government. Whether decentralization promotes democracy and development hinges on not only the form of decentralization, but also how broader political dynamics condition decentralization in practice.
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Capitalist Peace Theory: A Critical Appraisal
Gerald Schneider
Capitalist peace theory (CPT) has gained considerable attention in international relations theory and the conflict literature. Its proponents maintain that a capitalist organization of an economy pacifies states internally and externally. They portray CPT either as a complement to or a substitute for other liberal explanations, such as the democratic peace thesis, but disagree about the facet of capitalism that is supposed to reduce the risk of political violence. Key contributions have identified three main drivers of the capitalist peace phenomenon: the fiscal constraints that a laissez-faire regimen puts on potentially aggressive governments, the mollifying norms that a capitalist organization creates, and the increased ability of capitalist governments to signal their intentions effectively in a confrontation with an adversary. CPT should be based on a narrow definition of capitalism and should scrutinize motives and constraints of the main actors more deeply. Future contributions to the CPT literature should pay close attention to classic theories of capitalism, which all considered individual risk taking and the dramatic changes between booms and busts to be key constitutive features of this form of economic governance. Finally, empirical tests of the proposed causal mechanism should rely on data sets in which capitalists appear as actors and not as “structures.” If the literature takes these objections seriously, CPT could establish itself as central theory of peace and war in two respects: First, it could serve as an antidote to “critical” approaches on the far left or far right that see in capitalism a source of conflict rather than of peace. Second, it could become an important complement to commercial liberalism that stresses the external openness rather than the internal freedoms as an economic cause of peace and that particularly sees trade and foreign direct investment as pacifying forces.
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Central Africa: Regional Politics and Dynamics
Andreas Mehler
The variety in climate, vegetation, and population density in Central Africa is enormous, but some of the main features of policymaking and informal rules of politics—at first sight at least—appear quite similar between N’Djaména and Kinshasa, between Libreville and Bangui, in a vast territory bigger than the European Union: clientelism, personalization of power, politicized ethnicity, the impact of external intervention, and a legacy of repeated political violence establish some constant features. On the other hand, the variable size of countries (from island states in the Gulf of Guinea to large territorial states) has also come with various challenges. Also, Central Africa features land-locked countries such as Chad and Central African Republic, which negatively impacts economic development, in contrast to countries located at the Gulf of Guinea with an easy access to maritime trade routes. At closer inspection all of the eight countries have a specific history, but this overview article rather stresses the commonalities. Featuring in this contribution are the countries of Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Equatorial-Guinea, Gabon, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The limited achievements of pro-democracy movements in Central Africa in the 1990s have enduring consequences on politics in Africa. Authoritarian regimes have consolidated their grip on power after surviving severe crises in most Central African states. Big man politics continue to prevail, only few opposition parties have upheld their initial strength and lack internal democracy. Enduring violent conflicts in DRC and CAR (and arguably to a somewhat lesser extent in Chad), have undermined conviviality between groups and state capacities in providing public goods with dramatic consequences on effectiveness and legitimacy of the state and its representatives. Prospects for a future allowing for more participation, truly competitive elections, and a peaceful change of government are therefore also grim. However, both violent and peaceful forms of contestation since about 2015 are also signs of renewed mobilization of citizens for political causes across Central Africa. New topics, including consumer defense and ecological issues, plus now-ubiquitous social media, may all be drivers for a new episode of engagement after two decades of frustration. The limited achievements of regional integration and the lack of dynamism of subregional organizations means that Central Africa is still a much less consolidated subregion compared to, for example, West Africa.
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Centralization and Decentralization: Compatible Governance Concepts and Practices
Eva M. Witesman
The extent to which governance structures are centralized or decentralized is a key consideration for public administrators. While centralization and decentralization seem to represent opposite approaches to the structure of public organizations, the two frequently co-exist simultaneously in what is alternately deemed a comfortable coexistence or a paradoxical tension. Public institution reform efforts may call for increased centralizing forces (such as hierarchy, unification, and governance) or decentralizing ones (such as marketization, devolution of power, deconcentration, and diversification).
Public administrators calling for structural reform are often driven toward either centralization or decentralization by particular sets of public values. Values such as accountability, power, and efficiency favor centralized governance, while values such as responsiveness, engagement, and innovation favor decentralization. Thus, the design of public administration structures and processes frequently exist as an expression of value-based norms. Both centralization and decentralization are associated with distinct advantages for achieving specific public value goals. Conversely, each approach has unique weaknesses that create opportunities for corruption.
The pursuit of public value goals and the avoidance of corruption are two primary drivers that motivate structural reform. While structural reforms may be viewed as swings of a pendulum between two extreme ideal states (fully centralized or fully decentralized), a growing consensus in the scholarship suggests that centralized and decentralized structures are internally compatible and complementary. In other words, both centralized and decentralized structures frequently co-exist within the same institutions, often creating a dynamic tension between values. This creates an increasingly complex structural paradigm for the expression of public values. The result is that many governance structures appear to be evolving toward new models in which elements of both centralized and decentralized control are observed simultaneously.
