In Latin America, democratization in the 1980s and 1990s brought greater military subordination to elected leaders and a promising new era of civil–military relations. Yet the threat of coups lingered—particularly where leaders most threatened elite interests and where coups could be justified as “restoring” democracy. Such was the case in the early 21st century for presidents on the radical, populist side of Latin America’s “New Left,” including Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, and Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. In response, these presidents sought to guard their “contestatory” agenda by diminishing the armed forces’ ability and willingness to derail it. They adopted strategies like increasing spending on military hardware and salaries, stacking the officer corps with loyalists, indoctrinating the armed forces into the government’s political ideology, and raising citizen militias and parallel security forces. To different degrees—and with different degrees of success—they attempted to secure the military’s loyalty and to raise the costs of executing a coup. In other words, they engaged in coup-proofing, a practice used by vulnerable leaders around the world.
The study of coup-proofing in Latin America can advance research on comparative civil–military relations and democratization in several ways. First, scholars usually treat coup-proofing strategies as a response to the elevated risk of a coup. But when they threaten the military’s conservative corporate identity or limit its autonomy from civilian control, those strategies themselves could end up elevating that risk. Cases of coup-proofing from Latin America’s New Left would prove relevant for research seeking to disentangle this complicated causal relationship. Second, coup-proofing could jeopardize democratic consolidation, if not survival, if it shifts the military’s loyalty from a democratic, constitutional order to a particular leader and ideology. But if coup-proofing prevents unelected leaders from usurping office, then it might protect democracy. The short and long-term effect of coup-proofing on democratic institutions thus remains an open question. And third, if coup-proofing is to retain its conceptual utility in a region populated by democracies and hybrid regimes, then the definition of a “coup” has to remain limited to an illegal, undemocratic seizure of power involving at least some elements of the armed forces. Otherwise, coup-proofing could become conflated with impeachment-proofing. In practice, however, it becomes difficult to distinguish efforts aimed at preventing a coup from efforts aimed at escaping legal constraints on presidential power. This presents a challenge but also an opportunity for future research.
The record of coups and attempted coups in Latin America over the first two decades of the 21st century shows that while the coup d’état is no longer a fixture of political life in the region, it remains a real possibility. That reality calls for more research into coup risk, the ways that leaders respond to it, and the political consequences that follow.
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Coup-Proofing Vulnerable Presidencies in Latin America
Eric Rittinger
Article
Courts in Latin American Politics
Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos
In the aftermath of the third wave of democratization, Latin American courts left behind decades of subservience, conservatism, and irrelevance to become central political players. They now serve as arbiters in struggles between the elected branches, and increasingly affirm fundamental rights. Indeed, some rulings champion highly controversial rights and have huge budgetary implications, sending shock waves across these new democracies. What explains this unprecedented expansion of judicial power? In trying to answer this fundamental question about the functioning of contemporary democracies, scholars of Latin America have developed a truly vibrant and theoretically dynamic body of work, one that makes essential contributions to our knowledge of judicial politics more generally. Some scholars emphasize the importance of formal judicial reforms initiated by politicians, which resulted in more autonomous and politically insulated courts. In so doing, they address a central puzzle in political science: under what conditions are politicians willing to accept limits to their power? Inspired by rational choice theory, other authors zoom in on the dynamics of inter-branch interactions, to arrive at a series of propositions about the type of political environment in which courts are more capable to assert their power. Whereas this approach focuses on the ability of judges to exercise power, a third line of scholarship looks at how ideas about the law and judicial role conceptions affect judges’ willingness to intervene in high-stakes political struggles, championing some values and interests at the expense of others. Finally, more recent work asks whether assertions of judicial power make a difference in terms of rights effectiveness. Understanding the consequences of judicial decisions is essential to establishing the extent to which more assertive courts are actually capable of transforming the world around them.
Article
Crisis Agenda-Setting and Aviation Security Policy After the September 11 Attacks
Zachary R. Lewis, Kathryn L. Schwaeble, and Thomas A. Birkland
The September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States were a focusing event that greatly increased attention to particularly large acts of terrorism as a threat to the United States and to particular interests. One of these interests is the aviation industry. The September 11 attacks exploited features of the aviation industry that made it prone to attack and that made an attack on this industry particularly vivid and attention-grabbing.
The September 11 attacks led to policy changes in the United States and around the world with respect to aviation security, but those changes were not made in a vacuum. The changes that followed the September 11 attacks were made possible by efforts to learn from the range of aviation security incidents and challenges that have faced commercial aviation throughout its history. While the September 11 attacks were shocking and seemed novel, prior experience with aviation security crises provided those working in the aviation security policy realm with potential responses. The responses were drawn from a set of politically feasible responses that addressed the lapses in security demonstrated by terrorist attacks. The history of policy changes related to terrorism in aviation parallel the changes to policies that were made across the board in response to the elevation of terrorism on the agenda.
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Crisis Coordination in First Responder Organizations
Helge Renå
Crisis coordination as process can be understood as the adjustment of actions and decisions among interdependent actors to achieve specified goals. Coordination during crises typically involves a broad variety of first responder organizations, from professionals, such as emergency agencies and nongovernmental organizations like the Red Cross, to nonprofessional organizations and individuals, who often play a decisive role in crisis response. Traditionally, research on crisis coordination in first responder organizations seemed to be, broadly speaking, divided into two camps. One strand of literature focused on the formal structures of the government and the established first responder organizations and how they are interdependent via hierarchical relations and unity of command. The other strand of literature, with a long history in the field of disaster sociology, has taken a primary interest in the actual coordination that occurs “on the scene” in the immediate aftermath of crises and disasters. From this perspective, the actors involved in crisis coordination are conceptualized as a network of actors that are interrelated via novel structures and relations that emerge and develop as the crisis response unfolds. In the broader literature on coordination, there has been a shift in focus from explaining why coordination mechanisms work to a growing interest in how coordination happens by focusing on the emergent nature of the process of coordination. Following this shift and the scholarly work on organizational improvisation, there seems to be a growing consensus that crisis coordination is enabled by a combination of routinized practices and improvised action. More generally, recent scholarly work builds on the extant perspectives and literatures by seeing them in combination rather than as opposites. Instead of focusing primarily on the formal hierarchical relations in the established first responder organizations or the collaborative networks that emerge at the incident scene, current research tries to theorize how they are intertwined, and when, how, and why they sometimes reinforce each other and sometimes not.
Article
The Crisis Cycle
Christer H. Pursiainen
While crisis management is a well-developed institutionalized activity in public administration and private organizations, it is less developed and notably fragmented theoretically. Without any grand theories, the field is characterized across a range of disciplines by middle-range theories and discourses on one element of the process or another. These discourses seldom communicate with each other and effectively develop in isolation. The result is a fragmented field of theoretical concepts. The traditional “crisis management cycle” nonetheless provides a holistic framework of sorts for both theoretical and practical reflection, including pre-crisis, during-the-crisis, and post-crisis components. Capturing the salient themes of crisis management, this framework is useful in identifying the most important middle-range scholarly debates within the field. Through its holistic and almost all-encompassing scope of existing and potential new dimensions in crisis research, the crisis management cycle also lends credence to the perspective that the field will evolve from its current multidisciplinary character towards more genuinely interdisciplinary scholarship.
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Crisis Development: Normal Accidents and Beyond
Jean-Christophe Le Coze
Our current era is one of profound changes and uncertainties, and one issue is to understand their implications for high-risk systems and critical infrastructures (e.g., nuclear power plants, ships, hospitals, trains, chemical plants). Normal Accidents (NA), Perrow’s classic published in 1984, is a useful guide to explore the contemporary epoch, in the third decade of the 21st century. One reason is that this landmark book has triggered a sustained interest by scholars who have debated, challenged, rejected, refined, or expanded its core thesis over almost now 40 years. With La Porte’s, Sagan’s, Vaughan’s, and Hopkins’s contributions into what can be described as the “standard NA debate” in the late 20th century and the more recent “new controversies and debates” by Downer, Pritchard, or Le Coze in the early 21st century, the book can still resonate with current changes in the 2020s. These changes include phenomena as large, massive, intertwined, consequential, and diverse as the advent of internet and of digital societies, the increase of transnational flows of diverse nature (people, data, capital, images, goods) and the ecological crisis captured by a notion such as the Anthropocene. Taking stock, historicizing, and revisiting NA with such debates and changes in mind leads to characterize a post-NA narrative.
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Crisis Governance, Emergency Management, and the Digital Revolution
Patrick S. Roberts, Shalini Misra, and Joanne Tang
Digital technologies have fundamentally altered emergency and crisis management work through increased potential for role ambiguity, role conflict, distraction, and overload. Multilevel approaches to improve congruence between crisis managers and their environments have the potential to reduce cognitive and organizational barriers and improve decision making. The future of crisis management lies in reducing the misalignment between personal, proximal, and distal environmental conditions.
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Crisis Lawyering: Transnational Ethics for Global Emergencies
Ray Brescia
As crises proliferate around the world, from a global pandemic and natural disasters brought about by climate change to genocide and the rise of authoritarian regimes, lawyers are increasingly asked to play a role in addressing these crises. Not every client crisis is a crisis for the lawyer because that lawyer is prepared to handle it and knows just what to do and when to do it to pursue the client’s interests. But some of the crises that have emerged in recent years are novel, pervasive, and unprecedented in many ways, meaning that the legal profession, when its members are asked to address them, cannot rely on traditional approaches to their practice, and may need to take into account the interests of a wider range of stakeholders that is typical in the practice of law, where the interests of the clients are supposed to be paramount. Accordingly, since traditional lawyering approaches may not be appropriate for novel, pervasive crises, are new sets of ethical rules appropriate for just such crises to help lawyers navigate them effectively, competently, and ethically?
Article
Crisis Mapping and Crowdsourcing in Complex Emergencies
Jen Ziemke, Buddhika Jayamaha, and Molly M. Jahn
Crisis mappers secure satellite imagery, photos, video, event data, incident data, and other documentary evidence to create an operational picture of a disaster in order to facilitate improved humanitarian response and assistance in a crisis.
The era of human-powered crisis mapping between 2009 and 2014 was a bootstrapped effort very much a function of the peculiar state of technological development at the time—available but not yet formalized, streamlined, and automated. Humans filled the gap until machine assistance could catch up. These efforts, often mundane (e.g., cut and paste over and over for hours), were more reflective of the state of technology at the time than anything else.
Another precondition that enabled the field to grow is the often taken-for-granted public good provided by the GPS satellites maintained by the U.S. Air Force. Without this service, the project at the time would not have emerged where and when it did.
The future will be shaped as a result of improvements in automated forms of data collection; improved machine learning techniques to help filter, identify, visualize, and analyze the data; and the proliferation of low-cost drones and other forms of sensors, to name a few.
Article
Croatia and the European Union
Pero Maldini
Croatia’s accession to the European Union (EU) meant, in political terms, the recognition of its political and normative-institutional achievements in the establishment of a nation state and the democracy. At the same time, for the vast majority of Croatian citizens EU membership also had a symbolic meaning: a departure from the troubled past and a return to the Western, European cultural circle, which they have always felt they belong to. This feeling is the source for the strong pro-European orientation, which, as state independence was being achieved, and democracy established—as an expression of the strong political will of Croatian citizens for freedom and autonomy—helped achieve those historical and political goals. The EU was perceived as a framework that would enable those goals to be realized, so there was a general political consensus about joining it among all relevant political actors, and the vast majority of Croatian citizens granted their consent.
The path to full EU membership was long and arduous, primarily because of the specific conditions that marked the process of establishing a Croatian state and a democratic order. On the one hand, these are endogenous structural and socio-cultural factors: the structure and activity of political actors and the functioning of institutions, which were significantly marked by their authoritarian political and historical legacy. On the other hand, was a war of aggression and a struggle for freedom and independence with long-lasting and difficult social and political consequences. These specific conditions—which none of the other acceding countries had—slowed down the process of democratization and, consequently, hampered the EU accession process.
All these reasons are why Croatia had the most comprehensive and longest accession negotiations, including the most extensive body of pre-accession conditions. Although the extent and duration of negotiations, as well as the lack of expected support from the EU (especially during the war) have led to an increase in Euroskepticism and criticism of the EU—and consequently to the low turnout in the referendum for accession—the pro-European orientation remained dominant in Croatia. In general, public support for EU accession in Croatia was based on a set of mutually connected factors: identity-based (cultural affiliation), institutional-political (democracy), and utilitarian (socioeconomic benefits).
In the period after joining the EU, due to insufficient preparation, Croatia has relatively slowly used the opportunities (especially economic) provided by EU. Nevertheless, EU membership has accelerated the increase in institutional capacity and better use of European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF). At the same time, the free movement of people, goods, capital, and services, and the opportunities brought by the open EU market, had a double impact: strengthening the economy due to greater orientation toward the EU market, but also slower economic growth, due to structural problems (the lingering power of the state, and regulations to the economy and the market) and increased emigration of the highly educated younger population (chronic labor-force deficit).
Nonetheless, through Croatia’s participation in the EU institutions, the real benefits of full membership are becoming increasingly visible, and the sense of integration in the EU’s social, political, cultural, and economic space is growing stronger. At the same time, EU membership affects further improvement of the normative-institutional framework of Croatia.
Article
Cuba: The Military and Politics
Jorge I. Domínguez
Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), founded in 1959, have been among the world’s most successful militaries. In the early 1960s, they defended the new revolutionary regime against all adversaries during years when Cuba was invaded at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, faced nuclear Armageddon in 1962, and experienced a civil war that included U.S. support for regime opponents. From 1963 to 1991, the FAR served the worldwide objectives of a small power that sought to behave as if it were a major world power. Cuba deployed combat troops overseas for wars in support of Algeria (1963), Syria (1973), Angola (1975–1991), and Ethiopia (1977–1989). Military advisers and some combat troops served in smaller missions in about two dozen countries the world over. Altogether, nearly 400,000 Cuban troops served overseas. Throughout those years, the FAR also worked significantly to support Cuba’s economy, especially in the 1960s and again since the early 1990s following the Soviet Union’s collapse. Uninterruptedly, officers and troops have been directly engaged in economic planning, management, physical labor, and production. In the mid-1960s, the FAR ran compulsory labor camps that sought to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals and to remedy the alleged socially deviant behavior of these and others, as well. During the Cold War years, the FAR deepened Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet Union, deterred a U.S. invasion by signaling its cost for U.S. troops, and since the early 1990s developed confidence-building practices collaborating with U.S. military counterparts to prevent an accidental military clash.
Following false starts and experimentation, the FAR settled on a model of joint civilian-military governance that has proved durable: the civic soldier. The FAR and the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) are closely interpenetrated at all levels and together endeavored to transform Cuban society, economy, and politics while defending state and regime. Under this hybrid approach, military officers govern large swaths of military and civilian life and are held up as paragons for soldiers and civilians, bearers of revolutionary traditions and ideology. Thoroughly politicized military are well educated as professionals in political, economic, managerial, engineering, and military affairs; in the FAR, officers with party rank and training, not outsider political commissars, run the party-in-the-FAR. Their civilian and military roles were fused, especially during the 1960s, yet they endured into the 21st century. Fused roles make it difficult to think of civilian control over the military or military control over civilians. Consequently, political conflict between “military” and “civilians” has been rare and, when it has arisen (often over the need for, and the extent of, military specialization for combat readiness), it has not pitted civilian against military leaders but rather cleaved the leadership of the FAR, the PCC, and the government. Intertwined leaderships facilitate cadre exchanges between military and nonmilitary sectors. The FAR enter their seventh decade smaller, undersupplied absent the Soviet Union, less capable of waging war effectively, and more at risk of instances of corruption through the activities of some of their market enterprises. Yet the FAR remain both an effective institution in a polity that they have helped to stabilize and proud of their accomplishments the world over.
Article
Cyprus and the European Union
Stelios Stavridis and Charalambos Tsardanidis
The Republic of Cyprus (or Cyprus) joined the European Union (EU) in May 2004 and adopted the single currency (the euro) in 2008. This article consists of three parts: it begins with a historical contextualization, explaining the reasons for Cyprus’ application for an Association Agreement with the (then) European Economic Community (EEC), and also examining the latter´s reaction and policy towards the 1974 Turkish invasion following a failed coup d´état against the Makarios Presidency that has led to a divided island since then (Part 1). In brief, what is known as the “Cyprus Problem.” This part also looks at the evolution of the Association Agreement during the period since 1975 which ended with the conclusion of a customs union Agreement between Cyprus and the European Community in 1987. The article next turns to an analysis of the Republic of Cyprus´ EU accession negotiations process (Part 2). It also covers the impact (or lack thereof) of various reunification plans, and most notably what is seen as the culmination of such efforts in the so-called 2002–2004 Annan Plans. The following section presents an assessment of how Cyprus has fared as a member state since it joined the EU (Part 3). It covers several key questions regarding the EU–Cyprus relationship. Whereas this article is not about the Cyprus problem itself, but as will be made clear throughout this study, it remains the dominant issue for the island. Others issues encompass EU relations with the Turkish-Cypriot community, the question of Turkey´s EU accession, the impact of the economic crisis of 2013, as well as energy security considerations following the discovery of gas in the region. The study concludes that being in the EU offers better perspectives for the Republic of Cyprus than if it had been kept outside it. If only because as the Accession Treaty makes it clear: it is the whole island that has joined the EU albeit the acquis communautaire cannot apply to the north, occupied, part of the Island following the invasion by Turkey. But all Cypriots are EU citizens. Yet, to a large extent, the experience of Cyprus prior to and after EU membership also reflects the kind of specific problems that a “small state” is facing in its international relations.
Article
Deliberative Democracy and Political Decision Making
Jon Green, Jonathon Kingzette, and Michael Neblo
Defined expansively as the exchange of politically relevant justifications, political deliberation occurs at many sites in the democratic system. It is also performed by several different types of actors. Here, we review political deliberation based on who is deliberating and what role these deliberations play in making binding decisions. First, ordinary citizens frequently deliberate in informal settings. While these discussions often fail to live up to the standards outlined by deliberative theorists, they typically correlate with other democratic goods, such as increased political participation. Second, there have been several attempts in recent years to construct the conditions necessary for quality deliberation among citizens by organizing small-group discussions in semi-formal settings. Proponents of such discussions argue that they promote a variety of democratic goods, such as political knowledge and better-justified political decisions, and as such should be incorporated into the formal policymaking process. However, critics of these procedural innovations hold that a more deliberative society is unrealistic or, alternatively, that deliberation is not without drawbacks on its own terms. Third, in a limited number of cases, citizens’ deliberations are formally embedded in democratic institutions, serving to advise voters and politicians or directly leading to binding decisions. Finally, political elites deliberate frequently. Opinion leaders attempt to and often succeed in shaping the discourse around issues, while elected officials, bureaucrats, and judges formally deliberate before making almost every binding decision. Surprisingly, though these deliberations happen frequently and likely have substantial effects on policy, they are probably the least studied in the political system, though recent breakthroughs in text analysis offer a path forward to analyzing deliberation among elites more systematically.
Article
Democracy Promotion in Africa
Oda van Cranenburgh
Democracy promotion in Africa became an increasingly important priority for Western donors in the late 1980s, with a growing normative consensus in support of democracy and human rights since that time. In practice, however, democracy promotion policies suffer from some flaws and inconsistencies and the nature of Africa’s hybrid and ambiguous regimes present severe challenges. The available evidence suggests that donor policies often reflect implicit concepts and theories that do not always reflect the reality on the ground. Moreover, since the turn of the millennium competing economic or strategic interests often trump the promotion of democracy and human rights. Significantly, donors do not always operate in the same way. More specifically, a review of recent activity suggests that donor governments tend to use a negative linkage strategy when they set conditions for economic aid and a positive linkage strategy when they support democratic institutions and processes. In both strategies, competitive elections occupy a central place. While this electoral focus entails limitations, the approach is marked by a clear focus and operationalization. By contrast, broader political approaches target human rights and the rule of law and strengthening of political institutions. These ambitious goals are difficult to achieve. Such policies work when they are based on adequate analysis of the specific institutional context, but they often run up against political challenges that are beyond the control of donors. The scholarship on democracy promotion agrees that positive change can be achieved where internal conditions are favorable and when policies take into account the specific political and institutional contexts in African countries. Broader long-term regime change, however, depends primarily on internal conditions, such as social and economic development, and requires donors to go beyond the “easy part” and address specific African contexts and specific institutional problems.
Article
Democratic Backsliding in the European Union
Nick Sitter and Elisabeth Bakke
Democratic backsliding in European Union (EU) member states is not only a policy challenge for the EU, but also a potential existential crisis. If the EU does too little to deal with member state regimes that go back on their commitments to democracy and the rule of law, this risks undermining the EU from within. On the other hand, if the EU takes drastic action, this might split the EU. This article explores the nature and dynamics of democratic backsliding in EU member states, and analyses the EU’s capacity, policy tools and political will to address the challenge. Empirically it draws on the cases that have promoted serious criticism from the Commission and the European Parliament: Hungary, Poland, and to a lesser extent, Romania. After reviewing the literature and defining backsliding as a gradual, deliberate, but open-ended process of de-democratization, the article analyzes the dynamics of backsliding and the EU’s difficulties in dealing with this challenge to liberal democracy and the rule of law. The Hungarian and Polish populist right’s “illiberal” projects involve centralization of power in the hands of the executive and the party, and limiting the independence of the judiciary, the media and civil society. This has brought both governments into direct confrontation with the European Commission. However, the EU’s track record in managing backsliding crises is at best mixed. This comes down to a combination of limited tools and lack of political will. Ordinary infringement procedures offer a limited toolbox, and the Commission has proven reluctant to use even these tools fully. At the same time, party groups in the European Parliament and many member state governments have been reluctant to criticize one of their own, let alone go down the path of suspending aspect of a states’ EU membership. Hence the EU’s dilemma: it is caught between undermining its own values and cohesion through inaction on one hand, and relegating one or more member states it to a second tier—or even pushing them out altogether—on the other.
Article
Democratic Deficit in the European Union
Christine Neuhold
The debate on whether or not the European Union (EU) is suffering from a democratic deficit is “crowded territory.” The debate is not only far-reaching but has evolved along with the transformation of the system of European governance. In the 1990s the “standard version of the democratic deficit” was developed. This drives on the observation that EU member states have transferred powers to the supranational construction of the EU and as such these powers escape national parliamentary control. The fact that the European Parliament was a rather weak institution is seen as to further aggravate the situation.
While this is, since the early 2000s, no longer seen as an adequate standard of comparison and indicator for the democratic quality of the EU, the EU democratic system is still seen to fall short on different accounts, for example when it comes both to participatory and representative democracy. This might come as a surprise, as the EU has undertaken a number of reforms especially since and by way of the Maastricht Treaty to make the EU more “democratic.” For example, the (indirect) involvement of national parliaments into EU policymaking was strengthened or the tool of the European Citizen Initiative (ECI) was introduced. As such, the debate on the democratic deficit is not only academic but takes place within the political arena. It is consequential by being mirrored in treaty changes and thus also functional.
Overall these tools are seen to fall short however, at least so far. One reason seems to be expectation management. The terms used seem to be very “loaded”. For example, the notion is evoked that the Union is a representative democracy. Moreover piecemeal reform leads to different modes of representation. While some of these objectives have been achieved, for example, by providing access of certain groups to decision-making process, others are excluded, which can in fact exacerbate the democratic deficit. Overall the “traditional” debate on the democratic deficit has taken on a new quality: the context of emergence of the so-called illiberal democracies at the member state level.
It has been stated already almost 20 years ago that the EU will have to invent new forms of citizenship, representation, and decision making if it is ever to democratize itself. It seems that the EU has tried to do so partially, but the use of far-reaching and normative notions and concepts is bound to fall short in a system that is in constant flux and very heterogeneous.
Article
The Descriptive Representation of Women in Politics
Magda Hinojosa
Women remain strikingly underrepresented in politics: as of 2020, women hold only 25% of seats in the world’s national legislatures. Studies of women’s descriptive representation can be divided into two broad categories. The first category of scholarship seeks to understand when, why, and how women are elected to political office. Earlier academic work on the descriptive representation of women primarily analyzed social (educational levels, workforce participation rates) and cultural factors to understand women’s descriptive underrepresentation in politics. Institutional factors emerged as a significant area of scholarship, buoyed by the adoption and near immediate success of gender quotas. Scholarship has also centered on political parties and contextual factors (candidate selection and recruitment processes, the effects of crisis).
A second category of work examines the effects of women’s descriptive representation on the substantive and symbolic representation of women, and increasingly whether women’s descriptive representation begets more women in office. The scholarship on the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation has found strong evidence that having women in office results in the representation of women’s interests. Establishing how the descriptive representation of women affects citizen attitudes—such as their interest in politics and trust in government institutions—has yielded more mixed results. Nonetheless, the scholarship on the effects of women’s descriptive representation largely confirms that having women in office matters for outcomes related to policy and citizen attitudes.
The rich work that has been done to date on women’s descriptive representation could benefit from expanding the definition of the term. Although scholars have relied on a head count of women in positions of power—and notably often just in the national legislature—to assess descriptive representation, a more expansive approach to defining women’s descriptive representation is needed. Researchers ought to consider other ways in which representatives can descriptively represent constituents, for example, by calling attention to their role as women in their parliamentary speeches. Moreover, the study of women’s descriptive representation would benefit from greater attention to women’s descriptive representation at subnational levels; too often, the proportion of women in the national legislature is equated with women’s descriptive representation, leaving out how women can be descriptively represented at other levels of office, in particular, in local positions. Examining within-country variation in women’s officeholding could be particular fruitful in understanding the factors that affect women’s descriptive representation, including the pipelines to higher office. Furthermore, studying differences in descriptive representation for elected versus appointed positions could prove instructive. In addition, more scholarship is needed that takes an intersectional approach to studying both the factors that help or hinder women’s descriptive representation and the ways in which descriptive representation affects substantive and symbolic representation.
Article
Development Trajectories in Africa
Richard E. Mshomba
Since independence, African states have been striving for economic development, but relatively few countries have achieved their goal. Between 1970 and 2016, real GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa grew by an annual average of just 0.48%. However, there was a wide range of economic performance across different countries, as well as clear variation in growth rates over time. Countries such as the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Madagascar had, on average, a negative growth rate in terms of real GDP per capita. Meanwhile, countries such as Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Swaziland had positive average annual growth rates of at least 3%. The differences in economic growth rates reflect the diversity of economic structures, governance, and political stability across African states. Although deeper economic integration among African countries may work to reduce the large disparities in economic development, any projections must nonetheless recognize that countries will differ in their economic trajectories.
Variation over time is also important. The dominant patterns of economic development in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s and 1990s on the one hand, and the 1970s and past the 1990s on the other, were quite different, reflecting a long business cycle. If we look solely at economic growth statistics, the 1980s and 1990s can be described as lost decades. On average, real GDP per capita on the continent declined annually by 1.54% and 0.62% in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. By contrast, between 2000 and 2016, real GDP per capita increased by an annual average of 2.13%.
One important debate has focused on whether these shifts are primarily the result of domestic or international factors. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have been blamed for the decline in the economic fortunes of African countries in the 1980s. At the same time, they are praised for pulling many countries out of unsustainable macroeconomic policies. Moreover, a balanced overview of Africa’s development trajectory must conclude that even without major policy shifts such as those brought forth by the SAPs, many countries would still have remained highly dependent on one or just a few commodities, and would therefore have continued to experience wild swings in their business cycles in the absence of international intervention.
The lack of economic diversification of many economies on the continent means that the future is hard to predict. However, the prerequisites for a prosperous Africa are not a mystery—they include good governance, economic diversity, and genuine economic integration.
Article
Diplomacy in Foreign Policy
Kenneth Weisbrode
Diplomacy’s role in foreign policy is hampered by multiple understandings of what diplomacy is and does. A broad definition of diplomacy holds that it encompasses more than the promotion of peaceful international relations. Instead, it applies to the sum of those relations—peaceful, hostile, and everything in between. Thus, foreign relations—so long as they involve the interests, direction, and actions of a sovereign power—may be regarded as being synonymous with diplomatic relations, whereby foreign policy relates to the theory and practice of setting diplomatic priorities; planning for contingencies; advancing strategic, operational, and tactical diplomatic aims; and adjusting those aims to domestic and foreign constraints. This conception of diplomacy is functional: it emphasizes the roles of diplomats and recognizes that many other people perform these roles besides official envoys; and it illustrates that diplomatic settings—and the means, methods, and tools of diplomacy—undergo continuous change. The basic mediating purpose of diplomacy, however, has endured, as has much of its institutional apparatus—embassies, ambassadors, treaties, and so on. This is likely to remain the case so long as there are multiple polities in the world, all having to relate to one another.
Article
Disasters and the Theory of Emergency Management
David A. McEntire
Disasters and the theory of emergency management are vibrant subjects for scholars. Researchers have focused on a variety of topics, including the definition of disasters, human behavior in extreme events, the nature of emergency management, ways to make the profession more effective, the pros and cons of various paradigms, and new areas of research. In studying these subjects, scholars have employed a variety of methods, including observation, field research, and comparison, among others.
Findings from research reveals that humans are responsible for disasters and that vulnerability must be reduced. Studies reveal that antisocial behavior is less likely to occur than more common activities to support victims of disasters. The principles of emergency management have been elaborated, and scholars have argued that the phases of disasters are more complex that initially meets they eye. Research also reveals that bureaucratic approaches to emergency management are based on false assumptions and are too rigid. Scholarship also explores how to make emergency management functions more effective, and a number of articles have been written to explore paradigms to guide research and practice.
Theoretical work on disasters and emergency management has examined planning, improvisation, and spontaneous planning. Research has also explored humanitarian logistics, the use of social media, the scholarship of teaching and learning, cultural competency and the culture of preparedness. Going forward, more research is needed on the complexity of disasters and the use or impact of technology in emergency management. A greater understanding of public health emergencies is warranted due to the challenges of Covid-19.
