Drawing on literature from Anthropology, Economics, Political Science and Sociology, an interdisciplinary theory is presented that links the rise of contractual forms of exchange within a society with the proliferation of liberal values, democratic legitimacy, and peace among democratic nations. The theory accommodates old facts and yields a large number of new and testable ones, including the ...

Realizing the ideal of democracy requires political inclusion for citizens. A legitimate democracy must give citizens the opportunity to express their attitudes about the relative attractions of different policies, and access to political mechanisms through which they can be counted and heard. The most influential expression of these objectives derives from the political philosophy underlying d...

Increasing levels of democratic freedoms should, in theory, improve women’s access to political positions. Yet studies demonstrate that democracy does little to improve women’s legislative representation. To resolve this paradox, we investigate how variations in the democratization process—including pre-transition legacies, historical experiences with elections, the global context of transition...

In much of the political economy literature, social democratic governments are assumed to defend the interests of labor. The main thrust of this article is that labor is divided into those with secure employment (insiders) and those without (outsiders). I argue that the goals of social democratic parties are often best served by pursuing policies that benefit insiders while ignoring the interes...

reformism discourse was organized according to a set of non- homogeneous theories and because it was a combination of traditional teachings of islam and teachings of modern liberalism simultaneously, it didn’t have any theoretical integrity. immediate integration of reformers during the election was dues to a historical necessity of opposition against conservatisms, candidate who considered him...

Recent theories of political development have emphasized redistributive demands as the main drivers of democratic transitions and consolidation. The authors employ Cox duration models to evaluate a number of economic, institutionalist, and sociological theories of regime transition, using global data from 1970 to 1999. This study suggests that demands for redistribution are insufficient explana...

We present a theory of why some countries negotiate trade agreements during economic downturns. We argue that political leaders can gain from such agreements because of the signals they send to their publics. Publics are less likely to blame leaders for bad economic conditions when they have implemented sound economic policies, such as signing and implementing agreements designed to liberalize ...

Political participation in a modern, federal state is a complex business for an average educated citizen. These circumstances support political abstinence: Statistical studies prove the fact that as far as votes and elections are concerned, which are the most easy way to participate, the participation in votes and elections declined 20% respectively about 40%. Since 1900. Therefore it is necess...

Understanding and Modeling Comparative Democratic Policymaking: How Institutional and Strategic Settings Shape the Incentives for, Capacities to, and Natures of Political Budgeteering Robert J. Franzese, Jr. Associate Professor of Political Science The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor [email protected] http://www-personal.umich.edu 1 March 2005 [An Introduction to a New Project and a Guide to...

This paper develops a signaling model of corporate lobbying in democratic capitalist societies to analyze the conditions that lead to a powerful political position of business. Proceeding from the traditional dichotomy of structural economic determinants versus business’ political action, our model predicts the conditions under which elected political decisionmakers modify their policy pledges ...