Politician's Dilemma

Politician's Dilemma
Author: Barbara Geddes
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 1994
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780520072503

In Latin America as elsewhere, politicians routinely face a painful dilemma: whether to use state resources for national purposes, especially those that foster economic development, or to channel resources to people and projects that will help insure political survival and reelection. While politicians may believe that a competent state bureaucracy is intrinsic to the national good, political realities invariably tempt leaders to reward powerful clients and constituents, undermining long-term competence. Politician's Dilemma explores the ways in which political actors deal with these contradictory pressures and asks the question: when will leaders support reforms that increase state capacity and that establish a more meritocratic and technically competent bureaucracy? Barbara Geddes brings rational choice theory to her study of Brazil between 1930 and 1964 and shows how state agencies are made more effective when they are protected from partisan pressures and operate through merit-based recruitment and promotion strategies. Looking at administrative reform movements in other Latin American democracies, she traces the incentives offered politicians to either help or hinder the process. In its balanced insight, wealth of detail, and analytical rigor, Politician's Dilemma provides a powerful key to understanding the conflicts inherent in Latin American politics, and to unlocking possibilities for real political change.

The Candidate's Dilemma

The Candidate's Dilemma
Author: Elisabeth Kramer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2022-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501764039

In The Candidate's Dilemma, Elisabeth Kramer tells the story of how three political candidates in Indonesia made decisions to resist, engage in, or otherwise incorporate money politics into their electioneering strategies over the course of their campaigns. As they campaign, candidates encounter pressure from the institutional rules that guide elections, political parties, and voters, and must also negotiate complex social relationships to remain competitive. For anticorruption candidates, this context presents additional challenges for building and maintaining their identities. Some of these candidates establish their campaign parameters early and are able to stay their course. For others, the campaign trail results in an avalanche of compromises, each one eating away at their sense of what constitutes "moral" and "acceptable" behavior. The Candidate's Dilemma delves into the lived experiences of candidates to offer a nuanced study of how the political and personal intersect when it comes to money politics, anticorruptionism, and electoral campaigning in Indonesia.

The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box

The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box
Author: Masaaki Higashijima
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre: Dictatorship
ISBN:

Modern dictatorships hold elections. Contrary to our stereotypical views of autocratic politics, dictators often introduce elections with limited manipulation wherein they refrain from employing blatant electoral fraud and pro-regime electoral institutions. Why do such electoral reforms happen in autocracies? Do these elections destabilize autocratic rule? The Dictator's Dilemma at the Ballot Box explores how dictators design elections and what consequences those elections have on political order. It argues that strong autocrats who can effectively garner popular support through extensive economic distribution become less dependent on coercive electioneering strategies. When autocrats fail to design elections properly, elections backfire in the form of coups, protests, and the opposition's stunning election victories. The book's theoretical implications are tested on a battery of cross-national analyses with newly collected data on autocratic elections and in-depth comparative case studies of the two Central Asian republics--Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The book's findings suggest that indicators of free and fair elections in dictatorships may not be enough to achieve full-fledged democratization.

Dilemmas of Inclusion

Dilemmas of Inclusion
Author: Rafaela M. Dancygier
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2017-09-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691172609

As Europe’s Muslim communities continue to grow, so does their impact on electoral politics and the potential for inclusion dilemmas. In vote-rich enclaves, Muslim views on religion, tradition, and gender roles can deviate sharply from those of the majority electorate, generating severe trade-offs for parties seeking to broaden their coalitions. Dilemmas of Inclusion explains when and why European political parties include Muslim candidates and voters, revealing that the ways in which parties recruit this new electorate can have lasting consequences. Drawing on original evidence from thousands of electoral contests in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Great Britain, Rafaela Dancygier sheds new light on when minority recruitment will match up with existing party positions and uphold electoral alignments and when it will undermine party brands and shake up party systems. She demonstrates that when parties are seduced by the quick delivery of ethno-religious bloc votes, they undercut their ideological coherence, fail to establish programmatic linkages with Muslim voters, and miss their opportunity to build cross-ethnic, class-based coalitions. Dancygier highlights how the politics of minority inclusion can become a testing ground for parties, showing just how far their commitments to equality and diversity will take them when push comes to electoral shove. Providing a unified theoretical framework for understanding the causes and consequences of minority political incorporation, and especially as these pertain to European Muslim populations, Dilemmas of Inclusion advances our knowledge about how ethnic and religious diversity reshapes domestic politics in today’s democracies.

Democracy's Dilemma

Democracy's Dilemma
Author: Robert Paehlke
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2003
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780262661881

A call for a balancing of economic, environmental, and social concerns in the age of global economic integration.

The Security Dilemma

The Security Dilemma
Author: Ken Booth
Publisher: Red Globe Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0333587448

This major new contribution to the study of internatioal politics provides the first comprehensive analysis of the concept of the "security dilemma," the phrase used to describe the mistrust and fear which is often thought to be the inevitable consequence of living in a world of sovereign states. By exploring the theory and practice of the security dilemma through the prisms of fear, cooperation and trust, it considers whether the security dilemma can be mitigated or even transcended analyzing a wide range of historical and contemporary cases

Democratic Dilemmas

Democratic Dilemmas
Author: Angela K Bourne
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2018-07-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317484061

This book examines how democratic communities resolve dilemmas posed by anti-system parties or, more specifically, the question of why democracies take the grave decision to ban political parties. On the one hand, party bans may ‘protect’ democracies, usually from groups deemed to undermine the democratic system or its core values, territorial integrity or state security. At the same time, banning parties challenges foundational democratic commitments to political pluralism, tolerance and rights to free speech and association. The book probes the deliberative processes, discursive strategies and power politics employed when democratic communities negotiate this dilemma. It examines discourses of securitization and desecuritization, preferences of veto-players, anti-system party orientations to violence, electoral systems and the cordon sanitaire as alternatives to party bans, and incentives for mainstream parties to cooperate, rather than ban, parties to achieve office and policy goals. It does so with reference to case studies of party bans, legalizations and failed ban cases in Spain (Herri Batasuna and successors), the United Kingdom (Sinn Féin and Republican Clubs) and Germany (Socialist Reich Party and National Democratic Party of Germany).

The Democratic Dilemma

The Democratic Dilemma
Author: Arthur Lupia
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1998-03-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521585934

Voters cannot answer simple survey questions about politics. Legislators cannot recall the details of legislation. Jurors cannot comprehend legal arguments. Observations such as these are plentiful and several generations of pundits and scholars have used these observations to claim that voters, legislators, and jurors are incompetent. Are these claims correct? Do voters, jurors, and legislators who lack political information make bad decisions? In The Democratic Dilemma, Professors Arthur Lupia and Mathew McCubbins explain how citizens make decisions about complex issues. Combining insights from economics, political science, and the cognitive sciences, they seek to develop theories and experiments about learning and choice. They use these tools to identify the requirements for reasoned choice - the choice that a citizen would make if she possessed a certain (perhaps, greater) level of knowledge. The results clarify debates about voter, juror, and legislator competence and also reveal how the design of political institutions affects citizens' abilities to govern themselves effectively.

Middle East Dilemma

Middle East Dilemma
Author: Michael C. Hudson
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1999
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780231111393

From the unification of North and South Yemen, to the struggle for Mahgreb unity, and the experiences of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, this book presents a complex portrait of the history and prospects for Arab integration.

The Democrats' Dilemma

The Democrats' Dilemma
Author: Steven M. Gillon
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 546
Release: 1995-02-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780231515580

What does Walter Mondale's career reveal about the dilemma of the modern Democtratic party and the crisis of postwar American liberalism? Steven M. Gillon 's answer is that Mondale's frustration as Jimmy Carter's vice president and his failure to unseat the immensely popular President Reagan in 1984 reveal the beleaguered state of a party torn apart by generational and ideological disputes. The Democrats' Dilemma begins with Mondale's early career in Minnesota politics, from his involvement with Hubert Humphrey to his election to the United States Senate in 1964. Like many liberals of his generation, Mondale traveled to Washington hopeful that government power could correct social wrongs. By 1968, urban unrest, a potent white backlash, and America's involvement in the Vietnam war dimmed much of his optimisim. In the years after 1972, as senator, as vice president, and as presidential candidate, Mondale self-conciously attempted to fill the void after the death of Robert Kennedy. Mondale attempted to create a new Democratic party by finding common ground between the party's competeing factions. Gillon contends that Mondale's failure to create that consensus underscored the deep divisions within the Democratic Party. Using previously classified documents, unpublished private papers, and dozens of interviews -including extensive conversations with Mondale himself- Gillon paints a vivid portrait of the innerworkings of the Carter administration. The Democrats' Dilemma captures Mondale's frustration as he attempted to mediate between the demands of liberals intent upon increased spending for social programs and the fiscal conservatism of a president unskilled in the art of congressional diplomacy. Gillon discloses the secret revelation that Mondale nearly resigned as vice president. Gillon also chronicles Mondale's sometimes stormy relationships with Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, and Geraldine Ferraro. Eminently readable and a means of access to a major twentieth-century political figure, The Democrats' Dilemma is a fascinating look at the travail of American liberalism.