This chapter starts by reviewing the history of American news media since 1789, focusing on how new production technologies and business models led to a comparatively unbiased, objective journalism in the mid-20th Century. The difference today that audiences have become far more polarized. This has enabled market segmentation strategies in which each broadcaster avoid competition by pandering to a different political viewpoint. More recently, the rise of the Web has accelerated the rate at which new political messages can be invented, tested on audiences, and eventually refined to the point where mainstream outlets are prepared to broadcast it. The question remains how effectively large news organizations and Web platforms can suppress information they disagree with. The chapter explores when and to what extent todays markets permit this.

This synthesis aims to put together the different threads pursued throughout this volume and presents our institutional diagnostic. We note as point of departure that Frelimo’s continuing inability to promote agriculture and broad-based private sector growth helps explain why the country lacks a consistent domestic engine of inclusive growth. We also return to the fork in the road. Remaining on the present path would lead to increasing inequality, further regional imbalances, and possibly armed conflict. The alternative is to use the expected gas revenues effectively for poverty reduction. Political power and authority continue to be almost exclusively vested in Frelimo. This stands out as a deep factor in our diagnostic. It takes visionary and brave leaders to take on the necessary reforms. to put the country back on a favourable trend. The uniting capabilities that Frelimo at least once possessed are exactly what is needed now. While one may argue that changes identified here are not necessary for Frelimo’s hold on power, the implications of increasing inequality, fragmentation, and conflict, serve as a strong warning sign and incentive to act in the national interest.

The chapter begins by reviewing the long history of how Congress has procedural rules for itself and, in the process, created protections against majority tyranny while limiting the power of transient majorities to rewrite Americas laws. It also describes how members individual political need to depart from party platforms limits party leaders power and often promotes bipartisanship. The trouble is that these same rules facilitate gridlock, stoking anger and polarization across the wider society. The chapter concludes by analyzing how filibusters, supermajorities, and government shutdowns limit majority tyranny by supplying a practical test of when proposed legislation unduly burdens the minority.

In this chapter we summarise results from studying existing institutional indicators, a quantitative survey of 149 respondents and more than 50 hours of interviews with key informants. Focus is on identifying a series of key institutional weaknesses for further analysis in subsequent chapters.

Why do working-class people so rarely go on to hold elected office in the world’s democracies? In this chapter, we review what scholars know and use new data on the social class backgrounds of national legislators in the OECD to evaluate several country-level explanations that have never been tested before in a large sample of comparative data. Our findings suggest that some hypotheses have promise and warrant future research: working-class people more often hold office in countries where labor unions are stronger and income is distributed more evenly. However, some common explanations do not pan out in our data – neither Left-party strength nor proportional representation is associated with working-class officeholding – and the various country-level explanations scholars have discussed in the past only account for at most 30 percent of the gap between the share of workers in the public and in national legislatures. Future research should focus comparative analyses on individual- and party-level explanations and consider the possibility that there are factors common to all democracies that limit working-class officeholding.

The chapter begins by describing the presidents relations with Congress, backed the threat of presidential vetoes on one side and impeachment on the other. It then traces the rise of the federal bureaucracy as an independent policymaker, asking whether and to what extent presidential power, rule of law norms, and bureaucratic incentives can ensure broadly democratic outcomes. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of the Presidents War Powers, the dynamics of wartime elections, and the Executives alarming authority to impose emergency measures without Congress.

Political research has argued that systematic inequalities in political participation are bound to produce a system that caters more to those who actively voice their opinions. Yet it might be that citizens who rarely see their preferences translated to policy are discouraged from participating in politics. In this chapter, we attempt to estimate the extent to which unequal representation affects participation. Using nine survey measures of system satisfaction across twenty-nine European countries, and looking at nine forms of political participation, we decompose gaps in participation and estimate counterfactually how large these gaps would have been if low-educated and poor citizens had the same beliefs about the system as more-educated and affluent citizens. We find that the gap in voting between the bottom and top education/income quintile would be around 15 20 percent smaller if those groups were equally optimistic about the workings of the system. These results suggest that unequal participation is partly attributable to the system being unequally responsive.

The rule of law and judicial independence are a project yet to be achieved in Mozambique. The different attempts made so far to reform the legal system, mainly after the change in political and strategic direction brought about by the Constitution of 1990, were always short-sighted and conjunctural in nature, under domestic and foreign pressure that was not always clear or well-intentioned. Real structural reforms need to be made for the judiciary to be able to affirm itself as a real power and, in this way, favour balanced growth of companies, increased productivity, investment and jobs and, at the same time, the defence of the rights and legitimate interests of individuals and groups with fewer economic resources.

This chapter explores agricultural performance of Mozambique, its institutional weaknesses, and the underlying factors that underpin an unsatisfactory performance during many decades. We point to the role of systemic political instability and violence combined with challenges to state legitimacy. Regional divides and lack of market integration continue to influence in a critical and all-encompassing manner. Finally, the way in which the interests of the elite and donor influence have affected progress in the agriculture sector suggests the need for concerted reorientation in existing strategies, policies, and priorities. This is reinforced by future challenges, including the extractive industry; population growth and internal migration; national and international markets; climate change; and COVID-19. We highlight the need to place the future of agriculture in Mozambique within a long-term perspective, focusing on the adoption and stabilisation of an institutional framework aimed at increasing agricultural productivity and preserving the environment.