The risk of popular protest is one of the few deterrents against election manipulation in authoritarian regimes and unconsolidated democracies, but why are some fraudulent elections met with popular protest while others are not? We use data from elections in 108 countries, from 1980 to 2004, to show that the regime’s choice of election manipulation tactics affects the likelihood of post-election protest. Leaders signal their strength and resources by manipulating elections, but some manipulation tactics send stronger signals than others. We find that opposition groups are more likely to protest when relatively cheap administrative fraud is employed, but not when more costly forms of manipulation – extra-legal mobilization and voter intimidation – are used. This study demonstrates the importance of accounting for variation in electoral manipulation tactics, and the information communicated by those tactics, in explaining post-election protest and the stability of electoral authoritarian and newly democratic regimes.

Defying predictions of radical liberalization, labour market institutions in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe are characterized by relatively protective employment legislation, sometimes combined with collective bargaining rights. However, not all protective employment regimes survived political attack by neoliberal reformers. Existing theories in comparative political economy suggest that employment regimes reflect the relative political power of producer groups. Others have suggested that in Central and Eastern Europe the content of labour market reform was determined by the coercive influence of transnational actors. Through a comparative analysis of labour market reform in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia, this article finds that trade unions played a key role in early institutional settlements over labour markets. However, in Romania and Slovakia, these institutional settlements were subsequently undermined by attacks by ideologically motivated domestic elites in episodes of disembedded politics. The article develops the concept of disembedded politics and demonstrates its importance in post-socialist institutional change.

In this article, we study how polarization affects the propensity of supporters of non-viable parties to cast a strategic vote. To do so, we rely on Canadian election panel surveys from the Making Electoral Democracy Work project that were specifically designed to identify strategic voting. We find that the polarization between viable parties increases the probability of a supporter of a non-viable party casting a strategic vote, because it increases how much she likes her favourite viable party, and decreases how much she dislikes her least favourite viable party. Polarization thus increases strategic voting because it alters partisan preferences.

Government responsiveness to citizens’ preferences is considered a sign of a well-functioning representative democracy. While the empirical literature has grown significantly, scholars have given less scrutiny to the conceptualization of government responsiveness and its relationship to policy/ideological congruence. We show that government responsiveness represents dynamic changes from governments in order to improve policy/ideological congruence. In addition, we consider how electoral systems influence governments’ incentives to be responsive as well as their capacity to be responsive. Building on a veto player approach, we argue that government responsiveness decreases as the number of parties in cabinet increases. We examine government responsiveness to citizens’ ideological preferences in 16 advanced democracies in 1980–2016 with respect to social spending. In line with our veto player framework, we show, first, that governments are generally more responsive under majoritarian than PR electoral systems and, second, that government responsiveness decreases under PR electoral systems as the number of parties increases in cabinet.

Armed insurgents seeking to seize the state often aim to transform the nature of state power. Yet for insurgents who become ruling authorities, how do radical visions of state power influence governance after the urgency of war? This article examines state-building in the liberation movement for Western Sahara, a partially recognized state which has ruled an exiled civilian Sahrawi population in Algeria from wartime through to a prolonged ceasefire. Drawing on in-depth qualitative fieldwork, and engaging with theories of radicalism, post-war sociopolitical reconstruction and anomalous forms of state power, the article traces how post-ceasefire international and domestic contexts created conflicting pressures and opportunities for both the moderation, and the continuation, of Sahrawi refugees’ wartime radical governance. This case of insurgents-turned-rulers suggests how radicalism and moderation are overlapping processes, how moderation is not necessarily an ‘undoing’ of radicalism, and how radical ideas matter for leadership and grassroots militants in different ways.

The 2010–11 Arab uprisings continue to prompt a great deal of discussion. By focusing specifically on Tunisia and Egypt, this article aims to present a more dynamic account of revolutionary moments in these countries. It does so in two ways. First, the changing nature of structures and mechanisms of authoritarian domination over time is explored. Second, the convergences of different social classes and political forces during the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt are not treated as unique and static occurrences. By showing how the two revolutionary networks gradually emerged and enlarged, a truer picture is thus provided. By doing so, this article aims to contribute to a more nuanced interpretation of the two revolutionary outbursts and to the development of the fourth generation of revolutionary studies.

The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), victor in the civil war in 1991, has since transformed into an authoritarian party. While this transition is well covered in the literature, few studies have explored how the party’s ideology has adapted after its position was consolidated. This article addresses this gap, by analysing the EPRDF’s ideology of revolutionary democracy, and how the interpretation of it has changed over time. The Ethiopian case shows that wartime ideologies should not be considered as static remnants of the past. Instead, the ideology has served as a flexible political tool for controlling the state and for justifying or concealing major policy changes. More recent protests and ruptures in the ruling party, however, indicate that revolutionary democracy may have an expiry date. There seems thus to be a limit to how long a wartime ideology can provide power to uphold a rebel government’s hegemony and coherence.

Whilst much has been written about the opportunities and perils of Green participation in national coalition governments, analysis of Greens supporting minority governments is less common and has not focused on comparative-historical trends as this article does. We look beyond single case studies of Green-supported minority governments in order to establish historical party trajectories and policy impact over time in three countries with different political systems. The extent of the comparative work here has never previously been undertaken and establishes that repeat instances of such support can provide the basis for more stable and effective future interparty governing relationships. However, we argue that, whilst trust can build between parties to minority government arrangements over decades, it is not assured, and, whilst Green parties may achieve ministerial control after repeat instances of supporting minority governments, the benefits of doing so are not guaranteed.

On 17 March 2016 the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (Partîya Yekîtî ya Dêmokrat, PYD) unilaterally proclaimed the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria in three cantons, Afrin and Kobane in northern Aleppo province, and Jazira in Hassakeh. The party's ideology claims to endorse the participation of civilians and certain Arab tribes and minorities in its governance councils. However, the PYD and its armed militia, the People's Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG), have been accused of committing human rights violations against civilians and installing one-party rule. Given its stated normative commitments and ideas on democracy, this ideology–practice gap begs the question: what factors facilitated the PYD to conform to its democratic pronouncements on power-sharing and inclusivity under certain conditions and, conversely, what factors permitted their abandonment or violation? By analysing the PYD's governance record and strategies in northern Syria between 2012 and 2018, this article argues that the PYD displayed a mix of democratic adherence and transgression in its governance practices. This has meant that the PYD engaged hybrid mechanisms of democracy-building, coercion, displacement and violence in order to consolidate territorial control and assert ideological hegemony. I argue that complex networks of local, state and third-party interests complicate Kurdish self-rule in Syria, requiring a multilevel approach to understand the interrelated challenges to democratization in the post-war transition. I identify four major types of relations that have influenced the PYD's hybrid governance practices: intra-organizational factionalism; civilian–rebel relations, especially in mixed demographic areas; international sponsors and rivals; and rebel–regime relations.

Surging flows of international migrants challenge the state's capacity to control borders. This problem is especially acute when it involves unwanted, yet often the most vulnerable, incomers. In liberal democracies, policymakers are caught in the dilemma of how to block their presence without contravening the state's fundamental liberal principles. Against the backdrop of these realities, this article traces the development of monetized means of inducing the voluntary repatriation of such migrants. In contrast to the conventional view that associates this political phenomenon with the neoliberal marketization of belonging, I contend that the growing practice of incentivizing migrants to leave is better conceptualized as a subset of immigration control policies rooted in the liberal ideals that imbue the institutional orders of liberal democracies. From the state's perspective, such post-arrival measures pay greater attention to the individual rights of migrants. This argument is advanced with special reference to the underexplored case of Japan.