The United States emerged from the 1990s as an unrivaled global power to become a “unipolar” state. This extraordinary imbalance has triggered global debate. Governments and peoples around the world are struggling to understand to how an American-centered unipolar system operates—and to respond to it. What is the character of domination in a unipolar distribution? To what extent can a unipolar state translate its formidable capabilities into meaningful influence? Will a unipolar world be built around rules and institutions or be based more on the unilateral exercise of unipolar power? Scholars too are asking these basic questions about unipolarity and international relations theory. The individual contributions develop hypotheses and explore the impact of unipolarity on the behavior of the dominant state, on the reactions of other states, and on the properties of the international system. Collectively, they find that unipolarity does have a profound impact on international politics. international relations under conditions of unipolarity force a rethinking of conventional and received understandings about the operation of the balance of power, the meaning of alliance partnerships, the logic of international economic cooperation, the relationship between power and legitimacy, and the behavior of satisfied and revisionist states.

It has been widely suggested by political scientists and economists, based on empirical evidence for the period since 1970, that the institution of centralized wage bargaining and the presence of a government of the left are associated with lower levels of income inequality. The authors make use of new data on top income shares as well as long-run series on wage inequality to examine the effects of partisanship and wage bargaining over a much longer time period, nearly the entire twentieth century. Their empirical results provide little support for the idea that either of these two factors is correlated with income inequality over this period. They then show that a closer look at the introduction of centralized wage bargaining in individual countries during the middle part of the twentieth century reveals that in countries that moved to centralize wage bargaining, income inequality had already been trending downward well before the institutional change, that the move to centralized bargaining did not alter this trend, and that these changes in income inequality were also observed in countries that did not adopt centralized wage bargaining at this time. The results suggest that there were alternative institutional paths to reduced income inequality during most of the twentieth century. This raises the possibility that either structural economic changes or commonly shared economic and political events, such as world wars and economic crises, may ultimately be more important for understanding the evolution of income inequality than are the institutional or partisan characteristics commonly considered to be decisive by political scientists.

Although the case-based literature suggests that kin groups are prominent in ethnonationalist conflicts, quantitative studies of civil war onset have both overaggregated and underaggregated the role of ethnicity, by looking at civil war at the country level instead of among specific groups and by treating individual countries as closed units, ignoring groups' transnational links. In this article the authors integrate transnational links into a dyadic perspective on conflict between marginalized ethnic groups and governments. They argue that transnational links can increase the risk of conflict as transnational kin support can facilitate insurgencies and are difficult for governments to target or deter. The empirical analysis, using new geocoded data on ethnic groups on a transnational basis, indicates that the risk of conflict is high when large, excluded ethnic groups have transnational kin in neighboring countries, and it provides strong support for the authors' propositions on the importance of transnational ties in ethnonationalist conflict.

Under what conditions do democracies emerge and consolidate? Recent theories suggest that inequality is among the leading determinants of both democratization and consolidation. By contrast, this article argues that inequality harms consolidation but has no net effect on democratization. The author shows that the existing theories that link inequality to democratization suffer from serious limitations: (1) they are useful only for understanding transitions from below and thus do not apply to many other transitions (that is, those from above); (2) even for democratization from below, their predictions are unlikely to hold, since inequality actually has two opposite effects; and (3) they ignore collective action problems, which reduces their explanatory power. However, these objections do not affect the relationship between inequality and consolidation. In particular, while inequality has two opposite effects on the probability of transition to democracy, it unambiguously increases the probability of transition away from democracy. This article conducts the most comprehensive empirical test to date of the relationship between inequality and democracy. It finds no support for the main democratization theories. Contrary to what they predict, estimation suggests neither a monotonic negative nor an inverted U-shaped relationship. Yet inequality increases the probability of backsliding from democracy to dictatorship.

This article examines the political geography of state building in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The absence of interstate war has produced a unique situation for contemporary state builders in Africa—they have inherited states with relatively fixed borders encapsulating a variety of environmental and geographic conditions, compounded by varying distributions of population densities. The author examines the effects of a variety of strategies that African rulers have employed to enhance their state-building efforts given the type of national design they inhabit. These strategies include the allocation of citizenship, interventions in land tenure patterns, and the adoption and management of national currencies. The author tests the effects of these strategies on several dimensions of state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2004 using a variety of statistical analyses. The results indicate that the strategies currently adopted by African rulers have generally failed to substantially augment their capacity.

One of the most noteworthy political regularities in the early twentieth century was the shift away from majoritarian electoral rules in Western Europe. The conventional wisdom suggests that proportional representation (PR) was introduced by elites who believed that under the existing majoritarian rules (simple plurality, block-vote, two-ballot rules) they would soon lose power to rapidly growing socialist parties. But this does not explain why many electoral reforms were carried out in countries with weak or nonexistent socialist parties. The author shows that increasing the number of parties distorts the seat-vote properties of electoral rules to a larger degree than previously anticipated. Under increasing party competition, electoral regimes display larger partisan biases than those observed in two-party races and crowd out minority parties that have territorially dispersed constituencies in favor of minority parties that have territorially concentrated constituencies. Using a dynamic Bayesian model for seats and votes, the author measures the partisan biases brought about by the expansion of voting rights in the late nineteenth century to explain the drive to reform majoritarian electoral systems.

The authors present an alternative to power resource theory as an approach to the study of distribution and redistribution. While they agree that partisanship and union power are important, they argue that both are endogenous to more fundamental differences in the organization of capitalist democracies. specifically, center-left governments result from pr consensus political systems (as opposed to majoritarian systems), while strong unions have their origins in coordinated (as opposed to liberal) capitalism. These differences in political representation and in the organization of production developed jointly in the early twentieth century and explain the cross-national pattern of distribution and redistribution. The clusters have their origins in two distinct political economic conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century: one in which locally coordinated economies were coupled with strong guild traditions and heavy investment in cospecific assets and one in which market-based economies were coupled with liberal states and more mobile assets.

Most scholars hold that the consequences of unipolarity for great power conflict are indeterminate and that a power shift resulting in a return to bipolarity or multipolarity will not raise the specter of great power war. This article calls into question the core assumptions underlying the consensus: (1) that people are mainly motivated by the instrumental pursuit of tangible ends such as physical security and material prosperity and (2) that major powers' satisfaction with the status quo is relatively independent of the distribution of capabilities. in fact, it is known that people are motivated powerfully by a noninstrumental concern for relative status, and there is strong empirical evidence linking the salience of those concerns to distributions of resources. If the status of states depends in some measure on their relative capabilities and if states derive utility from status, then different distributions of capabilities may affect levels of satisfaction, just as different income distributions may affect levels of status competition in domestic settings. Building on research in psychology and sociology, the author argues that even capabilities distributions among major powers foster ambiguous status hierarchies, which generate more dissatisfaction and clashes over the status quo. and the more stratified the distribution of capabilities, the less likely such status competition is. Unipolarity thus augurs for great power peace, and a shift back to bipolarity or multipolarity raises the probability of war even among great powers with little material cause to fight.

Despite preponderant power, unipoles often do not get their way. Why? Scholars interested in polarity and the systemic structures determined by the distribution of power have largely focused on material power alone, but the structure of world politics is as much social as it is material. In this article the author explores three social mechanisms that limit unipolar power and shape its possible uses. The first involves legitimation. To exercise power effectively, unipoles must legitimate it and in the act of legitimating their power, it must be diffused since legitimation lies in the hands of others. The second involves institutionalization. A common way to legitimate power is to institutionalize it. Institutionalizing power in rational-legal authorities fundamentally transforms it, however. Once in place, institutions, laws, and rules have powers and internal logics of their own that unipoles find difficult to control. The third relates to hypocrisy. The social structures of legitimation and insti tutionalization do more than simply diffuse power away from the unipole; they create incentives for hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a double-edged sword for unipoles. On the one hand, unrestrained hypocrisy by unipoles undermines the legitimacy of their power. On the other hand, judicious hypocrisy can provide crucial strategies for melding ideals and interests. Indeed, honoring social ideals or principles in the breach can have long-lasting political effects, as decades of U.S. hypocrisy about democratization and human rights suggest.

A number of contemporary studies rightly emphasize the notion that policy outcomes result from institutional determinants. But as a growing literature on institutional development notes, these institutions are themselves impermanent. Sometimes, in crisis moments, institutions are replaced wholesale. More frequently, institutions evolve gradually over time. using the Brazilian Central Bank as a case study, this article illustrates that the policy-making process itself can be a central driver of gradual institutional development, with institutions evolving through the accumulation of policy choices made over many years and under different policymakers in response to contemporaneous events and unforeseeable economic and political challenges.

The purpose of this article is to emphasize the importance of the organizational blueprint of labor unions for welfare state outcomes. As a result of the tendency of scholars to view labor as a homogenous and disadvantaged class, the existing literature has paid little attention to this. Many scholars have simply taken labor union support for welfare state development for granted and consequently have focused only on labor union strength. This article argues, rather, that labor union support for welfare state development cannot be taken for granted. It shows that labor unions support or oppose welfare state development depending on their organizational blueprint. This new approach highlights the importance of the labor union movement's organizational structure, as opposed to its organizational strength, for welfare state outcomes. The article also explores how the organizational structure of the labor union movement shapes the stance of employer interest groups toward welfare state development. The empirical findings are based on a comparison of British and Dutch postwar old-age pension development

This article enlarges the existing literature on the varieties of capitalism by identifying a third basic variety that does not resemble the liberal market economy or coordinated market economy types. The dependent market economy (DME) type, as it is named by the authors, is characterized by the importance of foreign capital for the socioeconomic setup and is located in postsocialist Central Europe. Since the collapse of state socialism in the late 1980s, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and the Slovak Republic have introduced a rather successful model of capitalism when compared with other postsocialist states. This article identifies the key elements of the DME model and discusses their interplay. DMEs have comparative advantages in the assembly and production of relatively complex and durable consumer goods. These comparative advantages are based on institutional complementarities between skilled, but cheap, labor; the transfer of technological innovations within transnational enterprises; and the provision of capital via foreign direct investment.

Unipolarity is a novel condition in world politics, and its effects on international alliances have yet to receive sustained theoretical attention. Tracing its impact requires a careful distinction between the purely structural features common to any unipolar system and the unique characteristics of the current unipole (the United States) or the policies undertaken by particular U.S. leaders (such as George W. Bush). In general, the unipole will enjoy greater freedom of action and be less dependent on allied support, enabling it to rely more readily on ad hoc “coalitions of the willing.” Lesser powers will be concerned about the concentration of power held by the unipole, but they will also face larger barriers to concerted action to contain it. Hard balancing against the unipole will be unlikely—unless the unipole begins a major effort to expand—but lesser powers will engage in soft balancing to contain the latter's influence. Medium powers may pursue alliances with others in order to reduce dependence on the unipole, but weaker states are likely to ally with the unipole in order to use its power against local security challenges. Bandwagoning will remain rare even under unipolarity, but disputes over burden sharing and alliance leadership will continue. Weaker states will prefer multilateral arrangements that enhance their own influence, while the unipole will prefer bilateral or ad hoc coalitions of the willing that it can more readily dominate.

A number of influential studies in political science argue that important economic policy changes in the rich democracies since the mid-1970s were caused by the introduction of new economic ideas. This article claims that while experts exert strong influence over the selection of policy instruments, their influence over the formulation of policy objectives is much weaker. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the predominance of Keynesianism in Austria and Denmark did not lead Austrian and Danish governments to maintain low unemployment longer than Sweden, where Keynesianism was less strong. But it did lead them to regard fiscal policy as an instrument that can be used to control the level of activity in the economy, while their Swedish counterparts relied instead on exchange rate and monetary policy.

This article reviews four recent books on balancing and the balance of power. Both in isolation and when taken together, they provide strong analytical and empirical warrants against the proposition that balance of power equilibria represent the “normal condition” or “natural tendency” of international relations. They also reflect the growing dissensus among realists concerning how to conceptualize and operationalize the key concept of “balancing.”

The author argues that their analysis implies a tripartite distinction between balance of power theory, theories of power balances, and theories of balancing. Recognizing this distinction undermines many objections to expanding the concept of balancing to include “nontraditional” variants, but it also helps elucidate why we should eschew describing nontraditional balancing through the language of hard and soft balancing.

Even a more expansive conception of balancing, however, fails to insulate balance of power theory against mounting disconfirming evidence. While one might be able to salvage a “weak” variant of balance of power theory, realists are probably better off adopting a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to power-political competition. The entire field would benefit from treating “balancing” and the “balance of power” as objects of inquiry in their own right, rather than as the province of realist theory.

Dominant theoretical approaches in political economy today, whether they posit convergence to neoliberal capitalism, binary divergence of capitalisms, or tripartite differentiation of financial governance, downplay the importance of state action. Their methodological approaches, rational choice and historical institutionalism, tend to reinforce their substantive theories either by disaggregating the state into its historical institutional components or by focusing on the strategic actions of its rational actors. This article argues that by not taking state action seriously, they are unable to explain the differences in degree and kind of countries' neoliberal reforms. For this, it is necessary to bring the state back in and to put the political back into political economy not just in terms of political economic institutions but also in terms of policies, polity, and politics. To explore the political in all its variety, however, the article demonstrates that at least one more methodological approach, discursive institutionalism, is also needed. This approach, by taking the role of ideas and discourse seriously, brings political actors as sentient beings back in. This in turn also enables the author to explain the dynamics of neoliberal reform in political economy.

The globalization of finance in recent years and the concurrent growth in the financial sector's influence, manifested most dramatically in the recent financial crisis, highlights the importance for political scientists of understanding the political economy of global finance. The authors review six important books that are representative of recent thinking by political scientists on the topic. They address the central questions that have been at the heart of the literature on global finance from its beginning in new and interesting ways. The most important developments highlighted in this article are the move from a predominant focus on state-centered patterns of regulation to the consideration of transnational governance regimes that mix public and private regulation; the effort to understand the causal forces that shape the political economy of global finance by allowing for an interaction among interests, institutions, and ideas; and giving increased attention to new sources of systemic risk in the global financial system, as well to the consequences for domestic politics of interactions with the global financial system. Notwithstanding the progress that has been made in coming to grips with the political economy of global finance, the authors highlight a number of questions that need to be addressed in future research. Although various nonstate actors have been recognized as important in the constitution of the rules of global finance, it is also necessary to understand the behavior of the actors who enact these rules. It is also important to generate evidence that forges some agreement on the causes of the globalization of finance, especially as the arguments made become more complex. Finally, there is a need for a more realistic assessment of the costs and benefits of financialization at the global and national levels. This last challenge is essential for a thorough understanding of the current global financial crisis.

This review of new directions in the American and comparative literatures on the state reveals important intellectual trends that parallel each other quite closely. Both comparativists and Americanists address similar questions about the sources of state authority, and both propose similar answers. Collectively, these scholars and others are retheorizing the state—developing a suppler, multidimensional picture of the state's origins, structure, and consequences—to shed light on the reasons for the state's stubborn refusal to cede the stage. The emerging understanding of the state that the authors describe provides a framework not only for revisiting the state in the international realm but also, in dialogue with recent Americanist studies, for revising and deepening the understanding of the state's paradoxical role in American political development and finally setting aside the assumption of the United States as stateless. In this emerging view, American state building, strength, and institutional capacity form through links with society, not necessarily through autonomy from society. But such distinctive patterns provide insights for comparative studies, too, for instance, in respect to the relationship between the state and welfare policy across nations.

There is striking consistency in the international economic behavior of the United States across the bipolar and unipolar eras. The United States has been simultaneously a system maker and privilege taker, and its ability to play that dual role has required the willing collaboration of foreign partners. U.S. influence over those partners, however, has changed in important ways. During the cold war the United States dominated international economic adjustment struggles. Its ability to prevail in those struggles after the cold war has been significantly compromised. The United States, notwithstanding its preponderant power, no longer enjoys the same type of security leverage it once possessed, and the very success of the U.S.-centered world economy has opened a greater range of international and domestic economic options for America's supporters. In the unipolar era the United States may continue to act its own way, but it can no longer count on getting its own way.

Over the past two decades, human rights language has spread like wildfire across international policy arenas. The activists who sparked this fire are engaged in two different campaigns. The first is comparatively modest, involving the persuasion of tens of thousands of global elites such as journalists, UN officials, donors, and national political leaders. The second is broader and more complex: to have a real impact on the behavior of tens of millions of state agents worldwide. While most international relations scholars agree that the first campaign has made real gains, opinions are split on the success—past, present, and future—of the second. In part, these divisions fall along methodological lines. With some exceptions, qualitative scholars working in the empirical international relations tradition express more optimism than their quantitative counterparts, whose contributions to the subfield are relatively new. This article reviews several new books on human rights and shows how their insights engage with these ongoing methodological debates. The authors argue that both qualitative and quantitative approaches offer important strengths and that neither has a monopoly on truth. Still, the human rights discourse may be thriving, at least in part, for reasons unrelated to impact. The authors conclude with suggestions for a more systematic and multimethod research, along with a plea for scholarly attention to the potential downsides of international human rights promotion.