The importance of democratization in Africa heighted at the end of the Cold War while also making aid flow a salient feature in the democratization process. As well as encouraging development, many scholars maintain that aid flow has also promoted democratization. Some scholars argue that aid...

In Central Asia the theories and prescriptions of the transitions literature have not borne fruit. The region today is more autocratic than it was eighteen years ago at the time of the Soviet collapse. The goal of this paper is to understand why - why Transitions 1.0 failed - and to investigate...

At least since the late 1970s, the performance measurement literature has used different terminologies to describe agency - and citizen generated performance measures. The first type of measures are placed into objective and the second type into subjective categories. This paper argues that this...

Recent power sharing agreements in Kenya and Zimbabwe highlight a new set of issues relating to the broader practice of “inclusive governance” in Africa. In particular, power sharing pacts present a problematic solution to flawed elections in an environment of “forced trust.” This paper...

Why are women better off in some places than in others? Cross-national studies of the status of women have demonstrated astonishing diversity in the well-being of women across countries. In the Scandinavian countries, for example, women enjoy near equality in many indicators of well-being, such...

One of the lesser-acknowledged conclusions from analyses of the third wave relates to the importance of conservatives to democratic consolidation. Several landmark studies point to the centrality of protecting elite and business interests in democratic frameworks – for without that protection,...

The political developments in both Turkey and Thailand in the last few years have separately garnered a lot of media attention, but the uncanny similarities between the democratic trajectories of these two countries have escaped the attention of most observers. Both countries emerged from the...

In part as a response to the weakness of political parties, international assistance to political parties has gradually become a more significant element in support programmes for democratic processes and institutions. But international party support also brings new challenges for party...

Introduced in 1999, poverty reduction strategies (PRS) are currently the World Bank and IMF’s main instrument to regulate access to debt relief and concessional financing from both institutions. By replacing the former structural adjustment programs this new approach seeks to increase the...

We test three central claims in the consociationalist literature: that in ethnically divided societies, conflict can be reduced by adopting (1) proportional representation over majoritarian electoral rules, (2) parliamentary over presidential or semi-presidential arrangements, and (3) a federal...