理解胡安·林兹的民主思想

胡安·林兹是当今学界最系统研究民主化的著名学者之一.在数十年的从教生涯和学术探索中,林兹逐步形成了自己的民主化研究路径和学术体系.林兹的研究主要涵盖了对极权主义政体和威权主义政体内涵的界定和特征的分析,对民主政体崩溃的过程和原因的探讨,对民主的巩固所需条件的概括,以及对总统制和议会制的比较.本文在简要介绍上述主题的同时也对相关问题予以了简要评价,以期通过对林兹的简要介绍而对国内政治学研究的发展有所助益.     

政体周期：前苏联地区各国的民主、专制与颜色革命

对前苏联地区各国的政体变更的研究,常常陷于追逐该地区发生的各种政治事件中。这些研究经常假定政体变更,如果不是简单的不稳定,则意味要么是朝向民主体制要么是朝向专制制度变化。本文提出政体“周期”的理论（类似于经济周期）,认为政体变更可能是循环性的,而不是简单的用进步、倒退或毫无规则等概念来定义。事实上,前苏联地区各国中,政体周期的现象非常常见。一些国家已经从专制制度向更加民主的制度转变,然后又回到更加专制的制度。随着最近发生的“颜色革命”,这些国家又向更加民主的方向转变。本文提出一个政治精英集体行动的制度主义逻辑,集中关注“大佬总统制”在其中的作用,十分有助于我们理解这种政体周期的规律。这一概念也有助于解释为什么2003年到2005年之间,乌克兰、格鲁吉亚、吉尔吉斯斯坦等国发生了“颜色革命”,而俄罗斯、阿塞拜疆和乌兹别克斯坦等国则未发生。     

信访政治的变迁及其改革

原本作为接待来信来访之秘书功能的信访,经过30余年、尤其是近十年来的发展,已成为国家政治生活中具有举足轻重影响力的"信访政治",信访的机构、人员、职能和角色地位发生了根本性变化,获得了地方性立法的保障。然而,访民和一般民众的权利、尤其是其权利的法治保障,却并未获得相应的提升。这种背反情况的出现,正是威权体制的产物,也暗合于中国传统体制之精神。文章认为,信访政治严重悖于现代国家建设的民主、法治与科学精神。信访体制的改革,应当回到其宏观体制之根,推动宏观体制本身的民主化、法治化和科学化改革;应当厘清宏观体制和结构中的信访权力角色与功能定位。     

民主、投资与经济增长

本文使用166个国家和地区1972—2010年的面板数据检验民主对投资消费比和经济增长的影响。结果表明民主在增加居民消费占比的同时减少了资本积累,降低了经济增长速度,威权在促进投资的情况下更有利于经济增长。但当人均收入较低时,由于人们的收入仅能维持生存,投资消费比会维持在一个较低的水平,威权和民主体制对投资消费比都没有显著的影响。因此,在增长的初期,当人均收入达到一定水平之后,威权比民主更能促进投资。     

收入差距与威权治理:俄罗斯与中国的比较

人们常常注意到俄罗斯与中国发展道路的差异,但对两国的相似之处却讨论不多。文章认为,俄罗斯的政治体制通常被定义为"选举式威权主义"或者"竞争性威权主义",而中国则被中国问题专家称为碎片化的威权主义。两国在诸如税收、再分配支出以及公共产品供给等重要问题的政策制定程序上具有相似之处。在由国家提供公共产品、汇集和再分配社会资源的行政结构改革之后,中俄两国都不同程度地出现了收入和社会福利的分化。在中国,经济增长几乎使所有社会阶层的收入都有所增加,而俄罗斯却没有做到这一点。中俄两国面临的共同问题是:改革受益者收入的迅速集中使得地区和阶层的贫富差距愈加明显。     

民主化、治理和政府能力

在政体转型的过程中，民主体制究竟是增强还是削弱了政府能力？针对这个问题，作者深入分析了民主化、治理和政府能力之间的相互关系。经过分析，作者认为民主化并不是决定政治单位属性的有效途径。但是一旦非民主手段开启了民主化进程，那么民主规则就会在政府能力的塑造方面发挥关键作用。     

经济社会学中的市场与政府关系

从西方经济史来看,经济繁荣需要发展贸易。健康的市场环境是贸易的保证。需要政府明晰和保护产权。市场离不开政府的保护,而政府又不能过度干预市场。因此,市场与政府的关系一直非常微妙。苏联的经济史证明专制体制对经济产生巨大的破坏作用。经济繁荣不能无视政治体制的影响,民主政体对于发展经济是必须的。但是民主政体形成的众多分利集团会损害经济发展。因此共容利益是民主与经济间的关键因素。     

威权领导对员工工作投入的影响:员工情绪智力的调节作用

威权领导是华人家长式领导三元论中相当鲜明而重要的一个维度。目前学界专门对威权领导和下属反应的研究还比较少,在已有的研究中关于威权领导对下属工作影响的一些研究结论存在不一致。本文将员工工作投入作为衡量员工对威权领导反应的重要结果变量,探讨威权领导对组织内员工工作投入的影响作用;同时,本研究也将进一步探讨下属情绪智力在威权领导与工作投入之间的调节作用。最终的研究结果进一步论证了威权领导对员工工作投入的显著预测效果。而在各维度层面,员工情绪智力各个维度与工作投入的各个维度存在部分相关关系;员工情绪智力在威权领导和员工的工作投入之间产生部分调节效果。     

代表型民主与代议型民主

民主就是人民当家作主。既然如此,一国人民如何看待"当家作主"的含义、一国体制如何落实"当家作主"就至关重要。本文从理论上区分了两类民主:代表型民主与代议型民主。依据实证材料,本文提出三个论点:第一,中国人民期待一种不同形式的民主,即实质性民主,而不是形式上的民主。这是民主的需求方。第二,中国已在理论和实践发展出一种不同的类型的民主,即代表型民主,而不是代议型民主。这是民主的供给方。第三,尽管中国的政治体制有这样那样的问题,但它基本上符合中国人民对民主的期待,使得中国现在的体制在老百姓心中享有较高的正当性。     

“福山的菜单”与政治现代化的逻辑——评《政治秩序与政治衰朽》北大核心CSSCI

弗朗西斯·福山的新书《政治秩序与政治衰朽》重申了政治现代化的标准菜单:有效国家、法治与民主问责制,阐述了一套国家构建应优先于法治与民主的政治发展次序论,并对美国政治制度的衰朽提出了批评。本文认为,福山并未从历史终结论的立场上退却,而是给其打上了"有效国家"的理论补丁。至于他的政治发展次序论,挑战在于国家构建、法治与民主问责制有时是一个同步建设、互相影响的过程,威权政体更有利于国家构建的论点则缺乏充分证据。福山所批评的美国政治衰朽,更多是指具体政治制度或机构的衰朽,而非自由民主模式的衰朽,亦非系统的治国能力危机。总之,福山这一简洁理论框架与宏大历史叙事的组合有很多优点,但这部作品的逻辑严谨性尚有缺憾。     

Regime types,ideological leanings,and the natural resource curse

While many consider institutional quality as a central explanatory variable when finding what causes the variance in per capita GDP growth performance of resource-abundant countries, this paper attempts to focus on more structural factors: regime type and its ideological approaches to economic policy. Several joint effects of natural resource abundance and regime type on growth are found. The natural resource curse is likely to be more severe in authoritarian regimes than democratic regimes. Among democracies, it is found that the natural resource curse is more salient in presidential regimes than in parliamentary regimes. This paper also suggests that the natural resource curse is more likely when a certain type of democratic regime coincides with a particular ideological orientation of the regime with respect to economic policy. Presidential democracies with left-wing economic policy are found to be least growth enhancing among the combinations between regime type and its economic ideology offered, given similar levels of natural resource abundance.     

Autocracy,Democracy, and FDI Inflows to the Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between political regimes and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows to the developing countries for a sample of 134 countries over the 1983–2002 period. Using two categorical measures of regime type and three different measures of FDI, this study finds that, regardless of the measures of regime type, democracies are not significantly associated with either FDI in level or FDI as a ratio to GDP; democracy is positively related to a higher level of per capita FDI, but this result is not robust to alternative measures of political regime. Taken as a whole, there is no evidence of a systematic relationship between democracy and FDI inflows. This result suggests that being a democracy does not help attract higher levels of FDI.     

Differences matter: The effect of coup types on physical integrity rights

What is the effect of coups d’état on repression? Do ‘bad’ coups against democracies decrease respect for physical integrity rights? Does it make a difference whether a coup d’état is staged by the military or a civilian leader? We argue that the impact of coups on repression varies with regime type as this determines the relative costs of repression and buying political support. Combining updated panel datasets on democracy and coups d’état from 1960 to 2010, we provide an analysis of the effects of coups on physical integrity rights, differentiating post-coup regime type. We find that post-coup respect for physical integrity rights decreases when non-democratic regimes depose democratic regimes through a coup d’état - an effect which is fading over time. As opposed to military autocracies, civilian-led regimes are more repressive in the year after successfully ousting the previous government. Together with supplementary findings on democracy-inducing and failed coups, our findings show that differences in regime types do matter in research of coups d’état.     

Rewarding the introduction of multiparty elections

Do aid donors reward the adoption of multiparty elections? Are multiparty elections rewarded in both democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes? How do the rewards for institutional reforms compare to the rewards for substantive improvements in governance and political rights? These questions are of particular interest given both the spread of democracy and the emergence of autocracies with multiparty elections for the executive and legislature as the modal form of authoritarianism. To answer these questions, we examine temporal dynamics in aid flows before and after transitions to multiparty elections and the strategic allocation of aid rewards to specific sectors depending upon electoral competition and substantive improvements in governance and political rights. We find that, in the post-Cold War era, bilateral and multilateral donors reward the adoption of multiparty elections in both democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes while also rewarding substantive improvements in governance and political rights. Sector specific analyses reveal that multiparty elections are rewarded with greater democracy aid and economic aid in both democratic and electoral authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, the quality of elections matters: the adoption of democratic elections receives greater aid gains than the adoption of authoritarian elections.     

A political foundation of public investment and welfare spending

This paper develops a political economy model to examine the implications of political selection under an authoritarian regime. We formalize the fiscal policy choice of local governments, focusing on two political selection mechanisms and their implications for public investment and welfare spending. A growth-oriented promotion system induces local officials to increase public investment, which may increase output but crowd out welfare transfers. This mimics the recent investment-driven growth in China and relatively low effort to tackle high inequality. Under a broader incentive structure, we show that it is possible for an authoritarian regime to attain the social welfare of a democracy.     

Economic Growth and Political Regimes

The absence of continuous regime type measures that focus on institutions rather than outcomes besets studies on whether democratic or authoritarian regimes grow faster. Additional shortcomings include the failure to consider development stages and the erroneous endogenous specification of regimes. Given panel data on 105 countries from 1960 to 1989, the effective party/constitutional framework measure does not correlate with growth or investment in the total sample. But considering development levels, some evidence indicates that discretion decreases growth in advanced areas, and, contrary to theory, inhibits investment in poorer countries. Also, single-party dictatorships have higher investment ratios but do not grow faster than party-less regimes.     

A curse or a blessing? Natural resources in a multiple growth regimes analysis

The literature on the impact of an abundance of natural resources on economic performance remains inconclusive. In this article we consider the possibility that countries may follow different growth regimes, and test the hypothesis that whether natural resources are a curse or a blessing depends on the growth regime to which an economy belongs. We follow recent work that has used a mixture-of-regressions method to identify different growth regimes, and find two regimes such that in one regime resources have a positive impact on growth, while in the other they have a negative impact or at best have no impact on growth. Our analysis of the determinants of whether a country belongs or not to the blessed resources regime indicates that the level of democracy plays an important role while education and economic institutions have no effect.     

Ethnic identities,public spending and political regimes

Do democracies discriminate less against minorities as compared to non-democracies? How does the dominance of an ethnic group affect discrimination under various political regimes? We build a theory to analyse such questions. In our model, political leaders (democratically elected or not) decide on the allocation of spending on different types of public goods: a general public good and an ethnically-targetable public good which benefits the majority ethnic group while imposing a cost on the other minorities. We show that, under democracy, lower ethnic dominance leads to greater provision of the general public good while higher dominance implies higher provision of the ethnically-targetable good. Interestingly, the opposite relation obtains under dictatorship. This implies that political regime changes can favour or disfavour minorities based on the ambient level of ethnic dominance. Several historical events involving regime changes can be analysed within our framework and are consistent with our results.     

Natural resources and the tradeoff between authoritarianism and development

Why do African and Middle Eastern countries seem cursed by an abundance of natural resources yet USA, Australia and Norway seem blessed? A growing literature has argued that the benevolence or malignance of natural resources depends upon the quality of institutions. This paper offers a new explanation based on associational freedom and its interaction with the political system. The model predicts that natural resources have an adverse impact on economic performance and transition to democracy in authoritarian regimes but not in democracies. It also predicts that repression of associational freedom will be increasing in natural resources in authoritarian regimes. I test the model's predictions using fixed-effects regressions on an international panel from 1975 to 2000 and find support.     

Democracy and Development: Cruel Dilemma or Symbiotic Relationship?

The paper dissects the hypothesis that democracy is inimical to economic development. The historical origin of this perspective is presented and its key theoretical and empirical assumptions are examined and assessed. The chief conclusion is that there is no necessary tradeoff between democracy and development. When compared to authoritarian regimes, democracy is more likely to foster an environment that facilitates the innovative and entrepreneurial process so essential for sustained development. On the other hand, democracy is better for development only when accompanied by an expansion of markets and competition. Democracy without markets is unlikely to deliver significant growth. In this context, liberalized international trade can act in a productive symbiosis with democratic institutions to promote development by facilitating bilateral flows of ideas, knowledge, goods, services, and technology.