比较政治

GOV 39/2 2026-04-05 Original Competition Law and Varieties of Capitalism in the Long Run: The Evolution of Institutional Complementarity, 1890–2010

JOP — 2026-04-01 Original Varieties of Participation and Investment in Local Public Goods: Evidence from an RCT in Kenya Tara Grillos, Michael Touchton Abstract （原文未提供摘要） 中文 参与形式的多样性与地方公共品投资：来自肯尼亚随机对照试验的证据

JOP 88/2 pp. 493-508 2026-04-01 Original The Supply of Conspiracism in State-Controlled Media Gabriel Koehler-Derrick, Richard A. Nielsen, David Romney Abstract When, and why, do governments promote conspiracy theories and use conspiracist language in official media? We build on claims that autocrats use misinformation for diversionary purposes by showing that the level of threat a regime faces affects conspiracism: a mix of “classic” conspiracy theorizing and conspiratorial language. Governments facing threats may attempt to stave them off by promoting conspiracy theories in state media. By contrast, secure governments are not as prone to conspiracism because it can be politically costly in the long term. We test our arguments by examining conspiracism in Egypt’s print media between 2005 and 2018. When the government faced threats, the state-controlled newspaper printed more conspiracism than its independent counterpart. This relationship is moderated by changes in Egypt’s government: the state newspaper supplied less conspiracism during a brief period following relatively free and fair presidential elections.

JOP 88/2 pp. 601-617 2026-04-01 Original The Role of Issue Salience and Competitive Advantages in Spatial Models of Political Competition Anna-Sophie Kurella, Milena Rapp Abstract The empirical evidence within the field of party competition suggests that the success of far-right parties is tightly connected to issue salience of immigration policies. However, it is still unclear how other factors of the pattern of competition shape that relation. We contribute to this literature by taking a spatial viewpoint and analyzing the moderating role of the party configuration in a two-dimensional space. We focus on various characteristics of the party configuration that together describe a competitive advantage. We also extend the analysis to green parties. Based on simulations, we hypothesize that far-right and green parties benefit stronger from increasing issue salience if they take a moderate position on both their core issue and the economic dimension and if the distance to the next competitor on their core issue is large. Empirical analyses of far-right and green parties’ success in Western European countries support our hypotheses.

JOP 88/2 pp. 554-571 2026-04-01 Original The Politicization of Bureaucrats: Evidence from Brazil Anderson Frey, Rogerio Santarrosa Abstract In developing countries, incumbents commonly exercise political influence over bureaucrats through monitoring or patronage hiring. We investigate a new politicization channel: a phenomenon where bureaucrats join political parties while in office. First, with a regression discontinuity design and administrative data on the universe of Brazilian municipal bureaucrats, we identify an incumbency advantage in their politicization. Second, we find larger effects for a special set of bureaucrats: the ones that interviewed households for enrollment into Bolsa Família (BF). Third, we show that these effects are even stronger for interviewers highly exposed to voters and in municipalities where BF was expanded. Our findings suggest a policy-driven logic for this politicization: voter-facing bureaucrats who deliver salient policies accumulate electoral capital, which is converted into rents by joining the incumbent political networks.

WP 78/2 pp. 293-332 2026-04-01 Original The More Things Change: Legacies of Race and Segregation in South Africa's Land Reform Alex Dyzenhaus Abstract abstract: How does land reform occur and under what conditions do land transfers take place? The author argues that to understand contemporary market-driven land reform outcomes, one must examine the supply-side incentives of existing landholders in addition to demand-side explanations. Interviews and descriptive geospatial data from two provinces in South Africa show that landholders made land reform work for them and in doing so the redistribution of land reinforced past forms of segregation. These landholders' strategies were shaped by place-specific historical legacies of racial segregation: Some white farmers—in places in which spatial segregation fell on a rural-urban axis and economic segregation excluded black people from agriculture—used land redistribution to buffer their farms against predominantly black settlements. Other white farmers—in rural areas with dispersed spatial segregation and a large, but different, black farming sector—incorporated black farmers into the commercial value chain via land redistribution. The author's findings have implications for studies of redistribution in highly unequal contexts—that is, market-based redistribution can reinforce historical spatial and economic segregation.

JOP 88/2 pp. 449-464 2026-04-01 Original The Institutional Sources of Economic Transformation: Explaining Variation in Energy Transitions Jared J. Finnegan, Phillip Y. Lipscy, Jonas Meckling, Florence Metz

WP 78/2 pp. 333-376 2026-04-01 Original State Reach and Gender Norms: Examining the Uptake of Equitable Land Rights Lauren Honig, Adam S. Harris, Ellen Lust Abstract abstract: State reach has been linked to civil conflict, democracy, and the power of local authorities. The authors find evidence that state reach may also influence social institutions governing gender and property rights. Many governments implement laws that promise equal land rights to both men and women, thus attempting to change the social institutions governing land management. However, success varies. This article draws on original survey evidence from Malawi to show that state reach is positively associated with the practice of gender-equitable property rights at the community level and household level, even when considering community differences in such factors as land values, proximity to urban areas, migration, market access, ethnic heterogeneity, education, wealth, the nature of customary authorities, and lineage systems. Evidence from thirty-two focus groups reveals the importance of two key state reach mechanisms: state information dissemination and access to state forums. This research has implications for the study of the state, modernization, and social institutions, as well as for property rights and gender equality in Africa.

JOP 88/2 pp. 509-525 2026-04-01 Original Social Density, Clientelism, and Community Benefits Jeremy Spater, Erik Wibbels Abstract How does the social structure of a neighborhood affect the linkage strategies chosen by politicians? Our argument links the social centrality of individuals and the social density of neighborhoods to the incidence of individual-level clientelism and the contingent provision of neighborhood benefits, respectively. We test the resulting hypotheses using a combination of original network, experimental and nonexperimental survey data collected across 9,184 households in 217 slums across three cities in India. We find that socially central individuals are more likely to be targeted with private clientelism and that more socially dense neighborhoods are more likely to coordinate votes, attract benefits, and achieve the legal prerequisites for public services.

WP 78/2 pp. 377-418 2026-04-01 Original Rightful Challengers: How Chinese Criminal Defense Lawyers Encourage Judge-Prosecutor Disagreement Yue Hou, Jieun Kim Abstract abstract: In autocracies, courts are often perceived as tools of the autocrats, with lawyers viewed as lacking influence. The authors reassess these assumptions by examining criminal defense lawyers as "rightful challengers" within China's legal system. Analyzing an original data set of drug cases in Chinese criminal courts from 2014 through 2018, the authors find that when a lawyer is present, judges are three times more likely to reject prosecutors' arguments and twice as likely to deviate from prosecutors' sentencing recommendations. The deviation on average results in sentences that are shorter than the prosecutor's recommendation—shorter by more than two months in addition to the already shorter sentences judges give compared to prosecutors' recommendations. These findings suggest that lawyers can exert a substantial impact on judicial decisions by encouraging judge-prosecutor disagreement, particularly in cases that are less politically sensitive. Original interviews and close examination of lawyers' arguments reveal that the quality of defense is crucial for understanding lawyers' effectiveness in influencing court decisions. These results highlight how seemingly powerless societal actors, such as lawyers, can act as rightful challengers to powerful state actors within authoritarian regimes.