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Why reform in new democracies? -- Constrained strategies : the effects of inexperience and time -- Indonesian democratization and the party system -- Early stage reforms in a period of high inexperience, 1999-2004 -- Reforms under declining inexperience and modest temporal constraints, 2004-2009 -- Reforms under severe temporal constraints, 2009 and beyond -- Changing rules and incentives in new democracies -- Extensions and implications : lessons for scholars, reformers, and advisers.

Regional governments, particularly those representing distinct communities, are typically thought to pursue power of self-rule, or the ability to self-govern within their own regional jurisdiction. In contrast, limited attention has been paid to the importance of granting substantial influence via shared rule, or the ability to co-exercise authority over the state as a whole. Yet, central governments who fail to provide some form of guarantee regarding the authority to self-rule may face ongoing challenges to their legitimacy, authority, and ability to govern. As a result, granting shared control over modifications to their legal status may help to pacify demands from restive regions and those geographically separated from the state's centre. Analyzing the relationship between self- and shared rule across regional governments in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, I examine how the horizontal dimension of multi-level governance can serve as an accommodation strategy by central governments.

The incumbency advantage is typically thought to constrain female political representation, but can female incumbency provide a signal to parties that reduces strategic gender bias? We argue that once women prove they can win elections, parties will revise their strategic evaluations of their value as candidates. We test this using an original dataset of twenty-one Chilean elections between 1989 and 2012. We use a Heckman selection model to assess re-election rates by incumbent candidate gender, conditional on the re-nomination of incumbents. We find that female incumbents are just as likely to be re-nominated and re-elected as their male counterparts.

AbstractWhile there has been work on whether women are more tolerant of outgroups, the ethnic politics literature has generally overlooked the role of gender in explaining interethnic trust. Whatever attention exists often focuses on the gender of the subject—that is, who is doing the trusting—with mixed results. One reason is that the object being entrusted is either not specified or assumed genderless. In this paper, we call attention to the gender of an important entrusted object in interethnic relations: children. We argue people are less willing to have their daughters—compared to their sons—marry an ethnic outgroup. Additionally, this willingness declines as the cultural distance widens. We test this using a survey experiment in Romania where we leverage the diversity in ethnicity and a gendered language structure. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for gender-based differences in studying interethnic trust.

Do female executives exercise the authority of their office distinctly from their male counterparts? Anecdotal evidence suggests women legislators are likely to govern in a more consensual manner than men. Yet there has been little systematic research extending such claims to women in executive office. Using an original data set, we evaluate one aspect of policy agenda setting—rates of executive decree issuance—among four male–female pairs of Latin American presidents between 2000 and 2014. Female presidents are generally less prone to rule by decree, but this relationship is conditioned by presidential popularity. Female executives with high presidential approval ratings are less likely to rule via unilateral action than similarly popular male executives, but the gendered differences in decree issuance disappear when executives possess low approval ratings. Our findings have implications for understanding the potential benefits of feminine leadership styles for executive–legislative relations and good governance.