Who Gets to Play? Enfranchisement in the absence of democracy
Book Project (In preparation)
What are the origins of ethno-nationalist, over class-based, political competition in diverse, developing, and democratizing states? This book examines how and why political parties craft constituencies, and therefore divisions, in civil society during the long democratization process. Using several original data sources and a mixed-method approach from the Austrian Hungarian Empire (1867-1918), I show that socialist, fascist, religious, ethnic, and agrarian parties emerged gradually from below and attempted to solidify their presence in civil society through associations that provided members with necessary social services during a time of widespread disenfranchisement. However, the success of these parties in grassroots mobilization-through-social-services varied according to the political, economic, and national considerations and constraints of parties as organizations. As incumbent parliamentary parties extended the franchise to new groups to protect or create minimum-winning coalitions under precarious electoral conditions, the cleavage structure of the emerging party systems was determined by how extra-parliamentary parties organized, politicized, and mobilized everyday disenfranchised people in the vacuum of democracy, but also the welfare state.
Simply put, where extra-parliamentary parties had the resources to and did form nation-based constituencies through the provision of necessary goods and services, the party system came to be dominated by nationalist mass parties, not class-based mass parties. By combining the study of incumbent party strategies and grassroots mobilization by excluded challengers, this work contributes to bridging top-down and bottom-up theories of democratization, presents a theory for the persistence (or lack thereof) of parties through regime change, brings nationalism to the forefront of European democratization, and seeks to understand the origins of inter-group relations in diverse societies. Additionally, my work speaks to contemporary cases of voter enfranchisement and disenfranchisement, democratic backsliding, and the resurgence of nationalist illiberal politics in Europe.
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Working papers
1. Parties that care
Using original data sources from the Kingdom of Hungary and employing a mixed-method approach, I examine how parties carve out, politicize, and mobilize constituencies during democratization. I demonstrate that Socialist, Catholic, ethnic, and agrarian parties gradually emerged from grassroots movements. They solidified their presence in civil society by establishing voluntary associations, which provided essential social services to the masses during a time of mass disenfranchisement from the emergent state. I show that some parties were more successful than others in grassroots mobilization through social services and argue that this fulfillment of needs by parties helped politicize subsets of the masses and mobilized them after universal manhood suffrage was introduced. Using simple OLS models, I illustrate how party-defined access to associations constrained the boundaries of constituencies. When parties restricted access based on class or occupation, the post-democratic constituency was bound by class or occupational requisites. Similarly, when parties restricted access based on religious or ethno-national factors, the post-democratic constituency was bound by religious or ethno-national requisites. By combining the study of party building with the examination of the non-state origins of the European welfare state, I demonstrate how parties can gain their initial footholds in democratizing societies, enabling them to survive the lowering of the electoral threshold.
Covered in the APSA Comparative Politics Newsletter, with a response from Jason Wittenberg. This paper builds off an argument and further develops the anaylsis in two of my dissertation chapters.
2. Variation in sources: Counting hard-to-reach populations, the case of Haredi Jews in London (research note, Haile Zola is the first author)
How can researchers ensure more reliable counts for hard-to-reach populations when the "true" count is unknown? It is widely acknowledged that Orthodox Jews in the United Kingdom are undercounted in the national census, while non-governmental organizations are motivated to inflate counts on their membership registers to secure additional state resources. In this research note, we demonstrate the usefulness of employing sources from various agencies and organizations at different levels of analysis to triangulate and estimate the counts of hard-to-reach populations in advanced industrialized democracies. Focusing on the case of Haredi Jews in London, we illustrate how integrating micro-level data (interviews), meso-level data (non-state associations), and macro-level data collected by the state (administrative data) yields significantly different estimates regarding the number and distribution of Haredi Jews in London. We conclude with a discussion outlining a framework for aligning data sources more effectively with research questions in situations where the true population counts of hard-to-reach populations are unknown.
Haile Zola conducted over a year-long ethnography and over 45 interviews in London for her dissertation, which this project developed out of. I pressed download on the UK census website and helped put together the framework.
3. Who gets to play? Enfranchisement in diverse societies: The case of the democratizing Kingdom of Hungary
Why do ethnically diverse states choose to enfranchise certain minority groups before others? Like many Western European states, Central Eastern European states underwent a process of nation-state consolidation alongside democratization, resulting in a gradual approach to granting political rights. Through historical comparative analysis and an examination of evidence from the democratizing period in the Kingdom of Hungary (1867-1918), I demonstrate how different types of threats, both internal and external to parliamentary systems, influenced the decision-making of elites regarding which groups to include in the enfranchisement process. I consider the national, political, and economic preferences of these elites and assess the characteristics at the group level that I hypothesize and subsequently illustrate to have an impact on the (dis)enfranchisement of minority groups in diverse democratizing states. These characteristics, specifically size and cohesion, play a significant role. The evidence reveals that well-organized minority groups, especially those that are small and cohesive, engage in political organization. Conversely, the least organized among the ethnonational minorities were enfranchised to form minimum-winning coalitions for the incumbent party, as they posed a lower level of political and national threat. In other words, political organization can have unintended consequences for minority groups when it comes to their inclusion in the political processes of diverse states.
4. Confessional Illiberalism and its ugly cousins: Three varieties of illiberal parties in Europe (with Lenka Bustikova) (under review)
This paper discusses the historical origins of confessional illiberalism and its contemporary appeal in party politics. Confessionally illiberalism is the largest threat to contemporary liberal democracy: a governing model located in a synergistic triangle of a dominant party that fuses state with interests of religious organizations, such as Churches and advocacy groups. Confessional illiberalism has two cousins: prejudicial illiberalism and reactionary illiberalism. Prejudicial illiberalism is fueled by individual hate and mass resentment. Reactionary illiberalism arises as a policy pushback against
assertive and ascending minorities and seeks to roll back their advancement. Confessional illiberalism rests on a fusion of state and church and, through its penetration of religious intermediary associations as well as uncivil society it plants deep roots, difficult to dislodge once firmly grounded.
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Works in preparation
1. Working with electoral data from autocratic regimes: Lessons from pre-democratic elections in the Kingdom of Hungary (Blog post)
How can researchers effectively extract data from historical records while ensuring that the data reliably represents historical events? Throughout history, many emerging states held elections prior to achieving full democratic transition. However, scholars studying regime change often restrict their quantitative data to either the period preceding free and fair elections or the period following them. This truncation of data divides regime change into either "democratic" or not, disregarding the crucial role that pre-democratic elections played in both failed and successful transitions to democracy. In this paper, I present a mixed-method framework designed to study and utilize electoral data from pre-democratic elections in order to examine political outcomes associated with democracy or its absence. I conceptually break down the electoral institutions involved in the process of democratization into two components: inputs and outputs. I demonstrate the value of utilizing directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to theoretically analyze the underlying processes that drive pre-democratic elections. Additionally, I employ an original digitization of electoral data from the Kingdom of Hungary (1878-1935) to explore the relationships between various components within the DAGs. By measuring and controlling these relationships, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the causal links between electoral inputs and outputs during periods of political regime change. To achieve this, I illustrate how qualitative case studies of the inputs can be combined with quantitative historical data, bridging the qualitative gaps in existing quantitative studies.
Prepared for joined output with Authoritarian Political Systems Group, Workshop in May 2024. This paper developed from the data appendix of my dissertation.
2. The Political Economy of Hate: Conceptualisation, definition, and the democratic origins of political antisemitism
This is a very new project, and I am currently in the reading phase, which means I am still in the process of theoretical and conceptual development. The paper, which will eventually evolve into a book, offers a social science perspective rooted in history for the origins of political antisemitism in Central Europe during the nineteenth century, a time when states liberalized access to political participation. Conceptually and definitionally, I distinguish between antisemitism and racism by emphasizing empirical differences in the relationship between various groups and capital, as well as political power. I build upon existing theories that differentiate between threat and hate, on the supply side of party politics. Empirically, I utilize several data sources collected for my first book (and dissertation) project to examine the grassroots backlash against the relatively early inclusion of Jews in politics. I analyze the different ways in which Jews organized into pre-democratic parties in the Kingdom of Hungary and parts of Austrian Silesia. This work covers the same time period and cases as my dissertation and first book-project, and studies the backlash to inclusion, if there was any, and where this backlash occured, and by whom.
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Conditional Acceptance (European Union Politics):
1. The Changing European Gender Gap (with Orit Kedar and Odelia Oshri)
We examine the dynamics of the electoral gender gap in a cross-section of 18 Western European countries. During and until the 1970s, women supported conservative parties at higher rates than men. Over time this gap has narrowed and reversed. While there has been ample research on the structural and cultural reasons for women’s drift to the left, we argue that these explanations only half explain the reversal of the gender gap. To present a more comprehensive picture, we focus on men's shift from the left. We analyze the partisan realignment along gender lines in conjunction with the rise of the radical right, which are usually studied separately. We hypothesize that the dynamics of the gender gap are partly influenced by labor market segregation along gender lines, where men experience greater perceived economic vulnerability due to their position in the manual labor market.
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Papers on pause:
1. Coalitions, oppositions, and judicial democratic reversion: A paired comparison of Israel and Hungary (with Benjamin Yoel)
The global rise in the erosion of democracy by democratically elected leaders is a concerning trend. However, our understanding of the factors that determine the success or failure of elected leaders in undermining democracy through the courts remains limited. What causes the variation in elite-led democratic reversion in different contexts? In this study, we examine the cases of Israel and Hungary, two recent examples of the global shift away from democracy, with contrasting outcomes. Our analysis builds upon the observation that many activists and journalists in Israel have drawn comparisons between the erosion of democracy in Israel and Hungary. To establish the significance of this comparison, we utilize an original dataset comprising newspaper coverage of democratic reversion in Israel. While Hungary is not the sole point of reference for Israelis when discussing potential judicial reforms that could lead to democratic regression in their own country, our findings indicate that it is indeed the primary case used for comparison. Subsequently, we undertake a comprehensive comparison of the two countries. Despite several similarities, such as the attempts to erode democracy by right-wing leaders, we identify several differences, including the timing of opposition resistance and the party politics within each state. Consequently, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex processes involved in democratic erosion and the diverse strategies employed by democratically elected leaders.