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Life in the Political Machine explores the political lives of everyday citizens who find themselves embedded in subnational dominant-party enclaves that lie within national-level democracies. While we know quite a bit about why such enclaves emerge and persist, we know very little about how those individuals living within them think about and engage with politics. This book offers one of the first systematic explorations of the ways in which subnational "dominant-party enclaves" influence citizens' political attitudes and behaviors through a focus on the provinces and states of Argentina and Mexico.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Chapter 1: Welcome to the Machine
- Chapter 2: Dominant-Party Citizens
- Chapter 3: Conceptualizing and Measuring Dominant-Party Enclaves
- Chapter 4: Tilling the Soil of an Uneven Landscape: Dirty Politics in Dominant-Party Enclaves
- Chapter 5: The View From Inside the Machine: Democratic Attitudes in Dominant-Party Enclaves
- Chapter 6: Severed Linkages: Distorted Accountability in Dominant-Party Enclaves
- Chapter 7: Stacking the Deck: Political Participation in Dominant-Party Enclaves
- Chapter 8: Conclusion
- References
- Appendix
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Jonathan T. Hiskey is Associate Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. His work focuses on the impact that Latin America's uneven democratization processes have had on various local political and development outcomes in the region.
Mason W. Moseley is Assistant Professor of Political Science at West Virginia University. His research interests lie in comparative political behavior and public opinion, and he has published on protest, clientelism, and civic engagement, particularly in Latin America. He is the author of Protest State: The Rise of Everyday Contention in Latin America.
Zusammenfassung
Whether in the northern provinces of Argentina, the central states of Mexico, or the southern states of the United States, less-than-democratic subnational regimes are often found within democratic national political systems. However, little is known about how or if these subnational pockets foster political attitudes and behavior that threaten the democratic norms that exist at the national level.
Life in the Political Machine offers one of the first systematic explorations of the ways in which subnational "dominant-party enclaves" influence citizens' political attitudes and behaviors through a focus on the provinces and states of Argentina and Mexico. Specifically, the authors find starkly divergent patterns of political attitudes and behaviors among citizens in dominant-party enclaves as opposed to those living in competitive multiparty systems. In the latter, the authors find a political culture that approximates what scholars have long documented in established democracies. In the former, they uncover three factors--the politicization of the rule of law, an uneven electoral playing field, and the partisan cooptation of state resources--that strongly shape citizens' understanding of democratic principles, accountability, and political participation. The authors argue that this environment erodes public support for democracy at the national level and that these local strongholds of illiberalism thus provide added fuel to the recent drift from democracy globally. Ultimately, this book calls for greater attention to subnational variations in citizens' political attitudes and behaviors in order to more fully understand the process through which a national democratic political culture can emerge.
Zusatztext
Hiskey and Moseley make an original and important contribution to our understanding of subnational dominant party enclaves by examining these enclaves through a new lens: the beliefs and behaviors of the citizens who reside in them. Using varied data from Argentina and Mexico, the authors demonstrate that undemocratic local political regimes affect how citizens engage with both subnational and national politics. This lucid book is highly recommended reading for anyone seeking to understand how subnational undemocratic regimes affect the quality of national democracy.
