Daniel J Epstein

This paper examines variation in the development of stable party systems in Brazil's states through 2009, and finds that executive-legislative relations and the incentives they provide for politicians to invest in parties interacts with clientelistic "clan" politics in important ways. Statistical analysis across all Brazilian states is coupled with a structured paired comparison of the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina.

Executive elections have returned to Russia’s regions after eight years, during which time gubernatorial positions at the subnational level were filled by presidential appointment. These are critically important positions for ruling Russia, and thus controlling them is no less important to the Kremlin now than they were in 2004 when Putin abolished elections for these positions in order to strengthen the vlast’ vertikal. Although only 13 regions have held executive elections in this new era, vlast’ has won every contest. This paper examines an important aspect of how vlast’ maintains such electoral control. It uses statistical analysis to examine the importance of candidacy manipulations as an instance of “administrative resources” that the Kremlin employs to secure its desired electoral outcomes. The finding is that the maximization of vlast’’s electoral dominance is not as closely related to blocking the access of opposition candidates who want to get on the ballot as it is to the paucity of opposition candidates who even try to get onto ballot. Although decisions not to seek ballot access cannot be observed directly, the paper proposes an explanation for variations in the rate of opposition-candidate emergence: 10cal political culture that may enjoin politicians to define themselves as helpers, not autonomous agents or competitors. The paper then uses a case study of Briansk oblast to elaborate the evolution of such a “pomoshchnik culture,” and hypothesizes how it can affect attitudes about political competition among regional political elites.

Although aggregate data on party competition in Brazil seem hopeful, unsettling trends appear in state-level party systems in the years of the consolidation of Brazilian democracy (the period this article examines extends through the 2002 elections), such as instability and fragmentation, which exceed the extent of problems apparent at the national level. These hamper the informational role parties can play for voters picking from a large number of candidates. While other possible explanations shed little light on these problems, a hypothesis about clientelistic party-building strategies may explain the patterns in party competition across states. Such strategies depend on the distribution of selective benefits, such as patronage or vote-buying, to attract candidates, elicit votes and gain office for the party. Clientelistic party-building strategies provide no extra-material incentive for party cohesion, and may stymie the development of a stable competitive system. Furthermore, it...

... with a party list headed by the popular Minister for Emergency Situations, Sergei Shoigu, olympic wrestler Aleksandr Karelin, and Aleksandr ... by erstwhile Communist Sergei Glazyev and head of the old Congress of Russian Societies (KRO), nationalist Dmitry Rogozin (Lipman ...

From 2014-2017, four important referenda took place on secession in major states (Crimea & Scotland in 2014, Catalonia & Iraqi Kurdistan in 2017). Until recently, there had been very few such referenda since the collapse of communism, and those that had occurred had been mostly under UN auspices. This paper is an attempt to explain this new " referendum-cluster " according to patterns of weakness in the international order as a state system. It hypothesizes a New Nationalism that threatens the whole concept of states as the organizing principle for the international order. This New Nationalism does not represent groups seeking to merely get their own states, as in the 19 th century, but rather to utilize national loyalty as the actual mode of political domination over peoples, disconnected from state-characteristics such as sovereign territory or formal bureaucratic apparatus. Win or lose, referenda are important as " founding moments " for the myth-power of these new national movements, which seek to supplant the rational-legal and liberalist state-systems, even as they pay lip-service to certain of its intellectual and philosophical bases.

From 2014-2017, four important referenda took place on secession in major states (Crimea & Scotland in 2014, Catalonia & Iraqi Kurdistan in 2017).  Until recently, there had been very few such referenda since the collapse of communism, and those that had occurred had been mostly under UN auspices.  This paper is an attempt to explain this new “referendum-cluster” according to patterns of weakness in the international order as a state system.  It hypothesizes a New Nationalism that threatens the whole concept of states as the organizing principle for the international order.  This New Nationalism does not represent groups seeking to merely get their own states, as in the 19th century, but rather to utilize national loyalty as the actual mode of political domination over peoples, disconnected from state-characteristics such as sovereign territory or formal bureaucratic apparatus.  Win or lose, referenda are important as “founding moments” for the myth-power of these new national movements, which seek to supplant the rational-legal and liberalist state-systems, even as they pay lip-service to certain of its intellectual and philosophical bases.

These are the slides for the presentation of an early-stage project re-visiting state-level electoral politics and the intersection between political parties and familial-type clans in several Brazilian states, with an analysis of the big changes that the 2014 national elections wrought: the displacement of all clans (Sarneys & Lago/PDT) in Maranhão, and the entrenchment of a left-leaning clan (Wagner) and possible demise of the traditional right-leaning clan (Magalhães) in Bahia.

This blog post takes the March 2015 US employment report as a basis for a critique of US Congressional obsession with spending cuts that have undermined the Federal Reserve's attempts at economic management and may cause an unnecessary early recession in the United States.

This paper examines the stability of post-communist party systems in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland (through 2009), using the timing of periods of stability and instability to test theories of electoral rules, sociological cleavages, or incentivization for party-building driving by the degree of executive-legislative balance in each constitutional system.  It finds greatest support for the last of these to explain variation in stability over time and across the three countries.

This Paper uses a quasi-experimental design to investigate whether the imposition of a Majority Run-Off rule actually has the effected predicted by Duverger's Law, of increasing the number of political parties.  Although a simple (non-experimental design) series of T-tests appears to show Duverger's Law might be having an effect, a more rigorous text shows a negative result for Duverger's Law.  A more likely explanation is proposed based on regional trends connected to party traditions and clientelism.

This paper considers the concept of political party system institutionalizatoin and theorizes a new explanation for variations in party system institutionalization in transition countries.  The theory is based on the assumption that politicians want the power that is wielded by the executive and legislative branches of government, but in the legislative branch alone parties are indispensable to creating stable majorities to capture that power.  Thus, the more the balance of power is tilted, formall or informally, towards the executive, the less incentive politicians have to devote themselves to parties over the long term, and the less likely that a party system will become institutionalized.  The theory, along with other factors contributing to party system institutionalization, is tested across Russia's federal sub-units, using electoral volatility to capture the weakness of party system institutionalization.  Preliminary proxies of executive strength suggest evidence for teh theory, but further study is needed to find better measures.

This paper examines the implications of Stoner-Weiss' ideas about governance in Russia's regions for political party party development and presents some statistical evidence that, in fact, a positive relationship exists between between socio-economic indicators that may result from good governance on the one hand, and weak political parties on the other.  It also suggest the use of a new statistical measure of party volatility, Coefficient of Variance, which resolves some issues of traditional volatility measures in extreme multiparty systems, like Russia.

This paper examines several Russian regions to assess the degree to which political parties structure the outcomes of electoral competition.  It presents a rough typology of party and competition types seen in Russia's regions and suggests some structural factors that may favor or inhibit the development of well-institutionalized party systems across Russia's regions.

This paper examines variation in the development of stable party systems in Brazil's states through 2009, and finds that executive-legislative relations and the incentives they provide for politicians to invest in parties interacts with clientelistic "clan" politics in important ways.  Statistical analysis across all Brazilian states is coupled with a structured paired comparison of the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina.

These slides accompanied a paper I gave at the 2010 American Political Science Association conference, examining the explanatory factors behind variations in party system institutionalization in Russia & Brazil, both cross nationally and subnationally (variation of party system institutionalization across Russian regions and Brazilian states).  I show that an executive-legislative balance that is less tipped in favor of executives incentivizes more investment in political parties by political actors, and a better-institutionalized party system.  Also included is a structured, paired comparison of party system development in two Russian regions, Voronezh & Volgograd.

These are slides that accompanied a presentation (in Russian) giving an overview of evolving self-referential claims of governments in Latin American countries to legitimacy based on sets of social goals and responsibilities of the state.  It was given at the Samara Winter School conference of university students in March of 2011.

This Paper uses a quasi-experimental design to investigate whether the imposition of a Majority Run-Off rule actually has the effected predicted by Duverger's Law, of increasing the number of political parties.  Although a simple (non-experimental design) series of T-tests appears to show Duverger's Law might be having an effect, a more rigorous text shows a negative result for Duverger's Law.  A more likely explanation is proposed based on regional trends connected to party traditions and clientelism.

This paper examines the degree of party system institutionalization in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Perú since their Third Wave transitions to democracy.  It compares theories that would explain the degree of institutionalization: a theory of formal institutions based electoral rules, a theory of social cleavages linked to old partisan divides re-emerging, and a theory of incentives for investment in parties based on the balance of power between legislatures and executives.  It concludes that the latter offers more explanatory power than either of the other two.  It also introduces an explains a measure of party system institutionalization that improves on Pedersen's Index.

With the return of Executive Elections in Russia, regional electoral contestation becomes an important arena for regime power and opposition activity.  My current research shows that the key to the Kremlin's candidates winning big majorities in gubernatorial & big city mayoral elections (as opposed to simply stuffing the ballot box) is not kicking opposition candidates off the ballot, but somehow getting them to forgo even the attempt to get on the ballot in the first place.  In those few cases where they actually attempt to get on the ballot, they usually succeed and run very close elections, and in a few cases (mayors of Yaroslavl, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk), even win.

These are the slides I used in giving a talk on the outcome of Ukraine's 2014 parliamentary elections (October, 2014).  It explained the different parties and what the electoral outcome might indicate about the state of Ukrainian politics in the middle of war, as well as giving the background and (then) status of the war in Eastern Ukraine itself.

These are notes for a talk on the development of the Polish Political Party System, the fruit of a research trip to Poland in March, 2009, supported by the Skalny Center at the University of Rochester, and the seeds of a planned paper on the Party System Institutionalization in Poland.