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17 results in Cambridge Elements

Constructing Economic Nationalisms in Brazil and India

Constructing Economic Nationalisms in Brazil and India
  • Jason Jackson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2025
    Print publication:
    30 November 2025
  • While the concept of economic nationalism is frequently deployed it is poorly defined, posited as the cause of protectionism in some cases while providing a rationale for liberalization in others. This Element provides a more rigorous articulation by analyzing variation in foreign investment regulation in postwar India and Brazil. Conventional approaches cite India's leftist ”socialism” and Brazil's right-wing authoritarianism to explain why India resisted foreign direct investment (FDI) while Brazil welcomed foreign firms in this period. However, this ignores puzzling industry-level variation: India restricted FDI in auto manufacturing but allowed multinationals in oil while Brazil welcomed foreign auto companies but prohibited FDI in oil. This variation is inadequately explained by pluralist theories, structural-material approaches, or constructivist theories. Policymakers' preferences were shaped by contrasting colonial experiences that generated distinct economic nationalisms and policies and patterns of industrialization in both countries. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The Undulating Capacity of the State

The Undulating Capacity of the State
  • Autochthony and Infrastructure Development in African Cities
  • Ato Kwamena Onoma
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • This Element weaves together literatures on autochthony and belonging and on African urbanism to shed new light on the ability of the African state to undertake development interventions in some of the most important urban centers on the continent. It explains variations in levels of trust in the African state that shape neighborhoods' responses to states' development interventions. Focusing on the Senegalese state's construction of the VDN 2 highway on the outskirts of the capital, Dakar, the author argues that in major African cities with colonial origins, whether neighborhoods project themselves as 'autochthonous' or 'migrant' communities shapes general attitudes toward the state and influences the capacity of the state to carry out development interventions in these areas. In these cities, states are more likely to successfully intervene in neighborhoods dominated by 'new' migrants to the city than in those neighborhoods that portray themselves as 'autochthones' of these cities.
Shocks and Politics

Shocks and Politics
  • Understanding Disaster Preparedness
  • Jennifer Bussell
  • Published online:
    06 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • When will government elites prepare for natural hazards? Existing research posits that governments will respond to disasters, but rarely have incentives to prepare for them. This Element argues that disaster preparedness can, and does, occur in the context of both motivated ruling elites and a capable state. Ruling elites can be mobilized to lead preparedness efforts when there is a risk that past exposure to hazards will lead to political instability in the face of a future hazard. Where elites anticipate a threat to their rule in the face of a future hazard, due to substantial past exposure and significant opposition strength, they will be motivated to engage in disaster preparedness. The quality and character of these efforts subsequently depend on the government's capacity to coordinate the design and implementation of preparedness plans. The Element tests this argument using a medium-N, country case study approach, drawing on evidence from ten countries in Africa and three in South Asia, as well as subnational analysis in India.
Claim-Making in Comparative Perspective

Claim-Making in Comparative Perspective
  • Everyday Citizenship Practice and Its Consequences
  • Janice K. Gallagher, Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, Whitney K. Taylor
  • Published online:
    16 February 2024
    Print publication:
    14 March 2024
  • Claim-making – the everyday strategies through which citizens pursue rights fulfilment – is often overlooked in studies of political behavior, which tend to focus on highly visible, pivotal moments: elections, mass protests, high court decisions, legislative decisions. But what of the politics of the everyday? This Element takes up this question, drawing together research from Colombia, South Africa, India, and Mexico. The authors argue that claim-making is a distinct form of citizenship practice characterized by its everyday nature, which is neither fully programmatic nor clientelistic; and which is prevalent in settings marked by gaps between the state's de jure commitments to rights and their de facto realization. Under these conditions, claim making is both meaningful (there are rights to be secured) and necessary (fulfillment is far from guaranteed). Claim-making of this kind is of critical consequence, both materially and politically, with the potential to shape how citizens engage (or disengage) the state.
A Chinese Bureaucracy for Innovation-Driven Development?

A Chinese Bureaucracy for Innovation-Driven Development?
  • Alexandre De Podestá Gomes, Tobias ten Brink
  • Published online:
    25 August 2023
    Print publication:
    21 September 2023
  • This Element scrutinizes the attempts by the Chinese party-state bureaucracy since the 2000s to advance innovation and technological upgrading. It examines insights from the developmental state debate – the need for a bureaucracy to achieve internal coherence and the capacity of that bureaucracy both to forge coalitions between bureaucrats, businessmen, and scientists and to discipline domestic companies. Moreover, it assesses efforts to foster technological upgrading in the semiconductor and electric vehicle industries. While there are significant differences between China and earlier successful developmental states, with the former facing problems such as the legacies of short-termism, limited monitoring capabilities, and flawed discipline over business, the authors find that, compared with other emerging capitalist economies, the Chinese bureaucracy has developed strong capabilities to advance 'innovation-driven development.' This Element seeks to provide avenues for comparing China with other late developers.
Criminal Politics and Botched Development in Contemporary Latin America

Criminal Politics and Botched Development in Contemporary Latin America
  • Andreas E. Feldmann, Juan Pablo Luna
  • Published online:
    14 July 2023
    Print publication:
    10 August 2023
  • This Element investigates the relationship between the narcotics industry and politics and assesses how it influences domestic political dynamics, including economic development prospects in Latin America. It argues that links between criminal organizations, politicians, and state agents give rise to criminal politics (i.e., the interrelated activity of politicians, organized crime actors, and state agents in pursuing their respective agendas and goals). Criminal politics is upending how countries function politically and, consequently, impacting the prospects and nature of their social and economic development. The Element claims that diverse manifestations of criminal politics arise depending on how different phases of drug-trafficking activity (e.g., production, trafficking, and money laundering) interact with countries' distinct politico-institutional endowments. The argument is probed through the systematic examination of four cases that have received scant attention in the specialized literature: Chile,Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
Varieties of Nationalism

Varieties of Nationalism
  • Communities, Narratives, Identities
  • Harris Mylonas, Maya Tudor
  • Published online:
    04 July 2023
    Print publication:
    03 August 2023
  • Nationalism has long been a normatively and empirically contested concept, associated with democratic revolutions and public goods provision, but also with xenophobia, genocide, and wars. Moving beyond facile distinctions between 'good' and 'bad' nationalisms, the authors argue that nationalism is an empirically variegated ideology. Definitional disagreements, Eurocentric conceptualizations, and linear associations between ethnicity and nationalism have hampered our ability to synthesize insights. This Element proposes that nationalism can be broken down productively into parts based on three key questions: (1) Does a nation exist? (2) How do national narratives vary? (3) When do national narratives matter? The answers to these questions generate five dimensions along which nationalism varies: elite fragmentation and popular fragmentation of national communities; ascriptiveness and thickness of national narratives; and salience of national identities.
Power and Conviction

Power and Conviction
  • The Political Economy of Missionary Work in Colonial-Era Africa
  • Frank-Borge Wietzke
  • Published online:
    13 February 2023
    Print publication:
    02 March 2023
  • This Element engages with recent attempts by economists and political scientists to rigorously estimate impacts of missionary work in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that, although these efforts contribute to more accurate assessments of the 'true' effects of missionary presence, they also have a tendency to present Christian involvement in the region as a largely apolitical process, that was relatively unaffected by the rapidly evolving geopolitical and socio-cultural contexts of the colonial period. Countering this trend, this Element illustrates aspects of missionary behavior that were inherently more political and context-dependent, such as local struggles for religious hegemony between Protestants and Catholics and interactions between colonial regimes and the church-based provision of goods like education. The Element draws heavily on market-based theories of organized religious behavior. These perspectives are entirely compatible with the analytical language of economists and political scientists. Yet, they played surprisingly limited roles in recent literature on missionary impacts.
Locked Out of Development

Locked Out of Development
  • Insiders and Outsiders in Arab Capitalism
  • Steffen Hertog
  • Published online:
    22 December 2022
    Print publication:
    19 January 2023
  • This Element argues that the low dynamism of low- to mid-income Arab economies is explained with a set of inter-connected factors constituting a 'segmented market economy'. These include an over-committed and interventionist state with limited fiscal and institutional resources; deep insider-outsider divides among firms and workers that result from and reinforce wide-ranging state intervention; and an equilibrium of low skills and low productivity that results from and reinforces insider-outsider divides. These mutually reinforcing features undermine encompassing cooperation between state, business and labor. While some of these features are generic to developing countries, others are regionally specific, including the relative importance and historical ambition of the state in the economy and, closely related, the relative size and rigidity of the insider coalitions created through government intervention. Insiders and outsiders exist everywhere, but the divisions are particularly stark, immovable and consequential in the Arab world.
Everyday Choices

Everyday Choices
  • The Role of Competing Authorities and Social Institutions in Politics and Development
  • Ellen M. Lust
  • Published online:
    18 November 2022
    Print publication:
    08 December 2022
    • Element
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  • Scholars and practitioners seek development solutions through the engineering and strengthening of state institutions. Yet, the state is not the only or the primary arena shaping how citizens, service providers and state officials engage in actions that constitute politics and development. These individuals are members of religious orders, ethnic communities, and other groups that make claims on them, creating incentives that shape their actions. Recognizing how individuals experience these claims and view the choices before them is essential to understanding political processes and development outcomes. This Element establishes a framework elucidating these forces, which is key to knowledge accumulation, designing future research and effective programming. Taking an institutional approach, this Element explains how the salience of arenas of authority associated with various communities and the nature of social institutions within them affect politics and development. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Greed and Guns

Greed and Guns
  • Imperial Origins of the Developing World
  • Atul Kohli
  • Published online:
    24 October 2022
    Print publication:
    17 November 2022
  • This Element studies the causes and the consequences of modern imperialism. The focus is on British and US imperialism in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries respectively. The dynamics of both formal and informal empires are analyzed. The argument is that imperialism is moved mainly by the desire of major powers to enhance their national economic prosperity. They do so by undermining sovereignty in peripheral countries and establishing open economic access. The impact on the countries of the periphery tends to be negative. In a world of states, then, national sovereignty is an economic asset. Since imperialism seeks to limit the exercise of sovereign power by subject people, there tends to be an inverse relationship between imperialism and development: the less control a state has over its own affairs, the less likely it is that the people of that state will experience economic progress.
Rethinking the Resource Curse

Rethinking the Resource Curse
  • Benjamin Smith, David Waldner
  • Published online:
    01 April 2021
    Print publication:
    22 April 2021
  • This Element documents the diversity and dissensus of scholarship on the political resource curse, diagnoses its sources, and directs scholarly attention towards what the authors believe will be more fruitful avenues of future research. In the scholarship to date, there is substantial regional heterogeneity and substantial evidence denying the existence of a political resource curse. This dissensus is located in theory, measure, and research design, especially regarding measurement error and endogenous selection. The work then turns to strategies for reconnecting research on resource politics to the broader literature on democratic development. Finally, the results of the authors' own research is presented, showing that a set of historically contingent events in the Middle East and North Africa are at the root of what has been mistaken for a global political resource curse.
Democracy and Population Health

Democracy and Population Health
  • James W. McGuire
  • Published online:
    15 June 2020
    Print publication:
    09 July 2020
  • This Element explores the association between political democracy and population health. It reviews the rise of scholarly interest in the association, evaluates alternative indicators of democracy and population health, assesses how particular dimensions of democracy have affected population health, and explores how population health has affected democracy. It finds that democracy - optimally defined as free, fair, inclusive, and decisive elections plus basic rights - is usually, but not invariably, beneficial for population health, even after good governance is taken into account. It argues that research on democracy and population health should take measurement challenges seriously; recognize that many aspects of democracy, not just competitive elections, can affect population health; acknowledge that democracy's impact on population health will be large or small, and beneficial or harmful, depending on circumstances; and identify the relevant circumstances by combining the quantitative analysis of many cases with the qualitative study of a few cases.
Undocumented Nationals

Undocumented Nationals
  • Between Statelessness and Citizenship
  • Wendy Hunter
  • Published online:
    16 July 2019
    Print publication:
    11 July 2019
  • Understood simply, people are either citizens of a country or stateless. Yet reality belies this dichotomy. Between absolute statelessness and full citizenship exist millions of people who are nationals of a country in principle but lack the identity documents to prove it, beginning with a birth certificate. Languishing in a gray zone, undocumented nationals have difficulty accessing the full services and rights that their documented counterparts enjoy. Drawing on a range of country examples, Undocumented Nationals: Between Statelessness and Citizenship calls attention to and analyzes the plight of people who cannot exercise full citizenship owing to evidentiary deficiencies. The existing literature has not adequately conceptualized and examined this in-between status, which results sometimes from state neglect and other times from intentional state discrimination. By highlighting its causes and consequences, and exploring ways to address the problem, this Cambridge Element addresses an important gap in the literature.
Participation in Social Policy

Participation in Social Policy
  • Public Health in Comparative Perspective
  • Tulia G. Falleti, Santiago L. Cunial
  • Published online:
    29 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018
  • Health is a defining feature of life and its politics vital. Governments and international organizations have promoted community participation in public health since the late 1970s. However, we lack comparative studies of these participatory institutions in public health. This Element proposes a conceptualization of programmatic participation and distinguishes between two types, monitoring and policy-making. Falleti and Cunial review the origins of state-sanctioned institutions that mandate community participation in health in the two world regions with most advanced social welfare systems, Western Europe and Latin America, implying a comparative analysis of eleven health care systems. They argue that the origins of participatory institutions help account for the resulting types of programmatic participation. They delve deeper into the study of the experience of participation for policy making and analyze two hundred local participatory projects in public health. Falleti and Cunial focus their attention on the characteristics of participants, the role of health care professionals, and the role of local politics in the execution of community projects.
Coercive Distribution

Coercive Distribution
  • Michael Albertus, Sofia Fenner, Dan Slater
  • Published online:
    24 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 April 2018
  • Canonical theories of political economy struggle to explain patterns of distribution in authoritarian regimes. In this Element, Albertus, Fenner, and Slater challenge existing models and introduce an alternative, supply-side, and state-centered theory of 'coercive distribution'. Authoritarian regimes proactively deploy distributive policies as advantageous strategies to consolidate their monopoly on power. These policies contribute to authoritarian durability by undercutting rival elites and enmeshing the masses in lasting relations of coercive dependence. The authors illustrate the patterns, timing, and breadth of coercive distribution with global and Latin American quantitative evidence and with a series of historical case studies from regimes in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. By recognizing distribution's coercive dimensions, they account for empirical patterns of distribution that do not fit with quasi-democratic understandings of distribution as quid pro quo exchange. Under authoritarian conditions, distribution is less an alternative to coercion than one of its most effective expressions.
Developmental States

Developmental States
  • Stephan Haggard
  • Published online:
    06 February 2018
    Print publication:
    08 February 2018
  • The concept of the developmental state emerged to explain the rapid growth of a number of countries in East Asia in the postwar period. Yet the developmental state literature also offered a theoretical approach to growth that was heterodox with respect to prevailing approaches in both economics and political science. Arguing for the distinctive features of developmental states, its proponents emphasized the role of government intervention and industrial policy as well as the significance of strong states and particular social coalitions. This literature blossomed into a wider approach, firmly planted in a much longer heterodox tradition, that explored comparisons with states that were decidedly not developmentalist, thus contributing to our historical understanding of long-run growth. This Element provides a critical but sympathetic overview of this literature and ends with its revival and a look forward at the possibility for developmentalist approaches, both in the advanced and developing world.