While 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.

Anti-corruption efforts are inherently political. Corruption charges can be levied against political opponents as an instrument of repression; they can also be used against troublesome allies in the same party coalition to further consolidate power. In this paper, we focus on Indonesia and ask: Do major corruption charges follow a presidential electoral cycle—and if so, how? We contend charges against prominent members of the government coalition are more likely to happen before an election, allowing the government to replace intra-party rivals with loyal allies. Conversely, charges against prominent opposition members are more likely to happen after an election when fears of retaliation are low, opportunities for credit-claiming are high, and there is an incentive to remove veto players who may inhibit implementing the government's agenda. To test this argument, we use an original, newly assembled dataset of all major corruption charges—i.e., those involving high-profile politicians and garnering international attention—in Indonesia from 1998–2015 as reported in the Associated Press. We find a significant and robust relationship between the electoral calendar and major corruption charges. This relationship is robust across presidential administrations. These results yield insights into how anti-corruption efforts can become a political tool and counsel caution about the effectiveness of “good governance,” especially in new democracies. Finally, we discuss how contextual political factors external to Indonesia's anti-corruption commission, reinforce this empirical pattern.

How can the growing personalization of power be identified and measured ex ante? Extant measures in the authoritarian literature have traditionally focused on institutional constraints and more recently on individual behaviour – such as purging opposition members from (and packing allies into) government bodies. This article offers a different strategy that examines leaders’ individual rhetoric. It focuses on patterns of pronoun usage for the first person. The author argues that as leaders personalize power, they are less likely to use ‘I’ (a pronoun linked to credit claiming and blame minimizing) and more likely to use ‘we’ (the leader speaks for – or with – the populace). To test this argument, the study focuses on all major, scheduled speeches by all chief executives in the entire Chinese-speaking world – that is, China, Singapore and Taiwan – since independence. It finds a robust pattern between first-person pronouns and political constraints. To ensure the results are not driven by the Chinese sample, the rhetoric of four other political leaders is considered: Albania's Hoxha, North Korea's Kim Il Sung, Hungary's Orbán and Ecuador's Correa. The implications of this project suggest that how leaders talk can provide insights into how they perceive their rule.

What explains public attitudes towards a former aggressor state? Conventional wisdom would suggest the prevalence of negative sentiments rooted in historical hatred. In this article we contend that when individuals are proficient in a foreign language—e.g. a lingua franca—they have an alternative channel through which they are exposed to positive narratives put forth by other parties regarding the former aggressor state. And as a result, their attitudes towards the former aggressor state are more positive than those held by their linguistically limited counterparts. To test our argument, we focus on public attitudes towards the Japanese in Mainland China, Singapore, and Taiwan—three Chinese-ethnic majority political units that experienced Japanese aggression leading up to and during World War II. Using survey data, we demonstrate that individuals who are proficient in the English language are much more likely to hold positive attitudes of the Japanese. These results are robust even when we consider whether some individuals are predisposed to being cosmopolitan; whether some individuals have more opportunities to learn English; and whether the linguistic effects are symptomatic of American soft power.

Process-tracing has grown in popularity among qualitative researchers. However, unlike statistical models and estimators—or even other topics in qualitative methods—process-tracing is largely bereft of guidelines, especially when it comes to teaching. We address this shortcoming by providing a step-by-step checklist for developing a research design to use process-tracing as a valid and substantial tool for hypothesis testing. This practical guide should be of interest for both research application and instructional purposes. An online appendix containing multiple examples facilitates teaching of the method.

A foundation diet, an intermediate blend and a summit diet were formulated with different levels of soyabean meal, casein and crystalline amino acids to compare ‘slow’ and ‘rapid’ protein diets. The diets were offered to male Ross 308 chicks from 7 to 28 d post-hatch and assessed parameters included growth performance, nutrient utilisation, apparent digestibility coefficients and disappearance rates of starch and protein (N) in four small intestinal segments. Digestibility coefficients and disappearance rates of sixteen amino acids in three small intestinal segments and amino acid concentrations in plasma from portal and systemic circulations from the foundation and summit diets were determined. The dietary transition significantly accelerated protein (N) disappearance rates in the distal jejunum and ileum. The transition from foundation to summit diets significantly increased starch digestibility coefficients in the ileum and disappearance rates in all four small intestinal segments. These starch responses were associated with significant enhancements in nutrient utilisation. The dietary transition linearly increased digestibility coefficients and disappearance rates of amino acids in the majority of cases. The summit diet increased plasma concentrations of five amino acids but decreased those of four amino acids relative to the foundation diet to significant extents. Plasma concentrations of free amino acids were higher in the portal than systemic circulations. Rapid protein disappearance rates advantaged poultry performance and influenced post-enteral availability of amino acids. If the underlying mechanisms are to be identified, further research into the impact of protein digestive dynamics on broiler performance is required but appears justified.

Conventional wisdom holds that languages, as ethnic markers, build communities with shared preferences and strong social networks. Consequently, ethnolinguistic homogeneity can facilitate growth. This article challenges this conception of language as a cultural marker. It argues that language is also a practical vehicle of communication; people can be multilingual, and second languages can be learned. Hence language boundaries are neither (1) congruent with ethnic boundaries nor (2) static. If true, the purported advantages of ethnolinguistic homogeneity should also be evident in countries with large populations of non-native speakers conversant in official languages. The study tests this hypothesis using an original cross-national and time-variant measure that captures both mother-tongue speakers and second-language learners. The empirical results are consistent with the understanding of language as an efficiency-enhancing instrument: countries with exogenously high levels of heterogeneity can avoid the ‘growth tragedy’1 by endogenously teaching the official language in schools.

What explains minority language recognition in dictatorships? In this paper, we argue that minority language groups in authoritarian regimes are more likely to have their languages recognized when their interests are represented by a party in the legislature. Moreover, the level of recognition is greater. We test this argument using original group-level and time-variant measures of minority party in legislature and minority language policies for all Asian dictatorships from 1980 to 2000. The results are robust even when we shift the analysis to the country level globally and account for possible spurious correlations.

Why is it that some governments recognize only one language while others espouse multilingualism? Related, why are some governments able to shift language policies, and if there is a shift, what explains the direction? In this article, the authors argue that these choices are theproduct of coalitional constraints facing the government during critical junctures in history.During times of political change in the state-building process, the effective threat of an alternate linguistic group determines the emergent language policy. If the threat is low, the government moves toward monolingual policies. As the threat increases, however, the government is forced to co-opt the alternate linguistic group by shifting the policy toward a greater degree of multilingualism. The authors test this argument by examining the language policies for government services and the education system in three Southeast Asian countries (Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand).