Woodrow Wilson School - Grigore Pop-Eleches

“Public Goods or Political Pandering: Evidence from IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe.” Forthcoming in International Studies Quarterly.

“Disenchanted or Discerning: Voter Turnout in Post-Communist Countries” (With Alexander Pacek and Joshua Tucker). Forthcoming in The Journal of Politics.

“A Party for All Seasons: Electoral Adaptation of Romanian Communist Successor Parties.” Forthcoming in Communist and Post-Communist Studies (December 2008).

“Crisis in the Eye of the Beholder: Economic Crisis and Partisan Politics in Latin American and East European IMF Programs.” Comparative Political Studies 41(9): 1179-1211 (September 2008).

Abstract: This article shows that post-communist regime trajectories have been largely circumscribed by historical legacy differences but the question about which particular legacy matters most is much harder to answer, since statistical results are sensitive to model specification and to the choice of democracy indicator. While some of these discrepancies reflect the inherent limitations of traditional statistical methods, others reflect the different dimensions of democracy captured by different indicators. Therefore, the article contributes to a more nuanced explanation of post-communist democratization by showing that different legacies drive different aspects of democratization. Finally, the results demonstrate that several prominent alternative explanations - initial election outcomes, institutional choices, geographic diffusion, and external conditionality – played a relatively modest role in explaining democratization patterns beyond the constraints imposed by historical legacies.

Abstract: Since the fall of Communism, external democracy promotion has been most important in “borderline” countries (such as Bulgaria and Romania), which had less favorable structural conditions than the East-Central European front-runners, but where a domestic democratic constituency nevertheless existed and could benefit from Western support. The post-communist intervention history reveals a number of different mechanisms through which the West can support democratization: (1) by promoting democratic attitudes among citizens yearning for Western integration; (2) by shaping the preferences of political elites (both in government and in the opposition); (3) by tilting the domestic power balance in favor of democratic politicians; and (4) by promoting better democratic governance through incentives for public administration reform.

“From Crisis to Reform: The Politics of IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe.”

Abstract: This article analyzes the role of economic crises in the politics of IMF program initiation in Latin America during the 1980s and the countries of the former Soviet Bloc in the 1990s. The article first introduces a theoretical framework for studying the interaction between "objective" economic crisis conditions and domestic political interests as drivers of economic reforms. The second part of the article uses a combination of cross-country statistical evidence and case study illustrations which suggest that the policy repercussions of economic crises depend to a great extent on how domestic actors interpret the roots and solutions to these crises: when ideological convictions are weak or when the crisis does not easily lend itself to alternative interpretations – as was the case for low international reserves in both regions and for inflation in Eastern Europe – economic crises promote IMF-style reforms for governments across the political spectrum. On the other hand, in situations where the Fund’s crisis diagnosis is open to substantial debate – as was the case with the inflationary and debt crises experienced by many Latin American countries in the 1980s – economic crises can trigger divergent policy responses from governments of different political orientations, as right-wing governments eagerly apply the IMF’s policy prescriptions, whereas leftist governments are much more reluctant, and at times explicitly rejected IMF orthodoxy.

“Public Goods or Political Pandering: Empirical Evidence from IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe”

Abstract: This article uses empirical evidence from Latin American and East European IMF programs from 1982-2001 to analyze the nature and the extent of preferential lending practices by the International Monetary Fund. Unlike prior work, which focused on narrow political interference from large IMF member states, the present analysis differentiates between such narrow interests and the Fund’s international systemic responsibilities, which may justify the preferential treatment of systemically important countries to prevent broader regional or global crises. The empirical results suggest that systemically based deviations from technocratic impartiality predominate in situations – such as the Latin American debt crisis – where international financial stability is under serious threat. Under such circumstances, economically important countries do receive preferential IMF treatment but only when experiencing severe crises, while narrow “private goods” considerations are largely sidelined. When systemic threats are less immediate – such as in Latin America and Eastern Europe in the 1990s – IMF favoritism reflects a more volatile and region-specific mix of private and public considerations in line with the changing interests of powerful Western nations in the developing world.

“Voting When It Matters: Turnout In Post-Communist Countries” (With Alexander Pacek and Joshua Tucker).

Abstract: In comparison to the vast focus accorded the subject in the advanced industrial world, voter turnout has received comparatively little attention in the post-communist world. The major trend of declining turnout has of course been noted, given rise to the concern that the initial boundless enthusiasm and optimism of newly unshackled voters gave way to a listless resignation after several election cycles. In essence, once hopeful electorates, faced with rising economic hardships, unresponsive elites, and democratic backsliding, simply tune out. We propose an alternate possibility, however. Post-communist elections involve critical decisions about salient issues, but not uniformly across all countries at all times. We find, in reflection of this fact, that post-communist voters are more likely to participate in greater numbers in elections that are more “important” As noted in the title of our paper, we believe this suggests a “surprisingly rational” post-communist electorate that votes more when the stakes are higher. We test this argument with a pooled cross-national time series of 135 elections from twenty-one post-communist elections from 1990 to 2004. Our study is unique in that it incorporates both presidential and legislative electoral contests, and to the best of our knowledge it contains the most observations in any cross-national analysis of turnout in the post-communist world to date.