Articles by Giovanni Capoccia
Comparative Politics, 2023
Methodological Appendix for "Trying perpetrators: Denazification trials and support for democracy... more Methodological Appendix for "Trying perpetrators: Denazification trials and support for democracy in West Germany", Comparative Politics, First View 2023
Comparative Politics, 2023
We study the effects of transitional justice (TJ) programs that punish large numbers of human rig... more We study the effects of transitional justice (TJ) programs that punish large numbers of human rights violators through the lenses of social psychology theories on how individuals respond to punishment in allocative situations, including how defendants in court trials evaluate their verdicts. We analyze subnational variation in procedures and outcomes of denazification trials in West Germany during 1946-47. Consistently with established findings in social psychology, we find that procedural justice and the distributive fairness of outcomes can compensate for the antidemocratic attitudinal effects of being a defendant in a TJ trial. We also find evidence that procedural justice influences the democratic attitudes of family members of TJ defendants. The study has implications for contemporary cases of TJ programs that affect large numbers of perpetrators.
Comparative Political Studies, 2020
How harshly should perpetrators of past abuses be punished, to reinforce the
legitimacy of a new ... more How harshly should perpetrators of past abuses be punished, to reinforce the
legitimacy of a new democracy? Drawing on sociopsychological theories, we
hypothesize that prodemocratic mass attitudes are favored by the perception
that defendants in transitional justice trials have been punished in a way that
is morally proportional to their offenses. This perception is shaped by the social
categorization of defendants and the opinions about the certainty of their
guilt that predominate in the mass public. When defendants are largely seen
as co-ethnics and their guilt is contested, like in the West German case,
prodemocratic attitudes are likely to be strengthened by lighter punishments
and undermined by harsher sanctions. The analysis of subnational variation in
patterns of punishment in postwar West Germany confirms this hypothesis and
shows that these attitudinal effects persist in the medium term. Our findings
have implications for research on transitional justice and democratization.
Comparative Political Studies, 2020
This publication does not have an abstract
Chapter in Kirshner, Alexander, and Anthoula Malkopoulou (eds.), Militant Democracy and its Critics. Populism, Parties, Extremism, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2019
Despite the continuing political importance of the issues underlying the rights-restricting polic... more Despite the continuing political importance of the issues underlying the rights-restricting policies associated with the study of “militant democracy”, the concept has been all but absent from post-war mainstream comparative politics. The chapter argues that the absence of an empirical research program on militant democracy is due to the theoretical, conceptual and normative lenses characterizing the approaches that have successively dominated the sub-discipline. These approaches have led analysts to consider rights-restricting policies targeted at anti-democratic actors in the context of broader or narrower objects of study, thus reducing the conceptual and theoretical space available for the comparative analysis of militant democracy per se. The lack of systematic comparative knowledge from a robust research program on militant democracy has been not only detrimental to our understanding of democratic rule, but also to the research programs that have focused on phenomena related to rights-restricting policies in democracies. The chapter illustrates these points through a discussion of the empirical research on political tolerance. The discussion focuses on how the identification of democracy with a model of an unrestricted marketplace of ideas, which underlies many analyses of tolerance, has led to conceptual and analytical moves that have restricted the theoretical and conceptual space for the study of “militant democracy” as an independent phenomenon that happens in, and varies across, full-fledged democratic regimes. The chapter furthermore shows how a more reliable empirical knowledge of variation in rights-restricting policies across different democracies would be likely to improve our interpretation of comparative findings on political tolerance.
Comparative Political Studies, 2016
Historical institutionalist theories of endogenous change have enhanced our understanding of inst... more Historical institutionalist theories of endogenous change have enhanced our understanding of institutional development by providing a theoretical vocabulary for analyzing how institutions may be renegotiated over the long run by social and political actors. In these theories, however, the causal impact of institutions themselves on political outcomes, including their own change and reform, is less developed-a significant problem for an institutional research program. This article addresses this problem by proposing strategies that integrate historical institutionalism's insights into endogenous institutional change with a systematic analysis of the institutional conditions under which "bottom-up" processes of gradual change are likely to be counteracted. In particular, the institutionalization of cultural categories and the allocation of power over the timing of reform within institutional and policy configurations are important variables for understanding how preexisting institutions may enable institutional incumbents to channel, delay, or prevent institutional change altogether.
Chapter in Advances in Comparative Historical Analysis, eds. J. Mahoney and K. Thelen, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015
In the analysis of institutional development, critical junctures are moments in which structural ... more In the analysis of institutional development, critical junctures are moments in which structural (social, organizational, ideational) constraints on political decision-making are relaxed and new path-dependent institutions are put in place. Such structural indetermination leaves different institutional option open, at least two of which could ex ante be plausibly selected. Unlike economists, who have focused on the accumulation of unconnected micro-decisions as the possible cause of the emergence of new institutional equilibria, political scientists have instead emphasized the importance of contingent political decisions, and interactions among powerful individual and collective actors during critical junctures. Such decisions and interactions, however, have so far remained undertheorized in comparative-historical analysis. Drawing on different literatures in political science, and building on a definition of contingency that makes the concept usable in comparative-historical research, the chapter articulates propositions for making the agency and contingency at the core of critical junctures analytically tractable. The discussion highlights the theoretical and methodological payoffs of systematically analyzing the features of the politics of institution-making that are causally important for building or reforming path-dependent institutions during critical junctures. In particular, I focus on the formation of political coalitions, the emergence of “out-of-winset” outcomes, and the politics of ideas during crises. Looking at political decisions and interactions during critical junctures through these theoretical lenses can inform the comparative analysis of critical junctures, with the potential to yield fresh findings and to further the scholarly conversation on institutional change. The last part of the chapter discusses methodological issues in the study of critical junctures in comparative historical analysis, with particular emphasis on cross-sectional and longitudinal comparison, and the identification of negative cases.
Chapter in Fioretos, Orfeo, Falleti, Tulia, and Adam Sheingate (eds.), Oxford Handbook of HIstorical Institutionalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016
In historical institutional analysis, critical junctures are rare moments in the development of a... more In historical institutional analysis, critical junctures are rare moments in the development of an institution or a policy. Due to endogenous or exogenous disruptions, during critical junctures there is a substantial increase in the possibility that powerful political actors –be these individuals or organizations-- can, in a relatively short span of time, influence decisively the creation of new enduring, path-dependent institutions or the significant reform of existing ones. Pre-existing social, economic, and cultural conditions typically influence actors’ decisions, strategies, and interactions during the critical juncture --e.g. by limiting the range of plausible institutional options available, empowering or disempowering certain actors, offering different arenas for interactions-- but they do not predetermine its outcome. Hence, the defining trait of critical junctures is contingency: during a critical juncture, more than one option for institutional innovation must be available to actors, and must be plausibly attainable ex ante. The chapter conceptualizes and illustrates several situations in which the relexation of contraints on agency offers the opportunity for the establishment of new path-dependent institutions. In some cases, this opportunity is not seized: structural preconditions may be broadly favorable to the creation of certain institutions, but the failure to effectively mobilize supportive groups may fail to produce institutional innovation, or institutional innovation may be possible and attempted but may be narrowly missed. In other cases, against similar background conditions, short-term political imperatives may lead to the formation of different political coalitions that then support different institutional reforms. In other situations, even though the preferences of key actors are linked to pre-existing structural conditions, the institutional outcome that emerges from the juncture may not correspond to the actors’ individual or combined preferences (“out-of-winset” outcomes). In addition, the chapter pays particular attention to the importance of the politics of ideas during critical junctures, in which politically influential actors may seek to establish the legitimacy of new institutional arrangements. Looking at the politics of institutional formation during critical junctures through these theoretical lenses can inform comparative analysis and yield fresh findings, thus furthering the scholarly conversation on institutional change. The conclusion of the chapter locates critical juncture and path dependency analysis in the broader context of theories of institutional change, identifying the potential limitations of such theories and pointing to avenues of further theorization.
World Politics, 2007
The causal logic behind many arguments in historical institutionalism emphasizes the enduring imp... more The causal logic behind many arguments in historical institutionalism emphasizes the enduring impact of choices made during critical junctures in history. These choices close off alternative options and lead to the establishment of institutions that generate self-reinforcing path-dependent processes. Despite the theoretical and practical importance of critical junctures, however, analyses of path dependence often devote little attention to them. The article reconstructs the concept of critical junctures, delimits its range of application, and provides methodological guidance for its use in historical institutional analyses. Contingency is the key characteristic of critical junctures, and counterfactual reasoning and narrative methods are necessary to analyze contingent factors and their impact. Finally, the authors address specific issues relevant to both cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons of critical junctures.
Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2013
Over the past two decades, the concept of militant democracy-the use of legal restrictions on pol... more Over the past two decades, the concept of militant democracy-the use of legal restrictions on political expression and participation to curb extremist actors in democratic regimes-has again captured the attention of comparative constitutional lawyers and political scientists. In comparative constitutional law, the old neutral model of liberal democracy, according to which all political views are entitled to the same rights of expression and association, has given way to a general consensus that restrictions on basic rights designed to preserve democracy are legitimate. At the same time, legal scholars attribute the considerable cross-national variation in the formal design and use of such restrictions to the particular historical background of each country. In political science, a large body of work now examines specific militant restrictions on extremist actors. Although this scholarship consists mainly of descriptive analyses , it has begun to advance causal hypotheses explaining variation in important militant democracy policies. Taken together, these developments point to the fact that militant restrictions constitute an important facet of modern democracy and that at the same time, notwithstanding recent advances, our understanding of the phenomenon is still marked by significant gaps, making the legal and empirical analysis of militant democracy an important emerging research program both in comparative constitutional law and political science. This article reconstructs the debate on the concept since its origins in the 1930s and suggests directions for further research in both fields. 207 Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2013.9:207-226.
The Journal of Politics, 2012
Why are some challenges to the territorial unity of democratic states more tractable than others?... more Why are some challenges to the territorial unity of democratic states more tractable than others? The literature has focused on numerous explanatory factors, including the impact of institutional reforms and government policies implemented in response to subnational mobilization and the ethnic identity of subnational groups. Building on
the insights of a large literature on the political consequences of religious mobilization, this article analyzes a new dataset on the trajectory of 181 subnational political organizations active in India between 1952 and 2002. The article shows that demands for autonomy or secession put forward by religious organizations are likely to prove much more resilient over time than identical demands advanced by nonreligious organizations. The analysis has important implications for the study of secessionism and ethnic politics in general.
Middle East Law and Governance, 2014
This paper proposes and illustrates a framework for analysis of the recent events in Middle Easte... more This paper proposes and illustrates a framework for analysis of the recent events in Middle Eastern and North African countries (the so-called Arab Spring) by bringing into dialogue recent theoretical advances in democratization theory with the comparative-historical literature on the political development of the MENA region. We advocate two analytical shifts from conventional approaches in the analysis of the Arab Spring: first, reconsider the temporalities of democratization processes; second, focus on struggles over specific institutional arenas rather than over the regime as a whole. The former recommendation draws attention both to the strategies used by key actors in the political, economic, and civil society spheres, and to the historical legacies that built the influence and resources of these actors over time. The latter allows us to consider the institutional safeguards for old elites that are likely to be included in the post-authoritarian regimes emerging in the region. Even though some of these safeguards are clearly anti-democratic, historical examples show that they do not necessarily preclude democratization. Indeed, in some cases, their introduction might be necessary to achieve democratic openings in other arenas. We illustrate these theoretical points with reference to the case of Egypt.
Comparative Political Studies, 2010
This article lays the theoretical and methodological foundations of a new historically minded app... more This article lays the theoretical and methodological foundations of a new historically minded approach to the comparative study of democratization, centered on the analysis of the creation, development, and interaction of democratic institutions. Historically, democracy did not emerge as a singular coherent whole but rather as a set of different institutions, which resulted from conflicts across multiple lines of social and political cleavage that took place at different moments in time. The theoretical advantage of this approach is illustrated by highlighting the range of new variables that come into focus in explaining democracy’s emergence. Rather than class being the single variable that explains how and why democracy came about, scholars can see how religious conflict, ethnic cleavages, and the diffusion of ideas played a much greater role in Europe’s democratization than has typically been appreciated. Above all, the authors argue that political parties were decisive players in how and why democracy emerged in Europe and should be at the center of future analyses.
M. Crenshaw, ed., The Consequences of Counterterrorist Policies in Democracies, New York, Russell Sage, 2010
The post-9/11 counterterrorism policies enacted in different countries display important differen... more The post-9/11 counterterrorism policies enacted in different countries display important differences. In the United States, the emergence of an international terrorist threat on an unprecedented scale has led to a great increase in the power of the executive. By contrast, other countries that are potentially exposed to the same threat have retained tighter limits on the power of the executive. Resonating with a large literature in sociological institutionalism, constructivist scholars of international relations explained these differences through the power of institutionalized cultural norms (values, identities, ideologies), which provide the “prism” through which external shocks are seen before being translated into foreign and domestic security policies. This chapter argues that in order to have a satisfactory account of how countries react to international crises, the analytical focus on institutionalized norms must be integrated with the analysis of internal institutional dynamics. Even the most strongly embedded cultural norms are generally contested. In the often time-compressed horizon imposed on decision-makers by the emergence of an international crisis, such contestation is typically not solved by public deliberation. More likely, it leads to institutional friction between the government and the counter-majoritarian domestic institutions such as the judiciary, and subnational levels of government in a federal system, which may impose interpretations of inherited norms that prevail over rival interpretations supported by an overwhelming majority of the political elites and the public. This point is illustrated by an analysis of the policy responses to 9/11 in the Federal Republic of Germany. For historical reasons, the German constitutional system is characterized, more than any other advanced democracy, by particularly developed norms on the “protection of democracy” from its internal enemies, and therefore constitutes a “least likely case” for the proposition above.
Conference Paper, American Political Science Association Annual Convention 2006, Philadelphia, PA, August 31-September 3, 2006
Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2002
Many years after its emergence in the vocabulary of comparative politics, the label of "anti-syst... more Many years after its emergence in the vocabulary of comparative politics, the label of "anti-system" is still one of the most used to describe a party or group that exerts a radical form of opposition. However, the term has been used in an increasingly idiosyncratic manner, which makes it inappropriate for comparative research. The origins of the concept reside in the writings of Sartori on party systems in the 1960s and the 1970s, where it mainly referred to the totalitarian parties of the inter-war and post-war decades. Since its inception, however, the concept of an anti-system party has not only been used in party system analysis, but also in the context of empirical studies of various aspects of the life of democratic regimes, to indicate challenges to its stability, legitimacy or, more recently, consolidation. This article reconstructs the concept of anti-systemness by disentangling its different empirical referents in party system theory and in the empirical analysis of democracy, and proposes a more refined typology of "anti-system parties".
East European Politics and Societies, 2002
The article analyzes the political dynamics leading to the passing and the implementation of anti... more The article analyzes the political dynamics leading to the passing and the implementation of anti-extremist legislation in the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938), a little-studied case in comparative politics. Despite unfavorable domestic and international conditions for much of its existence, and the presence of significant anti-system forces, it managed to remain a pluralist democracy until Nazi conquest. This unexpected outcome was also due to the enactment of several laws that reinforced the democratic state’s hand against extremist organizations and propaganda aiming to subvert democracy. The Czechoslovak case is analytically interesting for the comparative study of “militant democracy” primarily because it shows that the “democratic dilemma” of “how much freedom for the enemies of freedom” can be politically solvable without democratic breakdown even in extremely difficult political conditions. The article advocates a comparative research agenda on the empirical analysis of the responses to extremism in democratic regimes.
European Journal of Political Research, 2001
While the strategies of political actors and institutions have been largely analyzed with referen... more While the strategies of political actors and institutions have been largely analyzed with reference to cases of democratic breakdown, democratic survival has often been viewed as a consequence of socio-economic and cultural preconditions. The analysis of successful reactions to strong extremist challenges in three cases of democratic survival (Czechoslovakia, Finland and Belgium in the inter-war period) against the background of two cases of breakdown in the same historical context (Italy and the Weimar Republic) is a useful complement to this view. The analysis of the selected cases shows how a stable coalition of democratic forces can effectively protect the democratic system from dangerous extremist attacks by pursuing both repressive and inclusive strategies
Western Democracies and the New Extreme Right Challenge, 2003
While the strategies of political actors and institutions have been largely analyzed with referen... more While the strategies of political actors and institutions have been largely analyzed with reference to cases of democratic breakdown, democratic survival has often been viewed as a consequence of socio-economic and cultural preconditions. The analysis of successful reactions to strong extremist challenges in three cases of democratic survival (Czechoslovakia, Finland and Belgium in the inter-war period) against the background of two cases of breakdown in the same historical context (Italy and the Weimar Republic) is a useful complement to this view. The analysis of the selected cases shows how a stable coalition of democratic forces can effectively protect the democratic system from dangerous extremist attacks by pursuing both repressive and inclusive strategies
West European Politics, 2002
The electoral system has often been considered an important determinant of the political stabilit... more The electoral system has often been considered an important determinant of the political stability that the Federal Republic of Germany has enjoyed in the half-century of its existence, so that it has been often indicated as a model for electoral reforms in other democracies. The analysis of the political impact of the German electoral system after 1949 shows that such impact was different in the different phases of evolution of the party system. In the 1950s, the German party system was characterised by a higher level of fractionalisation, which the electoral system contributed progressively to reduce. That phase was followed by 30 years of concentration and defractionalisation of the vote. In the last decade, the post-reunification party system presents again higher electoral fractionalisation, which the electoral system has partially reduced in the vote-seats translation. In the current political contingency it is doubtful, however, that the electoral system by itself can contain fragmentation on a durable basis.
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Articles by Giovanni Capoccia
legitimacy of a new democracy? Drawing on sociopsychological theories, we
hypothesize that prodemocratic mass attitudes are favored by the perception
that defendants in transitional justice trials have been punished in a way that
is morally proportional to their offenses. This perception is shaped by the social
categorization of defendants and the opinions about the certainty of their
guilt that predominate in the mass public. When defendants are largely seen
as co-ethnics and their guilt is contested, like in the West German case,
prodemocratic attitudes are likely to be strengthened by lighter punishments
and undermined by harsher sanctions. The analysis of subnational variation in
patterns of punishment in postwar West Germany confirms this hypothesis and
shows that these attitudinal effects persist in the medium term. Our findings
have implications for research on transitional justice and democratization.
the insights of a large literature on the political consequences of religious mobilization, this article analyzes a new dataset on the trajectory of 181 subnational political organizations active in India between 1952 and 2002. The article shows that demands for autonomy or secession put forward by religious organizations are likely to prove much more resilient over time than identical demands advanced by nonreligious organizations. The analysis has important implications for the study of secessionism and ethnic politics in general.
legitimacy of a new democracy? Drawing on sociopsychological theories, we
hypothesize that prodemocratic mass attitudes are favored by the perception
that defendants in transitional justice trials have been punished in a way that
is morally proportional to their offenses. This perception is shaped by the social
categorization of defendants and the opinions about the certainty of their
guilt that predominate in the mass public. When defendants are largely seen
as co-ethnics and their guilt is contested, like in the West German case,
prodemocratic attitudes are likely to be strengthened by lighter punishments
and undermined by harsher sanctions. The analysis of subnational variation in
patterns of punishment in postwar West Germany confirms this hypothesis and
shows that these attitudinal effects persist in the medium term. Our findings
have implications for research on transitional justice and democratization.
the insights of a large literature on the political consequences of religious mobilization, this article analyzes a new dataset on the trajectory of 181 subnational political organizations active in India between 1952 and 2002. The article shows that demands for autonomy or secession put forward by religious organizations are likely to prove much more resilient over time than identical demands advanced by nonreligious organizations. The analysis has important implications for the study of secessionism and ethnic politics in general.
Published in European Studies Forum, Autumn 2008, 38 (2), 58-65