Comparative analysis of original survey data from Ghana, Zambia and South Africa is used here to assess the attitudes of African citizens towards democracy. Is democracy valued intrinsically (as an end in itself) or instrumentally (for example, as a means to improving material living standards)? We find as much popular support for democracy in Africa as in other Third Wave regions but less satisfaction with the performance of elected governments. The fact that Africans support democracy while being discontented with its achievements implies a measure of intrinsic support that supersedes instrumental considerations. At the same time, approval of democracy remains performance-driven; but approval hinges less on the government's capacity at delivering economic goods than its ability to guarantee basic political rights. Our findings extend recent arguments about the importance of political goods in regime consolidation and call into question the conventional wisdom that governments in new democracies legitimate themselves mainly through economic performance.

In the 1950s modernization began to be an important paradigm for Latin American development. Early modernization theory depicted the economies of Latin America as traditional and underdeveloped. The theme of technological progress runs consistently through the modernization model. The purpose of this article is to assess an important question raised by Latin American development studies: that large allocations for the military sector are conducive to economic growth in Latin America. While this modernization literature is somewhat dated, many recent quantitative studies have also shown positive economic benefits from defence spending in the Third World. The added relevance here is that our model captures technological progress. After controlling for technological progress and externalities, our analysis shows that the military portion of budgets in Latin America have actually hindered modernization. We discuss these findings in terms of regime type and levels of US military aid to the region.

During the past two decades growing public sectors and simultaneous slow economic growth have highlighted the role of deficit management as a central part of economic policies in modern democracies. Both economists and political scientists have emphasized the role of political institutions in public financial policies. This study contributes to this growing body of research by showing that: (1) during election years public deficits increase because governments refrain from raising taxes; (2) multi-party governments are no more prone to deficit problems than one-party governments but they are more likely to raise both public expenditure and revenue; (3) in achieving deficit reductions, one-party governments with decentralized labour markets emphasize expenditure cuts while multi-party governments with centralized labour markets raise taxes; and (4) as a consequence, the highest tax rates can be found in countries with centralized labour markets, especially if labour market centralization is combined with multi-party government.

Two theoretical perspectives on the connection between religion and politics are applied to Great Britain. Data from the 1991 and 1992 waves of the British Household Panel Study, used to conduct multinomial logistic regression analysis, dispute the general consensus that religion has weak or no effects on the voting decisions of British citizens. Religious belonging, behaviour and belief, as well as the religious context of households, continue to influence British voting behaviour. Interaction effects among religious variables and between religious variables and class also operate to influence vote choice. Areas for further research into the religious bases of British electoral behaviour are suggested.

Does the voting behaviour of African-American legislators differ significantly from their white colleagues on legislative issues of importance to the black community? This question is important for two reasons. First, the underlying premise behind creating more majority-black legislative districts is that black legislators do a better job of representing the policy interests of black constituents than do white lawmakers.Charles Cameron, David Epstein and Sharyn O'Halloran, ‘Do Majority-Minority Districts Maximize Substantive Black Representation in Congress?’ American Political Science Review, 90 (1996), 794–812; Richard L. Hall and Colleen Heflin, ‘The Importance of Color in Congress: Members and the Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the US House’ (unpublished paper, University of Michigan, 1994); David I. Lublin, The Paradox of Minority Representation: Racial Gerrymandering and Minority Interests in Congress (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Kenny J. Whitby, The Color of Representation: Congressional Behavior and Black Interests (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997). If this assumption is incorrect, then as one scholar notes, efforts to advance the substantive interests of African Americans through racial redistricting ‘would appear badly misdirected’Richard L. Hall, Participation in Congress (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 191. Even if the assumption is correct, the question also arises as to whether the importance associated with race is altered when it comes to specific types of legislative issues. Perhaps race matters not only for the policy representation of black interests, but also for whether or not the proposed legislation is disproportionately (dis)advantageous for African Americans compared to the general population.