Jennifer L McCoy

Georgia State University | GSU · Department of Political Science

There is a growing worry about the health of American democracy, and political scientists and pundits alike are looking for possible explanations. Surveys conducted during the Trump presidency showed considerable citizen support for liberal democratic norm erosions, especially among Republicans. However, recent experimental research also shows that...

Political polarization is a systemic-level and multifaceted process that severs cross-cutting ties and shifts perceptions of politics to a zero-sum game. When it turns pernicious, political actors and supporters view opponents as an existential threat and the capacity of democratic institutions to process political conflict breaks down. The article...

There is a growing worry about the health of American democracy and politicalscientists and pundits alike are looking for possible explanations. Surveys conducted during the Trump presidency showed considerable citizen support for liberal democratic norm erosions, especially among Republicans. However, recent experimental research also shows that v...

This article assesses two next-level questions in the study of democratic backsliding: democratic resilience and political polarization. It first advances a set of methodological decision points to improve clarity in contemporary debates surrounding democratic backsliding measurement and the possibility of identifying moments of democratic recovery...

Us vs Them political polarization in Latin America has been rising since 2000 in keeping with global trends, but faster than world averages since 2015. Comparative research shows that not only are political divisions growing globally, but also that, once a society becomes divided into mutually antagonistic political camps (i.e. pernicious polarizat...

The recent global wave of autocratization is characterized by the incremental subversion of democracy from within by elected governments (democratic erosion). This article explains why democratic erosion is hard to reverse for opposition actors, even though it develops incrementally and often by using formally legal and democratic means. Complex ca...

Polarization is increasing worldwide. When broken down by region, V-Dem data suggest that every region except Oceania has seen polarization levels rise since 2005. Africa has had the smallest increase during this period, although it has long had high levels of polarization. Rising polarization in Europe is being driven by deepening political divisi...

Politics in the United States has become increasingly polarized in recent decades. Both political elites and everyday citizens are divided into rival and mutually antagonistic partisan camps, with each camp questioning the political legitimacy and democratic commitments of the other side. Does this polarization pose threats to democracy itself? Wha...

“Pernicious polarization” – the division of society into mutually distrustful Us versus Them camps in which political identity becomes a social identity – fosters autocratization by incentivizing citizens and political actors alike to endorse non-democratic action. An exploratory analysis of new V-Dem data on polarization indeed shows the negative...

Transforming armed groups into legitimate political actors is often considered an ideal way to settle armed internal conflicts. In democracies, the efficacy of such approaches depends on the public legitimacy that the citizenry grants them. How does the prospect of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia's (FARC's) political participation influence...

Citizen support for democracy-eroding political leaders is receiving much overdue attention, but existing studies have a difficulty disentangling contextual effects (such as who is in power at the time of the survey) from individual differences (like which party one supports and how much). We propose a novel survey experimental design to strip away...

With a decade of democratic backsliding in the world and the polarization-driven institutional erosion in the US, people's support for democracy-eroding political leaders is receiving much overdue attention. But existing studies have a difficulty disentangling contextual effects (such as who is in power at the time of the survey) from individual di...

With a decade of democratic backsliding in the world and the polarization-driven institutional erosion in the US, people's support for democracy-eroding political leaders is receiving much overdue attention. But existing studies have a difficulty disentangling contextual effects (such as who is in power at the time of the survey) from individual di...

Venezuela’s descent into the abyss deepened in 2018. Half of the country’s GDP has been lost in the last five years; poverty and income inequality have deepened, erasing the previous gains from the earlier years of the Bolivarian Revolution. Significant economic reforms failed to contain the hyperinflation, and emigration accelerated to reach three...

In this essay, I examine the risks to American democracy in light of lessons learned from my recent collaborative research and conclude that the U.S. is indeed suffering an erosion in the quality of democracy as a result of severe polarization, and is vulnerable to democratic backsliding.

Growing racial, ideological, and cultural polarization within the American electorate contributed to the shocking victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Using data from American National Election Studies surveys, we show that Trump’s unusually explicit appeals to racial and ethnic resentment attracted strong support from white w...

This volume collects and analyzes eleven country case studies of polarized polities that are, or had been, electoral democracies, identifying the common and differing causal mechanisms that lead to different outcomes for democracy when a society experiences polarization. In this introduction, we discuss our goals for the volume, the comparative log...

This article compares the dynamics of polarization in the eleven case studies analyzed in this special issue to draw conclusions about antecedents of severe political and societal polarization, the characteristics and mechanisms of such polarization, and consequences of severe polarization for democracy. We find that the emergence of pernicious pol...

Venezuela's descent into the abyss deepened in 2018. Half of the country's GDP has been lost in the last five years; poverty and income inequality have deepened, erasing the previous gains from the earlier years of the Bolivarian Revolution. Significant economic reforms failed to contain the hyperinflation, and emigration accelerated to reach three...

Growing racial, ideological and cultural polarization within the American electorate contributed to the shocking victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Using data from American National Election Studies surveys, we show that Trump's unusually explicit appeals to racial and ethnic resentment attracted strong support from white wo...

This article introduces the goals, comparative logic, methodological approach and the case studies in this volume and some original concepts underlying the analysis. The goal of the volume is to explore when and how societies become "perniciously" polarized and how this affects democracy, and then to start building a foundation for remedies. For th...

This article compares the dynamics in eleven case studies analyzed in this special issue to draw conclusions about antecedents of severe political and societal polarization, characteristics and mechanisms of such polarization in action, and consequences for democracy. We find that neither any specific underlying cleavages nor any particular institu...

This article introduces the goals, comparative logic, methodological approach and the case studies in this volume and some original concepts underlying the analysis. The goal of the volume is to explore when and how societies become "perniciously" polarized and how this affects democracy, and then to start building a foundation for remedies. For th...

This article compares the dynamics in eleven case studies analyzed in this special issue to draw conclusions about antecedents of severe political and societal polarization, characteristics and mechanisms of such polarization in action, and consequences for democracy. We find that neither any specific underlying cleavages nor any particular institu...

Growing racial, ideological and cultural polarization within the American electorate contributed to the shocking victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Using data from American National Election Studies surveys, we show that Trump's unusually explicit appeals to racial and ethnic resentment attracted strong support from white wo...

POLICY BRIEF ON POPULISM IN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS: WHAT, WHEN, WHO, AND SO WHAT?

This article argues that a common pattern and set of dynamics characterizes severe political and societal polarization in different contexts around the world, with pernicious consequences for democracy. Moving beyond the conventional conceptualization of polarization as ideological distance between political parties and candidates, we offer a conce...

As political and societal polarization deepens, democracies are under stress around the world. This article examines the complex relationship and causal direction between democracy and polarization and posits three theoretical possibilities: (1) polarization contributes to democratic backsliding and decay, (2) polarization results from democratic c...

With recent political developments sparking sharp divisions within democracies, an understanding of the dynamics of polarization is ever more necessary. Yet we still lack the tools necessary for its comparative study at the mass level. Finding that conventional measures of polarization as ideological distance between parties or among voters do not...

International election monitoring has been touted as a regional norm in the Western hemisphere, but recent reforms in Venezuela and Nicaragua substituted a diminished international role of electoral accompaniment. This article traces the initial acceptance and later limitation of international election monitoring in those countries to explore wheth...

Ana MaríaBejarano, Precarious Democracies: Understanding Regime Stability and Change in Colombia and Venezuela (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), pp. xvii+350, $40.00, pb. - Volume 45 Issue 2 - JENNIFER L. MCCOY

This article examines contemporary sources of democratic crisis and the international responses to these crises from 1990 to 2011. The analysis is based on an original dataset of five domestic sources of democratic crisis: classic military coup or coup attempt, incumbent leaders, intragovernmental clashes between branches of government, armed non-s...

This paper provides a systematic cross-national analysis of the role of electoral administration in explaining acceptable democratic presidential elections in 19 countries in Latin America since 1980 or the first pivotal, transitional election. We provide two alternative measures of election administration, as well as other key factors to test part...

Este artículo contiene un análisis sistemático del papel desempeñado por la administración electoral en 19 países de América Latina y de sus efectos sobre elecciones presidenciales democráticas aceptables desde 1980, o bien, a partir de la primera elección transcendental que marcó la transición a la democracia. Se utilizan dos maneras distintas de...

Presidential Impeachment and the New Political Instability in Latin America. By Pérez-LinánAníbal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 241p. $84.00 cloth. - Volume 7 Issue 2 - Jennifer L. McCoy

Since his election in 1998, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has taken on the mantle of creating a new model of independent politics and economics, and of challenging U.S. dominance in the region and the world. Utilizing a strategy of intense confrontation with adversaries at home and abroad, combined with new foreign alliances globally and integ...

Steve Ellner, Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chávez Phenomenon. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2008. Bibliography, index, 255 pp.; hardcover $55, paperback $25. - Volume 51 Issue 4 - Jennifer McCoy

This article provides a systematic cross-national analysis of the role of electoral administration in explaining acceptable democratic presidential elections in 19 countries in Latin America since the year 1980 or the first pivotal, transitional election. The authors provide two alternative measures of election administration, one focused on the de...

Democracy in Latin America: Political Change in Comparative Perspective. By Peter H. Smith. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 380p. $74.00 cloth, $28.95 paper. Peter Smith set out to write a textbook and ended up compiling an original database of Latin American democracy from 1900 to 2000. Analyzing a century of democratic change, Smith has...

This article analyses international responses to threats to democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean between 1990 and 2005 from five domestic sources: traditional military coup attempt; incumbent leaders; intra-governmental clashes between branches of government; armed non-state actors; and unarmed non-state actors including societal mass prote...

O artigo enfoca o referendo revogatório realizado na Venezuela em agosto de 2004, que confirmou a permanência de Hugo Chávez na Presidência do país até o fim de seu mandato. Apontam-se o contexto político que nele culminou, no qual o governo Chávez foi alvo de intensas contestações por parte de seus opositores, e seus conturbados desdobramentos, co...

Venezuelans voted on August 15, 2004 to keep President Hugo Chávez in office. Coming two years after the short-lived coup, the recall took place in an extremely divided society. Although endorsed by international observers, the opposition charged fraud. The government swept subsequent elections for governor and mayors. The government now controls a...

For four decades, Venezuela prided itself for having one of the most stable representative democracies in Latin America. Then, in 1992, Hugo Chávez Frías attempted an unsuccessful military coup. Six years later, he was elected president. Once in power, Chávez redrafted the 1961 constitution, dissolved the Congress, dismissed judges, and marginalize...

The conditions that facilitated the institutionalization of the Punto Fijo system during the 1960s had changed by the 1990s. The dramatic transformation from a poor, rural society to one that was urbanized and characterized by a highly unequal distribution of wealth between an expanded upper middle class and slum dwellers was not unlike development...

For four decades, Venezuela prided itself for having one of the most stable representative democracies in Latin America. Then, in 1992, Hugo Chávez Frías attempted an unsuccessful military coup. Six years later, he was elected president. Once in power, Chávez redrafted the 1961 constitution, dissolved the Congress, dismissed judges, and marginalize...

The article analyzes the development of a global anti-corruption norm, and specifically its anit-bribery component, through the first two of three stages during the 1990s: (1) awareness raising, (2) institutionalization through the development of legal and policy instruments, and (3) global adoption, internalization, and adherence. A hegemonic acto...

"The new Venezuela, with its vague Bolivarian ideology of nationalism, integrity, and strong leadership, is characterized by a concentration of power in the person of the president, a conquest of institutions that had represented the political and socioeconomic elite, the empowering of the masses through popular consultation, and a new third worldi...

Hugo Chávez has taken on the mantle of the people's will. He has also taken on an ever-larger share of political power and shown an increasing interest in spreading his “Bolivarian revolution” to the downtrodden in nearby Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

The challenge for the [Chávez] administration is to devise a way to include dissenting voices and respect minority views while still carrying out the changes desired by the Venezuelan people. The alternative is a tyranny of the majority in the name of revolutionary change.

Prepared for presentation at the LASA Congress, March 15-18, 2000, Miami, Florida. How do we explain the rise and apparent collapse in 1999 of a political regime hailed as Latin America's most stable democracy for more than three decades? Explaining the stabilization of a democratic regime in the 1960s and 1970s, while the rest of the continent was...

Journal of Democracy 10.3 (1999) 64-77 On 6 December 1998, Venezuelans elected as their new president Hugo Chávez Frias, a former lieutenant colonel and the leader of two failed coup attempts in 1992, effectively putting an end to the pacted political arrangement that had been in place in the country for the past 40 years. That arrangement, known a...

''Hugo Chavez faces a host of difficult economic and political problems. The gap between his campaign promises and the economic realities of Venezuala appears unbridgeable. Arguments over the process of convening a constituent: assembly have generated intense political disagreement among political parties and in civil society However, the president...

Venezuela has experienced stress in its socioeconomic and political order. From authoritarian rule, to civilian government and the problems of consolidation, this work looks at the question of whether Venezuela's democracy can be renewed or whether it will deteriorate to the point of collapse.

Autora de diversos artículos académicos sobre la política, democratización y política de reforma económica en Venezuela. William C. Smith: profesor de Ciencias Políticas en la Graduate School of International Studies de la Universidad de Miami e investigador del North-South Center. Ha publicado numerosos artículos sobre política argentina y brasile...

Venezuela's contemporary politics poses a problematic different from those predominating in the literature on democratization. Scholarly research in the last decade focused first on the crisis of authoritarian rule and the ensuing transition to civilian governments, with the reestablishment of electoral procedures, and, more recently, on the proble...

This study examines the case of the Brazilian debt rescheduling agreement of 1988 as a two-level game in which each of the two main negotiators—the Brazilian state and the international bank advisory committee—must satisfy its own constituents while trying to negotiate an international agreement. It is argued that the interaction between the domest...

POLLWATCHING AND PEACEMAKING Jennifer McCoy, Larry Garber, & Robert Pastor Jennifer McCoy is associate professor of political science at Georgia State University and senior research associate at the Carter Center of Emory University. Larry Garber is senior consultant with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. Robert Pastor is...

Examines the evolution of patterns of interest mediation in a "stable democracy' by looking at state-party-labor relations in Venezuela since 1958. Focuses primarily on the important ten years from 1974 to 1983, which comprised two administrations and encompassed both marked changes in the fiscal resources of the state, and a shift in the state's e...

Describes the evolution of the democratic class compromise between capital and labor which has undergirded the political stability of Venezuela over the past three decades. In essence, capitalists accepted democratic institutions as a means for workers to make effective claims to improve their material conditions, while workers accepted the private...

In mid-1985, the US Embassy in Caracas stated that “Venezuela appears to have successfully coped with its financial crisis” (US Embassy, 1985). In January 1986, the Wall Street Journal announced that Venezuela will become the first country in Latin America to sign a debt-refinancing agreement without mediation by the International Monetary Fund (IM...

Concludes that the "London Times" and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the United States government provide both comprehensive and unbiased coverage of events in Rhodesia, while the "New York Times" is less complete and the "Christian Science Monitor" is selective. (FL)

This paper emphasizes the need to measure the varying qualities of democracy. It delineates subtypes of political regimes that occupy a "gray zone" between dictatorship and democracy, and examines the possibilities for political change in the "gray zone". The authors address two sets of questions about political change: a) What causes a limitedly p...