Why do politicians invest in infrastructure projects that will not be completed during their time in office? In a CDDRL seminar series talk, Harvard University Professor of Government Alisha Holland addressed the question, shedding light on how the advent of public-private partnerships (PPPs) has shifted politicians’ orientation toward infrastructure projects.  

According to Holland, infrastructure investment has been on the rise in the developing world despite witnessing a steady decline in advanced industrial democracies. Why? The influx of PPPs has made infrastructure projects appealing to politicians, who have utilized such contracts to raise funds for electoral campaigns and delay project costs.

In the past, infrastructure projects were largely aimed at creating jobs for a given politician’s base of supporters and would-be voters. Thus, politicians were keen on seeing the successful completion of such projects. In contrast, today, infrastructure projects have become vehicles, not for securing votes, but for campaign finance, thanks to the PPP framework and the campaign donations it has helped generate for politicians, albeit indirectly. Thus, the mere launching of such projects (regardless of their completion) has become a political end in and of itself.

Infrastructure, Holland indicated, is at the heart of salient questions surrounding democracy, development, and state capacity. It also plays a central role in campaign finance in many developing democracies.  

Conventional wisdom suggests that politicians want to inaugurate infrastructure projects that employ constituents and future voters. If true, politicians should be signing contracts for such projects early in their terms to allow time for job creation before reelection rolls around. But this does not appear to be the case. In Latin American countries where presidents can run for reelection, two-thirds of contracts occur in the last 18 months before an election. 

Holland argued that this trend is rooted in governments’ shifting role in infrastructure. Whereas the state had long led infrastructure projects and hired directly with the goal of job creation, neoliberal reforms in the 1990s made governments rely more heavily on private contractors. Accordingly, the incentive structure facing politicians has changed. They have become less interested in creating jobs for supporters and more interested in securing campaign donations through the process of contracting private sector entities. The partnership with the private sector, moreover, has allowed politicians to hide project costs and shift liabilities to future administrations. The result is an influx of high-cost infrastructure projects with limited utility.

On a broader level, Holland’s findings help explain the widespread shift from political patronage to vote-buying in many countries. The advent of state-private sector partnerships has enabled politicians to raise the cash needed to fund vote-buying machines at a large scale.

How can the problem be mitigated? Much of the answer revolves around “inhibitory institutions.” These institutions could veto unwieldy projects before their commencement, as distinct from traditional mechanisms of horizontal accountability, like audit courts, which can only intervene after the damage is done.

Why do politicians belonging to religious minorities attain the highest political offices in some countries but not others? Koç University Professor of International Relations Şener Aktürk presented his research on the subject in a CDDRL research seminar series talk. 

A key element in shaping this outcome, Aktürk argued, is the configuration of a given nation’s constitutive conflict, which often takes the form of wars of independence or civil wars.  If the primary adversary in this conflict is of a different religion, he explained, the majority religion will likely be closely associated with national identity. However, in cases where that adversary is of the same religious sect, religious identity will end up becoming less central in the formation of national identity. Accordingly, it will become easier for religious minority politicians to assume leadership afterward.  If the majority religion is nationally institutionalized — which generally coincides with constitutive conflict structured along religious lines – it will likely be difficult for minority politicians to rise through the ranks. 

To illustrate this pattern, Aktürk reviewed the religious affiliation of chief executives across various countries. In the United Kingdom, whose constitutive conflict pitted Protestants against Catholics — and resulted in a Protestant victory — every Prime Minister from 1721 through 2021 was Protestant. Any claimed exceptions converted are a telling sign. Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim religious minorities had their first representatives, or “pioneers,” in the House of Commons by affiliating with the left, demonstrating that left-liberalism was their entry point into politics. 

In Catholic France, where the constitutive conflict was internal (French Revolution), there were 5 Protestant Prime Ministers, with the first one elected within the first 50 years of the Third Republic, when the new republican regime consolidated. A Jewish Prime Minister was reelected three times. The left represented politicians of minority religions, whereas the right represented those of the core group. 

In Hungary, the formative conflict consisted of Catholics fighting against each other. This has allowed Protestant minority leaders to claim they are more nationalistic than their Catholic counterparts, who were presumably forced to pick between their nation and religion. A similar story holds in Italy, the first country to have a Jewish Prime Minister. 

Germany is the most unique case, as it experienced a change in constitutive conflict. Following the Franco-Prussian War, Germany was majority Protestant, with state persecution of the Catholic minority. However, a bloodier and more traumatic constitutive conflict replaced the first one — the Holocaust and World War II. Under Hitler, who was of Austrian Catholic origin, German nationalism ceased to be a Protestant-led movement.

What does women’s representation look like under autocratic governments? In a recent research seminar series talk, CDDRL Visiting Scholar Mona Tajali, who is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Agnes Scott College, explored the complexities of this issue in the contexts of Iran and Turkey. 

Tajali’s talk underscored the gap between women’s political participation and representation. Voter turnout rates for women match those of men, and they are quite active in political organizations and in mobilizing for political causes. However, rarely do they reach the highest level of government. It is clear that structural factors, at times more than cultural or religious factors, are impeding women’s accession to senior government posts. 

Women in Iran and Turkey, from across different ideological currents, have long been demanding greater representation and calling for a level playing field. While there has been some progress in enhancing women’s representation, Tajali reminded us that nominal representation does not always lead to meaningful power or influence. Contradictory politics intervenes, with parties sometimes treating women as politically expedient tokens.

But, despite the impediment women face in formal politics, there are many examples of feminist movements making meaningful advancements. The Turkish movement KADER ran a campaign highlighting those parties who were truly responsive to women’s demands, not just those paying lip service. This was effective in putting pressure on mainstream parties to better represent the women in their electorate. In Iran, an online campaign was launched to change the male-dominated face of parliament. It identified misogynist candidates and incumbents with a poor record in their stances on women’s rights. 

However, the state has little tolerance for women critical actors seeking to challenge the status quo. The Council of Guardians in Iran and male party leadership in Turkey have disqualified and prevented many women from running for office. There has been an uptick in the harassment and intimidation of outspoken women in the parliament, not to mention the crackdown on feminist groups. This backlash has undermined collaboration among women activists who do hold political office.

As the confidence in electoral politics wanes, an important shift is happening with a demand for bottom-up political change. Groups are coming together to discuss their grievances despite the authoritarian contexts in which they are operating. The feminist movements are becoming bolder, clearer, and less censored in their demands. From journalists to students, women are engaging in courageous acts of defiance, many of which carry very real consequences.