This paper sets out an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This framework, while rigorous and broadly applicable and an advance on the frameworks currently employed, primarily seeks to incorporate an a priori element. Until now the frameworks utilized in examining critical junctures were entirely postdictive. Adding a predictive element to the concept will constitute a significant advance. The new framework, and its predictive element, termed the "differentiating factor," is tested here in examining macroeconomic crises and subsequent changes in macroeconomic policy, in America and Sweden. Résumé. Cet article propose un cadre amélioré pour analyser les conjonctures critiques. Bien que rigoureux, largement applicable et représentant en soi une avance sur les modèles actuellement utilisés, ce cadre cherche principalement à incorporer un élément a priori. Jusqu'ici les cadres servant à l'étude des conjonctures critiques étaient entièrement fondés sur la postdiction. L'ajout d'un élément prédictif constituera une avance notable. Cet article examine la validité du nouveau cadre et de son élément prédictif, appelé «facteur de différenciation», à la lumière des crises macro-économiques en Amérique et en Suède et des changements de politique macroéconomique qu'elles ont entraînés dans leur sillon.

Remittances are a significant source of foreign exchange for developing economies. I argue that remittances, due to their compensation and insurance functions, will increase the general income level and economic security of recipients, thereby reducing their perceived income risk. Over time, this will dampen demand from recipients for government taxation and social insurance. Therefore, I expect increases in income remitted to an economy to result in reduced levels of social welfare transfers at the macro-level. This dynamic can help us to understand spending patterns in developing democracies, and the absence of demand for social security transfers in countries with high levels of inequality and economic insecurity. I test this argument with a sample of 18 Latin American states, over the period 1990 to 2009, and subject the central causal mechanism to a battery of statistical tests. The results of these tests provide strong support for this argument.

This article aims to maximize the reliability of presidential power scores for a larger number of countries and time periods than currently exists for any single measure, and in a way that is replicable and easy to update. It begins by identifying all of the studies that have estimated the effect of a presidential power variable, clarifying what scholars have attempted to capture when they have operationalized the concept of presidential power. It then identifies all the measures of presidential power that have been proposed over the years, noting the problems associated with each. To generate the new set of presidential power scores, the study draws upon the comparative and local knowledge embedded in existing measures of presidential power. Employing principal component analysis, together with the expectation maximization algorithm and maximum likelihood estimation, a set of presidential power scores is generated for a larger set of countries and country time periods than currently exists, reporting 95 per cent confidence intervals and standard errors for the scores. Finally, the implications of the new set of scores for future studies of presidential power is discussed.A large body of work has estimated the outcome of variation in presidential power. To identify studies of presidential power systematically, we searched a selection of leading comparative politics journals 1 and identified a total of forty-nine studies that included an estimation of presidential power.2 The distribution of this work confirms that scholars are increasingly choosing to estimate the effect of presidential power generally. Four were published from 1995-99 inclusive and ten from 2000-04 inclusive, whereas twenty-five articles were published from 2005-09 inclusive with ten in 2010 and 2011 alone. In all but four of these studies, presidential power was operationalized explicitly or implicitly as an explanatory variable. In these forty-five studies, the dependent variable ranged widely across topics such as economic reform, democratic consolidation, the level of protectionism, the effective number of parties, cabinet composition, voter turnout and many others. In thirty of these forty-five studies, variation in presidential power was confirmed to have a significant effect on the outcome under investigation.What are scholars trying to capture when they estimate the effect of presidential power? In eleven of the forty-nine studies we identified, scholars focused only on a specific aspect of * Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, UK (email: david.doyle@politics. ox.ac.uk); School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Ireland (email: robert.elgie@dcu.ie). We would like to acknowledge the three anonymous referees and the editors of the journal. We would also like to thank the participants at the ECPR Joint Sesssions of Workshops, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, 2013. Data replication sets and online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org

Fluctuations in the volume and the value of financial remittances received from abroad affect the livelihood of households in developing economies across the world. Yet, political scientists have little to say about how changes in remittances, as opposed to the receipt of remittance payments alone, affect recipients’ political attitudes. Relying on a unique four-wave panel study of Kyrgyz citizens between 2010–2013 and a cross-sectional sample of 28 countries in Central Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, we show that when people experience a decrease (increase) in remittances, they become less (more) satisfied about their household economic situation and misattribute responsibility to the incumbent at home. Our findings advance the literature on the political consequences of remittance payments and suggest that far from exclusively being an international risk-sharing mechanism for developing countries, remittances can also drive fluctuations in incumbent approval and compromise rudimentary accountability mechanisms in the developing world.

Do Latin American citizens share a common conception of the ideological left-right distinction? And if so, is this conception linked to individuals' ideological self-placement? Selecting questions from the 2006 Latinobarómetro survey based on a core definition of the left-right divide rooted in political theory and philosophy, this paper addresses these questions. We apply joint correspondence analysis to explore whether citizens who relate to the same ideological identification also share similar and coherent convictions and beliefs that reflect the ideological content of the leftright distinction. Our analysis indicates that theoretical conceptions about the roots of, and responsibility for, inequality in society, together with the translation of these beliefs into attitudes regarding the state versus market divide, distinguish those who self-identify with the left and those who selfidentify with the right.