Over the past two decades, donor governments have increasingly embraced judicial independence as an important component of advancing democracy and promoting investment abroad. We argue that recipient governments, too, recognize the importance of judiciary reform for improving the investment climate at home. Because judicial independence carries political costs for the incumbent government, however, it is difficult for recipient governments to credibly signal commitment to judicial reform. External assistance to promote judicial independence and democracy serves as one mechanism of commitment. Donors promote judicial independence primarily through the channel of technical assistance which involves experts from donor governments who assist in and supervise the implementation of judiciary-strengthening projects. All else equal, we expect democracy aid to increase judicial independence. During election periods, however, when judicial independence can directly influence the outcome of elections incumbents have incentives to undermine aid efforts to promote judicial independence. Thus we expect the relationship between aid and judicial independence to weaken around election time. We employ an instrumental variable model to test this argument with a global sample of aid-eligible countries.

Recent literature has demonstrated a trade-based diffusion of labor laws to countries of the developing world, as the labor laws of exporter countries tend to converge with those of their importing partners. However, this literature has not been attentive to the natures of different types of trade partners and, specifically, to the likely differences between South-South trade and other types of trade flows. Such analysis is appropriate given the foreign policy norm that uniquely characterizes South-South relations, including South-South trade: countries of the South espouse the practice of non-interference in the domestic affairs of their partners, including the labor rights of those partners. In light of this foreign policy norm and its contrast to the tendency of Northern countries to promote labor rights through trade relations, the present study considers the implications of South-South trade for trade-based diffusion patterns. Specifically, it conducts analysis to differentiate the diffusion effects associated with South-South trade from those associated with other types of trade flows. The results demonstrate that South-South trade does not contribute to the trade based diffusion of labor standards and that countries that engage in higher levels of South-South trade are characterized by less trade-based diffusion of labor laws altogether.

In the face of competitive exclusion pressures, intellectual communities regenerate themselves by constructing niches while simultaneously nodding to a common tradition. We analyze the organizational logics of how a highly contested field, International Political Economy (IPE), has manifested in practices of publishing, teaching and conference participation. While existing analytic frames for understanding differences within IPE tend to emphasize a dualism at work – what we call ‘reduction to polarity’ – another possibility is the proliferation of different niches. Using a variety of new data on IPE publishing, teaching, and conference attendance across the globe, we use community detection algorithms, citation analysis, and social network analysis to assess the extent to which IPE is characterized by a reduction to polarity or niche proliferation. Our analysis suggests that when it comes to publishing and intellectual engagement, the field of IPE is highly plural and driven by the construction of distinct niches. Yet when it comes to teaching, IPE is characterized by a reduction to polarity. IPE scholars publish and convene in a world of plurality but reproduce in duality.