International Political Science Review

The concept of meritocracy is unstable as its constituent ideas are potentially contradictory. The egalitarian aspects of meritocracy, for example, can come into conflict with its focus on talent allocation, competition, and reward. In practice, meritocracy is often transformed into an ideology of inequality and elitism. In Singapore, meritocracy has been the main ideological resource for justifying authoritarian government and its pro-capitalist orientations. Through competitive scholarships, stringent selection criteria for party candidacy, and high ministerial salaries, the ruling People's Action Party has been able to co-opt talent to form a “technocratic” government for an “administrative state.” However, as Singapore becomes more embedded in the processes of globalization, it will experience new forms of national crisis, alternative worldviews through global communications technology, and a widening income gap, all of which will force its ideology of meritocracy to unravel.

This article presents a comparative analysis of the institutional trajectories traced by women's policy agencies within government in the province of British Columbia in Canada and in the state of New South Wales in Australia. In both cases, a period during which the principal women's policy agency took the form of a freestanding government ministry was followed by a period during which that ministry (along with an array of women's policy agencies located elsewhere in government) was dismantled. The partisan complexion of the governments undertaking these initiatives has been quite different in the two cases, and presents an apparent paradox. The article explores this paradox, as well as other patterns observable across the two cases, and provides an assessment of their implications.

The role of the state in the promotion of social or generalized trust is one of the most important ongoing topics in social capital research. We suggest that the state can play a positive role in the creation of social trust as a third-party enforcer of private agreements. This positive effect depends on the efficacy of the state. We also argue that the effects of the state on social trust will be unevenly distributed among majoritarian and minoritarian ethnic groups. These hypotheses are tested using the European Social Survey (2002—03) and confirmed for a dataset of 22 European countries.

A number of articles in the past few years have found that democracies are more likely to commit to a floating exchange rate regime. I argue that we do not have a solid understanding of the causal mechanism that explains why democracies would float more often. I test a variety of hypotheses to explore exactly what features of democratic practice might account for the propensity to declare a float, using two different datasets. While the tests are not conclusive, they suggest that the number of veto players or the regular use of open, competitive elections may influence exchange rate commitments.

This article examines the background conditions, trends, and scenarios of Russian economic internationalization. In the context of globalization, Russia is stepping up efforts to re-establish itself as a regional and global power. Despite recent progress in domestic economic development, Russia's comparative ratings in major international surveys remain modest or low and many indicators of political rights and civil liberties in Russia demonstrate worsening trends. Russia still lags behind other countries on many of the criteria measuring economic freedom, market attractiveness, globalization, corruption, opacity, and competitiveness. The article explores the lessons for Russia in its political-economic transformation from “peer” countries such as Chile, China, and Venezuela. In exploring the driving forces of Russian economic internationalization, the article focuses on three alternative scenarios conceptualized as “Chilean,” “Chinese,” and “Venezuelan.” Each of these scenarios reflects various traits that have commonalities with the Russian political-economic system, leadership, and situational characteristics in the international context. After examining the internal dynamics and external environmental factors pertaining to Russia, the article concludes that the most probable mid-range alternative for economic internationalization will resemble the Venezuelan scenario, with some elements of the Chinese model also evident.