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Neither Citizen Nor Stranger: Why States

Enfranchise Resident Aliens

David C. Earnest

World Politics / Volume 58 / Issue 02 / January 2006, pp 242 - 275

DOI: 10.1353/wp.2006.0024, Published online: 13 June 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/

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How to cite this article:

David C. Earnest (2006). Neither Citizen Nor Stranger: Why States Enfranchise
Resident Aliens. World Politics, 58, pp 242-275 doi:10.1353/wp.2006.0024

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 NEITHER CITIZEN
NOR STRANGER
Why States Enfranchise Resident Aliens
By DAVID C. EARNEST*

I N this era of large-scale migration, the number of resident aliens in

democracies has grown explosively. This presents both moral and
practical dilemmas for democratic governments and their societies. For
those states from which large numbers of citizens emigrate (the "send-
ing" states), their diasporas may have considerable economic influence
through their remittances and may wield political power through con-
tributions to political parties, informal personal networks, and, in some
states, the absentee ballot. For democracies that host large numbers
of noncitizens, governments ask resident aliens to shoulder many of
the burdens of citizens—including, most conspicuously, paying taxes
but also (at least in the United States) serving in the military. Yet in
both sending states and host states, resident aliens have had few politi-
cal rights until recently. While host democracies have offered resident
aliens considerable economic and civil rights, they have provided them
with only limited opportunities to participate in the politics of their
places of residence. Likewise, for the most part sending states have,
until recently, reserved voting rights for citizens who reside within the
borders of the state. Until the last few decades, then, resident aliens
have lacked the political rights that democracies grant their citizens.
They were perhaps the one remaining societal group against which
democratic states willingly—and some might say legitimately—dis-
criminated in the allocation of the right to vote.
During the course of the last fifty years, this has changed. During
this time, as many democracies have seen a large influx of migrants
who have come to reside more or less permanently, they have pursued
innovative approaches to incorporating these resident aliens into the
* For comments and suggestions I am indebted to T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Ragne Beiming, An-
dreas Carlgren, Brita Cronquist, Bruce Dickson, Martha Finnemore, Christoph Meran, Mark J.
Miller, Carlos Orta, James N. Rosenau, Claes Thorson, Hans Peter Schmitz, Susan Sell, Tomas Ud-
din, and four anonymous reviewers.

World Politics 58 (January 2006), 242-75

 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 243
polity. Sending states have expanded the use of the absentee ballot,
have created overseas legislative districts, and have even encouraged
their emigres to hold multiple citizenships simultaneously. Host states,
by contrast, have adopted one of the more surprising and innovative
practices to incorporate resident aliens into the political life of their so-
cieties. Since 1960 twenty-four democracies have enfranchised at least
some resident aliens, while several others have considered but rejected
such rights.1 Taken together, these innovative practices have led some
political scientists to argue that states are separating the institution of
citizenship both from its territorial basis and from the body of rights
it has traditionally embodied. For this reason, researchers have focused
on the politics of citizenship as an approach to broader questions of the
historical evolution of state sovereignty, citizenship, democratic norms,
and the global human rights regime.
This article contributes to the debate between what some scholars
have called the "nationalist" and "transnationalist" theses of citizenship
politics.2 In brief, both theses seek to explain the state's practices for the
constitution of its political community, but each locates the causes of
the state's policies at different levels of analysis. As the labels "national-
ist" and "transnationalist" suggest, furthermore, the two theses diverge
on the implications of contemporary citizenship politics in democra-
cies for our understanding of how global flows of migrants and norms
may affect the institution of sovereignty. Using voting rights for resi-
dent aliens as a dependent variable, I test four nationalist hypotheses
and three transnationalist hypotheses. While numerous social scientists
have conducted valuable and detailed case studies that seek to explain
1
Jan Rath, "Voting Rights," in Zig Layton-Henry, ed., The Political Rights ofMigrant Workers in
Western Europe (London: Sage Publications, 1990); David C. Earnest, "Voting Rights for Resident
Aliens: Nationalism, Postnationalism and Sovereignty in an Era of Mass Migration" (Ph.D. diss.,The
George Washington University, 2004).
2
One might prefer the term "internalist" to "nationalist" because the former avoids the negative
connotations of "nationalism." Yet other authors have used the term "nationalism" to refer to state-level
factors; for consistency I opt to follow their example. See inter aliaT. Alexander Aleinikoff, "Between
Principles and Politics: U.S. Citizenship Policy," in T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer,
eds., From Migrants to Citizens: Membership in a Changing World (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie En-
dowment for International Peace, 2000); idem, "Policing Boundaries: Migration, Citizenship and the
State," in Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf, eds., E Pluribus Unum? Contemporary and Historical Per-
spectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001); T. Alexander
Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds., Citizenship Policies for an Age of Migration (Washington,
D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002); Donald Galloway, "Citizenship Rights
and Non-citizens: A Canadian Perspective," in Atsushi Kondo, ed., Citizenship in a Global World:
Comparing Citizenship Rightsfor Aliens (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Gerstle and Mollenkopf, E Pluri-
bus Unum?\ Atsushi Kondo, "Comparative Citizenship and Aliens' Rights," in Kondo, Citizenship in
a Global World; Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham, "Challenging the Liberal Nation-State? Post-
nationalism, Multiculturalism, and the Collective Claims Making of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities
in Britain and Germany," American Journal ofSociology 105 (November 1999).
244 WORLD POLITICS
the emergence of voting rights for resident aliens,3 their small sample
sizes necessarily limit the generality of their findings. None have sought
a broader empirical test of the competing nationalist and transnational-
ist explanations for the ways in which democracies seek to incorporate
their migrant populations. This article fills this empirical void with a
time-series cross-section analysis of the voting rights for resident aliens
in twenty-five established democracies.
The quantitative nature of this study admittedly sacrifices much of
the rich and complex debate over the enfranchisement of aliens that
several qualitative studies have documented.4 While qualitative stud-
ies may illuminate potentially important factors in citizenship politics,
however, they too have their limitations. One is that "thick concepts
and theories are unwieldy in generalizing or rigorously testing complex
hypotheses."5 For example, Joppke and Aleinikoff both argue that ju-
diciaries tend to be activist in extending rights to immigrants, though
Neuman finds that in Germany the reverse was true. 6 Are Neuman's
findings peculiar to Germany, or do Aleinikoff and Joppke mischarac-
terize local factors as generally important? To answer such questions,
researchers must complement case-study research with larger cross-
sectional studies that assess the generality and limitations of findings
from qualitative studies. A principal goal of this study is to test the
generality of the findings from the extant case-study research. A second
limitation is that case-study research by construction cannot test an
important expectation of transnationalist researchers. Several research-
ers have argued that international and transnational processes explain
why states are converging around common citizenship practices.7 If so,

3
Lowell Barrington, "Understanding Citizenship Policy in the Baltic States," in Aleinikoff and
Klusmeyer (fn. 2); Virginia Harper-Ho, "Voting Rights for Resident Aliens: The History, the Law and
Current Prospects for Change," Journal ofLaw and Inequality 18 (Summer 2000); Kondo (fn. 2); Ger-
ald L. Neuman, "'We Are the People': Alien Suffrage in German and American Perspective," Michigan
Journal ofInternational Law 13 (Winter 1992); Jamin B. Raskin, "Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The
Historical, Constitutional and Theoretical Meanings of Alien Suffrage," University of Pennsylvania
Law Review 141 (April 1993).
4
Dirk Jacobs, "Discourse, Politics and Policy: The Dutch Parliamentary Debate about Voting
Rights for Foreign Residents," International Migration Review 32 (Summer 1998); idem, "Immigra-
tion in a Multicultural Sphere: The Case of Brussels," in Alisdair Rogers and Jean Tille, eds., Multi-
cultural Policies and Modes of Citizenship in European Cities (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2001); and
Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State: United States, Germany, and Great Britain (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
5
Michael Coppedge, "Thickening Thin Concepts and Theories: Combining Large N and Small
in Comparative Politics," Comparative Politics 31 (July 1999), 465.
6
Aleinikoff (fn. 2,2001); Joppke (fn. 4); Neuman (fn. 3).
7
Aleinikoff (fn. 2, 2000); Tomas Hammar, Democracy and the Nation-State: Aliens, Denizens and
Citizenship in a World ofInternational Migration (Aldershot, U.K.: Avebury, 1990); Yasemin Nuhoglu
Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 245
only a large cross-sectional study will uncover such convergence. To
my knowledge, no researcher has yet undertaken such a study. Hence,
with due regard for the risk of oversimplifying the richness of citizen-
ship politics, this study delves into the breach between the systemic and
transnational claims of transnationalist researchers and their largely
qualitative corpus of work.

I. T H E THEORETICAL PUZZLE

When faced with large and growing populations of resident aliens, de-
mocracies have gradually extended the rights traditionally associated
with citizenship to some of these noncitizens. Several researchers have
noted that states have extended these rights to resident aliens in a re-
verse of the historical order in which citizens first acquired these rights.8
T. H. Marshall's seminal thesis on the evolution of citizens' rights ar-
gues that rights emerge in a specific historical sequence that parallels
the institutional development of the modern nation-state. 9 Citizens
first gained civil-legal protections when states developed independent
judiciaries. Only when citizens could assert claims in independent
courts, Marshall argues, did they first gain the right to participate in
the political process via the franchise. Only following that did they win
economic and social protections. Curiously, however, noncitizens have
won their rights in a reverse sequence. In most democratic states gov-
ernments have extended considerable social and economic protections
first, followed by (sometimes limited) civil rights. Historically at least,
aliens have acquired the full panoply of civil, economic, and political
rights only through naturalization in their country of residence. Only
recently have resident aliens acquired political rights, and even today
these rights are neither universal nor necessarily consolidated. Contrary
to Marshall's thesis, furthermore, the rights of noncitizens do not pro-
ceed from any obvious institutional evolution of the nation-state.
Why have states extended rights to resident aliens in a sequence that
reverses Marshall's thesis? The apotheosis of this process—the enfran-
chisement of resident aliens—offers an important opportunity to test
competing explanations for several reasons. For one, as I will note, there
is considerable variability among the voting rights that resident aliens
have: some may enjoy substantive voting rights (as in New Zealand's

8
Joppke (fn. 4); Jytte Klausen, "Social Rights Advocacy and State Building: T. H. Marshall in the
Hands of Social Reformers," World Politics 47 (January 1995).
' T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development: Essays, with an Introduction by Seymour
Martin Lipset (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964).
246 WORLD POLITICS
parliamentary elections), while others may in fact be marginalized by
such voting rights (as in the "right" of noncitizens to vote for members
of Chicago's powerless school councils).10 This variability in both the
form and the substance of such voting rights is itself a puzzle. Democ-
racies have not (yet) converged around a common model or a shared
understanding of the political rights of resident aliens, a fact that poses
a difficult empirical challenge for any explanation. These rights are an
important test of the competing explanations for another reason. Ham-
mar argues that while states today maintain (and even nurture) sym-
bolic distinctions between citizens and aliens, there are few substantive
differences between the rights the state grants to citizens and those it
grants to aliens.11 If Hammar is correct, emerging practices like voting
rights for resident aliens are harbingers of changes to the institutions of
citizenship and the modern nation-state. In this sense, transnational-
ists echo Marshall's argument that the extension of rights flows from
the institutional evolution of the state. To understand why the rights
of aliens have reversed Marshall's sequence, one must begin by look-
ing both at the institutions of the state and at hypothesized reasons for
their evolution.
Reflecting the heritage of political rights theorists like Marshall and
Stein Rokkan, the nationalist thesis generally explains the political in-
corporation of resident aliens as a product of factors within the state,
including political culture, domestic institutions, and contestation be-
tween societal groups.12 As the name suggests, nationalists argue that
shared conceptions of the "nation" continue to drive the state's consti-
tution of the political community. This thesis encompasses traditional
political development arguments like those of Marshall, Rokkan, and
Rokkan and Lipset;13 institutional theorists like Joppke;14 and the cul-
tural arguments of Brubaker and Smith.15 In sum, nationalist scholars

10
See "Introduction: Political Participation and Civil Rights of Immigrants, A Research Agenda,"
International Migration Review 19 (special issue) (Autumn 1985) 405; Marco Martiniello, "Citizen-
ship in the European Union," in Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer (fn. 2).
11
Hammar (fn. 7).
12
Marshall (fn. 9); Stein Rokkan, "The Four Thresholds of Democracy," in Peter Flora, Stein
Kunle, and Derek Unwin, eds., State Formation, Nation-Building and Mass Politics in Europe: The The-
ory of Stein Rokkan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
13
Marshall (fn. 9); Rokkan (fn. 12); and Stein Rokkan and Seymour Martin Lipset, Party Systems
and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (New York: Free Press, 1967).
14
Joppke (fn. 4); idem, "The Evolution of Alien Rights in the United States, Germany, and the
European Union," in T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds., Citizenship Today: Global
Perspectives and Practices (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001).
15
Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1992); Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 247

explain variations in the state's treatment of resident aliens as a conse-

quence of immigrant groups articulating their claims for rights through
the traditional institutions that bind the nation to the state.
The transnationalist thesis explains the state's treatment of resident
aliens, by contrast, as a product of transnational or global processes
that erode the historical linkage of the nation to the state. This thesis
includes a broad range of theoretical perspectives, though all share
the argument that international and transnational processes transform
not only the politics of citizenship within states but also the authority
and capacities of states to construct a political community. Castles and
Davidson summarize the transnationalist thesis well:
Globalization erodes the autonomy of the nation-state, undermines the ideol-
ogy of distinct and relatively autonomous cultures, and causes the increasing
mobility of people across borders. . . . These new factors destabilize traditional
ways of balancing the contradictions that have always beset the nation-state
model: the contradiction between the inclusion and exclusion of various groups,
between the rights and obligations of citizenship, and—most important—be-
tween political belonging as a citizen and political belonging as a national.16

To explain this erosion of the state's authority over the constitution of

the political community, transnationalist scholars note three important
changes in the nature of contemporary citizenship politics. One is that
states have developed institutional alternatives to citizenship to accom-
modate the large influx of migrant labor that their economies require.
Hammar calls these innovative institutions "denizen rights," while
Castles and Davidson argue these institutions are a form of "quasi-
citizenship."17 A second change is that resident aliens increasingly
make their claims for social, political, and economic rights not through
the institutions of the state but instead through appeals both to their
states of origin and to international human rights and norms.18 This
transnational pattern of claims making by resident aliens anticipates
a third change typical of transnational citizenship politics: the nation-
state now faces multiple domestic, transnational, and international ac-
tors who participate in its formulation of citizenship and immigration
policies. The transnationalist thesis thus emphasizes the influence of
international norms, intergovernmental and nongovernmental orga-

16
Stephen Castles and Alastair Davidson, Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics
of Belonging (New York: Routledge 2000), ix.
17
Hammar (fn. 7); Castles and Davidson (fn. 16).
18
Soysal (fn. 7); Saskia Sassen, Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1996).
248 WORLD POLITICS

nizations, and the transnational organization of the interests of resi-

dent aliens. Because political communities increasingly are constructed
through transnational rather than state-centered processes, the histori-
cal linkage between the nation and the state is eroding.
Consideration of the variation in approaches to the enfranchisement
of resident aliens offers a useful test of both the nationalist and the
transnationalist theses. It is a valuable test of the nationalist thesis be-
cause it presents an apparently radical redefinition of citizenship and of
the state's authority to constitute the political community. It is a test of
the transnationalist thesis, by contrast, because the state nevertheless
remains the principal institution for the allocation of individual rights
and opportunities, including those of immigrants. The variability in
practices among democracies raises a question, furthermore, about the
transnationalist explanation: how is it that states facing a common set
of systemic factors adopt such divergent institutions?

II. HYPOTHESES AND DATA

To explore the variation in approaches to enfranchising aliens, I use a

time-series cross-section design that examines the voting rights offered
by twenty-five democracies to their resident aliens. I derive four na-
tionalist and three transnational hypotheses. After developing specific
hypotheses and measures, I briefly discuss the study's population and
measurement of the dependent variable.
NATIONALIST HYPOTHESES
Several nationalist scholars locate the state's policies toward resident
aliens in a cultural variable: a society's historical understanding of how
the nation is constituted. Hammar, Brubaker, and Barrington all note
that a society's shared understanding about the relationship of the na-
tion to the state—whether or not the nation is multiethnic and whether
citizenship is understood to be membership in the nation or mem-
bership in the state—affects how the state will incorporate migrants.19
Brubaker explains the greater levels of naturalization in France than in
Germany as the product of the different "cultural definitions of citi-
zenry" embedded in competing legal traditions of jus soli in France
(citizenship by birth) and jus sanguinis in Germany (citizenship by
blood). The jus soli legal tradition reflects a society's understanding of
the "nation" as a multicultural and political construct. As Brubaker ar-
19
Hammar (fn. 7); Brubaker (fn. 15); Barrington (fn. 3).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 249
gues, these nation-states tend to be assimilationist in their policies to-
ward aliens. The jus sanguinis doctrine reflects, by contrast, a society's
view of the nation as an ethnic construct. Such nation-states tend to
be exclusionary because immigration policies seek to reinforce national
differentiation.20 While most states today have citizenship policies that
combine elements of the jus soli and jus sanguinis tradition (for exam-
ple, a jus soli state that allows a child born overseas to citizen parents to
become a citizen), the important question is the degree of emphasis on
the two traditions. Scholars argue that ethnic nation-states tend to view
immigration as temporary, to have higher barriers to naturalization, and
to provide fewer economic, civil, and political rights to resident aliens
than multicultural states do. The distinction between the legal tradi-
tions ofjus sanguinis and jus soli thus captures important differences in
the cultural understandings of the relationship between the nation and
the state. The first of four nationalist hypotheses (labeled la in Table 2,
presented later in the article) holds that nation-states which view their
nations as ethnic communities are less likely to enfranchise aliens. To
test this hypothesis, I construct a binary variable using birthright citi-
zenship data from Adams, Kondo, and Weil that cover twenty-two of
the twenty-five democracies in the study.21 I rely upon Nagy to code
Hungary as a jus sanguinis state, and I code Costa Rica and Uruguay
on the basis of my reading of their national constitutions.22 Since I code
those democracies with birthright citizenship as one (and all others as
zero), the expectation is that this variable will correlate positively with
the voting rights of resident aliens.
Nationalist researchers also explain variations in the rights of resi-
dent aliens as the product of the state's institutions. Aleinikoff argues
that courts tend to be more receptive to immigrants' claims for rights,
while legislatures tend to be more illiberal in making immigration poli-
cies.23 Similarly Joppke argues that the activist policy-making role of
national courts explains in part why the historical evolution of the so-

20
Brubaker (fn. IS).
21
Sarah Adams, "The Basic Right of Citizenship: A Comparative Study," Centerfor Information
Studies Backgrounder (Washington, D.C.: Center for Immigration Studies, 1993), www.cis.org/ar-
ticles/1993/back793.htm (accessed April 4,2006); Kondo (fn. 2); Patrick Weil, 'Access to Citizenship:
A Comparison of Twenty-five Nationality Laws," in Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer (fn. 14).
22
Gabor Nagy, "Citizenship in Hungary, from a Legislative Viewpoint," in Andre Liebich and
Daniel Warner, with Jasna Dragovic, eds., Citizenship East and West (London: Kegan Paul Interna-
tional, 1995). See Title II, Article 13(3) of Costa Rica's constitution of November 8,1949, and Section
III, Chapter 1, Article 74 of Uruguay's constitution of December 8, 1996. My source for the docu-
ments and translation is Gisbert H. Flanz, ed., Constitutions of the Countries ofthe World (Dobbs Ferry,
N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 2000).
23
Aleinikoff (fn. 2,2001).
250 WORLD POLITICS

cial and economic rights of resident aliens has reversed Marshall's se-
quence.24 Yet, as Neuman's study suggests, activist courts may reinforce
citizenship laws that lead to closure rather than inclusion.25 Together,
these arguments look to the relationship between national legislatures
and judiciaries to identify variations in democracies' incorporation of
resident aliens. Hypothesis lb is that democracies in which the courts
exhibit independent policy-making activism are more likely to enfran-
chise resident aliens than are those democracies in which courts are
deferential to the legislature. To measure the relative activism of na-
tional courts, I use Lijphart's index of judicial review, which measures
the strength of national courts based upon (1) the presence or absence
of judicial review and (2) three degrees of court activism in asserting
authority over legislative matters.26 Lijphart's data cover twenty-three
of the twenty-five democracies in the study; I replicate his method-
ology using information from Howard and Utter and Lundsgaard to
code Hungary, and from Skaar to code Uruguay.27
A third provocative nationalist argument relates the rights of resi-
dent aliens to the political economy of welfare. Klausen explains the
expansion of the rights of migrants in the Nordic states as a product of
the decline of the welfare state. She argues that during the era of large
welfare spending, the state needed to police claimants for rights since
economic and social rights tend to be fundamentally private goods and
hence a scarce resource. But as states have scaled back welfare spend-
ing, Klausen asserts, they have had less need to monitor who receives
benefits. Since civil and political rights tend to be truly public goods,
furthermore, the state can expand such rights without infringing on
the rights of others.28 This is an interesting and counterintuitive argu-
ment: rather than economic or social rights leading naturally to political
rights, resident aliens may gain political rights only when they receive
fewer social benefits from the state. Conversely, states like Sweden have
extensive social welfare benefits as well as voting rights for nonciti-

24
Joppke(fn. 4).
25
Neuman (fn. 3).
26
Arend Lijphart, Patterns ofDemocracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-six Countries
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
27
A. E. Dick Howard, "Judicial Independence in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe,"
in Peter H. Russell and David M. O'Brien, eds., Judicial Independence in the Age of"Democracy:Critical
Perspectivesfrom Around the World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001); Elin Skaar, "Ju-
dicial Independence: A Key to Justice—An Analysis of Latin America in the 1990s (Argentina, Chile,
Uruguay)" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2002); Robert F. Utter and David C.
Lundsgaard, "Judicial Review in the New Nations of Central and Eastern Europe: Some Thoughts
from a Comparative Perspective," Ohio State Law Journal 5 A (Summer 1993).
28
Klausen (fn. 8).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 251
zens. A plausible alternative hypothesis is that democratic states with
expansive economic rights may be more likely to have political rights
as well. Hypothesis lc follows from Klausen's reasoning, that democ-
racies with extensive social welfare programs are less likely to enfran-
chise resident aliens than are those states with fewer social benefits. To
test this hypothesis, I measure the state's per annum welfare spending
over the time span of the study. I follow Huber, Ragin, and Stephens's
suggestion to measure social security transfers as a percentage of gross
domestic product, since it allows easier comparison both across states
in the study and over time without having to correct for inflationary
effects.291 use their data set and as per their recommendation supple-
ment it with data from the International Labour Office's World Labor
Report?0 To account for the likelihood that changes in welfare spend-
ing will take some time to affect the rights of resident aliens, I lag the
measure one year.
Finally, several nationalist scholars argue that partisan factors explain
much of the observed variation in policies for the incorporation of resi-
dent aliens. Hammar notes that when governments have enfranchised
resident aliens, it is typically parties of the left that have been in power.
He argues this is because resident aliens tend to vote for social demo-
cratic parties rather than right-leaning parties.31 This suggests hypoth-
esis Id: democracies in which leftist parties control the government
are more likely to enfranchise resident aliens, while rightist parties are
less likely to do so. Yet labor-oriented parties may also oppose policies
that would increase immigration and, by extension, undermine union
jobs. A plausible yet opposite expectation therefore is that left-leaning
parties may be less likely to extend voting rights to resident aliens. To
test these expectations, I use Blais, Blake, and Dion's measurement of
the partisan composition of government as the difference between the
percentage of cabinet seats held by parties of the left and right. 32 1 use
left-right coding of parties and governments collected by Armingeon,
Beyeler, and Menegale, who compile Blais, Blake, and Dion's measure

29
Evelyne Huber, Charles Ragin, and John D. Stephens, "Comparative Welfare States Data Set"
(Chicago and Chapel Hill: Northwestern University and University of North Carolina, 1997), www.
lisproject.org/publications/welfaredata/welfareaccess.htm (accessed April 7,2006).
30
For missing yearly observations, I use a linear interpolation routine (the "ipolate" command in
Stata version 7.0) to impute values for each subject state. International Labour Office, World Labor
Report (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1984-98).
31
Hammar (fn. 7).
32
Andre Blais, Donald Blake, and Stephane Dion, "Do Parties Make a Difference? Parties and
the Size of Government in Liberal Democracies," American Journal of Political Science 37 (February
1993), 49-50.
252 WORLD POLITICS
for twenty-one of the twenty-five states in the study.33 For the remain-
ing four states, I construct the measure using party composition data
from Beck et al. for Costa Rica, Hungary, and Uruguay and from Wol-
dendorp, Keman, and Budge for Israel (which I normalize to the Blais,
Blake, and Dion scale).34 Because a higher score on the Blais, Blake,
and Dion index indicates a partisan composition dominated by left-
leaning parties, the expectation is that the higher values of the partisan
variable will correlate positively with changes in the voting rights of
resident aliens.
Missing from this discussion of nationalist arguments are interest
groups themselves. Immigrant groups increasingly organize both do-
mestically and transnationally to articulate their claims for economic,
social, and political rights to their host governments.35 Several research-
ers likewise have illustrated how interest groups may influence the po-
litical incorporation of migrants.36 Such interest-group explanations
are exceedingly difficult to operationalize, however, in a time-series
cross-section study. The difficulties arise not only from the prolifera-
tion of such groups within nation-states but also from the absence of
a common standard among governments for identifying and account-
ing for their noncitizens. Whereas many states report aliens accord-
ing to their citizenship (including seventeen of the study's twenty-five
countries), several enumerate their residents by place of birth (includ-
ing Australia, Canada, and the United States). By focusing on place
of birth, the latter measure conflates naturalized citizens with aliens.
Hence it is difficult even to derive a valid and reliable measure for the
number of noncitizens, let alone to identify immigrant organizations.
Although interest-group explanations are important to both nationalist
and transnationalist researchers, I conclude that the available data suf-
fer from too many problems to derive valid measures of interest-group
behavior. Of course, interest-based explanations maybe correlated with

33
Klaus Armingeon, Michelle Beyeler, and Sarah Menegale, Comparative Political Data Set, 1960—
2001 (Berne: Institute of Political Science, University of Berne, 2002).
34
Thorsten Beck, George Clark, Alberto Groff, Philip Keefer, and Patrick Walsh, "New Tools in
Comparative Political Economy: The Database of Political Institutions," World Bank Economic Review
15 (September 2001); Jaap Woldendorp, Hans Keman, and Ian Budge, "Party Government in Twenty
Democracies: An Update (1990-1995)," European Journal of Political Research 33 (January 1998).
35
Sassen (fn. 18); Soysal (fn. 7).
36
Louis DeSipio, "Building America, One Person at a Time: Naturalization and the Political
Behavior of the Naturalized in Contemporary American Politics," in Gerstle and Mollenkopf (fn. 2);
Gary P. Freeman, "Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States," International Migra-
tion Review 29 (Winter 1995); Luis Eduardo Guarnizo, "On the Political Participation of Trans-
national Migrants: Old Practices and New Trends," in Gerstle and Mollenkopf (fn. 2); Jeannette
Money, Fences and Neighbors: The Political Geography of Immigration Control (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1999).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 253
the measure of political parties (which may organize immigrant groups)
and NGOs (which likewise actively mobilize immigrant groups). If so,
these measures may capture some of the effects of interest-based ac-
counts of immigrant mobilization. Nevertheless, to the degree interest-
based accounts matter independent of political parties and NGOs, this
omission may lead to biased and inconsistent estimates. This choice
between omitted variable bias and the use of invalid or unreliable mea-
sures of interest groups is a difficult one. I choose to omit measures of
interest-based explanations.

TRANSNATIONAL HYPOTHESES

It is a hallmark of transnationalist citizenship politics, scholars argue,

that international norms play an important role in constraining states'
citizenship practices. These norms may help expand economic, social,
and political opportunities for resident aliens. Intergovernmental orga-
nizations (iGOs) that champion such norms take an interest in states'
incorporation practices precisely because these policies may have in-
ternational consequences for civil strife, refugee flows, tensions be-
tween states, and even territorial divisions. Norms therefore may play
an important role in moderating the illiberal tendencies of some states'
policies toward resident aliens. Soysal and Sassen both argue that hu-
man rights norms have become codified in international institutions
that increasingly regulate states' policies toward minorities and resident
aliens.37 Barrington for one argues that during the 1990s the Council of
Europe, the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and
Helsinki Watch all advocated broader rights for the Russian-speak-
ing minority in the newly independent Baltic republics.38 Kashiwa-
zaki likewise argues that Japanese accession to various UN conventions
on human and minority rights caused the government to reform its
citizenship laws.39 These arguments suggest an important hypothesis,
2a: states that are committed to international human rights norms are
more likely to enfranchise resident aliens than are states less committed
to such norms.
To test this hypothesis, I use Simmons's measure of a state's com-
mitment to three relevant human rights institutions: the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Con-
vention on the Economic and Social Rights of Migrants (ICESR), and
37
Sassen (fn. 18); Soysal (fn. 7).
38
Barrington (fn. 3).
39
Chikako Kashiwazaki, "Citizenship in Japan: Legal Practice and Contemporary Development,"
in Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer (fn. 2).
254 WORLD POLITICS
the respective regional human rights agreements such as the Inter-
American Convention on Human Rights. Simmons measures a state's
commitment by scoring each state according to whether it has signed
(+1), signed and ratified (+2), or taken no action on the given instru-
ment (+0). 40 1 use this method to assign each state a score ranging from
0 (no action on any of the three instruments) to 6 (signed and ratified
all three instruments) for each yearly observation of each country in
the study.
International nongovernmental organizations (iNGOs) may also play
an important role as advocates for the rights of aliens. Sassen notes that
international law increasingly recognizes the standing of both individu-
als and INGOs to pursue claims against states in international courts.41
For this reason, nation-states increasingly face multiple levels of gov-
ernance in their citizenship politics.42 Transnational researchers argue
that nongovernmental actors thus have both the standing and the moral
authority to challenge illiberal practices and to encourage changes in
state policies. Hypothesis 2b is that states that are permeated by NGOs
are more likely to allow substantive voting rights for resident aliens.
A reliable measure of the influence of NGOs is more difficult to de-
rive, given the undoubtedly varied organization and scope of princi-
pled issue-networks both over time and among the states in the study.43
Rather than tracing the formation of such networks directly, I use An-
heier's proposed measure of the density of INGO membership in each
state in the study. He defines membership density as the number of
INGOs with at least one member in the state, per one million residents.44
Anheier and Stares construct this measure using data from the Union
of International Association's Yearbook of International Organizations.^

40
Beth A. Simmons, "Why Commit? Explaining State Acceptance of International Human
Rights Obligations" (Lecture presented at the Colloquium on Law, Economics, and Politics, New
York University School of Law, New York, September 24, 2002).
41
Sassen (fn. 18).
42
Aleinikoff(fn.2,2000).
43
Kathryn Sikkink, "Human Rights, Principled Issue-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin Ameri-
can," International Organization 47 (Summer 1993).
44
Because this measure is highly skewed toward states with small populations, Anheier and Stares
recommend using the log of this measure, a recommendation I follow; Helmut Anheier and Sally
Stares, "Introducing the Global Civil Society Index," in Marlies Glasius, Mary Kaldor, and Helmut
Anheier, eds., Global Civil Society 2002 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). And see Helmut
Anheier, "Measuring Global Civil Society," in Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor,
eds., Global Civil Society 2001 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
45
For ease of comparison across time, I look only at organizations coded by the UlA as types A, B,
C, and D. The UlA did not classify organizations as types E, F, and G prior to 1984. See Anheier and
Stares (fn. 44); Union of International Associations, Yearbook of International Organizations, 1 lth—39th
eds. (Brussels: Union of International Associations, 1967-2002).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 255

I use the UIA'S reported figures for each year from 1984 to 2000, and for
1960,1966, 1977, and 1981. Because the values are monotonically in-
creasing, I impute values for missing annual observations using a linear
interpolation routine.
I derive a final transnationalist hypothesis by implication. Resident
aliens may organize across sovereign borders to influence a state's citi-
zenship policies. Likewise, a simple fact of migration is that resident
aliens more likely come from nearby states than from ones far away. To-
gether these facts suggest that geography may well influence whether
or not states choose to enfranchise noncitizens. Hypothesis 2c is that
states are more likely to enfranchise resident aliens if they border on
other states that extend such voting rights. To test this hypothesis, I
follow Beck's suggestion to endogenize the spatial relationship among
states in the study by measuring the average score on the dependent
variable for each state that borders on the observed state.46 To account
for the possibility that the influence of neighboring states may occur
over time, I lag this measure one year.
This measure of neighborhood effects has the added benefit of test-
ing for spatial correlation among observations in the study. Political
scientists have recently renewed their interest in the effects on estima-
tion of the spatial organization of a study's subjects.47 There are two
reasons to suspect that spatial correlation may occur in this study. First,
some states like Spain and Portugal grant voting rights to resident
aliens from those states that reciprocate the rights to their emigres. To
the degree states have reciprocal migratory flows, as bordering states
often do, they will comprise explicitly interdependent and correlated
observations. Second, fourteen of the twenty-five states in the study are
European states, suggesting a regional effect may arise from European
norms, culture, or practices. If so, the proposed measures of cultural and
institutional variables may be correlated. In addition to testing an im-
portant transnational hypothesis, then, the neighborhood effects vari-
able offers a correction for possible sources of spatial correlation.

46
Nathaniel Beck, "Time-Series-Cross-Section Data: What Have We Learned in the Past Few
Years?"Annual Review ofPolitical Science 2001 4 (2001).
47
Kristian S. Gleditsch and Michael D. Ward, "War and Peace in Space and Time: The Role of
Democratization," International Studies Quarterly 44 (March 2000); John O'Loughlin, Michael D.
Ward, Corey L. Lofdahl, Jordin S. Cohen, David S. Brown, David Reilly, Kristian S. Gleditsch, and
Michael Shin, "The Diffusion of Democracy, 1946-1994," Annals of the Association ofAmerican Ge-
ographers 88 (1999); Alastair Smith, "Testing Theories of Strategic Choice: The Example of Crisis
Escalation," American Journal ofPolitical Science 43 (October 1999).
256 WORLD POLITICS

CONTROL VARIABLES
I control for six rival explanations for why states might enfranchise
aliens. One is a state's membership in the European Union. Because the
Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam require EU member states to
offer local voting rights to resident aliens who are citizens of other EU
states, it is important to control for this possible bias. Likewise, voting
rights for Commonwealth citizens in the United Kingdom and Barba-
dos, as well as the rights of British citizens in Australia and Canada,
may reflect the development of a Commonwealth citizenship policy in
the 1940s.48 A state's membership in the Commonwealth may explain
reciprocal voting rights for nationals from other Commonwealth states.
For these reasons I control for state membership in the Commonwealth
and European Union.
A third control is a dummy variable for states with proportional rep-
resentation systems. Given the emphasis in PR electoral systems on the
inclusion of minority groups, one might expect democracies with PR
systems to be more likely to enfranchise resident aliens than those with
first-past-the-post systems. I use data from Lijphart and Beck et al. to
code each state's electoral system.49 The fourth and fifth control vari-
ables are dummies to account for each state's political development his-
tory. Rokkan for one argues that the timing of the state's enfranchise-
ment of citizens depends in part upon the state's inherited traditions of
representative rule and whether it seceded from another state.50 I code
two dummies: one uses Rokkan's analysis to record whether (+1) or not
(0) the subject state has a strong history of representative institutions.
The other codes center-formed states as a one and secession states as
a zero. Finally, I include a simple time variable to test for the possi-
bility of significant trends during the four decades of the time series.
Together these six control variables account for historical, institutional,
and temporal effects. The appendix provides the summary descriptive
statistics and a correlations table for the model's variables.
One note of caution is in order: I am looking at states' variable ap-
proaches to enfranchisement rather than at why countries might change
their approaches. In other words, my design inherently focuses on conti-
48
Suzanne Shanahan, "Scripted Debates: Twentieth-Century Immigration and Citizenship Policy
in Great Britain, Ireland, and the United States," in Michael Hanagan and Charles Tilly, eds., Extend-
ing Citizenship, Reconfiguring States (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999).
49
Arend Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-seven Democracies, 1945—
1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Beck et al. (fn. 34).
50
Rokkan (fn. 12), 249.
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 257
nuity of practices within states but also on variability among them. This
focus favors arguments that emphasize continuity of practices (typi-
cally, nationalist arguments) over arguments about causes of change
(transnational explanations). This sets a high bar for the transnational
thesis; to the degree transnational arguments hold up, the finding will be
that much more important. Statistically, one would expect variables that
are constant over time to perform better than variables that change fre-
quently. I address this possible problem in the discussion section below.

III. DEPENDENT VARIABLE AND STUDY POPULATION

Today there are twenty-four states that have enfranchised resident aliens
and seven others that either have considered explicitly but rejected such
rights or have rescinded voting rights they once offered to noncitizens.
I measure a state's voting rights for resident aliens according to two cri-
teria. The first assesses the "scale" of the voting rights. Some states (like
Sweden) allow resident aliens to vote only in local and municipal elec-
tions, while others (like New Zealand) allow resident aliens to vote in
parliamentary elections as well. In several federal systems, furthermore,
resident aliens receive the right to vote from local or regional authori-
ties but not from the national government (Switzerland and the United
States typify such rights). Using the scale of voting rights, one can order
the democracies in the study from those with no rights, to those that al-
low aliens to vote only in local elections, to those that enfranchise aliens
for parliamentary elections. The second criterion is the "scope" of the
rights, which refers to which resident aliens receive the franchise. Some
states universally enfranchise aliens who need only to satisfy a require-
ment for period of residency (Sweden and New Zealand among others
have such universal systems) while other states extend the right only to
resident aliens of specific nationalities (such as the United Kingdom's
provisions for resident aliens from Commonwealth countries). In other
words, the scope of the rights refers to whether or not the rights dis-
criminate on the basis of the noncitizens nationality.
Using these two criteria, I have constructed an ordinal dependent
variable with six ranks. Because I seek to test the importance of na-
tional versus transnational factors, I order the dependent variable of
voting regimes from the most "national" to the most "transnational."
Consequently I treat no rights as lower than some rights; discrimina-
tory rights as lower than nondiscriminatory rights; and local rights as
lower than national rights. These criteria allow me to rank the depen-
258 WORLD POLITICS
dent variable into six categories: states that offer no voting rights (0);
rights granted by localities but not by the national government (1); local
rights that discriminate on the basis of nationality (2); national rights
that discriminate on the basis of nationality (3); local rights that are
nondiscriminatory (4); and finally national rights that are nondiscrimi-
natory (5).51 Figure 1 shows the scope and scale of the voting rights in
twenty-six democracies. The nondiscriminatory, national franchise in
New Zealand is the paragon of the right, while the piecemeal rights of-
fered only by municipalities in the United States and three cantons in
Switzerland represent the minimal possible rights.
It is possible that in some states voting rights for resident aliens are
formal or legalistic rights that lack substantial political significance. To
the degree that such rights discriminate on the basis of nationality or
limit voting to local elections, they arguably serve to marginalize non-
citizens as much as they incorporate them. Likewise, in states with in-
clusive citizenship practices, naturalization may be an easier path to
political rights than the enfranchisement of resident aliens. In these
respects, one might argue that the presence or absence of voting rights
for resident aliens does not adequately measure the inclusiveness of a
state's citizenship practices. Nevertheless the study's dependent vari-
able is both theoretically important and empirically valid for three rea-
sons. First, transnational scholars themselves have specifically identi-
fied voting rights for noncitizens as evidence that states increasingly
ground political rights in criteria other than citizenship.52 If so, natu-
ralization and enfranchisement are different policy choices that deserve
separate consideration: each is a distinct path to inclusion. Second, one
of the study's independent variables partially accounts for the degree to
which states differ in their naturalization policies. I have already noted
that multicultural nation-states tend to have more liberal naturaliza-
tion policies than ethnic nation-states. By including this independent
variable, the study can assess the degree to which voting rights for non-
citizens are an alternative to naturalization practices. Finally, by con-
structing an ordered measure of different voting rights practices, the
51
One might argue that one should rank discriminatory national rights above nondiscriminatory
local rights—in other words, to reverse ranks 3 and 4. To test nationalist and transnationalist hypoth-
eses, however, I argue one must order the voting rights systems according to their use of nationality as
a criterion for the franchise. In this sense, the orders of the dependent variable range from those that
most emphasize nationality as a criterion (no rights) to those that do not use nationality as a criterion
for the broadest range of rights. For this reason, I rank nondiscriminatory local rights as a higher order
than discriminatory national rights, since the latter retains an emphasis on nationality.
52
Aleinikoff (fn. 2,2000); Miriam Feldblum, "Managing Membership: NewTrends in Citizenship
and Nationality Policy," in Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer (fn. 2, 2000); Hammar (fn. 7); Kashiwazaki (fn.
39); Soysal (fn. 7).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 259
dependent variable distinguishes between politically substantial rights
on the one hand (as in New Zealand) and discriminatory or formalistic
mechanisms of closure on the other (as arguably occurs in Israel).
To avoid sampling on the dependent variable, this study uses a popu-
lation of those democracies that satisfy two conditions. I assume that
the enfranchisement of resident aliens is a feature more likely to be
found in established, mature democracies. Transitional democracies
may yet restrict political rights and liberties or suffer from reversals of
such rights. It arguably is not valid to compare transitional democra-
cies with those democracies that have a long tradition of representative,

Australia (before 1984) New Zealand (since 1967)

Barbados Uruguay
Canada (before 1975)
United Kingdom
Ireland (since 1984)
c
o New Zealand (before 1967)
•e
Portugal

Denmark (1977-81) Belize

Estonia Bolivia"
Finland (1981-91) Chile
Iceland (1920-95) Colombia"
a Israel Denmark (since 1981)
o
•a Norway (1978-82) Finland (since 1991)
Hungary
Localities only Ireland (1963-84)
o Netherlands
Canada Norway (since 1982)
Germany (1989-90) Spain
Switzerland Sweden
United States Venezuela

Specific Resident Aliens All Resident Aliens

(Discriminatory) (Nondiscriminatory)
Scope of Rights

FIGURE 1
THE VOTING RIGHTS OF RESIDENT ALIENS IN 26 STATES,
ORDERED BY THEIR SCOPE AND SCALE

"The constitutions of Bolivia and Colombia permit their respective legislatures to enact
enfranchisement laws for resident aliens, but neither country has done so.
260 WORLD POLITICS
participatory politics.53 For these reasons, I define the study's popula-
tion as those democracies that (1) are established and that (2) have
significant populations of resident aliens. To measure whether or not
a democracy is established, I use two measures: a state's score on the
Gastil combined index of political freedom and civil liberties (com-
monly referred to as the Freedom House index), and its score on the
54
POLITY variable from the Polity IV data set. 1 define an established de-
mocracy as one that has scored either (1) four or less on the combined
Gastil index for every year from 1990 to 1999 (lower scores indicate
greater liberties) without a regime change or (2) 9 or 10 on the POLITY
variable for every year from 1991 to 2000 inclusive without a regime
change. This requirement of a continuity of political freedoms follows
Lijphart's selection of democracies on the basis of continuous demo-
cratic practice.55 There are forty-three democracies that satisfy either
the Gastil or POLITY criterion.
Among these forty-three states are several that are "microstates" or
that have insignificant populations of resident aliens. Following the ex-
ample of Norris and Diamond I exclude the microstates from the study
(that is, those with fewer than two million residents).56 For simplicity,
the study assumes that a "significant" population of resident aliens is ei-
ther (1) one million or more resident aliens or (2) an immigrant popu-
lation greater than or equal to 1 percent of the state's total population,
based on the United Nations 2002 data.57 Using these criteria, twenty-
five of the forty-three established democracies have significant popu-

53
Of the twenty-six states in Figure 1 that have some provision for immigrant voting rights, eight
arguably are transitional democracies. Two (Hungary and Uruguay) are in the study's population. Of
the remaining six, Bolivia and Colombia have constitutional provisions that allow their legislatures to
enfranchise aliens at their discretion, though neither has done so. Estonia's franchise rights are dis-
criminatory (for native Russian speakers only), while Belize, Chile, and Venezuela have local rights
only. Given this variability among transitional democracies, it is not clear how alternative sampling cri-
teria would affect the study's hypothesis tests. If anything, since most states that enfranchise aliens are
consolidated democracies, the inclusion of a large number of transitional democracies with no rights
probably would increase the likelihood of finding no effect for any hypothesized factor.
54
Raymond D. Gastil, "The Comparative Survey of Freedom: Experience and Suggestions," Stud-
ies in Comparative International Development 2$ (Spring 1990); Freedom in the World 2001-2002: The
Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (New York: Freedom House, 2002); Monty G.
Marshall and Keith Jaggers, Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-
1999, Dataset Users Manual (College Park: University of Maryland, 2000).
55
Lijphart (fn. 26), chap. 4.
56
Larry Diamond, "A Report Card on Democracy," Hoover Digest: Research and Opinion on Public
Policy 3 (Summer 2000); Pippa Norris, "Designing Democracies: Institutional Arrangements and Sys-
tem Support" (Paper presented at the John F. Kennedy School of Government Workshop on Confi-
dence in Democratic Institutions: America in a Comparative Perspective, Washington, D.C., August
25-27,1997).
57
United Nations, Department of Economic Affairs and Social Affairs, Population Division, In-
ternational Migration Report 2002 (New York: United Nations, 2002).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 261

TABLE 1
T H E STUDY'S POPULATION OF DEMOCRACIES*

Australia Italy
Austria Japan
Belgium Netherlands
Canada New Zealand
Costa Rica Norway
Denmark Portugal
Finland Spain
France Sweden
Germany Switzerland
Greece United Kingdom
Hungary United States
Ireland Uruguay
Israel

"States that have had no voting rights for resident aliens during the period of this study are listed
in italics.

lations of resident aliens. These criteria exclude states with very small
populations of immigrants in which the political costs of enfranchising
aliens may be relatively low. By contrast, states with large immigrant
populations may face greater pressures, both from domestic interests
as well as from INGOS, to consider the plight of a large minority. It is
thus not clear a priori whether these selection criteria favor nationalist
or transnationalist arguments. Nevertheless, the twenty-five states this
study examines hosted about 62 percent of the world's migrants who
resided in democratic states during 2000.58 Given the importance of
these states in international institutions, furthermore, I conclude that
the study's population is reasonable. Table 1 lists these states. For each
of these democracies, I measure the dependent variable, the four na-
tionalist variables, the three transnationalist variables, and the six con-
trol variables for each year from 1960 to 2000. Though several states
have practiced the enfranchisement of aliens for over a century, the un-
availability of reliable data prior to 1960 (particularly on social welfare
expenditures) limits the study to observations from 1960 and after.59

IV. METHODS AND FINDINGS

To test the nationalist and transnationalist hypotheses, I use a time-se-

ries cross-section research design, commonly referred to as a TSCS study.
58
Ibid.
59
Earnest (fn. 1).
262 WORLD POLITICS
This type of research design is increasingly common in international re-
lations scholarship, particularly among democratic peace researchers.60
Both Beck and Kate and Beck have noted that such designs typically
are plagued with data problems for which researchers must correct, ei-
ther in their specification of the model or in their estimation tech-
nique.61 Specifically, contemporaneous correlation among panels, serial
correlation, and panel heteroskedasticity in TSCS studies typically cause
an underestimation of standard errors. This leads to overconfidence in
significance tests and a greater chance of finding effects when in fact
none exist. Unfortunately, the most common estimation technique for
TSCS designs—known as panel-corrected standard errors, or PCSE—is
not appropriate for this study because it requires an interval-level de-
pendent variable. Likewise, Beck's proposed corrections through model
specification—such as the inclusion of a lagged observation of the de-
pendent variable on the right-hand side of the model-—may in fact
overcorrect when the dependent variable changes infrequently over the
course of the time series.62 With only 17 observed changes in the de-
pendent variable out of 921 possible observations, Beck's proposals for
specification corrections likely will overestimate the true standard er-
rors of the estimates. The model then would likely find no significant
effects when some do in fact exist. In the absence of sufficient variation
over time, Green, Kim, and Yoon conclude that the pooling of TSCS
observations is an adequate strategy for estimation.63 I consequently
choose to pool the observations rather than estimate a fixed-effects or
error-components model.
As Beck has noted, little is known about panel corrections for de-
signs with an ordinal dependent variable.64 Simmons has proposed one
method that I use for this study. In her analysis of a state's commitment
to international human rights obligations, Simmons uses an ordered
probit estimator with robust standard errors that are adjusted for "clus-
tering" on each country in her study. This use of robust standard errors
substantially increases the estimated standard errors and "reduces the

60
Kirk S. Bowman, "Taming the Tiger: Militarization and Democracy in Latin America," Journal of
Peace Research 37 (February 1996); A. Cooper Drury, "Revisiting Economic Sanctions Revisited," Journal
ofPeace Research 35 (July 1998); Peter J. Partell, "Executive Constraints and Success in International Cri-
ses," Political Research Quarterly 50 (September 1997); Mi Yung Yoon, "Explaining U.S. Intervention in
Third World Internal Wars, 1945-1989,"'Journalof'Conflict Resolution 41 (August 1997).
61
Nathaniel Beck and Jonathan N. Katz, "What to Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-
Section Data," American Political Science Review 89 (September 1995); Beck (fn. 46).
62
Beck (fn. 46).
63
Donald P. Green, Soo Yeon Kim, and David H. Yoon, "Dirty Pool," International Organization
55 (Spring 2001) 455.
64
Beck (fn. 46), 287.
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 263
likelihood of inferring effects where in fact there are none."65 While
it is an imperfect solution to estimating TSCS models with an ordered
dependent variable, it is a conservative one that prejudices hypotheses
tests in the direction of a finding of no significance. To test the na-
tionalist and transnationalist hypotheses, I thus use an ordered probit
estimator with robust standard errors adjusted for clustering on each
democracy in the population. In my presentation of findings below I
also provide the results of the ordered probit model when estimated
with the normal (unadjusted) standard errors. By comparing the two
models, one can assess the sensitivity of findings to these assumptions
about the variance-covariance estimates.66
Table 2 presents the findings of this analysis. For each factor, I have
reported the estimated coefficient and, in parentheses, the estimated
standard error after adjustment for clustering on each country. An as-
terisk denotes those variables that are significant at the 0.05 level; a
double asterisk indicates the variable is significant at the 0.01 level.
Model 1 lists the estimated coefficients and robust standard errors for
the ordered probit analysis. Model 2 provides the coefficients and un-
adjusted standard errors.
A quick glance at the ordered probit results with robust standard er-
rors (Table 2, model 1) shows support for the nationalist thesis. All four
nationalist variables are significant. The birthright citizenship variable
is significant in the predicted direction. This shows that, as hypoth-
esized, democratic majorities that view the nation as a multicultural
community appear to be more likely to enfranchise resident aliens than
states whose citizens view the nation as an ethnic community. Surpris-
ingly, however, the three other significant nationalist variables oper-

65
Simmons (fn. 40), 17.
66
For purposes of comparison and for validation of the findings, I also conducted a PCSE regres-
sion of the model. While such analysis is inappropriate for ordered dependent variables, Beck (fn. 46)
notes that researchers using ordered variables with seven points commonly treat them as continuous
and can estimate such variables with PCSE techniques (p. 273). The dependent variable for this study
has only six points, making tenuous any inferences from PCSE estimation. When using PCSE estimation,
I assume that there is panel-specific first-order autoregression. The PCSE analysis found the following
nationalist and transnational factors significant: birthright citizenship (|3 = 1.512, s.e. = 0.225); density
of NGOs (0.529, 0.092); and proximity to other states that enfranchise noncitizens (0.179, 0.046). The
PCSE model also found several controls significant: membership in the British Commonwealth (1.412,
0.235); a history of representative institutions (0.742, 0.259); the center-formed state dummy (0.821,
0.252); and the control for unexplained temporal variation (0.021, 0.008). The PCSE model thus seems
to find more support for transnational arguments than the ordered probit model. This support is quali-
fied, however, for two reasons. First, the control variable for time illustrates that there is an overall
increase in voting rights over time that the PCSE model does not explain. Second, the reader is again
advised to keep in mind Beck's caution that we know little about the consistency of PCSE estimates and
the degree to which they are unbiased when one uses an ordered dependent variable; Beck (fn. 46).
 TABLE 2
ORDERED PROBIT ESTIMATES; ALL MODELS EXCEPT 2 ASSUME ROBUST
STANDARD ERRORS AND CLUSTERING ON EACH STATE

2 3
Full Model Full Model Controlling
(Unadjusted Only for
Standard Errors, Time Trend
No Clustering)

N= 808
P>chi2 = <.001 <.001 <.001
Log likelihood = -817.97 -817.97 -907.13
Pseudo R2 = 0.3127 0.3127 0.2378

Explanatory Variable Estimated Coefficient (standard error)

Nationalist Hypotheses
la. Birthright citizenship 2.038** 2.038** 1.782*
(0.408) (0.139) (0.406)
lb. Strength of judicial -0.697** -0.697** -0.547*
(0.222) (0.078) (0.206)
lc. Social security expenditures, 0.150** 0.150** 0.070
lagged 1 (0.033) (0.015) (0.041)
Id. Party of government -0.289* -0.289** -0.290*
(0.141) (0.066) (0.118)

Transnational Hypotheses
2a. Accession to international human 0.037 0.037 -0.072
rights agreements (0.092) (0.039) (0.097)
2b. Density of INGOs 0.205 0.205** 0.204
(0.170) (0.076) (0.157)
2c. Mean DV score of bordering states, 0.480** 0.480** 0.425*
[1 (0.114) (0.047) (0.136)

Controls
EU dummy -1.198** -1.198**
(0.364) (0.131) —
Commonwealth dummy 0.238 0.238
(0.348) (0.160) —
PR dummy -0.329 -0.329
(0.600) (0.234) —
History of representative institutions dummy 0.597 0.597**
(0.391) (0.126) —
Center-formed state dummy 0.008 0.008
(0.372) (0.115) —
Time -0.010 -0.010 0.012
(0.019) (0.008) (0.021)
 TABLE 2 cont.

4 5 6 7
Nationalist Nationalist Transnational Transnational
Factors Factors Plus Factors Factors
Only, Plus Controls Only, Plus Plus Controls
Time Trend and Time Time Trend and Time
Trend Trend

N= 808 808 883 883

P > chi2 = <.001 <.001 <.001 <.001
Log likelihood = -964.79 -890.16 -1184.12 -1086.06
PseudoR2 = 0.1893 0.2520 0.0985 0.1731

Explanatory Variable Estimated Coefficient (standard error)

Nationalist Hypotheses
la. Birthright citizenship 1.748** 1.892** — —
(0.376) (0.397)
lb. Strength of judicial review -0.690** -0.775** — —
(0.143) (0.196)
lc. Social security 0.064 0.126** — —
expenditures, lagged 1 (0.040) (0.036)

Id. Party of government -0.218 -0.166

(0.145) (0.143)

Transnational Hypotheses
2a. Accession to international
human rights agreements — — -0.090 0.058
(0.085) (0.088)
2b. Density of iNGOs — — 0.359** 0.375
(0.135) (0.201)
2c. Mean DV score of bordering states, — — 0.358** 0.332*
lagged 1 (0.128) (0.127)
Controls
EU dummy -0.864* -0.430
(0.397) (0.372)
Commonwealth dummy — 0.376 — 0.796
(0.343) (0.696)
PR dummy — -0.324 — 0.043
(0.463) (0.798)
History of representative institutions — 0.546 — 0.625
dummy (0.502) (0.409)
Center-formed state dummy — 0.199 — -0.043
(0.409) — (0.337)
Time 0.021 0.019 0.023 0.016
(0.022) (0.020) (0.014) (0.014)
I * significant at 0.05; "significant at 0.01
 266 WORLD POLITICS
ate in the direction opposite of the hypothesized effect. States with
more activist and independent judiciaries appear significantly less likely
to enfranchise their resident aliens, not more so, as hypothesis lb ex-
pected. Similarly, a state's spending on social security seems to be in the
direction opposite to that predicted in hypothesis lc; rather than lead-
ing to increased policing of claimants and hence a foreclosure of oppor-
tunities, states that spend more on social programs may be more likely
to extend voting rights to resident aliens. As Table 2 shows, however,
this finding is sensitive to choice of model specification. Finally, parties
of the left appear to be significantly less likely to enfranchise resident
aliens than parties of the right. This is contrary to Rath's argument but
consistent with the argument that labor-oriented parties may be less
friendly to immigrants' rights.67
The analysis finds weak support for the transnationalist hypotheses.
The only significant transnational predictor in the robust ordered pro-
bit model is a state's proximity to other states that enfranchise non-
citzens. The bordering states measure is significant in the direction
predicted: states are more likely to enfranchise resident aliens if their
neighbors do so, suggesting the importance of reciprocity and immi-
gration flows. The two other transnationalist variables—commitment
to international human rights institutions and the density of NGOs—are
not significant.
Only one of the control variables is significant, though it is a pro-
vocative one. The dummy variable for the European Union is signifi-
cant, but it is in the direction opposite of the expectation. Rather than
EU states being more likely to enfranchise resident aliens, the model
suggests they may be less likely to do so. It is worth noting that pro-
portional representation systems are not significantly more likely to
enfranchise resident aliens, despite their emphasis on the inclusion of
social minorities. Likewise, the dummy variables for the state's politi-
cal development are not significant. This suggests either that the jus
sanguinis variable captures these historical institutional factors or that
neither a state's legacy of representative institutions nor its history of
formation is relevant to its enfranchisement of resident aliens.
To test the sensitivity of these findings to model specification, I con-
duct five other ordered probit estimations with robust standard errors
on subsets of nationalist and transnationalist factors. Models 3-7 in Ta-
ble 2 report the findings of these alternative specifications. The results
show several factors perform consistently despite differences in model
67
Rath (fn. 1).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 267
specification. The measures for birthright citizenship and strength of
judicial review are significant and in the same direction in all four mod-
els (1, 3, 4, and 5). Likewise the measures for transnational hypotheses
2a and 2c behave consistently in the different specifications. In all four
models (1, 3, 6, and 7) the measure of spatial correlation is significant
and positive; in none of the four models is the measure of accession to
human rights instruments significant. Similarly control variables ap-
pear to perform consistently in the differing specifications. The dum-
mies for proportional representation systems, Commonwealth states,
political development (representative institutions and center-formed
states), and time all are not significant in any specification. Altogether,
nine of the full model's thirteen variables behave robustly across the
differing specifications.
Two nationalist measures perform inconsistently. The measure of
economic rights (social security expenditures) is significant and posi-
tive in models 1 and 5, but not in models 3 or 4. Likewise the measure
of the partisan composition of government is significant and negative
in models 1 and 3 but not in 4 and 5. Given that model 4 is the least
specified of the four models that test nationalist factors, one suspects a
problem with omitted variable bias. Nevertheless, the sensitivity of the
party variable and social security spending to choice of model specifica-
tion suggests one should be cautious about inferring effects for these
factors.
The only transnational factor that behaves inconsistently across the
different specifications is the measure of the density of iNGOs.This fac-
tor is significant in the hypothesized direction in model 6. This is the
most parsimonious model, however, including only the three trans-
national factors and the time control. Given this spare model, one sus-
pects this estimate is biased due to the omission of significant factors.
In the other three models that are more fully specified (1,3, and 7) this
factor is not significant. On the question of the estimated effect of NGO
density, then, one can conclude the finding of the full model is probably
unbiased. Since "overfitting" is less statistically problematic than omit-
ting relevant variables, the fully specified model informs my subsequent
discussion of findings.

V. DISCUSSION

These findings suggest mixed support for the nationalist thesis. Despite
globalization and the institutionalization of international human rights,
the study's twenty-five democratic states appear to retain a considerable
268 WORLD POLITICS

capacity to constitute their political communities. Shared conceptions

of the polity, whether as a multinational state or as an ethnic "nation,"
appear to remain a significant factor in how these democracies treat
their resident aliens. An example of this may be Germany, in which
three Lander during 1989 created rights for some resident aliens to
vote in their state and municipal elections. But a year later the Federal
Constitutional Court, citing a conception of voting rights that reflects
the nation's ethnic self-identification, argued the right to vote belonged
to the German nation, not to individuals, and struck down the local
voting rights.68 The support for the nationalist hypotheses is tempered
by the fact that this analysis finds two key arguments are significant in
the direction opposite of the expectation. Rather than strengthening
the political rights of resident aliens, strong judiciaries in these democ-
racies may delimit the political rights of resident aliens. This may arise
in part from the codification of principals of nationality in existing state
laws. As the example of Germany shows, courts may be more active in
reinforcing the legal bonds between the state and the nation rather than
in breaking them. Issue-areas may also explain this surprising finding.
Whereas courts are willing to extend social and civil protections to mi-
grants, it is possible they are deferential to legislatures in matters of
political rights. If so, then national legislatures must take the initiative
to extend voting rights to resident aliens.
Contrary to Rath's suggestion that left-leaning parties have electoral
incentives to enfranchise noncitizens, some of the analysis hints that
tensions between unions and migrant workers may make governments
of the left less likely to enfranchise them.69 This may explain why the
fully specified model finds governments of the right more likely to ex-
tend voting rights to resident aliens. The partisan measure appears to
be sensitive to choices of model specification, however. The impact of
parties is an area for continued investigation.
Another interesting finding is that a democracy's social welfare pol-
icy may positively correlate with its treatment of resident aliens, though
this is sensitive to model specification. Contrary to Klausen's argument,
it appears that social and civil rights correlate positively with the politi-
cal rights of migrants.70 Rather than leading to exclusion, then, in the
study's democracies welfare practices and voting rights may be part of a
broad strategy for the incorporation of resident aliens. As with the par-
tisan measure, however, this measure is sensitive to model specification.
68
Neuman (fa. 3).
69
Rath (fn. 1).
70
Klausen (fn. 8).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 269
This study's transnationalist factors do not perform as well, though
as discussed below this may reflect difficulties of measurement. That a
democracy's commitment to human rights does not predict whether or
not it enfranchises aliens is a surprising nonfinding, particularly since
transnationalist scholars argue that migrants increasingly assert their
claims in the language of global human rights. Two possible factors
may explain this surprising nonfinding. First, the study uses a popula-
tion of established democracies, all of which exhibit strong commit-
ment to human rights even though their voting rights practices differ.
It may be that transitional democracies are more receptive to the pres-
sures of international norms, while in states with very small populations
of resident aliens opposition to enfranchisement may be minimal. A
different population of democracies might lead to a finding of greater
effects.71 Second, these findings suggest an insufficiency of the transna-
tionalist argument. Transnationalist researchers have not demonstrated
how states translate the abstract claims of migrants into tangible poli-
cies or practices. Indeed, although human rights norms may demand
that states provide social or economic rights to migrants, they do not
specify what states must and must not do—they provide no template
for the political rights of migrants. Furthermore, unlike other emerging
norms, there are no international or nongovernmental organizations
that champion a model of political rights for noncitizens. As Sikkink
and Klotz have shown, international norms have the greatest regulative
effect when they have an organization that champions a specific tem-
plate that defines compliance and violation.72 In the absence of such a
template or a champion, resident aliens can make only abstract claims
for political rights. These norms are not sufficiently well developed; nor do
they have international or nongovernmental organizations that encourage
the development of a common set of political rights for noncitizens.
Nevertheless, the democracies in this study that enfranchise nonciti-
zens tend to cluster together, for reasons other than their commitment
to international human rights or the influence of INGOS. Why does the
geography of this phenomenon matter? Reciprocal arrangements be-
tween states and return flows of migrants are two possible causes. In
this sense, these twenty-five democracies may respond instrumentally
to migratory pressures: they may enfranchise their resident aliens not
for normative reasons per se, but to assure that their citizens who reside
abroad also receive voting rights. Another possible explanation for the
71
But see fn. 53.
72
Audie Klotz, "Norms Reconstituting Interests: Global Racial Equality and U.S. Sanctions
against South Africa," International Organization 49 (Summer 1995); Sikkink (fn. 43).
270 WORLD POLITICS
significance of geography is that resident aliens may be organizing and
articulating their interests across national borders in a way this study
fails to capture. It is well known, for example, that in some states can-
didates for office will campaign overseas for votes—a good example is
the influence of Dominican citizens who reside in New York City over
the political parties of their home country.73 If candidates seek sup-
port from expatriates, sending states may organize their expatriates and
lobby on their behalf to their host governments—much like Mexico has
done with its emigrants in the United States. Finally, the significance
of neighborhood effects may reflect a demonstration phenomenon: de-
mocracies that enfranchise their aliens demonstrate to their neighbors
the beneficial effects of these practices—either to a society as a whole
or in terms of the electoral gains for specific parties.
It is worth reiterating that my choices for the study's research design
deliberately set a high bar for transnationalist hypotheses, an observation
that cautions against the dismissal of transnationalist explanations. By
undertaking a quantitative study, with its omission of the idiosyncratic
and unique aspects of each state's citizenship practices, the findings
are necessarily limited. The study's population arguably includes those
democracies that are least susceptible to transnational factors such as
the influence of human rights and INGOs. The paucity of valid and reli-
able measures of some transnational factors naturally raises the concern
that the study's measures may not provide a fair test. The study's coarse
measure of nongovernmental organizations, for example, conflates all
INGOs into a single measure; statistically this understates the influence
of specific INGOs or advocacy networks. Likewise, the study's measure
of a state's commitment to human rights does not capture the advocacy
of specific international organizations such as the Council of Europe.
The statistical methods also suggest that, under different assumptions
about standard errors, transnational factors may perform better. When
one reruns the ordered probit estimation with normal standard errors
(instead of robust ones) or uses PCSE, the estimation finds significant
effects for nongovernmental organizations.74 This finding is consistent
with the transnationalist expectation.
These observations, along with much of the existing scholarship on
transnational citizenship politics, indicate areas for future research and
data collection. It is difficult to derive valid and reliable measures of
transnational influences on state policies. This study approaches these
questions not by measuring transnational or systemic factors but in-
73
Guamizo (fn. 36).
74
See fn. 66.
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 271
stead by measuring proxies for each state. It tries to assess the influ-
ence of international organizations, for example, by measuring a state's
commitment to human rights agreement. While such a technique is
common in IR scholarship, it may not reliably capture important in-
ternational or transnational dynamics of citizenship politics. A more
promising approach may be a dyadic analysis of sending states and re-
ceiving states, much as democratic peace theorists have done. A dyadic-
unit of analysis may also better capture the effect of transnational advo-
cacy networks, the effects of which studies that use the nation-state as
the unit of analysis by construction tend to understate. While such an
approach might identify important transnational dynamics, however,
it does not address the absence of longitudinal data on both national
and transnational factors: most existing measures go back no more than
two decades, and some (such as number of migrants or social welfare
expenditures) maybe unreliable. No doubt this is one reason why much
of the most productive scholarship on transnational politics uses case
studies or small-N designs. It also suggests, however, that there is no
substitute for the careful and exhaustive collection of data.
Future research will profit from collaboration between quantitative
and qualitative researchers. To understand better the role of interna-
tional organizations, for example, qualitative studies should trace the
processes through which such organizations may influence how states
translate abstract human rights norms and claims into specific citizen-
ship policies. Such findings can guide the future collection of valid and
reliable operational measures of the influence of international organi-
zations and human rights norms. Likewise, a more refined measure of
nongovernmental actors should identify specific issue-area NGOs that
advocate the expansion (or perhaps limitation) of franchise rights. Re-
searchers should trace the presence or absence of such NGOs broadly
across the democracies in this study and beyond. Here too is an area
in which future qualitative and quantitative research can productively
complement each other. One suspects such measurement efforts are
likely to find broader support for transnational arguments than this
study has found.

VI. CONCLUSION

Democracies today appear to retain considerable autonomy over their

policies for the political incorporation of their growing populations of
resident aliens. While the global human rights regime may create sys-
temic pressures on democracies, these pressures appear to be refracted
272 WORLD POLITICS
both through state-level institutions and through the prism of each
democracy's unique historical conceptions of its political community.
Rather than democracies converging around a common practice of en-
franchising noncitizens, there may be considerable differences among
democracies for some time. France for example has twice considered
such rights but failed to adopt them, while in 2004 Belgium adopted
local voting rights after failing to enact proposals on numerous occa-
sions since 1972.75 Emerging transnational norms may emphasize the
inclusion of migrants irrespective of nationality, but they appear not to
be determinative. In this sense, like many other pressures of globaliza-
tion, democracies seem to respond to transnational norms in ways that
are distinctly "national."
Yet this study finds some hints of the influence of transnationalism
in the ways democracies enfranchise their resident aliens. Parties and
institutions in these democracies may not behave in the ways that na-
tionalist research has predicted. Rather than responding to ideological
orientations, parties may reflect the underlying tensions between labor
groups and immigrant groups. This may explain why right-leaning par-
ties have fared better at enfranchisement than left-leaning ones. Like-
wise, rather than enhancing the rights of resident aliens as hypothe-
sized, activist courts may curtail such rights. It appears that legislatures,
not courts, may drive the expansion of political rights for reasons other
than electoral gain. The important question is what those reasons may
be: the role of legislatures will figure prominently in future research.
A possible answer to this puzzle lies, however, in the one significant
finding about transnationalism. Democracies that enfranchise resident
aliens appear to influence their neighboring democracies in ways that
this study has failed to capture. A next step for transnationalist scholar-
ship is not only to identify possible transnational mechanisms for the
organization of migrant interests but also to develop valid and reliable
measures.
Choices of method and sample have important theoretical con-
sequences for both qualitative and quantitative studies. This study's
method and sample arguably present a difficult challenge to transna-
tional factors, just as qualitative studies may tend to overstate the im-
portance of particular local circumstances. The challenge for the study
of citizenship politics, then, is to find a way forward: are nomothetic
explanations possible? If so, what research designs and measures may
allow for the most productive tests of the competing claims of nation-

75
Rath (fn. 1).
 NEITHER CITIZEN NOR STRANGER 273
alist and transnational hypotheses? In no way does this study answer
these questions definitively. Unless and until scholars start debating
these questions, however, the study of citizenship practices is likely to
suffer marginalization at the hands of both globalization theorists and
comparativists. It will speak to neither with any theoretical generality.
This is unfortunate because citizenship practices in democracies may
offer students of world politics a glimpse of the changing nature of
state sovereignty.
 APPENDIX: DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS AND CORRELATIONS TABLE

Descriptive Statistics
Variable Sample Period Countries Observations Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
Voting rights score 1960-2000 25 883 1.54 1.71 0 5
Birthright citizenship 1945-2000 25 1,194 0.38 0.49 0 1
Strength of judicial review 1945-2000 25 1,198 2.08 0.99 1 4
Social security transfers 1959-2000 25 831 13.89 5.62 2.30 34.7
Partisan control of government 1950-2000 25 916 -0.05 0.72 -1 1
Commitment to human rights 1945-2000 25 1,198 2.33 2.25 0 6
Density of NGOs (log) 1960-2000 25 908 4.52 1.19 1.22 6.35
Mean voting rights score of bordering states 1945-2000 25 1,177 0.59 1.01 0 4
EU dummy 1945-2000 25 1,198 0.32 0.47 0 1
Commonwealth dummy 1945-2000 25 1,198 0.19 0.39 0 1
Proportional representation dummy 1945-2000 25 1,178 0.79 0.40 0 1
History of representative institutions dummy 1945-2000 25 1,198 0.56 0.50 0 1
Center-formed state dummy 1945-2000 25 1,198 0.47 0.50 0 1
Time trend 1960-2000 25 921 1.05 11.79 -20 20
Correlations Table
10 11 12 13
1. Birthright citizenship 1.00
2. Strength of judicial review 0.27 1.00
3. Social security transfers -0.27 -0.02 1.00
4. Partisan control of government -0.19 0.06 0.20 1.00
5. Commitment to human rights 0.05 0.12 0.62 0.20 1.00
6. Density of NGOs 0.01 -0.49 0.35 0.27 0.34 1.00
7. Mean DV score of bordering states 0.02 -0.03 0.18 0.01 0.37 0.05 1.00
8. EU dummy -0.20 0.03 0.47 0.04 0.23 -0.07 0.20 1.00
9. Commonwealth dummy 0.39 0.01 -0.24 -0.19 -0.11 -0.11 0.13 -0.21 1.00
10. Proportional representation
dummy -0.29 -0.31 0.27 0.25 0.22 0.53 -0.20 0.09 -0.58 1.00
11. History of representative
institutions dummy 0.14 -0.30 -0.15 -0.13 -0.27 0.13 0.09 -0.21 0.43 -0.31 1.00
12. Center-formed state dummy -0.32 -0.07 0.20 0.03 0.12 -0.15 0.19 0.25 -0.21 0.10 -0.29 1.00
13. Time trend 0.06 0.08 0.66 0.07 0.77 0.31 0.27 0.16 0.05 0.13 -0.11 -0.03 1.00