M Steven Fish
Biographic Data
| ID | 975206 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Steven Fish |
| GIVEN NAMES | M Steven |
| FAMILY NAME | Fish |
| SIGNATURE | FISH M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9992-9984 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 884 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
V-Dem Codebook v14
The Power of Liberal Nationalism
Diversity poses no threat to democracy. What does imperil democracy are demagogues who deprive minorities of rights and claim that vesting themselves with extraordinary powers is vital to guarding the ethnic majority against the purported predations of minorities and immigrants. Virtually everywhere such demagogues have gained the upper hand. Moreover, they have claimed superiority as patriots and protectors of the nation. Democracy's liberal def…
V-Dem Codebook v11
V-Dem Dataset v11.1
V-Dem Codebook V10
The Polarization Paradox
The Polarization Paradox M. Steven Fish (bio) and Neil A. Abrams (bio) Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization. Edited by Thomas Carothers and Andrew O'Donohue. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2019. 280 pp. Thomas Carothers, Andrew O'Donohue, and their collaborators have produced a volume of depth and erudition on the global challenges posed by political polarization. Essays on nine countries analyze the…
V-Dem Codebook V9
What Has Russia Become
A Quarter Century of Post-Communism Assessed
Russia and the CIS in 2016
Russia continued to pursue a policy of vigorous engagement with Asia in 2016. Its policy toward the East serves its overriding goal of confronting the West and demonstrating to the world that Russia retains global reach. Given differences of perspective and interest between Russia and the big Asian powers, however, Russia faces an uphill struggle
The Secret Supports of Mongolian Democracy
In postcommunist Eurasia, a region littered with failed democratic experiments and frozen autocracies, Mongolia is an outlier. Mongolian democracy is robust in spite of the country's high poverty levels and its proximity to nondemocratic regimes. The key to the success of Mongolia's democracy lies in its powerful civil society. From the first sign of the country's political opening in 1989 to today, autonomous interest groups and social movements…
What Is Putinism
Under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ruling class again claims to represent a superior alternative to liberal democracy. How can we theorize this regime? Putinism is a form of autocracy that is conservative, populist, and personalistic. Its conservatism means that Putinism prioritizes maintaining the status quo and avoiding instability. Conservatism also overlaps with Putinism’s populism in crowd-pleasing broadsides against gay rights and feminism, but…
Men, Muslims, and Attitudes toward Gender Inequality
Gender-based inequality is often regarded as a salient characteristic of Muslim societies, yet few works have systematically compared the status of women in Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Fish (2011) finds a gender gap in structural indicators of inequality in Muslim-majority countries that cannot be explained by levels of economic development, raising questions about whether attitudes favoring inequality are more prominent among Muslims. We …
Policies first, institutions second
It has become convention in recent years to treat the building of institutions as the centerpiece of successful economic reform. The case of Estonia challenges this view. Although effective economic institutions eventually arose, Estonia began its transition bereft of the institutions that supposedly serve as the requisites of robust achievement. The institutions only emerged after an ideologically driven core of leaders implemented policies that…
A Response to Desposato
Indonesia
Indonesia’s successful democratization poses a puzzle. As a vast, lower-middle income country with scant tradition of open politics, Indonesia did not seem to be a good bet for robust democracy. But Indonesia enjoys an advantage: extraordinary levels of civic engagement. Indonesians participate in organizations at unusually high rates and display an exceptional level of interpersonal sociability. Spirited associational life has enabled Indonesian…
Are Muslims Distinctive?
Are Muslims Distinctive? represents the first major scientific effort to assess how Muslims and non-Muslims differ--and do not differ--in the contemporary world. Using rigorous methods and data drawn from around the globe, M. Steven Fish reveals that in some areas Muslims and non-Muslims differ less than is commonly imagined. Muslims are not inclined to favor the fusion of religious and political authority or especially prone to mass political vi…
Islam and Large-Scale Political Violence
Are Muslims especially prone to large-scale political violence? From Montesquieu to Samuel Huntington, prominent modern analysts of politics have regarded Muslims as unusually inclined to strife. Many other observers have portrayed Islam as a peace-loving faith and Muslims as largely pacific.Yet scholars still lack much hard evidence on whether a relationship between Islam and political violence really exists. Precious few studies adduce empirica…
The Handbook of National Legislatures
Where is the power? Students of politics have pondered this question, and social scientists have scrutinized formal political institutions and the distribution of power among agencies of the government and the state. But we still lack a rich bank of data measuring the power of specific governmental agencies, particularly national legislatures. This book assesses the strength of the national legislature of every country in the world with a populat…
Democratization and Economic Liberalization in the Postcommunist World
How does economic liberalization affect political regime? Economic liberalization is widely regarded as inimical to democratization. The “Washington Consensus,” which generally endorses “shock therapy” and envisions a basic compatibility between economic liberalization and democratization, is widely disdained in social science. Many scholars hold that neoliberal economics depresses popular living standards and exacerbates socioeconomic inequaliti…
Electoral Authoritarianism
Diversity, Conflict and Democracy
Does diversity endanger democracy? Ethnic composition is often thought to affect democracy by means of its influence on the probability of violent civil conflict. According to such thinking, more diverse societies are more prone to conflict, which in turn makes them less hospitable to democracy. How sound is this idea? This article tests it, performing quantitative analysis on data from the post-communist region. The study finds that conflict is …
Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies
In order to assess the real impact of different governmental arrangements on democratization, we must penetrate beyond general categories for classifying constitutional systems and measure the power of specific institutions. This essay presents a new instrument for measuring the powers of national legislatures across different constitutional frameworks that examines the postcommunist countries' Freedom House scores and ratings on a Parliamentary …
Democracy Derailed in Russia
Why has democracy failed to take root in Russia? After shedding the shackles of Soviet rule, some countries in the postcommunist region undertook lasting democratization. Yet Russia did not. Russia experienced dramatic political breakthroughs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it subsequently failed to maintain progress toward democracy. In this 2005 book, M. Steven Fish offers an explanation for the direction of regime change in post-Soviet …
Does Diversity Hurt Democracy
Freedom House president Adrian Karatynycky has claimed in the Journal of Democracy that "democracy has been significantly more successful in monoethnic societies than in ethnically divided and multiethnic societies." Is this often-heard claim true? Does heterogeneity promote conflict and harm democratization? Our cross-national analysis finds scant evidence for this notion. Since the obverse of this argumentÑi.e., that social diversity portends d…
Islam and Authoritarianism
Are predominantly Muslim societies distinctly disadvantaged in democratization? If so, why? The article presents a straightforward cross-national examination of the link between Islam and political regime. The evidence strongly suggests that Muslim countries are in fact democratic underachievers. The nature of the causal connection between Islam and political regime is investigated. Many conventional assumptions about Islam and politics do not wi…
Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies
In order to assess the real impact of different governmental arrangements on democratization, we must penetrate beyond general categories for classifying constitutional systems and measure the power of specific institutions. This essay presents a new instrument for measuring the powers of national legislatures across different constitutional frameworks that examines the postcommunist countries' Freedom House scores and ratings on a Parliamentary …
The Determinants of Economic Reform in the Post-communist World
Democracy Derailed in Russia
Why has democracy failed to take root in Russia? After shedding the shackles of Soviet rule, some countries in the postcommunist region undertook lasting democratization. Yet Russia did not. Russia experienced dramatic political breakthroughs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it subsequently failed to maintain progress toward democracy. In this 2005 book, M. Steven Fish offers an explanation for the direction of regime change in post-Soviet …
Does Diversity Hurt Democracy
Freedom House president Adrian Karatynycky has claimed in the Journal of Democracy that "democracy has been significantly more successful in monoethnic societies than in ethnically divided and multiethnic societies." Is this often-heard claim true? Does heterogeneity promote conflict and harm democratization? Our cross-national analysis finds scant evidence for this notion. Since the obverse of this argumentÑi.e., that social diversity portends d…
The Advent of Multipartism in Russia, 1993-95
1995). The Advent of Multipartism in Russia, 1993-95. Post-Soviet Affairs: Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 340-383
Democratization's Requisites
1998). Democratization's Requisites: The Postcommunist Experience. Post-Soviet Affairs: Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 212-247
Democracy from Scratch
Postcommunist Subversion
Our political malaise is due to the same cause as our social malaise: that is, to the lack of secondary cadres to interpose between the individual and the State. We have seen that these secondary groups are essential if the State is not to oppress the individual: they are also necessary if the State is to be sufficiently free of the individual. –Émile Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of in…
The Art of Being Indispensable
Max Weber's theory of leadership authority has deeply influenced theories of political parties, but Weber's concept of charisma is often used indiscriminately to refer to all kinds of personalist leadership. What is more, Weber's tripartite typology of traditional, charismatic and rational-legal authority neglects a form of leadership often found in major contemporary political parties. This article formulates a differentiated typology and concep…
What Is Putinism
Under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ruling class again claims to represent a superior alternative to liberal democracy. How can we theorize this regime? Putinism is a form of autocracy that is conservative, populist, and personalistic. Its conservatism means that Putinism prioritizes maintaining the status quo and avoiding instability. Conservatism also overlaps with Putinism’s populism in crowd-pleasing broadsides against gay rights and feminism, but…
Mongolia
Mongolia: Democracy Without Prerequisites M. Steven Fish (bio) In a vast, sparsely populated sweep of mountains, steppe, and desert in the heart of northern Asia, one of the most remarkable political transformations of the decade is unfolding. Mongolian democracy, in light of most social-science theories and commonsense expectations, should have never been. Few of the factors normally considered favorable for democratization were present in Mongo…
Diversity, Conflict and Democracy
Does diversity endanger democracy? Ethnic composition is often thought to affect democracy by means of its influence on the probability of violent civil conflict. According to such thinking, more diverse societies are more prone to conflict, which in turn makes them less hospitable to democracy. How sound is this idea? This article tests it, performing quantitative analysis on data from the post-communist region. The study finds that conflict is …
Islam and Large-Scale Political Violence
Are Muslims especially prone to large-scale political violence? From Montesquieu to Samuel Huntington, prominent modern analysts of politics have regarded Muslims as unusually inclined to strife. Many other observers have portrayed Islam as a peace-loving faith and Muslims as largely pacific.Yet scholars still lack much hard evidence on whether a relationship between Islam and political violence really exists. Precious few studies adduce empirica…
Democratization and Economic Liberalization in the Postcommunist World
How does economic liberalization affect political regime? Economic liberalization is widely regarded as inimical to democratization. The “Washington Consensus,” which generally endorses “shock therapy” and envisions a basic compatibility between economic liberalization and democratization, is widely disdained in social science. Many scholars hold that neoliberal economics depresses popular living standards and exacerbates socioeconomic inequaliti…
Indonesia
Indonesia’s successful democratization poses a puzzle. As a vast, lower-middle income country with scant tradition of open politics, Indonesia did not seem to be a good bet for robust democracy. But Indonesia enjoys an advantage: extraordinary levels of civic engagement. Indonesians participate in organizations at unusually high rates and display an exceptional level of interpersonal sociability. Spirited associational life has enabled Indonesian…
What Has Russia Become
Rethinking Civil Society
Rethinking Civil SocietyRussia's Fourth Transition M. Steven Fish (bio) During the decade that has passed since Mikhail Gorbachev rose to the pinnacle of the Soviet empire, Russia has experienced momentous changes and dramatic twists of history. Unfortunately, the emergence of a robust civil society cannot be numbered among these developments. Civil society—defined here as the realm of autonomous, voluntary associations that pursue limited ends i…
Bringing the Russian State Back in
The Secret Supports of Mongolian Democracy
In postcommunist Eurasia, a region littered with failed democratic experiments and frozen autocracies, Mongolia is an outlier. Mongolian democracy is robust in spite of the country's high poverty levels and its proximity to nondemocratic regimes. The key to the success of Mongolia's democracy lies in its powerful civil society. From the first sign of the country's political opening in 1989 to today, autonomous interest groups and social movements…
Men, Muslims, and Attitudes toward Gender Inequality
Gender-based inequality is often regarded as a salient characteristic of Muslim societies, yet few works have systematically compared the status of women in Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Fish (2011) finds a gender gap in structural indicators of inequality in Muslim-majority countries that cannot be explained by levels of economic development, raising questions about whether attitudes favoring inequality are more prominent among Muslims. We …
The Polarization Paradox
The Polarization Paradox M. Steven Fish (bio) and Neil A. Abrams (bio) Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization. Edited by Thomas Carothers and Andrew O'Donohue. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2019. 280 pp. Thomas Carothers, Andrew O'Donohue, and their collaborators have produced a volume of depth and erudition on the global challenges posed by political polarization. Essays on nine countries analyze the…
The Inner Asian anomaly
Following the demise of Soviet-type regimes most countries of postcommunist Inner Asia either experienced initial political openings followed by reversion to authoritarianism or moved directly from one type of harsh authoritarianism to another. Mongolia is exceptional. The extent of political opening there during the 1990s far exceeded anything seen in any neighboring country and the gains of the early post-Soviet period were maintained instead o…
Ten Years After the Soviet Breakup
The predicament of Russian liberalism
imagination. Liberal parties-defined here as those that stand for the advancement of civil rights and democratisation, political pluralism and tolerance, non-militaristic approaches to the solution of foreign and domestic conflict, and economic liberalisation and de-statisation-captured a combined total of just 16.2% of the vote in the party-list portion of balloting, through which half of the seats for the Duma, the lower house of parliament, we…
After Stalin's Death
Journal Article After Stalin's Death: The Anglo-American Debate Over a New Cold War Get access M. Steven Fish M. Steven Fish Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Diplomatic History, Volume 10, Issue 4, October 1986, Pages 333–355, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.1986.tb00464.x Published: 01 June 2007
Reform and Demilitarization in Soviet Society From Brezhnev to Gorbachev
Rethinking Civil Society
Rethinking Civil SocietyRussia's Fourth Transition M. Steven Fish (bio) During the decade that has passed since Mikhail Gorbachev rose to the pinnacle of the Soviet empire, Russia has experienced momentous changes and dramatic twists of history. Unfortunately, the emergence of a robust civil society cannot be numbered among these developments. Civil society—defined here as the realm of autonomous, voluntary associations that pursue limited ends i…
Democracy Begins to Emerge
Essay| October 01 1995 Democracy Begins to Emerge M. Steven Fish M. Steven Fish M. Steven Fish is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley. He is author of Democracy From Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (1995) 94 (594): 317–321. https://…
The Advent of Multipartism in Russia, 1993-95
1995). The Advent of Multipartism in Russia, 1993-95. Post-Soviet Affairs: Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 340-383
Democracy from Scratch
Russia Between Elections
Russia Between ElectionsThe Travails of Liberalism M. Steven Fish (bio) Did Russia’s December 1995 parliamentary elections represent a step forward for democracy or a harbinger of its demise? The elections were generally free and fair, but their results seem to have revealed a portentous popular nostalgia for a radiant communist past. Paradoxically, the elections both refuted a clutch of assumptions that have informed the pessimistic conventional…
The predicament of Russian liberalism
imagination. Liberal parties-defined here as those that stand for the advancement of civil rights and democratisation, political pluralism and tolerance, non-militaristic approaches to the solution of foreign and domestic conflict, and economic liberalisation and de-statisation-captured a combined total of just 16.2% of the vote in the party-list portion of balloting, through which half of the seats for the Duma, the lower house of parliament, we…
The Determinants of Economic Reform in the Post-communist World
Democratization's Requisites
1998). Democratization's Requisites: The Postcommunist Experience. Post-Soviet Affairs: Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 212-247
Mongolia
Mongolia: Democracy Without Prerequisites M. Steven Fish (bio) In a vast, sparsely populated sweep of mountains, steppe, and desert in the heart of northern Asia, one of the most remarkable political transformations of the decade is unfolding. Mongolian democracy, in light of most social-science theories and commonsense expectations, should have never been. Few of the factors normally considered favorable for democratization were present in Mongo…
Postcommunist Subversion
Our political malaise is due to the same cause as our social malaise: that is, to the lack of secondary cadres to interpose between the individual and the State. We have seen that these secondary groups are essential if the State is not to oppress the individual: they are also necessary if the State is to be sufficiently free of the individual. –Émile Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of in…
Bringing the Russian State Back in
The Art of Being Indispensable
Max Weber's theory of leadership authority has deeply influenced theories of political parties, but Weber's concept of charisma is often used indiscriminately to refer to all kinds of personalist leadership. What is more, Weber's tripartite typology of traditional, charismatic and rational-legal authority neglects a form of leadership often found in major contemporary political parties. This article formulates a differentiated typology and concep…
Reply to Cohen
The Inner Asian anomaly
Following the demise of Soviet-type regimes most countries of postcommunist Inner Asia either experienced initial political openings followed by reversion to authoritarianism or moved directly from one type of harsh authoritarianism to another. Mongolia is exceptional. The extent of political opening there during the 1990s far exceeded anything seen in any neighboring country and the gains of the early post-Soviet period were maintained instead o…
Russian Studies Without Studying
An American expert on Russian politics analyzes prominent claims that American "Russia-watchers" have mischaracterized and misunderstood the post-Soviet situation, contributed to the dissolution of the USSR, and helped cause Russia's socioeconomic crisis. Assertions that a change in the mind-set of American scholarship on Russia and that a transfer of billions of dollars to the Russian government are necessary to ameliorate the situation also are…
Ten Years After the Soviet Breakup
Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy
Why did the wave of democracy that swept the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe starting more than a decade ago develop in ways unexpected by observers who relied on existing theories of democracy? In Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy, four distinguished scholars conduct the first major assessment of democratization theory in light of the experience of postcommunist states. Richard Anderson, Steven Fish, Stephen Hanson, and Philip Roe…
Framing Democracy
Islam and Authoritarianism
Are predominantly Muslim societies distinctly disadvantaged in democratization? If so, why? The article presents a straightforward cross-national examination of the link between Islam and political regime. The evidence strongly suggests that Muslim countries are in fact democratic underachievers. The nature of the causal connection between Islam and political regime is investigated. Many conventional assumptions about Islam and politics do not wi…
Does Diversity Hurt Democracy
Freedom House president Adrian Karatynycky has claimed in the Journal of Democracy that "democracy has been significantly more successful in monoethnic societies than in ethnically divided and multiethnic societies." Is this often-heard claim true? Does heterogeneity promote conflict and harm democratization? Our cross-national analysis finds scant evidence for this notion. Since the obverse of this argumentÑi.e., that social diversity portends d…
Democracy Derailed in Russia
Why has democracy failed to take root in Russia? After shedding the shackles of Soviet rule, some countries in the postcommunist region undertook lasting democratization. Yet Russia did not. Russia experienced dramatic political breakthroughs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it subsequently failed to maintain progress toward democracy. In this 2005 book, M. Steven Fish offers an explanation for the direction of regime change in post-Soviet …
Electoral Authoritarianism
Diversity, Conflict and Democracy
Does diversity endanger democracy? Ethnic composition is often thought to affect democracy by means of its influence on the probability of violent civil conflict. According to such thinking, more diverse societies are more prone to conflict, which in turn makes them less hospitable to democracy. How sound is this idea? This article tests it, performing quantitative analysis on data from the post-communist region. The study finds that conflict is …
Political science (36 works) · Law (33 works) · Politics (30 works) · Law (27 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Political economy (20 works) · Democracy (19 works) · Economics (19 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (17 works) · Development economics (12 works)