Suchergebnisse

Please substitute the following for the definition on page 276 of our article in the Spring 1996 issue of International Organization (Volume 50, No. 2, pp.269–99):Definition. A coalition of m (out of n) members is nonconnected if there is a member i ε {N} – {M} that belongs in the Pareto set of {M}.

Most intergovernmentalist analyses of European integration focus on treaty bargaining among European Union member governments. Recent articles also have examined everyday decision making through power index analysis, an approach that asserts that a government's ability to influence policy is a function of all possible coalitions in the Council of Ministers to which it is pivotal. This approach suffers from two major weaknesses. First, it fails to take into account the policy preferences of governments; it overestimates the influence of governments holding extreme preferences and underestimates that of more centrist governments. Second, power index analysis fails to consider the important roles of the Commission of the European Communities and the European Parliament in legislative processes. Today's procedures affect the mix of agenda-setting and veto power, and this has systematic effects on policy outcomes. If intergovernmentalism is to explain choices made during treaty rounds, it must take into account these legislative dynamics.

Eine Vielzahl intergouvernmentaler Analysen, die sich mit dem Prozeß der europäischen Integration befaßen, stellen die Vertragsverhandlungen der Mitglieder in den Mittelpunkt ihrer Untersuchungen. Neue Forschungen bedienen sich zur Klärung des Entscheidungsverhaltens eines sogenannten "power index". Diese Analyse mißt die Einflußmöglichkeit einer Regierung in Relation zu allen möglichen Koalitionen im Ministerrat, die in einer bestimmten Sachfrage von Bedeutung wären. Besonders zwei Defizite sind hierbei zu erkennen. Erstens kann sie nicht die Präferenzen von Regierungen quantifizieren und daher ihren jeweiligen Einfluß messen. Ferner läßt diese Analyse den Einfluß der weiteren Akteure, wie Kommission und Parlament gänzlich außer Acht und reduziert das Entscheidungsverhalten auf die Exekutive unter Ausschluß legislativer Faktoren. (SWP-Krh)

Many analysts associate internationalization of markets with wide-ranging changes in domestic politics. An "open polity" approach shows how extant domestic institutions mediate in this relationship between internationally induced changes in domestic actors' policy preferences, on the one hand, and national policy and institutional outcomes on the other. The nature of labor unions and formal political institutions often results in political outcomes that differ significantly from those that would ensue if outcomes simply mirrored preference changes. In addition, while existing institutions may sometimes constrain governments from pursuing policies that would improve long-term economic performance, governments will often fail to change these institutions because of short-term political considerations.

Heightened economic interdependence in recent years is commonly argued to have generated great pressures for convergence in economic policies across the advanced industrial democracies. Interdependence has clearly had a great impact on the types of economic policies that governments can pursue: they have been unable to pursue independent fiscal and monetary policies since the mid-1970s. Furthermore, all governments have been forced to attempt to promote the competitiveness of national goods and services in world markets and to increase the speed and efficiency with which national producers adjust to changes in global markets. There are, however, different policies consistent with these goals. Statistical analyses of economic policies since the mid-1970s show that governments of the left and the right continue to be able to enact distinctive supply-side policies that promote competitiveness and flexible adjustment and simultaneously further their partisan objectives.

Many recent studies argue that labor organization and government partisanship were important determinants of the economic performance of the advanced industrial democracies during stagflation. They do not, however, take into account the potential impact on performance of position in the international economy; the relationships reported may therefore be largely spurious. Even when the strong effects of international position, most notably the extent of dependence on imported sources of oil, were controlled for, domestic political structures remained powerful determinants of economic performance during stagflation. "Corporatist" political economies dominated by leftist governments in which labor movements were densely and centrally organized, and "market" political economies in which labor was much weaker and rightist governments were predominant, performed significantly better than the less coherent cases in which the power of labor was distributed asymmetrically between politics and the market.