Suchergebnisse

In advanced democracies, are local political decisions determined by local events? Or are they really shaped by national forces? For the United States case, the evidence on this question is mixed. For the French case, the focus here, the evidence is also mixed, but less hard. In fact, for cantonal elections, in many ways archtypical local affairs, relevant systematic findings are virtually absent. We ask whether the cantonal elections of the Fifth Republic can be better understood as national, rather than local, contests. Our analysis leads us to the conclusion that the basic answer is, 'yes'. There appear several theoretical reasons for this, which we give an account of. Further, we go on to show that cantonal races can actually serve as barometers to forecast upcoming national races. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

This article has three main objectives. Firstly, it seeks to re-formulate the debate on technocracy in the European Union by drawing upon the concept of the EU regulatory state as developed by Majone (1996). Secondly, it illustrates the limits and tensions of a once politicised technocratic policy-making process by tracing the formulation of media ownership regulation. Although media ownership policy has been presented by the European Commission as a typical regulatory policy, it has followed a more politicised path than previous EU regulatory policies. This implies that media ownership policy does not follow the model of technocratic regulation presented by Majone in his characterisation of the EU regulatory state. Thirdly, the paper contributes to the debate on EU regulation by suggesting a new typology of regulatory policies in the EU. In the conclusion, it is argued that politicisation (which includes inefficiency and prolonged conflict) may be the price that the EU is forced to pay in its progress toward a more democratic polity. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

As the European Union (EU) has evolved, the study agenda has shifted from 'European integration' to 'EU politics'. Missing from this new agenda, however, is an understanding of the 'cognitive constraints' on actors and how actors respond, i.e. the shape of the EU 'political space' and the location of social groups and competition between actors within this space. The article develops a theoretical framework for understanding the shape of the EU political space (the interaction between an Integration-Independence and Left-Right dimension and the location of class and sectoral groups within this map), and tests this framework on the policy positions of the Socialist, Christian Democrat and Liberal party leaders between 1976 and 1994 (using the techniques of the ECPR Party Manifestos Group Project). The research finds that the two dimensions were salient across the whole period, explains why the party families converged on pro-European positions by the 1990s and discovers the emergence of a triangular 'core' of EU politics. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

This paper discusses (1) the extent to which the partisan composition of government affects economic policies and macroeconomic outcomes, and (2) the interrelationship between public spending, taxation and economic growth. These two issues are connected. Since target variables and instruments affect each other reciprocally, the specification of the partisan model should encompass both a reaction function and an outcome function. A pooled vector autoregressive model suggests that during the last century left-wing governments in the United States, Britain and Canada have reinforced the growth of both public spending and GNP. Only public sector expansion is affected by partisanship in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In the Anglo-American countries changes in spending occur before changes in economic growth in terms of a lagged crowding out effect. Spending and revenues appear to affect each other reciprocally. By contrast, public sector expansion in Scandinavia stimulates growth, while taxation leads spending. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

Discussion of new forms of party organisation have largely focused on the ways in which institutionalised parties have adapted to pressures towards 'catch-all' or 'electoral-professional' behaviour. This article examines the ways in which new parties respond to these pressures. A model of the 'party as business firm' is generated from rational choice assumptions and it is suggested that such a model can emerge when new party systems are created in advanced societies. Two cases of political parties which resemble the business firm model in important ways are analysed in order to gauge the consequences of this type of party organisation: UCD in Spain and Forza Italia in Italy. On the basis of this analysis it is argued that business firm parties are likely to be electorally unstable and politically incoherent, and also prone to serving particularistic interests. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

Claims have been made that national institutions influence public preferences, as well as structuring patterns of social division. This article analyses attitudes to redistribution and financial cheating in Norway and the USA. On the aggregate level the results show that there are striking differences between the two countries regarding attitudes to redistribution and confidence in the state, while similar attitude patterns are found regarding cheating with taxes and benefits. Results endorse arguments emphasising that the design and scope of welfare state policies shape and determine their own legitimacy. There is less support for political trust arguments, which emphasise that the efficacy of political decision-making institutions promotes beliefs about trust in the state and views on government responsibilities. Similarly, arguments proposing that advanced welfare statism has undesirable effects on civic morality, such as cheating on taxes and benefits, are not supported empirically. Finally, while conflicts over redistribution are similarly structured in the USA and Norway, divisions over financial cheating are less clear-cut and vary cross-nationally. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

The central question addressed by this article is whether the absence of active competition changes the forces that shape the institutional landscape at the parliamentary level, and thereby the landscape itself. Based on a transaction cost approach, the study investigates whether the bolstering of parliamentary oversight procedures occurs in situations in which there is no credible alternative to the incumbent government, and whether opposition impotence contributes to the development of oversight institutions. The article argues that the strengthening of parliamentary oversight procedures is most likely to occur when there is a minority government but the opposition MPs are not in a position to form or envisage a credible alternative. An analysis of changes in oversight arrangements in Norway during 1993-1996 strongly supports this argument. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

In Britain, both local elections and European elections can be regarded as second order. However, voters believe that even less is at stake in European elections than in local elections, and their behaviour is congruent with this: voters are more likely to turn out in local elections, they are more likely to 'split their ticket'; they are more likely to report that they vote on issues specific to the second-order arena. Logistic regression of party choices in the local, European and national contexts confirms this. National considerations played less part in the local election and there was some evidence that voters were influenced by the record of the locally-incumbent party. It appears that voting in the European elections has more of an expressive character, and is less instrumental than that in either local or national elections. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

This paper surveys the strengths and weaknesses of three widely-discussed egalitarian standards of interpersonal comparison: welfare, resource, and capability. We argue that welfare egalitarianism is beset by numerous serious problems, and should be rejected. Capability and resourcist standards conform with egalitarian convictions more closely, but each faces distinctive problems. We itemise a set of desiderata which a fully adequate account of interpersonal comparison would satisfy. We conclude that the choice between capability and resourcist standards turns on the relative importance of such an account being able to accommodate reasonable pluralism and identify inequality in a publicly verifiable manner. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

In a relatively short period of time, Romanian political science has made considerable progress, moving from virtual obscurity to unchallenged local prominence. This article examines the efforts to date to institutionalize political science as a separate teaching and research discipline by presenting recently established political science university-level programs, the major groups of authors carrying out research on political phenomena and the recurrent themes emerging from relevant literature. Though the present article is concerned mainly with current developments, occasional references to the political science's position during the communist period are also made. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

Despite the apparent development and spread of liberal democratic state forms in the 1980s and 1990s, possibilities for genuine democratic governance overall are declining. Firstly, the emergence and consolidation of modern liberal democracy was inextricably intertwined with the development of the nation-state and is profoundly socially embedded in that structural context. Secondly, in today's globalizing world, cross-cutting and overlapping governance structures and processes increasingly take private, oligarchic (and mixed public/private) forms; hegemonic neoliberal norms are delegitimizing state-based governance in general; and democratic states are losing the policy capacity necessary for transforming democratically generated inputs into authoritative outputs. Consequently, robust constraints limit the potential for (a) reinstitutionalizing the 'democratic chain' between accountability and effectiveness, (b) rearticulating the multitasking character of authoritative institutions and (c) renewing the capacity of authoritative agents to make the side-payments and to undertake the monitoring necessary to control free-riding and assimilate alienated groups. Rather than a new pluralistic global civil society, globalization is more likely to lead to a growth in inequalities, a fragmentation of effective governance structures and the multiplication of quasi-fiefdoms reminiscent of the Middle Ages. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

This is a comparative study of the three main roles of the state in industrial relations: the state as employer in the public sector, state intervention in private-sector-wage bargaining, and the procedural role of defining a legal framework for industrial relations. Based on data from 20 OECD countries, the article's analytical focus is twofold. For each of these roles, the paper examines whether there is a convergence towards neoliberal regulation in response to the shift from demand-side to supply-side policies, and whether neoliberalism is superior to alternative regulation forms in terms of performance. No evidence of such dominance of neoliberalism can be found. The upshot is that developments of state regulation are as much path-dependent as its socioeconomic effects are contingent on a country's context. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

Despite considerable interest in comparative fiscal policy in general, and the high salience of tax policy and tax reform in the industrialized democracies, there are relatively few cross-national studies of the economic and political correlates of revenues over time. We undertake a cross-national time series study of revenue growth in fourteen OECD countries between 1958 and 1990. We test a number of political and economic hypotheses about revenue change, including political business cycle, 'fiscal illusion', elasticity, and ideological theories. For the 1958-1990 period, we find that all countries, regardless of revenue structure, experience higher real revenue growth as a result of inflation, but that revenue growth is more responsive to unemployment in countries that rely more on direct taxes compared to countries with less direct-tax reliance. We find that this effect is most pronounced in the post-1972 period. We also find that revenue tends to increase in the years following elections, consistent with the idea that governments try to minimize the political fallout from tax increases by separating them as much as possible from election campaign periods; this effect, too, is most pronounced in the post-1972 period. We find no support for 'fiscal illusion' and ideological theories of revenue growth. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)