Suchergebnisse

The British general election on 10 May 2010 delivered Britain's first hung Parliament since February 1974, and in the run‐up, the Conservative party made much of the economic difficulties Britain faced in the second half of the 1970s in order to try and convince voters that anything other than a Tory vote would risk exposing the nation to the discipline of financial markets. The question of how well equipped an exceptional kind of British government is to deal with exceptional economic circumstances is therefore of paramount importance. This paper argues that the Conservative party made too much of the impact of the 1974 hung Parliament in precipitating subsequent economic crisis and suggests that as such, there is no reason to assume that the Conservative–Liberal coalition government is ill‐equipped to manage British economic affairs in difficult circumstances.

AbstractThirty years on from Peru's return to democracy in 1980, the country's record with democratisation has been chequered. Not only was the process of 'consolidation' reversed in the 1990s under the Fujimori government, but the degree to which durable linkages have been established between state and society is very limited. More than in most countries of Latin America, the party system has failed to fulfil the representative role allotted to it in the literature, a role that cannot easily be assumed by other sorts of institution. It is therefore an important case study for those concerned with the more structural obstacles to the development of representative politics. The article seeks to look at some key issues affecting party development: the chimera of consolidation, the persistence of clientelism and patrimonialism, the interaction with social movements and the significance of political culture.

Under the current federal electoral law, an increase in the number of second votes for a given party may cause a loss of seats for that party. This so-called "negative vote weight" has recently been declared unconstitutional by the German Federal Constitutional Court. One way of eliminating the negative vote weight that has not received much attention in the current debate on electoral reform is allocating seats by states. Contrary to other approaches in literature, this one aims at preserving the existing mixed electoral system with its unique electoral effects -- including the possibility of surplus seats -- , instead of replacing it with a substantially different system. A surplus mandates are a means of facilitating parliamentary majorities they should be regarded as a suitable component of the German mixed electoral system & that they deserve to be preserved. Adapted from the source document.

Scandinavian countries have a reputation for being reasonable and consensual. But that doesn't exempt them from the tensions and frustrations that can give rise to extremist groups, to the right of the traditional right-wing parties. In Norway and Denmark (the country where in 2006 the famous caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed were published), populist parties peddling anti-Islam rhetoric are now respectively the second and third-largest political groups nationally. In Sweden, a xenophobic party which is a direct outgrowth of the Nazi movement has a strong chance of winning seats in the next legislative election due on September 19. And in Finland, traditionally less open to foreigners, immigration has become one of the major political issues, in a debate fueled by a party that plays on mistrust of Muslims. All these developments reflect a sometimes troubled past in this region. Adapted from the source document.

After Scottish Devolution referendum in 1997, Parliament of United Kingdom passed the Scotland Act 1998, creating the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Executive. Changes in United Kingdom structure created situation similar to federal countries, where national and regional governments need to cooperate and coordinate their activities. Intergovernmental relations in the UK are mostly relations between executives, with limited role of parliaments. This paper analyzes intergovernmental relations in two periods – before 2007, when formal institutions like Joint Ministerial Committee were rarely used and after 2007, when Scottish Executive and UK Government were led by different political parties – Scottish National Party on the regional level and Labour Party on the national level. The aim of the article was to describe intergovernmental relations throughout 1999–2010 years, explain asymmetry, informality and inconsistency of this relations and prognose future relations in the context of Calman's Commission works.

The outcome of the 2007 elections in France raises a number of questions about the current state of democracy in that country. To put these elections into perspective, we examine the evolution of the French party system and electorate throughout the Fifth Republic. We look first at the pattern of party electoral movement over time. Then we evaluate the partisan cycle with respect to certain equilibrium conditions, namely stability, competition, and democratic rule. Based on these patterns, we arrive at a classification of French national elections using the Michigan school's theoretical framework. A key conclusion is that, in general, these Fifth Republic elections are in disequilibrium and often fail to express the majority partisan will. The 2007 results, which represent a return of the traditional right, are examined against the Iowa forecasting model, to see if they depart from these troubling conclusions. Adapted from the source document.

Parliamentary parties in the British House of Commons tend to experience high levels of voting unity with individual MPs only occasionally dissenting from party policy. Although constituency influence has been used extensively to predict legislative behaviour in candidate-centred electoral environments, it is argued here that constituency preferences can, under certain circumstances, shape parliamentary behaviour in a strong-party, weak personal-vote, electoral environment such as the United Kingdom. To empirically test this argument, the interest representation of British Muslims in the British House of Commons and specifically the voting record of MPs on proposed domestic anti-terrorism legislation seen to target British Muslims is investigated. The data shows that Labour MPs with certain constituency characteristics (relatively large Muslim, ethnic minority and migrant populations) were more likely to vote against the leadership position on anti-terrorism proposals perceived to target certain minorities.

This essay discusses the topic of what common lawyers call 'apparent authority', whereby a principal may be bound by an unauthorized act because the agent appears to the third party to be authorized. Other legal systems reach similar (but not always identical) results, sometimes by different means. It contrasts the view taken by most legal systems that the principal's liability depends on his own conduct (or 'manifestation'), with the diametrically opposed view that the liability depends on the reasonableness of the impression received by the third party, and whether there is any intermediate position. It considers the technical means for giving effect to such approaches, especially the first, and whether the 'estoppel' approach of Anglo-Australasian common law is preferable to the approach of Restatement, Third, which treats apparent authority as simply another form of authority not requiring additional means to be made effective.

This study examines the phenomenon of informal civil—military relations. Informal behaviors are those that normally do not occur within the chain of command, are not mandated by law, and do not conform to official procedures. Politicians and soldiers discover that formal, institutional routines are sometimes too constraining and that they can advance their interests more effectively by amending, circumventing, or violating those routines. The party most aggrieved by the rules of the game initiates an informal solution. Whether the other side goes along depends on how divergent its preferences are with the aggrieved party. Greatly divergent preferences result in unilateral informalities, less divergent but still negotiable positions yield bilateral-conflictive encounters, and convergent preferences result in cooperative ventures. Case studies on Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia exemplify three different kinds of informal encounters and their impacts on civilian policy choices and military interests.

We examined how voting behavior in the European Parliament changed after the European Union added ten new member‐states in 2004. Using roll‐call votes, we compared voting behavior in the first half of the Sixth European Parliament (July 2004‐December 2006) with voting behavior in the previous Parliament (1999–2004). We looked at party cohesion, coalition formation, and the spatial map of voting by members of the European Parliament. We found stable levels of party cohesion and interparty coalitions that formed mainly around the left‐right dimension. Ideological distance between parties was the strongest predictor of coalition preferences. Overall, the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 did not change the way politics works inside the European Parliament. We also looked at the specific case of the controversial Services Directive and found that ideology remained the main predictor of voting behavior, although nationality also played a role.