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A review essay covering books by: 1) David Art, Inside the Radiad Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe (2012); 2) Clifford Bob, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (2012); 3) James Cronin, George Ross and James Shock, What's Left of the Left: Democrats and Social Democrats in Challenging Times (2011).

Analyses of central bank independence (CBI) have generated two sets of apparently contradictory results - CBI appears to be both inversely related to inflation and positively related to the rise in unemployment and slowdown in economic growth during disinflations. I suggest that these results may issue from autonomous central banks being associated with sharper, more aggressive disinflations. To test the proposition I use two measures of policy stance, one of which contains more information concerning policymaker's expectations than has heretofore been the case. The results suggest a need to qualify yet further the optimality of CBI.

A prominent variant of the compensation hypothesis rests on the premise that increased trade exposure heightens domestic economic volatility, prompting demands for compensation via generous systems of transfers and services. Economic theory suggests that because the expansion of international trade entails integration into larger, deeper, more stable markets, and may entail risk diversification, it may actually promote rather than reduce stability. By the same token, however, economic theory also suggests that smaller economies should experience greater levels of volatility than larger economies, and thus also greater levels of insecurity. The evidence presented here suggests that the level of domestic economic volatility in the developed economies, during the latter half of the twentieth century, may indeed have been driven by the size and depth of markets. And critically, for these countries international trade integration may have eased rather than accentuated domestic economic volatility.

It is widely believed that independent central banks produce costless low inflation. Yet a few recent studies indicate that more independent central banks are associated with higher output costs during disinflations. This carries the implication that there are indeed costs associated with autonomy. The author develops and extends those analyses in two important ways. First, he shows that central bank independence (CBI) affects both the output and the unemployment costs of disinflation. Because central banks control only monetary policy, they should not exert a differential effect on the two ratios, and there should be a positive relationship between independence and both the unemployment and the output costs of disinflations. Second, by including a range of potentially significant political and institutional controls, the author demonstrates both the importance of political and institutional determinants of the costs of disinflation and that CBI is a robust predictor of those costs.

We argue that international trade affects party systems but that this impact is conditioned on the types of societal interests trade brings about. When factor mobility is high, trade promotes class-based grievances that are unlikely to affect the structure of the party system. However, when factor mobility is low, trade will increase the diversity of group interests and policy preferences, thereby pressuring structural change in the party system. A consequence is an increase in the effective number of political parties. The empirical analysis supports these expectations. This paper contributes to our understanding of the political impact of economic liberalization on representative democracy.

AbstractA growing literature indicates that the representation of women in legislatures is positively associated with the passage of female‐friendly social policy. However, there is little corresponding research concerning the effect of women in cabinet on female‐friendly social policy. Yet, almost all advanced industrial democracies are parliamentary democracies, where policies typically originate within the cabinet and governments typically enjoy substantial control over the legislative process. Thus, to the extent that women promote female‐friendly policy, women in cabinet positions should be ideally placed to do so, and indeed, possibly be more influential than women in legislatures. We find significant support for this argument in analyses of state guaranteed leave entitlement, in eighteen parliamentary democracies from 1980‐2003.