Suchergebnisse

This article seeks to disentangle which features of government intervention are linked to corruption & which are not, by distinguishing between the government roles of regulator, entrepreneur, & consumer. It finds that the degree of regulation of private business activity is the strongest predictor of corruption, & that high levels of public spending are related to low levels of corruption. There is no evidence of direct government involvement in production having any bearing on corruption. It is concluded that advanced welfare capitalist systems, which leave business relatively free from interference while intervening strongly in the distribution of wealth & the provision of key services, combine the most "virtuous" features of "big" & "small" government. This suggests that anti-corruption campaigners should be relaxed about state intervention in the economy in general, but should specifically target corruption-inducing regulatory systems. Adapted from the source document.

An examination of the presidentialization of Spain's political system focuses on the constitutional context of post-Franco Spanish democracy & the dynamics of political parties & electoral competition. The relative significance of varying levels of presidentialization that have occurred at different times is assessed in relation to its impact on prime ministerial power/autonomy. Ways in which the transition to the present parliamentary monarchy was influenced by historical legacies is examined, along with how a distinct break with the Franco regime was avoided; the consequences of achieving democracy through consensus; & negotiation among major political forces. Other issues discussed include the nature of Spain's party organization; factors that have contributed to prime ministers' domination of the executive; & elements of electoral campaigning that have enhanced presidentialization. It is concluded that the tendency towards presidentialization in the Spanish political system is partially balanced by countervailing factors such as the nature of party organization. Spain's young democracy is said to be best described as "parliamentarism with some features of presidentialism.". 1 Table, 45 References. J. Lindroth

Existing studies of the political determinants of top incomes and inequality tend to focus on developments within individual countries, neglecting the role of interdependencies that transcend national borders. This article argues that the sharp rises in top incomes observed in recent years are in part a product of specific features originating in the US political economy, which were subsequently exported to other economies through the global expansion of US-based financial investors. To test the argument, we collect fine-grained micro-level data on executive pay and firm ownership structures for a comprehensive sample of publicly listed firms in the United Kingdom (UK). Our analyses uncover robust evidence that the Americanization of UK firm ownership leads to the financialization of remuneration practices and sizeable pay increases for high-level managers at those firms. Scrutinizing the causal mechanisms underlying this effect, we find them to be more consistent with changes in bargaining power inside firms rather than coercion from outside or exogenous shifts in labor markets for executives. The findings show the disruptive potential of Wall Street investments abroad to empower local managerial elites to capture greater rents and, more generally, demonstrate the need to take the transnational seriously in order to understand patterns of inequality in the global political economy.