Suchergebnisse

This article contributes to the study of the politics of patronage appointments by creating a typology of patronage roles based on the nature of trust between patrons and appointees and on the skills patrons seek in appointees. Our classification brings together the dispersed literature on patronage roles and can be applied to the study of modalities of patronage across and within countries. We offer preliminary evidence from our study of the politics of patronage appointments in Latin America suggesting that variations in patronage roles can be related to variations in the institutionalization of party systems and to the nature of the links between political actors and voters. Finally, we explore whether the categories identified in our empirical study can be found in other settings. We conclude that our typology can contribute to the study of the impact of modalities of patronage on the quality of public administration and on political governability.

AbstractThe impact of institutions on the economic vote stands as a well‐established proposition for the advanced democracies of Europe. We know less, however, regarding the institutional effects on the economic vote in the developing democracies of Latin America. Carrying out an analysis of presidential elections in 18 Latin American countries, we offer evidence that the usual Eurocentric conceptualization of the clarity of responsibility is not ideal for understanding the economic vote in this region. There does exist a powerful effect of institutions on the economic vote within Latin American democracies, but one uniquely associated with its presidential regimes and dynamic party systems. Rules for these elections—such as concurrence, term limits, and second‐round voting—suggest that we should reconceptualize the notion of the clarity of responsibility in Latin America, focusing more on individuals in power and their constraints, and less on the political parties from which they hail.

AbstractPopulism has become pervasive in political language and in the diagnosis of the malaise of contemporary politics. At the same time, more narrow definitions of populism have become shared in scholarship on the subject, nourishing more analytical approaches that put populism in historical and cross‐regional perspective. The purpose of this introduction is to use the evidence assembled in this special issue to ask some fundamental questions concerning the study of populist mobilization. Most importantly, what do we gain and what do we lose from sight by focusing on the commonalities between parties based on their populist appeals, when populist parties differ dramatically in terms of the substantive ideologies they adhere to? Are there distinctive features in terms of voter attitudes that underlie populist mobilization? And if failures of political representation and populism are intimately related, can we expect populists to render party systems more responsive to voters' substantive policy preferences?

The coordination of wage bargaining has been used to explain everything from inequality to unemployment in rich democracies. Yet there has been little theoretical work and almost no quantitative empirical work exploring the determinants of bargaining coordination. Others hypothesize that centralized bargaining depends on the ability of peak associations to control the strike activities of their aliates. I argue formally that more unequally distributed resources across unions should inhibit the centralization of strike powers in union federations. Using membership as a proxy for union resources, I find empirical support for this hypothesis in a panel of 15 OECD democracies, 1955-92. I then show that the centralization of strike powers is a strong predictor of coordinated bargaining. I also �nd that the in uence of other variables purported to explain bargaining coordination (trade, country size, party systems fragmentation, government partisanship, and federalism) ow only through their relationships with centralized strike powers.

Are citizens in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe able to hold politicians accountable at elections? The inheritance of communism-disengaged citizens, economic flux, and inchoate party systems-might be expected to weaken accountability. Looking at the results of 34 elections in 10 Central and Eastern European countries, this paper finds instead a phenomenon that it calls hyperaccountability. Incumbents are held accountable for economic performance-particularly for unemployment-but this accountability distinguishes not between vote losses and gains, but between large and small losses. This result is significant in several respects. The evidence for economic voting restores some faith in the ability of voters to control their representatives in new democracies. The consistency of punishment in the region, however, may mitigate some of the benefits of economic voting. If incumbents know they will lose, then they may decide to enrich themselves when in power rather than produce good policies. [Copyright 2008 Elsevier Ltd.]

Factors that have resulted in contemporary electoral success for several right-wing populist parties in various European nations are considered; in addition, the impact of European populism on regional political developments is contemplated. Several circumstances that facilitated right-wing populism's political rise in France, Austria, Italy, & other European nations are identified, eg, these nations have demonstrated an inability to address ethnic diversity & have been affected by significant alterations to their national party systems. Discussion of these factors subsequently prompts the contention that populist movements are poorly equipped to handle political longevity, as illustrated by the downfall of right-wing populism in both Austria & the Netherlands. Nonetheless, populist parties are recognized for bringing certain issues to the forefront of the national consciousness; consequently, it is stated that other political parties, especially those that are social democratic, should actively engage such issues in order to prevent right-wing populist movements from overtaking existing democratic processes. J. W. Parker

A major challenge for EU enlargement is how to communicate the benefits of membership to electorates. Given the weak penetration of party systems in the Central and East European countries, subnational elites have an important role in shaping voter preferences. Attitudes among subnational elites to EU enlargement are examined in three leading candidate countries in Central and Eastern Europe: Hungary, Slovenia, and Estonia. The results are based on large-scale elite interviews conducted in 1999-2000 in key regional cities. The research demonstrates that subnational elites are disengaged not only structurally from the European integration project, since the negotiations involve the Commission and national governments, but also in their opinions. The subnational elites tend to view EU membership as a national issue and irrelevant for their level, and are poorly informed about EU activities that benefit them. The article suggests that this disengagement of subnational elites constitutes a space for the mobilization of Euroscepticism from below.

This work uses incomplete contracting theory to account for variation in the specific and residual powers of post-Communist presidencies. It uses evidence from 24 post-Communist countries to test theories of institutional choice that link presidential powers to economic reform, institutional legacies, party systems, and social cleavages. It argues that two factors can account for variation in presidential powers: the bargaining power of the electoral favorite and the degree of uncertainty over the electoral outcome. It tests this model in greater detail against four cases: Russia, 1991; Estonia, 1992; Russia, 1993; Belarus, 1994. Three insights flow from these cases. First, political institutions can be analyzed as the by-products of power-seeking politicians making choices under varying degrees of uncertainty. Second, despite the great uncertainty of the transition, actors understand their interests and strategies. Third, high uncertainty compels political actors to hedge their bets when designing political institutions.

IntroduzioneNel loro «Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems Since World War II», Richard Rose e Derek Urwin presentano ampie prove sulla stabilità della forza elettorale di molti partiti politici europei. Essi riportano in dettaglio la generale assenza di tendenze, i bassi livelli di elasticità e la persistenza della forza elettorale. Rose e Urwin auspicano un riorientamento teorico degli studi sui partiti e sul comportamento elettorale nell'Europa occidentale con le seguenti parole: «Il primo compito degli studiosi di scienze sociali che si occupano dello sviluppo dei partiti e dei sistemi partitici dopo il 1945 deve essere quello di spiegare l'assenza di cambiamenti in un periodo in cui la storia politica è stata tutt'altro che statica». I risultati ai quali essi sono giunti gettano anche dei dubbi sulle ipotesi secondo le quali i cambiamenti nei modelli elettorali conseguono direttamente dalle alterazioni della struttura sociale ed economica dell'Europa dopo la seconda guerra mondiale.