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| 1 |
ID:
081362
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2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article, first, identifies democratic, authoritarian and 'praetorian' political system types in Africa on the basis of major current indicators. It then systematically tests a broad variety of hypotheses concerning the historical, social-structural, socio-economic, political and institutional determinants and performance characteristics of these system types. A macro-quantitative synopsis attempts to identify the most 'parsimonious' overall constellations of factors in this regard. This is supplemented by a macro-qualitative analysis of major 'conjunctural' conditions identifying the main groups of cases and their determining factors in a 'contradiction-free' manner. The conclusions point to the decisive importance of 'governance' aspects in the future
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| 2 |
ID:
081363
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2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article studies the relationship between electoral policy proposals and subsequent government actions in the case of minority governments. Content analysis of electoral pledges of Spanish parties is utilised to study the gains that a relatively small party obtains when it helps to sustain the governing party in office without entering a coalition government. According to the authors' results, cooperating in parliament to maintain the minority government in office can be a rational choice for a party because it allows it to obtain significant gains in terms of programme fulfillment
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| 3 |
ID:
081364
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
During the past decade, prevailing scholarship has portrayed France and Germany as suffering from a persistent syndrome of 'welfare without work' entailing a vicious circle between stubbornly high rates of unemployment and non-wage labor costs. Scholars blame this disease on dysfunctional political arrangements, deep insider-outsider cleavages and failed systems of social partnership. As a result, the two countries are said to be more or less permanently mired in a context of high unemployment that is highly resistant to remediation. This article departs from this conventional wisdom in two important respects. First, it argues that France and Germany have undertaken major reforms of their labor market policies and institutions during the past decade and remediated many of their longstanding employment traps. Second, it shows that the political arrangements that adherents of the 'welfare without work' thesis identify as reasons for sclerosis have evolved quite dramatically. The article supports these arguments by exploring some of the most significant recent labor market reforms in the two countries, as well as the shifting political relationships that have driven these changes. In both countries, recent labor market reforms have followed a trajectory of 'buttressed liberalization'. This has involved, on the one hand, significant liberalization of labor market regulations such as limits on overtime and worker protections such as unemployment insurance. On the other hand, it has entailed a set of supportive, 'buttressing' reforms involving an expansion of active labor market policies and support for workers' efforts to find jobs. The article concludes that these developments provide reasons for optimism about the countries' economic futures and offer important lessons about how public policy can confront problems of labor market stagnation.
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| 4 |
ID:
081365
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent years have seen growing interest in the political power of ideas, especially in debates about globalisation and European integration. As is now widely noted, constructions of globalisation and European integration may play a powerful causal role in shaping policy prescriptions across Europe. Yet, while a substantial body of theoretical literature has pointed to the need for sustained empirical analysis of such discourses, little systematic and comparative analysis has been undertaken into policy makers' attitudes towards globalisation, European integration and the relationship between the two. This article presents the initial findings of a survey of elite political attitudes to globalisation and European integration in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The authors develop and apply a theoretical schema for the classification and mapping of such discourses. Their analysis reveals, on the one hand, the range and diversity of discourses of globalisation and European integration among elite political actors and, on the other, the continued prevalence of specific conceptions (and indeed misperceptions) of globalisation in particular that have now been challenged empirically. They identify a series of core tensions and contradictions within elite political discourse in both the United Kingdom and Ireland. This suggests a certain frailty in the prevalent understanding of globalisation to which elite political actors would otherwise seem committed when confronted with its distributive consequences
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| 5 |
ID:
081366
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article analyzes a period usually neglected in empirical studies of public opinion and European integration: the formative years between the early 1950s and the late 1960s. The analysis is based on one country - Italy - in which the European process was a source of deep political cleavage in the formative phase. The study of the sources and dynamics of support in these years sheds a different light on the determinants of support. More specifically, a pooled multivariate logistic analysis of six surveys conducted between 1952 and 1970 shows two things. First, it shows that public support in Italy was driven mostly by considerations that were affective and political rather than economic and utilitarian. Second, it explains under which conditions the political factors behind support (and opposition) for European integration in the 1950s and 1960s changed over time, mostly in reactions to international events and to developments in European institutionalization. The article points to the bottom-up nature of change in public support for European integration; changes in public opinion affected party positions, rather than vice versa
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