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Policy Making in Multilevel Systems
Does the territorial state organisation matter for effective policy making, and if so, in what way? So far, we know relatively little about its effects on policy making and policy outputs. Starting from the hypothesis that decentralised policy making has positive effects whereas federalism has a slightly negative impact on policy performance, this book systematically tests the independent and interdependent effects of different combinations of federal/unitary and decentralised/centralised structures of decision making and implementation. Based on a mixed methods design it first quantitatively tests the relationships for the OECD countries in cross-sectional as well as panel designs. In a second step, qualitative case studies are conducted for four countries: federal-centralised Austria, federal-decentralised Switzerland, unitary-decentralised Denmark, and unitary-centralised Ireland. The authors study two space-related policy areas, both with regard to the decision making and the implementation stage of the policy-making process: regional policy and transport policy.
Constraints on Party Politics
Political scientists are quite good at predicting ‘optimal’ policy positions that - under the given circumstances - allow parties to get maximal payoffs in terms of policy, office or votes. What we do not know is whether parties are actually able to take these positions or whether they are constrained to do so. This book attempts to narrow this gap. The major argument is that parties do not choose policy positions from scratch and that they cannot freely change their policy platforms. Rather, voters’ lacking perception of changing party platforms and intra-party factors constrain parties when shifting their policy positions. An empirical analysis of party policy shifts in ten Western E...
New Directions in Federalism Studies
This book compares and explores different aspects and perspectives of federalism studies, providing an analytical framework which transcends the sub-fields and encourages contributors to look beyond their own disciplinary approaches to the topic.
Integrating Indifference
Have European citizens become increasingly Eurosceptic over the last two decades, turning their backs on European integration? Though many journalists, politicians and academics argue that they have, this book suggests that reactions to European integration cannot be reduced uniquely to a rise in Euroscepticism, but that indifference and ambivalence need also to be brought into the picture when studying EU legitimacy and its politicisation. Drawing on new evidence from survey data from eight founding member states, and focus groups conducted in francophone Belgium, France and Great Britain, Integrating Indifference explores the various faces of citizens’ indifference, from fatalism, to detachment, via sheer indecision. This book adopts a pioneering mixed-methods approach to analysing the middle-of-the-road attitudes of ordinary citizens who consider themselves neither Europhiles nor Eurosceptics. Complementing existing quantitative and qualitative literature in the field, it opens up new perspectives on attitudes towards European integration.
Why Aren't They There?
Why Aren't They There? is a comprehensive study of political representation in a cross-national format, making a cross-country comparison of the representation of women, ethnic groups, and policy positions. It includes an analysis of the representation of women over time, and presents a critical view of the effectiveness of quotas. Using new data on ethnic groups in legislatures, it makes a significant step forward in the analysis of political representation. The representation of issue positions is examined in eight policy domains, and the book's systematic approach allows a groundbreaking examination of how different forms of representation – women, ethnic groups, issue positions – are interlinked. Didier Ruedin examines aspects unattainable in studies focusing only on a single form of representation. The result is a comprehensive understanding of political representation, and important and policy-relevant insights for electoral engineering.
Regionalist Parties in Western Europe
Regionalist parties matter. Over the past 40 years, they have played an ever-larger role in West European democracies. Because of their relevance and temporal persistence, their achievements have increasingly become visible not only in electoral arena, but also as regards holding office and policy-making. Enhancing our understanding of these different dimensions of success, this book analyses various types of regionalist party success. Beyond conventional perspectives, the focus of this book is also on how the dimensions of success are related to each other, and in particular to what extent electoral and office success – jointly or alternatively – contribute to policy success. Adopting a common theoretical framework and combining the in-depth knowledge of country experts, each chapter explores the evolution and impact of regionalist parties in regional or federal states, that is the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland. This allows for a comprehensive and comparative analysis of one of the main political challenges within West-European democracies.
China's Capitalism
Since 1978, the end of the Mao era, economic growth in China has outperformed every previous economic expansion in modern history. While the largest Western economies continue to struggle with the effects of the deepest recession since World War II, the People's Republic of China still enjoys growth rates that are massive in comparison. In the country's smog-choked cities, a chaotic climate of buying and selling prevails. Tireless expansion and inventiveness join forces with an attitude of national euphoria in which anything seems possible. No longer merely the "workshop of the world," China is poised to become a global engine for innovation. In China's Capitalism, Tobias ten Brink considers...
Organizing Political Parties
Political party organizations play large roles in democracies, yet their organizations differ widely, and their statutes change much more frequently than constitutions or electoral laws. How do these differences, and these frequent changes, affect the operation of democracy? This book seeks to answer these questions by presenting a comprehensive overview of the state of party organization in nineteen contemporary democracies. Using a unique new data collection, the book's chapters test propositions about the reasons for variation and similarities across party organizations. They find more evidence of within-country similarity than of cross-national patterns based on party ideology. After exp...
The Oxford Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies
"How can democracies effectively represent citizens? The goal of this Handbook is to evaluate comprehensively how well the interests and preferences of mass publics become represented by institutions in liberal democracies. It first explores how the idea and institutions of liberal democracies were formed over centuries and became enshrined in Western political systems. The contributors to this Handbook, made up of the world's leading scholars on the various aspects of political representation, examine how well the political elites and parties who are charged with the representation of the public interest meet their duties. Clearly, institutions often fail to live up to their own representat...
Gender Quotas and Democratic Participation
A revealing analysis of the effects of gender quotas on recruitment and election for political offices.
