The gradual transformation? The incremental dynamics of macroprudential regulation

This article focuses on the transformatory potential of macroprudential ideas following the financial crash of 2008, examining how they are being mediated by existing institutional contexts and how and why the task of building a new body of technical macroprudential knowledge is proceeding slowly. It is argued that the movement toward a form of macroprudential regulation has a distinctly incremental dynamic that means any macroprudential transformation will be a gradual process that is likely to span a decade or more. Using Peter Hall's framework of three orders of policy change across substantive and temporal dimensions, the article argues that the macroprudential ideational shift can be compared to third order change. In this sense, it was intellectually radical and took place rapidly in a period of around six months. However, intellectual radicalism does not automatically translate into a radical change in regulatory practice, because of a variety of countervailing political, institutional, and informational variables. In this respect, the task of developing first and second order macroprudential policy is proving to be a much more politically contested process. Furthermore, macroprudential policy is being developed by cautious technocrats who rely on the gradual accumulation of data and evidence to justify policy. The result is a distinctly incremental dynamic to macroprudential policy development that displays many of the features of a process that historical institutionalists refer to as “layering.”     

The Quiet Revolution? The Labour Party and Welfare Conditionality

Labour's 2017 general election manifesto contained a pledge to ‘end the punitive sanctions regime’ in the British welfare state. Whilst the specific implications of this pledge were not elaborated, such a policy would nevertheless constitute a profound break with a welfare consensus spanning over twenty years. The depth of the suggested changes on welfare are also evident in the scale of reform proposed to disability benefits, as well as plans—confirmed in August 2018 by the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell—to pilot universal basic income. Collectively, these policies would seemingly be deeply at odds with public opinion on the benefits system, which over the course of the last two decades has significantly hardened. Yet despite the seemingly radical and controversial nature of the policy, it received very little media or public attention during the election campaign. This article explores Labour's ‘quiet revolution’ on welfare, examining whether Labour's new welfare approach is indeed a bold attempt to reshape public opinion on welfare or, alternatively, a mostly pragmatic reaction to changing social attitudes. The argument presented is that whilst there are persuasive explanations that Labour is responding to a change in the public mood, there is also evidence of a more ambitious goal at stake: the aim of reshaping, not simply responding to, public opinion on the welfare state.     

The “Miracle” Revisited: The De-radicalization of Korean Political Culture

The radicalism that spawned the 1987 democratic revolution was a product of civic unity across class lines. Lacking the raw power of President Park, Presidents Chun and Roh had no choice but to seek a degree of democratic legitimacy. That same weakness was reflected in their relative surrender of Blue House power over Korean chaebols. Thus there were two winners in the political transformation of those years: minjung power (the Korean equivalent of Philippine “people power”) and corporatism, now largely freed from Parkian restraints. With the subsequent dissolution of minjung unity, however, corporatism emerged as the real winner of the “democratic” revolution. That victory was consummated by the neoliberal reforms mandated by the IMF in return for a mammoth bailout package after the Crash. There was little effective resistance to this IMFism, for the reform spirit of 1987 had perished long before.     

The Italian party system in transition: The end of polarised pluralism?

This article examines Giovanni Sartori's polarised pluralist model and its application to the Italian party system. It suggests a more appropriate alternative method for testing the model's applicability to present‐day Italy. This modification, far from changing the model of polarised pluralism, improves its empirical usefulness. The suggestion then is put forward that Italy, rather than being an example par excellence of polarised pluralism, as Sartorisees it, is neither characterised by increased polarisation nor by centrifugal competition. Instead, Italy today witnesses the prevalence of depolarisation and centripetal electoral competition.     

The 2012 Elections in Mexico: The Birth of a Consolidated Federal Democracy?

In 2012, the simultaneous elections at the federal, state and municipal levels in Mexico reopened the debate about the path of democratic consolidation in the country. With the return of the Revolutionary Institutional Party to the presidency in 2013, there are renewed signs that Mexican democratic consolidation is underway. Particularly important in this process is that the 2012 gubernatorial and mayoral elections have been more competitive, resulting in higher political alternation in power between political parties. Under a changing subnational political context, there are indications that subnational politicians are no longer under the shadow of a dominant party system. As a more consolidated federal democracy, the political landscape in Mexico has become more complex.     

The West German electoral system: The case for reform, 1949–87

Since the 1960s the question of electoral reform (specifically the introduction of a majority voting system) has not been a live issue in West Germany. The wide acceptance of proportional representation has much to do with changes in political culture ‐ a greater tolerance of conflict and less concern with stability. Foreign observers often treat the West German system as a model. However, the two‐vote system, although seen as maximising electoral choice, is seriously defective: it is confusing, encourages manipulation, and gives voters the false impression of having a greater degree of choice than is actually the case.     

The OECD and “The Rest”: Analyzing the Limits of Policy Transfer

Abstract

Prompted by the rise of the emerging economies and the growing importance of the G20, the OECD has formally announced its intention of establishing itself as a key actor in global policy coordination. As part of this ambition, it has embarked on cultivating closer relations with five G20 countries it designated as key partners through the so-called “Enhanced Engagement” programme: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa. This article mobilizes concepts from the policy transfer literature to explain why the OECD’s attempts to increasingly involve all five countries in its policy have fallen short of its original ambitions, and also why the transfer of its policy work has been uneven across policy and country issue.