Union members at the polls in diverse trade union landscapes

This article investigates to what extent social democratic parties still benefit from the support of union members at the polls. Not only are social democratic parties confronted with new competitors in the party systems, but also the union confederations of the socialist labour movement are in some countries losing their dominant position due to the rise of separate professional confederations. It is argued in the article that the effect of union membership on voting choice is conditioned by the structure of the trade union movement. The support of union members for social democracy is fostered by the strength of the confederations historically close to this party family, while it is hampered when strong separate (or politically unaffiliated) white‐collar confederations exist. Using European Social Survey and Swedish Public Opinion data, the article shows that social democratic parties still enjoy important support from trade union members, but at the same time are under fierce competition from bourgeois and green parties among members of white‐collar confederations. This reinforces the challenges for social democracy to build new voters’ coalitions in post‐industrial societies.     

The Two-Party System and the Federal Political Process

As part of its transition program to civilian federal democracy,the federal military government has constitutionalized a two-partysystem along federal lines, provided funding and other facilitiesto the two parties, and established institutions, such as theNational Electoral Commission and the Directorate for SocialMobilisation, to supervise and oversee the two-party process.This regimentation is seen as being necessary because Nigeriahas not been able to sustain either democracy or a stable partysystem in the past. The stage has been set, therefore, for themaintenance of a two-party system in the Third Republic, butmany problems remain to be resolved before the stable, competitiveparty system becomes rooted in Nigeria's federal system, societaldiversity, and political culture.     

Economic and Monetary Union: Pillar of a Federal Polity

The Masastricht Treaty commitment to the economic and monetaryunion (Emu) follows a lengthy process of building up monetaryintegration, starting with the European Monetary System (1979),then, in the 1980s, the free movement of capital and integrationof financial markets. Emu, representing the final stage of thisprocess, is seen by most federalists as a pillar in the structureof the European Union, contributing to its development by stagesinto a federal polity. With the economic and monetary union,the European Union's economic and environmental powers are becomingcomparable to those of some federations, and with institutionsthat have over time acquired substantial federal elements, furtherreforms may well make the European Union into a federal system.This article identifies the forces, interests, and methods involvedin an incremental process that may be called a new federalism.     

Stagflationary bias and the interaction of monetary policy and wages in a unionized economy

Economics Research Centre, School of Economic and Social Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K. The paper investigates the claim of Gylfason and Lindbeck (Public Choice, 1994) that a stagflationary bias arises from the interaction between monetary policymaking and wagesetting if, among other things, the government and unions share a concern for inflation. It uses a game theoretic model of this interaction, in which the government plays an economy-wide union. Though simple, this nests several other models as special cases. In that corresponding to Gylfason and Lindbeck's model, the factors which they identify are shown to be sufficient for stagflationary bias, in a specified sense. However, for the union to care about inflation is not a necessary condition. The main result of the paper concerns the more general model. It establishes a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for stagflationary bias, as previously defined. These conditions do not include a shared concern for inflation. The paper comments briefly on the significance of this result for stagflation and economic modelling.     

New State Equality: The Ambiguous History of a Constitutional Principle

In Coyle v. Smith (1911), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled thatCongress could not impose admissions conditions on new statesthat detracted from their equal standing in the union. Previously,the Court had deferred to Congress' authority over federal territoryand over its own membership. Before the Civil War, federal interestsin new states—particularly with respect to public lands—weresecured through admissions conditions. Later, however, admissions"compacts" became increasingly redundant; the Court groundedfederal property claims in the new states on the "rules andregulations" provision of the Constitution. Meanwhile, in aseries of decisions, the Court began to uphold the "municipalsovereignty" of the territories against congressional interference.Congress' authority in the territories was progressively limitedto that of acting as "trustee" for future states. These doctrinaldevelopments culminated in Coyle. The Court challenged Congress'right to set invidious admission conditions and asserted itsown jurisdiction over the state-making process. The new stateequality principle thus became "constitutional" as the Courtextended its authority. I wish to thank Herman Belz, University of Maryland, for helpfulcriticism.     

The Implications of Elections for Federalism in Iraq: Toward a Five-Region Model

For most observers, Iraq's recent elections were an importantfirst step on the road to democratic normalcy. However, threerelated outcomes—the political marginalization of SunniArabs, the electoral gains made by Shi'a religious parties,and the triumphant performance of the Kurds—render thetask of crafting Iraq's permanent constitution significantlymore problematic. In this paper, we examine the implicationsof these election results for the design of Iraq's federal system.Our focus is on the character of the subunits in any futuresystem, specifically on whether Iraq should adopt a form ofterritorial federalism based on the country's existing eighteenprovinces (as most scholars argue) or whether a form of ethnic,or "plurinational," federalism based on five regions would bebetter able to address the very significant problems createdby the election results. After assessing the relative meritsof the various proposals for a federal Iraq, we conclude thata system based on five broad regions, though not ideal, is theleast bad of the options available.     

India: Searching for a Consensus by Amending the Constitution?

Two major themes have dominated the debate over India's constitutional destiny since the 1980s: parliamentary versus presidential government and federalization of its predominantly parliamentary system. India will do well to continue with its parliamentary form of government. Besides familiarity with it through British colonial experience and practice for nearly half a century, India's social diversity and fragile democracy are better served by a “collective” parliamentary/cabinet system than a “singular” presidential one. The latter may prematurely centralize the system and promote executive aggrandizement and adventurism. But India's continental diversity and complexity cannot be adequately represented solely along the parliamentary axis; they require the additional — and more vigorous — federal axis for democratic accommodation and national integration. The impact on India's parliamentary/federal system of the changing nature of the party system and premiership styles is also analyzed. Six phases of party system evolution are identified: (1) predominant party system-I (1952–1969); (2) multi-party system-I (1969–1971); (3) predominant party system-II (1971–1977); (4) two-party system (1977–1984); (5) (a stillborn) predominant party system-Ill (1984–1989); and (6) multi-party system-II (1989–to date). Three styles of prime ministerial leadership are delineated: (1) pluralist, (2) patrimonial, and (3) federal. Federal forces and features of the political system were generally accentuated when the party system was not a one-party dominant one and the prime ministerial leadership was not a patrimonial one. Some viable constitutional amendments designed to promote federalization are considered. The two particularly promising avenues of federalization that combine “responsible federalism” with “responsible parliamentary government” are those that establish a series of autonomous federal instrumentalities recommended by the Sarkaria Commission and create a President-in-Council interlocked with the Inter-Governmental Council that takes away the power of proclaiming president's rule in a state from the federal Home Ministry.     

Public attitudes toward economic conditions and their impact on government behavior

This article reviews extant studies of the impact of economic conditions on government electoral behavior in the Western democracies. Three conclusions are reached: (1) in representative democracies there exists a consistent relationship between the economic situation and citizen evaluation of government; (2) the proposition that governments are interested in achieving their selfish goals in elections fares well compared with the competing proposition that governments are interested in the state of the economy as such; and (3) governments and voters are not the only actors in politico-economic decisions: bureaucracies and interest groups may make government incapable of changing its policies quickly in the face of stiff resistance from this multitude of other actors. Their inclusion in relevant models is a necessary next step in research designed to understand better the functioning of modern democratic societies.This paper was written while the author was at GSIA, Carnegie-Mellon University.     

Volunteerism and the project of the left: A response to James Petras and Chronis Polychroniou

Abstract

This article challenges the notion that volunteer and government supported social services are in some sort of fundamental opposition. The problem arises when volunteerism is proposed as a substitute for state action in the arena of social welfare. Seeking to justify recent cutbacks in federal monies for social services, the Presidents’ Summit deliberately avoided this issue. Nevertheless, taken within the context of the principle of governmental responsibility for social well‐being, voluntary association—private, but collectively organized action in the public sphere of civil society—is a necessary condition of democratic life.     

The End of Traditional Anti-systemic Movements and the Need for a New Type of Anti-systemic Movement Today

The aim of this article is to examine the systemic parameters that gave rise to the flourishing of anti-systemic movements in the 19th and 20th centuries and their subsequent decline in the era of neoliberal modernity. It is shown that their recent decline is not irrelevant to the nature of the traditional anti-systemic movement that challenged a particular form of power rather than power itself, as a result of the one-dimensional conception about the 'system' adopted by these movements which typically saw one form of power as the basis of all other forms of power. Today, the issue is not anymore to challenge one form of power or another but to challenge power itself, which constitutes the basis of heteronomy. In other words, what is needed today is a new type of anti-systemic movement that should challenge heteronomy itself, rather than simply various forms of heteronomy. The anti-globalisation 'movement', which is seen as a continuation of the democratic movement that began in the 1960s, has the potential to develop into such a movement provided that it starts building bases at the local level with the aim to create a new democratic globalisation based on local inclusive democracies that would reintegrate society with the economy, polity and Nature, in an institutional framework of equal distribution of power in all its forms.     

公民权利保障与规范视阈下的网络反腐制度化路径

作为科技发展与民主政治有机融合的产物,网络反腐不仅是公民行使监督权、参与权、知情权和言论自由权等的方式,也是以权利制约权力的重要手段。然而,要遏制公民权利行使过程中产生的负向效应,就必须对公民权利予以规范,而要弘扬公民权利行使过程中产生的正向效应,则要求国家对公民权利进行保障。因此,在规范网络公民参与行为的同时,还需使公权力机关承担相应的义务以保障公民的基本权利,进而将网络反腐纳入规范化、法制化的轨道。     

Deficit by Design

This paper focuses on the distinguishing concern of the discourse of democratic deficit: namely, that there appear to be some striking discrepancies between democratic norms and institutional practice. I argue in this paper that the problem of democratic deficit is in fact the normal condition of the institutions of representative government. Indeed, early arguments in favour of representative government insist that it departs from and is superior to democracy itself. If representative government provides the predominant modern understanding of democracy, then democratic deficit is an integral part of its design.     

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.     

Post-modernism as the Decadence of the Social Democratic State

In this paper it is argued that the corresponding rise of post-modernism and the triumph of neo-liberalism are not only not accidental, the triumph of neo-liberalism has been facilitated by post-modernism. Post-modernism has been primarily directed not against mainstream modernism, the modernism of Hobbes, Smith, Darwin and social Darwinism, but against the radical modernist quest for justice and emancipation with its roots in German thought. The Social Democratic State, the principles of which, it is here argued, were articulated by Hegel, was a partial triumph of this radical modernism, realising a higher level of reciprocal recognition and overcoming much of the brutality of the Liberal State. Post-modernism is shown to be a manifestation of the decadence of the Social Democratic State, characterised by the disintegration of cognitive and ethical developments which have been the condition for people to form communities based on reciprocal recognition. In this regard it parallels the decadence which took place in ancient Rome, for similar reasons: both the Roman Empire and the social democratic state reduced people to passive recipients of the benefits of their societies. The implications of this are twofold. If social democracy is to be revived, it will require a struggle for 'strong' democracy; that is, for a major role for participatory democracy. On the other hand if people opt for the creation of confederations of genuinely democratic communities to replace the state, this will not be achieved by post-modern decadence but through the developments of cognitive forms and communities through which the recognition of people as free agents is institutionalised.     

What tips the scales? Disentangling the mechanisms underlying post-electoral gains and losses in democratic support

Prior research has shown that winning or losing elections matters. To account for this pattern, it is argued that winners can expect their preferred policies to be implemented and experience the psychological gratification of winning, whereas losers have to accept disliked policies in addition to the psychological distress of losing. In an attempt to better understand the mechanisms underlying the dynamics of winners' and losers' democratic support after elections, this study aims to separate the influence of policy performance and psychological gratification. Using panel data from the 2017 German federal election, we show that policy congruence with the government increases voters' democratic support whether they voted for the government or not, suggesting that policy congruence is more important than winning the government in securing losers' democratic support. We find no independent effect of psychological gratification; however, the evidence suggests that winning the government affected voters’ democratic support independent of the two tested mechanisms.     

Democratic Dreams Neglected in the Land of the Pharaohs: US Democracy Assistance in Egypt

This paper examines the Obama Administration’s approach to democracy promotion in Egypt. After a brief discussion of the motivation for promoting democracy, this essay compares the Obama Administration to its predecessor and analyzes the changes that were spurred by the Arab Awakening. Did the Obama Administration, during and after the 2011 Revolution, fully support democratic change in Egypt not only with rhetoric but also with the financial and programmatic support necessary to help a transitioning country? Did the Obama Administration offer a consistent message on the importance of democratic policies? Or did the administration allow other policy objectives to trump democratic efforts? This paper explores the language, policies, and funding employed by the Obama Administration in Egypt to see what the impact has been.     

How Do Interest Groups Seek Access to Committees?

Concerns that interest groups use their financial resources to distort the democratic process are long‐standing. Surprisingly, though, firms spend little money on political campaigns, and roughly 95% of publicly traded firms in the United States have never contributed to a political campaign. Do interest groups seek political access through their modest contributions, or are these contributions only a minor and forgettable part of the political process? In this article, we present comprehensive evidence that interest groups are extremely sophisticated in the way they make campaign contributions. We collect a new data set on U.S. state legislative committee assignments and legislator procedural powers from 1988 to 2014, merged with campaign finance data, in order to analyze over 440,000 candidate–committee observations across 99 legislatures. Using a series of difference‐in‐differences designs based on changes in individual legislators' positions in the legislature, we not only show that interest groups seek out committee members, but we also show that they value what we call indirect access. When a legislator gains procedural powers, interest groups reallocate considerable amounts of money to her. The results reveal how interest groups in a wide range of democratic settings seek to influence the policy process not only by seeking direct access to policy makers but by seeking indirect access to legislative procedure as well.     

The Citizen Soldier and Democratic Societies: A Comparative Analysis of America's Revolutionary and Civil Wars

This paper reviews and criticizes the argument that citizens should take active responsibility for and be willing to sacrifice their life to establish and protect a liberal democratic social order. The argument is faulted for assuming that the key for good democracy is to get people to accept their responsibilities, in particular, their responsibility to be citizen soldiers. It is at least as important to ask how the service of citizen soldiers is connected with the constitution of democratic society. The argument is also faulted for ignoring that democratic societies vary in form and virtue and that it is necessary to explain when citizen soldiers will promote the establishment of one kind of democracy or another. To correct these deficiencies, a theory is offered that ties the service of citizen soldiers during war to the quality of democratic society through the allocation and routinization of charisma. The theory is illustrated by a comparative historical analysis of American experience during its Revolutionary and Civil Wars.     

Congressional voting on Superfund: Self-interest or ideology?

Many allege that Superfund is a pork-barrel program that serves self-interested federal legislators. An earlier empirical study found that Superfund cleanup priorities and expenditures were not dictated by congressional committee influence, but rather largely by public interest concerns. Despite this apparent denial of classic distributive politics, it is important to recognize that pork also can arise from legislators voting to expand programs when their constituents stand to benefit disproportionately. This study examines important House and Senate votes on Superfund for their correspondence to theories of congressional self-interest and ideology. On the whole, and despite its theoretical appeal as a potentially-classic pork-barrel program, congressional voting on Superfund is found to represent legislator's environmental and liberal ideologies as much as (if not more than) narrowly-defined self-interest. Along with the results of a previous study, this should be taken as evidence that Superfund has not consistently been a typical pork-barrel program, and that its rapid expansion and legislative support must be explained by other factors, including its symbolic environmental appeal.This research was funded in part by a Faculty Research Grant from the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.     

The Role of Semi-Direct Democracy in Shaping Swiss Federalism: The Behavior of Cantons Regarding Revision of the Constitution, 1866-1981

Swiss federalism operates as a semi-direct democracy involvingreiterated constitutional choice by the people and the territorialunits. In this respect, the Swiss federal process is uniquein comparison to other federal systems. An analysis of constitutionalreferenda and constitutional initiatives conducted from 1866to 1981 was undertaken in order to characterize the politicalbehavior of Swiss cantons concerning the referenda that havealtered the original Constitution of 1848. The behavior of thecantons may be explained by their sociopolitical features. Threegroups of cantons are distinguished by their pattern of behaviortoward proposed revisions of the federal Constitution. In addition,a comparison was made of the similarity and divergence of thecantons with the pattern of behavior of the entire federationin order to measure the degree of cohesion of the Swiss partnership.Strikingly, some of the cantons with a minority subculture weremore frequently in the winning coalition than were some cantonsthat share more of the characteristics of the majority culture.The Swiss federal process is found to strengthen nation-buildingby means of the continual adaptation, along with some innovation,of the original constitutional design on the part of the peopleas a whole and the cantons.