Looking for Sustainability: Environmental Coalitions across the State-Society Divide

This paper compares environmental policymaking in two Brazilian cities, Rio de Janeiro and Cubatão. It examines the formation of state-society synergistic interactions in the public policymaking process and their effect on long term sustainability of social mobilization. It concludes that whereas social capital can be constructed in the context of policymaking, it is critically dependent on a concerted effort from both state and society actors to build trust in their daily interactions. The Cubatão and Carioca River cases show that state-society synergy had little effect on the ability of the policy coalitions formed for pollution clean up to sustain themselves over time. Instead, there are indications that rather than a constraint, the flexible and informal nature of such coalitions may have been a critical factor in their ability to carry out policy successfully.     

Australia and the Developing World under the Abbott Coalition Government

The Abbott Coalition government, elected to office in Australia in September 2013, has not had a major focus on the developing world. Nevertheless, in terms of substance this government has been engaged with a number of issues that relate to, or have implications for, the developing world. At a general level these issues concern development cooperation, refugees and asylum seekers, and climate change. At a regional level Australia has had particular concerns relating to Indonesia and the Pacific island countries; there has also been some focus on India and Indian Ocean regionalism. Beyond Australia’s immediate region there has been engagement in some issues relating to Southwest Asia and the Middle East, and Africa. The government’s approach to issues concerning the developing world reflects its pragmatism based on a perception of Australian interests and an identification with the countries of the developed world as led by the United States.     

Legislative Coalitions in Presidential Systems: The Case of Uruguay

The article analyzes executive‐legislative relations in Uruguay between 1985 and 2005. It demonstrates that even after controlling for ideological affinity and acknowledging that ideology affects presence in the cabinet, legislators whose factions hold ministerial positions behave in a more progovernment way than their ideology would predict. This result not only shows that coalitions “work” but suggests that they work because the presidents use resources under their control to attract support from legislators. This article presents a systematic analysis of executive‐legislative relations in multiparty settings that builds on the finding that nonideologically contiguous coalitions often form to separate the ideological from the strategic determinants of legislative behavior. It also contributes to the literature by presenting a new set of roll call data and, more generally, highlights the risks of attempting to infer ideology directly from legislative behavior in presidential multiparty settings.     

Anti-Iraq War Protests in Turkey: Global Networks,Coalitions, and Context

This article examines how Turkish citizens participated in protests against the Iraq War and why civil society organizations were able to mobilize tens of thousands of people across the country despite the institutional weakness of the Turkish peace movement. The Iraq War case is important in that its scale and level of protest mobilization were unprecedented based on any other anti-war protests in Turkey. Using content analysis of newspaper reports of anti-Iraq War protest events, this article maps the patterns and forms of protest against the Iraq War and argues for the importance of global networks, coalitions among organizations, and political context for protest mobilization.     

Constructing Reform Coalitions: The Politics of Compensations in Argentina's Economic Liberalization

It is frequently argued that the key to "successful" economic liberalization is to marginalize interest groups that profit from existing regulatory regimes. This paper contends that some established interests can craft public policies to protect their rents in the new market setting. The state may shape the interests of social actors and create proreform constituencies out of old populist and interventionist groups. In Argentina, this coalition building was achieved by constructing reform policies that granted rents in new markets to business and organized labor and by deliberately avoiding unilateral deregulation in sectors where reform would hurt traditionally powerful actors. This argument is developed through a comparative analysis of policy reform in the labor market institutions and protected industrial sectors, areas where the costs of deregulation are said to be unavoidable for the established actors.     

Multi-level Games: The Serbian Government’s Strategy towards Kosovo and the EU under the Progressive Party

ABSTRACT

Since the signing of the historic ‘Brussels Agreement’ on 19 April 2013 on the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vu?i? and the Progressive Party have oscillated between competing tensions emanating from seeking membership in the European Union and those stemming from the retention of Kosovo, including the party’s uncompromising position on non-recognition. Following two-level game theory, this paper offers a comparative analysis of the Progressive Party’s multi-level game strategy vis-à-vis Kosovo and the EU, arguing that while the initial success of the Brussels Agreement can predominantly be attributed to the rise in popular support for EU accession, Serbian policy towards Kosovo appears to be far less clear and often contradictory and therefore, Serbian government strategy cannot have been influenced by public opinion.     

东亚货币合作的模式及未来前景

本文概述了东亚货币合作的背景及模式,剖析了进一步推进其合作在理论上和实践上面临的困难和挑战,并就中国的参与和作用以及合作的前景进行了探讨和分析.     

Dilemmas of Democratisation: Media Regulation and Reform in Argentina

The relationship between the state and the media has become a key political battleground in a number of Latin American countries in recent years. Using controversial changes to broadcasting regulation in Argentina as a case study, this article examines regional trends in this field. This article argues that despite criticism of the political motivations that led to its implementation, the Audiovisual Communications Law (popularly known as the ley de medios) has the potential to rebalance Argentina's media landscape. Moreover, it should not be equated with developments in Venezuelan media regulation, which do raise concerns about freedom of expression.     

Welfare State Restructuring without Grand Coalitions: The Role of Informal Cooperation in Blame Avoidance

This article argues that welfare state restructuring, which is highly unpopular among voters, is politically feasible if government and opposition parties cooperate informally with one another. Contrary to what key arguments made in the literature assert, restructuring does not require the formation of a grand coalition to diffuse blame from voters. Informal cooperation between parties is a distinctive blame-avoiding strategy, which differs not only from other party-oriented strategies such as building a grand coalition, but also from voter-oriented ones, such as obfuscation and exemption. By analysing the politics of pension reform in Germany, this article shows that informal cooperation enables political parties to restructure the welfare state without running the risk of electoral failure.     

Electoral Gender Quotas: Lessons from Argentina and Chile

This comparative case study examines the role of electoral quotas for increasing women's representation in Argentina and Chile. The Central hypothesis is that gender quotas in favourable electoral systems increase women's representation, and a corollary hypothesis is that more women in politics should also promote gender issues in public policy. Since the transitions to democratic regimes, many Argentine and Chilean women still promote gender issues, such as gender quotas, but the different transitions shaped the opportunity space for gender issues in politics. Thus, gender quotas can be effective, but the types of electoral and quota systems are important defining conditions and improvements in gender issues are not guaranteed.     

The Seed of Freedom: Regional Security and the Colombo Plan

Established in 1950, the Colombo Plan was a comprehensive program of foreign aid provided to South East Asian nations. In this article I argue that the Colombo Plan had a much broader political and cultural agenda, and cannot be understood from a humanitarian perspective alone. By exploring some of the cultural, ideological and political underpinnings of the scheme I illustrate that, as part of a comprehensive foreign policy, it is best understood as being motivated by international security priorities and the need to ally domestic cultural concerns. Although the Colombo Plan was inherently defensive, it also proved to be something of a progressive force which prepared the ground for a much closer relationship with (and within) the Southeast Asian region.     

The Federal Dilemma: Organisational Strategies and the Consolidation of Parties in Mexico and Argentina

What accounts for the consolidation of party organisations? The specialised literature has stressed the importance of institutions in shaping the ways in which political parties organise. However, little attention has been paid to the role of federalism. We argue that in federal settings, party territorial organisational strategies condition their capacity to become consolidated parties. We illustrate our theory with an analysis of the development of conservative parties in Argentina and Mexico to explain their different levels of consolidation.