Political parties, political corruption, and the economic theory of democracy

Many prominent cases of political corruption in Western European democracies have involved political parties, yet the link between theories of political parties and theories of political corruption has not been explored. This article seeks to examine this link from the perspective of economic theories of democracy. It is argued that the economic model of party organisation is liable to encourage corrupt behaviour on the part of politicians, and that modern party organisations are coming to resemble this model, making political corruption more likely to emerge. It is suggested that this hypothesis finds some empirical support in the evidence of systematic corruption amongst Southern European socialist parties. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The political feasibility of potent enforcement in a post-Kyoto climate agreement

To be effective, a post-Kyoto climate agreement must secure significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions by all (key) emitters. Potent participation and compliance enforcement will be required to make it in every key emitter’s best interest to participate in, and comply with, an agreement which specifies deep emissions reductions for all its signatories. This article considers the conditions under which potent enforcement would likely be politically feasible. Based on assessments of the current political landscape, and on the sets of constraints that characterize negotiations over enforcement systems, the article firstly finds that neither type of enforcement would be politically feasible if agreement is sought among all key emitters. Secondly, because participation enforcement is perceived as less legitimate than compliance enforcement, the coalition of countries prepared to accept the former is likely smaller than the coalition prepared to accept the latter. Thirdly, participation enforcement likely places stricter requirements on the coalition’s membership and size. Thus, while compliance enforcement should in principle always be politically feasible among some coalition, reaching agreement on participation enforcement is less likely. To the extent that participation enforcement is politically feasible, however, an agreement which enforces the cooperation of all key emitters may be attainable.     

The political and economic context of mental health care in the United States

Since the mid-1970s, the mental health treatment system in the U.S. has faced budgetary famine. This is in stark contrast to the growing cornucopia of fiscal resources enjoyed by the overall health care system. This paper explores the complex reasons for this disproportionate allocation in health spending. On the one hand, mental health may suffer from the perception that its diagnoses are largely "subjective" and its treatments do not fit the traditional "medical model" that can be defined precisely and paid for by third-party insurers. But more importantly, the death of mental health resources can be attributed to the peculiar nature and characteristics inherent in American politics. This paper describes the American political environment, from both a historical and a contemporary perspective, to give some insight into the development of policies affecting the mental health system in the U.S. Given the current climate of fiscal conservatism in this country toward any increases in social spending, it is likely that the profound mismatch in need and spending for mental health programs will continue indefinitely.     

Economic justice,political behavior,and American political values

Although theories of political economy state that citizens' concerns about economic outcomes are important determinants of their political responses, an alternative perspective states that concerns about economic justice influence political responses. Survey data were examined to determine the relative influence of each of these factors on political evaluations and behaviors. Concerns about the justice of the procedures used by the government to make decisions about the distribution of benefits and services strongly predicted evaluations of President Reagan and participation in policy-related political behavior, and were weakly related to general political activism. Concerns about the justice of the distributions of economic benefits were related to evaluations of President Reagan but not to political activism. Judgments about personal economic gain or loss relative to the past predicted evaluations of President Reagan while global subjective judgments of present economic outcomes weakly predicted policy-related political activism. The effect of justice is explained by considering the relationship between citizens' concerns about economic justice and values associated with the American political culture.     

The interplay between economic and political logics: path dependency in health care in England

The purpose of this article is to use the ideas of path dependency to understand why policies implemented by governments for health care in England were and are suboptimal in terms of the control of total costs, the equitable distribution of hospital services, and efficiency in delivery. We do this by relating the economic logic of achieving these objectives to the political logic of a state-hierarchical system in which ministers are accountable for the effects of policies and doctors largely decide the supply and demand of health care. The initial policy path of the National Health Service (NHS) controlled costs but lacked systems to achieve equity and efficiency in the funding of hospitals. Policies were introduced to achieve equity, but not efficiency, in the 1970s. The Thatcher government sought efficiency through a budgetary squeeze in the 1980s, which culminated in the NHS funding crisis of 1987 - 1988. The result was the policies of the NHS internal market, which promised efficiency by introducing a purchaser-provider split and a system of provider competition in which money would follow the patient. These promises justified an injection of extra funds for three years, but only a pallid model of the internal market was implemented. The Blair government abandoned the rhetoric of competition but maintained the purchaser-provider split and continued to constrain total NHS costs, which resulted in the funding crisis of 1998 - 1999. Current policies are to substantially increase spending on health care and reintroduce a system of provider competition in which money will follow the patient.     

Regulation, risk assessment, and the Supreme Court: the case of OSHA's cancer policy

As a case study of policy distortion in the legal and regulatory processes, this article first establishes the incongruities among the political, scientific, and legal issues surrounding OSHA's Cancer Policy and then examines the political consequences of ignoring these incongruities in judicial and administrative decisions about that policy. By delineating the political, scientific, and legal issues involved, we develop a basis for assessing the Supreme Court's difficulties in reviewing the Cancer Policy. These difficulties are related to the issue of regulatory reform, as indicated by the subsequent fate of OSHA's Cancer Policy under the Reagan administration. This article concludes with reflections upon regulatory reform in the light of the current status of OSHA's regulation of workplace carcinogens.     

The economic constitution and the political constitution: seeking the common good in the post-national setting

In the post-national setting, the concept of the ‘economic constitution’ has been seen as design template and saviour; whether based on transactional certitude or founded on ordoliberal precepts, the economic constitution is assumed to legitimate economic integration across national borders in the absence of comprehensive political settlement. Nevertheless, recent tensions – not only within the European Union (EU) but also, more strikingly, within the World Trade Organization context – indicate the limits of economic constitutionalism. This article seeks to identify the roots of recent dysfunction within the history and theory of economic constitutionalism. It traces the evolution of an adjudicational economic constitutionalism and its place within the EU legal order, including the new EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and contrasts this vision with the more comprehensive and/or socialized models of economic constitutionalism found not only within the Weimar Republic but also within the post-revolutionary/post-conflict constitutional context. The article also places a major emphasis on theorizing around the apex of economic-constitutional thought, ordoliberalism, but concludes that no concept of the economic constitution can be seen in isolation from its social-political context, or from notions of the common good. To this exact degree, failures in modern economic constitutionalism may derive from a misplaced universalism – a technocratic absolutism that abdicates political responsibility for the common good, locating it instead in an ‘idolatry of the factual’ or a new naturalism of market inevitability.     

Hospice utilization: political, cultural, and legal issues

The provision of end-of-life care is considered a substantive part of nursing, and hospice is often considered the "gold standard" of optimal end-of-life care. Unfortunately, however, only an estimated 43% of patients eligible for hospice actually receive hospice services (Harrison, Ford, & Wilson, 2005). The purpose of this article is to describe the political cultural, and legal issues associated with the underutilization of hospice care. Specifically, this article will outline the policy issues for accessing hospice under Medicare and Medicaid, the cultural and social issues in hospice utilization, and the legal implications of these issues. In addition, this article will serve to offer initial solutions to the problems at hand in order to guide nurses in promoting effective, efficient, and realized access to hospice services.     

Pandemics,economic freedom,and institutional trade-offs

European Journal of Law and Economics - We argue that institutions are bundles that involve trade-offs in the government’s ability to provide public goods that affect public health. We...     

Race, economic inequality, and violent crime

The current study used data drawn from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the census to investigate the relationship between indicators of interracial and intraracial economic inequality and violent crime rates, including White-on-Black, White-on-White, Black-on-White, and Black-on-Black offenses. Multivariate regression results for ninety-one cities showed that while total inequality and intraracial inequality had no significant association with offending rates, interracial inequality was a strong predictor of the overall violent crime rate and the Black-on-Black crime rate. Overall, these results were interpreted as consistent with J.R. Blau and Blau's (1982) relative deprivation thesis, with secondary support for P.M. Blau's (1977) macrostructural theory of intergroup relations. The findings also helped to clarify the unresolved theoretical issue regarding which reference group was most important in triggering relative deprivation among Blacks. It appeared that prior studies were unable to find support for the relative deprivation thesis for Black crime rates because of data and methodological limitations.     

Impact of the political and economic restructuring in Eastern Europe on the availability of net energy exports—An emprirical framework

The recent political changes will not only affect the domestic economies of the Eastern European countries but also important world commodity markets. This paper investigates the consequences for world energy markets. For this purpose, a disaggregated model of the Eastern European energy markets is developed that accounts for the introduction markets (‘pricing’) into the formerly central planned economies. Deregulation will stimulate conservation and will favour ‘noble’ fuels, i.e. oil, gas and electricity. (Potential) net energy exports will slightly increase by 1995 where gas exports could compensate for the decline in oil exports.     

Decision rules,membership and political centralization in the European Union

The decision to enter the European Union is based on a comparison of the costs of staying out and going it alone, and the costs membership. The latter depend on the degree of preference heterogeneity between prospective members and the Union as well as the decision rules employed for “constitutional” decisions. The same calculus guides the decision, by member states, to shift policies up to the Union level, only now the decision rules refer to centrally assigned policies. Preference heterogeneity makes more inclusive rules optimal in either case while at the same time reducing the attractiveness of membership or the centralization of policies to the EU level, respectively. The analysis complements and extends both traditional fiscal federalism literature as well as the more recent political economics literature on federalism.

Carbon dioxide emissions,financial development and political institutions

Economic Change and Restructuring - The paper empirically examines whether and how political institutions shape the nexus between finance and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. In a sample of...     

Communication Law,Technological Change,and the New Normal

Our current debates concerning communication law and policy would have been unrecognizable to us twenty years ago. Few predicted in 1993, when the World Wide Web was just five years old, that in two decades, the functions of a word processor, camcorder, telephone, camera and pager could all fit within a single, palm-sized device — let alone that the same device could be connected to hundreds of millions of like devices and distribute text, photographs and video in milliseconds. Today's prognostications are often tomorrow's follies. But as the articles in this issue show, communication scholars continue the task of fitting current law into the changed communication spaces created by the digital revolution. After surveying these changes, this article argues that over the next two decades, communications-related technological change will be felt in two areas that have long been the province of state tort law: reputation and privacy.