Why PAR Matters: Reflections after Seven Decades and Beyond

In this last issue under his supervision, PAR’s editor in chief reflects on the value and worth of the journal over the last seven decades and the competitive challenges that PAR faces today, and presents a modest blueprint for strengthening PAR in the future.     

Doing Politics: Collaborative Research and the Members of Parliament Project

This article gives an account of the `Members of Parliament Project' based at Nottingham Trent and Sheffield universities, which reveals something of the team's working practices and intellectual strategy and concludes with reflections on the benefits and costs of collaboration. It also covers the research undertaken: the creation of a database on Conservative Parliamentarians in order to undertake research on a range of socio-economic, ideological and political variables; the use of cohort analysis to study the socio-economic profile of the Conservative elite; the development of a typology of British Conservatism; and the use of attitude surveys to empirically investigate a novel `ideological mapping' technique.     

The Local Party Organization and Its Members: Between Randomness and Rationality*

In this article we shall argue the importance of approaching the relationship between party organizations and party members by analyzing the interaction between characteristics of the national party system, the party organization as a more or less open or closed system, and the resources of individuals particularly conducive to party membership. We shall mainly discuss the organizational level, taking as a starting point different models from organizational theory: the rational behaviour model, the survival model, the bureaucratic model, and the symbolic action model. We apply these models in our search for how political parties seek to mobilize members. Examples illustrating the relevance of the different models are a warning to those who wish to develop a general theory of party organization.     

Hardt and Negri's Empire : A New Communist Manifesto or a Reformist Welcome to Neoliberal Globalisation?

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire (Harvard University Press, 2000) has generally been characterised by the establishment press, but also by some in the Left, as a kind of new 'Communist Manifesto'. However, a careful examination of the content of the book makes it clear that, far from having any radical implications similar to those of the original Manifesto , Empire should better be characterised as an 'objective' welcome to neoliberal globalisation.     

Politics and Administration in Council-Manager Government: Differences between Newly Elected and Senior Council Members

This study examines the different attitudes of newly elected officials and senior incumbents on variables that are considered to be the building blocks of the relationship between local elected officials and professional civil service staff: council respect for the city's professional staff; a clear understanding of the roles of council and the staff; and the governing body's commitment towards working as a group and toward consensus. Governing body members who have served for eight or more years show greater respect for staff, have greater role understanding, and value teamwork among their colleagues more than their newly elected counterparts. While there are differences, the attitudes of long-term officials appear to change little while in office. They enter office with the building blocks of their own success. These findings are based on a cross-sectional and modest longitudinal survey research design, supplemented by in-depth interviews.     

激励机制：防止党员干部精神懈怠的路径选择

当前党员干部中存在的“精神懈怠”现象表现出根源性、隐蔽性、传染性和差异性特征,严重影响了党员干部的思想观念、工作作风及工作能力。精神懈怠现象产生的原因是多方面的,必须多策并举、辨证施治。根据组织行为学的“激励”理论,完善党员干部工作中的激励机制将是一条行之有效的治理举措。具体地说,应以内激励增动力,通过理论创新、教育灌输和文化熏陶等,建构共产党人先进的精神、理想和信仰体系,培育并形成自强不息、昂扬向上的精神动力,促使党员干部不想懈怠;以外激励加推力,通过制度保障、群众参与和科技推动等,形成激励与约束共存、管理与监督并重的良性环境,促使党员干部不能懈怠;以正激励添引力,顺应人的正当的精神和物质需求,采取满足、促进和奖励措施,促使党员干部不愿懈怠;以负激励增压力,通过严格问责、严肃惩戒,形成对党员干部潜在惰性的强大威慑,促使党员干部不敢懈怠。     

Members of parliament and governments in Western Europe: Agency relations and problems of oversight

Abstract. The vast majority of West European polities feature an agency relationship between members of parliaments and members of cabinets as the latter depend on the confidence of the majority of the former to remain in office. In this article, the terminology used by principalagent theory to characterise oversight activities – contract design, screening, monitoring and the use of institutional checks – and elements of transaction cost economics are applied to the agency relationship between members of parliaments and cabinet members in Western Europe. Traditional studies of parliamentary oversight have narrowly concentrated on monitoring, although parliaments (with considerable cross–national variations) use a broad range of oversight mechanisms including equivalents of contract design, screening and institutional checks. In addition, traditional studies have focused almost exclusively on one particular type of monitoring often referred to as 'police–patrol oversight', whilst neglecting or underestimating the effectiveness and low transaction costs associated with 'fire–alarm oversight'. Despite the valuable insights the principal–agent framework has already added to the study of executive–legislative relations in parliamentary democracies, future research will have to account more realistically for the role and organisation of political parties which structure the delegation process, help to solve a number of co–ordination problems in parliaments (for example, the co–ordination of committees and floor activities) and generate important internal agency relationships that are fundamental to an understanding of executive–legislative relations in Western Europe.     

Migrants into Members: Social Rights,Civic Requirements,and Citizenship in Western Europe

How do the states in Western Europe turn outsiders into insiders? This article examines that question by introducing a new qualitative framework that we term national membership conditionality structures (MCS). This framework includes not only status acquisition rules, such as those governing naturalisation and settlement, but also, crucially, civic integration requirements and social benefit eligibility standards. The article illustrates how linkages across these policy sectors shape different membership-making processes for third-country nationals by examining the MCS variation in Great Britain and Germany, two countries that both experienced significant migration inflows beginning in the first post-war decades. As a contrast to these two ‘mature’ MCS cases, a study of Spain is also included as a ‘nascent’ case, whose recent experience with large-scale immigration provides an opportunity to consider an MCS under active construction. The article concludes that while EU-level policies and institutions have extended their reach to cover ever more sectors, the components of national MCS remain largely outside supranational purview. As such, membership remains a core imperative of the contemporary nation-state.     

Board diversity and strategic orientation: Evidence from India

This study leverages the upper echelons theory to investigate the effect of board diversity (gender, age, education, and tenure) on the strategic orientation of a firm in terms of its exploration- exploitation. It also investigates the moderating role of the technological intensity of the industry for analyzing the relationship between board diversity and exploration–exploitation of the firm. The technological intensity of the industry is classified as high-tech and low-tech. This study brings to light the role of the contingency factors in influencing the board's strategic choice. The study is based on panel data set of Indian Top-200 companies listed on the National Stock Exchange for the period between 2010 and 2015. The present study's findings indicate that an increase in board diversity leads to more exploration than exploitation. Further, the effect of board diversity is more pronounced in high-tech than the low-tech industries.