The centre holds: The 1986 Netherlands election

It is often argued that clientelism is a key feature of electoral mobilisation in southern European democracies. This article examines the evidence for clientelism in the Spanish case, assessing the recruitment, redistributive strategies and electoral performance of governing parties in the 1977–96 period. It finds little evidence of extensive clientelistic mobilisation; instead, political parties’ use of state resources is largely consistent with their programmatic and ideological positions. ‘Old’ clientelism from the pre‐democratic era mostly did not survive the change of regime, whilst ‘new’ clientelism based on the expansion of state employment contributed to the Socialist Party's organisational consolidation, but was not a significant feature of its strategy of electoral mobilisation.     

The Solomon Islands: The experiment in decentralization

The Solomon Islands became independent in 1978. Influenced by developments in neighbouring Papua New Guinea, a plan for provincial government has been introduced in order ostensibly to achieve more effective decentralization than operated through local government councils. This article describes the successive attempts at establishing local government councils and discusses the present plan for provincial government in the context of experience with local councils. The plan is seen as an attempt at returning power to the people and avoiding the development of a centralized authority serving the interests of those associated with Central government.     

The Policy Sciences: The Challenge of Complexity

This essay reviews some of the recent criticisms of positivist science. It interprets this criticism, more generally, as directed towards the complexity of social science phenomena and the difficulty of dealing with complexity epistemologically and methodologically. Rather than ignoring complexity, changing the subject matter or explaining it away, we argue that complexity may be acknowledged and studied systematically withn the context of post-positivist approaches. The essay than proposes several strategies for conceptualizing and researching complexity (at a "meta-level" from substantive policy research) that are based in systems theory.     

The attack on community: The grooved debate

Before that, he served as Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He was a White House advisor in the final year of the Carter Administration and is presently the president of the American Sociological Association. Among his best-known works are The Active Society; Public Policy in a New Key; Modern Organization; The Spirit of Community;and The Moral Dimension.     

Bill Hayton: The South China Sea:The Struggle for Power In Asia

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Spain: The fragile democracy

The attempted military coup of 23 February 1981 underlined the fragility of democracy in Spain, recently restored after forty years of dictatorship by General Franco. The article argues that the ultimate reason for Spanish democracy's precarious state lies in the existence of a traditionally interventionist Army, an Army not identified with the values and ideals of democracy. A minority of right‐wing officers thought that terrorism by the Basque group ETA, the regional problem, and the political disenchantment of many Spaniards, related to the decline of Suárez, called for a new intervention by the Army against the legally constituted democracy.     

The Tax That Failed: The VAT in Niger

The value-added tax (VAT) requires considerable sophistication on the part of both the taxpayers and the tax authorities in order to function effectively; not all countries meet this criteria. After Niger implemented the VAT in 1986, instead of realizing an increase in tax revenue it witnessed a decline, creating a major budget crisis. This article discusses why the VAT was an inappropriate choice for Niger, analyzes the reasons for the decline in tax revenue, and proposes alternative policies consistent with the administrative capacity of the Niger government and the existing socioeconomic environment.     

The linguistic fault: The case of Foucault's archaeology

It is argued that the concept of discursive formation presented by Foucault provides the means whereby conventional treatments of ‘discourse’ can be criticized. These would include historical, linguistic and epistemological forms of investigation. But it is also argued that Foucault does not sufficiently displace linguistic categories. As a result his account of the theoretical problems of ‘conditions of existence’ of discourses cannot be sustained.     

The politics of neighbourhood institutions: The Italian case

This account is part of a larger research effort which is aimed at evaluating the significance for Italian society of the introduction of new government institutions at the neighbourhood level and of identifying the circumstances under which they are likely to be promoted and to succeed. The article looks at which types of neighbourhood government have been instituted and which cities in Italy have taken advantage of the provisions following the national legislation on neighbourhoods passed in 1976. An examination of conceptual models of neighbourhood government, secondary and interview data relating to the debate on the law, and neighbourhood electoral data are brought to bear on the two questions.     

The State in Environmental Management: The Ecological Dimension

A focus on 'modern' industrialized societies obscures both the great antiquity of the state and the powerful selective pressures that have led to the dominance of interstate competition, especially warfare. In pursuit of power, elites encouraged population growth and intensified the exploitation of the natural resource base, with progressively more severe ecological impacts. Modern technology has vastly amplified the problem. Though it makes possible sophisticated environmental management, that has been neglected for the demands of the military—industrial system. These ill-effects are reinforced by ignorance of ecology and inadequacy of traditional political thought. A major adaptive challenge faces modern states: to use their knowledge and resources for more humane, environmentally sensitive management and perhaps achieve a novel kind of steady state, or to renew emphasis on short-term competitive considerations.     

The aftermath of Heysel: The 1985 Belgian election

The institutional approach to generalised trust creation is based on the assumption that only institutions with certain features give people reason to trust strangers. This article offers a revised version of this approach by arguing that there is an indirect rather than a direct link between the properties of institutions and trust among strangers. Referring to a neo-institutional idea of institutions, it is suggested that the potential of institutions for enabling people to trust strangers rests on institutions' power to structure individual action. The endurance and efficacy of institutions rather than their normative principles give us significant clues that our anonymous fellow citizens think about institutions as we do and accordingly feel committed to the rules of action. This, in turn, provides good reasons to believe that most of them will behave in an ‘appropriate’ manner so that we can trust them even if they are strangers.