The Decline of the Swedish Model

The international literature on the Swedish model has failed to realize the severity of its economic crisis. The Swedish malaise is entirely home-made and started much earlier than international commentators realized. The sharp downturn in the performance of the public and private sectors in Sweden is a result of the overemphasis on the public sector, upsetting the earlier established balance between markets and politics. Since 1975 Sweden has been ruled by a distributional coalition that has not yet provided reforms that can take the country out of its economic difficulties.     

Polarization and the Decline of the American Floating Voter

The observed rate of Americans voting for a different party across successive presidential elections has never been lower. This trend is largely explained by the clarity of party differences reducing indecision and ambivalence and increasing reliability in presidential voting. American National Election Studies (ANES) Times Series study data show that recent independent, less engaged voters perceive candidate differences as clearly as partisan, engaged voters of past elections and with declining rates of ambivalence, being undecided, and floating. Analysis of ANES inter‐election panel studies shows the decline in switching is present among nonvoters too, as pure independents are as reliable in their party support as strong partisans of prior eras. These findings show parties benefit from the behavioral response of all Americans to polarization. By providing an ideological anchor to candidate evaluations, polarization produces a reliable base of party support that is less responsive to short‐term forces.     

Neoliberalism,Nationalism and the Decline of Political Traditions

The three great Western political traditions (conservatism, liberalism, social democracy) incorporate three of the four possible combinations of the core political axes: traditional, unchanging authority versus the challenge of change, and egalitarianism versus inegalitarianism. The fourth possibility—egalitarian conservatism—has appeared in various guises, but has usually become submerged within the right, including its most authoritarian forms. Current xenophobic movements claiming to represent those suffering from excessive change—for example, those involved in the UK 's EU referendum and Donald Trump's victory in the USA —are seeing an apparent resurgence of this neglected tradition. What are its implications for politics in general?     

The Coalition and the Decline of Majoritarianism in the UK

The United Kingdom has traditionally featured many aspects of the majoritarian model of democracy: its first‐past‐the‐post electoral system tends towards producing single‐party majorities, while its legislative decision rules concentrate policy‐making power in the hands of the resulting single‐party governments. However, in an unprecedented break with the UK's postwar conventions, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a coalition following the general election of 2010. In this article, we examine some of the Coalition's impacts on governing and constitutional conventions, placing them in a comparative European context. We conclude that the Coalition reflects a shift towards the less majoritarian forms of politics prevalent in continental Europe, and that some of these changes are likely to persist even after the end of the current government.     

The Prison Boom and the Decline of American Citizenship

The US imprisonment rate increased fivefold in the three decades from 1975 to 2005. Growth in the scale of criminal punishment was linked partly to a more punitive politics that repudiated the goal of rehabilitation, and partly to the collapse of economic opportunity for young unskilled men in inner cities. The growth of the penal system produced extraordinary rates of incarceration among recent cohorts of young black men with little schooling. We can understand the growth of incarceration to produce and erosion of citizenship among young black men, weakening the web of mutual obligation that defines full membership in American society.

Decline and fall of congressional news

He has written widely about the Washington press corps. This article was originally prepared as a report for the Renewing Congress Project of the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.     

The Decline of Bigotry in America

Though prejudice and discrimination exist in America, it has been steadily declining and measurably so. From our very beginnings, there has been a diversity, accretion, succession, and simultaneity of racial, religious, ethnic, and gender victims and victimizers. Fortunately, there has also been a process of meliorism, epitomized by the presidential election of a black American of mixed racial parents—Barack Hussein Obama. Regardless of their group identity, today’s generation of Americans has less victims or victimizers and has more social, political, and economic opportunities than their parents. grandparents, and predecessors had.     

新科技革命与苏联传统模式的衰亡

从 17、18世纪至今 ,人类社会经历了三次新科技革命 ,尤其是第三次科技大革命 ,改变了国力效益的标准 ,改变了富国弱国的标准 ,改变了世界竞争的内容和手段 ,对社会和经济发展提出了深刻的内在要求。而苏联传统模式与这种内在要求形成了冲突 ,导致最终衰亡 ,给我们以重要的反面教训和启示。     

后现代主义身份政治的衰颓与新民粹主义的崛起

20世纪70、80年代,资本主义进入一个相对稳定的发展时期,大规模阶级斗争相对缓和,新自由主义乘势崛起。作为新自由主义主流运动的补充,后现代主义身份政治发展起来。后现代主义身份政治从经济决定论转向文化和意识形态决定论,从大规模集体行动的逻辑转向分散的斗争。美国金融危机以来,大规模社会运动复兴,经济议题回到政治运动的中心,后现代主义身份政治的文化和自我意识革命逐步衰颓,新民粹主义乘势崛起。在聚焦经济议题和强调集体行动方面,新民粹主义和后现代主义身份政治迥然不同,但是从强调族群的文化和身份差异的角度来说,新民粹主义又把后现代主义身份政治发展到了极端。后现代主义身份政治是与金融资本的上升期相适应的,新民粹主义是与金融资本的下降期相适应的,但二者都因不理解金融资本的本性而把民众运动引向了错误的方向。只有社会主义民主运动才能赋予民众运动以正确的方向。     

Rise and Decline of Nations: Sweden

The development of the Swedish political economy is interesting in the perspective of the Mancur Olson theory about the rise and decline of nations. It is shown that the general argument of RADON is not in agreement with facts about the growth of the affluent society in Sweden between 1870 and 1970. The strong growth in the overall economic output took place in a society where a number of distributional coalitions were strongly organized. Also the special argument in RADON about the reversed consequences of broad interest organizations meets with little support. Whatever is meant by an encompassing interest organisation, what was crucial in the Swedish case was the strong position of party government and the broad participatory nature of the political process. Directly contradicting the RADON argument is the fact that the structure of distributional coalitions has in general become even more encompassing since 1970. yet the economic situation of Sweden has deteriorated considerably. The predicament of party government mest be emphasized, as the period since 1970 has witnessed a decline in the capacity of political leadership to govern the country.     

The Growth and Decline of Executive-Centered Intergovernmental Management

The idea that the president should manage intergovernmentalrelationships gained credence and became more feasible as theExecutive Office of the President developed managerial capacities.Executive-centered intergovernmental management gained considerablesupport in the Kestnbaum Commission's deliberations, developedrapidly in response to Great Society coordination problems,and culminated during the Nixon administration. This perspectiverelies on the use of hierarchical management techniques to producean orderly, rational federal system. Its decline began duringthe Carter administration and accelerated during the Reaganyears. It is doubtful that this perspective will again be influential,given the erosion of professional support for and waning presidentialinterest in comprehensive, federal intergovernmental management.     

The Decline of Federalism and the Rise of Morality-Policy Conflict in the United States

Morality policies-such as those pertaining to abortion, capitalpunishment, gambling, gay rights, pornography, and sex education—generateconflict over core values. These policies tend to be technicallysimple, potentially salient to the general public, and involvehigher than normal levels of citizen participation. They are,therefore, highly susceptible to being thrust into the activephase of policymaking when an incongruity develops between publicopinion and public policy. The reservation of authority to thestates on these issues embodied in the Tenth Amendment to theU.S. Constitution allows for closer policy-opinion congruence,therefore stabilizing morality policy politics. However, recentfederal actions on a range of morality policies have thrustthese issues onto the active political agenda of the states.     

Lockbox Government: Segregated Funding Strategies and the Decline of Governmental Flexibility

Proponents of "reinvention" assert that it will produce governments that are more agile, better able to adapt to rapidly changing conditions, and able to produce public services at much lower cost. However, attempts to make government "work better and cost less" have had limited success. Policy-makers have consequently invested their creative energy in another class of institutional innovations: segregated funding strategies, which protect agencies and programs from the impact of fiscal restraint by excluding them from normal budgeting processes. The proliferation of budget "lockboxes" may actually introduce new rigidities into the public sector and erode democratic influence in policy-making. On the other hand, there may be some circumstances in which these devices can be justified as a method of ensuring that critical long-run interests receive appropriate attention.     

发达国家共产党衰落的原因和教训

苏东剧变之后,发达国家共产党出现严重衰落迹象,面临生存危机。其原因在于,一方面,随着战后以来发达资本主义国家生产方式、阶级结构、经济政治和社会生活以及政治力量的变化,发达国家共产党原有的阶级基础和依靠力量均遭到削弱;另一方面,苏联的长期控制和影响以及发达国家共产党自身的教条僵化,导致反应滞后,未能及时应变和创新。其经验教训在于,必须根据时代变化和本国国情,走独立自主的发展道路,不断巩固和扩大党的阶级和群众基础。     

Explaining the Decline of Macro-corporatist Political Bargaining Structures in Advanced Capitalist Societies

A growing consensus among many observers of Western European politics has developed in recent years that, in certain countries, national level, consensus-based political bargaining arrangements involving representatives of organized capital, trade unions, and the state are giving way to more sectorally-based, conflictual forms of relations. These developments suggest an overall decline in the efficacy of national-level corporatist institutional structures in the liberal democracies of Western Europe. This article contends that neither of the two general theoretical approaches to the study of corporatism - the liberal model of the "neocorporatist state" (which fails to acknowledge the potential for serious system-threatening instability within corporatism) nor the Marxist model of corporatist "political structures" (which incorrectly predicts labor-generated corporatist instability due to inevitable rank-and-file discontent with the policy outputs of corporatist forms) - can account for this current wave of macro-corporatist instability and decline. In response to this theoretical impasse, this article develops a capitalist-centered explanation for the declining significance of corporatist forms. Business interests, it is maintained, may no longer be viewing corporatist arrangements as beneficial due to certain domestic structural economic changes and to transformations in the global capitalist system.