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.     

The Decline of Citizenship in an Era of Globalization

This article seeks to identify the linkages between traditional conceptions of citizenship based on affiliation with a territorial state and the rise of global market forces. The basic argument set forth is that the erosion of state autonomy and the emergence of arenas of decision and power beyond the control of the state have been weakening traditional bonds of identity between individuals and the state. This pattern is particularly pronounced in the liberal democratic states of the West, which were the main settings within which citizenship in its modern forms emerged. The latter parts of the article consider the prospects for new forms of political identity that are reshaping the meaning of citizenship, creating multiple loyalties and superseding the monolithic conception of citizenship associated with a Westphalian system of world public order. It is, as yet, too soon to depict the contours of post-Westphalian citizenship, but its essence will be shaped by an allegiance to shared values and to the experience of community, a dynamic that will increasingly diminish the reductive association of the citizen exclusively with a particular sovereign state.     

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 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.     

美国一位神教的概念解析

文章参照《大不列颠百科全书》和《美国宗教和政治百科全书》对一位神教的界定,结合相关的研究成果,运用比较研究的方法对美国一位神教的概念进行全面客观地解析,加深了对美国一位神教的理解,丰富了对美国多元文化的认识。     

The First Machiavellian Moment in America

Standard interpretations of early American political thought and of the classical‐republican tradition fit uneasily with an overlooked episode in the history of ideas: the reception of Machiavelli in seventeenth‐century New England. Some puritans there not only found ways to justify bad means for good ends but also adopted a deeper, properly political Machiavellism, upholding the priority of popular judgment over elite wisdom and of institutionalized accountability over discretionary political authority. Unlike the eighteenth‐century republicanism that has preoccupied modern scholarship, the theory of radical democracy associated with the first Machiavellian moment in America puts fundamental institutional reform and accountability with teeth on the agenda of democratic theory.     

The United States of America

European Journal of Political Research -