Two-tiered political entrepreneurship and the congressional committee system

Theories of political entrepreneurship usually focus on the construction of coalitions necessary to change policy. We argue that political entrepreneurs who are unable to secure favored policies may redirect their efforts to a “higher tier,” attempting to change the rules of the game to enable the exploitation of future political profit opportunities. We present a taxonomy of three levels of political rules—pre-constitutional, constitutional, and post-constitutional—and identify the salient characteristics of institutional entrepreneurship that targets rules at each level. The development of the congressional committee system is explored as a case study in entrepreneurship over post-constitutional rules.     

The verdict in the polls: how government stability is affected by popular support

The idea that the stability of governments is affected by how they are performing in the polls is both intuitive and popular in the literature. When support is low the government might be inclined to replace parties or the prime minister in order to regain support, thus forming a replacement government. Alternatively, a government doing well in the polls might opportunistically try to schedule an early election to capitalise on its favourable prospects. But despite the popularity of the idea, it has thus far not been tested empirically whether government stability is in fact influenced by popular support. This article aims to address this lacuna. Using a relatively new dataset with more than 12,000 unique polls, and recently developed Bayesian models for pooling the polls, it is here shown that government stability is in fact impacted by popular support. Governments display clear signs of electoral opportunism when they are polling well and, conversely, dissolve the government, without calling an election, when polling is bad. The results are strongest when there are few parties in the government, since agreement on the timing for a discretionary termination is easier when fewer players need to agree.     

The 1990 Budget Package: Redefining the Debate

The debate of budgeting issues in the 1980s culminated in a dramatic change in 1990—the passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. The negotiations leading to this agreement considered the status of the deficit and the philosophical shift from "no new taxes" to "fair taxes." It led to changes in direct spending, enforcement of budget targets, timing of the budget, sequesters usage, tax increases, and entitlement reforms.     

Academic freedom 1979: The West German case

Abstract

Given the continued significance of ideology as a social and political phenomenon, political science must consider the important contributions made to ideology theory made over the last thirty years by Louis Althusser. In this essay, I offer a critical exegesis of Althusser's views, focusing on the concept of reading, on the various conceptions of ideology held by Althusser, on the distinction Althusser made between ideology and science, and on his theory of the subject. This study of his thought makes three claims: (1) that Althusser's views, billed as a radical break with bourgeois thought, can be assimilated easily into social scientific understandings about ideology; (2) that Althusser's theory has internal difficulties rooted in the tension between positive and negative conceptions of ideology; and, (3) that Althusser left unanswered the key question of the means to ideological liberation.     

司法现代化标准下的检察委员会制度改革

检察委员会制度是中国特色检察制度的主要组成部分,也是我国检察改革的一项重要内容,但由于体制缺陷或者技术原因而阻碍了功能发挥。本文探讨检察委员会的改革,更多地是在兼顾司法制度机理的自身逻辑的同时,将司法现代化的标准作为论证检察委员会改革的场域,从而为具体司法制度的设计提供"相对合理"的参照坐标。     

The many faces of EU committee governance

Committees linking national administrations and the EU level play a crucial role at all stages of the EU policy process. The literature tends to portray this group system as a coherent mass, characterised by expert-oriented ‘deliberative supranationalism’, a term developed through studies of comitology (implementation) committees. This article builds on survey data of 218 national officials in 14 member states who have attended EU committee meetings. These groups exhibit important common features: expert knowledge rather than country size plays a pivotal role in the decision making process; across types of committee, participants evoke multiple allegiances and identities. In spite of loyalty to national institutions, there is also a sense of belonging to the committees as such, though with significant variation among types of committee. Council and comitology groups are strongly intergovernmental, while Commission committees seem more multi-faceted. The primary aim here is to give an empirical account, but the main observations are interpreted from an institutional and organisational perspective.     

“被回避”的回避制度?——试以李庄一案探析我国刑事诉讼回避制度之缺陷

沸沸扬扬的李庄案最终于2010年2月9日尘埃落定。自2009年12月12日重庆警方从北京将李庄押回重庆之日起,该案即获得各界广泛关注。围绕着李庄是否有罪,法庭内外正反两方面的观点交锋即从未停止过。然而,笔者并不想从实体角度对该案予以探讨,仅对李庄案诉讼活动中对于回避制度的实践过程加以探析,以期能对日后司法制度之完善做出贡献。     

The committee outlier debate: A review and a reexamination of some of the evidence

An ongoing and controversial topic of congressional scholars is the question “Are committees ‘preference outliers’ vis-a-vis their parent chamber?” Despite numerous research efforts showing isolated cases of outlying committees, little evidence shows a systematic tendency for committees to be unrepresentative of their legislature. A paper which comes close to being an exception is Weingast and Marshall's (1988) analysis of “the industrial organization of Congress,” which reports evidence of many and very strongly outlying committees. However, the apparently strong evidence is due more to the authors' incorrectly executed methods than to a general tendency for committees to be outliers. In this note I review the state of the committee-outlier debate and also show that Weingast and Marshall's empirical results cannot be replicated. I accordingly provide the correct results once their statistical tests are properly executed.     

Whitehall and the Refugees: The 1930s and the 1990s

Abstract

In this paper, originally presented on the occasion of the launch of her book concerning British immigration policy towards Jewish refugees from 1933 to 1948, London compares that past with present British immigration policy and attitudes towards it. She argues, above all, that the same worry about the long-term effects of immigration—that is, that refugees would settle in the country and not return home or move on—that very much influenced the tendency to inhibit aid to Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, is still very much alive today. While the legal situation of refugees and the kinds of persecution from which they seek refuge are different in the two periods in question, the 1930s and the 1990s—there are now, for instance, international conventions on refugees to which Britain is a signatory—British immigration policies of both periods are marked by many of the same priorities and many of the same attitudes towards and perceptions of refugees. In closing, she sounds a warning that an understanding of the past, crucial as it is, should not be mistakenly used to justify a lack of humanity in the present.     

The Bureaucratic Politics of Welfare-State Crisis: Sweden in the 1990s

This article suggests that key bureaucrats play a decisive role in times of welfare crisis. It argues that key bureaucrats, through their advice, define both the type of welfare crisis and the range of possible solutions, which have at least two important consequences: First, it broadens the distribution of welfare cuts, as key bureaucrats—contrary to politicians—have no interests in targeting special voter groups. Second, it enables political compromises, as both the government and the opposition trust the key bureaucrats' expertise. These suggestions are tested empirically in a case study of Sweden in the 1990s. It shows that key bureaucrats did indeed influence both the distribution of the cuts and enabled a compromise between the center-right government and the Social Democratic opposition.     

Dynamics and dilemma: The mainland and Taiwan in the 1990s

This paper examines the political and strategic dimensions of the cross-strait relations that are affected by the recent internal and external dynamics of both sides of the Taiwan Strait. It argues that the main factors behind this recent tension are the lack of political trust, absence of political contact, and a growing gap of perceptions at the high political level on both sides over each other’s intentions, policies and rhetoric. Economics, though it can influence politics considerably, is by no means a supplement to political interactions between the two sides. Some policy implications are discussed at the end of the paper.     

Equal employment opportunity across states: The EEOC 1979–1989

This study uses unpublished EEOC data from 1979–89 to concentrate on how dwindling resources and policy changes advocated by the EEOC chairs regarding the time and intensity devoted to anti-discrimination cases may have yielded regional variation in discrimination outcomes. We arrive at two major conclusions. First, evidence here suggests that the EEOC counteracted potential regional resistance against anti-discrimination laws. Second, we argue that the seeming inefficiency of the EEOC during Thomas' first years as EEOC chair appears to have occurred because he inherited a large pool of low-merit cases.