The Politics of Fiscal Austerity: Implications for the United States

As austerity becomes the new normal for advanced nations, questions are raised about whether nations can make the hard choices necessary to bring about a sustainable fiscal future. The political defeat experienced by so many European governments undertaking fiscal consolidations points to the vulnerabilities that leaders will face. This article shows that how some Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations have survived the daunting politics of fiscal consolidation by timing actions for periods of economic recovery and political honeymoons following elections and by pursuing deficit reduction strategies that emphasize broad sweeping changes yielding high potential for dramatic economic gains over the longer term. Unlike many European nations today, the seemingly endless appetite for US treasuries by worldwide markets give the United States the luxury of choosing to begin deficit reduction only when the economy strengthens. However, the absence of market pressure also reduces the sense of urgency, consigning national leaders to create internal crises such as the 2012 “fiscal cliff” to force their own hand. While the polarized politics characterizing our party system does not bode well for concerted fiscal action, divided government carries the potential for spreading political risks and promoting more sustainable fiscal outcomes, as it has in our recent history and in other nations as well.     

The Politics of Contemporary Black Conservatism in the United States

At first sight, the themes associated with contemporary black conservatism appear to replicate the concerns of the American right more generally. However, although there are black conservative intellectuals and activists who draw on US constitutional tradition and neo-classical economics, others derive their politics from notions of racial solidarity. This form of black conservatism rests on particular constructions of black masculinity, and invokes images of a past age when black communities were both intact and stable. It regards integrationism with suspicion and hostility. However, it also offers a relatively optimistic vision of future developments that can be contrasted with the more constrained ambitions which characterise 'mainstream' American conservatism today.     

The Institutional Basis of Secessionist Politics: Federalism and Secession in the United States

According to the literature on secession, the most importantdeterminant of secessionist sentiment is a high level of grievanceexperienced by the would-be secessionist group. However, therationale behind using secession (as opposed to another strategy)as a grievance-amelioration strategy remains almost completelyunexplained. This article contends that the institutional settingin which political conflict and grievance are experienced playsa crucial role in whether secession is conceived of as a viableoption. This contention is tested by examining the institutionalenvironment of federalism and the role it played in secessionin the United States in 1860 and 1861. The United States wasuniquely vulnerable to secessionist pressures—as are allfederal states, potentially—because of institutional structuresthat gave constituent states a high level of institutional authorityand capacity; this, in turn, contributed to a discourse of states'rights that included the contested right to secede.     

Financial Regulation in the United States: Lessons from History

History is institutional memory writ large. One looks at economic history to see what problems recur, what causes them to recur, what solutions have worked best in the past, and which interventions have made the problems worse. The authors argue that a moderately complex interaction between the workings of the financial sector, the way in which the political system is organized, and the administration of regulation makes perfect regulation of the financial sector extremely unlikely. Many of these problems arise as a result of conflicting incentives for those participating in and regulating the financial field. The authors find that some proposed solutions have improved matters but have costs, and that some proposed solutions have actually worsened problems in the financial sector.

Peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1837

     

Conjoint Federalism and Environmental Regulation in the United States

Many of the environmental laws enacted by Congress employ adistinctive blend of national and state authority. In theseconjoint arrangements, state authority is not totally preempted,but it is subordinated to national authority if states wishto participate in environmental regulation. Under normal circumstances,national and state authority are deployed concurrently in pursuitof environmental policy objectives. Conjoint arrangements aremuch more controlling of state action than the stimulative andfacilitative approach to intergovernmental program implementationcommonly associated with cooperative federalism. Despite nationalprimacy, in the bargaining that marks implementation processes,state officials may enjoy considerable influence. Although administrativelycumbersome and criticized from a variety of perspectives, conjointarrangements are not the major reasons for a slow rate of improvementin environmental quality. When the various options are considered,there are reasons to conclude that conjoint arrangements arethe most realistic means for attacking environmental problems,although questions remain about the appropriate balance of nationaland state authority in them.     

The Formation of National Party Systems in Europe: A Comparative-Historical Analysis

Using a large wealth of newly collected and unexplored data on single constituencies in 17 European countries, this comparative and long-term analysis describes the territoriality of electoral participation and vote for political parties, as well as their evolution since the mid- nineteenth century until the present day from highly territorialized politics to nationwide functional alignments. The article provides an empirical analysis through time, across countries and between party families. Through the inclusion of all the most important social and political cleavages (class, state–church, rural–urban, ethno-linguistic, and religious) the analysis assesses the homogenizing impact of the left–right dimension that emerged from the National and Industrial Revolutions, and the resistance of pre-industrial cultural and centre–periphery factors to national integration.     

The Limits of Regulation: Indirect Party Access to State Resources in Australia and the United Kingdom

The way in which political parties use state resources indirectly (e.g., parliamentary expenses) receives substantial attention in public debate, particularly when surrounded by perceptions of misuse. However, scholarly studies of resources indirectly available to parties through their functions in the state, how they are used and regulated, are rare. This article presents an analytical framework that identifies and categorizes the range of indirect resources linked to parties' institutional roles. It locates these resources within a four‐fold matrix of regulation, distinguishing regimes that vary in their detail and whether compliance is externally monitored. Undertaking comparative case studies of parliamentary resource use in the United Kingdom and Australia, we argue that the blurring of party‐political and parliamentary roles can impede the effectiveness of regulatory regimes that democracies adopt, regardless of detail and external enforcement. These findings have important implications for regulatory reforms that seek to constrain parties' behavior to depoliticize democratic governance.     

Politics and personal factors in retirement from the United States Supreme Court

A vacancy to be filled on the Supreme Court is a relatively rare event; continuity of service is the norm. In this paper I determine the circumstances under which justices decide to retire and, by extension, why they remain on the bench. Using a discrete-time method I find that political considerations do not appear to matter. Justices are more likely to retire when they are physically infirm and have qualified for pension benefits. But the more justices participate in the Court's activity, as evidenced by the number of opinions or dissents they write, the less likely they are to leave voluntarily.     

The Politics of Social Learning: Finance,Institutions, and Pension Reform in the United States and Canada

Because the traditional concept of social learning has faced significant criticism in recent years, more analytical work is required to back the claim that the lessons drawn from existing institutional legacies can truly impact policy outcomes. Grounded in the historical institutionalist literature, this article formulates an amended concept of social learning through the analysis of the relationship between finance, social learning, and institutional legacies in the 1990s debate over the reform of earnings‐related pension schemes in the United States and Canada. The article shows how social learning related to specific ideological assumptions and policy legacies in the public and the private sectors has affected policymaking processes. At the theoretical level, this contribution stresses the political construction of learning processes, which is distinct from the technocratic model featured in the traditional literature on social learning. This article also distinguishes between high‐ and low‐profile social learning while emphasizing the impact of private policy legacies on learning processes.     

Unions in Restructured States: Laborism in Australia and Economic Liberalism in the United Kingdom

There have been major reforms in the public sector in both Australia and the United Kingdom from the 1980s onwards. In each case, governments restructured their state sectors. These initiatives brought about not only widely acknowledged changes in organisation but also changes in the labour process and class relations as well as differing prospects for state sector trade unions.