European elections: Sweden

A preliminary count of the votes of the election on 17 September 1979 gave the Social Democrats and Communists a majority in the unicameral Riksdag. But with the counting of postal votes (especially those from abroad) it soon became apparent that the three non‐Socialist parties in the Riksdag—the so‐called ‘bourgeois’ parties— would maintain their hairsbreadth parliamentary majority. The final count tipped the balance, and the bourgeois parties won a majority of a single seat (compared with one of eleven in the previous parliament). The electoral system is designed to reflect an exact proportionality of representation for parties whose support exceeds four per cent of the total vote. The turnout of around 91 per cent was slightly lower than in 1976, but remained at the high level characteristic of the 1970s.     

Bridging the enduring gender gap in political interest in Europe: The relevance of promoting gender equality

Notwithstanding the improvement in gender equality in political power and resources in European democracies, this study shows that, on average, declared interest in politics is 16 per cent lower for women than for men in Europe. This gap remains even after controlling for differences in men's and women's educational attainment, material and cognitive resources. Drawing on the newly developed European Institute for Gender Equality's (EIGE) Gender Equality Index (GEI) and on the European Social Survey (ESS) fifth wave, we show that promoting gender equality contributes towards narrowing the magnitude of the differences in political interest between men and women. However, this effect appears to be conditioned by the age of citizens. More specifically, findings show that in Europe gender‐friendly policies contribute to bridging the gender gap in political engagement only during adulthood, suggesting that childhood socialisation is more strongly affected by traditional family values than by policies promoting gender equality. In contrast, feminising social citizenship does make a difference by reducing the situational disadvantages traditionally faced by women within the family and in society for middle‐aged people and older.     

Party over Policy? Scottish Nationalism and the Politics of Independence

The Scottish National Party (SNP) won control of Scotland's devolved government in the 2007 election yet opinion polls show no majority for its objective of independence in Europe. While the party is adept at exploiting short‐term political opportunity structures in the wider British context, as well as appealing to the ‘opinion electorate’, it appears less successful at persuading a majority of Scottish voters to agree with its core ideology. Helpful parallels can be drawn between 2007 and the last time the party polled over 30 per cent of the popular vote in Scotland at the 1974 (October) British General Election—then, as now, the Scottish voter appears to be willing to distinguish between party and policy.     

Time for a change: The French elections of 1981 : II. The National Assembly elections

The Socialist Mitterrand won the French presidency by 52 per cent to the conservative Giscard's 48 per cent. To exercise real power, Mitterrand immediately dissolved the conservative Assembly, elected in 1978. The bonus of legitimacy enjoyed by the newly elected President, together with the constitutional arrangements which make effective, stable government dependent on an Assembly majority sympathetic to the President and the decline of the Communist party and the divisions within the Right all amplified Mittrrand's victory in the Assembly elections, won by the Left with 55 per cent to the Right's 44 per cent on the decisive ballot. With 38 per cent of the vote on the first ballot, the Socialists emerged with 268 seats after the second. That landslide (for France) was won on a low poll, thanks to the abstention and indiscipline of conservative and Communist supporters. It gives the Socialists a majority in the Assembly, only the second time in the Fifth Republic that a single party has had a majority by itself.     

Equal Employment Policy in France: Symbolic Support and a Mixed Record

This article analyzes the policy framework for and the implementation of equal employment policy in France. After presenting the equal employment policy framework and the role of state feminist women's policy offices in its development, the author discusses the limited support for positive action strategies among French firms and unions. The implementation of equal employment policy has had a mixed record, often limited to symbolic gestures rather than concrete change. Contributing to this symbolic dynamic are the effects of reconciliation policy and the impact of the development of part‐time work on women employment. The analysis argues that reconciliation policy has not for its part always privileged an egalitarian set of measures that facilitates the sharing of family and domestic work between men and women. The article asserts that the development of part‐time work has contradicted equal employment policy efforts and has effectively contributed to maintaining women's positions in low‐paying and marginal jobs. The article concludes that despite an apparently comprehensive policy framework for equal employment policy in France, the situation of women workers appears to be followin two tracks: a top‐tier track of qualified, relatively well‐paid women who are able to have a career and to reconcile family and work, and a lower‐tier track of less‐skilled, lower‐paid women workers who continue to be marginalized on the labor market.     

Questions of Sovereignty: Redefining Politics in Scotland?

The issue of sovereignty has never been resolved in Scotland. The 1998 Scotland Act, creating the Scottish Parliament affirmed that the Westminster Parliament is sovereign, but this is disputed. In practice, the issue was left largely in abeyance as sovereignty was seen as an outdated concept. The Scottish independence referendum of 2014 and the UK Brexit referendum of 2016 both brought back the question of sovereignty in stark terms. Analysis of data from the British Election Study of 2019 with regard to (a) the right of Scottish self‐determination, and (b) the right of a UK‐wide majority to take Scotland out of the EU, allows us to identify ‘sovereigntists’ and ‘unionists’. Sovereigntists, on both dimensions, now constitute a majority. A smaller group of unionists reject both positions. There remains a group of ‘semi‐sovereigntists’ who accept Scottish self‐determination, but also that the UK as a whole should decide on Brexit. Controlling for the social and political factors, Scots are increasingly polarised around issues of sovereignty, which have become central to contemporary Scottish politics.     

Executive agencies in Tanzania: liberalization and Third World debt

The purchase of an expensive, debt‐financed aircraft tracking system by one of Tanzania's newly created executive agencies suggests that recent bureaucratic restructuring and liberalization in Tanzania could possibly undermine the good use of international debt management schemes for poverty alleviation. Moreover, it raises a question about the uses (and misuses), in countries where governance capacities are weak, of new public management models of organization. This article explores Tanzania's donor‐funded executive agency programme, as one part of its wider civil service reforms. Drawing on empirical research, it examines the power structures and interdependencies between Ministers, departments and NPM style semi‐autonomous agencies and the potential for rent‐seeking behaviour and perverse outcomes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time for a change: The French elections of 1981: I. The presidency

The French presidential election of 1981 saw a collapse of the Communist vote to 15 per cent (its 1936 score) on the first ballot and partly thanks to that decline, the election of the Socialist candidate, François Mitterrand, on the second round. President Giscard lost support because of economic difficulties and because he was unable to sustain the cohesion of his own coalition. The Left thus won the presidency for the first time in the Fifth Republic; but in order to rule effectively, the chief of state needs a majority in the National Assembly. Mitterrand thus dissolved the Assembly and called elections, which the Socialists won, again for the first time since 1958.     

Portugal's Quota-Parity Law: An Analysis of its Adoption

In August 2006, Portugal approved a new quota law, called the parity law. According to this, all candidate lists presented for local, parliamentary, and European elections must guarantee a minimum representation of 33 per cent for each sex. This article analyses the proximate causes that led to the adoption of gender quotas by the Portuguese Parliament. The simple answer is that the law's passage was a direct consequence of a draft piece of legislation presented by the Socialist Party (PS), which enjoyed a majority. However, the reasons that led the PS to push through a quota law remain unclear. Using open-ended interviews with key women deputies from all the main Portuguese political parties, and national public opinion data, among other sources, the role of four actors/factors that were involved in the law's adoption are critically examined: notably, civil society actors, state actors, international and transnational actors, and the Portuguese political context.     

Explaining variation in sub‐state regional identities in Western Europe

While national identities emerged as the dominant source of territorial identification during the twentieth century, sub‐state regional identities are becoming increasingly important in some Western European regions. However, this is not a uniform development. In some regions, nearly half of respondents in Eurobarometer surveys claim a stronger attachment to the region than to the state. In others, less than 4 per cent are primarily attached to their region. This article examines the extent to which these differences are explained by the characteristics of the regions themselves. What, if anything, do regions that mobilise public identity have in common? Developing a model of regional identities, the study examines cultural, geographic, economic and political factors that vary across different regions in Western Europe. The study finds that regional identities tend to be stronger in regions where a regional language is spoken and which do not border the state capital, signalling a cultural and a centre/periphery dimension to regional identity formation. However, there is potentially a more strategic aspect to identification, as regional identities are likely to be stronger in economically developed regions and in regions with highly distinctive voting behaviour.     

Scotland Out the Union? The Rise and Rise of the Nationalist Agenda

The election of the Scottish National party as a majority government in 2011 is as challenging to the British state as it was unexpected. While explanations for SNP success focused on Labour's faulty campaign and poor leadership, the last half‐century has seen the rise and rise of the nationalist agenda in Scotland. Scotland's politics are now more different from England's than at any time since the 1950s. The Scottish parliament is the effect of that change rather than its cause, while party competition between Labour and the SNP north of the border has shifted political gravity centre‐left in contrast with England. It is not inevitable, however, that Scots would vote for Independence in a referendum. Nevertheless, Scotland is a more semi‐detached country than at any point in the history of the Union, and the future of the British state, at least in its present form, cannot be taken for granted.     

Pathways to power: Women's representation in the 2014 European Parliament elections

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections produced a record proportion of women MEPs overall (37 per cent). Yet, these results vary widely across countries and parties. This article aims to explain these variations, evaluating not only who the elected representatives of the 8^th EP are, but also how they got there. Are the paths to the EP the same for women and men? Are there gender differences in terms of MEPs’ political experience? A unique dataset listing more than 700 elected MEPs and their background, party and country characteristics is used to empirically examine who makes it to the EP and through which route. The results of the analysis suggest no significant gender differences in the pathways to the EP. Yet, parties matter: more women were elected to the 8^th EP from left‐wing than from right‐wing or ‘new’ parties, and both men and (especially) women representing right‐wing parties tend to be politically more experienced than their fellow MEPs from other types of parties. Furthermore, it is found that men are more likely than women to be promoted straight from party office to the EP, suggesting that some pathways to the EP are less open to women than others.     

Much ado about money and how to spend it! Analysing 40 years of annulment cases against the European Union Commission

This article analyses four decades of annulment cases against the European Commission brought before the European Court of Justice by dissatisfied Member States. Annulment cases are interpreted as incidents of a struggle between Member State governments and the Commission about policy decisions. Studying annulment cases for the first time in comparative perspective, three important patterns of variation are identified: with respect to the evolution of annulment cases over time, as regards the Member States as plaintiffs and in view of policy fields. Subsequently the data are interpreted on the basis of structure, agency and policy field specific explanatory mechanisms. Leaving the aggregate level, the two policy areas that account for more than 80 per cent of annulments are analysed: EU agriculture and competition policy. In the vast majority of cases, the dominant rationale behind annulments is not national objections to the supranational exercise of delegated powers per se or in specific policies (as most structural theories would expect) but to the way the Commission uses these competences to restrict how national governments may allocate European or national funding.     

论我国公共权力的委托属性与建设服务型政府

中共十七大报告首次明确我国行政管理体制改革的目标是建设服务型政府。如何从管治型为主向服务型为主的政府转变，首先要弄清我国政府管理的经济、政治、文化和社会事务公共权力的来源及特征等属性，倡导全心全意为人民服务的价值理念，正确运用人民赋予的权力，动员人民群众广泛参与，代表最广大人民群众的根本利益，忠实地为人民办实事，做马克思所倡导的“社会的负责的公仆”。     

Gasoline prices and motor vehicle fatalities

Fatal motor vehicle crashes per capita remained relatively stable over the 1990s, in spite of new traffic safety laws and vehicle innovations. One explanation for this stability is that the price of gasoline declined, which resulted in more vehicle miles traveled and potentially more fatalities. By using 1983–2000 monthly gasoline price and fatality panel data and fixed effects specifications, this study exploits within‐state variation over time in gasoline prices and found that a 10‐cent decrease in gasoline prices increased motor vehicle fatalities by 2.3 percent over a 2‐year period. The effect on higher‐risk younger adults is more than twice as large. The secular decline in real gasoline prices over the 1990s may partially explain why motor vehicle fatalities per capita have not decreased even with the adoption of more stringent state policies. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Innovation,voice, and hierarchy in the public sector: Evidence from Ghana's civil service

Research on innovation in government often focuses on ideas introduced by senior leaders or managers, but ideas from public servants themselves are an important and underexplored channel for improving performance in government bureaucracies. We provide new evidence on the potential for bottom‐up work process innovation, using data from 744 individual and team innovation plans and 51 qualitative interviews in Ghana's civil service. In contrast to common negative stereotypes of developing country bureaucrats, most officials do have meaningful ideas for improving performance. However, the overwhelming constraint to voicing these ideas is hostility by supervisors to new ideas from their subordinates. We argue that this anecdotally common yet understudied behavior is consistent with theories of psychological attachment to hierarchy rather than alternative theories rooted in material, structural, or cultural resistance to employee voice and innovation. We discuss implications for bottom‐up work process innovation in government and interventions to promote it.     

Red Lines and Compromises: Mapping Underlying Complexities of Brexit Preferences

The political discourse is characterised by two opposing ideals of hard and soft Brexit. In this article, we present evidence of attitudinal types that map neatly onto these archetypal views. The hard Brexit view is defined by issues that eurosceptics prioritise, most prominently sovereignty. By contrast, europhiles prioritise cooperation with Europe in terms of scientific collaboration and market access. However, attitudinal types are not either/or in the minds of the British public, and many prioritise all or none of the issues. Further, the two opposing positions together account for 37 per cent of the public's view. That is, just over one‐third differentiate between the salient issues in ways congruent with political ideals. National identity plays a particular role in the sociodemographic profiles of these attitude types. Older people have a strong stance in any direction (sovereignty, cooperation, or both), but national identity is linked to differentiated positions (sovereignty only or cooperation only).     

Water policy and environmental sustainability: the case of post‐colonial Namibia

In semi‐arid countries, particularly in Africa, governments have evolved water policies oriented toward ‘techno‐giantist,’ grand‐scale schemes that have generally accelerated the depletion of national water tables. In Namibia, such a techno‐giantist water management strategy was utilized to reinforce the privileges of white minority farmers prior to independence, and was subsequently expanded to provide modern water facilities to the black African majority in the post‐independence period. The government has pursued not only the construction of a massive new system of pipelines and boreholes, but also the development of giant dam‐building and river canal schemes that are likely to result in watershed depletion over the long term. This reflects state leaders' belief in the imagery of political potency projected by the government's ability to build macro‐scale water systems. However, a water supply approach focused on more micro‐level extraction techniques through which aquifer recharge is prioritized is more likely to assure both local‐level water access and water table sustainability. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inclusiveness of Jordanian women in local decision‐making process: Opportunities and threats

Increasing Jordanian women participation in decision‐making process is the most debated topic in local administration over the world, including Jordan. The objective of this study was to determine opportunities and challenges that influence the inclusiveness of Jordanian women in local decision‐making bodies as perceived by local administrative personnel working in local administration. Primary data collected from (120) participants selected randomly from local bodies in Jordan analyzed by SPSS. The analysis revealed a statistically significant correlation between inclusiveness of Jordanian women in local decision‐making bodies and opportunities for increasing their advancement into decision‐making positions at (α ≤ 0.05) except affirmative action variable was not statistically significant (α ≤ 0.05). The analysis also revealed a statistically significant correlation between inclusiveness of Jordanian women in local decision‐making bodies and threats for blocking their access to decision‐making positions at (α ≤ 0.05). The recommendations of this study are that further analyses are required within this field. This might be so relevant to other populations in Arab countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.     

Transforming top‐down agricultural extension to a participatory system: a study of costs and prospective benefits in Egypt

This article challenges some previous assessments of agricultural extension relying on simple measures of costs per farmer trained. Taking the case of Egypt, five pilot projects that aim to transform the existing agricultural extension system to a participatory system are analysed as regards their cost‐effectiveness and prospective cost–benefits. It is shown that the intensity and likely impact of participatory approaches among the different projects vary. Hence, it is insufficient to judge extension programmes by their cost‐effectiveness alone. In the case of cotton, for example, the costs per farmer trained are considerably lower than in horticultural crops but there are large differences in prospective benefits which would make investment in participatory extension in the latter more promising. The article calls for a more careful analysis of the costs of extension programmes in agricultural development and identifies four major cost categories, namely base costs, start‐up costs, recurrent and farmers' costs. The article also submits that in the context of the debate on privatization of agricultural extension there is a role to be played for the public sector in agriculture. The success of participatory approaches to extension will depend on the quality of services provided in connection with farmer training programmes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.