Policy horizons in West European parliamentary systems

Abstract This paper investigates the hypothesis that coalition behaviour in West European parliamentary systems is conditioned by the existence of 'policy horizons' that delimit the extent to which parties can compromise on policy positions in order to participate in government. The first part of the paper demonstrates that policy horizons are implied by certain conceptions of party utility and that their existence would entail important constraints on the coalition game; in particular, they would produce equilibrium outcomes in some situations where voting cycles would normally be expected and they would tend to confine possible outcomes to central locations in the policy space in the absence of equilibria. The paper then develops a method of estimating policy horizons empirically in order to show that they account to a substantial extent for both the size and party composition of governing coalitions in these systems.     

Measuring portfolio salience in Eastern European parliamentary democracies

Abstract.  This article presents the results of an expert survey of 14 Eastern European countries on the subject of portfolio salience. Respondents provided ratings of the relative value of all ministerial portfolios in these countries over the years 1990–2002. The ratings are unique in the study of Eastern Europe and appear to possess the characteristics of comprehensiveness and reliability. Comparing the results with a similar survey of Western Europe indicates that individual portfolios are rated nearly identically in both regions. Some significant differences, however, emerge when we look separately at more advanced and less advanced Eastern European countries. Various suggestions are made for how scholars can use these new data in future work.     

Political participation and parliamentary careers: Women's quotas in West Germany

Drawing on a survey of women candidates and parliamentary handbooks, this article examines the effects of women's quotas in West German political parties. Since the mid‐1980s, the number of women members in Land parliaments and in the Bundestag increased sharply, in particular for the SPD and Greens. In the CDU and SPD, women require a track‐record of office‐holding before their nomination, while the party organisation carries little weight in FDP and Greens. CDU and FDP women tend to link political success to personality while women in the SPD and Greens look for an end to a male‐dominated party culture. The focus on women appears to favour the academically qualified, especially in the Greens and in the SPD.     

The missing piece: Measuring portfolio salience in Western European parliamentary democracies

Abstract.  Although much has been discovered concerning the resources and preferences that parties take into the coalition formation game in Western European parliamentary democracies, we know a good deal less about the payoffs they receive. Portfolios constitute an important payoff, not just because they provide access to patronage, but because influence over policy decisions tends to go with control over the key government portfolios. It is easy to discover which and how many portfolios each party holds in any government, but what is missing is accurate measurement of the value or salience of these portfolios. Some attempts have been made to measure portfolio salience, but they have lacked one or more of the following properties: cross-national scope, country-specific measurement, coverage of the full set of postwar portfolios, measurement by multiple experts and measurement at the interval level. In this article, we present a new data contribution: a set of portfolio salience scores that possesses all of these properties for 14 Western European countries derived from an expert survey. We demonstrate the comprehensiveness and reliability of the ratings, and undertake some preliminary analyses that show what the ratings reveal about parliamentary government in Western Europe.     

The search for the centre: Pivot parties in West European party systems

The central question is whether or not in multiparty systems the so‐called parties of the ‘centre’ can be defined and observed in isolation. We start from the assumption that party‐life in the centre‐space of a political system has distinctive features. Centre parties must therefore be conceptualised and analysed as phenomena sui generis and do not belong to either the left‐wing or the right‐wing of a party system. The second assumption is that every party in a parliamentary democracy is a vote seeking and policy guided actor. This means that a centre party depends on its capacity to compete with both ‘wings’ of a party system whilst occupying the centre‐space. It is then capable of becoming the ‘pivot’ of the system: its ‘centrality’ and ‘dominance’ represent ideological distinctiveness and electoral/legislative weight. The cross‐national analysis demonstrates that only a few parties are genuine pivot parties. The paper concludes with a discussion about the issue whether or not the existence of a pivot party is a blessing in disguise for the working of a democracy.     

The direct PM election and the institutional presidentialisation of parliamentary systems

The direct PM election model features as an ‘empty cell’ in typologies of political regimes. A more fine grained analysis of the model shows that it depends on the choices made on three institutional parameters (object of the election, electoral system, legislative/executive relationship) whether it constitutes a distinct regime type. A comparison of nine examples confirms that the label of a direct PM election covers a wide array of institutional designs. A direct PM election may involve a full-fledged presidentialisation, but it may also imply a marginal adaptation of the parliamentary system. The model can only be considered as an intermediate regime type when it combines the exclusive electoral origin of the executive with a parliamentary legislative/executive relationship.     

Workforce Policy in the European Sector

Recently, a number of new forecasts have been published pointing out the considerable demographic crisis in the NASA workforce. Although a few years ago there were signs that the problem of an ageing workforce in United States would be less severe than in Europe, we cannot ignore the effects of new developments in the European space sector. Indeed, a number of mergers and a slightly regressive space turnover took place in Europe, and the effects of this on the workforce population have not been re-evaluated.

For this study, a questionnaire was developed to investigate this effect, with a major emphasis on the future requirements of the European space sector's future workforce, in particular the desired hard and soft skills, and the current prevalence of those skills. This questionnaire was distributed amongst human resources departments of space organizations in Europe with help of the European Association for International Space Year (EURISY) network. Preliminary data on planned recruitment and present demographic distribution were collected, and these are presented herein.     

Constituency campaigning in parliamentary systems with preferential voting: Is there a paradox?

This paper sets out to show whether constituency campaign effects exist, particularly in the context of a preferential electoral system such as Australia's. Data from the 1993 Australian Election Study suggest that, despite the best efforts of the candidates, local campaigning has a very limited impact on the vote. The paper considers a range of possible explanations for this limited impact: displacement, MPs' perceptions of their role, sources of campaign information, the importance of party labels in Australia, party discipline. It concludes with an explanation for the apparent paradox of why candidates bother campaigning when it does not make a difference to their vote.     

The parliamentary elite in transition

Abstract Only two years after the critical elections of 27 March 1994, the Italian parliamentary election of 1996 marks another important step in the transformation of the political class. The extent of turnover is declining, and the renewal of the parliamentary elite shows some signs of stabilization. This article inquires into the differences in the sociological configuration of the new elite, and whether this means that new consolidated pathways to the parliamentary elite now already exist. The article analyzes the distribution of freshmen in the political class, the return of old backbenchers in the new political parties, the social and occupational background of MPs and, finally, their local and political experiences. In the final section, the article discusses some hypotheses about the perspectives on the recruitment of Italian MPs, focusing in particular on the effects of the structural crisis of political parties and the introduction of the plurality system. An empirically–derived typology of professionalization patterns is also provided.     

Legislative agenda-setting in parliamentary democracies

Various strands of literature in comparative politics regard governments as the only noteworthy initiators and mainsprings of legislative policy making in parliamentary democracies. Opposition activity in policy making is more often associated with the intention to prevent, rather than to shape, policy. Does this perception reflect real‐life politics? To answer this question, this article discusses different arguments that link institutional and policy‐related characteristics to the incentives and constraints of different government and parliamentary actors to initiate or co‐sponsor legislative bills. More specifically, it relates policy‐, office‐ and vote‐related incentives, as well as institutional and resource constraints of legislative actors, to the likelihood that these actors will take the lead in legislative agenda‐setting. These arguments are confronted with original data on the universe of all legislative bills in four parliamentary systems over one and a half decades. The article concludes that opposition and, in particular, bipartisan agenda‐setting is indeed rare. Yet, in contrast to widely held maxims, it is neither absent nor spurious, but related to the allocation of power and the intensity of ideological conflict both within and between the (coalition) government and parliament.     

The parliamentary elite in transition

Only two years after the critical elections of 27 March 1994, the Italian parliamentary election of 1996 marks another important step in the transformation of the political class. The extent of turnover is declining, and the renewal of the parliamentary elite shows some signs of stabilization. This article inquires into the differences in the sociological configuration of the new elite, and whether this means that new consolidated pathways to the parliamentary elite now already exist. The article analyzes the distribution of freshmen in the political class, the return of old backbenchers in the new political parties, the social and occupational background of MPs and, finally, their local and political experiences. In the final section, the article discusses some hypotheses about the perspectives on the recruitment of Italian MPs, focusing in particular on the effects of the structural crisis of political parties and the introduction of the plurality system. An empirically–derived typology of professionalization patterns is also provided.     

关于西部大开发政策选择的若干思考

为使西部大开发战略健康有序地实施,必须具备积极的热情和冷静的思考,才会取得最后的成功。本文试就西部大开发的政策选择作一深入分析,以寻求效率目标与公平目标的统一。     

Delegation and accountability in parliamentary democracies

Abstract. Parliamentary democracy has been widely embraced by politicians and especially by the scholarly community but remains less widely understood. In this essay, I identify the institutional features that define parliamentary democracy and suggest how they can be understood as delegation relationships. I propose two definitions: one minimal and one maximal (or ideal–typical). In the latter sense, parliamentary democracy is a particular regime of delegation and accountability that can be understood with the help of agency theory, which allows us to identify the conditions under which democratic agency problems may occur. Parliamentarism is simple, indirect, and relies on lessons gradually acquired in the past. Compared to presidentialism, parliamentarism has certain advantages, such as decisional efficiency and the inducements it creates toward effort. On the other hand, parliamentarism also implies disadvantages such as ineffective accountability and a lack of transparency, which may cause informational inefficiencies. And whereas parliamentarism may be particularly suitable for problems of adverse selection, it is a less certain cure for moral hazard. In contemporary advanced societies, parliamentarism is facing the challenges of decaying screening devices and diverted accountabilities.     

Deregulating broadcasting: the West European experience

Abstract. This article is concerned with the relationship between systemic and ideological changes affecting West European broadcasting and the nature of the regulatory responses. In theoretical terms the research interest Lies in the question of the extent to which changes in the nature of West European broadcasting regulation are determined by technological factors and forces in the international political economy. Particular attention is given to the factors impeding or constraining deregulation and to the argument that national institutional structures and traditions are mediating the impacts of technology, markets and ideology. Whilst the ultimate effects on future broadcasting regulation remain controversial, certain broad trends can be identified.