The successes and limitations of Russia’s economic strategy

The Kremlin’s basic economic strategy is to trade efficiency and growth for political control and a tight rein on Russia’s strategic sectors. Russia’s economy has faced substantial difficulties since 2013, although it is once again performing reasonably well and there is no basis for believing that sanctions will force a change in Moscow’s foreign policy. However, slow GDP growth and fiscal rectitude complicate the task of reversing a fall in living standards that could (unchecked) threaten political stability.     

Corporatism and the ‘privileged position’ of business

This article examines the contradictions between Lindblom's thesis of the ‘privileged position of business’ and the corporatist views of writers such as Schmitter and Lehmbruch. The implications of the two theories are analysed in the context of the exchanges between the capital and labour in corporatist systems. The analysis focuses on the kinds of exchange business may enter into, with special attention to the question of capital mobility, for that gives important insights into the stability of corporatist systems. Case studies of Sweden and Norway show that the kinds of bargain struck under corporatism may have serious consequences for corporatism, both as an analytical device and as a working system.     

Patronage and Power: Russia’s Dominant Party Regime

Following the election cycle of 2007–2008, Russia prepares to enter a phase marked by a change of presidents but continuity in the model of legislative-executive relations that was established under Vladimir Putin. During Putin’s presidency, Russia created an authoritarian dominant party regime. In such a system, patronage and coercion are used to ensure the dominant party’s control of elective offices. In Russia, United Russia’s commanding majority in parliament ensures that the president and government can enact their legislative agenda without opposition. The arrangement allows parliamentarians to enjoy substantial material benefits and patronage opportunities as champions of powerful commercial interests in return for conceding authoritarian powers to the president.      

The mass media's dual role: ‘watchdog’ and guardian of their own interests

The mass media are a special case of interest articulation in a democracy because they play two distinct roles. On the one hand, mass media provide information about efforts by various interest groups to influence public policy. On the other hand, being interest groups themselves, the mass media work to protect and advance their own interests. This article examines the compatibility of these two roles in Argentina and Uruguay by placing this in a broader discussion about the role of lobbying in democratic societies. The evidence suggests that despite impediments to the media's ability to fulfill both roles simultaneously, some have performed a credible job. The best explanation for the variance in performance among the media outlets includes a combination of the following factors: the size and density of the media market, patterns of media ownership, the relative strength of the state vis-à-vis the media, levels of public advertising, and the particular practices adopted by individual media companies. Evidence suggests that neither the traditional distinction between corporatist and pluralist societies nor government regulation of lobbying plays a dominant role in determining the media's performance. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Swiss business elite (1980–2000): how the changing composition of the elite explains the decline of the Swiss company network

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the decline of the Swiss corporate network between 1980 and 2000. We address the theoretical and methodological challenge of this transformation by the use of a combination of network analysis and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). Based on a sample of top managers of the 110 largest Swiss companies in 1980 and 2000 we show that, beyond an adjustment to structural pressure, an explanation of the decline of the network has to include the strategies of the fractions of the business elites. We reveal that three factors contribute crucially to the decline of the Swiss corporate network: the managerialization of industrial leaders, the marginalization of law degree holders and the influx of hardly connected foreign managers.     

The Administration’s Retreat and the Party’s Advance in the New Era of Xi Jinping: the Politics of the Ruling Party,the Government,and Associations in China

Journal of Chinese Political Science - In the new era of Xi Jinping, the Party has become more assertive, reclaiming the function of managing social organizations that the government agencies had...     

Local cohesion and radical right support: The case of the Swiss People’s Party

Radical right parties have become effective electoral competitors in many parts of Western Europe yet failed to achieve success in others. Much recent scholarship seeks to understand variation in radical right support. Here, we argue that local social cohesion boosts these parties’ vote shares. We use Swiss census data at the municipal level to measure local cohesion, drawing on indicators of residents’ commuting patterns, linguistic similarities and home ownership. Regression analysis shows that social cohesion is a positive predictor of local level support for the Swiss People’s Party, but not for any other major party. Hierarchical logit models combining aggregate cohesion measures with survey data demonstrate this contextual effect on individuals’ vote choices.     

The perils of multinational intelligence coalitions: Britain,America and the origins of Pakistan’s ISI

This article examines how Great Britain helped create Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) with two goals: (1) establishing a Pakistani branch of a Commonwealth intelligence network; (2) ensuring information security within that network. Ultimately, this endeavor failed because of perceived deficiencies in Pakistan’s security institutions and Britain’s inability to address Pakistan’s security needs. By the mid-1950s ISI forged close ties with the United States which offered more and with fewer political strings attached. This article offers new insights on intelligence alliance formation during the cold war. It also provides a useful case study in the weaknesses of multilateral intelligence coalitions.     

Peter Berger’s “Many Altars” and the Theology of Religions

My notes on Peter Berger’s recent publication (Berger 2014) come in two parts. In part one, I will address a couple of conceptual ambiguities surrounding the so-called “secularization theory”. In part two, I will deal with Berger’s argument that religious diversity undermines religious certainties and in that sense fosters secularization. As I will point out, theologians are not only well aware of this situation, they are discussing it as part of the so-called “theology of religions,” and they have identified a solution that avoids what Berger rightly characterizes as the two impasses of fundamentalism and relativism.     

The ‘Sword and Shield of the Party’: how the Vietnamese People’s Public Security Forces portray themselves

This paper shows that since the beginning of the reform period in 1986 the regime in Hanoi has taken great pains to create the image of the state having legitimate and, indeed, heroic security organs that acted as the ‘saviors of the Vietnamese revolution’ and still serve as the ‘shield and sword’ of the Vietnamese Communist Party. I argue that while previously the socialist state used to regard the history of its security organs as top secret, over the last few years, a huge amount of resources have been mobilized to actively propagate a sacred and romanticized image of the security apparatus.     

The partisan heuristic and the voters’ knowledge: The essential role of the information environment

The low-information rationality theory expects voters with low political knowledge to make more use of the partisan heuristic than those with high knowledge. However, empirical studies on decision making in direct democracy observe a positive correlation between political knowledge and the use of party cues. We resolve this tension between theory and empirical evidence by demonstrating that the relationship between political knowledge and the use of party cues is conditional on the information environment. We provide evidence for this hypothesis by exploiting a natural experiment in Switzerland and analyze a large variety of direct democratic votes. The results show that voters with lower levels of political knowledge tend to align less with their preferred party because they often have a wrong perception of their preferred party’s vote recommendation. However, if information on parties’ position is easily available, their vote choice is at least as much in line with their preferred party as among those with high knowledge. This suggests that in such an information environment voters with low political knowledge strongly rely on the partisan heuristic. Our research note supports the low-information rationality theory and this way contributes to the literature on the quality of political opinion formation and the political psychology of reasoning and decision making.     

The OECD and “The Rest”: Analyzing the Limits of Policy Transfer

Abstract

Prompted by the rise of the emerging economies and the growing importance of the G20, the OECD has formally announced its intention of establishing itself as a key actor in global policy coordination. As part of this ambition, it has embarked on cultivating closer relations with five G20 countries it designated as key partners through the so-called “Enhanced Engagement” programme: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa. This article mobilizes concepts from the policy transfer literature to explain why the OECD’s attempts to increasingly involve all five countries in its policy have fallen short of its original ambitions, and also why the transfer of its policy work has been uneven across policy and country issue.     

How Europe’s Political Leaders Made Sense of the Euro Crisis: The Influence of Pressure and Personality

The Greek announcement of its excessive debts led to one of the most severe crises the EU has faced since its inception. The crisis soon evolved into a full leadership crisis as European political leaders struggled to come up with a common solution to the challenges they faced. Theories of leadership and crisis management identify several factors that may contribute to these differences. This article examines to what extent leaders’ personal traits and external pressure influenced how six political leaders made sense of the situation. The study finds that a leader’s belief that they can control events, their self-confidence, as well as economic pressure provide a partial explanation of how European leaders make sense of the crisis. The traits of cognitive complexity and openness to information do not exert an influence in the cases discussed here. These findings indicate that any comprehensive understanding of how leaders make sense of crises should take note of specific individual as well as contextual factors.     

Peace-building Through Space-making: The Spatializing Effects of the African Union’s Peace and Security Policies

ABSTRACT

This article is discussing how the peace-building practices of the African Union have distinct ordering and space-making effects. Taking a socio-spatial perspective, it is argued that the peace and security projects through which the African Union, as a spatial entrepreneur, is addressing the scourge of ‘terrorism and violent extremism’ are geared towards (re-)establishing sovereignty that member states have lost in the past over their territories. While the African Union is favouring a spatial format that could be called ‘multiple networked regionalism’, the actual socio-spatial orders that are emerging around Africa’s transregional conflicts are far less clear cut.     

Trump’s Impact: The End of Sameness

In his startling run for president, Donald Trump dared to question the official orthodoxy that all races and ethic groups are the same. He is correct in that most seriously poor, many immigrants, and the radicals we face overeas all come from outside the West. Thus, according to world cultures research, they are much less individualist and more conformist than most Americans. This cultural difference goes far to explain the major challenges the United States faces both at home and abroad. But Trump’s bold challenge offers no easy solutions.