Power and Democracy in Norway: The Transformation of Norwegian Politics1

The Norwegian Power and Democracy Project concluded that the parliamentary chain of government is weakened in every link; parties and election are less mobilizing; minority governments imply that the connection between election results and policy formation is broken; and elected assemblies have been suffering a notable loss of domain. Popular participation has moved from long‐term organisations and political parties to short‐term action groups and associations with immediate concerns. The judicialisation of politics has strengthen the legal system and weakened the autonomy of local democracy, while the expansion of market forces further affects the span of parliamentary rule. The mass media has become politically more independent, while adapting more closely to economic forces and the quest for return of investment. There has, accordingly, been centralisation of economic power through mergers and acquisitions following the globalisation of the Norwegian economy. The so‐called ‘Scandinavian’ (or ‘Nordic’) model is increasingly strained, while corporatism is partly weakened and partly restructured. After the end of the Cold War, there has also been a consistent strategy in foreign policy for the branding of Norway as a champion for peace and human rights. There is a cluster of corporate bureaucratic agencies around the high‐profile peace mediation and humanitarian engagement.     

The politics of corporate crises in West Germany

This article examines the experience of corporate crisis in the major industrial economy of Western Europe. West Germany's experience of corporate crisis is analysed by reference to its legal framework, political context and economic history. Particular attention is given to two modes of crisis management: ‘bank‐led’ rescue and ‘the crisis cartel’. Case studies include AEG, Grundig, the steel corporations of the Ruhr and the Saar, shipbuilding corporations and Krupp. The argument draws on the evidence of mounting problems of corporate crisis management to assess the prospects for the theory and practice of the social market economy in West Germany.     

What really matters is which camp goes dirty: Differential effects of negative campaigning on turnout during Swiss federal ballots

Using individual data on Swiss federal ballots (VOX data) and an original dataset on the evolution and content of political campaigns, this article elucidates how negative campaigning influences individual turnout during Swiss federal ballots. It hypothesises that the effect of negativism on turnout depends on ‘which camp goes dirty’ and, specifically, on the direction of the political campaign (‘status quo’ versus ‘policy change’ campaigns). A series of multilevel models provide strong support for the hypotheses, by showing that high negativism in ‘status quo campaigns’ decreases individual turnout, whereas high negativism for ‘policy change campaigns’ increases it. It is argued here that this could depend on the emotional responses triggered by negativism in political campaigns.     

Digital Restructuring: Gender,Class and Citizenship in the Information Society in Canada

‘Digital restructuring’ denotes a phenomenon integral to but also distinct within economic and political restructuring broadly conceived. The concept of restructuring can be modified with ‘digital’ to forefront the important technological dimension of global restructuring, as well as to indicate developments associated with the new ‘information economy’. Digital technology and digitization have been integral to the scope and speed of the global economic and political restructuring of recent decades. They have constituted the technological conditions for some of the more characteristic aspects of this process; from the flexiblization or outright shedding of labour, to the mobility of production and capital and the globalization of trade and financial markets. This paper seeks to debunk much of the corporate and state mythology of digital restructuring currently in circulation by drawing upon the analyses of digital technology and restructuring advanced by critical scholars and progressive social movements, and to highlight the dangers to progressive political movements and discourses posed by the very nature of these representations.     

Company level localization and public affairs officers' educational background in Switzerland

As corporate public affairs officers have only rarely been researched in Switzerland, this study contributes a situation analysis of Swiss public affairs officers, their work processes, and biographical background to further fill this empirical gap. First, the existing public affairs research regarding Switzerland is reviewed, and research questions are derived. The research was conducted by sending out a survey to the members of the Swiss Association for Public Affairs, followed by personal in‐depth interviews with 11 public affairs officers. The findings show that respondents work in organizations that employ 1 to 82,100 people are all Swiss nationals, and their departments are mostly called ‘public affairs’. The responsibility of public affairs is predominantly for senior or top management level, and the majority of public affairs officers report to the director of their department. The respondents are highly educated. Moreover, the paper asks whether public affairs is conducted in a strategic way by taking Fleisher's 10 elements as a conceptual basis. Results show that strategic involvement of their activities is rather low. Recommendations are discussed in order to increase the strategic involvement and advance professionalization of public affairs in Switzerland with specific regard for the political system. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Eurozone crisis and the European corporate elite: bringing corporate actors into focus

This paper uses a framework referred to as the ‘corporate reconstruction of European capitalism theory of integration’ to analyse the European Union’s response to the Eurozone crisis. Most political economy analyses of the Eurozone crisis have focused on political leaders, clashes between creditor and debtor member states and public opinions in analysing the handling of the crisis. This paper focuses instead on the input of corporate actors. It is argued that both the setting up of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the handling of its crisis were congenial to corporate preferences. Europe’s nascent corporate elite was concerned with eliminating currency risk when the EMU was set up and therefore did not push for fiscal federalism. When the flawed architecture of the Eurozone transformed that currency risk into sovereign credit risk, corporate preferences adapted and now favoured fiscal liability pooling and ultimately the setting up of a fiscal union.     

Invisible capitalism: political economy and the regulation of undocumented ­immigration in France

What explains the French government’s unwillingness to accept more legal immigrants or at least ignore those who enter or over-stay clandestinely? This paper answers this question by exploring the political economy and regulation of undocumented immigration in France during the 1990s. In light of a broad liberal and Marxist literature on the political economy of immigration, I argue that three ‘proximate determinants’ shape the regulation of undocumented immigration in France (a ‘Europeanized’ security agenda, ‘self-limited sovereignty’ and control of the labour market, especially informal employment). However, these proximate determinants do not necessarily excavate the social relations of power (that is political economy) which constitute the basis for policy making. I argue then that a return to the importance of the labour market (and thus the class and racial constitution of French society) is essential, but without a simple return to Marxist political economy. Instead, I suggest the value of ‘virtualism’ for carving out a new post-structuralist/‘postmodern’ political economy of immigration.     

The Evolution of Public Service Provision by the Third Sector in France

Public services have been externalised, in part, to the non‐profit sector in France and in the United Kingdom. This article begins by reviewing relations between the public and non‐profit sector in France before 2008, and its evolution since. This has been characterised by the slow reduction of public funding, the adaptation of non‐profit associations and organisations, and their clearer positioning within a wider ‘social and solidarity economy’, which was consolidated by a framework Law in 2014. The article then examines the current sharing of responsibilities between the public and non‐profit sectors in education, health and social services, pointing to the diverse historical and political conditions which have led to this shared organisation.     

Sleaze or clear blue water?: the evolution of corporate and pressure group representation at the major UK party conferences

There has been growing academic and public interest in corporate political lobbying in both the UK and EU in recent years. In Britain, links between politicians and commercial interests have been one of the areas examined by the Committee on Standards in Public Life (‘the Nolan Committee’ and now ‘the Neill Committee’). A visible but under‐researched aspect of political lobbying by firms and other groups is the range of activities that take place at annual party conferences. An exhaustive study of these activities at the three main British party conferences between 1994–97 is reported, covering the period from Tony Blair's first appearance as party leader to the aftermath of the 1997 General Election. There is clear growth of visible lobbying, particularly at the Labour conferences, over the period leading up to the election, and a dropping off in 1997; particularly at the Conservative conference. The implications of the results for organisations, and particularly for public affairs practitioners, are considered. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Politics and enlightenment: Kant and Derrida on cosmopolitan responsibility

Walter Benjamin once remarked of the enterprise of translation ‘that it is nowhere’: that the labour of transcribing the sense, inflection and difference of any particular language and text must always situate the translator in a space which is neither ‘of the original, nor ‘of the language into which it is to be transcribed. This ‘non‐position’ of the translator—between the original and its analogue, between the ‘spirit’ and the ‘letter’, the difference and the acceptability of the text—marks the labour of translation as an ethical responsibility: that of communicating the significance of something—a gesture, a story, a custom, a tradition—which has appeared to this/our socio‐linguistic culture as strange and unfathomably alien; and to achieve this communication without annulling its strangeness, its alterity. The purpose of my comparison of Kant and Derrida's remarks on cosmopolitical responsibility therefore, is fourfold. First, I want to suggest that it is this ‘stricture’ of translation—this difficult responsibility of both judging and respecting the difference of foreign’ cultures—which marks the (non‐Kantian, non‐situated) ‘territory’ of cosmopolitical responsibility. Second, by using Kant's remarks on the relationship between the political evolution of European Enlightenment culture and a possible world confederation of sovereign states, I want to point up the hierarchies and secondarizations involved in the determination of universal standards of moral, ethical and political conduct (even if these standards are originally prosecuted as the legislative conditions of a ‘radical democracy'). Third, I want to look at the ways in which the stricture of translation has been articulated as a theory of ‘global’ responsibility—particularly in the divergent ethical and political approaches of Jurgen Habermas and Jean‐Francois Lyotard. Fourth, I want to suggest that it is Derrida's idea of a ‘dual responsibility’ of critical thought to the political and philosophical resources of European Enlightenment and to the difference of non‐European nations and cultures, that marks the difficulty (the stricture) of acting responsibly within the global economics of power, identity and legislation. I want, in other words, to show that the ‘nowhere’ of Benjamin's translator, is a ‘place’ whose possibility demands a certain ‘Kantian’ right of reflection; that is, the right to pursue the ‘transcendent’ principle of respect for the other.     

Variations in Organizational Participation in Government: The Case of Denmark*

The main purpose of this article is to refine, modify, and elaborate some central propositions and assumptions in the scholarly debate on corporatism or corporate pluralism. The empirical base is a data archive containing information on practically all interest groups in Denmark. Hypotheses are formulated and tested concerning variations in direct representation and participation of interest groups in public policy-making across (a) types of interest groups, (b) organizational resources, (c) organizational structures, and{d) political issue areas. Contrary to prevailing propositions in the literature on corporatism, the Danish case shows that corporate structures and practices go hand in hand with a system of interest groups characterized by myriads of interest groups, and an overall, rather decentralized structure.     

Corporate Pluralism in Danish Law-Making*

This article investigates the pattern of corporate political representation in Danish law-making. The most important finding is a large intra-system variation in scope, level, and structure of outside involvement. There is no evidence of an emerging 'total' system of corporate political representation. The dominant pattern is still one of a diversified use of several channels of access by a large variety of groups, organizations, and institutions. While the importance of organized interests is well documented, it is questionable to what extent this indicates a pattern of societal corporatism in the political system. Interest organizations play an important role in pluralist societies as well, and Philippe Schmitter's main point about representational monopoly does not gain support. Generally, the analysis tends to support a model of pluralist corporate representation.     

The new Korean political economy: beyond the models of capitalism debate

Abstract

A key theme within the literature on the evolution of the Korean political economy since the 1997/8 crisis has been the extent to which Korea remains a ‘developmental state’ or has pursued radical neoliberal reform. These debates have not only reflected a concern with understanding the Korean economy but with a wider set of questions relating to the future of capitalist diversity within a globalized economy. By the late 1980s Korea had come to be regarded as a model of successful state-led late capitalist development. Korean modern economic history has insured that questions relating to the extent that it has pursued neoliberal reform have been of keen interest to students of political economy globally. This paper argues that substantive neoliberal reform has taken place in Korea since 1997. The thesis that a new ‘developmental state’ is in process of consolidating itself is simply wrong. However, the state's reform program interacted with material conditions and political coalitions at the meso level in a complex and uneven manner. In certain critical sectors, such as finance, a neoliberal regulatory regime has been consolidated. In others, such as telecommunications, developmentalist regulatory structures have proven to be highly resilient. In order to fully understand the complexity of the contemporary Korean political economy it is necessary, therefore, to prioritize the importance of meso-level analysis.     

From ‘There is No Alternative’ to ‘Maybe There are Alternatives’: five Challenges to Economic Orthodoxy after the Crash

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, politicians famously told the public and themselves that ‘there is no alternative’ to a neoliberal economic paradigm. Fast‐forward to 2019 and there is, instead, the sense that ‘maybe there are alternatives’. However, when many observers and commentators look back to the 2008 crisis, they see a general continuity with what went before. In order to gain a better understanding of this ‘interregnum’, we map five sets of ideas and practices that challenge the policies, ideas, and conventions of pre‐crash orthodoxy. In doing so, we argue that there has been a fundamental transformation in legitimate public discourse about the economy since 2008: ideas and practices that were previously unimaginable or illegitimate in mainstream economic debate are now commonplace. Although this does not represent a ‘paradigm shift’, it represents significant political change that is important to understand and interrogate on its own terms.     

Innovative Governance and Development in the New Ireland: Social Partnership and the Integrated Approach

Since the mid‐1980s, the economy of the Republic of Ireland has displayed a remarkable turnaround. Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown at a faster rate than any developed country in the world. The government's deficit has been cut severely and the debt‐to‐GDP ration sharply reduced. Average incomes have risen significantly, and the unemployment rate reduced dramatically. This article documents these changes. Its main purpose, however, is to provide a plausible explanation for the “Irish miracle.” While many factors have been important—support for the Economic Union's regional development programs, a favorable tax structure, locational and language advantages for attracting multinational corporations, strong education and training programs—these factors in themselves do not explain the emergence of the “Celtic tiger.” They were in place before the mid‐1980s when Ireland was suffering from a fiscal, economic, and political crisis. Instead, the article argues, it was the creative and innovative response of Irish leaders in government, industry, and labor movement and community organizations to the crisis, and the subsequent institutionalization of this response in a new form of governance, that has been the catalyst for the Irish success story. Based on the thorough background research of the Economic and Social Research Council, a farsighted group of leaders developed a strategic plan in 1987 that provided a blueprint for constructive economic and social change. This was then formally instituted for wage restraint on the part of labor in return for income tax and social supposed provisions by government. Irish social Partnership is modeled to some extent on Northern European corporatism. The article reviews corporatism as an early form of innovative governance, using classical corporatism in Sweden and competitive corporatism in the Netherlands to illustrate how this approach has evolved over the years. Dutch economic success in recent years is due in part to its new form of corporatism that has helped it become globally competitive. It is argued, however, that Irish social partnership goes beyond continental corporatism in several important ways. It is more inclusive, covering a large array of social interests; it is more strategic, with a well‐articulated integrated approach to social and economic development that is self‐corrective and articulated in a new national agreement every three years; and it is more firmly institutionalized in both government and nongovernment agencies in the country. Social partnership and the integrated approach have become part of the culture of the new Ireland. This innovative form of governance underlies the Irish turnaround and augurs well for the future. It can also serve as a model, with appropriate modification tailor‐made to each case, for other jurisdictions hoping to emulate Ireland's success.     

Self-exclusion as a strategy of inclusion: the case of Shas

Among the many paradoxes of Israeli politics, there are the strategies of political inclusion used by organizations and parties representing groups that reject the universalism which Israeli democracy is heir to. This paper develops a model of ‘political inclusion Israeli-style’, illustrated by one party, Shas, which since 1984 proclaims itself the voice of the socially and culturally excluded Sephardi population of north African and Middle Eastern Jews, who represent over 40% of the Jewish population. Shas is also a movement of religious and ethnic revival which, by adopting a social strategy of self-exclusion grounded in strict religious observance, and of independence vis-à-vis established Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox politics, has gained 11 out of 120 Knesset seats, inclusion in government, and control over a share of educational and welfare expenditure. The paper raises the issue whether such less-than-perfectly universalistic practices are not a variety of corporatism and possibly, for the parties concerned, a more effective strategy of incorporation than the classic social democratic path.     

Grey Power: Towards a Political Economy of Older Voters in the UK

The impact of age on voting behaviour and political outcomes has become an issue of increasing interest, particularly in the UK. Age divides in voter turnout and political preferences have led to claims that age is the ‘new class’. In this article, we contrast existing ‘cultural backlash’ and political economy explanations of the age divide in politics, and challenge the view that older people are predominantly ‘left behind’, culturally or economically. We show that older people have distinct material interests, related to housing wealth and pensions’ income, that are visible in their political preferences. We argue for the development of a new political economy of age.     

The public issue life cycle and corporate political actions in China's transitional environment: a case of real estate industry

• Based on the ‘structured content analysis’ of the longitudinal data from a journal of Chinese real estate industry during last 11 years, this paper studies the nature of public issue life cycle and corresponding corporate political actions (CPAs) in a transitional economy. This paper finds out that in a transitional economy like China: (1) a new stage called ‘policy trial’ and double steps of policy introduction were found in the public issue life cycle; (2) the possible outcomes of Chinese public issues are partially consistent with Tombari's arguments; (3) the evolution of CPAs takes a more complex and different path compared with that in the West. In general, this paper provides an available research perspective (the public issue life cycle model) for firms to manage and monitor their external political environment by effectively developing CPAs in a transitional economy.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public administration reform in Vietnam: problems and prospects

Public Administration Reform (PAR) in Vietnam is an ambitious programme that seeks to implement ‘rule by law’ within a centralized, state management framework. It is a political strategy by the key party and state officials with the aim of institutionalizing and legitimizing the transition to the ‘socialist market economy’ through creating a dependable system of rule‐bound public administration. This programme has received extensive donor support. In the content and trajectory of PAR, external models and technical assistance are influential but the political struggle over control of state resources shapes the process. This is seen in the attempts to constitutionalize the powers of state organs and to distinguish them from the party; to separate owner and manager roles and to replace political with economic criteria in the operation of state owned enterprises; to combat corruption in ‘street level’ decision making; to rationalize the machinery of government; to create a centrally managed, professional civil service; and to reform the system of public finances. In each of these areas, there is resistance to reform proposals and evidence of implementation gaps. In these circumstances, concentration of donor support on the centrally managed PAR programme is a high risk strategy. Continued support for local, ‘bottom‐up’ reform initiatives could help sustain the demand for reform. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does Public Broadcasting Make a Difference? Political Knowledge and Electoral Campaigns on Television

The political role of the modern media and the impact on public opinion has come under intense scrutiny. The arguments in the scientific dispute have been structured under the optimistic ‘cognitive mobilisation’ and pessimistic ‘media malaise’ banners. For obvious reasons the role of television has been most intensely discussed. TV has the widest reach and is believed to have to the strongest impact. So far, much of the exchange of arguments has been based on data from the United States. In many European countries, public broadcasting is far more prominent than in the United States, and one can argue that the ideals underlying public broadcasting have put their mark on the TV industry in many European countries. Norway is such a case. The interesting question is, of course, whether this matters. Does public broadcasting foster a ‘virtuous circle’ of increased political competence, whereas commercial TV creates ‘media malaise’? Data from the Norwegian 1997–2001 election survey panel is used in this study to overcome the main methodological problem in the many studies based on cross‐sectional data: the question of causality. Too often researchers have based their inferences about the link between media exposure and political knowledge on cross‐sectional correlations. The empirical results do little to support the optimistic view of TV as the great political educator. On the contrary, neither exposure to the state‐owned public broadcasting NRK nor the commercial TV2 help to increase the general level of political knowledge. However, NRK seems to be the preferred channel among the politically well‐informed.