Voluntary environmental programs: A comparative perspective

Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) are institutions for inducing firms to produce environmental goods beyond legal requirements. A comparative perspective on VEPs shows how incentives to sponsor and participate in VEPs vary across countries in ways that reveal their potential and limitations. Our brief survey examines conditions under which VEPs emerge, attract participants, and improve participants' environmental performance. We focus on the costs and bene‐fits for actors seeking to supply (or sponsor) these governance mechanisms as well as the costs and benefits for firms who are considering joining VEPs and adhering to their program obligations. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Banning political parties in a democratic constitutional state: the second NPD ban proceedings in a comparative perspective

ABSTRACT

Backes’s article discusses the judgement of the Second Senate of the German Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) of 17 January 2017—not to ban the right-wing extremist party Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD)—in light of recent lively international debates on the protection of democracy. It considers the logic of an examination of proportionality as established by German constitutional law, considering aspects of the legitimacy, suitability, necessity and appropriateness of the party ban. The article shows that the newly introduced criterion of ‘potentiality’ requires an examination of proportionality even if the court itself denies this. Thus the threshold for intervention has been raised, moderately, since a concrete or even immediate threat as defined in police law is not required. The Court links the definition of a free democratic basic order more closely to the established minimum definitions of comparative research and provides clarification that further refutes the (exaggerated) accusation of ‘vagueness’. In doing so it has sharpened the contours of the concept of militant democracy that is widely regarded in international comparative studies.     

Issues,parties and attitudinal stability: A comparative study of Sweden and the United States

Though Converse's work has generated considerable debate about attitudes vs. nonattitudes, there has been surprisingly little new evidence concerning attitude stability in national electorates. We present data from three panel studies that show that the Swedish electorate is consistently more stable than its American counterpart. More importantly, the pattern of continuity levels across types of issues differs from that in the American electorate, with the highest continuity rates for abstract, ‘ideological’ issues. An explanation that accounts for the differences in continuity levels within as well as between countries is found in a structural factor, as suggested by Converse. That factor is the party system. In both countries there is variation in the relationship between party preferences and issue positions, but on the whole the parties in Sweden give clearer, more consistent cues about where to stand on issues.     

Ideological externalities, social pressures, and political parties

Members of political parties may influence each other. For example, a liberal in a party of moderates may moderate his views. At the same time, the moderates in the party may become more liberal. Voters in a district who favor such effects may care about the ideology of officeholders in other districts. They may therefore prefer a candidate who affiliates with a party over an independent with the same position.     

Administrative reform in developing countries: A comparative perspective

This study investigates administrative reform in seven Arab states, delineates common problems and describes general tendencies via content analysis of official statements. The study deals with reform in three major phases: defining administrative problems and needs; developing strategies for reform; and developing instruments of action for implementation. Appraisal of reform efforts discloses mediocre results based on a poor implementation record attributable to incongruities of methods and objectives of reform. Among such incongruities are the conventional limitations of bureaucracy, the copying of Western administrative rationality in form if not in substance, and insufficient attention paid to traditional, cultural, religious, and political contexts of administration. Recognizing the difficulties involved in conceptualizing and implementing reform in any society, the analysis offers several recommendations to improve the outcome of reform efforts, among them: encouraging employee involvement in reform decisions; improving collected diagnostic data; providing special training for employees responsible for managing reform; soliciting unwavering political commitment; developing incentive systems; and replacing the piecemeal approach with reliance on a systems perspective.     

Public service reform: A comparative west European perspective

This article compares recent public service reforms in Britain, France and Germany in terms of reform origins, the trade‐off between managerial and administrative values in the overall reform orientation and the balance within managerial reform between public choice and business management strands. An explanation is advanced of variations in national reform profiles which draws on elements of both political economy and historical institutionalist approaches. Particular importance is attributed to the composition of French and German administrative reform policy communities, and to the resilience of collectivist ideals of public service within the respective memberships, as compared with Britain.     

Political parties and coalitional behaviour in Belgium: the perspective of local politics

Abstract. What constitutes the starting point of this analysis is the limitations of traditional coalition theories. A particular weakness of the traditional approach is its treatment of political parties as unitary actors, largely unaffected by less formal determinants of coalitional behaviour, and each making rational calculations about the utility of coalition formation.
The alternative is a new multidimensional perspective of coalitional behaviour, based on a number of components. The aim of the article is a first and exploratory assessment of the relevance and usefulness of this multidimensional reorientation of coalition theory with regard to local politics (i.e. the municipal-council arena).
This assessment is based on a general analysis of the coalitional behaviour of political parties in Belgium (the Flemish part of the country) at the local level. The most important elements of both the formal and the multi-dimensional approaches for a study of local-coalition phenomena in Flanders are briefly summarized. It is along these lines that the results of the municipal-council elections in 1982 are discussed. Finally, a provisional evaluation is made of what and how the multi-dimensional alternative could contribute to a better understanding of coalition politics at the local level.     

Social movements and party systems: The French socialist party and new social movements

This article examines the apparent difficulty of various French ‘new social movements’ of the 1970s and 1980s to coalesce in the form of a ‘green’ or ‘new politics’ party. In addition to the nature of the French electoral system and dominant policy‐making apparatus, this article focuses upon relations between the Socialist Party and feminist and ecology movements. The major argument is that the Socialists, in their bid for hegemony among the left throughout the 1970s and 1980s, effectively undercut post‐material value‐oriented support for a ‘new politics’ party.     

Planning democracy in Africa: A comparative perspective on Nigeria and Ghana

Ghana and Nigeria are in the midst of government-initiated democratization programs. This paper compares the different settings, reasons, strategies, procedures, and implementation of democratization efforts in these two countries. While Nigeria's comprehensive approach to democratic planning has enabled elite continuity, it has neither assured regime stability nor enhanced state capacities. In contrast, Ghana's plan for democratic transformation, pursued in a piecemeal fashion, has resulted in regime stability and some state consolidation, but not in democratization. In both countries, there is little doubt that the unintended consequences of each approach may prove more significant than the direct results of successful policy implementation. Thus, even if the specific design for democracy may fail, the democratic project in these West African states may nevertheless be progressing.     

Energy and social change: An historian's perspective

The dominant model for analyzing the relationship between energy and social change, the “technology assessment” model, is criticized for being technologically deterministic, over-ambitious and insensitive to the political and social context of technology development. Three “lessons from history” are offered:

1. A multiplicity of disciplines, world views and explanatory factors are required to fully understand the relationship between technology and social change.
2. The lack of historical understanding and explicative theory in this field call for modesty in attempts to quantify and predict social impacts.
3. More emphasis should be placed on developing an understanding of the process by which technology is developed and diffused through society.

     

Pre-electoral coalitions in comparative perspective: A test of existing hypotheses

Despite the vast coalition literature, pre-electoral coalitions have never been at the center of any systematic, cross-national research. Given their prevalence and potential impact on government composition and policies, this represents a serious omission in our knowledge of coalitions. I begin to remedy this situation by testing two hypotheses found in the literature on party coalitions. The first is that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form in disproportional systems if there are a sufficiently large number of parties. The second is that pre-electoral coalitions are more likely to form if voters face high uncertainty about the identity of future governments. These hypotheses are tested using a new dataset comprising legislative elections in 22 advanced industrialized countries between 1946 and 1998. The results of the statistical analysis support the first hypothesis, but not the second.     

Migration and social gender relations: the anthropological perspective

"This article reviews Mexican research of female migration. An analysis is made of socio-demographic and anthropological studies that cover the relations between inequality among the genders, the causes and features of migration, and the work performed by female migrants in their places of origin and destination. The paper responds to the growing interest shown in international literature [on] migration in order to determine the influence of gender identity in the motivations and features of the migration of women, as well as the consequences of spatial mobility on their social conditions and their autonomy." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

The consequences of political disagreement in interpersonal communication: New insights from a comparative perspective

Political disagreement in interpersonal communication increases attitudinal ambivalence and can depress voter turnout. These effects seem to be driven by a wish to avoid social controversy rather than informational gains from encountering other opinions. This article shows that political disagreement in interpersonal communication increases the difficulty of deciding for which party to vote. Moreover, this effect is a result of social disapproval of one's party preference, while political expertise in interpersonal communication has no effect. For voter turnout, no direct effect of social disapproval of one's party preference is found. However, disapproval has an indirect influence on turnout via difficulty of vote choice. In sum, both political attitudes and political behaviour are affected by social pressures. Students of political attitudes and behaviour should try to include interpersonal discussion in their models in greater detail than is common practice today.     

Understanding unequal turnout: Education and voting in comparative perspective

Well-educated citizens vote more frequently than the poorly educated in some countries, including the USA. However, in many countries, no such differences are observed. One classical explanation of the presence or absence of this inequality in voting is that the strength of left-wing forces sharpens or reduces it. An alternative explanation is that some institutional arrangements and contextual features disproportionately affect the voter participation of some individuals depending on their resources, thus shaping turnout inequality. These theories are tested using multilevel modeling with data from 28 advanced industrial democracies. Compulsory voting reduces inequalities because under this system quasi-universal turnout is achieved. In addition, the poorly educated vote more frequently when the voting procedure is easy and when there are few political parties, thus reducing turnout inequality. However, strong left-wing parties and trade unions are not associated with more equal turnout.