Industrial politics in France: Nationalisation under Mitterrand

The first part of this article looks at the reasons why nationalisation featured in the 1981 French Socialist programme, and concludes that while in the abstract it was an issue that encouraged left‐wing unity, the Socialists and the Communists expected very different things from it. The second and third parts look at the implementation of the policy, stressing the continuity with which the Socialists', rather than the Communists', aims have been pursued.     

The politics of the culture of control: undoing genealogy

The third volume of David Garland's trilogy attempts to characterize recent developments in the field of crime control and criminal justice in terms of the emergence of a ‘culture of control’. For these purposes the author claims to use the genealogical method developed by Michel Foucault. This essay argues that Garland's selective reliance on this method amounts to an undoing of the Foucauldian ‘project’ insofar as it re-introduces the objectivity/subjectivity dichotomy which Foucault had tried to subvert throughout his work. This undoing entails profound consequences for the politics of The Culture of Control, which concludes on a reformist proposition that forsakes a form of resistance grounded on the awareness of its own, intrinsic limitations.     

Domestic scrutiny of European Union politics: Between whistle blowing and opposition control

Some European law proposals are subject to scrutiny by national parliaments while others go unchecked. The analysis in this article indicates that the opposition scrutinises European Union law to gather information on the proceedings inside the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. Yet whereas strong opposition parties scrutinise highly politicised law proposals, weak opposition parties tend to scrutinise those proposals that are negotiated under the non‐transparent fast‐track procedure. In addition, there is ample evidence that the leading minister initiates scrutiny in order to strengthen his or her intergovernmental bargaining leverage. Yet, this Schelling Conjecture presumes that the party of the minister is located between the expected bargaining position in the Council and the coalition partner. Any other domestic interest constellation could lead to scrutiny motivated by whistle blowing. However, an issue's salience helps us to separate the whistle blowing from the Schelling Conjecture.     

The politics of Belgium: Institutions and policy under bipolar and centrifugal federalism

This volume seeks to provide an integrated understanding of the Belgian political system through the prism of comparative politics. The transformation of the political system from a unitary into a federal system is used as a connecting theme linking the contributions. The volume is divided in two parts. The first part touches upon the sociological and institutional determinants of policy-making in Belgium, such as the dynamics of the Belgian federal system, the consociational features of the Belgian polity, the presence of a Belgian political culture (or of two distinct political cultures), the fragmentation of its party system and the role of political parties. The second part addresses policy performance and policy reform within the context of Belgian federalism, with a focus on divergence in policy performance and administrative practices, social security as a contentious federal policy area, policy failure and corruption and the impact of EU policies on the domestic federal order.     

Continuing politics by other means: Defence policy under the French fifth republic

This article examines French defence policy making. It has two aims: first to examine how far the sector is characterised by the forms of ‘heroic’ leadership usually associated with it, and second to place these empirical findings within the context of the literature that deals with the analysis of policy processes and public policy. The article shows how, contrary to the received wisdom, Mitterrand in particular has found it increasingly difficult to impose his personal preferences on defence policy. That this is so is a function partly of the nature of the policy process itself, and partly of the legacy — both institutional and in terms of policy — of de Gaulle. In illustrating shifting models of policy making and policy output, it reveals both the specific nature of the defence sector as well as the factors which influence the policy‐making processes over time.     

Party factions and the politics of coalition: Japanese politics under the “system of 1955”

The Liberal Democratic Party continuously held an absolute majority in the Japanese Lower House, under the Gojyûgonen taisei (System of 1955), from its founding in 1955 until its break-up and temporary fall from power in 1993. Until 1989, it also had a majority in the Upper House. Unlike the Italian DC, the Japanese dominant party never formally entered into coalition with another party — except for a single minor occurrence¹. Despite this continuity at one level, 15 different prime ministers presided over 48 Japanese cabinets formed between 1955 and 1993, whose average duration was 9.4 months. The re-allotment of all cabinet portfolios and party posts took place every year with a metronomic regularity and these realignments were fully-fledged exercises in coalition-building even though only one party was involved. This cabinet instability has provided evidence for the view that the LDP surrendered both policy- and decision-making power to the bureaucracy. But, since the LDP clung to the practice of yearly cabinet reshuffles rather than remedying this by simply changing the party constitution, the consequent weakening of the executive power cannot have been seen as having imposed a heavy cost. And, since the LDP held onto power for such a long time, it is obvious that this cost was successfully managed. The purpose of this paper is to treat the one-party Gojyûgonen taisei system as an important case study for coalition theory, relaxing the assumption of the LDP as an unitary actor and considering the party as a political system in its own right.     

Agency under constraint: Ideological preferences and the politics of electricity regulation in Latin America

Whereas both the literature on globalization and the literature on regulatory diffusion stress the pressures that led to policy convergence, this article shows how the ideology of incumbents produced different regulatory outcomes, even in the face of strong financial and technological pressures that constrained policy agency. By looking at the regulatory frameworks adopted at the time of electricity privatization in Latin America, this article shows that right‐wing governments adopted regulations that eliminated barriers to entry and investment and limited the discretion of regulators (market‐conforming regulations), and that former statists who had pragmatically converted to the market creed instead chose regulations that tended to impose higher barriers to entry and investment and gave regulators wide discretion in conflict resolution and price setting (market‐controlling regulations). These findings suggest the need to look at the ideology (and ideological legacies) of government coalitions for a more nuanced understanding of the process of regulatory diffusion that took place across many sectors in most regions of the world.     

Egypt: a country on edge

Two years after the uprising that ended the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt remains unsettled. Repeated changes to the rules of its political system have made for a bumpy and contentious transition in which many interested parties – the military, the judiciary, Islamist factions, the fragmented secular opposition, anarchist groups and labour movements – are jostling to impose themselves.     

Competition policy and institutional politics in the European Community: State aid control and small business promotion

Abstract. The article examines EC competition policy from a political science perspective, analyzing the political and institutional considerations which inform the development of the Commission's controlling capacities in competition. It concentrates on policy towards small businesses in manufacturing. We argue that the Commission's general capacities in the formation and the administration of competition policy have been growing in both the merger-controlling aspects and in the control of state subsidization. Against this background, the handling of state aid to small businesses presents us with a paradox: the more developed the enforcement system in competition, the less the Commission applied it to national subsidization of small-scale production. The role of EC competition policy and particularly the subtle handling of state subsidies should be analyzed as part of the developing system of Community policy vis-à-vis small business, encompassing measures at the EC and national levels. Community policy has emerged as a result of an accommodation between different EC institutional and domestic political objectives, and to some extent this accommodation has been achieved at the expense of policy content. The article traces the development of Community policy in this area from the early 1970s to the adoption of the first-ever detailed policy guidelines in 1992, and suggests an analytical scheme for explaining the emergence of small business promotion as an issue in EC institutional politics.     

Talking politics: Perils and promise

Abstract.  In its recent 'deliberative' turn, democratic theory has forgotten a conventional wisdom, once widely appreciated, that there is much in politics that is better not discussed. In this article, the author catalogues what topics might be deemed 'politically undiscussable', and why, as a first step toward showing how and to what extent talking about such matters might help or hinder their resolution. One important way discussion helps is by information-pooling to establish the truth of the matter. Even where that is not a viable aspiration, discussion might nonetheless serve a 'premise-revealing' function, showing one another that we are reasonable agents and thus helping to desensitize contentious issues.     

Immigration and French national identity under neoliberalism: Sarkozy's selective immigration politics as a performance of sovereignty

In 2007 then French president Nicolas Sarkozy established the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Cooperative Development. Ocak investigates what the ministry wanted to achieve by promoting national identity and linking it with immigration. Focusing on the so-called selective immigration policies and the national identity debate, she examines the ways in which neoliberalization hollows out the nation-state and transforms its relations vis-à-vis citizens and, as a result, increases the need to perform sovereignty to counterbalance the crisis of the welfare state. The articulation of the undesired immigrant figure and the project to engage French citizens in the management of the immigrant operate, she suggests, as tactics to smooth this transformation and compensate for the losses that the French citizens experience as a result of the reign of neoliberal policies.     

Cold bacon: co-partisan politics in Brazil

Public Choice - This paper provides evidence of alignment effects between the executive and the legislative branches of the central government. We rely on detailed data on Brazilian...