Registration Deadlines and Turnout in Context

This paper analyzes the effect of registration deadlines on voter turnout. The theoretical explanation considers how registration deadlines affect turnout when individuals influence the participation of others. The theoretical model leads to a novel empirical hypothesis, that deadlines can have both a direct and indirect effect on turnout through a behavioral contagion process. The paper reports empirical findings that confirm the theoretical expectations. These results have important implications for future research on registration deadlines and Election Day registration as the effects of these reforms depend on the specific social context in which they are adopted.     

Welfare expansion revisited: policy routines and their mediation by party, class and crisis, 1957–1982

Abstract. Post-war welfare effort (i.e., welfare spending as a share of national income) in advanced capitalist political democracies is proposed to result from policy routines emphasized in the traditional academic literatures complemented and mediated by class-linked factors stressed in the 'new political economy' literature. Both sets of factors are integrated into a single conception of state policy-making. In this, self-interested elite and administrative state personnel respond to their environments by means of relatively discretionary and relatively automatic policy routines, respectively. Left and non-Left governments mediate these routines and do so differently in different long-term institutional (strong-union versus weak-union) and macroeconomic (expansionary versus crisis) contexts. Welfare expansion is found to be amply explained by the proposed processes, differentiated by context. Left parties and militants are found to matter primarily in contexts marked by 'Left corporatism'(or strong unions) and/or by relatively 'expansionary economic climates'. Ironically, Left-party governments in Left corporatist contexts are found to be particularly sensitive to inflation where transfer spending is concerned. Where unions are strong, policy making is generally less incremental and more flexible. After 1973, policy sensitivity to real economic growth or decline looms large, and working-class-linked politics are muted where unions are weak, most especially where they are decentralized.     

Leadership change, legitimacy, and party transition in China

Using Max Weber’s theory of legitimacy and transition, this article suggests that the biggest challenge for China’s new leadership is to transform the Communist Party into an institutionalized ruling party. After analyzing the scenarios of democratization, legitimation, decay, or repression, resulting from the interactions between public contention and the ruling elite, this article argues that the CCP has accomplished the transition from a revolutionary to a reformist party but is now somewhere between claiming to “govern for the people” and “hanging on to power.” To become an institutionalized ruling party, the CCP needs to curtail official corruption and control its membership growth. There are, however, some serious political and personal limitations that China’s new leaders will have to overcome. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1988 and 1992 respectively. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, research fellow at the Salzburg Seminar in Austria, and a visiting senior fellow at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore. His research interests include Chinese political institutions and leadership changes, theories of international relations, Taiwan-Strait relations, and U.S.-China relations. He is the author ofParty vs. State in Post-1949 China: The Institutional Dilemma (Cambridge University Press, 1997). The author wishes to thank John Watt, Joshua Forrest and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the draft version of this article.     

Place,post-industrial change and the new left

Abstract. This article argues for the importance of place and policies addressed to it in recent post–industrial political transformations. My analysis focuses on the performance of Left parties in French and German cities with universities since the 1960s. Despite similar shifts in the occupational and sectoral bases of politics in the cities of both countries, these transformations followed divergent trajectories. In Germany decentralized policymaking, physical legacies of previous urban planning, and mobilization around land use and related issues gave rise to the most solid local strongholds of the Greens. In mid–sized and smaller cities, local constraints on growth itself resulted. In France centrally led expansion, less developed local policies and less planned urban structures contributed to emergent Socialist majorities and weaker, more contingent local Green performance. In both countries the environmental concerns and consumption interests linked to spatial amenities have given a new, altered significance to the geographic determinants of politics.     

War,security and system change in the Pacific

Missile Defences and Asian Pacific Security, by Michael J. Mazarr. Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, 1989. xii + 226 pp. £29.50. ISBN 0–333–48228–X.

Asian Security 1988–89, compiled by the Research Institute for Peace and Security, Tokyo. Brassey's Defence Publishers, London, 1988. viii + 173 pp. £17.95. ISBN 0–08–036263–X.

Warfare in the Twentieth Century: Theory and Practice, edited by Colin McInnes and G. D. Sheffield. Unwin Hyman Ltd, London, 1988. xv + 239 pp. £28.00 hardback, £8.95 paperback. ISBN 0–04–355034–7 and 0–04–355035–5.

Border Crossings: Studies in International History, by Christopher Thorne. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1988. x + 313 pp. £29.95. ISBN 0–631–16062–0.

The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American commitment to Southeast Asia, by Andrew J. Rotter. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, and London, 1987. $29.95 hardback, $9.95 paperback. ISBN 0–8014–1958–1 and 0–8014–9620–9.

Security and Economy in the Third World, by Nicole Ball. Adamantine Press, London, 1989. xxvii + 432 pp., 32 tables, 18 figs. £29.95. ISBN 0–7449–0021–2.     

Demographic dynamism and metropolitan change: Comparing Los Angeles,New York,Chicago, and Washington,DC

Abstract

The fluid dimensions of demographic status—age, career progression over time, geographic redistribution, and growing duration of residence—have not been sufficiently recognized in urban theory and policy. Demographic dynamism deserves special attention because it is through the presumed consequences for people that we judge the desirability of economic, political, and physical changes in a city. To explore the magnitude and significance of these issues, population dynamics and associated poverty and homeownership trends in four major metropolitan regions are compared.

Los Angeles may be changing more rapidly, but its dynamics only accentuate trends under way elsewhere. Rising proportions of the population that are neither in the white “majority” nor black “minority,” the low proportion of longtime residents, and the new challenge of immigration call into question fundamental assumptions about links between people and urban policy. The meaning of both poverty trends and homeownership attainments must be reassessed.     

Democracy,interrupted: Regime change and partisanship in twentieth-century Argentina

Electoral volatility is much higher in new than in advanced democracies. Some scholars contend that weak partisan ties among the electorate lie behind this high volatility. Political parties in new democracies do not invest in building strong linkages with voters, they claim; hence partisanship is not widespread, nor does it grow over time. Our view is that democratic processes do encourage the spread of partisanship and hence the stabilization of electoral outcomes over time in new democracies. But this dynamic can be masked by countervailing factors and cut short by regime instability. We expect that, all else being equal, volatility will decline over time as a new democracy matures but increase again when democracy is interrupted. We use disaggregated ecological data from Argentina over nearly a century to show that electoral stability grows during democratic periods and erodes during dictatorships.     

Class, territory and party: political change in Britain, 1945–1974

Abstract. Two theoretical traditions in the study of European voter alignments emphasize alternatively class and territorial structuring of mass politics. Until the 1970's the developmental paradigm resting on the class-based, stable polity model of the 1945–1970 period ruled the research agenda. The weakening of party alignments in the 1970's and the introduction of the competing territorial paradigm challenged the dominant model. This research tests both models in Britain against the supposed stability of the 1945–1970 period. The results demonstrate that while the developmental model fits Britain as a whole quite well, the introduction of regional polity analysis exposes considerable instability of voter and party alignments, uneven class development and the mobilization of cultural cleavages, dynamics which undergird the politics of cultural defence and find expression in the nationalist parties in the 1970's. In questioning the assumed stability of the 1945–1970 period the findings challenge the foundations of the current debates on realignment in Britain.     

Parties,the state and society in Greece: Continuity within change

The new Greek party system which emerged after the restoration of democracy in 1974 is characterised by a combination of features indicative of both continuity and change in comparison with the party system that existed before the military coup of 1967. This article concludes that in the present phase the contribution of parties to institutional consolidation and the stability of party identification, though not negligible, remains uncertain. It is likely to be influenced by variables both internal and external to the political system, relating to party interaction and to the relationship of parties with state and society.     

Strategic responses to institutional change: Parties,committees and multiple referral

Public Choice - Although multiple referral seems to remove committees' gatekeeping power, strategic opportunities exist for motivated committees to dominate late stages of the legislative...     

Institutional change and stability in postcommunist countries, 1990–2002

Abstract.  This article deals with the institutional change of 27 political systems in postcommunist countries, 1990–2002. The authors show that institutional change after the institutionalization of the postcommunist regime is limited and lock-in effects are strong. This applies to the more democratic and affluent countries as well as to the more authoritarian regimes. The authors do not find evidence for theories of institutional change that see institutional development as a linear function of socio-economic factors such as affluence or of domestic political power distribution. The European Union and NATO have an effect that is limited to the overall democratic character of the system.     

Public policy for business and the economy Ideological dissensus,change and consensus

A substantial literature shows that ideology, often describable on a conservative-liberal spectrum, is a significant independent variable influencing the formulation of public policy. The 1960s–1990s are frequently depicted as decades of ideological tumult. However, analysis of the editorials of major publications shows that substantial agreement existed on public policy directions for business and the economy throughout most of these years. Furthermore, in some policy areas initial dissensus was followed by significant movement toward consensus. A theory presented here based on the concepts of successful market operation, market misbehavior, and market breakdown explains in large part the reasons for this long term policy consensus as well as movement from dissensus to consensus.     

Policy feedback and pathways: when change leads to endurance and continuity to change

Policy Sciences - The policy feedback literature was initially concerned with explaining how positive feedback could lead to self-reinforcing policy trajectories. More recently, policy scholars...     

Protest: tradition and change

Analyses of political development in colonial Africa have largely concentrated on the role of the educated elite in the emergence of nationalist movements. In recent years some attempt has been made to fill out this one-dimensional view through the study of early and more broadly based protest movements in various colonial territories. This paper takes as its subject matter the records of riots which occurred on the Gold Coast between 1890 and 1920. These disturbances are taken as an index of non-elite protest while an analysis of case-studies indicates their significance for political developments leading to the emergence of nationalist parties.     

Public pensions and demographic change

He is a former John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies of Harvard University. He has written several books and articles on issues of labor market theory, work time, and social policy. He is author of Motive und Interessen im Arbeitszeitkonflikt: Eine Analyse der Entwicklung von Normalarbeitszeitstandardsand Zeit und Geld in privaten Haushalten: Gelegenheitsstruktur und Bedarf für Eigenarbeit als Determinanten sozialer Ungleichheit.He is also co-editor of Working Time in Transition: The Political Economy of Working Hours in Industrial Nations.