The politics of regulatory enforcement and compliance: Theorizing and operationalizing political influences

There is broad consensus in the literature on regulatory enforcement and compliance that politics matters. However, there is little scholarly convergence on what politics is or rigorous theorization and empirical testing of how politics matters. Many enforcement and compliance studies omit political variables altogether. Among those that address political influences on regulatory outcomes, politics has been defined in myriad ways and, too often, left undefined. Even when political constructs are explicitly operationalized, the mechanisms by which they influence regulatory outcomes are thinly hypothesized or simply ignored. If politics is truly as important to enforcement and compliance outcomes as everyone in the field seems to agree, regulatory scholarship must make a more sustained and systematic effort to understand their relationship, because overlooking this connection risks missing what is actually driving regulatory outcomes. This article examines how the construct of “politics” has been conceptualized in regulatory theory and analyzes how it has been operationalized in empirical studies of regulatory enforcement and compliance outcomes. It brings together scholarship across disciplines that rarely speak but have much to say to one another on this subject in order to constitute a field around the politics of regulation. The goal is to sharpen theoretical and empirical understandings of when and how regulation works by better accounting for the role politics plays in its enforcement.     

Zur Politisierung der Europäischen Union

The constitutional treaty of the EU failed. Why so? Does this failure indicate the end of European integration and the beginning of re-nationalization of European politics? This contribution argues that the failure of the constitutional treaty is due to a process of politicization of the EU. As a result, political processes beyond the nation state are judged increasingly not just on the basis of their effectiveness, but also in terms of the criteria for good political order, such as fairness and legitimacy. The respective governments of the EU member states, however, publicly still take an instrumental approach to the EU. This is doomed to failure and thus the future of the European project is open. Either politics adapts to the new evaluation criteria for European integration or a partial re-nationalization of European politics is indeed likely.     

Immigration and the sociocultural divide in Central and Eastern Europe: Stasis or evolution?

Immigration has historically been of low salience in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, the region has consistently higher levels of ethnocentrism than the rest of Europe. Scholars argue that the East's limited politicization of immigration is due to its status as a region of emigration and the presence of ethnic minority ‘others’. I argue that this is changing. The politicization of the European refugee crisis by domestic elites has begun to refocus the sociocultural dimension on the immigration issue. Using structural equation models, I compare European Values Study data from 2008 and 2017 across 10 East European EU member states. I find evidence that traditionalist attitudes are more strongly related to anti-immigration attitudes since the crisis, particularly for those who are interested in politics. Further, immigration attitudes are polarizing across the GAL-TAN dimension and by education. Hence, immigration is bolstering a pre-existing, socially structured divide around both nationalist and traditionalist values.     

Technocracy,Politicization, and Noninvolvement: Politics of Expertise in the European Regulation of Chemicals

This article addresses the relationship between scientific expertise and policy in European chemicals regulation. We argue that the role of scientific expertise in the European regulation of chemicals varies across decision‐making levels, countries, and stages of the policy process. Our case study of the role of scientific expertise in the regulation of brominated flame retardants illustrates considerably different manifestations of this interconnected process across regulatory arenas, even though this case concerns a single group of substances. On the European Union level, we find a mix of technocracy and politicization; in Sweden, a clear‐cut politicization; and in Poland, noninvolvement. Such differences can be explained by a combination of factors, in particular frame dominance, and mobilization of advocacy coalitions.     

新型治理:韩国民主进程中的市民组织

近些年来,在以发展型国家著称的韩国,公民参与政策过程的影响不断增强.本文分析了韩国民主巩固进程中市民组织的政治化问题.论文通过分析市民组织在政策过程中的三个政治活动案例,揭示了韩国市民组织的组织特征和政治功能,最后还对韩国市民组织的特征与日本市民组织的特征进行了比较,并对韩国政治中市民组织在新型治理中的作用及其前景进行了评价.     

Still men’s parties? Gender and the radical right in comparative perspective

This framing paper introduces the symposium on gender and the radical right. With the exception of a few recent studies, gender issues have received little attention in research on the European radical right. The purpose of this symposium is to address that and examine (1) whether radical right parties are still ‘men’s parties’ – parties led and supported primarily by men and (2) to what extent and how women and women’s concerns have been included by these parties. It argues that radical right parties have changed their appeal since their origins in the 1980s. There is now evidence of the fact that radical right parties, at least in some countries, exhibit an active political involvement of women and engage in some representation of women’s concerns. This puts them in a more ‘standardised’ political position vis-à-vis other parties. Given the current lack of focus on this topic, and given the recent gendered changes in radical right parties, this symposium stresses the academic and political importance of studying gender relations in radical right politics.     

Participation in hard times: how constrained government depresses turnout among the highly educated

Existing studies on electoral turnout in times of economic crisis have predominantly focused on disadvantaged voters. However, during the recent economic crisis, turnout among highly educated citizens has strongly declined as well. Existing resource-based theories of political participation cannot account for this. This article suggests that the anticipation of government inefficacy is an important driver of abstention among highly educated. Where governments are severely constrained, these citizens anticipate that the hands of future governments will be tied. Hence they are more likely to abstain out of frustration or rational calculations. The study uses the recent economic crisis as test case, as it entails particularly acute constraints on several European governments. The cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence – based on ESS survey data and different measures of government constraint in 28 European countries – provides ample support for the argument.     

Learning from the Americanists (Again): Theory and Method in the Study of Delegation

European(ist) scholars have largely followed their American(ist) colleagues in the formulation of theories about delegation of powers to non-majoritarian institutions, most notably through the application of principal-agent models of relations between legislative principals and their executive and judicial agents. This article suggests that Europeanists can once again learn from recent developments in both theory and method in the study of delegation in American politics. The first section discusses the methodological challenges of testing hypotheses about the conditions under which agents might enjoy some degree of autonomy from their legislative principals, and draws lessons from the recent Americanist literature. The section examines the development in American politics of a second wave of principal-agent analysis which aims to formulate and test hypotheses about the conditions under which legislative principals might delegate authority and discretion to bureaucratic agents. The third and final section of the article examines some preliminary applications of the principal-agent approach to the European Union and to the comparative study of European parliamentary democracies, and proposes a research agenda for the comparative study of national-level delegation in the parliamentary systems of Western Europe.     

Political Information, Political Involvement, and Reliance on Ideology in Political Evaluation

Many studies have focused on the relationship between political information and the use of ideology. Here, we argue that two “evaluative motivations”—general investment of the self in politics and extremity of partisanship—serve as moderators of this relationship. Specifically, we use data from two recent national surveys to test whether the possession of information is more strongly associated with a tendency to approach politics in an ideological fashion among individuals high in both types of evaluative motivation. Results supported this hypothesis, revealing that information was more strongly associated with ideological constraint and with a tendency to give polarized evaluations of conservatives and liberals among those who highly invest the self in politics and those with more extreme partisanship. As such, this study suggests that information and involvement interact to shape the use of ideology.     

Dimensionality,ideology and party positions towards European integration

The rise of political contestation over European integration has led many scholars to examine the role that broader ideological positions play in structuring party attitudes towards European integration. This article extends the existing approaches in two important ways. First, it shows that whether the dimensionality of politics is imagined in a one-dimensional ‘general left?right’ form or a two-dimensional ‘economic left?right/social liberal-conservative’ form leads to very different understandings of the way ideology has structured attitudes towards European integration, with the two-dimensional approach offering greater explanatory power. Second, existing approaches have modelled the influence of ideology on attitudes towards European integration as a static process. This article shows that the relationship between ideology and European integration has changed substantially over the history of European integration: divisions over social issues have replaced economic concerns as the main driver of party attitudes towards European integration.     

An end to “Civil War politics”? The radically reshaped political landscape of post-crash Ireland

The European debt crisis has impacted on electoral politics in most European states, but particularly in the Republic of Ireland. The severe nature of the economic crash and the subsequent application of austerity policies have brought large fluctuations in political support levels, with the three parties that have dominated the state since its foundation – Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour – all being adversely effected. The extent of these changes is highly controlled both by geography and by class, with political allegiances proving to be highly fluid in certain parts of the state. Growing support levels for left wing parties and groupings, but most notably Sinn Fein, appear to be moving Irish politics away from the old “Civil War” style of politics and bringing it more into line with the traditional class cleavage politics of continental Europe.     

当代中国农民制度化政治参与的类型分析

制度化政治参与是指政治参与主体依据国家的宪法、法律、规章、政策、条例等所规定的制度和程序参与政治生活、影响政治过程的行为。根据制度化政治参与的涵义，当代中国农民制度化政治参与可划分为：民意表达类型、民意代表类型、政治协调类型、村民自治类型四种类型。     

The disentanglement of interest politics: Business associability,the parties and policy in Italy and Greece

Abstract. The article explores changes in the politics of business associability in Italy and Greece, focusing in particular on a set of comparable domestic and European developments that have played the roles of stimuli for the slow but unmistakable transformation of interest politics. Against a background of intense politicization, changes that are taking place since the 1980s suggest that organized interests become disentangled from the linkages which sustained party colonization and state dominance. Changes in interest politics were facilitated by the transition to a majoritarian system (in Italy) and party alternation (in Greece). The disentanglement we refer to would be difficult under conditions of sharing–out government; conversely, alternating governments facilitate changes in the relationships between interests, parties and policy–making. Apart from the domestic sources of change, the article argues that shifts in interest politics are the combined outcome of wider challenges and of the impact of Europeanization. On the basis of this analysis, we speculate that the disentanglement of interest politics may be conducive to national policy adjustment in two possible scenarios. Either by enabling intersectoral agreements over policy issues or by freeing national policymaking from the burden of oligopolistic coalitions — a social democratic and a neoliberal scenario respectively.     

Driving Development from Below: The Advantages and Limitations of Vernacular Politics in the Bolivian Altiplano

Anthropologists studying the Andean community politics have increasingly emphasised the role of pragmatic, informal ‘vernacular’ political strategies in achieving material and political empowerment of the poor. However, while the concept of vernacular politics marks an advancement over binary and often polarised discussions of the role of local communities in development processes, studies have not fully explored the full range of implications of vernacular strategies on development processes. While researchers have demonstrated the substantial agency that local community actors have to influence development processes, the extent to which this influence effectively resists or reinforces the logic of public policy implementation has not been studied. This article explores the techniques used by rural communities in their interactions with public institutions in rural Bolivia. It shows that community organisations' vernacular political strategies have mixed outcomes: on the one hand, they allow the rural poor to assert their own agendas vis‐à‐vis the state so that they can benefit from public spending, while on the other hand, their tactics have the potential to entrench the influence of local power brokers and perpetuate inefficient uses of public funds. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emigrant external voting in Central-Eastern Europe after EU enlargement

The European Union's Eastern Enlargement of 2004–2007 triggered a large wave of migration. While the influence of Central-Eastern European (CEE) migrants on Western European politics has been studied, the impact of outward migration and political remittances “sent” by expatriates remain unexplored, despite the salience of democratic backsliding and populist politics in the region. We ask how external voting among migrants differs from electoral results in homelands over time, drawing on an original dataset gathering voting results among migrants from six CEE countries in fifteen Western European host countries. Using models estimated with Bayesian ordinary least squares regression, we test three hypotheses: two related to the disparity of diaspora votes from homeland party systems over time; and one to the ideological leanings of diasporas. We observe a growing discrepancy and note that diaspora votes follow the ideological fluctuations in the country of origin but distort it, with CEE migrants voting for more liberal and more economically right-wing parties than voters ‘at home’.     

Revisiting Politicization: Political Advisers and Public Servants in Westminster Systems

In recent times much has been made of the threat some argue is posed by political advisers to the impartiality of the Westminster civil service. Drawing on survey of senior New Zealand civil servants, this article examines the degree to which political advisers are perceived as a threat to civil service neutrality and describes the form taken by that threat as variously perceived. On the evidence reported, it is suggested that traditional understandings of “politicization” need to be reconceptualized if they are to fully account for the nature of the relationship between political and civil service advisers. To existing conceptions of politicization, therefore, the article proposes adding another: “administrative politicization,” allowing for different gradations of politicization to be identified, and enabling a nuanced assessment of the nature and extent of a risk to civil service neutrality that, the data suggest, is not as great as is sometimes alleged.     

Individual and contextual variation in EU issue voting: The role of political information

Increasing politicization in EU member states about European issues can be expected to strengthen the impact of attitudes towards Europe on vote choice in European Parliament (EP) elections. At the same time this impact is likely to vary between voters and contexts as a function of political information. This study explores the role of political information in explaining individual and contextual heterogeneity in the degree of EU issue voting. Using a two-step hierarchical estimation procedure to explore both individual and contextual variation, we show that while EU issue voting in the 2009 EP elections is only slightly more pronounced among the politically sophisticated, it is clearly more extensive in contexts that provide higher levels of political information on European matters.     

Secrecy in Europe

Abstract

This article introduces a collection of papers devoted to the study of secrecy in European politics across a range of EU and national settings and policy domains. Academic interest in secret politics – those aspects of public activity intentionally concealed from the public eye – and the governance of secrecy – the political processes and regulatory frameworks governing secret keeping – is growing. This interest reflects technological, social and political developments that appear to signal the end of privacy and the rapid expansion of political secrecy in European multi-level settings. As a consequence, the tensions between democratic accountability, with its transparency requirements, and political secrecy, which is typically justified on grounds of effectiveness of state action, have become more marked and more politicised. Engaging with these developments, the contributions to this collection draw on actor- and interest-centred perspectives that focus on actors’ motivations in secret politics; institutional perspectives that focus on contestation over secrecy norms; and organisational perspectives that emphasise the diversity of secrecy cultures. Further research will benefit from paying special attention to a diverse range of inter-institutional and inter-organisational secrecy settings; to political contestation over secrecy and the regulatory regimes that govern it; and to the refashioning of public-private secrecy architectures.     

Class,Race Issues,and Declining White Support for the Democratic Party in the South

The Democratic Party in the South has experienced a major loss of white voters in recent decades. Two major hypotheses have been proposed to explain this change. The dominant explanation in recent years has been that race issues have driven whites from the Democratic Party in the South. In this view, defections from the Democratic Party have occurred because whites oppose the party's positions on race issues. In contrast, others have suggested that class divisions have emerged as important, with affluent whites increasingly supportive of the Republican Party because they find its positions more compatible with their interests. Using NES data, this article assesses the evidence for these hypotheses, examining the impact of income position and race issues on partisan behavior since 1952. While both factors affect partisan support, income has come to have a relatively greater effect on partisan support than race issues. The evidence clearly indicates that class divisions in the South have steadily increased and that affluent whites have steadily shifted to the Republican Party. The implications are significant for understanding the dramatic changes in the South in recent decades. Much has been made of the tensions over race issues, and the findings presented here lend further support to the importance of race issues in southern electoral politics. However, these findings also suggest that class divisions are a steadily increasing source of political cleavage in this region. The current state of electoral politics in the South cannot be properly understood unless both of these factors are taken into account.