Party organisation and party competitiveness: The case of the Austrian People's Party, 1945–1992

Abstract. This article links party organisation to party performance, examining their relationship over almost half a century in an in-depth case study of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). It proceeds from the assumption that party organisation does matter for party performance, at least indirectly, and that the adaptation of the party organisation to a changing environment is, in the long run, the only viable strategy for party goal achievement. While the ÖVP's environment was subject to important changes, all of which worked against the party, it has failed to adapt to them. This, in turn, has reduced the competitiveness of the ÖVP. Consequently its record in achieving most of its party goals has been rather poor since 1970. The reconstruction of the intra-party discussions reveals that the party leadership had access to analyses identifying the structural weaknesses of the party organisation since the late 1950s. The ÖVP's failure to adapt is explained by using the 'nested games' approach of Tsebelis (1990). In order to enhance the understanding of organisational dynamics of parties in a more general sense, the case of the ÖVP is related to the work of Panebianco (1988) and Janda (1990).     

The literature on European parties and party systems since 1945: A quantitative analysis

Abstract. This article analyses the structure and evolution of the literature on parties and party systems in Europe since 1945. Using a bibliographical database comprising all references to scientific work on parties and party systems, we propose an innovative quantitative analysis. The completeness of our database allows us to show in detail the evolution of the literature over time. On the basis of a systematic coding of all references with respect to the type of parties, the countries and topics covered, as well as the language, place and type of publication, we propose a detailed quantitative analysis of the literature in all its dimensions. The result of our exploration is an accurate map of the literature on political parties in Europe.     

Capital mobility,perspectives and central bank independence: Exchange rate policy since 1945

Hegemonic stability theory has been the traditional explanation in International Political Economy for the trend from fixed to floating exchange rates which was brought about by the collapse of Bretton Woods. This approach is found to be problematic. A more powerful explanation is the postwar rise in capital mobility, which produces a trade-off between exchange rate stability and policy autonomy. Preferences for these two policies have been a function of perspectives on economic policy and the degree of central bank independence. Independent central banks prefer domestic policy autonomy to exchange rate management, as they have no socio-political incentives to produce competitive, stable exchange rates. Their interests are predominantly in achieving low domestic inflation. In addition, current perspectives hold that the best way of securing international exchange rate stability is to pursue stable macroeconomic policies at home, resulting in the predominance of floating exchange rate policies. This trend will continue into the near future despite opportunities for international cooperation presented by the rationalization of world monetary politics into a G3 following the introduction of the euro. This may have adverse effects on the global economy for three reasons. First, there is a long-term danger that triad regionalization will result in a revival of neo-mercantilist policies, in which the exchange rate could play a part. Second, a high proportion of world trade and finance will be denominated in dollars and euros, rendering the stability of the dollar/euro exchange rate a global public good. Third, dollar/euro exchange rate misalignments which harm either the U.S. or EMU will be harmful to the global economy because of the high percentage of world GDP accounted for by these two areas.     

New Labour Legacy: Comparing the Labour Governments of Blair and Brown to Labour Governments since 1945

The election of the Conservative–Liberal coalition in May 2010 provides the opportunity to start to map out the record of the Labour governments between 1997 and 2010. This paper deals with the specific question how the Brown/Blair governments performed on public expenditures when compared to the records of UK Labour governments since 1945. Did the public expenditure record of the 1997 represent a departure from that of previous Labour governments? This is important to ascertain since there are strongly held beliefs that New Labour was not committed to Labour's historic commitments of income redistribution and universal benefits. The analysis that follows is constructed around five major public expenditure programmes that reflect Labour's priorities. These include total expenditure, expenditure on health, education, housing and social security.     

Changes in the PSI leadership: the national executive committee and its membership (1976–1987)

Abstract. This paper deals with the role and composition of the Italian Socialist Party's National Executive Committee during the 1976–1987 period. These years saw the advent, the strengthening and the unchallenged supremacy of Craxi's leadership first within the PSI and then within the Italian political system. While in other political parties the role of the National Executive Committee as a decision-making body has remained crucial, in the PSI this role seems to have been impaired both by Craxi's extremely personal and strong leadership and by the weakness of the party organization. However, the loss of decision-making power by the collective leadership was accompanied by an increase in membership, which favoured the rise of new members to leading positions. The social and political characteristics of this new political class are analysed and evaluated through a number of empirical indicators. The results allow a better understanding of the actual changes that occurred in the party as a consequence of the innovations brought about by Craxi's leadership. This, in turn, sheds light on an important section of the Italian ruling class.     

Consistent allocation of cabinet seats: the Swiss Magic Formula

In 1959, the four largest political parties in Switzerland’s Federal Assembly established a broad coalition government with a specific allocation of the seven cabinet seats among them. This assignment continued unaltered for 44 years up to 1999. It is, therefore, phrased the ‘Magic Formula’. The underlying political paradigm appears to be essentially egalitarian, with a Rawlsian concern for minorities. We thus ask whether the Magic Formula can be implemented by the nucleolus of a weighted voting game for the Swiss government. We provide results over real-valued and integer-valued imputation sets, and for all regular election periods from 1959 to date. It turns out that the Magic Formula is contained in eight out of 11 nucleoli over integer domains between 1959 and 1999, and that it comes very close to the nucleolus in two of the three remaining cases. The game solution likewise predicts in part a major modification of the Magic Formula adopted in 2003.     

Making words count: Coalition agreements and cabinet management

The cabinet is a central actor in policy making in parliamentary systems. Yet, relatively little is known about how coalition cabinets operate. The delegation of decision‐making authority to ministers invites policy drift, which threatens the cohesiveness of the cabinet's policy programme. Cabinets employ a variety of methods to contain policy drift. The writing of coalition agreements is among the major tools, but there are others, including limiting ministerial autonomy and the use of junior ministers to shadow ministers. The present study demonstrates that coalition agreements are written to contain policy drift and that it is directly related to the degree of hierarchy in the cabinet. It studies the factors that affect the likelihood of a coalition agreement being written and how extensive they are, if written. Among these are the ideological diversity found in the cabinet, the use of alternative methods for controlling ministers and the complexity of the bargaining situation.     

Performance voting and knowledge of cabinet composition

Nearly every empirical study of outcome oriented retrospective voting assumes, though almost always implicitly, that a) every voter knows the composition of the incumbent government, or b) that voters who may not know who is in government do not cast retrospective votes. In this short essay we provide evidence that these assumptions are quite unlikely to hold and discuss how not taking this possibility into account has influenced our understanding of the retrospective voting mechanism and the conditioning effect of political sophistication on the economic vote. In so doing, we advocate for the inclusion of questions regarding cabinet composition in electoral surveys.     

The Caspian Sea: Potentials and Prospects

The intense interest shown by the major international oil and gas companies in the Caspian Sea testifies to its promising potentials. The seven- hundred-mile long Caspian Sea is located in northwest Asia. Five countries—Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan—share the Caspian basin. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Caspian states became open to foreign investment and the region has reemerged as a potentially significant player in the global energy policy. Indeed, the geological potential of the Caspian region as a major source of oil and gas is not in doubt. The rate of investment, however, is (and will continue to be) determined by the perceived risk in the region. This report examines three socioeconomic and political challenges to the region: ethnic conflicts, disagreements over the most cost-effective pipeline routes, and disputes over the legal status of the Caspian.     

Theories of legislation: some Austrian evidence and general conclusions

Abstract. After defining legislation as an extended process which includes initiation, preparation, legislation proper as well as implementation, an empirically derived threefold typology of laws differentiating them according to the groups most active in the initiation phase is proposed. Taking into consideration the official and unofficial policy theories of these groups, predictions can be made about the degree of effectiveness of laws. Some empirical evidence supports these assumptions. In this way a better understanding of the extended lawmaking process and the conditions for the successful implementation of laws may be achieved.     

Institutional veto players and cabinet formation: The veto control hypothesis reconsidered

Are potential cabinets more likely to form when they control institutional veto players such as symmetric second chambers or minority vetoes? Existing evidence for a causal effect of veto control has been weak. This article presents evidence for this effect on the basis of conditional and mixed logit analyses of government formations in 21 parliamentary and semi‐presidential democracies between 1955 and 2012. It also shows that the size of the effect varies systematically across political‐institutional contexts. The estimated causal effect was greater in countries that eventually abolished the relevant veto institutions. It is suggested that the incidence of constitutional reform is a proxy for context‐specific factors that increased the incentives for veto control and simultaneously provided a stimulus for the weakening of institutional veto power.