Assessing Party Effects on Local Policies: a Quarter Century of Progress or Eternal Recurrence?

There is substantial evidence of a significant link between parties and the overall scale of council activity. However, party effects vary considerably across services: the impact of parties is stronger on redistributive policies than on infrastructure or on the police and fire services. The evidence offers little support for the view that the primary policy making role of parties is mediative: additive party effects are far more significant than mediative party effects. As far as measures of party strength are concerned, the results for seat share are usually more significant than the results for outright control. Finally, policies are more strongly influenced by Labour party strength than by Conservative party strength, and left and right party effects are particularly strong when central government is controlled by Labour and the Conservatives respectively.     

Techniques to Enhance the Transmission of Quality Programs by Private Television Channels in Europe

Over the last years there has been a change in the structure of the European television market. The dominant private television stations as well as new forms of electronic communication, like cable television and Internet, have established a new role in communications. The question is whether private television channels can draw up a quality program in this role.The two standard approaches in Europe, namely, regulating intervention and free competition, do not suffice to provide an answer. For this reason, the present study aims to analyze two alternate tools for the exertion of policy, that is, the creation of incentives and the self-regulation of media organizations, in the hope that answers will be provided as to what ways the European private television can employ in order, on the one hand, to be financially effective and, on the other, to have a quality program.