Determinants of regime type in newly independent states

Abstract.  Since 1945, newly independent states have differed from longer lived states in their greater risk of violent conflict and more challenging environment for democratisation. The authors of this article theorise that certain economic, demographic, violence-related and external factors should affect the regime type (level of democracy versus autocracy) in newly independent states. Examining exclusively newly independent states that have undergone major political transitions allows one to determine factors favouring democracy over autocracy under such volatile circumstances. The authors test several hypotheses, using cross-sectional and cross-sectional time-series analyses, and find that economic development elevates the level of democracy in new states. Cultural heterogeneity has no effect, but external factors play an important role. Genocide and politicide reduce democracy, while civil wars have the opposite effect. These findings prove robust to alternative measurements of the dependent variable and alternative model specifications.     

Local government in the new South Africa

On 1 November 1995 the final piece in South Africa's democratic jigsaw was slotted into place when elections were held to create 686 new local authorities throughout the country. The new councils are confronted with a daunting task, as they have been championed by the national Government of National Unity (GNU) as the main delivery mechanism for social and economic redistribution as well as the vehicle for the achievement of the aims and objectives of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). This article argues that the legislative framework developed for local government has an urban bias that has operated to the detriment of a manageable solution to the problems of rural local government in South Africa. The article examines the new structures of local democracy and argues that the need to secure local representation may have been achieved at the expense of functional efficiency. The lack of human and financial resources in some of the less developed councils makes service delivery problematic. If service delivery is not improved it could undermine the new local democracy as peoples' expectations remain unfulfilled. The article also examines the efforts to accommodate the political and economic demands of South Africa's traditional societies and the commercial farmers. The article argues that the efforts to incorporate these powerful elements into the new dispensation have largely failed, creating a potential for future disruption. The article concludes that the creation of a constitutional framework for local government must be seen as the first step in the development of autonomous local government, and that the main task now facing all three tiers of South Africa's government is the development of sufficient financial and human resources to ensure improvements in the standards of living of poor South Africans.     

Testing times: Exploring staged responses and the impact of blame management strategies in two examination fiasco cases

This article examines the responses of ministers facing high levels of blame in the press after serious failures in the public exam system for school-leavers in Scotland in 2000 and England in 2002. It develops a method for systematic analysis and comparison of the behaviour of officeholders facing blame, tests the hypothesis that ministers will accept personal culpability only after other ways of handling blame have been exhausted and uses time series intervention models to show how one can estimate the impact of strategies on the next day's blame level. The basic sequencing hypothesis is partially upheld by the observed behaviour in these cases, though many other kinds of blame responses do not display a clear sequence. The intervention analysis also raises questions about the claimed effectiveness of presentational strategies for managing blame.     

Dodging the bullet: How crises trigger technocrat‐led governments

Governments led by nonpartisan, ‘technocratic’ prime ministers are a rare phenomenon in parliamentary democracies, but have become more frequent since the late 1980s. This article focuses on the factors that lead to the formation of such cabinets. It posits that parliamentary parties with the chance to win the prime ministerial post will only relinquish it during political and economic crises that drastically increase the electoral costs of ruling and limit policy returns from governing. Statistical analyses of 469 government formations in 29 European democracies between 1977 and 2013 suggest that political scandals and economic recessions are major drivers of the occurrence of technocratic prime ministers. Meanwhile, neither presidential powers nor party system fragmentation and polarisation have any independent effect. The findings suggest that parties strategically choose technocrat‐led governments to shift blame and re‐establish their credibility and that of their policies in the face of crises that de‐legitimise their rule.     

Commission Newsletter: 1995

SUMMARY

In this article, M. Manolova examines the provisions in the Bulgarian Constitution of 1879 which concern the responsibility of government ministers. It is shown how these provisions were unusually explicit in establishing that ministers were both individually and collectively responsible for their actions in government and in insisting that the power to institute proceedings lay exclusively with the parliament. The article compares the Bulgarian provisions with those in similar liberal constitutions of the period and notes the several instances down to 1919 when the provisions were implemented, in order to suggest that the principal of ministerial responsibility had a special importance in Bulgarian constitutional theory and practice.