Different governments,similar agendas? Analyzing more than seven decades of Norwegian policy agendas presented in executive speeches

Norwegian politics have undergone significant changes since 1945. This paper analyzes over seven decades of policy agendas outlined in Norwegian executive speeches focusing on the composition and development of the agenda using categories from the Comparative Agendas Project. The analysis focuses on (a) the dynamics of agenda changes over time, (b) the diversity and distribution of attention, and (c) in how far external shocks or partisan factors drive major agenda shifts. Our results show that the Norwegian executive agenda has become more encompassing over time, that it is comparatively diverse, and that diversity increases as Norwegian politics becomes more complex. While there is generally a high degree of stability in the agenda, sudden punctuations also occur. Partisan factors only play a limited role in explaining these attention shifts, while external shocks seem to be more relevant.     

Local Political Decision-Making: A Case of Rationality or Appropriateness?

The party and trustee principles are two representational styles used to describe how politicians make decisions. Swedish politicians have historically relied more on the party principle than the trustee principle. This article studies the decision-making practices of local Swedish politicians by exploring to what extent they rely on these principles when making decisions on two issues that diverge in political dignity: tax level and organisational change in the municipal administration. The study draws on new institutional theory, in which theories from rational choice and sociological institutionalism were used for modelling and performing a large study. The results indicate that, although Swedish politicians still rely on the party principle when making decisions, there is a significant difference as to what extent they do so in regard to the two policy issues. The trustee principle is more frequently used when deciding on organisational change than on tax levels. This result is valid for all Swedish parties, except for a relatively new political party at the extreme right of the ideological spectrum. Future research of the two decision-making principles in relation to other policy issues, as well as research that delves deeper into the deviant results of the different political parties, is encouraged.     

Brothers in arms or at arms? IG‐Metall in 1994: Confronting recession and unification

The protracted collective bargaining dispute in German manufacturing during spring 1994 displayed a variety of characteristics fundamental to an understanding of the social unification process in Germany. This article focuses on contextual conditions affecting the negotiating and compromise formation process. This serves to illustrate the ‘turbulent environment’ under which industrial relations are currently taking place. To illustrate this argument the article analyses the requirements and obstacles to finding a compromise in the 1994 bargaining round. The core challenge consisted in displaying a degree of organisational flexibility on both sides of the bargaining table. At the heart of this challenge is the search for a new architecture in German industrial relations which includes coming to terms with the combined effects of unification and economic restructuring.     

The Hidden American Immigration Consensus: A Conjoint Analysis of Attitudes toward Immigrants

Many studies have examined Americans' immigration attitudes. Yet prior research frequently confounds multiple questions, including which immigrants to admit and how many to admit. To isolate attitudes on the former question, we use a conjoint experiment that simultaneously tests the influence of nine immigrant attributes in generating support for admission. Drawing on a two‐wave, population‐based survey, we demonstrate that Americans view educated immigrants in high‐status jobs favorably, whereas they view those who lack plans to work, entered without authorization, are Iraqi, or do not speak English unfavorably. Strikingly, Americans' preferences vary little with their own education, partisanship, labor market position, ethnocentrism, or other attributes. Beneath partisan divisions over immigration lies a broad consensus about who should be admitted to the country. The results are consistent with norms‐based and sociotropic explanations of immigration attitudes. This consensus points to limits in both theories emphasizing economic and cultural threats, and sheds new light on an ongoing policy debate.     

Globale Ungleichheit: Weltgesellschaftliche Perspektiven

A common claim made by world system theory and world society theory is that the observable differences in the world system or the world society are to be considered as consequences of the structure of the overall system. This claim is tested by considering the current research on global income inequality. One finding of this research is that the individual share in global income is predominantly determined by where an individual lives. While it is difficult for Luhmann’s theory of world society to account for this observation, from the point of view of world system theory this observation can be interpreted as a result of globally effective profit interests which exploit the political segmentation of the globe. Nevertheless, this interpretation also has to be questioned. On the one hand, there are strong indications that the economic development and the distribution of income are strongly determined by national factors that cannot easily be interpreted as consequences of global forces. On the other hand, world system theory has not succeeded in establishing the mechanisms by which structures of global exploitation operate. It is argued that these findings do not invalidate a world societal perspective on global inequality, but only invalidate the stronger claim that global structures are necessarily determined by global forces. Rather, national structures are still shaping global structures to a high degree.