The National Interest and the Politics of Threat Exaggeration: The Blair Government's Case for War against Iraq

During the 2005 General Election the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, suggested that the invasion of Iraq was in 'the national interest'. Whether he knew it or not, this phrase has often referred to controversial decisions taken by governments, away from scrutiny and subject to criticism when made public, but which they believe are in the best interests of the British state.
The article summarises the consequences of the invasion in terms of the subsequent criticism and official inquiries before addressing the question of what is the national interest. The article then considers what exactly was the threat, and whether or not it was exaggerated, and what evidence is now emerging to indicate that the decision to invade was taken 'in the national interest'. It concludes that there was a decision to support the USA and that the threat was exaggerated to justify this decision.     

The Third Force? Independent Regulatory Agencies and Elected Politicians in Europe

Governments and legislatures in Europe have created or greatly strengthened independent regulatory agencies (IRAs). Yet they also retain many formal controls over those agencies. The article analyzes whether elected politicians have used their powers to create IRAs in their own image and kept IRAs under tight control or whether they have allowed IRAs to become a distinct set of actors, hence a "third force" in regulation. Principal–agent (PA) theories, largely based on U.S. experience, emphasize the importance of certain formal controls for elected politicians to limit "agency losses." However, an analysis of four European nations between 1990 and 2001 shows that elected politicians did not use their powers to appoint party politicians, force the early departures of IRA members, reverse IRA decisions, or reduce IRA budgets and powers. Using PA theory, two interpretations of this apparent puzzle are offered, each with differing implications for agency autonomy. One is that elected politicians used alternative methods of control, hence they suffered low "agency losses" and IRAs in practice had little autonomy. The other is that elected politicians found that the benefits of IRA autonomy in practice and the costs of applying their formal control outweighed agency losses, and hence accepted agency autonomy.     

United States Law on the Protection of Abused and Neglected Children

1.Introduction This paper discusses child protection in the United States.I will discuss four general topics.The first topic is United States laws on the protection of children from child abuse and neglect.The second topic is providing care for children who must be removed from their homes.The     

Ringing in the Changes

SUITED senior officials,shaggy singers and slouch-ing Internet potatoes movedaround each other with anuneasy lack of familiarity atthe opening ceremony of the Intel i-CafeMusic Studio in Zhengzhou on an icylate November day. The dignitaries wereofficials from the Department of Cultureof Henan. the central Chinese provinceof which Zhengzhou is capital. Wearinga surfeit of black, white and brown hairdye, the would-be rock stars were mak-ing a rare public foray. Most of themweren't familia…     

Art Matters

Beijing's Huajiadi community of contemporary artists may have disbanded, but its impact and the commercial success of its artists have been enormous.     

From 'welfare without work' to 'buttressed liberalization': The shifting dynamics of labor market adjustment in France and Germany

Abstract.  During the past decade, prevailing scholarship has portrayed France and Germany as suffering from a persistent syndrome of 'welfare without work' entailing a vicious circle between stubbornly high rates of unemployment and non-wage labor costs. Scholars blame this disease on dysfunctional political arrangements, deep insider-outsider cleavages and failed systems of social partnership. As a result, the two countries are said to be more or less permanently mired in a context of high unemployment that is highly resistant to remediation. This article departs from this conventional wisdom in two important respects. First, it argues that France and Germany have undertaken major reforms of their labor market policies and institutions during the past decade and remediated many of their longstanding employment traps. Second, it shows that the political arrangements that adherents of the 'welfare without work' thesis identify as reasons for sclerosis have evolved quite dramatically. The article supports these arguments by exploring some of the most significant recent labor market reforms in the two countries, as well as the shifting political relationships that have driven these changes. In both countries, recent labor market reforms have followed a trajectory of 'buttressed liberalization'. This has involved, on the one hand, significant liberalization of labor market regulations such as limits on overtime and worker protections such as unemployment insurance. On the other hand, it has entailed a set of supportive, 'buttressing' reforms involving an expansion of active labor market policies and support for workers' efforts to find jobs. The article concludes that these developments provide reasons for optimism about the countries' economic futures and offer important lessons about how public policy can confront problems of labor market stagnation.     

The New Institutionalism and EC Governance: The Promise and Limits of Institutional Analysis

The "new" institutionalisms" in rational choice and historical analysis are being applied with increasing sophistication and accuracy to the study of European Community governance. The basic premise of such institutional approaches is that EC institutions, once created, "take on a life of their own," acting as independent or intervening variables between the preferences and power of the member governments on the one hand, and the ultimate policy outputs of EC governance on the other. The challenge for institutionalist theory consists in constructing a precise analytical tool-box that will allow us to make specific predictions about the ways in which, and the conditions under which, EC institutions may exert such an independent causal influence. EC institutions matter, I suggest, insofar as they: lend stability to an existing institutional structure; shape any subsequent amendment of those institutions; allow individual member governments to be outvoted by qualified majority; cause member states to lose control of events through lock-ins; and subject member governments to the actions of supranational agents whose behavior they can control only imperfectly.