THE POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF JUDICIAL REVIEW

Academic analysis of judicial review is confined largely to juridical commentaries in legal journals. This article, written from an administrator's viewpoint, examines its consequences for the power of government, for administrative behaviour, for constitutional dynamics, and for the scientific study of policy-making. It distinguishes a four-fold effect on administrators, including a substantial element of inhibition, and highlights the uncertainty created by the incremental and inconsistent development of the principles of judicial review. In constitutional terms, while the courts eschew national security and economic policy, they have in other fields explicitly created a process of accountability parallel to that of Parliament, and have resisted statutory attempts to limit their jurisdiction. Analysed in terms of political science, judicial review imposes unrealistic standards of administrative conduct, entrenches the role of pressure groups, and places on public bodies legalistic requirements that they may not be equipped to fulfil. The combination of these pressures, exacerbated by further expansion of the scope of the judicial review, are likely to increase friction between judiciary and government, possibly precipitating a crisis.     

Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: Six European countries compared

Abstract.  This article starts from the assumption that the current process of globalization or denationalization leads to the formation of a new structural conflict in Western European countries, opposing those who benefit from this process against those who tend to lose in the course of the events. The structural opposition between globalization 'winners' and 'losers' is expected to constitute potentials for political mobilization within national political contexts, the mobilization of which is expected to give rise to two intimately related dynamics: the transformation of the basic structure of the national political space and the strategic repositioning of the political parties within the transforming space. The article presents several hypotheses with regard to these two dynamics and tests them empirically on the basis of new data concerning the supply side of electoral politics from six Western European countries (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The results indicate that in all the countries, the new cleavage has become embedded into existing two-dimensional national political spaces, that the meaning of the original dimensions has been transformed, and that the configuration of the main parties has become triangular even in a country like France.