The history of conditional agenda-setting in European institutions

Abstract. The purpose of this article is twofold. Our first goal is to make explicit an institutionalist theory of European integration. This theory is based on the concept of 'conditional agenda setting', which we argue has played an important role in European integration. According to this theory, the fact that Commission proposals are more easily accepted than modified by the Council has accelerated the pace of integration. This finding brings us to the second goal of this article which is to investigate, by studying the history of EU institutions, whether or not these institutions were the result of conscious planning. We demonstrate that while some of the founding fathers (Hallstein, Spaak) and opponents of the EU (de Gaulle) had an accurate understanding of the institutional structures created in Rome, later participants in the integration process did not. In particular, the arguments surrounding the Single European Act indicate a lack of understanding of the full implications of the institutions selected.     

Issue competition in the 1993 Norwegian national election

Public Choice - We investigate the role of issues in the 1993 Norwegian election. We are interested in comparing two spatial models of issue evaluation, the directional model and the familiar...     

The Effects of Capital Mobility, Trade Openness, and Democracy on Social Spending in Latin America, 1980–1999

Empirical studies measuring the impact of globalization on social spending have appeared recently in leading journals. This study seeks to improve upon previous work by (1) employing a more sophisticated and comprehensive measure of financial openness; (2) using a more accurate measure of trade openness based on purchasing power parities; and (3) relying on social spending data that are more complete than those used by previous studies on Latin America. Our estimates suggest that several empirical patterns reported in previous work deserve a second look. We find that trade openness has a positive association with education and social security expenditures, that financial openness does not constrain government outlays for social programs, and that democracy has a strong positive association with social spending, particularly on items that bolster human capital formation.     

English feudalism and the origins of capitalism

The specific historical basis for the development of capitalism in England — and not in France — is traced to the unique structure of English manorial lordship. It is the absence from English lordship of seigneurie banale ‐ the specific political form of parcellised sovereignty that figured centrally in the development of Continental feudalism ‐ that accounts for the peculiarly ‘economic’ turn taken in the development of English class relations of surplus extraction. In France, by contrast, the distinctly ‘political’ tenor of subsequent social development can equally specifically be traced to the central role of seigneurie banale in the fundamental class relations of feudalism.     

Block grants and state discretion: A study of the implementation of the partnership for health act in three states

This article examines the use of federal funds provided to state health departments under a grant consolidation of eight previously categorical health programs in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Alabama in a comparative context. The primary question addressed is why the three states chose to describe their allocations of funds within the total health department budget differently, and what political, administrative, and bureaucratic factors explained the differences. Although certain factors were found to be at work in all states (e.g. each had an incentive to concentrate the reported use of federal funds to simplify federal audits) these factors combined with circumstances unique to each state to produce different expenditure patterns. After examining the experience of three states, general hypotheses are developed. For example, it is hypothesized that more volatile changes in allocations will result from grant consolidations in policy areas which do not address basic service needs. Finally the decision-making process with respect to block grant funds is characterized as one in which a small group of professionals determined allocations autonomously with relatively little input from interest groups or other actors within state government; nevertheless, the external political and administrative environment severely limited the possibilities of realistic choice in each of the three states studied.I wish to thank the National Center for Health Services Research which supported this study under grant HS 01495. I am indebted to the state health department officials in Alabama, Michigan, and Pennsylvania who made this research possible. I would also like to thank Leonard Robins, Janet Shikles, William Schmalzreid, Bruce Vladeck, John Kingdon and Robert Baitty for comments on an earlier draft. Of course the views expressed are my own and in no way reflect the positions of the Department of Health and Human Services.     

Comparative urban social indicators: Problems and prospects

The increasing availability of urban social indicators offers the possibility of an overall quality of life measure which can be used to compare cities. Several solutions to the problem of combining the individual indicators into an overall comparative measure are considered in this article. The most promising results were obtained by grouping cities according to the similarity of their profiles on the social indicators. Yet the value of the comparisons remains speculative because of serious limitations in the indicators. While a number of improvements are possible, the resulting indicators will still only be adequate for use in gross comparisons of metropolitan areas.