The military dimension of Russia’s connection with Europe

The Russian challenge to the European security system is internal rather than external, because despite all the political efforts at distancing Russia from Europe, the indivisibility remains undiminished. The underlying assumption for Russia’s course is that the West is in irreversible decline, and the conclusion about the dissolution of the West-controlled world order is established in the key doctrinal documents. Instead of passively waiting for this meltdown to develop, it makes perfect sense for the Russian leadership to accelerate it pro-actively, using various levers, including military force. Moscow acts on the assumption that its “unconventional” methods could yield results only if augmented by military threats, against which the Europeans cannot master convincing counter-argument. The imperative to sustain and update credibility of these threats necessitates allocation of greater share of available resources to military build-up, which clashes with economic rationale of reducing this burden in the situation of protracted stagnation.     

Towards an evidence-based approach to communicating uncertainty in intelligence analysis

Intelligence products have a degree of uncertainty associated with them. This is typically expressed using linguistic probabilities (e.g., ‘likely’), and some organizations have adopted standardized lexicons for communicating uncertainty. This paper empirically shows that intelligence analysts use a wide heterogeneity of language to communicate uncertainty. This does not include all of the phrases in standardized lexicons used by the intelligence community. In addition, analysts may use some phrases differently to that advocated. Miscommunication of uncertainty can have deleterious effects on decision-making, and so standardization of uncertainty communication should be evidence-based. This paper discusses ways in which such evidence can be generated.     

Electoral infidelity: Why party members cast defecting votes

Party politics and electoral research generally assume that party members are loyal voters. This article first assesses the empirical basis for this assumption before providing individual‐level explanations for defection. It combines prominent theories from party politics and electoral behaviour research and argues that internal disagreement and external pressure can each bring about disloyal voting. The hypotheses are motivated with multi‐country European survey data and tested on two sets of party‐level national surveys. The results show, first, that, on average, 8 per cent of European party members cast a defecting vote in the last election, and second, that dissatisfaction with the leadership is the strongest predictor of defection. Additionally, internal ideological disagreement is associated with higher probabilities of defection, whereas the effects of pull factors in the form of contentious policies are rather limited. These findings emphasise the importance of testing scientific assumptions and the potential significance of party leadership contests.     

From ‘Unilateral’ to ‘Dialogical’: Determinants of EU–Azerbaijan Negotiations

Abstract

The European Union (EU) and Azerbaijan have negotiated three different agreements for a new legal basis underpinning their relationship since 2010. Whereas the EU tries to adhere to a more unilateral approach, Azerbaijan wants cooperation to take place on a more inclusive, dialogical, basis. The essay will present a model of ‘bargaining power’ to analyse how the Azerbaijani government has tried to enforce this, and to what degree it has been successful. It finds that the bargaining power model can explain some of the changing power dynamics in EU–Azerbaijan relations, and that these might speak to the broader Eurasian region too.     

For the Want of a Nail: The Interaction of Managerial Capacity and Human Resource Management on Organizational Performance

Human resource management and managerial capacity are well documented in the public management literature as integral management functions. The field has devoted attention to the importance of human resources, but it has yet to consider whether human resource management interacts with capacity in attaining organizational outcomes. Using a large‐N, multiyear data set of public organizations, this article seeks to rectify this gap in the literature. The findings validate scholarly arguments on the importance of public organizations’ need to manage human resources and capacity effectively, identifying just the right combination for performance gains. Empirical results encourage practitioners to consider the ways in which human resource management and capacity work together to influence performance but sometimes undermine each other in counterintuitive ways.     

Dynamics in the Dutch policy advisory system: externalization,politicization and the legacy of pillarization

Although the literature on policy advisory systems has experienced a revival in recent years, its empirical focus has mainly been on Anglophone countries (Craft and Halligan 2016). This paper applies the policy advisory systems approach to the Netherlands, which can serve as an example of the dynamics in the policy advisory systems of consensus-driven, neo-corporatist polities Lijphart in Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, 21, 235–266 1999). Using a historical-institutionalist perspective, the dynamics of the Dutch policy advisory system from the mid-1960s to the present day are examined. Based on original cross-time survey data and an analysis of secondary sources, the impact of depillarization (mid-1960s–mid-1990s), new public management (mid-1980s onwards) and an increased pressure on the executive have had for the Dutch policy advisory system (from the late 1990s): fragmentation, externalization and a non-partisan brand of politicization are shown. More specifically, the use of the institutionalized system of permanent advisory councils has lost part of its significance in favour of both external consultants and ad hoc advisory committees. The Dutch case, with its accumulative institutional design based on Weberianism, neo-corporatism and new public management elements, has thus experienced markedly different dynamics in its policy advice system than the Anglophone countries.     

How people organise cultural attitudes: cultural belief systems and the populist radical right

Political scientists generally agree that all individuals structure their cultural attitudes in the same unidimensional fashion. However, various populist radical right parties remarkably combine moral progressiveness with conservatism regarding immigration-related issues. This suggests that the structuring of cultural attitudes among the electorate may also be more complex than typically assumed. Applying Correlational Class Analysis to representative survey data, the study uncovers three cultural belief systems. For individuals adhering to an integrated one, all cultural attitudes are interdependent, as typically assumed. However, two alternative belief systems are also uncovered: intermediate and partitioned. In the latter, positions on one cultural attitude (e.g. ethnocentrism) are barely related to positions on others (e.g. rejecting Islam or opposing homosexuality). The existence of multiple cultural belief systems challenges the widely held assumption that all people organise their cultural attitudes similarly. Both political party agendas and individuals’ education level and religion appear key to understanding variation in belief systems.     

The European Court of Justice and its political impact

This article reviews recent advances in the study of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and its political impact at the European and member state levels. New quantitative as well as qualitative analyses show with great empirical precision that member state preferences guide the Court. The article summarises these findings, but argues that greater attention needs to be given to the (over-)constitutionalisation of EU law in order to fully capture the political impact of ECJ jurisprudence. Even if European judges are less activist than is often assumed and individual decisions are more restrained in the face of member state opposition, incrementally, case law evolves in a highly expansive fashion. And, exercising caution regarding unrealistic expectations about quasi-deterministic judicial law-making, it is found that the Court’s constitutionalised jurisprudence impacts heavily on European and member state policy-making.