British intelligence and counter‐insurgency in the era of decolonisation: The example of Malaya

This article uses two approaches to show the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) and intelligence were reaching a turning point before the 1952 appointment of a single commander; and to show the reason for this success was a counter‐insurgency technique which placed population control at its core. First, the article outlines the development of intelligence, in order to identify when and why it became effective. Second, it re‐examines intelligence on the Malayan Communist Party's (MCP) so‐called ‘October’ 1951 Directives. It argues these confirm the MCP was virtually forced to change its tactics by late 1951. Together, these approaches challenge existing historiography, which makes Sir Gerald Templer's era of 1952–54, when he was both High Commissioner and Director of Operations, the turning point.     

Q Methodology as a Tool for Committee Governance Research

The allegiance of national bureaucratic elites to European, national, institutional and policy-specific identities or associations is the subject of a growing body of European integration literature. Reviewing the methods employed by committee governance research, Q methodology is suggested as an alternative mechanism for measuring bureaucrat norms, beliefs and values. Its application to research on European committee governance could therefore increase the robustness of the qualitative element of existing mixed methods approaches. This would provide further insight into policy-making processes at the international level.     

Patriarchy in the Balkans: Temporal and cross-cultural approaches

The article deals with the history, distribution and ideology of Balkan patriarchy; the Balkan agnatic kinship system; and with the most significant patriarchal family structures. The demographic analyses are based primarily on the Serbian state census of 1863 (the first available census listing women) and the Federal Yugoslav census data for 1948, 1953, and 1961, coupled with archival and field data for the central Serbian village of Oras?ac for 1818–1975. Balkan patriarchy has much in common with similar well-documented systems in Asia and the Middle East. The Balkan situation was differentiated, however, in that this system existed both within and outside formal state structures. The patriarchal ideology shaped kinship and family patterns, as well as coresidential patterns within households. These patterns reproduced patriarchal structures, but the full reproduction of the system was constrained by economic circumstances.     

Party Elites' Perceptions of Voters and Public Opinion

Given the vast amounts of research on party competition, party strategy, political communication and electoral campaigning, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the study of national party elites' perceptions of voters and public opinion. This article argues that the mindset of leading party officials, and more specifically their perceptions of voter and public opinion rationality, driving forces and knowledge, is a much‐neglected explanation for why parties adopt the electoral strategies they do. Analysed here are unique internal party documents from two Swedish parties during the period 1964 to 1991: the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party. A simple analytic framework is proposed for the study of party elite perceptions of voters and public opinion. In contrast to the overwhelmingly pessimistic view of voter rationality that still prevails in contemporary research, the findings presented in this article suggest that national party elites in general have had a surprisingly positive view of voters and, in particular, public opinion. Perceptions of voters and public opinion were largely unaffected by the parties' electoral fortunes, and did not become gloomier over time.     

Which democracies prosper? Electoral rules, form of government and economic growth

Electoral rules and form of government have important economic effects, for example on taxation and public spending. However, there are no robust results in the literature when it comes to their effect on economic growth. This paper investigates whether electoral rules and form of government affects economic growth by applying panel data techniques on a very extensive dataset. There is no robust effect of presidentialism or parliamentarism on growth. However, there is very robust evidence for a positive, and quite substantial, effect of Proportional Representation (PR) electoral rules on economic growth. This is partly due to PR systems’ propensity to generate broad-interest policies, like universal education spending, property rights protection and free-trade, rather than special interest economic policies. Also semi-proportional systems seem to enhance growth relative to plural-majoritarian systems.