Europarties and party development in EU-candidate states: The case of Bulgaria

This article examines the direct impact of Europarties on domestic party development, taking the case of Bulgaria when it was a European Union (EU) candidate country. It combines arguments from party theory and the Europeanisation literature and focuses on the overlap of these two fields of study and it investigates the direct impact of Europarties on the choice of electoral strategies made by political parties in candidate states. The study begins by proposing an analytical model that explains the electoral behaviour of political parties based on traditional propositions in comparative party studies. Then it proposes to view international impact as an additional constraint on that behaviour. The main argument is that, in certain situations, Europarties have intervened in domestic party politics and have played a role in the decision of parties to choose certain electoral strategies. It is suggested therefore, that viewing party electoral behaviour purely from the perspective of domestic politics would not only be misleading, but would also lead us to expect behaviour that might not have been a possible alternative for the parties at a given point in time.     

Towards Institutional Symbiosis: Business and the United Nations in Environmental Governance

This article analyses the potentially symbiotic role of business and the United Nations (UN) in global environmental governance. Contending that a stronger and more coherent UN in the realm of the environment is in the interest of the business community, we focus on three main issues: what the UN needs to become stronger in environmental affairs; what business could provide on this behalf; and how business could benefit from a strengthened UN. We consider the current structural dilemmas of the UN environmental system, including concerns about institutional multiplicity and how these may affect business engagement. After reflecting on perceived and actual challenges and opportunities for business participation, we conclude with three substantive solutions towards more efficient collaboration. These solutions centre on the continuation of an interactive database begun by the Global Environmental Governance Project, a joint initiative of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the College of William and Mary.     

Regulation of Firearm Dealers in the United States: An Analysis of State Law and Opportunities for Improvement

Firearms were associated with 30, 136 deaths in the United States in 2003. Most guns are initially sold to the public through a network of retail dealers. Licensed firearm dealers are an important source of guns for criminals and gun traffickers. Just one percent of licensed dealers were responsible for more than half of all guns traced to crime. Federal law makes it difficult for ATF to inspect and revoke the licenses of problem gun dealers. State licensing systems, however, are a greatly under-explored opportunity for firearm dealer oversight. We identify and categorize these state systems to identify opportunities for interventions to prevent problem dealers from supplying guns to criminals, juveniles, or gun traffickers. Just seventeen states license gun dealers. Twenty-three states permit routine inspections of dealers but only two mandate that those inspections occur on a regular basis. Twenty-six states impose record-keeping requirements for gun sales. Only thirteen states require some form of store security measures to minimize firearm theft. We conclude with recommendations for a comprehensive system of state licensing and oversight of gun dealers. Our findings can be useful for the coalition of more than fifty U.S. mayors that recently announced it would work together to combat illegal gun trafficking.     

Evaluating Productivity Growth Measures in the EU

In this paper we evaluate the productivity growth of the member countries in the European Union (EU) before and after the enforcement of the Maastricht convergence criteria in 1992. Total factor productivity was measured by employing the growth-accounting approach and Tornqvist indices. The evaluation of productivity growth was performed by employing the non-parametric method of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in particular years and within three time periods. DEA was also used to evaluate the relative efficiency of EU members with respect to the convergence criteria with important implications for their economic integration. TFP growth was found to have contributed the most in the EU, while its share in the latest recessions was the smallest as compared to labor and capital share.     

Teachers’ strikes in Argentina: Partisan alignments and public-sector labor relations

In a context of increasing teachers’ militancy in Argentina, this article provides the first empirical analysis of teachers’ strikes in all twenty-four Argentine provinces during the 1990s. Using a cross-provincial statistical analysis, it explains the wide variation across provinces and across time of Argentine teachers’ strikes. It demonstrates that political alignments between provincial governors and teachers’ unions explain these patterns better than organizational and institutional variables, which strongly shape public-sector labor relations in other countries. We emphasize the discretion of provincial governors, for both the application of labor regulations and budgetary appropriations in the politicization of provincial public-sector labor relations in Argentina, especially after the decentralization of education resulted in the provincialization of teachers’ protests. Maria Victoria Murillo is associate professor of political science and international affairs at Columbia University. She was previously an assistant professor at Yale University, a Peggy Rockefeller Fellow at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and a Fellow at Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She is the author ofLabor Unions, Partisan Coalitions, and Market Reforms in Latin America (Cambridge University Press 2001) and various articles on the politics of market reforms, labor protest, and privatization of public utilities in Latin America. the authors acknowledge the useful suggestions of the editor and three anonymous reviewers, and the comments of Ernesto Calvo, Javier Corrales, Tulia Faletti, Miriam Golden, Frances Rosenbluth, Andrew Schrank, Kenneth Scheve, J. Samuel Valenzuela, James Vreeland; and the participants in the Seminar on Globalization and Labor Struggle at Columbia University, the Latin American Seminar of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, the seventh annual meeting of LACEA, and the Business School seminar at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. M. V. Murillo acknowledges the support of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies and the Carnegie Program for the Study of Globalization, and L. Ronconi acknowledges the support of the CEDI at the Universidad de San Andrés.     

A New Scenario for British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies?

This article looks at territories that form part of the ‘Commonwealth Family’ but which do not enjoy legal sovereignty as nation-states and cannot therefore qualify for full membership of the Commonwealth. A particular focus of this article is Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories, both of which retain a constitutional link with the UK, but most of them are largely self-governing, each with its own constitution and its own government. The author examines the arguments for and against providing for these territories with ‘observer’ or ‘associate member’ status, which would grant them greater access to the official institutions and forums of the Commonwealth.     

Romanians’ current perception of threat from immigrants in a context of co-ethnic migration: assessing the role of intergroup conflict and active/passive contact

This paper investigates the predictors of natives’ perception of the immigrant threat in Romania, an interesting site given immigrants’ marginal presence in the total population and the sizeable proportion of co-ethnic immigrants. Yet the interplay between nationalism and religion shapes an ideological frame that favours unwelcoming attitudes towards immigrants that challenge the Romanian identity forged along ethnic and religious ties. The authors used regression to analyse immigrant threat according to several dimensions: cosmopolitanism, group conflict and intergroup contact. In order to reflect specificities of this particular context, the latter dimension is conceptualized so as to include active and passive contact with immigrants. This distinction is relevant because of immigrants’ low presence in Romania. Findings suggest that variables from conflict theory explain more of the variation in the perceived threat, while indirect contact through mass-media exposure to immigrant content has the potential to reduce the perception of immigrant threat.     

Context manipulation in police interviews: a field experiment

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Recent writing and research on interrogation has highlighted the potential importance of the physical context in which the interview takes place. Whereas...