Something about young people or something about elections? Electoral participation of young people in Europe: Evidence from a multilevel analysis of the European Social Survey

Abstract.  Turnout at general elections across Europe is in decline as it is in other established democracies. A particular cause for concern is that young people are less likely to participate than older voters. Evidence presented in this article, based on national election results and the 2002–2003 European Social Survey, shows the overall turnout rate for 22 European countries in elections between 1999 and 2002 was 70 per cent compared to 51 per cent for electors aged less than 25. The authors examine national variations in turnout for young people across Europe, and use multilevel logistic regression models to understand these variations, and to test the extent to which they are attributable to the characteristics of young people and the electoral context in each country. Variations in turnout among young people are partially accounted for by the level of turnout of older voters in the country and partly by the characteristics of young voters, including the level of political interest and civic duty. The authors conclude that both individual-level and election-specific information are important in understanding the turnout of young electors.     

De facto Veto? The Parliamentary Liberal Democrats

The parliamentary party of the Liberal Democrats is a symbol of the third party's growth in recent years. As a result of successful election targeting and an improvement in electoral reach, the party has seen its number of MPs at Westminster more than triple since 1992. It has been claimed that the increase in size of the parliamentary party has been accompanied by an increase in its power, so that the parliamentarians now have a de facto power of veto over policy despite the official policy-making structures as laid out in the Liberal Democrat constitution. This article investigates the make-up of the parliamentary Liberal Democrats and their contemporary influence over policy formation, and the parliamentary party's relationship with the conference and the party leader—and especially the events leading to the change of Liberal Democrat leader in 2006—to establish the veracity of this claim.     

CORPORATIONS,ORGANIZED CRIME,AND THE DISPOSAL OF HAZARDOUS WASTE: AN EXAMINATION OF THE MAKING OF A CRIMINOGENIC REGULATORY STRUCTURE*

This paper explores the relationship between legitimate corporations that generate hazardous waste and elements of organized crime with whom they contract for the removal, treatment, or disposition of those wastes. The scope and importance of hazardous waste as a social problem is first described and the variety of organized crime participation in waste handling is summarized. The paper then explores the factors that enabled organized crime to become active in this sector of the economy. Lax implementation and en forcement, the most common explanations, are discussed. The formation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 is analyzed to show that there was a prior and more fundamental factor: large corporate generators of hazardous waste fought for a regulatory structure that would prove to be highly vulnerable to organized crime intrusion. This fact is then used to discuss and critique two current explanations of the relationship of corporate generators to organized crime waste handlers: “ignorance” and “powerlessness.” Finally, it is argued that although generators did not consciously intend to facilitate organized crime entry into hazardous waste hauling, they did subsequently enjoy tangible benefits from that entry.     

State of the Field

Although scholars of West European politics have long debated whether the region's highly institutionalised party systems were becoming de‐aligned and electorally unstable, the political fallout from the post‐2008 financial crisis has lent a new sense of urgency to the debate. The threats posed to party systems by economic crises are hardly unique to Europe, however. The Latin American experience with the debt crisis of the 1980s and 1990s suggests that party system upheaval was not simply a function of retrospective economic voting during the period of crisis. It was also attributable to programmatically de‐aligning policy responses to crises – namely the ‘bait‐and‐switch’ imposition of austerity and adjustment measures by labour‐based, left‐leaning parties that were traditional champions of statist and redistributive policies. Such patterns of reform made it difficult for party systems to channel societal resistance to market orthodoxy in the post‐adjustment era, setting the stage for convulsive ‘reactive sequences’ when such resistance arose outside and against mainstream parties through varied forms of social and electoral protest, typically on the left flank. This article explores the political fallout from the European and Latin American economic crises from a comparative perspective, arguing that it is essential to think beyond the short‐term political dynamics of crisis management to consider the longer‐term institutional legacies and fragilities of the different political alignments forged around crisis‐induced policy reforms.     

Measuring portfolio salience in Eastern European parliamentary democracies

Abstract.  This article presents the results of an expert survey of 14 Eastern European countries on the subject of portfolio salience. Respondents provided ratings of the relative value of all ministerial portfolios in these countries over the years 1990–2002. The ratings are unique in the study of Eastern Europe and appear to possess the characteristics of comprehensiveness and reliability. Comparing the results with a similar survey of Western Europe indicates that individual portfolios are rated nearly identically in both regions. Some significant differences, however, emerge when we look separately at more advanced and less advanced Eastern European countries. Various suggestions are made for how scholars can use these new data in future work.     

Revolutionary Movements in Latin America after the Cold War: The Case of the Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo

This article addresses the debate concerning the reasons for the emergence of revolutionary movements in Latin America in the post‐Cold War period. It uses the example of the Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo (EPP, Paraguayan People's Army) to question the hypothesis by McClintock that, whereas political factors were the principal cause of such movements during the Cold War, economic factors have dominated since then. After reviewing the structural context in which the EPP emerged, as well as its history, strategy and ideology, the article offers a contemporary understanding of the insurgency, examines its relevance to the debate about the prospects for revolution in post‐Cold War Latin America and proposes a reformulation of McClintock's hypothesis.