Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties' Policy Shifts, 1976–1998

Do “niche” parties—such as Communist, Green, and extreme nationalist parties—adjust their policies in response to shifts in public opinion? Would such policy responsiveness enhance these parties' electoral support? We report the results of statistical analyses of the relationship between parties' policy positions, voters' policy preferences, and election outcomes in eight Western European democracies from 1976 to 1998 that suggest that the answer to both questions is no . Specifically, we find no evidence that niche parties responded to shifts in public opinion, while mainstream parties displayed consistent tendencies to respond to public opinion shifts. Furthermore, we find that in situations where niche parties moderated their policy positions they were systematically punished at the polls (a result consistent with the hypothesis that such parties represent extreme or noncentrist ideological clienteles), while mainstream parties did not pay similar electoral penalties. Our findings have important implications for political representation, for spatial models of elections, and for political parties' election strategies.     

Enhancing Australian Regional Policy: A Conceptual Framework for Assessing the Role of Regional Development Australia

Australian regional development has suffered from ‘fragmentation’ with policy responsibility shared between different tiers of government. The Rudd government sought to improve regional policy with the establishment of the Regional Development Australia (RDA) network. However, uncertainty surrounds the role of RDA. This paper seeks to illuminate this problem by drawing on the literature on types of multi-tiered governance, especially the work of Hooghe and Marks and Skelcher on Type I and Type II bodies. It is argued in a normative framework that the RDA network has the characteristics of Type II entities and that this gives it a comparative advantage in specific respects.     

The Utilization of “Surplus” labor in the people's republic of China

Abstract

For decades, economists concerned with the problems of economic development have noted the typical existence of surplus labor in heavily populated, underdeveloped countries, most notably those of Asia, in which the factor endowment consists of abundant and often rapidly growing labor forces coupled with scarcity of both land and capital. In such countries, the vast majority of the population usually is engaged in agricultural activities and, at a minimum, is characterized by substantial seasonal unemployment during the slack agricultural times of the year and, more typically, also has substantial disguised unemployment throughout the entire year. Also characteristic of such countries is a continuing large-scale migration of labor from rural to urban areas, which transforms the disguised agricultural unemployment into open urban unemployment as the newly (and not-so-newly) arrived urban residents discover that the jobs they seek are substantially fewer than the number of job-seekers. Furthermore, even those fortunate enough to find urban employment often appear to be substantially underemployed, for example, in jobs within the government sector, in petty retail trade, and as messengers and private household servants. Even in countries that have been experiencing relatively high levels of investment and fairly rapid rates of economic growth, the employment problems are far from eliminated and cause social and political problems as well as economic ones. It seems ironic that in such countries there exists simultaneously so many people seeking work and so much work that could be accomplished and could raise basic living standards if the unemployed (and underemployed) workers could be engaged in productive (and more productive) activities.     

Public sector reform and the public interest in Australia

Contemporary public sector reforms in Australia have been dominated by efficiency, productivity and contestability considerations captured in the National Competition Policy (NCP). Both in the reform process in general and in the NCP processes in particular, the lack of priority attributed to non‐economic concerns such as co‐ordination, equity, representation, political accountability, consultation and distributive outcomes has been a serious omission. The idea of public interest, once central to democratic public administration, has re‐emerged to challenge the perceived excesses of economic rationalism as the unifying idea of reform. In this article it is argued that substantive situational manifestations of public interest can be used to complement rather than undermine the efficiency, productivity and contestability objectives of public sector reform.     

Short notes on some books received

This article challenges the thesis that local‐level bureaucrats need be part of any ‘dominant coalition’ at the village level. Based on a case study of Egyptian agricultural officials, the paper argues that local bureaucrats may well be more useless than dominant in any political or economic sense. In rural areas in which local officials lack the resources (supplies, funds) to do their jobs, they may well be quite inconsequential. In such situations their position as ‘public servants’ may be appropriated by members of the rich peasantry, who have no particular need to work closely with resource‐poor local government staff.     

Career Values of Public Administration and Public Policy Students in China,Malaysia and the United States

With governments around the world needing to attract talented professionals, this exploratory, cross-cultural research analyzes career values of 384 MPA and MPP students at major universities in the capitals of China, Malaysia and the United States. Malaysians and Americans structured 23 goals along dimensions that contrasted sharply to those of the Chinese. Moreover, Malaysians and Americans cared more about self-actualization and less about co-worker comradeship than did the Chinese. All three groups prioritized elements of altruism and affluence. Segmentation analysis uncovered six distinct subgroups (Acheivers, Altruistic Analysts, Administrators, Altruistic Affluents, Acquiescents, and Apathetics) with their distributions varying by country.     

Crisis and resurgence: East German state security

The Great Case Officer

Peter Grose: Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1994, 641 p., $30.00.

Chronicle of a Secret War (III) Laos: The CIA's Biggest Venture

Kenneth Conboy, with James Morrison: Shadow War: The CIA's Secret War in Laos Paladin Press, Boulder, CO, 1995, 453 p., $49.95

Much Ado About Nothin'?

H. W. Brands: The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War. Oxford University Press, New York, 1993, 243 p. $11.95 pb.     

Recent Supreme Court of Canada rulings on criminal defendants' right to counsel

The Supreme Court of Canada recently issued a trilogy of decisions pertaining to suspects' right to legal representation. These rulings further a major difference between the US and Canadian law: Canadian criminal suspects have far less access to legal counsel than suspects in the USA. This paper summarizes these decisions and draws comparisons between Canadian and the US criminal procedure with respect to a suspect's rights to legal representation. We present preliminary data on Canadian citizens' misunderstanding of criminal suspects' right to counsel and also Canadian legal professionals' opinions about the right to counsel. We recommend empirical investigation of the hypothesis that Canadian suspects are more likely than the US suspects to make false confessions.