Legislative systems with absolute party discipline: Implications for the agency theory approach to the constituent-legislator link

This paper examines how the presence of absolute party discipline forces one to re-examine some of the issues surrounding the constituent-legislator link. With absolute party discipline, slack at the individual district level is determined by the policy choices of a political party, rather than by the choices of the individual legislator. This party discipline not only has implications for the representational effectiveness of individual legislators, but also results in the terms “slack” and “shirking” no longer necessarily being synonymous. The empirical work shows that Canadian political parties engaged in wide scale shirking on the 1988 U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement.     

The majority as minority: women and contemporary politics in Scotland,New Zealand and Finland,c. 1960–96

SUMMARY

In this article, Catriona Burness seeks to establish the current potential for increasing significantly the level of women's participation in politics in Scotland and the United Kingdom in the light of the experience of their representation in Scotland, New Zealand and Finland since 1960. The comparator countries have been selected because they are small countries of comparable size, with advanced political cultures, in which women have been eligible to vote and be elected to parliaments for a considerable period of time. The article reviews the history of women's representation in each of these countries and seeks to identify patterns in the developments that have taken place. It then discusses the prospects for further advances on the current position, in particular in the light of the probable introduction of a devolved assembly in Scotland.     

G20视角下的沙特与全球经济治理

沙特阿拉伯于20世纪30年代发现石油，自70年代以来，随着石油价格的暴涨和世界石油需求量的猛增，使沙特迅速富有，一跃成为G20成员国，在全球经济治理中占有重要一席。由于沙特经济发展对国际市场和世界经济发展具有极强的依赖性，因此，在未来的全球经济治理中，沙特还会发挥更大的作用和影响力。