Elite Influence? Religion and the Electoral Success of the Nazis

In Weimar Germany, the Catholic Church vehemently warned ordinary parishioners about the dangers of extremist parties. We establish that constituencies' religious composition is a key empirical predictor of Nazi vote shares—dwarfing the explanatory power of any other demographic or socioeconomic variable. Even after carefully accounting for observational differences, Catholics were far less likely to vote for the NSDAP than their Protestant counterparts. The evidence suggests that this disparity was, in large part, due to the sway of the Catholic Church and its dignitaries. At the same time, we show that attempts to immunize Catholics against the radical left failed to achieve the desired result. To explain the puzzling asymmetry in the Church's influence at the ballot box, we develop a simple theoretical framework of elite influence in electoral politics.     

The Public Service Mutual: Theories of Motivational Advantage

Public service mutuals are a form of employee‐led organization in which service workers spin out of the public sector to form “mutuals” that contract back with government to provide a service. This article draws on economic and psychological theory to demonstrate that mutuals can align both self‐interested and altruistic or public service motivations so as to serve the social good; moreover, by offering greater autonomy to public service professionals, mutuals are predicted to encourage energetic and persistent behaviors. In both cases, there is an advantage over alternative forms of organization such as the public sector bureaucracy, the shareholder‐owned private firm, or the nonprofit organization. The employee‐led mutual form, however, may not appeal to risk‐averse workers, its collective decision‐making systems may be inefficient, and external mechanisms may be required to ensure that organizational outcomes are always directed toward the social good.     

How irresponsible are rising powers?

Rising powers like Brazil, China and India have recently made significant gains in their capabilities as states. Therefore many IR scholars are claiming that these powers must now contribute more to the provision of global public goods like a clean environment, free trade and human rights. This article will argue that reasonably democratic international political discourses are another global public good whose greater supply is sorely needed and that rising powers are having a positive impact on the creation of such discourses. Thus rising powers are not behaving as irresponsibly as many IR scholars assume.     

C. Focarelli,International Law as Social Construct. The Struggle for Global Justice,Oxford University Press,Oxford 2012, liii + 571 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-958483-3.

Netherlands International Law Review -