The Wanderers

Dr. Jeffreys writes to say that he would be interested to hearof any other tribe whose name is a sobriquet for "wanderer"or "stranger". He has not dealt with Southern Africa, and wewould therefore suggest Angoni. Any reader who can add to thelist may care to get into touch with the writer of this articleat Bamenda, British Cameroons.     

Organizational Process,Rulemaking Pace,and the Shadow of Judicial Review

Scholars have long understood that structuring internal work processes into more hierarchical or team‐based arrangements has consequences for organizational outputs. Building on this insight, this research examines the relationship between how agencies organize their rulemaking routines and the resulting rules. Tracking the job functions of rule contacts for economically significant rules proposed over a four‐year period, the analysis demonstrates that expanding the breadth of personnel types closely involved in a rulemaking is associated with a reduction in the time it takes to promulgate the rule. However, increasing the pace at which rules are finalized is not without cost, as those completed faster appear more likely to be overturned when challenged in court. The article not only adds another dimension to empirical scholarship studying rulemaking, which has largely focused on how forces originating outside the agency affect rules, but also suggests the importance of considering competing priorities in designing rulemaking processes.     

Preventing Prevention

Preventing climate change and damage from natural disasters typically requires policies with up‐front costs that promise a flow of benefits over time. Why has obtaining such policies in a competitive electoral democracy proved so intractable? We develop a formal model of electoral accountability in this context, in which politicians have private information about their motivations. The model shows why fully rational voters, though certain that incumbents spend less on disaster prevention than is good for them, reelect incumbents at very high rates. In addition, in such equilibria, voters would punish incumbents who spent more on disaster prevention. This equilibrium is consistent with (and implies) some of the major empirical regularities observed in the literature on voting and disaster prevention. We discuss some implications of our analysis for advancing public debates about disaster and climate change mitigation.     

Eurosceptic Challenger Parties and Political Opposition in European Union Politics: Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

Despite extensive research on Eurosceptic challenger parties, our knowledge of their influence on political opposition has so far been sparse. In this article we make an in‐depth assessment of parliamentary EU opposition, based on 4,264 statements made by national parliamentarians in the European Affairs Committees (EACs) of Denmark and Sweden. Our analysis shows that the presence of Eurosceptic challenger parties in the national parliamentary arena impacts patterns and practices of EU opposition significantly. A greater presence of ‘hard’ Eurosceptic parties in parliament is associated with more opposition in EU politics. These parties deliver a vast majority of the polity‐oriented opposition towards the EU and present more policy alternatives than mainstream parties. The findings presented have implications for our understanding of national parliamentary EU opposition as well as for the assessment of the impact of Eurosceptic challenger parties on the process of European integration.     

The Balkan experience: Explanations of public affairs and interest group activity

This final article is a synthesis of findings from the seven country studies in this special issue. Although there are characteristics common to all group systems, particularly those transitioning to democracy, there are also significant differences. Analysis of these differences reveals a direct relationship between both the level of socioeconomic and political development and the characteristics of the group systems in all Balkan countries. In addition, we provide new insights into group system development and operation. These are particularly related to the impact of war, inter‐ethnic cleavages, constitutional arrangements (majoritarian and consociational), economic crises, geopolitics, and the major presence of external interests.     

Economic crises, capital transfer restrictions and investor protection under modern investment treaties

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. Key points

• Capital liberalization was the norm of internationaleconomic relations until the Economic Depression of the 1930swhen exchange restrictions became an important instrument ofeconomic policy of many countries.
• The IMF Articles of Agreementwere the outcome of efforts by several countries to providean acceptable international legal framework that would minimizethe negative impact of exchange restrictions while at the sametime preserving the right of Member States to impose exchangerestrictions when faced with balance-of-payment problems.
• Thatposition is to a large extent maintained by most modern investmenttreaties although subject to heightened scrutiny by internationalarbitral tribunals under the disciplines of expropriation, nationaltreatment and fair and equitable treatment standards among othersin order to protect investors’ interests whilst safeguardinghost states, regulatory autonomy.