Committee autonomy in parliamentary systems – coalition logic or congressional rationales?

Large-n comparative research on committee structures in legislatures is rare. This paper uses newly collected data to analyse committee structures across 30 legislatures of parliamentary systems which possess strong parliamentary party groups. It seeks to explain committee autonomy which reflects the degree to which committees are able to carry out their tasks independently. The variation in autonomy is accounted for by contrasting the ‘keeping tabs on coalition partners’ perspective with the congressional theories of legislative organisation (referred to as distributional, informational, and partisan theories). The results support the informational and the keeping tabs perspective. More autonomous committees tend to be found in legislatures with a relatively high workload and frequent coalition governments. For the ongoing discussion about the applicability of the congressional theories outside the US, this study provides support for the usefulness of the US theories in parliamentary systems of government.     

新疆的痛与美——一个美国人的旅行日记

新疆朋友的心态让我想起美国人对9·11的反应,也就是一种心理转折,尽管看起来正常,但事实上一切都改变了。9·11后,每次遇到另一个美国人我们都会分享当天的经验,我们当然会谈到恐怖主义,最初从憎恨的感觉说起,几个星期和几个月以后从永不褪色的不安全感说起。我们感到愤慨时,这个恶劣的行为一方面非常简单,一方面又难以理解。     

Sequential torts and bilateral harm

This paper analyzes care incentives of individuals in a bilateral-harm setting if care choices are sequential. We find that the efficient outcome is not guaranteed under any liability rule considered, irrespective of whether information is perfect or imperfect. Furthermore, it is no longer possible to generally rank liability rules according to their induced social costs. These findings are in strong contrast to the sequential-torts setting in which harm is unilateral.     

Why do only some people who support parties actually join them? Evidence from Britain

What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model’ are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties’ policies are key factors in members’ decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party’s values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally.     

Living Near Violence and Feeling Safe: What is the Role of Active Guardianship in the Home Territory?

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - Living in close proximity to recent, violent crime may undermine sense of safety in the home territory by increasing perceived crime risk. Yet it is also...     

Book reviews

Ephraim Maisel, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 1991-1926 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press 1994), £35. ISBN 1-898723-04-4.

Timothy P. Maga, The World of Jimmy Carter: U.S. Foreign Policy 1977-1981 (West Haven, CT: University of New Haven Press, 1994). 189 pp. ISBN 0-936385-23-0.

Michael Leifer, Dictionary of the Modern Politics of South-East Asia (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), xii + 271pp. £45. ISBN 0-415-04219-4.

Christopher C. Harmon and David Tucker (eds.), Statecraft and Power: Essays in Honor of Harold W. Rood (Lanham and London: University Press of America with the National Institute for Public Policy, 1994), 284pp ISBN 0-8191-8718-6.     

Political Science, Public Administration and the Danish Civil Service Profession

The history of Danish political science is young, and public administration has from the beginning been part of the training of political scientists. This background reflects a double strategy: first, in order to ensure political scientists a position in the labour market, they were launched as a new kind of generalist, competing with lawyers and economists. Second, public administration has from the very beginning been seen as a subfield of political science. Even if the institutions engaging in PA research and training have varying profiles, the integration of the discipline in political science is still dominant. So far it has been a success, whether measured at the level of political science graduates in the civil service or the level of PA research. However, the paper argues that in a tougher labour market, generalists with a broad political science background face severe competition from lawyers and economists, and that this must have implications for the direction of research and training in public administration.