THE STATE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: A PROFESSIONAL HISTORY, 1970–1995

This article surveys developments in the profession of public administration in Britain in the 1980s. It explores: publications by analysing the contents of the leading journal; research grants through an analysis of ESRC awards; teaching through a resume of recent CNAA reports; and employment through a secondary analysis of the Political Studies Association's survey of the political science profession. Where possible, I compare the results with the findings of equivalent surveys in the US. These several surveys support five conclusions.     

Multicountry Studies of Latin American Legislatures: A Review Article

Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies. By Mark P. Jones. (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Pp. 246). Legislative Politics in Latin America. Edited by Scott Morgenstern and Benito Nacif. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. 503). Partidos Políticos de América Latina: Centroamérica, Mexico, y República Dominicana. By Manuel Alcántara Sáez and Flavia Friedenberg. (Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca de América, 2001. Pp. 776). Partidos Políticos de América Latina: Cono Sur. By Manuel Alcántara Sáez and Flavia Friedenberg. (Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca de América, 2001. Pp. 628). Partidos Políticos de América Latina: Paises Andinos. By Manuel Alcántara Sáez and Flavia Friedenberg. (Salamanca, Spain: Biblioteca de América, 2001. Pp. 680). Patterns of Legislative Politics: Roll Call Voting in Latin America and the U.S. By Scott Morgenstern. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. 224).¹ Politicians and Economic Reform in New Democracies. By Kent Eaton. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. Pp. 351).¹ Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America. Edited by Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Soberg Shugart. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. 493). Term Limits and Legislative Representation. By John M. Carey. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 216).     

Contract Rights and Remedies,and the Divergence between Law and Morality*

Abstract. There is an ongoing debate in the philosophical and jurisprudential literature regarding the nature and possibility of Contract theory. On one hand, are those who argue (or assume) that there is, or should be, a single, general, universal theory of Contract Law, one applicable to all jurisdictions and all times. On the other hand, are those who assert that Contract theory should be localized to particular times and places, perhaps even with different theories for different types of agreements. This article considers one facet of this debate: evaluating the relevance of the fact that the remedies available for breach of contract can vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another. This wide variation in remedies for breach of a (contractual) promise is one central difference between promises in morality and enforceable agreements in law. The article asserts that variation of remedies strongly supports the conclusion that there is (and can be) no general, universal theory of Contract Law.     

Seen but Not Heard: Committee Visibility and Institutional Change in the Senate National Security Committees, 1947–2006

Scholars have neglected the effect of the press on political institutions in favor of media influences on campaigns or on voters' trust and information about government. This article examines senators' committee preferences in response to declining media coverage of Congress, focusing on the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees from 1947 to 2006. The research relies on new, continuous measures of committee desirability and a unique dataset of congressional press coverage. Although both committees' visibility and attractiveness have declined dramatically over 60 years, statistical analyses indicate that change in internal rules and external events are the most important influences on senators' investment in committee careers.     

Economic grievances and political protest

How do economic grievances affect citizens’ inclination to protest? Given rising levels of inequality and widespread economic hardship in the aftermath of the Great Recession, this question is crucial for political science: if adverse economic conditions depress citizens’ engagement, as many contributions have argued, then the economic crisis may well feed into a crisis of democracy. However, the existing research on the link between economic grievances and political participation remains empirically inconclusive. It is argued in this article that this is due to two distinct shortcomings, which are effectively addressed by combining the strengths of political economy and social movement theories. Based on ESS and EU-SILC data from 2006–2012, as well as newly collected data on political protest in 28 European countries, a novel, more fine-grained conceptualisation of objective economic grievances considerably improves our understanding of the direct link between economic grievances and protest behaviour. While structural economic disadvantage (i.e., the level of grievances) unambiguously de-mobilises individuals, the deterioration of economic prospects (i.e., a change in grievances) instead increases political activity. Revealing these two countervailing effects provides an important clarification that helps reconcile many seemingly conflicting findings in the existing literature. Second, the article shows that the level of political mobilisation substantially moderates this direct link between individual hardship and political activity. In a strongly mobilised environment, even structural economic disadvantage is no longer an impediment to political participation. There is a strong political message in this interacting factor: if the presence of organised and visible political action is a decisive signal for citizens that conditions the micro-level link between economic grievances and protest, then democracy itself – that is, organised collective action – can help sustain political equality and prevent the vicious circle of democratic erosion.     

Gravitation or discrimination? Determinants of litigation in the World Trade Organisation

The strong presence of large countries in World Trade Organisation (WTO) dispute settlement and the absence of very poor ones have raised concerns that increasing legalisation in the global trading system has not diminished discrimination against less powerful countries as much as expected. This article examines dispute initiations in all WTO member state dyads in 1995–2003 to shed more light on this issue. The analysis suggests that the main driver of dispute initiation is a gravitational one: larger economies and bigger traders are more likely to become involved in trade disputes primarily because their economies are more diversified, and also because greater market size makes them more attractive targets of litigation. While evidence is not found for discriminatory effects against countries with small legal capacity, the results of the article point to a more complex form of power bias – namely a preponderance effect. They suggest that disputes among country dyads including a much more powerful defendant than complainant or vice versa are dealt with outside the WTO. This finding is potentially worrying because it is, arguably, easier to reduce legal capacity differences than to reduce power differences.