Popular initiatives in Uruguay: confidence votes on government or political loyalties?

Among stable democracies, Uruguay is one of the most prodigious users of direct democratic devices at the national level. If we analyze the relationship between the share of “yes” votes received by any popular initiative and the share of votes received by politicians who politically supported it, we observe a strikingly high positive correlation of 0.9. Explaining this correlation is the central objective of this paper. Three alternative hypotheses are plausible: First, such a correlation could be a spurious association due to aggregation bias. Second, PI results could be reflections of economic conditions. Third, Uruguayans are extremely consistent in following their political parties' advice. This paper finds that when Uruguayans go to the polls to vote on a popular initiative, their vote choice is primarily the result of their party loyalty, rather than their reaction to economic conditions. In testing my hypotheses I rely on the following statistical methods: King's “Ecological Inference,” multivariate regression, and path analysis. The data come from seven popular initiatives in Uruguay since 1985 (133 observations).     

The European Parliament and the Commission Crisis: A New Assertiveness?

This article examines two claims made about the "Commission crisis" of 1999: first, that the accountability of the Commission to the European Parliament (EP) was significantly increased; and, second, that the model of parliamentary government in the European Union (EU) was advanced by events in 1999. In analyzing the crisis and its consequences, this article focuses upon the powers of dismissal and appointment, and what these powers reveal about the capacity of the EP both to hold the Commission responsible for its collective and individual actions and to influence its policy agenda. If a parliamentary model is to develop in the EU, the negative parliamentary powers of censure and dismissal have to be balanced by the positive powers of appointment and enhanced executive responsiveness. On both counts—dismissal and appointment—the 1999 "Commission crisis" did not point to the clear and unambiguous dawning of a "genuine European parliamentary democracy."     

Sovereign nations and global markets: modern British Conservatism and hyperglobalism

In this article we seek to trace through the major stands of British Euroscepticism and concentrate, in particular, on the importance of a powerful 'hyperglobalist' Eurosceptical strand within British Conservatism. We investigate the British Conservatives' recent divisions over European integration, against the background of the party's increasingly marginal status in British party politics. The piece also draws on findings from two recent surveys of the attitudes of British parliamentarians to European integration, carried out by the Members of Parliament Project for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). We explore how Conservative divisions of opinion are related in part to particular understandings of globalisation and regionalisation and attempt to show how globalist ideology has unexpectedly re–emphasised and bolstered the traditional nationalism of the Tory party and caused an increasingly hostile attitude amongst many British Conservatives towards the European project as it is presently constituted. We also examine recent attempts to map British Conservative Euroscepticism on to continental varieties using a mixture of ideological positioning and party system (Taggart 1998), arguing that this ignores the extent to which British Eurosceptics advance unique (in EU member state terms) hyperglobalist (rather than isolationist or protectionist) arguments in objecting to further European integration.     

Representation is Democracy

During the Cold War, arguments about representation were a significant part of international debates about democracy. Proponents of minimal democracy dominated these arguments, and their thin notions of representation became political common sense. I propose a view of representation that differs from the main views advocated during the Cold War. Representation has a central positive role in democratic politics: I gain political representation when my authorized representative tries to achieve my political aims, subject to dialogue about those aims and to the use of mutually acceptable procedures for gaining them. Thus the opposite of representation is not participation. The opposite of representation is exclusion – and the opposite of participation is abstention. Rather than opposing participation to representation, we should try to improve representative practices and forms to make them more open, effective, and fair.