Sharing Isn't Easy: When Separate Institutions Clash

There is a lively debate in the United States about how the president and Congress do and ought to relate, and about the significance of recent clashes between the two over control of the bureaucracy. This article focuses on the causes and consequences of increased congressional (and presidential) review and specification of administrative behavior. It examines congressional oversight behavior, micromanagement by Congress, struggles over control of regulations and interpretations of statutes, and efforts by the White House to increase its control over appointments to executive positions. The article concludes with an overview of the sources of tension between the two institutions and an analysis of the conditions under which they could more successfully share power.     

State Power and Ideology in Britain: Mrs Thatcher's Privatization Programme

State-centred theory, a leading exemplar of the new institutionalism, assumes the separation of state from society and objectivity from subjectivity. This epistemological stance supports a structural analysis which holds that the state is an actor in its own right, that the state has distinctive interests, and that state capacity depends on strong institutions and weak societal opposition. Yet the case of the Thatcher governments'ideologically motivated privatization programme challenges the statists'hypotheses and epistemology. Rather, the making of British privatization policy supports the view that the way political actors form and use ideas is important in explaining state power and in defending the liberal democratic vision of mankind as the maker of history.     

Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology∗

Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology, by Maurice Godelier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Pp. v+243; £9.20, £3.00 paper. (Translated by Robert Brain.)     

Mediterranean neo‐democracies and the opinion‐policy nexus

This article empirically evaluates the previously unresearched relationship between mass public opinion and public policy in the Mediterranean neo‐democracies. By studying almost 250 issues over the last decade, the nature of contemporary democracy in Spain, Portugal and Greece is revealed in relation to the overall consistency between majority preferences and government action. In addition, the opinion‐policy nexus is explored in regard to the potential impact of alternative institutional structures, landslide majorities, different categories of issues (e.g., redistributive, foreign policy), and the partisan composition of the government (i.e., socialist versus non‐socialist).