“It's the Central Government's Fault”: Elected Regional Officials' Use of Blame‐Shifting Rhetoric

This article investigates regional officials' use of blame‐shifting rhetoric in times of heated public criticism of unpopular regional policy decisions. Based on a content coding of nearly 500 political accounts from elected regional officials it is shown that “it's the central government's fault” is the most frequently used excuse when regional officials publicly defend unpopular decisions to cut public health care. The article finds that this excuse is used more by regional leaders (mayors and chairmen of regional boards) than by other elected officials and that partisan competition affects how often this excuse is used.     

The Coalition Programme: A New Vision for Britain or Politics as Usual?

The Coalition programme includes restructuring public provision through reforms and cuts which will take public spending in the Britain below that in the US. This article explores whether the Coalition agenda is best understood as a new approach to Britain's deep‐seated economic short‐comings or simply as the normal politics of gaining and retaining power. It analyses the current government's programme, identifies the common features across the range of policies and discusses how they are likely to develop as they encounter set‐backs.     

Which decision‐making arrangements generate the strongest legitimacy beliefs? Evidence from a randomised field experiment

How can democracies satisfy citizens' demands for legitimate decision making? This article reports findings from a randomised field experiment designed to mimic decision making in large‐scale democracies. Natural collectives of individuals with a shared history and future (high school classes) were studied. They were asked to make a decision about how to spend a sum of money under arrangements imposed by the researchers and distributed randomly across classes. Within this setting, empirical support for three ideas about legitimacy enhancing decision‐making arrangements is tested: participatory constitution‐making; personal involvement in the decision‐making process; and fairness in the implementation of arrangements. Throughout the analyses it was found that personal involvement is the main factor generating legitimacy beliefs.     

Going,going, . . . gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe

This article offers an overview of levels of party membership in European democracies at the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century and looks also at changes in these levels over time, comparing party membership today with figures from both 1980 and the late 1990s. While relying primarily on the direct and individual membership figures as reported by the parties themselves, the fit of the data with survey data is explored and it is concluded that the two perform well in terms of convergent validity. The differences between large and small democracies are examined, as well as old and new democracies, and it is found that levels of party membership are related to both the size and age of the democratic polity in question. Finally, the implications of the patterns observed in the membership data are discussed, and it is suggested that membership has now reached such a low ebb that it may no longer constitute a relevant indicator of party organisational capacity.     

The Recent Appearance of Favelas in São Paulo City: an Old Problem in a New Setting

Abstract— While favelas have been an important feature of many Brazilian cities over the past 50 years, they were relatively insignificant in São Paulo until the mid- 1970s. Since then, São Paulo's favelas have experienced a dramatic expansion and some estimates now put their total population in the region of two million. This article examines potential explanations for this sudden change, including migration, changes in the housing market, relative prices and state intervention.     

CONTROL THEORY REEXAMINED: Race and the Use of Neutralizations Among Institutionalized Delinquents

A theoretical challenge to the socio-structural analysis of delinquency was posited by Sykes and Maria over two decades ago. Since then, relatively few studies have addressed the several issues inherent in neutralization theory. The present research explores the association between socialization and neutralization as this relationship pertains to racial differences among institutionalized delinquents. Significant differences for socialization and neutralization scores on the basis of race were noted. Lack of significant differences between races in terms of the hypothesized direction of the socialization/neutralization correlation was interpreted as a function of the nonlinearity of the data.