Macro Expectations for the Second Half of 2013

DESPITE continuing efforts by major central banks around the world to prop up growth by injecting money and credit into their respective economies there are signs that a number of the 10 largest global economies are starting to falter. As a major trading power, China is not immune to slowing growth abroad and will likely continue to feel a chill from relatively cool economies, including the U.S., Germany, France and others that were cool to begin with.     

The Impact of Unified Party Government on Campaign Contributions

This article examines the connection between unified party government and campaign contributions. Our central argument is that unified party government confers a substantial, but previously overlooked, fundraising advantage to intra‐chamber majority parties. We examined data on corporate campaign contributions to U.S. House incumbents and state legislators in 17 different legislative chambers. We found a strong fundraising benefit accruing to intra‐chamber majority status across all of these legislatures, but the benefit is heavily conditioned by the presence of unified or divided government. The results offer important implications for our understanding of the financial balance of power in American politics and for the vast scholarly literature on unified party government.     

CHARACTERIZING AGRICULTURAL POLICY-MAKING

This article examines the contemporary agricultural policy-making environment in Britain and suggests that the growing complexity of interest articulation and policy making has eroded NFU dominance as a peak association. We would suggest that it is this clientelistic attitude to agriculture rather than a specific relationship with one interest group (however influential) that shapes the agricultural agenda. This article rejects a version of events which sees policy outputs as being the result of exclusive MAFF/NFU interactions as exaggerating policy-making closure, and the exclusion of environmental and other externality interests. It portrays the policy sector as fragmented and competitive, with a wide cast list of pressure participants all vying for policy influence. It identifies flexible policy communities operating at the sub-sectoral level, and within such arrangements the NFU often has to defer to the specialist or niche expertise of single commodity groups or agricultural processing companies.