The evolution of European legal integration

This article contributes to the development of theories on European integration by testing and exploring statistical models on the long-term development of legislative activity of the European Commission. Drawing on legal information gained from the European Union’s PreLex database and analyzing it with the help of statistical analyses, we map out growth patterns of EU law between 1976 and 2003. We construct time-series models and models based on non-linear regression. While the performance of models based on the traditional theoretical approaches, intergovernmentalism and neo-functionalism, is rather poor, the analysis suggests that nonlinear dynamic models might be an interesting avenue for future conceptualizations of the EU integration process. This article is based on a paper presented at the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union Second Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, “Implications of a Wider Europe: Politics, Institutions and Diversity”, 24–26 June 2004, Bologna, Italy. We would like to thank the seminar participants for useful comments.     

Error minimization and deterrence in agency control

In the presented oversight model, in which a regulatory agency may collude with regulatees, a watchdog organization may scrutinize the agency’s decision-making and find evidence speaking for collusive behavior. Found evidence is of a specific, stochastic quality. Courts will overturn the administrative decision when the evidence presented in court exceeds a minimum quality standard set by the political principal. Lowering the quality standard increases the odds of finding evidence of sufficient quality and, hence, leads to increasing collusion deterrence and to a lower probability of acquitting collusive administrators (type I error), but also to a higher probability of convicting an innocent administrator (type II error). It is shown that, when welfare-maximization gives rise to an interior solution, the welfare-maximizing standard of evidence is lower than the one that merely minimizes the costs of legal errors without taking deterrence costs into account, but will imply incomplete deterrence. However, conditions can and will be identified under which both error cost minimization and complete deterrence coincide with welfare-maximization.     

Bremse oder Gaspedal? Eine empirische Untersuchung zur Wirkung der direkten Demokratie auf den Steuerstaat

This article analyzes the relationship between the different forms of direct democratic participation and the size of the tax state in the Swiss cantons for the period from 1983 to 2000. The analysis distinguishes between the different effects of the financial referendum and the initiative. Theoretical arguments suppose that the financial referendum curb the tax state, whereas the initiative is expected to contribute to its growth. Pooled time series analyses show that legal conditions of direct democratic participation in general and especially the legislation on financial referenda are much more important than the frequency of plebiscites for the explanation of the different sizes of the tax states in the cantons. As an additional result of the analyses, the impact of direct democracy on the tax state turns out to be much larger in the 1990s compared to the decade before.     

Sustainable development revisited

Before one can talk about “sustainability”, economic development has to have occurred, and the traditional motor for development has always been economic growth, says Professor Karl Heinrich Oppenländer, President of the ifo Institute for Economic Research. He poses the questions, Is growth policy the best social policy? Has the social market economy failed because of its ties to economic growth, or has this growth simply been too small? What would a strict adherence to the concept of sustainable development mean? This paper was originally presented at the IIPS 10th Anniversary Symposium, “Transforming the Global Order for the 21st Century,” held in Tokyo on 18–19 May 1998.     

The growth of policies,rules, and regulations: A review of the literature and research agenda

This article reviews the vibrant literature on policy growth in political science and adjacent disciplines, thus offering a conceptual framework for situating past and future research efforts and facilitating the engagement between them. The first part presents important concepts that capture policy growth or aspects of it (rule growth, policy layering, policy mixes, policy accumulation, policyscapes, the policy state) and dominant measurement approaches. The second part provides an overview of the main drivers of policy growth in advanced democracies, discussing the role of societal demands, political competition, institutional fragmentation, and bureaucratic processes. The third part outlines the multi-faceted and far-reaching consequences of policy growth for policy, politics, and the polity. While policy growth is often portrayed as the price to pay for upholding the democratic capitalist order in constantly modernizing and diversifying societies, the existing research also points to the negative consequences emanating from increased state activity. Policy growth not only threatens to overburden bureaucracies and thereby undermine policy effectiveness; it may also transform the institutional structure of the democratic state and make its politics more complicated and conflictual.     

Finance capital and peasants in Colonial West Africa: A comment on Cowen and Shenton

The presence of finance capital in colonial West Africa was predicated on the presence of imperial administration and merchant capital. From these it derived its profits. Cowen and Shenton suggested finance capital was seeking to diversify its sources of profit by engaging cocoa farmers in credit. While this may have been true for the period of cocoa boom before the First World War, it is argued in this piece that in 1938‐more than 20 years later ‐ the banks’ motivation was entirely defensive. No diversification was intended, and the action was directed at salvaging current business. This comment does not question Cowen and Shenton's ‘Fabianism’ thesis but substitutes merchant for finance capital as being in conflict with Colonial Office attitudes.     

The Virtuous,the Critical and the Trustworthy: Citizen Ideals and Forms of Democratic Participation

A vibrant democratic society requires continuous innovation to actualize and encourage democratic ideals through participation, but no universal answers exist as to which kinds of participation are best suited to achieve this. This article demonstrates that different types of participation correlate with different citizen ideals, implying that the remedies to democratic deficits depend on which ideals need to be strengthened. Citizen survey data is used to examine the relationships between two types of citizen participation – in voluntary associations and workplaces – and three empirical citizen ideals: the virtuous citizen, the critical citizen and the trustworthy citizen. The results suggest that voluntary associations make space for all three ideals, while workplace participation tends to be characterized specifically by the critical citizen's ideal of reason‐giving and critical reflection. The article ends by discussing the implications of these results: new democratic designs should be more effective if tailored to address context‐dependent weaknesses in democratic practices.     

New politics: Just post‐materialist? The case of the Austrian and Swiss Greens

While Inglehart's post‐material model figures very prominently in the literature on new politics, the limits of its relevance have seldom been critically assessed. This article uses various inconsistencies between his model and the socio‐economic features of the Austrian and Swiss Greens to point to some of its theoretical shortcomings. Because of its psychological assumptions, the model neglects various cultural and historical structures which are essential for any full and consistent explanation of new politics in Austria and Switzerland.