This article introduces the concept of orchestration as the mobilization of an intermediary by an orchestrator on a voluntary basis in pursuit of a joint governance goal. Orchestrator-Intermediary theory then provides a model of indirect governance that supplements delegation models premised on principal-agent theory. Under both theories, governors enhance their governance capacity by drawing on the capabilities of third parties. Whereas delegation is premised on hard ‘contractual’ control over the agent, however, orchestration relies on the soft control of like-minded intermediaries through material and ideational support. The two models overlap, and governors mix them in practice, but distinguishing between them analytically can broaden and deepen analysis of indirect forms of governance. This article discusses the circumstances under which each model provides a better fit for real-world problems, as well as the key limitations of each model. Among other things, orchestration is relatively more likely in democratic than authoritarian systems, when governors have limited direct capacities of their own and when veto players are more numerous. Orchestration is not always more desirable than delegation, but it provides an important alternative in some circumstances. Multiple examples from both domestic and international settings are used to illustrate this claim. The article closes with key considerations regarding the effectiveness and legitimacy of orchestration.

This article aims to maximize the reliability of presidential power scores for a larger number of countries and time periods than currently exists for any single measure, and in a way that is replicable and easy to update. It begins by identifying all of the studies that have estimated the effect of a presidential power variable, clarifying what scholars have attempted to capture when they have operationalized the concept of presidential power. It then identifies all the measures of presidential power that have been proposed over the years, noting the problems associated with each. To generate the new set of presidential power scores, the study draws upon the comparative and local knowledge embedded in existing measures of presidential power. Employing principal component analysis, together with the expectation maximization algorithm and maximum likelihood estimation, a set of presidential power scores is generated for a larger set of countries and country time periods than currently exists, reporting 95 per cent confidence intervals and standard errors for the scores. Finally, the implications of the new set of scores for future studies of presidential power is discussed.

While pre-electoral coalitions have important effects on the functioning of democracy, their formation has only been systematically examined in the context of established democracies. This study examines the patterns and factors of electoral alliance formation in eleven democracies in Central and Eastern Europe by focusing on joint candidate lists. It finds that electoral coalitions are more frequent in newer democracies than in established democracies. The formation of alliances is systematically related to their potential costs and benefits. On the one hand, coalitions can provide small parties with legislative representation and larger parties with important government coalition partners. On the other hand, parties face costs related to their electoral compatibility and the sharing of election candidacies and office positions.

This article extends the theory of government agency survival from separation of powers to parliamentary government systems. It evaluates expectations of increased risk to agencies following transitions in government, prime minister or departmental minister, and from incongruence between the originally establishing and currently overseeing political executive. Using survival models for UK executive agencies between 1989 and 2012, the study finds that politics trumps performance. Ministers seek to make their mark by terminating agencies created by previous ministers, which is reinforced by high media attention to the agency. Performance against agency targets is not associated with higher termination risk, and replacement agencies do not perform any better than those that were terminated. Financial autonomy provides some protection for agencies that are less dependent on budgetary appropriations.

How do individual party representatives respond to direct policy requests from citizens when the requests go against the party’s position? In a survey experiment, 2,547 Swedish politicians are randomly assigned to scenarios in which citizens make contact to influence a political decision. Their willingness to respond to citizens’ policy requests is measured using six indicators that capture adaptive as well as communicative responsiveness. The results show a lower willingness to adapt and to communicate when the request disagrees with the party’s position. The effect is mitigated when politicians agree with the proposal and when likely voters make contact, but only for listening and adaptive responses, not for explaining responses (which have the opposite relationship). Important findings for future research are that the party matters for politicians’ responsiveness and that their willingness to give explaining responses follows a different logic than for listening and adaptive responses.

Classic and revisionist perspectives on economic voting have thoroughly analyzed the role of macroeconomic indicators and individual partisanship as determinants of subjective evaluations of the national economy. Surprisingly, however, top-down analysis of parties’ capacity to cue and persuade voters about national economic conditions is absent in the debate. This study uses a novel dataset containing monthly economic salience in party parliamentary speeches, macroeconomic indicators and individual survey data covering the four last electoral cycles in Spain (1996–2011). The results show that the salience of economic issues in the challenger’s discourse substantially increases negative evaluations of performance when this challenger is the owner of the economic issue. While a challenger’s conditioning of public economic evaluations is independent of the state of the economy (and can affect citizens with different ideological orientations), incumbent parties are more constrained by the true state of the economy in their ability to persuade the electorate on this issue.

Most Americans support liberal policies on the social welfare agenda, the dominant policy cleavage in American politics. Yet a striking feature of the US party system is its tendency to equilibrium. How, then, does the Republican Party minimize defection on the social welfare agenda? The results of this study illustrate a deep ideological asymmetry between the parties. Republican identifiers are ideologically aware and oriented to a degree that far exceeds their Democratic counterparts. Our investigation, which utilizes cross-sectional, longitudinal and experimental data, demonstrates the role of ideological awareness and involvement in the Republicans’ ability to maintain the backing of their supporters even on issues on which the position of the Democratic Party is widely popular. It also exposes two mechanisms, party branding and the use of the status quo as a focal point, that Democrats use to retain or rally support for issues on the social welfare agenda on which the Republican Party’s position is widely popular.

Does exposure to political violence prompt civilians to support peace? We investigate the determinants of civilian attitudes toward peace during ongoing conflict using two original panel datasets representing Israelis (n=996) and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza (n=631) (149 communities in total). A multi-group estimation analysis shows that individual-level exposure to terrorism and political violence makes the subject populations less likely to support peace efforts. The findings also confirm psychological distress and threat perceptions as the mechanism that bridges exposure to violence and greater militancy over time. The study breaks ground in showing that individual-level exposure – necessarily accompanied by psychological distress and threat perceptions – is key to understanding civilians’ refusal to compromise in prolonged conflict.

Transparency is one of the most contested aspects of international organizations. While observers frequently call for greater oversight of policy making, evidence suggests that settlement between states is more likely when negotiations are conducted behind closed doors. The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) legal body provides a useful illustration of these competing perspectives. As in many courts, WTO dispute settlement is designed explicitly to facilitate settlement through private consultations. However, this study argues that the privacy of negotiations creates opportunities for states to strike deals that disadvantage others. Looking at product-level trade flows from all disputes between 1995 and 2011, it finds that private (early) settlements lead to discriminatory trade outcomes – complainant countries gain disproportionately more than the rest of the membership. When the facts of a case are made known through a ruling, these disproportional gains disappear entirely. The article also finds that third-party participation – commonly criticized for making settlement less likely – significantly reduces disparities in post-dispute trade. It then draws parallels to domestic law and concludes with a set of policy prescriptions.

The United States Supreme Court recently employed foreign legal sources to interpret U.S. law, provoking widespread political and legal controversy. Scholars have yet to examine systematically the conditions under which justices cite foreign law, however. Applying theoretical approaches from international relations and judicial politics scholarship, we search every Supreme Court opinion between 1953 and 2009 for references to foreign law. Justices strategically reference foreign law to prop up their most controversial opinions. They also borrow law from countries whose domestic political institutions are viewed as legitimate; and, surprisingly, conservatives are as likely as liberals to cite foreign law. These findings add important information to the discussion over citing foreign law, and highlight how geopolitical context influences domestic legal policy.

In response to growing economic and political interdependence at the international level, contemporary theories of justice have debated whether the demands of distributive justice extend beyond the nation-state. This article addresses the reverse question: whether and how the demands of justice arise below the state, at the level of civil society associations. This question becomes pressing in light of the increasing fragmentation of national governance, and the resulting institutional interdependence between political institutions and private associations. The article argues that the extent to which these associations are directly bound by egalitarian principles depends on a complex set of factors, including their structure and size, their role in the social provision of important goods, and their institutional relation with political institutions.

The unusually stable Earth system of the Holocene epoch of the past 10,000 years, in which human civilization arose, is yielding to a more dynamic and unstable Anthropocene epoch driven by human practices. The consequences for key institutions, such as states, markets and global governance, are profound. Path dependency in institutions complicit in destabilizing the Earth system constrains response to this emerging epoch. Institutional analysis highlights reflexivity as the antidote to problematic path dependency. A more ecological discourse stresses resilience, foresight and state shifts in the Earth system. Ecosystemic reflexivity can be located as the first virtue of political institutions in the Anthropocene. Undermining all normative institutional models, this analysis enables re-thinking of political institutions in dynamic social-ecological terms.