Three perspectives on delegation in the European Union are presented in this article. The transaction-costs perspective focuses on information asymmetries between policy makers and implementers. According to the commitment perspective, policy makers delegate authority as a solution to commitment problems. The consensus-building perspective views the decision to delegate as a trade-off between decisiveness and inclusiveness during the bargaining process. Hypotheses are derived from these perspectives regarding the amount of delegation to both the European Commission and to member states in legislation. From detailed information on eighty-six EU laws, there is some evidence for the transaction-costs perspective as an explanation of delegation to the Commission. With respect to delegation to member states, there is some evidence for both the transaction-costs perspective and the consensus-building perspective.

This article assesses the degree of policy responsiveness in the new democracies of post-communist Europe. Panel data on economic reform and public opinion show that public support for reform has a large and significant effect on reform progress. Where public support for reform is high, reform proceeds more quickly. This effect remains strong even when controlling for the endogeneity of public support and other economic and political causes of reform, though it is strongest in more democratic countries. These results suggest that economic reform may be better promoted by persuading the public of the beneficial consequences of reform than by trying to insulate reformers from the public, and that the quality of democracy in the region may be higher than commonly perceived.

Most research on political tolerance relying on the ‘least-liked’ group approach has painted a bleak picture of low and feeble levels of tolerance. An alternative approach, permitting an evaluation of the breadth of tolerance, is combined with the use of survey experiments to demonstrate that tolerance varies considerably across target groups. Specifically, the formation of tolerance judgements is shown to differ depending on a group’s association with violent and non-democratic behaviour. Thus, tolerance is high and resilient towards groups that themselves observe democratic rights – even if these groups are disliked or feared. The theory suggests that this is caused by norms of reciprocity and, contrary to extant research, this article shows that within the limits set by these norms, tolerance is strong.

Why has the American political landscape grown more partisan since the 1970s? This article provides a novel account of the determinants of partisanship. The author argues that partisanship is not only shaped by the traditionally suggested socio-economic factors, but also by the uncertainty of future income (risk exposure): rich individuals facing a high degree of risk exposure (or poor people facing low risk exposure) are ‘cross-pressured’; while their income suggests that they should identify with the Republicans, their income prospects make them sympathize with the Democrats. These two traits have overlapped increasingly since the 1970s. Those with lower incomes tend to be also those with higher risk exposure (risk inequality increased). This has led to a sorting of the American electorate: more citizens have become ‘natural’ partisans.

Institutional rules that create winners and losers can also compel those who anticipate losing to quit that institution. In legislatures, these anticipatory exits have implications both for representation and our understanding of how seniority systems work. The current project constructs a model of anticipatory exit in which legislators who are not favoured under the rules leave, thus making room in the seniority queue for their more favoured colleagues. Empirical analysis of the US House of Representatives supports the model: Legislators most distant from their party are about as likely to run for higher office as they are to receive institutional power, whereas those most proximate to the party virtually never run for higher office and almost certainly receive a subcommittee chair.

International structures tie the hands of policy makers in the developing world. Dependency on the world economy is blamed for low growth, high volatility and less redistribution of income than average, but the effect of international constraints on mass politics is relatively unknown. This study examines how citizens of developing democracies assign responsibility for policy outcomes. A theory of the distribution of responsibility, combining insights from the political economy of development and the study of mass behaviour, is presented. Evidence from seventeen Latin American countries shows that citizens often blame policy outcomes on international and private-sector actors, to which they, as voters, have no direct recourse. Ties to world markets and the International Monetary Fund, especially foreign debt, shift responsibility towards international actors and tend to exonerate national politicians.

The relationship between median citizen opinion on the left–right dimension, as measured in the Eurobarometer and European Electoral Studies series of surveys, and the left–right positions of governments in West European democracies is explored to gain a fuller understanding of how and to what extent median opinion may influence what governments subsequently set out to do. The analysis allows for the possibility that measurement may not be equivalent across countries and surveys, that the data may contain significant dynamic effects, and that different countries may exhibit different relationships between the two variables. The analyses show that changes in the citizen median generally produce larger changes in government position, the size depending mainly on the proportionality of the electoral system.

To evaluate calls for a more theoretically generalizable, large-N study of EU interest representation, we adapt the ESA model of interest system density, originally developed to study the interest communities of the American states, to the EU case. We necessarily modify both model and measures in order to account for the unique features of the EU policy process. We test the model with OLS regression using data on the density of different types or guilds (economic and social sectors) of organized interests in the European Union. We use the findings to discuss the viability of inter-system transfers of theories about the politics of interest representation.

Compassion, theorists from Arendt to Nussbaum suggest, carries an ineluctable pressure to identify with individual suffering. The very idea of a politics of compassion verges on incoherence. Politics typically demands attention to the aggregate and it is just there that compassion falters. This is a problem for critics addressing the politics of photography, who typically presume that the point of photographs must be to elicit compassion among viewers. But a proper understanding of compassion makes this presumption highly problematic. The role of compassion in exemplary writings on the politics of photography reflects a fixation with ‘emblematic’ individual subjects in ‘classic’ American documentary practice, which prevents critics from properly grasping the best of contemporary documentary. The conclusion is that promoting solidarity provides a more plausible, if elusive, aim for the politics of photography.

The study of education has long been a neglected subject in political science. Recently, however, scholarly interest in the field has been increasing rapidly. This review essay introduces the general readership to this burgeoning literature with a particular focus on work in comparative public policy and political economy. Particular topics discussed are the historical and political foundations of contemporary education systems, the political and institutional determinants of education policies, the internationalization and Europeanization of education, the political economy of skill formation in varieties of capitalism and the effects of education policies. The article also introduces scholarship in related disciplines such as economics, sociology and comparative education sciences, and points out avenues for future interdisciplinary dialogue between political science and these disciplines.

Arguing about rational choice theory remains a popular pastime. Following the publication of Green and Shapiro’s Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, a backlash against the use of rational choice theory within political science gained momentum. This article shows how, since 1994, sceptics have refined and extended the critique of rational choice and how practitioners have defended their approach, and a more general argument has emerged. In the 1990s, attitudes towards rational choice theory constituted a fundamental fault-line within the discipline, but changes to the way in which rational choice is practised and defended, together with some broader changes in the social sciences, have created more areas of common ground and taken some of the urgency out of this debate.

This article disaggregates coalitions of third-party mediators and examines their effectiveness in interventions. First, it is argued that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the size of a mediating coalition and mediation effectiveness. Secondly, mediators sharing a history of conflict and distrust will transfer their past relationships to a mediation attempt, making it less effective. Consequently, states sharing friendly and co-operative ties with each other are more successful in managing conflicts. Finally, a coalition of mediators that is largely democratic should be more effective due to a shared culture of peaceful conflict resolution, inclusivity and increased communication flows. The empirical analysis using data from the Issues Correlates of War Project for 1965–2000 largely provides support for the theory.

A growing literature has focused attention on ‘expressive’ rather than ‘instrumental’ behaviour in political settings, particularly voting. A common criticism of the expressive idea is that it is ad hoc and lacks both predictive and normative bite. No clear definition of expressive behaviour has gained wide acceptance yet, and no detailed understanding of the range of foundations of specific expressive motivations has emerged. This article provides a foundational discussion and definition of expressive behaviour accounting for a range of factors. The content of expressive choice – distinguishing between identity-based, moral and social cases – is discussed and related to the specific theories of expressive choice in the literature. There is also a discussion of the normative and institutional implications of expressive behaviour.

Rational choice, historical institutionalism and sociological institutionalism are under criticism from a new ‘constructivist institutionalism’ – with critics claiming that established positions cannot explain institutional change effectively, because agents are highly constrained by their institutional environments. These alleged problems in explaining institutional change are exaggerated and can be dealt with by using a suitably tailored historical institutionalism. This places active, interpretive agents at the centre of analysis, in institutional settings modelled as more flexible than those found in ‘sticky’ versions of historical institutionalism. This alternative approach also absorbs core elements of constructivism in explaining institutional change. The article concludes with empirical illustrations, mainly from Australian politics, of the key claims about how agents operate within institutions with ‘bounded discretion’, and how institutional environments can shape and even empower agency in change processes.

A novel theory of the healthcare policy of right-wing governments is presented in this article. It posits that the politics of health care is inherently different from the politics of a social policy related to the labour market. Health care protects against risks that are in the main uncorrelated with the income distribution. This implies that median voters will favour public provision, while high-income voters will not. This generates a unique challenge to right-wing governments that have to balance the interests of the two. The solution is marketization via compensation, where public spending is expanded but where public support of private market solutions is given special priority.