The article starts by locating both the author and men in relation to feminism as an identity, which cuts across the public–private divide. It then attempts to illuminate the meaning of ‘being feminist’ by addressing three, tightly interwoven, issues. First is the question: what is the ‘woman’ who is the subject of feminism? The second section discusses the nature of feminism in its various guises, focusing mainly on feminism in Britain since the late 1960s. It engages with the notions of ‘post-feminism’, ‘global sisterhood’ and a ‘third wave’. Finally, the article analyses critically feminism's uneasy relationship with identity politics.

THERE ARE CERTAIN PREDICTABLE HIGH POINTS IN THE political calendar. Local elections, the Queen's speech and the Budget are pencilled in at each party's headquarters and the media devote acres of newsprint and hours of broadcasting time to each. Yet none of these compare in duration to the season of party conferences, which last for the best part of a month. For political commentators and activists they are the political equivalent of an Olympic games for sports fans and competitors.

THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO CONTRIBUTE TO the continuing debate on the manner in which power is exercised in Western-style democracies from a democratic–elite — or what I prefer to term a demo–elite — perspective. This is to be done through a theoretical exposition placing this perspective in the spectrum of the main theories on the same topic, with special reference to the classical democratic–elite theories of Max Weber, Gaetano Mosca, Joseph Schumpeter, and Raymond Aron, and the contemporary pluralistelitist theories of Robert Dahl and Giovanni Sartori.

This study focuses on the principal rules of government formation as well as on the deviant cases. On a party level, over 1,000 cases and approximately 250 government formations in 17 West European countries during the second half of the twentieth-century are analysed. By means of regression analyses, the study explores the effects of the size of the parties, other party characteristics, as well as characteristics in the party system on the choice of premier party and coalition party respectively. The results show that the choice of premier party to a great extent is decided by the size of the party and the position as median party. The choice of coalition party, however, is a far more complex process. Favourable and unfavourable conditions are defined, and the deviant cases are identified, compared and analysed with respect to the choice of PM party and the choice of coalition party respectively. The study shows that the deviant cases are not disparate. On the contrary, the deviant cases form a set of rules of their own.

In this article, we triangulate qualitative data regarding the framing of the pandemic and the strategic decisions taken by Spain's new populist radical right-wing party, VOX, with a quantitative analysis of aggregate polling data and individual-level survey responses to answer three questions: how has VOX framed the politics of the pandemic? What actions has VOX taken in response to COVID-19? Have the events of the COVID-19 crisis affected VOX's electoral chances? We argue that VOX's response to the pandemic has focused on augmenting the antagonistic relationship between itself and the political establishment, especially the left-wing government. Strategically, VOX has sought to leverage the health crisis to engage in legislative manoeuvres aiming, without success, to position itself as the primary party-in-waiting for right-wing voters. We also demonstrate that VOX has proven to be resilient against the potential for electoral decline that was widely prophesied at the beginning of the pandemic.

How is government affected by including populists in a governing coalition? We investigate if populist political parties behave ‘normally’ when they attain power, or if they govern differently from mainstream political parties. Empirically, we use survey data from 282 ministerial advisers from three cabinets in Norway. Our conclusion is that populists govern normally on some governance dimensions and exceptionally on others. Populists in office had ample professional experience, adhered to collegial decision making and thought the bureaucracy delivered quality and was politically responsive – on a par with the non-populists. However, populists differed from non-populist politicians in their contact patterns and their communicative concerns. That populists in this context belong to a party with a long history of parliamentary representation (Norway's Progress Party) suggests elements of exceptionalism are things one should expect to find in practically all populist parties that attain power.

Some studies suggest that market-based economic development with state policies based on the rule of law are essential in stabilizing democracy and protecting civil and political rights. This article explores a possible association between weak civil and political rights, democratic instability and the delay in a state-regulated market development under the rule of law in Turkey. Despite its experience with democratic institutions since the 1950s, Turkey can be characterized as an ‘illiberal’ democracy because of its poor record on human rights. The lack of a relatively autonomous and competitive market economy may be explained by clientelist and inegalitarian forms of state intervention. These in turn contribute to the perpetuation of low income levels, a clientelist rent-seeking political and economic culture and unstable and illiberal democracy.

Although Turkey took its initial steps toward establishing democracy in 1950, it has thus far failed to become a fully functioning democracy. Using the comparison cases of Spain and Greece, this article discusses two related variables that are likely to have thwarted the development of full democracy in Turkey: the country's experience with authoritarian rule, and the lack of elite settlement or convergence towards acceptance of the democratic rules of the game. The article ultimately contends that despite the EU's attempt to push Turkey towards full democracy in the modern day it is unlikely that it will become a fully functioning democracy unless it manages to achieve civilian elite agreement regarding the rules of the Turkish democratic game, and that Turkey's experience with authoritarian rule may, in turn, have hindered the development of such rules.

As Christmas 2000 Approached In Dublin There Appeared Little prospect that its citizens would avoid the annual rigmarole associated with securing a safe passage home after an evening out. Anaesthetized by now to forecasts of an integrated transport system the envy of Europe, this was a public that had become weary. As for getting a taxi home, there are few it seems who by now could not recount to you their own little horror story: two-hour vigils at a taxi rank in the rain had become firmly ensconced within the mythology of the Celtic Tiger. And yet, as with so many other anecdotes of this period, they would have to vie for our attention in a conversation space crowded with incredulous descriptions of Dublin's morning gridlock, its escalating house prices or political and financial embezzlement.

During The Years Immediately Following The Fall Of The Ceausescu regime in 1989, Romania fulfilled the requirements of an ‘electoral democracy’. Free and reasonably fair elections regularly produced parliaments (1990, 1992) and governments dominated by the communist successor parties run by Ion Iliescu, a member of the old nomenklatura. Once elected, these institutions operated in principle within the framework of procedural democracy, but in practice often broke the rules and norms accepted in the West as characteristic of liberal democracy. When this occurred public opinion was either too weak, or divided, or simply too indifferent to demand more accountability. Further impoverishment of the poorest citizens due to mismanagement of the economy and rampant corruption contributed to the demise of the post-communist regime in 1996, which in turn led to the hope that with electoral democracy established, the development of democratic institutions and government accountability would follow.

THE ABORTIVE COUP IN VENEZUELA, ON 4 FEBRUARY 1992, came at first sight in a very surprising place and at a very surprising time. Venezuela has enjoyed uninterrupted democratic rule since 1958; the last serious attempted coup was as long ago as 1962. Moreover, many Latin American countries whose experience of military rule was much more recent, have moved in the direction of democracy during the last few years. Textbooks which discussed and sought to explain Latin America's recent move toward democracy have only recently been published. Do Latin Americanists now need to start rehearsing their after-the-fact explanations for a new series of democratic breakdowns? The decision by President Fujimori in Peru to close his national Congress in April 1992 might suggest that the Venezuelan case is by no means isolated.

Various studies have outlined the institutional (e.g. the existence of quota laws and the electoral system type of a country) and non-institutional factors (e.g. the political culture of a country) that account for variation in women’s representation, in general, and, in more detail, the low representation of women in the US Congress. However, no study has, so far, compared the Congressional career paths of men and women in order to understand whether this gender gap in representation stems from a difference in terms of the duration and importance of the careers of male and female policymakers. Using data on all US House elections between 1972 and 2012, we provide such an analysis, evaluating whether or not the political careers of women in the US House of Representatives are different from the political careers of their male counterparts. Our findings indicate that the congressional careers of men and women are alike and, if anything, women may even have a small edge over their male colleagues.

It is common wisdom that the increase in the number of women in parliament brought along a new diversity of perspectives presented in legislatures. So far, however, we know little about the implications of women's presence on party cohesion. Moving towards a more complete understanding of how women affect political processes, this article addresses the question, does gender affect vote defection from party lines, and if so, under what circumstances? We argue that the actual and perceived risk associated with vote defection in roll-call votes is gendered and that this is constraining the leeway of women to rebel. Analysing roll-call vote data of the German Bundestag (1953–2013) provided by Bergmann et al. (2018), we show that gender exerts a consistent effect only if electoral safety and policy content are considered: it is in feminine policy areas and at high levels of electoral security that women are more likely than men to rebel. This finding implies that taking different incentive structures into account is key if we want to understand gendered legislative behaviour.

Does cabinet size have an impact on economic policy in Africa? The average number of ministers has increased steadily for four decades, yet we know little about the economic effects of new portfolios, despite popular complaints about costly cabinets. Comparative studies generate conflicting expectations, either blaming coalition governments for patronage or crediting them with economic restraint. Using data on 45 Sub-Saharan African countries between 1971 and 2006, our empirical analysis links parties and portfolios to budgetary policy performance. We show that cabinets with more ministries are associated with budget surpluses, but they are also slightly more likely to engage in patronage spending. Next, we find that cabinets governing through multiparty coalitions have no consistent impact on budget surpluses. However, they are strongly associated with less extractive government and lower rates of patronage spending compared with single-party cabinets. These results hold after controlling for the type of colonial legacy, economic conditions, population size, constraints on executives, level of democracy, oil income, type of party system and ethnic and religious fractionalization. We conclude that parties and portfolios are both important but they have different effects: adding portfolios to the cabinet may improve economic outcomes by enhancing specialization, but governance through multiparty cabinets generates incentives to both limit extraction and restrain patronage spending.

THE NINETEEN YEARS DURING WHICH THE TREATY OF PARIS HAS been in force and the thirteen years of the Treaties of Rome have led to a development in the Communities which, in its extent, variety and depth, exceeds anything the signatories could have hoped for. The volume of derived Community legislation has increased considerably and it now governs important sectors of economic activity. The enlargement of the Communities provides the best confirmation of this success.

Furthermore, the dynamic force of the Community system has been such that the deepening of the Communities has extended far further than the areas delimited by the Treaty. More and more action has been undertaken in sectors at or beyond the limit of the Communities’ responsibilities – not to speak of decisions taken on ‘foreign policy’, which, since 1970, have led to the introduction of procedures for political co-operation.

THE THIRD MINISTERIAL MEETING OF THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO), held in Seattle from 30 November to 3 December 1999, was a resounding failure. It was intended to launch a new round of multilateral trade negotiations, in succession to the Uruguay Round which had ended seven years before. But even before it could begin, the proceedings were disrupted by massive demonstrations. Central Seattle became a war zone, with tear gas and rubber bullets, and then a ghost town, with empty streets and boarded-up windows. Inside the conference hall the atmosphere was little better. The conference chair (Charlene Barshefsky, US Special Trade Representative) and the WTO Director-General (Mike Moore, new in office) were booed in open session. In the end, the ministerial meeting was suspended with nothing agreed, only an exhortation from the chair ‘to take time out’ in the hope of resolving disagreements and reconvening later.

This article looks at what went wrong and why and what will be needed in future. It contrasts the failure at Seattle with the undoubted achievements of the international trade system in the 1990s. It examines three possible causes of failure: disruption by NGOs; organizational weakness in the WTO; and errors of government. Of these three, it finds governments most to blame. Governments generally, but especially the United States and the European Union, have not grasped the full extent of the demands placed on them by the advance of globalization. Seattle was a setback but need not be a disaster – provided governments correct the errors that allowed it to happen.

THIS STUDY IS ONE OF COMPARATIVE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS deliberately avoiding a sociological definition of the situation. It is assumed that two societies had existed in Czechoslovakia for some time and the difference between them, and possible analogies, are examined. There is also an assumption that the division of Czechoslovakia occurred especially because ‘Czechoslovak society’ as such had not yet been established; this was in spite of the fact that the two societies, at the time of the split, had substantially more in common than they had had at the time of Czechoslovakia's formation. There exists the view, which we want to verify, that during the decline of the federation the following factors were significant:

• 1. The differences in economic, social, cultural and dispositional structures;

• 2. The asynchronous and differing processes of modernization in both societies;

• 3. The different consequences of the formation of societies of Soviet type in the Czech Lands in Slovakia;

• 4. The differing processes for rectification of political, economic and cultural institutions in both republics after November 1989.

There are Many Ambiguities Within The Literature on globalization. Some scholars speak of a world that is chunging others use the framework as part of a new univocal discourse to describe late twentieth-century capitalism. Apart from ‘globalization’, many other cartographic and navigational metaphors have been employed to describe the present world order. There is the loss of the ‘magnetic North’; an ‘emerging global civilization’; and a curious notion of an evolving ‘global civil society’. Master concepts like ‘sustainable development’ and ‘world politics’ have consequently become popular and are creeping into international relations discourse. In extreme cases the literature seems to suggest or imply that history is coming to an end on convenient Western socio-cultural terms only. Indeed it seems that proponents of globalization have come to proclaim universality afresh in similar vein to that of those who indulge in and perpetuate the notion of a post-Columbus 500-year capitalist historicism. I do not share the triumphalism of the liberal globalization discourse. It is certainly important to ask whether the wave of technological change, interdependent policy-making, international socialization of production, and time-space compression have or have not come to transcend or replace the complex web of centre-periphery relations. There remains generally a familiar interstate world system, albeit with the spatial and temporal limits to state, market and human interactions experientially compressed. Questions about who rules, who benefits or suffers, and whether prospects for social survival are better or worse remain as important as ever.

Recent referendums show that autocratic regimes consult voters even if the outcome is a foregone conclusion. They have been doing so with increasing frequency since Napoleon consulted French citizens in 1800. Why and when do dictatorial regimes hold referendums they are certain they will win? Analysing the 162 referendums held in autocratic and non-free states in the period 1800–2012, the article shows that referendums with a 99% yes-vote tend to occur in autocracies with high ethnic fractionalization and, in part, in sultanistic (tinpot or tyrannical) regimes, but generally not in communist (totalitarian) states. An explanation is proposed for this variation.

This article examines the role played by national history in generating and sustaining the popularity of British Eurosceptic arguments. The core argument advanced is that the modernist approach to history prevalent among British historians and the society in which they work has to be considered the key reason for Euroscepticism retaining such a popular appeal in Britain. The overly reverential attitude to recent martial history on the part of the British, and an almost total neglect of the peacetime dimensions of modern European history since 1945, both serve to exaggerate the tendency in the country to fall back on glib images of Britain as a great power with a ‘special relationship’ across the Atlantic and Europe as a hostile ‘other’ to be confronted rather than engaged with constructively.