ALL INVITATIONS TO WRITE SOMETHING THAT COME WITH FAR distant deadlines are a subtle exercise in entrapment (and I speak here from experience as both hunter and quarry) resting on the usual tendency to discount the future. How could anyone resist the temptation to talk about everybody's favourite subject – themselves – when it is enhanced by the flattery implicit in the suggestion that other people might be interested? So easy too: just a few thousand words about changes in the discipline in the last twenty-five years and the way in which one sees it.

Governments’ decisions to delegate policy decisions to non-majoritarian agencies have been both criticized as attempts at blame avoidance or depoliticization and defended as enhancing the rationality and credibility of decisions. This article focuses not on the decision to delegate, but on the decisions of how and to whom to delegate. We argue that strategic motives are relevant not only in the decision to delegate, but equally, and perhaps more importantly, in the selection of the institutional properties of these non-majoritarian agencies. We present two case studies of health care priority-setting, in England and Germany, to illustrate how governments proceed strategically in institutional design choices and how their decisions affect outcomes.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BUSINESS INTERESTS AND THE British Conservative Party is a matter of crucial importance which is relatively neglected in the existing literature. The basic theme of this article is that this relationship is more problematic and tenuous than is often assumed to be the case. Relations between business interests and the Conservative Government elected in 1979 are likely to be characterized by recurrent tensions on questions of economic and industrial policy.

The economic crisis has meant that radical left parties in Europe have been faced with changing socioeconomic environments. In this study we examine how European radical left parties have responded to the crisis in terms of their societal mobilization strategies and seek to explain their responses. Discussions in the relevant literature advocate that party-specific characteristics matter greatly in how parties mobilize in society and establish relations with social groups in times of stability. But do they continue to be as important at times of dramatic change, when new realities emerge in society? We look at the cases of the Greek (Greek Communist Party and Coalition of the Radical Left), Irish (Sinn Féin), Portuguese (Portuguese Communist Party and Bloco) and Spanish (Spanish Communist Party/United Left) radical left parties, which are alike at the country level but exhibit differences at the party level. Utilizing data from an original expert survey, we show that both ideology and organizational legacy throw considerable light on the observed variation among the six radical left parties’ societal responses to the crisis. In this way, they ensure continuity rather than change.

This article sheds light on the Greek trigger of the eurozone's fiscal crisis. Using Ostrom's institutional theory of collective action it argues that Europe's predicament is rooted in the failings of political leadership and institutional design at both the European Union and Greek levels. The findings have implications for Ostrom's framework, Europeanization and the future of European integration.

While digital technologies have induced profound global transformations, political scientists often lack the analytical tools to grasp their effects on politics. In particular, digitization's impact on dictatorships remains not only empirically understudied, but seriously under-conceptualized. How do new technological possibilities affect autocratic politics? This contribution starts from the inner logic of authoritarianism rather than from technical innovation. It first maps the ways in which autocrats employ various digital technologies to maintain power. This helps us identify seven core areas where dictatorial politics are transformed by the use of new tools. We delineate the key characteristics of these areas of change and conclude that, in their sum, technologically induced transformations significantly alter the nature of dictatorship if and when it is digitized.

‘FEDERALISM’, CLAIMED THE SWISS PHILOSOPHER, DENIS DE Rougemont, ‘rests upon the love of complexity, by contrast with the brutal simplicity which characterises the totalitarian spirit’. It would be hard to deny that complexity is the most striking feature of federal government in Switzerland. To comprehend it fully, one would have to analyse the history, politics and atmosphere of each of the twenty-six cantons, for each is a political system in itself; and there is no such animal as a ‘typical’ canton. Political scientists have studied one or two cantons in some depth, and there are also impressionistic accounts of cantonal life, but there is no really satisfactory comparative analysis of the cantons as a whole. Further, many Swiss cantons are ‘closed' societies, difficult for the foreigner to penetrate and not easily accessible to the academic inquirer. The political scientist needs to acquire the skills of the anthropologist in addition to those of the analyst of political institutions if he is to make headway. It is difficult, therefore, to give anything more than a very general impression of the principles lying behind federal government in Switzerland, an impression which is bound to be, to some degree at least, misleading. For of no country more than Switzerland is it more correct to say that the truth lies in the minute particulars and not in generalities.

The complexity of Swiss federalism is a consequence of the fact that the Swiss have embraced more completely than any other democracy that essential principle, the leitmotiv, of federalism — the sharing of power. Switzerland is indeed an extreme example of federalism, just as it is an extreme example of the application of the principles of democracy and of neutrality in foreign affairs.

AT THE START OF THE 1990S, THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS OF opposition movements in tropical Africa was dramatically transformed. Prior to 1990, in only a minimal number of states had legally tolerated opposition parties even been permitted, while in no case had any opposition party been able to assume power after defeating the incumbent government at the polls. Within a few years, multi-party systems were introduced within almost all African states, while several opposition parties achieved the ultimate test of gaining state power by electoral means. At first sight, at least, opposition in Africa had undergone a radical shift, bringing the continent into line with a movement towards multi-party electoral political systems that was taking place throughout the world.

This article compares the patterns of breakdown of communist rule and the processes by which power was transferred to new ruling groups in four countries: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the GDR. In the countries covered in this paper, two paths to systemic crisis and breakdown are identified: the path of failed reform in Hungary and Poland, and the path of intransigent resistance to reform in Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic. The lesson of the Czechoslovak and East German experience was clearly that those regimes which totally rejected reform, because they saw it as incompatible with communist power, faced total and rapid collapse when confronted with the challenge of Gorbachev's perestroika and when deprived of the support of the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’; but the experience of Poland and Hungary suggests that those regimes which embarked on reform were no more successful in preserving communist power — half-way reform turned out in many ways to be even worse than no reform at all, while radical reform, that is, reform which would bring about the intended economic results, in the end could not be achieved without sweeping away communist power. Gorbachev himself now seems to be impaled on the horns of this same dilemma in the Soviet Union.

Despite their alleged anti-systemness and ‘non-coalitionability’, radical right and radical left parties have, since the early 1990s, both supported and entered coalition governments in a number of European liberal democracies. Using the classical ‘size and ideology’ framework, this study sets out to examine how – or, put differently, under what circumstances – radical right and radical left parties are able to overcome the obstacles associated with governing and enter coalition governments. Inspired by previous observations regarding the complex and multicausal nature of radical government participation, the study relies on a configurational method. By means of a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 37 radical parties at 207 coalition formation instances in 22 (Western and Central and Eastern) European countries, the article sheds light on different paths that lead to government inclusion (and exclusion) of radical actors. The empirical evidence indicates that electoral success in combination with a fairly similar policy position to a weak prime minister party is sufficient for government inclusion. The paths to government exclusion, by contrast, underline the importance of ideological distance in combination with size-related factors.

THE POSSIBILITY THAT THE PARLIAMENT OF THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN Community may, wholly or in part, be elected directly within the next few years must excite both advocates of European unification and students of that curious political phenomenon, the European Community. The event is still exceedingly problematical; no attempt is made here to assess just how much so. But the demand for direct election, and specific proposals to that end, have been actual for just over a decade and are worth analysing both as they relate to the possible future event and as they relate to other known factors – the existing state of organized political forces in Western Europe and the role of elections in the political life of member-states.

External actors engaged in peace building often induce domestic elites to share power. This article explores the effectiveness of external incentives in establishing, maintaining or reforming power-sharing. Adopting a rationalist approach to socialization, the research investigates the strategic interaction between external and internal actors in two cases of contemporary power-sharing: Northern Ireland and Bosnia-Herzegovina. External incentives will probably be more effective when they uphold a peace agreement that satisfies groups’ structural preferences on constitutional issues. External incentives can, under certain conditions, lead to internalization and the potential ‘habitualization’ of power-sharing as norm-conforming behaviour. The strategy of external actors will be less effective when their socialization efforts are inconsistent and coercive, viewed as threatening to one or more of the contending groups.

Party dominance is not clearly conceptualized and operationalized in the existing literature and has rarely been quantitatively assessed and explained. This study defines dominance as a combination of absolute dominance – the percentage of parliamentary seats won by the largest ruling party – and relative dominance, which takes into account the strength of its main competitor. Based on this definition, it would be possible to calculate an average score of party dominance over a defined period of time. The index developed here is applied to the main ruling parties in 54 regions from 1995 to 2015. Variation in regional party dominance during this period is then explained by considering dominance at the national level, differences in regional socioeconomic development and political legacies. In the last part of the article, individual party scores are aggregated by region. Association between this new aggregate score and regional quality of government is tested.

What happens after primary elections? Strategies of loyalty or defection in general elections have been addressed by US literature mainly by means of aggregate data. However, we lack similar studies in non-US contexts. This article investigates the strategies followed after primary elections by taking the case of the Italian Partito Democratico as an illustration. We addressed the individual drivers of loyalty or defection strategies by considering three different dimensions: (1) the outcome of the primary election, having backed a winning or losing candidate; (2) the strength of partisanship, meant as ideological congruence with the party and partisan involvement; and (3) the leader effect. We relied on four surveys (exit polls) administered during party leadership selections held in 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2019. The results suggest that all three dimensions have an influence on post-primary strategies, but what counts the most is partisan involvement.

The Greek financial system was typical of a state-directed credit-based southern European model. Financial liberalization from the late 1980s and early 1990s was mainly state directed, aimed to serve the objectives of disinflation and the single European market. As a result of liberalization, the banks emerged as powerful players in the 1990s. The cheap-credit, rapid credit-growth period of 1998–2008 allowed banks to maximize sectoral profits, incomes and power. Debt-driven growth also served the government’s objectives of delivering relatively effortless rapid prosperity. The banks’ decline following the 2010 public debt crisis resulted mainly from the fiscal failure of the sovereign and the current account imbalances of the euro area. In crisis, the banks cannot escape the confines of their sovereign, which itself is heavily constrained by the surrounding euro area economic structure. Such structural limitations circumscribe the power of bankers.

In Tanzania, as in other legally established one-party states, it is not appropriate to think in conventional terms of a government and an opposition. For while such states allow free discussion, perhaps within fairly broad limits, they proscribe free association outside the single party system. Those who disagree fundamentally with the ruling party are not free to form a rival political association in order to promote their own views. They must either keep quiet and conform, or seek to advance their cause by resorting to unconstitutional action.

It follows therefore that in order to test the ‘democracy’ of a oneparty state, different questions have to be asked than in the case of a country where two or more parties are allowed to operate. Taking political competition as a central issue in any one party system, the questions are: how much political competition is judged legitimate ? Where, and within what limits, is competition encouraged ? How far is it real or nominal ? It is also relevant to ask whether interest groups can find satisfaction within the single-party structure and how stable is the system as a whole.

Notwithstanding the democratization processes that have taken place since the 1980s, clientelism continues to be an important political practice throughout contemporary Latin America. By offering an analysis of the changing patterns of patron–client exchanges in Mexico City, this article demonstrates how the repercussions of the local democratization process expanded clientelist practices to the realm of public security provision. This expansion, it is argued, is related to efforts of the local government to regain previous levels of political control over the local police forces that had been undermined by the fragmentation of long-standing national patron–client structures under authoritarian rule. Additionally, it is demonstrated that in an increasingly insecure urban environment, local politicians and brokers realized the political gains to be derived from expanding clientelist exchanges to the realm of security provision.

A SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT IN RECENT SOUTH AMERICAN POLITICS has been the re-emergence of populism. More interesting still has been the unexpected combination – in some countries – of traditional populist appeals (successfully made), the determined application of free market policies, and the successful re-election of the market-reforming populists. This does not mean that populist politicians can succeed to order. Many populist candidates have sought election and only a few have secured it. Of those elected as (essentially) independent candidates, only some have succeeded. Presidents Bucaram in Ecuador and Collor in Brazil were removed from office by Congress and subjected to legal proceedings for corruption. However, where populists have succeeded, they have done so on a far more impressive scale than most people originally predicted.

The existing literature on party organization is deeply divided over the question of how much freedom of choice decision-makers in a party enjoy in relation to their environment. Although the resulting theoretical deadlock seriously weakens our understanding of party formation and change, no attempt has been made to reconcile the different approaches. This article aims to do just that by offering a historical institutionalist perspective on party organization. Studying the development of political parties in South Korea, it argues that party organizations are best understood as strategic responses to electoral markets. Party organizations reproduce and change, as advantaged factions defend the status quo, while disadvantaged factions work towards organizational reform.