DESPITE ITS WIDE INFLUENCE, THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF KARL POPPER has received, until recently, remarkably little systematic attention from academic political theorists. Hailed by Isaiah Berlin as the most formidable of Marxism's living critics and reviled by Marxists as a prominent luminary of that White Emigration whose pernicious influence is mainly responsible for the ideological rejuvenation of a moribund reactionary culture, canonized as a prophet of freedom and enterprise and lumped together with such despised conservatives as Oakeshott, Namier and Butterfield as one of those who want only ‘to keep that dear old T-model on the road by dint of a little piecemeal engineering’, Popper incontestably has been a storm centre of several major ideological controversies. Equally, Popper's dissident reinterpretations of the thought of Plato and Hegel, like his defence of value-freedom and methodological individualism in the social sciences, have generated massive and subtly ramified literatures, while the form of critical rationalism which has been developed by some of his disciples has been seen, both by its proponents and by its enemies, as the foremost contribution to the contemporary struggle against irrationalism.

The personalization of politics, the decline of political parties and the weakening of political institutions in large democracies are considered to produce instability and to undermine democratic governance. Yet despite having extremely informal and personalized systems with non-ideological parties, small states around the world maintain significantly higher levels of democracy and regime stability than large ones. This article addresses this paradox by offering a systematic literature review of 167 case study publications on personalization and informal politics in 46 small states. The analysis reveals that personalized relations between political elites translate into either fragmentation or power concentration, while pervasive patron–client linkages structure the interaction between citizens and politicians. Despite the obvious downsides of these dynamics for democratic governance, the small state system is functional in the sense that it fulfils the needs of both citizens and politicians, which explains why small states have succeeded in maintaining their political stability.

ALTHOUGH THE SYNCHRONIZATION OF ECONOMIC FLUCTUations with the electoral cycle often preoccupies political leaders, the real force of political influence on macroeconomic performance comes in the determination of economic priorities. Here the ideology and platform of the political party in power dominate. Just as the electoral calendar helps set the timing of policy, so the ideology of political leaders shapes the substance of economic policy.

IN SPITE OF ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED, WITHIN BRITAIN AND WITHOUT, since Bagehot's death in 1877, the British political world still speaks, writes and teaches in Bagehot's terms, Some reassessments of his ideas did of course take place, the most searching of which probably arose as a result of the advent of socialism. Its impact on the politics of Britain, and of the world, needed to be considered. Nevertheless, though we might have grasped what changes had taken place, and though we might have seen how Bagehot's vision needed to be adjurtedg to these new realities, yet, on the whole it seemed that these changes did not affect the essential aspects of that vision. We were still bounded by the classic British parliamentary system for which Bagehot is the best interpreter.

THE ELECTION OF 582 COUNCILLORS TO NORTHERN IRELAND'S 26 local authorities on 21 May 1997 was eclipsed, to a large extent, by the media focus on the General Election earlier that month (1 May). That little attention is paid to the only elected forum with executive powers in Northern Ireland is neither new nor surprising. Councils in the province have relatively few functional responsibilities, confined principally to the delivery of regulatory services (street cleaning, refuse collection, leisure and tourism and a limited role in economic development); representation on area boards which deliver major services such as education; and a consultative role in relation to planning, roads, water and housing which are delivered through ‘Next Steps’ agencies or similar arm's-length organizations. This minor role is reflected in the level of council budgets. In 1997/98, the estimated net expenditure for local government in Northern Ireland amounts to £230 million, approximately three per cent of identifiable public expenditure.

DURING THE 1990S, THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS (IFIS) have gone beyond supporting free-market economics via the socalled Washington consensus which advocated primarily marketoriented reform, to adopt a broader notion of ‘good governance’ which includes political as well as economic factors. The World Bank's Development Report 1997; The State in a Changing World is a key document in explaining this new thinking. It lays out the desirability of democracy, the rule of law and effective democratic regulation alongside the market-oriented economic policies and fiscal orthodoxy which IFIs have long advocated. There is no doubt that governance matters to development and to that extent the Report is welcome. The Report also makes a number of worthwhile points about administrative good practice and reform. However some scepticism is in order too. This is because the Bank's notion of ‘good governance’ is too idealistic, insufficiently historically specific and over-confident in respect of what we do know and can know about the politics of development.

The objective of this paper is to reconstruct both the Kursk incident and especially the reaction to it by Russian military and political authorities with the aim of gauging the extent of continuity and change of Soviet-era practices in three key areas of contemporary Russia's public institutional life: (1) the organizational behaviour and institutional culture of the Russian military; (2) the behaviour of Russia's executive political leadership, i.e. President Vladimir Putin; and (3) the media of mass communication. Reaction to such crises, the author argues, can shed much light on the actual behavioural patterns and operating assumptions of relevant institutions and leaders. The method employed is essentially a detailed forensic reconstruction of the incident and its aftermath from three angles: the reactions of the military authorities; the reactions of Putin; and the reactions of the mass media (and of the authorities to the mass media).

The individual is nonsense, the individual is zero.

Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1921

Human life still costs nothing here.

Leonid Radzikhovskii, 2000

In recent years much debate has been generated over the reshaping of the European airline industry and the restructuring of many of the heavily indebted national flag-carriers across the European Union. The European Commission has sought to orchestrate this reform process by the gradual break up of monopolies in air travel and its associated services and a much tighter policing of state aid practices. The EU's liberalizing agenda in air transport, however, has met with strong domestic opposition in the member states. Nowhere else has the resistance to reform been stronger than in Greece, where for a decade successive attempts to restructure or privatize Olympic Airways have yielded very limited success. By focusing, in particular, on the initiative of the Greek government in 2003 to create a new ‘Olympic Airlines’, the article examines how domestic pressures prompted the Greek government to shift away from cooperation with the Commission and invite conflict. The Greek government lost an ECJ case and both Athens and the Commission were left with a sub-optimal outcome. By linking the narrative to the conceptual literature on Europeanization and compliance, the article addresses a number of themes including: the contestation of European competition rules and the ability of national governments to manipulate them, policy entrepreneurship and complex problem-solving, as well as the Commission's role as a stimulus, but potentially also an obstacle to domestic reform.

This article examines the nature of political opposition in the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR) to give us an understanding of its role in and approach to political reform in the territory. It explores the emergence of the pro-democracy opposition in Macao since the end of the colonial era and the self-perception of pro-democratic opposition groups in the MSAR regime, and argues that the majority of opposition groups perceive themselves as ‘loyal’ opponents to the current regime. The groups aim at checking the authorities in the scope of the constitution as loyal constituents. Their assumption of this role is the result of several environmental factors, including a relatively weak civil society, a lack of resources and a pro-government media.

Normative democratic theory assumes that political systems should ensure civil, political and social rights, and this claim has become more salient since the economic crisis that began in 2008. This conception of citizenship was developed most prominently by T.H. Marshall (1950), and it has been further elaborated by numerous other authors, resulting in a clear division between procedural/electoral democracy concepts and authors emphasizing egalitarian concepts of democracy. We use latent class analysis to assess democratic ideals among European citizens as reported in the 2012 European Social Survey. The findings demonstrate that a majority of Europeans consider political and social rights as equally important, while some citizens predominantly emphasize either political or social rights. Furthermore, the focus on social rights is not limited to those with left-leaning ideologies. Considering current manifestations of discontent about the politics of austerity, we discuss the implications of social citizenship concepts for democratic legitimacy in Europe.

Why have some German Land constitutions been changed more frequently than others? This is the basic research question addressed in this article. In addition and maybe even more importantly, for the first time the article will apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to the study of comparative constitutional policy, and thus will investigate what conditions explain the changeableness of subnational constitutions. Overall, I will argue that subnational constitutional policy is not just a manifestation of Germany’s consensus democracy. On the contrary, it seems that a crucial element of majoritarian democracy – that is, a low number of effective parties – appears to be a core condition for the changeableness of constitutions. In addition, the findings suggest that any theory striving to explain the frequency and scope of constitutional amendments in a comparative perspective should include both institutional and party factors.

AS THE GREAT HISTORIAN LOUIS HARTZ TAUGHT US IN HIS remarkable study The Liberal Tradition in America, anyone wishing to focus on the special character of a regime would do well to begin by taking the measure of what is absent rather than what is present. Like America, Switzerland has long been regarded as an exception to many of the conventional rules of historical and democratic development — Sonderfall Schweiz is how the Swiss portray and perhaps boast a little about their national exceptionalism. Switzerland possesses a unique form of democratic government the hallmarks of which are participatory democracy, neutrality and radical federalism (decentrahsm or localism, what the Swiss sometimes call Kantönligeist). These hallmarks give to it a character which stands in stark contrast to traditional Anglo-American democracy. The student of comparative politics will observe at once that a great many of Switzerland's leading political features seem to have no analogue in either the English common law or the American Constitution. Swiss democracy is English democracy minus most of English democracy's salient features: which is to say, it is scarcely English democracy at all.

The powerful idea of natural rights as the armour of the individual against illegitimate authority (originally against the illegitimacy of absolute monarchy, later against the hyper-legitimacy of majoritarian tyranny) is largely missing, for example. Missing too is the tradition of an independent judiciary devoted to the protection of wholly private rights against an alien, power-mongering state. When Alexis de Tocqueville, whose liberal premises suited America so well, went looking in the Alps for something like the English liberties, he went astray. Not finding English liberties, he quite misunderstood Switzerland's regime.

MEMBERSHIP OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY INVOLVES A TRANSFER OF some powers of law-making, on a range of economic and social matters, from national authorities to the Council of Ministers and the Commission. In constitutional terms this implies a limitation of sovereignty on the part of the individual member states; but to what extent does it represent a loss of political sovereignty?

There are several considerations, starting with the abstractness and relativity of the concept of sovereignty itself in relation to the interdependence of groups of states in the post-war world. Membership of any international organization implies some degree of formal constraint which is accepted as a means of achieving a desired goal. Admittedly the European Community has established a unique juridical plane, but governments of the member states assess membership as a means of enhancing their national economic and political capabilities.

THE TRANSITION FROM COMMUNIST TOTALITARIANISM TO a democratic socio-political organization and to a market economy system depends on several economic factors (capital, technology, skilled labour force, competent management) and also on political and cultural elements. The political speeches, whether delivered by government or opposition in Romania, underline almost exclusively the financial, technological or political aspects, neglecting quite completely the psycho-sociological dimension of this transitory period. The fact that the economic reforms somehow failed is only partly due to the lack of economic resources or to organizational setbacks. These are, of course, significant and undeniable reasons, but there is one more explanation rather forgotten, and that is the attitude of the Romanian population itself towards economic, social and political changes.

CAN PARLIAMENTARY INSTITUTIONS THRIVE IN COUNTRIES WITH little or no tradition in the habits of self-government? Is multiparty competition viable in states where compromise is not accepted as a political virtue? The questions are familiar and are asked whenever the advisability of exporting the Westminster model (or the Capitol Hill or Palais Bourbon model) is raised.

The proposition to be examined is that a parliamentary and party system was transplanted into an initially unfavourable environment and eventually acclimatized itself. The ecological difficulties are familiar; indeed, they form the substance of the debate about the export of systems. In the Third World, at the point of decolonization it involves the former colonial power bequeathing liberal-democratic institutions as a device for legitimizing the new native regime.

Power is potentiality: for those subjected to it, it offers the potential for good and for ill and therefore each and everyone is directly concerned with the way in which power is used. On this account we give the subject the name of citizen; for to do so implies a right to influence the use of power, which is his at least theoretically. But it is a hollow right, without substance, if he cannot use it. It is a hollow right if its only manifestation is that the citizen from time to time be invited to vote for the person or persons who will then wield absolute power. In such cases, the choice of the citizen is limited and furthermore he who before his accession may seem most desirable may after it reveal himself to be very bad: one has only to remember that no emperor was more fervently greeted than Caligula.

ON 1 JULY 1997, THE END OF COLONIAL RULE USHERED IN A NEW government for the 6½ million people of Hong Kong. Ironically, in stark contrast to other new regimes which took over from colonial rulers, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government was greeted with only a moderate amount of enthusiasm by the governed. Nevertheless, public support for the new regime mounted in the first four months of its existence. Since October 1997, however, it has declined continuously and has now reached a low level. Evidently, the governing strategy crafted by the HKSAR government had achieved a certain degree of success in the early months of its existence. Since then, though the HKSAR government obstinately follows this governing strategy, changes in the conditions in Hong Kong have in any case rendered this strategy obsolete. Low public support is bound to undermine effective governance in postcolonial Hong Kong.

This article investigates the dimension and evolution of the financing of political parties. It focuses on 28 parties in the five major European countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain), analysing the parties’ budgets from 2002 to 2016. The article's assessment shows that the availability of funds increased until the beginning of the Great Recession (2008), and then decreased, mainly due to a decline in public support for parties. Diminished state generosity has led parties to look for different sources of financing: the article shows the proportion of self-funding resources in terms of membership fees and private donations that has sustained the parties’ finances. Finally the article presents a model that helps to explain the shrinking of parties’ income by including parties’ ideological alignment, electoral outcome, presence in government and share of public financing, and countries’ public spending and GDP level, to investigate the plausible causes of the reduction of parties’ income.