Concern about corruption has stimulated the creation of a multiplicity of indicators by a multiplicity of methods by the World Bank, World Economic Forum, Transparency International and commercial rating agencies. However, the construction of indices varies, raising substantive and methodological issues, which are reviewed with particular reference to post-Communist transition societies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This paper systematically examines indicators, starting with the definitional distinction between measures of administrative corruption as distinct from state capture. It pays particular attention to problems arising from the aggregation of indicators from multiple sources, and the extent to which the changing composition of cross-country indicators limits trend analysis. It concludes that many of the problems of aggregation may be avoided by using single source and single dimension indexes.

This article examines the deregulation of cross-broader broadcasting to test its impact on strategies pursued by EU member states. It modifies our understanding of regulatory competition through an institutional explanation of the process. The European Union’s Television Without Frontiers (1989) Directive provided a framework for regulatory competition in television broadcast markets. Despite a high level of investment flight, member states did not automatically respond with deregulation but were compelled to do so by the European Court of Justice. Therefore national deregulation in this field was not a natural response to the preference of economic actors or an objective of state policy; it was driven by the European institutions.

This paper explains differences in the policy objectives and policy programs of Swedish immigrant policy as a consequence of the fact that policy objectives tend to be evaluated in public political debates whereas policy programs are evaluated through administrative reviews within government. Given contrasting contexts, different questions are important for policy legitimacy. The public debate focuses on questions of moral values, while the audit within government deals with issues of efficiency. Policy objectives and policy programs therefore respond differently to criticisms that separate rhetoric and practice. As a result, Swedish immigrant policy rhetoric and practice were from the outset only loosely joined and have failed to converge over time.

Drawing upon theoretical studies on the policy impact of political parties, this article address cross-national differences in financial policy choice and capital market development in Malaysia and Thailand. An explanatory approach that considers inter-party organisational dimensions in tandem with intra-party structural attributes shows that financial and regulatory policies have varied significantly between Malaysia and Thailand in response to the national configurations of political parties. The different patterns of policy choices, in turn, have led to varied capital market structures and development trajectories. Thus the theoretical literature on the political economy of financial capitalism in developed countries, which stresses the importance of domestic political institutions, has implications for the political underpinnings of financial market reforms in emerging market countries.