This paper discusses the ethical barriers to development in economies whose institutions have not quite adjusted to the needs of capitalism. It is argued that at a given stage of market development, the market forces will either impose behaviours and moral codes which further sustain the development of capital markets or will be defeated. The defeat may lead a country back to pre-capitalist relations, behaviours and rules that will jeopardize any further development. In post-socialist economies, in particular, large sections of society are unprepared to apply the rules of advanced capitalist markets. Resistance to market becomes an obstacle to the building of institutional ethics and transparent markets. Only openness to foreign competition and foreign demand for higher ethical standards in business can help the adjustment of economic and legal institutions to the requirement of advanced markets. The Italian case offers an instructive example of contradiction between institutional backwardness and market dynamism in which the catalysing factor was foreign competition.

This paper examines the place of groups in the consultative process in British policymaking. It stresses the importance of consultation even under the Thatcher government and distinguishes between consultation, bargaining and negotiation. The paper identifies the important divide between the relatively few groups with privileged status and the greater number of groups who find themselves consigned to less influential positions. The discussion revisits the insider/outsider typology often used to differentiate interest group strategies and status in policy development. It suggests that the insider group term is associated with a particular style of policy making, and offers amendments to the existing use of the terms to avoid the difficulties which occur from the conflation of group strategy and group status.

This article unveils the resilience of national institutional designs in the process of European unification; more specifically, the article stands out the pervasiveness of the pattern of relationship between government and industry in the environmental policy of two countries: Spain and Germany. Although the European Union (EU) is increasingly influential in environmental policy, these designs have only recently undergone slight changes. This can be explained not only by the lesser importance that the EU has heretofore attached to the connection between the systems of interest intermediation and the fulfilment of Community policy goals, but by the strength of the historical arrangements and cultural traditions at the national level.

The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States is a pre-eminent banking institution, and an institution that has been subject to scrutiny from a wide variety of scholarly perspectives. The object of this article is to review prominent works dealing with the politics of the Federal Reserve, particularly its relations with other institutions and their effects on monetary policy. The review shows that the formal legal independence of a central bank such as the Fed does not mark the end of monetary politics, and its record suggests a greater measure of modesty and caution on the part of enthusiasts for independent central banks.