Notwithstanding an ever-growing body of literature on administrative reforms, the studies either focus on single countries or emphasize common tendencies in all countries; hence providing little systematic insight for the evaluation and explanation of administrative change from a comparative perspective. In the light of this deficit, it is the aim of this article to develop an analytical concept for explaining cross-national variances in patterns of administrative development. For this purpose, the concept of national administrative reform capacity is developed, arguing that the potential for reforming different administrative systems is basically dependent on the general institutional context in which these systems are embedded. On this basis, two ideal type constellations of administrative reform capacity and corresponding patterns of administrative development are identified and illustrated by a systematic comparison of administrative reform capacities and administrative changes in Germany and Britain.

The central argument of this paper is that, rather than simply absorbing democratic values diffusely, Koreans have acquired their support for democratization incrementally through experience with the consequences of regime change. In order to account for this pattern, we develop an empirical model that distinguishes between democracy as an ideal (desirability) and democracy understood as a viable political system (suitability). We draw on a survey of the Korean public to demonstrate that changes in these dimensions follow distinct trajectories, according to the recollections of our respondents, during the course of democratization. While beliefs about democracy-in-principle appear to be fairly impervious to political events and socioeconomic conditions, attitudes toward democracy-in-practice reflect a learning curve as the transition unfolds. We estimate the relative impact of evaluations of the economy, of the quality of life, and of governmental performance and political experience on support for democracy in practice. On the whole, democratic commitment is ‘earned’ through increasingly favorable perceptions of improvements in the quality of life, in economic growth, and especially in the performance of successive democratic governments, as contrasted with the workings of the previous authoritarian regime.

This paper seeks to explain patterns of central government control and local government discretion across nations as well as across policy areas. The argument is that central-local policy is the result of the interaction of three types of actors: ‘Expenditure advocates’, ‘expenditure guardians’, and ‘topocrats’. The argument is based on two assumptions. First, the actors are assumed to pursue self-interests – respectively, sectoral policy goals, macroeconomic control, and local autonomy. Second, the actors' abilities to pursue their self-interests are assumed to be constrained and facilitated by the structure of intergovernmental policy networks. The theoretical propositions are put to a first test in a comparative analysis of three policy areas (economic policy, health policy, and child care policy) in the three Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

This paper surveys the direction of change to employment regimes in the EU, in which fiscal consolidation constitutes the macro-economic foundations to labour markets in virtually every member-state. Attempting to address budget deficits has had important spillover effects, most notably on the conduct of pay determination. In particular, multi-tier bargaining in Europe has been revived not to conclude the social corporatist deals of the past but to reorient labour market behaviour to the introduction of a single currency. Support systems for the unemployed are also experiencing wide-ranging reforms across the EU: governments are attempting to shift expenditure from passive measures to more direct initiatives to help people get back to work. The prospect for closer cross-national collaboration on labour market matters has increased by Brussels launching a programme to benchmark employment policies across the EU. Together, these changes are streamlining Social Europe and reorganising the sovereign boundaries of economic citizenship.

The purpose of this article is to examine the implications for welfare state retrenchment of central-local financial relations. In the post-war period, welfare state expansion has been a dominant theme in the development of central-local government relations in advanced industrial democracies. By the 1980s, however, nearly all OECD member countries had resorted to deficit financing as stagnant tax revenues combined with political pressure for increased public services. Faced with the urgent necessity of fiscal reconstruction, conservatives in advanced industrial democracies have favoured cutting public services throughout the 1990s. As always in times of retrenchment, elected officials have needed to win the goodwill of voters and interest groups for these unpopular cutbacks. There is no doubt that the politics of retrenchment is distinctively different from that of growth. Despite this new stage in the development of the welfare state, few systematic attempts have been made to analyse the impact of retrenchment politics on central-local financial arrangements. This article contributes to the new debate on comparative theories of retrenchment by analysing the impact of welfare state retrenchment in the context of Japan's recent fiscal reconstruction.

In an effort at theoretical clarification, the authors reviewed 45 recent articles reporting empirical research employing the concept of ‘social capital’. The literature is roughly equally divided between those who treat social capital as an independent variable and those who consider it as a dependent variable, and between those who operationalize the concept principally in terms of norms, values and attitudes and those who choose a more social structural operationalization, invoking social networks, organizations and linkages. Work on social capital as a mainly normative variable is dominated by political scientists and economists, while sociologists and a wide range of applied social scientists utilize more social structural understandings of the term. We find little to recommend in the use of ‘social capital’ to represent the norms, values and attitudes of the civic culture argument. We present empirical, methodological and theoretical arguments for the irrelevance of ‘generalized social trust’, in particular, as a significant factor in the health of democracies or economic development. Social structural interpretations of social capital, on the other hand, have demonstrated considerable capacity to draw attention to, and illuminate, the many ways in which social resources are made available to individuals and groups for individual or group benefit, which we take to be the prime focus and central attraction of the social capital concept. The paper concludes by elaborating a context-dependent conceptualization of social capital as access plus resources, and cautions against ‘over-networked’ conceptualizations that equate social capital with access alone.

This paper examines recent European policy changes designed to support small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). These changes have resulted in both the development of specific support programs for SMEs and more general deregulatory measures to improve the economic environment for business. The rationale often provided is that SMEs contribute to a dynamic and innovative environment and generate high quality employment. An analysis of OECD material and a review of the literature on SMEs reveals that their role in innovation, employment growth and the adoption of new forms of work organisation is often over-emphasised. The vast majority of SMEs do not carry out research and development and are associated with low quality and insecure employment. Policies in support of SMEs need to be formulated with an awareness of the diversity of SMEs. There are only a very limited number of SMEs which make an important contribution to employment and innovation. Efforts to facilitate the establishment and growth of these high quality SMEs need to be based on targeted programs rather than general measures such as tax reduction or labour market deregulation. Targeted policies include R&D support, the improvement of SMEs' intangible investments and regional access to capital and technology. General measures are more likely to create an environment in which low quality, low wage employment is generated in SMEs with little future.

This study raises two basic questions. How is competition in telecom and electricity governed? What explains the considerable differences in their governance regimes? To answer these questions the study compares the economic and technological characteristics of the sectors; deconstructs the telecom sector into two micro-regimes (terminal type-approval and networks interconnection) and the electricity sector into three (generation, transmission, distribution); defines intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, liberalism, and étatism for each of the five segments of the sectors; distinguishes three different kinds of competition – deregulated competition, regulation-of-competion, and regulation-for-competition; and deconstructs the European policy game into three different games (sectorial, national, and union). The European Union's policy choices are: supranational governance in telecom and intergovernmental governance in electricity. The introduction of competition as an administrative process leaves considerable room for entrepreneurship and political choice by European nation-states and strengthens their regulation capacities. Differences in the governance regime for telecom and electricity are explained by a state-centered multi-level approach.

For all the day-to-day changes, the parties have actually been surprisingly faithful to their overarching ideologies. However, in no way has this stability precluded change. The main claim made in this article is that, on the contrary, in several instances it appears that the only way of keeping up ideological stability is through policy change. The kind of stability based on an ongoing adaptation and change might be the very triggering cause behind the successful opening up of a policy window. By offering a firm point of reference, ideology analysis could function as a bridge between ‘formative’ approaches – which indicate some degree of actor freedom — and ‘path dependency’ approaches – which stress deterministic structuring by institutions – and provide one of the missing links between institutional and rational choice analyses.

This paper offers sectoral evidence in support of the argument that a partial transference of sovereignty has occurred within the EU with the gradual shift in regulatory authority from national capitals to Brussels. This transfer of policy competence is evident even in politically sensitive areas such as civil aviation. However, whilst Europe's supranational institutions have gained in de jure power, they often remain lacking in de facto authority. Democratic legitimacy ensures that nation-states retain real authority in areas such as air transport. This authority is nonetheless being steadily challenged by Brussels and a genuine balance of power is emerging. This has been evident in the development of air transport liberalisation, where a Commission-led coalition of interests ensured that deregulation occurred – despite the resistance of several influential national governments. State aid regulation has been more contentious, with EU rulings frequently encountering resistance from governments seeking to preserve perceived national interests.

Scholars studying the processes that lead to significant alterations in public policies have identified two major sources of change: policy-oriented conflict and policy-oriented learning. Many investigations of specific cases of consequential policy change also suggest that “shocks” from outside the policy subsystem, (that is, the specific political arena where a policy issue is formulated and implemented) are often necessary for significant policy change to occur. Rather than being competing explanations of policy change, this paper argues that external shocks, conflict, and learning often interact to generate windows of opportunity which enable policies to be significantly altered. These perspectives on policy change are then qualitatively applied to recent changes in U.S. national security policy which have allowed formerly secret spy satellite technology to be used in commercial data gathering systems. The final part discusses the implications of this research for the theory of policy change and for U.S. national security policy.