It is well known that in developed democracies the opposition tends to cooperate with the government. Spain is no exception: around 70 per cent of all ‘organic laws’ (constitutionally significant bills that require a parliamentary majority to be passed) are approved with the support of the main opposition party. We try to explain the variation in the level of consensus in the first seven legislative terms of the current Spanish democracy. We show that there are three key variables: the balance of power between government and opposition, the nature of the institutional actor that first proposes the bill, and the ideological significance of the bill.

Policy transfer has become a crucial aspect of the contemporary world of policy-making. However, the relationship between the actual process of policy transfer and the ‘success’ of policy outcomes generated by that transfer is an under-researched area. This article addresses the following key question: what factors affect the success, or otherwise, of policy transfer? This question is explored using a putatively successful case of policy transfer, the Gateway Review process between 2001 and 2010, focusing particularly on three of the early transfers of this process from the UK to Victoria and then to the Commonwealth level and New South Wales in Australia.

In the midst of the economic crisis sweeping across the European continent, popular support for European integration has become a common theme in political discourse. This article revisits the debate regarding popular support for European integration. Although many journalists, politicians and pundits currently argue that the public is becoming increasingly sceptical of further steps towards integration, this study qualifies that claim and suggests that public opinion towards Europe is best described as ambivalent. Also, it shows that ambivalence regarding European integration is higher in Western than in Central and Eastern Europe. This is probably due to the fact that as citizens in Western Europe have gained more experience with the positive and negative consequences of integration over the years, they have also become more ambivalent about the European project. Rather than suggesting that citizens are by and large turning their backs on Europe, I put forward the view that we seem to be witnessing growing uncertainty about the future scope and depth of the integration process. This, I argue, could be viewed as a natural by-product of experiencing both the virtues and the vices association with membership. Consequently, attitude ambivalence as such may be demonstrative of a maturation of public opinion concerning European integration.

Scholars of electoral behaviour regularly link political dissatisfaction to two types of behaviour: voting for populist parties and unstable voting behaviour. It is therefore not surprising that the electorates of populist parties are generally assumed to be rather volatile. In this article, we argue that this is not necessarily the case – in particular in a context of increasingly strong and viable populist parties. We make use of data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project to show that voters for populist parties are neither more nor less volatile than voters for mainstream parties. Political dissatisfaction among voters for populist parties even increases the likelihood of stable voting for populist parties. The supply of populist parties further conditions the stability of the populist vote, as voters in systems with established populist parties are more likely to vote stably for populist parties. Finally, we find that in a context of strong and stable populist parties, the effect of political satisfaction on vote switching is somewhat reduced.

Many legislatures around the world are undergoing a ‘participatory makeover’. Parliaments are hosting open days and communicating the latest parliamentary updates via websites and social media. Public activities such as these may make parliaments more informative and accessible, but much more could be done to foster meaningful democratic renewal. In particular, participatory efforts ought to be engaging citizens in a central task of legislatures – to deliberate and make decisions on collective issues. In this article, the potential of parliamentary committees to bring the public closer to legislative deliberations is considered. Drawing on insights from the practice and theory of deliberative democracy, the article discusses why and how deeper and more inclusive forms of public engagement can strengthen the epistemic, representative and deliberative capacities of parliamentary committees. Practical examples are considered to illustrate the possibilities and challenges of broadening public involvement in committee work.

The European Union has undergone four successive rounds of enlargement since its inception in 1957. Currently, the EU finds itself in the midst of a new wave of enlargement, in the context of a simultaneous process of ‘deepening’ and ‘widening’. The enlargement process in progress, aims to incorporate the former communist countries on the eastern periphery of the Community. It is rather ironic, however, that Turkey, one of the earliest applicants for membership of the Community, is not included among the group of states, notably the four Visegrad countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) which enjoy a serious prospect of being admitted into the Community in the near future. This constitutes a paradoxical development in the sense that the claims of these countries for full EU membership are very recent, dating back to their liberation from communist rule in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1989.

Politics and gender scholarship is increasingly seeking to understand the relationship between the presence of women in politics and gendered policy outcomes – the substantive representation of women (SRW). Yet its focus remains squarely on the activities of ‘critical actors’ in parliaments and women's policy agencies and on ‘feminist’ rather than ‘mainstream’ policy areas. In contrast, this article investigates the impact of feminist actors in a range of institutional settings on recent processes of welfare reform in the UK. It finds that the gendered welfare reform introduced by New Labour was initiated and pushed through by a coalition of committed feminist actors across a range of institutions. Crucially, the reforms relied on the existence of ‘strategic actors’ and ‘gate openers’, defined as feminist actors in positions of significant institutional power. It makes a contribution to the actor-centred SRW scholarship, develops an institutionalist approach to this research and identifies the need for a political economy perspective to understanding how women can shape policy outcomes.

This article investigates the dynamics that gender quota reforms create within and between government and opposition parties in electoral authoritarian dominant-party states. A dominant-party state regularly holds relatively competitive elections, but the political playing field is skewed in favour of the government party. We investigate the circumstances under which gender quotas’ goal of furthering political gender equality within political parties can be reconciled with parties’ electoral concerns. We address these issues by analysing the implementation of reserved seats by the three largest parties in the dominant-party state of Tanzania. The empirical analysis suggests that the uneven playing field leaves an imprint on the specific priorities parties make when implementing candidate selection reforms. Because of large resource gaps between parties, the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi – (CCM), is able to reconcile gender equality concerns with power-maximizing partisan strategies to a greater extent than the opposition parties.

The recent success of right-wing populist parties (RPPs) in Europe has given rise to different explanations. Economic factors have proven to be significant mainly at the aggregate level. As for the individual level, it has been argued that the so-called ‘losers of globalization’ – the less educated and less skilled, profiles with higher job insecurity – are more likely to support RPPs. Nevertheless, RPPs perform strikingly well in countries less affected by the Great Recession, gathering high levels of support among profiles not considered the losers of globalization. Moreover, the effect of age on support for RPPs is not clear, as, on the one hand, the young are better educated and skilled, but, on the other, they suffered the effects of the economic crisis more. To address this puzzle, we focus on the impact of unemployment and employment insecurity among the youth on voting for RPPs in 17 European countries. We find that youth support for RPPs can be explained by the precariousness of the youth labour market.

In The Mid-Morning Hours Of 11 September 2001, Shortly After the second Twin Tower of the World Trade Center had collapsed, amidst the fog surrounding us all – who, when, why – I heard a brief item of news on the radio. Canada had closed its airspace to all American planes still en route; since US airports were also closed for several hours on that day, these pilots would have no choice but to return to their destinations or to circle the airs in search of ‘safe haven’. This news was not repeated. Canada eventually did permit US airplanes to land and many transatlantic passengers found safety in Iceland's Reykjavik airport for a period of time, up to several days in some cases.

This small incident is one among the many in recent years that have made increasingly transparent the fragility of the territorially bounded and state-centric international order. For a few brief hours, the passengers of the airplanes that could not obtain landing permission were like refugees without first admittance claims. The same logic that permits states to deny first admittance to certain refugees and asylees, and often contrary to the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, was operative in this instance as well. Invoking national security concerns, the USA's closest neighbour could, even if briefly, follow the imperatives of sovereign statehood and close its airspace as well as landing privileges to passengers who had now become ‘refugees in orbit‘ in the heavens.

Most scholarship on contentious politics in authoritarian regimes focuses on severe repression and transgressive protest (e.g. revolt), suggesting a zero-sum game played by the state and challengers. However, a burgeoning literature suggests that less brutal forms of authoritarian states have emerged in recent decades and that protesters in these countries tend to limit their challenges, avoiding direct confrontation with the authorities. If so, can the notion of the zero-sum game truly capture the nuances and complexities of contentious politics in authoritarian regimes? Taking the case of China, this article offers a systematic analysis of the pattern of repression and protest in a strong authoritarian state. Drawing on an original data set of 1,418 protest events in China, this article shows that the Chinese state permits some (albeit limited) space for protest and that most protesters confine themselves to this space. These findings thus provide quantitative evidence that popular contention in China is featured by a non-zero-sum game. Overall, this study contributes to a more comprehensive and complex understanding of popular contention in authoritarian settings.

Critics of the global economic multilaterals (GEMs) – the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization – allege that these organizations fail the test of democratic accountability. Two distinct measures of democratic accountability have been applied to the GEMs. To the degree that these organizations display ‘accountability deficits’, those deficiencies are the result of choices by the most influential national governments. Three techniques have been deployed to enhance the accountability of the GEMs: transparency (more information for those outside the institution), competition (imitation of democratic accountability) and changes in rules of representation (accountability to stakeholders rather than shareholders). Each of these may impose costs, however, and may conflict with other valued aims of the organizations.

Governing in multilevel settings has become a prominent research field in comparative political science. This article asks if German state parties adopt similar ideological positions and coalition strategies to the parties on the federal stage. The results of a content analysis of state and federal election manifestos show that German political parties on the state level indeed adopt different programmatic positions to the federal parties'. Government formation on the state level, however, is not only influenced by the state parties' programmatic viewpoints, but also by the predominant patterns of coalition politics at the federal level.

COVID-19 shocked the world and provided a particular challenge for populist radical right (PRR) forces. We lay out three research questions that this special issue addresses through case studies of the PRR in government in Brazil, Hungary, Turkey and the US and in opposition in France, Italy, Germany and Spain: (1) How have PRR actors responded to the pandemic? (2) How have PRR actors framed the politics of the pandemic? and (3) What have been the effects of the pandemic on the popularity of the PRR? We explain the case selection of this special issue and summarize the main findings of the eight case studies, which show that the pandemic did not severely damage the PRR and that they had very different responses to the challenge. This reinforces the idea that the PRR is not ephemeral but is rather the by-product of structural transformations of contemporary societies and is here for the foreseeable future.

Semi-presidentialism is the situation where a constitution makes provision for both a directly elected fixed-term president and a prime minister and cabinet who are responsible to the legislature. A common argument against the adoption of a semi-presidential constitution by a new democracy is the problem of cohabitation – where a president from one party holds power at the same time as a prime minister from an opposing party and where the president's party is not represented in the cabinet. The concern is that cohabitation creates competing power centres within the executive that are dangerous for young democracies. This article shows that cohabitation has been directly associated with the collapse of a young democracy in only one case. Moreover, by specifying the conditions under which cohabitation can occur, we also show that the threat of cohabitation has been associated with collapse in only one further case. We suggest that this is so because cohabitation refers to a very specific situation that can only occur under a certain combination of circumstances that can often be avoided. Overall, we show that there is little evidence to support one of the most well-known and long-standing arguments against semi-presidentialism. Thus, while semi-presidentialism may indeed be perilous for new democracies, we conclude that it is perilous for reasons other than the problem of cohabitation.

The literature on party system change and electoral volatility in post-communist Europe tends to make a clear-cut distinction between Central and Eastern European (CEE) party systems and Western European (WE) ones. The former are unstable and unpredictable and electoral volatility is driven by the continuous emergence of new political parties. Conversely, electoral stability is the rule in the latter, and volatility is associated with electoral shifts among established parties. This conventional wisdom suffers from three potential sources of bias: case selection, time coverage and method. By correcting these biases, this article investigates whether the traditional division between CEE and WE party systems has been levelled as regards volatility. To do so, it presents evidence based on an original data set of electoral volatility and its internal components covering 31 WE and CEE party systems since 1990. It finds that a process of asymmetric convergence in the levels of electoral volatility is taking place between the two regions, with Western Europe approaching Central and Eastern Europe with increasing electoral instability.

‘INFLATION IS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE A MONETARY PHENOMENON resulting from and accompanied by a rise in the quantity of money relative to output.’ ‘We face a new inflationary problem. Its origins are social and political, not economic or monetary.’ These two quotations summarize briefly, but well, the two most widely held yet sharply conflicting views on the causes of inflation. Which view is correct? Is it possible, perhaps, that.in a paradoxical sense both are? These are the central questions which are addressed in this paper. First an analytical framework is presented within which it is possible to pose the major relevant questions about the causes of inflation, concentrating articularly on the possible interactions between political, soci af and economic factors. That fiamework is then used to present the two most commonly advanced and yet sharply distinct views about the causes of inflation and, by implication, what would have to be done to stop it. These two views are then evaluated on the basis of the empirical evidence. This evaluation is more impressionistic and historical than econometric and technical though the two approaches do in fact tell the same story. Finally, the policy implications which follow from the analysis are examined. This policy evaluation is conducted in broad political, rather than narrowly technical, economic terms.

IT IS NOT EASY TO CHARACTERIZE THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) AS A political system. The main comprehensive approaches have at least partly failed, and we have to admit that the EU is neither completely neo-functional, nor intergovernmental, nor pre-federal. We may call it sui generis, but this does not carry us very far.

On the other hand, we continue to apply in our analyses of the EU notions which originated in classical national democratic systems. This is true not only for the structures – above all the institutions – but for the processes as well. To add to our dilemma, recent studies on policy-making show us that the EU is far less homogeneous than one might imagine and that there are substantial differences from one policy area to another. But even if the EU is mainly a negotiating system, an authority which is clearly responsible for its outcomes should nevertheless exist. In a classical parliamentary system the government and the parliamentary majority fulfil this function. The minority may mainly oppose the majority and press for alternative solutions, or it may use its influence for reaching a compromise; it is generally agreed that a structured opposition is a constituent part of a democratic political system.

Although conventional wisdom sees Switzerland as oppositionless, in December 2007 its biggest party, the Swiss People's Party (SVP), declared itself in ‘opposition’. It implied this was something dramatic but implementation was hesitant, degenerating into personalized attacks on the minister elected over its party leader. This led to splits in the party and the strategy petered out, with the SVP returning to collegial government, consensus having proved too strong. Although political science has recently neglected opposition, the SVP's understanding of the concept was distant from most ideas of ‘opposition politics’, notably Anglo-Saxon practices. The experiment is therefore best understood as a rhetorical flourish, arising out of the SVP's powerful, but unusual, populism. Though unsuccessful, it shows Swiss politics are changing and the populist challenge remains.

Since the formal invocation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, much global discourse has been shaped by those principles, to the extent that one could without exaggeration describe the period as an ‘age of human rights’. But will and indeed can that survive the perceived danger arising from violent acts of terrorism? Is this now an ‘age of terrorism’– or at least, an ‘age of counter-terrorism’– in which human rights are being accorded a secondary status? This article considers those contentions and also advocates particular roles for those who work in the human rights field.