This article aims at defining the concept of “semi-presidential government” and detailing the diversity of its practices. There are in fact three types of semi-presidential regimes: the president can be a mere figurehead, or he may be all-powerful or again he can share his power with parliament. Using four parameters — the content of the constitution, tradition and circumstances, the composition of the parliamentary majority and the position of the president in relation to the majority — the author seeks to explain why similar constitutions are applied in a radically different manner.

This article examines the reception by voters of the first direct elections to the European Parliament in June 1979, using data from comparable surveys conducted shortly after Polling Day in eight of the nine member states of the European Community. Against a background of party campaigning and media coverage which often differed from that normally associated with national elections, four indices of popular involvement are examined: degree of interest in the campaign; evaluations of its presentation on television; the extent to which it was followed through the mass media and other channels of communication; and voters' perceptions of the issues that emerged from the campaign. A number of influences that affected turnout and other forms of electoral participation are then reviewed, including outlook on European affairs, partisan affiliations, demographic positions, and amount of mass media exposure to the campaign, a factor which appeared particularly significant for those voters whose interest in the campaign was relatively weak.

An important manifestation of freedom of assembly is the right to organize and participate in peaceful public demonstrations. Data from representative cross-sectional surveys of the adult population of seven European countries and the United States show that mass support for this right cannot be taken for granted in Western democracies. Education, age, and political value priorities are three explanatory variables that can be expected to affect the likelihood of a person opposing any attempt by government to forbid public demonstrations. The strength, form, and nature of the relationship between disapproval of a ban on demonstration and the explanatory variables are compared cross-nationally.

The composition of the directly elected European Parliament does not precisely reflect the “real” balance of political forces in the European Community. As long as the national political systems decide most of what there is to be decided politically, and everything really important, European elections are additional national second-order elections. They are determined more by the domestic political cleavages than by alternatives originating in the EC, but in a different way than if nine first-order national elections took place simultaneously. This is the case because European elections occur at different stages of the national political systems' respective “electoral cycles”. Such a relationship between a second-order arena and the chief arena of a political system is not at all unusual. What is new here, is that one second-order political arena is related to nine different first-order arenas. A first analysis of European election results satisfactorily justifies the assumption that European Parliament direct elections should be treated as nine simultaneous national second-order elections.

The study of central–local relations in Britain is in a state of flux. Traditionally the subject has been the preserve of Public Administration but work in this tradition has been incisively criticised. However, no cogent alternative framework of analysis has been offered. This paper briefly reviews the existing British literature before assessing the contribution of recent theoretical developments in the sociology of organisations to the understanding of intergovernmental relations. It concludes that the literature on interorganisational analysis has become pre-occupied with methodological questions and in its most common manifestations will not facilitate the analysis of intergovernmental relations. However, if interorganisational analysis is located within a theory of intra- and interorganisational power, it can provide a series of concepts of considerable utility. Although the paper focuses on understanding British practice, recent work on interorganisational relations in France, West Germany and the United States of America is discussed.

This study consists of three parts. The first part defines the objectives of the country-comparison Sweden-Germany, and it describes the strategical options which are available for a selective manpower policy: demand strategy, supply strategy, mobilisation strategy and compensatory strategy. The second part deals with some policy consequences following from new international trends in employment and unemployment. Special consideration is given to the development of state regulation and of industrial relations. One finding is that Sweden's regulation of the labour market emphasizes job protection, whereas Germany stresses various compensations in case of redundancy. The third part presents detailed information on the development of selective labour market policy in both countries during the last fifteen years. The core of this part, however, consists of a synopsis of the Swedish and German labour market policy. “The Swedish model” is mainly characterised by strategies influencing demand and mobilisation of labour, whereas “the German model” relies relatively more on supply management and compensatory strategies. Sweden spends five times more on selective measures than Germany relative to the Gross National Product. The net effect on unemployment decreases in Sweden, whereas the application of this efficiency criterion for Germany still hints at an optional range for introducing more selective measures. One consequence of this result is that labour market policy should emphasize problems of policy implementation and concentrate on influencing processes in the labour market. The convergent trend of the “Swedish model” and the “German model” lies in the increasing application of selective employment subsidies designed to maintain workplaces or to create new jobs.

The study of sexual differences in political participation is increasing in analytic specificity. The present article takes its point of departure in the contention that sexual differences are the major source of participatory inequality in Norway. On the basis of survey data (N = 784), it explores a major hypothesis on sexual variation: the possible existence of a “female culture” which conditions women away from greater involvement. Participation is defined as both electoral and interest-group involvement, and various indicators of the female culture are studied by regression analysis to determine their effect in relation to other socioeconomic factors. There are two major findings: (1) Both positive and negative evidence of the female culture are revealed, but, with the exception of general political interest, none of the personality, attitude, or value components affect political participation. (2) The variable which explains sexual variation most is an interaction variable composed of gender, family status, and work status. Being married and having children appears to exert strong differential effects on the involvement patterns of women and men, and these patterns can be traced out in terms of gender-specific profiles of organizational attachment and intra-organizational recruitment. As a conditioner of political involvement, the female culture is best understood as a question of gender-specific role demands in relation to the productive and reproductive processes, with clear consequences for organizational preference and political activization.

This article examines the campaigns to increase EC voters' awareness of the EC and direct elections to the European Parliament with a view to stimulating high turnout. A supranational perspective is adopted. The first part of the paper discusses and evaluates the aims and effects of the so-called “non-partisan” European Elections Information Programmes launched by the Commission and the European Parliament, and briefly details their implementation in the Member States. The second part of the paper sketches the campaigns of the transnational party organizations – European People's Party, Confederation of Socialist Parties and European Liberals and Democrats – for the elections. It is concluded that the effectiveness of the programmes and political campaigns was curtailed by a number of political factors at the national level in many Member States.

T.R. Gurr's article, which appeared in the December 1974, issue of the American Political Science Review, reported several important findings from analysis of the authority characteristics of 336 polities that functioned between 1800 and 1971. While other methodological points are addressed throughout, this study is primarily a comparison of the findings of Gurr's analysis with those of two reanalyses based upon less-inclusive conceptual and operational definitions of what constitutes system-transforming change. Among other departures from Gurr's findings is substantially less consistent support for the hypothesis that polity durability is enhanced by coherence among authority traits. Analysis of a dynamic version of Eckstein's consonance theory reveals that incoherent historical polities which adapted in any direction were more long-living than their non-changing counterparts, and equally long-living as polities with coherent authority patterns. Thus, the study revealed not only that some of Gurr's findings were dependent upon his operationalization of “end of polity”, but also the need for further examination of the data in light of discrepant findings among the three analyses.

Local elites are viewed as constituting the base of the political system. In such a perspective, they represent the first stage of the selection process for politicians. Looking at the political system as a whole, two hypotheses can be introduced: (1) Discontinuity between local political elites and central political elites; (2) Symbiotic continuity between the political levels, with local power being a springboard to higher political mandates and the concomitant existence of mechanisms for the cumulation of mandates and umbrella relationships (“parachutages”). This paper will illustrate possibilities for the two models, with the United States appearing to support the first hypothesis, and France the second.

How proportional are the results of electoral systems designed to ensure proportional representation? How large is the deviation from proportionality for relative majority systems? Does a given system favor large, small or medium-sized parties? Are some parties consistently advantaged? Is the system predictable or erratic? Plotting the percentage of seats–percentage of votes ratio versus percentage of votes for all parties, is found to be a simple and yet powerful graphical method to answer such questions. Application of such “proportionality profiles” to West European multi-party systems leads to a typology of electoral systems based on their actual effect (rather than their formal procedure or intended effect). District magnitude, the number of rounds, and nationwide adjustment rules are found to be more important than formal seat distribution rules such as d'Hondt or Sainte-Laguë.

In the case of several successful nationalist movements in Europe the path to independence has followed a common pattern. In Ireland, Finland, Estonia and Latvia, the progress of a tripartite struggle may be charted: between the metropolitan governing power, the local centre and the local periphery. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the local centre (Irish Protestants, Swede-Finns and Baltic Germans) comprised a minority population group divided from the bulk of the local population in terms of language, economic position and political status (and, in the case of Ireland, religious affiliation). Political development tended to take on a form contrasting with the West European norm. As society modernised, the local periphery began to challenge the economic hegemony of the local centre by moving into towns and into industrial occupations and by threatening the confiscation of landed estates. The cultural supremacy of the local centre was undermined as the standardisation and revival of the peripheral language led to its replacing the central language in education, commerce and the administration, except in Ireland. The growth of a distinct ethnic identity among the peripheral population assisted in its assuming control of local government and ultimately of attaining political independence.

The present article focusses upon the impact of the European election campaign on the mobilisation of top political leaders, party activists, members and electors in the nine member countries of the European Community. For the purpose of comparative analysis, five factors are considered to be of importance: information, salience, electoral procedures, resources and conflict. These factors are discussed in order to compare the efforts and success of the respective campaigns. The information was provided by the national teams of the EES-Campaign Project.

This paper analyses some of the main approaches that can be found in the literature on corruption.

– the question of definition: the end of overdefinition;

– the modernisation thesis: its assumptions and why some authors challenge it;

– the survival of corruption in advanced democracies;

– causes of corruption: a systemic and endemic phenomenon; two or more of the causes of corruption are dealt with in more detail: overregulation and the role of bureaucracy and the discretion of public officials;

– money in politics: attempts at reforming the system of election financing, in particular, in the United States and the entanglement of politics and (inter)national business;

– the consequences of corruption (in terms of societal values and costs);

– the remedies proposed: legislation, deterrence or reforms.

National middle-level party elites have begun to claim control over their leadership's transnational engagements particularly since preparations for the first European Elections have greatly increased transnational party (leadership) cooperation and organisation. Using a common questionnaire, political scientists from all EC countries have surveyed delegates to 39 national party conferences and 3 transnational party federation congresses, in order to compare systematically the structure of middle-level party elites and their attitudes towards transnational policy-making. Some preliminary results are presented here: interest in EC-politics, federalism vs. confederalism, the powers of the European Parliament, Europe's relationship to the superpowers, coalition tendencies in the European Parliament. The data for this article were provided by the following national project directors and their teams: