Preferences Of Political Actors Research Articles

Why Are Constitutional Amendments in Mexico so Frequent?

This research investigates the reasons for the overwhelming frequency of constitutional amendments in Mexico despite the widely held academic views of its constitution's rigidity. The article introduces a novel model highlighting the core of the Mexican Constitution. This model serves as a foundational lens to understand the interplay between political institutions, preferences of political actors, and amendment provisions. The application of this model attributes the frequency of amendments to three different reasons: first, the length and inconsistency of the Mexican Constitution; second, the institutional requirements for amendments; third, the political consensus prevailing in the Mexican political scene (crucial instances, such as the onset of multipartyism with concertacesión and pivotal reforms to Articles 27 and 73, offer deeper context) makes amendments feasible. A comprehensive analysis of the 68 constitutional amendments from 2000 to 2013 corroborates these expectations concerning institutional thresholds, coalition dynamics, and amendment significance.

Large-Scale Ideal Point Estimation

AbstractRecent advances in the study of voting behavior and the study of legislatures have relied on ideal point estimation for measuring the preferences of political actors, and increasingly, these applications have involved very large data matrices. This has proved challenging for the widely available approaches. Limitations of existing methods include excessive computation time and excessive memory requirements on large datasets, the inability to efficiently deal with sparse data matrices, inefficient computation of standard errors, and ineffective methods for generating starting values. I develop an approach for estimating multidimensional ideal points in large-scale applications, which overcomes these limitations. I demonstrate my approach by applying it to a number of challenging problems. The methods I develop are implemented in an r package (ipe).

Investment Treaty Arbitration in Latin America

This study analyzes variations in the incidence of state involvement in investment treaty arbitration in Latin America and the Caribbean over the 1987–2014 period. Its main contributions are fourfold. First, by focusing on the balance of incentives and opportunities facing political leaders and foreign investors, the study establishes a new basis for understanding the reasons actors opt for the risks and uncertainties of international arbitration instead of resolving international investment disputes via alternative means. Second, by restricting the focus of research to the Latin American region, the study is able to move beyond the analysis of relatively time-invariant structural and institutional conditions and crude indicators to address the role played by the preferences of political actors. Third, by disaggregating disputes by sector of investment, the analysis documents the variable role of ideology and electoral incentives in investment treaty arbitration. Finally, by underlining the distinctiveness of the Latin American experience with investment treaty arbitration, the study offers new insights into the global backlash against investment treaty arbitration, which has gone farther in the region than anywhere else. Overall, the results underline the potential payoffs of breaking down the international experience with investment treaty arbitration into regional patterns to obtain a deeper and more granular understanding of the political economy of investor-state dispute settlement.

Temp Nations? A Research Agenda on Migration, Temporariness, and Membership

This article outlines a research agenda to study how, why, and with what consequences systems of migration policy that rely on time-delimited statuses have been tools of nation-state making. Taking a long view and comparing key contemporary cases, I argue that temporary migration regimes have been appealing because they purport to reconcile the disparate interests and preferences of political actors in sending and receiving countries, native and foreign workers, and employers. Such regimes have been a means for the affirmative selection of migrants as workers—an approach that preserves the option of rejecting them as permanent members. The proposed research would uncover the full range of temporal means by which states have shaped populations through migration policy. Substantively, it explores how changes in the ratio of temporary to permanent statuses affect the meaning of political belonging. This would include an examination of how the policing of temporariness requires routine bureaucratic monitoring as well as extreme measures like deportation with consequences for migrants as well as for the communities in which they live.

The 2013 Israeli elections and historic recurrences

The 2013 election campaign in Israel shows, at first glance, some unanticipated results and unexpected reactions of several political actors. Three events in particular can be noted: (1) the rise of a significant centrist middle-class party; (2) the association of the newly elected right-wing Prime Minister with his left-wing rivals; and (3) the revival of a national religious party after years of decline. A broad overview, however, reveals that from many perspectives numerous key elements of Israeli politics have remained broadly the same over the decades. Some unanticipated outcomes of the elections are to a substantial extent repetitions of past events, referred to in this paper as historic recurrences. In order to establish this claim about historic recurrence, each event is compared to past events with which several striking similarities are found. In order to explain the phenomenon of historic recurrence in Israeli politics, two sets of concepts are applied: the sociological terminology regarding reference group and collective identity, and rational choice theories about voter behaviour and the preferences of political actors.

The Future of Belgian Federalism: An Analysis of Party Preferences

This article studies the political discourses regarding the future of Belgian federalism since the year 2000. Analysing party manifestos, it intends to identify patterns of preferences about the long-term evolution of Belgian institutions and the distribution of competences. The quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that the systemic duality of Belgian federalism largely explains the preferences of political actors: French-speaking parties overall oppose the broad state reform that the Dutch-speaking parties collectively support. Yet, each party has a specific position on the decentralization cleavage and a vision of Belgian federalism that cannot be reduced to its linguistic affiliation.

Analysing Party Politics in Germany with New Approaches for Estimating Policy Preferences of Political Actors

This contribution introduces the development of German party competition and coalition politics in recent decades on the one hand and the latest techniques for estimating the preferences of political actors on the other. It argues that, for reasons of social change, the preferences of the electorate were reshaped and political actors therefore had to adopt programmatic changes. In addition, the establishment of a new socialist party in the eastern German states, and since 2005 also in the western part of Germany, resulted in new coalition strategies for the ‘traditional’ political parties, which are discussed between and within the parties. Researchers can apply various methods to test what programmatic position political actors adopted and whether they changed their programmatic orientation over time. The paper discusses the advantages and drawbacks of the major strategies in estimating preferences of political actors and provides an overview of the contributions to this issue of German Politics.

Congressional Politics of Financing the International Monetary Fund

We address the question of how international public goods are financed by analyzing voting in the U+S+ Congress on legislation to increase the U+S+ contri- bution to the International Monetary Fund ~IMF!+ We argue that legislators are more likely to vote in favor of an increase ~1! the more campaign contributions they obtain from banks that specialize in international lending, and ~2! the greater the share of high-skilled proglobalization workers in their districts+ The first argu- ment supports the inference that a financially strong IMF mitigates the risks of international lending, to the benefit of the lending banks+ The second reflects our claim that voters view the IMF as a positive force for global economic integration that—following Stolper-Samuelson reasoning—benefits high-skilled workers+ Lastly, we analyze IMF loan decisions and find modest support for the claim that IMF policy reflects the interests of major international banks+ Overall, our results sug- gest that private actors within the United States have individual stakes in funding the IMF+ The primary mandate of the International Monetary Fund ~IMF or Fund! is to safeguard the stability of the global financial system—an international public good+ The IMF obtains the resources it needs for its stabilization operations from mem- ber governments, with large members contributing most of the funds+ In this arti- cle, we analyze the politics of funding the IMF from the perspective of its largest contributor, the United States+ Rather than treating the United States as a single entity with a unified national interest at the Fund, we consider the preferences of political actors within the United States who exert power over financing the

De impact van zachte en harde politieke instituties in Europese besluitvorming : de totstandkoming van de 'Verpakkingsrichtlijn' (94/62/EG)

This article argues that both hard and soft institutions shape the strategies and - to a lesser extent - the preferences of political actors in the European Union. First of all, it discusses the institutional perspective in political science and presents an institutional model of decision-making. Secondly the institutional argument is illustrated by a detailed account of the decision-makingprocess with respect to the Packaging Directive. An analysis of the actor configuration, the interactions between the involved actors and an overview of the decision-making process itself, all show to what extent actor's strategies and preferences are constrained and empowerd by the European institutional context.

Searching for a Theory of Bureaucratic Structure

Administrative institutions often have important implications for the allocation of scarce resources. To some extent, therefore, they reflect the interests of those who have a stake in policy implementation. Although scholars have devoted increased attention to this fact, current theories that seek to explain bureaucratic structure as a reflection of politics are severely limited in range. In addition, they provide little insight as to the kinds of interests that underlie specific institutional arrangements. Future research should seek to identify contextual variables that condition institutional choice within the administrative process. Scholars have shown a heightened interest in the political sources of bureaucratic structure. Thus, although it is hardly new, the idea that organizational arrangements and procedures within the administrative process reflect the interests of those who stand to be affected by policy implementation has been given much more explicit attention. Rational choice theorists have been especially ambitious in developing this thesis. In this article I will describe and then critique perspectives that view administrative design as an instrument of political control. Leading efforts to theorize about the systemic role of bureaucratic structure will be limited in two broad respects. The more obvious is that the determinants of institutional choice are much more varied than economic models suggest. The contractual metaphor employed by such explanations, in which structure is intertwined with the goals of specific programs, cannot be applied to many if not most constraints on public administration. A more damning criticism of rational-choice theory is that, even where they are valid, its assumptions about the relationship between delegated authority and program design provide little insight concerning the implications of particular structural choices for particular types of interests. Notwithstanding its pretensions 591/Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory I would like to thank Jim Anderson, Frank Baumgartner, Jim Clingermayer, and Ken Meier for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. J-PART 7(1997):4:591-613 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.198 on Thu, 21 Jul 2016 04:06:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Searching for a Theory of Bureaucratic Structure to scientific explicitness and logical rigor, neoinstitutionalism has merely contributed to an already confused body of plausible but conflicting proverbs. The limitations of efforts to develop a coherent theory of bureaucratic structure suggest that we can gain a better understanding of the subject by identifying contextual factors that shape the motives and preferences of political actors.

Executive veto and spending limitation: Positive political economy with implications for institutional choice

The consequences of institutional change in the budgetary process are not generally determinate independent of the preferences of political actors. Nonetheless, this study shows for a general class of preference configurations that the legislative branch cannot be made better off by a spending limitation unless the executive is empowered with a line-item veto. In the absence of executive item-veto authority there is no incentive for the legislature to constrain spending.