Relative Political Power Research Articles

The political influence of an interest group: A comparative study on the Muslim minority in the United States and Britain

The article proposes to examine the existing political influence of the Muslim minority in the United States and Britain. The academic literature rarely refers to the component of political power as a tool that can explain the application of policy. Therefore, the analysis in the article will focus on several criteria comparatively between the two countries. The criteria include the influence of colonialism, the demography of the Muslim minority, the identity of the citizen as “Muslim”, integration policies, and the influence of the Muslim lobby. The article will show how these criteria prominently explain the political power of Muslim minorities in the intra-communal public sphere in Britain, in contrast to their relative weakness in the political sphere in the US. This is in accordance with the relative political power in each country. This article offers a new understanding of the political power of civic groups.

The distribution of power within the EU: perspectives on a Ukrainian accession and a Turkish accession

On February 28th, 2022, Ukraine submitted an application concerning accession to the European Union. As Ukraine is already linked to the European Union through an Association Agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement—signed in 2014—there might be a chance for the Ukraine to join the EU within the next decade. With about 41 million inhabitants, Ukraine is a rather large country and the 65% majority requirement under the EU’s Qualified Majority Voting rules would give Ukraine some significant power in a future EU28. Herein, it is shown how relative political power indices—as measured by the Banzhaf index—would change in the case of an EU enlargement to allow accession by Ukraine: The large economies would lose power and, surprisingly, many small countries would gain political power. Such perspectives might lead one to reconsider the voting procedures of the Council of the European Union at the EU level in the course of future negotiations on amendments to the Lisbon Treaty. The case of Turkey’s accession is also considered as is the case of Montenegro joining the European Union.

Populations and Policies in a Younger but Faster-Aging East Central Europe: The Political Demography of Missed Opportunity

The new democracies in East Central Europe started the post-communist era with comparatively young populations. After 1989-1990, they have largely spurned a quarter-century long demographic window of opportunity for reform, by insufficiently adapting their policy models to prepare for fast population aging ahead. Especially in Romania, Bulgaria and the Visegrad Four, this is reflected in low active aging and child wellbeing index rankings, relatively small social investment in early human capital, weak improvements in prospective old age dependency ratios, and large-scale emigration. Slovenia and the Visegrad Four, but not the Baltics, also became „pensioners‘ welfare states“ with prematurely strong pro-elderly policy bias. In some cases, massive early exit worsened pension system sustainability while boosting pensioners‘ electoral power (political push before demographic pull). However, around the time when the demographic window started closing (2010-2015), the political salience of family policies, work-family reconciliation policies, and active aging policy increased, often spurred by the same Christian-conservative and/or nationalist-populist parties that caused illiberal democratic backsliding. But by then, the relative political power of elderly voters during elections in East Central Europe was among the highest in the world.

Disembedded Politics: Neoliberal Reform and Labour Market Institutions in Central and Eastern Europe

AbstractDefying predictions of radical liberalization, labour market institutions in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe are characterized by relatively protective employment legislation, sometimes combined with collective bargaining rights. However, not all protective employment regimes survived political attack by neoliberal reformers. Existing theories in comparative political economy suggest that employment regimes reflect the relative political power of producer groups. Others have suggested that in Central and Eastern Europe the content of labour market reform was determined by the coercive influence of transnational actors. Through a comparative analysis of labour market reform in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia, this article finds that trade unions played a key role in early institutional settlements over labour markets. However, in Romania and Slovakia, these institutional settlements were subsequently undermined by attacks by ideologically motivated domestic elites in episodes of disembedded politics. The article develops the concept of disembedded politics and demonstrates its importance in post-socialist institutional change.

The missing link? The role of sub-national governance in transnational social protections

Much of the existing literature on social protection for immigrants focuses on what people do as individuals and households or on national policy. However, there is a third set of actors which deserves attention: sub-national and local governments. Drawing comparisons both within and between the United States and Spain, this article analyzes the extent to which sub-national governments step in when national policies block immigrant access to healthcare. Using cross-national surveys, national and sub-national data, we find that sub-national governments often provide some level of social protection, even in the case of undocumented immigrants. However, their responses vary significantly and are not easily explained by left-right political divides, changes in levels of diversity, or the relative political power of immigrants. Future work is needed not only to explain variations in non-citizen health coverage policies at the sub-national level in receiving countries, but also to offer a more complete picture of immigrant resource environments through a parallel analysis of sending-state social protection policies.

International Financial Institutions and Labour Rights: Rhetoric versus Reality

6 | International Union Rights | 24/1 FOCUS | WORLD BANK AND IMF International Financial Institutions and Labour Rights: Rhetoric versus Reality Labour organisations have long been critical of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. In particular, groups argue that policy prescriptions attached to international financial institution (IFI) loans, which emphasise labour flexibility, wage cuts, and reduced public sector jobs, amount to ‘cookiecutter policies that harm the interests of working people’ (Lloyd and Weissman 2007: 7). Politically, these policies are seen as undercutting the power of labour groups, decreasing both their ability to protect members as well as their relative political power. A large body of academic scholarship has studied the ways in which IFI programmes affect recipient countries. While earlier studies primarily focused on macroeconomic implications, more recent systematic research has also begun to examine the socio-political impacts. Thus far, results have been decidedly negative. For instance, Abouharb and Cingranelli (2007) found that structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) are significantly related to political repression– the programmes created a pernicious dynamic in which loan conditions encouraged anti-government protests that were often violently repressed. Subsequent work has found these programmes to be negatively associated with women’s economic rights, particularly freedoms from work and pay discrimination as well as workplace harassment (Detraz and Peksen, 2015). There is some evidence, however, that these programmes may ultimately serve to support some democratic reforms (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2007; Birchler et al. 2016). Somewhat surprisingly, less attention has been devoted to the labour rights implications of IFI policies. For its part, until recently the IMF has overlooked the possible effects of their programmes on labour conditions. In a welcome break, a recent IMF report (Jaumotte and Buitron 2015) noted the importance of a strong collective bargaining regime to reduce income inequality and secure better wages for low and middle-income earners. The report specifically finds that ‘the decline in unionisation appears to be a key contributor to the rise of top income shares’ (p. 31) to the detriment of those in other groups. Given the dearth of IMF research in the area of labour rights, the significance of this release was noted by labour scholars. For example, Manborde (2015: 7) observed in an earlier edition of this journal that the report finally attested to the importance of trade unions as necessary ‘economic and political correctives’ in the ‘kind of free market economy created by the mainstream political parties’. Somewhat sardonically, Cross (2015: 10) welcomed the IMF’s ‘foray into the realm of union rights’, though noting that it ultimately did little beyond refuting ‘some of the lazier assumptions on the effects of stronger trade unions’. Paucity of labour research aside, the IMF and World Bank have long noted the potential social and economic harm that their policies can cause, and have at the least expressed rhetorical support for labour rights. For example, over twenty years ago then IMF Director Michel Camdessus (1996) noted that IMF programmes should ‘contribute to improving human living standards’, States should take measures to assist with the ‘human costs of adjustment’ and labour organisations can play a key role in helping countries deal with the possible adverse impact of globalisation. Subsequent efforts on the part of these institutions have gone somewhat beyond rhetoric. By the late 1990s, the IMF began to incorporate promises to improve labour rights, specifically compliance with ILO core labour standards, into its loan conditions (Anner and Carraway 2010). One scholar argued that both IFIs have helped to increase the influence of the ILO and that ‘contrary to widespread opinion, the IMF and World Bank have become quasi-partners (with the ILO) in promoting labour rights’ (Stallings 2010: 13). For example, representatives from each organisation make it a practice to attend the others’ meetings and the World Bank’s procurement standards for contractors include core labour standards (Stallings 2010). At the least, this marks an encouraging break from their traditional view that, famously noted by former World Bank President James Wolfensohn (Lloyd and Weissman 2001, 11), that such organisations do ‘not get involved in national politics’. Thus while it has long been argued that IFI policies bode poorly for labour rights, there is some evidence that these...

A Society Apart: Rural Chinese Catholics and the Historiography of ‘Otherness’

This article examines the theme of ‘otherness’ in historical scholarship on rural Chinese Catholic communities. Whereas studies of the Jesuit Mission in China tend to emphasise the potential harmony between Christianity and elite Confucian culture, a methodological turn towards local history during the 1980s and 90s has revealed that ‘otherness’ or ‘separation’ may be a more helpful heuristic lens for understanding the situation of the vast majority of Catholics in rural China. This article surveys English-language and Chinese-language micro-histories of rural villages. It maps three general historiographical views by which historians explain Catholic villagers’ ‘otherness’ as the result of cultural dissonance, socio-economic inequality or relative political power. By periodising these centuries of history according to the feasibility of opting out of mainstream society, this article seeks to show how Chinese Catholic identity continues to be forged at the ever-moving borderline between Catholic and non-Catholic society.

The Political Transaction Costs and Uncertainties of Establishing Environmental Rights

The significance of transaction costs for the analysis of environmental policy is increasingly recognized. This article focuses on one aspect of the topic: the political uncertainty and transaction costs of establishing environmental rights. Our contribution is to model the political process around the rights establishment, and to monetize the associated welfare costs. The model includes both policy-related and political–institutional parameters, including the extent to which environmental rights are shared with polluters; the environmental benefits of the policy; the policy's abatement costs, and the relative political power of polluters and environmentalists. The model is solved to give unique Nash equilibria for the transaction costs of lobbying, and for the probability of the policy's political success. These results are then used to show the degree to which political actions can dissipate the expected economic surplus from environmental policymaking.

Agricultural rent-seeking in developing countries: an empirical investigation

Recent increases in demand for agricultural land has fuelled academic, as well as public, interest in the potential effects of high value agricultural land, particularly in developing countries. The dominating question seems to be: will increasing demand for agricultural land imply land grabbing or rural development? This article finds empirical support for a proposed theory which suggests that the extent of agricultural rent-seeking, in the form of large-scale land acquisitions, is determined by the relative political power of an elite and a farmer group.

Corporate Law Reform and Political Environment: An Empirical Analysis Employing Public Comment Procedure Data

Corporate law shapes the fundamental business environment and affects various stakeholders such as shareholders, managers, employees, and creditors. Each stakeholder has an incentive to influence the reform process of corporate law. The many corporate law reforms in Japan reflect its rapidly changing business environment. It is possible to determine the behaviour of various stakeholders by examining the politics of the reform process of corporate law.In order to understand the corporate law reform process, this paper uses the notice-and-comment procedure (`public comment procedure'), which was introduced by the Administrative Procedure Act in 1993. The Administrative Procedure Act requires every law reform or order proposed by a government agency to undergo a public comment procedure. Under this procedure, people submit comments to the Ministry of Justice; some of these comments are reflected in the final bill, whereas others are not. The paper performs a quantitative analysis of a hand-collected dataset from two recent public comment procedures on corporate law reform. By analysing the comments with respect to the issues, we can understand the mechanism of the corporate law reform process, particularly the relative political power of various interest groups.The results showed that the bureaucrats are rigid and not willing to take public comments seriously. However, on some technical issues, legal academics and legal professionals, such as courts and law firms, influence the behaviour of the bureaucrats. The results showed that the bureaucrats employed these comments to honour the technical views of professionals. In other cases, corporate managers significantly influence the reform process. The results did not support Croley's (2007) independence hypothesis about government agencies.

Financing long-term care for frail elderly in France: The ghost reform

Like many welfare states, France is faced with increasing demand for long term care (LTC) services. Public LTC coverage has evolved over the past 15 years, reaching a coverage depth of 70%. Nonetheless, it does not provide adequate and equitable financial protection for the growing number of frail elderly individuals, who are expected to constitute 3% of the population by the year 2060. Since 2005, various financing reform proposals have been debated, ranging from a newly covered risk under the social security system to targeted subsidies for private LTC insurance. However, to date no reform measure has been enacted. This article provides a brief history of publicly financed LTC in France in order to provide a context for the ongoing debate, including the positions and relative political power of the various stakeholders and the doubtful short-term prospect for reform.

The Renewable Fuel Standard 3.0?: Moving Forward with the Federal Biofuel Mandate

Increased reliance on renewable energy technologies remains the best approach to mitigate the environmental and social problems associated with the unsustainable use of finite fossil fuels for our energy needs. The Renewable Fuel Standard (“RFS” or “Standard”) exists as a pioneering pillar in the realm of federal incentives for renewable energy technologies, particularly biofuels. By mandating the commercialization of socially beneficial biofuels, it: (1) improves the environment by reducing climate change inducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector; (2) increases U.S. energy security by reducing petroleum imports from hostile foreign regions; and (3) serves as a driver for much needed economic development. Moreover, it does this through an exceptionally elegant regulatory regime, which imposes its costs on the petroleum industry and, as such, has very little impact on the federal budget. But a political storm is beginning to brew over the continued implementation and existence of the RFS. Petroleum-related interests, who vehemently oppose the RFS for obvious reasons, continue to outspend the lobbying efforts of stakeholders who support it and the food industry, which continues to cling to the increasingly empirically refuted notion that biofuels have an enormous impact on food prices, are using the 2012 draught as a rallying cry for waiving the RFS’s requirements. Congress is beginning to head the call and has considered an increasing number of Bills seeking to either modify or repeal the Standard.In this Article, we provide a thorough analysis of all issues facing the continued implementation and existence of the RFS. We first set out background information on biofuels in general and then provide a detailed overview of the enactment, creation, and implementation of the RFS’s regulatory regime. Second, we present a political economy analysis of altering the RFS, where we detail the preferences, critiques, and relative political bargaining power of all affected stakeholders. Next, we detail and comment on all legislative attempts to modify or repeal the RFS that Congress has considered in its current term. Finally, we provide our justified recommendations, which include legislative and administrative reform proposals for moving forward with the Standard. Specifically, we recommend that the biofuel categories under the RFS be expanded to include socially beneficial biomass sourcing at volumetric target levels consistent with current production and blending realities.

La diplomacia del gas boliviano : integración energética y geopolítica en la región

This work starts from the premise that Bolivia's growing gas potential conditions a new pattern of international insertion, substantially and positively modifying its economic-energy and diplomatic-geopolitical role in the region. For Bolivia, the abundant certified natural gas reserves represent important consequences for its international role. On the one hand, there is an opportunity to generate cooperation and energy interdependence links with the main regional powers, which, in turn, mean an increase in their relative political power in the region and an improvement in their possibilities of geopolitical gravitation and diplomatic management. On the other hand, this potential also represents the opportunity to consolidate relations of interdependence and balance with its neighbors, becoming the axis of energy integration in the region and thus contributing to a better economic complementation with them.

<i>Impossible Democracy: The Unlikely Success of the War on Poverty Community Action Programs</i>, and: <i>Why America Lost the War on Poverty—and How to Win It</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Impossible Democracy: The Unlikely Success of the War on Poverty Community Action Programs, and: Why America Lost the War on Poverty—and How to Win It Jennifer Frost Impossible Democracy: The Unlikely Success of the War on Poverty Community Action Programs. By Noel A. Cazenave (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. xvii plus 264 pp.). Why America Lost the War on Poverty—and How to Win It. By Frank Stricker (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xiii plus 345 pp.). Frank Stricker and Noel A. Cazenave have written two very different books about the U.S. federal government's War on Poverty in the 1960s. Historian Stricker employs a broad view, examining poverty, public policy, and politics over half a century, and declares the War on Poverty a failure, while Cazenave, a historical sociologist, focuses on two 1960s community action projects in New York City that preceded and influenced the War on Poverty and finds "unlikely success." Despite these contrasting approaches and conflicting arguments, Stricker's synthesis and Cazenave's case studies together provide a picture of the recent American past that challenges current popular and political, if not scholarly, understandings of the first and only time in history Americans sought an end to poverty. These books also reassert the role of politics and the state in dealing with economic forces and developments, a welcome reassertion in an era of increasing economic insecurity and globalization. Stricker's synthesis demonstrates the persistence of poverty and the inadequacy of public policies aimed at dealing with it from the 1950s into the 21st century. Despite unprecedented economic growth and productivity, at least eleven percent of the U.S. population, and often more, have lived in poverty during this period of time. Stricker locates the causes of poverty primarily in unemployment, part-time employment, or poor-paying jobs and attributes these conditions to capitalism and market forces, rather than to individual problems or group failings. Utilizing a Marxist perspective, he argues "unemployment is normal for capitalism" and benefits individual capitalists by controlling workers [End Page 831] and suppressing wages (4). In opting for a structural, and not an individual or cultural, analysis of poverty, he departs from and criticizes the liberal War on Poverty in the 1960s, which focused on blocked opportunities to employment among poor Americans due to inadequate education and job training, as well as conservatives in the 1980s, who blamed impoverished Americans not only for their joblessness but also their dependence on liberal welfare programs. With this understanding of the causes of poverty, Stricker makes a strong argument for the necessity of public job creation to solve the problem of poverty. What is most powerful about Stricker's overview is how he consistently presents the political and economic decisions that have sustained poverty over a half century, from the War on Poverty when politicians and policymakers ostensibly sought to eradicate it, to the subsequent war on the poor when they undermined welfare benefits and other social services and, at the same time, maintained unemployment levels as a curb to inflation and benefit to business. This overview demonstrates that the U.S. federal government has the authority and resources to act decisively in the economic arena, and Why America Lost the War on Poverty—and How to Win It ends with a list of "what needs to be done," which puts at the very top government stimulation and creation of jobs (235). Stricker makes it clear that nothing is inevitable about capitalist development, and that economic forces have been and can be shaped to the benefit of different groups within American society. Whether public policy shapes economic forces to help the rich or the poor depends upon their relative political power, and Cazenave believes the community action component of the 1960s War on Poverty did increase the political participation and empowerment of low-income Americans. He comes to this conclusion by closely analyzing the Mobilization for Youth (MFY), established in the late 1950s, and the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited-Associated Community Teams project (HARYOU-ACT), formed in the early 1960s. These two Manhattan-based community projects were influential precursors of the War on Poverty's...

Power Politics and Inetrnational Labor Standards

This paper analyzes how a country's commitment to labor standards is affected by the relative international political power they possess. Powerful countries may be less committed to actual enforcement of certain labor standards since they are unlikely to face significant threats of international sanctions regardless of their actions. The paper introduces an index of international power for 116 countries that is used to examine how power affects the extent to which countries enforce standards relating to freedom of association and collective bargaining. The evidence strongly suggests that, even after controlling for differences in wealth, productivity and market freedom, powerful countries are significantly less committed to the protection of labor standards than less powerful countries.

Policing the Rural Crisis

Based on empirical research in a number of rural communities in north-western NSW, this article explores the dynamics of rural crisis as it is manifested in and through popular attitudes and campaigns around law and order. There is no denying that crime rates in many rural communities are high, often very high by national standards, or that local crime disproportionately involves Indigenous offenders (and Indigenous victims). However, the views expressed in interviews with established White residents, in local media and in organised campaigns around law and order are suggestive of a much deeper sense of threat and crisis. This, it is argued, can be explained in relation not simply to crime rates but the way in which crime is experienced at the local level and the manner in which it is connected to other unwanted change that is seen to threaten the integrity of these communities. In order to understand these anxieties it is necessary to explore historical patterns of settlement, the economic structure and the culture of rural communities. Indigenous Australians have, at best, occupied an ambiguous and fragile position in relation to membership of these communities, a form of ‘passive’ belonging, ‘conditional’ on deference to dominant White norms governing civic and domestic life. Local Indigenous crime can be a source of deep anxiety not only because it causes harm to person and property but because it is interpreted by many Whites as a repudiation of the local social order, a signifier of larger threats to the community and on occasions as a harbinger of social breakdown. The article explores some of the key themes emerging from interview material that characterise this sense of crisis and relates them to the larger pattern of change affecting many communities: economic decline, changing government policies and priorities, the growing relative economic and political power of Indigenous people, debates about native title and so on.

Sustainability and Determinants of Italian Public Deficits Before and after Maastricht

This paper has two goals. 1) To evaluate the sustainability of Italian public deficits according to the methodology developed by Trehan and Walsh (1988, 1991) and Bohn (2004); 2) To analyze how the determinants of debt creation evolved in the years following the Maastricht Treaty and how this evolution shaped the development of the Italian public finances. The analysis is carried out in three steps; first we estimate and compare the stochastic properties of the main indicators of the Italian budget performance to test for sustainability; second, we confront the results of a cointegration-vector error correction model on two sample periods: a “pre Maastricht” (1950-1991) and a “post Maastricht” (1950-2002), to identify the main determinants of public deficits, according to the theoretical literature and the dynamic relationship between each of them and the dependent variable; third, we use the results of these estimates to specify a dummy variable model that evaluates how Italian fiscal policy reacted to changes in these determinants in the 1950-2002 sample. We conclude that a) In this period Italian public finances failed the sustainability test; b) Debt creation is much more sensitive now than before 1991 to external constraints, chiefly the numerical rules imposed by the Maastricht Treaty itself, institutional factors, such as the budget approval rules and the relative political power of the Minister for the Economy.

A quantification of policy reform: an application to the Uruguay Round Negotiations on Agriculture

We employ an empirical general equilibrium model to quantify the welfare effects of trade policy reformation in the Uruguay Round Negotiations on Agriculture. Our approach is two-fold: first we focus on the primary players in the agricultural negotiations: the Cairns Group, the European Union, Japan, and the United States, where the players are defined as benevolent governments whose primary objective is to maximize total welfare, measured in terms of the equivalent variation (EV). Second, we take into account the divergent objectives of different interest groups within the targeted regions, namely from the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, where different weights given to these sectors depending on their political influence. Here the decision making authorities, or governments, are no longer assumed to focus solely on the maximization of the region’s EV welfare; instead they are assumed to maximize a payoff that is defined by the utilities of the agricultural and non-agricultural interest groups. This is modeled with a Political Preference Function that has a CES functional form. The results lead to several conclusions. The greater the reduction in protection, the greater the increase in welfare for most of the regions of the world. We contend that comparatively moderate reductions were enacted however, because of the relative political power that the domestic agricultural interests possessed in each region. Though the goal of the WTO/GATT is obviously to liberalize trade, only modest gains may be expected in the area of agriculture due to the internal conditions that have been advanced in this paper.

Patterns of Names, Patterns of Places

Among the most common questions asked by archaeologists who study past agrarian landscapes are the following:1) How did farmers use land (in terms of the activities by which they made a living)?2) On what basis did they claim the right to occupy and use land (in terms of territorial possession, ‘ownership’, common rights, etc)?3) In what sequence was land occupied, and what general principles governed sequences of colonisation, ‘intensification’, and territorial sub-division?4) To what extent were territorial patterns stable over long periods of time? How frequently did political and social action take place in the context of a relatively unchanging political geography?5) Was there a hierarchy of places and communities, rooted in history, which influenced their relative social, political and economic power?

The Obsolescence of Capital Controls?: Economic Management in an Age of Global Markets

Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, after decades of trying to limit short-term international capital movements, advanced industrial states moved decisively in the direction of decontrol. What has driven this remarkable policy convergence? The answer lies not in ideological change or shifts in relative political power, but in the prior development of international financial markets and in the increasing globalization of business. In a policy environment fundamentally reshaped by these factors, financial institutions and multinational firms were able to threaten or implement strategies of evasion and exit. Thus, the usefulness of controls declined as their effective costs rose sharply. In this light, the cases of Japan, Germany, Italy, and France are examined. The analysis points to the tightening link between short-term capital movements and foreign direct investment, issues that have long been treated as conceptually distinct. It also underlines the intricate connection between national policies governing capital movements and those aimed at managing international financial markets.