During the late 1970s and 1980s, Sweden and Japan both experienced a decentralization of industrial policy decision-making and implementation. This article analyses the theoretical and empirical relationships between state and local industrial policies during processes of structural change and also how structural change affects regionally targeted policies. It is argued that although increasing emphasis on local mobilization and autonomy on industrial policy matters may enhance local efficiency, it may at the same time confront state policy-makers with increasing problems of maintaining co-ordination and the resolution of industrial problems at a sectoral level. Also, at the same time as structural change solves industrial policy problems, it generates other problems associated with regional imbalances. Finally, structural change exacerbates competition for businesses among different locales. In some cases, and most prominently in Japan, the nation-state government encourages this competition, since it increases planning accuracy and local mobilization of resources.

The success of the departmentally-related Select Committees established in 1979 depended upon active backbenchers willing to monitor and if necessary criticize party leaders and policies. Such a notion, however, is generally held to be inconsistent with party government dynamics associated with the Westminster Model. This article suggests that MPs, particularly backbenchers, are frustrated with their jobs and seek meaningful roles to play in the House. An increasingly important avenue for them is through select committee service, which offers them a variety of rewards and opportunities. The data is drawn from over one hundred interviews with MPs, clerks and staff during 1986-87 while a Fulbright Scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford. This article is part of a larger work on changing legislative attitudes and a comparative project on parliamentary reform.

Recent party research has neglected the analysis of internal party organizations. Taking the central question of how party leaders are selected to study an aspect of intra-party decision-making, we carry out a detailed analysis of the regulations and practice of party chairman selection procedure in the Austrian parties over the post-war period. Although the methods of selection are similar - and similarly oligarchical - the implementation of these formal rules is found to differ both according to the degree of oligarchy exercised in the selection process, and in the priority structure given to the electoral, intra-party and parliamentary arenas in emphasizing the qualities a leader should have. As traditional party identification declines and the party leader becomes more important for electoral success, the differentiation between the parties increases. We develop an explanation for these differences in terms of a configuration of party characteristics, which may also be useful for examining other aspects of intra-party decision-making.

This paper attempts an application of Nordlinger's theory of conflict regulation to Northern Ireland. This represents a shift away from an institutional focus on consociational ‘devices’ to the more basic concern of establishing whether the basis for any conciliatory action actually exists in the first place. The first section concludes that structured elite predominance (a virtual precondition for conflict regulation) characterises the main Northern Ireland political parties (although it is relatively weak in the case of the Ulster Unionist Party). However, section two, in an addition to Nordlinger's framework, argues that the existence of a dual party system severely hamstrings the development of elite political security, by stimulating within-bloc electoral competition. Moreover, section three stresses that the key to an acceptable consociational formula is the balance which is struck between the internal and external dimensions of the problem. Finally, the paper assesses the prospects for ‘coercive consociationalism’, in the light of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the political developments over the last five years which it induced.

Studies of political participation have traditionally differentiated conventional from non-conventional, legal from illegal, modes of participation. In this paper we to develop a more complex scheme, using the technique of multidimensional scaling (MDS). We look at the perceptions that individuals hold about different forms of political participation that range from voting to armed violence and include other legal or illegal manifestations. The results show the existence of two meaningful underlying dimensions. The first relates to ‘within-system’ versus ‘out-of-system’ activities; the second relates to ‘progressive’ versus ‘conservative’ activities. A cluster analysis is then used to develop a typology of political participation.