The prevailing but not unchallenged ‘conventional wisdom’ in the literature dealing with the impact of globalisation on public spending is that the effects of increased openness can be compensated through the welfare state. Repeatedly, studies have found little evidence for a ‘race to the bottom’ in taxation or spending. This research note shows that it is premature to conclude that globalisation has no negative impact on public spending. By extending the period of observation into the 2000s, by looking at changes in openness and spending instead of their levels, and by disentangling the effects of openness in the cross‐sectional and over‐time dimensions of variation, this article shows that the association between increased openness and spending is clearly negative. Although the contribution of this research note is mainly empirical, some theoretical arguments are presented, emphasising the long‐term nature and complexity of policy making in the politics of globalisation.

This paper explores the legitimacy of third sector organizations in the policy process in the United Kingdom. It draws on empirical research to examine how legitimacy is defined, both by third sector organizations and by those they target within government. The paper argues that while many third sector organizations give high priority to political forms of legitimacy—in the sense of participatory structures and accountability to members and beneficiaries—government is generally more likely to give priority to technical forms of legitimacy, e.g., the quality of research and the ability to implement policy. Nonetheless, political legitimacy is still important, first because this is the form of legitimacy that third sector organizations claim for themselves and second because, as government gives way to governance with an increase in partnerships and collaboration, the dilemmas faced by third sector organizations in achieving political legitimacy are being faced on a broader canvas.

By most definitions, the third wave of democratisation has given rise to dominant parties and dominant party systems in Africa. The effective number of parties, the most widely used method to count parties, does not adequately capture this fact. An analysis of 59 election results in 18 sub‐Saharan African countries shows that classifications of party systems on the basis of the effective number of parties are problematic and often flawed. Some of these problems are well known, but the African evidence brings them out with unusual clarity and force. It is found that Sartori's counting rules, party system typology and definition of a dominant party are still the most helpful analytical tools to arrive at an accurate classification of party systems and their dynamics in general, and of dominant party systems in particular.

Voters who perceive the economy to be weak are generally less likely to support the incumbent government. Yet there is a debate over whether all people respond equally to economic shifts or if the state of the economy is more salient for those who feel economically vulnerable. This article examines whether insecure employment situations and employability concerns strengthen responses to the government's economic record. Data from Latin America and Eastern Europe confirm that workers who feel anxious about being fired or who believe it would be difficult to find a new job place significantly greater weight on sociotropic evaluations than do those with more secure employment situations. Thus incumbents who create risks for vulnerable workers are sanctioned, while those who create opportunities are rewarded most.

This paper uses attitudes towards the third sector in Sweden to test general assumptions about how citizens in West European political systems apply ideological schemas as shortcuts to political preferences. Attitudes towards the third sector are found to be affected by all ideological schemas reflected in the Swedish party system (state–market, Christian traditionalism, and growth–ecology). Contrary to what is implied by findings from America, these effects are very stable across socio–economic groups (especially those of the dominant statemarket schema). Similarly, no interaction effects of political sophistication could be traced, and the relative impact of the schemas remains the same regardless of whether or not the third sector is presented as an alternative to the welfare state. The implications of these findings for the nature of public opinion formation in ideologically clear and structured political systems are discussed.

This article reviews and evaluates the process and experience of embedding internationalisation in a UK, HEI School of Social Sciences curriculum. It reflects upon the merits and limitations of using of a peer-reviewed checklist approach compared with alternative approaches, such as the provisioning of online toolkits, resource lists and internationalisation centres or units. Through an evaluation of the peer-reviewed checklist approach, this article sheds light on the gap between the desire by institutions to embed a richer understanding of internationalisation into the curriculum, and the uptake, awareness and implementation of this material by academic teams on the ground. The article asserts that in order to be effective, efforts to internationalise the curriculum need to be embedded in routine academic processes. It favours a ‘mixed’ approach, suggesting that a predominantly quantitative checklist approach can, in certain circumstances, prompt further (qualitative) reflection and engagement by those using the checklists, and, by so doing, act as a tool for change rather than simply providing a means of assessing or measuring internationalisation.

Throughout Latin America, the relationship between government and civil society organizations (CSOs) has been characterized by opposition, substitution, and submission; and, the incipient path to cooperation is barely noticeable. For their part, participatory public policies make sense within a theory of democratic governance. Democratic governance seeks two propositions: (a) participation from other social actors will give rise to more efficient government action; and (b) citizen support will emerge from the said government action. This paper criticizes the current relationships between the governments and CSOs in this region. In addition, it explores the potential strategies that could be adopted were there a cooperation between these two entities. The paper is supported by theoretical literature as well as by a revision of some cases of participatory public policies that are currently active in the region. The paper proposes that the strategies of opposition to government and government substitution have to be abandoned in this region. The paper focuses on civil organizations (CSOs). It is true that they do not constitute the entirety of civil society; however, they are frequently the most organized compared with other civic actors, such as social movements, families, and individual initiatives. CSOs form only a part of the diversity known as civil society; however, they significantly contribute to the discussion about the public good, and very often they participate in providing such goods. The future of participatory democracy in Latin America is related to our ability to achieve a more complete participation of CSOs in the entire process of participatory public policies—from the formation of public agendas to their design, implementation, and evaluation.

This article develops a formal semantic and syntactic analysis of distributive numerals in Tlingit, a highly endangered language of Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon. Such numerals enforce a ‘distributive reading’ of the sentence, and thus are one instance of the broader phenomenon of ‘distance distributivity’ (Zimmermann 2002). As in many other languages, a Tlingit sentence containing a distributive numeral can describe two distinct kinds of ‘distributive scenarios’: (i) a scenario where the distribution is over some plural entity (e.g. ‘My sons caught three fish each’), and (ii) one where the distribution is over some plural event (e.g. ‘My sons caught three fish each time’) (Gil 1982, Choe 1987, Zimmermann 2002, Oh 2005). Despite this apparent ambiguity, I put forth a univocal semantics for Tlingit distributive numerals, one whereby they consistently invoke quantification over events. Under this semantics, the ability of distributive numerals to describe both kinds of scenarios in (i) and (ii) is due not to an ambiguity, but instead to the sentences having relatively weak truth conditions. In contrast to prior analyses of distributive numerals and distance distributivity, the proposed semantics does not actually make use of distributive operators, but nevertheless retains a rather conservative picture of the syntax-semantics interface. The analysis can also account for certain locality effects noted for distance distributives in Korean and German (Zimmermann 2002, Oh 2005), as well as an intriguing puzzle regarding distributive numerals and pluractionality in Kaqchikel (Henderson 2011). Finally, I show how the analysis can be extended to the well-known case of English ‘binominal each’.*

Steiner's principal objection to our paper is that deliberators in a committee are permitted to speak strategically whereas deliberative theory requires ‘that actors do not lie but are truthful and authentic in their statements’. In this response we observe that such a prescription is relevant only to the extent that individuals might be expected to behave otherwise. Our paper explores conditions under which deliberators' strategic (descriptive) incentives are aligned with the (prescriptive) advice to tell the truth.

This research examines the manner in which effectiveness is socially constructed and interpreted within a subpopulation of “practical solution delivering” Canadian environmental organizations. Key findings are that effectiveness is not framed by ENGO staff in terms of sustainability-related outcomes of value, despite contextual reasons why this might be so. Instead, effectiveness is interpreted in terms of popularity and engagement with the public, with funders and with other key stakeholders. This suggests that despite organizational and population affirmations to the contrary, the environmental programs and activities are designed to engage human awareness and affect more than to create practical environmental change.

Regional governance systems may resolve the dilemmas of global financial integration, and the Eurozone is the most advanced attempt to do so. The Euroland sovereign debt crisis is a test of this proposition but the outcome finds the EU wanting. The first section places EMU in the broader context of financial liberalisation. The next section shows that we have long known that financial liberalisation is associated with financial instability, demanding robust governance. The subsequent section examines the reaction to the Eurozone crisis, and argues that the lessons available were poorly learned. Although the EU and ECB revealed leadership and crisis management capacity in the financial market phase, the sovereign debt phase of the crisis was less successfully handled, producing conflict among Eurozone members. As a result the Eurozone hangs in the balance.

The empirical work concerning the relation between economic conditions and the popularity of parties in the Federal Republic of Germany is surveyed. Research in this area started in 1971. During the first ten years (only) traditional econometrics were used. It was shown that the lower unemployment and/or inflation, the higher – ceteris paribus – the popularity of the leading party in government. In the 1980s, using modern time series methods, the validity of the earlier results has been questioned. However, it has been shown that such a relation can also be detected using modern time series techniques. Finally, it is asked whether the observed voting behaviour is consistent with the theory of rational expectations. Using popularity data, the hypothesis of rational expectations can be rejected. Thus, West German voters do not behave rationally in the sense used by Muth.

While government turnover is often thought of as an adverse source of instability, it may also be viewed as a favourable source of competition and institution‐building. To articulate and test such hypotheses, this article describes two main concepts of government turnover: leadership turnover, or change in rulers, and ideological turnover, or change in the rulers' ideology. Refinements involve the mode, outcome and timing of turnover. The article discusses measurement issues that arise when there are multiple power institutions and when parliaments are controlled by changing majority coalitions. The measures of turnover are illustrated by examining the post‐communist world. The article considers the possibility that higher cumulative post‐transition turnover – in terms of leaderships or ideologies – has assisted in establishing the rule of law.