Advocates of one or another set of institutions for new democracies have typically neglected the question of adoptability. The omission is especially evident in institutional prescriptions for the reduction of ethnic conflict in severely divided societies. These have been advanced with little regard for obstacles likely to be encountered in the process of adoption. Yet adoption is problematic. Processes of negotiation and exchange open the possibility of mixed outcomes reflecting the asymmetric preferences of majorities and minorities. The Northern Ireland Agreement of 1998, however, is a glaring exception, for it produced institutions that are intended to be clearly and consistently consociational. An examination of the process by which the agreement was produced suggests that the coherent outcome in Northern Ireland was the result of some very special conditions conducive to a consensus on institutions that spanned party lines. These conditions are unlikely to be widely replicable, and the fact of consensus does not imply that the agreed institutions are apt for the divided society whose problems they are intended to ameliorate.

The concept of critical realignment has shaped much of the thinking of political scientists and historians about the processes and patterns of change in American politics. Research on re-alignment has, however, tended to focus on successful cases and to concentrate on the electoral breakpoints rather than the process of regime formation, with the result that little systematic thinking has been devoted to the question of why some electoral upheavals lead to party realignment while other large vote shifts do not. This article begins from the proposition that the election does not so much constitute the realignment as offer the opportunity and the momentum for the new party to build a lasting national coalition. Whether the party capitalizes on this potential depends on processes and events that follow the critical election, during what could be called the ‘consolidation phase’ of the realignment. The question is ultimately one about public opinion, but the concept of consolidation needs to take in the interaction between the public and political elites, since mass opinion is formed in the context of elite initiatives and interpretations. The model of consolidation depicts two interrelated processes. The first involves strategic competition among elites, including elected officials and organized societal interests, who frame the conflict, by prioritizing issues and cleavages, and by relating policy proposals to group identities and widely-shared values. The second focuses on the public. Their standing loyalties disrupted by the crisis and the incumbents' inability to deal with it successfully, citizens engage in a process of experiential search as they seek to re-establish the stable political orientation given by attachment to a political party. The article draws on qualitative and quantitative information from the New Deal to illustrate the model of consolidation.

It is a widely accepted that the 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam significantly increased the powers of the European Parliament (EP). The critical question, however, is why the European Union (EU) governments did this. I argue, contrary to existing explanations, that these changes came about because the EP was a ‘constitutional agenda-setter’. The rules in the EU Treaty, as established at Maastricht, were incomplete contracts, and the EU governments had imperfect information about the precise operation of the Treaty. As a result, the EP was able to re-interpret these rules to its advantage and threaten not to co-operate with the governments unless they accepted the EP's interpretations. The article shows how this process of discretion, interpretation and acceptance worked in the two main areas of EP power: in the legislative process (in the reform of the co-decision procedure), and in executive appointment (in the reform of the Commission investiture procedure). The article concludes that ‘agenda-setting through discretion in rule interpretation’ is a common story in the development of the powers of parliaments, both at the domestic and EU levels.

Through a pooled cross-section time-series analysis of the determinants of wage inequality in sixteen OECD countries from 1973 to 1995, we explore how political-institutional variables affect the upper and lower halves of the wage distribution. Our regression results indicate that unionization, centralization of wage bargaining and public-sector employment primarily affect the distribution of wages by boosting the relative position of unskilled workers, while the egalitarian effects of Left government operate at the upper end of the wage hierarchy, holding back the wage growth of well-paid workers. Further analysis shows that the differential effects of government partisanship are contingent on wage-bargaining centralization: in decentralized bargaining systems, Left government is associated with compression of both halves of the wage distribution.

Though ordinary Russians have embraced many aspects of democratic culture, their learning to tolerate their political enemies has been the most difficult democratic lesson for many. In this article, I analyse change in political tolerance in Russia, using panel data I collected in 1996 and 1998 in a nationally representative sample of Russians. Two bodies of theory are considered to generate hypotheses about change: the conventional cross-sectional model of the aetiology of tolerance; and experiential theory, based on perceptions of the performance of both the economic and political systems. The dynamic character of the model is provided by perceptions of the performance of the economy, of the political system and of the seriousness of the crime problem in Russia. Many of my findings are unexpected. For instance, tolerance seems to beget tolerance, in the sense that, over time, those who are tolerant tend to perceive diminishing threats from their political enemies. Yet threat perceptions are sustained by perceptions of the political and economic conditions in contemporary Russia. Perceptions of the change in crime are especially important since they seem to exacerbate perceptions of political threat, thereby eroding both political tolerance and support for democratic institutions and process. Paradoxically, threat is also sustained by democratic values – those who support democratic institutions and processes are more likely to perceive threats from their political enemies, a finding peculiar to the unsettled Russian case. Thus, this analysis goes some distance towards discovering the causes of changes in both Russian tolerance and intolerance.

We examine the effects of voting for the winners and losers of presidential and congressional elections on political trust. On the basis of survey and electoral data for 1972 and 1996, we argue and demonstrate empirically that presidential winner–loser status systematically affects citizens' trust in government. We find that voters for the losers of the presidential contest show lower levels of trust. Moreover, we find that voting for the congressional winners does not attenuate this effect. Political trust is highest among voters who voted either for both the presidential and congressional winners or the presidential winner and congressional losers; trust is lowest among those who voted for both the presidential and congressional losers or congressional winners and the presidential loser.

This article examines the extent of political participation by Latino non-citizens across the United States. The only previous national quantitative research on this topic is by Verba, Schlozman and Brady, who found little difference between the participation rates of Latino citizens and non-citizens. Using the Latino National Political Survey, large differences between citizen and non-citizen participation are found. Although Latino non-citizens participated in non-electoral political activities and in non-political civic groups, they were significantly less likely to do so than Latino citizens. Examination of the non-citizen population shows that immigrants who understood politics better, planned on naturalizing, had a stronger ethnic identity, were more familiar with English and were younger were more likely to become involved. The traditional socio-economic measures of education and income as well as length of stay in the United States were non-significant predictors of non-citizen participation.

Theorists such as Carole Pateman and Benjamin Barber suggest that democratic participation will engage citizens and lead them to have more positive regard for political processes and democratic practices. The American states provide a setting where provisions for direct voter participation in legislation vary substantially. If participatory institutions have an ‘educative role’ that shapes perceptions of government, then citizens exposed to direct democracy may be more likely to claim they understand politics and be more likely to perceive that they are capable of participation. They may also be more likely to perceive that government is responsive to them. We merge data on state-level political institutions with data from the 1992 American National Election Study to test these hypotheses with OLS models. Our primary hypotheses find support. We present evidence that the effects of exposure to direct democracy on internal and external political efficacy rival the effects of formal education.

misunderstanding the regulatory state?

In the last quarter of the twentieth century something transformed government across the advanced capitalist world, and a large amount of comparative political enquiry is now concerned with pinning a convincing label on that transformation. Of the many candidates the subject of this review article has proved especially popular. As I will show, a regulatory state is now commonly said to exist in a wide range of geographical and institutional settings: writers speak of a regulatory state in the United States and in Britain; of the European regulatory state; and even of refinements like ‘a regulatory state inside the state’.