One of the core values in a democracy is the possibility for citizens to bring about alternation in power if they disapprove of the governmental policy. This article examines patterns of alternation and the degree of accountability in three different democratic systems: pluralitarian (characterized by a two-party system), majoritarian (moderately fragmented party system) and consensus (very fragmented party system) democracies. The extent of non-alternation as well as wholesale alternation decreases as we move from pluralitarian to majoritarian and further on to consensus democracy. When alternation is related to election results, majoritarian systems are the most responsive ones, whereas consensus systems generate the lowest degree of accountability.

Across Western Europe, parties have emerged that are both right wing and in favour of restrictions on immigration. These parties are commonly referred to in terms of either ideology (e.g. ‘far right’) or policy (‘anti-immigration’). This article compares far right parties, selected on the basis of their ideologies, and anti-immigration parties, selected based on their immigration policies. I argue and empirically demonstrate that, contrary to what the extant literature suggests, these sets of parties are not identical. I point out similarities and differences, showing why it is useful to distinguish between these two types of party. The article concludes by discussing the relevance of these differences to the relevant literature.

In the wake of the deepest and longest recession the UK has experienced since the 1930s, this article examines the origins, sustenance and puncturing of the growth dynamic the UK economy enjoyed between 1992 and 2007. In so doing it seeks to gauge the interventions made to attempt to shore up the growth model and the prospects for the resumption of growth. It argues that the Anglo-liberal growth model is, indeed, fatally flawed and that, in the absence of a new growth model, it is difficult to see how sustained economic growth can be achieved. Yet it also argues that, at present, no alternative growth model is on offer and that it is wrong to infer the likelihood of a paradigm shift in economic thinking from the ‘inter-paradigm’ borrowing used to shore up the old growth model in the midst of the recession. If crises are judged as much by the transformations to which they give rise as by the accumulation of pathologies out of which they crystallize, then what we have experienced to date is not so much a crisis as a catastrophic equilibrium. Though the symptoms to which it has given rise are pregnant with the possibility of crisis, the crisis itself is yet to come.

For more than four decades the analysis of party organizations in the European democracies has been completely separated from analyses of American party structures. The first part of this article examines how and why such a separation was to emerge in the aftermath of Duverger's and Epstein's path-breaking original work. It then goes on to outline how an analytic framework might be developed so that more wide-ranging comparative studies of party organizations in democratic regimes can be undertaken in future. Only with such research can the limitations of ‘exceptionalist’ and ‘regionalist’ explanations of party structure development and change be overcome.

A successful reform of any system of governance must be well informed of the system's own functional logic. In the context of its democratization, this article explores whether the institutional arrangement of the European Union has developed or behaves more like a presidential than a parliamentary system. Building on that, the authors re-examine the opportunities and feasibility of realizing that model as a step towards more democracy in European governance.

Interactions between ruling and opposition parties in India have long been sorely neglected by political analysts. This study finds clear contrasts between interactions at national and state levels in this federal system, and further, often marked variations across the 28 states – each of which has its own Westminster-style legislature. Government–opposition relations range from semi-civilized to caustic, although most cases are situated some at distance from those extremes. So, despite a recent confrontation in the Indian Parliament, there are no strong trends towards either deterioration or greater accommodation. This is a study in ambiguity.

In the past, European election campaigns have been fought primarily at national level, organized and led by national parties. The European political parties had neither the financial nor the organizational means to lead pan-European election campaigns. The June 2009 elections, however, highlighted a different and potentially significant trend: new EU regulations provided for the direct financing of European political parties, allowing them to campaign directly in the elections. It is argued that these developments could lead to the Europeanization of European elections campaigns. This article applies the concept of Europeanization to the election campaigns of the Party of European Socialists and three of its member parties: the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party and the German Social Democrats, creating an ideal-type model of Europeanization. It concludes that in the three cases Europeanization is still in its infancy.

This article looks at the role of the Party of European Socialists (PES) in its attempts to shape social democratic parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) towards a West European norm. It discusses how existing views in the academic literature on the role of transnational parties are inadequate. We argue that the PES did not play a key role in encouraging the establishment and development of parties in the CEE states from the 2004 enlargement in the early stages of accession. We contend that the overall influence of party federations has been limited, and that these limitations were as much in evidence before enlargement took place as they were afterwards.

The existing literature on party organization is deeply divided over the question of how much freedom of choice decision-makers in a party enjoy in relation to their environment. Although the resulting theoretical deadlock seriously weakens our understanding of party formation and change, no attempt has been made to reconcile the different approaches. This article aims to do just that by offering a historical institutionalist perspective on party organization. Studying the development of political parties in South Korea, it argues that party organizations are best understood as strategic responses to electoral markets. Party organizations reproduce and change, as advantaged factions defend the status quo, while disadvantaged factions work towards organizational reform.

There is broad agreement that the most important transformation undergone by democratic politics since the second half of the twentieth century has been the diffusion of the means of mass-communication (television in particular). Teledemocracy especially has changed democratic politics in a specific way: the leaders rather than the parties now stand at the centre of the electoral and political process. This article does not aim to go over the relationship between media and politics; that has already been done. Instead, it focuses on how to deal with a situation in which media and politics overlap.

Mega-events present a special venue for the practice of risk management. This article analyses the management of security risks in the case of two sporting mega-events, the London 2012 Olympic Games and the FIFA 2006 World Cup in Germany. To what extent do strategies and practices of risk management resemble each other across events? And what explains similarities or differences in the tools of risk management observed in each of these cases? First, this article explores three theoretical explanations for the choice of particular policy tools or instruments. Second, it introduces the tools of government approach as a means of conducting a direct comparative analysis of risk management across political and organizational settings and over time. The tools used for security risk management at the two mega-events are then compared and the different logics of tool choice are evaluated. This analytical approach offers a basis for future comparative inquiry into tools of risk management used in public and private organizations. The empirical findings highlight the particular importance of national political systems in influencing tool choice.

New modes of governance are said to create problems of political accountability. To understand this claim, we need a theory of accountability. Electoral accountability provides authorization and sanction, but it neglects the problems entailed in the requirement to provide explanation and justification. Political accountability in this discursive sense can be understood through the idea of public reason, where this is defined in terms of substantive rationality and an orientation to the public interest. This conceptualization leads in turn to the requirement of replicability and openness in public reasoning. The problem of accountability is one of securing the conditions under which the institutions within which policy deliberation takes place can merit the confidence of citizens in these terms, and the Commission White Paper on European governance is used to illustrate the application of these tests.

This article argues that radical right parties can be seen as displaying three patterns of opposition towards European integration: rejecting, conditional and compromising. These three patterns are identified through the careful examination of party attitudes on four different aspects related to European integration and the EU. These include the idea of a common identity of European peoples, the principle of cooperation at a European multilateral level, the EU policy practice and the desire to build a future European polity. In light of this conceptualization of radical right opposition to European integration, the article conducts a qualitative analysis of party literature of 12 radical right parties from 10 European countries during the latter part of the 2000s.

Denmark, Norway and Sweden are still among the most corporatist democracies in the world. Although corporatism has declined in Scandinavia over the last decades, it still exists, albeit at a lower level. Based on comparative and longitudinal data, we argue that this is a consequence of the disruption of some of the prerequisites to corporatist exchange. Neither governments nor the relevant interest groups in Scandinavia control what their exchange partner desires to the same extent as they did during the heyday of corporatism. Despite the involvement of different factors in the three countries, the main pattern is the same. Consequently, the character of state–interest group relations in Scandinavia is not as distinctive as it used to be.

Although Turkey took its initial steps toward establishing democracy in 1950, it has thus far failed to become a fully functioning democracy. Using the comparison cases of Spain and Greece, this article discusses two related variables that are likely to have thwarted the development of full democracy in Turkey: the country's experience with authoritarian rule, and the lack of elite settlement or convergence towards acceptance of the democratic rules of the game. The article ultimately contends that despite the EU's attempt to push Turkey towards full democracy in the modern day it is unlikely that it will become a fully functioning democracy unless it manages to achieve civilian elite agreement regarding the rules of the Turkish democratic game, and that Turkey's experience with authoritarian rule may, in turn, have hindered the development of such rules.

Two typical features of new modes of governance (NMG) are of particular concern: (1) the delegation of regulatory activities to independent regulatory authorities at the national and the European level; and (2) regulatory networks outside the legislative arenas, with both private and public actors. These features tend to make the NMG less democratically accountable. Yet some hold that NMG can confer legitimacy on the European Union, especially because they secure ‘output’ more effectively than democratic arrangements, even though they lack any ‘input’ from voters. This article challenges these normative claims: the alleged benefits of NMG may be less than often claimed, while democratic accountability measures are less of a challenge to effectiveness and credibility, properly conceived.

It has been suggested that political distrust is associated with lower levels of voter turnout and increased votes for challenger or populist parties. We investigate the relationship between political (dis)trust and electoral behaviour using the 2009 Belgian Election Study. Belgium presents an interesting case because compulsory voting (with an accompanying turnout rate of 90.4 per cent) compels distrusting voters to participate in elections. Nevertheless, distrusting voters are significantly more inclined to cast a blank or invalid vote. Second, distrust is positively associated with a preference for extreme right (Vlaams Belang) and populist (Lijst Dedecker) parties. Third, in party systems where there is no supply of viable challengers (i.e. the French-speaking region of Belgium), the effect of political trust on party preference is limited. We conclude that electoral effects of political distrust are determined by the electoral and party system and the supply of electoral protest.