This paper takes a critical look at the struggle between the European Commission and European consumer markets over the future of agricultural biotechnology. While the Commission is keen to normalize the commercialization of biotech foods and crops, European consumers refuse to eat/buy products containing genetically modified organisms (GMO) and have effectively closed the market to GMO. Is this a rare example of European citizens prevailing over the elitist technical decision making procedures in Brussels and the pro-GMO coalition of agro-chemical companies, biotech research institutes, big farming, and selected member states? We show that peculiar circumstances enabled consumer-protection and environmental NGOs to mobilize consumers and to deflect the Commission’s goal of introducing biotech foods for a time, a rare achievement in the annals of EU policymaking. However, shifts in global agricultural markets will render this more difficult in the future, in part by awakening dormant tensions within the European anti-biotech movement.

Concern about corruption has stimulated the creation of a multiplicity of indicators by a multiplicity of methods by the World Bank, World Economic Forum, Transparency International and commercial rating agencies. However, the construction of indices varies, raising substantive and methodological issues, which are reviewed with particular reference to post-Communist transition societies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This paper systematically examines indicators, starting with the definitional distinction between measures of administrative corruption as distinct from state capture. It pays particular attention to problems arising from the aggregation of indicators from multiple sources, and the extent to which the changing composition of cross-country indicators limits trend analysis. It concludes that many of the problems of aggregation may be avoided by using single source and single dimension indexes.

Interest groups are a major channel through which citizens can express their opinions to decision-makers. Their participation in policymaking may improve decision-making processes by supporting policies that are in line with citizen preferences and blocking policies that solely reflect the interests of the governing elite. At the same time, however, intense interest group pressures may make it difficult for policy-makers to implement the most efficient policies since such policies often impose costs on parts of the public. Competition among interest groups over the distribution of economic gains may also slow down the rate of economic growth (Olson 1982). Finally, if some groups constantly win, interest group politics may undermine the legitimacy of electorally accountable decision making in a democracy.

This article looks at the impact of multilevel governance structures on state-society relations. It contends that rather than focusing on relations between state actors and societal actors, it is more useful to look at shifts between competing advocacy coalitions in a given issue area. It argues that the impact of multilevel governance structures on domestic advocacy coalitions depends on the political opportunity structure provided at the international level, the types of policy outputs international institutions can deliver, and the extent to which members of an advocacy coalition have the organizational capacities to be active at the international level. These factors are explored in two cases of public health policy: anti-smoking policy and alcoholism policy. Moreover, both cases show that multilevel governance structures offer better opportunities for challengers than for defenders of the domestic status quo.

Cutbacks in thirteen Swedish transfer programmes are analysed to evaluate the argument that explaining welfare retrenchment is a different enterprise from explaining welfare expansion. The conclusion is that the ‘New politics of welfare’ is of major importance in the Swedish context, not only in the Anglo-Saxon context that Paul Pierson studied. Programmes relatively susceptible to non-transparent reforms have suffered larger cutbacks than other programs. Non-indexed programmes present opportunities for cutbacks by non-decision and are particularly vulnerable to obfuscation. Hence we have a politics of blame-avoidance rather than one of credit-claiming. Pensions are among the least targeted for cuts because pensioners’ organisations that emerged as the welfare state matured have gained influence at the cost of unions.

This article examines the deregulation of cross-broader broadcasting to test its impact on strategies pursued by EU member states. It modifies our understanding of regulatory competition through an institutional explanation of the process. The European Union’s Television Without Frontiers (1989) Directive provided a framework for regulatory competition in television broadcast markets. Despite a high level of investment flight, member states did not automatically respond with deregulation but were compelled to do so by the European Court of Justice. Therefore national deregulation in this field was not a natural response to the preference of economic actors or an objective of state policy; it was driven by the European institutions.

Scholars have avoided studying interest group influence because of the difficulty operationalising the concept. The research presented here introduces a new way of measuring lobbying success and lays out a model of its determinants. To understand why interest groups sometimes succeed and at other times fail, we must consider the institutional structure of the political system within which the advocates are operating; the characteristics of the issue at hand; and finally the characteristics of the interest group itself and their lobbying strategy. I test these factors with original data based on interviews with 149 advocates in Washington D.C. and Brussels active on a random sample of 47 policy issues. From the results, issue context emerges as a much more important determinant of lobbying success than institutional differences. The institutional differences that do emerge suggest that direct elections coupled with private campaign finance lead to winner-take-all outcomes biased in favour of wealthier business interests, while the lack of these institutional characteristics leads to more balanced policy compromises with more advocates achieving some of their policy goals.

Intelligence sharing among countries with different technical capabilities and local knowledge is particularly valuable for countering terrorism, transnational organized crime, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. States participating in intelligence-sharing arrangements must balance the benefits of more and better intelligence against the possibility that their partners will withhold or distort the information they share or will pass along to others the information they receive. Participants can balance these benefits and risks by introducing elements of hierarchy into their sharing agreements. Hierarchical arrangements allow a state to monitor more effectively for defection and to reassure others of its own commitments to the terms of their sharing arrangement. I evaluate this argument by analyzing intelligence sharing between the United States and Britain and West Germany during the early cold war, and conclude with some insights the approach sheds on contemporary sharing arrangements and problems.

This paper explains differences in the policy objectives and policy programs of Swedish immigrant policy as a consequence of the fact that policy objectives tend to be evaluated in public political debates whereas policy programs are evaluated through administrative reviews within government. Given contrasting contexts, different questions are important for policy legitimacy. The public debate focuses on questions of moral values, while the audit within government deals with issues of efficiency. Policy objectives and policy programs therefore respond differently to criticisms that separate rhetoric and practice. As a result, Swedish immigrant policy rhetoric and practice were from the outset only loosely joined and have failed to converge over time.

Drawing upon theoretical studies on the policy impact of political parties, this article address cross-national differences in financial policy choice and capital market development in Malaysia and Thailand. An explanatory approach that considers inter-party organisational dimensions in tandem with intra-party structural attributes shows that financial and regulatory policies have varied significantly between Malaysia and Thailand in response to the national configurations of political parties. The different patterns of policy choices, in turn, have led to varied capital market structures and development trajectories. Thus the theoretical literature on the political economy of financial capitalism in developed countries, which stresses the importance of domestic political institutions, has implications for the political underpinnings of financial market reforms in emerging market countries.

Studies of lobbying try to determine the influence and power of non-governmental actors on public policy. Although influence is very difficult to measure empirically, many continue to push for better research design to solve the problem. Through case studies of business-government relations in the United States and the European Union, this article argues that the difficulties with power and influence concern not only their operationalisation, but they also reflect conceptual confusions. Trying to determine the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of a policy issue can be misleading, since power also structures apparently harmonious exchange relationships. The perceived success of business lobbying in the cases studied depended on the governments' receptiveness to their demands, which in turn depended on strategic advantages they saw for themselves in international negotiations. Even when business appears to lead the dance, it is more promising to look at resource distribution and the interdependence of both sides, instead of assuming the domination of business power over policy outcomes.

This paper investigates how different factors, such as size, duration and composition of fiscal changes, can alter the effects of fiscal policy on private consumption. Using an unbalanced panel of 19 OECD countries during the period 1960–2000, it is found that transfer changes are believed to be permanent during fiscal contractions. Hence, it is more likely that an expansionary fiscal contraction will occur if the government cuts transfers. This result highlights the importance of taking into account specific circumstances, such as the debt and deficit position, when studying expansionary fiscal contractions. The results also indicate that expansionary fiscal contractions are likely to come at a considerable social cost.

This paper provides empirical evidence of the relation between trade openness, capital openness and government expenditures in a cross-sectional time-series context. It is shown that capital openness is significantly and negatively related to government expenditures in line with the conventional wisdom that capital mobility may undermine the ability of governments to maintain larger public sectors. More importantly, the compensation hypothesis originally proposed by Rodrik (1998) and traceable back to Cameron (1978) is not in general supported by the data.

The actions of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) concerned with such issues as development, human rights, and the protection of the environment voicing concerns to public authorities raises the questions: Do these newly mobilised societal actors influence EU trade policy outcomes? We answer in the negative, arguing that such groups, which have diffuse costs and benefits from trade policies, do not dispose of resources with which they can threaten or enhance political actors' chances of re-election or re-appointment. A survey of NGOs and business groups as well as two in-depth case studies on the negotiations concerning the EU's Economic Partnership Agreements and the EU's policy on access to medicines in developing countries support our reasoning. The analysis shows that although NGOs have gained access to policy-makers, they have largely failed to shift policy outcomes in their favour.