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With the establishment of the Copenhagen criteria for membership in 1993 the European Community has entered a complex process of guiding Eastern European countries on their way back to Europe. The substance of this process consisted in institutional models and behavioral patterns delivery, which through the mechanics of conditionality, timing and bargaining was expected to produce substantial effects on national governance systems . This paper aims to present this experiment as a distinct governance mode in the EU based on conditionality about institutional performance and political timing. It further argues that as a top down governance process accession affects domestic policy making and institutional building efforts, but is limited to formal institutional choices. Actual institutional performance in candidate countries is predefined by previous and existing formal and informal institutional structures, political actor?s interests and reform capacity. The paper further proposes a more governance oriented approach in researching the substance of accession process and its outcomes in a transformational context. It combines vertical and horizontal analytical tools for discovering at one hand the substance of accession conditionality as a distinct governance structure. On the other hand it takes a closer look at two economic policy sectors for examining the actual functioning of the accession conditionality at domestic level in a given accession country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of all the issues that democratic, trade union, and left wing political parties have tried to address in capitalist societies, the most difficult to challenge has been the issue of capital investment, from private investment to even their own pensions. Democratic and popular forces have been quite successful in establishing welfare states, forming trade unions, imposing regulatory controls on market activity, and achieving modest degrees of worker participation (at least in the most advanced industrialized democracies). Yet they have been generally incapable of obtaining any influence ? let alone control ? over the location of investment in these societies. This paper will examine the possibilities of raising questions of social democratic influence over private and pension investment in Western Europe. By examining the historic contours of the 20th century debates in Germany and Sweden, the two countries where the debate went the farthest, I hope to generate hypotheses as to whether this policy option might represent a viable tactic by the contemporary democratic left to both the pension and democratic deficit issues in Western Europe generally, and the EU specifically. Germany and Sweden have been chosen as critical case studies because their experiences can likely offer useful guidance about the concrete limits to utility of this approach. This paper is divided into three sections. First, it analyzes the issue of investment and private control and shows how difficult it has been for democratic societies to challenge private interests on this core issue. Despite the growing predominance of collective funds (e.g. private pensions and public social insurance funds), democratic societies have never been able to ?democratize? investment decisions. The general arguments raised against such radical proposals by traditional controllers of investment have been that they too directly challenge ?managerial autonomy? or, alternatively, such radical steps are unnecessary because the free choice of individuals to decide where to invest is the essence of individualistic shareholder democracy. Second, the paper looks at the origins of German and Swedish attempts to democratize investment via two different paths and two different kinds of political institutions. It then analyzes their evolution through the 1970s and 1980s and suggests why they ultimately were unsuccessful in achieving their respective goals. Third, the paper concludes with some speculative consideration ? and perhaps more questions than answers ? on the relationship between democracy and investment in societies, such as those in Western Europe and/or the EU, that are both democratic and capitalist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the role of party system in the outcome of pension reform in Central and Eastern Europe. Mapping party positions in a bi-dimensional space, in which one dimension is left-right and the second is a nationalist-authoritarian vs. cosmopolitan-libertarian dimension, allows predicting the likely pro-reform and anti-reform coalitions. The success of reform in the long-run depends on the types of coalitions that can form and the existence of a minimal consensus between the major left and right parties on the basic blueprint of reform. A roll call analysis of voting in the Polish Sejm brings evidence for the dimensionality of the political space, legislators? ideal points, and the formation of pro-reform and anti-reform coalitions. Results are compared with party positions given by expert evaluations. The study compares Poland?s chances of reform success with those of Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. Unlike the existing literature, which emphasizes the role of crises and international pressures in the outcome of pension reform, this paper argues that the demand-side factors are of limited relevance. It also finds that the concentration of power is a poor predictor of the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the new institutional architecture of Eastern Europe. It extends Lijphart?s study of democratic institutions to fourteen new democracies in Eastern Europe. In his analysis of advanced democracies, Lijphart found that ten institutional variables cluster on two clearly separate dimensions. This clustering does not occur in the new democracies of Eastern Europe; they do not fall clearly into Lijphart?s consensus and majoritarian camps. On the executives-parties dimension, Eastern European countries are basically consensus except for highly majoritarian forms of interest group representation. On the federal-unity dimension, they are even more divided. While they tend to have unitary, unicameral governments (both majoritarian traits), they have adopted highly consensual modes of constitutional amendment, judicial review, and central banks. While Lijphart suggests that his two types of democracy have a logical coherence, this paper attributes these hybrids to the circumstances prevailing at the time when new institutions were adopted. In particular, communist legacies and international conditions have influenced the choice of new institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to examine the possible outcomes of the combination of liberalizing Middle Eastern political systems and Islamist oppositions. It does so by examining the broader phenomenon of liberalizing political systems integrating religious oppositions. This involves an examination of the earlier precedent of the passage of Catholic confessional parties and their constituencies in nineteenth century Europe from being protagonists of the Church?s opposition to the tenets of liberalism toward becoming pro-system political parties with Christian roots and inspiration, the post-WWII Christian democratic parties. The paper argues that this passage from opposition to reconciliation with liberalism in the European context entailed key processes involving (1) a dialectical relationship between liberals & religionists in the context of a liberalizing system, and (2) a gradual expansion of the religious party beyond religious and confessional lines. The Arab Middle Eastern context by contrast exhibits a process of limited liberalization from above in which liberals are a weak or quasi-non-existent force, resulting in the near absence of a dialectical process of elite challenges, negotiations and accommodation between liberals and religionists. In that context, the principal actors in influencing the religion-and-politics configuration in the political system are authoritarian states and religionists. The expansion of Islamist parties beyond religious issue concerns is in evidence but is limited in scope in part as a function of the constraints imposed by the authoritarian states. Based on this analysis, the paper introduces the theoretical argument that the process of democratic transition needs to be conceptualized as having a parallel process involving the transition of religious constituencies inimical to the religion-and-politics liberal formulae in the direction of an accommodation to new equilibria concerning the relative role of religion in public life, thus marking a transition of support from divine sovereignty toward popular sovereignty. Such a parallel transition it is argued, is not unproblematic and is contingent upon the nature of the democratic transition itself or the problems stalling its emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the impact of semi-presidential regimes on governance, delegation and accountability by examining under which conditions presidents take over from assemblies in these regimes, and form presidentially chosen technical cabinets. One interpretation is that these episodes of presidential governance illustrate the agency risks inherent in semi-presidentialism: delegation to two electoral agents creates tensions, which presidents may in the worst-case scenario resolve by marginalizing the assembly. A second interpretation is that these technical cabinets illustrate the flexibility of semi-presidential regimes in generating a wide variety of governance solutions, from president-led to fully assembly based cabinets. Alternatively, the formation of technical cabinets may reflect the staying power of initial historical choices, and the path dependence of politicians? subsequent decisions. This paper offers the first empirical assessment of the conditions under which presidents take control over governments and the implications which this has for governance, delegation and accountability in what has recently become Europe?s most commonly chosen regime type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restructuring of governments in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has not led to the emergence of uniform cabinet structures across the region. The paper addresses the issue of a persistent variation in cabinet ministerial organization and size across countries and over time. It advances a patronage-based theory of cabinet formation. The central claim is that the extent of clientelistic structuring of the party system, the parliamentary/semi-presidential constitutional divide, and the character of a governing coalition have a systematic effect on politicians? willingness to proliferate cabinet ministerial positions or to maintain already oversized cabinets. To support this claim the paper specifies and tests a number of hypotheses about the effects of political, institutional, and structural variables on the evolution of cabinet organization in the region. The evidence suggests that constitutional design and party system clientelism have a significant impact on changes in cabinet organization and size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at measuring the process of democratization, subdivided into the liberalization of the autocratic regime, the mode of transition, and the consolidation of democracy. The ca. 30 countries included in the study are situated in different regions in the world, mainly Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Republics, and Latin America. Most of them have experienced transitions away from different types of autocracies since 1974. However, we also include some countries from the Middle East and Northern Africa, which are, at best, in an embryonic stage of liberalization. The concepts will be measured in the form of a scalogram. Two coders assign scores for 27 indicators measured on an annual basis. Thus, the data provides a comparative measure of the level of liberalization and consolidation each country has achieved at any point in time over the period 1974-2000. In addition to this, each country’s mode of transition can be identified. The major task of our paper consists in exploring this cross-sectional, time series data to reveal their ‘patterns’. Such an investigation will be mainly guided by the question of how the different aspects of the complex processes of liberalization and consolidation are related to each other over time and space. One main finding is that our data both on liberalization and consolidation has a one-dimensional structure. Based on this finding, we can create scales of liberalization and consolidation. We find that most countries from Central and Eastern Europe perform comparatively well. Not only do they reach the same high levels of liberalization and consolidation like the Southern European cases, but they also do so in a much shorter time span than Spain, Portugal, Greece, or any of the Latin American cases in the 70s and 80s [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the construction of the European minority rights regime in the 1990s. It asks why the regime contains imprecise norms, ‘soft’ law and weak institutions. More specifically, it asks why international institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have not pushed for stronger agreements and for the legalization of minority rights at the European level. This is puzzling given that activists often seek legalization in order to gain leverage in domestic politics. Furthermore, the normative environment in which European politics took place could have empowered activism in favor of the construction of a stronger regime on minority rights. International NGOs have lobbied for monitoring procedures of state compliance with European agreements, which allow the participation of NGOs and of minority groups. Nevertheless, they have not advocated the legalization or greater standardization of minority rights at the European level. In the Council of Europe, a significant debate occurred around the drafting and signing of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM). According to the available evidence, the final document adopted reflected the lowest common denominator of the preferences of the member states. The paper finds that international NGOs recognize that, in the task of mediating between governments and minority groups, ‘soft’ law and imprecise norms are effective because of their flexibility. Furthermore, soft instruments may contain a greater number of provisions and principles, while legally binding agreements with effective enforcement usually include a narrower array of rights. In terms of the debate within the Council of Europe, the argument for legalization of minority rights was forcefully supported by the organization’s Parliamentary Assembly, but rejected by the Council of Ministers. The difference of opinion between the two bodies remains after a decade of discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of European economic integration and European norms on the rights of minority groups in Estonian and Latvian ethnic politics in the 1990s. By the end of the 1990s, Estonia and Latvia amended the citizenship and language policies of the early 1990s, while maintaining the principle of the ethnically based state. The main incentive for policy reform came from the prospect of European Union (EU) membership. The international norms on minority rights, developed mostly after the end of the Cold War, have complemented the incentive of EU membership. Estonia was quicker to respond to the incentive of European Union (EU) membership than Latvia. The domestic consensus on market reforms and membership in the West have enabled the Estonian elites to form coalitions necessary to adopt the minority policy changes required for EU membership. In Latvia, a consensus on EU membership is also present. Nevertheless, the prominent role of extremist nationalist in Latvian politics has often weakened government coalitions and slowed down the process of both economic and minority policy reform. The European norms on minority rights have played a greater role in Latvian deliberations on policy reform. Latvian centrists have referred to European norms to justify their compliance with EU membership criteria. In Estonia, the strong domestic consensus on EU membership and lack of debate on the citizenship and language policies has meant that European norms have not played a significant role. Estonian elites complied with EU recommendations when it was clear that compliance was required for membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do national parliaments regain some of their influence over policy areas that have been lost to the European Union? National parliaments influence policy as it travels ‘upstream’ to the intergovernmental level or in the ‘downstream’ implementation process. This paper presents a model that demonstrates how national parliaments could strengthen their influence over European policy in the upstream stage by minimizing information asymmetries with their representative at the European level, the national government. The containment of agency losses in the upstream process is a necessary step toward regaining policy influence, but it is not sufficient. Downstream influence is also necessary. This paper uses principal-agent theory to explain why national parliaments establish European Affairs Committees (EAC) and illustrate EAC limitations. It presents a model for the strategic interaction between national parliaments and governments over European policy. The conclusion describes possible empirical tests of the model and gives suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular participation in the electoral process plays a very important role in enhancing the legitimacy of democratic regimes. However, democracies differ widely in the degree to which voters exercise their franchise. This paper examines the effect of political institutions on electoral turnout in the new democracies of East Central Europe (Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia). The paper considers a number of hypotheses. First, electoral turnout should increase with the proportionality of the electoral system (Blais and Carty 1990, Cox 1999). Second, electoral turnout should be greater where concurrent elections are held to multiple political offices, such as a strong presidency or a second chamber. Conversely, nonconcurring elections should reduce voter turnout. Finally, the party system may also have an impact both on electoral turnout as well as the magnitude of the effect of political institutions: the more competitive the party system, the higher the turnout and the stronger the impact of the political institutions are expected to be. The selection of the four cases from a well defined geo-political region allows to control the comparison for a number of sociological and historical variables. At the same time, the institutional diversity among the four new democracies provides for an excellent laboratory to test the above hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to explain why American health officials, NGOs, and the public are concerned about tobacco smoke while European health officials, NGOs, and the public worry about genetically modified crops and foods. To explain this outcome, the paper examines a combination of cultural and institutional factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Maastricht (1992), the EU has begun to supplement its process of economic integration by developing common institutional structures in the security and defense realm. Although not officially challenging NATO, what is now called a European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) signifies an increased degree of cooperation among EU member states outside of NATO, thus challenging the Alliance’s role as the dominant security organization in Europe. The paper seeks to explain this process by addressing the question why, despite NATO’s continued existence and successful performance throughout the 1990, EU member states decided to establish their own common defense structures. Demonstrating that existing theories (realism, institutionalism, supranationalism) are unable to account for this post-Cold War shift in institutional allegiance, a social constructivist perspective traces the formulation of the national security interest back to conceptions of national identity. In essence, it is argued that a shift in collective identity has taken place among EU member states, replacing ‘the West’, the collective underlying NATO, with ‘Europe’, the collective underlying CFSP/ESDP. The paper is divided in two parts. First, addressing the problem of operationalization, the study seeks to improve our theoretical understanding of the identity concept and connect it to the definition of national security. Deploying identity as an intermediate variable that channels ideas into political behavior, it focuses on the recognition of national identity as evolving out of the interplay between collective and individual identity. It shows how the resulting definitions of Self and Other have crucial impact on how a state defines its security space, corresponding threats, and the means to address these threats. The identity shift is accounted for by the ability of the political elite to redefine the ideational parameters of national (collective/individual) identity during critical periods along a temporal axis. Second, the study takes a comparative perspective by looking at the shift in identity and institutional allegiance in Germany. It applies the constructivist approach to show how both Adenauer’s decision for NATO in the post-WW II period and the support of the Kohl government for CFSP/ESDP in the 1990s were attempts to (re)define German normality. While the first case reveals German desire to escape the totalitarian shadows of its own past and define itself as a ‘free’ society, the 1990s show a stronger identification with the European collective, built on the theme of ‘unity’ and the fear of ‘fragmentation’. Outlining increasing discomfort with an American defined post Cold-War world order, the study concludes by suggesting an ideational split of the ‘West’, with ‘Europe’ increasingly establishing its own security identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks answers to the puzzle, "How is that, in the face of an overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is real, the advanced industrialized countries cannot agree on measures to deal with the problem?" The paper is guided by two intuitions: (1) national-level decision-making processes may foreclose mutually acceptable bargains between countries and (2) the ways international norms get framed may make getting on the agenda more likely but success at the decision stage less likely and The study concludes that the international arena’s early commitments froze in preferences that were too distant from those of important players in U.S domestic politics, both Congressional and larger societal (i.e. corporate interests). At the same time, as depicted by a simple spatial model, the preferences of European polities restricted the range of acceptable compromises that could be made, thus leaving the U.S. and its European allies at odds. Through the example of global warming, the paper also seeks to ascertain the gravity and significance of the foreign policy differences between the U.S. and its allies. Here, the argument emphasized the proxy nature of global warming as part of a larger European concern about U.S. unilateralism and diffidence. Implicitly, the paper favored the notion that the character of American hegemony matters for cooperation, and that the conflict with Europe over global warming and other issues may significantly undermine the capacity for Europe to cooperate with the U.S. on issues of interest to the Americans. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the research on turnout in European parliamentary elections has focused on explaining why turnout in these elections is low. Explanations for low turnout include the second order nature of EP elections, negative attitudes about European integration, negative news and lack of mobilization. In this paper, we examine the role of television news coverage in mobilizing voters during the 1999 EP election campaign. The effect of the tone of coverage depends on how visible the campaign is. When the campaign is most visible, negative news can demobilize voters, but campaign news is less visible, negative news has the potential to mobilize electorates. We also find that the mobilizing effects of campaign visibility news are conditioned by levels of attention to political news. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines different aspects of media contexts at the macro-level, as well as at the micro-level, which may stimulate electorates to turn out and vote. After introducing the different aspects of media contexts that may matter in explaining voter turnout, the relationship between these variables and electoral participation in the European elections of 1999 will be studied. Media variables will be tested in an integrated model (at the individual level), controlling for other variables that have often been found to affect electoral participation, by using a large-scale survey dataset that contains all EU-member states. The results indicate that both partisan media contexts and a situation of intensive election campaigning can mobilize the electorate to turn out and vote. At the individual level, specific kinds of media exposure encourage people to turn out and vote, whereas other kinds are more likely to discourage people from electoral participation. All in all, this paper finds support for the notion that both media exposure and media contexts have the ability to mobilize electorates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do parties overcome their suspicion of one another and form trusting relationships? In this paper, I examine the efficacy of two trust-building strategies: incremental approaches that are premised on the idea that trust develops as actors learn about the reliability of their counterparts and institutional strategies that suggest that trusting relationships develop in response to transformations of the social spaces actors occupy. My research on the development of the European Community suggests that institutional approaches to trust-building are superior to learning-based (i.e., incremental) approaches because the former are more effective than the latter at allaying the fears actors have about the costs of betrayal. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to understand under what conditions the EU can set an international standard. It details the 1995 EU Data Privacy Directive and the reaction of the United States to it. The Directive has now become the de facto international privacy regime, binding US companies that do business with Europe. It thus becomes the first global standard that the US has been impacted by without having had input into its content. Given that the EU aspires to a greater role in transnational governance (White Paper on European Governance, 2001), what were the important factors necessary for the EU's success in this issue? This paper analyzes three different hypotheses that exist in the literature: 1) US government officials readjusting their views about the need for a comprehensive privacy policy after "communicative action" with the EU, 2) the successful threat of EU market exclusion backed up by the "shield" of the WTO exemption for privacy, and 3) US domestic interest groups trying to use the EU directive (gaiatsu) to accomplish a domestic agenda that they could not push through alone because of US domestic preference aggregation failure. The paper finds support for the third interpretation of the EU's success. For this reason, there may not be many other areas in which the EU can successfully project its regime preferences internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European economic integration has been much more successful than European political integration. This paper argues that European political integration lacks good justifying arguments. More generally, the debate over the European project lacks a clear understanding of what constitutes a good justifying argument. This paper proposes a reasonable standard of justification that all arguments in support of political integration ought to be able to satisfy. On the basis of this theory of justification, the paper considers a number of different arguments in support of a European postsovereign polity. While most euro-enthusiasts favor postsovereignty over a European superstate, this paper argues that a European superstate lacks some of the more obvious failings of a postsovereign polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asylum seekers constitute the largest group of inward migrants for many developed states. However, numbers of asylum seekers are far from being equally distributed among developed states even if one controls for differences in size and wealth of host countries. The paper seeks to address the question why asylum applications, and hence relative ‘asylum burdens’, vary so dramatically between OECD states, despite Western governments’ attempt to co-operate on asylum matters. Previous research in this area has been based on qualitative survey based research or on the quantitative analysis of single country data. This paper offers a more systematic long-term comparative perspective that empirically examines prominent ‘pull factor theories’ of migration through pooled cross-section time series analysis of 20 OECD countries for the period 1985-1999. The analysis suggests that the key determinants for application patterns, are historic ties and networks, macro-economic conditions as well as the liberal reputation of host countries, i.e. factors that are not particularly amenable to unilateral attempts by policy-makers to regulate asylum flows. The paper also calls into question the belief that efforts to harmonise restrictive policy measures across Europe will result in more equitable burden-sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on recent Western European experience, this paper looks at how definitions of national citizenship are changing in response to immigration. On the basis of a comparative examination of recent changes in French, German, and British nationality laws, the paper critically re-evaluates each of the three perspectives on developments in national citizenship most predominant in the recent literature: the post-nationalist view, the multiculturalist view, and the national traditions perspective. The last part of the paper then turns to developing an alternative account of recent developments, combining elements of the other approaches but going beyond them. Consistent with multiculturalists? and post-nationalists? expectations, nationality laws are converging, but not always in the ways they would predict. The convergence that is taking place stems largely from a series of shared objectives and causal beliefs that increasingly shape countries? policies. European states? informal recognition of one another as key members of their international ?reference groups? has also favored more similar citizenship policies. To explain continued differences between cases, I argue, attention to these factors is best complemented by a relatively open-ended version of the national traditions perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the long-distance or "extra-systemic" political participation of immigrant communities in Europe. As opposed to primordialist, statist-institutionalist or globalization explanations for transnational political activities, the paper proposes a model of transnational political mobilization by non-state political entrepreneurs to account for this phenomenon. Transnational mobilization by non-state political entrepreneurs involves the formation of a transnational constituency, the extraction of material resources from that constituency, and the building of transnational networks and organizations. Two case studies of transnational mobilization are examined: the Algerian FLN in France and the Kurdish PKK in Germany. The paper demonstrates the utility of building a bridge between the world systems literature on global migration processes and the state-based literature on immigrant incorporation and participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature that has sought to explain the affects of the economy on voting is extensive. However, these findings are for the most part based on Western democratic models. Consequently, political scientists have failed to take advantage of the emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe to see if these models are robust. Given the changes over the past decade, this paper tests the extent to which extant theories can be used to explain election outcomes in this region of the world. In this particular study, Polish monthly public opinion data is utilized to determine more accurately whom the electorate holds accountable during periods of economic stress in semi-presidential systems?the president or the prime minister. The findings in this paper suggest that a strong determinant of electoral accountability and the allocation of blame are dependent upon whether the government is unified or divided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the incentives of party activists to become involved in the party life. In the last decades, the research on party activism has developed several and relevant works that shed light to the topic. However, a strong division from the beginning between the American and European approaches has limited the scope of their results, eroding the potential of the comparative analysis between both partisan worlds. Our paper is an attempt to overcome this lack. Using data from party activists in two Spanish political parties, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Popular Party (PP), and the California Democratic Party (CADEM), we propose two main hypothesis: a) the different types of party membership (more formal in Europe than in the US) affects the incentives of party activists to become involved; b) these incentives influences differently in US and Europe to the degree of internal activism. We considered two different typologies to measure incentives proposed by J.Q. Wilson and A. Panebianco. The empirical analysis employs data from people attending the recent party conventions and congresses in those parties. Our results are somewhat mixed overall. Although some significant differences in incentives and activism arises, the general comparison shows that party activists are not so different as the traditional American 'exceptionalism' and European 'regionalism' have assumed so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses an often neglected question in labor market research: to which extent do outcomes aggregated on the national level disguise occupational diversity in employment conditions? In particular, how and why do occupational groups differ with regard to the incidence of non-standard employment? To explore these questions, the paper derives a detailed occupational scheme from the literature, capturing the variety of labor market outcomes within countries. In a second step, the scheme is theoretically linked to the topic of non-standard work. It is argued that different degrees of skill specificity across occupational groups produce diverging incentives for flexible and long-term employment, respectively. This leads to the expectation of (some) service-sector occupations showing stronger tendencies towards non-standard employment than those in the industrial sector. Based on European and German micro data, the categorization is used to decompose various labor market indicators. The results clearly demonstrate the unequal incidence of non-standard employment along the lines of the suggested categorization. Moreover, the longitudinal perspective suggests that traditionally functioning occupational groups will be crowded out by more destandardized ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about gay rights as human rights is presented which is prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Seattle, Washington, from September 1-4, 2011. The paper discusses topics including the institutionalization of gay rights as human rights within international human rights norms in Europe, the U.S. and the United Nations (UN).

The superpowers' Cold War nuclear arsenals have been frequently mocked as "arsenals of folly" that greatly exceeded the requirements of deterrence. This paper instead demonstrates that the U.S. arsenal was principally driven by the political economy of U.S. military commitments to Europe. Ultimately the least bad option for the United States given constraints was to plausibly threaten nuclear first use, which in turn required plausible damage limitation by destroying Soviet nuclear forces. This paper demonstrates that this logic inexorably drove U.S. nuclear doctrine and posture, and in fact had the desired effect on the Soviet leadership of making nuclear first use seem plausible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper confronts a significant dilemma in efforts to define the character of national identity. On the one hand, there is a long-standing scholarly tradition that distinguishes "civic" from "ethnic" conceptions of nationhood, associating them with the western world and the rest of the world (variously defined) respectively. This seems to coincide with a sharp difference in state attitudes towards minorities that separate two parts of Europe-the formerly communist states of central and eastern Europe and the longer established democracies of western Europe. On the other hand, careful empirical, survey-based study of the issue and qualitative analysis of various forms of national identification suggest that in reality there are few differences between the articulation of nationalist self-definition from one big global zone to another. The paper seeks to resolve this tension by redefining the two conceptions of nationhood as ideal types, elements of each of which may be found in every country; it draws attention to the difficulty of measuring ethnic identification in western Europe in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern secularism, as theorized by prominent liberal philosophers such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, prescribes that the state should treat all religions equally on condition that they and their adherents relinquish their theocratic aspirations and recognize the political sovereignty and superiority of man-made law. Convinced that the secular bargain undermines the moral virtue of society and its members, a small, fragmented, but nevertheless conspicuous number of Islamists in Europe prefers to observe Islamic law in all walks of life, private and public. Alarmed by Islamists and informed by Orientalist readings of Islam, an increasingly vehement and vociferous contingent of Islamophobes avers that Islam is inherently incompatible with democracy and urges European governments to treat neither Islam nor Muslims equally, but rather suspiciously as real or potential threats to the wellbeing of European societies. In contrast, advocates of Euro-Islam insist that Islam can be reformed, like Christianity, to meet the requirements of modern secularism. This paper contends that elements of all three of these vying positions have found their way into policymaking targeting Muslims in several European lands. The resulting inconsistency and contradiction - what I call policy "messiness" - corroborate the process of "mutual fragilization" theorized by Charles Taylor in which actors facing radical value pluralism develop solicitude regarding their own principles as well as greater tolerance for ambivalence. The latter, in particular, creates what Homi Bhabha terms a "third space" from which actors confronting cultural pluralism can freely and constructively explore cross-fertilizations and hybrid combinations with the potential to yield yet unimagined approaches and solutions to the problems of "super-diversity." Just such creative hybridity does the paper identify among a younger generation of European Muslims whom many observers dub "post-Islamists." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the incentives of party activists to become involved in the party life. In the last decades, the research on party activism has developed several and relevant works that shed light to the topic. However, a strong division from the beginning between the American and European approaches has limited the scope of their results, eroding the potential of the comparative analysis between both partisan worlds. Our paper is an attempt to overcome this lack. Using data from party activists in two Spanish political parties, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Popular Party (PP), and the California Democratic Party (CADEM), we propose two main hypothesis: a) the different types of party membership (more formal in Europe than in the US) affects the incentives of party activists to become involved; b) these incentives influences differently in US and Europe to the degree of internal activism. We considered two different typologies to measure incentives proposed by J.Q. Wilson and A. Panebianco. The empirical analysis employs data from people attending the recent party conventions and congresses in those parties. Our results are somewhat mixed overall. Although some significant differences in incentives and activism arises, the general comparison shows that party activists are not so different as the traditional American 'exceptionalism' and European 'regionalism' have assumed so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last ten years (2002-2012), the relations between the EU, Algeria, Mali and Mauritania have shifted from traditional trade and development to migration and security issues. In order to understand the recent shift in the European political agenda in controlling migration flows from Africa, the research analyzes the dynamic network structure of political relations between the EU, Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania. The research questions focus on the extent to which the EU has altered the structure of power through the establishment of external actors in the region, as well as the extent to which these networks represent a significant role in the formulation and implementation of national migration and border security policies in these African countries. The network analysis approach is used in order to test the centrality of actors in the region and their effective role in the implementation of national policies. The research argues that in the process of securing the European borders from unwanted migrants, the EU, on behalf of specific Member States, has altered the centrality of power within the network and managed to effectively internalize mechanisms of power through the administrative practices of these non-European States. Furthermore, the paper hypothesizes those nodes that are in or close to the center of the network have a higher degree of power and influence among other actors in relation to migration and border-security activities. By observing specific patterns of interaction (i.e. event participation) between officials (government and non-government), the paper claims that those external actors frequently involved in the various stages of policymaking have a greater level of influence on the formulation of migration-related policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how international trade, investment, and migration affect establishment-level standard weekly hours in Europe. These aspects of globalization have offsetting implications that make it unclear whether it spurs, reduces, or has little net effect on standard hours. To explore these possibilities, the paper analyzes a survey of a large sample of establishments in eighteen European countries. The analysis reveals and explains significant diversity in how different "faces" of globalization affect weekly hours. Establishments in sectors facing more trade and investment tend to have neither shorter nor longer work weeks. But those in net import-competing sectors and having more foreign-born employees tend to have higher standard hours than other enterprises. Finally, collective bargaining over working hours may mediate the effects of globalization, particularly trade: establishments without collective-bargaining agreements increase their standard hours in response to trade, while those establishments with such agreements are less likely to so respond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensified globalization and the demands on government that are created by it make studying public administration comparatively - how the field is defined, how comparative issues are framed, what subjects are addressed, and what research designs and methods of data collection and analysis are employed - a timely and worthwhile endeavor. To assess the nature and scope of the field of Comparative Public Administration (CPA), this paper identifies and codes for content 69 articles published in refereed journals between 2005 and 2009 that are comparative in nature, that is, the article must concern two or more geographical regions. This could be across nations (at national or subnational level), groups of nations (OECD, G8) or across continents. To be included among the 69, the article must also be relevant for public administration. Four significant attributes of the articles that were coded are highlighted here. First, a majority of the articles referenced the context of institutions or administrative processes, and the major subjects that frequently organized an article were reform, including New Public Management, and budgeting and finance. Second, these comparative public administration articles were dominated by studies of the United States and Europe. Third, three of our every four articles in our sample either attempted to establish linkages between independent and dependent variables or described those variables. In slightly more than one of every four articles that we examined authors tested causal relationships among variables. Fourth, the vast majority of articles that we coded for content made use of existing or secondary data; interview and survey data were rarely used. Furthermore, we found that 15 percent of the authors in our sample used sophisticated statistical methods. In slightly more than half of the articles qualitative methods were used. Among other things, the uses of theory, method, and data in the 69 CPA articles published between 2005 and 2009 differ markedly from how they were used in the published journal articles that Van Wart and Cayer (1990) coded for content twenty years ago. The paper concludes with a set of seven recommendations for future comparative public administration research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the electoral effects of corruption allegation in parliamentary electoral campaigns in Europe 1983-2007. Firstly, the paper examines the individual parties' electoral performances and secondly the survival rate of the governments. The results show firstly that parties that accuse their opponents for being corrupt are much more successful than parties that focus on other issues, under control for the position of the party (incumbent or in opposition) and for the actual level of corruption and secondly that governments tend to fall much more frequently when facing corruption charges, again under control for the level of corruption. The analysis also reveals that corruption scandals that are not politicized, i.e. brought up by a political party during the electoral campaign, have a negligent effect on governmental survival rate. Only when the issue is politicized does it have an impact. It thus seems that the politicization of political corruption has an independent effect on the electoral outcome and to a higher extent than previous research suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The signature pedagogy of political science has remained static for many decades in European universities. However, the character of the student body has altered radically. The challenge for lecturers is to motivate (and inspire) a body of students who are increasingly job oriented and less likely to value education for the sake of education. This paper will outline and reflect on two different projects designed to increase student engagement in 2009. Yair (2000) observed that student engagement tends to be higher when students are involved in active forms of learning. Both projects were designed with active and participatory learning at their core. Teaching for Understanding acted as an overarching framework. The first project brought students directly into the national political arena. The Department of Government organised for the Constitutional Review Committee of the Joint Houses of Parliament to hold a public consultation session in the University. Students participated in the project to prepare a policy submission on the reform of the electoral system. The project was designed to directly engage undergraduate students in research, which would also contribute to a national policy debate on electoral reform. Students became policy experts through their research and policy sessions. They then made oral and written contributions to the Constitutional Committee. Their contributions have been recorded in the parliamentary record. In the second project, students engaged with the academic publishing process. An undergraduate learning journal was established and this allowed research and research related skills to be integrated into the undergraduate learning experience. The project took students through the entire process of research; from proposal, to designing their programme of enquiry, editing and finally, publication as a journal article. Geiger (2002) described 'peer effects' as students learning from one another. Students participated in publishing workshops and were equal partners on the editorial panel. An essential part of the undergraduate journal is the student ownership and leadership of the project. There are interesting parallels between both projects. At the heart of both projects was a desire to engage undergraduates in active political science research and participation. They contributed to the creation of a learning community between faculty, students and policy makers. In particular, the undergraduate learning journal will sustain the integration of research, teaching and learning within the Department. The exchange of ideas and feedback that this relationship engendered allowed faculty and students to learn from one another, and develop a scholarly environment that is beneficial for all concerned. This paper will outline the steps in each of the projects and assess the extent to which students engaged with national debates on electoral reform and the academic publishing process. It will present evidence from student surveys and interviews to demonstrate that students were enthused by the projects. The paper will conclude with the faculty reflections on the projects and the extent to which objectives and learning outcomes were achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political Representation at the European level is organized around two principles: the territorial one and the partisan. Earlier studies have shown that the MEPs decide very much along partisan lines as long as bread-and-butter issues are concerned. When it comes to European issues, the national dimension plays an important role. The paper elaborates the distribution of styles and foci of representation, tests some explanation for the choice of style and focus, and finally investigates the impact of style of representation on the choice of foci and the character of campaign strategies. The paper shows that in a potential choice situation of colliding interests, the style orientations have a strong constraining effect on focus, and that it matters for political practice if candidates and MEPs regard themselves as trustees, party's or voters' delegate. The paper will use unique data from the PIREDEU project, namely the survey among the candidates (and elected) to the European Parliament 2009 in 27 countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a new trend in recent reforms of Bismarckian pension systems in Europe and Japan. It aims at revising the conventional argument that emphasizes the concertation between business and labor and at shedding a new light on the role of party politics in welfare states. In advanced democracies, the overhaul of pension system is one of the principle agendas of welfare and economic reforms. However, according to existing researches, fundamental reform is rare, if any, in Bismarckian pension systems because the very characteristics of the system (a pay-as-you-go scheme, highly occupational segmentation, and a high-replacement rate) create costly financial barriers and generate strong veto players against reform. Under such a condition in the era of "welfare state retrenchment", the only possiblity is step-by-step reform based on the blame-avoidance approach to gain consensus from many veto players. The result is piecemeal amendaments in pension finance and institutions, conducted through concertation among key interest groups, especially business and labor. Recent reforms in several countries (France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Japan), however, do not fit into this line of argument. These countries have recently experienced large-scale, comprehensive reforms by unifying fragmented schemes into integrated, fully-funded schemes. Strikingly, these reforms were mostly government-led, and carried out without the consensus among major societal actors. The conventional argument on concertation cannot explain this change. To explain this development of pension reforms, this paper presents a new theoretical framework that focuses on a two-dimensinal consensus-gaining strategies for policymakers. Policymakers simultaneously try to obtain support from major interest groups ("corporatist arena"), on the one hand, and from political parties ("electoral arena"), on the other. The core of this argument is that policy makers in Bismarckian pension countries need not necesarrily compromise with interest groups to fend off their vetoes. They can also rely on the support from political parties to overcome their vetoes. They count on either of these two types of support, or sometimes mix them to implement pension reforms. This analysis clearly depicts the changing nature of recent reforms of Bismarckian pension system. The similarities and the differences found in case studies in terms of the mix of the two types of consensus-building have implications on the literature on varieties of capitalism in these countries. It also sheds a new light on the importancce party politics plays in institutional reform in a political system with multiple vetoes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to frame and describe a novel method of political party positioning within the European Union and beyond. Ever since the groundbreaking work by Downs in the 1950s, political scientists have derived a variety of methods to empirically determine the position of parties on scales varying between policy positions or between ideologies. Today, two sets of techniques dominate this research domain: expert surveys and manifesto/programme coding. What is common to both techniques is that the positioning is done by professionals outside the parties, i.e. by qualified researchers in expert surveys and in manifesto coding. Up to now, the parties have never been asked to position themselves. Through the EU Profiler project, a large-scale, interdisciplinary and pan- European research endeavour, some 300 political parties within the European Union (and in a number of neighbouring countries) have been offered the possibility to place themselves on 30 political issues related to party competition in the 2009 European elections. The resulting data will offer unique opportunities for comparing the accuracy and efficiency among party positioning techniques, exploring for the first time and in a systematic way the auto-positioning of political parties throughout Europe. This paper will offer insights into the conceptual design and practical application of this new method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For nearly four decades, coordinated market economies (CMEs) reigned in much of continental Europe and its most hegemonic exemplar was the Federal Republic of Germany. However, for the past twenty years conventional wisdom argued that this institution-based form of capitalism was exhausted and that neoliberal economic models were much more appropriate. But the 2008 international financial crisis and world wide recession have put a brake on calls for more neoliberalism. The paper argues that the rush to neoliberalism ignored deeper and much more basic issues: Why were these German and continental European organized capitalist institutions created in the first place? What ideas created and sustained them? What purpose did they serve? Which actors and social forces embodied them? The institutional and philosophical core of the creation of this model in the 19th century and its successful resurrection under more democratic auspices in the post-WWII years have powerful foundations. These CME institutions were founded at moments of economic crisis, precisely because liberal markets had failed or were woefully inadequate. Once activated, they were based upon the capacity to mobilize physical and human resources and to find comparative advantage without neglecting social infrastructure (Thelen 2004). Are these no longer relevant policy goals in the 21st century? To investigate more fully whether Germany and the EU nations with similar CME models would be wise to embrace their recent turn to neoliberalism rather than attempting to rebuild the spirit - but not the letter - of earlier forms of coordinated market policies, I will test the theory of path-dependent comparative historical institutionalism to ask whether a deeply embedded set of institutional structures, founded on a set of ideas requiring broad-scale and coordinated action that have twice before during the past one hundred and fifty years grown and then faltered, can do so again. The paper probes a question crucial not only for Germany and its role as the economic engine of the EU, but for industrialized democracies more generally. Is this form of organized capitalism - with deep, sticky and path-dependent late-19th century roots - capable of producing a 21st century political economy framework within the EU that can approximate the sustained economic growth, democratic political accountability, and social security and commitment to equality that characterized the developed democracies of western Europe in the second half of the 20th century? Put differently, is this a path toward a renewed European social model? The purpose for using this path-dependent historical institutional analysis is to discern if the institutional logic (comprising durable institutional structures and flexible visionary ideas) from these two earlier periods that could be resuscitated and/or reinvigorated to serve as foundations for a 21st century organized capitalist regime. The answer is not yet clear. In that sense, this inquiry is also joining a forty year old theoretical debate about whether institutions are sclerotic impediments to change (Olson 1965) or whether they can be imbued with properties of dynamic adaptation (Hirschman 1970). The specific indicators to be identified from these two earlier periods are those that comprise an institutional logic that built and reinforced the organized capitalist regimes and pre-empted and/or rejected dominant laissez-faire patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about European politics and society is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the institutional multiplicity of democracy, and the choice of fair elections through the comparison of two electoral episodes in Portuguese history.

A conference paper about Russia's strategic energy interaction is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the recent Russia-Georgia war and gas cut-off to Ukraine and Europe, and Russia's mixed record with energy diplomacy.

A conference paper about transatlantic visa politics is presented which is prepared for presentation at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, in Toronto, Ontario, from September 3-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), diplomacy between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its European counterparts, and the book "The New World Order," by Anne Marie Slaughter.

Surprisingly, the cross-national diffusion of contention over political regimes has slowed down greatly over the last 200 years. Yet at the same time, its rate of success in triggering democratic transitions has increased as clearly. What accounts for these inverse trends and the negative correlation underlying them? After refuting arguments that highlight modernization and globalization, the rise of nationalism, rational learning, and the appeal of norms and values, this paper develops a novel explanation that rests on cognitivepsychological insights and invokes secular organizational developments. In the 19th century, before political parties had arisen, it fell to common people to decide on whether to join challenges to established autocrats. Short on reliable information and political experience, these citizens relied on inferential shortcuts that induced them to follow external precedents of successful regime changes rashly; yet this very rashness, which bred challenges in unfavorable situations, led to limited success. After the rise of parties, by contrast, common people take cues from organizational leaders, who command more information and experience. Before emulating an external precedent and challenging their own rulers, leaders therefore wait for propitious circumstances. For this reason, regime contention in the 20th century diffuses more slowly yet attains higher rates of success. The paper documents these arguments by analyzing the spread of the 1848 revolutions, the impact of the Russian Revolutions of 1917, and the third wave of democratization, exemplified by Chile's transition to democracy during the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western European countries differ according to the ways in which they organize local government, not least in the manner in which mayors are selected, in the mayors' statutory positions and responsibilities, and the institutional relations between the council and the mayor/executive board. The institutional arrangements have been modified in several countries. Focal question in the paper is whether the institutional reforms have resulted in a revitalization of local politics and democracy. A first measure to revitalize local politics is a separation of local political powers. In Germany, the UK, Italy, and the Netherlands powers of the council as the representation of the citizenry at the one hand, and the Mayor or the Executive Board at the other, have been separated. They now both have their more or less exclusive statutory powers, tasks and responsibilities, in some cases resulting from the introduction of directly elected mayors. Question then is, whether these policies lead to a revitalization of local politics. Secondly, in a number of Western European countries governments have introduced direct elections for the mayor's office. Despite differences between countries, in all cases the assumption is, that direct mayoral elections do make a difference and that directly elected mayors will appear to be strong leaders. Question, however is to what extent is mayoral performance affected by selection procedures and the statutory position of the mayoral office? The results of a number of comparative empirical studies will be presented in the paper. It will become clear that there are huge differences in mayoral performance. Several factors influencing that performance will be identified. The most important conclusion is that mayoral selection procedures and statutory positions do affect mayoral performance, although not as much as expected. Other factors are at stake. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of external impulses on European democratization from 1830 to 1940. It distinguishes three types of diffusion, namely (1) the gradual spread of values and norms; (2) the diffusion of instrumental knowledge about the design of political institutions; and (3) the spread of situational judgments about the feasibility of initiating political change. The latter type of external impulse, derived from the attainment of substantial change in another polity, can produce dramatic waves of regime contention. But since the actual distribution of power in emulating countries often differs from the frontrunner, these conflicts produce various types of results. The paper discusses four types of outcomes of diffusion, namely (1) successful replication; (2) preemptive reform; (3) abortive replication; and (4) blockage of replication efforts. The latter two outcomes help explain why in European history, not only political liberalism and democracy diffused, but during certain time periods authoritarianism, corporatism, and fascism spread as well. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely argued that European leaders wishing to improve the competitiveness of their economies must emulate the harsh and regressive neo-liberal policies associated with the Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Margaret Thatcher. The choice is between neo-liberal reform and no reform. My paper challenges this gloomy understanding. Between neo-liberal reform and no reform, a number of European countries have pursued a course of what I call "progressive liberal" reform. By "progressive liberalism," I mean policies that appropriate the goals of neo-liberalism, but pursue these goals in a manner that preserves or even enhances equality and protections for the disadvantaged. After reviewing the challenges that economic liberalization poses to progressive parties, my paper examines progressive liberal reforms in three areas: reductions in social spending, tax cuts, and labor market flexibilization. For each case, I proceed in four steps: 1) I first define the traditional leftist position that opposes liberalizing reform; 2) I next present the neo-liberal position, which favors liberalizing reform with regressive distributional implications; 3) I then show that the liberalizing reform in question harbors a progressive potential; 4) Finally, I describe how the reform has been implemented in practice, in a particular European context, so as to capture many of the benefits associated with neo-liberalism, while safeguarding progressive values and the needs of low-income and disadvantaged groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about religious symbols in public places and the post-9/11 controversies about the compatibility of Islam and democracy within and beyond Europe indicate the coming of a major new conflict area in liberal democracies. This paper starts with the observation of an ongoing and in some respects increasing significance of religion in the politics of Western democracies and links it to processes of pluralization and globalization, which in turn are related to migration moves across the world. Based on a typology of nationality codes in 19 Western democracies, the paper asks what role religion, understood as confessional legacy, individual religiosity, institutional actors and Christian parties, play in shaping citizenship policies. It follows the "family of nations" concept in comparative policy research (Castles) and argues that the interplay of nation building, religious traditions and church-state-relations brings religion back into this highly secular policy domain. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Professor Bull has mentioned, the title of this panel is, "The New Special Relationship?: post-Gaullist France and America." The title of my paper is, "Washington, Sarkozy, and the Defense of Europe." My title is both consistent and misleading. Consistent because in some respects I treat defense issues in the paper; misleading because I go beyond that focus to mention the defense of Europe and Western civilization in a broader sense. This is partly because of my current proclivities, as manifested in my most recent book, "La Republique de Dieu," published in Paris earlier this year. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper diagnoses public opinion in the US and the four European countries on the three cases of use of force undertaken in the post-Cold War era - Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraqi Wars (2003). Taking a comprehensive view of the existing polling an aggregate analytical method is devised to map out and explain what generates 'support for use of force' in the US and the EU4 (UK, France, Germany and Italy). Three theories of public opinion and use of force are empirically tested. Firstly, the principal policy objectives thesis mirrors the differences in primary policy objectives of military actions. Secondly, the ends and means calculus thesis argues that public support is generated by utilitarian calculations of costs and benefits of military operations. Lastly, the interrelationship approach to leadership effect thesis originates in the indispensable role of leader in moulding public opinion and the impact of leadership popularity on diagnosis of public support for the use of force. Incorporating alternative variables into a multidimensional approach to public opinion on use of force this paper argues that the while the presence of the legitimate recognition and the absence of risks in military operation are sine qua non for Europeans to support wars which foment the coercive foreign policy restraint objective; Americans tend to evaluate wars more cost-aversively. Taken as a whole, this paper analyses 'European' participation to the US-led use of force from mass public opinion level through statistical investigation of aggregate public opinion survey data (1998-2004). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]