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In already completed papers (Zuckerman, Dasoviæ, Fitzgerald, and Brynin 2002 and Zuckerman, Fitzgerald and Dasoviæ 2002), we show that partisanship is bounded -most everyone never supports one or the other of the major parties prefers its main rival at varying rates. Decisions about partisanship reflect the logic of appropriate behavior, which is torn between processes of social conformity and individualization, and the principles of out-group homogeneity. In this paper, we demonstrate that those who are just entering the electorate also display the characteristics of bounded partisanship. As would follow from studies of social networks and political socialization, the partisan preferences of their parents strongly influence the characteristics of bounded partisanship among the young. As would follow from the logic of appropriate behavior, young persons do not automatically and routinely follow the partisan examples of their parents. For them too, political interest and reinforcing social contexts facilitate the recognition of appropriate behavior. At the same time, our analysis provides very little evidence of young persons taking partisan stances that depart from those of their parents. In the established democracies of Britain and Germany the partisanship of the young tends to follow that of their parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network services reforms in the EU have stimulated a large new political science literature which tracks changes in national or sectoral institutional structures or policy making processes. This literature is strangely silent concerning the impact of these changes on the regulated firms. Taking its starting point in the telecommunications sector this paper examines whether the divergent administrative structures of Oftel and RegTP result in differences in market access and consumer protection in the German and UK telecommunications sectors. The paper concludes that these markets operate in a similar fashion because of the implementation of detailed EU directives. However, EU telecommunications directives do not regulate takeovers, which constitute a key aspect of telecommunications trade. Access to foreign telecommunications markets frequently takes place through takeovers. Divergent market structures in Germany and the UK shape very different perceptions of what an EU takeover directive should contain. Germany has changed some of its legislation to become more like the UK but these changes have made Germany more vulnerable to takeovers and to threats to its traditional ways of structuring its market. Germany’s new sense of vulnerability put a damper on Germany’s enthusiasm for an EU takeover directive while the UK wholeheartedly supported the proposal [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deindustrialization is regularly invoked in studies of advanced capitalism, yet a consideration of both its historical causes and its differential impacts on political outcomes in countries over time remains elusive. Adopting a historical institutional approach, this paper seeks to link the origins and effects of deindustrialization in Britain and Germany since the 1960s. These two countries are widely seen as reflecting different political approaches towards deindustrialization, with the former embracing and even accelerating the shift to a more service-oriented economy and the latter seeking to minimize the impact of such changes. The paper argues that variation in the British and German outcomes has been crucially shaped in the past half-century by the countries' respective political economic institutions and their contrasting national policy discourses on economic competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the problem of explanation in comparative politics. Accepting the principles of methodological individualism, the analysis equates social mechanism with the general class of explanatory principles. Successful explanations join social mechanisms with rigorous empirical analyses. Advances in statistical modeling allow the application of these methods of detailing and defending the validity of the empirical claims to complex, reciprocal, and multi-level political phenomena, the stuff of comparative politics. The paper illustrates these general principles. It offers theoretical support for reciprocal political influence in households and it tests this interpretation against alternative social mechanisms, matters of importance in the politics of Germany and Britain, and it employs appropriate statistical methods to model these complex reciprocal relationships. More generally, seeking to demonstrate the power of the explanation offered -and not just to offer a plausible account or a story in line with theoretical principles the explanatory power of its claims -the analysis insists on the need of both social mechanisms and rigorous empirical tests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British, German, and French states have recently stepped up their actions against racist violence. There are significant policy similarities across the countries, but equally meaningful differences. In relative terms, Britain has focused more of its energies on reforming the police and the judicial process for prosecuting racially aggravated offences; Germany has delegated power and resources to civil society groups for developing programs against right-wing activities; and France has taken high-profile symbolic actions and has begun adapting its educational policies to address racist violence. This paper maps the policy terrain within each country. It also assesses the effectiveness of different policy approaches. It demonstrates that raw statistics on racist violence are inadequate measures of success, and argues that policies must be judged by how societal groups perceive them and therefore by the extent to which they foster national cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates economic voting in four countries in Western Europe - Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, and Norway - with reference to variations in institutional structure, the internal dimensions of the voting model, and economics vs. cleavages and ideology as determinants of the vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines activity choices among women's groups from the UK, France and Germany from 1980-2007. In so doing, I ask if women's groups behave to changes in the political opportunity structure (POS) in a similar fashion as other social groups and begin to explore if a gendered interpretation of the POS is necessary. Several activity choices are examined: lobbying, consultation, protest, media reports, criticisms, support, court activity and non-political activity. Two aspects of the POS, elite alliance and electoral cleavages are examined. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the conclusions of a primary research project on the reform of national health systems in France, Germany, Spain and the U.K. In all of these countries, the decades from the late 1980s to the present have witnessed significant change. Although this has included the spread of internal competition and growing autonomy for certain non-state and para-state actors, it does not follow that the mechanism at work is a "neo-liberal convergence." Rather, what we observe is that the translation into diverse national settings of quasi-market mechanisms is accompanied in every case by a reassertion of regulatory authority and, in France and Germany, by the strengthening of statist, as opposed to corporatist, management of national insurance systems. The use of quasi-market tools, thus, brings state-strengthening reform. The proximate and necessary cause of this dual transformation is to be found in each of our cases in the work of small closely-integrated groups of policy professionals whom we label "programmatic actors." While their identity differs across cases, the functional role and motivation of these actors is strikingly similar. Motivated by a desire to wield authority through the promotion of programmatic ideas, rather than by material or careerist interests, these elite groups act both as importers and translators of ideas and as architects of policy. The resulting elite-driven model of policy change integrates ideational and institutionalist elements to explain programmatically coherent change despite institutional resistance and partisan instability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the inclusion of feminist movements -- and by implication all social movements -- inside the State. It makes two major arguments. First, that exclusion from the State is a continuous variable with many social movement actors having penetrated the State to some degree. We then argue that social movements' inclusion is a function of characteristics of the State, particularly the partisan control of the bureaucracy and mechanisms for building the civil service, and characteristics of movements, particularly ideology and their partisan allies. We examine these arguments by examining three cases of feminist activism inside the State: the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The U.S. and Germany have similar bureaucratic characteristics in terms of recruitment and partisan control but differ dramatically in the nature of the feminist movement. The women's movements of Germany and the United Kingdom share many characteristics but the pathways into the bureaucracy differ dramatically. We find that feminist insider participation through women's policy agencies is affected by partisan control and the organization of the bureaucracy (e.g. location of the women's policy agency). The participation of individual feminist insiders also appears affected by norms of partisan control and by the ideology of the women's movement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the reaction of mainstream political elites to acts of terrorism and quantitatively assesses whether opposition parties will rally around the flag, much like they do in the midst of military or diplomatic crises. A statistical analysis, conducted on 181 terrorist events in five countries (France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States) over the period 1990 to 2006, indicates that rallies around the flag are the rule. Overall, the results show that the repetition of acts of terror is a strong factor affecting political parties' responses to terrorist acts, as repeated attacks are more likely to prompt criticism. The magnitude of the act (i.e. number of fatalities) is also associated with a rallying effect as larger attacks are more likely to result in a unified front across parties. Country specific analyses indicate that Spain has the lowest rallying rate amongst the countries studied whereas the United Kingdom has the highest. Finally, this study suggests that massive rallies around the flag following acts of terror were relatively rare in the U.S. prior to 9/11. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the "official stories" of political party finance in the United Kingdom and Germany to explore similarities and differences in the ways that party financing affects democratic governance. It looks at the 2 biggest parties in each of these countries, and asks what the patterns of giving may indicate about the motivations of the donors. this cross-national comparison highlights the British patterns of what looks like donors' pursuit of selective benefits, with a few donors giving at very high levels, with the governing party reaping disproportionate rewards, and with few donors giving across the political spectrum. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several decades, political parties throughout the developed world have transformed their approach to election campaigning. This transformation manifests itself not only in campaign activities (market research, media management, internet campaigning, etc) but also in campaign organization. Specifically, campaign functions have increasingly been "outsourced": transferred away from party organizations and their full-time staffs into the hands of individuals and firms outside the political parties. In thus re-organizing their campaigns, parties are also re-organizing themselves. This paper turns to economic theories of the "boundaries of the firm" to suggest a theory of the determinants of the "boundaries of party" - that is, a theory of the outsourced campaign. It draws on evidence from campaigns in Germany, Britain, and the United States in assessing the plausibility of its account. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about Great Britain's targeted appeasement policy towards Japan and Germany during the 1930s is presented. It discusses the need to incorporate both international politics and domestic distributive consequences in foreign policy models. It examines the Domestic Political Economy model and the competing security preferences of inward and outward oriented blocs within most states.

A conference paper about the changing face of labor migration policy in Germany and Great Britain is presented. It examines the state of labor migration theory, granting particular attention to studies on the role of social partners in policy formation. It evaluates three approaches that provide hypothesis as to how employer preferences align and develop on the issue of labor migration.

Europeanization has brought radical change to the governance practices of all EU member-states, which have in turn clashed with traditional ideas about democracy. These changes in practices and challenges to ideas have profoundly affected all EU member states, but some more so than others, largely as a question of ?institutional fit.? The EU, as a ?compound? supranational polity in which governing activity is highly diffused through multiple authorities, has been more disruptive to ?simple? national polities such as Britain and France, in which governing activity has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than to ?compound? national polities such as Germany and Italy, in which it has traditionally also been diffused through multiple authorities. The main problem for EU member-states, however, is not so much that practices have changed and that ideas have been challenged than that national leaders have generally failed to come up with new ideas and discourse that reflect the new Europeanized realities. But here, too, institutional differences matter, although to differing effect. Simple polities have greater potential for speaking to changes in practices and challenges to ideas, were they to so choose, because their concentration of authority ensures them a more elaborate ?communicative? discourse to the general public, in which they are better able to speak in one voice and to convey a single message than more compound national polities, let alone the EU, given the number of potentially authoritative voices with differing messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have sought to explain the dynamic relationships among economic factors and voter preference. Using aggregated data of monthly or quarterly opinion polls, these studies have sought to clarify how voters’ opinions of the economy predict evaluations of leaders and parties and thereby vote choice. In each of these dynamic analyses, the use of aggregate data forces the researchers to estimate rival models and choose favored variables. Thus, two design errors are inherent in these studies: one, they are prone to an ecological fallacy by predicting individual-level behavior using aggregate data, and two, they are unable to look closely at different periods within the overall study. Our study seeks to bring together individual- and aggregate-level inferences by employing analyses of monthly and quarterly opinion polls in the United Kingdom and Germany over several years. For each country we estimate the effects of several subjective economic variables on party approval in monthly surveys through the 1990s, and investigate how the parameters vary over time. Specifically, we posit that the many arguments over whether voters are forward-looking, backward looking, egocentric, or sociotropic are overly restrictive and that each of these measures may outperform the others depending on factors such as the point in the election cycle. Thus, the argument over whether voters are ‘peasants’ or ‘bankers’ should be more properly phrased as: ‘When are they peasants and when are they bankers?’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the conditions that lead to the political power position of business by developing a signaling model of corporate lobbying in democratic capitalist societies. Abandoning the traditional dichotomy of structural economic determinants versus business’ political action, the model predicts under which conditions elected political decisionmakers modify their policy pledges to accommodate business’ political preferences, and when they take their chances and override business’ lobbying messages. Our results show that the structural power of business over public policy is contingent on three variables: the relative size of the reputation constraints of business in relation to the costs of lobbying, the ratio of the policymaker’s reputation constraints from pre-election policy commitments to the electoral costs from adverse economic effects, and the likelihood that the policy in question has negative electoral consequences on the side of the policymaker. The model is evaluated in the context of qualitative data from case studies of business lobbying on tax reform and environmental and financial services regulation in Britain and Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project combines social theories concerning communicative action and the influence of culture on states’ security policies to examine multinational crisis management in the Balkans through the 1990s. By examining how the United States, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, and France collaborated in response to the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo I have been able to isolate specific, security-related cultural incompatibilities that contributed to their inability to collaborate quickly and effectively. My central claim is that each state possesses a distinct ‘security-related culture? that provides state leaders with understandings about which actions are possible, appropriate, and favorable. How these understandings are articulated in different institutional settings account for whether collaboration will proceed effectively or contentiously.? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous research on the reciprocal effects of citizens' issue attitudes and their party support emphasize citizens' issue positions, political competition revolves equally around issue salience, i.e., debates over which issue areas political parties should prioritize. Using multi-wave panel data from Germany and Great Britain, we analyze the reciprocal effects of citizens' issue salience and their party support over the period 1984-2009, and we conclude that citizens' issue priorities both influence and are influenced by their party attachments, and, moreover, that these effects are linked to parties' long-term policy emphases as articulated in their election manifestos. This effect is strongest among supporters of a small issue-orientated niche party, the Greens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of local campaigning of candidates and its impact on voting behavior, both turnout and vote choice. It states that local campaigning gain attention in majority electoral systems like Great Britain, proportional electoral system like Finland or Spain and mixed electoral systems like New Zealand and Germany.

Britain and Germany have been experiencing significant changes in the nature of work and welfare since the 1990s. Although important differences have remained, there have been compelling indications of a dual transformation of welfare constituted not only by a far-reaching retrenchment in unemployment insurance but also by a remarkable expansion in family policy. These developments have their functional underpinnings in accelerating de-industrialization with a declining proportion of the male workforce with specific skills as well as in service sector growth and rising female labor market participation characterized by an increase in general skills. As the aggregate effect of economic fluctuations in industrial production has diminished over time, the relative incidence of work disruptions which have arisen from maternity and child-rearing has increased substantially. This dual transformation in welfare and employment patterns suggests that the process of de-industrialization has initiated significant path adjustments unanticipated in the existing comparative political economy literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines competing hypotheses for the change in strategies by conservative political parties that seek the votes of ethnic minorities. The concept of outreach is explored categorizing it into organizational, symbolic and programmatic appeals. The article also presents an overview of the collective efforts by the UMP in France, the Conservative Party in Great Britain and the Christian Democrats in Germany to test the hypothesis.

This article compares local government reforms in three European countries, France, the United Kingdom (England), and Germany addressing two types of reform. On the one hand, decentralisation reforms are referred to, that is the vertical re-organisation of tasks between state/ central government and local authorities. On the other hand, the horizontal readjustment of competencies between local authorities and market or non-profit actors are investigated, thus focussing on privatisation, corporatisation and contracting out. Drawing on findings of an ongoing research project, the focus is particularly on reform impacts and effects, making a distinction between institutional changes and performance impacts. Which effects did decentralisation and privatisation processes cause and was local governments' performance improved? The author reveals that there is a general trend of devolving public functions to lower levels of government. All three countries have moreover witnessed a shift from unitary local government to a fragmented system of local governance. These convergent developments notwithstanding, the institutional strategies pursued and performance effects obtained differ considerably across countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Re-linking political philosophy with empirical political science has become a major theme in the discipline. In this regard, we propose that researchers should take a prime focus on favorable institutional and cultural contexts that can build bridges from the "ideal" to the "real". We focus on two deliberative ideals - respect and argumentative agreement - in 55 parliamentary debates in Switzerland, the United States, Germany, and Great Britain. We find that especially consensus institutions (in the form of grand coalitions or "bipartisan" arrangements) have robust effects on respect and argumentative change. Veto power, in turn, did not yield any effects, while reflective institutions perform slightly better and make a difference for respect. Consensus culture, in turn, may play some role, but respective effects are far less clear. We conclude that institutions can build bridges between philosophical ideals and the real world of politics, regardless of the cultural context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the politics of labor market adjustment in Great Britain, Germany and Denmark from 1975 to 2005. It explores the national attempts to introduce labor market flexibility within both the changing realities of the global economy and perceptions of the adjustment challenge in the labor market. It discusses the theoretical framework into the national patterns of choice and change in labor market governance.

The article compares the political pressures and institutions in Great Britain, Japan and Germany. The three countries are said to have experienced various reforms in relation to domestic financial crises and global pressure to increase supervisory capabilities. The author analyzed the political institutions in each country. She confirmed the arguments concerning the political and institutional aspects of the convergence theory. She also revealed the political dimensions where reform must be evaluated.

Following the recent turn towards quasi-experimental approaches in the lit- erature on the incumbency advantage in congressional elections, (Lee, 2001; Lee, Forthcoming), we employ a regression-discontinuity design (RDD) to identify the causal effects of party incumbency in British and German post- World War II elections. The RDD framework exploits the randomized varia- tion in incumbency status that occurs when a district race is close. Based on the assumption that parties do not exert perfect control over their observed vote shares, incumbents that barely win a race should be similar in their dis- tribution of observed and unobserved confounders to non-incumbents that barely lose. This provides us with a naturally occurring counterfactual ex- ploitable for causal inference under a much weaker set of assumptions than the conventional regression analysis commonly used in the incumbency lit- erature. For both British and German federal elections, we find that party incumbency has a significant and positive impact on vote shares and the probability of winning in marginal districts, the subpopulation of interest for which incumbency advantage is likely to make a difference. This stands in contrast to previous, much more ambiguous findings. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the impact of political ideologies on British and French leaders' decisions to appease Nazi Germany in the 1930s rather than adopting more forceful deterrent policies. It shows how the division of Europe's great powers into three rival ideological blocs--liberal Britain and France, fascist Germany and Italy, and communist Russia--pushed British and French conservatives to view the appeasement of Germany as the best way of protecting their states' security.

Appeasement has a bad reputation in realist writings. It is viewed as a policy of weakness and naivete, based on the foolish assumption that one can engage an aggressive state and avert war by granting concessions. In this regard, realists view appeasement as antithetical to a strong policy of deterrence, which can keep revisionist states in check. This negative view of appeasement is based on the traditional interpretation of British appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s, which views appeasement as a vain attempt to avoid war with Germany. Drawing upon extensive primary source research, however, we conclude that this case is badly misunderstood. We demonstrate that British leaders were convinced after the 1936 German remilitarization of the Rhineland that war with Germany was inevitable, but that British rearmament had not progressed to the point where Britain could comfortably commence a war. Therefore, the British Government sought to delay war through appeasement until such time as the military balance improved in the late 1930s. Thus, far from being naﶥ, appeasement was a very realist strategy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]