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The report 'Australia Reconstructed' (AR), a social democratic blueprint for the rationalization of Australian economic development that was issued by organized labor and the Australian Labor Party government in 1987, represented a laudable attempt by organized labor to achieve a permanent role in Australian economic policymaking. AR sought to present a principled corporatist alternative to the market-driven philosophy prevalent among economic policymakers. While AR's proposal contained numerous fundamental weaknesses, it still offered a coherent strategy for institutionalizing economic decisionmaking.

Politicians welcome the support of policy networks from industries as a means of reducing the risks involved in entering the poltical arena. The assured political base is in turn provided with subsidies which may be general or specific depending on the extent of competition among the candidates. Private industry thus becomes an influential instrument in elections and through lobbying. Models for explaining the behavior of industries should have to account for the relative influences of voting and lobbying on political activity.

Firms lobby for subsidies along geographic, sector, or factor lines and, as a result, receive subsidies with a local, sectoral, or factorwide scope. This article investigates what determines the line of cleavage and thereby the scope of the subsidy. The factor mobility hypothesis, according to which an economic prior - the degree of factor mobility - determines the geometry of lobbying coalitions, misses the fact that factor mobility is as much the product of policy and policymaking as it is its determinant. This article argues instead that politicians maximize their chances of staying in power through the deliberate use of subsidies to structure the political debate and embed factor owners into stable policy networks. Individual factor owners, in turn, join these policy networks to lobby for monopoly rents capable of insuring them against adverse economic competition. The model yields two testable hypotheses. First, fight governments favor subsidies to capital, whereas left governments favor subsidies to labor. Second, the degree of intensity of electoral competition determines the scope of the subsidy policy. Quantitative and qualitative evidence is offered for 21 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries during the 1980s.

South Korean conglomerates, also known as chaebol, have long enjoyed the support of previous dictatorial governments. With the strong backing of the state, these chaebol underwent unprecedented expansion at the expense of the marginalized working class. However, democratic reform, symbolized by Kim Young-Sam's ascendancy to power in 1992, and public discontent with clientelism have brougt about significant changes in the relations between industry and state. Under Kim Young-Sam's leadership, medium and small-sized industries receive incentives previously denied to them.

This article uses policy network theory to examine comparatively the politics of the British and West German coal industries in the 1980s. It considers the reasons why policy in Britain was directed at restructuring and in West Germany at preserving the industry's existing structure. It focuses on the dynamics of network stability and change, and the growing importance of the international dimension in domestic policy making, a factor overlooked by network theory. The article contrasts the Thatcher and Kohl governments which though both avowedly committed to free-markets, pursued very different polices in the coal industry. The article concludes with a brief assessment of network theory.

Much of our nation has become entangled in its own power, stifling creativity and productivity. Government agencies responsible for serving the people have become muscle-bound, almost to the point of […]

There has long been debate on the extent to which the structure of government in metropolitan areas helps or hinders income growth. Polycentrists contend that numerous local governments lead to competition that streamlines government, produces services at least cost, and leads to higher incomes. Centrists argue that large, multiple service governments have scale economies leading to more efficient production of services and hence higher incomes. What matters to regionalists is whether there is a metropolitan governance arrangement that effects an improvement in the distribution of economic activity that increases income. Which school of thought is right? This article evaluates the association between metropolitan governance structures and growth in per capita personal income among [is less than] 287 of the largest metropolitan statistical areas for the period 1976 to 1996. After controlling for several factors, we find empirical support for the centrist and regionalist schools of thought but very little support for the polycentrist school.