I analyze a dataset of news from the New York Times, from 1946 to 1997. Controlling for the incumbent President's activity across issues, I find that during the presidential campaign the New York Times gives more emphasis to topics that are owned by the Democratic party (civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare), when the incumbent President is a Republican. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the New York Times has a Democratic partisanship, with some "watchdog" aspects, in that -during the presidential campaign- it gives more emphasis to issues over which the (Republican) incumbent is weak. In the post-1960 period the Times displays a more symmetric type of watchdog behaviour, just because during presidential campaigns it gives more more coverage to the typically Republican issue of Defense when the incumbent President is a Democrat, and less so when the incumbent is a Republican.

We analyse the determinants of ministerial hazard rates in the UK from 1945-1997. We focus on three sets of attributes i) personal characteristics of the minister; ii) political characteristics of the minister and iii) characteristics pertaining to the government in which the minister serves. We find that educational background increases ministers’ capacity to survive, that female ministers have lower hazard rates and older ministers have higher hazard rates. Experienced ministers have higher hazard than newly appointed ministers. Ministerial rank increases a ministers’ capacity to survive, with full cabinet members having the lowest hazard rates in our sample. We use different strategies to controls for the characteristics of the government the ministers serve in. Our results are robust to any of these controls.

Formal analysis of the political economy of trade policy was substantially redirected by the appearance of Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman’s 1994 paper, “Protection for Sale”. Before that article a fairly wide range of approaches were favoured by various authors on various issues, but afterwards, the vast majority of theoretical tracts on endogenous trade policy have used the Protection for Sale framework (PFS for short) as their main vehicle. The reason, of course, is that the framework is both respectable – because its microfoundations are distinctly firmer than were those of the earlier lobbying approaches – and it is very easy to work with. Despite the popularity of the PFS framework, it appears that no one has presented a simple diagram that illustrates how the PFS frameworks and explains why it is so easy. This short note aims to remedy that ommission.

2011 was a year of protests around the globe. In Europe and its wider neighbourhood, citizens took to the streets and squares to protest against austerity, inequality, and financial mismanagement and to call for greater accountability from political leaders. In Citizens’ Initiatives in Europe: Procedures and Consequences of Agenda-Setting by Citizens, Armine Ishkanian finds an informative and timely publication about how citizens across Europe attempt to influence agenda-setting and policy making processes. Citizens’ Initiatives in Europe: Procedures and Consequences of Agenda-Setting by Citizens. Maija Setälä and Theo Schiller (eds). Palgrave Macmillan. March 2012. 280 pages.

Examining interactions between global, regional and national media processes, European Media emphasises the transformation of political communication in Europe and the alleged emergence of a European public sphere and identity. Damian Tambini finds it offers an excellent overview and reference on some of the big shifts that characterise the evolving media scene in Europe.

Political plurality in Mexico may now be firmly established and elections may be generally free and fair, but the country still has far from embraced full democratic transition, argues Jo Tuckman in her new book. Tom Gash finds that Tuckman is close enough to Mexican life that the stories she provides ring true and contain refreshing snippets of detail. A satisfying read, but light on detail about what lies ahead. Mexico: Democracy Interrupted. Jo Tuckman. Yale University Press. May 2012.

Since the onset of global crisis in recent years, academics and economic theorists have been drawn to Marx’s analysis of the inherent instability of capitalism. The rediscovery of Marx is based on his continuing capacity to explain the present. In the context of what some commentators have described as a “Marx renaissance”, the aim of this book, edited by Marcello Musto, is to make a close study of Marx’s principal writings in relation to the major problems of our own society, and to show why and how some of his theories constitute a precious tool for the understanding and critique of the world in the early twenty-first century. Reviewed by Nick Taylor. Marx for Today. Marcello Musto (ed.) Routledge. April 2012.

This book brings together an international group of historians, philosophers, and political scientists to evaluate the impact of Michael Freeden‘s work and to reassess its central claims. Although the book contains several highlights, Mark Fisher feels that the pervasive back-slapping and high-fiving characteristic of a festschrift works largely to undermine the volume as a critical study. Liberalism and Ideology: Essays in Honour of Michael Freeden. Ben Jackson and Marc Stears (eds.). Oxford University Press. February 2012.

Despite for many years receiving one of the highest per capita aid worldwide, the economies of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have failed to achieve any lasting developmental outcomes and suffer from major weaknesses which undermine their very survival. This book argues that the dominant, mainstream approach to the study of aid and aid effectiveness is theoretically and empirically inadequate for a comprehensive understanding and analysis of the workings of aid in developing countries. Alaa Tartir finds that this book adds an important, distinctive and timely contribution to the scholarly work on Palestine. The Political Economy of Aid in Palestine: Relief from Conflict or Development Delayed? Sahar Taghdisi-Rad. Routledge. 2011.

Debates about the appropriate mix between autonomy and accountability of bureaucrats are relevant to numerous areas of government action. I examine whether there is evidence of a tradeoff between transparency, democratic accountability, and the gains from monetary delegation. I begin by presenting a simple theoretical model which suggests that central banks that are transparent, in the sense of publishing their macroeconomic forecasts, will find it easier to acquire a reputation. Despite making central banks more subject to outside scrutiny then, monetary transparency can lead to improved economic outcomes. I also consider arguments about the effect of accountability provisions involving parliamentary oversight and control over central bankers. The paper then uses a new data set to examine these issues empirically, focusing on a natural experiment involving disinflation costs under different central banking institutions during the 1990s. Results suggest that countries with more transparent central banks face lower costs of disinflation while accountability provisions have no clear effect on disinflation costs. My results also concord with earlier findings that the effect of monetary institutions is conditional on other features of the political environment.

Social choice and welfare economics are subjects at the frontier of many disciplines. Even if economics played the major role in their development, sociology, psychology and, principally, political science, mathematics and philosophy have been central for the manifold inventiveness of the employed methods and for the diversity of the studied topics. This phenomenon can be compared with game theory, a subject which has, of course, many connections with social choice and welfare. This fact is reflected by the disciplinary origins of the contributors to the subject and, as an anecdote, by the disciplinary origins of the board of editors of this journal. Philosophers are expected to contribute mainly to the study of social justice and related ethical questions. But there is a tradition among logicians for studying voting theory. A famous example is C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), even though the complete works of Dodgson on voting occupy only a few pages. A major recent example is Michael Dummett. Michael Dummett is famous among social choice theorists for his joint paper with Robin Farquharson published in Econometrica in 1961. Later he wrote two important books on voting (Dummett (1984, 1997); for an overview see Salles (2006)). But it must be outlined that Michael Dummett is also...

This article provides empirical evidence that good political governance and good economic policies can lower homicide rates. Violent crime is therefore not simply determined by modernization, population characteristics and cultural factors. This result follows from rigorous econometric testing based on a cross-national panel of homicide data from up to 117 countries over the period 1980 to 1997. Contrary to most existing studies, which have applied ordinary least squares on data drawn from one time period only, this analysis uses a fixed-effects estimator with fully robust standard errors. A fixed-effects estimator elegantly controls for time-invariant determinants, such as cultural factors, and allows the pooling of homicide data from otherwise incompatible sources. This is complemented by random-effects estimation in sensitivity analysis. The results suggest that economic growth, higher income levels, respect for human rights and the abolition of the death penalty are all associated with lower homicide rates. The same is true for democracy at high levels of democracy. The transition from autocracy to democracy is likely to be accompanied by a rising homicide rate, however, until full democracy has been reached. Results also indicate that policies aimed at improving equity have no effect on violent crime. In particular...

Foreign investors are often skeptical toward the quality of the domestic institutions and the enforceability of the law in developing countries. Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) guarantee certain standards of treatment that can be enforced via binding investor-to-state dispute settlement outside the domestic juridical system. Developing countries accept restrictions on their sovereignty in the hope that the protection from political and other risks leads to an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI), which is also the stated purpose of BITs. We provide the first rigorous quantitative evidence that a higher number of BITs raises the FDI that flows to a developing country. This result is very robust to changes in model specification, estimation technique and sample size. There is also some limited evidence that BITs might function as substitutes for good domestic institutional quality, but this result is not robust to different specifications of institutional quality.

How cohesive are political parties in the European Parliament? What coalitions form and why? The answers to these questions are central for understanding the impact of the European Parliament on European Union policies. These questions are also central in the study of legislative behaviour in general. We collected the total population of roll-call votes in the European Parliament, from the first elections in 1979 to the end of 2001 (over 11,500 votes). The data show growing party cohesion despite growing internal national and ideological diversity within the European party groups. We also find that the distance between parties on the left–right dimension is the strongest predictor of coalition patterns. We conclude that increased power of the European Parliament has meant increased power for the transnational parties, via increased internal party cohesion and inter-party competition.

Collaborative partnerships – featuring intergovernmental and/or public-private sector cooperation – have been identified a leading organisational expression of the ‘new urban governance’. The paper examines the Vancouver Agreement – an urban development compact between the governments of Canada, British Columbia and the City of Vancouver. Signed in March 2000 for a five-year term, and renewed in April 2005, the Vancouver Agreement has been widely acclaimed as an example of successful collaborative working addressed to the revitalisation of the city’s Downtown Eastside. The origins of the agreement are explained in the context of an urban crisis ascribed to the Downtown Eastside, where established policies were seen to be failing. High-level political support for a new governance approach led to the adoption of an urban development partnership, and the article sets out its structure and strategic programmes of action. Benchmarked against conditions for effective intergovernmental working posited in the academic literature, the paper then analyses five procedural attributes of the partnership – resource sharing, leadership, community involvement, mutual learning and horizontal accountability. Concluding observations are offered on whether any general lessons can be inferred from the Vancouver Agreement experience.

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have become the most important legal mechanism for the encouragement and governance of foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries. Yet practically no systematic evidence exists on what motivates capital-exporting developed countries to sign BITs earlier with some developing countries than with others, if at all. The theoretical framework from the aid allocation literature suggests that developed countries pursue a mixture of self-interest, foreign need and, possibly, good governance. We find evidence that both economic interests of developed countries’ foreign investors and political interests of developed countries determine their scheduling of BITs. However, foreign need as measured by per capita income is also a factor, whereas good governance by and large does not matter. These results suggest that BIT programs can be explained employing the same framework successfully applied to the allocation of aid. At the same time, self-interest seems to be substantively more important than developing country need when it comes to BITs.

Digitalization, financialization, globalization and consolidation are major trends under way within global media industries. Drawing upon empirical evidence from across media sectors and geographical boundaries, this book examines the impact of these ongoing trends on media production, distribution and characteristics of media products, and attempts to debunk a series of global media myths. The book covers lots of new ground but Bingchun Meng was left wondering why Asia did not feature more prominently in a book on the transformation of global media.

The government’s proposals to means-test for Child Benefit has been met with fierce criticism across the political spectrum. Thomas Cawston of Reform argues that by doing the right thing in the wrong way the government is damaging the credibility of means-testing, and suggests that abolishing Child Benefit entirely and increasing existing child tax credits would achieve fairer results and greater savings.

All three major party leaders have been at pains to stress their determination to nurture responsible capitalism and end the culture of economic recklessness that has dragged us into the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Tim Leunig discusses the methods by which such responsibility may be achieved, arguing that long-term success will only come through greater competition in product markets, and a commitment to increasing the numbers of skilled workers in the labour force.

Activating Human Rights and Peace is an enlightening collection of well thought through cases aimed at academics and students of human rights, political science, law and justice, peace and conflict studies and sociology. It argues that we need to appreciate that cultivating a human rights and peace consciousness is choice-less: there is a moral imperative to engender and sustain an ethical praxis that is motivated by a concern and commitment for how we live with each other. Kristen Perrin notes that each chapter gives a glimpse into the diverse range of ideas encompassing contemporary human rights issues.