Political Studies

The temptation to free ride and the fear of exploitation are traditionally offered as factors explaining individuals' choices under conditions of social dilemma. In two experimental studies of prisoner's dilemma behaviour we demonstrate that the ratio-differences of payoffs are as important as the absolute differences in affecting the likelihood of cooperation. The implications of this additional structural determinant of dilemma choice are developed and applied to the stalled gains debate in international relations theory. By incorporating ratio-differences into the analysis ‘realist’ and ‘liberal’ theories of state behaviour may be reconciled.

The overall freedom of an individual or a society is something that exists in differing degrees. By contrast, anyone's particular freedom to engage in this or that mode of conduct is something that exists (or does not exist) in an all-or-nothing manner. Many political philosophers have taken a contrary view, however, and have contended that each particular freedom exists to a greater or lesser extent in proportion to the easiness or difficulty of exercising it. This essay argues that the temptation to view particular freedoms as matters of degree can be overcome when careful attention is paid to three distinctions: overall liberty versus particular liberties, the existence of any particular liberty versus the probability of its emergence, and becoming more free to do something versus becoming free to do something in more ways. By properly marking these distinctions, one can readily apprehend that the existence or inexistence of each particular freedom is characterized by no gradations – an insight that improves one's understanding of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of any such freedom.

The article is built on four propositions. First, there is a latent potential within the German polity for the mobilisation of what remains a significant level of popular unease about aspects of the ongoing process of European integration. Second, at present this potential is unfulfilled and, as a result, Euroscepticism remains the ‘dark matter’ of German politics. Third, the absence of a clearly stated Eurosceptical agenda is not due to the inherent ‘enlightenment’ of the German political class about the European project, but rather is the result of systemic disincentives shaping the preferences of rational acting politicians. Finally, these systemic disincentives are to be found within the formal institutions of the German polity. The key ideas here are of ‘hard’ versus ‘soft’ Eurosceptical narratives, sustained versus heresthetic agendas, and ‘polis constraining’ versus ‘polis shaping’ strategies for their promotion. Political agents' choice of strategy depends on the nature of the institutional setting within which they are operating. The institutional configuration of the Federal Republic provides poor returns for party-based Euroscepticism. The mobilisation of popular unease about aspects of European integration remains an unattractive option for rational acting political agents.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are playing an increasingly important role in the process Foucault called ‘governmentality’. Drawing on the Foucauldian literature, this paper uses a case study of biodiversity conservation as well as indigenous people's ancestral domain in the Philippines to show how two quite different NGO-led conservation agendas nonetheless share a common underlying purpose: persuading indigenous people to internalize state control through self-regulation. Ironically, it is this sort of NGO contribution to the elaboration of government (in the Foucauldian sense) that may turn out be the most significant and lasting contribution that NGOs make to social change.

I argue against the commonly held view that ethnically based preferential policies consistently lead to the construction of well-defined boundaries between collectivities. Using a statistical study of Australia as a case, I demonstrate that preferential programs, under certain conditions, may blur the boundaries between groups. This trend is reflected in the growing number of individuals in the early 1980s who chose to claim an Aboriginal identity in Australian states that increasingly recognized indigenous land claims.

Lijphart's spectrum of democracies – recently expanded by Jack Nagel to a sub-majoritarian sphere of pluralitarian systems which use disproportional electoral systems in order to manufacture majority governments from minorities in the electorate – is based on only one dimension: inclusion of preferences. Political scientists in the Lijphartian tradition wrongly assume that inclusion of preferences, which is an input characteristic, automatically leads to responsiveness, which refers to actual policy decisions and hence is an output characteristic. We therefore add ‘responsibility’ as a second input characteristic and employ it alongside the inclusiveness of institutional regimes. We argue that in representative democracies there exists a trade-off between inclusiveness and responsibility. This trade-off helps us to measure the democratic quality of institutional regimes. The now expanded spectrum of democracies based on these two dimensions shows that majoritarian democracy proper – in which governments represent a majority of individual preferences but not more than necessary – is the best possible combination of the two democratic values.

This article evaluates the changing assessments within the British trade union movement of the efficacy of European Union integration from the viewpoint of labour interests. It argues that there has been a marked further ‘Europeanisation’ of British trade unionism during the 1990s, consolidating an on-going process which previous research shows began in earnest in the mid 1980s. A shift in trade union economic policy assessments has seen the decisive abandonment of the previously dominant ‘naive’ or national Keynesianism. While there remain important differences in economic perspective between unions, these are not such as would create significant divisions over the question of European integration per se, the net benefits of which are now generally, though perhaps not universally, accepted. The absence of fundamental divisions is evident from a careful assessment of the debates about economic and monetary union at TUC Congress. The Europeanisation of British trade unionism needs to be seen within the context of an emergent regionalism, in Europe and elsewhere. It can best be understood as a rational response by an important corporate actor (albeit one whose national influence has been considerably diminished in recent decades) to globalisation and a significantly changing political economy environment.

Cross-pressure was introduced as a concept in political analysis half a century ago. While different forms of political cross-pressure have been noted, they are generally considered to have the effect of making citizens withdraw from politics. However, this conclusion is not always supported by data. A modified proposition is suggested in order to account for other reactions to cross-pressure that have been registered from time to time.