What accounts for variations in the size of OECD stock markets? Existing answers point to the negative impact of state control over industry, enhanced by state centralization, and mitigated by common law. I counter that state centralization has a positive impact on stock market growth as well....

This paper deals with some elements of Machiavelli's theory of political action and its relation with tragedy and choice. 1) I will sketch 3 different interpretations of his work. 2) I will analyse how political action often involves tragic choices between common good and justice, and how this...

Presidentialism has been long defined as a regime type based on the principle of separation of power. I will start by adopting a restricted definition of presidentialism and advancing a typology of democratic regimes, just to thereafter apply it to the two largest South American countries:...

Putnam's civil society is the idea that good government performance aas well as economic development is a product of 'civic community', i.e. the networks of trust, reciprocity, and habits of co-operation that arise in the associational micro-spheres of civil society such as the soccer club, the...

The aim of this article is to develop a theoretical framework in order to explain the access of business interests to the European Commission, the Parliament and the Council of Ministers. The degree of access to these institutions is explained interms of a theory of demand and supply of access...

This paper is based on a successfully implemented "role-play simulation" of the CFSP that authors designed and then carried out in the Spring of 1999. The aims of this exercise were to evaluate the working of the CFSP and the further to develop simulation techniques in a European atmosphere. The...

While the strategies of political actors and institutions have been largely analyzed with reference to cases of democratic breakdown in inter-war Europe and other contexts, democratic survival has often been viewed as a consequence of socio-economic and cultural "preconditions". The analysis of...

The paper presents in a simple model the possible choices and constraints facing democratic governments when confronting an anti-democratic party challenge that is able to seriously endanger the survival of the democratic system.

This paper attempts to assess the extent to which a 'new' industrial relations regime has developed in advanced economies over the pat two decades and the prospects of new industrial relations. In addition to examining developments in the private sector, the paper assesses changes in public...

The first part of this paper briefly examines the merits of neo-classical arguments regarding the causes of the recent upsurge in Greek unemployment. It shows that the view according to which high unemployment in Greece is caused by high waged rests on a weak empirical foundation. Moreover, by...