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This chapter introduces and defines the terms ‘informal groups of states’, ‘groups of friends’, and ‘contact groups’. It develops a synergistic analytical framework, identifying the causal mechanisms that contribute to the formation of informal groups of states by borrowing from insights of theories of agency and delegation. It challenges the proposition that centralization and independence are key functional characteristics of international organizations which enhance efficiency. Instead, it argues that decentralization via informal groups of states allows the achievement of policy goals that would be unattainable in a centralized setting. The typology of exit, voice, and loyalty is incorporated into analytical framework to explain the dynamics between informal groups and the Security Council. Such an approach provides substantial explanatory leverage to explain the institutional effects of the Security Council under conditions of systemic change. The chapter concludes with an outline of the book’s contents.

Rival French conceptions of political representation with electable citizens limited to property owners, were implemented in a context of political destabilization and class conflicts. Roman Catholicism and Gallic secularism engaged in hostilities and the Left/Right dichotomy became established. Administrative centralization was embodied in the Prefect, while national assimilation was forcefully pressed. Attempts at alliance with Britain took the fitful form of the Entente Cordiale.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the reign of Aśoka Maurya and the collapse of the Mauryan dynasty. It describes the place of Aśoka against the background of the third century BC in India and the distinction between Aśoka the man and Aśoka the monarch. It suggests that Aśoka's greatness lay in the fact that he was equipped both by his own endeavour and by circumstances, to understand the culture to which he belonged and its then rapidly changing requirements. It also clarifies a popular misconception about the Mauryan period which describes it as one which was politically decentralised and individually democratic; whereas in fact it was the beginning of political centralisation and it also saw the triumph of a social order which did not permit of much individual liberty.

Organized business and labour are vital in the operations of industrial relations. Unions and employer associations, both organizations of interest, have to deal with certain organizational issues. First, these organizations have to establish their representational domain in terms of membership and tasks. Second, the organization would require a certain level of centralization so that the members comply with collective goals and decisions. Third, such organizations have to utilize power to progress. This chapter looks into these organizational issues not only through a conventional collective-action theory, but also through looking into the conflicting demands of an associations's structure in terms of membership and influence.

This chapter asks a deceptively simple question: How do we understand the relationship between the prime minister, cabinet, and the rest of the Westminster system? It explores the dilemmas posed by the alleged centralization of power on prime ministers. It concludes the arguments for presidentialism are not persuasive. The chapter suggests that four factors shape and constrain both the capacity of prime ministers and the expectations about cabinet in Westminster systems: the contingent nature of ‘court politics’, traditions of leadership, competing notions of cabinet and its role as authoritative decision-maker, and territorial interdependence. There is recurring dilemmas running through the debate between Westminster and the governance tale with its stress on the prime minister as one actor embedded in, and dependent on, webs of organizations and governments. The inescapable fact for all governments, unitary or federal, is that they have to work in, with and through a complex of organizations, governments, and networks with power constrained by ever more pervasive and complex patterns of dependence.

Chapter 7 and the corresponding Ch. 12 in Part Three of the book present the Antifederalist objections to a stronger national government in the “fiscal‐military” sphere, with this chapter looking closely at Antifederalist objections to the military clauses of the US Constitution. The opponents of the Constitution never accepted the Federalist claim that the independence, liberty, and prosperity of the American republic depended on the creation and maintenance of a peace establishment consisting of regular troops, and did not believe that the union faced as serious threats as the Federalists claimed, keeping to the view that standing armies in time of peace were a threat to liberty. Both ancient and modern history had taught that “almost all” nations in Europe and Asia had lost their liberty because of the establishment of a standing army, so it hardly made sense for Americans to imitate them. To Antifederalists, it seemed that if the military clauses of the Constitution were adopted and the Federalists realized their plan to raise a standing army, the people of America would soon find that the Constitution's supporters would make use of it on the domestic rather than the international scene. The Antifederalist criticism of the army clauses therefore said little about commercial treaties and the importance of military strength in international relations; instead, they approached the issue from the traditional British Country perspective, claiming that standing armies in time of peace posed a threat to liberty, that transfer of military power from the states to Congress threatened both the state militia and the state assemblies, and that a standing army would make it possible for the national government to deprive people of their property without their consent by levying and collecting arbitrary taxes – in other words, a standing army in a time of peace was to the Antifederalists an objection to the centralization of power at the expense of the people's ability to withhold consent through their control of strong local institutions.

Presents the Antifederalist objections to a stronger national government in the “fiscal‐military” sphere, with this chapter looking closely at Antifederalist objections to the federal fiscal powers of the US Constitution, and the answers of the Federalists to these. Only rarely did the Antifederalists raise any objections to the right of Congress to borrow money, but the fact that they seemed to accept that public borrowing might sometimes be necessary did not mean that they accepted the need for an unlimited federal power over taxation. In their opposition to the Constitution's tax clauses, the Antifederalists continued an Anglo‐American political tradition of opposition against state growth that in turn is but an instant of a universal resistance to the centralization of power characteristic of early modern Europe. The Antifederalist opposition centered on the future role of the state legislatures: in Antifederalist thought the state assembly had come to take on the function filled by the House of Commons in English “Country” thought, so it was regarded as a crucial barrier against government abuse and as the only institution that made possible taxation with the consent of the governed.

The Italian political system has usually been described as a stable parliamentary democracy with proportional representation electoral rules and a fragmented party system. In the mid-1990s, this image was undermined by a deep crisis, which resulted in changes to the electoral system, the party system, and the executive-legislative relationship. In general, the whole chain of delegation has suffered as a result of the weak institutionalization of delegation mechanisms. The reasons for this weakness are to be found in the historical circumstances of Italy’s democratic experience, in particular, a highly fragmented, polarized polity, and a society with deep cleavages.

The EU's founding Treaties have been characterized by political contestation along two dimensions: a centre‐periphery dimension in which centralization to Brussels is opposed to national sovereignty, and a left‐right dimension pitting a center‐right project of market liberalization against a center‐left project of ‘regulated capitalism’. From the Treaty of Rome through the Maastricht Treaty, the fundamental thrust of the treaties has been neoliberal, focusing on the creation of a unified European marketplace, while side agreements have secured some elements of the regulated capitalism project. In this context, the Treaty of Amsterdam represents an outlier: a Treaty that addresses the central concerns of the regulated capitalism model (e.g. employment, social policy, and the environment), but does so primarily through new regulatory instruments and comparison of best practices rather than binding EU regulations. For good or ill, this ‘Blairite Treaty’ reflects the ‘Third Way’ governing philosophy of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

This chapter on the national co-ordination of European Union (EU) policy in Denmark starts by pointing out that the Danish position within the EU is somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, Denmark has acquired the image of a ‘Eurosceptic’ having obtained several opt-outs from the Maastricht Treaty; on the other hand, its day-to-day performance in the EU is widely regarded as positive, since its rate and speed of implementation of EU legislative acts is one of the highest. This performance is partly due to Denmark’s EU co-ordination system, combined with its internal emphasis upon consensus. The Danish EU co-ordination system is centralized but also displays some decentralized features; in addition, compared with the normal domestic procedures for co-ordination, EU co-ordination in the country is very formalized, although it is also achieved informally through consensus. The four main sections of the chapter discuss: the centralization issue; the structure and procedures for EU policy co-ordination; sectorization (a decision-making process in which the decisive influence is located in an alliance between a sectoral ministry and important interest groups in an area); and the role of parliament and the European Committee.

Considers the organizational consequences for parties of the professionalization of election campaigning. This process has gone through three main stages, from pre‐modern, through the TV‐dominated modern stage, and onto the current advanced‐modern stage of campaigning personified by the use of new telecommunications technology. The chapter shows party organizations to be highly adaptive, investing heavily in time and resources in the new campaign techniques, professionalizing, and centralizing their organizations (particularly around their top leaderships), and paying far more attention to image and specific campaign issues as opposed to traditional ideological standpoints. There has been a shift from parties selling themselves to voters to designing an appropriate product to match voter needs. Because of these changes, contemporary political parties have repositioned themselves to survive the uncertainties of operating as representative institutions in the increasingly participatory age of the end of the millennium.

Identifies some general themes that typically figure in particular policy debates in the USA and the European Union. It first traces, in the broadest possible outlines, the historical rhythm of centralization and decentralization in the USA and the EU, and then offers a few observations, for each polity, on the phase of the cycle at the start of the twenty‐first century, discussing the rhythms of federalism in the USA, and the EU experience of integration and subsidiarity. The generic arguments that drive the specific debates involved often concern geography‐linked diversity, the advantages and disadvantages that come with governmental scale, the role of autonomous governments as testbeds for innovation, and the alignment of choice and consequence to minimize policy externalities.

Critically examines the fashionable notion that the steady trajectory of USA federalism in recent decades has been in the direction of decentralization or devolution; the case made rests above all on the pervasiveness of concurrency: ‘All public functions are likely to involve intergovernmental power‐sharing in one way or another . . . The centralization that has occurred in the USA has rarely involved wholesale federal occupation of policy fields . . . often in a positive‐sum manner in which there is a concomitant expansion of State and/or local government powers’. In this context, so‐called devolution in the USA has been far from a wholesale transfer of power but rather a series of halfway measures. More importantly, if legitimacy has not been enhanced through outright devolution—presumably an unachievable first‐best in the author's view—then ‘issues of process’ are vital. That is the legitimacy of the norms, institutions, and mechanisms that allow constant adjustment of roles and responsibilities between levels of government in response to changing circumstances and changing citizen preferences. The four sections of the chapter look in turn at definitions of devolution, explanations for the disjunction between devolution, rhetoric and devolution reality in the USA, devolution politics, and the implications for the EU.

The US Constitution embodied a limited degree of laissez faire, enough to give capitalism at least an advantage over any other economic organization of the society if Adam Smith's theory is roughly right. What capitalism mainly needed was free markets, and the US Constitution went very far toward providing that interstate commerce would not be trammeled by the states acting for narrow interests against farmers and producers in other states. In the conflicts between commerce, small farming, and plantation agrarianism, nearly neutral government was good for the longer‐run workability of the constitution and its government. The fundamentally important issue in the design of constitutions is to enable rather than hinder economic transitions that are not well understood in advance. When the economies of eastern socialist regimes ceased to benefit from centrally controlled mobilization to do what was already well done elsewhere, their Communist governments were an obstacle to developing in other ways and, in particular, to making the transition to market economies.

Illustrates why the present institutional framework of the EU is no longer able to face new policy challenges. Provides an overview of general modes of EU policy‐making and then addresses concrete new policy challenges faced by the EU (common foreign and security policy, eastern enlargement, and monetary union) with regards to the strengths and limitations of these policy‐making procedures. Scharpf presents an argument for limitations in recent EU reform debates, from the White Paper on Governance to the European Convention, and argues for new modes of European governance that will allow effective ‘Europeanized’ responses to new policy challenges accommodating ‘legitimate diversity’ at the national level. Begins with a brief overview of the principal ‘modes’ of EU policy‐making—defined by participation rights and decision rules—for which the labels of ‘intergovernmental negotiations’, ‘joint decision making’, and ‘supranational centralization’ are used, and then the new policy challenges with regard to the strengths and limitations of these present modes of policy making are discussed. The seven sections of the chapter are: The Challenge of Present Constitutional Debates; The Plurality of European Governing Modes; New Policy Challenges; The European Dilemma: Consensus Plus Uniformity; Two Non‐Solutions: Subsidiarity and Majority Rule; European Action in the Face of Legitimate Diversity; and Conclusions.