Parliamentary Affairs articles from October 1998

Parliamentary Affairs archives from October 1998

INTRODUCTION: Regulating Lobbying in the Western World.
October 1, 1998... THE RELATIONSHIP between state and society is one of the central issues for democracy. As Walzer put it, `only a democratic state can create a democratic civil society; only a democratic civil society can sustain a democratic state'.(1)...

Interest Group Regulation Across the United States: Rationale, Development and Consequences.
October 1, 1998... THE REGULATION of lobbying and lobbyists has been an issue in American politics for over a hundred years and it remains so today at the federal, state and recently at the local level. Thus America provides a range of experiences and lessons...

The Canadian Experience: The Lobbyists Registration Act.
October 1, 1998... IN THE Canadian federal election of 1984 the Progressive Conservatives Party (PC) won a massive majority and reduced its principal opponents, the Liberals, to a mere forty seats. Nine years later, in October 1993, the Canadian electorate was...

Towards Regulation in the UK: From `General Good Sense' to `Formalised Rules'.
October 1, 1998... THE REGULATION of lobbying in Britain has been a significant issue in Britain for about 25 years, with successive parliamentary inquiries looking at the issue but their recommendations (if any) having limited impact. The House of Commons...

Locating the Target: Regulating Lobbying in Australia.
October 1, 1998... AUSTRALIA'S EXPERIMENT with regulating lobbying and lobbyists has so far been unsuccessful. In 1996 the new Liberal-National coalition government disbanded the Lobbyists Registration Scheme which had been set up by the Labor government, also...

Lobby Regulation in the Japanese Diet.
October 1, 1998... THE REGULATION of interest groups and lobbies in the Japanese national legislature, the Diet, is nearly non-existent. On the broader level of politics in Japan, there is very little direct governmental regulation of interest groups. On the...

The Strange Case of Regulating Lobbying in Germany.
October 1, 1998... IN RECENT years government regulation of lobbying activity has been of growing concern. However, the role of lobbying and lobbyists in the political process varies considerably across nations and so does the regulatory discourse. In Germany...

Regulation of Interest Groups in Israel.
October 1, 1998... INTEREST GROUPS constitute the essence of civil society. Their very presence and their freedom to influence political authorities are a clear manifestation of a profound democratic principle. It is not surprising that authoritarian...

Regulation of Lobbyists in Scandinavia -- A Danish Perspective.
October 1, 1998... TRADITIONALLY, a salient feature of the Scandinavian political systems has been to involve interest groups in the policy-making process without having formalised regulations. However, within the last couple of years, the political systems...

Regulating Lobbying in the European Union.
October 1, 1998... WITHOUT DOUBT, the fastest recent growth of interest organisation and representation in any democratic system has been that addressed to the European Union. Seven hundred `Euro groups', mostly based in Brussels, together with a variety of...

PRIME MINISTERS AND OTHERS: PERFORMANCE REVIEW AND LEAGUE TABLES(*).
October 1, 1998... PRIME MINISTERS WE HAD A fine crop of biographies offers scope for a review of recent and contemporary political leadership in Britain. Is the performance of our political leaders adequate? Or does the report from Oflead indicate that it...

WAS IT A LANDSLIDE, AND IF NOT, WHY NOT?(*).
October 1, 1998... BOOKS ON THE 1997 UK ELECTION WHICH APPEARED BEFORE THE YEAR WAS OUT British general elections have attracted an increased volume of academic as well as popular attention in recent decades. Until the 1970s, one academic commentator not...