This article provides a statistical analysis of core contentions of the ‘varieties of capitalism’ perspective on comparative capitalism. The authors construct indices to assess whether patterns of co-ordination in the OECD economies conform to the predictions of the theory and compare the correspondence of institutions across subspheres of the political economy. They test whether institutional complementarities occur across these subspheres by estimating the impact of complementarities in labour relations and corporate governance on growth rates. To assess the durability of varieties of capitalism, they report on the extent of institutional change in the 1980s and 1990s. Powerful interaction effects across institutions in the subspheres of the political economy must be considered if assessments of the economic impact of institutional reform in any one sphere are to be accurate.

The diversionary proclivities of democratic and autocratic regimes have been debated in the empirical literature. This new theoretical synthesis on the subject builds upon the insights of the institutional approach, rational choice literature on voting and research on audience costs. It is contended that leaders in mature democracies have more incentive to use diversionary force than leaders in other regimes, and they are more likely to gain domestic political and economic benefits from it. To test this, dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) models are used to ascertain the reciprocal relationships between domestic political unrest, domestic economic performance and foreign military intervention in 140 countries in 1950–96. The theory is supported since, collectively, mature democracies are more prone to use diversionary force and to benefit from it than non-democracies. Interesting nuances appear when specific types of presidential or parliamentary democracies are analysed.

Numerous recent studies have addressed how the investment choices of firms depend on elite perceptions of the quality of national regulatory regimes. Likewise, other studies show that government structures can help to support credible commitments that protect market mechanisms. The authors provide the first analytic discussion of elite perceptions of national regulatory quality as a function of the independence of regulators in a country’s political system. Their central claims are that market operations depend on perceptions of regulatory quality and that independent regulators facilitate elite perceptions of regulatory quality because they check actors in domestic political systems. Cross-national statistical evidence suggests that regulatory independence supports elite perceptions of high regulatory quality. This article also provides evidence that regulatory independence is more likely where political competition shapes incentives to intervene in business markets.

A unidimensional spatial model of multiparty parliamentary elections under proportional representation is presented, in which parties project that the median parliamentary party will implement its policy position. The parties are assumed to be uncertain about the electoral impact of valence issues relating to party elites’ images of competence, integrity and charisma. The assumptions of the model, highlighting the importance of the median party in parliament, are consistent with empirical work by McDonald and Budge. Under them, the existence of a Nash equilibrium under quite general concavity conditions is proved and it is shown that parties will moderate their positions when their valence images deteriorate. Computations of party equilibria are reported. The model and its implications for policy-seeking parties with results on vote-seeking parties can be contrasted with that recently reported by Schofield and Sened.

How do majority group members in emerging multicultural and multiracial societies respond to the experience of living amidst ethnic diversity? Recent public opinion surveys are analysed to assess the contextual determinants of English whites’ opinions towards ethnic minorities and immigrants. Multilevel analyses reveal that whites’ racial hostility is affected by local ethnic context; however, the direction of this effect depends on which ethnic minority groups reside in the area. Consistent with the contact hypothesis, whites who live in neighbourhoods with relatively large black populations display lower levels of racial hostility than respondents with few black neighbours. However, in line with racial threat theory, residential proximity to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis is associated with more negative attitudes towards ethnic minorities.

David Mayhew’s Divided We Govern significantly challenged the conventional wisdom of the adversarial effect of divided government on government effectiveness in the United States. While the post-Mayhewian literature has been centred on legislative productivity as a measure of gridlock, gridlock is here defined as an ‘inability to change policy’. In this study, the preferences of the legislators, such as the filibuster, override and House median veto players are plotted in Euclidean space. The analysis focuses on the influence of the area of the winset, which is an intersection overlapped by the veto players’ indifference curves. There is a substantial impact of the area of the winset on the change in policy output point, which is measured by the ADA scores and by Poole’s Mean Winning Coordinate. Yet divided government has marginal or no effect on policy swing. The conclusion is that the preferences of veto players, but not party control of the government, have a substantial impact on gridlock in the United States.

In many areas of political science, scholars have begun to emphasize the dynamics driving the statistical variance of political outcomes as well as those governing changes in the mean. Some recent studies have brought this methodological focus on variance to measures of presidential approval, but no one has yet examined how the effects of traditional explanatory variables (such as major events and war) on the volatility of approval interact with respondents’ partisan predispositions. Using both aggregate approval data and individual-level panel data, this analysis demonstrates that factors reinforcing a group’s partisan proclivities to support or oppose the president increase the stability of that group’s support, while developments that conflict with a group’s partisan predispositions increase the volatility of approval.

What is a party? This article presents the argument that rmal party apparatus is only one part of an extended network of interest groups, media, other advocacy organizations and candidates. The authors have measured a portion of this network in the United States systematically by tracking lists of names transferred between political organizations. Two distinct and polarized networks are revealed, which correspond to a more liberal Democratic group and a more conservative Republican group. Formal party organizations, like the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee, tend to receive information within their respective networks, which suggests that other groups serve to funnel information towards the formal party.

Scholars often incorrectly categorize informal social networks as homogeneous and dismiss their potential for exposing members to diverse opinions. Recent research in the United States, however, shows that diversity in informal social networks exists and has a positive influence on political tolerance. Whether exposure to a politically heterogeneous network also increases tolerance in socially homogeneous Japan is tested here. To do this, two new Japanese national sample surveys that utilize name-generator methodology were created and administered to a sample of respondents, as well as a new measure of network political diversity in a multi-party system. Also, an additional type of tolerance, moral tolerance, was tested. The conclusion is that diversity in informal social networks has a positive influence on political and moral tolerance in Japan.