Since the new millennium, scholars have acclaimed a vigorous global justice movement (GJM). Many accounts have stressed the tolerant identities of those involved in this movement, and/or the movement's horizontal decision-making structure. Consequently, formal organizations are often excluded from analysis, precluding the chance to assess systematically whether they are involved in social movement modes of coordination. The article uses deductive block modelling and inferential statistics on survey data of a broad sample of 208 western European global justice organizations to uncover their modes of coordination. I find that many organizations commonly considered integral to the GJM demonstrate organizational and coalitional modes of coordination, while formal organizations often engage in coalitional work. Organizations most densely networked, including some formal organizations, do have social movement modes of coordination: they identify with the GJM, display continuity in attendance at international protests/events, and have contentious relations with political institutions. In addition, I raise methodological considerations for future studies of social movement modes of coordination.

In this paper, we propose a new measure of party system nationalization based on a minimalist definition of the phenomenon. A perfectly nationalized party system is a party system with only national parties or, in other words, without sub-national parties. Instead of the homogeneity of parties’ vote shares or the number of parties throughout the country, our measure captures the aspirations of parties to be national whose proxy is the proportion of districts (weighted by seats) that a party runs a candidate. The measure is compared with existing indicators through a longitudinal analysis of 256 elections in 18 Western European countries from 1945 to 1998.

To what extent and in what way does European integration fuel state restructuring? This is a long-standing but still not a fully answered question. While the theoretical literature suggests a positive link between the two, previous empirical studies have reached contrasting conclusions. The article offers an alternative testing of the proposition, centred on the role of party strategies as a causal mechanism, analysed across space and time. On the cross-sectional axis, it focusses on parties in Flanders and Wallonia (Belgium), Lombardy and Sicily (Italy), Catalonia and Andalusia (Spain), and Scotland and Wales (United Kingdom). On the cross-temporal axis, it focuses on four critical junctures connecting integration and state restructuring. It analyses the degree to which ‘Europe’ has been strategically used in connection to state restructuring and which conditions have been necessary and/or sufficient to that outcome. The analysis has been conducted on the basis of a Qualitative Comparative Analysis methodology. Five main results emerge: (1) overall, parties have generally exploited ‘Europe’ in connection with state restructuring to a limited extent only but in a few cases exploitation has been very intense and intimately linked to strategic turning points; (2) ‘Europe’ has overwhelmingly been used to support state restructuring; (3) the most intense use has been made by regional parties with a secessionist position and positive attitude to the EU; (4) ‘use of Europe’ is a product of a complex conjunctural effect of several conditions; (5) it has increased over time but is not a linear product of integration, a sharp drop can be observed between the two most recent time points. These findings show that European integration can indeed exercise causal influence upon state restructuring via party strategies but that this is highly contingent on the complex interaction of multiple factors.

The national identity argument holds that a shared national identity is necessary to motivate citizens in democratic societies to pursue a number of goals, especially social justice. We review the empirical evidence for and against this claim, looking particularly at how national identities have been measured. We distinguish between studies that aim to compare the relative strength of identities cross-nationally and those that look at individual differences within one nation. We separate four dimensions of national identity: national attachment, national pride, critical vs. uncritical patriotism, and civic vs. cultural conceptions of identity. These are only weakly correlated with each other, and impact differently on support for social justice and the welfare state. Using case studies from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, we suggest that the relationship between national identity and social justice varies between societies, and that a key factor is finding an appropriate balance between the strength of such identities and their inclusiveness.

The current debate on political participation is bound to a discussion about whether citizens are active or passive. This dichotomous notion is nurtured by an extensive normative debate concerning whether passivity is an asset or a threat to democracy; and it is especially manifest in studies of young people's political orientations. Drawing on this discussion, the present study goes beyond the dichotomy by keeping political interest conceptually separate from participation in order to improve our understanding of political passivity. Multivariate cluster analysis of empirical data on Swedish youth suggests that we need to consider three distinctive forms of ‘political passivity’. In the paper we present empirical evidence not only of the existence of a particular ‘standby citizen’, but also of two kinds of genuinely passive young people: unengaged and disillusioned citizens. Alongside active citizens, these people are in distinctly different categories with regard to their political behavior. This entails a new analytical framework that may be used to analyze an empirical phenomenon that has received surprisingly little attention in the literature on political participation and civic engagement.

It is widely debated in studies of international negotiations why certain negotiators are more successful than others. Institutionalist and rationalist approaches claim that institutions and negotiators’ resources largely explain the outcome of negotiations, whereas constructivist approaches stress the importance of shared norms and values. The article asks to what extent the use of normative arguments explains negotiation success in EU treaty negotiations. We apply our approach to the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Amsterdam. We first define normative arguments as justifications for positions that refer to common norms and develop a concept of common values for EU constitutional negotiations. Second, we assess to what degree governments justify their positions by normative arguments using an automated analysis of position papers. Finally, we ask if such justifications increase success in negotiations. The results of our statistical models show that arguing affects negotiation success significantly and positively.

Building on a widely held account of transparency as integral to legitimate and successful governance, this article addresses the question of how transparency in decision-making can influence public perceptions of political decision-making. An original experiment with 1099 participants shows that people who perceive political decision-making to be transparent judge the degree of procedural fairness highly and are more willing to accept the final decision. Perceptions of transparency are, however, largely shaped by transparency cues (e.g. statements provided by external sources) rather than by the degree of actual transparency, and no direct effect of actual transparency can be found on decision acceptance. The implication is that it is difficult to influence people's acceptance of political decisions by means of transparency reforms, as people base their assessments of political decisions largely on considerations other than evalutations of actual decision-making procedures.