Party system institutionalisation in east-central Europe: empirical dimensions and tentative conclusions

The nationalisation of party systems is a topic closely related to processes of party system institutionalisation, an area that has developed its own literature and dimensions of analysis. Institutionalisation is understood to comprise four main dimensions: the growth of stability in the rules and nature of inter-party competition, the development of stable roots in society that help ensure a measure of regularity in how people vote, the acquisition of legitimacy by parties and the electoral process, and the establishment of party organisation that have an independent status and some value in their own right. The idea of party system institutionalisation was first presented by S. Mainwaring and T. Scully in 1995 and has been developed in a range of other publications, mostly by Mainwaring with a number of different contributors. It was first developed in a Latin American context but has an obvious relevance to developments in other newly democratising countries. In terms of outcomes, party system institutionalisation is understood to have a strong impact on the quality of democracy and to reduce tendencies to clientelism, political populism and the growth of anti-politics sentiments, and to foster mechanisms of democratic accountability and effective policy formulation. Over the years, a substantial literature on the process of party system institutionalisation has been produced and, in recent years, a growing proportion of this has concerned systems in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper will, firstly, survey and evaluate some of the most recent literature with a view to establishing what light it sheds on the process in East-Central Europe and, secondly, identify and assess the key data that enable any judgement to be made on the course of this process in the region and to identify the contributions in this area of various data-bases relating to party politics

Immigrant-Native Substitutability: The Role of Language Ability

Wage evidence suggests that immigrant workers are imperfectly substitutable for native-born workers with similar education and experience. Using U.S. Censuses and recent American Community Survey data, I ask to what extent differences in language skills drive this. I find they are important. I estimate that the response of immigrants’ relative wages to immigration is concentrated among immigrants with poor English skills. Similarly, immigrants who arrive at young ages, as adults, both have stronger English skills and exhibit greater substitutability for native-born workers than immigrants who arrive older. In U.S. markets where Spanish speakers are concentrated, I find a “Spanish-speaking” labor market emerges: in such markets, the return to speaking English is low, and the wages of Spanish and non-Spanish speakers respond most strongly to skill ratios in their own language group. Finally, in Puerto Rico, where almost all workers speak Spanish, I find immigrants and natives are perfect substitutes. The implications for immigrant poverty and regional settlement patterns are analyzed.

Food, Brexit and Northern Ireland: Critical Issues

This report is the third in our Food Brexit Briefing series. It argues that the absence of serious consideration of food flows into, out of and through Northern Ireland is a significant policy omission in the ongoing Brexit negotiations. There has been much talk of the importance of Northern Ireland, but next to no detailed attention to the food implications of Brexit for Northern Ireland. The report makes the case that there is an urgent need to get down to detail over border arrangements, contingency planning and resource allocation. This is too important to leave to last-minute makeshift or muddle. Food is central to the economy of Northern Ireland, and the continuing supply of safe, high quality, healthy food is currently dependent on the absence of border controls between Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and the rest of the European Union. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food criss-cross these borders every year. They are currently free from inspection because of shared, underpinning EU Single Market regulation. An unplanned or mishandled food border imposition is likely to have powerful, destabilising consequences for the integrated nature of food supply, trade and access within Northern Ireland for many years to come. It would raise important challenges for food safety, put jobs at risk, potentially constrain Northern Ireland’s access to health-supporting foods such as fruit and vegetables, and create opportunities for food fraud and crime. The report, by Gary McFarlane and Tony Lewis, both senior environmental health professionals and officers of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, and Professor Tim Lang, of the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London, is based on a thorough review of food flows into, from and through Northern Ireland, and the practical experience of its authors. The report dismisses talk of ‘technological fixes’ to help maintain the smooth flow of goods as vague, unavailable now and unrealistic. It calls for all the governments and bodies involved in food and Brexit – the European Union, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland itself – to set political differences aside in order to resolve the considerable practical challenges of cross-border food traffic. The authors make more than 30 recommendations to help that process

Overall and blade element performance of a 1.20 pressure ratio fan stage with rotor blades reset -7 deg

A 51-cm-diam model of a fan stage for short haul aircraft was tested in a single stage compressor research facility. The rotor blades were set 7 deg toward the axial direction (opened) from the design setting angle. Surveys of the air flow conditions ahead of the rotor, between the rotor and stator, and behind the stator were made over the stable operating range of the stage. At the design speed and a weight flow of 30.9 kg/sec, the stage pressure ratio and efficiency were 1.205 and 0.85, respectively. The design speed rotor peak efficiency of 0.90 occurred at a flow rate of 32.5 kg/sec

Further evidence of the absence of Replica Symmetry Breaking in Random Bond Potts Models

In this short note, we present supporting evidence for the replica symmetric approach to the random bond q-state Potts models. The evidence is statistically strong enough to reject the applicability of the Parisi replica symmetry breaking scheme to this class of models. The test we use is a generalization of one formerly proposed by Dotsenko et al. and consists in measuring scaling laws of disordered-averaged moments of the spin-spin correlation functions. Numerical results, obtained via Monte Carlo simulations for several values of q, are shown to be in fair agreement with the replica symmetric values computed by using perturbative CFT for the second and third moments of the q=3 model. RSB effects, which should increase in strength with moment, are unobserved.Comment: 7 pages, some minor modifications (mainly misprints). To Appear in Europhysics Letter

Solid propellant rocket motor and method of making same

A method is described for making a solid propellant rocket motor having a specific concavity formed within the fuel charge. A mandrel with an aperature wider than that of the casing is inserted within the motor casing and a solidifiable propellant cast above the mandrel. The mandrel is removed after the propellant is cured

The Diffusion of Mexican Immigrants During the 1990s: Explanations and Impacts

Mexican immigrants were historically clustered in a few cities, mainly in California and Texas. During the past 15 years, however, arrivals from Mexico established sizeable immigrant communities in many "new" cities. We explore the causes and consequences of the widening geographic diffusion of Mexican immigrants. A combination of demand-pull and supply push factors explains most of the inter-city variation in inflows of Mexican immigrants over the 1990s, and also illuminates the most important trend in the destination choices of new Mexican immigrants %u2013 the move away from Los Angeles. Mexican inflows raise the relative supply of low-education labor in a city, leading to the question of how cities adapt to these shifts. One mechanism, suggested by the Hecksher Olin model, is shifting industry composition. We find limited evidence of this mechanism: most of the increases in the relative supply of low-education labor are absorbed by changes in skill intensity within narrowly defined industries. Such adjustments could be readily explained if Mexican immigrant inflows had large effects on the relative wage structures of different cities. As has been found in previous studies of the local impacts of immigration, however, our analysis suggests that relative wage adjustments are small.