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This article examines the impact of political opportunity structures (POS) on the activity choices of women's groups in the UK, France, and Germany in order to determine whether political opportunities, specifically elite alliances and changes in electoral cleavages, are gendered. We ask how/whether various institutional structures impact the activity choices of women's groups, gauging whether women react to opportunities in a similar manner as other social groups, namely environmental groups. We find that social democratic elite allies and electoral cleavages prompted by de-alignment influence activity choice among women's groups in a similar manner as among environmental groups, yet the data show that women's groups are disenfranchised from direct contact with policymaking elites through consultation, thus suggesting the presence of gendered POS.

The 'Responsibility to Protect' (RtoP) principle represents a commitment to prevent and halt mass atrocity crimes. However, in his 2009 report on implementing the RtoP, the UN Secretary-General noted that more work was needed to understand the measures that states might take to exercise their RtoP. Given that UN peace operations are now customarily mandated to 'protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence', it would seem prudent to ask how peace operations can contribute to operationalising the RtoP and how the RtoP might support peacekeeping. This article explores the potential for implementing the RtoP through peace operations. It argues that the RtoP and peace operations are mutually reinforcing. Notwithstanding systemic challenges, peace operations offer a legitimate vehicle for implementing RtoP, whereas RtoP provides a facilitating norm for harnessing political will and buttressing the legitimacy and credibility of contemporary peace operations.

This article explores the ideational dynamics that shaped the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) campaign to establish capital mobility as a formal obligation of IMF membership during the 1990s. First, the article examines how the IMF made the issue of capital account liberalisation 'legible' through constructing a particular 'legibility map' on capital mobility, which was rigorously promoted across its membership. Second, the article explores the processes through which the IMF's legibility map on capital mobility was accepted by the organisation's member states. The article traces debates within the IMF Executive Board relating to the decision to amend the IMF's Articles of Agreement to give the organisation a formal mandate and jurisdiction over capital account liberalisation to complement its existing mandate and jurisdiction over current account transactions.

A stark contrast exists between the popular image of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as a uniquely powerful international organisation (IO) and its actual capacity to monitor national policies and to enforce compliance with WTO rules among its member states. Rather than overseeing policy implementation itself like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, the WTO relies much more heavily than other high-profile IOs on a legalist method of surveillance. This article suggests that the notion of a 'member-driven legalism' is central to how the WTO 'sees' the world. In particular, the WTO's processes reflect a strong institutional belief that neo-liberal policies can be implemented by a consensus- and member-driven legalistic WTO system.

Why does the willingness of interest groups to join forces with their peers abroad vary across issues? The present article points to cross-issue variation in the "constrain-thy-neighbor" effects of transnational law. Interest groups consider not only whether they are worse off if they themselves are subjected to a transnational law. They also consider how it affects them if the same law applies abroad. Depending on the issue, they derive advantages or disadvantages from seeing their neighbors constrained, and this affects their willingness to fight transnational legislation on that issue. To illustrate the argument, the article compares cohesion within the Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe (UNICE), the European peak employer federation, on two aspects of EU company law. UNICE members were divided over EU takeover directives while uniting against EU worker participation directives. Statements released by German and British UNICE members show that the divergent constrain-thy-neighbor effect associated with these issues contributed to variation in cohesion.

"Why, at the end of the 20th century, should capital markets have served to transfer resources from emerging markets to those which are more developed? Mr. Bernanke's interpretation-that the global imbalances reflected a Savings Glut in the East fueled by fear of financial crisis-has been challenged for neglecting dis-saving in the West. As we show, these contrasting perspectives can be combined in a stochastic two period, two bloc model: one bloc, the "East," has a precautionary saving incentive due to future income uncertainty, while the other, the "West," experiences a bubble and, because it smoothes consumption, runs a current account deficit. The tractable global model we use, which relaxes the conventional assumptions of a representative agent and unbiased expectations, shows how a significant resource transfer can be effected with relatively small changes in global interest rates."

"A large body of European Union (EU) law - EU administrative law - is not made by the EU's democratically elected bodies, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament (EP). Instead, most administrative laws are made by the unelected European Commission. That, of itself, does not mean that the EU is insufficiently democratic: most democracies delegate the power to make administrative laws to unelected regulators. In those democracies, however, elected legislatures can at least change administrative laws after they are promulgated. This article contends that the EU is different: the Council and EP are effectively unable to change administrative laws. This article identifies 'design flaws' in the EU's lawmaking processes that are responsible for this democratic shortcoming. It then surveys relevant provisions of the new Lisbon Treaty in order to determine whether Lisbon will remedy that shortcoming: whether it will empower the Council and EP - or citizens directly - to change administrative laws."

"The military regimes of 1964-1989 in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil implemented a code of legitimacy that appealed to various secular beliefs rooted in civil society at the same time that they fostered a common myth of religious legitimation-that of defending "Western Christian civilization." It was under this umbrella that military groups and religious actors faced each other and/or established alliances. In this cultural politics, religious actors that had previously been excluded from the power game sought to support and/or be recognized by the state as allies in the construction of a belief in the legitimacy of the dictatorships."

The motivation of civil servants to serve the public has gained considerable attention among public administration scholars and practitioners. The obvious substantive interpretation of serving the general interest is at odds with public service motivation being predominantly applied instrumentally, as a means to attain employee and organizational performance. There is a comparable situation with the oath of office, which can be regarded as a highly symbolic indicator for civil service motivation as such. The oath of office is regarded predominantly as an integrity tool, at the expense of its embedded substantive meanings. We will argue that in both cases there is a risk for a blind spot for adverse effects, that is, unwanted outcomes and the annihilation of exactly the social significance of the phenomenon in question. The lesson is that public service motivation has to be analyzed from a more encompassing perspective, acknowledging the interlocking of instrumental usage and substantive meaning. In organizational practice public service motivation (and the oath of office) should be used with care in order to warrant successful and meaningful deployment.

Haug pursues two objectives in this essay. First, he wants to develop a better understanding of the global conflicts at the beginning of the twenty-first century. To reach that understanding, it is, he argues, necessary to get beyond the crude empiricist language of the mainstream. Secondly, therefore, he elaborates and further develops certain key aspects of Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony (consensual leadership through multilateralism vs. mere supremacy, "hegemonic sacrifice," etc.) in order better to grasp the lines of conflicts in national as well as international politics. Haug takes as his starting point the guiding question of a 2006 conference in Athens, namely whether the current political conjuncture should be interpreted as one of imperialism or, in Hardt and Negri's sense, as empire. He recasts this question from one of interpretation to one of history, and in so doing he rearticulates the concepts of empire vs. imperialism. He sees transnational high-tech capitalism as having arrived at a crossroads. One path from this crossroads, he argues, leads to rival imperialisms; and the other path leads to the formation of a regulated world market flanked by world ecological and social politics, to, in short, an "empire" of transnational capitalism. The big question underlying Haug's project is this: Will the United States succeed, after the political, military, and economic debacle of the phase of the unilateral "imperialist" politics of George W. Bush, in recovering a political leadership role in the world? The effort of the United States under President Obama to do so must contend with the Bush legacy, consisting of two unwinnable wars, a deep economic crisis that began as a financial crisis, and a politically and culturally divided nation. Haug's essay does not pretend to answer this larger question; its more modest purpose is foundational, that is, to articulate the question more clearly and to establish the prerequisites and criteria for a pro