Rethinking crises and the accretion of executive power: the “War on Terror” and conditionality evidence from seven political systems

External shocks to democratic systems are likely to threaten the stability of relations between the executive and the representative assembly. This article investigates the impact of the so-called “war on terror” on executive-assembly relations in comparative perspective. We analyze data from seven countries, which varied in terms of form of government, level of democracy, culture, social structure, and geographic location, to evaluate its effects. We find that whereas in some systems the “war on terror” altered the balance of power between the executive and the assembly, in other cases the extant balance of power was preserved. We postulate various conditions under which the constitutionally sanctioned balance of power is most likely to be preserved in times of crisis.

Handling the transfer of power: a note on the 1964 origins of the Douglas‐Home rules

Opposition is rarely a good preparation for government. The only post‐war government to enter office confident, well‐acquainted with the Civil Service and with a fund of administrative experience to draw on was the Attlee administration formed in 1945. The longer a party spends in opposition the more these assets disappear. Labour, by the end of the long period of Conservative rule in 1951–64, was largely unfamiliar with the burdens of office. This formed the background to the formulation of the Douglas‐Home rules, whereby informal contact is permitted between the Civil Service and the Opposition in advance of a general election. Since 1964 this arrangement has gradually become more extensive (especially after Neil Kinnock complained that the period for contact was too brief during the run‐up to the 1992 election) and more formalised. In late 1993 John Major agreed that contacts could be made from early 1996 in advance of the next election, rather than only during the last six months of a parliament, as had by then become the convention.’ The object of this short paper is, however, to explain how these rules originated.

The relation between content providers and distributors: Lessons from the regulation of television distribution in the United Kingdom

Using the United Kingdom (UK) as a case study, this article analyses the growing commercial and regulatory significance of broadcaster-distributor relations within the contemporary television industry. The first part of the article argues that despite important changes in broadcast delivery technology, more recently shaped by the growth of the Internet, and the associated growth of options of receiving television content, the traditional delivery platforms (digital terrestrial, satellite and cable) remain by far the preferred choice for viewers in Britain. At the same time, public service broadcasters continue to be the biggest investors in domestic original non-sport content and account for over half of all television viewing. The strength of PSBs in content and their growing reliance on commercial proprietary subscription platforms (cable and satellite) and gradually on the Internet presents challenges in the nexus between broadcasters and distributors. The article focuses on the debate over retransmission fees between PSBs and Sky, and on the question of whether Sky should be required to offer some of its premium content to rival pay-TV platforms. These two examples highlight the impact regulatory intervention can have on the balance of power between broadcasters and distributors. The article concludes that such debates concerning the commercial relations between content providers and distributors will remain pivotal and become more heated given that similar issues are raised in the Internet environment.

Efficient low-power design and implementation of IQ-imbalance compensator using early termination

In this paper, we propose a low-complexity architecture for the implementation of adaptive IQ-imbalance compensation in quadrature zero-IF receivers. Our blind IQ-compensation scheme jointly compensates for IQ phase and gain errors without the need for test/pilot tones. The proposed architecture employs early-termination of the iteration process; this enables the powering-down of the parts of the adaptive algorithm thereby saving power. The complexity, in terms of power-down efficiency is evaluated and shows a reduction by 37-50 % for 32-PSK and 37-58 % for 64-QAM modulated signals.

Introduction: the impact of the 'War on Terror' on executive–legislative relations: a global perspective

In democratic polities, constitutional equilibria or balances of power between the executive and the legislature shift over time. Normative and empirical political theorists have long recognised that war, civil unrest, economic and political crises, terrorist attacks, and other events strengthen the power of the executive, disrupt and threaten constitutional politics, and damage democratic institutions: crises require swift action and executives are thought to be more capable than parliaments and legislatures of taking such actions. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 and the ensuing so-called 'war on terror' declared by President Bush clearly constituted a crisis, not only in the United States but also in other political systems, in part because of the US's hegemonic position in defining and shaping many other states' foreign and domestic policies. Dicey, Schmitt, and Rossiter suggest that critical events and political crises inevitably trigger the concentration of (emergency) powers in the hands of the executive. Aristotle and Machiavelli questioned the inevitability of this process. This article and the articles that follow in this Special Issue utilise empirical evidence, through the use of case studies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, Israel, Italy and Indonesia, to address this debate. Specifically, the issue explores to what extent the external shock or crisis of 9/11 (and other terrorist attacks) and the ensuing 'war on terror' significantly changed the balance of executive-legislative relations from t (before the crisis) to t+1 (after the crisis) in these political systems, all of which were the targets of actual or foiled terrorist attacks. The most significant findings are that the shock of 9/11 and the 'war on terror' elicited varied responses by national executives and legislatures/parliaments and thus the balance of executive-legislative relations in different political systems; that, therefore, executive-legislative relations are positive rather than zero-sum; and that domestic political contexts conditioned these institutional responses.