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Analyzing data obtained from the literature and our own calculations, significant differences were found among countries in their levels of class voting. The Scandinavian countries had the highest and Canada and the USA the lowest levels of class voting. Since the 1950s, there was a decline in almost all countries in the level of class voting. In this article, several hypotheses were deduced from a limited number of individual assumptions, each purporting to explain the differences among and declining trends within countries. Testing these hypotheses with multilevel techniques revealed that differences among countries can best be explained by their population's religious-ethnic-linguistic diversity, and by the union density within countries. The decline in most countries can best be explained by the rise in their standard of living. Furthermore, a rise in the percentage of union members, especially among the nonmanual classes, accelerated the decline in the level of class voting in some countries. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

Abstract. Analyzing data obtained from the literature and our own calculations, significant differences were found among countries in their levels of class voting. The Scandinavian countries had the highest and Canada and the USA the lowest levels of class voting. Since the 1950s, there was a decline in almost all countries in the level of class voting. In this article, several hypotheses were deduced from a limited number of individual assumptions, each purporting to explain the differences among and declining trends within countries. Testing these hypotheses with multilevel techniques revealed that differences among countries can best be explained by their population's religious–ethnic–linguistic diversity, and by the union density within countries. The decline in most countries can best be explained by the rise in their standard of living. Furthermore, a rise in the percentage of union members, especially among the nonmanual classes, accelerated the decline in the level of class voting in some countries.

This paper discusses how women's position and opportunities in farming can be improved, and how women can gain (increased) influence in agriculture. It examines empowerment as a possible strategy for change. This approach is derived from feminist writings and grassroots experience of third‐world women. It focuses on transformation starting from the grassroots, or the 'powerless.' Is empowerment a strategy for change for farm women in western industrialized countries? Despite inherent contradictions and dilemmas, is argued that empowerment can contribute to improving women's position and opportunities in farming and also give them increased influence in agriculture and rural communities.

A thorough understanding of the Arab oil-embargo and production cuts of 1973/74 is obscured by attempts to determine its "success" or "failure" on the basis of a simplistic sender/target model. By contrast, this article analyzes the embargo as a communicative process and explores how both the embargoing and the embargoed countries constantly tried to define the contents, purpose, and legitimacy of the measures. Apart from its initially stated goal of pressuring the United States, Western Europe, and Japan to support the Arab countries in the conflict with Israel, various actors in the Arab as well as in the Western world used the embargo for a multitude of different purposes. Their largely symbolic interaction is not secondary for an understanding of the historical significance of the embargo, but the attempts to make use of the "oil-weapon" constituted its very meaning. Adapted from the source document.

Much of the existing historical research discusses the 1973 oil crisis through single national perspectives. In contrast, this article focuses on the multilateral dimension of this far-reaching
event. Starting with the Suez crisis of 1956, it explores the work of the OECD Oil Committee and its High Level Group regarding possible oil crises. However,the crisis mechanisms the OECD developed were not activated when the 1973 oil crisis hit. Thus, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger took the initiative to form a stronger group of oil consuming countries outside the OECD, which should have guaranteed cohesion in the West in future oil crises. Pressured by the United States and expecting advantages from close transatlantic energy cooperation, the other Western industrialized countries, except France, approved of the project. The result was the founding of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in November 1974. Its structure and voting rules reflect the crucial role the United States play in the agency. Therefore, in the context of international relations, the IEA serves as an example of the United States' struggle to maintain its hegemony in the Western camp.

Although the politics of law and order are currently a major issue of debate among criminologists, comparative public policy research has largely neglected it. This article fills that gap by bringing together criminological and public policy theories, and by examining law-and-order policies in twenty Western industrialized countries. It adds to the existing literature in two important ways: it provides a straightforward quantitative test of the existing criminological explanations of law-and-order policies using public spending as the dependent variable; and it shows that governments' partisan ideology matters for law-and-order policies. Government ideology influences how much countries spend on public order and safety, but the effect depends on the budgetary room for manœuvre and the strength of institutional barriers.