According to some, the modern mass media have a malign effect on modern democracy, tending to induce political apathy, alienation, cynicism and a loss of social capital – in a word, ‘mediamalaise’. Some theorists argue that this is the result of media content, others that it is the consequence of the form of the media, especially television. According to others, the mass media, in conjunction with rising educational levels, help to inform and mobilize people politically, making them more knowledgeable and understanding. This study investigates the mobilization and mediamalaise hypotheses, and finds little to support the latter. Reading a broadsheet newspaper regularly is strongly associated with mobilization, while watching a lot of television has a weaker association of the same kind. Tabloid newspapers and general television are not strongly associated with measures of mediamalaise. It seems to be the content of the media, rather than its form which is important.

How should society structure income redistribution so as to correct for ineliminable inequalities in marketable talent? This article explores the strengths and weaknesses of an ‘egalitarian earnings subsidy scheme’ (ESS) in which individuals receive (or pay) a subsidy (or tax) for each pound earned based on the difference between their earnings potential and their society’s average earnings potential. ESS corrects for brute luck inequality in earnings potentials in a well-targeted fashion; implements an attractive conception of reciprocity; and, in contrast to an alternative lump-sum tax proposal, does not entail the ‘slavery of the talented’. However, any practicable version of ESS may undermine at least one other egalitarian objective – that of maintaining equality of status amongst unequally talented citizens. As a status-friendly alternative, we might try to approximate ESS through a more conventional redistribution scheme using taxes and subsidies that implicitly ‘tag’ low- and high-ability individuals. While it is difficult to draw any firm policy conclusions, it seems clear that the idea of talent-based taxes and subsidies on the model of ESS should occupy a more prominent place in our thinking about tax–benefits policy to tackle earnings inequality.

This article supports two theoretical changes to models of comparative economic voting. The first is that the distinction between expected and unexpected components of inflation and economic growth is important. We posit that voters are primarily concerned with unexpected inflation and unexpected growth since these changes have real income effects and serve as better indicators of government competence. Empirical analyses of data from nineteen industrialized nations in 1970–94 reveal stronger electoral effects for the unexpected components of inflation and growth than for their overall levels. The second innovation is the relaxation of the assumption of homoscedasticity, which led to the finding that the relationship between economic factors and incumbent vote has become more volatile over time and is less volatile when policy-making responsibility is more obscured.

The article focuses on citizens’ satisfaction with the German democratic political system. The empirical analysis reported supports the argument that the performance of the economy and the government affect popular satisfaction with the regime. In the East, satisfaction with the regime remains very low and dissatisfaction has spread into West Germany. In the West, the sources of this dissatisfaction are both economic developments and government performance; citizens modify their views on the system as a consequence of the government’s and the economy’s successes and failures. The dynamic is similar in the East. Economic strains, and the perception that the federal government is not making sufficient efforts to equalize living standards, have kept the Eastern population from committing themselves to the new unified political system.

In 1976, when European debates within urban theory were dominated by neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian approaches to cities as sites for the provision of social and welfare services, the very different notion of ‘the city as growth machine’ slipped into the US urban studies lexicon with the publication of Harvey Molotch's article of the same name. In 1983, the year in which Castells brought the radical phase of European urban studies to a halt with a famous warning against ‘the useless construction of abstract grand theory’, the concept of an urban regime had a similarly unobtrusive birth when the phrase was used by Fainstein and Fainstein to describe ‘the circle of powerful elected officials and top administrators’ in US city government. Had the story ended there it is unlikely that the world – especially outside North America – would have heard much more of urban regimes and growth machines. As it has turned out, though, from the late 1980s onwards urban scholars have hardly seemed able to hear enough about these two approaches within US urban political economy.