Raj ChariTrinity College Dublin | TCD · Department of Political Science
Raj Chari
PhD Queen's (Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
About
52
Publications
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Introduction
I am a comparative political scientist whose work has examined developments in Europe and North America, using quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. A first main area of research focuses on comparative public policy. Here I have examined lobbying activity and interest groups (including international trends in regulating lobbyists) as well as competition policy. A second area of research analyses political parties and elections.
Publications
Publications (52)
A substantial aspect of scientific research involves the exercise of linking concepts to observations using measurements. This exercise has often raised the question among researchers of whether or not measurements ‘truly’ and ‘reliably’ capture ideas and observations. In this paper, we wish to address this question by setting out a methodological...
We know that European countries privatized in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. But what happened to these firms? This book conceptualizes two types of firms emerging after privatization. The ‘Alphas’ are today’s European and global giants, merging with or acquiring other firms, while the ‘Betas’ were taken-over by Alphas or other sectoral leaders. Exami...
How many times did we see that governments worldwide had no idea of which policies to pursue during COVID-19? To prevent that from happening again, we are very excited to announce the publication of the book Viruses, Vaccines, and Antivirals: Why Politics Matters. Authored by Isabel Rozas and myself, the book examines the politics and science of CO...
There are more than 2,000 interest groups in Ireland that play a key role in policy development. This paper explores which of these groups have access to Irish policymaking across various political arenas. It does so by examining original data from 2018, gained through large-N survey research on over 300 active interest groups, including business g...
Regulating lobbying is a rather recent concept in the majority of EU member states. Currently, only seven member states (France, Ireland, Lithuania, Austria, Poland, Slovenia and the UK) have legislation on lobbying activities, as well as a mandatory register of lobbyists. The most recent law has been adopted in France on 8 November 2016. Lobbying...
estern European states privatized throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Implicit in the literature is the idea that with privatization the ‘state’ was out of the economy. However, emerging literature on the relationship between business and politics has shown the importance of the state in helping firms expand globally. Yet, few studies have exami...
The recent financial and economic crisis has forced governments and people from around the globe to ask some hard questions about how democracy has evolved. Some of these are old questions; others are new. Is democracy really the most desirable form of government? How democratic is policy-making during the financial and economic crisis? Why do vote...
The authors identify and examine the most promising political science theories for explaining the financial and economic crisis that started in 2007. Surveying the literature on lobbying, elite integration, ideological hegemony, structural state dependence and varieties of capitalism, they review the potential contributions of these different theor...
This article examines the causes of the financial and economic crisis in the Republic of Ireland. It first reviews the crisis in advanced capitalist democracies and then situates the Irish case in this context. In the section thereafter, it relates existing narratives and other evidence to the different theoretical explanations surveyed by Bernhage...
Throughout the liberal democratic world, the practice of lobbying governments and policy makers is considered integral to the process of policy formulation. Lobbying in Ireland has come to the fore of public policy debates given the catastrophic collapse of the Irish economy since late 2008 and the role played by lobbyists in contemporary Irish pol...
In this research note we describe the introduction and evolution of Australia's approach to regulating lobbyists. We examine how the lobbying regulations in place across Australia today compare with each other, as well as with lobbying regulations in some other countries around the world. The regulations in each Australian jurisdiction are classifi...
The article first argues that the influence of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) policy, the goals of 'right-wing' party members and the demands of economic elites are interrelated in explaining the pursuit of labour market deregulation by the Spanish socialist government in 1994. It then provides lessons for Spanish policy-making, potentially appl...
n an age of corruption, sleaze and scandal associated with financial crisis and economic downturn across the globe, citizens want more transparency and accountability in politics. This book examines a principal means by which this can be achieved: the regulation of lobbyists.
It provides innovative insights into lobbying regulations across four co...
This paper initially examines the history and evolution of lobbying regulations in Australia at both the federal and state levels. This examination is conducted in a comparative context, setting the codes of conduct in place in various Australian jurisdictions against each other, as well as against the lobbying regulations in place in other countri...
This paper will discuss how democracies across the world have sought to regulate the behavior of lobbyists and what impact this has had on transparency in these political systems. This is an area of political science which the literature has largely ignored, or focused on in a blinkered fashion, as scholars have tended to examine lobbying regulatio...
Many studies of the policy process in Spain use distinct periods as an organising framework for analysis, and this approach implies that the process itself changes according to the different periods in question. However, we argue that this ‘periodisation’ approach fails to draw an appropriate distinction between policy choices and outcomes, on the...
The literature on the external relations of the EU often emphasises the normative nature of the Union’s policies. It follows that specific policy initiatives such as the Euro–Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) are then assessed according to normative parameters. This paper challenges this assumption and argues that a realist interpretation of the Unio...
By any standards, democracy in Spain since the late 1970s has been a signal success. Following a stultifying dictatorship that lasted from 1939 until 1975, Spain’s economic and political development has been little short of remarkable. Spain’s economic transformation, which started to emerge during the latter years of the dictatorship, strengthened...
Lobbying is central to the democratic process. Yet, only four political systems have lobbying regulations: the United States, Canada, Germany and the EU (most particularly, the European Parliament). Despite the many works offering individual country analysis of lobbying legislation, a twofold void exists in the literature. Firstly, no study has off...
The traditional literature on interest group behaviour presumes that private interests develop lobbying strategies based on the principle of effective allocation of resources. However, nearly 400 private interest groups actively lobby the Council of Europe, a classical intergovernmental organisation with weak decision-making powers, where no signif...
EU policy shapes all areas of our lives -- from our money, to our food, to our welfare. Yet we know little about how EU decisions are made, and who benefits from them. This book is a critical guide to the policies of the EU. Raj Chari and Sylvia Kritzinger argue that there is an agenda that underlies EU policy making. Some policies -- those that ai...
Recent international events sparked renewed academic interest for the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, particularly towards the Arab world. Usually, much is made of the normative power of the Union and of its role in exporting the values of democratic governance and human rights. It follows that the policies of the Union in spec...
This paper analyses the formulation of the EU Merger Control Regulation (MCR) and its implementation via the 1992 Nestlé/Perrier merger. It offers two arguments. First, these phases of policy development occurred in ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ policy communities found at the supranational level of governance. The first community consists of larger Commissi...
This paper analyses Italian parties' manifestos for national and European elections from 1979 to 1999 with the 'Wordscore' programme in order to gauge whether party positions with regard to the European Union have changed and whether the salience of the European Union has increased. Results indicate that, although there is no sign of increased sali...
Set in the context of the larger literature on regionalist parties and specifically on the Italian Northern League, this paper examines and explains why the party moved from Euro-positivism to Euroscepticism. Drawing on concepts raised in the larger comparative politics literature, five explanations of this U-turn towards Europe are evaluated. It i...
Introduction The broad objective of this paper is to better understand how national governments form their policy position on the Draft Constitutional proposal by analysing developments in Spain. It does so in three sections. After first considering different (theoretical) issues raised in Spanish policy-making literature, Section 1 examines the Sp...
For students of EU public policy, the EU's reaction during and after the Iraq War may represent the same story of impotence that has historically plagued the EU when trying to speak with a single voice and act with a united front during a major world crisis. Despite some achievements with the EU's Common and Foreign Security Policy (CFSP) of the ea...
Set in the context of the literature on patterns of organised interests in Western Europe, this article has two objectives. The first is to examine the policy-making process when Irish state enterprises were sold and to characterise this process in light of three different theoretical patterns, namely pluralism, corporatism and elitism. The second...
Policy Scandals': A Spanish Case THE STUDY OF POLITICAL SCANDALS IS OF SIGNIFICANCE TO STUDENTS of comparative government and politics for two related reasons. First, is the importance of scandals in understanding the evolution of the political system. As Moodie argues, 'to explore the extent and nature of discreditable events. .. in any political...
This paper considers the political activity of economic actors in what we refer to as ‘overlap issues.’ Such issues consist of two separate, but related, domestic and supranational decisions that are taken at both levels of European governance. Examined here are the domestic level privatisation policy-making processes in Spain, France and Ireland,...
Eugene McGregor (Journal of Politics35, 459–478, 1973) recognized a regularity in multi-ballot leadership conventions in the United States. He hypothesized that the change in absolute votes between the first and the second ballot could be used to forecast the eventual winner of a leadership race. When the McGregor model is applied to the Canadian m...
Few students of contemporary Spanish politics have sought to explain the seemingly paradoxical commitment to privatisation of state enterprises by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). Focusing on the sales of two major companies (Seat and Enasa) formerly belonging to Spain's National Industry Institute (INI), this essay argues that INI priv...
Lobbying is central to the democratic process. Yet, only four political systems have lobbying regulations: the United States, Canada, Germany and the EU (European Parliament). Despite works offering individual country analysis of lobbying legislation, a two-fold void exists in the literature. Firstly, no study has offered a comparative analysis cla...
Written evidence submitted to a Parlimentary Committe of the United Kingdom Government
Projects
Projects (4)
This series addresses the ‘COVID-phenomenon’ - more than a viral infection, COVID-19 has impacted how scientists find solutions, what governments do, and how societies react. With this multi-dimensional impact in mind, this innovative new Series published by De Gruyter (and edited by Raj Chari and Isabel Rozas) captures the interdisciplinary investigation that seeks to understand this phenomenon and address future challenges should another pandemic or health emergency arise.
If you are interested in contributing to the series with your own book, please go to www.viral-politics.com and click on 'Book Series.'
Along with Isabel Rozas (TCD, Chemistry) and an amazing group of young scholars, we are delighted to announce our team is investigating the Politics and Science of Covid-19 in an exciting new project, Viral-Politics. Our research will focus on developments across the globe in the US, Canada, Ireland, the UK, Spain, India, South Africa, Chile and New Zealand. For more on the objectives of this interdisciplinary project that brings together political science and medicinal chemistry, the members of the team, and links to data you may be interested in, please go to our newly developed webpage: www.viral-politics.com
Across the globe, governments are developing policies that increase transparency and accountability in politics. A key initiative of this is the regulation of lobbying. Building on the landmark first edition, Regulating lobbying updates its examination of all jurisdictions with lobbying regulations, from the Americas to Europe, Middle East, Asia and Australia. It provides unique insights into how the regulations compare and contrast with one another, and offers an up-to-date theoretical classification of different regulatory environments.
The book comprehensively examines jurisdictions worldwide and investigates whether some measurements of the robustness of lobbying laws are more valid and reliable than others. This second edition covers more countries than its predecessor, and builds upon the authors’ experience of advising governments globally in order to provide a no-nonsense guide on how to make or amend a lobbying law. This book will appeal to an academic readership, to those teaching courses on lobbying and regulatory politics and to those researching in the field. It will also be of great interest to practitioners, including legislators, civil servants and lobbyists.
