Abstract
(a) Central institutions/Institutions centrales
65.368 AARS, Jacob —
This article examines to what degree the movement of elected representatives from local to central level affects the outlook of those who move “upwards”, [using] Sweden and Norway as comparative cases. In both countries, a high share of MPs has served as local councilors before being elected to parliament. According to conventional wisdom, this high share of inter-level mobility would strengthen ties between government tiers. Hence, MPs with local political background are assumed to have greater confidence in the capacities of local government. It turns out that Sweden corresponds to this assumption, while the Norwegian results to some extent contradict the same hypothesis. A number of explanations for the disparate findings are discussed. [R, abr.]
65.369 ADSHEAD, Maura —
This paper presents a study of the Irish experience of EU cohesion policy, to explore what the Irish case can tell us about the conditionality of state's adaptation to EU policy values and practice. Using Bache's (2008) framework for the analysis of Europeanization, Multi-Level Governance and Cohesion policy, the paper finds that Europeanization has resulted in a reorientation of domestic policies, practices and preferences in the Irish case, but the consequence has been the creation of Multi-Level Governance Type II, not I. The governance changes that have occurred have been ad hoc and messy, and central government's response to them has been short-termist and financially expedient. This raises concerns about the sustainability of knowledge transfer impacts from Irish Multi-Level Governance and partnership projects within the formal system of Irish government. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.1031]
65.370 AHRENS, Joachim; STARK, Manuel —
Although the government of Kazakhstan has largely ignored Washington Consensus-type recommendations for policy reform, the country exhibits remarkable economic growth, stable (though non-democratic) political conditions and a strong presidency. Thanks to increased world market prices for natural resources, the government has also been able to freely choose its public policies and construct politico-institutional structures of its own devising. These have helped it generate not only political stability but also social and economic progress. This system may lead one to ask whether Kazakhstan is an emerging developmental state. This article sheds light on the hybrid character of the Kazakh model, at once an ideal type and a reflection of national specificities. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.590]
65.371 AINSWORTH, Scott, et al. —
We explore the sensitivity of [the US] Congress to statements of administration policy (SAPs) and signing statements in the struggle with the executive over policy. We hypothesize that the nature and use of objections contained in these presidential communications generates additional congressional oversight. To test whether this happens, we developed a dataset with all SAPs, signing statements, and congressional oversight hearings from 1997 through 2007. The results indicate that the type and number of objections raised in presidential communications affects congressional oversight activity. [R]
65.372 ALDRICH, John H.; MONTGOMERY, Jacob M. —
We challenge the conclusion that the preferences of members of [the US] Congress are best represented as existing in a low-dimensional space. We conduct Monte Carlo simulations altering assumptions regarding the dimensionality and distribution of member preferences and scale the resulting roll-call matrices. Our simulations show that party polarization generates misleading evidence in favor of low dimensionality. This suggests that the increasing levels of party polarization in recent Congresses may have produced false evidence in favor of a low-dimensional policy space. We re-examine the historical roll-call record and find evidence suggesting that the low dimensionality of the contemporary Congress may reflect party polarization rather than changes in the dimensionality of policy conflict. [R, abr.]
65.373 ALVAREZ-ROSETE, Arturo; MAYS, Nicholas —
Through a case study of the formulation of the English NHS Plan 2000, this article investigates which of two competing models of the British policy process — the Differentiated Polity and Asymmetric Power Models— better describes the reality of major NHS reform policy-making under New Labour. The process of developing the Plan showed signs of a more open policy process, seemingly closer to the DPM. There was contestability of policy advice and limited involvement of the medical profession through its representative bodies. However, the process was tightly controlled and personally led by the Secretary of State and his advisers, with the direct involvement of the Prime Minister throughout. Two key moments of interest group involvement — the Modernization Action Teams and the signing of the Plan by health sector organizations— were marked by power asymmetries. [R, abr.]
65.374 ARÈS, Mathieu —
Chinese-Canadian energy partnership springs from a mutual strategic dependence. For the Canadian government, the securing of international markets and the development of transportation capacity are key to both government action and foreign policy. This is the kind of context in which China has been given priority, even though the idea of a single state's control in that strategic sector is a serious reason for doubt such an attitude. For Chinese authorities, beyond its symbolic importance, the Canadian authorities’ permission for Nexen to be bought by the national company China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) represents both a test for the new conservative policy and a specific form of the new strategic partnership between China and Canada. [R, trad.] [See Abstr. 65.1165]
65.375 ARNOLD, Felix; KAUDER, Björn; POTRAFKE, Niklas —
We examine moonlighting by politicians in Germany. In July 2007, the German Supreme Court adjudicated that MPs have to publish details of their outside earnings. Using panel-data models, we investigate how outside earnings are correlated with absence and parliamentary activity. The results do not indicate that outside earnings are correlated with absence rates and speeches; but they do suggest that outside earnings are somewhat negatively correlated with oral contributions, interpellations, and group initiatives. We propose that the results for Germany do not corroborate evidence on other countries such as Italy because party discipline, institutions, and political cultures differ across countries. [R]
65.376 ARNOLD, Gwen —
This article investigates the conditions under which government officials who implement policy integrate the best available science into regulatory practice. It examines the adoption of rapid wetland assessment tools, a type of science policy innovation, by street-level bureaucrats in six US Mid-Atlantic states. These bureaucrats operate in relatively opaque and discretion-laden institutional settings. The analysis of an original survey of state wetland officials shows that these officials are more likely to adopt tools when they have more opportunities to learn tool-related information and practice norms. Bureaucrats’ adoption of this class of science policy innovations appears facilitated by peer communication via network ties, on-the-job experience and incentives and disincentives associated with bureaucrats’ organizational contexts and operating environments. [R]
65.377 AYTAÇ, S. Erdem —
Existing studies on the allocation of resources across multiple electoral districts focus primarily on a setting of two-party competition and consider only the core versus swing district hypotheses. This framework does not correspond to the actual electoral setting in many countries and ignores valuable information furnished by a context of multiparty competition. Compared with two-party elections, multiparty elections provide more information about the underlying distribution of the ideological preferences of voters in a district; this information could be utilized by the incumbent party to maximize electoral returns. I argue that a setting of multiparty competition presents incentives to the incumbent party to channel disproportionately more resources to districts with an ideologically close challenger. Systematic evidence from the Conditional Cash Transfer program spending in 878 districts of Turkey from 2005 to 2008 supports this hypothesis. [R, abr.]
65.378 BABAN, Feyzi —
Although there has been a relaxing attitude in Turkey towards wearing headscarf in the public sphere, the controversy surrounding the visibility and use of the headscarf has often been read through modernity/tradition dichotomy, which sees the use of headscarf by women as a threat to modernity by religious subjectivities. The principal reason for this reading is that the citizenship regime in Turkey has not been simply about defining a framework of membership to a political community but rather has been used to construct modern subjectivity. This article dislocates the headscarf controversy from this dichotomous reading by moving it into the larger framework of citizenship politics. It argues that we need to identify the wearing of the headscarf as a specific “act of citizenship” that challenges dominant citizenship practices. [R, abr.]
65.379 BADER, Max —
Flawed electoral legislation in post-Soviet states has facilitated the conduct of undemocratic elections. This article argues that the low quality of electoral legislation in the region results in large part from a process of “authoritarian diffusion”, whereby the election laws of the post-Soviet states extensively borrow and adapt from Soviet laws and post-communist Russian laws. The authorities of most post-Soviet states have routinely disregarded recommendations by the OSCE and the Venice Commission to improve electoral legislation. Besides presenting evidence of “authoritarian diffusion” across the post-Soviet area, the article highlights the enduring impact of the Soviet legacy and of Russia's relatively hegemonic position in the region. [R]
65.380 BAHCHELI, Tozun; NOEL, Sid —
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders have been negotiating to create a “bizonal, bi-communal” federation over a span of thirty-six years, but despite support from the UN and other intermediaries, no agreement has yet been reached. This article examines the reasons why the many attempts to negotiate a “federal solution” have failed. Our argument is that dyadic federations have inherent flaws that make them difficult to operate successfully, and even if the two communities could somehow be persuaded to form such a union, it would not be viable as a system of government. [R]
65.381 BAKER, Lucy; NEWELL, Peter; PHILLIPS, Jon —
This paper explores the political economy of energy transition in South Africa. An economic model based around a powerful “minerals-energy complex” that has previously been able to provide domestic and foreign capital with cheap and plentiful coal-generated electricity is no longer economically or environmentally sustainable. The paper analyzes the struggle over competing energy visions, infrastructures and political agendas in order to generate insights into the governance and financing of clean energy transitions in South Africa. It provides both a rich empirical account of key policy developments aimed at enabling such a transition and provides reflections on how best to theorize the contested politics of energy transitions. [R]
65.382 BAKKE, Kristin M., et al. —
De facto states, functional on the ground but unrecognized by most states, have long been black boxes for systematic empirical research. This study investigates de facto states’ internal legitimacy — people's confidence in the entity itself, the regime, and institutions. While internal legitimacy is important for any state, it is particularly important for de facto states, whose lack of external legitimacy has made internal legitimacy integral to their quest for recognition. We propose that the internal legitimacy of de facto states depends on how convincing they are to their “citizens” as state-builders. Using original data from a 2010 survey in Abkhazia, we examine this argument based on respondent perceptions of security, welfare, and democracy. [R, abr.]
65.383 BALE, Tim —
Under pressure from voters, and from other parties, Europe's center-left has had to re-evaluate its position on migration. The UK Labour party is no exception. Public concern about large-scale immigration clearly contributed to its heavy defeat at the 2010 general election. Since then it has been slowly but surely hardening its stance on the issue, although this is by no means unprecedented: while the rise of UKIP [UK Independence Party] may have upped the ante in recent months, Labour has a long history of adjusting policy in this area so as to remain competitive with its main rival, the Conservative party. Labour is now asking itself whether it will be possible to do this without challenging one of the fundamental precepts of EU membership — the right of free movement of people. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.119]
65.384 BARBER, Stephen —
Taking as its point of departure Matthews’ “Constitutional stretching: coalition governance and the Westminster model” [ibid. 49(4), Nov. 2011: 486–509; Abstr. 62.1821], this article draws on the experience of coalition government in Westminster to review, categorize and consider how power-sharing has necessitated a rethink of what is the British constitution. Defining constitutional stretching as being about the sustained operation of two-party government within the Westminster model, it shows that traditional practices around manifestos, collective responsibility and the prerogative have been adjusted since 2010 in order to facilitate functioning administration. The article observes that some stretching is not entirely novel with precedents to be found in earlier single party administrations. It further argues that while conventions have been strained, the Cameron/Clegg government survived, suggesting a need to adjust our understanding of constitutional concepts. [R, abr.]
65.385 BARREDA, Mikel —
This paper presents a comparative analysis of the quality of democratic accountability mechanisms in Latin America. It reviews the concept of democratic accountability quality and its operationalization by means of factor-analysis. Three quality indicators are identified corresponding to the types of accountability that prevail in the literature: horizontal, electoral and social. The study reveals considerable differences among the Latin American democracies. Set out below is an exploratory analysis of the factors explaining these differences. The analysis yields three main conclusions: (1) it confirms the usefulness of the model; (2) the quality of each type of accountability is explained by specific factors: no one factor explains all three cases; (3) a different logic behind social accountability mechanisms is detected as compared with the other two types of accountability mechanisms. [R]
65.386 BECKER, Jonathan —
Russia has adopted a neo-authoritarian media system that has more in common with similar non-democratic systems around the world than with the Soviet system that once prevailed on the same territory. Though the picture for media freedom in Russia is bleak today, the types of control imposed are significantly different from [those of] the Soviet era in terms of breadth, depth, and mechanisms of control, and the role of ideology. Fearing the kind of revolutions that took place in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, Russian President V. Putin is imposing tight restrictions, setting an example for authoritarian regimes around the world. [R] [See Abstr. 65.508]
65.387 BECKER, Manuel —
Turkey's accession to the EU is a contentious issue and led to explicitly controversial debates in the German Bundestag during the period of the red-green coalition between 1998 und 2005. The historical and moral responsibility as well as the historical and cultural roots of Europe were the two major fields of argument. Formal argumentation strategies applied in the debate are historical superevaluation, historical comparison and arguing by scientific and intellectual authority. A main problem in arguing with history in political debates is the lack of profound rationality. Most historical arguments used in politics do not meet scientific standards. Interestingly enough, all three possibilities in answering the question whether Turkey should be a member of the EU (positive, negative, neutral) were underlined by historical arguments. [R, abr.]
65.388 BEDOCK, Camille —
The article deals with the issue of the frequency of the reform of democratic institutions in consolidated democracies. It is based on a dataset comprising six dimensions of democratic reforms between 1990 and 2010 in 18 Western European democracies. It demonstrates the crucial importance of the political context to explain the frequency of these reforms. In the long run, democracies where the level of political support is the lowest reform their institutions more. In the short run, reforms in a given legislature are more numerous when preceded by a political alternation or a rise of the level of electoral volatility. I show that the political determinants of democratic reforms are more relevant to explain the frequency of reform than the degree of institutional constraints inherent to each political system. [R]
65.389 BEIER, J. Marshall; MUTIMER, David —
Beginning with a recurrent discussion about the choice between two imagined “Star Trek” technologies, the “holodeck” and the “transporter”, this article explores how popular culture can be revealing of ways in which political possibilities are variously made and foreclosed by dint of deeply held but under-interrogated ideational commitments circulating in the mundane and carried forward by what might seem unlikely voices. Tracing a few such commitments as they pertain to the legitimization and delegitimization of political subjecthood, we examine the political stakes of questions of agency and delusion through what were initially reported to have been the June 2006 suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the crisis that emerged with respect to multiple hunger strikes at that same facility some seven years later. [R, abr.]
65.390 BENCZES, István —
The fiscal rules of the Stability and Growth Pact on deficit and debt have become the focus of many scholarly works in the past 15 years. The study of domestic fiscal rules, however, has remained a neglected part of research. The new Treaty on the EMU's Stability, Cooperation and Governance (TSCG) makes the analysis of domestic fiscal rules highly relevant since the Treaty requires member states to adopt a balanced budget rule. By analyzing domestic fiscal rules in EU member states on the one hand and the fiscal compact on the other hand, the paper intends to show that without a strong political commitment and national ownership, no fiscal rule can be effective enough. Therefore, the new TSCG should be strengthened in this particular aspect. [R]
65.391 BÉRAUD-SUDREAU, Lucie —
In 2000, the processing of arms-export licenses was taken from the Ministry of Defense department in charge of arms-export promotion, in order to reinforce control procedures. This reform was cancelled in 2008, with the aim to reinforce export-promotion. How can we explain such a reversal, which coincides with a change of the political party in power, although the literature sees defense policy as unaffected by changes in political majority? [Using] the programmatic approach, this article shows that the content of change is best explained by the politicization by administrative and political actors of the allocation of export control and promotion functions. However, the change in political majority cannot explain the timing of change. For this, it is necessary to study power struggles among actors. [R]
65.392 BERG, Dag-Erik —
The article discusses legal and administrative dimensions that are relevant for comparing development policies for the Scheduled Castes across Indian states. The policies for the Scheduled Castes are subject to more central control than several other policy domains. The article therefore highlights the logic in India's multilevel system of governance while specifying the constitutional meaning of the Scheduled Caste category, its related terms and discursive relevance. This provides a background to outline the relevant institutional dimensions at the center of India's political system and the level of the regional states. The article suggests that the Scheduled Castes Development Corporations provide a useful basis to develop interstate comparisons. [R, abr.]
65.393 BERLINSKI, Samuel; DEWAN, Torun; VAN COPPENOLLE, Brenda —
Using evidence from the Second Reform Act, introduced in the UK in 1867, we analyze the impact of extending the vote to the unskilled urban population on the composition of the Cabinet and the background characteristics of MPs. Exploiting the sharp change in the electorate caused by franchise extension, we separate the effect of reform from that of underlying constituency-level traits correlated with the voting population. Our results are broadly supportive of a claim first made by H. Laski (1928): there is no causal effect of the reform on the political role played by the British aristocracy. [R]
65.394 BERNECKER, Andreas —
Does stiffer electoral competition reduce political shirking? I construct a new data-set spanning the years 2005 to 2012 covering biographical and political information about German MPs, including their attendance rates in voting sessions. For the parliament elected in 2009, I show that indeed opposition party MPs who expect to face a close race in their district show significantly and relevantly lower absence rates in parliament beforehand. MPs of governing parties seem not to react significantly to electoral competition. These results are confirmed by an analysis of the parliament elected in 2005, by several robustness checks, and also by employing an instrumental variable strategy exploiting convenient peculiarities of the German electoral system. The study also shows how MPs elected via party lists react to different levels of electoral competition. [R]
65.395 BLACK, Ryan C.; BRYAN, Amanda C. —
When the US Supreme Court sits with an even number of justices participating, there is a risk that the Court will be deadlocked in a tied vote. While this outcome awards the individual respondent with a victory, it also preserves circuit splits and other ambiguities in the law. We examine the conditions under which an even-membered Supreme Court actually results in a tie vote. We argue that the Court recognizes the potentially damaging consequences of 4–4 rulings and seeks to avoid them when those consequences would be most severe. Consistent with that conjecture, we find that ties are less likely when a decision is necessary to resolve a dispute in the lower courts and when cases are important to the executive branch. [R]
65.396 BLACKBOURN, Jessie —
On 11 September 2001, Lord Carlile was appointed as the UK government's first independent reviewer of terrorism legislation under the Terrorism Act 2000. There is a growing body of literature on the role of the courts and parliament in scrutinizing anti-terrorism legislation. There has, however, been no sustained attempt to evaluate either the office of the independent reviewer in general or Lord Carlile's performance within it. Lord Carlile's tenure in office was defined by the first post-9/11 decade. He recently resigned and a new independent reviewer appointed. This article examines the independent reviewer's influence on government policy in the area of pre-charge detention in contrast to other review mechanisms. [R, abr.]
65.397 BODDERY, Scott S.; YATES, Jeff —
Does the identity of a majority opinion-writer affect the level of agreement a [US] Supreme Court decision receives from the public? Using a survey experiment, we manipulate majority opinion authors to investigate whether individuals are willing to agree with Supreme Court opinions authored by ideologically similar justices even though the decisions cut against their self-identified ideological policy preferences. Our study provides insight into the extent to which policy cues — represented by a political institution's policy messenger — affect agreement with a given policy. We find that a messenger effect indeed augments the level of agreement a given Supreme Court case receives. [R]
65.398 BONNAUD, Laure; MARTINAIS, Emmanuel —
Decided under the presidency of N. Sarkozy (2007–2012), the “General Review of Public Policies” has resulted in many administrative reorganizations, including the creation of a large department of sustainable development. The Ministry of Ecology, the Ministry of Infrastructure and part of the Ministry of Industry merged in a new administration, uniting traditionally competing sectors. This article focuses on the effects of this administrative merger on the implementation of environmental policy. It analyzes the implementation of the environmental impact assessment, a dedicated public information policy, and highlights its impact on horizontal coordination, operational procedures and the work of civil servants. [R]
65.399 BOUDIA, Soraya; DEMORTAIN, David —
This article [examines] how risk-analysis, as a framework for science-based decision-making, became a generic tool of government. How have its typical categories and procedures come to be used for such a wide spectrum of health and environmental issues, in a diversity of national and transnational institutional contexts, [until] today? The paper studies the series of attempts to formalize risk-analysis in the 1970s and 1980s, with particular attention to the key steps of the development of the National Research Council's “Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process”, or Red Book. It shows that genericness is an inherent property of the tool, owing to the kind of knowledge on which it is founded, and the highly proceduralized, portable forms it took. [R, abr.]
65.400 BOWEN, Daniel C. —
Many US states require redistricting authorities to follow traditional districting principles (TDPs) like the creation of compact districts and respecting the integrity of county and town boundaries. Reformers, academics, and other redistricting experts have long suggested that following such districting principles may enhance representation. Yet, very few academic studies have empirically examined these expectations. Using two measures of geographical compactness and a new measure of respect for political subdivisions (referred to as coterminosity) created with a geographic information system (GIS), the connection between district boundaries and representation is tested. The results show strong evidence that the use of geographic districting principles can enhance dyadic representation, as more compact and more coterminous districts are associated with more positive evaluations of legislative responsiveness and greater citizen-representative communication. [R, abr.]
65.401 BOWLER, Shaun; ESTERLING, Kevin; HOLMES, Dallas —
Serving on a jury is both a right and a legal obligation for democratic citizens; however, the response rate to jury summonses is low in most jurisdictions. We conducted a randomized control trial in which we mailed various postcard reminders to [US] citizens who had recently received a summons. While we find that all postcard reminders were effective in improving yield compared to a no-postcard condition, we find that “enforcement” postcards reminding citizens that they face fines or jail time for not appearing were more effective than plain reminders or reminders that serving on a jury is a civic duty. Enforcement postcard reminders had a substantially larger causal effect than what is typically found in get-out-the-vote randomized studies. [R, abr.]
65.402 BRONNER, Laura —
Influential theories of democratization emphasize elites’ fear of the redistributive consequences of democratic reform as an important limit on democratization. They also argue that landowners are more likely than capital-owners to fear redistribution, as their assets are less mobile and thus more vulnerable to expropriation. To test these claims on the micro level, this article uses the 1867 UK Reform Act, which doubled the enfranchised population to include much of the urban working class, as a case study. Using an original dataset on the members of the 1865–1868 House of Commons, I find that in fact, the most substantively important variable for votes on democratization was partisanship, which has been neglected by the distributional-conflict literature. Material interests, particularly landowning, do matter, but they are crucially mediated by strategic partisan electoral concerns. [R]
65.403 BRUMMER, Klaus —
The German Bundestag is considered as being among the national parliaments with the most extensive “war powers” worldwide. However, its influence on decisions about the foreign deployment of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, is not only limited by the competencies of the German federal government. Rather, three additional factors pose restrictions on the use of both formal and informal instruments at the disposal of the Bundestag to influence governmental decision making. The occurrence of those restrictions is illustrated by the decision on the participation of the Bundeswehr in the UNIFIL mission. [R, abr.]
65.404 CALLAGHAN, Timothy; JACOBS, Lawrence R. —
As the implementation of health care reform proceeds in the face of ongoing political conflict, variations in [US] state decisions are shaping important aspects of its pace and scope. This article investigates five potential explanations for state implementation of the Medicaid expansion — state party control, economic affluence, the trajectory of established policy, state administrative capacity, and the process of learning from intergovernmental bargaining. Our analysis of fifty states finds, not surprisingly, that party control of government influences state decisions. We also find, however, several additional and striking influences on states — namely, the trajectory of established policy for vulnerable populations and, of particular importance, state learning about the process of intergovernmental bargaining. [R]
65.405 CARSON, Jamie L.; CRESPIN, Michael H.; MADONNA, Anthony J. —
We take advantage of a new source of data providing updates from the Majority Leader's Office that signal the leadership's positions on floor votes. We offer a more nuanced explanation of voting in the US House as our findings suggest that not all procedural votes are created equal. While the most liberal members of the party vote with the leadership on procedural votes at high rates and nearly 100 percent of the time when signaled by the majority leader, moderate members are significantly less likely to support the party and are not responsive to these signals. [R]
65.406 CASADO-ASENSIO, Juan; STEURER, Reinhard —
Complex environmental challenges cut horizontally across sectors and vertically across levels of government. To address them in coordinated and integrated ways, governments have resorted to integrated, multisectoral strategies since the 1990s. After introducing this new governance approach, we describe the policy rationale, prevalence, governance characteristics and performance of three distinct yet thematically related, integrated strategies on sustainable development, climate change mitigation and adaptation in the EU-15 countries. Based on this literature-based synthesis, we highlight their similarities and differences and the lack of linkages between them. The concluding discussion explores options on how to develop integrated strategies further. [R, abr.]
65.407 CASAL BÉRTOA, Fernando; DEEGAN-KRAUSE, Kevin; UCEN, Peter —
This article, a detailed analysis of the content of the legislation on political parties in post-communist Slovakia, constitutes one part of a broad-based attempt to discover the extent to which changes in the patterns of party regulation have affected party system formation and development. In Slovakia, the answer is “not much”, but the process by which this answer emerges can help explain broader patterns. Party organizational and finance regulation in Slovakia made its impact felt only in relatively minor ways at the margins of political conflict, but the rules proved in some contexts to be more than simply party-created reifications of existing practice. [R] [See Abstr. 65.408]
65.408 CASAL BÉRTOA, Fernando; VAN BIEZEN, Ingrid —
Recent years have seen a considerable increase in the scope and magnitude of party regulations. Despite the increased propensity of the modern democratic states to intervene in the activities, organization and behavior of parties, the phenomenon of party regulation has received relatively little systematic and comparative scholarly attention. In order to fill part of the existing gap in the literature, we concentrate on the regulation of political parties in the post-communist democracies of East-Central and Southeast Europe. Our focus is on the formal rules as stipulated in Party Laws, finance laws and national constitutions, while we explore their impact on the party organizations and party systems. [R] [Introduction to a thematic issue of the same title, edited by the authors. See Abstr. 65.407, 409, 465, 477, 552, 559]
65.409 CASAL BÉRTOA, Fernando; WALECKI, Marcin —
In the first stage of democratic transition, Poland adopted a more laissez-faire stance towards the regulation of political parties, a natural response to the former Communist system and a rejection of its restrictions and a fear of a one-party system that could harass the opposition. By the mid-1990s, however, Polish political elite started to recognize the importance of political parties in a modern democracy and the problems related to their functioning and funding. A new development in regulating political parties gradually came about in 1997 as a result of the approval of a new Constitution and Law on Political Parties. This is the story of such legislative change as well as how it has affected the development of both political parties and the party system since 1989. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.408]
65.410 CASTILLO ORTIZ, Pablo José —
In the frame of the crisis which has been hitting our continent for the last years, the main political actors have adopted a number of decisions of enormous impact upon the Spanish and European public law. The aim of this article is to track, to systematize and to analyze the response given by the Spanish academy to these transformations, response which as we will show has been featured by a skeptic reading of the reforms. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1014]
65.411 CEPPARULO, Alessandra, et al. —
Forecast errors in budgetary variables are frequent. When systematic, they are a source of concern, as they signal misconduct in fiscal policymaking, undermine the government's credibility and compromise long-term fiscal sustainability. This paper analyzes the characteristics of fiscal forecasting and implementation errors in Italy using real-time data over the period 1998–2009. Several empirical methods are applied in order to identify the features of policy-makers’ behavior in preparing and implementing annual fiscal policy and to discover potential determinants in the formation of the implementation errors. Our results show that implemented budgetary plans systematically fall short one year ahead of ambitious planned adjustments for the main public finance aggregates. [R, abr.]
65.412 CHARDAS, Anastassios —
This article assesses the influences exerted by EU Cohesion Policy to the patterns of governance of the sub-national actors in Greece and the role played by the latest wave of territorial reforms and the austerity measures introduced following the fiscal crisis of 2010 in these processes. It deploys the theoretical frameworks of Multi-level Governance and the application of the principle of partnership, [which] has been an integral aspect of the regulatory framework governing the Cohesion Policy after all the reforms of the Structural Funds. The aims of the partnership principle are mediated through domestic policy practices which, in the case of Greece, have been highly centralized. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.1031]
65.413 CHRISTIANSEN, Flemming Juul; PEDERSEN, Helene Helboe —
Coalition governance is a challenge for political parties because it involves cooperation and compromises between parties that have different political goals and are competitors in political elections. Coalition coordination is crucial for the intra-coalitional cooperation of the governing parties. A key element in coalition coordination is coalition agreements, which to a varying degree constrain the behavior of the coalition partners. This article explores the share of laws that were precisely defined in government agreements and/or legislative agreements, and sets out to explain variation in this share of coalition agreement-based laws. The analyses are based on unique data on legislative as well as governmental coalition agreements entered by three Danish governments with varying parliamentary strength. This study shows that coalition governance is influenced by government strength. [R, abr.]
65.414 CHU Yin-wah —
This article examines the impact of globalization and democratization on the South Korean and Taiwanese developmental states. In order to examine today's developmental state, the changes in and continuities of “hard” and “soft” institutions as well as politico-structural factors must be studies alongside public policy tools. In the two cases examined here, it emerges that the governments and their administrative apparatus have remained attached to maintaining a guiding role for the state in economic matters. As these states more or less formally (depending on the case) democratized and reorganized their institutions, public policies remained coherent. Yet the state shifted from financial to institutional support: in South Korea, in a small number of industrial sectors; in Taiwan, among a more diverse array of sectors. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.590]
65.415 CITRIN, Jack; LEVY, Morris; WRIGHT, Matthew —
In response to growing demographic diversity, European countries have selectively implemented political multiculturalism, a set of policies that seek to redefine prevailing conceptions of national identity. We explore the consequences of such policies for mass political support. Applying multi-level modeling to the 2002 and 2010 waves of the European Social Survey and analyzing multiple dependent variables including trust in regime institutions and assessments of the government of the day and the political system's performance, we show that the extensive adoption of multicultural policies magnifies the degree to which hostility to immigration is negatively associated with political support. This finding, robust to multiple specifications, is corroborated using European Values Survey data. [R, abr.]
65.416 CLAYTON, Amanda; JOSEFSSON, Cecilia; WANG, Vibeke —
This article charts a new direction in gender-quota research by examining whether female legislators in general, and quota recipients in particular, are accorded respect and authority in plenary debates. We measure this recognition in relation to the number of times an individual MP is referred to by name in plenary debates. We use a unique dataset from the Ugandan parliament to assess the determinants of MP name-recognition in plenary debates over an eight-year period (2001–2008). Controlling for other possible determinants of MP recognition, we find that women elected to reserved seats are significantly less recognized in plenary debates over time as compared to their male and female colleagues in open seats. [R] [See Abstr. 65.167]
65.417 COHEN, Samy —
Although for the first two decades following the establishment of the State of Israel, consensus reigned regarding Tzahal, or the Israeli Defense Forces, today this institution is no longer exempt from public criticism. Its image as the “army of the nation”, a melting pot for generations of immigrants, still flourishes. But this image now only reflects part of the reality and a number of transformations have been accompanied by questions and doubts: What is the weight of the role played by religious soldiers? Are the generals becoming a threat for Israeli democracy? Is it the State which “possesses an army”, or the army which “possesses a State”? [R] [See Abstr. 65.501]
65.418 COLE, Jennifer —
The current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has been widely covered in the global media, as the latest example of a health epidemic that can quickly spread across and beyond countries. While drugs development is needed to counter the virus, the author argues that any successful long-term approach to fighting epidemics must be based on a deeper sociocultural understanding of the dynamics that underpin fragile healthcare systems. [R]
65.419 CORRALES, Javier; PENFOLD, Michael —
More and more Latin American countries have sought to relax or even eliminate presidential term limits. What are the consequences for democracy? [R]
65.420 CULPEPPER, Pepper D. —
This article explores the political economy of reform under the technocratic government of M. Monti. Unlike the technocratic governments of the 1990s, the Monti interregnum was an experiment in unmediated democracy, in which a government is actively supported by neither political parties nor encompassing social groups. Italian political leaders adopted unmediated democracy because of the underlying interest group conflicts in the Italian political economy. Unmediated democrats such as Monti can impose bitter medicine on a stalemated society when it is in a stage of acute crisis, but the passage of longer-term reforms requires a social coalition to support those reforms beyond the critical stage of crisis. Thus the government implemented budget cuts, but liberalization and institutional reform stalled in the face of opposition. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.1051]
65.421 CURINI, Luigi; ZUCCHINI, Francesco —
The role played by legislative committees in parliamentary democracies is directly related to some of their properties. In particular, cohesion — similarity of committee members’ preferences — is the most important non-institutional feature that influences committee working. This non-institutional aspect, in turn, is directly affected by the institutional environment. We hypothesize that electoral rules, committee agenda-setting power and MPs’ level of knowledge of the committee policy domain influence the committee cohesiveness by affecting the utility that a MP derives from a purposeful choice of the legislative committee she belongs to. To test this proposition we focus on the last 30 years of Italian legislative activity using data from co-sponsorship to infer MPs’ preferences in a multidimensional policy space. [R, abr.]
65.422 DANCEY, Logan; NELSON, Kjersten R.; RINGSMUTH, Eve M. —
Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings offer senators a public opportunity to exercise their “advice and consent” privilege and scrutinize presidential nominees. We examine the purpose and functioning of confirmation hearings for federal district court nominees, the majority of presidential selections to federal courts. Using transcripts from all hearings between 1993 and 2008, we find the characteristics of individual nominees have little effect on the types of questions senators pose. Instead, larger institutional and political factors — such as Senate composition, party of the president, and proximity to a presidential election — are much better predictors of how senators use their opportunity to scrutinize nominees. The results indicate senators use hearings to engage in partisan and ideological position taking rather than to ascertain the qualifications of district court nominees. [R]
65.423 DEMČUK, Artur L.; SOKOLOV, Vasilij I. —
The article provides an overview of the place and role of opposition in Canadian political life, analyzes the activities of the official opposition at the Canadian House of Commons, formal rights of the official opposition, of how it participates in the law-making process, specificity of the opposition strategy and tactics nowadays, trends of changing role of opposition in Canadian political process. [R]
65.424 DeVORE, Marc R. —
Because individual states lack the research and development budgets and scale economies to remain autarkic, the survival of Europe's defense-industrial base depends on international cooperation. The ability of states to cooperate “under anarchy” is inextricably tied to the existence of international institutions. However, the nature of arms-production renders the design of institutions particularly challenging. This study systematically explores how variations in the structure of international armaments institutions have shaped both the influence of different groups of actors and the nature of collaborative weapons projects. Three broad trends can be observed in the evolution of armaments institutions: (1) the gradual incorporation of a larger number of actors into the arms cooperation process; (2) the incremental exclusion of military professionals from armaments institutions; and (3) the growing influence of corporate actors. [R, abr.]
65.425 DI MASCIO, Fabrizio; NATALINI, Alessandro —
This article analyzes the Italian government's response to the sovereign-debt crisis. Given the severity of the fiscal crisis affecting Italy, this article provides insights about the crisis's implication for public administration in such a politically sensitive environment where drastic and far-reaching measures had to be taken by the government. Drawing on the historical institutionalist approach, the impact of the crisis is not considered in isolation but in the context of the historical trajectory that has shaped the government's capacity to respond. To assess the crisis's implications for public administration, the empirical analysis focuses on public employment as an area that is especially exposed to fiscal restraint. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.1398]
65.426 DOBERSTEIN, Carey; MILLAR, Heather —
This article examines the interaction of different modes and levels of legitimacy within network governance institutions over time. Drawing on new theoretical directions in European governance studies and empirical findings from Canada, we contend that whereas input legitimacy can be exchanged, or traded-off, with output legitimacy to reinforce the overall legitimacy of a network governance institution, “throughput legitimacy” functions as a necessary condition that sustains legitimacy over time. Through a comparison of homelessness governance networks in Toronto and Calgary, we find that throughput legitimacy carries an amplification effect that results in either virtuous or vicious cycles. That is, we argue and demonstrate that low throughput legitimacy in network governance institutions can effectively bring down the whole house of cards. [R]
65.427 DRAKE, Ian J. —
The National Popular Vote (NPV) interstate compact proposes to change the presidential election system from a state-based federal system to a national popular vote system. NPV proponents contend states can implement the compact without federal governmental authorization. This article addresses the constitutional questions of whether the NPV must obtain Congress's approval and whether Congress has the constitutional authority to grant such approval. In addressing these questions, I review US Supreme Court precedents and constitutional history and find the NPV is the type of compact the Supreme Court would conclude requires congressional approval. Most importantly, I contend Congress is constitutionally unable to grant approval of this compact and the Supreme Court will play an integral role in making this determination. [R]
65.428 DUFRESNE, Yannick; NEVITTE, Neil —
First-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral rules usually produce legislative majorities. But minority governments appear to be an increasingly common electoral outcome in political systems operating under those rules. What, then, drives citizens views about minority governments? The Canadian case is instructive; it operates under FPTP rules and has recently experienced three minority governments in a row. This investigation proposes three explanations for why citizens might support minority governments and these explanations are empirically tested using Canadian Election Study data. The analysis indicates that people support minority government outcomes mostly for partisan strategic reasons. Pragmatic considerations are important but, surprisingly, principled motivations have quite modest effect. [R]
65.429 DUPUY, Claire —
This paper addresses the issue of regional policy convergence by focusing on endogenous explanatory factors. It carries out an investigation of when, how, and with what effect a “desire for conformity” arises, and contends that regional governments may actively cultivate policy similarity as a strategy to develop or secure their policy capacity. Specifically, the paper argues that the adoption of this strategy is contingent upon two requirements that may or may not be met, and that its outcome is the convergence on targeted dimensions of regional policies. [R, abr.]
65.430 DYVIK, Synne Laastad —
Feminist scholarship has shown how gender is integral to understanding war, and that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was partly legitimized through a reference to Afghan women's “liberation”. The article analyzes how gender is crucial also to understanding the practice of “population-centric” counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Because this type of warfare aims at “winning hearts and minds”, it is in engaging the population that a notable gendered addition to the US military strategy surfaces, Female Engagement Teams (FETs). Citing “cultural sensitivity” as a key justification, the US deploys all-female teams to engage with a previously untapped source of intelligence and information: Afghan women. Beyond being necessary to complete the task of population-centric counterinsurgency, it is also hailed as a progressive step that contributes to Afghan women's broader empowerment. [R, abr.]
65.431 EGGERS, Andrew C.; SPIRLING, Arthur —
In Westminster systems, governments enjoy strong agenda-setting powers but are accountable to an inquisitorial opposition. This article provides insights into the origins of this arrangement from the British House of Commons, drawing primarily on a new data set of a half million parliamentary speeches. We show that, according to a novel measure we develop, government ministers became more responsive to opposition members of parliament in the same period that the government's agenda power was most conclusively strengthened — roughly, the two decades culminating in Balfour's “railway timetable” of 1902. We argue that this increase in responsiveness helps to explain why opposition members of parliament acceded to reductions in their procedural power. We thus highlight a link between government strength and opposition scrutiny in the historical development of the Westminster system. [R]
65.432 ELLIG, Jerry; CONOVER, Christopher J. —
Elected leaders delegate rulemaking to federal agencies, then seek to influence rulemaking through top-down directives and statutory deadlines. This paper documents an unintended consequence of these control strategies: they reduce regulatory agencies’ ability and incentive to conduct high-quality economic analysis to inform their decisions. Using scoring data that measure the quality of regulatory impact analysis, we find that hastily adopted “interim final” regulations reflecting signature policy priorities of the two most recent [US] presidential administrations were accompanied by significantly lower-quality economic analysis. Interim final homeland security regulations adopted during the G.W. Bush administration and interim final regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act in the B. Obama administration were accompanied by less thorough analysis than other “economically significant” regulations. [R]
65.433 ENNS, Peter K. —
Following more than 30 years of rising incarceration rates, the US now imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any country in the world. Building on theories of representation and organized interest group behavior, this article argues that an increasingly punitive public has been a primary reason for this prolific expansion. To test this hypothesis, I generate a new over-time measure of the public's support for being tough on crime. The analysis suggests that, controlling for the crime rate, illegal drug use, inequality, and the party in power, since 1953, public opinion has been a fundamental determinant of changes in the incarceration rate. If the public's punitiveness had stopped rising in the mid-1970s, the results imply that there would have been approximately 20% fewer incarcerations. [R, abr.]
65.434 ERISEN, Cengiz; VILLALOBOS, José D. —
Scholars have long explored why presidential rhetoric is important and how it matters for public leadership and policy-making. However, relatively few works have considered the role that emotion plays in leadership communication and no research has conducted a thorough examination of the various types of emotions invoked in presidential rhetoric, their frequency, or how they have shaped presidential discourse over time. In this study, presidential speeches across 13 administrations (1933–2011) are examined to provide a first assessment of the extent to which US presidents have invoked fear, anger, and hope across policy domains and key types of speeches. [R]
65.435 FELDMAN, David —
Immigration policy has repeatedly failed to fulfill the ambitions of its advocates. Successive governments have neither willed the means nor been open about the obstacles in their way to restricting immigration. Disappointing results have contributed to disillusionment with the political system and help to create the ground on which UKIP [UK Independence Party] has prospered. [R] [See Abstr. 65.119]
65.436 FOURIE, Elsje —
Contemporary scholarship on policy-making in Africa tends either to view the process as being entirely divorced from international policy lessons and experiences, or to portray policy-makers as prone to unreflective imitation of whichever countries happen to be economically and politically ascendant. Kenya's Vision 2030 demonstrates both of these assumptions to be flawed: not only have Kenyan planners and technocrats consciously emulated foreign models in the formulation and execution of this long-term development plan, but the way in which they have done this is embedded in a historical reading of Kenya's development trajectory as well as the trajectories of those countries from which lessons are drawn. Thus, Vision 2030 bears the imprint of Singaporean and Malaysian policies, rather than only the more modish “Chinese Model”. [R, abr.]
65.437 FRANÇOIS, Abel; WEILL, Laurent —
This paper deals with the incidence of multi-office holding of local mandates on the French deputies’ work. We define this work through three types of activity: law-production, control of the government and constituency representation. Using DEA, we compute efficiency scores for the deputies of the 12th legislature (2002–2007). This score allows to question the link between multi-office-holding and legislative activity. We find out a positive relation when we use static definition of the multi-office-holding, even its magnitude is low, and no relation when we use dynamic definition. These findings give small evidence that complementary effect between parliamentary work and local mandates is higher then substitution effect. [R]
65.438 FRANK, Denis —
In 2008, Sweden introduced the most expansive migration policy in the OECD. The reform combines neoliberal elements with old forms of labor control in a new way. I compare the immigration policy of 2008 with that of 1954–1972. Labor immigration from 1954 to 1972 occurred in a radically different historical context than the current market-liberal one. One important change between the two periods concerns the surveillance of migrants residing in Sweden. During the earlier period, state authorities conducted thorough surveillance of migrants residing in Sweden. The 2008 immigration policy involves private actors surveilling in a way that is unprecedented since the end of the Second World War. [R]
65.439 FUBINI, Riccardo —
In 1434, Cosimo de’ Medici returned to Florence after a year's exile in Venice. His reappearance marked the beginning of important political and institutional changes, which in the long term culminated in the installment of a principality (1530–1532). Nonetheless, the “moment of 1434” has not been the object of a historiographical consensus. The Medici's power still rested on the same group of privileged citizens, who formed the basis of political power since the 1380s. It did not bring about any immediate constitutional change, but instituted a regular recourse to extraordinary practices that transformed the reality of political practices. The paper raises the fundamental question of the bedrock of Florentine constitutionalism through a critical re-reading of Florentine political life from the 1380s to the 1450s. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1298]
65.440 GANGHOF, Steffen; EPPNER, Sebastian; HEESS, Katja —
The Finnish electoral system has recently been changed to slightly increase proportionality, but nothing has been done to make cabinet alternatives more “identifiable” before the election. This outcome poses a major puzzle for one important theoretical approach to electoral-system change. This approach sees normatively “unbalanced” systems as vulnerable to reform and would have expected a significant increase in the pre-electoral identifiability of competing cabinet options. The article explains the Finnish case by embedding it in a comparative model of normative tradeoffs in democratic design. Based on Finnish case evidence and a statistical analysis of 100 elections in 32 democracies (from 2001 to 2011), the article argues that the type of democracy exemplified by Finland is not normatively unbalanced. [R, abr.]
65.441 GARÇON, José —
A number of veteran rulers were toppled during the Arab Spring in neighboring countries, but Algeria's A. Bouteflika is still in office. Despite his poor health, he won a fifth term in April [2014], with 81.5% of the vote in the first round. The election result is indicative of the state of politics in Algeria. Career military men, political racketeers and former leaders of the National Liberation Front dominate the political scene. The opposition is gagged and the Algerian people are receptive to the propaganda of a regime which claims to stand for stability. Indeed, Algerian society is still traumatized by the terrible violence of the “war on terrorism” in the 1990s. But the political elite is being shaken by infighting and the economy is treating water. [R, abr.]
65.442 GEDDES, Andrew —
Immigration politics in Britain have been transformed by high levels of immigration, the effects of EU free movement, strong anti-immigration sentiment and UKIP's rise. All are compounded by a more general discontent with politics and politicians. In face of claims that something must be done, politicians seek tougher controls on immigration and free movement, but these may be difficult to attain because of entanglement with EU rules, while failure to achieve stated objectives can further compound the disconnect that fuels support for UKIP. [R] [See Abstr. 65.119]
65.443 GELB, Leslie H. —
A [US] presidency that began with lofty expectations has devolved into steadily defining them down. But now B. Obama can restore his fortunes by acting decisively abroad. [R]
65.444 GERBER, Alan S., et al. —
Recent research finds that doubts about the integrity of the secret ballot as an institution persist among the American public. We provide novel field-experimental evidence about how information about ballot secrecy protections can increase turnout among registered voters who had not previously voted. First, we show that a private group's mailing designed to address secrecy concerns modestly increased turnout in the highly contested 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. Second, we exploit this and an earlier field experiment conducted in Connecticut during the 2010 congressional midterm election season to identify the persistent effects of such messages from both governmental and nongovernmental sources. Together, these results provide new evidence about how message source and campaign context affect efforts to mobilize previous non-voters by addressing secrecy concerns. [R, abr.]
65.445 GEYS, Benny; MAUSE, Karsten —
This article examines whether sex matters with respect to a type of legislator behavior that has thus far been neglected in the literature analyzing the distinctive nature of female and male legislators: parliamentarians’ outside interests. Using data for 614 German MPs, our analysis confirms that female MPs on average hold fewer outside jobs than men — especially in private-sector functions. We also find that individual characteristics such as political experience, having (young) children and age reflect sources of this divergence. These findings and their implications are discussed in the light of extensive research on sex and gender effects in other political and labor market settings. [R]
65.446 GHERGHINA, Sergiu; CHIRU, Mihail —
Previous research has found mixed evidence regarding the change of parliamentary voting behavior following electoral reforms. But scholars have not analyzed whether the mechanisms by which voting loyalty is elicited matter differently in such cases. Our article investigates the individual variation in voting loyalty across two legislative terms, using a sample of 26 high-stakes roll-call votes. Romania constitutes an ideal setting for such a study due to its recent shift from closed-list proportional representation to single-member districts. Multivariate ordinary least-squares models (including all MPs and including only incumbents) test for the effect of parliamentary experience, party membership duration, parliamentary office, party hopping and district magnitude, while also accounting for demotion and a number of socio-demographic controls. [R, abr.]
65.447 GIULIO, Marco Di —
For Italian national policy-makers, the implementation of EU's transport regulations represented an extraordinary opportunity to address the field of transport in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness, [seeking] industrialization of the production chain and better integration among different transport modes. [Simultaneously], interest groups underwent several organizational changes that brought more cooperation and integration within major peak associations such as Confindustria and Confcommercio. Fragmentation thus emerged as a stable pattern in the field of transport and is interpreted in connection with the lack of integration of the whole policy. Changes occurred in the relations between groups and the political system, which seem in fact to be increasingly loosely connected, while organized interests maintained solid connections with bureaucratic actors, whose centrality has been hampered by the regulatory turn in European transport policy. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.858]
65.448 GLENN, John —
An important political consequence of the crisis of capital in the 1970s has been an increasing intensification of informal imperialism within Africa. This paper argues that the advanced capitalist countries again confronted the endemic problem of overcapacity alongside a decline in the rate of profit and that the major neoliberal reforms foisted upon the African continent were part of the spatio-temporal fix that followed. The quotidian management of many African states was not an intended consequence of structural adjustment, but the subsequent perturbations that beset many developing countries after following such policies has led to such a degree of institutional instability that a new form of imperial governance has come into being. Juridical sovereignty has been maintained, but political sovereignty has been severely compromised through the emergence of this neo-imperial governance. [R, abr.]
65.449 GLENNON, Michael J. —
When elements of the national-security apparatus deceive [the US] Congress or the courts, they undermine the very institutions that they protect. The CIA's attempt to hide its history of torture from congressional oversight is Exhibit A. [R]
65.450 GODWIN, Erik K.; ILDERTON, Nathan A. —
Theories of [US] presidential success find that political disunity reduces the President's effectiveness by restricting his authority to generate new policies. We maintain that focusing solely on policy change neglects the influence exerted by the President when he defends his policy agenda by preventing unfavorable changes to the status quo. We develop a new theory of presidential success that predicts that certain political environments raise the resource costs to the President of policy change. During these times, the President shifts political resources to defending the status quo. We empirically test our predictions in both legislative and regulatory law-making, and find strong support for our theory. [R]
65.451 GRANO, Simona A. —
This article focuses on the transformations (or lack thereof) in Taiwan's environmental governance, under different political parties, particularly during the past few years. I review the key issues that have characterized Taiwan's environmental movement and its battles, starting with the democratic transition of the mid-1980s, before focusing on two developmental projects — Taiwan's eighth petrochemical plant and fourth nuclear power facility — to bring to light the most significant changes and continuities in the environmental-policy realm. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.767]
65.452 GRIX, Jonathan; HOULIHAN, Barrie —
The limited literature on “soft power” and sports mega-events fails to either explain the concept and how it pertains to sport or provide examples that operationalize the concept empirically. Further research can build on the idea of sports mega-events being used for public diplomacy; the case of Germany has led many “emerging” states to bid for and host such events. We show how the UK engages in a different manner in its “soft power” strategy. Mobilizing J. Nye's concept of “soft power”, we empirically investigate Germany's strategic use of a sports “mega” (the 2006 FIFA World Cup) to successfully alter their image among “foreign publics”. We then analyze the example of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games for Britain's international prestige. [R, abr.]
65.453 GUALTIERI, Piero —
The reform of 1328 that modified the modalities of election to the highest functions of the city's executive represents a significant moment in Florentine political-institutional history. The article first reviews the institutional functioning of the city-state and then discusses the evolution of electoral practices based on the introduction of the magistracies of the Priory of Arts (1282). In a relatively short period, this established itself as the hub of the city's government. An analysis of such an evolution helps understand how the reform, though opening a new chapter in Florentine politics, was in fact an original assemblage of already existing elements in the local institutional tradition. It thus completed a long process of political experimentation in a series of clearly identified moments. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1298]
65.454 GUÉNARD, Marion —
Three years after the fall of H. Mubarak, Egypt seems to have gone back to where it was before the Tahrir Square revolt. The turbulent chain of events started with the army-backed pro-democracy revolution, followed by elections won by the Muslim Brotherhood, new protests against the Brotherhood, the anti-Morsi coup d'état by the military and, most recently, the election of field marshal A.F. Al-Sissi as president. Egypt's military has now virtually cemented its power. Al-Sissi governs without a political party and with barely any regard for democracy. For the time being, he is revered by the Egyptian people. But the harsh repression, and to an even great extent the austerity measures implemented by the new government, could well prompt the Egyptians to take to the streets yet again. [R, abr.]
65.455 GUIRAUDON, Virginie —
This article focuses on the situation of migrants and their descendants in European labor markets. This important socio-economic dimension of the current crisis illuminates the role of pre-existing policies and institutions and points the way to political solutions. How can one account for cross-national, cross-local, and cross-sectoral variation in the labor market outcomes of migrant-origin minority groups and explain migrant-origin and gender differences. I critically examine debates on the “integration” of migrants and the “second generation” reflecting political diatribes on the across-the-board poor performance of minorities and the role of ethnic or religious factors. An alternative explanation underscores the importance of policy paradigms and institutional hurdles focusing on three aspects of European political economies: welfare state arrangements, education, and sub-national labor market policies. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.1051]
65.456 GÜLEÇ, Asli —
Among welfare programs, public pension schemes have been particularly subject to cost-containment. Various countries have been exposed to relatively similar pressures such as ageing populations or growing unemployment. This article explores the policy impact of international financial institutions (IFIs) including the World Bank, IMF and the EU on the reform of old-age pension systems in Greece and Turkey. It suggests that in both countries, IFIs have helped to trigger the process of reforms and to spread the global pension orthodoxy. Although the pension schemes still diverge in institutional structure and benefit provision, in both cases adoption of the pension orthodoxy of individualization of pension rights has followed the advice tendered by the IFIs. [R, abr.]
65.457 GUTIÉRREZ, Rodolfo —
The Great Recession has had a deep impact on employment levels and on income inequality in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy, [suggesting] a possible “Mediterranean” variant of welfare capitalism. This paper analyzes the performance of the Mediterranean cluster during the Great Recession period in its two main dimensions, labor market participation and poverty risk, and to what extent that performance has evolved in a divergent or convergent manner. Firstly, it portrays the main changes in this variant of welfare capitalism during the last two decades. Then it provides a comparative profile of the employment crisis suffered by these countries and of its impact on poverty risks. Finally, the main institutional traits are discussed, explaining the relative performance of welfare capitalism in this cluster of countries. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.547]
65.458 HACKETT, Ursula —
In the current polarized political climate, there is heightened attention paid to the American state constitutional provisions known as “Blaine Amendments” or “No-Aid Provisions”, passed between 1835 and 1959 to prohibit public aid to religious schools. Judgments about No-Aid Provisions have largely been made by scholars on an ad hoc basis using narrative-based historical accounts, emotive language and without clear classificatory criteria. Using content-analysis, this article constructs the first quantitative scale of No-Aid Provision strength and subjects it to statistical treatment to explain why some prohibitions are much stronger than others. It finds that larger Catholic populations, Republican dominance, and Federal Enabling Acts make No-Aid language more strident. It adjudicates between competing explanations for No-Aid Provision strength in a way that illuminates the interaction of politics, religion and education in America. [R]
65.459 HALE, Geoffrey —
This article examines the evolving debate over takeover bids by foreign state-owned and influenced enterprises (SOEs) in the context of CNOOC's successful 2012 acquisition of Nexen Inc., historical debates over foreign investment in Canada and the ongoing adaptation of Canadian trade and investment policies to global shifts in economic activity and power. It views SOE-related policy changes as responses to four broad factors: Canada's adaptation to changing global investment patterns as a small, open economy, efforts to diversify Canada's trade and investment relations while balancing domestic regional and sectoral interests, the extension of trade-related principles of reciprocity to investment policies and competition among governmental and economic interests in the allocation of discretion in corporate governance and related regulatory policies. [R]
65.460 HALUPKA, Max —
In 1967, the Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status was revoked on the basis that it failed to meet the criteria outlined in section 501(c)(3) of the [US] Internal Revenue Service. Between its loss, and eventual reacquisition in 1993, the Church of Scientology employed a number of political-based tactics to legitimize itself to the public sector. This article explores these tactics in relation to the religion's use of perception-management. The article argues that the processes of both legal recognition and legitimization draw upon each other in a new faith's transition to mainstream theology. In this, the Church employed perception-management in attempt to influence both processes. In exploring this, the paper contributes to our understanding of role that public legitimacy plays in a new faith's development. [R]
65.461 HAMANN, Kerstin, et al. —
Do electoral pressures provide an explanation for why governments offer pacts to unions and employers rather than acting through legislation when faced with the need to pass potentially unpopular reforms to welfare policies, wages, and labor markets? This article addresses that question by analyzing whether governments’ pursuit of pacts affects their vote-share and increases the probability that they gain re-election for 16 West European countries between 1980 and 2012. It is found that the presence of social pacts has a significant and positive effect on incumbents’ vote-shares at the next election and also results in a higher probability of re-election. [R, abr.]
65.462 HAMILTON-HART, Natasha —
Rather than conforming to a single model of export-driven growth, countries across the Asia-Pacific vary in terms of their external imbalances and the domestic politics of monetary policy that underlie them. This article argues that while there is evidence of what can be called monetary mercantilism — a deliberate policy of currency management to retain export competitiveness — in some countries, others exhibit a very different pattern of monetary politics. Domestic political change may be bringing Southeast Asia's more democratic countries closer to the consumption-driven model of developed economies such as Australia and New Zealand. Conversely, despite much higher per capita national incomes, less rebalancing has occurred in traditionally export-driven countries. [R, abr.]
65.463 HAMPSHIRE, James; BALE, Tim —
Research on the impact of parties on public policy, and on immigration policy in particular, often finds limited evidence of partisan influence. We examine immigration policy-making in the UK coalition government. Our case provides evidence that parties in government can have more of an impact on policy than previous studies acknowledge, but this becomes apparent only when we open up the “black box” between election outcomes and policy outputs. By examining how, when and why election pledges are turned into government policies, we show that partisan influence depends not only on dynamics between the coalition partners, but how these dynamics interact with interdepartmental conflicts and lobbying by organized interests. In-depth process tracing allows us to see these complex dynamics, which easily get lost in large-n comparisons of pledges and outputs, let alone outcomes. [R]
65.464 HASELSWERDT, Jake —
Scholars have recently begun to recognize the importance of policy durability to the overall shape of public policy. Existing work on policy durability focuses on the political environment rather than elements of policy design, such as the delivery of benefits as a tax break instead of a direct outlay. I argue that the unique characteristics of tax breaks, including the relatively narrow reach of these policies, make them vulnerable to elimination. Using a newly expanded data-set, I test this claim by examining the longevity of all federal tax and non-tax programs created between 1974 and 2003, and find that tax expenditures are more vulnerable to elimination than non-tax programs. [R, abr.]
65.465 HAUGHTON, Tim —
Party laws and regulation in the Czech Republic are largely permissive and have served the interests of the established parties, helping to underpin the largely oligopolistic nature of Czech party politics. Whereas non-financial regulation remained virtually unchanged in the first two post-communist decades, party financing laws have been amended, often in response to scandal. Although the existing system of regulation has helped entrench the position of the main political parties, the system is not impervious to change. Indeed, a ruling of the Constitutional Court combined with the anti-corruption appeal of new parties helped weaken the position of the largest parties in the 2010 elections. Subsequent scandals have ensured the continuing fragile stability of Czech party politics. [R] [See Abstr. 65.408]
65.466 HEINEMANN-GRÜDER, Andreas —
The power of security agencies in authoritarian regimes rests on a precarious balance between hierarchy and autonomy. In Central Asia, security agencies enjoy a high degree of autonomy and compete with one another over the misappropriation and control of public and private resources. Even if many people in Central Asia have adapted to the corruption and repression of the security establishments, that in no way means that those authorities are legitimate; efforts to control public opinion, along with unfree and unfair elections, create illegitimate conditions of justification. The Islamist threat, which the Central Asian regimes use to justify their repression, is exaggerated and simultaneously fueled by the practices of their security agencies. [R, abr.]
65.467 HEUZÉ, Richard —
Renzo's reform package spans government institutions, taxation, the labor market, the judicial system, public administration, regional powers, pensions, an electoral reform law, and much more. In just a few months, he has been propelled to the center of the European political stage. He has singled out the problems which have weighed down Italy for generations and is determined to fix them. His enthusiasm and determination have given Italy new hope. And his victory in the European elections has helped restore Italy's international credibility. It remains to be seen whether the former mayor of Florence will be abele to deliver concrete, lasting results from the reforms he has been recommending so vociferously. The opposition has already gotten their knives out, and he still has a long way to go until May 2017. [R, abr.]
65.468 HILL, Ron —
The governance of further-education colleges has two main phases since the passing of the Education Act 1944 — the period when further education colleges were under local authority control and the period from “vesting day” on 1 April 1993 when colleges became incorporated and further education corporations were formed as charities. This review is primarily concerned with the landscape of college governance since 1 April 1993 and draws upon some of the very limited number of research studies into the practice of further education governance. The experience and contribution of the key governance players — chair of the corporation, governors, the principal, the senior staff, the clerk to the corporation — are discussed. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.670]
65.469 HLOUŠEK, Vít; KOPEČEK, Lubomír —
Czech politics suffers from a low durability of most of its governments, and frequent government crises. One of the products of this situation has been the phenomenon of caretaker governments. This article analyzes why political elites have resorted to this solution, and discusses how this has reflected an older Czech tradition. Two cases of such governments are analyzed in detail. The Tošovský government was characterized by the ability of the Czech president to advance his agenda through this government at a time when the party elites were divided. The Fischer government was characterized by the considerably higher role of parties that shaped and limited the agenda of the cabinet, and the president played a more static role. [R]
65.470 HOLLIBAUGH, Gary E., Jr.; HORTON, Gabriel; LEWIS, David E. —
To what extent do [US] presidents select appointees based upon campaign experience and connections? The answer has important implications for our understanding of presidential management and political leadership. This article presents a theory explaining where presidents place different types of appointees and why, focusing on differences in ideology, competence, and non-policy patronage benefits among potential appointees. We develop a formal model and test its implications with new data on 1,307 persons appointed in the first six months of the B. Obama administration. The empirical results broadly support the theory, suggesting that President Obama was more likely to place appointees selected for non-policy patronage reasons in agencies off his agenda, in agencies that shared his policy views, and where appointees are least able to affect agency performance. [R, abr.]
65.471 HOLT, Jordan; MANNING, Nick —
Much has recently been written about how best to measure governance or “state quality”. Should we evaluate government performance by looking at what government achieves (outputs) as R. Rotberg and C. Boardman recently suggested? Or should we focus on measuring state capacity and bureaucratic autonomy, as F. Fukuyama concludes? This commentary argues in support of Fukuyama's approach by using a public administration lens to disaggregate the public sector into two domains: upstream bodies at the center of government and downstream delivery bodies that deliver, commission, or fund services under the policy direction of government. It goes further by recommending a measurement framework that focuses on identifying indicators that are behavioral and action worthy in relation to five public management systems ultimately owned and operated by the central, upstream agencies. [R] [See Abstr. 65.164]
65.472 HORGAN, Gerard W. —
Recent cases of partisan-motivated prorogations of parliaments at the federal and provincial levels in Canada have focused attention on this phenomenon. While such prorogations are uncommon in the mature Westminster-style parliaments, the Canadian cases are not unique. Systematic study of partisan-motivated prorogations in the Australian states has illuminated the factors commonly associated with such cases. This paper outlines the results of this literature and then tests whether the Canadian cases fit the pattern. It shows that, on balance, these factors do apply. The paper thus concludes that, while partisan-motivated prorogations may not be predictable, it is possible to identify circumstances in which there is a substantially greater risk of their occurrence. [R]
65.473 HORIE, Masahiro —
As a result of continuous administrative reform efforts for decentralization and with increasing power of governors and mayors, roles and responsibilities of local governments in Japan have increased enormously. People now expect them to do much better than before. As a result, they are now in a severe competition with other local governments, but, at the same time, they cannot do everything by themselves without cooperation with the national government or other local governments. The paper first describes the changes in local government, including merging of municipalities, and then dwells upon the changes in intergovernmental relations in terms of both competition and cooperation. Finally, the future of intergovernmental relations in Japan is briefly discussed, including the possibility of creating a Regional Local Government system. [R, abr.]
65.474 HUANG Chin-Hao; JAMES, Patrick —
Debates about whether China's rise poses a threat or an opportunity for Taiwan have settled into a realist assumption that Beijing will continue to upset the balance of power and a liberal approach that believes the benefits of economic interdependence are leading to greater gains. Missing from this debate is a nuanced consideration of how Taiwan's policy elites view themselves and their position in cross-Strait relations. Taiwan's decision-makers’ views are deeply affected by, and interact with, factors and institutions on and beyond the island. This article offers a model of political processes — the staying power of the status quo and order of movement — as a possible route towards an explanation for Taiwan's position on cross-Strait negotiations. [R, abr.]
65.475 HÜLLER, Thorsten —
In previous years, two influential analyses of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) from the camp of empirical rational choice launched two strong theses: Judges are influenced by their political preferences (Hönnige) and act opportunistically in alignment with public opinion (Vanberg). Both theoretical models are in important parts inconsistent. In the first case, the empirical support is also weak, in the second, the data can be explained in a more convincing way. [R]
65.476 HUNDT, David —
This article analyzes the Korean developmental state since the late 1990s, and argues that the state has continued to play a weighty role in the economy. The state guided industrial and financial restructuring after the Asian economic crisis, and intervened to stimulate the economy during the 2008 global financial crisis. In doing so, state elites have displayed a distinctive form of economic leadership that is largely consistent with the developmental state. This article analyzes the deeper aspects of the developmental state, specifically its internal functions and its collaboration with business. The article brings politics back into analysis of the developmental state by questioning the assumption that strong economic performance is necessary for the maintenance of close ties between the state and chaebol. [R, abr.]
65.477 ILONSZKI, Gabriella; VÁRNAGY, Réka —
The article assesses dynamics of regulation on parties in Hungary by distinguishing between periods of consensus characterized by a cartel-party effect and periods of conflicts characterized by a dominant-party effect. The relative stability of the party system until 2010 makes Hungary a good case to study the growing rigidity of regulation along with increasing disregard for legal constraints. The resulting loss of credibility along with the changing political logic gave way to the emergence of self-centered party regulation, which could not address the main caveats of the regulatory framework and could easily undermine the party system's stability. [R] [See Abstr. 65.408]
65.478 JACOBS, Lawrence R. —
The Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) is successfully expanding access and compelling insurers to change their business models to serve more socially-useful purposes; cost-control enjoyed initial success but confronts barriers rooted in America's resilient political economy. The ACA is disrupting long-standing patterns of American politics, introducing new developmental paths that unsettle or, in certain respects, offset the familiar patterns of selectivity, deference to private markets, and “drift” that tend to produce government inaction as economic insecurity increases. New policy arrangements for financing and delivering medical care is ushering in a new politics of US health care that are resetting the terms of future debate; the ACA is also challenging familiar approaches to studying politics including analyses of framing, policy effects and political development, and American political thought. [R, abr.]
65.479 JALALZAI, Farida —
To what extent have women made progress in attaining presidential and prime ministerial positions in Europe? We might expect women in this region to have made significant strides in executive office-holding, given the more favorable political, cultural, and social conditions women face. At the same time, diversity within one large region allows not only for an assessment of the conditions best facilitating women's executive incorporation but also the ability to scrutinize the degree to which they exercise more substantial powers. While Europe boasts the greatest numbers of women executives to date, women face many limits in the type of positions they occupy and powers afforded their offices, although important exceptions surface. Numbers, pathways, and political clout shape women's advancement in this historically male preserve, resulting in mixed progress overall. [R, abr.]
65.480 JAVELINE, Debra; BAIRD, Vanessa A. —
Public support for minority rights plays an important role in minorities actually securing and protecting those rights. In countries where public support for minority rights is low, how can attitudes be changed? Using data from two surveys of more than 6,000 Russians each, we show that institutions have the potential to persuade about a quarter of otherwise intolerant Russians to move toward supporting rights. We explain this important shift among this subpopulation. Paradoxically, we find that a usually unpalatable characteristic, deference to authority, among the intolerant is significantly related to their potential to be persuaded to support rights. [R]
65.481 JESSEE, Stephen A.; THERIAULT, Sean M. —
Most analyses of congressional voting, whether theoretical or empirical, treat all roll-call votes in the same way. We argue that such approaches mask considerable variation in voting behavior across different types of votes. In examining all roll-call votes in the US House of Representatives from the 93rd to the 110th Congresses (1973–2008), we find that the forces affecting legislators’ voting on procedural and final passage matters have exhibited important changes over time, with differences between these two vote types becoming larger, particularly in recent congresses. These trends have important implications not only on how we study congressional voting behavior, but also in how we evaluate representation and polarization in the modern Congress. [R]
65.482 JOCHEM, Sven —
Iceland has experienced a hard financial crisis, but employed a rather successful crisis-management. The country, however, generated international admiration because of the deliberative constitutional reform attempt, which finally shipwrecked because of the dynamics of party competition. This paper argues that nepotist tendencies of the Icelandic democracy are not captured by empirical measurements of the quality of democracies. These nepotist defects partially urged the severity of the financial crisis in Iceland. The Icelandic form of democracy complicated the deliberative process of a constitutional revision. In the end, the constitutional revision was blocked by party competition in a divided society lacking consensual institutions of democracy. [R]
65.483 JONQUIÈRES, Guy de —
Since taking office in 2012, Mr. XI has rapidly accumulated massive personal power and tightened his grip on the ruling Communist Party, while instituting one of the most ferocious crackdowns on corruption in China's history. By establishing an unchallenged hold over the Party's machinery and national decision-making, he has put himself in an exceptionally strong position to ram through much-needed changes in policy and bulldoze obstacles to the planned reforms. However, as this article argues, tightening political control while seeking simultaneously to free up the economy by expanding the role of markets has created a fundamental paradox. [R, abr.]
65.484 JÖRKE, Dirk —
Numerous thinkers have reflected on the relationship between the size of a country and the form of its government. Herodotus and Montesquieu are classic figures of political thought. If one applies their considerations to today's Russia, it appears that the significance of a state's size must be qualified, but it may not be completely neglected either. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1289]
65.485 KABIR, Ahmedul —
The paper argues that a truth commission satisfies political, legal and ethical requirements simultaneously in a transitional setting. A truth commission can, to a great extent, resolve tensions between truth, justice and reconciliation and play an emancipator role towards democracy, although it can never guarantee truth, justice or reconciliation, as they come with a mixed package that includes a clear objective of ending violence, attending to social inequalities and individual and social readiness. This paper lays out many positive and negative aspects of a truth commission and suggests why a truth commission has increasing appeal. [R, abr.]
65.486 KAM, Christopher —
This article examines why after 35 years of repeatedly rejecting, the British House of Commons enacted the secret ballot with the Ballot Act of 1872. Drawing on roll-call votes, I show that the Second Reform Act significantly extended the electoral franchise and substantially redistributed parliamentary seats; the House elected immediately following these changes to pass the Ballot Act of 1872. A key reason for the change was that anti-ballot MPs whom the redistribution threatened to expose to electoral competition were disproportionately likely to retire prior to the 1868 election. These results imply that it was the anticompetitive effects inherent in the gross malapportionment of the older electoral system rather than the restricted nature of the franchise that insulated MPs from public pressure and kept parliamentary opinion on the secret ballot in stasis. [R, abr.]
65.487 KELLY, Dominic —
This paper deploys the Gramscian concepts of hegemony and consent in order to explore the process whereby nuclear power was brought to Japan. The core argument is that nuclear power was brought to Japan as a consequence of US hegemony. Rather than a simple manifestation of one state exerting material “power over” another, bringing nuclear power to Japan involved a series of compromises worked out within and between state and civil society in both Japan and the US. Ideologies of nationalism, imperialism and modernity underpinned the process, coalescing in post-war debates about the future trajectory of Japanese society, Japan's Cold War alliance with the US and the role of nuclear power in both. Consent was secured [by] combining the fear of nuclear attack and the hope of unlimited consumption in a nuclear-fueled postmodern world. [R, abr.]
65.488 KENNEDY, Loraine —
Beginning in the 1980s, the political economy of India underwent significant transformations: the reform process launched at this time sought to deregulate industrial activities and gradually open them to international trade. [However], the state is still present in the industrial domain, where major policy matters are at stake, notably the absorption of an unskilled and mainly rural labor force. On the basis of a diachronic analysis, this article examines recent changes in industrial development policy. I examine the considerations underlying policy orientations as well as the concepts called upon to evaluate the evolution of the Indian state in this sector. The present special economic zone policy, for example, reflects the state's continued desire to support industrial development while significantly changing its economic logic and the modes of assistance it provides. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.590]
65.489 KERN, Florian; KUZEMKO, Caroline; MITCHELL, Catherine —
This paper contributes to the literature on institutional change by creating a framework that both measures and explains policy change. The framework is then applied to UK energy policy from 2000 to 2011 and finds that a policy paradigm-change has occurred. Contrary to expectations in the literature, however, the process of change has been informed by multiple narratives and the new governance system is complex and incoherent. The analysis also finds that there has been relatively little shift in how energy systems operate, suggesting shortcomings in a conceptual focus on institutional change over outcomes. [R]
65.490 KOELBLE, Thomas A.; SIDDLE, Andrew —
This article holds that the experiment with local government decentralization in South Africa has failed. We argue that South Africa's local government is overburdened with constitutional and legal requirements that it is not equipped to meet. Local government, in general, lacks the technical and administrative capacity to provide the services it is required to supply. Based on a sample of 37 municipalities, we argue that the system of decentralization is far too complex for undercapacitated municipalities to handle. As a result, large-scale nonperformance both in terms of service delivery as well as a democratic deficit characterizes local government. These failures contributed to the emergence of widespread “service delivery” protests throughout the country. [R]
65.491 KONG, Dejun Tony —
In search for the origin of political trust and ways to enhance political trust, institutional theorists have largely focused on perceived competence of political institutions in Western democracies and neglected another dimension of political institutions’ character — benevolence. The lack of empirical evidence from Arab countries also raises questions about the generalizability of the institutional theories developed in Western democracies. Following previous research on legal institutions, I extended institutional theories of political trust and found that both perceived competence and benevolence of political institutions facilitated political trust in Arab countries, using the archival data from the Arab-Barometer (2006–2007). [R, abr.]
65.492 KOPRIĆ, Ivan —
Local public affairs in Croatia in the period after the establishment of the new system of local self-government in 1993 are analyzed. Several issues are considered: constitutional regulation of local self-government scope of affairs, constitutional principles of performing local affairs, harmonization of the Croatian legal regulation with the European Charter of Local Self-Government, and performance of local affairs in local government practice. There are many complex problems with local scope and the preconditions for solving them are unfavorable. [R, abr.]
65.493 KORSNES, Marius —
This paper [examines] what government mechanisms have allowed China's wind industry to grow as fast as it has over the past ten years. Instead of formal rules and regulations, this paper focuses on specific sets of institutional conditions that have been crucial in the process of high-speed implementation of wind energy in China. Specifically, fragmentation and centralization, together with policy experimentation and policy learning, have been fundamental for policy flexibility and institutional adaptability. The paper illustrates that there are benefits and disadvantages to these characteristics, and that inherent qualities of China's governing system that lead to rapid growth overlap with those that lead to challenges in terms of quality and long-term performance. [R]
65.494 KRIEGER, Wolfgang —
Contrary to popular beliefs promoted by the media, it is insufficient to resort to parliamentary commissions such as the committee investigating the US National Security Agency spying case when seeking effective protection of citizens’ rights concerning secret service scandals. German MPs should be self-critical and ask themselves whether the current secret service policy in general and the electronic communication protection in particular are adequate. It is obviously not the case, as proved by the deficits in cyber-protection pointed out by the Federal Court of Auditors, which confirms that new rules and control procedures are needed to protect citizens’ rights in the new digital world.
65.496 KUDELIA, Serhiy —
This article analyzes two decades of contestation over Ukraine's constitutional provisions regulating executive-legislative relations using insights from the theories of interstate bargaining. It demonstrates how changes in the power balance between elite actors and the variation in the length of their time horizons affect the probability of them reaching an agreement. The article explains the reasons for elite acquiescence to the building of a powerful presidency in Ukraine in the 1990s, a successful shift to a semi-presidential system in 2004, repeated failures to amend the semi-presidential system, and an abrupt return to a super-presidential model in 2010. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Ukraine: politics and society”. See also Abstr. 65.586, 692, 848, 924, 1313, 1418]
65.497 KUHN, Raymond —
This article examines the first two years of Hollande's presidential term from a leadership perspective. While he has sometimes been unlucky in the face of unanticipated events and severely constrained by contextual factors outside of his control, he has also displayed a lack of certain essential leadership qualities. He failed to grasp the scale of the economic crisis and so lost precious time in fully addressing the need for structural reforms and engaging in a persuasive pedagogic narrative. In addition, his public communication — an essential leadership quality in the era of mediatized politics — has been poor. Hollande's attempt to relaunch his presidential leadership following the disastrous set of midterm election results in 2014 marks the start of a new phase in his tenure. [R, abr.] [First article of a thematic issue on “The Hollande presidency, 2012–14”, edited and introduced by Ben CLIFT and Raymond KUHN. See also Abstr. 65.796, 836, 950, 1145]
65.498 KULMALA, Meri, et al. —
While Russia's leaders claim to have facilitated a “miracle” in welfare provision, an examination of the budget numbers shows that overall welfare spending has not increased as much as general budget outlays. Because there is little room for NGO or trade union involvement in decision-making, policies support state interests rather than those of the broader society. For example, Russian leaders have concentrated resources on raising the birthrate and increasing pensions rather than addressing the pressing issue of high male mortality. Paradoxically, however, in some cases, NGOs initiate the provision of new kinds of services, such as for AIDS patients, which are then taken over by the state. Federalism is important since there is wide variation across regions in social welfare provision. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.780]
65.499 KUNG, James Kai-sing —
Using China's Great Leap Famine as example, this article shows how political career incentives can produce disastrous outcomes under the well-intended policies of a dictator. By exploiting a regression discontinuity design, the study identifies the causal effect of membership status in the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee — full (FM) versus alternate members (AM) — on grain procurement. It finds that the difference in grain procurement between AMs and FMs who ranked near the discontinuity threshold is three times that between all AMs and all FMs on average. This may explain why Mao exceptionally promoted some lower-ranked but radical FMs shortly before the Leap: to create a demonstration effect in order to spur other weakly motivated FMs into action. [R]
65.500 LARTIGOT-HERVIER, Louise —
This article analyzes the unemployment insurance reforms in the 2000s in France and Germany, in terms of the power of unions. It [considers] how and why unions have [allowed] reforms that weaken their role in management and their ability to guide reforms in this sector, while in both Bismarckian countries they were deemed “veto-players”. This contribution highlights the explanatory, specific and common mechanisms on each country, and shows how political strategies combine with union divisions and new alliances between some social partners and governments explain the feasibility of such reforms. These structural reforms are determinant to the “distributive” reforms [T.J. Lowi, “Four systems of policy, politics, and choice”, Public Administration Review 32(4), 1972: 298–310] they allow to develop later. [R, abr.]
65.501 LAURENS, Henry —
The author revisits the concept of “the Age of Revolutions” in the Middle East, which refers to a period stretching from the 1940s until the 1970s. He likewise emphasizes the historiographical misunderstandings that occurred with regard to this topic. The military, viewed as the promoter of modernity, was supposed to ensure reforms that would prevent these states from tipping over into Communism. In fact, however, the governmental systems implemented often resembled police states (mukbabarat) in which intelligence services played a key role. If these governments can be seen as revolutionary, it is only in so far as they aimed to effect social transformation. [R] [Part of a thematic issue on “Military and power in the Middle East”. See also Abstr. 65.417]
65.502 LAVERY, Lesley —
I present the results of an original survey experiment designed to understand the complex relationship between policy information, attitudes, and evaluation. Parents of children attending schools identified for improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) are exposed to basic, context-specific, policy information on a randomized basis and then asked to complete an attitudinal survey. Treatment parents are significantly more likely than control group peers to report familiarity with NCLB and correctly identify the policy status of their child's school. An increased depth of policy understanding enables these parents to bring evaluations of their child's educational experience, policy, and government into alignment. Findings demonstrate the potential for careful policy framing and delivery to encourage enlightened opinion formation and political participation. [R]
65.503 LECOURS, André —
In 2012, a Nepali Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting a federal constitution was dissolved after four years of wrangling over federalism issues. This article develops three explanations for why federal structures have yet to take shape in Nepal. It argues that consensus on federalism hides a reluctance by key actors to build a federal system; that while some political forces want federal structures based on ethnic identities, two of the three main political parties have little appetite for “identity-based federalism”; and that political actors hold antagonistic ideas about federalism and what it should achieve. More broadly, the article speaks to cases of “holding together” federalism stemming from previously unitary states. [R]
65.504 LEGRAND, Tim; JARVIS, Lee —
This article assesses the use of proscription powers as a tool for countering terrorism, using the UK as a case study. The article situates the UK's current proscription regime in historical context, noting the significant recent increase in proscribed groups and the predominance of “Islamist” organizations therein. It then critiques proscription on four principal grounds. First, in terms of the challenges of identifying and designating proscribed groups. Second, we highlight the considerable domestic and transnational politicking that surrounds proscription decisions. Third, we assess the normative importance of protecting scope for political resistance and freedoms of expression and organization. And, fourth, we question the efficacy of proscription as a counter-terrorism tool. Proscription's place in contemporary security politics should be heavily safeguarded given these challenges. [R, abr.]
65.505 LEÓN, Margarita; PAVOLINI, Emmanuele —
Family policies have traditionally been weak in Southern Europe. In the last two decades, however, and following a “catching up” course, Spain has created new family programs and expanded existing ones. Meanwhile, the picture for Italy during the years preceding the crisis is more of a “frozen landscape”. However, the diverging paths of the two countries in terms of policy reform in the years preceding the crisis do not place them in substantially different positions. The economic crisis and the austerity measures that followed have aggravated the weaknesses of family and care policies in both countries. [R] [See Abstr. 65.547]
65.506 LEUNIG, Sven; TRÄGER, Hendrik —
For decades, a debate has raged in political science, the media and in politics: whether partisan politics have superseded the genuine interests of the Länder in the German Bundesrat. This article first deals with the question which methodological approach or which research design is likely to offer an answer to the problem. We suggest a sequential use of, first, quantitative methods, and second, qualitative case studies which amend the results of the former. We use this approach for those cases in which the conference committee between Bundestag and Bundesrat was invoked between 1990 and 2005, as well as for selected law-making processes during that time-frame. Our results support the thesis that the Länder interests were marginalized by partisan politics only in rare instances. [R]
65.507 LEWIS, Andrew R. —
Between the late 1970s and early 1990s, the [US] Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) altered its First Amendment advocacy, shifting from being an ardent supporter of the strict separation of church and state to being a champion of the government accommodation of religion. At the same time, the denomination also became unswervingly pro-life. I use the SBC case to identify a previously under-analyzed link between abortion politics and church-state politics. I suggest that pro-life politics played an important role in the SBC's shift away from the separation of church and state. I focus on three areas where abortion politics aided this shift: (1) opposing separationists’ assertions that anti-abortion policies violated the Establishment Clause; (2) becoming allies rather than foes with Catholics; and (3) promoting a greater emphasis on the free exercise of religion. [R, abr.]
65.508 LIPMAN, Maria —
During V. Putin's first presidential term, the Kremlin established control over Russia's major television networks. Putin's return to the Kremlin in 2012 and Russia's role in the Ukrainian crisis have exacerbated constraints on media freedom. Nongovernment media fell under strong pressure and new limits on internet communications were imposed. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Media in Eurasia”, edited and introduced by Peter ROLLBERG. See also Abstr. 65.386, 512, 571, 760, 823, 893]
65.509 LIZZI, Renata —
The close link between the largest Italian agricultural organizations and the Christian Democratic Party initially structured party-group relationships. [As] the effective dynamics changed, the governing parties gave less attention to agricultural issues: this situation was consolidated, thanks to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The institutionalization of a distributive policy paradigm, both at the national and at the European levels, strengthened farmer organizations and other agricultural interest groups. Following the Italian political crisis of the early 1990s and CAP reform in the 1990s and 2000s, the political and policy contexts changed substantially: the main political parties disappeared, but interest groups were able to maintain relations with governments of the day and to develop links with different parties in the legislative arena, enabling them to play a central role in agricultural policy-making. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.858]
65.510 LÓPEZ CASTILLO, Antonio —
This article proposes to distinguish two main lines in the European jurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court. Overlap and discontinuity of this jurisprudence should not be confused about its evolution and potential convergence. In this sense, it should point out the possible awakening of a sleeping beauty, the formula “Solange”. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1014]
65.511 MacKENZIE, Scott A. —
The [Constitution's] Seventeenth Amendment transferred responsibility for selecting senators from state legislatures to voters. Scholars argue that voters’ ability to sanction performance ex post altered senators’ legislative activities. I focus on voters’ ex ante screening of senators. Using original data on senators’ political experiences, I show that direct elections increased the professionalization of pre-Senate careers. I then use sequence-analysis methods to identify career paths to the Senate. Pre-Senate career paths help explain which senators received important committee assignments. These findings challenge claims that direct elections had minimal effects on the Senate's composition and that recruitment is unrelated to legislative behavior. [R]
65.512 MANAEV, Oleg —
The media system in post-Soviet Belarus, just like Belarusian society as a whole, is deeply divided. While the state-run media survive through financial support from the state and has won the trust of the “common majority”, independent media attract support from abroad and appeal mainly to an “advanced minority” that disagrees with the policies of the current government. The media strengthen “social capital” in these two different parts of Belarusian society, contributing to the further coexistence of authoritarianism and democracy within one country. However, as a result of state policy, the authoritarian state media completely dominate the democratic media, creating a media model best described as “Islands in the Stream”. [R] [See Abstr. 65.508]
65.514 MASSEY, Calvin —
A series of [US Supreme Court] cases, culminating in Shelby County vs. Holder [2013], limited Congress's power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, although no such development has occurred with respect to the Thirteenth Amendment. This asymmetry of the enforcement power is only tangential: the focus is on Congress's power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment. Is that power identical to the power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment? What does Shelby County mean for the remainder of the Voting Rights Act? Has Shelby County called into question the constitutional validity of other portions of the Voting Rights Act? Did Shelby County import to the Fifteenth Amendment the congruence and proportionality test from the Fourteenth Amendment and, if so, might that test gravitate to the Thirteenth Amendment? This essay [addresses] these questions. [R, abr.]
65.515 MATANOCK, Aila M. —
Governance delegation agreements — international treaties allowing external actors legal authority within host states for fixed terms — succeed in simple and, under certain conditions, complex state-building tasks. These deals are well institutionalized and have input legitimacy because ratification requires sufficient domestic support from a ruling coalition. In order to obtain that input legitimacy, however, host states constrain external actors commensurate with their level of statehood: Stronger states delegate less legal authority. This article argues that these constraints, which produce joint rather than complete authority, require external actors to work within state structures rather than substituting for them, and thus make coordination of complex tasks more difficult. A quantitative overview of data on consent-based peacekeeping missions complements a qualitative analysis focused on comparative case studies in Melanesia and Central America to test the theory. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.164]
65.516 MATSAGANIS, Manos; LEVENTI, Chrysa —
Southern European welfare states are under stress. On the one hand, the recession has been causing unemployment to rise and incomes to fall. On the other hand, austerity has affected the capacity of welfare states to protect those affected. This paper assesses the distributional implications of the crisis in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal from 2009 to 2013. Using a microsimulation model, we disentangle the first-order effects of tax-benefit policies from the broader effects of the crisis, and estimate how its burden has been shared across income groups. We conclude by discussing the methodological pitfalls and policy implications of our research. [R] [See Abstr. 65.547]
65.517 MAVRIKOS-ADAMOU, Tina —
This article explores the dilemmas that Albania has been experiencing in implementing the rule of law during the past two decades with particular attention to the political institutional obstacles, including the difficulties of establishing an independent judiciary and the pervasiveness of corruption. The concept of the rule of law is the lens through which the difficulties of the democratization process are examined. The lack of transparency in the legislature and more broadly in the political decision-making process, and the divisive and leader-dominated political party system are two additional obstacles that Albania is facing in consolidating democracy. Since its first post-communist election in 1991, Albania has experienced challenges in conducting legitimate elections that meet international standards. The political and cultural environment provide the backdrop for analysis. [R, abr.]
65.518 MEDINA GUERRERO, Manuel —
Intense financial turbulences within the Eurozone have unleashed what has been referred to as the deepest existentialist crisis in the EU. In order to face it, the institutional balance that sustains the EU since Maastricht has been altered by recent reforms in European law, i.e. the reform of the Stability and Growth, the reform of the very TFEU to allow for exceptions to the no bail-out clause (art. 136.3, and the conclusion of two new Treaties, the Treaty establishing the European Financial Stabilization Mechanism and, above all, the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, that directs member states to incorporate in their constitutions the “balanced budget rule”. Therefore these instruments not only entail centralization of powers in the EU, but also the transformation of the member states’ economic constitutions. This paper aims to examine the impact of the constitutional amendment in the Spain's federal estructure, and the analysis focus mostly on the Organic Law passed by the central government to implement the new art. 135 CE. This Organic Law has substantially altered the previous legal framework so that the system of intergovernmental relations between the center and the autonomous communities has been deeply reshaped. In order to ensure the fiscal discipline, the communities has been subject to new monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms. Furthermore, communities’ control over their own budgets has decreased because two bail-out mechanisms have been established by the state: the “payments to suppliers fund” and the “regional liquidity fund”. These mechanisms are conditioned on the communities’ compliance with the budgetary and economic measures undertaken by the central government. Finally and amendment of the Organic Law (2013) has broadened the debt limit rule by including the commercial debt. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1014]
65.519 MEINEL, Florian —
Legitimization has turned into one of the key words of political jargon in Germany, and a great number of national, European and transnational problems are blamed on its deficit. German concern about legitimization issues can be understood as the other side of the coin of the transformation of the constitutional state. Internationalization of centers of power, the rise of new international actors and the falling apart of the constitutional state have caused what is commonly described as a “legitimization crisis”, given that they hinder the justification of new political actions. However, the concept of “democratic legitimization” is vacuous and must be determined, including from a legal point of view.
65.520 MENKHAUS, Ken —
Over two decades of external efforts at institution-building in Somalia have failed to revive a functional central government there. There are many reasons for this, not least of which are powerful local interests in perpetuating weak government institutions, facilitating corruption and other illicit activities. But some notable successes have occurred at the local level, both with formal and informal governance mechanisms. Municipalities have been particularly effective sources of formal governance in Somalia's failed state, providing basic security and services via legitimate and responsive local authorities. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.117]
65.521 MERRILL, Samuel, III; GROFMAN, Bernard; BRUNELL, Thomas L. —
While there are many formal models that generate predictions about polarization, only a handful address the question of how, with no change in electoral rules, levels of polarization can dramatically vary over time, as they have in the US House during 150 years of two-party competition. We propose a model that emphasizes national party constraints on district candidates’ ability to locate at positions far from the national party stance. The model predicts a close relation between tight tethers maintained by the national parties and congressional polarization, suggests implications for political competition, and generates the empirically accurate prediction that partisan polarization and within-party differentiation are negatively correlated. [R, abr.]
65.522 MILIO, Simona —
With reference to cohesion policy, multi-level governance (MLG) is the policy-making architecture that implements the subsidiarity principle, which aims for direct involvement bringing government closer to the citizen. In parallel, the partnership principle (PP) has been introduced to guarantee the participation of social and economic actors in both decision making and implementation processes in order to better understand and respond to territorial needs. A review of existing literature identifies opposing views on the benefit of this complex architecture. This paper investigates potentially conflicting effects of MLG and the PP on political accountability, for example by blurring responsibilities and corrupting stakeholder engagements. The Italian case is used to test this hypothesis and identify bottlenecks. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.1031]
65.523 MONTEN, Jonathan —
Since 2001, international attention has focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and specifically on the question of whether external intervention can assist weak or fragile states in successfully making the transition to stable democracies. This article analyzes the US occupations of Japan beginning in 1945, Afghanistan beginning in 2001, and Iraq beginning in 2003, and uses these cases to review and critique the literature on why some interventions have been more successful than others in building robust and effective state institutions. The comparative analysis suggests that external interveners face substantial barriers to state-building in circumstances that lack favorable domestic preconditions. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.117]
65.524 MOORE, Scott —
Inter-jurisdictional water-resource issues constitute a growing political and economic challenge in China. This article examines three such cases of hydropolitics, namely large dam construction, water resource allocation, and downstream water pollution, through the lens of central-local relations. It argues that the hydropolitics in China are characterized by the pursuit of localized preferences within the constraints imposed by a centralized political system. In each case, the primary actors are subnational administrative units, who adopt various competitive strategies to pursue their own localized interests at the expense of neighboring jurisdictions. This article argues that although vertical control mechanisms in the Chinese system effectively limit central-local preference divergence, they do little to contain horizontal conflicts between sub-national administrative units. [R, abr.]
65.525 MOORE, Scott M. —
China presents a paradox for scholars of environmental politics. Environmental politics and policy-making in China now includes elements critical to environmental protection in the West, including nongovernmental participation and stringent environmental legislation. Yet the country's authoritarian system constrains popular participation, and environmental outcomes are generally poor. China's South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) embodies this puzzle: despite the pluralization and development of environmental politics and policymaking, the SNWTP is a technocratic mega-project that imposes high social, economic, and environmental costs. What explains this puzzle, and what are the implications for understanding environmental politics in other authoritarian developing countries? [R, abr.]
65.526 MOSER, Scott; REEVES, Andrew —
The Second Reform Act ushered in the age of democratic politics in the UK by expanding the voting franchise and remedying legislative malapportionment. Analyzing parliamentary debates and divisions, we investigate why reform successfully passed the House of Commons in 1867. We consider why reform passed under a minority Conservative government yet failed under a majority Liberal government despite no election or change in membership. Though partisanship is most influential for parliamentary voting, it is an incomplete explanation given the absence of modern party institutions. Rather, we argue that the narrowed scope of debate under the Conservatives was crucial in passing reform. [R]
65.527 MOSLER, Hannes —
In 2004, South Korea's Constitutional Court declared the “Political Party Act” constitutional, reaffirming the prohibition of local party organizations by law. Party chapters — the “party on the ground” — lie at the heart of both the organizational and procedural dimension of the party system. Removing them is thus akin to “emasculating” the political parties and can be understood as a major interference with the realization of democracy. Based on the concept of judicialization of politics, this article investigates the decision's juridical rationality and cogency for its correctness and appropriateness by comparing it with three different authoritative references: the readings of the relevant Korean Constitutional norms as advanced by Korean constitutional scholars, the interpretation of equivalent norms in the German Constitution, and a judgment by the Court itself in a closely related case. [R, abr.]
65.528 MUMME, Stephen P. —
This article examines environmental protection along the US-Mexico border since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in January 1994. It first reviews the general and border-specific neoliberal arguments positing a favorable relationship between trade agreements and environmental protection. It then reviews the trajectory of environmental policy along the border, focusing on the principal institutions and programs developed pursuant to NAFTA. The article shows that while NAFTA-derived environmental agencies and programs have partially mitigated the adverse environmental impact of trade at the border, they have not kept pace with these developments, nor do they compensate for trade-related national security policies that hinder the implementation of environmental protection at the border. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Globalization and 21st century international borders”, edited by Lawrence A. HERZOG and Keith HAYWARD, and introduced by the first editor. See also Abstr. 65.534, 549, 643, 1132]
65.529 MUSHABEN, Joyce Marie —
Understood primarily as a meta-narrative reflecting citizens’ reluctance to accept migration and Islam as permanent components of their society, grass-roots protests against mosque construction also highlight a democratic paradox regarding multi-level governance: while national governments bear chief responsibility for ensuring fundamental religious freedoms, local authorization procedures affecting mosque construction (e.g., zoning, building permits) have rendered communal spaces a Ground Zero for the regulation of Islamic faith communities. While similar protests have taken place across Europe, German officials face special problems in responding to challenges by neighborhood groups, rooted in the complicated nature of federalism, the legacy of National Socialism and a new, if misunderstood, element of “militant democracy” at local levels. [R, abr.]
65.530 NATALI, David; PRITONI, Andrea —
This contribution [examines] the interaction between political decision-makers and interest groups (IGs) through an historical approach, embracing two decades of Italian pension reforms. It focuses on party-group relationships, through a rigorous definition of the changing modes of interaction between the two and the study of the key endogenous and exogenous factors that have shaped it. It confirms some broader trends in IG politics in Italy: the progressive disentanglement of parties and IGs, and the fragmentation of the policy arena. New actors see a role in the reform process. We also outline some peculiarities of the field. This is the case of the changing role of IGs between the 1990s and the more recent reform processes in the 2000s and 2010s. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.858]
65.531 NATALI, David; STAMATI, Furio —
The article studies pension reforms in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain between 1990 and 2013, focusing on three dimensions of change: multi-pillarization, institutional harmonization, and spending trends (cost-containment/expansion). The pension evolution of these countries is reassessed throughout the period of crisis and austerity. All countries encouraged the spread of private pensions and harmonized their fragmented public schemes. Cost containment was massive, putting future adequacy at risk. While international actors, especially the EU, acquired a stronger role, that of organized labor declined. Spiraling between crisis and austerity, these systems changed and adapted, but still face old and new problems: inequality, risk-individualization, and increasing vulnerability to external shocks. [R] [See Abstr. 65.547]
65.532 NATTER, Katharina —
The factors that influence the formation of transit states’ policies towards irregular migration have been insufficiently analyzed. This case study therefore investigates why and how Morocco, at the interface of Euro-African migration flows, created a policy towards irregular migration at the beginning of the 21st c. This article shows that Morocco's policy, rather than being a by-product of European migration policies, was the authorities’ strategic response to the country's complex geopolitical environment that aimed at restoring Morocco's pivotal role in the region via irregular migration control. [R, abr.]
65.533 NETTESHEIM, Martin —
In the 1980s, there was a significant change in the jurisprudence of the German Constitutional Court, whose rulings were no longer inspired by utopian thinking. Since then, judgments have been imbued with a post-political tendency, which means that the Court seeks the most rational solution to a given problem without considering its political implications. In particular, post-political actions are driven by economic laws and safety issues and are conducted to prevent threats and dangers arising from European integration without considering a long-lasting political horizon. The Court should apply an appropriate standard in order to correct this situation.
65.534 NEVINS, Joseph —
In 2008, US immigration authorities raided [a] restaurant business in San Diego, California. They arrested 18 employees for working in the US without authorization, and ultimately deported most of them. The raid reflects a growing effort by the federal government to compel employers to cooperate with state-led efforts to police workplaces and effectively cleanse them of unauthorized workers. This article traces the institutional genealogy of such efforts while demonstrating how they are part and parcel of a general “hardening” of US socio-territorial boundaries and the growth of a state apparatus charged with policing those boundaries. It illustrates how these developments articulate with the shifting nature of the state — in the contemporary US and elsewhere — and how it defines and produces matters of security and wellbeing. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.528]
65.535 O'LOUGHLIN, Mary Ann; NEWTON, Alex —
The COAG Reform Council has played a critical role in tracking progress, nationally and on a state-by-state basis, against the COAG reform agenda. The council has analyzed and publicly reported on governments’ performance against outcomes, performance indicators and targets agreed by COAG. However, until 2013, gender-analysis was not directly incorporated in the assessment of governments’ performance. The Council's first report on gender, “Tracking equity: Comparing outcomes for women and girls across Australia”, redressed this omission. This article explores how taking account of gender greatly enriches our understanding of governments’ performance in critical areas, and enhances public accountability as a result. An understanding of gender differences also provides a better basis for government decision-making on ways to improve outcomes. [R] [See Abstr. 65.252]
65.536 OBINGER, Herbert; SCHMITT, Carina; ZOHLNHÖFER, Reimut —
Many scholars have argued that partisan differences have disappeared since the 1980s because of the ever-increasing economic globalization and the deepening of European integration. Using a new primary dataset on public ownership that contains detailed information on privatization in 20 countries between 1980 and 2007, we test these claims empirically in relation to state ownership. We pay special attention to the question of whether changes in the international political economy, notably globalization and different aspects of European integration, condition partisan politics. Our empirical findings suggest that political parties have continued to significantly shape national privatization trajectories in line with the classic partisan hypothesis. While partisan differences are somewhat reduced by the liberalizing and market-building efforts of the EU, globalization does not condition partisan effects. [R, abr.]
65.537 OMORI, Sawa —
This research explains the politics of financial reforms in Indonesia by applying the theory of veto-players. By comparing the periods during and after the IMF programs, I analyze temporal variations in the effects of the IMF and the number of veto-players on financial reforms in Indonesia. [R]
65.538 OÑATE, Pablo —
The electoral quota passed in Spain in March 2007 stipulated at least 40% candidates of either sex for all elected offices. Exploring how effective this measure has been in generating conditions of political equality in a broader sense, this article analyzes the degree to which this regulation has resulted in a rise in the number of female MPs, as well as to their presence in leading positions and their nomination to a wide range of parliamentary committees. Comparing trends in 18 national and regional legislatures before and after the quota was introduced, the analysis concludes that the quota led to a modest increase in the numbers of women elected, but did little to reduce vertical and horizontal segregation or bridge the gap between nominations to traditionally “feminine” and “masculine” portfolios. [R] [See Abstr. 65.167]
65.539 ONOMA, Ato Kwamena —
Why are some countries more successful at carrying out post-conflict reconstruction programs than are others? Sierra Leone and Liberia have similar histories and suffered wars that were intimately linked. When the wars ended, foreign-backed efforts were undertaken to reform the security sector in each country. These reforms were more successful in Sierra Leone than in Liberia. This article argues that the diverging outcomes are explained by the extent to which post-conflict regimes reflected the distribution of power on the ground in the two countries. Sierra Leone's transition regime better reflected the distribution of power among forces on the ground, which led to a consultative approach to framing the reform program. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.117]
65.540 OPPERMANN, Kai; BRUMMER, Klaus —
This article contributes to research on the foreign policy influence of junior partners in coalition governments. It pays greater attention to different patterns and pathways of such influence. It distinguishes two types of coalition set-ups for foreign policy-making. In the first type, junior partners hold one or more departments in the foreign policy executive, and their foreign policy influence rests on the powers that controlling ministries in the field brings. In the second type, junior partners do not hold any department in foreign affairs, and their influence comes from their ability to constrain the discretion of the senior partner in foreign policy. The article exemplifies its theoretical contentions in comparative case studies on the current coalition governments in Germany and the UK, which represent the first and second type respectively. [R, abr.]
65.541 ORREN, Karen —
With a view to elaborating a developmental theory of constitutionalism in the US, this essay explores the relationship among constitutional, criminal, and civil law. It supports, with relevant case materials, a single proposition: civil litigants are afforded contested constitutional protections in federal court to the extent that the judges attribute an aspect of criminality to the underlying facts or issues in question. The essay tests this proposition in the areas of punitive damages, double jeopardy, and constitutional torts; discusses the mirroring of the stipulated pattern in legal maneuvering on constitutional issues; and briefly spells out its implications for the larger theory. [R]
65.542 OSTRANDER, Ian; SIEVERT, Joel —
Prior literature suggests that [US] presidents use signing statements to unilaterally move policy closer to their own ideal point after Congress has already voted on and passed a particular bill. Congress, however, retains the ability to revisit and amend the law by passing another bill. A presidential signing statement may thus make a law less durable and more likely to be amended in the future. To investigate this relationship, we examine all laws passed from the 95th through the 108th Congresses in order to demonstrate the specific influence of presidential signing statements on future congressional amendment activity. The results of our analysis lend support to the theory that laws receiving presidential signing statements are in fact more likely to be revisited and revised by Congress. [R, abr.]
65.543 PACHON, Alejandro —
Scholars have widely adopted the view that the behavior of the Tunisian military during the “Arab Spring” constitutes a positive case of military defection. This paper argues that, contrary to this dominant interpretation, the military remained loyal to the authoritarian civilian leadership throughout the protests as it had repeatedly done in the past. Defection occurred, however, within the Police and the National Guard, which are mistakenly portrayed as having been loyal to Ben Ali. The paper shows that scholars have sought to explain exactly the opposite of what actually happened and, thus, it questions their conclusions regarding civil-military relations in Tunisia. [R]
65.544 PAQUET, Mireille —
Between 1990 and 2010, a gradual process of institutional change has affected Canada's immigration and integration governance regime. The central characteristic of this process is the emergence of a new legitimate institutional group of actors: Canadian provinces. This change is a break from the previous pattern of federal dominance and provincial avoidance. It is not the result of diminished federal intervention in immigration and cannot be explained by exogenous shocks. Current explanations of this evolution focus on federal decisions and have trouble explaining provincial mobilization. Using a mechanistic approach to the analysis of social processes and insights on gradual institutional changes, this article demonstrates that provinces have been the central agents bringing about the federalization of Canada's immigration and integration governance regime between 1990 and 2010. [R, abr.]
65.545 PÉREZ NIÑO, Helena; LE BILLON, Philippe —
Sharing similar colonial and post-independence civil war experiences, Mozambique's and Angola's development paths are often contrasted, with foreign aid-dependent Mozambique hailed a success compared to oil-rentier Angola. This article questions the so-called Mozambican miracle and revisits Angola's trajectory over the past two decades. Paying attention to ruling parties and postwar political economy transitions, we discuss differences and similarities in post-conflict reconstruction paths, policy, and institutional fragility. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.117]
65.546 PETERS, Margaret E. —
This article argues that immigration policy-formation in the US after 1950 can be understood only in the context of the increasing integration of world markets. Increasing trade openness has exposed firms that rely on immigrant labor to foreign competition and increased the likelihood that these firms fail. Increasing openness by other states to FDI allowed these same firms to move production overseas. Firms’ choices to close their doors or to move overseas decrease their need for labor at home, leading them to spend their political capital on issues other than immigration. Their lack of support for open immigration, in turn, allows policy-makers to restrict immigration. An examination of voting behavior on immigration in the US Senate shows that the integration of world capital and goods markets has had an important effect on the politics of immigration in the US and shows little support for existing theories of immigration policy-formation. [R, abr.]
65.547 PETMESIDOU, Maria; GUILLÉN, Ana M. —
South European countries have been hit hardest and longest by the post-2008 economic crisis. This has brought their welfare states under acute strain. Unmet need has sharply increased while significant welfare reforms and (more or less) deep cuts and changes in social spending have been prominent in the repertoire of the crisis-management solutions implemented by the governments (under EU constraints and the strict rescue-deal requirements for Greece and Portugal). This introduction briefly reviews reform trends prior to and during the crisis in order to highlight convergent and divergent paths among the four countries and outline the major questions addressed by the contributions to this volume. [R] [Introduction to a thematic issue on “Economic crisis and austerity in Southern Europe: threat or opportunity for a sustainable welfare state?”, edited by the authors. See Abstr. Abstr. 65.457, 505, 516, 531, 548]
65.548 PETMESIDOU, Maria; PAVOLINI, Emmanuele; GUILLÉN, Ana M. —
This article addresses the question of whether the economic crisis provides a politically opportune time to drastically curtail public healthcare in South Europe or whether, instead, there are signs of longer-term reform strategies for potentially balancing fiscal targets with the quest for enhanced value and health outcomes, when eventually growth resumes. After a brief examination of the profile of healthcare systems in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain prior to the crisis, we comparatively assess the mix of retrenchment, restructuring and recalibration strategies. The effects of the austerity-driven reforms on current (and expected) health outcomes are also briefly analyzed. We conclude with reflections on the future of public healthcare in South Europe. [R] [See Abstr. 65.547]
65.549 PEZZOLI, Keith, et al. —
Global megatrends — including climate change, food and water insecurity, economic crisis, large-scale disasters and widespread increases in preventable diseases — are motivating a bioregionalization of planning in city-regions around the world. Bioregionalization is an emergent process. It is visible where societies have begun grappling with complex socio-ecological problems by establishing place-based (territorial) approaches to securing health and well-being. This article examines a bioregional effort to merge place-based health planning and ecological restoration along the US-Mexico border. The theoretical construct underpinning this effort is called One Bioregion/One Health (OBROH). OBROH frames health as a transborder phenomenon that involves human-animal-environment interactions. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.528]
65.550 PLUTA, Anne C. —
This article uses a study of presidential touring to advance an alternative view that 19th c. presidents embraced opportunities provided by exogenous forces to develop and maintain a relationship with the public. This argument stands in contrast to traditional accounts that the president was bounded by norms and ideas of proper behavior. Instead, I posit that presidents were much more responsive to evolving opportunities to participate effectively in political competition. [R]
65.551 POGODDA, Sandra; HUBER, Daniela —
This paper analyzes India's internal peace-building approach in Bihar, north-east India and Jammu and Kashmir regarding its similarity with the liberal peace and its effectiveness in terms of conflict-transformation. By focusing on the human rights and needs components of Indian peacebuilding, we investigate whether state interventions have managed to transform the local conflict spheres in their political, economic, societal and gender/family dimensions. Drawing on fieldwork carried out between 2011 and 2013, the paper remains skeptical about both the novelty and effectiveness of the Indian peace-building approach. [R]
65.552 POPESCU, Marina; SOARE, Sorina —
The article examines the evolution of party regulation in Romania and identifies a progressive shift from the early 1990s promotion scope of party legislation towards a multi-layered prescriptive and rather restrictive legislation. The dynamics identified fit the party cartelization idea, although with significant amendments. The mid-1990s and the 2000s changes were not primarily geared towards controlling access to public funding for party politics; beyond the rhetoric pleading in favor of a simpler democracy, the various amendments testify parties’ interest to limit access to privileged state contracts and patronage positions. [R] [See Abstr. 65.408]
65.553 POWER, Timothy J. —
I explore the meaning of the transition from Lula da Silva to D. Rousseff, considering not only that both belong to the same party (PT) but that Dilma was Chief of staff in Lula's second [term], so there is a remarkable continuity between the two. I examine the context of the 2010 elections, stressing that Dilma's victory is to be understood in the context of the rise of a consensus democratic, originated in the Real Plan in 1994, involving the Government of F. Cardoso. I also discuss the 2010 electoral process and its results, “lessons from the Lula years” and its possible impact on the Government of Dilma and finally, the first two years of the Government of Dilma in the light of Lula's legacy. [R]
65.554 PRANTL, Heribert —
In the political debates in Germany concerning handicapped and disabled people, concepts like “integration” and “inclusion” are insufficiently defined or inaccurately used. On some occasions, these notions are used as synonyms, and in others “inclusion” is rightly used as a superlative, that is, as an advanced form of integration. If inclusion is attained, democracy will be a real socially operative system which will hear every citizen's voice. If “integration” of new generations of immigrants was considered as the third German unification, “inclusion” of handicapped or disabled people will surely be regarded as the fourth.
65.555 PRONTERA, Andrea —
Path dependency is not the only single model of historical process alternative to the orthodox homeostatic model of policy evolution, and recently it has been challenged by a promising alternative: process sequencing. Taking the Italian renewable electricity policy as an example and adopting the method of process tracing, the article demonstrates the value of this approach. Each of the main Italian policy reforms, from 1992 to 2012, move in the opposite direction of the previous policy choice, and the policy instruments introduced each time aim to reverse the preceding solution. However, even if not consistent with the broad notion of path dependency and self-reinforcing processes, these policy dynamics cannot be understood without a special attention to historical process and sequences. [R]
65.556 PUPPIS, Manuel, et al. —
Since independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) became key actors in European regulatory governance in the 1990s, a significant share of policy-making has been carried out by organizations that are neither democratically elected nor directly accountable to elected politicians. [Although] public communication plays an important role, empirical research focusing directly on how regulators communicate is virtually non-existent. This paper examines the public communication of IRAs in four countries (the UK, Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland) and three sectors (financial services, telecommunications, and broadcasting). The empirical analysis, based on qualitative interviews and a quantitative content-analysis, indicates that the organization of the communication function follows a national pattern approach while a policy-sector approach is helpful for understanding the use of communication as a soft tool of regulation. [R, abr.]
65.557 PYNNÖNIEMI, Katri —
From its establishment in May 2009 until late spring 2012 when it lost momentum, the presidential Commission for the Modernization and Technological Development of Russia's Economy was instrumental in shaping the public debate on political and economic change in Russia in general, and the president's campaign for “technological modernization” in particular. The commission was designed to have a dual role: to accelerate priority projects for the technological modernization campaign and to provide a political venue for imagining the nature of the technological modernization and what it would mean for Russia. Ultimately, however, it is best to evaluate the role of the commission in the context of science fiction, since its work was focused more on fantastic imaginings of a possible future for Russia, rather than actually implementing practical change. [R] [See Abstr. 65.780]
65.558 RANKO, Annette —
This paper contributes to the literature on the inclusion-moderation hypothesis. It identifies factors that — in addition to political inclusion — might hinder or further a group's ideological moderation. Specifically, it analyzes the effect of a regime's discourse and of political inclusion on the ideological development of an Islamist group. It draws on the case of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) under H. Mubarak. It finds that moderation takes hold w only hen inclusion is coupled with a negative regime discourse towards the Brotherhood. The moderating effect of such discourse is also sustained when inclusion is reduced to a minimum. Further, this study argues that the content of the regime's discourse was a key determinant in shaping the only selective moderation the Brotherhood underwent. [R]
65.559 RASHKOVA, Ekaterina R.; SPIROVA, Maria —
Since the fall of communism and the transition to democracy, all East-European states have transitioned to multiparty democracies. However, the legal frameworks within which parties function differ substantially among countries. Some countries embrace diversity without posing obstacles to mobilization on ethnic grounds, for example, while others prohibit the establishment and existence of parties of ethnic ideology. Here, we study how Bulgarian parties are regulated through the Party Law, the Electoral Law and the Constitution. In particular, we look at the requirements for setting up of political parties and the type, quantity and allocation mechanisms of public funding and trace the effect that these and other factors have had on the development of the current party system. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.408]
65.560 RAY, Saumyajit —
In the [US] presidential system, the President's party has on more than one occasion been reduced to a minority in the federal legislature. The US President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives — the leader of the majority party — had often found themselves clashing on matters of policy, legislation, and executive action. This essay makes a careful selection of five House Speakers in the post-1945 period, all belonging to the “other party”, and explores their relations with the Presidents of their times. Out of these, only N. Gingrich succeeded in dividing the government as never before, demonstrating that the House Speaker had the capacity to stall government altogether, something even a “Leader of the Opposition” in a parliamentary system can never do. [R]
65.561 RENWICK, Alan —
The Electoral Reform Society has recently published two reports putting the case for electoral reform in local government. These suggest acceptance, in the wake of defeat in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, that the group's ultimate goal of change to the Westminster electoral system is unlikely to be fulfilled soon and that a more gradual strategy is therefore needed. This paper examines this shift by asking three questions. First, is Westminster electoral reform really a dead letter? Second, is local electoral reform more likely — and, if so, just how much more likely? Third, would local electoral reform matter in itself? [R]
65.562 ROSS, Cameron; TUROVSKY, Rostislav —
Today's Russian Federation Council, the upper chamber of the bicameral parliament, effectively represents the federal government in the regions rather than providing the regions representation in federal policy-making. The system of choosing members has evolved considerably over time, from direct elections in the early to mid-1990s, to appointments today by the regional executive and legislative branches. In practice, the appointment process is neither democratic, nor representative, instead giving strong benefits to the ruling United Russia party, whose members dominate the chamber. Businesspeople make up a third of the members, but Russia's largest energy and metals companies do not see the rubber stamp body as a way to influence policy-making. [R]
65.563 ROYO, Sebastián —
The economic crisis has had an earth-shattering effect in Spain at all levels: economic, political, institutional, and social. There are different interpretations about the causes of the crisis. Most of the analyses on the economic crisis in Spain have concerned themselves with phenomena like mismanaged banks, excessive debts, the bubble in the real-estate sector, or the loss of competitiveness. Others have sought to explain the crisis as a byproduct of European Monetary Union integration. This article argues that a fundamental reason for the crisis is rooted in the process of institutional degeneration that preceded the crisis. [R] [[See Abstr. 65.1398]
65.564 RRUSTEMI, Arlinda; BAUMGÄRTEL, Moritz —
The Parliament of Kosovo passed a controversial amnesty law in July 2013 in the context of the Brussels-led negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo. This article evaluates the law using a functional framework, thus exploring possible implications with regard to legality, the rule of law, security, the economy, and reconciliation. We find that the amnesty law entails serious problems or risks in each aspect except legality due to its broad scope which includes common and economic crimes while providing possibilities for abuse. Moreover, international actors involved in the negotiation process exerted considerable pressure to adopt the amnesty law which raises questions concerning their motives and strategy. [R, abr.]
65.565 RUBINSTEIN, Nicolai —
This article analyzes the complex evolution of the constitutional and electoral procedures and the debates about them during the first years of the Great Council, when the republican regime was re-established after the fall of the Medici, at a time when Savonarola was very influential. Several dimensions were interlinked: fundamental reflections about the weight of the different social groups that were part of the Great Council or the supposed characteristics of election and sortition, tactical maneuvers that were intended to procedurally promote such or such political camp, and practical concerns about the concrete organization of the debates. It is only after some years that the sortition of the magistrates became a claim of the “popular” current and was eventually adopted. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1298]
65.566 SAINT-MARTIN, Denis —
Ethics reform in [the US] Congress is expected to display extensive instability and “cycling”. Members hold conflicting views about ethics, and parties have weak capacities to order their preferences. The trend is for legislators to resist change until a scandal erupts and forces them to act. As a result, ethics reforms in Congress have typically developed through a layering of short-term and piecemeal institutional responses to the scandal of the moment. But the accumulation over time of seemingly small adjustments to the ethics process has been more path-dependent than anticipated in theories of disjointed pluralism. [R, abr.]
65.567 SAMBO, Abdulfatai O.; KADOUF, Hunud Abia —
The contemporary Arab world has witnessed uprisings and turmoil as a result of alleged power-overreaching by political elites. Consequently, people call for democracy with emphasis on constitutionalism, accountability and protection of human rights. Yet, the voice of the judiciary seems not to be heard in championing these values in many Muslim nations despite the clear roles Islam places on the judiciary regarding political matters. This paper therefore analyzes the power of judicial review on political questions from the perspective of Islamic jurisprudence. It finds that the power of judicial review and its main institution existed in early Islamic periods after the demise of the Prophet (SAW). [R, abr.]
65.568 SAUNAVAARA, Juha —
Despite the unique internal and external characteristics of the process that took place in Japan from 1945 to 1952, the political reconstruction of Japan can be utilized as a frame of reference against which the lessons drawn from the recent democratization processes in Afghanistan and Iraq can be reflected. This not only reveals the challenges and possibilities of the political reconstruction processes aiming at democracy, but also leads to the question as to whether the process of democratization can ever meet the demands of democracy if it is enforced by foreign occupiers. The experiences in Japan suggest that the utilization of nondemocratic practices and the period of pseudo-democracy do not rule out the possibility of the emergence of a genuine democracy. [R, abr.]
65.569 SCHÄFERHOFF, Marco —
Concentrating on the health sector, this article argues that the provision of collective goods through external actors depends on the level of state capacity and the complexity of the service that external actors intend to provide. It shows that external actors can contribute most effectively to collective good provision when the service is simple, and that simple services can even be provided under conditions of failed statehood. Effectively delivering complex services requires greater levels of state capacity. The article also indicates that legitimacy is a key factor to explain variance in health service delivery. To demonstrate this, the article assesses health projects in Somalia. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.164]
65.570 SCHEIPERS, Sibylle —
The West's treatment of irregular fighters in the “war on terror” was highly problematic. This article contends that we must look beyond the assumption that political and strategic considerations compromised the law and led to the “invention” of the category of the “unlawful combatant”. Rather, the law of armed conflict itself includes strong exclusionary mechanisms towards irregular fighters. These exclusionary strands in the law came to dominate the West's strategic decision-making on the treatment of irregular fighters. Moreover, the fact that irregular fighters became such a vital issue post-9/11 [2001] was not a result of the war on terror being a new kind of war, as has often been argued. Rather, it reflects an identity crisis of the West's regular armed forces at the start of the 21st c. [R]
65.571 SCHIMPFOSSL, Elisabeth; YABLOKOV, Ilya —
This article examines questions of censorship, self-censorship and conformism on Russia's federal television networks during V. Putin's third presidential term. It challenges the idea that the political views and images broadcast by federal television are imposed coercively upon reporters, presenters and anchors. Based on an analysis of interviews with famous media personalities as well as rank-and-file reporters, this article argues that media governance in contemporary Russia does not need to resort to coercive methods, or the exertion of self-censorship among its staff, to support government views. Quite the contrary: reporters enjoy relatively large leeway to develop their creativity, which is crucial for state-aligned television networks to keep audience ratings up. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.508]
65.572 SCHMAHL, Stefanie —
Since the German Federal Constitutional Court's ruling on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the Bundestag received additional participatory and decision-making rights in EU affairs as a result of the Responsibility for Integration Act. This law contains provisions relating to the principle of subsidiarity, under which the EU might act only insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States. These issues raise competence problems, which are exacerbated by the actual measures taken to save the euro and it would therefore be necessary to readjust European parliamentary democracies.
65.573 SCHMITT, Carina —
Privatization has spread around the globe. While a number of studies find empirical evidence for the diffusion of privatization, it remains unclear what the relevant linkages between states are. This article analyzes whether it is economic competition or political affinity that influences the diffusion of privatizing public utilities. The sample includes telecommunications, postal, and railway providers as the main network-based utilities operating at the national level in 15 European countries from 1980 until 2007. The results of the spatial regressions clearly show that governments follow each other for economic reasons. Trading partners strategically interact when privatizing their national public-utility providers to form strategic cross-border company alliances and to avoid competitive disadvantages in the global market. [R, abr.]
65.574 SCHRAM, Sanford F., ed. —
Editor's introduction, pp. 425–437. Articles by Clyde W. BARROW, “Realpolitik in the American University: Charles A. Beard and the problem of academic repression”, pp. 438–458; Steven C. WARD, “From E Pluribus Unum to Caveat Emptor: how neoliberal policies are capturing and dismantling the liberal university”, pp. 459–473; Tracy L.R. LIGHTCAP, “Academic governance and democratic processes: the entrepreneurial model and its discontents”, pp. 474–488; Jacob SEGAL, “Ideology and the reform of public higher education”, pp. 489–503; Joseph M. SCHWARTZ, “Resisting the exploitation of contingent faculty labor in the neoliberal university: the challenge of building solidarity between tenured and non-tenured faculty”, pp. 504–522; Vincent TIRELLI, “Contingent academic labor against neoliberalism”, pp. 523–537; Seaton Patrick TARRANT and Leslie Paul THIELE, “The web we weave: online education and democratic prospects”, pp. 538–555; Clyde W, et al., “The changing democratic functions of historically black colleges and universities”, pp. 556–572; Douglas A. MEDINA, “Open admission and the imposition of tuition at the City University of New York, 1969–1976: a political economic case study for understanding the current crisis in higher education”, pp. 573–589; Brian CATERINO, “Lowering the basement floor: from community colleges to the for-profit revolution”, pp. 590–606; George EHRHARDT, “Academic conservatives and the future of higher education”, pp. 607–621; Romand COLES, “Transforming the game: democratizing the publicness of higher education and Commonwealth in neoliberal times”, pp. 622–639.
65.575 SCHREYER, Bernhard —
Governing in an open world means acting under the conditions of complexity, contingency and emergence. In order to manage this challenge, governments have to decide, to explain and to attribute. Therefore political decisions become morally charged. For this reason, alternative ideas will be devalued and are no longer available. On the one hand, it is not possible to renounce the moral justifications; on the other, it is more difficult to find new solutions. This ambivalence is a fundamental characteristic of the political systems in an open world, which cannot be suspended. [R] [First of a series of articles on “The future of European governance”. See also Abstr. 65.963, 1019, 1078]
65.576 SHAH, Aqil —
Why do some militaries retain high authoritarian prerogatives during transitions from militarized authoritarian rule? The Pakistan military's 2007 extrication shows that an important part of the answer lies in the level of structural differentiation between the “military government” and the “military institution”. Despite sustained contentious opposition to military rule, the high level of separation between these two military dimensions of the state allowed the institutional military to delink itself from the discredited dictatorship and exit on its own terms. In the post-authoritarian context, the military has preserved its expansive prerogatives by using a variety of adaptive contestation mechanisms — including the mobilization of the media and the judiciary — that act as a continuing source of political instability and uncertainty. [R]
65.577 SHAKER, Mohamed Ibrahim —
If the Arab countries were to take the step of inviting Iran to join a Middle East nuclear fuel cycle from the outset, including Iran's sensitive nuclear technologies, would such a step open the way for a peaceful settlement of the Iranian nuclear crisis? If Iran kept control of its nuclear program under the umbrella of a Middle Eastern nuclear fuel cycle, then Iran's peaceful nuclear accomplishments could be put to the service and benefit of all the Arab members of the region without necessarily leading to any transfer of sensitive technologies beyond Iran. To draw a road map toward the establishment of a WMDFZ in the Middle East, this article draws on lessons from previous experiences, especially the European Atomic Energy Community Treaty, in establishing a regional cooperation framework. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.1202]
65.578 SHIPAN, Charles R.; VOLDEN, Craig —
In federal systems, governments have the opportunity to learn from the policy experiments — and the potential successes — of other governments. Whether they seize such opportunities, however, may depend on the expertise or past experiences of policy-makers. Based on an analysis of state-level adoptions of anti-smoking restrictions targeted towards youths, we find that US states are more likely to emulate other states that have demonstrated the ability to successfully limit youth smoking. In addition, we find that political expertise (as captured by legislative professionalism) and policy expertise (as captured by previous youth access policy experiments at the local level) enhance the likelihood of emulating policy successes found in other states. As such, we establish that internal expertise and external learning are complements, rather than substitutes. [R]
65.579 SIDDIQUEE, Noore Alam —
While Malaysia has always seen major reform and modernization programs, the Government Transformation Program (GTP) introduced by the current Prime Minister in 2009 has drawn much attention as a new model of public service reform. Touted as a major innovation in public service reform, it is also claimed to have made impressive progress in areas where previous reforms have failed. This paper reviews the experience of the GTP as a reform model and assesses its impacts and policy significance. [R, abr.]
65.580 SIK Kim Hwang —
Since 1948, the Constitution of the Republic of Korea has been amended nine times. In these decades, the country saw periods of being a democratic state and of being a dictatorship before once again turning into a democracy, which has become very stable in the decades since the last amendment in 1987. After more than 25 years, new calls for constitutional reform have emerged. These could include adding additional rights and amendments to existing ones, a re-structuring of the political system as well as changes of the competences of the constitutional court. [R, abr.]
65.581 SIMKINS, Tim —
This article considers how structures and processes of governance in education have changed in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland over recent years, setting this discussion within the context of debates about the nature of governance and governing in public services more generally. I argue that governance needs to be considered as a comprehensive concept that encompasses both the role of the state and the range of other actors and processes through which educational provision is steered; and that governance is essentially about power: its distribution and its use. The article draws on these key ideas to explore the similarities and differences between the experiences of the four constituent jurisdictions of the UK over recent years. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.670]
65.582 SINKLER, Adrian —
I address the question “when do peasants on collectively-owned land demand private titles?” by analyzing a land-titling program in Mexico. Where commercial farmers were more powerful, the state issued fewer land grants to peasants and invested in public goods to capture electoral support from commercial farmers. Fewer peasants received land in these areas, but those who did had access to public goods that reduced socioeconomic marginalization and increased their capacity to invest in a private title. Using a technique called causal-mediation analysis, I show that a higher percentage of arable land granted to the peasant sector during the 20th c. directly reduces the likelihood of land privatization in the 21st c., and indirectly reduces privatization through farm productivity and human development levels. [R, abr.]
65.583 SOTOMAYOR, Arturo C. —
Can peacekeeping participation help reform military institutions in democratizing states? Drawing on evidence from Nepal — one of the world's largest troop contributors to UN peacekeeping operations — this essay illustrates that participation in peace missions can sometimes undermine security sector reform and deteriorate civil-military relations. Furthermore, this analysis shows that peacekeeping participation will not necessarily reorient troops away from their conventional internal roles (such as counterinsurgency) or improve civilian control over the armed forces. Hence, civilians can lose control over soldiers just as frequently when they are deployed overseas as when they are at home. [R]
65.584 STARODUBTSEV, Andrey —
This article analyzes the political reasons for Russia's failure to define and implement a coherent regional policy during the 2000s. Combining J. Kingdon's “multiple stream” framework and empirical evidence from Russian regional policy, I conclude that this failure resulted from the inability of administratively and politically weak reformers to resist top officials who consider regional development a secondary priority and pressure groups that are interested in maintaining the status quo. [R] [See Abstr. 65.780]
65.585 STEVENSON, Howard —
In the post-war period, teacher unions in England and Wales have experienced considerable turbulence regarding their participation in the structures of system governance. Participation in governance had traditionally been conducted through the processes of collective bargaining until the abolition of national negotiating rights in 1987. After an extended period of exclusion from governance networks this situation was reversed in 2003 following the establishment of a “social partnership” between employers and education unions. This article draws on data from the Economic and Social Research Council funded project “Workforce remodelling, teacher trade unions and school-based industrial relations” to assess the significance of the social partnership for system governance. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.670]
65.586 STEWART, Susan —
The neopatrimonial framework helps to explain the difficulty making progress on procurement reform in Ukraine. Even when reform laws are adopted, entrenched private interests succeed in watering down these laws, moving significant parts of the procurement process from the formal to the informal sector. Because of the prevalence of domestic interests in the process, outside actors, such as the EU, World Bank, and USAID have little influence in pushing for a more transparent procurement process in Ukraine. [R] [See Abstr. 65.496]
65.587 STREMLAU, Nicole —
In the early 1990s, Ethiopia's ruling party, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), drafted one of Africa's most ambitious constitutions, allowing for ethnic federalism, decentralization and democratic reforms. The constitution has been highly controversial and many of its aspirations remain unrealized. This article explores how the EPRDF sought to use the media to explain and encourage acceptance of the constitution. It offers a framework for analysis that is relevant for countries beyond Ethiopia by examining: the role of media policies in providing domestic and international legitimacy for constitutions; the ways in which media can provide a space for nonviolent political conflict or negotiation, where elites can navigate political struggles and debate ideology; and the use of media to implement the constitution's most ambitious goals. [R, abr.]
65.588 STROSCHEIN, Sherrill —
Both Bosnia in 1995 and Northern Ireland in 1998 were extremely fragile in the immediate aftermath of brokered peace negotiations. Each instituted a form of consociationalism — a government that institutionalizes a voice for each ethnic group — as an element of brokered peace. I examine Bosnian postwar governance with comparative insights from Northern Ireland. Bosnia was the recipient of a large amount of international aid. While this aid was crucial to the initial state-building effort, the problems Bosnia now faces are due to its consociational governance structure. Some of the group-based aspects of consociationalism are in tension with individual rights, a problem that cannot be addressed by aid alone. [R] [See Abstr. 65.117]
65.589 SUITER, Jane; O'MALLEY, Eoin —
This article tests a theory to explain particularistic political spending not normally used on parliamentary systems. Using constituency-level data, we evaluate the merits of theories predicting whether parties reward their core voters or target floating or swing voters to maximise the party's electoral return. In order to bring new insights into the process of parliamentary pork in a system which incentivises garnering a personal vote, we introduce the decision-making rule (ministerial autonomy) as a variable and argue that the level of ministerial discretion in allocating funds coupled with the electoral system's incentives leads, in Ireland, to a form of distributive authoritarianism where the interests of ministers trump those of their party. [R]
65.590 SUZUKI, Takaaki —
Contrary to what is claimed in much of the extant literature, the Japanese state has clearly undergone significant transformation since the 1980s. Indeed, while the state has taken a lesser role in industrial policy and matters relating to the social domain (both historically significant areas of action in the developmental state model), the overall place of the state has grown, not shrunk, as it now assumes a greater (if less visible) role in preserving the stability of a liberalized, finance-driven market. In Japan, the characteristics of the state have considerably changed in both qualitative and quantitative terms, changes that can be described as a neoliberal hybridization of the developmental state model. [R, abr.] [First of a series of articles on “Toward a renewal of the developmental state in Asia?”, edited and introduced by Pauline DEBANES and Sébastien LECHEVALLIER, pp. 9–18. See also Abstr. 65.278, 370, 414, 488]
65.591 SYDORCHUK, Oleksii —
This article compares the influence of two subtypes of semi-presidentialism — premier-presidentialism and president-parliamentarism — on democratic consolidation in post-communist Poland and Ukraine. It distinguishes several periods of institutional development in Poland and Ukraine and then juxtaposes them against each other. Doing this makes it possible to disaggregate the impact of various institutional features on democratic progress in the two countries and explain discrepancies in their paths toward consolidated democracy. Two additional explanatory factors are employed to better capture the causes behind the different democratic performance of Poland and Ukraine: the clarity of the division of executive power and the level of commitment among the main political actors to existing formal rules. [R, abr.]
65.592 THERIAULT, Sean M.; THOMAS, Herschel F. —
Advocates for same-sex marriage have had much to celebrate. The last few years have shown that state after state and senator after senator have declared their support for full marriage equality. Such momentum suggests that their goals will be realized sooner rather than later. In this article, we analyze when senators announce their support for same-sex marriage. Contrary to the popularly held belief that their decisions will quickly snowball into filibuster-proof numbers, we find that most of the easy successes have already been achieved. The difficulty of securing the last few votes may take much longer. [R]
65.593 THOMAS, Paul —
The relationship between Britain's Prevent program and wider multiculturalist policies of community cohesion has provoked much discussion but there has been less focus on how this relationship has been experienced at the local operational level. This article analyzes the nature of this policy relationship, arguing that Prevent has progressively “crowded out” cohesion practice at both the local and national level to the detriment of both counter-terrorism and community relations. Although questioning the need for Prevent, local authorities reluctantly operationalized it through a “marriage” with an initially equally resourced cohesion program but the conceptual flaws and political weight of Prevent generated a perception and reality of enhanced securitization and the side-lining of cohesion. The political solution of the 2011 Prevent Review was an organizational “divorce” between the two policies and the government departments responsible for them. [R, abr.]
65.594 THOMPSON, Louise —
Bill committees in the British House of Commons have long had an unenviable reputation as weak scrutinizing bodies. Reforms in 2006 allowed committees scrutinizing government bills to receive written and oral evidence on a routine basis. They had the potential to bolster the scrutiny of government legislation, bringing greater legitimacy to the scrutiny process and increasing the policy knowledge of committee members. This article examines the impact of the oral evidence-taking process on the work of bill committees between 2006 and 2010. It finds that oral evidence sessions have changed the scrutiny behavior of MPs, acting as a vehicle for the formulation of substantive changes to government bills and as an additional opposition scrutiny and debating tool. [R, abr.]
65.595 THORNBURG, Matthew P. —
How do electoral institutions affect self-identified partisanship? I hypothesize that [US] party registration acts to anchor a person's party identification, tying a person to a political party even when [his] underlying preferences may align [him] with the other party. Estimating a random effects multinomial logit model, I find individuals registered with a party are more likely to self-identify with that party and away from the other party. Party registration also affects voting in presidential elections but not in House elections, leading to greater defection in the former where voters have more information about the candidates. These insights illuminate varying rates of electoral realignment, particularly among southern states, and the makeup of primary electorates in states with and without party registration. [R]
65.596 TUREK, Lauren Frances —
This essay surveys G.W. Bush's public statements from 1993 to 2001 to examine the evolution of his religious and political rhetoric. His personal religiosity and use of religious rhetoric during his campaigns for the presidency and in his two terms in office have received extensive comment from the press as well as from scholars, yet very little on the role of religion in his earlier political career. Although Bush had evinced an evangelical faith for years before he launched his bid for the governorship, he did not begin his political career as an overtly Christian leader. Instead, over the course of his governorship, he gradually incorporated Christian tropes in his speeches to develop, explain, and gain support for his “compassionate conservative” policies and to build rapport with voters. [R]
65.597 TYNKKYNEN, Nina —
This article assesses the prospects for ecological modernization in Russia by scrutinizing the policy environment which conditions the structuration of environmental policy. Recently introduced state environmental policy principles for the period up to 2030, which the Russian government states to be the main goal for the country's ecological modernization, form the starting point of this analysis. The article sheds light on the factors that enable or constrain the implementation of these principles and ecological modernization in general. It concludes that while institutional improvement is taking place, other dimensions of the policy environment are less favorable for ecological modernization. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.780]
65.598 TZELGOV, Eitan —
I use quantitative textual analysis of the Israeli Knesset's legislative debates to analyze legislative parties’ strategies. The analysis demonstrates three results. (1) Given an opportunity provided by an exogenous shock to the Israeli political system, dovish opposition parties used their floor speeches strategically to emphasize a frame of Israeli security on which the hawkish majority held a losing position. (2) Due to its weak position, the hawkish coalition eventually “deserted” the frame. (3) This dynamic resulted in a major change in the legislative discourse on security, and in the consolidation of a frame of security that highly favored the opposition. I argue that this strategy constitutes rhetorical heresthetic, since it emphasizes the internal contradictions of the majority and contributes to its split. [R, abr.]
65.599 VAMPA, Davide —
This article demonstrates that the political mobilization of regional identities through the creation of regionalist parties has positively impacted on the development of region-specific models of welfare governance in Italy. This means that, in a decentralized country, the “center-periphery” cleavage may significantly influence the sub-state politics of welfare. [R]
65.600 VIDAL CORREA, Fernanda —
Leading approaches in the literature on women's representation have studied the effects of gender quotas in their interaction with the national electoral system. Two aspects of Mexican law have been understudied thus far, but provide important insights for understanding the degree to which quotas empower women in politics. First, quota enforcement at the subnational level depends on state-level laws, which in some cases dictate partial or no enforcement at all. Second, the joint ticket system has created a two-nominee system in which two elected figures run; the first occupies the seat (propietario) while the second is elected as a substitute (suplente). [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.167]
65.601 VIGOUR, Cécile —
The question of how to explain policy change has led to important academic debate over the past two decades. This article challenges explanations regarding veto-players (VPs), arguing that interest groups (IGs) sometimes play a more decisive role than VPs — depending on the degree of organization and mobilization of such groups. The comparative analysis of judicial reforms in Italy, Belgium, and France shows the conditions under which IGs — understood here as legal professions — matter in the lawmaking process. Ceteris paribus, the more cohesive and legitimate an IG, the more likely it is to influence lawmaking regardless of the VP configuration. Analyses of legislative and policy change should therefore consider not only institutional and partisan actors but also the role of social groups and IG in this process. [R]
65.602 VILLALOBOS, José D.; VAUGHN, Justin S.; COHEN, David B. —
[Little] is known about why some managers are better at influencing organizational performance than others. Relatively few studies have systematically examined managerial influence and scholars have yet to investigate either quantitatively or systematically managerial influence in the [US] White House. Utilizing original survey data collected from former White House officials who served in the R. Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and B. Clinton administrations, this study applies empirical public management theory to examine for the first time the key determinants that shape perceptions of chief of staff managerial influence. The findings demonstrate how several core concepts in public management theory help explain the dynamics that drive perceptions of managerial influence. [R, abr.]
65.603 VITHIATHARAN, Vighneswaran; GOMEZ, Edmund Terence —
Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the regulatory system involving governance of the corporate sector was subjected to major reforms, primarily in response to exposures of serious cases of corruption and abuse in the financial sector. However, the 2008 global financial crisis indicated continued occurrence of irresponsible forms of corporate development and practices, underscoring structural weaknesses within the regulatory system despite these reforms. This article argues that the reforms introduced ignored how state-business nexuses shape the way firms operate, a core reason for the persistence of unproductive and speculative forms of corporate development, grand corruption and cronyism. Utilizing Malaysia as a case study, this article indicates that institutional reforms involving devolution of power to regulatory institutions are imperative to provide them with the autonomy to objectively institute prudential controls. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.1377]
65.604 WALKER, Hannah L. —
Rates of contact with the criminal justice system are geographically and racially sensitive, such that some groups of people experience contact at much higher rates than others. The negative effects of personal contact with the criminal justice system are well documented. Less well understood are the effects of the criminal justice system on those who have not had personal contact but who are members of groups where contact is a common occurrence. This research explores the political effects of the carceral state for the second group, and finds that proximal contact mobilizes, an effect that is most pronounced for nonwhites. [R]
65.605 WANG Shi-kai —
The governing capacity of developing countries mainly includes absorbing ability, redistribution ability, coercive ability, systematic ability and negotiation ability. The administrative capacity which is composed by absorbing ability, redistribution ability and coercive ability is a necessary condition for developing countries to achieve economic development, but the administrative ability only is not enough to guarantee the rapid development of economy: it will fall into the predicament of administrative absorption of politics. However, the political capacity that composes systematic ability and negotiation ability is the key factor to decide the final rise of developing countries, with strong political ability to construct a broad political alliance network and enhance the elite group in support of national power, so that developing countries can maintain strong executive ability in the process of economic development. [R]
65.606 WANG Vibeke —
Participation in legislative debates is potentially an important tool for MPs to communicate policy positions and exert influence on the policy process. Yet there are few studies of legislative speech behavior, and specifically gendered analyses are sparse. This article examines how gender and gender quotas affect speech activity measured in terms of how much MPs speak on the floor of the Ugandan parliament. An original dataset constructed from transcripts of parliamentary debates spanning a ten-year period (1998–2008) is applied in the analyses. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.167]
65.607 WANG Yuhua —
How does the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secure the loyalty of its coercive leaders, and its public security chiefs in particular, in the face of numerous domestic protests every year? This article presents the first quantitative analysis of contemporary China's coercive leaders using an original data-set of provincial public security chiefs and public security funding during the reform era. I demonstrate that the CCP, owing to its concern for regime stability, has empowered the public security chiefs by incorporating them into the leadership team. Empowered public security chiefs then have stronger bargaining power over budgetary issues. [R, abr.]
65.608 WARBER, Adam L. —
Scholars have loosely defined executive orders as presidential directives that instruct bureaucrats about how to implement policy. In contrast, proclamations are thought to be used by presidents to address policy matters regarding the general public. This has been an assumption that scholars have accepted without empirical evidence. We have long known that presidents strategically pursue policy to build support among numerous groups, such as African-Americans, religious organizations, women, educators, and labor unions. Presidency scholars also know that executive orders are an expedient tool that an administration utilizes to pursue its policy agenda. Why should we assume that the exclusive target population of executive orders is members of the federal bureaucracy? This study explores whether and how presidents from 1936 through 2008 use executive orders to target specific populations with policy. [R]
65.609 WATERMAN, Robert —
The migration of public decision-making responsibility away from elected representatives and the emergence of new governance actors necessitate a fuller conceptualization of accountability relationships. As governments pursue partnerships with societal actors and disperse authority across multiple levels, questions of public input and accountability within the democratic governance process arise. This paper uses cases of authority migration in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia (1946–2005) to examine the accountability relationships between new governance actors and both government and society. The existence and relative strength of accountability relationships are evaluated using the rules stipulated in the provincial legislation. Political ideology of governing parties, geographic scale of new jurisdictions and period in time are evaluated as predictors of the strength of the accountability relationship overall. [R, abr.]
65.610 WINECOFF, W. Kindred —
This paper argues that banks operating in systems where monetary and regulatory authority are unified in a central bank expect and receive preferential monetary policies, and so act less prudently than do banks in non-unified systems. These incentives arise when the natural tension between counter-cyclical monetary policy and pro-cyclical regulatory policy is resolved in ways that benefit the banking sector. I test the hypothesis using time series cross-sectional regression models that exploit two types of policy interventions — accession to the European monetary union, and several reassignments of domestic regulatory authority — within OECD countries from 1992 to 2009, the period during which the international Basel accords harmonized key aspects of national regulatory standards. [R, abr.]
65.611 WINZEN, Thomas —
Recent literature notes that national parliaments’ growing relevance in EU affairs might have led to the empowerment of legislative bureaucrats rather than elected politicians, an argument that we may label the “bureaucratization thesis”. This paper suggests that a delegation approach is most suitable for studying the democratic relevance of legislative bureaucracy in EU affairs. From a delegation perspective, however, parliamentary political-administrative relations are likely to work effectively instead of creating democratic deficits. According to this “delegation thesis”, parliamentarians are likely to restrict the bureaucratic domain, refrain from delegating exclusive competences, delegate selectively to party group officials and, thus, constrain bureaucratic opportunities to influence policy to positive agenda-shaping. An exploratory analysis of agenda-setting in EU affairs in the German parliament provides tentative support for these arguments. [R]
65.612 WINZEN, Thomas; ROEDERER-RYNNING, Christilla; SCHIMMELFENNIG, Frank —
Existing research on the EU's multilevel parliamentary system builds on the hypothesis of parallel evolution, situating explanations for EP empowerment at the EU level and explanations for national parliamentary powers in EU affairs at the national level. We propose the hypothesis of co-evolution, which specifies a connection between national and European arenas of parliamentarization. We study whether the EP's empowerment enhances or reduces pressure on national parliaments to strengthen their own EU-related competences. First, we argue that national parliamentary parties take conscious positions on the powers of the EP. Second, support for the EP among the party composition of national parliaments tells us whether parliaments regard the EP as a competitor or ally, feeling pressed, or relieved of the pressure, to strengthen their EU-related competences. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1028]
65.613 WOCKELBERG, Helena —
This article tests two hypotheses regarding bureaucratic role-perceptions and the implementation of EU policies at the Member State level. A comparison of national agencies in two different executive settings, the Danish and the Swedish, yields the conclusion that established theories on bureaucratic role-perceptions explain differences in policy-making in the late stage of the EU policy process. Interview data support the first hypothesis: that the main difference between Danish and Swedish national-level bureaucrats is that between perceiving oneself as a national servant (Denmark) and as an independent expert (Sweden). The second hypothesis tested is that national-level bureaucrats [in] certain circumstances will perceive themselves as EU servants, and make implementation choices accordingly. Convincing evidence supporting this hypothesis is not found. [R, abr.]
65.614 WOLBRECHT, Christina; HARTNEY, Michael T. —
We develop a general framework for understanding party issue positionadoption and change that highlights the role of issue-definition — the considerations, values, and goals associated with a policy debate at any one time. This framework helps us to explain the participation and preferences of groups regarding an issue; the perceived ideological fit and strategic benefits of issue positions for parties; and how parties negotiate and manage issue conflict within their coalition. We apply that framework to the case of [US] education policy, showing how education issue definition has changed over time — from a focus on resources and equality to an emphasis on values and excellence — and how those changes have been consequential for each party's changing, and converging, positions on education policy. [R, abr.]
65.615 WORTHY, Benjamin —
This article examines the extent to which the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) is used by members of the UK Parliament to hold the government to account, compared with the experience in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Ireland. As with other accountability mechanisms, FOI can be used for a range of issues. It is primarily a tool of opposition and can be a versatile weapon, useful in the right time and place. However, it does not significantly enhance accountability and remains a minority pursuit. This is because FOI takes time, members are creatures of habit and it is useful only in particular ways. [R]
65.616 YILDIZ, Uĝur Burç —
This article explores the problems of democratic governance of the defense and security sectors in Turkey. In recent years, to democratize its civil-military relations, Turkey has successfully dealt with the firstgeneration problems of making institutional reforms to eliminate the military's intervention in politics. Democratic civil-military relations, however, cannot be achieved only by getting the military out of politics, but also require the elimination of second-generation problems concerning the democratic governance of the defense and security sectors. In this respect, Turkey faces significant challenges related to its ineffective defense policy-making structures, insufficient parliamentary oversight of the defense and security sectors and civil society's very low level of participation in defense and security debates. Turkey needs to make reforms in these problematic areas in order to democratize its civil-military relations. [R]
65.617 ZARATE TENORIO, Barbara —
This article analyzes the relationship between collective protest and social spending in Latin America from 1970 to 2007. I argue that under democracy, organized labor is in a better position relative to other groups in society to obtain social policy concessions as a consequence of their collective action efforts. Labor insiders mobilize around specific demands, and labor strikes carry significant economic and political costs on governments. In contrast, other groups in society rarely protest around specific social policy issues and are more often subject to successful demobilization tactics from political leaders. Results from an error-correction model (ECM) show that in democracies, collective protest has differentiated effects on social spending. [R, abr.]
65.618
Contributions to a conference held on 25 November 2013, by Laurence BURGORGUE-LARSEN; Jean-Denis MOUTON; Ariane VIDAL-NAQUET; Frédérique COULÉE; Ferdinand MELIN-SOUCRAMANIEN; Sébastien TOUZÉ; Jordane ARLETTAZ; Sandra SZUREK; Frédéric DIEU; Jean-Manuel LARRALDE; Gilbert GUILLAUME.
(b) State, regional and local instituions/Institutions locales et régionales
65.619 ANDREWS, Rhys; DOWNE, James; GUARNEROS-MEZA, Valeria —
Under the [UK] Labour government, Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) in England were responsible for the delivery of Local Area Agreements (LAAs) — agreed targets between central and local government. This paper uses statistical techniques and local authority case studies to explore the impact of LAAs on LSPs’ efforts to promote social cohesion. The results suggest that LSPs with a LAA for social cohesion experienced a better rate of improvement in community cohesiveness than those without, and that tougher targets resulted in stronger improvement. The impact of changes in LSPs’ approaches to promoting social cohesion appears to be responsible for this finding. [R]
65.620 ARNOTT, Margaret —
Politicians have returned frequently to the need to reform schools to achieve wider objectives of social reform and economic prosperity. Within the UK education systems, however, there have been differing experiences and approaches at both national (Scottish, English, Welsh and Northern Irish) and local levels towards school governance reform. School governance in Scotland remains distinct compared to the rest of the UK, both in terms of the pace of reform and the content. The pace of reform in Scotland has been slower and the content has been shaped to a greater extent by political and professional modes of accountability. This article argues that a new phase in school governance reform is likely to follow the election of the Scottish National Party (SNP) majority government in May 2011. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.670]
65.621 BAEKGAARD, Martin —
This article examines two traditional and four new explanations of committee composition. Using survey data on 541 Danish local politicians’ pre-election committee seat preferences and their actual post-election committee seats, it is found that politicians are more likely to have their committee seat preferences fulfilled the less their preferences for the committees’ policy domains differ from those of their fellow party members and the more specialized they are within the jurisdiction area of their preferred committee. Thus, the ex ante control of committee members sometimes observed in the American context is also relevant in the very different institutional setting of Danish local government. Moreover, a number of other explanations are found to be of equal relevance. [R, abr.]
65.622 BAKER, Kerryn —
Drawing on the work of D. Dahlerup and L. Freidenvall [“Quotas as a ‘fast track’ to equal representation for women: why Scandinavia is no longer the model”, International Feminist Journal of Politics 7(1), March 2005: 26–48; Abstr. 55.4509], this article considers how the implementation of the French parity laws in the Pacific collectivities fits in with established discourses of quota adoption. It proposes that there is another axis of quota-adoption — the “exogenous” and “endogenous” track models. In France, the parity laws, introduced in 1999, have had mixed results, with a large increase of women councilors at municipal level, significant changes at regional and European levels, but a disappointing impact on the gender make-up of the National Assembly. The impact of the parity laws, however, stretches well beyond the borders of mainland France. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.167]
65.623 BENITO, Bernardino, et al. —
This paper analyzes the causes of legal political rent-extraction by using a direct measure of it, namely, local top politicians’ wages. In particular, we investigate whether local politicians’ incentives to extract rents by setting their own wages are influenced by the degree of political competition and voter information. We use a sample of the largest Spanish municipalities over the years 2008–2010. The results indicate that weaker political competition and lesser voter information are related to more rent-extraction. In an additional analysis, we show that higher wages do not ensure better financial management. These findings confirm that when politicians can set their own salaries, higher wages do not mean better management, but they are just political rents. [R]
65.624 BICKERSTAFF, Steve —
The article addresses at least three subjects not now addressed in the literature: (1) existing municipal redistricting commissions; (2) the need for independent commissions at the city level; and (3) the primary issues to be resolved in designing a city redistricting commission. [R] [See Abstr. 65.636]
65.625 BLOM-HANSEN, Jens; HOULBERG, Kurt; SERRITZLEW, Søren —
The search for the optimal size of political systems is one of the most enduring in political thought. Given the validity of arguments for and against small units, one might expect variation in rearrangements of unit sizes. However, the reform trend is uniform: units, often at the local level, are amalgamated to harvest scale effects. This article evaluates the argument on economies of scale in the economic costs of running political systems. A recent Danish reform allows us to avoid endogeneity problems often facing researchers of size reforms. The reform was directed by the central government and constitutes an exogenous shock to 239 municipalities, whereas 32 municipalities were left untouched. We thus have a quasi-experiment with pre- and post-treatment observations for both an experiment and a control group. [R, abr.]
65.626 BRUNELL, Thomas L.; MANZO, Whitney Ross —
We compare the partisan use of population deviation for lower chambers of state legislatures across the country in the 2000 round of redistricting to the 2010 round. We hypothesize that the Cox v. Larios decision will have an attenuating effect on population deviations overall as well as a reduction in the blatant partisan use of population deviations. Data-analyses indicate strong support for our argument. [R]
65.627 BUCKLEY, Noah, et al. —
A growing body of literature suggests that the personal characteristics of public officials have an effect on policy outcomes. But scholars differ as to which of the two primary methods for selecting public officials — elections and appointments — are more likely to produce high quality officials. Using original data on the backgrounds of Russian mayors between 2000 and 2012, we examine how the biographies of elected and appointed mayors differ. We find that differences between the two types of officials are modest, but noteworthy. [R, abr.]
65.628 BUSSU, Sonia; BARTELS, Koen P. R. —
Participatory arrangements have become a popular way of addressing modern challenges of urban governance but in practice face several constraints and can trigger deep tensions. Facilitative leadership can play a crucial role in enabling collaboration among local stakeholders despite plural and often conflictual interests. Surprisingly, this style of leadership has received limited attention within debates linking urban governance and participatory democracy. We summarize the main insights of the literature on facilitative leadership and empirically develop them in the context of participatory urban governance by comparing recent participatory processes in two Italian cities. [R, abr.]
65.629 CARLSON, Deven E.; COWEN, Joshua M.; FLEMING, David J. —
This article considers the introduction of a performance-measurement reform for private schools serving students who receive state-provided vouchers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin [US]. Drawing on unique panel data collected both before and after the reform, we show that private sector performance increased significantly when outcomes were publicly reported. We frame these results in the context of third-party provision of public services and argue that our evidence suggests that market-based competition alone may not drive nongovernmental providers to perform at optimal levels. Instead, such vendors may require performancemonitoring schemes similar to those faced by their governmental counterparts. [R]
65.630 DALEY, Dorothy M.; MULLIN, Megan; RUBADO, Meghan E. —
This article examines the use of discretion by state agencies in the context of multilevel policy. Research on agency discretion assumes that discretion represents a departure from legislative intent. However, Congress may delegate authority to promote policy innovation. Using data on investment in drinking water infrastructure from 2000 to 2008, we examine the relationship between agency discretion and functional expertise in implementing the [US] Drinking Water State Revolving Fund program. We focus on two areas where states can exercise discretion: (1) projects not related to compliance with federal law and (2) support to small water systems. Our results indicate that agency expertise influences investment, but problem severity reduces differences across agencies. Initial choices over agency design affect how states adapt federal programs to meet state needs. [R]
65.631 FARRELL, Catherine —
This article focuses on the involvement of governors in the governance of schools in Wales. Set within the context of the devolved education system, school governance has gone from being on the margins of interest to center-stage. This reflects a new focus on pupil performance and outcomes and the need for pupils in Wales to be successful internationally. As new regulations come into place in Wales which demand more from governors in relation to promoting school performance and educational achievement, there is a requirement for governors to undertake particular training. Governors will have to decide whether to federate governor arrangements or not in relation to their leadership of schools. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.670]
65.632 FLAVIN, Patrick —
Laws that regulate the financing of campaigns are one attempt to attenuate the role of money in politics in hopes that citizens’ opinions will receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions. Do states with stricter campaign finance laws actually display more egalitarian patterns of representation? Using public opinion measures from the National Annenberg Election Surveys and data on state policies, I first demonstrate that state policy decisions are consistently more proximate to the opinions of citizens with higher incomes. I then evaluate the relationship between the strictness of state campaign finance laws and political equality and find evidence that states with more stringent campaign finance disclosure requirements weigh citizens’ opinions more equally in the policy-making process. [R, abr.]
65.633 GALANTI, Maria Tullia —
This paper proposes a theoretical reflection on policy leadership and uses a case study in urban planning to unpack power relationships involved in policy change at the municipal level. Its contribution is twofold. (1) It clarifies the concept of leadership in different social sciences and proposes an original application to the analysis of the policy process in local governments based on a typology of styles of policy leadership and a classification of strategic resources. (2) It argues for the existence of a policy leadership in the process of urban planning in Turin (1993–2011) as a key component of the complexity of urban governance, by focusing on the situated and strategic nature of exchange relationships. [R, abr.]
65.634 GALIMBERTI, Deborah, et al. —
This article explains the political dynamics that have made the urban community of Lyons, in the process of becoming legally a métropole, one of the most powerful metropolitan governments in Europe. This power lies in the combination of two factors: the consensus involving most of the urban elites around an agenda in favor of growth and attractiveness; the identification of the inter-municipal cooperation authority as the main vehicle for this agenda. This model has probably reached its limits, which the recent reform may exacerbate. The article distinguishes the challenges the future Métropole de Lyon will face. [R, abr.]
65.635 GLICK, David M.; FRIEDLAND, Zoe —
Although the policy-diffusion literature comprises a large number of methodologically sophisticated papers, very little is known about basic issues such as how often states actually look at others’ policies, whose policies they look at, and when they look. We study policy research briefs prepared for legislators to focus on policy knowledge diffusion. We find that policy researchers frequently reported on others’ policies. We also find that factors such as innovativeness and proximity affect how often a state's policies are studied. More generally, we find evidence of fairly sophisticated learning as policy makers looked at others’ policies in nuanced and varied ways. Our findings suggests that information about policies diffuses through systematic and targeted research during the policy-making process. [R, abr.]
65.636 GOEDERT, Nicholas M. —
This article uses a toy model of three “regimes” of legislative districting, accompanied by five state case studies from the 2000s decade, to demonstrate how measuring the impact of redistricting must be framed by two questions. First, what norm or dimension of representation is being measured? Second, what are the larger electoral conditions under which we are measuring? The article anecdotally shows how districting in five states impacted four different representation norms: bias, responsiveness, competitiveness, and congruence. On several of these dimensions, the success of a gerrymander depends on the national balance of tides in favor of one party in the specific cycle being measured. [R, abr.] [First of a series of articles on “Policy central: designing and evaluating independent redistricting commissions”, introduced by Doug CHAPIN. See also Abstr. 65.624, 654]
65.637 GORE, Christopher D.; MUWANGA, Nansozi K. —
African cities are currently experiencing some of the highest population growth rates in the world. Accompanying this growth is constant pressure on national and local governments to develop structures that respond to the multiple demands this demographic change provokes in relation to service delivery, economic development and social wellbeing. In response, national governments are reviewing the political and administrative structures of their capital cities, sometimes recentralizing authority. This article examines the reforms to Kampala, capital city of Uganda. It explains how the national government gradually created the legal conditions necessary to take over the capital city directly, and the political rhetoric and conflict that ensued. While Kampala had deep internal problems and fared poorly in service delivery, matters were exacerbated by the national government's historical indifference to the city. [R, abr.]
65.638 GRIMES, Marcia; ESAIASSON, Peter —
Political equality and responsiveness to citizens are both central values in democracy. Citizens strong in political resources may, however, impress their preferences upon decision makers more effectively than others, meaning that government responsiveness may possibly exacerbate inequality in policy outcomes, especially if participatory democratic arrangements are prevalent. The article studies these processes empirically, drawing on a dataset of the siting of unwanted facilities in two Swedish cities. Indicative of the tension between equality and responsiveness, we find that residents’ political resources affect facility siting in the local district. [R]
65.639 GUNN, Erika; CUNNINGHAM, J. Barton; MacGREGOR, James N. —
This article reviews a research study on developing performance benchmarks to guide Chief Administrative Officer performance in Nova Scotia. We collected examples of excellent and substandard performance from 22 individuals who were CAOs, members of Council, or provincial advisors. The information was content-analyzed, revealing 13 competency areas, illustrating four types of competencies. We suggest that the competencies might be arranged in a semi-causal logic model (or Competency Scorecard, similar to the Balanced Scorecard) and that performance measures might include outcome and activity measures. The framework might guide researchers in calibrating the linkage between competencies and organizational performance measures. [R]
65.640 HAYES, Thomas J.; DENNIS, Christopher —
This article examines the factors that influence two important areas of state tax policy — the adoption of an income tax as well as whether a state permits deducting federal income taxes against state individual income taxes. We focus on a factor that has largely been unexplored, the flow of income going to the top 1% of earners. Using data from two different time periods (1916–1937 and 1960–2003), we find that the share of income received by the richest 1% of taxpayers corresponds with both the likelihood states will adopt an income tax as well as whether states allow deductions of federal income tax against state individual income taxes. [R]
65.641 HENNESSEY, Jessica —
There are a variety of methods that state legislatures can use to pass legislation which relates to municipalities. This paper explores why, how and when states changed their constitutions from allowing special legislation for municipalities to requiring general laws which would apply to all municipalities. Historians have put forward several explanations for why special legislation was harder to maintain as the 19th c. progressed. A new way of framing the story is presented here by considering how the passage of special legislation was maintained through a logroll; legislators formed a coalition to vote on each other's local legislation. [R, abr.]
65.642 HERTEL-FERNANDEZ, Alexander —
Departing from the business-power scholarship that emphasizes structural, electoral, or financial mechanisms for corporate influence, I argue that lawmakers are likely to rely on businesses’ proposals when they lack the time and resources to develop legislation on their own, especially when they also hold an ideological affinity for business. Using two new datasets of “model bills” developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a policy group that promotes pro-business legislation across the states, I find strong support for this theory. These results indicate that ALEC provides private policy capacity to state legislators who would otherwise lack such support, and relatedly, that low state policy capacity may favor certain organized interests over others — namely, the business interests affiliated with ALEC. [R, abr.]
65.643 HERZOG, Lawrence A.; SOHN, Christophe —
This article scrutinizes the different logics at play as urbanization occurs around international boundaries. It disentangles the contradictory “bordering dynamics” that shape cross-border urban spaces in the context of globalization and territorial restructuring. Because national borders embody multifaceted as well as ambivalent roles and meanings, they can be viewed as critical barometers for understanding how globalization impacts cross-border metropolitan space. The first two sections of the article explore the two globalization processes — “debordering” and “rebordering” — that define the formation of cross-border metropolises. We view the border as a social and political construction; as such, we propose a conceptual framework that addresses the changing role and significance of boundaries in the making of cross-border metropolises. [R, abr.] [[See Abstr. 65.528]
65.644 HUDALAH, Delik; FIRMAN, Tommy; WOLTJER, Johan —
This article examines the dynamic role of culture in metropolitan governance building in the context of decentralizing Indonesia. The analysis focuses on “best-practice” experiences of metropolitan cooperation in greater Yogyakarta, where three neighboring local governments known as Kartamantul have collaboratively performed cross-border infrastructure development to deal with the consequences of extended urbanization. We draw on sociological institutionalism to argue that building this metropolitan cooperation has its roots in the capacity of the actors to use and mobilize culture as a resource for collaborative action. [R, abr.]
65.645 JAMES, Chris —
This article identifies and develops themes in changes in the governance and governing of schools in England in the last 40 years. The themes are: the drive to improve school performance and pupil attainment; the depoliticization of school governing; the development of school governing as managerial scrutiny; the growth in the influence of Ofsted; the increasing diversity of institutional forms and governing structures; the increasingly conflicting roles of school governing bodies; the development of the role of the head teacher in governance; the overall decline in the influence of the local authority in school governing and governance; the changing influences on the stakeholder model; and changes in the nature of governing, effectiveness and future prospects. The analysis draws on recent research reports and relevant statutes, policies and guidance. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.670]
65.646 KELLER, Hagen —
The article offers a synthesis of the evolution of the electoral techniques and of the conception of the community in the Italian communes between the 12th and the 14th c. The Italian communes were a place of an astonishing political imagination. They developed the “vote by compromise” with several steps, were together with the Church one of the sources of the majority vote and, from the 13th c. onwards, developed massively the use of sortition. Several dimensions were important in these developments: social conflicts, procedural debates, and a normative conception that saw the voting systems as a tool for designating the most impartial, just and useful persons in the perspective of communal harmony — a conception quite different from the one that underlies elections in modern democracies. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1298]
65.647a KLIEN, Michael —
Research on the political budget cycle suggests that some budget items are more visible than others. Accordingly, the cycle will exert a varying impact on policy instruments of different salience. Using a panel data-set of tariff decisions by Austrian local governments we identify a stable and sizable electoral cycle in water tariffs. Tariff increases are both less frequent and less strong before elections. The cycle effect is, however, not constant: Small increases are not affected by elections or even more likely. This is consistent with advances from prospect theory suggesting that visibility may depend on the size of a policy. Consequently, small tariff changes may not be salient, particularly if they are below inflation as a reference threshold. [R]
65.647b LACKOWSKA, Marta —
The paper looks at the strategies adopted by the post-socialist cities faced with the political multilevel system of the EU. They are seen as a special type of outward political rescaling and analyzed as a part of a wider urban strategy of political internationalization. The empirical evidence is based on the study of the twelve largest Polish cities, members of Eurocities and other lobbying organizations. Leaning on the E.-H. Klijn and J.F.M. Koppenjan [“Public management and policy networks: foundations of network approach to governance”, Public Management 2(2), 2000: 135–158] typology of possible orientation of public authorities faced with global pressures, the character of urban strategies is discussed, whereby three forms are distinguished: networking, bilateral and individual activities. The study [examines] what Europeanization of the largest Polish cities looks like. [R, abr.]
65.648 LAZIN, Fred —
This paper explores the building of administrative and democratic institutions of local government in newly emerging democracies in parts of the former Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. It covers the period through 2005. It studies the main objectives and achievements of the various reforms aimed at local government systems in Russia, Poland and Romania. The overall findings in the several countries are all but homogeneous and unidirectional: though democratization and decentralization are claimed by many central governments as non-negotiable, the analysis clearly demonstrates how their actual policies are implemented over time and across nations in an often inconsistent manner. [R]
65.649 LYON, Aisling —
This article assesses the impact of recent decentralizing reforms on the fiscal autonomy of Macedonian municipalities. It considers how the short-term political calculations and intra-party dynamics of governing parties may have influenced both the design and implementation of fiscal decentralization. The article evaluates the revenue, expenditure, and contractual autonomy of Macedonian municipalities. It argues that the political-economic context within which fiscal decentralization has been conceived and implemented thus far has not been conducive to enhancing the fiscal autonomy of the municipalities. The research confirms that, while constitutionally guaranteed decentralization processes may be harder to reverse than others, it is not impossible. Advances in either administrative or political decentralization can be undermined by tightening controls over fiscal relations. [R]
65.650 MA, Paul —
This article deals with the controversy that arose in 2002–2005 over faith-based arbitration tribunals held in Ontario. [Examining] new empirical sources, it focuses specifically on the public discourse of social actors who opposed the establishment of arbitration tribunals. The majority of those who opposed arbitration tribunals did not formulate their position in terms of an opposition between religion and feminist values. Rather, they focused their arguments on the supposed danger of Islam, which they perceived as an oppressive and alien religion. The controversy over religious arbitration becomes a way to claim a Western, “Canadian” identity that is also secular and Judeo-Christian. The Ontarian controversy can be related to European debates on Islam that emerged during the last decade. [R, abr.]
65.651 MELO, Marcus André; PEREIRA, Carlos; SOUZA, Saulo —
This paper investigates the determinants of compliance with fiscal rules. Using information from 27 Brazilian state governments, the paper shows that the level of political competition and the degree of political autonomy of the fiscal watchdogs explain the extent of creative accounting in the Brazilian federation. Despite hard budget constraints imposed by the much-acclaimed Fiscal Responsibility Law, state governors retain the strategic ability to undertake fiscal window-dressing in response to fiscal stress. As fiscal watchdogs are not immune to the influence of the legislature and state governor, however, this paper demonstrates that their level of independence and autonomy is associated with the degree of creative accounting. In addition, we show that political competition encourages non-compliance through various causal mechanisms. [R, abr.]
65.652 MONRO, Surya; RICHARDSON, Diane —
This article examines the role of local government in relation to one minority grouping, Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB) people, drawing on empirical material gathered from 2007 to 2010 as part of a large Economic and Social Research Council research project. It describes the importance of equalities legislation and related implementation mechanisms in driving forward the LGB equalities agenda, explores aspects of welfare delivery to LGB people and addresses democratic processes. The article suggests that a collision of different forces is currently taking place: the legislation supports the protection of the LGB communities, but this support is undermined by the recession-related and ideologically driven public sector cuts. In addition, aggregate approaches to local democracy may override the interests of minority groups such as LGB people. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.670]
65.653 MOSES, Joel C. —
Elections for all 83 Russian governors were reinstated in Russia in 2012, seven years after they had been suspended. The democratic reform coincided with renewed political activism in Russia since December 2011, but the reform was as much a belated recognition of the shortcomings and failures from appointing Russian governors. Pragmatic necessity and not democratic conversion was the determining factor. Based on the first elections in October 2012, the reform will have only a limited effect over the next few years on democratic change in Russia, at most placating liberal and regional demands while consolidating personal rule under V. Putin. [R]
65.654 NEWTON-FARRELLY, Jennifer —
As the dust settles on the post-2010 census redistricting round across the US, reform groups are focused on legislative change. They aim for a redistricting process which would generate a fair map, one likely to advantage neither party at subsequent elections. In pursuit of this objective several US states have delegated their redistricting powers to independent authorities, and maps come into effect without the need for the legislature's approval. But those independent authorities will not automatically come to agreement on a map that is any fairer than a legislature might draw, so some states direct the process via restrictive criteria. Several states require that districts not be drawn to give an advantage to an incumbent, political candidate, or political party. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.636]
65.655 NGUYEN-HOANG Phuong; HOU Yilin —
This article examines the asymmetry in local government responses to economic-cycle-based changes of state aid in a framework that distinguishes current outlay from non-current expenses and discretionary savings. Employing a panel dataset of Massachusetts [US] municipalities for two economic cycles, we obtain three findings. (1) We do not find evidence of property-tax relief during economic booms. (2) Discretionary savings may be used to cover noncurrent outlays during booms and to offset spending cuts during recessions. (3) We find a large (asymmetric) fiscal inducement that may emerge during recessions when state aid cuts coincide with property-tax shortfalls. While these context-specific results may not be easily generalizable, they necessitate further research into the role of local discretionary savings and cash reserves in intergovernmental fiscal relations. [R]
65.656 NIXON, David C. —
This paper examines long-term-care insurance-sales to assess whether state income tax subsidies are effective in encouraging the private purchase of long-term-care insurance. Drawing from the most comprehensive available sales data on long-term care insurance policies, cross-state and over-time variation in sales data during the late 1990s and early 2000s are analyzed. This analysis uses a panel model with fixed-effects controls for potential endogeneity between state provision of tax subsidies and actual sales of long-term care insurance policies. Income, health and family support factors are significant determinants in the sale of long-term care insurance, but the tax incentives provided by many state governments do not induce any more sales of long-term care insurance than could be expected without such incentives. [R, abr.]
65.657 ÖKTEM, Mustafa Kemal —
This study analyzes the basic difficulties of local governance: a survey was conducted using a random sampling method within the inner city municipalities of Ankara. The findings indicate that improving local governance by enhancing transparency and building mechanisms of e-governance is the first step to motivating the public to participate in and to move toward a system of local governance. In general, each of these strategies would likely increase overall citizen involvement and, in particular, would increase the involvement of those citizens between 26 and 35 years old. [R]
65.658 PAQUIN, Stéphane —
This paper proposes a periodization of the international policy between Québec and the US from a framework of analysis developed by Peter Hall. This framework covers two levels of analysis: the first is interested in public policy instruments, while the second focuses on the paradigm of public action. From these two main criteria, we propose a periodization into five periods: 1867–1960 [lacked a] structured paradigm [or] instrument; 1960–1976 [saw] Québec create many instruments, as a public policy paradigm [was] gradually being built; 1976–1980 [saw] Québec sovereignists [become] aware of the US's importance; 1980–2001) is marked by the free-trade turn. The last period (2000 to present) is characterized by the importance of the new challenges that extend the paradigm of public policy, such as security issues after 9/11 [2001]. [R, abr.]
65.659 PATERSON, Lindsay, et al. —
Scotland seems to be a counter-example to general theories of the relationship between language and national identity or nationalism. These theories point to three components in the ideology of language and nation: that being able to speak the national language is necessary for full national membership, that the national language is a core part of the nation's culture, and that the future of national political autonomy and the future of the national language are connected with each other. In Scotland, it appears that language is not central to national membership or culture, and language campaigning has not been central to the political campaigns for autonomy. The article presents new evidence, from the 2012 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, which questions these beliefs about the relationship between language and national identity or nationalism in Scotland. [R]
65.660 PERRON, Catherine —
The partnership principle in the EU has often been examined in the context of the emergence of a multi-level type of governance. Recently, a number of studies have focused on the implementation of the European Cohesion Policy in the new member states. They have listed the numerous obstacles to its functioning effectively. Complementary to this approach, this paper starts from the example of a best-practice, looking at the concrete results of the use of partnership to ensure a place-based approach to regional policies. It uses the example of the East-German Land of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a NUTS II region that benefits from structural funding under the convergence objective. After describing how the partnership principle works on the ground, it examines the conditions of its success. It then analyzes its contribution to “good governance”. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.1031]
65.661 PROVOST, Colin —
State enforcement by state attorneys general (AGs) has become a major component of American antitrust law. Much has been written about state antitrust enforcement, but existing accounts of AG incentives and behavior are incomplete. As elected officials in forty-three states, AGs must represent their constituents and, therefore, will be drawn to cases that maximize the level of settlement reward — cases with large, wealthy defendants. I hypothesize and find that state AGs represent their constituents along ideological lines, but this relationship is conditioned by case characteristics that involve the potential settlement reward. [R, abr.]
65.662 REINERS, Markus —
The dispute about the use of referenda has intensified and takes center stage with the increasing problems of policy intermediation and implementation. It is about the alleged democratic deficit of the German representative political system and the question whether the implementation of direct democratic forms of participation can contribute to solve the problems or whether such forms should rather be classified as inhibiting innovation. The debate shows its “explosive effect” in the controversy of Stuttgart 21 and continues in the parliaments. The article confronts the arguments of representative and direct democratic forms of participation and discusses whether a modernization gap needs to be closed. [R, abr.]
65.663 RODRÍGUEZ-BENAVIDES, Domingo; LÓPEZ-HERRERA, Francisco —
Wagner's law states that the growth of public spending is a result of an increased economic activity. The bulk of empirical research on the fulfillment of the law has been conducted at country level, and there are few studies on its fulfillment at the level of states, provinces or regions in a country. By means of econometric methods of panel cointegration analysis that study the whole set of Mexican states, this article shows evidence in favor of compliance with Wagner's Law during the period 1980–2007 and that compliance is a function of the development level achieved by each state. [R, abr.]
65.664 RONAI, Simon —
Creation of a metropolitan area “Aix Marseille Provence” in the MAPTAM law results of a long power struggle between Bouches-du-Rhône department and state elected officials. The specific geographic and urban location and the political stakeholders making the local level their priority explain that the situation is more conflictual than in other regions. First, singular geographic features explain the deadlock of the debate: Marseille dominates while it also is the poorest city surrounded by more affluent and developing cities, the urban area is wide and suffers discontinuities. After the 2014 election, and despite the will of a large part of civil society and economic actors, no one can predict if the Metropole will be created and actually exist in January 2016. [R, abr.]
65.665 ROSAS, Guillermo; JOHNSTON, Noel P.; HAWKINS, Kirk —
We consider the behavior of an incumbent that can deploy local public goods and private goods to buy votes, and is unable to verify vote choice but capable of monitoring voter turnout, a common scenario in secret-ballot polities. As advanced by recent literature, the ability to monitor turnout rather than vote-choice implies that politicians should use targetable private goods to mobilize voters. However, politicians also deploy non-excludable local public goods, which have low mobilization potential because of free-rider incentives. We argue that vote-buying politicians reserve local public goods for loyal constituencies (where they enjoy support from most voters that bother to turn out) and provide private goods in other constituencies where they gain from motivating less committed supporters to turn out. We test aggregate-level implications of our theory on Venezuela's social programs. [R]
65.666 SABIN, Jerald —
This article argues that the granting of responsible government to Yukon in 1979 was not the inevitable outcome of territorial political development but the result of a protracted and organized settler political movement that emerged first in opposition to the federal government and, later, to Yukon's Indigenous peoples. I analyze settler actor political behavior and outcomes using the framework of “contested colonialism”. NonIndigenous Yukoners are understood as actors who simultaneously bring colonialism to the North while also contesting elements of that same colonial order. Using extensive archival research, I identify several critical junctures leading to the implementation of responsible government during the 1960s and 1970s. [R]
65.667 SCHNEIDER, Ellen; RITTBERGER, Berthold; WONKA, Arndt —
The Lisbon Treaty has led to an expansion of the rights of parliaments in scrutinizing EU decision-making, including — for the first time — also regional parliaments. Yet, theoretically informed empirical work on how regional legislatures adapt to the increasing relevance of the EU for subnational jurisdictions remains scarce. Drawing on data from an original survey of 251 MPs, conducted in seven German Länder in 2011, we explore regional MPs’ involvement in EU affairs. We find strong variation among MPs’ level of EU involvement. Exploring different sets of explanations, we show that individual-level factors — the perceived salience of the EU and MPs’ perceived influence in EU matters — hold the highest explanatory power. [R]
65.668 SCOTT, Ian —
This article examines two political and constitutional issues arising from scandals concerning the past and present Hong Kong Chief Executive. These relate to whether existing measures are sufficient to ensure integrity in high office and to the role of the Chief Executive after the introduction of universal suffrage in 2017. [R]
65.669 SØRENSEN, Rune J. —
Lack of party competition may impair government efficiency. If the voters are ideologically predisposed to cast their votes in favor of one political party, they may reelect an underperforming incumbent. Party polarization may magnify this effect since the median voter faces a higher cost of selecting a better, but ideologically distant incumbent. Alternatively, if the electorate is evenly divided between parties, polarization may induce parties to invest more effort in improving their election prospects. The current paper analyzes efficiency in Norwegian local governments. [R, abr.]
65.670 STEWART, John —
This article sets the current position of local government in a longer historical perspective. It discusses the 1974 local government reorganization and argues that many of the principles and assumptions determining the ways of working of local authorities remained unchanged after this reorganization. However, the next 40 years were ones of continuing change, much of it imposed by central government, and the article discusses the often piecemeal implementation of individual changes and the resulting atmosphere of uncertainty and instability. [I then] analyze the cumulative impact of the changes and identifying key problems, and draw on this analysis to set out the challenges that have to be met if the full potential of the local government is to be realized in the future. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Trends in the governance of education in the UK”, edited and introduced by Michael CONNOLLY, Catherine FARRELL and Chris JAMES. See also Abstr. 65.468, 581, 585, 620, 631, 645, 652, 675]
65.671 STOLZ, Klaus; FISCHER, Jörn —
Drawing from the scarce literature, we first sketch out career patterns of regional ministers prior to and during their time in the regional cabinet. The main focus, though, is on the post-cabinet biographies of all regional ministers in the sixteen German Länder since unification. Our empirical analysis reveals the regional cabinet as the career apex for most ministers. Looking at those ministers who do move up the political ladder after leaving the cabinet shows a clear preference for the national over the European level and the executive office over the legislative mandate. Variation in post-cabinet careers seems not only to be influenced by party, Land and ministerial office (Prime Minister vs. normal minister) but also by the causes and circumstances of exit from the cabinet (exit type). [R, abr.]
65.672 SUBRA, Philippe —
As a result of its victory to the municipal election 2014, the right will unexpectedly have control over the Paris Métropole created by the MAPTAM law (27 January 2014) after a long and epic political battle. The new local governance plan will be effective in 2016 — pushed by Marylise Lebranchu and other socialist parliament officials — is still contested by most of the local elected officials across the board. Two visions of the métropole compete: a confederal métropole coordinating the actions of the existing intercommunalities, or an integrated and powerful metropole, tending to replace the city as the governing and local democracy urban authority and overstepping the intercommunality as it existed to this day. In fact, the conflict is about the status, the powers and the financial independence of the territories supposed to replace the intercommunalities. Another conflict on financial transfers between Paris and the Hauts-de-Seine on one hand, and the Seine-Saint-Denis on the other hand is looming. [R] [See Abstr. 65.783]
65.673 SWIANIEWICZ, Pawel —
The article discusses the impact of EU integration on the policies formulated and implemented by Polish local governments. Its analytical framework refers to T. Börzell and T. Risse's concept of the levels of Europeanization [“Conceptualizing the domestic impact of Europe”, in K. Featherstone and C.M. Radaelli, The Politics of Europeanization, Oxford, 2003] distinguishing between absorption, accommodation, and transformation. The article discusses the impact on administrative structures, goals of local policies, as well as on the styles of policy preparation and implementation. It concludes that the level of absorption is the most often found form of adaptation. However, sometimes changes initiated as a plain absorption evolve gradually into deeper transformation of local politics. [R]
65.674 VARRÓ, Krisztina —
In line with the recognition that cross-border regions have not undermined the significance of nation-state spaces but have added to their complexity, conceptual frameworks of analysis have become more and more refined. However, studies still tend to be framed in one spatial grammar, that of territory, scale or network, and fail to consider the ways in which these different dimensions become interlocked. This article addresses this lack by developing a multidimensional perspective, in order to finally circumvent state-centric thinking on cross-border regions and to offer a more nuanced account of whether and how new imaginaries of spatial governance institutionalize. These arguments are demonstrated by means of a case study of cross-border regional governance in the Dutch-German-Belgian borderlands. [R, abr.]
65.675 WATERMAN, Chris —
This article considers the key governance issues for schools and colleges in England and how they have been affected by the redistribution of power between central government and local government. The principal foci are the main legislative changes and the impact they have had on the respective powers and responsibilities of central government, local government and schools and colleges. The radical developments since the formation of the coalition government in May 2010 have accelerated the shift of power to central government from local government and by the end of the first term of the coalition the local authority will have little more than a vestigial role in the provision of secondary education and a diminishing role in primary and special education. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 65.670]
65.676 WONG, Mathew Y. H. —
This article provides an account of the recent introduction of a minimum wage in Hong Kong in 2011. Traditional welfare state theories had their origins in rich democracies. We refine the theoretical arguments in accordance with the semi-democratic nature of Hong Kong. We argue that the legislation was initiated reluctantly by the business-friendly government under unfavorable economic conditions. Any subsequent concessions to labor were not attributable to labor strength or political oppositions, which were very weak. Instead, multiple miscalculations by the politically dominant business side allowed the labor movement to gain limited grounds throughout the struggle. We also apply our arguments to the case of Singapore, illustrating how welfare state theories can be adapted to less democratic systems. [R] [See Abstr. 65.1377]