Abstract
(a) Central institutions/Institutions centrales
66.391 ALBERTUS, Michael —
This article examines how the partisanship of empowered subnational politicians can affect within-district benefit distribution. I present a theory of the role of subnational politicians in distributive politics, and then test this theory on a distributive Venezuelan land reform initiative by leveraging unique individual-level data on revealed voter preferences and the receipt of particularistic benefits. Using data from a list of millions of voters who signed petitions to recall former President H. Chávez, I match information on recent land-grant applicants to petition-signers to measure how political preferences affect the likelihood of applying for and receiving land, and how state governors condition this relationship. I find evidence for both strategic core-voter targeting and blockage of benefits to opposition voters. These effects, however, are modified by the political affiliation of governors. [R, abr.]
66.392 ALBRECHT, Peter —
This paper argues that when police reform in Sierra Leone was instituted to consolidate a state system after the country's civil war ended in 2002, it reproduced a hybrid order instead that is embodied by Sierra Leone's primary local leaders: paramount and lesser chiefs. In this sense, policing has a distinctly political quality to it because those who enforce order also define what order is and determine access to resources. The hybrid authority of Sierra Leone's chiefs emanates from multiple state-based and localized sources simultaneously and comes into play as policing takes place and police reform moves forward. This argument is substantiated by an ethnographic exploration of how and with what implications community policing has been introduced in Peyima, a small town in Kono District. [R, abr.]
66.393 ALIMONTE, Roberto d' —
Italy's new electoral system for parliamentary elections — the third since 1993 — will come into force on 1 July 2016, replacing the present proportional system for the Chamber of Deputies, but not that for the Senate. A constitutional reform, under way, aims at transforming the Senate into a second chamber without the authority to consider motions of confidence, and limited powers. The new electoral system — nicknamed the Italicum — is a majority-assuring system agreed upon by the leader of the Democratic Party, M. Renzi, and the leader of Forza Italia, S. Berlusconi. Thanks to a seat bonus, it guarantees an absolute majority (of 340 seats) to the list that obtains at least 40% of the votes or to the list winning a run-off if no list wins 40% at the first round. [R, abr.] [See also Gianfranco PASQUINO, “Italy has yet another electoral law”, pp. 293–300]
66.394 ALTSCHULER, Bruce E. —
The author revisits the Pentagon Papers case to determine its relevance in the internet age. He argues that the emergence of independent leakers with access to the internet has shifted greater responsibility on the mainstream media to practice self-restraint and to decide what to publish. The emergence of independent leakers has also accelerated prosecutions by the B. Obama administration. [R]
66.395 ALVARADO ESPINA, Eduardo —
To evaluate the performance and quality of a democratic system we must analyze the electoral system. From the first post-dictatorship parliamentary elections in Chile in 1989, the process of appointing political representatives to parliament has been mediated by a binominal magnitude (M=2) electoral system. This originated in the military dictatorship and has made political representation disproportionate, resting, almost exclusively, on two major electoral arguments. This is a system that has reduced competition for political power to a logic of agreements between two parties. This paper reviews these issues on order to demonstrate that the demobilization of the electorate, the institutional closure of the petrified party system existence and the consolidation of two powerful political elites are the institutional expression of the exclusionary effects, oligarchic and disaffection, that cause the binominal system. [R]
66.396 AMERY, Fran —
In 2011, Parliament debated an amendment to the [UK] government's Health and Social Care Bill which would have mandated that abortion counseling be provided by independent organizations. While many attacked the amendment as anti-feminist, its principal sponsor, N. Dorries, claimed to be acting on behalf of women. This article argues that a historical approach may be fruitfully utilized in order to make sense of such conflicting “feminist” claims. Through analysis of parliamentary debates, it demonstrates that when historical and discursive context is taken into account, the Dorries amendment can be viewed as part of a broader attack on the foundations of the 1967 Abortion Act. This historical approach also allows the contributions of pro-choice women representatives to be criticized as problematic attempts to reconcile a feminist abortion politics with the status quo. [R]
66.397 APPLEBAUM, Anne —
East European communists inherited the Bolshevik obsession with repressing any genuinely independent civil society groups. [R] [First of a series of articles on “Authoritarianism goes global. Part II”. Part I: see Abstr. 65.6324. See also Abstr. 66.268, 421, 516]
66.398 ARNOLD, Rainer —
Modern European constitutionalism is characterized by its anthropocentric approach, by its conceptual convergence which increases on the national, supranational, and conventional levels as well as by the Constitutional State's essential role. The first aspect expresses itself through the individualization of constitutional law which finds its most fundamental reference in the human being, his dignity, autonomy, and freedom. The State's legitimacy as well as that of any social organism with public power, such as the EU, translates into a single purpose: to promote, both directly and indirectly, the individual's benefit. In addition to the tendency towards individualization, there are a couple more noteworthy characteristics of European constitutionalism, namely constitutionalization and internationalization.
66.399 ARORA, Dolly —
This paper [examines] the trends in center-state relations in post-independence India in their varied manifestations over time, across space, and along the specific context of issues. [After] a brief overview of the constitutional framework of center-state relations, it looks at the multiple strands of center-state relations and the mediating variables that shape these. Section III underlines the challenges that face the center-state relations in the emerging context. [R, abr.]
66.400 AUSTIN, Ian Patrick —
Singapore's strategic play to secure international wealth-management market-share has been very successful. Serious questions, however, were raised in relation to this ascendency as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) drove the EU and the US to become proactive in clamping down on tax evasion and other areas deemed to be undesirable within the international financial system. This paper examines the Singapore government's decade-long growth policy of its wealth management sector, and how it has been impacted upon by international regulatory responses. Further, it examines how in stark contrast to the EU and the US, Indonesia has been far less successful in its diplomatic efforts to have Singapore address financial diplomacy issues (tax evasion and ill-gotten gains from corruption) in relation to Indonesian citizens residing in Singapore. [R, abr.]
66.401 BABA, Kaori —
During the final decade of the 20th c., many Latin American countries enacted sweeping market-oriented pension reforms, introducing, at least partially, private pension system based on defined contributions and individual capitalization. Lately, however, many of these nations have witnessed shifts in the reformed pension schemes. Why have these “re-reforms” occurred? Why have they taken different forms in different countries? This study explores the causes of divergent policy outcomes of Latin American pension re-reforms from a comparative perspective. My theoretical framework emphasizes the following two factors: (1) the type of compromise made under the first-generation reforms and (2) the pension policy-making process. The inquiry demonstrates the importance of a balance of power among pension stakeholders, which emerged as a legacy of long-term political processes. [R]
66.402 BALFOUR, Lawrie —
For scholars interested in what J. Frank calls “the outsize authority of the Founders in our jurisprudence and our politics”, I propose reviewing the legacies of The Federalist Papers from the vantages offered by Toni Morrison and Herman Melville. I linger on three words — empire, women, and slaves — that appear in Frank's Publius and Political Imagination yet do more work than he explicitly allows. Passing references, omissions, elisions, and unowned contradictions reveal how the Founders evoked figures of the conquered and the enslaved to support the consolidation of the nation; they also suggest dimensions of the Founders' imagination whose analysis could enlarge and sharpen Frank's argument about the Federalist's formative and depoliticizing work. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.322]
66.403 BALI, Azad S.; RAMESH, M. —
This article assesses India's health policy reforms and argues that at each juncture the policy instruments it utilized were inconsistent with the goals it was trying to achieve. The health care sector required more intervention than the central and state governments offered. The meagre funds allocated to public health programs and the unwillingness and inability of state governments to shoulder responsibility for primary and secondary care led to the dominance of the private sector in delivery, out-of-pocket financing, and fee-for-service payment to providers. Recent reforms have made some progress in addressing the lacunae but are handicapped by the pervasive dominance of the private sector which severely limits the choice of policy tools available to the government. [R] [See Abstr. 66.136]
66.404 BAROUD, Ziyad —
In the face of institutional vacancy, it is time to offer initiatives and alternatives in order to fill the void and bear a program, an action plan, a vision. If Lebanese civil society claims to be an essential partner, any revision of the system could take place only through a genuinely representative assembly, therefore requiring an electoral law able to convey this purpose wisely. [R] [Part of a thematic issue on “Lebanon 1975–2015: 40 years of failures and hopes”, coordinated and introduced by Lina ZAKHOUR. See also Abstr. 66.478]
66.405 BARTELS, Brandon L.; O'GEEN, Andrew J. —
Jurisprudential regimes theory (JRT) posits that legal change on the US Supreme Court occurs in a drastic, structural-break-like manner. Methodological debates present conflicting evidence for JRT, which has implications for the important law versus ideology debate. We first elaborate two alternative theoretical perspectives to JRT — evolutionary change and legal stability. Our analytical framework focuses on two key substantive effects of jurisprudential categories on the Court's case outcomes — relative differences between categories over multiple time periods and longitudinal differences across time periods. Importantly, different pieces of empirical evidence can provide support for different dynamic processes. The extent to which “law matters” is not necessarily tied to one particular model of legal change. Empirical analysis of updated and backdated free expression data generates key findings consistent with JRT, legal stability, and evolutionary change. [R, abr.]
66.406 BASSOK, Or —
Using the debate over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I expose the identity dimension of various interpretative theories and analyze the differences between the roadmaps offered by them. I argue that according to each of these roadmaps, courts' authority to review legislation is required in order to protect a certain vision of American constitutional identity even at the price of thwarting Americans' freedom to pursue their current desires. The conventional framing of interpretative theories as merely techniques to decipher the constitutional text or justifications for the Supreme Court's countermajoritarian authority to review legislation and the disregard of their identity function is perplexing in view of the centrality of the Constitution to American national identity. [R, abr.]
66.407 BAYRAKTAR, Alparslan —
The logic of energy security is changing, with supply security being de-emphasized, governance and collective solutions are being increasingly emphasized. As issues of energy, climate change, sustainability, energy-poverty have become thoroughly intermingled, the challenge of energy security cannot be tackled merely by mercantilist, national, unidimensional tools. Turkish energy transition is in a excellent position to derive lessons from this security-governance supplantation and also be a catalyst for the region as well as the globe. [R]
66.408 BÉAL, Vincent; EPSTEIN, Renaud; PINSON, Gilles —
This article focuses on the circulation of urban policy models and “best practices” and its influence on the reshaping of relationships between states and local governments. It suggests that the increasing mobility of practices, knowledge and initiatives in urban policies cannot be explained only by the horizontal and transnational dynamics of urban policymaking. It relies also on the restructuring of the state the ways in which its policies are formulated and implemented at the local levels. By considering the National Program for Urban Renewal and the Sustainable City Plan, the article highlights the emergence of a new model of central-local relationships based on the state's tracking of local “innovative” or “exemplary” initiatives, and on their certification and diffusion. [R, abr.]
66.409 BENEDIKTER, Roland; KAELIN, Lukas —
The article compares the current status of public spheres in the US and the EU. In the US, there is a real sense of nation and highly developed media outlets, which reflect and amplify severely polarized left/right political identities. In contrast, in (Continental) Europe, a true transnational media sphere has not (yet) developed; media outlets remain primarily national in orientation. We contend that the EU urgently needs a genuine public sphere that would help transcend the existing twenty-eight national identities. Unlike in the US, in Europe, cultural unification which is the basis of the political project can't consist of “melting” languages, national myths, historic memories or ethnic habits, but only in the generation of a joint, multi-lingual, multicultural and multi-national public sphere. [R, abr.]
66.410 BERG, Linda; SOLEVID, Maria —
In 2009, Sweden allowed licensed wolf-hunting for the first time in 45 years. After record media attention and threat of legal action from the EU, the licensed hunt stopped, but protective hunting continued — as did the polarization in public debate. This article analyzes how the wolf issue relates to the three main cleavage elements and to what extent the elements align. It provides an empirical investigation of the wolf issue, applying the three-step cleavage model on the 2010 Swedish National Election Study data. [R, abr.]
66.411 BESHARA, Christopher J. —
In transitional democracies, it is not unusual for the constitution to include substantive constraints on the amending power as a hedge against the polity's uncertain commitment to the rule of law. Although the Indian Constitution has no such provision, its Supreme Court has taken the controversial position that the Constitution has an unalterable “basic structure”. Under the basic structure doctrine, constitutional amendments that purport to abrogate basic norms of constitutional governance are void. In India today, the doctrine is evolving from a substantive limit on the amending power into a restriction on antidemocratic conduct, broadly understood. My inquiry focuses on whether the basic structure doctrine provides a coherent theory by which constitutional arbiters can address some of the pathologies that are common to post-authoritarian societies and dominant-party democracies. [R, abr.]
66.412 BEŠIREVIĆ, Violeta —
This article deals with judicial irrelevance in democratic consolidation, on the basis of the Serbian example. It surveys the politics of the Constitutional Court in post-Milosevic Serbia, and shows that the Court has failed to become a significant veto-player or an important mechanism for facilitating the transition to democracy. To explain this conclusion, this article turns to the play-it-safe strategy the Court applied in the most controversial political cases, in which it would have been possible to initiate changes in public policy, including cases concerning constitutionmaking, the state of emergency, judicial reform, and political decentralization. The analysis demonstrates that the roots of judicial dormancy in political disputes derive from deferential ideology, the anti-politics approach and institutional insecurity. [R, abr.]
66.413 BEVAN, Shaun; JOHN, Peter —
This article demonstrates how party leaders (frontbenchers) and backbenchers use their access to UK Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) to represent the policy agenda. Building on comparative research on parliamentary questions and agenda-setting as well as taking account of the particular context of PMQs, we argue that party leaders and followers draw attention to different kinds of policy topics to influence government. A content-analysis of over 9,000 questions between 1997 and 2008 demonstrates how the posing of questions affected the agenda, depending on whether they came from the front or backbench, from government and opposition and from different parties. PMQs helps both the opposition and backbenchers draw attention to issues that the government and opposition party leadership did not always wish to attend to. [R, abr.]
66.414 BEZES, Philippe; LIDEC, Patrick Le —
While the semi-presidential French regime and the reinforcement of “presidentialization” under Nicolas Sarkozy have often been associated with the idea of disruptive and heroic changes, France's post-crisis budgetary policy appeared strongly embedded in the previous commitments made by President Sarkozy and relied largely on measures of a gradual and low-profile nature without significant U-turns. In order to explain this result, the article emphasizes the effects of French institutions on government capabilities and on the potential allocation of blame and the related political strategies connected with the electoral cycle and timing. In addition, it also explores the specific characteristics of the French national crisis and its perceptions by top bureaucrats, as well as the nature of the external macro-constraints that influenced French budgetary policy, whether originating with markets, international organizations or the European Union. [R] [See Abstr. 66.522]
66.415 BILGIN, Pinar; INCE, Basak —
The relationship between security and citizenship is more complex than media portrayals based on binary oppositions seem to suggest (included/excluded, security/insecurity), or mainstream approaches to IR and security seem to acknowledge. This is particularly the case in the post-imperial and/or post-colonial contexts of global South where the transition of people from subjecthood to citizenship is better understood as a process of in/securing. For, people were secured domestically as they became citizens with access to a regime of rights and duties. People were also secured internationally as citizens of newly independent “nation-states” who were protected against interventions and/or “indirect rule” by the (European) International Society. Yet, people were also rendered insecure as they sought to approximate and/or resist the citizen imaginaries of the newly established “nation-states”. [R, abr.]
66.416 BISOGNI, Giovanni —
The article sketches a short outline of the Italian Constitutional Court, answering two basic questions: what is its impact on political and social life in Italy and, accordingly, what this institution exactly is. My thesis is that the ideas of founding fathers of Italian Constitution on the judicial review of legislation are the best way to tackle questions. Indeed, the vagueness of those ideas left the Constitutional Court quite free to decide purposes and means of its role in the political system — what it is the “secret” of its success. Moreover, the same indeterminacy explains why it is not so easy to give it a precise identity — if political or judicial, together to a certain inadequacy of conceptual tools used by political science and legal scholarship. [R]
66.417 BLECK, Jaimie; MICHELITCH, Kristin —
In 2012, Mali faced a crisis disrupting nearly twenty years of democratization: a coup and rebel insurgency. This article investigates policy priorities amongst rural Malians living on the border of state and rebelcontrolled territory during the crisis. While academic and policy-making communities have focused largely on Mali's recent and sudden regime and territorial breakdown, the villagers defined the crisis in terms of their unmet needs for public services and infrastructure amidst high food and water insecurity. Concern for the sudden “juridical state” breakdown — the collapse of the democratic regime — was trumped by the focus on long-term “empirical state” breakdown. Using recent Afrobarometer data on diverse dimensions of empirical statehood, we show that the problem of rural neglect emphasized by seminal scholars is persistent not only across Mali, but also across many African countries. [R, abr.]
66.418 BÖLLER, Florian —
Previous studies have characterized the US Congress as uniformly weak in carrying out its constitutional responsibility in the politics of military interventions vis-à-vis the president. The picture, however, has more nuances when the efforts of Congress to control and provide oversight to ongoing military interventions is evaluated. This differentiated perspective on the various tools of democratic control is applied to a structured-focused comparison of US military interventions between 1973 and 2013. Indeed, there is a considerable variance in executive-legislative relations concerning the war powers question, which contradicts the traditional finding of a consistently weak Congress. [R, abr.]
66.419 BOYS, James D. —
Despite their apparent differences, both R. Nixon and B. Obama secured their party's nominations and ultimately the presidency partly due to their manipulation of contentious and inherited “wars of choice”. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq provided the political and cultural circumstances that made Nixon and Obama credible “peace candidates” in 1968 and 2008 respectively. Having championed their opposition to the wars to gain the presidency, both men continued the conflicts throughout their first term and subsequently utilized these conflicts to help secure a second term in office, declaring “victory” as part of their re-election campaigns. This study examines the manner in which Obama, like Nixon, benefited as president from an inherited “war of choice” and adopted Nixonian methods to maximize his chances for re-election in 2012. [R] [See Abstr. 66.507]
66.420 BRADLOW, Daniel D. —
There is a need for the countries of Southern Africa to invest in building infrastructure, for which purpose they can be expected to utilize the services of multilateral development banks (MDBs). MDB-funded infrastructure projects often become arenas for debate over the roles and responsibilities of different actors in the development process. This article discusses the fact that there is no longer a clear consensus on the relative responsibilities of governments, MDBs and non-state actors in regard to infrastructure projects, and analyses how these new tensions in the relations between these three actors could complicate efforts to develop the infrastructure so urgently needed in Southern Africa. [R]
66.421 BRADY, Anne-Marie —
China is aggressively working to reshape its image, touting the “Chinese Dream” and its desire for a peaceful rise to power on the international stage. [R] [See Abstr. 66.397]
66.422 BRENNER, David —
This article argues that attempts to buy insurgency out of violence can achieve temporary stability but risk producing new conflict. While cooptation with economic incentives might work in parts of a movement, it can spark ripple effects in others. These unanticipated developments result from the interactions of differently situated elite and non-elite actors, which can create a momentum of their own in driving collective behavior. This article develops this argument by analyzing the re-escalation of armed conflict between the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and Myanmar's armed forces after a 17-year-long ceasefire broke down in 2011. After years of mutual enrichment and collaboration between rebel and state elites and near organizational collapse, the insurgency's new-found resolve and capacity is particularly puzzling. [R, abr.]
66.423 BRIDGE, Dave —
In merging the regime politics and political party literatures, this article identifies a rare type of “counter-majoritarian difficulty” — a situation where the [US] Supreme Court makes policy against the political will or preferences of a majority. When the Court rules in favor of the dominant political party's preferences on issues that are of secondary importance to the party, the Court can paradoxically trigger a cross-partisan alliance built around the very premise of undermining the judiciary. Using case studies from the mature New Deal — including communism, school prayer, busing, and abortion — this article shows how non-leading factions in the Democratic Party allied with Republicans to form grassroots, congressional, and electoral majorities. These three majorities, inadvertently created by the Court, successfully obstructed implementation, curbed the Court, and helped realign the party system, respectively. [R]
66.424 BUETTNER, Thiess; KAUDER, Bjoern —
This paper explores whether and how political biases arise in an institutional setting where revenue forecasting is delegated to a body that includes experts from institutions neither part of nor controlled by the government. The empirical analysis focuses on the performance of German federal tax revenue forecasts, in the preparation of which the advice of external experts has a long tradition as an institutional safeguard. While, on average, revenue forecasts turn out to be unbiased, the results show that the government exerts an influence. In particular, optimism/pessimism in the government's GDP forecast helps to explain why the revenue forecast turns out too optimistic/pessimistic. In addition, governmental estimates of the revenue effects of tax-law changes are found to contribute to forecast errors. [R] [See Abstr. 66.277]
66.425 BURG, Avraham —
This article argues for an unorthodox reading of Israel's current political situation. Rather than examine the immediate results of the March 2015 elections, it lays out the ramifications of the country's current predicament in light of the complex relations between the Jewish majority and Palestinian Arab minority. The author contends that despite the seeming stranglehold that extremist nationalism exerts on the political process, there is true potential for Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) to gain full and equal citizenship, on a par with that of their Jewish counterparts. He argues further that the PCI may be poised to lead the Palestinian national movement in advancing a political resolution to the conflict with Israel. [R]
66.426 CAIRNEY, Paul; JORDAN, Grant —
The “policy communities” literature has stood the test of time because it describes a “universal” logic for groups and governments to interact. To deal with complex government, policy-makers divide their responsibilities into manageable units, and delegate responsibility for policymaking to bureaucrats, who form relationships with the groups from which they seek information and advice. Governments come and go, and these relationships vary from issue to issue, but the logic of consultation does not change. In this article, we describe this process, situate it within a broader discussion of policy theory, and use these insights to respond to the points made by Marsh and McCaffrie. [R]
66.427 CALMES-BRUNET, Silvia —
As far as minority languages are concerned, there have been few changes since the 16th c. in France. The constitutional reform of 2008 has only confirmed the subordination of regional languages to French, and the jurisprudence of the Conseil constitutionnel has contributed to the impasse of the situation. It is impossible to make the French Constitution compatible with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages without modifying one or the other and France's choice has been not to change the constitutional order in force. Foreseeably, neither will the constitutional amendments to come in the near future introduce changes in this field.
66.428 CATALANO, Serida L.; GRAZIANO, Paolo R.; BASSOLI, Matteo —
This article analyses and compares the multi-dimensional co-ordination of employment and social policies at the Italian local level, especially focusing on the policy implementation stage. It departs from developing a theoretical framework to take into account the crucial variables that might potentially impact on the co-ordination of social cohesion policies. In particular, following a neo-institutionalist approach, great emphasis is placed on the legacy of the Weberian bureaucratic model, and its implied “specialisation ethos”. In addition, the effect of other contextual variables, such us social capital and the rate of unemployment, are considered. The empirical analysis confirms the crucial impact of the specialization ethos in preventing inter-policy co-ordination from occurring at the Italian local level, and the relevance of other contextual variables in causing policy integration within services, rather than between services. [R]
66.429 CECCANTI, Stefano —
Italicum, the new Italian electoral law, must necessarily be complemented by a constitutional change in view of its political repercussions. Namely, the electoral reform will change the form of state and government: it will be easier for the ruling party to win a majority in the Senate and as a result, bicameralism will be neutralized in practice. Adopted in the hopes of giving Italy long-term political stability, it is very likely, however, that the Constitutional Court will challenge Italicum's legality. The novelties introduced by this law are very much akin to the French majority-assuring system in force after the constitutional reform of 2000 and Italy must now decide whether it will follow its neighbor's steps.
66.430 CHAUVET, Clément —
Public civil service law acknowledges a firmly grounded duty to obey, which is subject to a number of exceptions, including a duty or right to disobey. However, the duo obedience-disobedience includes a number of paradoxes resulting from the opposition between two contradictory requirements: to protect the administration if necessary against disobedience and to protect the civil servant, possibly by obeying an order that should have been ignored. [R] [See Abstr. 66.98]
66.431 CLEGG, Daniel —
Introduced in the late 1990s, tax credits grew under successive Labour governments to become a cornerstone of UK social policy. Distinguished from traditional welfare policies by their target group and their mode of administration, and with goals that appeared capable of commanding support across the ideological spectrum, tax credits until recently seemed to hold the key to tackling poverty in a politically popular manner. But since 2010, the tax credit system has been systematically dismantled, initially qualitatively and latterly also quantitatively. This paper discusses the multiple factors that help to explain the rapid fall from grace in the UK of this liberal approach to supporting the incomes of poor working households. [R]
66.432 CLEMENS, Austin; CRESPIN, Michael; FINOCCHIARO, Charles J. —
In recent years, considerable scholarly attention has focused on earmarks, the quintessential example of pork barrel politics. We assess the degree to which existing theories can explain the distribution of earmarks in the US House of Representatives. First, drawing on informal interviews with individuals on Capitol Hill regarding the earmark process, we argue that assessing institutional and constituency-level factors that affect the earmark receipts of individual members requires examination at the level of the Appropriations subcommittees. Second, we demonstrate that both distributive and partisan theories of legislative organization are applicable to the distribution of earmarks. Finally, we present results indicating that contrary to the conventional wisdom, most subcommittees do not distribute pork based on electoral vulnerability. Rather, legislators' status in the appropriations process has the most influence. [R, abr.]
66.434 CUTLER, Josh, et al. —
Empirical evaluations of models of government-formation tend to separate government-formation per se from the distribution of key government pay-offs, such as cabinet portfolios, between members of the resulting government. Models of government formation are necessarily specified ex ante, absent any knowledge of the government that forms. Models of the distribution of cabinet portfolios are typically specified ex post. This disjunction lies at the heart of a notorious contradiction between predictions of the distribution of cabinet portfolios made by canonical models of legislative bargaining and the robust empirical regularity of proportional portfolio allocations — Gamson's Law. This article resolves this contradiction by specifying and estimating a joint model of cabinet-formation and portfolio-distribution that, for example, predicts ex ante which parties will receive zero portfolios rather than taking this as given ex post. [R, abr.]
66.436 DARCILLON, Thibault —
This paper explores the determinants of pro-minority shareholder corporate governance reforms. Using a Cox conditional model in gap time, this paper provides new empirical evidence on the linkages between the adoption of pro-minority shareholder corporate governance reforms at the firm level and government ideological affiliation in 16 OECD countries over the period 1970–2009. I find strong evidence linking rightward shifts in government ideological orientation with the adoption of minority shareholder protection legislation. This result supports our argument that changes in the composition of the coalition of heterogeneous interests and/or a change in the expectations of the parties' constituency will affect government strategy on the adoption of pro-minority shareholder corporate governance reforms. I also find that the macroeconomic context at the international level may influence the adoption of these reforms. [R, abr.]
66.437 DELVOLVÉ, Pierre —
The inherent ambiguity of the subject of constitutional autonomy of State is due to the multiple meanings of the expression “European law” and the contradictory nature of the expression “constitutional autonomy”. The contradiction between constitutional and European positions is at the source of the “drama” that is related to the constitutional autonomy of State in European law. In order to resolve this drama, two actions need to be taken: states should adhere to European norms and norms need to be implemented by European states. Constitutional autonomy can manifest itself at both stages of the adherence to a treaty: negotiation as well as ratification.
66.438 DESPOSATO, Scott W.; INGRAM, Matthew C. —
How does a court's policy-making authority shape the nature of judicial behavior? We argue that judicial systems that limit policy-making authority also discourage the politicization of courts, encouraging judges to think narrowly about the interests of litigating parties. In contrast, granting a court high policy-making authority — affecting potentially thousands of cases and other branches of government — naturally encourages judges to consider broader ideological principles. Typically, unraveling cause and effect would be difficult, as judicial behavior and institutions are usually stable and endogenous. But an especially stark sequence of political and institutional changes in Brazil affords analytic leverage to explore these questions. [R, abr.]
66.439 DORRONSORO, Gilles; GOURISSE, Benjamin —
Until the 2000s, the army is constantly involved in the political life of the Republic of Turkey. To explain this feature, the paper shows that the military interventions, far from responding to crises of the political sector, are both the results of the internal dynamics of the army and coalitions whose army is the backbone. This dual dynamics of empowerment of the military institution and intervention in politics via coalition formation highlights the mechanisms that allow an institutional actor to create crises and through this, to settle in the heart of the political game. [R]
66.440 DUTIL, Patrice —
Governments have made strides in “crowdsourcing” yet the concept has not been defined as a tool in either policy-making or in delivering services. The article identifies different forms of crowdsourcing and argues that existing taxonomies for governing instruments insufficiently account for crowdsourcing as a strategic tool in its arsenal. Focusing on the most important types of crowdsourcing drawn from the federal, provincial and municipal levels, it explores the limits of crowdsourcing and issues it raises for governance and administration. The cases reveal how crowdsourcing can help the state meet needs by activating crowds into accomplishing tasks. Using crowds is more than a procedural novelty: it opens new venues for direct contact between the state and citizens that can affect the force and direction of decision making. [R]
66.441 ECKER, Alejandro; MEYER, Thomas M.; MÜLLER, Wolfgang C. —
Multiparty government in parliamentary democracies entails bargaining over the payoffs of government participation, in particular the allocation of cabinet positions. While most of the literature deals with the numerical distribution of cabinet seats among government parties, this article explores the distribution of individual portfolios. It argues that coalition negotiations are sequential choice processes that begin with the allocation of those portfolios most important to the bargaining parties. This induces conditionality in the bargaining process as choices of individual cabinet positions are not independent of each other. Linking this sequential logic with party preferences for individual cabinet positions, we study the allocation of individual portfolios for 146 coalition governments in Western and Central Eastern Europe. [R, abr.]
66.442 EDNEY, Kingsley —
Studies of Chinese soft power have emphasized its potential to ameliorate the security dilemma and help China achieve a “peaceful rise”. While this perspective is useful, it overlooks an important alternative Chinese interpretation of soft power as a response to domestic security challenges. In order to address this omission, this article uses a regimesecurity approach to examine soft power in the Chinese context. Through an investigation of the Chinese concept of “cultural security”, the article reveals that Chinese analysts view soft power as having the potential to help the Chinese Communist Party solve an internal security predicament by enhancing regime legitimacy and national cohesion. [R] [See Abstr. 66.1029]
66.443 ELMENDORF, Christopher S. —
Unlike many other statutes, the [US] Voting Rights Act authorizes no administrative agency to issue implementing rules with the force of law. This essay nonetheless argues that guidelines issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) through the notice-and-comment process could play a critically important role in persuading the Supreme Court not to construe the Voting Rights Act into quiescence — an outcome that otherwise seems quite likely. Though DOJ guidelines would not bind anyone outside of the agency, they could have a substantial impact on the Supreme Court's assessment of the costs and benefits of alternative statutory constructions. The guidelines I suggest would clarify the relationship between statutory and constitutional violations, while bolstering the manageability of racial vote dilution law and reducing its dependence on strong racial assumptions. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.582]
66.444 EMRE, Yunus —
This paper scrutinizes why the Western European type of social democracy has not developed in Turkey. Both the historical backdrop and current constraints on the development of social democracy are examined. This paper argues that social democracy's failure in Turkey has stemmed from two reasons: (1) historical and structural constraints that obstructed social democracy should be taken into account; (2) social democratic movements suffered from an agency question. The leadership of the political parties, which defined themselves as center-left entities, had a number of chances to build a “genuine social democracy”, but they chose alternative policy paths based on identity politics. The CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Republican People's Party) is the focal point of the paper since it has always been the main subject in the debates over social democracy in Turkey. [R, abr.]
66.445 ERVIK, Rune; LINDÉN, Tord Skogedal —
This article argues that two images of justification in the Norwegian pension reform process partially explain how resistance to the reform was overcome. The first image is a type of crisis scenario that is neatly cached in the “shark jaw” image — a graphic illustration in which projected future petroleum revenues and pension expenses are displayed simultaneously. The lines for the two indicators extend in opposite directions, resembling a jaw. The second image frames the actual reform as an improvement; this view illustrates how the reform allows one to enter an “elevator” that moves one upwards, presenting a stark contrast to the substance of retrenchment. The article is informed by V. Schmidt's discursive-institutionalism perspective [“Discursive institutionalism: the explanatory power of ideas and discourse”, Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 2008: 303–326; Abstr. 59.1731] and her distinction between coordinative and communicative discourses. [R, abr.]
66.446 FATIN-ROUGE STÉFANINI, Marthe —
The question of the field of application of referenda, methods of triggering and above all of controlling the application of referenda is among the most discussed issues over the past twenty-five years. Discussions began with the 1962 referendum in France, when President Ch. de Gaulle proposed a bill that would allow to elect the President of the Republic by direct universal suffrage. Since then, the doctrine has been reproached mainly for the field of application of Article 11 and the possibility held by the President to resort to this disposition in order to modify the Constitution, without having to follow article 89 first.
66.447 FERRARI, Silvio —
This article considers the different components of the acquis communautaire in the matter of religion. The acquis communautaire is the set of values, principles and rights that a state has to accept before becoming a member of the EU. EU legal provisions, European Court of Justice (ECJ) decisions and European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rules are part of this acquis, together with the constitutional traditions of the member states. The chapter dwells on this last component, arguing that there is a European model of state-religions relations that is reflected in the constitutional traditions of the EU member states. Whether this acquis communautaire is able to face the challenges raised by the growing religious diversity in the EU is discussed in the last part of the chapter. [R]
66.448 FISHER, Louis —
Throughout history, [US] presidents have invoked a broad array of powers. Some are legitimate and well grounded; others exceed constitutional boundaries and have met defeat in Congress, the courts, and the public. Still others originate from historical errors by the Supreme Court, particularly in the field of external affairs. The powers analyzed in this article begin with these: enumerated, implied, inherent, prerogative, ministerial, and discretionary. Presidential instruments of power include executive orders and proclamations. The erroneous “sole organ” doctrine, first appearing in the Curtiss-Wright case of 1936, was at issue in the Jerusalem passport case of Zivotofsky v. Kerry. The scope of unilateral executive authority is being tested in initiatives by the B. Obama administration in the field of immigration policy. [R] [See Abstr. 66.507]
66.449 FLAVIN, Patrick; HARTNEY, Michael T. —
Government policies can activate a political constituency not only by providing material resources to, or altering the interpretive experiences of, individual citizens, but also by directly subsidizing established interest groups. We argue that state laws mandating collective bargaining for public employees provided organizational subsidies to public-sector labor unions that lowered the costs of mobilizing their members to political action. Exploiting variation in the timing of laws across the states and using data on the political participation of public school teachers from 1956 to 2004, we find that the enactment of a mandatory bargaining law significantly boosted subsequent political participation among teachers. We also identify increased contact from organized groups seeking to mobilize teachers as a likely mechanism that explains this finding. [R, abr.]
66.450 FONSECA, Pedro; FERREIRA, Maria João —
This article discusses the discursive legitimation strategies used by the Portuguese government to legitimize its political action between 2011 and 2014 in the context of the financial, economic and social crisis and the implementation of a three-year bailout program and consequent austerity policies. Drawing from Critical Discourse Analysis, we selected eight political discourses delivered by the Portuguese Prime Minister and organized his discursive legitimation strategies into four main categories: (1) “state of exception”, (2) blame-allocation, (3) no alternative options and the appeal to emotions and (4) effectiveness. We conclude that, between 2011 and 2014, the Portuguese Prime Minister, through the “state of exception” narrative and blame-allocation strategies, sought to impose and legitimize governmental political action as the only viable option to overcome the crisis. [R, abr.]
66.451 FRAENKEL-HAEBERLE, Cristina —
This article first considers the influence of some formative principles of German administrative law on Italian legal culture. It then explores the German influence on Italian administrative procedures. The final area deals specifically with concepts of Italian administrative judgment that have been influenced in diverse forms by the German legal culture. This analysis reveals the strong sway that German Legal Scholarship and German Law have had on Italian legal dogma and legislation. These have contributed directly, as well as indirectly through EU Law, to the improvement and refinement of principles and provisions of Italian Administrative Law. The recent reforms of remedies in administrative law can also, on the face of it, be connected to the German codification, which itself has been the subject of various studies that are also considered in this contribution. [R, abr.]
66.452 FRAHM, Ole —
Despite Africa's size and diversity, several common political features can be observed in many Sub-Saharan states. Ever since their constitution or their independence, they seek a centralized state power, and, paradoxically, at the same time, a federally oriented administration. Apart from the example set by emerging centralized countries (e.g., China), both the civil society and the international donor community contribute to the belief that a centralized state is the paradigm of a successful nation building process. However, from the perspective of human rights and economic development, in the majority of African states centralization has been notoriously unfortunate. [See Abstr. 66.128]
66.453 FUKUMOTO, Kentaro; MATSUO, Akitaka —
This study discusses a downside of electoral pressure. As elections approach, legislators reduce their effort in legislative activities, albeit while increasing their efficiency. To show this, we propose a new, natural experimental design exploiting staggered legislative election calendars to identify the effect of approaching elections. Two-way natural blocking improves the balance of pretreatments and an instrumental variable approach addresses noncompliance by retirees. Our analysis of the Japanese House of Councilors demonstrates that legislators up for election show up in the chamber less often than those not facing election; however, when they do show up and speak, they tend to speak longer. [R]
66.454 GAGLIARDONE, Iginio; JOHNSON, Douglas H. —
The Ethiopian government, led by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), has developed one of the most restrictive systems for the regulation of new media in Africa. So far, most discussion has focused on the measures employed by the EPRDF to prevent the internet and mobile phones from becoming tools for opposition forces to challenge the regime. Much less attention has been paid to the strategies pursued in order to make new media work in support of the government's ambiguous but ambitious attempt to make Ethiopia a developmental state. Examining the period between 1991 and 2012, this article explores how the EPRDF gradually moved from a simple strategy of information control towards incorporating new media into its state- and nation-building efforts through large-scale projects such as Woredanet and Schoolnet. [R, abr.]
66.455 GAÏA, Patrick —
Where does the French Constitutional court stand in terms of the general withdrawal, which, it seems, has already been accepted as a form of irresistible and irreversible fatalism? In order to answer this question, it is first necessary to trace all the different paths the Council has followed since 1990 and to check if there are still any authority resources left in the courtroom to dare and challenge the word of the EU, which has become omnipresent. What marks the Council's European empathy? What are possible paths that act as dominant factors explaining this movement?
66.456 GARCIA, Ryan J. B. —
Nearly all studies that examine the effects of military service on the individual have a self-selection bias [produced by] studying the allvolunteer force. To solve this problem, we take advantage of the natural experiment afforded by the suspension of the French National Service program to produce unbiased causal analyses of the effect of national service on a range of civic engagement measures. Results generated using Instrumental Variables estimation indicate that there is little difference in individual-level civic engagement between service participants and their non-serving peers. However, when potential mediators are taken into account, the ensuing results imply that the substantial increase in the likelihood of having children associated with national service participation has a suppressive effect on service participants' overall level of civic engagement. [R]
66.457 GARTNER, David —
Underlying both the [US] Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder [2013] and congressional inaction in renewing the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is the claim that the Voting Rights Act has already succeeded and is therefore no longer necessary. These claims ignore enduring challenges to voter participation and miss the steep drop-off in participation by historically excluded groups in mid-term elections and the persistent participation gap for Latinos in all elections, especially in jurisdictions that have historically been covered by the VRA. In responding to these enduring challenges, universal approaches to expanding voter registration and participation are increasingly important. Fifty-one million eligible Americans still cannot participate in voting because they are not registered to vote, and these potentially eligible voters are disproportionately African-American and Latino. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.582]
66.458 GASPAR, Vitor —
Alexander Hamilton was the first US Treasury Secretary from 1789 to 1795. When he started, the federal government was in default. During his tenure, US Treasuries became the ultimate safe asset. He successfully managed expectations, achieved debt service reduction, and stabilized financial panics. He delivered sound public finances and financial stability. In the end, the US possessed a modern financial system able to finance innovation and growth. At a time when Europe is working its way out of the sovereign debt crisis and implementing banking union and financial union, it is worthwhile to search for lessons from early US history. [R] [See Abstr. 66.924]
66.460 GILARDI, Fabrizio; WASSERFALLEN, Fabio —
Tax competition is the quintessential example of policy interdependence. The general idea is that tax changes in one jurisdiction lead to similar changes in others. However, research has shown that institutional and political constraints limit competition. This article develops another argument: that socialization among policy-makers attenuates competitive dynamics by setting limits to the extent of competition that is considered acceptable. Using fine-grained Swiss data and spatial econometric techniques, it shows that personal income tax rates are more strongly correlated among competitors that do not participate in the same intergovernmental organizations. This finding implies that, to some extent, the detrimental consequences of competition can be mitigated by fostering institutionalized forms of interaction among policy-makers. [R]
66.461 GOODMAN, Sara Wallace —
Research on immigration and citizenship is a growing area, [creating] the boon of comparative citizenship and immigration policy indices. [Focusing on methodology] the first half addresses policy indices, including (1) concept validity and boundary maintenance and (2) measurement, compensability, and aggregate index use. The second half examines why these problems matter in hypothesis-testing and for inference by replicating three policy index-using studies and rerunning analyses with different indices to test consistency of findings. These tests underscore a central finding: What scholars know about the effects of immigration and citizenship policy is subject to data- and sample-selection. The article concludes with recommendations and strategies for moving forward. These approaches strengthen new research agendas and mainstream migrant-related policy studies with comparative politics. [R]
66.462 GOODWIN, Mark —
Political science has not developed a strong sub-field in the politics of education. Three recent works on education policy under New Labour suggest strategies for applying insights drawn from the discipline of political science to the study of the field of education. One strand of existing scholarship on education policy and politics has emphasized the neoliberal, market elements of New Labour schools policy. This review article makes the case for a more nuanced account that disaggregates both state and market, and endorses the micro-level studies of changes in education governance undertaken by the works under review. [R]
66.463 GOSSELIN, Maurice; HENRI, Jean-François; LAURIN, Claude —
This article assesses the impact of New Public Management (NPM) reforms in the public sector from a cost-consciousness perspective. Using an action-research methodology, we analyze the intensity of the external pressures that influence the institutional logic under which public sector organizations manage their costs. The field work shows that even after decentralization, public sector organizations appear unable to move their costing function from expense control to cost-management unless external pressures motivate managers to complete the reform. We propose that the probability of success of reforms is increased when organizations are subject to strong pressures that could take the form of individual incentives or external threats. [R]
66.464 GOTTWALD, Jörn-Carsten; BERSICK, Sebastian —
The emergence of China as a major power raises fundamental questions regarding the future of global financial governance. China is seen to represent a new force in defining the “rules of the game” of global finance, particularly within the new G20 framework. This expectation, however, contrasts sharply with traditional views of China prioritizing sovereignty and therefore distancing itself from ambitious multilateralism. From a Chinese perspective, the contrast between external expectations regarding China's future role and its traditional highly concentrated international involvement is striking. In terms of policy initiatives and proposals for institutional reform, the PRC has so far kept a low profile. The article takes a role-theoretical approach to analyze the ongoing shift of China's policy in global financial governance in the context of the G20. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.1124]
66.465 GOYAL, Ashima —
Inclusive institutions make correct policy choices required for steady catch-up growth more likely. India started out with highly inclusive political institutions since it adopted democracy with universal suffrage at independence. But extractive economic institutions, inherited from the British, were made more so by economic controls. In addition, a heterogeneous electorate allowed politicians to cultivate vote-banks and populist schemes instead of delivering better public services and governance. India's opening out was adequately nuanced and flexible but was sometimes used as a substitute for harder domestic reforms. It, however, added to the growing constituencies that benefit from growth, and are pushing for more inclusive productivity enabling economic institutions. Broader interest groups create better institutions and incentives. [R, abr.]
66.466 GREEN, Jeremy; LAVERY, Scott —
This article interrogates the underlying mechanisms at the heart of Britain's post-crisis political economy. We argue that the contemporary economic recovery has been characterized by a dynamic of “regressive redistribution”: a socially regressive dynamic of state-led economic restructuring that has worked through two axes at the center of the recovery. The first axis, a monetary policy framework centered upon Quantitative Easing, has driven asset-price inflation to the benefit of the wealthiest asset-holders. The second axis centers upon the politics of regressive labor market restructuring which has provoked widespread wage deflation. In combination, these two axes have been central to defining the contours of the Britain's post-crisis political economy paradigm: characterized by rising asset wealth for the few, and falling living standards alongside increasing economic insecurity for wage earners. [R, abr.]
66.467 HAGER, Carol —
The energy revolution poses a fundamental challenge to the German corporatist institutional model. The debate over German energy policy is becoming a contest between centralized and decentralized models of political and economic power. Prevailing institutionalist theories have difficulty accounting for these developments. I analyze the local development of renewable energy by means of a case study of the Freiburg area in southwestern Germany, which has evolved from a planned nuclear power and fossil fuel center to Germany's “solar region”. Incorporating insights from ecological modernization theory, I show how the locally-based push for renewables has grown into a challenge to the direction of German democracy itself. [R, abr.]
66.468 HAN Heejin —
After a brief introduction of the existing literature on environmental pioneer states and their internal characteristics, this study examines various low-carbon green growth (LCGG) initiatives that the South Korean government introduced to market Korea as a trendsetter in the global environmental arena. The country's domestic foundations for environmental innovation, however, reveals a dissonance between its international aspirations and the internal conditions that are needed to sustain the pursuit. This case of mixed environmental achievements by a rising middle-power state suggests the insufficiency of a state-led approach to environmental innovation and leadership. [R]
66.469 HANSEN, Michael A. —
Why do some countries deviate from EU law? More specifically, why do countries violate the Stability and Growth Pact, which is a cornerstone piece of legislation for the shared economy? Is it that violators simply have no other choice due to economic need? Are the violators intentional deviators that are simply able to violate the Stability and Growth Pact because of their power in the EU? This article answers these questions and identifies those factors that are most likely to impact a country's deviation from the two main clauses of the Stability and Growth Pact. The major finding is that it is economic need, not a country's relative power, governing ideology or diffusion, that has a large impact on which clause will be violated. [R]
66.470 HASTINGS, Annette; MATTHEWS, Peter —
There is concern that the “localism” promoted by the UK Coalition Government will further empower the already powerful. This paper uses P. Bourdieu's theory of practice to theorize middle-class public service use. Building on a previous evidence review [P. Matthews and A. Hastings, “Middle-class political activism and middle-class advantage in relation to public services: a realist synthesis of the evidence base”, Social Policy and Administration 47, 2013: 72–92] it considers whether the habitus of the middle-classes enables them to gain disproportionate benefit from public services. Service provision is understood as a “field” marked by a competitive struggle between social agents who embody class-based power asymmetries. It finds that engagement with the state is a classed practice producing benefits to those already empowered and that localism may exacerbate inequalities. [R]
66.471 HEINELT, Marie-Sophie —
This article outlines a comparative perspective on legal multiculturalism in Latin America. It analyzes how consultation and territorial autonomy rights may be used to include the interests of indigenous and Afro-descendant minorities in decision-making. It is argued that (1) the organizational forms of minorities and (2) previous patterns of interaction with state actors need to be taken into account systematically. Scrutiny of two case studies from Colombia and Panama shows that collective rights can improve access to decision-makers and help to channel minority interests into policy outputs. Both case studies reveal that confederal organizational forms help to maintain coherent ethnic mobilization. The Panamanian case furthermore demonstrates that previous interactions with state actors can result in bargaining advantages for minorities. [R]
66.472 HOOIJER, Gerda; PICOT, Georg —
In almost all European welfare states, immigrants face a higher risk of poverty than natives, but the gap between the two groups varies. In examining this variation, our article contributes to the nascent literature on the impact of welfare states on immigrants. We hypothesize that whether immigrants benefit from welfare generosity depends on three intervening factors: immigration policy, labor market regulation, and welfare eligibility rules. We use fuzzy-set analysis to examine the interplay of these determinants in 16 West-European states. The findings show that in most countries a high migrant disadvantage results from the combination of a large share of humanitarian and family immigrants and generous social policies. The underlying mechanism is that “unwanted” immigrants are institutionally impeded from full access to generous welfare states. [R]
66.473 HSU, Jennifer Y.J. —
The emergence of China as a development actor across the global South has raised significant questions regarding the extent to which the country presents new development opportunities to its compatriots in the South. My aim is to reflect on and parse out the experiences and policies that have shaped China's development to assess how it can inform the field of development studies. I argue that we need to critically engage in China's development process, as China's own development has led to the emergence of many more problems than solutions, ranging from increasing inequality to exclusionary development practices pertaining to ethnic minorities. [R]
66.474 INGRAM, Haroro J. —
Drawing on English and Arabic Islamic State (IS) communiqués produced by its central media units, wilayat information offices and broader supporter base, this study examines the strategic logic of IS information operations (IO). It argues that the overarching purpose of IS's IO campaign is to shape the perceptions and polarize the support of audiences via messages that interweave appeals to pragmatic and perceptual factors. Pragmatic factors are leveraged in IS messaging by promoting the efficacy of its politico-military campaign and denigrating its enemies' efforts via rational-choice (logic of consequence) appeals. Perceptual factors are leveraged via identity-choice (logic of appropriateness) appeals that frame IS as the champion of Sunni Muslims (the in-group identity), its enemies as Others complicit in Sunni perceptions of crisis, and IS as the only hope for solving this malaise. [R, abr.]
66.475 KALINOWSKI, Thomas —
The East Asian G20 members — China, Japan and Korea — are playing an increasingly important role in governing the global economy. Their global political rise is frequently discussed in binary terms in which the “realist” assumption of inevitable conflict between rising and declining powers is contrasted with the “liberal” assumption of the region's growing integration into international institutions. This article offers an alternative explanation for East Asia's global political role by shifting attention to the internal dynamics of the East Asian development model. This “second image” interpretation of international political economy focuses on the ways in which domestic political economies influence international negotiations and institutions. Furthermore, this article departs from a focus on national political economies and considers the global role of the East Asian model of capitalism as such. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.1124]
66.476 KARI, Ville —
This article examines the 2012–2013 constitutional crisis of Nepal — a period between the dissolution of the first Constituent Assembly and the election of the second. The constitution-drafting process (begun in 2007) dragged on for several years and eventually exhausted the mandate of the Constituent Assembly despite several extensions. The dissolution of the Assembly in May 2012 led to a political impasse — a crisis of constitutional caliber from where the Interim Constitution seemed to provide no exit. In effect, Nepal had no constituent body to finalize the constitution, and no constitutional framework nor parliament to facilitate the re-establishment of such a body. It seemed that the constitutional process had been overcome by the complexities of post-conflict politics, which in the case of Nepal largely revolves around ethnic politics and federalism. [R, abr.]
66.477 KASDIN, Stuart; LIN, Luona —
How do [US] government agencies allocate program resources? Some authors presume that agencies seek to maximize program objectives; others suggest agencies favor the districts important to the president's election. In addition, agencies may distribute larger program resources to those districts whose congressional representatives are best positioned to help the agency. We examined how federal government agencies responded both to the 2006 election, when control of Congress shifted from the Republican to the Democratic Party, and to the 2010 election, when the House switched from Democratic to Republican control. We used a difference-in-difference analysis to evaluate the impact of each election on the agencies' allocations of contracts. Agencies generally responded to the elections by allocating more contract resources to districts represented by the winning party. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.277]
66.478 KHEIR, Antoine —
“The constitution is not the problem and its revision will not solve the problem”. Collegial government with a blocking minority without many possibilities to govern well, the loss of the state's monopoly of coercion, and the inability to elect a president after months of vacancy of the highest office: the effects of these elements may become increasingly dangerous, creating new working hypotheses that would modify the regime. [R] [See Abstr. 66.404]
66.479 KICKERT, Walter J. M. —
This article analyses fiscal consolidation in the Netherlands, especially the politics of consolidation and cutbacks. We discuss the contents of the consolidation measures, and the political decision-making processes leading up to the measures. The analysis of the political decision-making focuses on the characteristics and stages of the decision-making. The three stages of fiscal consolidation analyzed in this article — the October 2010 coalition agreement, the April 2012 spring agreement, and the October 2012 coalition agreement — show a gradually mounting recognition of the necessity for serious cutbacks. Decision-making was mainly characterized by consensual compromising, that is, incremental, across-the-board, cheese-slicing measures. However, in later stages of the fiscal crisis, hesitant attempts were made at targeted political priority-setting. [R] [See Abstr. 66.522]
66.480 KICKERT, Walter J. M.; RANDMA-LIIV, Tiina; SAVI, Riin —
The aim of the article is to comparatively describe and explain consolidation measures and political decision-making processes in 14 European countries. The consolidation measures followed a similar pattern. Hiring and pay freeze occurred almost everywhere, whereas more radical cutback measures were introduced only in a limited number of countries. Cutback decision-making was not a one-off event, but consisted of a series of stages, beginning with temporary and small measures and gradually evolving into more serious cutbacks, sometimes arriving at targeted cuts and political priority-setting. The political decision-making was moderate and gradual rather than drastic and swift. Exceptions to this general pattern were the Baltic states as well as those European countries which received financial assistance on the condition of swift and severe cutbacks. Economic factors and supra-national influences primarily explained the size of consolidation measures, whereas domestic political factors turned out to have limited explanatory power. [R] [See Abstr. 66.522]
66.481 KING, Jeff —
It is often assumed that the US is exceptional in according poor legal status to socio-economic rights, and that its judges show a distinct reticence towards enforcing positive entitlements. This article challenges this view by identifying two ironies in the American brand of exceptionalism about social rights. It argues that America's judges have often enforced positive duties to provide social services in a manner that is in fact strikingly interventionist by international comparison. It also shows how this more robust involvement in welfare rights adjudication has often not produced the results desired by advocates of social rights, and may even in some cases have been regressive. The article explores the causes and consequences of the experience, and suggests what lessons it may hold out for other countries. [R]
66.482 KIRKLAND, Christopher —
The crisis of 2007 affected banks, financial institutions and retailers at a macro-economic level as well as individuals and families at a microeconomic level. Following the acceptance of a crisis, the politics of blame began, with politicians, the media academics and the public assessing who (or what) generated the crisis and what could be done to alleviate it. Three broad narratives of blame have hitherto been purported; the first views the crisis as an international crisis, or whose roots stem from the US, the second suggests that the policies of New Labour generated the crisis and the third traces the origins of the crisis back to Britain's withdrawal from the ERM in 1992. I present a fourth account which sees the crisis as stemming from the 1980s and the policies of Thatcherism. [R, abr.]
66.483 KLAFKI, Anika Magdalena —
Multi-ethnic federalism is a recommendable alternative of conflict-resolution within constitutional law, given that, by means of a decentralized state model, it allows a transfer of powers to certain ethnic groups. There is, however, a paradox inherent in this peacekeeping method: the more these groups' interests are served, the fewer constitutional objectives are achieved in order to grant a functional state-building process. This apparent contradiction confronts State conflict-resolution and functional division of tasks in the process of creating a constitution, as one can clearly observe in the case of Bosnia Herzegovina.
66.484 KOMÁREK, Jan —
This article critically assesses the transformation of national constitutional courts' place in the law and politics of the EU and its member states. This process eliminates the difference between constitutional and ordinary national courts, which is crucial for the institutional implementation of the discourse theory of law and democracy. It also disrupts the symbiotic relationship between national constitutional democracies established after World War II and European integration. The article argues that maintaining the special place of national constitutional courts is in the vital interest of both the EU and its member states, understood together as the European Constitutional Democracy — the central notion developed in this article in order to support an argument that should speak to both EU lawyers and national constitutionalists. [R]
66.485 KRASTEVA, Anna —
The article theorizes relations between religion, politics, and nationalism in the Bulgarian post-communist public sphere. Communist politicization of religion formulated “Secularization without secularism”. The postcommunist religionization of politics and politicization of religion are analyzed through the symbolic mapping of religions, the structural affinities between nationalism and Orthodox Christianity, contestatory desecularization, secularized Othering, and desecularized identity. “Elastic (post)secularism” conceptualizes the eclectic, diverse, and contrary forms of postcommunist religious politicization that stretch it through kaleidoscopic narratives and arguments toward secularism and postsecularization. Unlike Kristen Ghodsee's symphonic secularism, which regards the relation between religion and politics from a religious perspective, elastic (post)secularism offers a political perspective. [R, abr.]
66.486 LETELIER, Leonardo E.; DÁVILA, Mireya —
This paper explores the political economy at the time of the 2012 tax reform, which paved the way for a radical tax increase in 2014. Both were an explicit response to demands to improve public education. As opposed to the 2014 reform, the 2012 tax adjustment was an unplanned decision made in the wake of a pact of long-term fiscal stability during the government's last year in office and was partially negotiated with student associations and pressure groups. We hypothesize that the existing institutions were not strong enough to meet emerging social demands through formal channels. We will show evidence for the hypothesis that the government's incorporation of students' demands in its agenda was mainly a response to the role of the media, the fact that it is not difficult for students to organize themselves and express their demands, the support of students' families and the ruling government's fear of missing out on a second term in office. [R]
66.487 LEUNIG, Sven —
The distribution of competences between the German Federation and the Länder is unclear in the text of the German Basic Law. From a scientific point of view, the principle of subsidiarity was not correctly taken into account for the carrying out of this distribution upon the promulgation of the German Constitution of 1949 and its 2006 reform. The question then arises as to whether or not an amending act is necessary. This requires a prior analysis of certain aspects related to the principle of subsidiarity: first, the efficiency of the measure at issue, second, its financial feasibility, and, most important of all, its appropriateness. [See Abstr. 66.128]
66.488 LIDÉN, Gustav; NYHLÉN, Jon; NYHLÉN, Sara —
In December 2010, significant parts of Swedish integration policy were changed. Through the “establishment reform”, a centralization was implemented in which the national level overtook the responsibility of municipalities for the establishment of newly arrived immigrants. In today's system, the responsibility is shared between several authorities, the municipalities, and publicly financed private actors. Recent governmental reports have described the current situation as being characterized by coordination problems and shortcomings in accountability. This policy creates an institutional landscape that spans both vertical and horizontal dimensions, reflecting several levels of the public administration and actors that originate from several sectors. This article explores the governance of Swedish integration policy, with a theoretical focus derived from the ideal types of hierarchy, market, and network. [R, abr.]
66.489 LOMBARDINI, John —
This article [examines] Athenian anti-tyranny laws as a democratic response to emergency. These laws promoted the killing of “tyrants” who overthrew democracy and punished those who collaborated with any non-democratic regime. I argue that the anti-tyranny laws reflect a broader series of measures enacted in the aftermath of the oligarchic coup of 411 BCE that sought to facilitate the collective action of the demos as a means of maintaining and preserving Athenian democracy. Such legislation is best understood when situated within the context of a distinctly Athenian conception of the rule of law that viewed the relationship between the rule of law and popular sovereignty in recursive terms. The article places this Athenian response to emergency in dialogue with recent work on emergency politics in contemporary political theory. [R]
66.490 LUND, Brian —
This article surveys the territorial politics of housing policy with particular reference to the Conservative Party. It examines the how attempts to establish a new planning framework under the previous Coalition government came unstuck and sets out the implications of the planning impasse for home ownership and “generation rent”. The territorial and tenure dimensions of the 2015 General Election are considered and possible future Conservative conflicts over land release are explored. [R]
66.491 LUNDQVIST, Lennart J. —
Summarizing the comparative project “Governance and Environment in Western Europe”, A.-I. Jansen and his co-editors state that industrialized countries increasingly adapt environmental policies to the competitive logic of global financial markets. Political and economic elites see “ecological modernization” as reconciling political, economic and ecological objectives in a win-win game, thus counting out policies based on natural science view of man-nature relationship as a zero-sum game. I use recent comparative studies of environmental policy convergence to assess tendencies of policy harmonization that imply breaking out of the “iron cage” of ecological modernization “locked in” by the logic of global markets. [R, abr.]
66.492 LYON, Aisling —
This article examines whether fiscal decentralization in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia between 2005 and 2012 has been achieved at the expense of economic and territorial cohesion. It examines the presence of longstanding socio-economic disparities and rural underdevelopment, before considering whether fiscal decentralization has: facilitated a more equitable distribution of public resources; created the optimal conditions for expanding citizens' access to basic services; and reduced socioeconomic disparities between urban and rural areas. The article argues that unless carefully designed and implemented, fiscal decentralization reforms can have unintended consequences and may actually exacerbate socio-economic disparities rather than reduce them. [R]
66.493 MANDELKERN, Ronen —
Constructivists generally suggest that during economic crises liberal economists persuaded decision-makers to adopt pro-market policy ideas as solutions for economic turbulence. While this answer is true, it is also only partial because it disregards the role played by governance-related ideas and institutional entrepreneurship in the political actions of liberal economists. I argue that ideas regarding decision-making mechanisms provided liberal economists with the basis for creatively exploiting preliberalization institutions, such as central banks and central budget offices, through which these economists enhanced their long-term political influence. An in-depth examination of the paradigmatic case of economic liberalization driven by liberal economists — Israel's Stabilization Plan — exemplifies that argument. [R, abr.]
66.494 MANDIČ, Srna —
The concept of empowerment introduces a new perspective into the discussion on social change. The paper presents the concept in all its complexity; based on an overview of a large body of heterogeneous literature, the following general features of empowerment as a concept and as practices are identified: its transformative, multi-level and context-dependent nature, the heterogeneity of its practices, and cooperation between actors as its precondition. Measuring the phenomenon is also discussed. In exploratory empirical analysis using Slovenian public opinion survey data, selected preconditions of individual empowerment are observed; they are found weak in comparison to other countries, particularly the inclination to cooperate with others. Thus, in Slovenia the potential of empowerment as a specific transformative practice is established as specifically weak and calls for further exploration. [R]
66.495 MARSH, David; McCAFFRIE, Brendan —
In [“What is the ‘dominant model’ of British policymaking? Comparing majoritarian and policy community ideas”, British Politics 8(3), Sept. 2013: 233–259; Abstr. 63.6543], G. Jordan and P. Cairney have helped focus attention on the concept of policy style. Here, we examine their arguments critically to make four points. (1) Their treatment of the extant policy networks literature is problematic in various ways. (2) The policy styles literature needs to engage more directly with the governance literature. (3) While the literature on governance suggests that there are three modes of governance — hierarchy, markets and networks — it is generally the “mix that matters”. Consequently, there are both similarities and differences between countries' policy styles. (4) The policy styles literature, like the network governance literature, plays down the importance of the role that citizens, as distinct from experts, can, and to an extent do, play in policy-making. [R] [See also Abstr. 66.426]
66.496 MASRI, Mazen —
Partitioning historic Palestine into two states is often presented as the most plausible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This article examines the potential impact of such a development on the Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI), primarily from the vantage point of Israel's constitutional regime. The article explores three fundamental aspects of the Israeli constitutional system — its instability, the “Jewish and democratic” definition of the state, and the exclusion of the PCI from “the people” as the unit that holds sovereignty — and argues that the envisaged two-state solution will only reinforce the definition of Israel as a Jewish state and consequently provide further justification for the infringement on the rights of its Palestinian citizens. [R]
66.497 MAY, Peter J. —
The cataloging of failures when putting policies in place has been the hallmark of implementation studies since the 1970s. The numerous lessons from this research can be distilled into guidance about improving policy design to enhance implementation prospects and other suggestions for overcoming administrative obstacles. This contribution extends these lessons by addressing how the governing arrangements for addressing policy problems — the policy regimes that are put in place — either work to reinforce or undermine political commitments enshrined within policies. Regimes mediate feedback effects of policies in affecting policy legitimacy, coherence, and durability. These notions about policy regimes are contrasted with traditional perspectives about implementation failures. The value of a regime perspective in studying policy implementation and governing is illustrated for the case of the [US] Affordable Care Act. [R] [See Abstr. 66.136]
66.498 MAZO, Eugene D. —
This is a reply to the three papers that were presented at the inaugural meeting of the new Section on Election Law, which took place at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, in January 2015. The author assesses where we stand regarding the future of the Voting Rights Act and also provides a short history of the creation of the Section on Election Law itself. [R] [See Abstr. 66.582]
66.500 McNALLY, Christopher A. —
By conceptualizing China's domestic political economy as having generated Sino-capitalism, this article utilizes a “second image” explanation to elucidate the logic of RMB internationalization policies. It traces the origins of China's unique policy stance with historical institutional analysis. It conceptualizes the domestic logic of Sino-capitalism and then highlights key aspects of Sino-capitalism's institutional arrangements and policy approaches as they shape RMB internationalization. It argues that the basic institutional logic and policy stances of Sino-capitalism are here to stay. With regard to RMB internationalization, this indicates that full-scale liberalization measures, especially of China's capital account, are unlikely to be undertaken in the near future. However, Sino-capitalism's logic opens up new avenues by which China could gradually foster an international currency. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.1124]
66.501 McNULTY, Stephanie L. —
As citizens increasingly work to improve transparency and governance, participatory budgeting (PB) has emerged in thousands of cities. Advocates argue that PB can serve to educate citizens, increase transparency, and even improve living standards in the cities and towns that implement this form of public finance. However, we still know very little about how inclusive these processes are. This article asks: first, are participatory budgeting processes engaging women and men equally? Second, if gender exclusion is taking place, why? Finally, what can the development community do to begin to eradicate exclusion? Through the case study of participatory budgeting in Peru, the article documents that participatory budgeting in this country is not inclusive. The article concludes with recommendations for advocates who wish to rectify these challenges through concrete interventions. [R, abr.]
66.502 McWILLIAMS, Susan —
At least in the American case, the surest way to disenthrall ourselves of a disabling founder-worship is to more fully embrace the founders. This essay uses the case of Fabius — the pen name of the under-studied American founder John Dickinson — to show how many resources there are for political reform, rebellion, and reconstitution within the American founding. It thus argues that we need not imagine revolution as the only remedy to the great ills that plague the American republic. The example of Fabius also reminds us that foundings are heterogeneous things, filled with conversation and contestation, and in that sense need not be imagined as dramatic exceptions to the dynamics of everyday life and the possibilities of democratic rule. [R] [See Abstr. 66.322]
66.503 MENDES, Philip —
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) is Australia's leading welfare advocacy group. During 2011–2013, ACOSS coordinated a high-profile campaign to lift the rate of the Newstart allowance for the unemployed. The campaign used a number of advocacy strategies such as policy reports, petitions, media releases, support from other key interest groups and consultations with parliamentarians, but was unsuccessful in persuading the Labor government to amend the payment rate. This article argues that the campaign was always going to struggle to succeed given the Australian welfare state's historical preference for labor market engagement over broader social rights. Other barriers included the budget deficit, the increasing influence of [giving priority to] active rather than passive social protection, and the challenge of advocating policy-change against combined opposition from the two major political parties. [R, abr.]
66.504 MILLAR, Gearoid —
In peace-building and transitional-justice literature, economic restoration is considered central to sustainable peace in post-conflict societies. However, it is also widely recognized that many post-conflict states cannot afford mechanisms to provide restoration. This paper examines the potential for FDI to serve as one alternative means by which to provide economic restoration in post-conflict states. Presenting findings from six months of fieldwork evaluating one such project in rural Sierra Leone, the paper describes how local people experience such projects and explores whether employment and land-lease payments can provide experiences of economic restoration so far unforthcoming from the state. [R, abr.]
66.505 MÖLLERS, Christoph; BIRKENKÖTTER, Hannah, eds. —
Editors' introduction, “Towards a new conceptualism in comparative constitutional law, or reviving the German tradition of the Lehrbuch”, pp. 603–625. Articles by Michaela HAILBRONNER, “Rethinking the rise of the German Constitutional Court: from anti-Nazism to value formalism”, pp. 626–649; Niels PETERSEN, “The German Constitutional Court and legislative capture”, pp. 650–669; Emanuel V. TOWFIGH, “Empirical arguments in public law doctrine: should empirical legal studies make a ‘doctrinal turn?’”, pp. 670–691; Oliver LEPSIUS, “The quest for middle-range theories in German public law”, pp. 692–709.
66.506 NAKROŠIS, Vitalis; VILPIŠAUSKAS, Ramūnas; KUOKŠTIS, Vytautas —
This article analyses the inputs, decisions, outputs and outcomes of fiscal consolidation and structural reforms undertaken by the Lithuanian authorities in the period 2008–2012. Our research was based on desk research, which was supplemented by interviews with government decision-makers. The article found that Lithuania successfully pursued fiscal consolidation, which contributed to stabilizing its economy and public finances. If economic factors largely explain the timing of fiscal consolidation decisions, political factors are more powerful in accounting for the expenditure-led nature of fiscal consolidation in Lithuania. However, despite bold and ambitious plans, Lithuania's structural reforms proved to be fragmented and incremental due to the absence of a stable base of political support, sustained political attention and persistent political leadership. [R] [See Abstr. 66.522]
66.507 NELSON, Michael —
Complicating the conventional wisdom, [US] President Clinton did not sign welfare reform legislation in 1996 for entirely short-term political reasons. Oral history interviews with administration officials demonstrate that his support for welfare reform was rooted in longstanding policy concerns and in his long-term desire to restore the Democratic Party to competitive viability. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “The presidency and unilateral power”, edited by Jeffrey CROUCH, and introduced, pp. 287–292, by Brandon ROTTINGHAUS, “Assessing the unilateral presidency: constraints and contingencies”. See also Abstr. 66.419, 448, 530, 572]
66.508 NEWMAN, Joshua; HEAD, Brian W. —
Discussions of failure in public policy have been hampered by a lack of consensus on a definition of the term “failure”. It can be shown that arguments relating to policy failure tend to conflate forms of failure that are actually discrete, such as failure to meet objectives, claims of negative distributional outcomes and negative electoral outcomes attributed to specific policy decisions. This article attempts to unify and clarify the discourse on policy failure by presenting a multi-dimensional approach that can identify separate aspects of failure within a single policy or program. This multi-dimensional approach to policy failure is then be applied to climate change policy in Australia, in order to demonstrate how some aspects of a policy can be interpreted as failed while others can simultaneously be interpreted as successful, even by the same observer. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.136]
66.509 NICHOLSON, Matthew —
This article reviews the history and politics of the English foreign act of state and non-justiciability doctrines in light of recent judgments in Belhaj and Rahmatullah. It argues that the doctrines have a political unconscious — a term borrowed from literary theorist Fredric Jameson — and that an appreciation of this should inform the Supreme Court's approach to the forthcoming appeals. [R]
66.510 NÖLKE, Andreas —
China plays a “mainstream” role in global banking negotiations and does not articulate positions that considerably contradict those of the dominant actors (for example, the US or UK). Still, the Chinese banking sector differs quite considerably from those of Western economies. In order to understand the Chinese stance on international banking regulation, we need to look at the development of domestic regulation in China. An analysis of institutional changes in Chinese banking regulations highlights the importance of various political-economic factions that have different positions on banking regulation. These factions are a core ingredient of the Chinese state-permeated model of capitalism. Moreover, it is impossible to understand the development of this type of capitalism without taking the size of the economy and the timing of its historical insertion into global capitalism into account. [R] [See Abstr. 66.1124]
66.511 OTTAWAY, Marina —
In different ways, both the US and Iran have engaged in nation-building in Iraq. The US did so very explicitly, announcing to the world its intention to rebuild post-Saddam Iraq as a democratic country with a US trained professional army. Iran's approach was low profile and focused not on transforming Iraq into a new country but on building strong relations with important domestic actors. The US failed in Iraq, Iran succeeded in establishing itself as the most influential player. No matter how one judges the outcome, it entails an important lesson for the US about its approach to nation-building. [R]
66.512 OWEN, Erica; QUINN, Dennis P. —
Does increasing economic globalization influence aggregate policy mood toward the role and size of government in the US? Drawing on insights from IPE scholarship, this article suggests that the impact of trade on aggregate preferences will depend on citizens' exposure to trade. It hypothesizes that employees of import-competing, export-oriented and multinational firms will adopt a “compensatory” model in which higher levels of imports (exports) lead to a liberal (conservative) shift in policy preferences for more (less) government. It distinguishes between intrafirm and non-intrafirm trade flows. It measures policy mood using Stimson's “Mood”, and estimates Error Correction and Instrumental Variable models. Trade flows strongly influence Mood in a manner consistent with hypotheses drawn from international political economy and heterogeneous firms (or “new new”) trade theory. [R]
66.513 PEREIRA, Anthony W. —
The conditional cash transfer (CCT) program Bolsa Família (Family Allowance), introduced in Brazil in 2003, is one of the largest such programs in the world. Bolsa Família has played a role in the recent reduction of poverty and income inequality in Brazil. But what has been its impact on democracy? An assumption in the literature on social policy, derived from the European experience, is that targeted programs such as Bolsa Família divide citizens, erode trust between citizens and between citizens and the state, and weaken democracy. This article challenges that assumption, showing that there is considerable evidence that Bolsa Família has strengthened the citizenship rights of the poor and enhanced democracy. [R, abr.]
66.514 PETTAI, Eva-Clarita —
This article discusses the presidential historical commissions of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that were established in 1998 to research the crimes of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes and to overcome interpretive disputes that had begun to overshadow the new democracies' politics. Conceptually framed as a state tool of historical conflict resolution and reconciliation, the Baltic commissions' structure, operative work and results all reveal many of the pitfalls, but also the opportunities of such official bodies of historical truth-seeking. The article concludes that even though all three commissions had a clear reconciliatory aim, their operative processes and final output differed remarkably. Their contribution to actual reconciliation was also very limited. [R]
66.515 PICCOLINO, Giulia —
Fiscal sociology has alleged the existence of a mutually reinforcing effect between the emergence of representative government and effective taxation. This paper looks at Benin, a low-income country that successfully democratized in the early 1990s. It finds that Benin appears to have reinforced its extractive capacities since democratization. However, the effect of democratization has been indirect, while the influence of the International Financial Institutions (IFI) and the size of the country's informal sector have played a more direct role. Nevertheless, the hypothesis that effective taxation is based on a quasi-consensual relationship between the state and the taxpayers finds some confirmation. [R]
66.516 POMERANTSEV, Peter —
The Kremlin [Russia] is now bringing to the rest of the world the kind of propaganda and conspiracy theories it has been churning out at home. [R] [See Abstr. 66.397]
66.517 POWELL, Emilia Justyna —
This article argues that specific characteristics of the domestic legal institutions of Islamic law states shape these states' choices of peaceful resolution methods in territorial disputes. After providing original data on the characteristics of Islamic legal structures, I systematically compare pertinent rules of international dispute resolution methods and Islamic law. I demonstrate empirically that not all Islamic law states view international settlement venues in the same way. Secular legal features, such as constitutional mentions of education, supreme court, or peaceful settlement of disputes have the power to attract these states to the most formal international venues — arbitration and adjudication. On the other hand, Islamic law states whose legal system is infused with Islamic religious precepts are attracted to less-formalized venues. [R]
66.518 PRAÇA, Sérgio —
How are patterns of delegation between the president and the legislature chosen in multiparty presidential regimes? How do political actors make strategic use of legislative provisions during moments of institutional reform? This essay explores causal mechanisms related to these questions based on a case study of Brazilian budget reform from 1999 to 2008. The main findings are that legislative agenda control can be decisive for the maintenance of delegation patterns that favor governing coalitions; entrepreneurs have a real, but limited, power; and the strategic use of legislative rules may be as relevant for institutional reform as they are for regular policy-making. [R]
66.519 PROSSER, Brenton; DENNISS, Richard —
Within Westminster-based majority parliaments, the presence of minority government runs contrary to the conventional wisdom. Over the last 40 years, however, there has been a steady voting trend away from major parties in many of these parliaments. The complex composition of the Australian Senate after July 2014 reinforces that non-ministerial marginal members continue to be a vital part of the political landscape. This article introduces the concept of the marginal member and examines the potential influence of these members for legislative outcomes and lobbying success. It provides a heuristic through which to identify avenues of policy influence and presents a range of strategies for lobbyists working with marginal members within minority-government contexts. [R]
66.520 PROSSER, Brenton; DENNISS, Richard —
A steady decline in major party support in Commonwealth nations has resulted in changing parliamentary compositions, including the growing prevalence of minority government. Such situations pose new questions for notions of government legitimacy within Westminster systems. For instance, is negotiation with cross-benchers an example of government illegitimacy? What is the legitimate role of non-ministerial members when the composition of parliament gives them the final say on the enabling legislation for public policy? What is the legitimate response of the public sector regarding policy-making in the context of minority government? We reflect on how a “marginal member” concept can provide new insights into such issues and their implications. [R]
66.521 RAGUSA, Jordan M.; BIRKHEAD, Nathaniel A. —
When does [the US] Congress repeal previously enacted laws? We believe repeals are an alternative for examining effects of congressional organization on legislative behavior. We develop and test hypotheses on the conditional nature of party power and location of pivot points with a data-set of repeals from 1877 to 2012. The largest effects on Congress's capacity to repeal legislation are variations in the majority's positive agenda control and shifts in the gridlock interval. Majority controls of both chambers after a long stretch in the minority increases likelihood of repeal more than conditional party government alone. Because the partisan factors in our model have the largest substantive effects, and repeals do not occur automatically in productive Congresses, we characterize repeals as long-term contests between two great “teams” over the location of the status quo. [R, abr.]
66.522 RAUDLA, Ringa; SAVI, Riin; RANDMA-LIIV, Tiina —
The main purpose of this article is to take stock of the literature on public sector cutback management in the 1970s and the 1980s, with a specific focus on cutback strategies and the contents of cutbacks. Both theoretical and empirical studies, focusing either on the central or local government level or different policy fields, have been reviewed. The study shows that when governments face cutbacks, they need to address the fundamental choice between across-the-board and targeted cutback strategies. Cutbacks do not occur as one-off single actions but are usually carried out in a number of cutback rounds. The longer-lasting and the more severe is fiscal stress, the more likely it is that the governments will start imposing targeted cuts rather than implementing across-the-board strategies. Looking at the patterns of cutback management in the past is expected to provide useful insights for systematizing the approaches to cutback management and for researching the current crisis. [R] [Introduction to a thematic issue on “Fiscal consolidation in Europe: cutback measures and decision-making”, edited by Walter J.M. KICKERT and Tiina RANDMA-LIIV. See Abstr. 66.414, 479, 480, 506, 535, 554]
66.523 RAWLINGS, Richard —
The UK continues to undergo a rapid process of constitutional change, with an ongoing redistribution of law-making and governmental powers to different parts of the Union under an expanded rubric of “devolution”. This article illuminates a pervasive sense of territorial constitutional crisis and opportunity in the most recent period. Constructive and flexible federal-type responses inside a famously uncodified constitution are championed. Wales, commonly treated as a junior partner in the UK, presents special challenges for constitutional and legal analysis and distinctive perspectives on the Union which have not received the attention they deserve. In tackling this deficiency, the article elaborates a “new Union” concept of a looser and less hierarchical set of constitutional arrangements in which several systems of parliamentary government are grounded in popular sovereignty and cooperate for mutual benefit. [R, abr.]
66.524 REID, Richard —
The opposition of peers to an elected [UK] House of Lords has often been explained as based on self-interest. Building on evidence from interviews with 77 members of the House of Lords, this article argues that there is more to this opposition. Through an application of C. Parsons' concept of the cross-cutting issue, this article posits that ideas are central to understanding the position of peers to reform of the House of Lords. Beyond this particular case, this article also provides support for the explanatory gains that can be garnered from non-rational accounts of continuity and change. [R]
66.525 RHEAULT, Ludovic —
This paper examines the relationship between the industry mix and policy decisions regarding the skill-composition of immigration. I start with the premise that low- and high-technology industries are unequally affected by changes in the intensity of factors of production, and develop conflicting preferences over immigration policies. To avoid the negative reactions that would ensue from the depletion of regional industries, governments have incentives to adjust the skill-composition of immigration in order to maintain the existing regional industry mix. I test the implications of this argument using data on Canadian provinces between 2001 and 2010, and a research design based on the two-stage least squares methodology. Overall, the empirical results are consistent with the theory: provinces relying intensively upon low-technology industries are likely to receive higher proportions of low-skilled immigrants. [R, abr.]
66.526 ROBERT, Jacques-Henri —
Disobedience, meaning the refusal to comply with an order given to a subordinate by a person vested with public or private authority, is normally not punishable by law. yet, this principle, which goes back to the Revolution, is now subject to an increasing number of exceptions. [R] [See Abstr. 66.98]
66.527 ROMMERSKIRCHEN, Charlotte —
Since the outbreak of the Eurozone's sovereign debt crisis, a range of fiscal policy measures have been adopted at the EU and national levels that have given rise to claims of a significant reinforcement of fiscal policy constraint. Given the prominence and reinvigorated political appeal of fiscal rules in the EU and beyond, it is disconcerting how little we actually know about the link between fiscal rules, budgetary outcomes and market behavior. This research note takes stock of the existing literature and challenges its contribution to the current policy debate on the merits of fiscal rules. Specifically, it focuses on problems linked to endogeneity, measurements and contextuality. [R]
66.528 ROUTRAY, Sailen —
Scholarly attempts to explain aid-subversion in post-conflict contexts frame the challenge in terms of corrupt practices and transactions disconnected from local power struggles. Also, they assume a distinction between organized crime and the state. This comparative analysis of aid-subversion in Colombia and Afghanistan reveals the limits of such an approach. Focusing on relations that anchor organized crime within local political, social and economic processes, we demonstrate that organized crime is dynamic, driven by multiple motives and endogenous to local power politics. Better understanding of governance arrangements around the organized crime-conflict nexus which enables aid-subversion is therefore required. [R]
66.529 RUBIO-MARÍN, Ruth —
This article lays out the theoretical framing underlying the gendered construction of citizenship in Western political thought during the transition to modernity; describes the relevant actors in the fight for female suffrage and the impact that the separate spheres of ideology had on both the narratives supporting and resisting female suffrage, and on the selective and piecemeal way in which suffrage was eventually won by women in European countries. Furthermore, it identifies the main factors accounting for women's earlier or later achievement of suffrage in different European nations and, exploring the connection between women's access to voting rights and to civil and social rights, it retells a story of women's citizenship which is an inverted image of that developed by T.H. Marshall on the basis of the male paradigm. [R, abr.]
66.530 RUDALEVIGE, Andrew —
Despite the useful simplifying assumptions of recent work on unilateral power, archival analysis shows the issuance of executive orders is a process rife with transaction costs as [US] presidents bargain with the bureaucracy over formulating their scope and substance. As a result, presidents must create what Williamson (1985) called “governance structures” to minimize those costs, with the Office of Management and Budget's clearance process at its heart. As with legislative policy-formulation, presidents assert more centralized control over executive orders production on items that affect large numbers of departments, on matters of executive reorganization, and on significant matters. Political contexts are trumped by managerial concerns. Orders dealing with implementation of recently passed statutes or other presidential “clerkship” functions tend to follow a far less centralized formulation process. [R] [See Abstr. 66.507]
66.531 SAAD-FILHO, Alfredo —
The Programa Bolsa Família (PBF) is one of the largest conditional cashtransfer (CCT) programs in the world. CCTs have been described as a “magic bullet” for development, and PBF is widely regarded as an exemplary program. Examination of its conceptual underpinnings, features, impact and limitations shows that PBF provides substantial income support to the poorest. However, PBF is also self-limiting and it can offer only limited long-term gains to the poor. More significant outcomes require the expansion of the scope of PBF and other social programs towards the universalization and decommodification of social provision in Brazil. [R]
66.532 SANCHEZ-PALACIO, Aurora —
This paper addresses the adequacy of ethnic federalism in Nepal, and the implications of such a structure for minority protection and representation. After the end of the civil war and the approval of an Interim Constitution in 2007, popular movements led to the adoption of a provision establishing federalism. One of the proposals is federalism based on ethnicity. I first consider the role of ethnic groups in Nepal from a historical perspective, to examine the degree to which minorities have been represented in previous regimes. I study the social composition of Nepal to understand the meaning of “ethnic group” in the present constitutional process. Finally, I take a comparative approach to determine whether the experiences of India, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia are useful in order to frame the new Nepalese system. [R, abr.]
66.533 SANMARTÍN PARDO, José Jesús —
We study the causes that impulse the strategic change in President B. Clinton's institutional rhetoric. The political imagination was developed as a relevant key element. During the first stage (1993–1994) of his term, President Clinton committed manifest errors in an irregular political dialogue. After the failure of the 1994 election, Clinton developed further adaptation of techniques that R. Reagan had expanded during his presidency, in order to better diffuse his syncretic ideology, vocationally looking for integration influenced by C. Quigley. Besides gaining assertiveness, Clinton managed to establish himself as a inclusive leader who sought direct connection with the people and the service. Rhetoric metamorphosis of Clinton was consolidated in 1995, making feasible powerfully his next year's re-election. [R]
66.534 SANTIAGO, Rui; CARVALHO, Teresa; SOUSA, Sofia —
This article analyzes comparatively how academics, physicians, and nurses positioned themselves in relation to the reconfiguration of power structures and decisional processes, under New Public Management influence, in the hospitals, and higher education institutions. The empirical data are gathered from a survey applied to the three professional groups. Quantitative results show that the three groups have similar positions concerning power concentration at institutions' top governance. However, relevant differences emerge in their views concerning the organization and control of the social division of work and also of their professional practices. [R]
66.535 SAVI, Riin; RANDMA-LIIV, Tiina —
The article investigates the Estonian government's response to the fiscal crisis by looking at the dynamics of the decision-making processes during cutback management from 2008 to 2013 from the dichotomy of centralization-decentralization. The study explores the cutback decisionmaking by pinpointing the main actors and contextual variables shedding light on the management of fiscal crisis. It is demonstrated that, in general, the fiscal crisis contributed to increasing levels of centralization in governmental decision-making. The crisis decision-making was dominated by centralized political decisions and non-inclusion of the opposition and interest groups. Still, achieving urgent solutions was facilitated by decentralized decisions at the ministerial level, the empowerment of budgetary institutions and the intensive engagement of the civil servants. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.522]
66.536 SCHAMMANN, Hannes —
PEGIDA the movement of “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident”, has dominated the public debate on immigration policies in Germany in winter 2014/15. It has also attracted the attention of political scientists specializing in protest and social movement studies. Scholars of migration policy, however, have hardly contributed to the scientific debate on PEGIDA. Part of that reluctance might result from the belief that the PEGIDA-phenomenon is just another proof of the so-called opinion-policy gap hypothesis in migration studies. Freeman (1995) famously argued that there is a gap between public opinion which is constantly calling for restrictive immigration policies and factual immigration policies in Western democracies, which are becoming more expansive over time. This article challenges that view on PEGIDA in particular and on the opinion-policy gap hypothesis in general. [R, abr.]
66.537 SEBŐK, Miklós —
This paper argues for a reappraisal of extant scholarship on delegation in the domain of financial regulation. Through an examination of Japan's experience with financial regulation between 1992 and 2003, it demonstrates that crisis-induced institutional development entails a shift toward a more flexible, trustee-type bureaucratic structure. While the logic presented is far from a universally applicable theory of institutional change, it calls into question the relevance of more conventional approaches to the origins of delegation of authority, notably the approach that uses unified and divided government as a key variable. A renewed emphasis on the role of extra-political sources of transfers of authority inside the executive, and also between the legislature and the executive, therefore, is in order. [R]
66.538 SEKUŁA, Alicja —
This paper identifies the reasons for the lack of relationship between general grant revenue and investment expenditure of local government units. The author formulated the hypothesis that there is no link between general grants and investment expenditure and that the reason for this are the current spending on education, absorbing the entire amount of general grants received by local government units. The hypothesis was verified in a procedure consisting of several steps. [R, abr.]
66.539 SHEPPARD, Jill —
This article compares offline and online petition-signing in Australia, to examine whether online forms of political activity can mobilize citizens who would otherwise not participate. Using data from the 2010 Australian Election Study and a model of civic voluntarism comprising online and offline resources, the article presents several unexpected findings. (1) Women are significantly more likely than men to sign both written and e-petitions, and this will likely continue with the increasing circulation of e-petitions and corresponding decline in written petitions. (2) Australians from a non-English-speaking background are underrepresented in the signing of written petitions but not of e-petitions. Civic skills gained in the workplace and voluntary organizations positively predict both forms of petition-signing, but language, gender and income do not constitute barriers to the signing of e-petitions. [R, abr.]
66.540 SIEGEL, David —
This article examines the link in local government between the mayor and councilors, on one hand, and the chief administrative officer (CAO), on the other hand. The CAO is an essential link in the accountability process that flows from the electorate through the municipal council to the public servants who work for the municipality. In practice, this delicate linkage has frequently been forged in an ad hoc manner by trial and error. This article proposes a framework for a more solid structure for this important relationship. [R]
66.541 SIEMIATYCKI, Matti —
Across Canada, governments of all level have increasingly embraced public-private partnerships (PPPs) as their preferred approach to deliver large-scale public infrastructure. After twenty years of practice, this paper examines the evolving rationales, governance structures and partnership models that have been used to deliver PPPs in Canada. In particular, the analysis highlights common deal structures, types of risks and responsibilities that are transferred to the private sector, and the significant role that public funding continues to have. Outstanding issues facing Canadian PPPs relate to their high upfront costs, limitations placed on meaningful community consultations, and a procurement process that can inhibit design or architectural excellence. [R]
66.542 SIMONET, Daniel —
New public management (NPM) provides an opportunity to analyze a reform trajectory that is influenced by country-specific institutional and social traditions. France adopted its own version of NPM, embracing some of its “traditional” elements such as quasi-markets and performance-evaluation and rejecting others. NPM reforms in France pursued a re-centralization agenda rather than a disaggregation of public agencies. Outcomes were below expectations in core areas such as citizen participation and physician professional satisfaction. Subsequent health reforms indicate convergence toward a hybrid system rather than toward a post-NPM paradigm. [R]
66.543 SINGH, Mahendra Prasad —
During the 1970s, the Indian Parliament was squeezed by a great extra-parliamentary mass movement against authoritarianism and corruption and partial but crippling subversion of parliamentary-federal Constitution during the national emergency. Democracy was restored following the 1977 general elections. But the general decline of Parliament that set in the post-Nehru era has not yet been reversed. Major indicators of this decline are shortening sessions, time lost due to disruptions in proceedings by the opposition and violation of norms and precedents by the government, rampant absenteeism, actual hours of sitting as a percentage of available hours, phenomenon of weak legislative federalism via Rajya Sabha in the overall setting of parliamentary-federalism, challenges of new extra-parliamentary mass movements, and judicial activism. The new committee system introduced since 1993 is a welcome development. [R, abr.]
66.544 SOLMAZ, Kahraman —
Reform of the 1982 Constitution's has been on Turkey's political agenda since the late 1990s. The EU has played a major reform-facilitator role by demanding specific constitutional reforms as a part of Turkey's accession framework to the EU and the Turkish Parliament has amended the Constitution numerous times in response to EU's demands. Although these reforms have not sufficed for obtaining EU membership, they have contributed to the balance of political confrontation. Nevertheless, an entirely new, more democratic and representative constitution drafted by civilians remains necessary to promote greater civil liberties.
66.545 STEEVES, Jeffrey —
The 2010 Kenya Constitution introduced a new level of government through a process of devolution. County governments were established in each of 47 districts with elected Governors and Members of County Assemblies, and each government acquired their own Executive Council and public service. From independence forward, Kenya had been a highly centralized polity reinforced by the rise of an imperial presidency. Now the political system has been turned on its head. How will the national political and administrative elites react to this veritable revolution? Will devolution succeed? Key variables are used to assess Kenya's early devolution experiment. [R]
66.546 STEINBERG, Jonny —
What has changed most since the end of apartheid is the relationship between policing and political order. During the late apartheid era, the structure and ethos of the South African Police was animated by the task of containing an insurgency. In the democratic era, policing is increasingly animated by the task of managing conflict in the ruling party. The difference is profound and the implications ripple right to the edges of the police organization, fashioning the manner in which street life is policed and impinging on the functioning and the durability of the detective service. The article argues that instruments used in the past survive only when agents in the present find them useful, and that accounts of continuity need to [focus] on the politics of the here and now. [R, abr.]
66.547 STRONG, James —
Parliament now decides when Britain goes to war. The vote against military intervention in Syria on 29 August 2013 upheld a new parliamentary prerogative that gradually developed through debates over earlier actions in Iraq and Libya. While the academic community and much of the British political elite continue to focus on the free rein granted to prime ministers by the historic royal prerogative, this article argues it is critically constrained by its parliamentary counterpart. It traces the way political conditions, individual policy-maker preferences, and the conventional nature of the unwritten British constitution allowed parliament to insert itself into the policy-making process without the consent of successive governments. [R, abr.]
66.548 SULKIN, Tracy; TESTA, Paul; USRY, Kaye —
We examine relationships between [US] legislators' characteristics and activity and their constituents' evaluations of their performance in office to argue that [their] behavior filters down to citizens, but their responses are conditioned by their partisanship and interest in politics. Our analyses combine 2006 and 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study survey data on citizens with information on legislators' activity in office in the 109th and 110th Congresses. Results reveal widespread linkages between MC behavior and constituency approval, but that legislators' co-partisan, out-partisan, and independent constituents respond in different predictable ways. Effects are strongest among the most interested constituents, with implications for our assessments of legislators' strategies and constituency representation. [R, abr.]
66.549 SZMOLKA, Inmaculada —
This article analyses inter- and intra-party relations in the formation of coalition governments in Morocco after the elections held in November 2011, and presided over by Abdelilah Benkirane. Although coalition theory has been applied in democratic contexts, we consider that the study of government coalitions, and in particular of party relations, is also important in hybrid political systems, in which there is significant room for political competition and participation. The methodology of the study is principally based on interviews carried out with members of the Moroccan Government, among them the Head of Government, and also with leaders and members of the parties in the government coalition and in opposition. [R, abr.]
66.550 TARIQ, Sidra —
The on-going military modernization in India and China has been an expected development which has been a consequence of their mounting economic and political might aiming at power projection. Even though the present relationship between them has not been perfectly symmetrical or without mistrust, an outright war does not seem likely between them. If the political and military leadership of both states are able to continue basic cooperation, then the chance of an arms race will be considerably reduced. [R]
66.551 TEETS, Jessica C. —
I address the puzzle of what motivates local officials in China to do something new — create a new policy, launch a pilot — especially when such innovation has uncertain outcomes. I explore local policy-makers' incentives regarding innovation to understand why they experiment with new policies under conditions of political risk and uncertainty. I utilize data from existing studies on policy-innovation, including the Local Governance Innovation Awards, to conduct this analysis. This analysis is significant because many scholars have noted that local innovation and adaptation is the key to authoritarian resilience in China. Therefore, the ability to encourage innovation (and capture good ideas) is vital to continued success, and Xi Jinping's administration must institutionalize innovation by realigning incentives to reward sustainable innovation rather than superficial or “face” innovation. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.604]
66.552 TOKE, David; NIELSEN, Helle Ørsted —
There is a discussion among political scientists about the extent to which there are differences in policy styles between western European states, including in particular whether they share common means of consulting and deciding policy through policy networks. This article studies the differences in policy consultation approaches between Denmark and the UK in the case of renewable energy. It further examines whether consultation patterns differ in the policy formation and policy implementation phases. It is found that while in both Danish and British cases there is decision-making through policy communities, there are still some clear differences in the ways in which consultation takes place and decisions are made at the levels of both policy-formation and policy-implementation. [R]
66.553 TORFS, Rik —
This article focuses on the complex question of state-religion relations in Belgium and examines definition of laicism/secularism in the constitutional or juridical texts to show the main characteristics of official discourses. It also looks at how the state manages religious institutions and education in a secular context with reference to public funding and curriculum issues. This article analyzes the position of Islam and Muslims in Belgium. [R]
66.554 TROUPIN, Steve; STEEN, Trui; STROOBANTS, Jesse —
This article analyses fiscal consolidation policy in federal Belgium in the period 2009–2014, until the initial 2014 budget. It relies on documentary analysis and interviews to examine the intensity, content and decisionmaking process of this policy. Explanations for this particular fiscal consolidation policy are looked for in the macro-economic context, the political-administrative system, and external influences. We find generally modest budget cutbacks punctuated by an exceptionally significant budget exercise. This pattern is best explained by the tensions within the Belgian political-administration, generating policy continuity, and by external pressure, that allowed policymakers to overcome these tensions. [R] [See Abstr. 66.522]
66.555 TURNER, Joe —
This article explores the changes to the family migration visa (2012) through a history of post-colonial government. It explores how the visa shares a familiar function to previous forms of rule which targeted the household and family as a site of regulation. Under Empire, “marriage restrictions” were used to manage the “intimate” connections between colonizer and colonized. Over the course of the 20th c., UK border regimes also targeted the intimate and the familial to regulate racial proximity. In tracing this history, I argue that the family migration visa works as a similar technique. I highlight how government techniques make claims over whom can live with, raise a family with, be intimate with whom in Britain. [R, abr.]
66.556 TURNER, Lewis —
In Lebanon and Jordan, the (non-)encampment of Syrian refugees is serving states' labor market goals. The Lebanese economy “requires” large numbers of non-encamped low-wage Syrian workers, but the Jordanian regime assists its Transjordanian support base by restricting poor Syrians' access to the labor market through encampment. While acknowledging the importance of both states' differing historical experiences hosting refugees, and the security and budgetary motivations for policies of (non-)encampment, this article uses a critical political economy analysis of economic and labor market statistics to dislodge the centrality of the security discourses that increasingly inform discussions of refugee populations and the policies directed towards them. [R, abr.]
66.557 UDAGAMA, Deepika —
Domestic application of international human rights law may encounter more serious obstacles than purely doctrinal constraints due to political factors. Sri Lanka offers an interesting case study in that regard. Once a committed democracy with high social indicators, it descended into authoritarianism and political violence a few decades after independence. This article examines the interplay between Sri Lanka's dualist legal system and its international human rights obligations and points to how the relationship is increasingly being defined by political factors than doctrinal complexities. It argues that in such circumstances remedial action may lie more within the political arena than before legal forums. [R]
66.558 VAN DER STEEN, Martijn, et al. —
This article looks at policy failure in systems that rely on highly autonomous organizations to deliver the services promised in the policy programs. We argue that in order to better understand success and failure in such systems, the existing categories of policy failure and organizational failure do not suffice. Therefore, we look at the ability of agents assigned to that task to effectively act in the relation in-between the system level and the level of individual organizations. This brings to the fore another type of failure — governance failure — the inability of a policy system to timely detect and asses looming failure in individual parts. It is helpful to apply a lens of interactive complexity to these systems and to look at causal loops rather than causal lines. We apply this perspective to a case of the Inspectorate of Education, to study how it dealt with three cases of looming failure in schools. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.136]
66.559 VARGA, Mihai; FREYBERG-INAN, Annette —
This article supplements the literature on post-communist trade unions with an account of how state measures can affect union strength in postcommunist Europe. The authors focus on the case of Romanian trade unions, which is exceptional in post-communist Europe in that it is possible to rule out lack of protest capacity as a cause for weakness of policy influence: Romanian unions have maintained a high protest capacity throughout the transition. However, this protest capacity has translated into influence over national economic policy and labor-relevant legislation only throughout the 1990s, and much less so in the 2000s and beyond. The authors examine the reasons for the trade unions' diminishing influence over national policies and observe a refinement of government measures to render protest ineffective. [R, abr.]
66.560 VERKERK, Jitske; TEISMAN, Geert; VAN BUUREN, Arwin —
We argue that effective climate adaptation depends on the ability of actors on various levels to achieve a multilevel governance process in which their distinct activities result in a coherent adaptation strategy. The classic government's capacity to coordinate such complex processes has proved limited. Therefore we explore the notion of synchronization — the ability of actors to connect governance processes that all have their own development, logic and self-organizing dynamics. With a theoretical conceptualization and a case study, we analyze whether and how the concept of synchronization helps to understand the self-organizing coordinative capacity within multilevel governance processes. [R]
66.561 VÖRÖS, Imre —
The author provides an overview of Hungary's democratic Constitution of 1989, after sketching its historical development. This Constitution met the requirements of democracy, constitutionality, human rights, and market economy in every respect. It was this constitution with which the Republic of Hungary became a member of the EU. Hungary's first Constitutional Court — after having been elected freely by the Hungarian Parliament in 1990 — configured an internationally recognized common practice by virtue of interpreting the Constitution in the course of its application. Inaccuracies could have been mended with constitutional amendments. Instead, in 2011, a new so-called Fundamental Law was decreed with the votes of one single party, the governing party Fidesz. [R, abr.] [First article of a thematic issue on “Hungary's path toward an illiberal system”, edited and introduced by András INOTAI. See also Abstr. 66.612, 793, 1010, 1064, 1335]
66.562 WANG Jenn-Hwan; TSENG Sheng-Wen; ZHENG Huan —
Small hydropower is regarded by the Chinese state as a method for both poverty alleviation and environmental protection in rural areas. This paper finds that local government officials develop an “environmentally bundled economic interests” approach that simultaneously fulfills the central state's new political mission and local economic development demand. The small hydropower plants however have paradoxically become the destroyer of the environment as local government at different levels develop the plants in an un-coordinated manner. We use the growth of small hydropower in Yunnan province as an exemplar to show the new tendency and problems of China's environmental governance. [R]
66.563 WARE, Alan —
The role played by educational credentials in British labor market recruitment changed radically during the 20th c. Having higher or better credentials than others became a key determinant in selection for society's best-paid jobs. The resulting race for them has had perverse effects. In various ways, the incentive to “stay ahead” has prompted large expenditures by families to improve the qualifications a child obtains at school, while there is also now huge demand for post-graduate qualifications. Not only is there resulting social waste but also social injustice; while education was understood previously as a means of breaking down barriers to social mobility, it now has the opposite effect. This article explores the causes of these developments and outlines briefly how a new center-left agenda for education might be constructed. [R, abr.] [See also Alison Johnston, “Is British mass higher education really a ‘fraud’? A rebuttal to Ware”, pp. 485–488; and author's response, pp. 489–492]
66.564 WEBB, Andrew; RADCLIFFE, Sarah —
This paper explores expressions of sociocultural and political subjectivity among indigenous youth located within four secondary boarding schools in the Araucanía Region of Chile. For rural indigenous students, these schools are a primary site in which they come to gain a sense of themselves as members of civil society and as future citizens. Drawing on young peoples' experiences in boarding facilities and expressions regarding sociopolitical positioning, we analyze the ways Mapuche youth engage with the racially and class-inflected hierarchies of inequality present in the school, the region and beyond. Within these school spaces, little intellectual space afforded young people to consider how civic inclusion can be renegotiated in relation to indigenous identifications. Nevertheless, the young people demonstrate a capacity to engage critically with national discourses from media and schooling. [R, abr.]
66.565 WEST, Karleen Jones —
Decentralization has been considered a tool of democracy-promotion because of its ability to improve citizen participation and increase equity by allocating resources to long-neglected populations. I examine these claims by focusing on decentralization's effects for indigenous and Afro-Latino individuals in fifteen Latin American countries. Using Americas Barometer survey data provided by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), I first analyze how the inclusion of ethnic citizens in local government affects attitudes that are considered crucial for democratic consolidation, such as satisfaction with democratic governance. I then assess whether decentralization has increased inclusion by examining how political, fiscal, and administrative decentralization affect ethnic individuals' participation and engagement in local government. [R, abr.]
66.566 WILKERSON, John; SMITH, David; STRAMP, Nicholas —
This article proposes a new approach to investigating the substance of lawmaking. Only a very small proportion of bills become law in the US Congress. However, the bills that do become law often serve as vehicles for language originating in other bills. We investigate “text reuse” methods as a means for tracing the progress of policy ideas in legislation. We then show how a focus on policy ideas leads to new insights into the lawmaking process. Although our focus is on relating content found within bills, the same methods can be used to study policy substance across many research domains. [R]
66.567 WONKA, Arndt —
The Euro crisis has a strong impact on EU politics and the EU polity. Crisis-related issues were debated across Europe and governments and EU institutions introduced several institutional instruments which are meant to make EU economic governance more effective. This paper investigates the scope, timing and divisiveness of political contestation, i.e., politicization, in the German Bundestag and the frames on which political parties relied in their debates on crisis-induced institutional innovations in the Bundestag. To account for these patterns, the paper relies on institutional theories and theories of party competition. Empirically, it draws on written protocols of debates and parliamentary questions in the Bundestag. A case study of Germany and the Bundestag does not lend itself to broad generalizations. Yet, it is an unlikely case for politicization and a politically important case. [R] [See Abstr. 66.993]
66.568 WOO, J. J. —
Existing studies of Hong Kong's and Singapore's success as leading Asian international financial centers (IFCs) have largely focused on economic structural factors at the neglect of political economic contextual variables. Taking a policy-subsystems approach and based on extensive field research, this article addresses this shortcoming by conceptualizing the “policy relations” that exist between state, industry, and other non-state actors in the two IFCs and delineating the “division of policy roles” among these actors. In the process, this article contributes toward the existing IFC literature and conceptualizes the sociopolitical relations that exist among financial sector actors. [R]
66.569 WOO, J. J.; HOWLETT, M. —
This article uses a case study of financial sector policy-making in East Asia in the post-2000 period to examine and help to resolve questions surrounding the origins of the phenomenon of “dynamics without change” in public policy-making; that is, the appearance of policy activity and alteration without affecting the overall nature and orientation of policy outputs or outcomes. This is a phenomenon which has challenged existing notions of policy dynamics which associate enhanced policy activity with fundamental changes in outputs and outcomes and is an issue which has concerned policy studies since R. Alford's seminal study of British health policy dynamics first noted the phenomenon in the mid-1970s. [R, abr.]
66.570 WOOD, Matthew —
Depoliticization as a concept offers distinctive insights into how governments attempt to relieve political pressures in liberal democracies. Analysis has examined the effects of depoliticization tactics on the public, but not how those tactics are sustained during moments of political tension. Drawing on policy networks and agencification literatures, this article examines how these tactics are resilient against pressure for politicization. Using an in-depth case study of the controversial appraisal of cancer drug Herceptin in 2005/6 by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the article examines how “resilient” NICE was to external politicization. It is argued that NICE was resilient because it was effectively “insulated” by formal procedures and informal norms of deference to scientific expertise. This mechanism is termed “institutional double glazing”. [R, abr.]
66.571 XU Chenggang —
This article focuses on China's institutions. I argue that although the size of China's economy is extremely important in terms of its impact on the global economy, it is misleading to ignore political and economic institutions. Indeed, forecasts based on extrapolating past trends could be erroneous. China was the largest economy in the world before the end of the 19th c. but then lost ground to Western nations that established the rule of law and free trade. To understand China's past and future development, one has to examine its institutions. [R]
66.572 YU Ouyang; WATERMAN, Richard W. —
We provide a thorough test of three theories of executive unilateral action. Applying a newly-developed methodology to the most comprehensive dataset of unilateral [US] presidential directives to date, results of the Bayesian Poisson Vector Autoregressive model suggest that, although executive orders, memoranda, and proclamations are all strategic tools that presidents utilize to unilaterally alter policy, fundamental differences exist between them, as well as the inter-dependence among them. Whereas the percentage of bills passed is related to presidential proclamations, legislative activity actually depends on the number of executive orders issued. However, CQ success scores are related to both executive orders and presidential proclamations. We also find that presidential ideology and congressional ideology are related to executive action, whereas the impact of divided government is at best only weakly related. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.507]
66.573 ZAUN, Natascha —
While scholars traditionally expected EU policy-making in the area of asylum to produce lowest common denominator standards, recent studies on the first phase of the Common European Asylum System have observed higher asylum standards in some instances. This article explains this divergence. Drawing on concepts of regulatory expertise and “misfit”, it argues that the observed variation in policy output can be explained by the dominance of a few (Northern) member states which were highly successful in inserting their positions in the core EU directives. Government effectiveness and exposure to the phenomenon entailing regulatory expertise provide a powerful explanation for member states being effective policy-shapers. Characterized by low levels of government effectiveness and exposure in the asylum area, Southern European countries were, on the contrary, rather passive during the negotiations. [R, abr.]
66.574
Articles by Bertrand FAURE; Nicolas KADA; Franck LAFFAILLE; Henri OBERDORFF; Jean-Marie PONTIER.
66.575 ASHE, Fidelma —
The 1998 Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland provoked local-level processes of demilitarization that focused on developing community-based restorative justice practices to replace paramilitary forms of justice. These schemes were viewed as important aspects of the broader process of conflict transformation in the region. The dominant narrative surrounding the development of these new justice forms framed them as an outcome of the efforts of ex-combatant men. This article contests this narrative and examines women's contribution to the development of CBRJ in Northern Ireland. Using data from focus groups, the article exposes the consequences of displacing women in conflict-transformational analysis. Additionally, it explores how women's articulation of their conflict-transformational practices engenders a critical reframing of key terms in conflict-transformational narratives including peace, security, and justice. [R, abr.]
(b) State, regional and local institutions/Institutions locales et régionales
66.576 BALLA, Steven J.; DEERING, Christopher J. —
Although state resistance to federal mandates is a prevalent characteristic of contemporary American federalism, little is known about the factors that separate resisting states from states that do not oppose federal policy. This article examines state resistance through a framework that classifies public policies by salience and complexity and identifies societal interests and government officials who are hypothesized to influence policy-making on issues of varying types. These hypotheses are investigated in the context of state resistance to four federal laws — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, No Child Left Behind Act, Help America Vote Act and REAL ID Act. The results of the statistical analysis demonstrate the centrality of the characteristics of citizens, elected officials and specialized interest groups in conditioning state resistance to federal mandates. [R, abr.]
66.577 BONICA, Adam; WOODRUFF, Michael J. —
We introduce a new method to measure the ideology of state [US] Supreme Court justices using campaign finance records. In addition to recovering ideal point estimates for both incumbent and challenger candidates in judicial elections, the method's unified estimation framework recovers judicial ideal points in a common ideological space with a diverse set of candidates for state and federal office, thus facilitating comparisons across states and institutions. After discussing the methodology and establishing measure validity, we present results for state supreme courts from the early 1990s onward. [R, abr.]
66.578 BUCKLEY, Fiona, et al. —
Previous research has found the single transferable-vote electoral system is relatively friendly to women candidates. Despite this, female representation in the Irish Parliament remains substantially lower than in most other democracies. Drawing on pipeline theory and localism, we assess the impact of local office-holding on the success of male and female major party candidates in the 2007 and 2011 Irish general elections. We find previous experience in local office is a key springboard to higher office for men and women, and when women serve in local government, the likelihood of election increases significantly. [R]
66.579 CARR, Jered B. —
This article reviews and assesses the empirical evidence for 10 propositions that council-manager governments perform better than mayor-council governments. This evidence indicates that although progress has been made on demonstrating differences in representation and functionality, the proposition that council-manager governments are better managed than mayor-council governments has yet to be seriously engaged in this literature. Filling this critical gap requires progress in two areas: the development of theory to explain why council-manager governments are better-managed organizations and the production of evidence assessing the major propositions of this theory. [R, abr.]
66.580 CHENG Nga-Yee Irene; SO Wing-Mui Winnie —
National or regional policy, regulatory framework and administration/dissemination constitute governance. Environmental governance is distinctive because advice to policy-formation implies a bottom-up, participative and collaborative structure and set of processes. Solving environmental problems, which involves community engagement, inevitably invites a more diverse participation. This often creates tensions between government and some stakeholders in society and among stakeholders. This article examines some of these tensions that have arisen in Hong Kong as government, NGOs and business interests attempt to move to a multi-level approach. Academia and NGOs are concerned particularly with quality-of-life issues and policies that ameliorate the impact of environmental deterioration. [R, abr.]
66.581 CHIEN Shiuh-Shen; ZHAO Li-Tao —
This paper focuses on a new phenomenon in China: local government entrepreneurship in constructing infrastructure and attracting investment has been diffused from more developed to less developed regions. We argue that this geographically diffused phenomenon is part of a larger attempt by the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) to facilitate advancement of less developed regions. The CCP has used a unique and centralized personnel-management system to shift knowledge and resources in the interest of local economic development through between-region pairing assistance and inter-regional cadre transfer. This diffusion has mixed results: it accelerates infrastructure construction, investment and economic growth in less developed areas, but at the expense of increased social exclusion and environmental pollution. [R] [See Abstr. 66.604]
66.582 CRAYTON, Kareem —
This essay addresses the thorny politics of enacting voting rights policy in legislatures. Electoral survival is a key concern of legislators, so election reforms set high stakes when their likely results are well known to those who must enact them. The challenges to organize legislative majorities are therefore heightened in this context. To illustrate the point, the article reviews the chain of events leading to the various enactments of the Voting Rights Act starting in 1965. President L.B, Johnson completed a radical and swift change in the electoral system for the entire country, particularly in the Southern States. Key to his success was his awareness of and responsiveness to the multiple electoral concerns in Congress. I argue that the law's passage must be viewed as the product of satisfying the electoral incentives of legislators. [R, abr.] [First of a series of articles on “The [US] Voting Rights Act at 50”, edited and introduced by Joshua A. DOUGLAS. See also Abstr. 66.443, 457, 498]
66.583a DAIGNEAULT, Pierre-Marc —
We know surprisingly little about the ideas that underlie welfare reform in Canada. In particular, few empirical studies have directly examined the ideas of policy actors. This article presents a retrospective case study of a major policy initiative, namely Saskatchewan's Building Independence (BI), and examines its alignment with three paradigms of social assistance. Data come primarily from interviews with policy actors. This study concludes that the policy ideas informing BI align closely with the activation paradigm but also share some similarities with the entitlement and workfare paradigms. The significance of this finding is then discussed in light of three issues: (1) Aboriginal people, (2) the perspective of social assistance clients, and (3) “Third Way” ideology. [R, abr.]
66.583b DONNELLY, Faye —
This article adopts the Copenhagen School's concept of desecuritization to analyze the gestures of reconciliation undertaken during the 2011 state visit of Queen Elizabeth II to the Republic of Ireland, including her willingness to speak in Gaeilge at Dublin Castle. It opens new pathways to explore if, when and how desecuritizing moves can become possible. It advances the concept of bilingual speech acts as a nuanced, yet fruitful, way to tease out the complexities of security speech and (de)securitization processes. It also suggests that the concept of bilingual speech acts provides a way to respond to calls to include translation in critical security and securitization studies. Empirically, this article unpacks the different kinds of desecuritizing moves undertaken in this context, as well as the different modalities of security speech in play. [R, abr.]
66.584 DUFOUR, Pascale; BHERER, Laurence; ROTHMAYR ALLISON, Christine —
The literature on activism characterizes the recent transformations of activism as part of a process towards the “personalization of politics”. For structural or cultural reasons, committed citizens appear to be developing a new relationship to politics, seeking personal satisfaction in their engagement. We propose an alternative interpretation, and characterize this transformation as “do-it-yourself” (DIY) politics. Based on the protests against shale gas development in Quebec, we show that the DIY politics is the “logical” (in the sense of rational) result of citizens developing the means to compensate for the lack of institutional opportunities in the context of developments that potentially threaten their lives and livelihoods. Hence, DIY politics must be understood as a more prosaic and contingent reaction to a specific situation, an individual and collective response to a problematic situation. [R, abr.]
66.585 FERNÁNDEZ-ALBERTOS, José; LAGO, Ignacio —
This article examines the determinants of regional identifications in decentralized Spain. The main arguments is that regional identifications change as a result of subnational parties' mobilization strategies, and these depend in turn on the political competition context that they face. We rely on individual data from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas to show that exclusive identifications with Baleares, Canarias, Catalonia, Galicia, Navarra, and the Basque Country increase when subnational parties participate in government, but not when they are the only party in power or have an electoral support above the 40 percent of the votes. Moreover, regional identifications are also exacerbated when there are two parties with a similar electoral support competing within the nationalist bloc. Decentralization per se does not affect regional identifications if there are no subnational parties or, in other words, when there is not a string regional cleavage. [R]
66.586 FOUROT, Aude-Claire —
In France, municipalities enjoy an important room for maneuver regarding the regulation of Islam. Créteil's mosque is notable, not only for the speed with which it was built, but also for its central location and visibility. In addition to the political will of Créteil's mayor, local actors often put forward the project's consultation process as a main factor explaining this success. But is [this] really the case? Why did the municipality choose to publicize this project and what are its effects? In considering the consultation process as a public action instrument, this article analyzes three types of effects it can have on public action. More than an instrument of democratization or an effective implementation tool, the consultation process defines specific Islam's forms of representation at the municipal level. [R]
66.587 GARGALLO, Eduard —
This paper analyzes how Communal Conservancies in Namibia are being used by rural communities as tools for gaining or securing access to and control of communal land in a moment when it is perceived as increasingly scarce. Peasants, Traditional Authorities, the State and conservationists all try to influence the use given to contested lands. The paper focuses on two cases: King Nehale Conservancy, a heavily populated mixed agricultural land in North-Central Namibia (Owamboland) and Nyae Nyae Conservancy, a semi-arid land inhabited by a historically marginalized population, the Ju/'hoan San. In both cases, Conservancies contribute to an increased control by communities over their land, but also imply the reinforcement of the presence of the State and private capital in communal areas, and become part of the internal struggles among sections of the communities themselves. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 66.1322]
66.588 GARON, Francis —
Policy Design Theory (PDT) predicts that the distribution of the costs and benefits of governmental intervention depends on the social construction and level of power of target groups. The case of Québec, Canada, which recently went through acrimonious policy debates on immigration and integration issues, does not correspond to this pattern. Degenerative politics — that is, the stigmatization of powerless groups and an unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of governmental intervention to the detriment of the most vulnerable — did not occur even if the conditions were seemingly in place to produce it. Using Québec as a “most likely” case, I show that the policy-making sphere remained immune to the degenerative dynamics that took hold in the media and the legislature. [R, abr.]
66.589 HARTIG, Falk —
This article analyzes the strategies, goals and impact of the Confucius Institutes (CIs). It examines CIs as an important tool in China's public diplomacy, employed by its government to communicate specific strategic narratives about China to foreign publics, and, in so doing, increase China's soft power. Based on empirical data from CIs in different parts of the world, the article demonstrates that the impact of CIs is hampered both by political/ideological concerns and by a number of practical issues. It is argued that CIs do not present the “real” China to the world, but rather a “correct version” of it, which in turn limits their ability to project China's strategic narratives effectively and increase its soft power. [R] [See Abstr. 66.1029]
66.590 HESTER, Rebecca J. —
This essay illuminates the challenges of using cultural competency training as an ethnicity-based political strategy for indigenous Mexicans struggling to gain rights and recognition in a transnational context. Through an analysis of the political and philosophical stakes in a cultural competence training delivered to social service providers by Mexican migrants, the essay interrogates the claim that these trainings, even when provided by linguistically and culturally competent facilitators, intervene in social and health inequities. The analysis is based on two and a half years of ethnographic research with a well-known indigenous Mexican migrant-led non-profit organization in California, Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño. [R]
66.591 HINKLE, Rachael K. —
I examine the impact federal appellate courts have on state policy diffusion through the use of computational text-analysis. Using a dyadic framework, I model the impact courts have on the decision to adopt a policy and, if adopted, how much text to borrow directly from another state's preexisting law. A court decision ruling a statute unconstitutional can generate up to a 28% relative reduction in the probability of adoption, and a ruling of constitutionality can both increase the probability of adoption by a similar amount and more than double the amount of borrowed text. These findings shed light on how states learn from one another. [R]
66.592 HOWELL, Kerry Edward; SHAND, Rory —
This study of the developing Welsh Assembly (WA) provides a unique opportunity to comprehend how the values and public statements of a democratic institution's initial and ongoing leadership develop its structure and culture. We track the evolution of a new democratic institution and investigate relationships between leadership, path-dependency and cultural development. This paper analyzes Welsh Assembly Member (AM) leadership in relation to sources of path-dependency in the WA. Two sets of interviews and surveys provide AM perspectives of the Assembly in relation to the evolving leadership capability and institutional culture. [R]
66.594 KUKUCHA, Christopher J. —
Despite criticism of ongoing protectionism, this study argues that Canada's internal trade regime has evolved significantly since the implementation of the original Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). This includes thirteen formal amendments to the AIT and numerous regional agreements in Western, Central, and Atlantic Canada. Borrowing from the liberal IPE literature, it argues that existing regional agreements complement and offer a potential framework for broader internal trade reforms at the national level. Of these the New West Partnership Trade Agreement (NWPTA) offers a promising model for Canada's internal market, with revised rules and norms related to negative lists, labor mobility, procurement, and investment and dispute settlement. [R, abr.]
66.595 LAWLOR, Andrea; LEWIS, J. P. —
The Canadian case provides an excellent laboratory to test some broadly held assumptions about portfolio-adoption, particularly given the contrast of the ten provinces' unique political cultures with their shared jurisdictional roles. We illustrate our case using a dataset that contains information on 85 portfolio-adoptions in the Canadian provinces since 1982. Findings suggest little by way of a clear set of partisan or institutional motivations for portfolio-adoption, although there is some evidence that governments are more likely to adopt portfolios in the first 100 days of governing and they are more likely to do so when elected with larger caucuses, possibly because of the need to find larger roles for party loyalists. [R, abr.]
66.596 LYONS, Joseph —
This paper explores how local government structure affects policy coordination. It compares the delivery of economic development services in two Ontario [Canada] cities. In London, a specialized agency is the lead, but lacks full functional control, while in Hamilton policy control is consolidated in a single municipal department. The findings support the hypothesis of those who argue in favor of general-purpose governments, as the municipal hierarchy in Hamilton was instrumental in achieving policy co-ordination. Proponents of specialization argue that it limits the need for co-ordination between governments but, as the London case demonstrates, this logic breaks down when there are too many players with too few responsibilities. [R]
66.597 MARTENS, Linsay; McNUTT, Kathleen; RAYNER, Jeremy —
Like other policy subsectors, power-generation has been affected by the governance changes of the last two decades, including a shift to more collaborative state-society relations. Collaborative governance implies new kinds of public engagement designed to provide both input legitimacy, through the involvement of a broader range of actors in policy design, and output legitimacy, through enhanced feedback and policy learning. This paper compares the impact of “governance-driven engagement” in the power-generation subsectors in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan, arguing that engagement increased the complexity of the policy mix in the subsector without succeeding in providing better feedback and learning. The paper notes a recent trend towards more expert-driven and less collaborative processes, as both provinces struggled to rationalize and simplify power-generation policy goals and instruments. [R]
66.598a McCRUDDEN, Christopher, et al. —
Northern Ireland's consociational institutions were reviewed by a committee of its Assembly in 2012–2013. The arguments of both critics and exponents of the arrangements are of general interest to scholars of comparative politics, power-sharing and constitutional design. The authors of this article review the debates and evidence on the d'Hondt rule of executive formation, political designation, the likely impact of changing district magnitudes for assembly elections, and existing patterns of opposition and accountability. They evaluate the scholarly, political and legal literature before commending the merits of maintaining the existing system, including the rules under which the system might be modified in future. [R]
66.598b McGRATH, Robert J.; ROGOWSKI, Jon C.; RYAN, Josh M. —
Few political institutions are as central to theories of lawmaking as the executive veto. Despite its importance, institutional continuity at the national level has precluded identification of empirical effects of the veto on [US] legislative behavior. We address this limitation and present evidence from the states demonstrating how the veto affects the formation of legislative coalitions and, indirectly, executive influence over policymaking. We find consistent evidence that the presence and strength of gubernatorial veto powers affect the lawmaking behavior of state legislatures. Our analysis shows how institutional provisions condition executives' ability to affect policy outcomes in separation-of-powers systems. [R]
66.599 MEHIRIZ, Kaddour —
This article presents the findings of a study on the influence of redistributive politics on grant distribution of a municipal infrastructure funding program managed by a quasi-autonomous organization. The study indicates that grant distribution among the municipalities is not exempt from redistributive politics. Municipalities located in swing districts and those represented by members from the party in power or by members having more seniority have a greater propensity to receive grants than other municipalities. The study thus casts doubt on one of the main claims of the proponents of quasi-autonomous organizations according to which the decision-making of these bodies is exempt from partisan politics. [R]
66.600 MUÑOZ ARAVENA, Waleska Tatiana —
A common, long-standing debate in public administration is the relationship between politics and administration. This article summarizes the principal academic discussion on the degree of separation that should exist in public administration in general. Then, it analyzes the type of relationship present at the local level, and especially in the decisions to hire and maintain transitory positions (short contracts in the public sector. [R]
66.602 PRIBBLE, Jennifer —
Institutional effectiveness varies widely across Chile's 346 municipalities. Whereas some local governments seem to work with impeccable precision, others struggle to deliver basic services and welfare benefits to the population. This article explains why such variation exists; it combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to show how mayors can play a crucial role in building institutional effectiveness. The study focuses on the administration of Chile's municipal job placement offices. It finds that municipalities where mayors have held office for three or more consecutive terms exhibit stronger institutional capacity than those localities where electoral turnover is the norm. The analysis, therefore, underscores an interesting finding: electoral competition has the potential both to improve and to undermine administrative capacity. [R]
66.603 ROYLES, Elin; McEWEN, Nicola —
Sub-state governments have emerged as important sites of climate policy innovation, but their capacity for action has rarely been examined. Although they are devolved regions within the same state, Scotland and Wales have varying degrees of constitutional competence. We conduct an inter- and intra-regional comparison to examine whether constitutional competence shapes the scale of ambition and achievement in climate policy outputs and outcomes. Focusing on emission-reduction programs and renewable energy, while there is a clear relationship between constitutional capacity and policy ambition, the impact of constitutional capacity is more evident in the capacity to deliver than in policy ambition. [R, abr.]
66.604 SCHUBERT, Gunter; HEBERER, Thomas —
Since the early reform days and particularly during the Hu-Wen era, the local state has seen remarkable changes triggered by the central government's new focus on rural development and rural-urban integration. At the same time, the performance evaluation of local cadres and government units has been streamlined to enforce stricter compliance with upper-level policy guidelines and local governments have been systematically encouraged to engage in policy experimentation and innovation by linking policy success to cadre promotion. However, the local state, at all levels, is still struggling with “un(der)-funded” mandates; rising public demand and, as often reported, social protest. This article argues that the concept of local developmentalism can still serve as a useful analytical tool to explain state-business relations at county level and below. [R, abr.] [First article of a thematic issue on “Mainland China's reform and transition? The opportunities and challenges of the Xi-Li administration. Part II”. Part I: see Abstr. 65.6799. See also Abstr. 66.551, 581, 1038, 1111]
66.605 SKOGSTAD, Grace; WHYTE, Tanya —
This article investigates the nature and role of authority contests — the claims and counterclaims about whose ideas matter on policy debates and via what procedures they should be heard — in policy paradigm contestation, reform and abandonment. Examining the authority contests around prairie Canada's grain marketing policy illustrates an additional pathway — a value-driven model — to Hall's model of endogenous policy anomalies. It further documents differences across governments in how they resolve contentious policy debates, showing that governments make fewer efforts to supplement their own representational authority with expert and/or popular authority when they enjoy majoritarian support from the affected region than when they do not and when their support for paradigm-change is value-driven rather than a response to policy anomalies. [R]
66.606 SMULOVITZ, Catalina —
This article shows that the institutional design of Argentine federalism allows for differences in the protective scope of the provincial domestic violence laws. It holds that the broad legislative capacities of subnational districts enable the working of political and social local factors, which, in turn, determine heterogeneity in these laws' protective scope. It analyzes, compares, and measures 37 laws on domestic violence sanctioned between 1992 and 2009. It advances a methodology to measure their differences and it evaluates the impact local factors have on legal variations across jurisdictions. The article shows that the protective scope of these laws is determined by the intensity of the local electoral competition and by the strength of women's organizational capacity. Results also show that time matters insofar as it allows for the diffusion of more protective laws. [R]
66.607 SOUZA, Celina —
The article explores the role of state-led and of center-led pro-poor policies in the electoral shift of state elections in the state of Bahia, Brazil. It analyzes a pro-poor policy sponsored by a traditional party which has ruled the state for several decades during both the military and the democratic regimes. The article investigates the causes of the party's defeat in 2006 and its replacement by a non-traditional party. It argues that the defeat of the traditional party and the victory of a nontraditional one can be explained as the result of the state's main pro-poor policy that has always created dependency between voters and subnational politicians. Center-led pro-poor policies introduced in the late 1990s, in contrast, have universal or clear targets, eliminating the intermediation of sub-national political brokers. [R]
66.608 STJEPANOVIĆ, Dejan —
This article analyzes the politics and constitutional position of the Brčko District of BiH, drawing on this case to inform several important debates in the field with regards to questions of federalism, citizenship, and electoral politics. The article shows that the condominium logic of territorial arrangement has profound implications for substate citizenship in Brčko. It argues that apart from territorial options and consociational institutional mechanisms substate citizenship is an important element of conflict-management. Though often neglected in the literature, dual substate citizenship could be considered an instrument of conflict management and, as this article argues, as a model of institutional innovation in divided societies. [R]
66.609 TARRAGONI, Federico —
After two decades of neoliberal governance, Latin American states have turned to the model of a “popular civil society” through participatory devices, which seems to have generated new forms of citizenship in popular barrios and a “surveillance democracy”. Based on two ethnographic research projects (2007–2011) on Venezuelan Consejos comunales, this paper aims to show that these new popular relationships with the state are the result of two sociological variables: dependence and autonomy. Within a new typology of popular relationships with the state— refused dependence, victimizing, conflict, and accepted dependence— it shows the complexity of popular politicization produced by a “participatory state”. [R]
66.610 TREMBLAY, Manon, et al. —
Drawing on the literature on the process of cabinet appointments and on ministerial careers and the types of mobility that they involve, this article examines the hypothesis that the rate of ministerial promotion and demotion within a cabinet differs for women and men. To verify this hypothesis, we compiled a database that integrates the several hundred individuals who served as ministers in the Quebec Executive Council between 1976 and 2012. The quantitative analysis consists of descriptive statistics and negative binomial models; it takes into consideration a number of variables, including age, education, and past political mandates. Our results show that the ministerial careers of women and men follow a similar trajectory. [R, abr.]