Abstract
(a) Central institutions /Institutions centrales
67.4239 ABDMOULEH, Maher —
The post-revolutionary Tunisian Constitution has intended to transform the Tunisian territory. Can spatialization of the three territorial Tunisian entities meet the challenge of marginalization of certain areas? Does the territorial network seeking synergies for the benefit of marginalized regions by putting them in geographical units within developed areas on the coast, solve the problem of regional disparities? Does democratization of the political system, particularly at the local level, interest the youth and help them occupy their space and exercise their rights of citizenship? To conduct this research, we refer to judicial documents associated with the Tunisian territory, particularly the 2014 Constitution, also the works of judiciary doctrine, as well as the reflections developed by other specialists in the field. [R]
67.4240 ALIKHANI, Behrouz —
Four years after the Arab Spring, the old authoritarian political system seems to be restored in Egypt. In this paper, particular regard is paid to the role of “non-Islamists” in this process. On the theoretical level, a process-sociological model of democracy is introduced, which includes — in addition to the institutional dimension of processes of democratization — not only the functional but also in particular the habitual dimension of such processes. [R]
67.4241 ANGEVINE, Sara —
This study investigates if women in Congress are representing women worldwide by extending their surrogate representation of American women to women in foreign countries. Congressional research shows that race affects surrogate representation across borders via transnationalism. I test whether this also applies to gender when no shared “mother country” unites women, there are divisions over how to represent women, and American foreign policy is considered a stereotypically masculine policy domain. With an original dataset of three Congresses (2005-2010), I test if female House Representatives are more likely to introduce foreign policy legislation that targets foreign women and girls by applying regression analysis. I find that gender matters and that women in Congress are more likely to introduce legislation on behalf of women worldwide, acting as global surrogates. [R, abr.]
67.4242 ARMIJO, Leslie Elliott; RHODES, Sybil D. —
Brazil's infrastructure underperforms compared to that of peer emerging economies. Why? The political institutions of coalitional presidentialism with strong federalism undermine rational national planning. Politicians’ incentives to distribute “pork” combine with sector-specific oligopoly characteristics, offering fertile ground for corruption. Yet the greatest challenge is low infrastructure investment, a consequence of weak private capital markets and regulatory inconsistency. Recent center-right governments improved infrastructure service-delivery without stimulating investment, while center-left governments raised investment, but undermined public finances and efficiency. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4999]
67.4243 AZAM, Jean-Paul; BHATIA, Kartika —
This paper presents a model of provocation in a federation, wherein the state government triggers an insurgency with a view toward acquiring control of some economic assets with the help of the central government. Some econometric support for this model is found using data on the Naxalite conflict in eight states of India. The tests performed control for endogeneity of the state government's police force interventions. They suggest that the latter are meant to trigger the violent activity of the insurgents, so as to lure the central government into intervening and helping clear the ground for mining purposes in the lands of tribal people. [R]
67.4244 BARBI, Fabiana; COSTA FERREIRA, Leila da; GUO Sujian —
China clearly matters when it comes to global efforts to mitigate climate-change and any successful international efforts to stabilize greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions must inevitably include the country. In terms of climate-change responses, it is argued that governments are important actors that play a key role in defining appropriate rules, institutions and modes of governance to meet these changes at different levels and scales and in enforcing the defined rules and regulations. This article presents a detailed case study aimed at the analysis of how Chinese policies and governance structures related to climate-change have evolved over the past 20 years, particularly from 1992 to 2015, and how they have influenced Chinese GHG emissions during this period. [R]
67.4245 BÁRCENA JUÁREZ, Sergio Arturo —
Standard American models assume re-election as the main incentive for legislative involvement. But what kind of behavior can we expect from representatives serving under a non-re-election norm? The Mexican Chamber of Deputies makes an interesting example for answering the aforementioned question. By analyzing bill-sponsorship patterns of Mexican federal deputies throughout the LIII-LXII Congresses (1985-2015), this article tests alternative hypotheses around congressional activity. The research highlights that non-re-election itself does not inhibit legislative entrepreneurship, since a process of regime democratization may stimulate legislators to increase their sponsoring. By using regression models applied to the non-majoritarian stage of the Chamber, the article finds that belonging to an opposition party, being a female legislator, local legislative experience, and college education foster legislators’ involvement. [R] [See Abstr. 67.4286]
67.4246 BAUMGARTNER, Frank R., et al. —
We compare patterns of change in budgetary commitments by countries during periods of democracy and authoritarianism. Previous scholarship has focused almost exclusively on democratic governments, finding evidence of punctuated equilibria. Authoritarian regimes may behave differently, both because they may operate with fewer institutional barriers to choice and because they have fewer incentives to gather and respond to policy-relevant information coming from civil society. By analyzing public budgeting in Brazil, Turkey, Malta and Russia before and after their transitions from or to democracy, we can test punctuated equilibrium theory under a variety of governing conditions. Our goal is to advance the understanding of the causes of budgetary instability by leveraging contextual circumstances to push the theory beyond democracies and assess its broader applicability. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Political budgeting across Europe”, introduced by Christian BREUNIG, Christine S. LIPSMEYER and Guy D. WHITTEN. See also Abstr. 67.4279, 4310, 4313, 4460, 4735, 4745]
67.4247 BICHOT, Jacques —
After demonstrating the “absurd” state into which France's Social Security system's accounts have fallen, the author suggest that its operation should be revised by restoring to it the status of social insurance in the strict sense, a status it has lost over time due to the welfare state's interference in its management. [R]
67.4248 BO Yan —
The efforts of the securitization of climate change have been witnessed since 2007 at both international and national level. While the effectiveness of those securitization efforts needs to be further assessed, the security implications of climate change have come to be recognized at both levels. In the above context, this article explores why China has not gone so far in the securitization of climate change, especially compared with the EU who acts as one of the securitizing actors? [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4810]
67.4249 BOLKVADZE, Ketevan —
How do the survival incentives facing incumbents in hybrid regimes affect the engineering of bureaucratic reforms? This article tackles this question by departing from the literature on competitive authoritarianism and with the help of detailed empirical evidence from Georgia's public administration reforms (2004-2012). It first argues that in order to preserve their hold on power, dominant parties have to tilt the political playing field, while still upholding popular support. I posit that this dual incentive structure leads the incumbents to promote efficiency of public service, but to also curb these policies at a point that would jeopardize their ability to use administrative resources for partisan ends. Consequently, bureaucratic reforms reach a saturation point, beyond which no more reforms can be endured. [R]
67.4250 BONNEAU, Chris W., et al. —
The literature on the US Supreme Court has paid substantial attention to the perceived legitimacy of the Court's decisions. However, much less attention has been paid to the perceived legitimacy of the reasons the Court provides for its opinions. We design two experiments to understand how the public perceives opinion content. Unlike prior studies, we take it as a given that the Court uses legal reasons in its decisions. This offers us a baseline by which to compare departures from these legal reasons. We find that extralegal reasons, when paired with legal reasons, do nothing to harm the legitimacy of the Court. [R, abr.]
67.4251 BOUCHER, Anna —
The concept of boundary-spanning regimes has emerged to describe activity across policy subsystems that seek to manage “wicked” public policy problems. This paper examines two existing public policy theories, namely those of exogenous shocks and the Advocacy Coalition Framework theories, and assesses their capacity to explain why boundary-spanning regimes emerge. It argues that broad structural conditions play an important role in shaping boundary-spanning activity in the case studies discussed in this paper, indicating limitations in these theories which tend to overlook such conditions. The paper tests the explanations for policy change through original qualitative analysis of incremental convergence across the welfare and immigration policy fields in Australia from 1947 to 1996. [R]
67.4252 BRITO, Pablo Reynoso —
Indonesia and Mexico appear to be completely different nations with disparate political and security problems. However, after analyzing both nations’ geographies, recent political processes, their socio-economic problems, as well as their relative position in the international system, one may reach a different conclusion. This paper presents the security challenges faced by Indonesia and Mexico from the national, regional and global levels of analysis. It argues that their difficult territories, their recent democratization, and their position as regional and middle powers are their main security challenges. Finally, this paper gives a set of conclusions and policy proposals. [R, abr.]
67.4253 BROOKS, Heidi —
Despite policy commitments and legislated mechanisms, the system of participatory democracy in post-1994 South Africa is largely considered to have failed. In order to understand how underlying ideas can help to explain weaknesses in practice, this article examines how participatory democracy is understood by the ruling African National Congress (ANC). It shows that the multiple intellectual traditions shaping the participatory model have led to a set of policy initiatives that are not without internal tension. In part, the technocratic creep associated with improving public sector performance has stymied participatory efforts by placing efficiency and delivery over democracy and empowerment. [R, abr.]
67.4254 BROWN, Kerry —
Using the three areas of government modernization referred to by Fukuyama — the state, rule of law and accountability — this essay looks at the ways in which the Communist Party has engaged in a progress of partial reform, tactically conceding space for other actors in some areas, while maintaining control of the core issue for control — political organization and the articulation of broad overarching goals for Chinese society, and how it has attempted to do something unique — create a modern, developed, market economy while still being governed by a Communist Party exercising a monopoly on power. [R, abr.]
67.4255 BRYAN, Amanda Clare; OWENS, Ryan J. —
Because the Supreme Court can decide only so many cases per term, justices carefully target which cases they hear and which parties they supervise. We focus on their decisions to hear cases involving states as parties. We believe justices use the agenda power to target states with whom they disagree ideologically. Granting review allows justices to keep an eye on wayward states and to remind them of the ever-present threat of Supreme Court review. The results support our theory. Justices are significantly more likely to grant review to cases involving ideologically unfriendly states — and these results are exacerbated in salient cases. These findings suggest justices are more aggressive agenda setters than commonly believed. [R]
67.4256 BUCUR, Cristina —
This article focuses on the relative powers of Presidents, PMs and political parties over cabinet composition in semi-presidential systems. Several expectations regarding their ability to fire ministers are tested on an original dataset on the tenure of French ministers under conditions of unified government and cohabitation. The analysis shows that presidential influence over cabinet composition strengthens during unified government. Although the influence of both PMs and parties increases during cohabitation, their bearing on cabinet composition varies less than expected across the two executive scenarios. Moreover, ministerial durability is shown to increase during cohabitation. These results highlight the impact of intraparty constraints on prime ministerial influence and the asymmetrical relation between executive format and the ability of the President and the PM to control executive decision-making. [R]
67.4257 BURRETT, Tina —
Shinzo Abe's return to office as Japanese prime minister in December 2012 offers a rare opportunity to explore how past experience shapes decision-making when leaders are given a second chance at power. Abe's second term was more successful than his first premiership (2006-2007). What accounts for the differences between Abe's two premierships? I employ an interactionist approach to analyze personal political leadership in institutional and situational contexts. I utilize this approach to identify changes in Abe's leadership between his first and second administrations. I conclude that changes in the institutional and situational contexts of his leadership better explain Abe's second-term successes than developments in his leadership skills. I further conclude that Abe's predominance calls into question the prevailing view of the Japanese prime minister as institutionally weak. [R, abr.]
67.4258 BYRNE, Chris; RANDALL, Nick; THEAKSTON, Kevin —
This article contributes to the developing literature on prime ministerial performance in the UK by applying a critical reading of S. Skowronek's account of leadership in “political time” to evaluate D. Cameron's premiership. This, we propose, better understands the inter-relationship of structure and agency in prime ministerial performance than existing frameworks, particularly those based on Greenstein's and Bulpitt's approaches. We identify Cameron as a disjunctive prime minister, but find it necessary significantly to develop the model of disjunctive leadership beyond that offered by Skowronek. We identify the warrants to authority, strategies and dilemmas associated with disjunctive leadership in the UK. We argue that Cameron was relatively skillful in meeting many of the challenges confronting an affiliated leader of a vulnerable regime. [R, abr.]
67.4259 CANETTI, Daphna, et al. —
Can different political ideologies explain policy preferences regarding asylum-seekers? We focus on attitudes regarding governmental policy towards out-group members and suggest that perceptions of threat help to shape these policy attitudes. Study 1 compared public opinion regarding asylum policy in Israel (N = 137) and Australia (N = 138), two countries with restrictive asylum policies and who host a large number of asylum-seekers; Study 2, a longitudinal study, was conducted during two different time periods in Israel — before and during the Gaza conflict. Results of both studies showed that threat perceptions of out-group members drive the relationship between conservative political ideologies and support for exclusionary asylum policies among citizens. [R, abr.]
67.4260 CAYTON, Adam F. —
While democratic theory suggests that representatives should be willing to adjust their issue positions to adapt to new circumstances, politicians face serious political risks from “flip-flopping”. How do members of Congress balance these risks? Using an original data-set of district economic conditions and opinion from 2007 to 2010 and sets of repeated roll-call votes, I leverage the exogenous shock of the Great Recession to explain position change on three major economic policies. I find that position change occurs in response to the constituency on final passage votes, but that partisan pressures exert greater influence, especially on procedural votes. This novel test of responsiveness has implications for the nature of policy representation and the mechanisms behind aggregate responsiveness. [R]
67.4261 CEPIK, Marco; MÖLLER, Gustavo —
This article compares the intelligence systems of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. How are they organized? How is power distributed among organizations in each country? What are the organizational risks? By employing Network Analysis to publicly-available data on intelligence agencies, collegiate bodies, and supervising organizations, authority relations and information flows were mapped. Regarding organizational configuration, similarities were found between India and Russia, as well as between China and South Africa. Brazil differs from the four countries. As for the power distribution, in Russia, Brazil, and India intelligence is subordinated to the government, and shows more centrality in the cases of China and South Africa. Finally, Russia runs the highest risk of having an intelligence system less able to adapt to strategic circumstances. [R, abr.]
67.4262 CHEN Lijun; FU Yan —
Since China's reform and opening up, the role of think tanks in policy-making has increased providing decision-makers with an “internal reference” for agenda-setting. Think tanks are frequently entrusted by government to undertake policy research projects. In the context of strong ideological control where official think tanks have dominated, a new-type of privately-run and government-subsidized think tanks has emerged in the field of talent policy. Using the Zhejiang Institution of Talent Development as an example of a typical privately-run and government-subsidized think tank, this study explores the dynamics of the increasing role and influence of such think tanks in policy-making. [R, abr.]
67.4263 CHEN Xuelian; GÖBEL, Christian —
Since 2004, the central government has incentivized local officials to solve regional problems proactively and to prevent their emergence. The present contribution investigates the impact of these incentives. It analyzes the geographic distribution of policy innovations in China, the types of measures local government officials devise to solve or to prevent local problems, and the factors to render likely the successful implementation of certain measures at specific locations. Based on the literature on policy implementation in China's local states, we formulate hypotheses and test them by means of geographically visualized data and multivariate linear regressions. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4396]
67.4264 CHOHAN, Usman W.; JACOBS, Kerry —
This article examines the presidentialization thesis through the lens of the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO). It considers the origins of the PBO in the American presidential system, where it has served to challenge the fiscal power of the president, and finds that PBOs perform an analogous function in parliamentary settings. The article then explores the PBO's logic in parliamentary systems that exhibit evidence of presidentialization, specifically examining the case of Canada. It finds that such budget offices mitigate the budgetary power of presidents, as well as prime ministers who are becoming more like presidents. They thereby offer a counterweight to the assertive fiscal tendencies of executives in presidentializing parliamentary systems. [R]
67.4265 CHRISTENSON, Dino P.; KRINER, Douglas L. —
The formal institutional constraints that Congress and the courts impose on presidential unilateral action are feeble. As a result, recent scholarship suggests that public opinion may be the strongest check against executive overreach. However, little is known about how the public assesses unilateral action. Through a series of five survey experiments embedded in nationally representative surveys, we examine the extent to which Americans evaluate unilateral action based on constitutional, partisan, and policy concerns. We find that Americans do not instinctively reject unilateral action as a threat to our system of checks and balances, but instead evaluate unilateral action in terms of whether it accords or conflicts with their partisan and policy preference priors. Our results suggest that the public constraint on presidential unilateral action is far from automatic. [R, abr.]
67.4266 CIEPLEY, David —
The US Constitution is best understood not as a “social contract”, but as a popularly issued corporate charter. The earliest American colonies were literal corporations of the Crown and, like all corporations, were ruled by limited governments established by their charters. From this, Americans derived their understanding of what a constitution is — the written charter of a sovereign that ordains and limits a government. The key Federalist innovation was to substitute the People for the King as the chartering sovereign. This effectively transferred the “governance technology” of the corporation to the civil government. Federalists used these corporate practices to frame a government that united seeming irreconcilables — a government energetic yet limited, republican yet mixed, popular yet antipopulist — yielding a corporate solution to the problem of arbitrary rule. [R, abr.]
67.4267 CLARKE, Andrew J.; JENKINS, Jeffery A.; MONROE, Nathan W. —
Much of the literature on partisan agenda-setting in Congress focuses on the majority's ability to exercise negative agenda control. As a result, the empirical emphasis has been on “rolls”, or how often the majority of the majority party opposes legislation that nonetheless passes. Although interesting, rolls are only one source of majority party failure. The other source, largely unexplored in the literature, is when the majority of the majority party supports legislation that is subsequently defeated. These cases represent “disappointments”, and are a means to determine how effective the majority party is at exercising positive agenda control. Making some basic modifications to a standard spatial model of agenda-setting, we articulate why and where we might expect the majority party to fail to exercise positive agenda control effectively. [R, abr.]
67.4268 COLTON, Caroline —
This article examines how contestable market theory has reconfigured the economic and regulatory concept of competition in order to enhance the compatibility of Australia's economy with international trade and investment agreements. Australia has recently negotiated and signed a raft of bilateral, plurilateral and regional agreements, including the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Australia-China Free Trade Agreement. In order to ensure that Australia meets its obligations and commitments to these agreements, two key advisory bodies made recommendations, the majority of which were accepted by the government, to ready Australia's competition governance and economic policy for greater global integration. Less well known is the role of contestability in radicalizing ideology as it countenances monopolization and privatization in the guise of market access by justifying the substitution of actual competition with the mere threat of competition. [R, abr.]
67.4269 CONNELL, Andrew P. —
As full-time Church of England diocesan Bishops, the Lords Spiritual are necessarily very much part-time Parliamentarians. This presents them with challenges in terms of maintaining a presence, and demonstrating its legitimacy, in an increasingly “professionalized” House of Lords. This article draws on original interviews to explore the factors which shape the Bishops’ attendance and participation in the House of Lords. It suggests that although long-standing constraints on their attendance have persisted and indeed increased in recent decades, they have nonetheless found ways to maintain and increase their Parliamentary activity in the light of changes in the Church, Parliament and society. [R]
67.4270 CORBETT, Jack; VEENENDAAL, Wouter; UGYEL, Lhawang —
Monarchical rule is said to have become anachronistic in a modern age of legal rational orders and representative institutions. And yet, despite successive waves of democratization having usurped their authority across much of the globe, a select few monarchs remain defiant, especially in small states. This stubborn persistence raises questions about the application of Huntington's “King's Dilemma” in which modern monarchs are apparently trapped in a historical cycle that will ultimately strip them of meaningful power. Drawing on in-depth historical research in three small states that have sought to combine democratic and monarchical rule — Tonga, Bhutan, and Liechtenstein — we argue that, contra Huntington, monarchs in small states are neither doomed to disappear nor are they likely to be overwhelmed by the dilemma posed by modernist development. [R]
67.4271 CORNUT-GENTILLE, François —
Is the reduced role of Parliament sought by the Fifth Republic's Constitution still viable, considering the sort of challenges faced by today's governments? The author argues for considering parliamentary functions to made them useful for governing. [R, transl.]
67.4272 COSTA, Ravi de —
This paper examines truth and reconciliation processes in stable, democratic societies. Its focus is on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which assumed that historical knowledge can lead directly to new understanding and then to reconciliation, a social change involving improved relations between Aboriginal and other peoples. The paper argues that institutions such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada — here called discursive institutions — require more careful explanations of how discourse might be related to change. Discursive institutions mobilize prior orientations and existing social, cultural and institutional levers for change; they do not create new mechanisms for doing so. [R] [See Abstr. 67.4315]
67.4273 CSEHI, Robert —
Using a comparative federalist approach, this article explores how horizontal coordination in federal political systems is likely to materialize. Starting from the notion of “shared rule”, the article argues that “non-centralization” may occur in a given policy area when the loss of resources at the constituent unit level is not compensated with an equivalent increase in federal powers. In the meantime, horizontal interdependence as well as vertical independence are facilitated through different incentives. The combination of these two factors leads to horizontal coordination where federal actors come to play a different role. The analytical framework advanced in the article is applied to two different cases, the Canadian inter-provincial trade, and the EU's economic governance framework. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5004]
67.4274 DANOPOULOS, Constantine P. —
This article assesses the content quality of democracy in Greece. Theoretically, the quality of democracy is assessed in three different but interrelated dimensions: procedure, result, and content. Procedure is about the character and workings of the environment in which governance takes place; result refers to the overall quality of government performance and citizen satisfaction; and content involves the quality of the substance of governance, and it is gauged through two variables: freedom and equality. Freedom involves political, civil, and socioeconomic rights, including speech, property, and social protection. Equality is about prohibition of discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, race, political orientation, or other extraneous conditions. The study concludes that the country's quality of democracy is fair, but is in need of improvement. [R, abr.]
67.4275 DERBALI, Abdelkader —
This paper analyzes the systemic risk of the Chinese financial institutions following the financial crisis of 2007. We estimate the systemic risk of a sample composed by 70 Chinese financial institutions through the period beginning on 02 January 2008 to 30 June 2015. We utilize the SRISK as a measure of systemic risk. This measure aims to capture financial institutions’ activity stress and its potential to become systemic. The proposed measures capture not only individual financial institutions vulnerability, but also the stress dependency structure between them and the Chinese financial system. In addition, these measures can be quite useful for identifying systematically important banks. [R, abr.]
67.4276 DIMITROV, Martin K. —
This essay advocates for adopting a disaggregated approach when evaluating the progress that non-democratic countries like China are making towards establishing the rule of law. An understanding that the rule of law may develop in some areas, though not in others, allows us to identify the structural underpinnings of a limited rule-of-law system. The essay adopts a procedural definition of the rule of law as rules-based governance and argues that the regularized enforcement of laws and regulations is the key precondition for its emergence. This study defines regularized enforcement as consistent, transparent, and procedurally fair enforcement and identifies the conditions under which such enforcement may emerge. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4284]
67.4277 ECKHARDT, Niklas —
This article first focuses on the adaption of the concept of transitional justice to the Colombian situation. Its application in Colombia demonstrates differences to paradigmatic cases of transitional justice. The concept obtains the function of a legal term, which serves to justify deviations from legal standards. This entails adjustments of components and objectives of transitional justice and causes the risk of confusion or abuse of this term. In the second part, the legal concept of transitional justice, which has been established by the Colombian constitutional court, is analyzed. It reveals a lack of structure and demonstrates legal deficits. [R, abr.]
67.4278 EDINGER, Florian —
The Rules of Procedure of the German Parliaments grant parliamentary parties the right to request a parliamentary hearing. Is it unconstitutional to violate this right? The State Constitutional Court of Saxony decided that it is indeed unconstitutional. It ruled that the constitution grants the legislators the right of equal treatment, and their parliamentary parties as well. The majority violates this right if it denies a parliamentary party a hearing without a substantial reason that is based on the constitution itself. The court's decision protects the rights of minorities in Parliament and secures that parliamentary hearings contribute to legislation being as good and objective as possible. [R]
67.4279 FAGAN, E. J.; JONES, Bryan D.; WLEZIEN, Christopher —
This article examines how the characteristics of political institutions impact the extensiveness of budget punctuations. We develop a theory based on an adaptive systems framework from policy process studies of budgeting, and posit that institutional factors that impede democratic responsiveness lead to inefficiencies that cause policy changes to become more punctuated. Based on previous research on policy responsiveness, we hypothesize that national budgets become more punctuated with increases in federalism, electoral proportionality and executive dominance. Our results strongly support the proposition that more federalized systems produce more budget punctuations, but provide only weak support for the propositions that proportional systems and those with dominant executives do so. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4246]
67.4280 FARRELL, David M.; SUITER, Jane; HARRIS, Clodagh —
In the 2011 Irish general election, held in the midst of the economic crisis, electoral reform was catapulted to the top of the agenda, with all of the political parties including proposals for electoral reform in their manifestos. The matter was subsequently given to the Irish Constitutional Convention to discuss. The Convention recommended keeping a modified version of the existing single transferable vote electoral system. This article reviews the Irish debate, showing how for the most part the impetus for electoral reform came from the party leaderships. By contrast, mass public opinion on the issue was at best equivocal. [R, abr.]
67.4281 FENWICK, Tracy Beck —
In order to identify the causal mechanisms (rational learning, adaptation, and innovation) driving changes in the area of anti-poverty policy in Brazil, this article traces the micro-level decision-making processes across three presidents. It lays out the politics of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Brazil and presidential usage of this targeted social policy instrument since the 1990s. In contrast to previous presidents, President D. Rousseff's decisions did not enable her rationally intended policy agenda. Why? The President him- or herself is privileged as the central actor whose decision-making processes impact policy development and its subsequent performance. I argue that prior to the most recent changes under Dilma, was the demise of CCTs being “good enough” from a policy perspective. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4999]
67.4282 FOREMNY, Dirk; SACCHI, Agnese; SALOTTI, Simone —
This paper analyzes the relationship between fiscal decentralization, the duration of fiscal consolidation episodes, and their success for 17 OECD countries between 1978 and 2009. The consolidation of the general government budget appears to be of longer duration when expenditure decisions are more decentralized. We also find that transfers from higher levels of government are cut during consolidation episodes, suggesting that central governments shift the burden of consolidation towards lower tiers of government. This is especially true when the latter have little legal autonomy to raise tax revenues and have little influence over executive decisions taken at the central level. We document that this increases local governments’ public debt/GDP ratios. [R, abr.]
67.4283 FRANTZ, Erica; STEIN, Elizabeth A. —
Paradoxically, many dictators agree to institutionalized succession rules even though these rules could regulate their removal from office. This study shows that succession rules, like other pseudo-democratic institutions in authoritarian regimes, provide survival benefits for dictators. Specifically, they protect dictators from coup attempts because they reduce elites’ incentives to try to grab power preemptively via forceful means. By assuaging the ambition of some elites who have more to gain with patience than with plotting, institutionalized succession rules hamper coordination efforts among coup plotters, which ultimately reduce a leader's risk of confronting coups. Based on a variety of statistical models, including instrumental variables regression that addresses potential endogeneity between succession rules and coup attempts, the empirical evidence supports the authors’ hypothesis that institutions governing leadership succession reduce the likelihood that dictators confront coups. [R, abr.]
67.4284 FUKUYAMA, Francis —
China developed the modern state more than two millennia ago, but has yet to achieve a real rule of law limiting state power, and has no democratic accountability. Current Chinese government under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party replicates many features of dynastic rule, including top-down organization and upward, rather than downward, accountability. The system is unbalanced, with insufficient constraints on executive power, risking emergence of the “bad Emperor” problem. The current anti-corruption campaign is unsustainable in the absence of a true rule of law. Transition to a more fully modern political system should sequence rule of law before democratic accountability, placing real constitutional limits on state power and only gradually opening up the system to greater political pluralism. [R, abr.] [First article of a thematic issue on “Francis Fukuyama and discourse on Chinese governance”. See also Abstr. 67.4178, 4202, 4205, 4215, 4233, 4235, 4254, 4276, 4342]
67.4285 GARCÍA-JUANATEY, Ana, et al. —
This article contributes to our understanding of the autonomy, control and management of public agencies in Spain, based on managers’ perceptions of their financial and operational capacities as well as their mechanisms of accountability. Its findings derive from the opinions of senior officials of Spanish public agencies, gathered through a survey conducted between July and November 2013. The survey is modeled on an international collaborative project (COBRA) that aims to analyze the processes of agencification among public administrations in different countries. The results of this study suggest that managers of Spanish public agencies enjoy a high level of autonomy. [R, abr.]
67.4286 GERVASONI, Carlos; NAZARENO, Marcelo —
The recent literature on the relation between the Argentinean federalism and legislative politics assumes, but does not prove, that governors exercise much influence over national legislators. We test this idea through a novel methodological strategy: a survey of experts on the politics of each of the Argentine provinces. The alleged legislative influence of governors is only partially verified (and is larger for deputies than for senators); the evidence shows a high level of inter-provincial heterogeneity. Using multiple regression analysis we find that the main explanatory variable for this heterogeneity is the seniority of governors in their positions, which can be interpreted as a proxy for the degree of control they acquire, as time passes, over provincial political and partisan structures. [R] [First article of a symposium on “Legislative studies in Latin America”, introduced, pp. 3-8, by Khemvirg PUENTE. See also Abstr. 67.4245, 4395, 4462]
67.4287 GRITTER, Matthew —
This explores the case of New Mexico. I argue that the elite leadership of New Mexico Senator D. Chavez helped to shape national debates regarding fair employment and other civil rights legislation. Chavez helped work for the passage of a strong state fair employment law in New Mexico in 1949 and increased awareness of the place of people of Mexican origin in civil rights policy and politics nationally and in New Mexico. Gaining support from African Americans, Catholics, Jews, and labor unions, Chavez helped to include people of Mexican origin in debates regarding civil rights policy. However, a lack of national legislation, policy implementation, and the rise of backlash politics prevented the creation of a strong policy and strong agency. [R, abr.]
67.4288 HALL, Matthew E. K. —
Policy implementation is usually studied at the micro level by testing the short-term effects of a specific policy on the behavior of government actors and policy outcomes. This study adopts an alternative approach by examining macro implementation. I employ a variety of methodological techniques to test the influence of macro criminal justice policy on new admissions to federal prison via three mediators: case filings by federal prosecutors, conviction rates in federal district courts, and plea bargaining behavior. I find that cumulative Supreme Court rulings influence the incarceration rate by altering conviction rates in district courts; however, I find only mixed evidence of congressional and presidential influence. The results suggest that US macro policy influences bureaucratic outputs by altering the behavior of subordinate policy implementers. [R, abr.]
67.4289 HÄNNI, Miriam —
Many ethnic minorities demand (adequate) descriptive representation in parliament because they expect it to affect the responsiveness of governments towards their demands. However, the mechanism of how minority representatives affect policy outcomes remains unclear. I argue that descriptive representation mainly has an effect if representatives possess additional leverage to influence policy outcomes. The argument is tested with hierarchical time-series models from 88 minority groups in 47 countries multiethnic democracies. The analysis shows that descriptive representatives are most successful in influencing policy outcomes if they are included in the government, the legislature is powerful, and a group is comparatively large. [R]
67.4290 HE Zengke —
Since 1999, there has been continuous discussion and exploration among academic circles in China on the concepts of governance, good governance, and social governance advocating cooperative management of public affairs by multiple entities, such as state and society, government and citizen. Since 2004, the ruling party and government has gradually accepted concepts in social governance, provided policy space and opportunity for social cooperation and public participation in social management mechanism, and accepted the concept of “social governance” in the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in 2013. In the same time frame in accepting the concept of social governance, the CPC has been continuously adjusting its policy in social management. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4396]
67.4291 HEBERER, Thomas —
Political scientists frequently argue that authoritarian systems are per se economically inefficient, non-innovative, and without legitimacy. China's economic success and relative stability in recent decades have shown, however, that such postulates are far too simplistic. Accordingly, the question is why China is managing to develop so smoothly and how its stability and legitimacy are to be explained. This article takes up the concept of the “developmental state” in order to better explain and localize the function and behavior of the Chinese state. It argues that developmental states exhibit specific features that help elucidate and explain the “resilience” of the Chinese political system. [R]
67.4292 HEISBOURG, François —
The analogy between the US president and German emperor works because of similar institutional and international realities, and because personality matters. [R]
67.4293 HOCHSTETLER, Kathryn —
Does the Brazilian presidential system shape environmental policy there? The comparative literature on environmental policy offers few reasons to think that it might. Most explanations of variations in the quantity and quality of environmental regulation stress levels of economic development or move outside of the nation-state to examine international processes of diffusion and convergence. This article examines environmental policies and outcomes in three successive presidential administrations in Brazil to develop hypotheses about whether institutional factors should gain a larger place in comparative studies of environmental policies and outcomes. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4999]
67.4294 HOLLIBAUGH, Gary E.; ROTHENBERG, Lawrence S. —
Scholars interested in bargaining over political appointments typically analyze the duration between the candidate's nomination and eventual disposition, ignoring the prior period between vacancy and nomination. Using a dataset of vacancies reported to the Government Accountability Office, we instead examine the nomination stage. We uncover both commonalities and differences between the dynamics of nomination and those of confirmation. Ideological divergence between the President and the Senate filibuster pivot tends to delay nominations but only under divided government. Presidents not only move more quickly on more important positions, but are also influenced by the ideological leanings of the agencies. [R]
67.4295 JAIN, Arvind K. —
The fight against the breed of corruption that exists in Canada today requires a two-pronged approach: reduction of economic rents that can be exploited through corruption, and increase in the cost of engaging in corruption. Most of the recent efforts within Canada have targeted the second approach. Attempts are being made to weaken the link between private business and public officials (elected or appointed) through constraints on political contributions, lobbying abilities and the exchange of gifts. The challenge is to also allow competition to prevail while limiting the misuse of the regulatory powers of the government. In addition, Canada must make a serious effort to decrease its acceptance of corruption abroad. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5077]
67.4296 JONES, Evan —
This article extends the role theory literature on domestic role contestation process by specifically examining bureaucracies as potential advocates of competing national role conceptions. While recent scholarship on domestic role contestation affirms the influence of party politics and cabinet dynamics on role enactment, bureaucracies remain underexplored as key actors despite the presence of a robust literature that supports their relevance in the foreign policymaking process. This article draws on expectations from both the role theory and bureaucratic politics literatures to explain how bureaucracies contest national roles and how such contestation may be resolved. The article tests these propositions through the study of China's inter-bureaucratic contestation over its appropriate role in the South China Sea territorial disputes between 1979 and 1992. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4054]
67.4297 JUNG Chan Su; CHUN Young Han; OH Jae Rok —
This study tests the relationships between legislative and presidential influences and organizational probity in South Korean central government agencies, on the basis of political transaction-cost and principal-agent theories. We use three measures of legislative influence — inspectional influence (total annual days of legislative inspection), statutory influence (rules-to-laws ratio), and budgetary influence (ratio of reprogramming budget to total budget), and one measure of presidential influence (annual number of substantive meetings with the president). Then, these independent variables are linked to the organizational probity measure from audited archival data. The results support theoretical arguments for control over administrative agencies. Thus, the evidence suggests that governments should be cautious of implementing reforms that increase organizational or managerial autonomy. [R, abr.]
67.4298 KARCH, Andrew; ROSENTHAL, Aaron —
Supporters of the [US] Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) sometimes speculate that public attitudes toward the law will shift if proponents succeed in focusing attention on its more popular components, but the scholarly literature on framing effects provides ample reason to question their assertion. This article contends that engagement, an alternative rhetorical strategy where advocates address the same policy dimensions as their opponents, is a more promising approach. Extending the engagement literature to the elite context in which most ACA-related decisions are made, it argues that elite-level engagement necessitates the additional task of linking policy change to opponents’ broader philosophical and policy goals. [R, abr.]
67.4299 KASDIN, Stuart; IORIO, Federica —
When programs are grants to states, federal funds will be used to meet both the national objectives and the local priorities of the state or local government recipients. This article examines the decision to design new federal programs as either a grant to states or as administered by federal agencies. We predict that Congress will choose either the states or the federal bureaucracy based on which agent is more likely to manage the program consistent with the preferences of the Congressional majority. We examine the political and economic conditions present in the year before Congress created a program. We find that Congress's perception of a government agency's partisan orientation matters: A perceived divergence in partisan orientation between the Congress and federal agency increases the likelihood of a grant design. [R, abr.]
67.4300 KASDIN, Stuart Roy —
When creating a new program, an authorizing committee must choose a budget structure, either using mandatory funding or creating an authorization for appropriations to enable the appropriation committees to use discretionary funding. One hypothesis we examine is based on the strategic interplay by [US] congressional committees seeking to control their policy domains. An alternative hypothesis is that where there is greater expected difficulty in predicting likely program needs — e.g., predicting the annual spending needs for unemployment insurance — a mandatory structure would be expected. We find that the hypothesis associated with the committees’ pursuit of autonomy is supported, whereas the rational design hypothesis associated with reduced transaction costs is not supported. [R, abr.]
67.4301 KEUDJEU DE KEUDJEU, John Richard —
The paradoxes that seem to emerge from African constitutional reformism lead to questioning the very conception of citizenship and the republic in African constitutionalism. It is therefore necessary to take a closer look at the substantiality of citizenship and the republic in Africa with regards to general theory on the subject inspired by Western experience. Such an analysis highlights the opposition between the building of an endogenous African law, which reflects its constituent communities’ and individuals’ fundamental preoccupations, and a logic imported from the West. In order to define citizenship and the republic in African constitutionalism, therefore, it is first necessary to systematize a plural and geographically variable law, then discern the extroversion of the republic in Africa through a differential definition of citizenship.
67.4302 KNUTSSON, Hans —
This paper explores how policy implementation may be understood from a learning perspective, affected by universal tendencies for humans to draw biased conclusions from specific events. The Advocacy Coalition Framework is used as point of reference when applying concepts of learning and decision-making biases and heuristics. From a set of three separate events of a continuous implementation of the 1994 LSS Act (The Act Concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments), empirical illustrations are forwarded based on both primary and secondary data sources. The paper contributes to the field of policy implementation as a learning process. It supports the ACF learning tenets about the importance of factors, forums, conflicts, and stimuli. [R, abr.]
67.4303 KOMUS, Alastair; CASLER, James —
The development of space technologies is tied to economic and national interests. Historically, space technology development has been dominated by government agencies. There are key difference between the public administration models implemented by Canada and the US due to the vast differences in resources. Topics examined include legislative acts, organizational structure, contractor relations, breadth of research, national prestige, policy setting, and the economic activity generated by public space programs. In contrast to the US, Canada has emphasized development of industrial, rather than in-house, capabilities and has focused on developing niche expertise to achieve national objectives. [R]
67.4304 KUCIK, Jeffrey; MORAGUEZ, Ashley —
Despite increasing polarization in the House of Representatives, preferential trade agreements (PTAs) often pass not only with, but often because of, support from both parties. What explains these patterns? When do members cross party lines to support (or oppose) trade legislation? We argue that members are both ideologically and electorally motivated. Further, we argue that the relative balance of these incentives varies across the membership in meaningful ways. We examine House votes on 11 PTAs and find that ideology and district trade position have independent effects on support for free trade. We also find that the effect of trade position is conditioned by the ideology of the legislator; moderates are more responsive to their constituents’ interests on trade. [R]
67.4305 KULENOVIC, Enes; PETKOVIC, Krešimir —
The paper utilizes Machiavelli's insight into the nature of core political goals — winning state power, maintaining state power and achieving political vision — by applying it in the context of Croatian politics from independence to 2011. The scope of the research covers four periods: the Tudjman era (1990-2000), Racan's governments (2000-2003), Sanader's governments (2003-2009) and Kosor's government (2009-2011). In each of these cases we ask how the ruling elite got into power, how they maintained and lost power, and what political vision they achieved. The goal of the study is to understand the interplay between ideological, economic, institutional and tactical aspects of political power and its transformation within the Croatian context. [R]
67.4306 LAGASSÉ, Philippe —
The British and Canadian Parliaments have no legal control over military deployment decisions. Recently, however, governments in both countries have held votes in the House of Commons on expeditionary missions involving combat. In the UK, this has led to a convention of legislative control of the executive's prerogative to deploy the armed forces. In Canada, the votes have benefited and enabled the executive, rather than strengthening legislative control. Using J. Mahoney and K. Thelen's [Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power, New York, 2010] theory of gradual institutional change, this article analyzes how and why war prerogative reforms in the UK and Canada have resulted in different outcomes. [R]
67.4307 LAMPRINAKOU, Chrysa, et al. —
Drawing on data from the Parliamentary Candidates UK project, we profile the socio-demographic characteristics of parliamentary candidates standing in 2015 and compare elected MPs to previous cohorts since 1979. We argue that the 2015 cohort of candidates largely resembles the archetypal candidate identified by C. Durose, et al. [“‘Acceptable difference’: diversity, representation and pathways to UK politic”, ibid., 66(2), 2013: 246-267; Abstr. 63.4306]. Despite smaller parties’ campaign rhetoric of a “new kind of politics”, parties across the spectrum offer up very similar candidate profiles. We find a narrowing of occupational backgrounds, with fewer candidates and MPs from manual occupations, and an increasing percentage of candidates and MPs with a university education. [R, abr.]
67.4308 LAURIAN, Lucie; WALKER, Mark; CRAWFORD, Jan —
This article focuses on the organizational factors of environmental sustainability implementation in local government. We investigate the interactions, as well as direct and indirect impacts, of the framing of environmental sustainability and organizational culture and structure on implementation outcomes. We use a survey of 217 city/county planners and managers in 146 randomly selected American mid-sized cities and counties. The survey was specifically designed to tease out organizational features and their impacts. We model these impacts using structural equation modeling. We find that horizontally and vertically integrated organizational structure supports two essential dimensions of organizational culture: innovation adoption and consensus building. These cultural traits positively impact the framing of environmental sustainability at the core of organizations’ logic, which in turn significantly supports implementation outcomes. [R, abr.]
67.4309 LAYTON, Matthew L.; SMITH, Amy Erica —
Observers have long noted Brazil's distinctive racial politics: the coexistence of relatively integrated race relations and a national ideology of “racial democracy” with deep social inequalities along color lines. Those defending a vision of a nonracist Brazil attribute such inequalities to mechanisms perpetuating class distinctions. This article examines how members of disadvantaged groups perceive their disadvantage and what determines self-reports of discriminatory experiences, using 2010 AmericasBarometer data. About a third of respondents reported experiencing discrimination. Consistent with Brazilian national myths, respondents were much more likely to report discrimination due to their class than to their race. [R, abr.]
67.4310 LIPSMEYER, Christine S.; PHILIPS, Andrew Q.; WHITTEN, Guy D. —
What affects government policy-making continues to be an important question for researchers interested in political competition and policy priorities. In this contribution, we bring together a theoretical framework that focuses on the influence of globalizing forces on government policy decisions with a methodological emphasis on explaining dynamic budgetary trade-offs. While comparative public policy and budgetary scholars typically have focused on entire budgets or amounts spent on specific policies, we look at the political priorities embedded in budgets by modeling the budget as a pie. Then, we theorize about how governments respond to external shocks by altering the allocations to the various policy areas. Using this approach, we find that governments of different ideological types react to external shocks by altering their different policy priorities. [R] [See Abstr. 67.4246]
67.4311 LITTLE, Adrian —
Reconciliation has played differing strategic roles in a variety of conflictual contexts. In some instances, such as Northern Ireland in the 1990s, the demands of reconciliation and the pursuit of truth seemed a step too far in the process of reducing political violence. In others, such as South Africa, it was a pivotal part of the transformative dynamic offering hope for a more unified post-apartheid settlement. Meanwhile in contemporary Australia, the idea of reconciliation continues to provide a rhetorical framing for the renegotiation of indigenous politics. This paper analyzes these differing approaches to and uses of reconciliation and contends that they are underpinned by political narratives which invoke emotions of fear, hope and disappointment. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4315]
67.4312 LITTLE, Conor; TORNEY, Diarmuid —
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change established a global framework that emphasizes “nationally determined” responses to climate change. This places national policies front and center. Ireland is not just another understudied case. It is an interesting case. This symposium addresses some rapidly developing areas in the study of comparative climate politics. It contributes to developing knowledge of the features that make the Irish case interesting; that make it similar to and potentially representative of other classes of cases; and that make it different from other cases and in some respects unique. Overall, the symposium highlights significant constraints on effective policy responses to climate change in Ireland. [R, abr.] [First articles of a symposium on “Climate change”. See also Abstr. 67.4352, 4500, 4578]
67.4313 LOFTIS, Matt W.; MORTENSEN, Peter B. —
Much research has analyzed the influence of government partisanship on social policies. This contribution addresses three challenges in that literature. (1) It advocates a dynamic linear modelling (DLM) approach well suited to address time-varying partisan effects. (2) The DLM makes it possible to examine partisan effects country-by-country, thereby avoiding the cross-national pooling approach dominating this literature. (3) It offers a new approach to the challenge of choosing the right control variables. The main conclusion is that the relationship between government partisanship and welfare generosity does not appear to vary over time according to any pattern predicted by existing theories. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4246]
67.4314 MACAULAY, Fiona —
This article analyzes the governance tools available to three Brazilian presidents — F. H. Cardoso, L. I. Lula da Silva and D. Rousseff — to direct and enact policy in the area of law-and-order, that is, to prevent crime, improve policing and develop effective penal responses. It examines the commonalities and the differences in the ways that each approached their key roles as president: communicating with the public on the issues, using the agencies of the federal bureaucracy, managing intergovernmental relations with the subnational units (states and municipalities), and managing their multiparty coalition and relations with Congress. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4999]
67.4315 MADDISON, Sarah —
Reconciliation and conflict transformation require simultaneous effort across several socio-political levels. This article advances both a conceptual and an empirical argument to frame reconciliation and conflict transformation in these terms. First, it draws on theories of agonistic democracy to argue for the intrinsic and potentially productive role of non-violent conflict in reconciliation efforts that accept conflict as both enduring and necessary. Second, it contends that reconciliation is a multi-level task that requires ongoing attention and effort directed towards constitution-building, institutional reform and relational transformation. The article concludes that, once conflict transformation is understood in these terms, reconciliation must be seen as a far more difficult and long-term endeavor than is usually acknowledged, requiring innovative political institutions capable of keeping open spaces for democratic political contestation. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Reconciliation, transformation, struggle”, edited by the author and Adrian LITTLE. See also Abstr. 67.4272, 4311, 4351, 4603, 4687]
67.4316 MADDISON, Sarah —
In settler colonial societies such as Australia, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people have turned to constitutional reform as a means of addressing historical exclusions and colonial injustice. In practice, however, the promise of constitutionalism has revealed clear limits. This article explores these limits in the context of the current Australian campaign for the constitutional “recognition” of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, where the loudest dissenting voices have come from Indigenous people themselves. In light of this, this article proposes a more agonistic engagement of diverse and dissenting opinions, with a view to opening up a more radical, decolonizing space for constitutional politics. [R]
67.4317 MASCIO, Fabrizio di; NATALINI, Alessandro; STOLFI, Francesco —
The article analyzes how Administrative Burden Reduction has been implemented in Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Using an institutional processualist approach we show how this policy instrument has been implemented differently in these countries depending on the concatenation of mechanisms activated by the interplay between agency and structure. The article thus contributes both to the Europeanization literature and to the institutional processualist approach, which has so far only been applied to single country cases. [R]
67.4318 MASOOD, Ali S.; KASSOW, Benjamin J.; SONGER, Donald R. —
We offer a novel theory on Supreme Court impact that makes several key contributions beyond existing accounts. We argue that policy-oriented justices are particularly attentive to the impact of their precedents within the US Courts of Appeals. We provide a framework in which both Supreme Court and circuit-level influences drive US Courts of Appeals responses to the Supreme Court's precedents. Principally, we argue that the Supreme Court's use of its summary decisions, which explicitly reference its formally argued decisions, increase circuit court utility of the High Court's precedents. We test our predictions using new data on appeals court responses to the Supreme Court's precedents. The empirical results support our account and shed new light on the hierarchical dynamic within the American federal judiciary. [R]
67.4319 MASTHAY, Theodore J.; OVERBY, L. Marvin —
This study identifies the key factors in [US] Senate retirement decisions. With a less demanding election schedule, greater power afforded to individual senators, more prestige attached to the office, and fewer attractive options for progressive ambition, we find that Senate retirement decisions differ substantially from patterns observed in the House. Among other things, the partisan retirement differential that is so obvious and persistent in the House (with Republican MCs retiring at higher rates than Democrats) is markedly absent in the Senate. We explore this and other inter-chamber differences, discussing both their empirical and normative ramifications, and noting their importance for our understanding not only of the two chambers but also of the two parties. [R]
67.4320 MATHEW, Nicole Asmussen; KUNZ, Mathew —
Candidate selection is an important avenue for parties to influence elections, yet political scientists know little about which candidates are recruited to run and groomed to win. We hypothesize that parties focus their pre-general election activities on ideologically compatible candidates with high qualifications in competitive districts, but opt for more moderate candidates in districts with weak party support. We exploit a unique data source: FEC records indicating which candidates received instructional audiotapes from GOPAC, a political organization run by future House Speaker N. Gingrich. Using these tapes as indicators of recruitment and grooming, we find that the party behaved pragmatically, recruiting conservatives in Republican districts, but setting aside ideological considerations elsewhere. [R, abr.]
67.4321 McCARGO, Duncan; ALEXANDER, Saowanee T.; DESATOVA, Petra —
Thailand's August 2016 constitutional referendum marked the second occasion on which a military junta has sought popular endorsement to legitimize its efforts to reform the country's political system. As in the previous referendum of August 2007, Thai voters endorsed military plans to reduce levels of democracy. Draconian moves by the regime curtailed open debate about the content of the draft constitution, which virtually nobody had read. The draft charter was still opposed by almost 40% of voters, testifying to continuing high levels of political polarization along regional lines. This article argues that the referendum process may have helped the military to impose order on Thai society during the difficult period of royal transition, but did not create any genuine peace between the country's fractious competing groups and interests. [R, abr.]
67.4322 McDONNELL, Robert Myles —
As the popularity of formal analyses of legislative activity in Latin America grows, so does the importance of understanding the limits of the estimates produced by such analyses and the methodological adaptations necessary when using these measures to make formal comparisons. This research note details the considerations involved and demonstrates their significance with an empirical example using the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. This empirical analysis leads to conclusions that are the opposite of those in the literature, suggesting that such formal comparisons across institutions need to be made with care. [R]
67.4323 McGAUVRAN, Ronald J.; ESHBAUGH-SOHA, Matthew —
In his work, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership [Washington, 1987], S. Kernell argued that changes in the congressional bargaining environment incentivized an increase in presidential speeches. Although subsequent research rejected that these changes increased speeches, Congress continues to evolve, having become more centralized and unified (by political party) since the 1970s. This article revisits the changing congressional environment to assess what impact it has had on presidential speechmaking. If greater centralization and party unity are to affect speechmaking, they should decrease it, but only under unified government. We find that although congressional centralization, which should promote more bargaining between presidents and legislators, decreases speeches, the impact is not conditional on unified government. We conclude that the president's electoral not policy goals are the primary motivation for presidential speechmaking. [R, abr.]
67.4324 MICHAEL, Kobi —
Despite the vast resources poured by the international community into the construction of Palestinian institutions, the PA has failed to build and maintain the infrastructures required for the establishment of a vital, democratic and functioning state. By most common parameters, the PA is a failed entity. Taking into account this experience and the consequences of the last six years of Arab upheavals, characterized by the increasing phenomenon of failed states, there is a need for a paradigm shift that will increase the likelihood of a functioning Palestinian state after a peace agreement with Israel is signed and reduce the risk of its being a failed state that would pose a complex, dangerous challenge for Israel and the neighboring Arab states. [R]
67.4325 MOURITZEN, Hans —
In a multipolar world with weak institutions, and where the alternative can be chaos and war, Finlandization is better than its reputation. [R]
67.4326 NCHOUWAT, Amadou —
In the absence of a uniform legal perception of terrorism, the qualification of a group, an individual or an act as terrorist is the function of national legislation and, in some cases, speaks of the discretion or the arbitrariness of governments. The constitutional state still remains the only framework to fight against this global phenomenon, which presents a problem since terrorism as a phenomenon and the mechanism of the constitutional state seem to move along lines that are diametrically opposed: whereas the curve of terrorism is rising, that of the constitutional state reflects the decline of the constitutional state. Is there a link between these two dynamic processes? Is terrorism's dangerous expansion also the consequence of states’ violations of the requirements of the constitutional state? [R]
67.4327 NEIHEISEL, Jacob R.; DJUPE, Paul A. —
The Madisonian formulation suggests that (religious) pluralism is linked to moderate representation when filtered through republican selection. We leverage the quasi-experiment afforded by the ratification of the 17th Amendment to explore whether religious diversity shapes how senators vote. The shift from indirect to direct elections, coupled with roll-call and religious Census data, allows us to test hypotheses derived from differing conceptions of pluralism and the literature on constituency effects in Congress. We find that religious diversity is linked to ideological moderation, but that link weakens considerably in the immediate aftermath of the amendment's passage. [R]
67.4328 NERON, Pierre-Yves —
In his recent work, Cass Sunstein has tried to respond to some of the criticism of his and Richard Thaler's notion of nudges and what they claim to be a new philosophy of public policies: libertarian paternalism. Sunstein argues that conceiving of public policies in terms of nudges allows to push the classical analysis of market failures to a higher level. Sunstein's theory points in the direction of significant weaknesses in the way nudges are conceptualized. It also demonstrates that there is major disarray in the way debates on nudges are being conducted. Debates on nudges and above all on the lessons that can be learned from research in behavioral economics should go in other, more fertile directions. [See Abstr. 67.4711]
67.4329 NEWBERG, Paula R. —
Preventing and responding to terror are both essential for Pakistan's survival; this has been increasingly clear with each passing decade since the 1980s. Any decisions taken in this realm therefore have far-reaching consequences for policy and politics, as it does in other states where the law of emergencies is a frequent political agenda item. In this instance, Parliament took a step that in effect separates what it means to protect the state from what it means to protect its citizens. More generally, the amendment raised two questions that have troubled Pakistan since its first efforts at constitution drafting in the 1950s: What does it mean to be governed by a Constitution? And how important are rights protections in Pakistan's understanding of constitutionalism?
67.4330 NICLAUSS, Karlheinz —
The result of the forthcoming federal elections in Germany might be a Bundestag consisting of six parliamentary parties. In this case creating a majority government will pose a challenge because the prolongation of the governing grand coalition is little appreciated by political parties and by the media. A government including at least two of the minor parties would be marked by diverging views on vital policy issues. A conceivable way out could be the formation of a minority government, which so far has been a taboo in Germany, at least at the federal level. Minority governments, however, are normal in Scandinavian democracies for instance. But would a minority government be in accordance with the German Basic Law? And would it be able to work durably as well as effectively? [R]
67.4331 NORTON, Philip —
The UK Parliament in recent decades has seen significant structural and behavioral changes that have rendered it more effective in carrying out its core functions than at any time in modern political history. These changes have not impacted greatly on public perceptions of Parliament and its members. Parliament and parliamentarians have been the source of declining satisfaction. The public have been more influenced by their perceptions of parliamentarians’ behavior than a results-based performance. Parliamentarians have not recognized the source of the dissatisfaction and have no clear institutional mechanism for responding to it. There is no one authoritative figure who can speak for Parliament. To combat public perceptions requires a proactive and collective response on the part of members of both Houses. [R]
67.4332 PINFARI, Marco —
This article presents and analyzes the “Obama supports terrorism” campaign, which was launched in Egypt in late June 2013 and was instrumental to the framing of some Islamist groups as terrorist both before and after the 3 July 2013 coup. The analysis of the visual material of the campaign highlights its reliance on various Western discourses from the War on Terror, including some whose religious and racial content is an odd fit for a non-Western, Muslim country like Egypt. Yet, despite the lack of a clear and unified causal narrative to justify such framing, the success of the campaign was crucially aided by the symbolic and rhetorical power its slogan, which provided a credible “schema of interpretation” for its supporters. [R]
67.4333 Podger, Andrew, ed. —
Editor's introduction. Articles by XIAO Hanyu, “Public financial management and the campaign against extravagant position-related consumption in China”, pp. 546-563; ZHAO Zaozao, “Why local governments need performance evaluation: intermediary institutions in the performance-based budgeting process in China”, pp. 564-573; NIU Meili, “Adoption or implementation: performance measurement in the city of Guangzhou's department of education”, pp. 574-590; ZHANG Ping, et al., “Education outlay, fiscal transfer, and inter-region funding equity: a county-level analysis of education finance in China”, pp. 591-610.
67.4334 PRITONI, Andrea —
This article analyzes the legislative productivity of 112 parliamentary governments in 12 Western European democracies (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and UK) from 1990 to 2013. My independent variable is an index offering an immediate picture of the decision-making potential of parliamentary governments, while the dependent variable is the “detailed” legislative production of those governments. If we are able to differentiate between governments who decide, and governments who do not, we could answer a considerable number of interesting questions: which Western European parliamentary democracies tend to produce more (detailed) laws and which — on the contrary — are used to facing greater difficulties for achieving that goal? What are the reasons behind these opposing trends? [R, abr.]
67.4335 PROVINI, Olivier; SCHLIMMER, Sina —
Since the 1970s, Tanzania has been the biggest recipient of development assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Numerous authors and development experts have dealt with this empirical evidence and have shaped Tanzania as a donor darling. However, these research studies lack an analysis of the impact of this specific political economy on the policy process. Undertaking a comparative analysis of two policy fields (higher education and land policies), this paper grasps the effects of transnational stakeholder networks on policy-making. We argue that the state actors are generally bypassed in the process of creating higher education (privatization of public universities) and land (land grabbing) policies. However, our empirical results show that policies are negotiated by a variety of public and non-public stakeholders and shaped by its historical path. [R, abr.]
67.4336 PRYOR, Tom —
I develop a new measure of interpersonal influence on the US Supreme Court. Following M. F. Altfeld and H. J. Spaeth [“Measuring influence on the US Supreme Court”, Jurimetrics, 24: 236-247, 1984], I define influence as “the act of producing an effect on the behavior of another without the use of coercion, authority, or political control”. I propose a measure of influence based on the number of times a justice cites her colleagues’ concurring and dissenting opinions. First, I verify that this citation-based measure is a valid method of gauging influence. From there, I use this measure to help explain justice behavior in two pivotal stages of the Supreme Court's decision-making process: oral arguments and opinion assignments. A citation-based measure of influence can help explain and predict behavior on the Supreme Court. [R, abr.]
67.4337 PULJEK-SHANK, Randall —
Neopatrimonialism has explanatory power regarding the limitations of post-war democratization because it considers the combination of formally-democratic institutions together with power relations based on patronage. Neopatrimonialism does not however explain why marginalized groups make political claims in such inhospitable climates, nor have their experiences of governance processes been adequately explored. This paper addresses this gap based on empirical research in Bosnia-Herzegovina, applying a framework of civic agency to elaborate the goals and capacities of civil society actors. Under what conditions can civic agency foster inclusive governance outcomes? The research found that perceptions of limited and ambiguous outcomes from engagement in governance processes encourage civil society organizations to have incrementalist goals and limit self-perceptions of capacity. Inclusive outcomes were nonetheless more likely with persistent intentions and actions. [R, abr.]
67.4338 RAIMUNDO, Filipa —
This article analyzes the behavior of parliamentary parties during the decision-making process on how to deal with the authoritarian past in Portugal from 1976 to 2015. The goal is to examine the importance of the left-right cleavage vis-à-vis other factors explored in the literature. Through this study we aim to understand the extent to which party ideology explains the initiative and the support given to transitional justice initiatives in Parliament. The main conclusion is that ideology on its own does not explain party behavior and that other factors such as the government/opposition cleavage and the legacies of the transition help explain the observed patterns. [R]
67.4339 RAUH, Jonathan —
Ethics commissions address policies that are external to the policymaker, the enforcement of which may be damaging to the policy-maker. Given this potential for harm it is likely that delegation to commissions is transactional with elected officials controlling autonomy based on a set of specific goals. The author tests this argument by examining how executive and legislative control of a commission's autonomy impacts the effectiveness of a commission's oversight. Findings suggest that elected officials attempt to influence commissions in a strategic manner based upon whether they want to direct attention away from themselves or toward the other branch of government. [R]
67.4340 RAYNAUD, Philippe —
Si la réforme de 1962 concernant l'élection au suffrage universel du chef de l'État a paru consacrer le lien direct entre ce dernier et le peuple, la nécessité de s'appuyer sur un grand parti pour être élu et pouvoir gouverner a conduit au déclin de la république mi-plébiscitaire, mi- parlementaire des premières années, et l'échec du référendum de 1969 en a marqué le terme. L'alternance politique de 1981 et la pratique présidentielle de F. Mitterrand conforme à l'esprit des institutions vont conduire à un large consensus autour de la Ve République. Mais, depuis le début des années 2000, elle est en butte à la défiance accrue des citoyens. [R, abr.]
67.4341 REFKI, Dina, et al. —
Previous literature on women's representation in the Ugandan Parliament painted a grim picture of women exploited by political leaders, and brought into Parliament and other political spaces by a benevolent dictator who allowed their entry to extend and deepen his political networks. These women were expected to accept a subordinate and inferior place, and to defer to male authority. Studies noted that women lacked gender consciousness and even the analytical power to understand the implications of the policies they helped pass. There was a general consensus that patriarchal attitudes in Parliament diminished women's influence and undermined their political efficacy. This paper analyzes gender relations, and examines the status of female members through their words, actions and behaviors in the Ugandan Parliament. [R, abr.]
67.4342 REN Jiantao —
Fukuyama tried to expound political development in contemporary China and justify its universal effectiveness, with the interpretation mode of modern political order supported by the state, rule of law and accountability. It is appropriate to describe, analyze and conclude that current political development in China is under the circumstance of a powerful state, weak rule of law, and soft accountability. However, because of the absence of the premise of interpretation, it is doubted that Fukuyama's interpretation mode of modern political order, which is supported by three pillars, is universally effective. It remains unsolved that the standard of defining modern state is much vaguer rather than clearer, the course of China's development is more unpredictable rather than more explicit, and that the construction of modern political order is more evasive rather than more certain. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4284]
67.4343 SADRAN, Pierre —
Héritière, sur ce point, de la monarchie, la république a très longtemps travaillé au renforcement et au maintien d'un État centralisé. A partir de la fin des années 1960, la nécessité d'une politique de décentralisation s'est imposée aux gouvernants qu'ils soient de droite ou de gauche. La décennie 1980 marque le début d'impulsions décisives à cet égard, chacune des grandes avancées réalisées étant marquée par un fort pragmatisme. L'auteur souligne combien cette oeuvre décentralisatrice reste fidèle au modèle républicain, qu'il s'agisse de l'indivisibilité du territoire ou de la forme même que revêtiront les nouveaux pouvoirs locaux. Mais cela n'a pas empêché la prise en compte des différences territoriales, ni chez les élus locaux l'appropriation d'une gouvernance à l'échelle des collectivités. [R]
67.4344 SALTER, Alexander William —
Political bargaining among political elites often creates tensions that cause informal decision-making norms to break away from their original constitutional moorings. Government fiscal crises are an illuminating example of this dysfunctional dynamic. [R]
67.4345 SCHLAEGER, Jesper; WANG Qian —
This paper examines the role of e-monitoring in anti-corruption in China. Previous research has described different administrative monitoring systems, but so far these empirical accounts lack a comprehensive theoretical framework. This paper applies institutional theory to explain how e-monitoring has become an important part of a strategy to lead China towards higher quality of government. The study in turn examines the actors, ideas, technologies, and institutionalization of e-monitoring. It finds that e-monitoring has become pervasive in anti-corruption efforts, enhancing transparency of government work processes by a combination of top-down and bottom-up instruments. It is, however, uncertain whether e-monitoring will lead to higher quality of government in China, because this depends on the timing of corruption campaigns as well. [R, abr.]
67.4346 SØYLAND, Martin G. —
The field of ministerial durability, showing why some ministers are dismissed and others not, has increased in size over the last decade. Specifically, linking ministerial performance through resignation calls with durability has been applied to both majoritarian and semi-presidential systems, whereas this link is less explored in consensual electoral systems. This study explores the relationship between ministerial performance and durability in postwar Norway, drawing on the principal- agent theory for parliamentary democracies and the accountability link between party leaders and ministers. The main finding is that there are many similarities to other studies’ ministerial durability and performance. By measuring performance in resignation calls coming through the media, it is found that ministerial durability is decreased when performance is low. [R, abr.]
67.4347 TANG Liang —
This article takes economic modernization and political democratization as the end goals of national modernization, and it regards the configuration of political and economic institutions as the institutional framework for achieving those goals. The first section puts forward a brief analysis of the characteristics of the three main models, namely, the Western model, the socialist model and the authoritarian developmentalism, in order to lay a useful analytical foundation for subsequent discussion of the China model. The second section defines the China model as a kind of authoritarian developmentalism. It analyzes its characteristics or effectiveness by comparing with other authoritarian developmentalism. The third section looks at the challenges and prospects of the China model from the developmental perspective. [R] [See Abstr. 67.4396]
67.4348 TAYLOR, Andrew J. —
Congress and the Presidency 44(1), Jan.-Apr. 2017: 102-119.
This article tests competing theories of legislators’ understanding of electoral accountability by examining which members of the House of Representatives convey their legislative records to the public most frequently. Using data derived from lawmakers’ descriptions of their floor votes and other legislative activity in more than 50,000 press releases issued during 2010 and 2012, I detect some behavior consistent with representatives’ beliefs that voters assess their policy positions without a party frame. Members whose record is incongruous with their constituents’ policy preferences tend to avoid mentions of their personal legislative behavior, for example. The article provides strong evidence that members subscribe to a partisan model and particularly a version in which voters care appreciably more about the actions of the majority than the minority. [R]
67.4349 THORLAKSON, Lori —
This article identifies the limits and possibilities of the federal comparison for the EU party system. Can the literatures on parties and party systems in multi-level systems deliver more insights to the analysis of the developing life of parties and party competition in the EU? What are the most productive dialogs between scholars of federal and multilevel parties and scholars of European Union parties? It argues that the study of representation in the EU involves two key multi-level challenges: vote choice in a multi-level setting and party system development through upward aggregation. Drawing more closely from the comparative federalism literature can provide analytical leverage for both issues. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5004]
67.4350 TODD, Jennifer —
Parliamentary Affairs 70(2), Apr. 2017: 301-321.
This article argues that the root of recent crises and political stalemate in Northern Ireland lies in a constitutional failure. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 played an innovative constitutional role in Northern Ireland, and this was central to peace and stability. Yet, its own principles were underspecified and disputed. Strong convergent action by the British and Irish states functioned as an informal mode of constitutional adjudication and it stabilized the settlement. It failed, however, to emphasize constitutional principles or to embed them within the politics of Northern Ireland. British and Irish interests and capacities have changed and with them also the role the states play in Northern Ireland; the result from 2012 has been recurrent political crisis. If the informal British-Irish approach cannot be sustained, the likely alternative carries still greater dangers to stability. [R, abr.]
67.4351 TOIT, Fanie du —
To help explain public sentiment about reconciliation among contemporary South Africans, two major issues are discussed. The first is how reconciliation was articulated and “performed” by key leaders during the early transition. The second relates to factors shaping South Africans’ current perceptions of reconciliation. By recalling significant statements made by political leaders, and outlining the roles of the National Peace Accord and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I show that reconciliation was initially accepted by South Africans when it was defined as an acceptance of their interdependence, and was seen as being based on a commitment to justice and inclusivity. The postapartheid leadership was mandated to build on these commitments. However, the government's failure to pay reparations, combined with state corruption and denial from the white community, have created increasing disillusionment with reconciliation. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4315]
67.4352 TORNEY, Diarmuid —
Ireland's national climate law, the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act, was enacted in December 2015. It forms part of a broader trend of countries enacting overarching national framework climate change legislation, with the UK Climate Change Act of 2008 considered to be the pioneering legislation. This article seeks to answer two questions. First, to what extent did Irish policy-makers and other stakeholders draw explicitly on the example of the UK Climate Change Act in developing the Irish climate law? Second, to what extent was the development of the climate law in Ireland characterized by convergence towards the UK Climate Change Act, and how can we explain the observed level of convergence? Using a framework drawn from policy diffusion studies, the article argues that the development of Irish climate legislation can be characterized as partial policy diffusion from UK. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4312]
67.4353 TÜRK, Pauline —
Dans une démocratie, le degré de considération dont bénéficient les parlementaires constitue assurément un indicateur majeur de sa bonne marche. Au cours des dernières années, plusieurs lois ont ainsi cherché à renforcer la confiance des électeurs dans leurs représentants par des mesures touchant à la transparence financière, aux conditions d'exercice du travail parlementaire, à une meilleure adéquation entre les élus et les citoyens. Et la révision constitutionnelle de 2008, quant à elle, avait pour but de revaloriser le rôle du Parlement en renforçant ses pouvoirs vis-à- vis du gouvernement et en améliorant la qualité de la loi. Nonobstant la persistance de certaines faiblesses, l'auteure observe que de réels progrès ont été accomplis à cet égard. En revanche, elle dresse un bilan négatif de la fonction de contrôle et d'évaluation du Parlement. [R]
67.4354 UGYEL Lhawang; O'FLYNN, Janine —
There has been resurgence in evaluation of policy, reflected mostly by an increase in ex ante studies. Although there is a shift towards ex post evaluation, this has been gradual, resulting in a paucity of ex post evaluation literature. To address this gap, we apply a revisionist approach to evaluate a major public sector reform in the Bhutanese civil service. We conclude that it provides a more holistic approach for ex post evaluation policy, and also a more nuanced evaluation which moves us beyond the narrow binary view of success or failure in reform. [R]
67.4355 VEENENDAAL, Wouter —
While all neo-institutional approaches to varying degrees of success aim to explain institutional persistence, none of them offers clear-cut explanations for the persistence of institutions that have become completely undesirable. The present article aims to analyze how such cases of institutional “lock-in” can be explained. It does so by means of a case study of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The analysis reveals that the survival of the Kingdom can be seen as an instance of extreme path- dependence, but also that rationalist notions of Pareto optimality and veto-players can contribute to explaining the persistence of this institution. The analysis reveals that the unique political structure of the Kingdom, constituting a hybrid between a federal and a unitary state, has prevented any attempts to reform the institutional structure. [R, abr.]
67.4356 WEST, William F. —
Scholars have paid little attention to the operation and effectiveness of offices, councils, committees, task forces, and the like within the Executive Office of the president. This neglect may be understandable given the opacity within the White House. Yet it is also unfortunate given the popular view of executive centralization as a counterpoise to a fragmented bureaucracy and given that “supervised collaboration” is the primary mechanism through which presidents can seek to coordinate policy implementation. With this in mind, the following study examines integrates the management of America's oceans and coasts under the past two administrations. Limited progress in this area to date speaks to institutional incentives and constraints that should temper the enthusiasm of those who look to the presidency as a source of administrative coordination. [R, abr.]
67.4357 WHITE, Stuart —
There is growing interest in the UK in holding a constitutional convention (CC) to deliberate possible reforms to the political system. What form should a CC take? Having identified a range of possible models, we examine their merits according to stated normative criteria, focusing specifically on (1) how CC membership is determined, (2) whether a CC should have agenda-setting power and (3) whether it should have power to send proposals to binding referendum. We find good reasons to support a “citizen majority” membership (chosen in a near-random fashion from the general public), agenda-setting power and referendum power. However, none of these features is likely to be the most appropriate in all contexts. [R, abr.]
67.4358 WILLUMSEN, David M.; GOETZ, Klaus H. —
The decision of parliamentarians to retire potentially gives rise to a “last period problem”: the desire for re-election and political advancement, generally regarded as strongly influential on their behavior, no longer motivates their parliamentary actions. We analyze the behavior of retiring British MPs in terms of attendance at votes, rates of rebellion, and the signing of Early Day Motions (EDMs) and the effects of the timing of their retirement announcement. MPs reduce their attendance rate at floor votes in their final term, but do not alter their behavior as regards the signing of EDMs or voting the party line. This suggests the presence of parliamentary motivations other than those generally highlighted. [R]
67.4359 WU Jiannan; HOU Yilin; MA Liang —
This article examines the rise of the field of Public Administration (PA) in China from 1978 to 2006. It first identifies several major driving forces behind the creation of the field in the country's reform context for a preliminary analysis; then examines some problems that have emerged from the quick expansion of the field, especially Master of Public Administration programs; finally offers suggestions for the field's further development. This article contributes to the literature by dissecting the China case in developing PA in a reforming country. [R]
67.4360 XU Ping —
By using American state-level data from 1999 to 2008, this article explores how the recent immigrant influx has influenced public welfare spending in the American states. By integrating the race/ethnicity and globalization compensation theory, I hypothesize that immigration will increase welfare spending in states with a bleak job market and exclusive state immigrant welfare policy; in contrast, immigration will decrease welfare spending in states with a good job market and inclusive state immigrant welfare policy. Empirical tests show evidence for both hypotheses, suggesting that the applicability of general political science theories depends on a combination of state policy and economic contexts. [R]
67.4361 YU Keping —
This article examines the current institutions, structure, function, and features of the CCP's cadre education and training system, with particular analysis of its significance and implication to improve the quality of CCP's cadres at different levels and to increase the CCP's capacity to govern the country. This article argues that as the sole ruling party controlling all core political power in China, the CCP's quality and capacity directly determine whether China's state governance is strong or weak, and good or bad. Accordingly, the CCP's cadre education and training system is one part of the national governance system. On the one hand, in order to modernize the national governance system, it is necessary to modernize the CCP's cadre education and training system. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4396]
67.4362 YU Jianxing; WANG Shizong —
The rise of governance theory produces a discernible impact on politicaladministrative research and public administration practices in China. The introduction of such concepts as the state governance system and social governance indicates that governance has even become an official discourse in China. Since the inception of governance theory in China, a series of disputes have emerged in terms of the logical relationship between governance and good governance and the applicability of governance theory in China. Although these disputes exert a marginal effect on research on Chinese governance, a core issue regarding applicability reappears — tension between state-building and governance — amid the present-day conflict between state governance and social governance, as well as, the current contention between official discourse and academic discourse. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4396]
67.4363 ZAHARIADIS, Nikolaos —
Under what conditions do governments choose hard or soft bargaining strategies in intergovernmental negotiations? Applying a bargaining power model in two-level games, I explore the factors that explain Greek strategy in bailout negotiations during the period 2010-2015. Governments with fewer power resources, worse best alternative to negotiated agreement and fewer domestic constraints are more likely to follow a soft bargaining strategy. But the choice of strategy is as much the result of structural features of bargaining power as it is of ideology and the perception of success (or failure) in iterative bargaining rounds. The findings have implications for bargaining power models and EU bailout negotiations. [R]
67.4364 ŽELEZNIK, Ana —
This article [examines] public policy towards “the Erased” implementation problems in Slovenia, where the former Yugoslav population was removed from the Register of Permanent Residence by national authorities. We focus on the implementation of two constitutional rulings during the period from 1999 to 2012 in the context of multi-level policymaking and policy networks. With the analytical framework applied in a two-level analysis, we analyze how these mezzo- (the relations between policy actors) and macro-level (the structural strength of the state and social political groups in parliament) variables influence policy outcomes and in particular ineffective implementation. The results reveal a gap between two different decision-making processes: what political actors wanted to do, and what they were obliged to do according to constitutional demands. [R, abr.]
67.4365 ZHANG Xiaoming; CAO Zhenghan —
How to control local officials is a basic concern among the state governance issues. This problem contains two reciprocally restricted dimensions: how to keep the officials loyal to central authority and accountable to citizens. Election recognized as a powerful method to control local officials has been deployed by many authoritarian governments. Especially, the party-state of China has implemented grassroots election for decades, which attracts a great deal of academic attention. Our field work and research find that compared with the election manipulation in the early stage, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been pushing forward the institutionalization of grassroots election. This paper demonstrates how the tension between loyalty and accountability structures the strategic transformation of grassroots control in China. [R, abr.]
67.4366
Articles by Dmitrij KAPITELMAN, Rainer HOFMANN, Sonja WOLF, Jannis PANAGIOTIDIS, Haci-Halil USLUCAN, Gerard VOLKMER.
67.4367
Les 23 avril et 7 mai 2017, les Français éliront pour la dixième fois consécutive le président de la République. Il s'agira de désigner le titulaire du onzième mandat présidentiel depuis l'instauration de la Ve République en 1958. L'élection du chef de l'Etat au suffrage universel est devenu le rendez-vous électoral majeur de notre vie politique en même temps que le “marqueur” par excellence de nos institutions. Mais quels sont les pouvoirs du Président? Quelle est sa place au sein de nos institutions? Détenteur de nombreuses prérogatives, peut-il pour autant être toujours qualifié de “monarque républicain”? [R]
(b) State, regional and local institutions/Institutions locales et régionales
67.4368 AHLERS, Anna L.; HEBERER, Thomas; SCHUBERT, Gunter —
This article describes China's reorganization of its local governance system since the early 2000s. Policy shifts, administrative restructuring and intensified public inclusion have considerably modified local governance, especially in the country's vast rural areas and, we argue, have laid the groundwork for continuous and more effective policy- implementation amidst increasing complexity and challenges. Based on years of fieldwork on new rural development policies, urbanization programs and private sector development in China, we briefly describe the most important developments in local governance, especially at the county level and below. We then trace the reconfigured characteristics of internal governmental procedures of policy adjustment and implementation. We find new types of external stakeholder inclusion, which we analyze based on the example of local government interactions with private entrepreneurs in promoting development blueprints and strengthening public goods provision. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4396]
67.4369 ANZIA, Sarah F.; MOE, Terry M. —
For decades, America's state and local governments have promised their workers increasingly generous pensions but failed to fully fund them, producing a fiscal problem of staggering proportions. We examine the politics of public pensions. While mainstream theoretical ideas in the American politics literature would suggest the pension issue should be polarized, with Democrats pushing for generous pensions over Republican resistance, we develop an argument implying that both parties should be expected to support generous pensions during normal times and that only after the onset of the Great Recession, which expanded the scope of conflict, should the parties begin to diverge. Using a new data-set of state legislators’ votes on hundreds of pension bills passed between 1999 and 2011, we carry out an empirical analysis that supports these expectations. [R]
67.4370 ARTIOLI, Francesca —
This article examines how the local interests constrain the policies of State retrenchment that suppress both public activities and investments in territories. Facing a risk of policy failure due to the multiple oppositions to base closures, the Ministry of Defense develops a policy of blame- avoidance and compensation. It seeks to anticipate the mobilization from locally elected officials, while at the same time mitigating the negative effects of base closures on local development. This territorial politics of State retrenchment is explained, on the one hand, by elected officials holding both local and national offices and, on the other hand, by national policies of spatial planning. Both of them are integrating institutions that structure the politics of territorial retrenchment in France. [R, abr.]
67.4371 ČERMÁK, Petr —
The paper presents findings from the research on the intensity and quality of local inter-ethnic relations in the sample of five ethnically mixed Bosniak-Croat-Serb municipalities in the Western Balkans region which were hit by the ethnic conflict in the 1990s. In each municipality, potential territorial, ideological and socio-economic cleavages are investigated. Directions of the identified cleavages are compared with the ethnic cleavage. Depending on the cross-cutting or reinforcing character of the recorded cleavages in relation to the ethnic structure, it is assessed how much of internal cohesion has been achieved among once belligerent ethnic groups in these unique micro-regions. [R, abr.]
67.4372 CONNOLLY, Jennifer M. —
A majority of US municipalities now operate under the council-manager form of government, an institutional design that creates a principal-agent problem as the elected council and appointed manager have divergent incentives. Although current scholarship on the council-manager relationship focuses on ex post municipal-level outcomes, this study advances the literature by developing a theory of ex ante contracting between principal and agent at the local level. The theory predicts that increasingly constraining political environments are associated with a greater degree of contractually provided employment protection for incoming city managers. Using unique data on California municipalities and their managers, empirical analysis supports the theory's predictions. [R, abr.]
67.4373 COPUS, Colin; STEYVERS, Kristof, eds. —
First article by the editors of the same title, pp. 1-18, following by the articles of PARK Jongsun and OH Youngmin, “The impact of different public contracting management models on the inputs and outcomes of local public services”, pp. 19-41; Andrés NAVARRO-GALERA, _et al._, “Do political factors affect the risk of local government default? Recent evidence from Spain”, pp. 43-66; Michal PLAČEK, “The effects of decentralization on efficiency in public procurement: empirical evidence for the Czech Republic”, pp. 67-92; Želimir KEŠETOVIĆ, Predrag MARIĆ and Vladimir NINKOVLĆ, “Crisis communication of local authorities in emergency situations — communicating ‘May floods’ in the Republic of Serbia”, pp. 93-109; Daphne VANLEENE, Joris VOETS and Bram VERSCHUERE, “Co-Producing a nicer neighbourhood: why do people participate in local community development projects?”, pp. 111-132; Sandro FUCHS, Andreas BERGMANN and Isabel BRUSCA, “Using financial reporting for decision making as a measure towards resilient government finances: the case of Switzerland”, pp. 133-153.
67.4374 DREW, Joseph; GRANT, Bligh —
Politicians often use “independent experts” to avoid blame for contentious public policy. The use of multiple agents, however, has attracted relatively little attention. We extend the blame-avoidance literature to identify additional opportunities and risks that arise when multiple agents are used to support/oppose particular public policies. We then test our propositions using evidence from recent local government reforms in New South Wales. The picture which emerges is largely one of confusion whereby independent agents provide contradictory opinions, attempt to shift blame to one another, and dispute interpretations of earlier advice. We conclude our analysis with a discussion of the salient factors for successful pursuit of the multiple-agent variant of the blame games. [R]
67.4375 ELOLA, Aitziber, et al. —
This paper contributes to the study of the role of public policies in the origins and evolution of clusters. Building on the existing literature, we set up a taxonomy of nine public policies that may have an impact on the emergence and evolution of clusters. Based on in-depth case studies of six clusters of the Basque Country, we analyze the relevance of the different types of policies both in the emergence and evolution of clusters over time. The paper concludes that public policies seem to have played only an indirect role across clusters and over their life cycles. Moreover, it points to the necessity of taking history and context into account. [R, abr.]
67.4376 FARRIS, Emily M.; HOLMAN, Mirya R. —
Immigration enforcement and policy-making has increasingly devolved to the local level in the US. American sheriffs present a unique opportunity to evaluate decisions made about immigration policies in the local context. In dealing with immigration concerns in their counties, sheriffs act both within the confines of federal and state mandates and as local policymakers. However, little research comprehensively assesses the role sheriffs play in immigration policy making. Using data from an original, national survey of more than five hundred elected sheriffs in the US, we provide a broad account of sheriffs’ roles in immigration enforcement and policy making. Our research demonstrates that sheriffs’ ideology and personal characteristics shape their personal attitudes about immigrants. In turn, these attitudes play a key role in influencing local enforcement decisions. [R, abr.]
67.4377 FONG, Brian —
On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the handover, Hong Kong's transition towards a full democracy remains unsettled. Drawing upon the contemporary theories of hybrid regimes, this article argues that manipulations adopted by electoral authoritarian governments have become increasingly common in Hong Kong today. As Hong Kong's elections, opposition activities, and media have been increasingly put under electoral authoritarian-style manipulations, the city-state is now situated in the “political grey zone” in-between liberal authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism and its transition into a full democracy remains nowhere in sight. The case study of Hong Kong will help enrich the existing comparative literature on hybrid regimes by developing a new “in-between category” and offering an interesting case of democratization of sub-national polity. [R]
67.4378 FRED, Mats; HALL, Patrik —
Over the last couple of decades an increasing use of temporary organizations has been observed in public administration, a development sometimes referred to as a projectification. This article explores the political-administrative rationality of projectification by studying the initiation and implementation of a project funding system regarding social investments in a Swedish municipality. It argues that projectification is driven by the administrative leadership with the aid of devoted civil servants. Projects are also attractive to politicians because of the temporal, forward-looking character of politics itself, i.e., that time conception of projects management and politics is basically similar. The article shows that the critique against projectification in terms of increasing short-termism is somewhat beside the point, since politicians and top managers rather seem interested to introduce more short- termism in public administration. [R, abr.]
67.4379 GARGIULO, Enrico —
This article explores residency, a form of municipal membership that plays a strategic role in Italy. Residency is a formal status and a means to have access to rights. Therefore, it is a sort of local citizenship that, at least in part, equalizes citizens and non-citizens. Due to its strategic role, many local authorities have paid serious attention to it recently. Municipalities have illegally tightened the requirements provided for by national laws for obtaining the status of resident or introduced new requirements. Stressing the different mechanisms of exclusion from residency, this article explains that they often work as administrative borders. [R, abr.]
67.4380 GRASLAND, Claude, et al. —
France and Tunisia have experienced in 2014-2016 an important revision of their administrative organization. France has divided by almost two the number of its administrative regions and Tunisia has planned the creation of a new regional level based on the aggregation of the existing units. New names, new borders, new administrative center… These transformations concern not only spatial planners and policy-makers. They are also enhanced in the perception of territories by their inhabitants. And, it is therefore of utmost importance to catch the perception of regional divisions by people before, during and after the transformations. Our research focus on preliminary survey realized on samples of undergraduate students of geography in France and Tunisia. [R, abr.]
67.4381 GUAN Ting; DELMAN, Jørgen —
This study probes into climate policy design at city level in China, with Hangzhou's energy efficiency and renewable energy policies between 2005 and 2014 as a case. The study applies a political action arena approach to accentuate the importance of different normative preferences behind climate change policies in relation to Hangzhou's emerging urban climate governance regime. Three main categories of policy instruments are identified: command-and-control, market-based, and collaborative governance instruments, and their development over time is examined. It is concluded that in Hangzhou energy efficiency is a more mature and comprehensive political action arena than renewable energy. The study also finds that there has been a significant shift away from preferences towards command-and-control to more market-based instruments, while cooperative governance instruments are still in their infancy. [R, abr.]
67.4382 HARGUINDEGUY, Jean-Baptiste; COLE, Alistair —
Despite harsh criticisms, Spanish provincial governments
67.4383 HOLM, Andrej; LEBUHN, Henrik —
Urban sociologists note an increasing social polarization within cities. The effects of neoliberal urban policies are often described as processes of segregation, emergence of dual cities and lacking social mix at the neighborhood level. In response, many cities have developed “area- based policies” presumed able to counteract the local dynamics of fragmentation. This article investigates the Berlin program Socially Integrative City asking whether such policies incorporate the demands of urban social movements that mobilize against neoliberal policies. The Socially Integrative City emphasizes the production of social cohesion and integration and shared local identities. In contrast, we suggest urban sociology and urban policies should focus on political conflict, social movements and extra-institutional impetus in order to address urban fragmentation and polarization. [R]
67.4384 HOPPER, JoyAnna S. —
In 15 American states, environmental protection agencies perform both pollution-control and natural resource conservation functions. I examine how this combination of functions affects the regulatory style embraced by these agencies. I find, through interviews with environmental agency workers and empirical analyses using enforcement data from 2010 to 2014, that the cooperation and flexibility with industry inherent to natural resource conservation efforts is a fundamental part of the regulatory process within these combined agencies. Great efforts are made to garner voluntary or negotiated compliance without the possible economic consequences of punitive actions. Enforcements are less frequent and less severe. The effect of this agency design choice is powerful, maintaining its effect even when controlling for political, ideological, and economical pressures. [R, abr.]
67.4385 HSU, S. Philip —
This article explores how the party-state in China copes with grassroots self-government
67.4386 IACOVINO, Nicola Mario; BARSANTI, Sara; CINQUINI, Lino
This paper analyzes the presence of different managerial approaches in a public organization, the Tuscany Region of Italy. In particular, it highlights the phenomenon of the plurality of frameworks working in the organization, namely Old Public Administration (OPA), New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance (PG). The transformation and coexistence of the above-mentioned models is tested with a contentanalysis based on the perspectives of policy-makers and top-level managers expressed in interviews and on the context of administration planning and control systems found in documents. Each managerial logic has a different relevance in the organization. [R]
67.4387 JELLOUL, Mourad Ben —
The revolution of 14 January 2011 was triggered in the most undeveloped areas of Tunisia and stems inter alia from the regional disparities and territorial imbalance. The new political context in Tunisia has enabled an awareness of regional developmental issues and territorial governance, which explains the importance of regional issues in the new Constitution. Thus the regional element starts to become the first level of administrative hierarchy, above the governorate. The regionalization model as proposed by different studies is based on the principle of separation by more equitably reorganizing the territory. This paves the way for new territorial governance where the governmental institutions no longer have the monopoly of a public move, which emanates today from numerous protagonists as a response to the social project we [examine]. [R]
67.4388 KETTUNEN, Pekka —
The article discusses the concepts of centralization and decentralization in theory. There are various criteria that can be used to assess the advantages and disadvantages of decentralization, and the paper discusses these. In addition, empirical examples are presented. Next the article moves on to a case study of Finland. Finland has strong municipalities in the comparative European aspect, but there are problems, too. There are plenty of small municipalities, which cannot carry all the responsibility by themselves; hence the national government would like to see more amalgamations. The final section discusses in more general terms how local autonomy can be combined with coordination, and which new options there are. [R] [See Abstr. 67.4795]
67.4389 KOVÁCS, Ilona Pálné, et al. —
The paper analyzes, from a political science perspective, the main factors and circumstances of the process of territorial governance reform attempts before 2010, and the turning point after starting a strongly centralized model. The focus of the research was not so much on the objectives of the reforms, but rather on the context and the actors of the reform processes. It was presumed that the defeat of decentralization could be explained by the weakness of the actors to preserve the formerly strong positions of local governments. The research hypothesized that, following the transition years, the gradually fading enthusiasm of parliamentary and party-political elites contributed to the failures of correctional reforms and to the limitation of institutional guarantees for safeguarding the interests of local governments. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4795]
67.4390 LIN Xuefei; XU Xianglin —
In the governance system under China's unitary administration model, local governments not only have to undertake the overall administration responsibility for the regional development and stability, but also have to accept the professional and functional supervision of various departments of the central government. This compartmentalized management system creates an objective structural constraint on the system innovation of local governments. In a governmental administrative system where the two contrasting logical notions of hierarchical authority (known as a “kuai”) and administration based on function (known as a “tiao”) are combined, the biggest obstacle to the system innovation in local governance is protecting the interests of various internal departments under the “dual leadership’. [R, abr.]
67.4391 MONGY, Aymeric —
This research spreads knowledge methods and recipes of the New Public Management label. The renewal of local staff would be an ideal vehicle for local governments to convert to the manager rationality. This work is a localized analysis of generational struggles between the various components of administrative elites within a regional Council. It describes the dynamics of circulation of this new version of the “self-interest of State”. Indeed, public servants are opposed. However, the institutional framework where they struggle has a strong executive. In this context, the relationship with managerial knowledge seems less related to the profile officials as structural logic of politics. [R]
67.4392 NEUMEIER, Christian; WALDHOFF, Christian —
Under current law, there is no legal basis to reclaim financial subsidies provided to parliamentary parties of the German Bundestag if they have been used improperly and contrary to their statutory purpose. The article analyzes the statutory regime for the financing of parliamentary parties and finds that it provides no specific legal claim to that effect. It argues that general administrative legal mechanisms to reclaim such funds are inapplicable since a legal claim against parliamentary parties for repayment of misused public funds is subject to an explicit provision by parliament. While this requirement follows from the principle of parliamentary autonomy (the right of parliament to regulate its own affairs), it also reflects the normative characteristics of controlling public financing of politics. [R, abr.]
67.4393 NYHAN, Brendan —
When political scandals erupt in the press, we usually blame misconduct by public officials, but these episodes are political events whose occurrence and severity also depend in part on the political and media context. Using data on US governors, I show that several key factors affect the likelihood and intensity that alleged misconduct will be politicized by the opposition and publicized by the press. First, lower approval ratings, which decrease the cost of politicizing and publicizing an allegation, are generally associated with more frequent and intense media scandals. By contrast, competing news events can crowd potential scandals off the news agenda. However, no evidence is found that opposition control of state political institutions leads to more media scandal. [R, abr.]
67.4394 OULASVIRTA, Lasse; ANTTIROIKO, Ari-Veikko —
In the aftermath of large company failures in the early 2000s, there emerged a new wave of efforts to enhance risk management (RM) and control in enterprises. The normative RM model has been promoted widely to all organizations, including public sector organizations. This article describes and explains the diffusion and adoption of RM innovation in local government in Finland. Our survey results support the argument that if comprehensive RM is not obligatory, it is not widely used in local government. Our analysis reveals that financial constraints explain to some extent the existence of comprehensive RM in municipalities, while structural factors such as the size of municipalities do not, even though RM is slightly more advanced in larger rather than smaller local governments. Slow adoption indicates that comprehensive RM as a managerial innovation lacks immediate benefit when assessed against the efforts and costs of its introduction and maintenance. [R, abr.]
67.4395 PEZZOLA, Anthony —
In the absence of enforcement mechanisms, it is unclear how legislators can cooperate over time to protect the diverse interests of the diverse subnational interests of small provinces. Using Argentina as a case study, this research argues that the economic geography of a country and the need to maintain inter-party cohesion directly influences the ability of legislators to advance diverse subnational interests. Since the mid-1990s, a small group of Argentine legislators has protected sugar producers by forming coalitions to override two presidential vetoes under institutional characteristics unfavorable to intertemporal cooperation. This research demonstrates that territorial patterns of economic production and the need for political parties to maintain internal cohesion has played a critical role in allowing the formation of the super majorities necessary to protect varied subnational interests across time. [R] [See Abstr. 67.4286]
67.4396 SAICH, Tony —
The article uses a unique set of survey data from 2003 to 2014 to evaluate how Chinese citizens perceive the performance of their local officials. The findings confirm the view that Chinese citizens “disaggregate” the state with satisfaction dropping as government gets closer to the people. Officials are seen to have become more competent and friendly in their dealings with citizens. Satisfaction tends to be higher with the provision of those public goods that the old planning system was good at delivering and are more concerned about the household-based challenges that the reforms have brought. Environmental worries have risen and citizens feel that progress has been made in the fight against corruption but this may have created a more critical view of local officials. [R, abr.] [First article of a thematic issue on “The study of Chinese governance: present, past and future”. See also Abstr. 67.4263, 4290, 4347, 4361, 4362, 4368, 4406, 4407, 5042]
67.4397 SANDFORD, Mark —
Initial analyses of the “devolution deals” that form the cornerstone of current efforts to devolve power within England assess the policy against conventional governance criteria: accountability, transparency, and the quality of governance systems. In fact, English devolution policy has little connection with territorial governance. Instead, it closely resembles a contractual process, with central government determining the terms on which it will outsource specified programs and projects to local governments, complete with requirements for “business readiness”, implementation plans, evaluation requirements, and future joint working. Accountability, governance and even geography take second place to the aim of improving central policy outcomes via a contract-style relationship. This perspective is styled “post-territorial devolution”. [R, abr.]
67.4398 SHON Jongmin —
The reliance on sales taxation has increased in both states and counties. This study aggregated county-level data and empirically explored the associations between state-local sales taxes and economic activity by industry types in county governments for the period of 1990-2013. The results revealed negative associations of sales tax rates with economic activity, especially in the manufacturing industry. Further, the findings provided the spatial dependence of economic activity across counties as a form of possible spillover. This study suggests that policymakers should pay attention to how the manufacturing and retail industries respond to any changes in sales tax rates for business activity. [R]
67.4399 SPICER, Zachary —
Municipal governments are increasingly showing interest in intermunicipal cooperation. Often overlooked in the discussion of such collaborative relationships are concerns related to accountability and transparency. We introduce a framework to measure accountability and transparency in inter-local relationships and test it with a brief case study of inter-municipal cooperative agreements collected from the Greater Toronto [Canada] Area. Overall, the agreements collected score very low on our accountability scale, mainly because of low levels of public access and poor internal accountability. We conclude the study by examining the challenges of having multiple lines of accountability in local service collaboration. [R]
67.4400 STEEN, Anton —
Refugee settlement is regularly contested among local governments in Norway who have full autonomy to accept or reject the state's request that they receive a certain number of refugees. The author studies how local administrative and political processes may account for the responses of 14 cities — seven receptive and seven restrictive — in multi-level governance settings. Are the decisions to accept or reject the state's petition driven by the city administrations or by political parties in the city council? And how may local issue framing explain the outcomes? The data indicate that the administrative framing of refugee settlement is paramount for activating certain political patterns, and for instigating a majority in favor of the administrative motion. [R, abr.] [Part of a series of a thematic issue on “Refugee migration and local demarcations: new insight into European localities”, edited and introduced, pp. 429-439 by Birgit GLORIUS and Jeroen DOOMERNIK]
67.4401 SULLIVAN, Esther —
This article examines housing insecurity within manufactured housing. A large portion of manufactured housing is installed in mobile home parks, which can legally close at any time, displacing entire communities. Based on two years living within and being evicted from closing mobile home parks in two states, this comparative ethnography of mass eviction juxtaposes sites of distinctive state practices for managing the forced relocation of park residents. I analyze the experience of eviction in Florida, in light of the experience in Texas. I describe the paradoxical effects of Florida's protective, yet market-oriented, state housing interventions, which produced both a cottage industry of mobile home relocation services and a more protracted, pernicious eviction for displaced residents. [R, abr.]
67.4402 TAKAO, Yasuo —
This article examines the determinants of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) policy adoption in Shibuya, one of the twenty-three city wards of Tokyo, by taking an actor-specific approach to the first case of officially recognized same-sex partnership in Japan. How did the sexual minority issue become the subject of official agendas? How did actors both inside and outside the municipal government seize agenda-setting opportunities for government action? The results indicate that key policy makers’ entrepreneurship played a primary role in the official recognition of same-sex partnership by linking policy solutions with agenda-setting opportunities. [R, abr.]
67.4403 TAO, Jill L. —
This paper examines disparities between unitary central governments and local governments in how environmental policy is defined and implemented at the local level. This is done within the context of Northeast Asia, where results can often differ from expectations driven by traditional models of local government behavior offered by the West. A theoretical measure for policy distance between the central government and its subsidiaries is constructed and then operationalized in a comparative context within northeastern China and the Republic of Korea. Using local and national budget data from 23 cities with histories of environmental issues (13 in northeast China and 10 in South Korea), the author's measure of policy distance between the center and the periphery is tested. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4795]
67.4404 TURKI, Sami Yassine; GANA, Alia —
Promoting local governance and strengthening territorial collectivities are among the major institutional reforms initiated in “post-revolutionary” Tunisia. This article explores the stakes and implications of the extension of the municipal status to rural areas. After having characterized the territorial division system and its underlying logics, we examine their consequences with regard to the relationships between the different scales of the territorial organization. In light of current dynamics that characterize rural areas, we highlight the complexity and the practical difficulties that the project of extension of the municipal organization to the whole country is likely to be faced with. [R, abr.]
67.4405 VALL-PRAT, Pau; RODON, Toni —
This article explores under what conditions regional governments tend to have larger or smaller cabinets. The main contention is that crossregional variation in cabinet size is partly explained by the dynamics set up by the multilevel system of government, mainly territorial decentralization, multilevel government (in)congruence or the existence of nationally distinct regions. The hypotheses are tested with a new and original dataset built upon the Spanish case (1979-2015). Findings show that regions with more welfare state policies, especially when the region's economic capacity is high, and nationally distinct regions tend to have bigger executives. In contrast, decentralization in the form of basic state functions and government incongruence do not have a significant effect. [R, abr.]
67.4406 XU Yong —
The author believes that the intrinsic value of autonomy and villager autonomy dictates that villager autonomy will continuously open up a road for itself in practice. Also villager autonomy needs to realize its value in effective forms. Since the 1980s, there have been three stages in the forms of villager autonomy: (1) self-generated and voluntary villager autonomy based on natural villages with its main contribution of “three selfs” (self-management, self-education and self-service); (2) standard and regulated villager autonomy on the basis of administrative villages with its main contribution of “four democratics” (democratic election, democratic decision making, democratic management and democratic supervision); and (3) internally generated and externally coordinated villager autonomy below administrative villages with its main contribution of efforts to explore different effective forms of autonomy. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4396]
67.4407 ZHANG Jing —
This article discusses the financial behavior of local governments and its political consequences in China. According to surveys conducted from 2006 to 2011, the author points out a trend: local governments have increasing awareness over the control of their “financial assets”, they have increasing motives to pursue rewards, play active roles as investors expanding to broader economic realms, and market principles have been fully legitimized among official institutions and organizations within the system. With the strengthening awareness in the ownership and handling of political assets, the financial capacity of local governments — the ability to allocate resources and the ability to return incentives — have increased. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.4396]
67.4408 ZHU Ling —
I explore the determinants of frontline service organizations’ support for and implementation of social policy reforms in the context of the US national health care reform. Ascribing to theories of inter-organizational collaboration, I argue that local service organizations, as the frontline agents of policy changes, develop their policy preferences and implementation activities in accordance with the collaborative networks, in which they situated. Network participation reduces uncertainty about the new political environment and motivates organizations to join the reform coalition. Using a sample of near 1,000 American hospitals, I offer the first systematic study of hospital chief administrators’ support for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), as well as their hospitals’ preparation for and compliance with the ACA. [R, abr.]