Abstract
(a) Central Institutions /Institutions Centrales
67.5414 ALDRICH, John H.; THOMSEN, Danielle M. —
This article examines why some state legislators run for [US] Congress and others do not. Our main argument is that there are differences in the expected value of a state legislative seat and the expected benefits of being a member of Congress. One key component of this value is how closely the candidate fits with her party. We find that the probability of seeking congressional office increases among state legislators who are distant from the state party and proximate to the congressional party and decreases among those who are distant from the congressional party and proximate to the state party. [R]
67.5415 AMIRKHANYAN, Anna A.; MEIER, Kenneth J.; O'TOOLE, Laurence J., Jr. —
This article investigates how the understanding of and attitudes toward government regulation among public, nonprofit, and for-profit managers affect organizational performance, using US nursing homes as the empirical setting. Findings suggest that managers’ perceptions of regulation legitimacy positively affect service quality. Subgroup analysis suggests that managers’ views of regulation matter in nonprofit and for-profit organizations but not in public organizations. In nonprofit homes, performance declines when managers report higher regulatory expertise. In for-profit facilities, frequent communication with regulators lowers quality. These findings suggest that the regulated entities’ views of government regulation are central to their success, which necessitates improvements in the regulatory process. [R, abr.]
67.5416 ANTIĆ GABER, Milica; SELIŠNIK, Irena —
After the first multi-party election in the Slovene National Assembly the share of women MPs dropped dramatically and did not substantially change during the following two decades. This led to a debate among feminist activists and scholars and left-oriented female politicians regarding the absence of effective measures to improve the situation. The voluntary quotas adopted by center and left-wing parties did not yield visible progress on the presence of women in important political bodies, as these parties’ gatekeepers did not fully respect their own rules when composing candidate lists. It was only when legal quotas were introduced that significant changes occurred in the share of women at the highest levels of Slovene politics. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5704]
67.5417 ANTWI-BOASIAKO, Kwame Badu —
The enforcement of affirmative action programs such as quotas has not only generated endless debate in many countries but has also encountered resistance from those, usually conservatives, who question the fairness of such a program or policy. Brazil and the US are two of the destinations for enslaved people of African descent who were, on their arrival to their new countries, treated as second-class citizens and had to endure institutional, political, and legalized structural racism and discrimination in high education. This paper provides some of the definitions of affirmative action found in the literature and discusses the struggles of the Brazilian government is using to addressing past discrimination in university admissions. [R, abr.]
67.5418 ARENDS, Helge —
Decentralization is considered a panacea for deficient public-sector performance by many. However, recent trends of health sector recentralization in several OECD countries suggest the opposite. Taking on a cross-country perspective, I examine two hypotheses, namely that decentralization leads to an increase in public health spending (H1) and to poor health sector outcomes (H2). The evidence I present suggests that decentralizing spending tends to lead to larger public health sectors and to poorer health sector outcomes. However, decentralizing tax authority has no effect on the size of the health sector and may actually have a positive effect on health sector performance. The broader lesson is that sector-specific insights can reveal a more nuanced view on the consequences of fiscal decentralization. [R, abr.]
67.5419 ARNOLD, Christian; DOYLE, David; WIESEHOMEIER, Nina —
Presidents play a central role in legislative activity in Latin America. Previous research highlights that some form of ideological compromise on behalf of the president is vital to sustain successful legislative coalitions. Yet, primarily due to the lack of a firm empirical basis on which to measure such presidential give-and-take, the extent to which presidents make use of such policy compromise, and under what conditions this is a viable strategy, remains unknown. Applying quantitative text-analysis to 305 annual “state of the union” addresses of 73 presidents in 13 Latin American countries, we provide comparable time-series data for Latin American presidential movements in a one-dimensional issue-space between 1980 and 2014. [R, abr.]
67.5420 ASKIM, Jostein; KARLSEN, Rune; KOLLTVEIT, Kristoffer —
Political appointees in executive government have received increased scholarly attention in recent years. However, few studies have covered non-Westminster systems, and apart from classifications that systemize variation in assignments, theorizing about appointees has been limited. Using large-N survey data, the article finds three distinct roles among political appointees in Norway: “stand in”, “media adviser” and “political coordinator”. The article then combines insights from research on political appointees with insights from core executive studies (CES) to explain why political appointees perform one role or another. The empirical results support the notion that roles of appointees within the core executive depend on where they sit, supporting the asymmetric power model within CES. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5468]
67.5421 AZPITARTE SÁNCHEZ, Miguel —
This paper starts from the new political texture built after the December elections of 2015, where a bipartisan system was replace by a multiparty system. From this premise, the essay analyzes the efforts to establish the new rules of the political praxis. Therefore, it takes account of the fail attempt to base a “majority of wide spectrum” or a “cross government”, and finishes on the process that took M. Rajoy to a minority government. The last point goes through the different constitutional conceptions planned on the investiture and the control of government. [R]
67.5422 BARNSLEY, Kathryn; WALTERS, E. Haydn; WOODBAKER, Richard —
Tasmania led in several areas of tobacco-control legislation reform in the period 1997 to 2010. Despite this, Tasmania lagged in other crucial areas, particularly the allocation of resources for community education, mass media campaigns and cessation programs. Key impediments were crony capitalism; the conservative ideology of “white male” politicians; cognitive dissonance of smoking politicians; a lack of perception of priority regarding the scientific research evidence about smoking risk; and delays caused by the tobacco industry. This study analyzes the political situation in Tasmania and argues that evidence-based progress on tobacco-control resource-allocation was not established until 2013. [R]
67.5423 BECKMANN, Matthew N.; CHATURVEDI, Neilan S.; GARCIA, Jennifer Rosa —
Lyndon Johnson woke up studying whip counts, went to bed reading the Congressional Record, and invested countless hours in between translating that political intelligence into a lobbying offensive. The result, famously christened “The Johnson Treatment”, remains the archetype practitioners and political scientists cite when appraising presidential leadership on Capitol Hill. Yet Beltway folklore aside, we know little about how LBJ helped forge winning legislative coalitions. Stepping back from the (countless) colorful anecdotes, this study offers a new and systematic look at Johnson's lobbying. Specifically, after exploring theoretical models of presidential coalition-building, we then investigate their operational tenets using original data on all President Johnson's contacts, with each member of Congress, in both chambers, for every day he was president. [R]
67.5424 BEIM, Deborah —
I argue the [US] Supreme Court learns to craft legal rules by relying on the Courts of Appeals as laboratories of law, observing their decisions and reviewing those that best inform legal development. I develop a model that shows how the Supreme Court leverages multiple Courts of Appeals decisions to identify which will be most informative to review, and what decision to make upon review. Because an unbiased judge makes an extreme decision only when there is an imbalance in the parties’ evidence, the Supreme Court is able to draw inferences from cases it chooses not to review. The results shed light on how hierarchy eases the inherent difficulty and uncertainty of crafting law and on how the Supreme Court learns to create doctrine. [R]
67.5425 BHATTACHARYYA, Harihar; SUAN HAUSING, Kham Khan; MUKHERJEE, Jhumpa —
This article critically examines territorial strategies adopted by the Indian state to accommodate territorially concentrated minority groups in two very recent cases: the formation of Telangana (2014) and the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) (2003). We situate both cases within the broader context of linguistic state reorganization in India since the 1950s. We argue that while the formation of states on the basis of linguistic principle was necessary given the long history of demand for linguistic states in India, it is, as Telangana and BTC clearly bear out, not sufficient to accommodate minorities. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5521]
67.5426 BLANCO VALDÉS, Roberto Luis —
The changes that have taken place in the Spanish party system after both legislative elections celebrated in 2015 have modified the functioning of the Spanish parliamentary system. This work analyzes those changes and its consequences in the governability area and proposes a reform on the election system of the prime minister established in the Spanish Constitution. [R]
67.5427 BOATENG, Oheneba A. —
Based on empirical evidence from a donor-funded project in Ghana, this article demonstrates that when development implementation is depoliti-cized, targets will likely be achieved within budget and on time. Funded and supervised by the Millennium Challenge Corporation of the US, Ghana Compact I has been recommended as a model for future development implementation. This article explains this success, compared to select social programs. It argues that Compact I was implemented successfully because it was insulated from political interference, and suggests that donor-induced depoliticization offers a route to successful development implementation in recipient countries. [R]
67.5428 BÖLLER, Florian; SIEWERT, Markus B. —
Comparing Trump's achievements in his first hundred days with those of his predecessors, the picture regarding the realm of domestic policies looks ambivalent. [His] political agenda has seen failures (e.g., executive orders stopped by court ruling on immigration, a failed attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare), but also some successes, such as the nomination of Neil Gorsuch for the [US] Supreme Court. In all this, the structural constraints of separated institutions sharing powers are clearly visible. The hyperpolarization of parties in Congress is just one element. Moreover, Trump's use of unilateral tools fits into the general trend of presidents trying to increase their political leverage over the last decades. Uncommon are new communication strategies to present “alternative facts. [R, abr.]
67.5429 BURNS, Sarah —
The author challenges the concept that presidential overreach has eroded the separation of powers in the realm of warfare. She argues that rather than causing the erosion, [US] presidents have responded to Congress's reluctance to deliberate about military affairs. They have relied increasingly on questionable legal justifications from executive branch lawyers. [R]
67.5430 CARAYANNOPOULOS, George —
The frequency and severity of natural disasters has placed a clear emphasis on the role of governments in responding to these crises. During the past decade, disaster events have had a significant impact on the relevant communities as well as raising questions regarding the role of government and the bureaucratic coordination of planning and response processes. These events have placed a renewed focus on the ability of governments to plan, prepare, and respond in an effective way to crises. They have also tended to indicate that there remain serious challenges to government coordination and that crises create a unique series of challenges for the public sector. At the heart of understanding how governments respond to crises are notions of bureaucratic coordination. [R, abr.]
67.5431 CARRILLO, Marc —
The delimitation of the powers of the transitional government has a great constitutional relevance. It is a typical institution in parliamentary forms of government in circumstances of political crisis. It finds its foundation in the principle of responsibility of the institutions and in the principle of continuity of the State. The power of co-decision of Spain in the institutions of the EU requires that the criteria of urgency and guarantee of general interest that are applied at the state level also extend to the European sphere. [R]
67.5432 CHRISTENSON, Dino P.; KRINER, Douglas L.; REEVES, Andrew —
Previous scholarship argues that [US] House members’ partisan relationship to the president is among the most important determinants of the share of federal dollars they bring home to their constituents. Do presidential politics also shape distributive outcomes in the Senate? Analyzing the allocation of more than $8.5 trillion of federal grants across the states from 1984 to 2008, we show that presidential copartisan senators are more successful than opposition party members in securing federal dollars for their home states. Moreover, presidents appear to target grants ex post to states that gain presidential copartisans in recent elections. [R]
67.5433 CHRISTIE, Tamoya A. L.; RIOJA, Felix K. —
Government spending on public infrastructure, education, and health care can increase economic growth. However, the appropriate financing depends on a country's fiscal position. We develop a two-sector endogenous growth model to explore how variations in the composition and financing of government expenditures affect economic growth. We find that, when tax rates are moderate, funding public investment by raising taxes may increase long-run growth. If existing tax rates are high, public investment is only growth enhancing if funded by restructuring the composition of overall public spending. Additionally, public investment that is debt financed can have adverse effects on long-run growth due to the resulting increases in interest rates and debt-servicing costs. [R]
67.5434 CHRISTOPOULOS, Dimitris —
The article discusses an important reform of the Greek Citizenship Code, starting from the initial introduction of the Citizenship Law in 2010, the public debate and reactions that followed leading to its partial annulation as unconstitutional in 2012, and finally, the developments until its restoration with a new law in 2016. This initiative introducing radical reforms for the Greek context took place in the midst of the public debt crisis, and thus has not been discussed accordingly. Until then, the issue of Greek nationality represented a non-issue in the political agenda of the country. The paper examines how such a reform is pushed forward during extremely difficult conditions, an unprecedented economic and political crisis, coupled by the largest refugee wave in the recent history of the country, having still an uncertain future/outcome. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.6372]
67.5435 CLARKE, Andrew J.; JENKINS, Jeffery A.; LOWANDE, Kenneth S. —
While a number of studies have examined the politics of tariff decision-making in the US, little work has examined the subsequent political effects of tariff policy. We analyze — both theoretically and empirically — the electoral implications of tariff revision. Specifically, we investigate the veracity of the Cannon Thesis — the proposition advanced by Speaker Joe Cannon in 1910 that the majority party in the US House was punished when it made major revisions to the tariff. We find that from 1877 to 1934 major tariff revisions were, on average, associated with a significant loss of votes for majority-party members — both regionally and nationally — that translated into a loss of House seats. Our results provide a new explanation for the delegation of tariff policymaking to the executive branch. [R, abr.]
67.5436 COINTE, Béatrice —
To illuminate the changes triggered by renewable energy policy, the evolution of solar photovoltaic policy in France is analyzed with a focus on its central instrument, feed-in tariffs (FITs). FITs for photovoltaics raised difficulties in many countries, but their effects were particularly dramatic in France. Market sociology and science and technology studies are employed to describe FITs as agencements organizing the markets and politics of electricity production. FITs are considered as inherently unpredictable insofar as they encourage innovation and the emergence of new actors. The ways in which three successive agencements of FITs for photovoltaics framed the politics and economy of photovoltaics in France, and how they addressed unanticipated effects, are discussed. This is suggestive of transformations and tensions in the construction of French energy policy. [R, abr.]
67.5437 CONTEH, Felix Marco —
The politics of decentralization reforms in Sierra Leone are unpredictable and instructive. This article, based on fieldwork, analyzes party politics within the context of decentralization, arguing that the imperatives of post-conflict decentralization are not necessarily embedded in technical considerations, but in processes of political compromise and accommodation. Decentralization has helped facilitate the re-emergence of the old political order, in that the country's main political parties have secured a consensus through which they have reconfigured the post-conflict state on their own terms. This study reveals that the narrative of a “divide” within the political class is exaggerated, and illustrates the homogeneity and interconnectedness of its interests. The extent to which the “peace” will be sustained by this compromise is uncertain. [R, abr.]
67.5438 CORMAC, Rory —
The UK has long engaged in covert action. Owing to the secrecy involved, however, such activity has consistently been excluded from debates about Britain's global role, foreign and security policy and military planning: an important lacuna given the controversy, risk, appeal and frequency of covert action. Examining when, how and why covert action is used, this article argues that contemporary covert action has emerged from, and is shaped by, a specific context. First, a gap exists between Britain's perceived global responsibilities and its actual capabilities; policy elites see covert action as able to resolve, or at least conceal, this. Second, intelligence agencies can shape events proactively, especially at the tactical level, while flexible preventative operations are deemed well suited to the range of fluid threats currently faced. Third, existing Whitehall machinery makes covert action viable. [R, abr.]
67.5439 CRABTREE, Charles; NELSON, Michael J. —
Does increased judicial independence lead to increased state respect for empowerment rights? Initial research on this topic suggested an affirmative answer, but new data call this into question. We use new measures and modeling approaches to re-examine the effect of de facto judicial independence on state respect for empowerment rights. Empowerment rights include the rights to electoral self-determination, domestic movement, foreign movement, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and assembly and association. These rights are vital to democratic governance. They affect citizens’ fundamental relationships with their government: the ability of citizens to criticize the government, the ability to live according to their belief systems, and their ability to seek refuge from repressive governmental actions. Our analysis reveals a positive, and robust, association between de facto judicial independence and state respect for these rights. [R, abr.]
67.5440 CRAFT, Jonathan —
Empirical examinations of partisan advisers detail significant differences in their policy work, influence, and their patterns of interactions with other policy actors. This raises important implications for their potential contributions to policy failure avoidance. Using recent qualitative data from elite interviews in Canada, this study finds that advisers’ policy work contributes to political policy failure avoidance as policy is developed. The findings help unpack the types and nature of policy-based resource exchanges that advisers undertake, through advisory and non-advisory forms of policy work, that strengthen political control and manage policy perceptions by other actors during policy development. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5468]
67.5441 CROSBIE, Thomas; SASS, Jensen —
This article examines the relationship between scandal and democracy through the case of sexual assault within the US military. Scandal may have a positive dimension in forcing tainted institutions to correct their course. We examine how the US military responded to news reports of sexual assault over a period of nearly four decades. During the first three decades of this period, news reports of sexual assault were widespread but largely ignored by military leaders. During the last decade, however, the fact that sexual assault was endemic but largely ignored by the armed forces triggered a scandal, one senior military figures were forced to address. In light of this case, the article concludes that scandal can function as a mechanism of democratic governance, where it compels social and ethical norms to be properly enforced. [R, abr.]
67.5442 DEMAJ, Labinot —
Studies on the influence of performance information on budgeting decisions have produced contradictory findings. This article offers a framework of the parliamentary context that links performance information to legislators’ budgeting decisions. The framework suggests that the impact on politicians’ allocations will differ depending on whether performance information is reflected in the budget proposal, whether the allocation issue concerns a politically difficult trade-off for the decision-maker, and whether information falls into a receptive partisan mind. The experimental study uses 57 actual legislators. The results show that the introduction of performance information into legislators’ deliberation process leads to stronger deviations from the status quo allocation. This difference occurs because performance information highlights more clearly the expected consequences of budgetary changes and allows for more pronounced reactions. [R, abr.] [See “Performance information impact of legislators: a blessing or otherwise?”, commentary by Michel HUISSOUD, pp. 379–380]
67.5443 DESHPANDE, Rajeshwari; KAILASH, K. K.; TILLIN, Louise —
This article examines the role of India's states in shaping the implementation and framing of social policy within India's federal system. Since the 2000s, the central government has overseen a substantial expansion of social welfare policies. Yet, it is India's states that are responsible for both an increasing proportion of total public expenditure on social welfare provision as well as determining the nature and effectiveness of that provision across space. Drawing on a comparative research program across pairs of Indian states, three critical factors explaining how statelevel political environments shape social policy are identified: the role of policy legacies in shaping policy frames; the role of social coalitions underpinning political party competition; and the role of political leaders in strengthening state capacity to achieve program goals. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5521]
67.5444 DOBBINS, Michael —
This article comparatively examines the higher education reform pathways of France and Italy. Using a scheme of empirical indicators, I focus on the divergent and convergent developments in these two countries, which played a pioneering role in the Europeanization of higher education. While France has consistently moved closer to a market-oriented model, legacies of academic self-rule were initially strengthened in Italy, before recent reforms aimed to crack down on academic power abuses. To explain these policy pathways, I pursue a dual theoretical argument by linking institutional isomorphism with historical institutionalism. [R]
67.5445 DOBBINS, Michael —
English version: see Abstr. 67.5444
67.5446 EISING, Rainer; SPOHR, Florian —
The article examines the impact of organized interests on the passage of legislation in the German Bundestag through an empirical analysis of the position papers presented in the public hearings of its standing committees in 2011. We employ GLM regression analyses to study if interest groups act as change agents that bring legislation closer to their own policy preferences. We discuss two major findings that shed light on the role of interest groups in legislation. First, business groups’ opposition to government bills triggers legislative changes because their members control the means of production and make investment decisions. In contrast, fundamental opposition of non-business groups has no impact. Second, bills debated and opposed by a greater number of interest groups undergo more changes. [R, abr.]
67.5447 ENDO, Chikako; LIM, Sang Hun —
This paper considers the implications for social rights when welfare provision is devolved from the state to the social economy. We bring together the idea of social rights as claims that entail institutionalized public duties, and that of the social economy as an institution for welfare provision based on voluntary, associational principles. After clarifying the tensions in rights provision within an associational framework, we argue that future research should consider how social economy organizations may shoulder collective duties independently, or how they could enhance social rights within the paradigm of the welfare state. [R]
67.5448 ESCRIBA-FOLCH, Abel; KRCMARIC, Daniel —
Exile has been the second most common fate for dictators who lost office since World War II, yet scholars know little about this phenomenon. We ask: where do exiled dictators go? We argue that three sets of factors — transnational ties, geographic proximity, and monadic characteristics of potential host states — influence where dictators flee. For evidence, we use original data on exile destinations to construct a directed dyadic data set of all autocratic rulers who fled abroad upon their ouster. We find that dictators are more likely to go into exile in states that are close neighbors, have hosted other dictators in the past, are militarily powerful, and possess colonial links, formal alliances, and economic ties. By contrast, fleeing dictators tend to avoid democratic states and countries experiencing civil conflict. [R, abr.]
67.5449 FARUKSHIN, M. Kh. —
The article analyzes institutional foundations of ethnic federations. Special attention is paid to consideration of the two key problems: instrumental role of such federations and political representation of ethnic groups, including ethnic minorities. Ethnic federations can play positive role and at the same time don't exclude the risk of destabilization and separatism. From the positive side, these federations provide for ethnic groups an opportunity for realization of their right for self-determination up to creation of their own state or political autonomy within the framework of a single state. Ethnic federations also broaden the opportunities for protection of culture, language, traditions and identity of ethnic minorities. Political representation of ethnic groups has both moral and political meaning. The author shows different means for providing political representation: proportionality, parity, quota, reserving, etc. [R, abr.]
67.5450 FERREYRA, Gabriel —
This article sheds light on the problem of judicial corruption in Mexico in the federal judicial system. Using ethnographic methods, the author interviewed forty-five individuals who were working for or studying the federal courtrooms in six different cities in Mexico. Challenging conventional assumptions of judicial corruption in Mexico, this research reveals that the federal judiciary is not as corrupt as thought by Mexican and American societies. Corruption does exist, but it is not frequent, and extensive and court employees categorize the problem in multifaceted ways, always emphasizing the legal aspect. Issues such as nepotism, cronyism, and influence peddling, although present, are not always defined as corruption. [R, abr.]
67.5451 FESSHA, Yonatan Tesfaye —
Territorial autonomy for ethnic groups is an important component of Ethiopian federalism designed to deal with the challenges of ethnic diversity. The constitutional decision to use ethnicity as a basis for the organization of the state represents a recognition of the political relevance of ethnicity. However, the decision that each major ethnic group should be dominant in one and only subnational unit has elevated ethnic identity to a primary political identity. This approach overlooks other historically and politically relevant territorial identities. The constitution thus misses an opportunity to respond to ethnic concerns without freezing ethnicity as an exclusive political identity. [R] [See Abstr. 67.6257]
67.5452 FISEHA, Assefa —
Ethiopia has empowered its second chamber (the House of Federation — HoF) to interpret the constitution and resolve constitutional disputes. This article analyzes whether a majoritarian institution such as the HoF can serve as effective mechanisms for the resolution of constitutional disputes. While the HoF has played some role in resolving cases of high political significance such as rights realizing local self-rule, it has of late tilted the federal balance in favor of the center. The fact that the HoF remained a political organ controlled by the same dominant party meant that constitutionally entrenched civil and political rights remain without a guardian. [R] [See Abstr. 67.6257]
67.5453 FOWLER, Linda L.; MARSHALL, Bryan W. —
This paper employs new measures of positive agenda control and a unique data-set of 3,407 nontrivial bills from 1981 to 2008 to answer two questions: how did legislative leaders construct veto-proof coalitions, and what did presidents do with them? Legislative leaders, we argue, deployed procedures to expand and sustain veto-proof coalitions, despite increasing polarization. The resulting history, which signaled members’ commitment to a bill, provided information to the president that reduced uncertainty about possibilities for interbranch bargaining and the likely success of a veto. We find that positive agenda control increased the probability of vote tallies of two-thirds or more, especially after the 1994 election. The analysis suggests that congressional leaders paradoxically gained capacity for nurturing large, bipartisan alliances as the institution became more polarized. [R, abr.]
67.5454 FU, Diana —
How does an authoritarian state govern contentious civil society and what are the effects on grassroots mobilization? This article theorizes the relationship between repression and mobilization by examining the case of informal labor organizations in South China that threaten social stability. Findings based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork inside these organizations suggest that the central state's mandate to maintain social stability is refracted through the interests and capabilities of local agencies. This results in “fragmented control”: divergent, even conflicting, forms of state governance over civil society. Local authorities work at cross-purposes by simultaneously repressing, co-opting, and neglecting underground organizing. Fragmented control generates political uncertainty on the part of activists and induces them to engage in “censored entrepreneurialism”. [R]
67.5455 GALLEGO, Aina; MARX, Paul —
Labor market policies are multi-dimensional: their design depends on factors such as generosity, coverage, the combination of active and passive elements, and overall cost. Political conflict on one dimension often hides agreement on others, and social groups possibly care about different aspects of policies. However, most empirical studies treat policy preferences as unidimensional. This article utilizes a novel experimental conjoint design to assess how five dimensions affect support for labor market policies in Spain. It also assesses if individuals’ self-interest and ideology affect the importance of each dimension for support for a policy. We find that individuals’ support depends mostly on the generosity of policies for the most destitute and on funding. We also find that ideology shapes which dimensions of policy citizens care most about, but economic self-interest does not. [R, abr.]
67.5456 GALLEGO, Aina; MARX, Paul —
Labor market policies are multi-dimensional: their design depends on factors such as generosity, coverage, the combination of active and passive elements, and overall cost. Political conflict on one dimension often hides agreement on others, and social groups possibly care about different aspects of policies. However, most empirical studies treat policy preferences as unidimensional. This article utilizes a novel experimental conjoint design to assess how five dimensions affect support for labor market policies in Spain. It also assesses if individuals’ self-interest and ideology affect the importance of each dimension for support for a policy. We find that individuals’ support depends mostly on the generosity of policies for the most destitute and on funding. We also find that ideology shapes which dimensions of policy citizens care most about, but economic self-interest does not. [R, abr.]
67.5457 GALLINAT, Anselma —
The East German past has been the focus of much debate and scholarly work in Germany since unification in 1990. The government-sponsored discourse on this past, Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, the “re-working of the past”, presents the GDR as the “SED-dictatorship”. In constructing the East German past as part of Germany's dictatorial past the discourse of Aufarbeitung legitimizes German unification and the transition to democracy. This paper explores how local governmental institutions attempt to realize the national and authoritative discourse of Aufarbeitung. Drawing on ethnographic research it discusses two projects realized by the “Working Group Aufarbeitung“ on the topic of everyday life in socialism which provides both a challenge — to the categorical certainties of the discourse's narratives — and an opportunity — to attract a wider audience — for this political field of memory-work. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5501]
67.5458 GAVA, Roy, et al. —
This research note presents an innovative dataset of Swiss MPs’ interest ties between 2000–2011. The longitudinal analysis shows that the average number of interest ties per MP has more than doubled: from 3.5 in 2000 to 7.6 in 2011. Since the mid-2000s, public interest groups have accounted for approximately one out of two ties between MPs and interest groups, showing the strongest increase during the period. However, when looking at the most present individual groups, important business groups dominate and appear well connected with the governmental parties of the political right. Finally, interest groups are also able to forge themselves a strategic presence within the parliamentary committees that are the most relevant for their policy issues. [R, abr.]
67.5459 GILLEY, Bruce —
This article looks at taxation to understand the ruling Chinese Communist Party's relationship to society. It finds that the party has maintained fiscal capacity through non-intrusive transactional taxes that allow it to deliver more services in wealthier areas where potential dissent is greatest. This model is reaching its limits because of its negative impacts on economic growth and social equity. Attempts to expand new taxation sources — such as property value taxes or progressive and comprehensive personal income taxes — are difficult because of the prior reliance on transaction-al taxes. As a result, the CCP will rationally continue to rely on inefficient and inequitable taxation because of the political costs of pursuing a modern taxation system. The China case is indicative of the fiscal dynamics of durable authoritarian regimes. [R, abr.]
67.5460 GIMÉNEZ SÁNCHEZ, Isabel —
This article analyzes the main constitutional issues raised around the parliamentary activity performed during the 316 days of incumbent government. This period of interim had spanned two different legislatures and had meant a great variety of situations never before experienced in our democracy. Special consideration is given to the extension of the accountability and legislative initiative available to our Parliament in this Executive's interim period. We will also deal in particular with the question of the scope of the government's power to accord to parliamentary legislative initiatives when increasing credit or decreasing revenues. [R]
67.5461 GOELZHAUSER, Greg; ROSE, Shanna —
Unified Republican Party control of the federal government after the 2016 election brought a reversal of several B. Obama administration policies, especially those adopted via executive and administrative action in areas such as immigration, energy, the environment, and LGBT rights. The 2016 election also prompted a reversal of partisan perspectives with respect to federal-state relations, as Republicans in Washington moved to preempt state discretion in various areas, whereas Democrats in state capitols challenged the legality of presidential actions and resisted federal efforts to constrain state and local discretion. We discuss these themes through an analysis of developments in 2016 and early 2017 regarding health care, immigration, education, marijuana, and energy and environmental policy. We also consider key US Supreme Court decisions affecting the contours of state policy-making. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Annual review of American Federalism, 2016–2017”, introduced and edited by the authors. See also Abstr. 67.5479, 5515, 5539, 5576, 5588, 5590, 5698]
67.5462 GUGUSHVILI, Dimitri —
Between 2004 and 2012, Georgia implemented one of the most comprehensive packages of neoliberal economic reforms ever. These reforms have certainly helped to spur growth, but their social effects remain under-researched. To narrow this gap, this article investigates the effects of growth on poverty in Georgia using the official household survey data. The analysis shows that contrary to popular expectations, poverty has decreased only slightly throughout this period and remains high despite a number of progressive measures adopted by a successor coalition government. These findings provide further evidence on the inappropriateness of the neoliberal model as a poverty-reduction strategy. [R]
67.5463 HALL, Ruth; KEPE, Thembela —
The most recent incarnation of South Africa's land reform is a model of state purchase of farms to be provided on leasehold, rather than transferring title. This briefing presents headline findings from our field research in one district. [R]
67.5464 HALL, Stephen G. F. —
Much has been written about Russian authoritarian promotion in the former-Soviet Union and further afield, but there has been little analysis of Russian learning from other regimes. This article argues that the Belarusian regime provides lessons to Moscow for overcoming democratic protests, having learned from the 2000 overthrow of S. Milosevic in Serbia. The Belarusian case therefore expands a literature primarily centered on Russia, extending understanding of authoritarian learning and questioning Russia's role as the primary authoritarian promoter in the region. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5205]
67.5465 HANRETTY, Chris; LAUDERDALE, Benjamin E.; VIVYAN, Nick —
Is policy representation in contemporary Westminster systems solely a function of programmatic national parties, or does the election of legislators via single-member districts result in MPs whose policy positions are individually responsive to public opinion in their constituencies? We generate new measures of constituency opinion in Britain and show that, in three different policy domains and controlling for MP party, the observed legislative behavior of MPs is indeed responsive to constituency opinion. The level of responsiveness is moderate, but our results do suggest a constituency-MP policy bond that operates in addition to the well-known bond between voters and parties. [R]
67.5466 HAZAMA, Yasushi; IBA, Şeref —
This article examines the political motives and legislative consequences of Turkish omnibus bills that propose to amend a large number of disparate, unrelated laws. The quantitative analysis reveals, first, that the government uses omnibus bills to covertly change existing laws by attaching new articles to bills that are being deliberated. Second, undercover legislation backfires. The larger the number of current laws changed by an omnibus bill, the more likely those changes are to be annulled by the Constitutional Court. The legislative-efficiency objective behind omnibus bills is thus undermined by legal errors and deficiencies that result from a lack of parliamentary discussion. [R]
67.5467 HORST, Patrick —
B. Obama wanted to be a transformational president in the mold of Franklin D. Roosevelt — he was not. According to S. Skowronek's [US] leadership types, Obama was a “pre-emptive” president who had to make political concessions to the dominant conservative regime. Obama also failed in getting over the intense political polarization in Washington. His room for maneuver was especially limited in foreign policy where he continued to carry main elements of his predecessor's anti-terror strategy. Measured against a less heroic standard of transactional and incremental leadership, Obama still was a courageous, adaptive and effective president who knew how to use his administrative tools and personal resources. Obama's greatest political success was his handling of the Great Recession; his health care reform was a historic achievement, which will define his political legacy. [R, abr.]
67.5468 HUSTEDT, Thurid; KOLLTVEIT, Kristoffer; HOULBERG SALOMONSEN, Heidi —
Ministers increasingly rely on advisers for support and advice. In many countries, these political aides are labelled differently. Generally, they serve as close confidants to their political masters and operate in the “shadowland” between politics and bureaucracy. Scholarship has dragged the ministerial advisers out of the dark and described their background and functions. Still, the field of scholarship has a Westminster bias, is characterized by single case studies, and remains undertheorized. The lack of comparative focus and theoretical underpinnings can be explained by the complex nature of ministerial advisers. This introductory article suggests a definition for ministerial advisers and reviews the extant literature on these important actors. The main argument is that the extent and relevance of ministerial advisers in executive government merits integration into mainstream public administration and political science theory and research. [R] [First article of a symposium on “Ministerial advisers in executive government”. See also Abstr. 67.5420, 5440, 5469, 5490, 5522, 5525, 6012]
67.5469 HUSTEDT, Thurid; SALOMONSEN, Heidi H. —
Ministerial advisers are said to strengthen the political control of bureaucracy. Using a comparative case design, this article investigates this claim by studying the roles of ministerial advisers in government coordination in Denmark and Sweden. The article demonstrates how the roles of advisers differ in coordination: Swedish advisers directly control government coordination through hierarchical authority. The roles of advisers and bureaucrats are functionally differentiated in coordination. In contrast, Danish advisers play a more indirect role in coordination. Rather than controlling coordination, they serve to reproduce the functional politicization of the permanent bureaucracy in government coordination. The findings underline the relevance of including advisers in the future study of government coordination. The analysis is based on 48 interviews with advisers and top civil servants in Denmark and Sweden. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5468]
67.5470 KARCH, Andrew; ROSE, Shanna —
This article reorients the study of elite feedback effects by investigating, in the context of American federalism, whether and how national programs can influence the incentives and resources of state government officials. It examines four case studies in which national officials adopted a new program and subsequently tried to alter it by diminishing the states’ administrative role, reducing the financial resources available, or terminating the program. State-level actors emerged as critical stakeholders and strongly resisted national efforts to reform unemployment insurance and Medicaid, but neither the Sheppard-Towner Act nor general revenue sharing generated strong elite-level feedback effects. This variation suggests that timing, policy design, and their interaction can prompt or discourage government elites to mobilize. [R, abr.]
67.5471 KASATKIN, P. I.; IVKINA, N. V. —
The article considers the role of B. Obama's personality in making foreign policy decisions in the US. It provides analysis of the key mechanisms of leader's influence on the formation of US foreign policy and the consequences of such influence. The analysis of his public speeches helps to reveal his attitude towards the main issues of the political agenda. The authors analyze the statements in his speeches, such as Christian values, exceptional role of the American state, the basic steps of [his] first and second election campaigns and their distinguishing characteristics from other US president elections. There are parallels between the personality of Obama with persons who have left their mark in American history, such as Abraham Lincoln and J.F. Kennedy. [R, abr.]
67.5472 KATO, Daniel —
Mass incarceration is at a crossroads. Even though demands to dismantle mass incarceration are increasingly gaining traction, it will not necessarily lead to a reduction of the carceral state. There is an emerging trend that centers on surveillance, security, and police discretion. The ways in which policy-making is negotiated, social upheaval is managed, and policing is being adjusted affirm a shift that puts more of the onus on the controlling aspects associated with law-enforcement and less on the enclosing characteristics of incarceration. The current decline in incarceration should thus be seen as more of a realignment than an end of the carceral state. [R]
67.5473 KEHRBERG, Jason E. —
The author discusses the effects of authoritarianism in American states and specifically on immigrant access to TANF. He uses an original measure of authoritarianism and concludes that states with authoritarian populations are more likely to deny immigrants access to welfare benefits. [R]
67.5474 KELMAN, Steven; SANDERS, Ronald; PANDIT, Gayatri —
In addition to difficulties gathering and evaluating complete information, cognitive limitations and biases preclude individuals from making fully value-maximizing choices when making decisions. It has been suggested that, done properly, involving advisors can compensate for individual-level limitations. However, the “groupthink” tradition has highlighted ways group-aided decision making can fail to live up to its potential. Out of this literature has emerged a paradigm Janis calls “vigilant problem-solving.” For this article, we interviewed 20 heads of subcabinet-level organizations in the US federal government, asking questions about how they made important decisions. Ten were nominated by “good-government” experts, 10 chosen at random. We wanted to see whether there were differences in how members of those two groups made decisions, specifically, to what extent executives in the two categories used a “vigilant” process. [R, abr.]
67.5475 KELSO, Alexandra —
This article explores the procedural politics of the Queen's Speech debates, and analyzes atypical cases to demonstrate the institutional, constitutional and political utility of the process. It examines the defeated King's Speech of 1924; the backbench dissent of the 1946 King's Speech; the volatile Labour Queen's Speeches of the 1970s; and finally the free vote on a government backbench amendment to the 2013 Queen's Speech. In demonstrating the political use of parliamentary procedure, it maps a number of different modes of procedural utility for Queen's Speech debates: to facilitate government; to frame policy debates; to contest policy choices; and to articulate both inter- and intraparty dissent. As a consequence of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011, Queen's Speech debate procedures may become an increasingly important mechanism through which normally marginalized actors pursue their political goals. [R, abr.]
67.5476 KHUN, James; HALL, Matthew E. K.; MACHER, Kristen —
Who controls the content of the majority opinion on the US Supreme Court? Previous studies assume that a single justice exerts primary influence over the entire opinion. In contrast, we argue that different justices control holding (the legal determination that sets binding precedent) and dicta (unnecessary comments that lack precedential value). We argue that the bargaining process enables the median justice in the majority coalition to control holding, while the opinion author controls dicta. We test the empirical expectations of our theory on the concurrence behavior of Supreme Court justices: special concurrences reflect disagreement with holding, whereas general concurrences often reflect disagreement with dicta. The results support our theory that the bargaining process divides control over holding and dicta, which can produce ambiguity and confusion in the law. [R, abr.]
67.5477 KOREH, Michal; BÉLAND, Daniel —
Bridging existing streams of fiscal and social policy research, this article lays the foundations for a fiscal-centered perspective on welfare state development and restructuring. This perspective is grounded in two interlocking claims. The first is that social insurance systems financed by contributions can be used by state and non-state actors to advance their fiscal goals, beyond the financing of social benefits and services. The second is that, through different mechanisms such as legitimacy production, institutional design, and coalition-building, the design and management of social insurance contribution policies for such fiscal purposes can have a direct impact on social programs. [R]
67.5478 KUHN, Raymond —
This article applies the concept of mediatization to the French presidential office, with a comparative focus on the two most recent incumbents, N. Sarkozy and F. Hollande. The central argument is that Sarkozy's presidential leadership, both symbolically and substantively, was more influenced by media logic than that of Hollande, notably during the first two years of the latter's tenure. The paper thus emphasizes the relative autonomy of the presidential incumbent as the principal executive actor operating within a significantly bounded national political communication system. It stresses the importance of agency as a key variable in any assessment of the mediatization of executive leadership, not just in France, but by extension in other established democracies. [R]
67.5479 KULESZA, Christopher F.; MILLER, Michael G.; WITKO, Christopher —
Recent federal court decisions have deregulated state campaign finance systems to a significant degree. These decisions also raise issues of federalism. Although most studies of federal-state conflict focus on disputes between state officials and elected federal policy-makers, courts are also policy-making institutions, and in the absence of policy-making by other federal branches, courts have become the critical federal policymaker in this area. In response to US Supreme Court rulings that deregulate campaign finance rules and are out of step with the policy preferences of many state electorates and officials, states are attempting to resist these rulings, but using different approaches [from those] used by states in disputes with the Congress or President. We discuss these rulings and state responses to them. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5461]
67.5480 LANDEMORE, Hélène —
The 2010-2013 Icelandic constitutional process offers a unique opportunity to test the predictions of epistemic deliberative democrats (as well as some constitutional scholars) that more inclusive processes lead to better outcomes. After briefly retracing the religious history of Iceland and the steps of the recent constitutional process, the article thus compares three constitutional proposals drafted at about the same time to replace the 1944 Icelandic constitution. Two of these drafts were written by seven government experts; the third one was written by a group of 25 lay citizens, who further crowd-sourced their successive drafts to the larger public. The article suggests that on the question of religious rights the crowd-sourced constitutional proposal indeed led to a marginally “better” (more sophisticated and more liberal) constitutional document. [R]
67.5481 LAVERY, Lesley —
Over the past three decades, a reform movement bent on improving [US] schools and educational outcomes through standards-based accountability systems and market-like competitive pressures has dominated policy debates. Many have examined reform policies’ effects on academic outcomes, but few have explored these policies’ influence on citizens’ political orientations. Using data from an original survey, I examine whether and how No Child Left Behind's accountability-based architecture influences parents’ attitudes towards the government and federal involvement in education. I find little evidence that diversity in parents’ lived policy experiences shapes their political orientations. However, the results of a survey experiment suggest that information linking school experience to policy and government action may increase parents’ confidence in their ability to contribute to the political process. [R, abr.]
67.5482 LEE Sangkuk —
Xi Jinping swiftly centralized political power shortly after the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) National Congress in 2012, opposing what was predicted when he was elected general secretary. This action also compromises China's long-term efforts to avert an over-concentration of power among a few elites. This study deals with Xi's strong ascent to power, defined as the result of institutional change in China's political power game from the perspective of new institutionalism. The author identifies triggers of institutional change, ideas and norms introduced for changing informal institutions, and the actual transformation of formal institutions, arguing that Xi took advantage of social demand for reform coordination as well as some top elites’ serious political misbehavior to commence institutional change for the centralization of political power. [R, abr.]
67.5483 LEE Sun-Woo; WHITE, Stephen —
This article aims at an empirical verification of prosecutors’ partisan behavior through a case study based on the Russian presidents B. Yeltsin and V. Putin periods. According to G. Helmke's original theory of strategic defection, dependent judges may occasionally check their principal, the executive leadership, by withdrawing their support in the course of an electoral cycle. However, a modified theory of strategic defection can be readily applied to civil-law prosecutors’ behavior in new presidential democracies, where several presidents dominated that office during most of their tenure but experienced prosecutorial defection in their final phase. Russia provides a textbook case for examining the modified theory in relation to prosecutors’ partisan behavior against an incumbent president. [R, abr.]
67.5484 LIGHT, Michael T. —
This article combines data from US and German courts with interviews of judges from both countries to (1) estimate the punishment consequences of lacking state membership; (2) compare the sentencing gap across international contexts, and; (3) identify and explicate the mechanisms linking citizenship to punishment considerations. Findings show noncitizens receive increased punishment in US and German courts net of legal factors, but this effect is less pronounced in Germany. The interviews suggest that a variety of intervening mechanisms explain these results. Prominent among these is that judges in both countries resent the fact that noncitizens compound their immigrant status with criminal transgressions. However, German judges place greater emphasis on consistency and proportionality at sentencing, thus guarding against overly harsh and disparate punishments. [R, abr.]
67.5485 LIN, Scott Y. —
Since the financial crisis of 2008–2009, how a state can play a more active role in correcting market failure has become a central topic in political economy. Thus, academia is again discussing state capitalism seriously. Contemporary state capitalism assumes state intervention in markets is becoming more multifaceted. Consequently, traditional state-owned enterprises exist alongside new government-favored actors, such as privately owned national champions and sovereign wealth funds, intervening in markets. This coalition helps the state achieve its security, political, economic, social, and nationalistic goals more efficiently. Its growing power in markets also heralds the return of state capitalism. This paper uses state capitalism theories to re-interpret China's food security governance. [R, abr.]
67.5486 LIN Shyh-chyang —
This research study maps out the career network of selected members from the Politburo and Central Military Commission (CMC) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This research uncovers the crucial positions leading to the CCP's political and military power center, as well as how these positions interrelate. The results show the following. First, in the Jiang Zemin era (Jiang's era), Politburo members were mainly promoted from the central party committee or Central Government. Second, in the Hu Jintao era (Hu's era), key members from administrative regions started to step into the power center. Third, in the era of Xi Jinping (Xi's era), most Politburo members were promoted directly from administrative regions, especially from the coastal areas, such as Shanghai and Guangdong province. [R, abr.]
67.5487 LINDSTÄDT, René; VANDER WIELEN, Ryan J.; GREEN, Matthew —
While there is a substantial literature highlighting the presence of social dynamics in legislatures, we know very little about the precise processes that generate these social dynamics. Yet, whether social dynamics are due to peer pressure, frequency of interaction, or genuine learning, for example, has important implications for questions of political representation and accountability. We demonstrate how a recent innovation can be used to study the diffusion of behavior within legislatures. In particular, we study diffusion within the US House of Representatives by looking at the dynamic process underlying discharge petitions. Based on data from 1995 to 2014, we find that the social dynamics underlying the discharge procedure tend to involve the rational evaluation of information conveyed by the behavior of previous petition signatories. [R]
67.5488 LINH Bui Thi Thu, et al. —
To decentralize Japan's fiscal system, the Trinity Reform, which was implemented from 2003 to 2007, reformed (1) the transference of tax revenue sources from the central to local governments, (2) local allocation tax, and (3) national subsidies and grants. This study drew on the multiple streams framework in public policy — including problem, policy, and politics — to understand the financial change process in intergovernmental relationships and the successes of Prime Minister Koizumi as a policy entrepreneur in breaking the iron triangle of the Liberal Democratic Party politicians, ministry bureaucrats, and local governments to administer the fiscal decentralization and local autonomy reform. [R]
67.5489 LIVNE, Roi; YONAY, Yuval P. —
This article analyzes the financialization of sovereign debts as a process that reconstitutes statehood. Focusing on Israel, we argue that the financialization of its sovereign debt and the professionalization of this debt's management reconfigured the state's relationship with its citizens and transformed it into a market relationship. Drawing on observations and in-depth interviews conducted in the Israeli Government Debt Management Unit, we develop a microanalysis of Israel's macro-economic policy on its debt. We follow the aftermath of a historical transition in Israel's debt-management. The article investigates three factors in Israel's debt management, which perform this new state agency in the present: the professionalization of sovereign debt management, the utilization of risk management models and the standardization of sovereign bonds. [R, abr.]
67.5490 MALEY, Maria —
There are increasing concerns that the line between political and public service roles is becoming blurred, and that political advisers may be politicizing the work of public servants. Underlying this is the fundamental value conflict between responsiveness and impartiality and the challenge of balancing neutral competence and responsive competence in government. In Australia and Canada the norm of impartiality is challenged by the movement of staff between partisan ministers’ offices and the public service. This is a case study comparison of how the risks posed by these transitions are managed through institutional rules and practices. This study of rule-building by two countries with similar political institutions and shared traditions demonstrates the critical role played by rules which regulate activity between two organizations with opposed values. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5468]
67.5491 MARQUARDT, Jens —
This article unveils how the complex multilevel governance system of a developing country affects environmental policy implementation. The Philippine Renewable Energy Act is discussed as an in-depth case study. The law was passed in 2008 to increase the share of renewables in the electricity mix, but its implementation remains a challenge. Analyzing the complex multilevel governance system of the Philippines, this article shows how inter-jurisdictional coordination and the distribution of power resources and capacities affect the implementation process. This qualitative research is based on key documents and insights from 48 expert interviews. From a theoretical perspective, research about power in central-local relations can make a useful contribution to current multilevel governance concepts. [R]
67.5492 MARQUES-PEREIRA, Bérengère —
This paper reassesses the gender-equality policies implemented in Chile by the Concertación governments. During its twenty years in power, this center-left coalition succeeded in making gender a public action category. Our aim is to grasp the multilevel dynamics in which that category is inserted, at the crossing of the national, the international and the transnational levels. Its advent and its consolidation were supported by networks of expertise made up of feminists from the UN system, women from feminist associations and women belonging to executive and legislative institutions. [R, abr.]
67.5493 MATTHEWS, Felicity; FLINDERS, Matthew —
The article draws on A. Lijphart's two-dimensional typology of democracies [Patterns of Democracy — Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, New Haven, 1999, 2e ed. 2012], developing a refined framework that enables systematic comparison over time. It demonstrates that over the course of the 2010–2015 Parliament, the UK underwent another period of majoritarian modification, driven by factors including the long-term influence of the constitutional forces unleashed under Labour and the short-term impact of coalition management. The article offers a critical rejoinder to debates regarding the relationship between institutional design and democratic performance. Methodologically, it demonstrates that the tools of large-scale comparison can be effectively scaled down to facilitate within-case analysis. Empirically, it provides a series of conclusions regarding the tenability of the UK's extant democratic architecture under the weight of pressures to which it continues to be subject. [R, abr.]
67.5494 MAYER, Matthias Michael —
As a macrostructure, this article uses a bureaucratic politics framework to understand the preference formation of the German federal government on liberalizing economic migration policies. This allows unpacking the process of preference formation and linking it to a number of causal factors, which, by influencing the costs and benefits distribution of the relevant actors, shape the position of the government. The article argues that the misfit between the existing national regulations for economic migration and European-level policies has to be zero — otherwise the economic and political adaptation costs for the actors involved are too high. A heated national debate on immigration is negatively related to governmental support for such measures, as the political costs of support skyrocket. [R, abr.]
67.5495 MILEY, Thomas Jeffrey —
This article explores the political consequences of austerity politics in Spain. It argues that the economic-cum-political crisis in Spain has brought to the surface underlying structural weaknesses of its constitutional edifice accumulated over the past decades. The article sketches the parameters of the current crisis, and [explains] the dynamic process of crisis and breakdown of Spain's “constitutional regime”. It focuses on the party system, and the territorial model of governance (the so-called Estado de las Autonomías). It analyzes developments in both of these arenas, and assesses the emergent opportunities for transition to a new constitutional regime (or regimes), as well as the prospects and policy avenues open for re-equilibration. It gives an account of the transition away from two-party politics, and of the rise of new parties such as Podemos and Ciudadanos. [R, abr.]
67.5496 MIROSHNICHENKO, I. V.; MOROZOVA, E. V. —
The authors reveal the structure and content of the public policy network, formed under the influence of societal changes in modern society, in which political institutions and practices have acquired new universal qualities. The article identifies and describes the stages of evolution of the network approach in political studies. Network public policy takes place in an internet-integrated environment and is both the process and the result of the interaction of socio-political actors using network resources and technologies to develop ways of solving problems of public importance and their integration into governmental practices. Contours of the problem field cover the changes in different dimensions of public policy (information-discursive, institutional, governmental, technological, socio-cultural, spatial) and their results. [R, abr.]
67.5497 MONTGOMERY, Jacob M.; NYHAN, Brendan —
Standard accounts of legislative behavior typically neglect the activities of professional staff, who are treated as extensions of the elected officials they serve. However, staff appear to have substantial independent effects on observed levels of legislator productivity and policy preferences. We use a novel data-set of comprehensive longitudinal employment records from the US House of Representatives to estimate the effects of congressional staff on legislative behavior. Specifically, results from a series of heteroskedastic Bayesian spatial autoregressive models indicate that members of Congress who exchange important staff members across congresses are more similar in their legislative effectiveness and voting patterns than we would otherwise expect. These findings suggest that scholars should reconsider the role of staff in the legislative process. [R]
67.5498 MURPHY, Philip —
This study looks at the socialization of internal political efficacy. It assesses the link from individual background, through socio-political learning experiences, to the perception of political competence. A quantitative survey of thresholders (n 849), i.e. adolescents on the threshold of voting age in the Republic of Ireland provides data for analysis, with a particular focus on their socialization experiences in home, school and associational settings. It finds a higher sense of internal efficacy among young males than females, irrespective of socialization experience. Family politiciza-tion is found to mitigate the differences in internal efficacy associated with socio-economic status. Though some pseudo-political mastery experiences from school and associational environs assessed here are linked to thresholder's internal efficacy, the link is minor. [R]
67.5499 MURTAZASHVILI, Ilia; MURTAZASHVILI, Jennifer —
This article compares four historical periods in Afghanistan to better understand whether land reform in the post-2001 context will improve prospects for political order. Its central finding is that political order can be established without land reform provided that the state is able to establish and maintain coercive capacity. However, the cost of establishing political order mainly through coercion is very low levels of economic development. We also find that when land reform was implemented in periods of weak or declining coercive capacity, political disorder resulted from grievances unrelated to land issues. In addition, land reforms implemented in the context of highly centralized political institutions increased property insecurity. This suggests the importance of investing in coercive capacity alongside land reform in the current context. [R, abr.]
67.5500 NOH Shihyun —
Initial [US] state implementation of the Affordable Care Act health exchanges was marked by political polarization. More than half of the states initially chose not to create their own health exchanges, leading the federal government to adopt a new strategy: dividing the implementation of health exchanges into a series of smaller tasks. States could choose which of four core functions of the exchanges they would implement, with the federal government handling the remaining functions. This strategy induced some resistant states to administer some core functions. Why did some states take part in the exchanges while others did not? Ordered logistic regression analyses provide evidence that both state political context and other factors affected this decision. [R, abr.] [First of a thematic issue on “Political and ideological polarization and its impact of subnational governments in the United States”, introduced by Soren JORDAN and Cynthia J. BOWLING, “The state of polarization in the states”, pp. 220–226. See also Abstr. 67.5555, 5592, 5888, 5941]
67.5501 PETTAI, Eva-Clarita —
This study compares the politics of post-Soviet retrospective criminal justice processes in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania after 1991. Taking an institutionalist approach, it pays particular attention to the interactions between judicial and non-judicial institutions in the search for truth and justice, and analyzes how the nature of this interaction determines processes of historical narrative framing and remembering in the public domain. The study also links this with a critical examination of the investigatory infrastructure put up by state legislators to enhance prosecutorial capacity and efficiency. Its main contention is that such an analysis of the institutional context of investigations and trials is essential in order to better understand how judicial procedures and resulting truths translate into public historical discourses and collective memory. [R, abr.] [Part of a thematic issue on “Governing the memories of communism in Central and Eastern Europe: policy instruments and social practices”, edited and introduced by Pascal BONNARD and Cécile JOUHANNEAU. See also Abstr. 67.5457]
67.5502 PLETNIA, Maciej —
Since the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan's (LDP) return to power in late 2012, there has been on-going discussions regarding the possibility of revising the Japanese constitution. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made numerous remarks regarding his intention to implement significant changes. Understandably, amendments to the controversial Article 9 as well as to the Article 96 have become the main points of interest for both journalists and scholars. Judging by the LDP's constitutional draft from 2012 there are other significant changes that the ruling party would like to implement. This article mainly analyzes the proposed amendments regarding the position and significance of the emperor, national flag, and anthem, as well as separation of the state and religion. [R, abr.]
67.5503 POTTER, Rachel Augustine —
The slow pace of administrative action is arguably a defining characteristic of modern bureaucracy. The reasons proffered for delay are numerous, often centering on procedural hurdles or bureaucrats’ ineptitude. I offer a different perspective on delay in one important bureaucratic venue: the federal rule-making process. I argue that agencies can speed up (fast-track) or slow down (slow-roll) the rule-making process in order to undermine political oversight by Congress, the president, and the courts. That is, when the political climate is favorable, agencies rush to lock in a rule, but when it is less favorable, they wait on the chance that it will improve. I find empirical support for this proposition using an event-history analysis of more than 11,000 agency rules from 150 bureaus. [R, abr.]
67.5504 PRATO, Carlo; WOLTON, Stephane —
The 2010 US Supreme Court decision on Citizens United v. Federal Electoral Commission lifted restrictions on the funding by unions and corporations of groups engaging in independent political advertising (outside spending). Many have criticized the majority opinion's premise that outside spending cannot corrupt or distort the electoral process. Fewer have examined the implications of this decision under the Court's assumptions. Using a game-theoretic model of electoral competition, we show that informative outside spending by a group whose policy preferences are partially aligned with the electorate may reduce voter welfare. This negative effect is more likely when policy information is highly valuable for the electorate or congruence between the group and voters is high. We further show that the regulatory environment produced by the Court's decision is always suboptimal. [R, abr.]
67.5505 QVIST, Martin —
This article examines the relationship between a meta-governing role of government and processes of network-formation, based on a study of a governance initiative for improvement of refugee “activation” services in Sweden. Meta-governance is centered on supporting the development of self-regulatory capacity within discretionary spaces of action and has, so far, primarily been associated with a specific type of interdependency-driven networks. This article focuses on an alternative scenario, where uncertainty under such governance arrangements, rather than interdependence, becomes the driver of network formation. The relevance of this “uncertainty approach” is demonstrated in the Swedish case. [R]
67.5506 RAJARAMAN, Indira —
This article focuses on whether the discontinuity in the structure of the Indian economy, which started with the economic reforms of 1991, triggered changes in federal fiscal arrangements. This examination is embedded in a larger overview of the basic fiscal structure, characterized by annual flows from the national government to subnational states that have both statutory and non-statutory components. An unforeseen consequence of trade liberalization was the loss of trade tax revenue, which drove down tax collections at the Center both as a percent of GDP, and relative to states. Four major policy changes initiated after 1991 are attributable to post-reform concerns with efficiency in the fiscal structure. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5521]
67.5507 RASHKOVA, Ekaterina R.; ZANKINA, Emilia —
Quotas are determined to be the main and most effective tool in promoting gender equality. We examine six Southeast European countries where quotas have been either reintroduced (following the abolition of communist-era quota systems) or introduced for the first time. Presenting original data on the descriptive representation of women in parliament, we find significant within-region variety. Unlike in Western countries, where women's representation tends to be higher among center and left parties, center-right parties have in some cases staged the most women. We look into quotas, as well as cultural and historical contexts, in order to examine this region-specific phenomenon and account for the within-region variation. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5704]
67.5508 REVENGA SÁNCHEZ, Miguel —
This paper examines the long process of government formation that we had in Spain over the last few months. The paper explains the changes in the political situation and evaluates the functioning of Article 99 of the Constitution. Special consideration is given to the role of the king in the procedure of formation of the government, in general terms, and paying special attention to the performance of King Philip VI. The paper concludes asking whether or not to reform the article studied, and concludes proposing some adjustments of the ordinary legislation that will improve its application in the future. [R]
67.5509 RICHTER, Philipp —
Transparency is seen as an instrument to strengthen the legitimacy of the political-administrative system. The adoption of the so-called transparency laws, which shall extend the passive right of freedom of information to an obligation of active publication, reflects this debate. Against this background, the paper systematizes theoretically the effects of transparency on the legitimacy of public administration and collects empirical findings, which help to estimate the probability of these effects. It is shown, that the effects of transparency are complex and that the realization of the positive, intended effects is attached to conditions, which corresponded with empirical findings only to a limited extend. [R]
67.5510 RIPOLLÉS SERRANO, María Rosa —
This article is about the relationship between the Parliament and the caretaker government. During two terms — XI and XII —, there have been large periods without precedent in the Spanish Constitutional system, during which the Parliament has been ready to fulfill its role, except for appointing a new Prime Minister according to section 99 of the Spanish Constitution. On the other side the caretaker government has legal limitations, and should remain strictly limited to ensure the maintenance of the administration. In these circumstances the caretaker government took the line that it would not be necessary to be submitted to the parliamentary control. As a result of that the Lower House has adopted the decision to submit this conflict before the Constitutional Court. [R, abr.]
67.5511 RITHMIRE, Meg Elizabeth —
This article critically examines the origins and evolution of China's unique land institutions and situates land policy in the larger context of China's reforms and pursuit of economic growth. It argues that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has strengthened the institutions that permit land expropriation — namely, urban/rural dualism, decentralized land ownership, and hierarchical land management — in order to use land as a key instrument of macroeconomic regulation, helping the CCP respond to domestic and international economic trends and manage expansion and contraction. Key episodes of macroeconomic policy-making are analyzed, with the use of local and central documents, to show how the CCP relied on the manipulation and distribution of the national land supply either to stimulate economic growth or to rein in an overheating economy. [R, abr.]
67.5512 SALE, Giovanni —
The “Muslim ban” is without doubt the most controversial executive order taken by the 45th President of the US, D. Trump. The protection of national security put forward by President Trump does not suffice to understand this measure's usefulness. It has unleashed a wave of protests, not only amongst liberal intellectuals, but also in large swathes of American public opinion, including some large multinational firms. Whereas Western heads of state and government have almost unanimously condemned the ban, Arab leaders have not issued categorical pronouncements on the matter. [R, transl.]
67.5513 SANDERS, William G. —
Using frameworks for the analysis of policy devised by Colebatch and Bacchi, three accounts are developed of the emergence of an Australian government program for Indigenous employment and community participation in remote areas. Timeframes increase and types of actors change moving from an authoritative choice account to structured interaction and then problematization. Individual agents in authoritative choice are replaced in structured interaction by government departments as distinctive organizational actors. In the problematization account, concepts become the dominant actors, changing over longer timeframes. In remote Indigenous employment a change in problematization is discerned in the 1970s, from inclusion in award wages and social security to concerns about welfare dependence. A later problematization change reframes a 1970s program from employment to welfare. [R]
67.5514 SANTA ANA, Otto; WAITKUWEIT, Kevin Hans; HERNANDEZ, Mishna Erana —
The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution grants citizenship to every child born on US soil. While most Americans think this formulation is permanent, it is actually open to change. We undertake a conceptual metaphor-based critical discourse-analysis of three contending contemporary legal stances regarding US citizenship. In the light of four current court cases, some legal theorists argue that the formulation is both undemocratic and inadequate, and should be amended to address 21st century national concerns. Others argue to retain the current formulation in spite of these concerns. Our study reveals that the rival stances are argued in terms of irreconcilable conceptual metaphors, and each legal stance in itself is deficient to address these current concerns. [R]
67.5515 SAULTZ, Andrew; FUSARELLI, Lance D.; McEACHIN, Andrew —
This article analyzes the [US] Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and the evolving role of the federal government in educational policy. We rely on J. Kingdon's policy window framework to evaluate how key political constituencies on both the political right and left pressured Congress to limit both the executive branch and federal roles in educational policy. We find that policies during the B. Obama Administration shifted political attitudes on key issues and within key constituencies that had previously supported a stronger federal role. We conclude with a discussion of how this shift in federal education policy can yield insights applicable to other policy areas and also how this informs the current direction of federal-state relations. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5461]
67.5516 SCHNABEL, Johanna —
I suggest that the design of intergovernmental councils (IGC) accounts for the extent to which they are able to prevent the federal government from encroaching on subnational jurisdictions. IGC operate in areas of interdependence where the federal government faces incentives to restore to hierarchical coordination. The effect of the intergovernmental safeguard is measured by the absence or presence of federal encroachment. Two concepts are useful to explain it: the extent to which governments are committed to coordination and the dominance of the federal government of vertical IGC. I argue that different combinations of the two variables help to understand the safeguarding effect of intergovernmental councils. In particular, I contend that in any configuration in which federal dominance is present the federal government can encroach on subnational jurisdictions. [R, abr.]
67.5517 SCRUGGS, Lyle; HAYES, Thomas J. —
This article examines the relationship between income concentration and policy outputs that determine the generosity of two major state-level safety net programs: unemployment insurance and cash social assistance. Using a difference in differences framework, it tests the degree to which the top 1 percent share is associated with benefit replacement rates for these programs during the period 1978–2010. The results suggest that higher state income inequality lowers those states’ welfare benefits significantly in ways consistent with a “plutocracy” hypothesis that has been suggested in work by scholars such as Bartels, Bonica, Gilens, and Page. The results are robust to controls for several alternative explanations for benefit generosity, including citizen ideology, party control of government, fiscal pressure on programs, state racial heterogeneity, and public opinion liberalism. [R, abr.]
67.5518 SEN, Maya —
Using a novel, two-part conjoint experiment, I show that respondents put high importance on the political leanings of potential US Supreme Court candidates, a finding in contrast with the scholarly view that the public views the Court as different from other, more political institutions. Indeed, when respondents are given information about a nominee's partisan leanings, they rely extensively on that information in deciding whether to support the candidate, whether they trust the candidate, and whether they find the candidate qualified. By contrast, when partisan information is withheld, respondents appear to use other kinds of signals, such as race, to fill in the gaps. Those who are most knowledgeable about the Court are most influenced by these partisan signals, providing further support for the importance of political heuristics. [R, abr.]
67.5519 SHAIR-ROSENFIELD, Sarah; STOYAN, Alissandra T. —
What explains the failure of legislatures with strong constitutionally endowed powers to exert themselves over the executive in practice? We examine the role of legislator professionalization in strengthening the legislature's ability to constrain executive action, conceptualizing legislator professionalization as prior legislative experience and prior professional work experience. We argue that more professionalized legislators, through the skill and knowledge they bring to the policymaking process from prior experience, will be better equipped to challenge executive authority. In a sample of four Latin American countries from 1990 through 2010, we find that legislatures are more likely to curb executive decree issuance when individual legislators are strongly professionalized, controlling for constitutional powers and several other partisan and political factors. [R, abr.]
67.5520 SHARAFUTDINOVA, Gulnaz; DAWISHA, Karen —
Using Russia as a case, this study brings attention to the unexpected negative impact of global interdependence and shows that institutional arbitrage opportunities have enabled economic actors to solve for institutional weaknesses and constraints in the domestic realm by using foreign institutions, thereby limiting the emergence of a domestic rule of law regime. We argue that such opportunities lower the propensity of asset-holders, normally interested in strong institutions at home, to organize collective action to lobby for better institutions. We demonstrate the main ways through which Russia's capital-owners make use of foreign legal and financial infrastructures such as capital flight, the use of foreign corporate structures, offshore financial centers, real-estate markets, the round-tripping of FDI, and reliance on foreign law in contract-writing and foreign courts in dispute-resolution. [R, abr.]
67.5521 SHARMA, Chanchal Kumar —
This article examines how the party system types (dominant party versus coalition system) and particular attributes of discretionary grants (providing credit claiming opportunity or facilitating side payments) influence opportunities for pork-barrel politics. This article proposes a situational theory of distributive politics that states that incentives for exclusive targeting of affiliated states in one-party dominant systems drive national ruling parties toward particularism while the shrinking opportunity to indulge in such a policy in multiparty coalition systems creates a universalization effect. [R, abr.] [First article of a thematic issue on “Continuity and change in contemporary Indian federalism”, edited and introduced, pp. 1–13, by Chanchal Kumar SHARMA and Wilfried SWENDEN. See also Abstr. 67.5425, 5443, 5506, 5531, 5550, 5596]
67.5522 SHAW, Richard; EICHBAUM, Chris —
Recent research on political advisers is characterized by an expansion beyond Westminster and clearer connections with proximate literatures. This article speaks to the second of these features by applying the Public Service Bargain (PSB) lens to minister/political adviser relationships in new ways. Extant PSB analyses either position political advisers as an independent variable influencing the core bargain between ministers and senior officials, or face difficulties when viewing advisers through existing perspectives developed to explain deals between politicians and public servants. Consequently, the nature of “the bargain applying to political advisers” [C. Hood and M. Lodge, The Politics of Public Service Bargains, Oxford, 2006] remains unclear. This article addresses that lacuna by deploying the reward, competence and loyalty dimensions of PSBs. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5468]
67.5523 SHERYAZDANOVA, Gulmira; BUTTERFIELD, Jim —
Kazakhstan has made progress in economic and social development, but it struggles with systemic corruption. Its leadership has acknowledged the depth of the problem. An ambitious e-government program is underway that is designed to simplify processes, reduce documentation, eliminate queues, and limit interactions between citizens and officials that create opportunities for bribery. Although the initiative is still too new to gauge its full impact, we examine online forums, news coverage, and third-party reports to offer a preliminary judgment. Indications are that e-government is reducing petty corruption, but it needs to be part of a larger package of anticorruption measures. [R]
67.5524 SIEBRITS, Krige —
A legislature holds the power of the purse when it controls a country's public finance system. Apart from being one of the core functions of legislatures, such control is of considerable significance to the process of democratic consolidation. This essay comments on the state of and the scope for enhancing the power of the purse in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It makes two points. First, it uses quantitative measures to show that the de jure budgetary powers of these legislatures vary markedly. Second, it argues that aspects of the political institutions and cultures of these countries present formidable hurdles to attempts to strengthen these powers. [R]
67.5525 SILVA, Patrícia —
This article contributes to the current debate regarding the role of political advisers in Portugal. It empirically analyzes appointments to positions within ministers’ private offices, specifying when and why such advice is sought and accepted by ministers. Multivariate analysis is complemented with elite perspectives on the roles of ministerial advisers. Results suggest that parties in government appoint political advisers to ministers’ private offices as a strategy to legitimize policy choices and instruments, by injecting partisanship, responsiveness and loyalty in the policy-making process. Politicizing these positions is also a valuable asset for politicians given the procedural-oriented, and the inter-sector and interservice coordination problems within a heavy administrative structure, such as the Portuguese one. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5468]
67.5526 SOLOVYOV, A. I. —
The article describes the features of the positioning of a political leader in the public administration system. The author analyzes the leader's functional and role burden as a bearer of the highest status of authority and as a civil entrepreneur that supports political communication with the society. Upon revealing the specifics of application by the leader of political and administrative tools in the implementation of its functions, the author reveals the limitations and risks of reducing its official functions, which emanate from the administrative hierarchy. The key means of resolving the structural conflict between political and administrative tools of implementation of the activities of a political leader as a senior state manager is the formation of a special structure of power. [R, abr.]
67.5527 SOLOZÁBAL ECHAVARRIA, Juan José —
Understanding the prolonged government crisis that the Spanish democracy has recently experienced requires a review of the specific normative assumptions from which it starts, that is, to interpret article 99 of the Constitution. Besides, in a broader context, we need to consider the role of the Head of State in parliamentary systems, both in a Monarchy and in a Republic. From this theoretical and institutional context, important conclusions can be drawn, which may propose a new reading of the King's constitutional position in what can be termed, as Professor Stern did, referring to the formation of government in parliamentary regimes, “the Core of the system”. Finally, the study accomplishes a dubious conclusion about the possibilities of bringing a constitutional reform of the previously mentioned article 99 of the Constitution. [R]
67.5528 SONG Dao-lei —
In China, community governance is one of the lowest ranked locations through the whole governance system, but the cornerstone of state governance and the foundation of governance capability and modernization. National power, social organization, marketing forces and resident groups all contribute to the pluralistic situation of the community governance. National power plays a leading role. Community governance is a miniature of state governance from Danwei China to Community China. Community China demands that the government should focus on communities in order to narrow the gap between state and society. To some extent, state governance is the amplificatory community governance. Social organizations participate in the community governance so that it becomes more and more professional. Enterprises also become one of them through their own professional skills, organization groups and creative ideas. [R, abr.]
67.5529 SUTEU, Silvia —
The literature on entrenchment as a means to achieve constitutional endurance has grown in recent years, as has the scholarship on unamendable provisions as a mechanism intended to safeguard the constitutional project. However, little attention has been paid to the promise and limits of eternity clauses in transitional settings. Their appeal in this context is great. In an effort to safeguard hard-fought agreements, drafters often declare unamendable what they consider the fundamentals to the political deal: the number of presidential term-limits, the commitment to human rights and to democracy, the form of the state (whether republican or monarchical), the territorial integrity of the state, the territorial division of power, secularism or the official religion. This article explores the distinctive role and problems posed by eternity clauses in transitional constitution-building. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5135]
67.5530 SUTTON, Alex —
Approaches to depoliticization have tended to focus on its use as a domestic strategy. Where the literature tends to be lacking is in consideration of its international role. This article examines the way in which imperialist policies have been depoliticized through technically managed or apparently economic institutions. It explores the way in which British imperial strategy was depoliticized by the use of the Sterling Area, analyzing an episode in British-Malayan relations in which the apolitical character of the Sterling Area was brought into question. [R]
67.5531 SWENDEN, Wilfried; SAXENA, Rekha —
This article critically assesses the impact of the Planning Commission on center-state relations in India. It argues that the Planning Commission had a centralizing effect due to its role in overseeing five-year and annual planning, its contribution to designing and overseeing Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS), and its involvement in discretionary grant-making. Central policy priorities and inter-state disagreements prevented the Planning Commission from acquiring the role of a shared-rule institution, capable of offsetting the centralizing implications of the aforementioned policies. The article then speculates on what prompted the recent replacement of the Planning Commission with the NITI Aayog and what this may mean for shared rule and the nature of collaborative federalism in India more in general. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5521]
67.5532 TEODORO, Manuel P.; BOND, Jon R. —
Presidential scholars and baseball writers debate who were the greatest. While baseball analysis evolved from qualitative impressions of “experts” to rigorous, data-driven “sabermetrics”, analysis of presidential greatness continues to rely on “old-school” reputational rankings based on surveys of scholars’ qualitative assessments. Presidential-congressional relations and baseball are all about winning, but what fans (of sports and politics) find most intriguing is Wins Above Expectations (WAE) — did the team do better or worse than expected? This paper adapts the Pythagorean Expectations (PE) formula developed to analyze baseball to assess legislative success of presidents from D. Eisenhower to B. Obama. A parsimonious regression model and the PE formula predict annual success rates with 90% accuracy. The estimates of WAE from the two approaches, however, are uncorrelated. [R, abr.]
67.5533 TEV, Denis B. —
The article presents the results of a study of channels of recruitment and career paths of members of the administrative elite of the Russian Federation, conducted in 2013–2014. The federal administrative elite was understood as a set of persons occupying key positions in the structures of Russian presidential and executive power. The analysis led to a number of major conclusions. First, with all the variety of career paths, the dominant trends are internal recruitment and professionalization of high officials. Second, the militarization of the administrative elite is essential, but outside the force structures themselves it is not the prevailing trend of recruitment. Third, the management of economic structures is a significant, but usually indirect source of recruitment of elite administrators. [R, abr.]
67.5534 THIEMEYER, Guido —
The article provides a historical analysis of the impact of supranational European integration on German federalism based on archival research. When it was set up in 1949, the political system of Germany was based on a political equilibrium between the Länder and the Federal Government. With the beginnings of supranational European integration in the 1950s, when the Federal Government transferred certain elements of national sovereignty to European organizations, this equilibrium was disturbed. From now on the Länder governments developed different strategies to prevent their creeping disempowerment which went along with this constant change of the political system of the Federal Republic. The article therefore deals with an aspect of “Europeanization” of Germany and the emergence of the so-called European multi-level-governance system. [R]
67.5535 TURGEON, Mathieu; BELANGER, Éric —
Some institutional arrangements may be undesirable for democracy by obscuring which political actors are to be held responsible for failed or successful policies and bad or good macroeconomic performances. Much of the work in the area has focused on whether institutions affect the “clarity of political responsibility” and the ability of voters to punish or reward, in turn, governments and elected officials. Not much has been said, however, about the assignment of responsibility outside the electoral context, for a broad range of policy areas. This paper explores these questions in the context of French semi-presidentialism. It demonstrates that the French public is surprisingly quite responsive to the demands imposed by their political system. [R, abr.]
67.5536 ULRIKSEN, Marianne S. —
There are palpable cracks in the Botswana economic growth success story, most apparent in the evidence of persistent and extreme inequality. This article offers new insights into the Botswana puzzle by focusing on redistributive policies — taxation and transfers — as potential mechanisms to tackle poverty and inequality. The historical analysis explores how the minimal redistributive policies reflect the interests of the elites and how these actors justify their policy decisions with reference to the needs of the poor — an important electoral constituency; and it links policy developments to social and economic outcomes where no comprehensive social security system and negligible taxations means that only the well-to-do are in positions of income security and only the most vulnerable receive some relief. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.6252]
67.5537 VLANDAS, Tim —
There is a large literature arguing that countries with high employment protection legislation (EPL) have worse labor market performance. Yet, the overall impact of the crisis on France's labor market was comparatively limited. To solve this puzzle, this paper makes four points. First, it shows that France's labor market problems have not historically been about high EPL. Second, the crisis in France was not as acute as in the Euro area. Third, the costs of the crisis were concentrated on certain labor market groups. Finally, the government introduced several labor market policies in response to the crisis and labor market dualization increased despite falling policy dualism. While deregulation seems to have made matters worse, the government also introduced short-time work schemes, prolonged unemployment benefits and extended active labor market policies. [R, abr.]
67.5538 WARE, Alan —
Initially, four plausible reasons for introducing selection in secondary education are examined. These are: first, to ration education in less advanced economies; second, to increase the supply of skilled labor within an expanded national elite; third, as part of a “segmented” system of education. A fourth — increasing upward social mobility — is open to two objections: (1) the May government's proposals are so limited as to have little likely impact on mobility and (2) upward mobility in the 20th c. was possible only because of structural change in the British labor market. Finally, it is argued that attempts to select the “best” in any activity or skill are necessarily highly imperfect, and are far less accurate than testing who does and does not meet some minimum level of competence. [R, abr.]
67.5539 WEISSERT, Carol S.; POLLACK, Benjamin; NATHAN, Richard P. —
Negotiations between federal and state officials are a mainstay of intergovernmental relations, but the politics of negotiation have been largely understudied. We [examine] those politics by examining the development of the Arkansas premium assistance waiver — an early and influential Medicaid waiver. We examine the leverage of both the federal and state governments in their efforts to reach agreement on a plan that suited both sets of actors. The federal government was providing funding important to the state, but the state had the capacity necessary to put a program in place. The federal government wanted some type of expansion in a Southern state; Arkansas wanted to do it “their way”. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5461]
67.5540 WEISSTANNER, David —
Do coalition governments really suffer from short time-horizons in fiscal policymaking, as posited by standard political-economy models? This article focuses on coalitions that have created high levels of familiarity through shared governing experiences in the past and that are likely to cooperate again in future governing coalitions. I argue that such coalitions have incentives to internalize the future costs of debt-accumulation and reach credible agreements to balance their constituencies’ fiscal preferences. Moreover, sustaining broad coalitions should have electoral advantages to implementing controversial economic reforms, thus resulting in lower debt increases compared not only with less durable coalitions but also with single-party governments. Comparing 36 economically advanced democracies between (up to) 1962 and 2013, I estimate the effects of coalitions’ cooperation prospects on the dynamics of public debt. [R, abr.]
67.5541 WERNER, Benjamin —
It is broadly acknowledged that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is an important engine of European integration. Although this role of the Court is well documented and analyzed, there still is little research about the domestic effects of CJEU activism. This article contributes to the emerging literature on Europeanization through case law by analyzing national responses to the CJEU adjudication on so called Golden Shares, a jurisdiction that limited member states’ influence on privatized companies. It is argued that the domestic reactions to these CJEU decisions were decisively conditioned by the presence of protective fallback options for the member states — and not by mobilization pressure or legal uncertainty costs, the two most important determinants of national responses to CJEU case law that have been identified so far in the literature. [R, abr.]
67.5542 WOLAK, Jennifer —
When members of Congress neglect the needs of their districts or vote contrary to the wishes of their constituents, their public approval suffers. Does the same hold true for representatives at the state level? Using experiments, I explore whether people dole out similar rewards and penalties to state legislators and members of Congress for their successes and shortfalls in representing constituents. I find that a similar model of political accountability travels from national politics to state politics. People value policy representation, casework, and attention to the district as much from state legislators as they do from members of Congress. [R]
67.5543 WU Chung-li —
The role of the court system in national policymaking has long been a central issue in democratic theory. Two contending theories, the traditional view and the realist one, have been offered to explain the influence of the judiciary compared to other political institutions. Looking at the subject from R. Dahl's realist perspective, it is hypothesized that supporters of the ruling majority generally have a favorable attitude toward the courts, ceteris paribus. This study [examines] the issue of public support by examining the public's evaluation of the judicial system in Taiwan. It evaluates the impact of political factors (especially party identification) on public support for the judiciary, based on the results of a national survey carried out in 2014 to assess public attitudes toward the courts and other political institutions. [R, abr.]
67.5544 ZENG Qing-jie —
Originated from public administration studies in the West, the concept of governance has received growing interests in China's official discourse and academic literature. This article reviews the context in which governance studies flourished and examines the similarities and differences in how the concept has been analyzed and applied between the West and China. Similar to the Western discourse on governance, the Chinese discourse advocates for pluralist governance based on government-society cooperation and interactions between autonomous social organizations. However, attention to social governance in China is accompanied by efforts by the ruling party to enhance supervision of Party officials and the role of the bureaucracy in leading socio-economic development. We survey three major conceptual frameworks in the Chinese governance literature: the pressure system, the project-based system, and campaign-style governance. [R, abr.]
67.5545 ZHI Qiang; PEARSON, Margaret M. —
Portrayals of China's bureaucratic behavior tend to emphasize either streamlined central control via top-down directives emanating from a Leninist system, or a highly fragmented organization characterized by continuous horizontal bargaining. While both views have merit, they miss important but little-recognized dynamics of Chinese bureaucratic behavior. Examination of the 30-year evolution of a single organization, China's 863 Program, allows us a unique look inside the “black box” of decision-making. First, we highlight a largely unrecognized mechanism of top-down control: a signal-response process that fosters substantial uncertainty for officials in the system. Second, our case highlights a circumstance in which reformers made radical moves — deployed as a “band-aid” layer of rational-instrumentalism — to meet a perceived external security threat. [R, abr.]
67.5546 ZHU De-mi; ZHOU Lin-yi —
The paper explores the process of the transformation of Chinese environmental governance from administrative domination to administration, market and the social cooperation governance based on the institutional framework. With economic development, population growth and urbanization, some problems with the administration-dominated environmental governance institutional framework have been gradually exposed. It cannot effectively deal with transboundary pollution and multi-agent incentive problem. The institutional framework changed from administration-dominated, whole nation system and the supervision is divided into the sector and region into cooperation governance based on administrative mechanism, market mechanism, and social mechanism. It is the choice of environmental governance system in China, which can integrate the three mechanisms of administration, market and society, break the “regional boundaries” and the “functional boundary” and play a synergistic role. [R, abr.]
67.5547 ZHU Jiangnan; QI Zhang; LIU Zhikuo —
Immediately after Xi Jinping assumed the position of party secretary-general, he launched a large-scale top-down antiwaste campaign amongst the Chinese cadre corps. Compared with similar policies announced by Xi's predecessors, this campaign has distinct features that entail substantial political risk for the party secretary-general. Why did Xi choose this politically risky strategy? Drawing on recent literature on authoritarian regimes, this article argues that, amongst all possible objectives, an authoritarian leader such as Xi can use this type of policy campaign to demonstrate his power. In particular, the inherent importance of informal politics, the recent developments in Chinese politics, and Xi's personal background have increased his incentive and capacity to signal power by implementing such a campaign. A comparison with Xi's two predecessors, interviews, and statistical analyses support this argument. [R, abr.]
67.5548
Introduction by Mark TURNER, Michael O'DONNELL and KWON Seung-Ho, “The politics of state-owned enterprise reform in South Korea, Laos, and Vietnam”, pp. 181–184. Articles by KWON Seung-Ho and Joseph KIM, “Efficiency versus public good: electricity privatization in South Korea”, pp. 185–214; Nguyen Manh Hai and Michael O'DONNELL, “Reforming state-owned enterprises in Vietnam: the contrasting cases of Vinashin [Vietnam Shipbuilding Corporation Group] and Viettel [Military Telecom Corporation]”, pp. 215–237; Latdavanh SONGVILAY, Sthabandith INSISIENMAY and Mark TURNER, “Trial and error in state-owned enterprise reform in Laos”, pp. 239–262.
67.5549
Articles by Elisabeth WEHLING; Stefan BACH; Constanze ELTER; Jens BECKERT; Lukas HAKELBERG and Thomas RIXEN.
(b) State, Regional and Local Institutions/Institutions Locales et Régionales
67.5550 ADENEY, Katharine —
Concerns are expressed that ethnofederalism will increase pressures for secession and/or lead to increased violence through increasing a sense of separateness of the people living within that territory, providing resources for political entrepreneurs to mobilize groups against the center and will lead to the persecution of minorities within the ethnofederal units. India is an example of a federation that appears to demonstrate that ethnofederalism decreases rather than increases conflict through its successful reorganization of states along linguistic lines. However, a group-level analysis reveals a more diverse picture. India has simultaneously been both a success and a failure at conflict-management. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5521]
67.5551 ALESINA, Alberto; PARADISI, Matteo —
The introduction of a new real estate taxes in Italy in 2011 provides a natural experiment, which is useful to test for political budget cycles. The new real estate tax allowed discretion to local governments. This generates a random variation in the distance of municipalities from the following elections when they choose the level of the tax rate. We do find substantial choosing lower tax rates when close the elections. We observe this budget cycle for smaller municipalities where the tax was more likely to be the single most important issue for the local government. Cities close to elections with large deficits did not set lower rates and so did municipalities with a lower average value of properties. Finally, the political budget cycle is stronger in the South. [R]
67.5552 ARNOLD, Tobias —
This study analyzes the effect of local authorities in the Swiss cantonal parliaments on the allocation of special school costs. The empirical findings show that a higher share of local authorities in the cantonal legislature leads to a higher share of special school costs borne by the cantonal authorities. The effect is stronger for mayors compared to all members of local governments. Hence, mayors have a strong connection with their home municipality and use the political power of the accumulation of mandates for shifting undesirable costs from the local up to the cantonal level. [R, abr.]
67.5553 ASKIM, Jostein, et al. —
Local government systems change at varying speeds. While some countries have dramatically reduced the number of local governments during a short period of time, other countries have seen only incremental change or relative inertia. A number of explanations for structural change have been put forward in the comparative local government literature, but these explanations have to a small extent been tested empirically. This article uses statistical indicators to analyze changes in the local government systems in 17 Western European countries between 2004 and 2014. Some often-cited explanations for what drives structural change receive little support. Still, the article demonstrates that changes tend to occur in situations marked by different combinations of decentralization, urbanization, fiscal stress and a recent history of territorial up-scaling. [R]
67.5554 AYELE, Zemelak A.; VISSER, Jaap de —
Ethiopia has an ethnic federal system that is based on the assumption that the ethno-linguistic communities of the country are located in neatly defined, or definable, territorial areas. On the basis of this assumption the federal system aspires to accommodate the ethnic diversity of the Ethiopian people through, principally, if not exclusively, territorial schemes. This assumption is, however, incorrect as far as urban areas are concerned which, despite being territorially enclosed within one of the ethnic-based regions or sub-regional units, have thousands of multiethnic dwellers. The territorial scheme thus fails to cater to a large contingent of multiethnic urban dwellers. [R] [See Abstr. 67.6257]
67.5555 BIRKHEAD, Nathaniel A. —
This article examines the relationship between [US] state budgetary delays and party polarization. Although others have evaluated the influence of divided government on a state's likelihood of passing a budget on time, the influence of party polarization has not been explored. Given the growing rate of party polarization in the American states, it is important to understand the implications that this trend has for the budgetary process. The first analysis in this article predicts if a budgetary delay will occur, and the second evaluates the factors that explain how long the stalemate continues when a delay occurs. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5500]
67.5556 BRIGG, Morgan; CURTH-BIBB, Jodie —
Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHSs) have a strong track record of delivering comprehensive primary health care in Australia, but the sector also suffers from governance challenges. This article argues that a combination of settler-state dominance of governance arrangements and inadequate conceptualization of governance in the sector have led to the risk of “controlled communities” — either quasi-government control of organizations or the control of individual ACCHSs by a small cohort of members. In response, we deploy a political rather than technical approach to governance to consider the contested and intercultural nature of ACCHSs governance alongside recent governance initiatives in Southeast Queensland that signal the value of disaggregating and delineating different forms of governance in the sector. [R, abr.]
67.5557 BROWN, Alexander —
What was and is the real function of the stirring up religious hatred offences in England and Wales? I canvass five possible explanations. In the end I come down on the side of a pluralistic explanation that combines the public order explanation and the client politics explanation in conjunction with the parity of protection explanation. I reject both the sop explanation and the anti-terrorism explanation. [R]
67.5558 BUNDI, Pirmin; EBERLI, Daniela; BÜTIKOFER, Sarah —
We consider the question of how professionalized the cantonal parliamentarians are and which factors are related to this professionalization. By definition, Swiss parliamentarians exert an occupation in parallel to their mandate. We argue that parliamentarians who spend more time for their mandate have more resources to do so and, more importantly, intend to pursue a political career. In doing so, we analyze data gathered from a survey that was conducted among all Swiss cantonal parliaments in 2014. Our multi-level analysis shows that parliamentarians who run for office at the national level spend significantly more time for their parliamentary mandate than their colleagues. This effect decreases with the parliamentarians’ age. This finding could be relevant in order to understand the career paths of Swiss parliamentarians. [R, abr.]
67.5559 CARMO, André; ESTEVENS, Ana —
[Recently, we] witnessed the progressive commodification of Lisbon. The adoption of neoliberal strategies of urban development — oriented towards competitiveness and aimed at putting Lisbon at the forefront of the international metropolitan group — has contributed to the reshaping of its landscape. The organization of flagship events, privatization of public spaces and development of local policies oriented towards the promotion of creative industries, and the increasing relevance that various forms of tourism have assumed, illustrate well the path that has been followed. However, expressions of urban citizenship against this destructive trajectory have emerged, showing that the urban development of Lisbon is a contentious process. We look at three expressions of citizenship in Mouraria, a neighborhood located in the historical center of Lisbon, in which the tensions and contradictions between neoliberal urbanism and urban citizenship take place. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.6372]
67.5560 COOPER, Christopher A.; MARIER, Patrik —
This article develops the concept of executive style to explore how variations in the relationships between politicians, career civil servants, and political appointees affect the types of policy outputs. A comparative analysis of home care policies in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia finds that the former's civil service executive style — where professional civil servants work in close partnership with politicians in all phases of the policy process — led to the development of an innovative home care program with a long-term vision, whereas the latter's politicized executive style — where politicians marginalize the role of civil servants in favor of political appointees — led to frequent changes in policy largely driven by short-term considerations. [R]
67.5561 DAVIES, Andrew Lucas Blaize; WORDEN, Alissa Pollitz —
In many American states, local governments have discretion over implementing and funding the right to counsel, resulting in considerable variability in programs and funding levels. Placing this issue in the theoretical context of redistributive policies and politics, we investigate decisions on funding this service across upstate New York counties. Using as a point of departure P. Peterson's classic explication of community politics, we first model variation in funding as a function of counties’ fiscal capacity, need for services, and costs of supplying legal representation. We also test Peterson's prediction that local political factors will play little if any role in budget decisions. Second, through interviews with program administrators we explore the characters of twelve defender programs in which expenditures departed from the model's predictions. [R, abr.]
67.5562 DISTELHORST, Greg; HOU, Yue —
Why do nondemocratic regimes provide constituency service? This study develops theory based on a national field audit of China's “Mayor's Mailbox”, an institution that allows citizens to contact local political officials. Analyzing government responses to over 1,200 realistic appeals from putative citizens, we find that local service institutions in China are comparably responsive to similar institutions in democracies. Two key predictors of institutional quality are economic modernization and the intensity of local social conflict. We explain these findings by proposing a demand-driven theory of nondemocratic constituency service; in order to sustain the informational benefits of citizen participation, the responsiveness of service institutions must increase with citizen demand. We then offer supplementary evidence for this theory by analyzing the content of real letters from citizens to local officials in China. [R]
67.5563 ECKERSLEY, Peter —
This article draws on secondary historical sources and primary interviews to highlight how the legacy of the creation of local governments in England and Germany has significant implications for policy-making in the present day. By employing an institutionalist perspective to analyze how one municipality in each country tries to promote renewable energy and retrofit private housing, it demonstrates how historical factors have resulted in the German Council having more capacity to act hierarchically in local governance arrangements than its English counterpart. These findings have notable implications for how governments at all levels seek to tackle major challenges such as climate change. [R]
67.5564 EDWARDS, Barry, et al. —
A number of states have empowered independent redistricting commissions (IRCs) to redraw legislative districts each decade following the US Census. Reformers see IRCs, which have binding authority and political independence, as a solution to the practice of gerrymandering and have proposed using them throughout the US. With less incentive to protect incumbents, do IRCs adhere more closely to traditional redistricting principles, such as drawing compact districts, maintaining continuity, and respecting political subdivisions? We examine a large sample of congressional and state legislative districts and find that, relative to legislatures, IRCs tend to draw more compact districts, split fewer political subdivisions, and may also do a better job of preserving the population cores of prior districts. [R]
67.5565 EIZAGUIRRE, Santiago; PRADEL-MIQUEL, Marc; GARCIA, Marisol —
Spanish cities have suffered increasing social inequality after the 2008 economic crisis and austerity policies. However, harshening social conditions have also led to “acts of citizenship”. Against the background of Marshallian and Tocquevillean takes on citizenship and civil society, this paper analyzes the emergence of the political confluence that gained office in the municipal elections of May 2015 in Barcelona incorporating citizens’ organizations and advocacy groups. Barcelona en Comú claims a radical change in policy orientation with a renewed citizenship agenda. We argue that this is an example of urban citizenship that requires historical contextualization. We see continuities and discontinuities between the current local governance model and agenda and the democratic local governance model established during the 1980s when civil society provided significant input. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.6372]
67.5566 FARAGÓ, László; SCOTT, James W. —
This perspective on Hungary's post-socialist regional policy governance is informed by an approach that relates region-building and regional governance to social autopoiesis and the self-referential and self-(re)producing nature of social systems such as states. Following debates in regional studies that reflect tensions between the local constitution and external determination of regional governance, we demonstrate how Hungary has incorporated EU policy frameworks through specific appropriations of territorial politics and regional ideas. These appropriations reflect Hungary's post-socialist transformation not only in terms of responses to global forces, but also as specific spatial practices and re-gionalization experiences. This has in effect resulted in a regionalism without regions — a strategy of Europeanizing territorial politics without creating institutional structures that directly challenge existing power relations. [R, abr.]
67.5567 GAL-ARIELI, Nivi, et al. —
This research examines local authority involvement in education as a function of local policymakers’ perceptions of education as a public service — namely, whether public education is for the benefit of society as a whole, or for individual students and parents. Perceptions of education and involvement in education were assessed through 107 questionnaires returned by mayors and heads of local education departments in Israel. The results show that (1) local policymakers tend to perceive public education as a general public service, and (2) the relationship between this perception and involvement in education varies with the locality's center-periphery status. Implications of the findings are discussed in line with viewing education in the spirit of new localism. [R, abr.]
67.5568 GARCIA, Beatriz —
The crisis in Spain has generated new forms of solidarity that have become new ways of being and living the city. Streets and houses have been taken by the population in protests and direct actions. The 15M movement, with its assemblies in every public square and park, the “mareas” (waves), which occupied hospitals and schools to create dialogue between parents and teachers and between doctors and patients, and the Platform of Mortgage Victims, the leading force in the struggle against evictions, are three examples of new ways of understanding the city. In the context of these experiments in self-management of the social reproduction of life, proposals for the transformation of government have also emerged, pointing precisely to the strengthening of citizen self-government. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.6372]
67.5569 GONG Ting; XIAO Hanyu —
We examine the impact of isomorphic pressures on institutional practices, a field that has not been adequately explored and explained. A critical issue, on which this article focuses, is the process by which isomorphic pressures translate into homogenous institutional practices across organizations. Drawing on the case of extravagant position-related consumption in local governments in China, we identify the sources of isomorphic pressures, how they come to have an impact, in what ways they are manifested and how they are sustained. We find that institutionalized isomorphic pressures may create informal institutional practices in contradiction to formal legal norms. We further analyze the endogenous dynamics behind the formation of isomorphic pressures, which are deeply embedded in the complex web of Chinese bureaucratic relationships. [R, abr.]
67.5570 GONZÁLEZ, Lucas —
What is the effect of political competition on subnational social spending? Using descriptive statistics and regression models for original budget panel data for the 24 Argentine provinces between 1993 and 2009, the study finds that social spending increases the more secure governors are electorally and the longer they have been in office. It also finds that other arguments in the literature are relevant in explaining variations on types of spending, such as partisan fragmentation in the districts. The article discusses these findings for the Argentine provinces and explores their implications with regard to the debates on the effects of electoral competition and the design of social policies, especially in developing countries and federal democracies. [R]
67.5571 GRAZIOLI, Margherita —
In the prolonged aftermath of the economic crisis, urban citizenship is becoming nuanced with a multifarious array of quotidian grassroots organizational forms, aiming at re-appropriating essential right to the city, such as housing. In the case of Rome, squatting has become a widespread practice for both native and migrant dwellers for tackling with conditions of severe housing deprivation and lack of public housing, despite the punitive legislative context. This paper contends that their subjective composition, and the forms of organization and life stemming from squatting nowadays, can contribute to updating Lefebvre's definition of right to the city, and his critique of the citizen as the enfranchised subject for exerting a transformative power over the urban environment. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.6372]
67.5572 HARALDSSON, Mattias —
This paper explores the influence of municipal governance forms and structures on accounting compliance in municipal organizations. If municipal governance forms and structures influence accounting compliance, then understanding these relationships becomes important when discussing heterogeneous practice and efficient accounting regulation. The context and object of analysis is the practices of revenue recognition within the Swedish municipal solid waste-management sector. Overall, this analysis identifies that financial accounting compliance is influenced by municipal governance forms and structures, and the results further highlight how financial accounting practices might diffuse through local intra-organizational processes. [R, abr.]
67.5573 HUNG Po-Yi; BAIRD, Ian G. —
This paper engages with the concept of territorialization through telling the story of the transformation of Chinese former Kuomintang (KMT) soldiers of Yunnanese origin and their descendants living in northern Thailand, from being opium and heroin traders and smugglers, to becoming mercenaries fighting against the Communist Party of Thailand in northern Thailand on behalf of the Thai military, to finally transforming into tea farmers and traders through receiving development aid support provided from the Republic of China (Taiwan). Taiwan's development aid was ostensibly only for humanitarian purposes, but in reality also had important underlying political objectives. We argue territorialization is a more-than-human political technology. It frequently combines both military politics and development politics, even though the literature often separates these two elements, as if they are not frequently intertwined and interrelated. [R, abr.]
67.5574 JAIN, Purnendra; SINGH MAINI, Tridivesh —
Subnational governments (SNGs) in India are increasingly engaged abroad through involvement in regional and global affairs, questioning the central government on international matters, seeking foreign direct investment, organizing trade fairs and investment summits, leading economic missions, and hosting visiting dignitaries to showcase their jurisdiction's economic potential. These new and emerging actors on India's foreign affairs landscape are pluralizing and decentralizing India's foreign policy, albeit in a limited way and on small scale, as all states and territories are not as yet actively involved in foreign affairs. The paper argues that management of India's external relations is no longer informed or conducted simply by a select group of diplomats, high-ranking political leaders, and other specialist foreign policy advisers in New Delhi. [R, abr.]
67.5575 JÄSKE, Maija —
This study investigates “soft” forms of direct democracy and identifies factors that explain their occurrence. Soft direct democracy refers to non-binding referendum motions and advisory referendums, which the literature on direct democracy has largely ignored. Strategic motives have dominated previous explanations of the occurrence of initiatives and referendums, but are less useful in exploring non-binding procedures of direct democracy. The article distinguishes four types of factors — socio-structural, party system, political support and learning — and tests hypotheses on their effects with sub-national data from Finland. The data enable us to compare two different types of instruments — non-binding referendum motions and advisory referendums — while controlling for many unobserved factors. [R, abr.]
67.5576 JENSEN, Jennifer M. —
[US] Governors have always had to balance state interests with political party interests. However, governors’ role in the federal arena, which historically has had a significant bipartisan element, has shifted somewhat, today placing a greater emphasis on party interests. This change is one of the degree; it is less a sea-change than a change in the salinity of the sea. I provide evidence of this move to more partisan behavior and explore two sets of interrelated factors that have influenced this change: party polarization in Congress and state legislatures and among voters, and the structure, activities and influence of the National Governors Association, Democratic Governors Association, and Republican Governors Association. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5461]
67.5577 JENSEN, Jens Stissing; CASHMORE, Matthew; ELLE, Morten —
The concept of sustainability transitions has become increasingly prominent in academic and policy discourses during recent decades, but the importance of the link between knowledge-producing epistemic practices and urban governance has been underappreciated in this discourse. Based on a case study of cycling in Copenhagen between 1900 and 2015, and drawing upon a governmentality-inspired analytical framework, this research demonstrates that transformative governance may be initiated by epistemic practices that render urban systems visible in other ways. Urban cycling has been reconstructed over time in Copenhagen as a traffic safety “problem”, a component of the experiential and livable city, and a health-producing (and hence economically valuable) regional transport mode. The research findings emphasize that epistemic practices can provide a powerful stimulus for creating changes in urban governance. [R, abr.]
67.5578 KANYANE, Modimowabarwa —
W. Wicomb from the Legal Resource Centre states that the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, marks the first time that customary law was recognized as a law equal to its common law and even statutory law counterparts. While this recognition is implicit in chapter two of the Constitution, the Constitutional Court's jurisprudence in 2000 placed such recognition beyond doubt to make sure that the legislature and executive entrench the understanding of constitutional recognition of customary practices. This article considers the question: Is the interface of the interplay of local government, traditional leaders and society possible to restore transformation and community development where there are traditional leaders’ presence? To answer, qualitative methodologies were explored. [R, abr.]
67.5579 KOGAN, Vladimir —
The distribution of income lies at the intersection of states and markets, both influencing and responding to government policy. Reflecting this reality, increasing research focuses on the political origins of inequality in the US. However, the literature largely assumes — rather than tests — the political mechanisms thought to affect the income gap. This study provides a timely reassessment of one such mechanism. Leveraging variation in labor laws between states and differences in the timing of adoption of right-to-work (RTW) legislation, I examine one political mechanism blamed by many for contributing to inequality. Using a variety of panel designs, I find little evidence that RTW laws have been a major cause of growing income inequality. [R, abr.]
67.5580 LI Huiping; WANG Qingfang; ZHENG Chunrong —
Fierce competition among county-level governments has substantially increased disparities in public service provision and housing markets across urban China. The role of the changing intracity administrative structure deserves scholarly, attention in this process. Building on an interdisciplinary literature of public choice and cadre promotion theory, we propose that interjurisdictional competition enlarges the intracity fiscal disparity under China's transitional administrative and fiscal systems. Results from fixed-effect panel data modeling confirm that cities with higher level of interjurisdictional competition are associated with higher intracity fiscal disparity. This study demonstrates how transition and decentralization of the centralized fiscal system have long-term, intended and unintended, impacts on fiscal inequality and urban stratification. [R, abr.]
67.5581 LIN Jing; TUSSING, A. Dale —
After the Chinese central government announced a policy of raising retirement benefits in 2005, there ensued a race to the top in pension benefit growth among its 31 provincial units. This study explains how this seemingly unusual nationwide social welfare expansion came about in authoritarian China. It helps to open up the black box of mysterious Chinese politics. The study highlights the roles of sub-national governments in decentralized Chinese social welfare policy-making. Instead of treating authoritarian rulers as unitary actors, this study looks into the interplay of center and provinces in a decentralized authoritarian political system. [R, abr.]
67.5582 MARTINEZ-PALACIOS, Jone —
This article specifies the conditions that a democratic expansion process would require in order to be inclusive in the face of complex forms of inequality. The dialogue between the qualitative analysis of an inclusive local governance experience initiated in Ottawa in 2004 and proposals to integrate the egalitarian perspective of critical deliberative theory and intersectionality theories throws up two elements that facilitate inclusive deliberative governance: (1) the incorporation of the intersectional perspective into the design and running of local governance apparatuses and (2) the implementation of enclave deliberation. [R]
67.5583 MASSETTI, Emanuele; SCHAKEL, Arjan H. —
The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of decentralization on regionalist parties’ strength in both national and regional elections. We consider decentralization both as a putatively crucial event, that is, the creation of an elected regional government, and as a process. Our study is based on a dataset including aggregate vote shares for 227 regionalist parties competing in 329 regions across 18 Western democracies. Our findings show that decentralization as an event has a strong impact on the number of regionalist parties, as it triggers processes of proliferation and diffusion. Decentralization as a process has an overall empowerment effect in regional elections, while it does not have an effect in national elections. [R, abr.]
67.5584 MIDEGA, Milkessa —
In addition to regional-states, Ethiopia also has two federally chartered cities. This paper is an examination of the semi-consociational system found in the city of Dire Dawa, situated between the Somali regionalstate of Ethiopia and Oromia. There is a power-sharing arrangement that the Federal Government has imposed on the ethnic groups competing for the control of Dire Dawa. There is segmental autonomy, proportionality, and a grand coalition; yet this has taken place outside the formal constitutional framework. The arrangement seems to have contained the more combative elements of ethnic nationalism, but relative political stability has come at the expense of grassroots democracy. [R] [See Abstr. 67.6257]
67.5585 MOLDENAES, Turid; TORSTEINSEN, Harald —
This is an exploratory study of re-politicization of municipal companies in one Norwegian municipality. Unlike re-municipalization, which seems to imply the reversal of privatization and out-contracting, and the reinstitution of municipal ownership, the Norwegian case demonstrates a continued adherence to the provision of certain public services through municipal companies. However, our study reveals increasing re-politicization, especially with respect to board composition. The mechanisms behind this process seem first and foremost to be a post-new public management (NPM) response (re-centering) combined with efforts of rebalancing NPM-inspired solutions without changing them in any fundamental way (learning from experience). [R]
67.5586 NG Yee-Fui, et al. —
Australia remains one of the last liberal democracies to retain a property franchise at the local government level, the result of both historical particularities and contemporary political arrangements. This article analyzes the property franchise in Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, based on democratic theory and an empirical study. It illustrates the tensions between the democratic principles of representation and political equality in defining structures for representation at the local government level. The authors suggest that a more nuanced interpretation of representation can be adopted at a local level based on territorial residency rather than legal citizenship. Despite this, based on analysis of both electoral and non-electoral mechanisms, the property franchises are found to be anachronistic and indefensible from a democratic perspective and unrelated to the status of capital city. [R, abr.]
67.5587 NIAOUNAKIS, Thomas; BLANK, Jos —
Inter-municipal cooperation is increasingly popular in European countries. Saving cost is a key motivation. This paper analyzes the relation between inter-municipal cooperation and cost efficiency among Dutch municipal tax departments between 2005 and 2012. Motivated by the notion that cost savings are ascribed to scale economies, the relation between cooperation and cost is modeled explicitly through scale. The size of the cooperation is incorporated as a determinant of cost efficiency. The results indicate that inter-municipal cooperation can contribute to reducing cost and that the relation can be explained by scale. Other than through scale, municipalities that cooperate are not estimated to operate significantly more or less efficient. [R, abr.]
67.5588 NOLETTE, Paul —
A key development during the B. Obama Administration was the increasing importance of state attorneys-general (AGs) in national policy-making. This article examines the dual role that AGs played during the Obama years. The first role was highly contentious, with Republican AGs leading several multistate challenges to Obama Administration priorities and successfully limiting President Obama's policy legacy. The second role was more cooperative, involving increasing coordination between AGs and their federal counterparts in national enforcement efforts. Relying on case studies in the areas of immigration enforcement, climate-change regulation, and the oversight of for-profit higher education, this article highlights several crucial trends concerning the activities of these important state-level actors. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5461]
67.5589 PARK Sanghee —
This article investigates how a worsening economy affects local revenue structure, and whether the impact is moderated by the fiscal relationship within higher levels of government. The revenue potential of nontax sources — fees/charges and fines/forfeitures — is considerable for local governments under economic hardship. With the panel data from California counties over a period of 11 years (2000–2010), this article shows that reliance on nontax revenue largely depends on the economic and fiscal factors that vary across counties, and the effect of economy is contingent on local dependence on intergovernmental transfers. Counties are likely to raise nontax revenue when the economy worsens and their transfer-dependence increases, while the marginal effect of the economic indicators changes from negative to positive as transfer dependence increases. [R, abr.]
67.5590 RIVERSTONE-NEWELL, Lori —
This article analyzes the increasing use of state pre-emption law by conservative [US] state leaders as a tool to rein in progressive local governments. The scope and special qualities of recent state preemption laws are explored by examining legislation pre-empting local fracking bans, preventing minimum wage ordinances, targeting sanctuary city policies, overturning LGBT rights ordinances, and enacting blanket preemption measures. Reasons for the recent surge of state preemption laws are suggested, and the overall effectiveness of these laws is discussed. I conclude that rising conservative dominance of state legislatures has provided the opportunity to thwart progressive local policies, and these efforts have been aided by various industry and conservative organized groups. State pre-emption laws are not always successful in their aims. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 67.5461]
67.5591 SAREEN, Siddharth —
The Indian state of Jharkhand, formed in 2000, is one instance where little is known about local access to services: the literature reflects a lack of local democracy but rarely considers the relationship between these aspects. Therefore, this study examines the processes through which local actors access benefits from two contrastingly structured government services, using an access-analysis framework. The empirical basis comprises two cases in Jharkhand's forest villages: government service (1) in kendu leaf trade regulation and (2) of minimum-wage work opportunities for rural households. The objective of each is to benefit poor villagers such as the indigenous Ho people inhabiting these communities. The study explains through what mechanisms access occurs and the distribution of benefits this enables across local actors. [R, abr.]
67.5592 SINGER, Phillip M. —
A growing percentage of [US] state budgets has been focused on caring for individuals who receive long-term services and supports (LTSS). States have an important tool to reduce the costs of caring for individuals with LTSS, Medicaid Section 1915© waivers. Using logistic regression, whether and when a state decides to apply for a waiver during the years 1993–2014 is tested. Wealthier, larger states are more likely to apply for waivers, while previous waiver applications are related to fewer applications. The role of political polarization within the legislature has mixed results on whether a state decides to apply for a waiver. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5500]
67.5593 TURCHENKO, Mikhail —
This article examines the causal mechanism that resulted in the recall of in Petrozavodsk city mayor at the end of 2015. The analysis shows that the regional authorities played the leading role in occasioning this outcome. They decided to remove the in Petrozavodsk mayor after failing to control her actions in office. The key step toward implementing this decision was eliminating the autonomy of political elites, who supported the mayor. The regional authorities replaced popular mayoral elections in the city with the appointment of a city manager in order to assure their political control in the future. The case study demonstrates that the survival of mayoral governance and direct mayoral elections in Russian cities depend on mayoral loyalty to the regional authorities. [R]
67.5594 WANG Wen —
This study examines the determinants of fiscal slack from the perspective of Chinese local government officials. Given China's rapid economic growth over the past 30-plus years, Chinese local governments reportedly hold huge slack resources that attract public scrutiny. In an effort to improve their fiscal performance, some localities recently established budget stabilization funds, following a top-down initiative. However, it remains unclear to what extent fiscal slack has accumulated and which factors affect slack resource levels of Chinese local governments. This study finds that political and fiscal factors exert significant influence over local officials’ decisions about slack resource levels. The findings of the study bear implications for establishing fiscal rules and improving the performance of sub-national governments in China and other countries. [R]
67.5595 WU Fulong —
This article examines the emergence of city-region governance as a specific state spatial selectivity in post-reform China. The process has been driven by the state in response to the crisis of economic decentralization, and to vicious inter-city competition and uncoordinated development. As part of the recentralization of state power, the development of urban clusters (chengshiqun) as interconnected city-regions is now a salient feature of “new urbanization” policy. I argue that the Chinese cityregion corresponds to specific logics of scale production. Economic globalization has led to the development of local economies and further created the need to foster “regional competitiveness”. [R, abr.]
67.5596 WYATT, Andrew —
Since the mid-1990s, state governments within India's federal system have taken a greater interest in foreign relations. They have sought indirect influence by lobbying the central government to take account of their preferences and direct influence by seeking investment and making links with international organizations and other national and subnational governments. This article considers how chief ministers engage in parallel diplomacy noting how they draw on regional cultural resources and make connections with a regionally defined diaspora. The article finds that some chief ministers have embraced the role of “chief diplomat”, while others take a more discreet approach to international activity. Comparing the cases of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu reveals the political logic for expanding, de-emphasizing, or avoiding international engagement. [R] [See Abstr. 67.5521]