Abstract
(a) Central institutions / Institutions centrales
72.1810 ABIZADEH, Arash —
The two traditional justifications for bicameralism are that a second legislative chamber serves a legislative-review function (enhancing the quality of legislation) and a balancing function (checking concentrated power and protecting minorities). I furnish here a third justification for bicameralism, with one elected chamber and the second selected by lot, as an institutional compromise between contradictory imperatives facing representative democracy: elections are a mechanism of people’s political agency and of accountability, but run counter to political equality and impartiality, and are insufficient for satisfactory responsiveness; sortition is a mechanism for equality and impartiality, and of enhancing responsiveness, but not of people’s political agency or of holding representatives accountable. The justification advanced here is grounded in egalitarian premises about the need to protect state institutions from capture by the powerful few and to treat all subjects as political equals. [R, abr.]
72.1811 ANEY, Madhav S. ; DAM, Shubhankar —
We analyze decree powers in India. We show that bicameral minority governments in India systematically use ordinances to circumvent parliament and prosecute their legislative agendas. They promulgate more ordinances, enact less legislation, and often repromulgate lapsed ordinances. These patterns suggest that, with bicameral minority governments, the locus of lawmaking shifts to the executive branch. While both majority and minority governments invoke ordinances, the latter do so systematically to get around their parliamentary deficit. In the hands of minority governments, then, the mechanism effectively helps to defy the will of the parliamentary majority. [R, abr.]
72.1812 ARTER, David —
This article is the first expressly to focus on membership ballots as an instrument in the selection of parliamentary candidates in Finland, a polity in which the nomination process is inclusive and decentralised. A Finnish case study is of comparative interest for three main reasons: (1) Finland is one of the few European countries in which candidate selection is regulated by the state; (2) challenging much of the literature, the combination of democratised selection procedures and an intraparty preference voting system has not incentivised individualistic parliamentary behaviour and reduced legislative party unity; (3) contrary to the trend towards the democratisation of nominations elsewhere, membership ballots, from being routinised and internalised in the four larger historic parties, have become the exception rather than the rule in Finland today. [R, abr.]
72.1813 ASKIM, Jostein ; KARLSEN, Rune ; KOLLTVEIT, Kristoffer —
Ministerial advisors have become an essential aspect of executive branches worldwide, thus making the ministerial advisor office a potential route for young politicians aspiring to an expanding political class. The article studies which professions ministerial advisors migrate to following their ministerial careers, how ministerial advisors’ post-ministerial careers compare to their pre-ministerial careers, and if the variance in careers can be explained by the resources that ministerial advisors obtain while in government. Empirically, the article draws on a cohort of 139 ministerial advisors in Norwegian governments between 2001 and 2009; it covers positions in the political sphere and the public, private and voluntary occupational sectors over a period from each ministerial advisor’s youth to the end of 2017. The bibliographic data are combined with surveys and elite interviews. The results show that more than expanding the political class as a recruitment ground for future Members of the Parliament and ministers, ministerial advisor appointments serve as stepping-stones to careers outside of politics. [R, abr.]
72.1814 BARRETT, Richard A. —
At present, the US institution handling international agreements is replete with uncertainty about the precise role of different branches of the government and the rules government actors are to follow. The result is inferior democratic rule and a worse bargaining position in world affairs. This article surveys the institution’s current problems with treaties, congressionalexecutive agreements, and sole executive agreements. It explains the judicial response and why historical practice has not led to a resolution, but an exacerbation of problems. It lays out the costs of these problems and articulates how cementing the Senate’s role in agreements would greatly augment both democracy and security. [R]
72.1815 BLACKHAWK, Maggie, et al. —
For much of American political history, the electoral franchise was restricted to only a portion of the population. By contrast, the right to petition was considered universal and enshrined in the First Amendment, giving voice to the voteless. Petitioning thus served as a fundamental mechanism of representation. Still, fundamental questions remain: How was petitioning used, how did Congress respond to petitions, and did the petition allow for partial representation of the marginalized and unenfranchised? We address these questions by analyzing the Congressional Petitions Database (CPD), an original endeavor tracking virtually every petition introduced to Congress from 1789 to 1949. [R, abr.]
72.1816 BOROŃSKA-HRYNIEWIECKA, Karolina —
Have national parliaments become ‘multi-arena players’ in the field of EU affairs? Through the means of cross-country comparison of Poland and France this study probes how national parliaments juggle their activities between domestic and EU-level realms with regard to four EU-oriented arenas: ex-ante scrutiny of national governments, the Early Warning Mechanism for subsidiarity control, the political dialogue with the European Commission, and the ‘green card’ initiative. The paper detects what conditions parliamentary activity in particular arenas and to what extent domestic legislatures act autonomously within them. The findings are counterintuitive and yet clearly demonstrate that what drives parliamentary mobilization in EU affairs is not the institutional strength of a parliament in EU scrutiny, but rather Member of Parliament’s perception of their institutions’ EU-related roles. [R]
72.1817 CARRERI, Maria —
Can competent political leaders bring significant policy changes to communities otherwise doomed by “bad” informal institutions? This question has remained unanswered because of the lack of a convincing measure of politicians’ competence. I develop a novel survey technique to measure the administrative competence of executive politicians, and I apply it in interviews with 306 Italian mayors. I study the impact of mayors’ administrative competence on the policies they enact, using a difference-in-differences approach. Results show that more competent mayors are associated with better policies, but the association is only present in cases where the quality of informal institutions is low. In these municipalities, the election of more competent mayors translates into a more effective use of funds, an increase in long-term investments, and better service provision without an increase in taxes. [R, abr.]
72.1818 CASH, Jordan T. —
This article explores how Speakers of the House act as foreign policy entrepreneurs. I examine the conditions under which speakers may successfully achieve their foreign policy goals using Henry Clay, Thomas Reed, and Jim Wright as “most likely” case studies. I posit that Speakers may act with considerable agency and entrepreneurship in foreign policy, but succeed only under conditions of divided government, when they have significant support from their membership, and when the policy is conducive to legislative action. Even then, Speakers may need to use authority outside their formal powers to be successful. [R]
72.1819 CAYTON, Adam —
This article uses an original data-set of policy instruments in all substantive House bills from 2007 to 2012 to test an argument about the kinds of instruments that most divide the contemporary ideological/partisan coalitions and uses an exploratory factor analysis of policy substance (combinations of instruments and topics) that lawmakers support to reveal the structure and content of the policy space. The analysis shows that disagreement over whether to increase or decrease taxes and spending are more divisive than disagreement over regulations and communication. Policy ideologies are characterized by a dominant economic dimension that is highly correlated with NOMINATE’s first dimension, but with lower polarization and explanatory power. A second dimension that is conceptually similar to NOMINATE’s second, and many smaller, issue-specific dimensions also exist. [R, abr.]
72.1820 CROSSON, Jesse M., et al. —
Since the 1990s, members of the US House have shifted resources away from legislative functions to representational activities. We reveal this decline using an original dataset constructed from 236,000 quarterly payroll disbursements by 1,090 member offices for 120,000 unique staff between the 103rd and 113th Congresses, as well as interviews with former members and staff in Congress. These data allow us to test two plausible alternative explanations, one rooted in the centralization of legislative power over time and the other in conservatives’ desires to contract government power. We show that the decline in legislative capacity is symmetrical between and consistent within both parties, contrary to expectations rooted in asymmetrical, ideological sabotage. [R, abr.]
72.1821 CURRY, James M. ; DONNELLY, Christopher P. —
Most scholarship on US distributive politics either focuses on the abilities of individual representatives and senators to bring home the bacon or highlights the role the president plays in influencing funding decisions. Little attention is paid to collective efforts in Congress involved in securing grants-in-aid to states. In this paper, we assess how characteristics of House and Senate state delegations affect the collective efforts of a state’s federal officeholders to secure statewide funds. In both the House and Senate, we find that partisan cohesion in a state delegation predicts more federal funds to states. In particular, states receive more funds when larger shares of their delegations are members of a chamber’s majority party. [R, abr.]
72.1822 DABEK, Dorota ; SUPERNAT, Jerzy —
The article offers a concise study of the gestalt of the Polish administrative state before and after the accession of the Republic of Poland to the EU in 2004. Pre-accession and post-accession fundamentals in the field of public administration and administrative law are identified and analyzed within the framework of the Europeanization of administrative law and administration in EU member states. The outcome of the process of Europeanization is the operation of the Polish administration and administrative law, not only within the context of the Polish state and Polish law, but increasingly within the supra-state European administrative framework and European legal space and European public law. [R] [See Abstr. 72.1841]
72.1823 DIMITRIJEVSKA-MARKOSKI, Tamara ; BREEN, J. Dallas ; MOBLEY, Robert —
Many municipalities use strategic planning and management, but there is a limited understanding of the use of these processes among small municipalities. This study examines the use of strategic planning and management across municipalities in Mississippi and studies the factors associated with that use. An analysis of over 38 municipalities shows low levels of strategic planning and management. The findings support the expectations of the capacity-performance paradigm, where financial, technical and administrative capacity, as well as goal clarity and leadership commitment, are associated with the use of strategic management. [R]
72.1824 DREIER, Sarah K., et al. —
How, and in what contexts, do US senators publicly invoke religious rhetoric when engaging with their constituents? Do periods of heightened public anxiety make senators more likely to use religious rhetoric? We use the Internet Archive’s 90-terabyte collection of material from the US government’s internet domain (.gov) to evaluate the relationships between insecurity, anxiety, and religious rhetoric on senators’ official websites. We estimate the association between a senator’s use of anxiety-related terms on her official website in a given year (as a proportion of overall yearly words) and that senator’s use of religious rhetoric (public-facing religiosity). We find a strong, positive association between senators’ public display of anxious sentiments and public-facing religiosity in a given year. This research advances scholarly understanding of how US legislators invoke religion in public spaces. [R, abr.]
72.1825 ELSTUB, Stephen ; CARRICK, Jayne ; KHOBAN, Zohreh —
When the Scottish Parliament was established the intention of the founders was to make it a more innovative, participatory, and deliberative legislature than the UK had experienced before. Research suggests that attempts to achieve these aspirations were short-lived. Recently, a Commission on Parliamentary Reform (2017) was established to add fresh impetus to this mission. Its recommendations included the running of inhouse minipublics to support the committee system. In 2019 the Scottish Parliament’s Citizen Engagement Unit ran their first mini-publics: a Citizens’ Jury on land management and the natural environment for the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, and a series of Citizens’ Panels on the future of primary care for the Health and Sport Committee. This paper evaluates their design and implementation against key norms of deliberative democracy and the expectations of the reform committee, to establish whether the Scottish Parliament is now adopting a meaningful ‘new politics’. [R, abr.]
72.1826 FLEMING, Thomas G. —
During the premiership of Theresa May, parliamentary procedure in the UK was scrutinised, criticised and challenged to an extent unprecedented in recent years. This put intense pressure on the ‘rules of the game’ governing parliamentary politics. This article thus aims to answer three questions. First, what were the pressures on parliamentary procedure in this period? Secondly, what were their consequences? Thirdly, how can these consequences be explained? The article addresses these questions by describing challenges to the House of Commons’ rules regarding agenda control, proxy voting and private members’ bills. It also describes the procedural changes resulting from these challenges and evaluates their significance. Finally, it considers how far these changes support the expectations of existing literature on parliamentary rule changes. [R, abr.]
72.1827 FLEMING, Thomas G. ; SCHLEITER, Petra —
In August 2019, the UK government’s attempt to prorogue parliament for five weeks raised the question whether the UK’s prorogation rules ought to be reformed. We place this discussion in comparative perspective by contrasting the UK’s prorogation rules with (1) equivalent procedures in 26 European democracies and (2) recent changes in other areas of UK executive-legislative relations. These comparisons suggest that the UK’s current prorogation rules are increasingly anomalous. They give governments significantly more power to suspend parliament than comparable European democracies, and are at variance with recent efforts to counterbalance the executive’s wide ranging discretion in the UK. [R]
72.1828 FRANCO-VIVANCO, Edgar —
The centralization of conflict resolution and the administration of justice, two crucial elements of state formation, are often ignored by the statebuilding literature. This article studies the monopolization of justice administration, using the historical example of the General Indian Court (gic) of colonial Mexico. The author argues that this court’s development and decision-making process can show us how the rule of law develops in highly authoritarian contexts. Centralized courts could be used strategically to solve an agency problem, limiting local elites’ power and monitoring state agents. To curb these actors’ power, the Spanish Crown allowed the indigenous population to raise claims and access property rights. But this access remained limited and subject to the Crown’s strategic considerations. The author’s theory predicts that a favorable ruling for the indigenous population was more likely in cases that threatened to increase local elites’ power. [R, abr.]
72.1829 GUENTHER, Scott M. ; KERNELL, Samuel —
According to the conventional view, presidents are largely bereft of influence with an opposition-controlled Congress. Congress sends them legislation with a “take it or leave it” choice that maximizes the preferences of the opposition majority while minimizing presidents’ preferences. To extricate themselves from this bind, presidents threaten vetoes. Past research suggests that their efforts largely fail, however, for two model-driven reasons: first, veto threats amount to minimally informative “cheap talk,” and second, Congress is a unitary actor with firm control over its agenda. We relax both assumptions, bringing veto rhetoric into a setting more closely resembling real-world conditions. Presidents transmit credible veto threats to a heterogeneous, bicameral Congress where chamber rules enable the minority party to wield some influence over legislation. [R, abr.]
72.1830 KĘPA, Monika —
The subject of the article covers the issues concerning the concept of selfgovernment and the constitutionally differentiated types thereof, which realise the principle of decentralisation of public power. The systemic principles of the functioning of the democratic state are defined by the operation of self-governments, including the professional self-government bodies which associate the people who perform the public trust professions. Therefore, it plays a key role both in forming the political system of the state and, consequently, in performing public tasks. The aim of the article is to show the basic features of self-governance which form this concept. It in turn allows to define the essence of self-governance, however, not only abstractly but on a given example — the professional self-government of legal counsels in Poland. [R, abr.]
72.1831 KHAN, Imran Ullah ; HUSSAIN, Shahzad —
The study examines the performance of Pakistan bureaucracy by using historical reports and semi-structured interviews, as well as by reviewing the literature. This study consists of six parts: (1) describes the introduction to new public management and bureaucracy; (2) discusses the bureaucratic history of Pakistan; (3) theoretical insights; (4) methodology; (5)interview analysis and discussion; (6) concludes the study and suggests appropriate reforms. The study suggests that the reform program should consider the political will, secure environment, on-job training, power-sharing hierarchy, elimination of corruption and nepotism, competitive salary, and merit-based selection. [R] [See Abstr. 72.1841]
72.1832 KINSKI, Lucy —
Scholars have written much about what national parliaments can, should and actually do in European Union (EU) governance. What they have largely disregarded so far is the actors’ perspective. Which roles do national members of parliament (MPs) themselves view as a priority and how do they assess their performance? Which factors may structure observed variation? From a strategic perspective on legislative behavior, the article conceptualizes five roles for national MPs in EU politics: Scrutinizers, Subsidiarity Watchdogs, Networkers, Communicators and Transposers. It draws on plenary debates on the Constitutional Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty and the Eurozone crisis as well as data from 66 interviews with MPs from Austria, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. There is a clear focus on scrutiny in EU affairs and communication to citizens. [R, abr.]
72.1833 KIPPIN, Sean ; PYPER, Robert —
The functioning of the convention of collective ministerial responsibility in British government during the period 2010-2019 is assessed by examining, in turn: the convention’s historical context, its operation during the period of the 2010-2015 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, and its application during 2015-2019 in the extraordinary circumstances of the Brexit fissures. The key variables and causal factors which historically affected the implementation of the convention continued to have relevance in this period, during which it further evolved under the relative tensions of coalition politics and the more severe strains of fundamental policy differences on a matter of strong political salience. [R, abr.]
72.1834 KMIECIAK, Zbigniew —
The author answers the question how much the structural aspect of the codification of administrative proceedings, carried out for the first time in Poland in 1928, has changed. He focuses on the issues relating to the organization of the legal substance, building provisions, determining the relations between them, and making preferences. He emphasizes that, compared to the Presidential Decree of 1928, the Code of Administrative Procedure offends with excessive detail? In the author’s opinion, the new Code should have more a framework character and contain more “blanket” references that is currently the case. The implementation of this legislative concept will allow — as he notes — for greater coherence of the law on administrative proceedings. [R, abr.]
72.1835 KNIGHT, Adam —
All wars are expensive, but civil wars carry heightened stakes. Defeat can mean loss of territory, the dissolution of the sitting government, or the liquidation of the state itself. Even a victorious government may face tremendous crises and pressures in the short-term. A central bank can signal a sovereign’s creditworthiness to potential lenders, but the bank’s independence (or even existence) can be terminated should a government wish to do so. Despite this, lenders not only continue to lend to governments amidst civil wars but also respond to signals of creditworthiness such as the presence of an independent central bank. Using several statistical models and bond yield data from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I demonstrate that the presence of a central bank reduces sovereign borrowing costs for a state amidst a civil war. [R, abr.]
72.1836 KONKOV, Aleksandr E. ; CHUKOV, Roman S. —
The article deals with considering the phenomenon of the parliamentary diplomacy, analyzing its nature and sources. Based on observing multisided dynamics of world politics and global trends in the public-government relations, [we] define parliamentary diplomacy with the overall context of public diplomacy as quite a relevant mechanism of the modern international communication. The parliamentary aspect is considered as one of the most illustrative and legitimate institutional conjunction of both government (parliament is a constitutional body of power) and public (MPs are representatives of people, of civil society) nature of the modern communication on the mega-political level. Authors also analyze some relevant practical aspects of the Russian parliamentary diplomacy both at bilateral and multilateral levels. Those include parliamentary assemblies of such international organizations as OSCE, CIS, CSTO etc. [R, abr.]
72.1837 LADEWIG, Jeffrey W. —
Over the past twenty years, there has been much discussion about two of the most important recent trends in American politics: the increase in income inequality in the United States and the increase in ideological and partisan polarization, particularly in the US House. These two nationallevel trends are commonly thought to be positively related. But, there are few tested theoretical connections between them, and it is potentially problematic to infer individual-level behavior from these aggregate-level trends. In fact, an examination of the literature reveals, at least, three different theoretical outcomes for district-level income inequality on voter and congressional ideological positions. I explore these district-level theoretical and empirical possibilities as well as test them over decades with three different measures of income inequality. [R, abr.]
72.1838 LEHMAN, John F. —
A recurring question posed in recent issues of Orbis has been whether we find ourselves in a new era of great power competition. If so, are there lessons to be learned from America’s Cold War experience? Editor Nikolas K. Gvosdev asked John F. Lehman — former Secretary of the Navy, member of FPRI’s Board of Directors, and one of America’s leading strategic thinkers and policymakers — for his advice for US strategists in this new era of great power competition, based on his experiences during the Cold War. Readers of Orbis will also benefit from Secretary Lehman’s assessments with the release of his new book, Where are the Carriers? US National Strategy and the Choices Ahead. [R]
72.1839 MARRENGANE, Ntombini ; SAWYER, Lindsay ; TEVERA, Daniel —
This special issue on the role of traditional authorities in African cities highlights critical debates about governance and urban development on a fasturbanising continent. The six articles in this issue focus on the following: (1) the roles of traditional authorities as custodians of the values of society; (2) the roles of traditional leaders as moral authorities; (3) the modern chieftaincy as an invention of the colonial state; (4) the ‘unrelenting cooptation and appropriation’ of traditional governance structures by the state; and (5) the stretching of pre-colonial narratives to justify the legitimacy of traditional leadership and its control of community resources. The special issue features contributions from Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana and Eswatini, providing a rare comparison between cases from Southern and West Africa. [R]
72.1840 McMAHON, John —
Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the Fourth Amendment case Utah v. Strieff (2016) received a great deal of media attention, particularly for its citations to prominent Black political thinkers and its evocations of Black Lives Matter. This article interprets Justice Sotomayor’s dissent as constructing an emergent legal theory that incorporates Black Lives Matter and the experiences of people of color subject to being stopped and searched into the core of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. In contrast to Clarence Thomas’s abstracted majority opinion, I argue Sotomayor contests the meaning of the law’s relations to subjects, bringing the feeling, moving, restrained, invaded, prodded, shaped, habitual, racialized subject of the police stop into Supreme Court legal reasoning. In tension with Sotomayor’s phenomenological alternative theory are structural and institutional constraints on the liberatory possibilities for any Supreme Court dissent, particularly one focused on racial injustice. [R, abr.]
72.1841 MUHARREMI, Robert —
The international community, led by the UN, created Kosovo’s new postwar institutions and continues to influence them, even after Kosovo declared independence in 2018. Yet despite enormous international involvement and the clear intention of the international community to develop institutions that will promote economic development, Kosovo’s governance institutions remain weak, especially in the field of public administration and the rule of law. The present paper applies the garbage can model of governance to explain the creation of institutions in Kosovo and identify the design flaws that have led to weak institutions. [R, abr.] [First of a series of articles on “Comparative public administration”. See also Abstr. 72.1822, 1831]
72.1842 NOWAK, Tobias ; GLAVINA, Monika —
The European legal order gives an important role to national judges. They are expected to observe EU law rules and apply them to the domestic legal disputes where appropriate. For a long time, the academic literature on the application of European law in the courts of the member states had a normative and doctrinal focus. It described what European law and the Court of Justice of the EU expects from national judges. Data from different studies, however, shows some variation in how judges see this role. Based on these findings, this article introduces four types of rule application, which are constructed along the lines of more or less use of EU law. These types are meant not only to bring order to the data collected but to inspire further research on the influence of the organization of courts and court systems on decision-making patterns. [R]
72.1843 ÖBERZ, Shirin Ahlbäck ; WOCKELBERG, Helena —
A central claim of the NPM doctrine is that public sector organizations will deliver better quality and improve efficiency if managers are given more autonomy in managerial and operational decisions. At the same time the idea is to keep managers under close control, which has led to the introduction of result-control instruments. This balancing strategy is referred to as the paradox of autonomization. There is, however, still scarce knowledge on whether and how the proposed balancing techniques work. Using a unique database on Swedish government agencies, this article aims to mitigate this deficiency (N = 1752). A balancing strategy is mainly confirmed, since higher managerial and structural autonomy are balanced with more external results control by government. This study is an answer to a general call for more objective measures for evaluating bureaucratic autonomy. [R, abr.]
72.1844 PHADNIS, Ajit ; MANIBABU, Bhaskara P. —
Earlier studies have advanced a number of arguments to explain why legislators disrupt legislative business. This study carries out a confirmatory analysis of the arguments by analyzing 93 speeches delivered by Indian legislators on the subject of disruption. Using Applied Thematic Analysis we identified themes that are salient in the legislator speeches. We find highest salience given to the role of the Speaker, with members emphasizing on the need for the Speaker to show impartiality in the performance of duties. Another highly salient theme was the relationship between legislative parties and legislators, which featured concerns over rising dominance of legislative party leaders. Other themes such as adequacy and enforcement of legislative rules, the competitive interplay between ruling and opposition parties, influence of media and paucity of legislative opportunities received moderate attention. [R, abr.]
72.1845 POSTOUTENKO, Kirill ; SABELFELD, Olga —
This article aims to demonstrate that the transition from the mainstream narrative to the interactional history of concepts promises tangible benefits for scholars of social time in general and temporal comparisons in particular. It is shown that the traditionally close alignment of narration with the production of historical consciousness at various levels hinders the study of time as a semantic variable perpetually contested, amended and upheld across society. Alternatively, the references to time made in public settings, allowing for more or less instant reactions (turn-taking) as well as expression of dissenting opinions (stance-taking), offer a much more representative palette of temporal semantics and pragmatics in a given sociopolitical environment. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.2763]
72.1846 POYET, Corentin —
There is growing interest in personal representation and policy responsiveness in the European literature. The current scholarship mainly focuses on strong legislatures. This article aims to contribute to the discussion about policy responsiveness by investigating the least likely case, France. It asks whether French MPs engage in policy responsiveness, and if they do, how responsiveness interacts with party agenda and electoral vulnerability. Drawing on written parliamentary questions asked by French MPs from 1997 to 2007 (N = 1172), the article shows that MPs’ behaviour is strongly affected by their district features. Moreover, the article shows that party agenda conditions the impact of district features. MPs are more likely to engage in policy responsiveness when the issue is also essential for the party. In other words, policy responsiveness is not independent of the party agenda. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.1926]
72.1847 REYKERS, Yf —
This paper asks: to what extent can a dedicated or special committee with access to classified information empower parliaments to oversee major defence procurement decisions? These decisions often involve a mixture of political, military, economic and societal interests. Particularly after episodes of contestation or controversy, questions tend to arise about how to empower parliaments. The central argument in this paper is that being institutionally empowered and incentivised does not guarantee rigorous oversight. The availability of expertise is an oft-ignored factor in studies of parliamentary oversight. An analysis of oversight behaviour by the Belgian Federal Parliament during the acquisition of new fighter jets (2015-2018) shows that members of parliament also need to be capable of mobilising the necessary expertise in order to translate technical information in such a way that it allows them to influence decision-making, which is often executive-dominated. [R, abr.]
72.1848 RICE, Matthew G. ; REMMEL, Megan L. ; MONDAK, Jeffery J. —
Long recognized for the diverse array of personalities it hosts, the US Senate constitutes an institution in which individual psychological differences among its members carry significant potential consequences. Unfortunately, studying those individual differences is no easy task. This study introduces a new approach for doing so. Specifically, the study develops Big Five trait ratings for eighty-seven US senators, with data drawn from assessments provided by a set of experts, US Senate insiders. The paper explains the rationale for use of expert evaluations, offers evidence regarding the reliability and validity of the resulting measures, and explores possible relationships between personality and ten aspects of Senate behavior. [R]
72.1849 ROCCO, Philip —
Dominant explanations for the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) durability point to its reputation for neutral competence. This argument, however, fails to acknowledge that Congress has retrenched other institutions with similar reputations. Drawing on theories of policy durability and change, I argue that the CBO’s endurance has depended on the existence of a political support structure and growing congressional investments in fiscal knowledge. As these changes created barriers to formal retrenchment, critics of the CBO have embraced “technopolitical” strategies for altering its analyses or undermining its credibility. I conclude by considering the implications of these findings for what we know about the durability of policy-analytic institutions. [R, abr.]
72.1850 RUSSO, Federico —
Parliamentary questions are often employed by Members of Parliament to demonstrate their responsiveness to the needs of the constituency. This article takes advantage from this opportunity to study the determinants shaping the constituency focus of Italian deputies. Previous research has shown that the degree to which Members of Parliament devote attention to their geographical district depends on several factors related to electoral incentives, demands coming from citizens and taste-based preferences. By studying the behaviour of Italian deputies elected in three legislative terms with a system giving few incentives to perform constituency service, this article offers new evidence that non-electoral reasons are important to shape the role played by Members of Parliament. [R] [See Abstr. 72.1926]
72.1851 SHIN Hyejeong ; AHN Ji-Young —
This paper investigates whether political connection of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in public institutions is associated with organization efficiency. We utilize two types of public institutions in Korea, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and quasi-governmental organizations (QUANGOs). Using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we find that CEOs with political connection are positively related to organization efficiency. Specifically, such association is largely driven by QUANGOs whose revenue resource is fully funded and owned by the government. It implies that politically connected CEOs can improve firm efficiency when the organizations are financially dependent on the government and are under its stringent monitoring by government. [R]
72.1852 SHINICHI, Kitaoka —
When the first and second terms in office are combined, the total duration that Abe Shinzo served as Prime Minister of Japan exceeded that of all his predecessors. This article reviews and assesses the achievements of his second administration (December 2012-September 2020) with a focus on the fields of diplomacy and security. Selected policies in each of the two fields are described in detail. Although some important policies were not addressed, the author recognizes three particularly significant achievements by the Abe administration in the fields of diplomacy and security, which are: (1) the 2015 Legislation for Peace and Security; (2) Prime Minister Abe’s statement marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II; and (2) his 2016 initiative for pursuing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). [R] [See Abstr. 72.2677]
72.1853 SPADORO, Antonio —
After 7 years, what is the propulsive thrust of this pontificate? Some commentators and analysts have wondered if this thrust still arouses others and have tried to reflect on its substance. The question could be translated in this way: what kind of government is Francis’: this article intends to address that question. The temptation today is to imagine a pope who builds a road map of institutional reforms, elaborated with a projectable, functionalist and organizational spirit, bending the will to form to spiritual worldliness, in order to achieve goals and ideas of the church, as it should be, not inspired by the 10 years of faith in Jesus. Francis stated it openly: “the worldly gaze sees structures to be made more efficient; the spiritual gaze sees brothers and sisters begging for mercy. [R]
72.1854 SPOHR, Florian —
This article analyzes the informal and the formal access of public and business interests to the German Bundestag in the year 2015. Informal access is surveyed by the door passes handed out by the Bundestag administration and the parliamentary party groups, formal access by the invitations to the public hearings of the Bundestag’s committees. Building on resource-dependence theory, this contribution assumes that information and support are access goods to the Bundestag which are of different importance for informal and formal access and unequally distributed between the different interests. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.1713]
72.1855 STECKER, Christian ; KACHEL, Jannis ; PAASCH, Jana —
This research note presents the first systematic documentation of the legislative process in the German state parliaments. The data-set comprises 16,610 bills between 1990 and 2020. After a description of the data, we provide illustrative insights into the patterns of law-making. It is shown that these patterns are dominated by the new dualism between government and opposition. Furthermore, the incentives of issue competition are clearly present in the legislative initiatives. There is no evidence, however, for the expectation that intra-coalitional policy distance prolongs the duration of legislative procedures. The published data provide scholars with the opportunity to investigate various additional research questions. [R]
72.1856 SÜLEYMANOĞLU-KÜRÜM, Rahime —
This paper studies the sociology of elites and the role of cliques on the foreign policy-making process through an exploratory case study of Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It identifies elite sociology as the independent variable triggering a policy-making process in the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in line with organisational process or governmental politic approaches. It shows that until the 1980s, the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs was marked by strong hierarchical tradition triggered by a certain career path and cliqueism leading to the homogeneity in the sociology of elites. This in turn triggered a foreign policy-making process based on organisational process. The role of cliqueism weakened along with the incremental circulation of elites in the post-1980s and particularly in the post-2005 period as the elite structure in the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs became even more heterogeneous. [R, abr.]
72.1857 TAKAO, Komine —
This article focuses on the economic policies under the Shinzo Abe administration in office from December 2012 until September 2020. The economic policies under the Abe administration are generally referred to as “Abenomics.” There are several possible definitions of “Abenomics,” but for the purposes of this paper, we will take the broadest definition and refer to the entire range of economic policies that were implemented under the Abe administration. [R] [See Abstr. 72.2677]
72.1858 TAKESHI, Umekawa —
How different was President Trump from previous presidents? This study first analyzes the routine activity of the president including signing legislation into law, veto action, presidential signing statements, and executive orders. The analysis shows that the activity by President Trump was not significantly different from his predecessor, President Obama. This study then turns to analysis of atypical behavior of President Trump and reveals that he deviated from the norms and practices of previous presidents. In particular, President Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns, use of the White House for the election, the appointment of “acting” cabinet members, the abuse of the power of amnesty, and the January 6, 2021 uprising at the US Congress are discussed. The impact of Trump’s presidency will be examined. [R] [See Abstr. 72.2677]
72.1859 TODD, Jason Douglas, et al. —
We investigate whether communicating constituents’ preferences to legislators increases the responsiveness of delegates to the Vietnamese National Assembly (VNA). Using a randomized control trial, we assign legislators to three groups: (1) those briefed on the opinions of their provincial citizenry, (2) those presented with the preferences of local firms, and (3) those receiving only information on the Communist Party’s objectives. Because voting data are not public, we collect data on a range of other potentially responsive behaviors during the 2018 session. These include answers to a VNA Library survey about debate readiness; whether delegates spoke in group caucuses, query sessions, and floor debates; and the content of those speeches. [R, abr.]
72.1860 TRISCHLER, Jakob ; KALUZA, Johan —
This article analyzes whether involving public service users in the recruitment of frontline employees (FLEs) helps to identify candidates who have the skills needed to co-produce with citizens. It investigates user involvement in FLE recruitment in three public service organizations in Sweden — from the perspectives of service managers, service developers, Human Resource Managers, union representatives and frontline employees. It finds that involving users was perceived to be beneficial for attracting and identifying applicants with a user-centered mindset. User involvement was also seen useful for establishing realistic expectations of what public services can deliver. However, a perceived challenge was to ensure equality and equity of user contributions. This included finding users who were sufficiently informed but without resorting to ‘expert users’. [R, abr.]
72.1861 UMIT, Resul —
In many countries, members of parliament receive publicly funded allowances to communicate with the electorate. Some hope that ensuing parliamentary communication engages the people with politics and increases electoral participation. Others worry that such use of public funds might create an unfair advantage for incumbents and affect electoral results. Yet, the consequences of this practice remain unknown. Data from the UK House of Commons suggest that both the hopes and the worries are baseless: there is no evidence that parliamentary communication allowances increase electoral turnout or affect incumbents’ vote share. If these allowances are not effective, both parliaments and their members might want to reconsider their use and usefulness. [R]
72.1862 VRACIU, Cosmin —
The separation-of-powers literature has entertained the possibility of differentiating governmental functions at a conceptual, pre-institutional level, as a way of defining the separation of powers. However, it can be objected that attempts at differentiating functions at this level cannot escape a problem of arbitrariness. In this article, I develop an account of the separation of powers which addresses this problem. On my account, the legislative function is defined by the creation of validity claims, understood as claims making it a matter of normative common-knowledge that such and such normative attitudes hold for the interaction between agents. The executive-judicial function is defined by the specification of rights and other jural positions out of the validity claims. This account of the separation of powers has the double advantage that it works at a conceptual, pre-institutional level, and that it is able to distinguish between the functions in a non-arbitrary manner. In developing this account, I also consider its practical implications. I argue that the conceptual distinction between the legislative and the executive-judicial functions is expressive of rule-of-law values, and that this might render it a sufficient but not necessary condition for the institutional separation of powers. [R]
72.1863 WAGER, Alan —
This article brings together over thirty on-the-record interviews with politicians and political strategists at the centre of British politics during the Brexit gridlock. Prompting political elites to retell their oral histories allows us to begin to understand areas of institutional change and continuity, with the aim of beginning the process of ‘historicising’ Brexit. These interviews demonstrate three areas where the norms of the UK political system were tested and challenged between June 2017 and January 2020: attempts at sustained cross-party activity in the House of Commons, efforts to rebalance legislative-executive relations, and the temporary fluidity of the UK’s party system. Boris Johnson’s ultimate success during this period of (what is now) British political history provides a salutary lesson in the durability of majoritarianism within Westminster, even in the face of sustained challenge on multiple fronts. [R]
72.1864 WARBURTON, Eve, et al. —
Around the world, legislatures are dominated by politicians who are wealthier and more educated than their constituents. This is particularly so in developing democracies, where clientelist politics and wealth inequalities make it difficult for lower-class citizens to run for office. We contribute to scholarly debates about the substantive consequences of descriptive inequality by analysing a new and important case — Indonesia, the world’s third most populous democracy. Indonesian politicians have much higher levels of education and income than citizens, and they are more likely to have professional backgrounds. To explore the implications of these inequalities, we survey and compare politicians’ and voters’ positions on a range of economic policy issues. [R, abr.]
72.1865 WEGNER, Joanna —
The range and variety of tasks of contemporary administration leads to the conclusion that decodification is an inevitable phenomenon. Lack of precise regulation regarding the relationship between the provisions of the Code of Administrative Procedure and separate provisions is only partly compensated by the “invasive clause” of Art. 1 of the Code, which also expresses the “conflict of law principle”, of subsidiary application of the Code in matters not regulated by special provisions. Unlike the norms that exist in other countries’ legal orders, the Polish one does not establish the limits of permitted departures from the Code regulations. It seems that no such departures could apply to those provisions of the Code that relate to basic procedural guarantees, which are intended to protect the values that are well-established in the European tradition. [R]
72.1866 ZBÍRAL, Robert —
Populism might be a threat to parliamentary democracy but does not automatically signal its demise. First, not all populist parties seek illiberal goals. Second, in Europe most populist parties entering governments have done so as coalitions with mainstream parties. Yet, almost all populists, including the non-extremist and ‘integrated’ ones, call for more efficient governance. We assume that once in the executive, that objective will also manifest itself in the rationalisation of law-making in legislatures. By applying a more assertive strategy and exploiting existing rules, cabinets will attempt to streamline their legislative agendas. We test this theoretical framework on empirical evidence from the Czech Chamber of Deputies, which can serve as prototypical case. Since 2010, three coalition governments have ruled. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.2106]
72.1867
Introduction by Johannes Hendrick FAHNER. Articles by Séverine MENÉTREY; Apollin Koagne ZOUAPET; Misha Ariana PLAGIS; Mamadou Bakaye DEMBELE; Kehinde IBRAHIM; Francesca MUSSI; Olabisi D. AKINKUGBE.
(b) State, regional and local institutions / Institutions locales et régionales
72.1868 BENITO, Bernardino ; MARTÍNEZ-CÓRDOBA, Pedro-José ; GUILLAMÓN, María-Dolores —
Cases of corruption, the financial and economic crisis, and citizens’ growing interest in public affairs have contributed to the political changes that have taken place in Spain in recent years. In this scenario, in which new political actors appear, this research analyses whether politicians’ remuneration, their dedication regime and several socio-political and economic variables have an impact on the efficiency of the main municipal services. The results indicate the key role of remuneration and the dedication of politicians in efficiency. [R]
72.1869 CAMÕES, Pedro J. ; TAVARES, António ; TELES, Filipe —
Talking is cheap, at least in the short term; elected officials may profess their preferences for IMC and yet deny IMA organisations the necessary resources to fulfil their missions. Driven by a focus on revealed preferences for inter-municipal cooperation, the article aims to answer two questions: Why do some IMA exhibit a high level of commitment on the part of their local government members whereas others remain underutilised, reflecting a choice by local governments to retain these responsibilities themselves? How does this commitment to IMAs vary over time? We use data from 25 IMAs over a 10-year period (2008-2018) in Portugal to assess the intensity of cooperation among Portuguese local governments through stand-alone organisations. [R, abr.]
72.1870 CHENG Shaoming ; GUO Hai David —
Homeowner associations (HOAs), as a form of private residential governance, have grown exponentially in the United States, representing a profound transformation in urban governance. This paper examines the fiscal correlation between local municipal governments and private residential governments, and specifically, the extent to which the proliferation of HOAs in a municipality is related to municipal expenditures and revenues. Administrative data of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation are employed with spatial econometric methods for accounting for potential inter-jurisdictional spillover effects. Empirical evidence suggests that a greater presence of HOAs within a local municipality is associated with the municipality’s declining public expenditures and revenues for providing public services to local residents. [R]
72.1871 CHUNG Il Hwan ; WILLIAMS, Daniel —
Fiscal stress has been a source of significant concern for local governments and has led to the introduction of a variety of approaches for dealing with such a situation. One emerging practise is to adopt early-warning systems which identify fiscal stress, assign a fiscal stress label, and assist with local governments’ financial management. Although there is a growing body of research focusing on fiscal stress indicators, there is a lack of studies examining whether localities given a fiscal stress label by the fiscal stress monitoring system improve their fiscal health. With a regression discontinuity design, we have found that less stressed localities improve their financial condition as compared with more stressed ones in the short run. [R, abr.]
72.1872 DEMIROĞLU, Elif Topal —
This article focuses on the increasing role of cities and local governments in migration governance through following the increasing “local turn” approach in migration studies in recent years. Turkey, which has a long immigration history and by far the largest immigration population of the country with massive Syrian immigration which started in particular in 2011, cities and local governments have developed different local governance arrangements by which they are trying to produce answers to the diversity brought about by immigration. Local responses differ in terms of scope, actor, approach and method. In this study, how and why the municipalities produce different responses are discussed in the context of the role of the municipalities and the common methods that local responses share despite the same legal framework and being a part of Istanbul metropolitan area. [R, abr.]
72.1873 DROBNE, Samo ; BREZOVNIK, Boštjan —
Socio-economically based functional regions, which are partially self-contained economic areas, are often more suitable for various structural analyses, implementation of state and regional policies, development of state administration, planning and monitoring of spatial development, identification of spatial disparities and other analyses of socio-economic relations than the traditional historically and geographically based administrative regions. This article therefore examines the assumption that functional regions are a suitable basis for the formation of territorial provinces in Slovenia. We have modelled the functional regions of Slovenia according to the established and internationally accepted method CURDS and compared them with the current proposals for provinces and established statistical regions in Slovenia. [R, abr.]
72.1874 FESSHA, Yonatan T. —
South Africa, a country that does not recognize itself as a federation, has established a second chamber that is probably ideal for legislative intergovernmental relations. The National Council of Provinces is explicitly mandated to represent provincial interests. This is so both in terms of composition and the authority it enjoys in influencing national legislation. The South African experience reveals that a properly designed second chamber may not deliver the desired result of facilitating legislative intergovernmental relations owing to internal operational rules that do not allow subnational governments to properly consider a bill, formulate a mandate that reflect subnational concerns and instruct their delegation to vote accordingly. Intergovernmental relations, as a result, continues to be the domain of the executive. [R, abr.]
72.1875 FREIDENVALL, Lenita ; RAMBERG, Madeleine —
This article analyzes the implementation of gender mainstreaming at the local level in Sweden by investigating implementation gaps in the operations of two municipalities, Eskilstuna and Jönköping. The study draws on the literature on policy implementation, particularly the dimensions of comprehension, capacity, and will, as well as the feminist institutional literature on resistance. The data are based on a micro-study of the implementation of gender mainstreaming in two model municipalities, comprising interviews with key actors and a document study. The study shows that the key obstacles to the implementation of gender mainstreaming are complacency and the congestion of perspectives. [R, abr.]
72.1876 GILE, Aleksei ; DIMKE, Daria —
How does centralisation affect public goods provision in Russian municipalities? Drawing on the evidence from 68 interviews with municipal elites in four Russian regions, we demonstrate that, first, centralisation through excessive regulation encourages the provision of a higher quantity of public goods but does not encourage their quality. Short time horizons and haste lower the quality of goods even further. Moreover, centralisation favours municipalities with higher state capacity. Finally, risk-averse behaviour by officials leads to a lower quality of public goods. [R] [See Abstr. 72.1906]
72.1877 GRITSENKO, Daria ; INDUKAEV, Andrey —
This essay examines the role of civic tech in contemporary Russian governance through a data-driven analysis of the ‘Active Citizen’ platform deployed in Moscow. It shows that the way in which polls are conducted on the platform has various consequences, from serving the city administration’s PR needs to shuffling the power balance in various policy areas and effectively disempowering certain stakeholder groups, as well as helping the administration to increase control over a policy domain. At the same time, some platform uses actually empower citizens by engaging them in decision-making and offering grounds for further mobilization. [R] [See Abstr. 72.1906]
72.1878 GUBERNAT, Ewa, et al. —
Keeping local government units’ financial stability to run necessary projects is becoming a severe threat due to the remarkable increase of theirs’ debt level. A question arises whether the application of debt limits excessively restrict municipalities’ investment potential. Using the linear regression model, we proved that increasing the maximum allowable debt level decreases investment potential. We have challenged the relevance of using fiscal rules and presented liberalizing the fiscal rules’ principles to assess the investment potential as an indicator to guarantee optimum use of the local government units’ economic potential from different perspectives. [R]
72.1879 HADFIELD, Amelia ; TURNER, Christian —
Brexit is proving epochal in its impacts on Britain. Work exploring Brexit’s impact upon the structure, responsibilities and future plans of English local government is critical for a number of reasons, from the sheer preponderance of legislation fundamentally altered in the context of the European Union Withdrawal Act of 2018, to changes in regional funding streams and alteration to the governance of local authorities. Based on the original research undertaken between 2015 and 2018 in South East England and the county of Kent, this article contributes to the body of research exploring Brexit’s impact on local government. To do so, it draws on a combination of stakeholder interviews, in-house analysis, regional Brexit impact assessment reports, evidence given in 2017 to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and the Committee’s final report of April 2019. [R]
72.1880 HENRICKS, Kasey —
Few studies that disentangle the relationship between race, crime, and punishment have turned to administrative documents as a central site of power. Speaking to this omission, I use a case study of mandatory financial sanctions in the Criminal Division of the Cook County Circuit Court in the State of Illinois. These sanctions are represented in ways that abstract the conviction process from its highly racialized context. They enable legal actors to enact a multilevel mode of decision making, combining compulsory and discretionary judgment, that entrenches racial bias within the broader legal organization of punishment. And they redistribute the operational costs of justice through earmarks onto those who are processed through the system (i.e., disproportionately people of color). [R, abr.]
72.1881 IGLESIAS ALONSO, Ángel H. ; BARBEITO IGLESIAS, Roberto L. —
This article shows the current results of the experience of the participatory electronic democratic project, implemented from 2015 to 2019 by the local government of the city of Madrid. The project aimed to be an open and binding space for the formulation, debate, and approval of proposals for the design and implementation of local public policies. The empirical analysis is mainly based on data provided by the municipal government, triangulated with qualitative interviews with key political, bureaucratic, and civic stakeholders. The initial assessment shows that new technologies improve political participation in a rather meagre way, and may even erode the democratic process. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.1898]
72.1882 KERSTING, Norbert —
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive restrictions on public life. A survey of more than 1500 local councilors showed that councils at the local level are restricted in their capacity. After a total lockdown in March 2020 at the local level, the local central committee (Hauptausschuss) took over, substituting for and representing the full city council’s local decision-making capacity. Later on, in some cities, councils were able to implement council meetings with half of the councilors. In this “executive hour,” several local committees and commissions as well as political events organized by the civil society could not be implemented. [R]
72.1883 KHMELNITSKAYA, Marina ; IHALAINEN, Emmirosa —
This essay considers how the tensions inherent to authoritarian politics structure urban governance in the city of Moscow. The focus here is on urban development policy and the housing renovation programme introduced in 2017. The essay demonstrates a flexible governance arrangement that responds to the interests and ideas of the country’s leadership and involves city-level bureaucratic decision-making, the accommodation of economic interests and expert opinion, and consultations with the public. Such consultations have recently become more significant because of intensive protests paired with the city administration’s belief in participatory urban governance. [R] [See Abstr. 72.1906]
72.1884 KIRLAPPOS, Andreas —
The Republic of Cyprus is a small EU member-state whose structures reproduce a resilient domestic tradition of increased centralism. As expected, this restricts local government whose actors demonstrate differentiations in their overall role and responsibilities. This work utilises the vertical research dimension of top-down Europeanisation to investigate the influence of European Integration at the Municipal level and the Municipal reactions to it. It adopts a local government comparative perspective to analyse the two latest cohesion policy programmatic periods (2007-2013 and 2014-2020).This work utilises explicit analytical contexts (Europeanisation and historical institutionalism) to deliver a theoretically and empirically informed analysis based on empirical data resulting from two field studies (2013 and 2019). [R, abr.]
72.1885 KOOP, Royce ; CONRAD, Laura —
This research note addresses whether women representatives tend to hold differing policy priorities than men by analyzing the policy concerns of municipal councilors elected in Canadian cities. We use data from an original dataset derived from a survey of sitting Canadian councilors conducted in 2014. Following the existing literature, we hypothesize that female councilors are more likely than male councilors to prioritize “non-traditional” policy domains. We find that women are more likely than men to prioritize three non-traditional policy domains: arts and culture, the environment, and social services. These differences are confirmed for social services and the environment in a multivariate analysis with control variables. [R, abr.]
72.1886 LESNIKOWSKI, Alexandra, et al. —
Adaptation to impacts of climate change is a key pillar of climate change policy, and local governments have historically played a major role in the design and implementation of these policies. An array of political, economic, institutional, social, and individual factors influence adaptation policy instrument choice. At the local government level, these choices also reflect inter-governmental dynamics that can constrain or support local efforts. We analyze eight hypothesized drivers of local adaptation policy instrument choice using fractional regression analysis and multilevel modelling. Local governments are pursuing diverse adaptation policy implementation styles that are associated with different levels of internal capacity, local political economies and problem perception. [R, abr.]
72.1887 LIBMAN, Alexander ; YAKOVLEV, Andrei —
Since 2012, with a view to strengthen the development of strategically important regions, Russia has established several federal agencies responsible for these territories. The essay investigates one of these agencies: the Ministry for the Development of the Far East (Ministerstvo Rossiiskoi Federatsii po razvitiyu Dal’nego Vostoka). We identify two main trade-offs associated with the governance approach used in Russia — between federal power and local knowledge, and between bureaucratic expertise and novel ideas — and examine how the ministry has dealt with these tradeoffs and their consequences for the ministry’s performance. [R] [See Abstr. 72.1906]
72.1888 MAZURKIEWICZ, Marek —
The objective of this paper is an attempt to answer if non-competitive elections to commune councils in Poland may be the result of incumbency advantage of mayors. The author assumes, that the effects of incumbency advantage of mayors in influence not only the competition for the office of mayor, but also the entire local political scene. These effects may weaken the competitiveness of elections and lead to the cartelisation of local political scenes. In extreme cases, it may even cause the degeneration of political pluralism and lead to non-competitive elections at both the executive and legislative levels. [R, abr.]
72.1889 MURAOKA, Taishi ; AVELLANEDA, Claudia N. —
Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) has increasingly become an important tool for local governments. This study aims to understand the role of IMC from the perspective of network management. We argue that IMCs create networks of horizontal interactions among local governments, facilitating collaboration and information exchange among them. By so doing, IMCs can promote local government performance even outside their main service domains. To evaluate the performance enhancing role of IMC networks, we analyze the case of municipal associations in El Salvador. Based on original surveys of Salvadorian mayors, we find that networks built on municipal associations positively correlate with electricity provision. By contrast, no effect exists on running water provision, perhaps because it requires no collaboration among municipalities. [R, abr.]
72.1890 ORZESZYNA, Krzysztof ; TABASZEWSKI, Robert —
This article examines the role of local authorities in promoting the sustainable development goals set out in the UN 2030 Agenda. The main aim was to analyse the legal aspects of activities taken by local authorities obliged to promote SDGs with the use of global and regional regulations, using the example of Poland. The adoption of the 2030 Agenda has damaged the current, ineffective model of Implementation of Sustainable Development. The present study discusses the Polish approach to sustainable development, including the experience and tasks of Polish municipalities, poviats, and voivodships in the field of sustainable development strategies as well as the prospects of implementing the goals of the new 2030 Agenda. [R, abr.]
72.1891 PARK Jinsol, et al. —
While credit rating agencies mention that a government factor is one criterion for assessing municipal bond ratings, current studies on credit ratings offer relatively little evidence as to how the government factor affects municipal bond ratings, compared to socioeconomic and financial factors. By utilising the award of the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Programme of the Government Finance Officers Association as an indicator for high-quality financial reporting, we find that the quality of financial reporting is one important factor that determines municipal bond ratings. We also demonstrate that the repeated actions of providing high-quality financial reporting are valuable for municipalities by enhancing market credibility and thus improving ratings. [R, abr.]
72.1892 PASTOR ALBALADEJO, Gema ; SANCHEZ MEDERO, Gema —
This article defines and analyzes a new concept: inclusive transparency. Specifically, it conducts a comparative study of transparency portals in twenty-five Spanish local councils, all of which occupy prime positions in Transparency International’s Index of Municipalities. The evaluation aims to establish their degree of compliance with Spanish and European regulations, ensuring website accessibility for people with disabilities. To this end, an evaluation model (composed of 4 criteria, 11 variables and 45 indicators) has been generated, taking inspiration from electronic accessibility guidelines, which have been applied using automatic techniques and transparency portal revision manuals. The results of the research allow verification of a positive correlation between the levels of active and inclusive transparency. [R, abr.]
72.1893 PERSON, Christian —
The autonomous choice of local tax rates is an important element of local fiscal autonomy, guaranteed by the German constitution. As municipalities use this option differently, there are large discrepancies in the design of local tax policy. This raises the question how these differences can be explained. To answer the question, the article analyzes the determinants of local tax policy in six German Länder between 2004 and 2013. The analysis reveals that economic and budgetary conditions are main drivers of local tax policy. Partisan effects can be identified only sporadically. Thus, the ability of parties to influence local tax policy according to their preferences is increasingly restrained by growing fiscal problem pressure. Only with regard to local property taxes, they seem to have some room for maneuver. [R, abr.]
72.1894 POLISHCHUK, Leonid ; RUBIN, Alexander ; SHAGALOV, Igor —
Russian authorities have been increasingly willing to facilitate apolitical collective action to deal with day-to-day problems. A case in point is community self-organization, known as ‘territorial self-management’ (TSM), supported by local administrations through cost-sharing and other means. We use a unique dataset on TSM in the city of Kirov to study the causes and consequences of this phenomenon. TSM accommodates a mix of cultural traits in a given society, combining social capital and awareness of public problems with a skepticism about political participation and a preference for government patronage. TSM increases approval of local government in the supported communities but can also spark broader collective action that restores the agency relation between society and government. [R] [See Abstr. 72.1906]
72.1895 PRINC, Marcin ; KRYSKA, David —
The article provides an analysis of the tasks of local self-government units discussed in light of the migration process. The authors compare the legal framework in Poland and the Czech Republic primarily in relation to the tasks of communes. The scope of the research includes an explanation of issues such as the legal status of a foreigner, the tasks of local government entities, and who is the member of a local self-government community. The article also contains examples of actions undertaken for the benefit of foreigners based on current legal grounds. The research is mainly based on two methods: the legalistic and the comparative. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 72.1898]
72.1896 SHAIR-ROSENFIELD, Sarah —
Regional governments, particularly those representing distinct communities, are typically thought to pursue power of self-rule, or the ability to selfgovern within their own regional jurisdiction. In contrast, limited attention has been paid to the importance of granting substantial influence via shared rule, or the ability to co-exercise authority over the state as a whole. Yet, central governments who fail to provide some form of guarantee regarding the authority to self-rule may face ongoing challenges to their legitimacy, authority, and ability to govern. Analyzing the relationship between self- and shared rule across regional governments in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, I examine how the horizontal dimension of multi-level governance can serve as an accommodation strategy by central governments. [R, abr.]
72.1897 SHON Jongmin —
This study empirically examines the effects of tax competition in both horizontal and vertical ways on the revenue capacity of counties in California from 2003 to 2015. Spatial Durbin model (SDM) identifies the effects of two-way tax competition on a county’s revenue capacity. The findings provide evidence that local sales tax helps a county expand its total revenue, but the two-way tax competition brings about a decrease in local revenue capacity as a result of spillovers. Furthermore, a lower-taxing area can have more benefits because the expansions in the neighbors are much greater than the higher-taxing one. [R, abr.]
72.1898 ŠKARICA, Mohovil —
The paper examines and evaluates the relations between the first and the second tier of local government in Croatia and their evolution during the past two decades. The beginning of the period was rather promising for local government development as Croatia began its path to EU membership and constitutionally re-defined its local government institutions, embracing a modern concept based on subsidiarity and decentralization. The absence of territorial consolidation reforms and limited decentralization efforts that followed have produced a specific interplay between the roles of municipalities and countries that deviates from the current comparative (European) trends which suggest the rise of basic municipal tier and diminish the importance of intermediate territorial levels. The context of Europeanization and the concept of multi-level governance shape the framework for the analysis. [R, abr.] [First of a series of articles on “Local government and democracy”. See also Abstr. 72.1881, 1895]
72.1899 SWIANIEWICZ, Paweł ; SZMIGIEL-RAWSKA, Katarzyna —
One of the side effects of municipal territorial reforms is the common-pool problem. The problem arises when the costs of an activity that benefits a small entity are borne by a larger entity. A review of existing empirical studies suggests that although the common-pool problem has been identified in all investigated cases, it has not as yet been sufficiently analysed and understood. This article focuses on two voluntary mergers in Poland. The authors test the impact of the merger decision on the pre-merger level of capital spending and debt. The analysis is based on a quasi-experimental design using Synthetic Control method. The paper identifies factors explaining why the behaviour of the analysed merging municipalities differs from the results of earlier studies. The most important finding is that the mechanism preventing common resources hoarding is effective when local rules are applied to the merger. [R]
72.1900 SZMIGIEL-RAWSKA, Katarzyna ; ŁUKOMSKA, Julita ; TAVARES, António F. —
The aim of the paper is to identify the factors determining the choice between service delivery modes to provide local services. The original choice model proposed by Ferris and Graddy predicts that local officials seek to minimise service delivery costs (production and transaction costs), subject to political and fiscal constraints. The article tests production efficiency and transaction costs hypotheses in relation to the modes of service delivery adopted by local governments in Poland: in-house, corporatisation, cooperation, contracting out. It explores delivery choices of three different services: water supply, local transportation, and home care for elderly people. Based on the results of a nationwide survey addressed to all municipalities we test the aforementioned hypotheses using multinomial logit regression models. [R, abr.]
72.1901 TAN Qingshan ; LIU Jiansheng ; DANG Yuxuan —
The authors investigate how a local government, facing the challenge of a central policy mandate, acted with innovation and autonomy to carry out poverty alleviation by grafting local interests onto the policy’s implementation in China. They argue that local states’ innovative strategy in integrating local growth objectives with pursuing and fulfilling the central policy can yield positive-sum outcomes for local-central relations and have a more significant impact on local development. [R]
72.1902 WANG Yanrong, et al. —
Agricultural industrialization consortium is a key policy tool to promote agricultural development for local governments in China. However, a stylized fact is that various consortia showed promising organizational performance at start, but then the performance deteriorated at later stages. The driving force behind is the dual paradox inherent in development and institution. The consortium is overly development oriented; yet as an institution it cannot adapt to the strong development impulses. Case studies show that the dual paradox inevitably led to the decline in organizational performance. [R]
72.1903 WEISSERT, Carol S., et al. —
The nation’s governors took strong and decisive action in responding to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, often directly affecting their local governments. These actions allow us to examine this question: Will governors’ actions in an unprecedented emergency situation centralize the authority of the state or rely on local governments to deal with localized problems? Additionally, what factors affect those decisions? We examine all governors’ executive orders affecting local governments in the first five months of the 2020 pandemic. We find that preemption did occur, especially in the early months of the pandemic. States that gave their localities more autonomy were associated with preemption throughout the pandemic; the governor’s party affiliation and her ideological match with local officials were associated with greater preemption in some phases of the pandemic but not others. [R] [See Abstr. 72.2688]
72.1904 WOJEWÓDZKA-WIEWIÓRSKA, Agnieszka ; STAWICKI, Maciej —
The aim of the research has been to portray spatial differentiation of the process of school closures in rural areas of Poland, as well as to identify causes, and the effects of the closures on the socio-economic functioning of communities and local governments. To achieve that, desk research was first applied, with data used to classify Poland’s gminas (local-authority areas), in line with changes in numbers of pupils and schools. In the next step, in-depth interviews with gmina authorities and inhabitants were conducted, to allow intentionally-selected case studies to be considered further. It emerged that the main reasons for around 3300 Polish schools to close over the 2000-2016 period were declining fertility plus migration, combining to reduce numbers of primary-school pupils. Economic reasons were cited as the direct cause of school closures in the countryside. [R, abr.]
72.1905 YARRAM, Subba Reddy ; DOLLERY, Brian ; TRAN, Carolyn-Dung Thi Thanh —
In common with higher tiers of government worldwide, Australian state governments often adopt highly interventionist ‘one-size-fits-all’ policies aimed at improving local government efficiency and performance. We employ recent expenditure data to investigate empirically the short-term impacts of rate capping on municipal expenditure in the Australian state of Victoria and to explore whether it had differential effects on spending by different types of local authorities. We find that while total spending did not fall, budgets for ‘invisible’ services, like aged care and disabled services, did decline. Our analysis also shows that the impact of rate capping on the various types of municipal expenditures is uneven between the different categories of local authority. [R, abr.]
72.1906 ZAVADSKAYA, Margarita ; SHILOV, Lev —
Does electoral support affect the quality of public goods provision? In this study, we explore the variety of governance patterns on the level of Russian municipalities from 2012 to 2018. We estimate the effects of budget autonomy and electoral loyalty during federal elections on public goods provision and explore whether elected heads provide better services. Our findings suggest that since elected heads have limited capacity to provide better services, electoral loyalty does not uniformly result in improved public goods provision in municipalities. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Exploring varieties of governance in Russia: in search of theoretical frameworks”, introduced, pp. 971-988, by Vladimir GEL’MAN and Margarita ZAVADSKAYA. See also Abstr. 72.1876, 1877, 1883, 1887, 1894, 2658]
72.1907 ZUO Meiyun ; MA Dan ; YU Yan —
Recognizing the critical role that information technology (IT) can play for the aging population, local governments tend to take responsibilities for IT-enabled senior care service delivery. Formulating IT governance mechanisms is important for governments to perform their responsibilities and maximize public value. As service arrangers, governments’ actions are affected by complex external environments for legitimacy, which has been largely ignored in the existing studies. By incorporating the strategic and institutional perspectives of legitimacy into Savas’s service delivery structure, this study developed a triadic framework that accounts for different contextual determinants related to the external market environment and the institutional environment to investigate the formulation of IT governance mechanisms. A survey involving 329 town-level governments in Beijing, China, was done to validate our research model. [R, abr.]