Abstract
(a) Central institutions /Institutions centrales
64.3119 ACHTSIOGLOU, Eftychia; DOHERTY, Michael —
This article considers the impact of the economic, social and political crisis on the labor-law regimes of Greece and Ireland. Both countries have been the recipients of “bail-out” deals, negotiated and monitored by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF. The article considers the extent to which both countries have been required to make amendments to their labor-law regimes as a condition of their bail-outs. It argues that the changes demanded reflect the basic norm now governing the EU legal order, namely that of “competition”; the logic of market integration based on the primacy of economic competition. The article sets the reforms in Greece and Ireland within the broader context of the “social deficit” problem of EU construction. [R, abr.]
64.3120 ÁGH, Attila —
This paper argues that without a strong participative democracy, neither the efficiency nor the political legitimacy can develop properly in Central and East European (CEE) new democracies. It analyzes the stages of development of the modern states in a comparative way as the polity, politics and policy stages. While CEE states are still only coping with the difficulties of the second stage, the most advanced member states are already in the third stage. The new democracies have to catch up not only in the economic field but also in the respect to their public administration and public policy systems. [R, abr.]
64.3121 AGUILAR RIVERA, José Antonio —
After contextualizing the historiographical debate between those that reduced the deliberation that took place in Cadiz to a mere adoption of foreign codes and laws on the one hand, and those defending it on nationalist and historical grounds on the other, the author suggests that the Cadiz experiment is closer to the Spanish American constitutional cycle. The Spanish Constitution evidently departs from the theoretical and institutional framework developed by the two important constitutional experiments that preceded it (in the US and France), but also presents original elements that set it apart from a merely derivative exercise. This paper stresses the ambiguity of the nature of rights, historicism, religious intolerance and the definition of citizenship as elements proper to the text of 1812. [R, abr.]
64.3122 ALDRICH, John; REIFLER, Jason; MUNGER, Michael C. —
We investigate whether Riker's intuition about citizens acting on institutional preferences is borne out by an original empirical dataset collected for this purpose. These data, a survey commissioned specifically for this project, were collected as part of a larger nationally representative sample conducted right before the 2004 election. The results show that support for a reform to split a state's Electoral College votes proportionally is explained by (1) which candidate one supports, (2) which candidate one thinks is likely to win the election under the existing system of apportionment, (3) preferences for abolishing the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote winner, and (4) statistical interactions between these variables. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3053]
64.3123 ALONS, Gerry —
France's protectionist position regarding agricultural trade is often claimed to result from French farm-lobby influence. This article challenges such established claims, based on an analysis of French decision-making on the agricultural chapter of the GATT Uruguay Round. Farm-lobby pressure cannot fully explain French policies, as governments often went against farmers’ preferences and the level of pressure varied substantially, while there was continuity in French protectionist governmental preferences on agricultural trade. Instead, this article shows that ideational variables played a major role in explaining the continuity in French protectionist positions. [R, abr.]
64.3124 ANDERSON, Sarah E.; WOON, Jonathan —
Delay is a common feature of appropriations politics. Although members of [the US] Congress and the president often decry lengthy delays in the passage of appropriations bills, we investigate whether such delays might confer strategic advantages, and if so, to whom. We draw from bargaining theory to understand how the relationship between the duration of negotiations and outcomes depends on the underlying distribution of bargaining power and the nature of the bargaining process. We find that the House and Senate concede more to presidents who prefer less spending, while the Senate is more responsive to presidential needs during presidential election years. These results suggest that the president's power comes from the asymmetry of veto and proposal rights, rather than from symmetric bargaining with proposals and counterproposals or a “war of nerves”. [R, abr.]
64.3125 ANG Yuen Yuen; JIA Nan —
Using survey data of over 3,900 private firms in China, we examine whether — and how — political connections promote or undermine the use of formal legal institutions. We find that politically connected firms are more inclined than nonconnected firms to use courts over informal avenues of dispute resolution. Furthermore, by comparing the effects of political connections on dispute-resolution patterns across regional institutional environments, we find that “know-who” (political influence over adjudication) dominates “know-how” (knowledge of navigating courts) in linking political connections to the use of courts. Contrary to canonical theories that predict the declining significance of connections following the expansion of courts, our study suggests that informal networks and formal laws are more likely to share a relationship of perverse complementarity in transitional and authoritarian contexts. [R, abr.]
64.3126 ANZIANI, Alain —
Parliamentary deontology is a triangle with three vertices: the respect of the law, subject to criminal prosecution, the spirit of the law, which should avoid conflicts of interests, and ethics, with new questions regarding absenteeism and behavior. In order to avoid further loss of confidence in public action, all this requires greater transparency, unquestionable control and sanctions. While France sets the example for public financing of politics, it is still looking for a model of parliamentary deontology, despite recent progress in that field. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3127 ARRIGNON, Mehdi —
Two main criticisms are usually addressed against European studies in the field of employment policies: (1) “Europeanization” would be an old and odd concept in the field of employment policies; (2) because of the weakness of European instruments, the EU would not limit the polarization between welfare regimes. [Research] about “activation” of social policies in France, Spain and the Netherlands shows that one can nuance and discuss these recurring arguments. Policy instruments and policy principles have converged since the launch of the European Employment Strategy in 1997. European procedures of harmonization were an independent variable of social change in France, Spain and the Netherlands. [R]
64.3128 ASPINWALL, Mark —
Post-NAFTA Mexico provides us a unique opportunity to study a single norm (rule of law) in two different sectors (environment and labor). Much can be controlled — the timing of new oversight pressures from outside (NAFTA and the US) as well as inside (courts and freedom of information agency). Socialization of rule-of-law norms is therefore best explained by looking carefully at differences between the relevant agencies. I show that variation in (1) levels of professionalization among agency officials and (2) permeability of domestic agencies to outside influence, explains much of the variation between labor and environmental officials over attitudes to rule of law. Labor agencies were far more constrained by legacies of highly influential vested interests, and this limited their capacity to adapt to new normative pressures. [R, abr.]
64.3129 AUEL, Katrin; RAUNIO, Tapio —
[While] the literature has focused on the relationship between parliament and government in EU affairs, other parliamentary functions, and in particular those that relate to their citizens such as the communication function have been largely neglected. Yet democracy depends on a viable public debate on policy choices and political alternatives to allow citizens to make informed political (electoral) choices and to exercise democratic control. This collection therefore investigates whether, and how, individual members of parliament, political parties, or legislatures as institutions “link” with their electorates in EU politics. This introduction discusses why engaging with the public in EU affairs is — or at least should be — an important aspect of parliamentary work, introduces parliamentary means of communication and assesses parliamentary incentives and disincentives “to go public” in EU politics. [R, abr.] [Introduction to a thematic issue of the same title, edited by the authors. See also Abstr. 64.3130, 3162, 3164, 3183, 3240, 3249, 3251, 3264]
64.3130 AUEL, Katrin; RAUNIO, Tapio —
Over the last 20 years, the role of national parliaments in EU affairs has gained considerable academic attention. Much of the literature has shown that national parliaments are no longer docile lambs, but exercise tighter scrutiny of their governments in EU affairs. What tends to be overlooked, however, is that the parliamentary communication function is at least as important in EU politics. Yet while the literature has discussed reasons why members of parliament or political parties may prefer to “depoliticize” European issues by conducting their EU business away from the prying eye of the public, so far we have little empirical data on how parliaments communicate EU politics. This study therefore provides a comparative analysis of parliamentary debates on EU issues in the UK, Finland, Germany and France. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3129]
64.3131 AVRIL, Pierre —
Given the constitutional and political features of the Fifth Republic that are taken for granted (unless one challenges the “negative parliamentarism” that characterizes it), the strengthening of Parliament can be pursued by combining the two main cleavages of the regime. One is the political distinction between the government/majority and the opposition; the other is the institutional division between the executive and legislative branches. The legislative function, which creates policies, will always be performed mainly by the majority under the authority of the government. On the other hand, the modern monitoring and evaluation function belongs specifically to parliament as an institution and not just to the opposition, and it requires innovative solutions. There should, therefore, be a rebalancing of this function between the two Chambers. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “The renewal of [France's] Parliament”. See also Abstr. 64.3126, 3137, 3138, 3170, 3199, 3208, 3210, 3265, 3310, 3315]
64.3132 BAILER, Stefanie —
For decades, the European Commission's possible legislative influence has interested scholars of EU studies, yet few empirical studies on the determinants of the Commission's influence exist. This paper analyzes quantitative data on 60 EU proposals to show to which degree rather endogenous resources of the Commission, external conditions determined by the EU member states or institutional constraints determine the Commission's influence on EU legislation. Modeling the Commission as an agent having resources and strategic options, I demonstrate that the Commission's ability to defend the content of its original proposals is to a large extent dependent on its principals, the member states. Endogenous resources of the Commission such as expertise and experience influence only to a small extent the legislative success of the Commission. [R, abr.]
64.3133 BALDINI, Gianfranco; BALDI, Brunetta —
Since the mid-1990s, Italy has made significant steps towards federalism, decentralizing political, fiscal and administrative powers. Yet, the country is experiencing problems in finalizing these reforms towards a stable federal architecture. This article examines Italy as a case of failed federalization. Adopting a long-term focus inspired by the “gradual institutional change” approach, we argue that federalization has been trapped between a rather anomalous (and pathological) alliance between a persistent centralism, which prevailed when Italy was born as a state in 1861, and an ever-present strong tradition of localism. This approach allows us to show the very incremental nature of institutional change and to map changes and continuities along the 150 years of the Italian state, identifying both political and cultural factors that help to explain this unfulfilled journey towards federalism. [R, abr.]
64.3134 BALDWIN, Kate —
Why would politicians give up power over the allocation of resources to community leaders? This article examines why many African governments have ceded power over the allocation of land to unelected traditional leaders. In contrast to the existing literature, which suggests that traditional leaders’ power is a historical holdover that has not been eliminated due to weak state capacity, I argue that African political leaders often choose to cede power to traditional leaders as a means of mobilizing electoral support from non-coethnics. I find support for this argument using a new subnational dataset that includes approximately 180 regions in eighteen African countries. The cross-sectional analysis is complemented by case studies of the dynamics of the devolution of power to traditional chiefs. [R]
64.3135 BELL, Stephen; FENG Hui —
This article charts and explains the rising authority of the People's Bank of China (PBC) within the steep hierarchy of the party state. The PBC‘s rise is explained by using a version of historical institutionalism which focuses on the dialectical or mutually shaping relationships between agents, institutions and wider contexts over time. Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which wider contexts such as crises, power distributions, ideational agendas and structural economic change shaped institutional change at the PBC. Theoretically, this approach moves beyond treating institutional contexts in an ad hoc manner, as existing theory does, and unifies the treatment of contexts within an agent-centered version of historical institutionalism. [R]
64.3136 BENČINA, Jože; MRDA KOVAČIČ, Anja —
This paper presents a selection of 43 variables collected from various sources, which are used to describe the concepts of decentralization and quality of governance in the EU countries. Decentralization is analyzed from two aspects, fiscal and political, while the quality of governance is, along with certain real indicators, measured in particular with the opinions of citizens. The aim of the research was to determine the factor structure of selected variables and provide guidelines for using best practices in exploratory factor-analysis. [R, abr.]
64.3137 BENETTI, Julie —
In Parliament, the majority identifies with the leader of its group. He personifies the group, he represents it as well as leads it. That is why the 23 July 2008 constitutional revision could have brought about a new conception for the role of the majority leader, the renovation of the role of the majority being embodied in its president. But this reform transformed neither the role of the majority leader nor the function of the parliament majority itself. As the guarantor of the unity and discipline of his group, the majority leader is above all else a figure of authority and command. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3138 BERGOUGNOUS, Georges —
The constitutional recognition of the opposition goes hand in hand with the assertion of the monitoring and evaluation function of the Parliament. They both contributes to the renewal and revalorization of the legislative branch, which was the main goal of the 2008 constitutional revision. Among the instruments chosen to reach this goal was the setting up of teams with equal political rights, in order to empower the opposition and normalize its relationship with the majority. But this method calls for reflection regarding its limitation to monitoring tasks and the way it enshrines — and, therefore, legitimizes — a bi-partisan political reality. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3139 BOAS, Taylor C.; HIDALGO, F. Daniel; RICHARDSON, Neal P. —
When firms give money to candidates for public office, what return can they expect on their investment? Using data from Brazil, we employ a regression discontinuity (RD) design to identify the effect of an electoral victory on government contracts for a candidate's corporate donors. Firms specializing in public-works projects can expect a substantial boost in contracts — at least 14 times the value of their contributions — when they donate to a federal-deputy candidate from the ruling Workers’ Party (PT) and that candidate wins office. We find no effects among allied parties, indicating that the PT prioritizes this form of state spending for party strengthening rather than coalition management. [R]
64.3140 BÖHM, Katharina; LANDWEHR, Claudia —
The paper presents two cases of Europeanization in health policy — an area that has so far been viewed as hardly affected by European integration. [However], some traces of Europeanization can be found, because the Commission has a strong interest in further integration in this field and all other relevant actors have motives to at least engage in cooperation. Our first case deals with the EU's transparency directive and shows that this has forced member states to establish formal decision-making procedures, but did not result in a harmonization of decision-making processes and institutions, which is why the Commission has fostered cooperation and networking. The second case looks at the Europeanization of health technology assessment, demonstrating how cooperation and policy-learning take place and how the Commission has successfully promoted the emergence of a new policy field. [R, abr.]
64.3141 BONICA, Adam —
This article uses a new dynamic ideal-point estimation method that incorporates smoothing techniques to construct a more detailed account of [US] Senate polarization. The results reveal that the Senate polarized in two distinct phases. Member replacement accounts for nearly all of the increase from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s after which ideological adaptation emerges as the dominant force behind polarization. In addition, I find that a few brief periods of intensified partisanship account for most of the increase in polarization since the mid-1990s, suggesting that these episodes have had significant and lasting effects. [R]
64.3142 BONVECCHI, Alejandro; SCARTASCINI, Carlos —
This article proposes a research agenda for the organization of the executive branch in Latin America by reviewing the literature on the US and Latin American presidencies and outlining the research gap between them. The study finds that while strong, region-wide patterns have been established about cabinets in Latin America, research is lagging behind on the presidential center, presidential advisory networks, and their effects in policy-making. The article sets forth a series of research questions and suggests a combination of quantitative, social network, and case study strategies to address them. [R]
64.3143 BRAMS, Steven J.; CAMILO, Gustavo; FRANZ, Alexandra D. —
We apply a fallback model of coalition-formation to decisions of the US Supreme Court, focusing on the seven natural courts, which had the same members for at least two terms, between 1969 and 2009. The predictions of majority coalitions on each of the courts are generally borne out by the 5–4 decisions, whereas the predictions of the A.D. Martin and K.M. Quinn (“Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999”, Political Analysis 10(2), 2002: 134–153) model, which assumes a single underlying dimension along which the justices can be ordered, are not. The present model also provides insight into the dynamic process by which subcoalitions build up into majority coalitions and, in addition, identifies “kingmakers” and “leaders” on the natural courts. Furthermore, it provides evidence, from coalitional memberships, that a few justices shifted over time from one ideological camp to another. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3053]
64.3144 BROMMESSON, Douglas; EKENGREN, Ann-Marie; OSCARSSON, Henrik —
This article investigates if and how the members of the Swedish Parliament adapt to media. Do they adapt to media in line with cartel theory and its expectations on elite control and homogenization? Or, do they adapt in line with H. Kitschelt's expectations on individualization and fragmentation? In the article, based on mediatization theory, we study how the MPs have adapted to media over time, from 1985–2010, with a special focus on 2010. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3497]
64.3145 BROWN, Hana E. —
This article introduces a racialized conflict theory to explain how racial divisions structure welfare state development in the absence of de jure discrimination. The author explains the effect of racial divisions on policy outcomes as the result of the attitudinal, cultural, and political spillover effects of prevailing conflicts in a social field. Using a paired-case comparison and analysis of multiple data sources, the author applies this theory to analyze Georgia's and Alabama's surprisingly divergent welfare reforms in the 1990s. Results support the racialized conflict theory and suggest important revisions to prevailing theories about the sociopolitical effects of contemporary racial divides. [R]
64.3146 CALDERÓN, Emilse —
This article aims to analyze the occurrence of the process of security outsourcing and its implications for theory/practice. This task is based on the security decisions made by the Colombia neighboring countries, 2000–2011. The article also takes in account their internal realities on border areas stricken by non-traditional threats of armed conflict and the spread of drug-trafficking networks. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3171]
64.3147 CAMPELLO, Daniela —
The persistence of policy switches — whereby presidents renege on campaign promises shortly after winning elections — 30 years after Latin America's redemocratization defies established notions of democratic representation, and poses a puzzle to analysts and voters alike. I advance current explanations for switches, by arguing they can be understood only in the context of currency booms and crises, typical of Latin American economies after their reintegration into world finance in the 1970s. To test my propositions empirically, I examine elections held in the region between 1978 and 2006 and find evidence consistent with the claim that switches are more likely to occur in periods of dollar scarcity, when the need to attract financial capital to the economy pushes leftist presidents into adopting policies opposed to the programs they announced during campaign. [R]
64.3148 CANTÚ, Franciso; DESPOSATO, Scott; MAGAR, Eric —
This paper examines the nature of the data available for studying legislative behavior in Mexico. Only a subset of roll-call votes has been released for the critical transition period of 1998–2006. We test whether this subset is a representative sample of all votes, and thus suitable for study, or it is biased in a way that misleads scholarship. Our research strategy takes advantage of a partial overlap between two roll-call vote-reporting sources by the Chamber of Deputies: the site with spatial vote disclosure, created in 1998; and the site with universal vote disclosure, since 2006 only. An examination of the data-generation and publication mechanisms, comparing different estimations of legislative behavior, reveals that omitted votes reduce the precision of estimates but do not introduce bias. [R, abr.]
64.3149 CAPPELLETTI, Fabio; FISCHER, Manuel; SCIARINI, Pascal —
In 2004, the Swiss people accepted a new equalization scheme and a new distribution of competences between the federal state and the cantons. It was argued that the reform was successful because of the capacity of veto-players to overcome their interests and adopt a “problem-solving” interaction mode. We propose a different interpretation and argue that distributive issues and the accommodation of actors’ interests crucially mattered. We identify three mechanisms that contribute to a successful reform: package-deals, side-payments and the downsizing of the reform. Our in-depth, mainly qualitative study of both the content of the reform and related decision-making process supports the pertinence of these strategies for the explanation of the successful reform of Swiss federalism. [R]
64.3150 ČEPO, Dario —
The democratic deficit is a sign that the EU lacks full legitimacy. The paper shows that comitology system is a source of democratic deficit. It shows the reasons why national public administrations got involved in the decision-making process, and the role they have in overseeing the implementation of adopted measures. The paper also gives the reasons why comitology is a threat to democratic accountability, pointing to the Council as the main source of that threat. Finally, it also suggests ways of reducing the democratic deficit by empowering the representatives of national public administrations to work transparently. [R, abr.]
64.3151 CHIRU, Mihail; GHERGHINA, Sergiu —
This article investigates the extent to which post-communist political elites favored the intervention of external organizations in parliamentary work. It draws on data from a survey of parliamentary elites from the beginning of the transition towards democracy in the four Visegrad countries. The results show a much more complex picture than usually assumed, with important variation both between the four legislatures and within the same parliaments. The varying levels of support for external actors’ involvement in parliamentary work had different triggering mechanisms connected among other factors to MPs’ socio-demographic profile, ideological outlook, and the institutional role they envisioned for parliament. [R]
64.3152 CHOUINARD, Stéphanie —
This article studies the claims for non-territorial autonomy (NTA) of Canada's francophone minority communities (FMCs) — encompassing the over one million French-speaking citizens that live outside the province of Québec — before the courts since the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The findings show that Canadian courts have sought to apply principles of NTA to accommodate FMCs by extending the Canadian language rights regime in order to apply some principles of non-territorial autonomy, in the form of “institutional completeness”. In so doing, the courts have opened the door to a legal recognition of positive group rights for this minority. [R]
64.3153 CHRISTIANSEN, Thomas; HÖGENAUER, Anna-lena; NEUHOLD, Christine —
This article develops a framework for the analysis of the Europeanization of national parliaments that starts from the recognition that the Lisbon Treaty changes involve an inherent dynamic towards increasing transnational interaction among parliaments as well as pressures to rely more on technical expertise and administrative support in their internal workings. The processes of transnationalization and bureaucratization are considered as key indicators that help us to identify different degrees of Europeanization of national parliaments in the EU. As a final step, the article develops a typology of national parliaments based on the assumption that the more Europeanized parliaments will tend to invest more into their administrative resources and will engage to a greater extent with other national parliaments as well as with EU-level actors. [R, abr.]
64.3154 CIERCO, Teresa; REIS, Liliana —
Kosovo is the largest per capita recipient of EU financial aid in the world, and is home to the largest civilian crisis management mission ever launched by the EU (EULEX). However, it is questionable whether or not this assistance has been sufficiently effective. The judiciary continues to suffer from political interference, inefficiency and a lack of transparency and enforcement. The Kosovar authorities do not prioritize sufficiently the rule of law and the disagreement over the recognition of Kosovo jeopardizes the incentive for EU accession. This paper considers the EU's assistance to Kosovo in the field of the rule of law and assesses its success in achieving its intended results. It discusses the EULEX's impact upon the overall progress of Kosovo in the main areas of the rule of law: the police and justice. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3171]
64.3155 COELI SIMÕES PIRES, Maria —
Although there have been significant advances in terms of federalism legitimacy in Brazil, the inverted pyramid emphasizes the model's limitations and generates setbacks, defining the need to reread federal governance under the idea of democratic and efficient management, using qualitative tools, especially in constitutional law. [R, abr.]
64.3156 COLLI, Andrea; MARIOTTI, Sergio; PISCITELLO, Lucia —
This article [examines] the role of European governments in fostering new global players in the utilities. We argue that the international growth of firms stems from their interaction with governments, which act not only as rule-setters but also as goal-oriented strategists, through public policies and mechanisms ranging from firm ownership to more indirect intervention designed to promote internationalization. We claim that the outcome of the interaction significantly depends on the country's form of capitalism. The particular form of capitalism manifested in a country is deeply rooted in historical and cultural behavioral models and differs according to path-dependent institutional changes. Our conjectures are empirically supported by a comparative analysis of the international growth of previously inward-looking domestic incumbents in the European energy and telecommunications industries over the last 15 years. [R]
64.3157 COWLEY, Philip; STUART, Mark —
Based on examination of the division records and elite-level interviewing, this article examines the nature of backbench dissent in the House of Commons during the government of G. Brown, covering its range and scope, the composition of those defying their whip, as well as placing it in its political context. It reveals a high level of rebellion by Labour MPs — higher than that seen in any previous post-war Parliament — along with showing the degree to which the government were forced to negotiate with, and concede to, their backbenchers in order to prevent rebellion reaching even higher levels. [R]
64.3158 CRAIG, Geoffrey —
This paper investigates how political subjectivity is framed and expressed through language use in television political interviews. The paper argues that P. Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field provide a useful framework for analyses of political subjectivity in news media interviews, but it also argues that the more sociological emphasis of Bourdieu's theory cannot sufficiently account for the constitutive importance of discourse in the agency of the habitus and the boundaries and authority of different fields. As such, the analysis also draws on critical discourse-analysis to demonstrate how Prime Ministerial discourse involves negotiations of different constitutive features of an individual subjectivity, and also negotiations between a particular habitus and the exigencies of the journalistic and political fields. [R, abr.]
64.3159 DAHO, Grégory —
The thesis of adaptation, dominant in academic and strategic circles, explains the transformation of military organizations only from the changes of the international environment since the end of the Cold War, maintaining a deterministic, functionalist and disembodied vision of change. Through the observation of the genesis of civil-military activities in France between 1992 and 2005, we raise an alternative track, paying particular attention to the evolution of social interaction between officers. It is primarily the erosion of the taboos systems inherited from the war in Algeria which contributes to the current transformation of the military actors and organizations. [R]
64.3160 DAMONTE, Alessia —
Mainstream analyses have often understood environmental effectiveness as a consequence of the shape of interests and policy-making, and have tested their models through statistical techniques. Results have, however, proved quite erratic. It is argued that these weaknesses reflect a misconception about causality, thus highlighting the need for a shift in both model and method. A different model is developed that explains effectiveness through policy tools and ideas. The model is then applied to the performances of the EU15 member states in mid-2000s, and assessed using Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Cases are polarized around two classic cleavages (“environmentalists” vs. “productivists”, and “pro-marketers” vs. “protectionists”), but give evidence that all the related tool mixes are able to deliver — while the relevant difference between leaders and laggards lies in the use of evaluation devices. [R]
64.3161 DE LUCA, Giacomo —
We investigate how the employment relationship may lead employers to control the voting behavior and to induce the electoral registration of their workers. Forced registration and the control of votes become feasible when voting behavior is observable, as in open-ballot elections. Workers whose vote is controlled are more likely to be registered as compared to other eligible voters, increasing their impact on electoral outcomes. Increasing the secrecy of the vote (e.g., with a secret ballot) significantly reduces the control of votes. Electoral registration, however, remains biased as long as the probability of voting behavior disclosure induces less ideologically motivated voters to comply with the political preference of the employer. We provide empirical support for the predictions of the model examining the effects of the introduction of the secret ballot in Chile in 1958. [R]
64.3162 DE RUITER, Rik —
This study investigates how members of parliament (MPs) of opposition parties in the UK and the Netherlands go public with information on the performance of national policies from six open methods of coordination (OMCs), and to what extent country differences in the set-up of parliamentary systems matter in this context. The empirical findings indicate that Dutch MPs use more information from OMC reports to shame the incumbent government than do British MPs. In both parliaments these shaming activities take place primarily in committee meetings and have no link with newspaper coverage on OMCs. Activities of MPs aimed at going public with information from OMC reports established only a weak link between OMCs and the citizens in EU member states. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3129]
64.3163 DE SMET, Brecht —
The 2011 Egyptian revolution and its concrete outcomes of military rule and Muslim Brotherhood governance demand a thorough analysis that transcends the archetypical binaries of revolution and counter-revolution, uprising and transition, dictatorship and democracy. A Gramscian interpretation, deploying the concepts of historical bloc, passive revolution, and Caesarism, embeds the contemporary events within a historical process of post-colonial state formation and reconfiguration and the local implementation of global neoliberal accumulation strategies. These lineages elucidate the capacity of the Armed Forces to play a specific Caesarist role during the revolutionary process. [R, abr.]
64.3164 DE WILDE, Pieter —
This contribution assesses the explanatory power of European integration theory for the politicization of specific EU issues in mass media and national parliaments. By comparing debates on the EU budget in the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland, on three different budget negotiations, in newspapers and in plenary parliamentary sessions, a rich picture is presented of how visible the EU is, who communicates and how sense is made of EU issues. The comparative framework allows for the isolation of the effects of different national interests, increasing authority of the EU and institutional operating logics. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3129]
64.3165 DETERS, Henning —
In its pending decision on the constitutionality of the European Stability Mechanism and Fiscal Compact, the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) has recently ruled on several applications for temporary injunctions against the transposition of these instruments. The problem of democratic self-determination under the constraints of monetary integration has been a main concern in the ruling. Yet, the democracy-safeguards the FCC has prescribed are parochial in not considering their impact on other EU Member States, and the Court's view of autonomy is skewed towards the issue of spending. Both concepts are at odds with the current level of transnational interdependence,. Constitutional jurisdiction should acknowledge its role in this state of affairs and fortify its effort in building judicial networks of deliberative exchange to overcome outworn parochialisms. [R, abr.]
64.3166 DOHERTY, Brian; HAYES, Graeme —
Investigating the recent direct action campaigns against genetically modified crops in France and the UK, the authors [examine] how contrasting judicial systems and cultures affect the way that activists choose to commit ostensibly illegal actions and how they negotiate the trade-offs between effectiveness and public accountability. The authors find evidence that prosecution outcomes across different judicial systems are consistent and relatively predictable and consequently argue that the concept of a “judicial opportunity structure” is useful for developing scholars’ understanding of social movement trajectories. The authors also find that these differential judicial opportunities cannot adequately account for the tactical choices made by activists with respect to the staging of covert or overt direct action; rather, explanations of tactical choice are better accounted for by movement ideas, cultures, and traditions. [R]
64.3167 DUVELL, Franck —
States often fall out or collaborate over issues to do with international migration while migrants through their very actions shape the interdependence of states. Turkey and the EU also frequently argue over migration issues. Over the years, Turkey's economy grew significantly. It became an attraction and a safe haven to migrants and refugees. In April 2013, a new migration and asylum law came into force that responds to these new challenges. This was followed by the EU-Turkey visa liberalization and readmission agreements. This contribution sketches some of the issues and notably the wider context to these latest developments. [R]
64.3168 DZANKIC, Jelena —
In Montenegro, the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), the legal successor to the Montenegrin branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, has uninterruptedly remained in power since the break-up of Yugoslavia. By looking at citizenship policies in Montenegro since the disintegration of Yugoslavia as an “image of the nation” and an “image of politics”, this paper maintains that citizenship legislation has been one of the key mechanisms that has enabled the perpetuation of DPS rule. By embedding the “image of the nation” in citizenship legislation, the ruling Montenegrin elite reinforced their political agenda. By entrenching the “image of politics” in citizenship laws, they managed to produce conditions favoring their electoral victories, thus enabling the party's institutional dominance. [R]
64.3169 EDWARDS, Barry C. —
H. Hoover continues to serve as an object of derision in contemporary debates over economic policy. But is the textbook portrayal of Hoover as an unrelenting conservative historically accurate? A number of scholars assert that Hoover was a progressive president. Given Hoover's status in our political consciousness, the stakes in this debate are significant. Political science can inform this debate with rigorous ideological measurement. I complete a record of Hoover's legislative positions and use W-NOMINATE to estimate Hoover's ideal point relative to the 71st and 72nd Congresses. I demonstrate a design to improve presidential ideal-point estimation. The results fill a gap in presidential scholarship, show that Hoover was a conservative Republican, and suggest that efforts to portray Hoover as a progressive leader are misinformed. [R, abr.]
64.3170 EHRHARD, Thomas —
The process of electoral reapportionment in France is both little known and suspicious. Parliament was at first deprived of this procedure in favor of the government, but we are now witnessing its return in the process. The vision of a politicized and partisan procedure of electoral redistricting is very far from the complex reality of the procedure. The article puts it into perspective by taking into account the institutional constraints that govern electoral redistricting. It is based on interviews with the major actors of the procedure. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3171 ELIAS, Luís André —
The externalization of internal security is an important asset for the national foreign policy. Nowadays, police missions of the UN, operations in the framework of the EU Common Security and Defense Policy, the police and judicial cooperation of Justice and Home Affairs of the EU, police cooperation between Portuguese speaking countries are decisive components for the prevention and suppression of organized crime and terrorism, as well as for the capacity building of judicial and internal security systems in post-conflict countries. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “The foreign dimensions of domestic security”, edited and introduced by Ana Paula BRANDÃO and Helena CARRAPIÇO. See also Abstr. 64.2854, 2863, 3146, 3154, 3727, 3856]
64.3172 ENNS, Peter K., et al. —
This article develops and tests a model of conditional status quo bias and American inequality. We find that institutional features that bias policy outcomes toward the status quo have played a central role in the path of inequality. Using time-series analysis of top income shares during the post-Depression period, we identify the Senate as a key actor in the politics of income inequality. Our findings suggest that the supermajoritarian nature of the Senate and policy stagnation, when coupled with economic and social factors that produce rising inequality, create a situation in which inequality becomes difficult to reverse. [R]
64.3173 ERZEEL, Silvia; CALUWAERTS, Didier —
Although gender quotas are increasingly adopted, the legitimacy of such measures remains controversial. We ask how MPs — the key players in the implementation and adoption of quotas — think about affirmative action, and under which conditions they find quotas to be legitimate measures for improving gender equality. Our results reveal that much variation exists as to how MPs perceive the legitimacy of quotas, at both the individual and the macro level. Women and left-wing MPs consider quotas to be more legitimate than men and right-wing MPs. The openness of the parliamentary arena towards women's movement proves to be an important condition for the positive evaluation of quotas. The broader electoral and parliamentary context has only a conditional effect: it influences female MPs’ assessment of quotas but not that of male legislators. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.2856]
64.3174 EVANS, Kevin A. —
The article analyzes the rhetorical content of the 985 signing statements from FDR through J. Carter and argues that the president's rhetoric is an effort to frame the accomplishment that has just occurred with an eye toward maximizing prospective power and building legacy. The article explores the impact of different political contexts (divided government and elections) on several important rhetorical characteristics found in signing statements. In addition, the study delves into three interesting cases related to presidential credit claiming and attribution. LBJ and Carter were the most likely to attribute credit to members of Congress, while R. Nixon was the most likely to claim credit for himself. The findings help illuminate the various motivations that presidents have to use signing statements for reasons beyond constitutional challenges. [R, abr.]
64.3175 FIELD, Bonnie N. —
This article analyzes how multilevel territorial politics impact the performance of minority parliamentary governments. It tests whether the governing status of a regional party at the regional level — whether it is governing, and, if so, in which type of cabinet — affects its level of support for a statewide party governing in minority at the national level. Using the Spanish case, it concludes that governing dynamics at the regional level affect regional parties’ behavior in the national parliament. Furthermore, a regional party's support for the national government is, in part, dependent upon its own need for support to govern in its region. Both findings suggest that particular regional governing dynamics can assure or complicate a minority government's ability to attain the parliamentary support necessary to govern. [R]
64.3176 FLECKENSTEIN, Timo; LEE, Soohyun Christine —
Recent welfare reforms across the OECD have sought to make social policies more “employment friendly”. Although “old” social policies of the Golden Age (i.e., unemployment protection and old-age security) were subject to comprehensive retrenchment, “new” social policies, especially family policies facilitating work-family reconciliation and female employment participation, experienced substantial expansion. Following the Swedish “pioneer”, strong male-breadwinner countries have expanded employment-oriented family policies since the late 1990s. Against the case of early family policy expansion in Sweden (typically associated with social democracy and an organized women's movement), we examine whether the drivers of employment-oriented family policy have changed since the end of the Golden Age. We highlight party competition as key political driver in policy expansion in “latecomer” countries, whereas post-industrialization provides the functional underpinnings for these policies. [R, abr.]
64.3177 FLINDERS, Matthew; DOMMETT, Katharine; TONKISS, Katherine —
The use of arm's-length bodies to deliver certain services, to regulate certain sectors or to assume responsibility for particularly salient political issues is neither new in historical terms or a feature unique to the UK in comparative terms. What is particularly distinctive, however, is the Coalition Government's attempts since 2010 to reduce the number of “quangos” while also strengthening the capacity of the core executive and sponsor departments to control and co-ordinate this dense and fragmented sphere of delegated governance. Drawing upon the findings of the first research project to analyze the current Public Bodies Reform Agenda, this article provides an account of the “filling-in” of the “hollowing out”. When viewed through a historical lens, the Coalition Government has adopted a distinctive approach to “the quango problem”. [R]
64.3178 FLINDERS, Matthew; GEDDES, Marc —
This article examines how the politics of patronage has evolved in recent decades and argues that it is possible to identify a silent revolution that has gradually but consistently constrained the reach and discretion enjoyed by ministers in deploying their patronage powers. What is particularly distinctive about British political history since 2007 is the introduction of a far-reaching ladder of legislative scrutiny that ranges from informal pre-appointment hearings, at one end of the ladder, to a statutory veto over the minister's preferred candidate, at the other. However, this “outlawing of the spoils” has evolved in a typically British way with reforms being implemented on an ad hoc and incremental basis. [R, abr.]
64.3179 FOLEY, Robert T. —
The idea that the armies of the First World War were incapable of learning is one of the most enduring myths of the conflict. This image of “lions led by donkeys” has proved difficult to modify. By examining the British and German armies as learning organizations during the war, this article contributes to the growing literature on wartime adaptation and innovation, as well as the wider literature on organizational learning in wartime. It demonstrates how the organizational cultures of these two armies shaped the way in which they learned, predisposing the British army towards radical, often technological, solutions to the tactical and operational challenges of the First World War battlefield, while inclining the German army towards incremental and tactical solutions to the same problems. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3882]
64.3180 FORTANE, Nicolas —
By analyzing the career of a scholarly reference in political and administrative fields, this paper explains the processes that enable the use of an “idea” for political purposes. It thus appears necessary to study the circulation and appropriation dynamics that make a scientific concept available to political and/or administrative actors, and to understand how it can be related to a political issue, advocacy or a public policy. This case-study shows how dopamine (conceived as the neurotransmitter of addictions) contributed to an important shift in French drug policies at the end of the last century. [R]
64.3181 FRANCESCHET, Susan; PISCOPO, Jennifer M. —
This article investigates whether and how gender shapes access to elite political networks, using the case of Argentina, the first country in the world to adopt a national-level quota law in 1991. Quotas have significantly improved women's access to elected office, without altering either the gendered hierarchies or gendered power networks that govern political advancement. We find that while men and women elected to the National Congress have considerable political experience, men are more likely to have held executive office, particularly posts that provide access to resources that sustain clientelism. We further find that female legislators are less likely to be married and have children than male legislators, indicating that women's domestic responsibilities circumscribe their political careers. [R]
64.3182 FUSTEC, Klervi —
To the degree that the UNDP has played a role in promoting the question of “climate change”, the dependence of the Palestinian Authority on international aid has contributed to framing this emergent public problem; its construction is anchored in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Palestinian state's demand for recognition at the international level. In the international arenas dedicated to “climate change”, the Palestinian Authority discusses this question in terms of political and climatic injustice. Two questions thus merit study: what effect does the construction of the climate problem have on the Palestinian Authority and, conversely, what effect does the Palestinian Authority have on the construction of the climate problem? [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.2869]
64.3183 GARCÍA LUPATO, Fabio —
The analysis of how the EU affects domestic political competition and political parties has mainly been centered on elections, whereas studies on parliaments have focused more on institutional adaptation. However, parliaments also provide forums for debating alternative domestic and EU policies. This study examines how Europe is used in parliamentary competition in Italy and Spain by analyzing party discourses in investiture and budget debates. Covering two decades (1986–2006), the study investigates whether or not the EU has gained importance over time in the way parties use European policies, the evolution of party positions towards the EU and, more generally, the consequences of integration for party policies and discourse. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3129]
64.3184 GARCÍA SÁNCHEZ, Miguel —
This paper studies, the relationship in Colombia between illicit crops, coca eradication strategies and citizens’ perceptions of trust on the local executive and the police. Using survey data from the America's barometer and contextual level data on coca crops and eradication strategies it was possible to conclude: a higher local incidence of illicit drugs trafficking has a negative relationship with citizens’ perceptions of trust on the local governments. These relationships are not homogeneous as they are conditioned by individual level variables such as evaluations of the economy and the provision of public goods. [R]
64.3185 GARRIGA, Ana Carolina; DUARTE ORTIZ, Héctor —
We present a new instrument to measure the scope of delegation of decree power to the president (DAD). The two variants of this index provide objective and replicable metrics for measuring DDA scope and allow cross-time and cross-sectional comparisons. The indexes will enable further studies on the presidents’ legislative powers. We use them to measure Argentine, Peruvian and Venezuelan DDA between 1961 and 2001. [R]
64.3186 GAYNOR, Niamh —
While, in theory, decentralization offers many benefits, empirical evidence of these benefits remains limited. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Burundi in 2011, this article argues that the current donor emphasis on institution-building alone proves insufficient. Evidence is presented to show that current support, while consolidating the authority of local political elites, reinforces political and horizontal inequalities, thereby paving the way for further disaffection and conflict. Reflecting back to the initial aims of the process, a re-orientation is proposed, moving the focus of support beyond elite state actors and institutions and bringing citizens back into the process of state-building and transformation. [R]
64.3187 GERBER, Alan S., et al. —
The B. Obama administration has made a major investment in comparative effectiveness research (CER) to learn what treatments work best for which patients. CER has the potential to reduce wasteful medical spending and improve patient outcomes, but the political sustainability of this initiative remains unclear because of concerns that it will threaten the doctor-patient relationship. An unresolved question is whether it is possible to boost public support for the use of CER as a cost-control strategy. We investigate one potential source of public support: Americans’ trust in physicians as faithful agents of patient interests. Our survey results suggest that the medical profession's stance will be an important factor in shaping the political viability of efforts to use CER as a tool for health care cost-control. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3286]
64.3188 GINSBURG, Tom; HUQ, Aziz —
January 2014 marks the tenth anniversary of Afghanistan's constitution. In what areas has it succeeded or failed? Judging by its achievements with respect to four midrange goals, the document has a record that is decidedly mixed. [R]
64.3189 GOODMAN, David S. G. —
Three decades of economic growth have brought spectacular results to China, but have also increased economic inequality. Reactions to increased inequality in China, as elsewhere, have treated inequality as a pathology when in fact it is more usual than equality, and possibly more functional in terms of social and individual development. The problem with inequality is not that it exists but that it may be poorly conceived, especially in public discourse, and consequently that it is inadequately managed. Inequality extends well beyond questions of income and wealth to the distribution of power, of gender and of generation. Healthy societies require more even wealth distribution but they also require a wider appreciation of different types of inequality. [R]
64.3190 GOYA, Michel —
In 1914, the firepower of modern weaponry produced a massacre. To limit losses, the warring parties dug themselves into trenches. The French army was forced to innovate. Infantry and artillery underwent major transformations. Military doctrine evolved to integrate new technologies — tanks and aircraft in particular — into tactical planning. By 1918, the French army, more powerful and more mobile than its opponent, eventually defeated Germany. [R] [See Abstr. 64.2936]
64.3191 GRAÇA FEIJÓ, Rui —
This article considers R. Elgie's proposal for a positive correlation between premier-presidential forms of semi-presidentialism and the success of democratic transitions, and discusses the way in which Timor-Leste fits the model as well as the need for a clear view of the incentive mechanisms at play. It further analyzes the importance of “independent” presidents with “moderating powers” as a way of achieving inclusive governance and to facilitate democratic consolidation. Contrary to suppositions that attribute a tendency for president-parliamentary regimes to succumb to conflict between the main political actors, the case of Timor-Leste suggests that the definition of the president's role as a “moderator”, and the exercise of the function by “independent”, non-party personalities counteracts such inclinations with positive effects on democratic consolidation. [R, abr.]
64.3192 GROSSMAN, Emiliano; WOLL, Cornelia —
By analyzing the variety of bailouts during the 2007–2009 financial crisis in Europe and North America, we show that the strategies governments use to cope with the instability of financial markets does not depend on economic conditions alone. Rather, they take root in the institutional and political setting of each country and vary in particular according to the different types of business-government relations banks were able to entertain with public decision makers. Still, “crony capitalism” accounts overstate the role of bank lobbying. With four case studies of the Irish, Danish, British, and French bank bailout, we show that countries with close one-on-one relationships between policy-makers and bank management tended to develop unbalanced bailout packages, while countries where banks negotiated collectively developed solutions with a greater burden-sharing from private institutions. [R, abr.]
64.3193 GUINCHARD, Serge —
The conflict of interests of judges are at the core of the requirements of a high quality justice system which operates serenely, immune to suspicion of dependency on any kind of power institution and to personal bias. The relationships that could oppose or link a judge to one of the parties should be addressed preventively and, if necessary, a posteriori through the annulment of the decision delivered in such conditions. But the answer of positive law differs according to whether the judges are professional magistrates or lay judges. In the first case, the statute that protects their independence is the best guarantee to avoid conflicts of interests. In the second case, the lack of statute (referee) or a less protective statute (for instance judges of commercial courts) leaves the management of conflicts to the impartiality of the judges and their virtue based on personal ethics. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3239]
64.3194 GUINJOAN, Marc; RODON, Toni —
Support for decentralization has generally been considered an outcome derived from the existence of regional or subnational identities. A recent complementary explanation has highlighted the role of politics to create regionally oriented support. We combine these two explanations by studying what determines the support for decentralization in Spain, an almost unique case where these two approaches can be tested. Using a hierarchical model, we show that in those regions without a different subnational identity, some citizens develop regionally oriented support because of their wish to bring the administration closer to the citizens and because their preferred party is pushing for further decentralization. In addition, we highlight the importance of considering decentralization as an outcome derived from party dynamics, which are able to shape political attitudes towards decentralization. [R]
64.3195 HARRISON, Tom; KOSTKA, Genia —
By assuming that the main obstacle to emissions-reduction lies in the inability to reach agreement internationally, the current debate underplays the challenges of building the state capacity needed to ensure mitigation takes place. The implementation of mitigation strategies requires careful balancing of competing priorities and deliberate strategies to bring different interest groups on board. We analyze the way this balancing act has been carried out in promoting energy efficiency measures in China and India. The balancing act has been done differently as each country has tailored its approach to the specific context of competing priorities and differing state capacity. We encapsulate these differences by referring to China's approach as “state-signaling” and India's approach as a “market-plus” approach. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3070]
64.3196 HASSELL, Hans J. G. —
Using polling data from 1982 to 2009, I develop a model of public opinion toward the Speaker of the [US] House. I show that, in addition to economic and institutional factors, the speaker's ideology and events associated with the speaker's responsibilities in office affect the public's opinion toward this congressional leader. I also examine the partisan differences in the formation of public opinions about the speaker. I find that minority party partisans are more likely to have negative evaluations of the speaker when the speaker has more ideologically extreme views which lead to higher levels of polarization. In addition, members of different parties weigh economic and institutional factors differently in their evaluations of the speaker. [R]
64.3197 HASTINGS, Annette, et al. —
There is a longstanding concern about middle-class capture of the benefits of public service provision, although relatively little evidence exists on the exact nature of any advantage or on the processes by which this comes about. Using a framework developed from J. Gal (“Formulating the Matthew Principle: on the role of the middle-classes in the welfare state”, Scandinavian Journal of Social Welfare, 7, 1998: 4255), and via two case studies of street-cleansing services in the UK, the article explores the ways in which middle-class service-users assert influence in relation to service design, resource-allocation and practice on the ground. It explores how urban managers respond to middle-class influence, revealing the ways in which influence is accommodated and the benefits of this to middle-class service-users. [R, abr.]
64.3198 HAUSEGGER, Lori; RIDDELL, Troy; HENNIGAR, Matthew —
The federal government's power to appoint judges has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. While many suggest that partisan affiliation, gender and professional background may be influencing the Canadian appointment process, and some have called into question the fairness of such influences, little attention has been directed at determining whether these characteristics influence the outcome of cases. This paper studies decisions made by the Ontario Court of Appeal between 1990 and 2003 and uses a unique measure of partisan affiliation in an attempt to answer the question: do characteristics which play a role in the appointment process influence judicial decision-making. [R]
64.3199 HÉRIN, Jean-Louis —
Opposition or minority group? This choice was opened by the Senate at the time of the last constitutional revision which was adopted thanks to the contribution of future minority groups. Bolstered by this constitutional sanction, minority groups contribute to comforting parliamentary pluralism, first of all in the Senate where the majority group does not hold an absolute majority of seats. This carries the risk, in the eyes of some, of complicating the deliberation process and of questioning the supremacy of the majority rule. Whether the groups belong to the majority or the opposition, they are able to assert their specificity or their autonomy in a context of parliamentary bipolarization. Is it possible to imagine a representative Parliament without one or several minority groups? [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3200 HESS, David J. —
In the case of technology transitions to low-carbon sources of energy, there is growing evidence that even in countries with a strong political consensus in favor of a transition, the pace has been slow in comparison with the need to reduce greenhouse gases. One factor that affects the slowness of the transition is political resistance from the incumbent industrial regime. Using data on the mobilization of resistance from the fossil-fuel industry in the US, the study builds on the growing literature on the political dimensions of sustainability transitions by drawing attention to the role of incumbent regime coalitions, grassroots coalitions in support of green transition policies, and countervailing industrial power. [R, abr.]
64.3201 HEYDEMANN, Steven —
The revolutionary wave that washed over the Arab world in 2011 swept away the rulers of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen. This article compares the economic policies adopted by the various governments in response to popular dissatisfaction, finding significant similarities between post-authoritarian transition regimes and authoritarian “survivors”. Both have relied on a temporary increase in redistribution, direct monetary transfers to what are deemed politically useful sections of the population and an ongoing commitment to pre-uprising policies of reduced social spending and economic liberalization. This convergence runs counter to expectations that elected transitional governments would be more responsive than their authoritarian predecessors to mass demands for social and economic justice. It also undermines the notion that these authoritarian regimes are inflexible and unable to adapt their policies to changing circumstances. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3940]
64.3202 HEYNCKES, Heinz-Willi —
The Subcommittee on Local Government Affairs was established in response to a growing public debate on the positioning of local authorities and how they are impacted by federal legislation. The Subcommittee was intended to give more weight to local authorities’ concerns at the federal level. The Bundestag's Rules of Procedure establishes a close link between the subcommittee's deliberations and the main committee. The members of the subcommittee are appointed autonomously by the parliamentary groups. In view of its position as a subcommittee dealing with a cross-cutting issue in which several committees play an important role, it would have been preferable for the Subcommittee on Local Government Affairs to have been set up as a joint subcommittee, granting each of the committees involved equal status. [R, abr.]
64.3203 HILLS, Alice —
Somalia is an exceptionally insecure state that nevertheless offers an arena in which police officers and institutions can — and do — function. This article argues that Somalia's three regional police forces offer insight into the dynamics that result when locally driven institution-building projects interface with international state-building projects. The resultant picture is nuanced because police negotiate with private actors even as they develop their state-based authority, and their achievements are limited by Somali power brokers sharing a political understanding of security provision, valuing external assistance as a business opportunity, and adapting international models of governance accordingly. Consequently, while the prospects for institution-building are favorable, stabilization is unlikely to shift into state building or development. [R]
64.3204 HOCHSTETLER, Kathryn; MILKOREIT, Manjana —
The BASIC countries (Brazil, China, India, South Africa) have played a major role in recent climate negotiations. We argue that a focus on identities — both their individual national identities as emerging powers and their joint identity as the BASIC coalition of emerging powers — is useful for understanding the coalition's negotiation stances and the larger negotiation dynamics between 2009 and 2011. BASIC countries maintain a hard defining line between themselves and developed states in terms of their climate obligations but accept some differentiation between themselves and other developing countries, thus adding a destabilizing third category of countries to the climate negotiations. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3676]
64.3205 HONG, Amy —
In the past decade, a number of events in France — from the banlieues riots in 2005 to 2011's burqa ban and the dismantlement of Roma [Gypsy] camps by both N. Sarkozy and F. Hollande — have propelled debates around immigration, integration and citizenship to the forefront of French politics. At the intersection of these debates are France's undocumented migrants, known as sans-papiers. This article examines five French organizations’ advocacy strategies to defend the rights of sans-papiers. [R, abr.]
64.3206 HORNE, Cynthia M. —
Interpersonal trust in post-communist societies is particularly low, and is often cited as an impediment to democratic consolidation. One way in which countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have tried to build trust is through transitional justice measures, particularly lustration or vetting policies. There is a direct relationship postulated between lustration, transitional justice, and social trust-building. This paper tests this assumption by examining the impact of both targeted lustration and broader transitional justice programs on social trust. The study finds there is a divergent impact of lustration on trust, both building particularized trust in social institutions and undermining generalized interpersonal trust. [R]
64.3207 HOWELL, William G.; AHMED, Faisal Z. —
An extraordinary body of scholarship suggests that wars, especially major wars, stimulate presidential power. And central to this argument is a conviction that judges predictably uphold elements of presidents’ policy agendas in war that would not withstand judicial scrutiny in peace. Few scholars, however, have actually subjected this claim to quantitative investigation. This article does so. Examining the universe of Supreme Court cases to which the US Government, a cabinet member, or a president was a named party over a 75-year period, and estimating a series of fixed effects and matching models, we find that during war Justices were 15 percentage points more likely to side with the government on the statutory cases that most directly implicated the president. [R, abr.]
64.3208 HYEST, Jean-Jacques —
The creation of the Joint Committee, one of the original features of the Fifth Republic (art. 45 C.), aims to encourage the development of a balanced bicameral system and to prevent a blocking of the debates between the two Chambers. Governed by simple rules, it allows a genuine dialogue between the National Assembly and the Senate. The article describes the working of this procedure, which concerns almost one third of the bills presented in parliament. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3209 JAGGERS, Jeremiah; GABBARD, W. Jay; JAGGERS, Shanna J. —
This article critically reviews four widely accepted eras of US immigration policy: open door, regulation, restriction, liberalization. These eras are based on federal efforts to regulate and control immigration since the American Revolution until the 21st c. In addition to identifying salient historical, legislative, political, and social forces shaping immigration policy in each era, considerable attention is given to changes over the past decade. Modern realities have shaped what the authors propose as a new era of immigration policy (devolution), based on the significant social and legislative ramifications in the US since 11 September 2001. Finally, future immigration policy implications are considered. [R]
64.3210 JAN, Pascal —
Despite long-lasting relationships between the Parliament and the Court of Accounts, these have become more compact in the last two decades, illustrating an objective alliance between the two institutions that are mutually reinforcing. Parliament takes advantage of the quality of the Court of Accounts’ work in order to strengthen the relevance of its control of the government's action. The Court, which is independent and reactive, has increased its respectability and positioned itself as a privileged accessory of Parliament as the latter tries to reconquer its authority vis-à-vis the executive branch. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3211 JASCHIK, Kevin —
This article examines whether small states — against all (realist) odds — can have influence on the international political agenda. A theoretical framework is developed grounded in agenda-setting theory and the literature on strategic framing, foreign policy analysis and advocacy networks, resulting in a process-oriented, constructivist approach to international agenda setting. This is used to address three propositions: firstly, small states do have influence on the international agenda; secondly, they generate this influence through strategic framing, and last, they enhance their influence through alliances and advocacy networks. The theoretical framework is applied using two case studies: the small island states of the Maldives and Tuvalu in their fight against climate change. [R]
64.3212 JENSEN, Carsten, et al. —
Protection against social risks is generally popular among voters and should enjoy the benefits of institutional inertia. Yet retrenchment occurs rather frequently in advanced welfare states without this systematically leading to electoral punishment. We solve this paradox by arguing that governments can avoid the blame of retrenchment by pursuing a strategy of “expansionary dismantling”, where new policies and instruments are used to compensate reform losers and to obfuscate cutbacks. We test our argument with a huge new dataset consisting of changes in unemployment legislation and replacement rates in 18 OECD countries from 1976 to 2000. The statistical tests provide robust support for our argument, suggesting that the introduction of new policies and instruments leads to cutbacks in replacement rates. [R, abr.]
64.3213 JEONG Gyung-Ho, et al. —
We advance a generic theory of institutional change and illustrate it through a study of the Gas Deregulation Act of 1977–1978. The passage of the Act provides an informative case study about institutional change as an innovative post-cloture filibuster was implemented, and then defeated, in the course of the debate. Contrary to K. Shepsle's argument that institutions determine outcomes, we argue that the legislative majority shaped the institution to get the policy outcome it wanted. We find evidence that negotiations among competing coalitions constrained outcomes to be inside the uncovered set. When the filibuster-related rules threatened to lead to an outcome outside of the uncovered set, the rules were changed to avoid this outcome. [R, abr.]
64.3214 JIN Dal Yong —
This paper investigates the changing role of the nation-state in the context of the broader social structure of society amid neoliberal globalization with a focus on the politics of the Korean Wave. It analyzes the ways in which the Korean government has developed its unique cultural policy and how it has contributed to the growth in Korean cultural production and export. The paper argues that neoliberal ideologies have not completely altered the role of the nation-state in the Korean Wave in spite of the dominance of neoliberal ideology in Korea's economic conduct. [R]
64.3215 JONES, David K.; BRADLEY, Katharine W. V.; OBERLANDER, Jonathan —
Enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) created a dilemma for Republican policy-makers at the state level. States could maximize control over decision-making and avoid federal intervention by establishing their own health insurance exchanges. Yet GOP leaders feared that creating exchanges would entrench a law they intensely opposed and undermine legal challenges to the ACA. Republicans’ calculations were further complicated by uncertainty over the Supreme Court's ruling on the ACA's constitutionality and the outcome of the November 2012 elections. Out of thirty states with Republican governors in 2013, only four launched their own exchange. Why did many Republican-led states that initially appeared open to establishing exchanges ultimately reverse course? [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3286]
64.3216 KAUFFMAN, Craig M.; MARTIN, Pamela L. —
This article explores watershed management reform in Tungurahua, Ecuador, to analyze how local communities challenged the dominant international model of sustainable development and — through a process of negotiation, learning, and network construction with international partners — produced an alternative model infused by indigenous norms of human wellbeing, or sumak kawsay — el buen vivir. The institutionalization of these norms was a catalyst for the development of Ecuador's National Plan for Wellbeing (Buen Vivir) and Ecuador's quest to change the way the world thinks about development and sustainability. This case illuminates how local populations working with competing interpretations from international agendas construct new environmental governance regimes, and how the scaling up of these regimes carries local norms of environmental management to the global level. [R, abr.]
64.3217 KEATING, Vincent Charles —
This article examines the effect of the G.W. Bush administration's human rights preferences during the war on terror with respect to torture by analyzing a large-n sample of public legitimization strategies of both the US and other [countries]. The article asks two questions: (1) has the defection of the US from these human rights norms led to a “norm cascade” that delegitimized the norms? (2) Did the material preponderance of the US help it to legitimize its preferences in international society? Despite initial ambiguity, there is little evidence by the end of the Bush administration's term that a core group of states supported their preferences, nor did its material preponderance help the Bush administration to legitimize its position. [R, abr.]
64.3218 KILINÇ, Ramazan —
Why do state policies toward religious minorities — shaped by long-term historical institutions — change? Although explanations based on secularization, religion, ideology, rational choice, and international context have advanced our knowledge of the origins of freedoms for religious minorities, they have not sufficiently addressed the interaction between international pressure and domestic actors. In an effort to develop a synthetic theory of religious freedoms, this article argues that the implementation of international norms on religious freedoms depends on the availability of relatively stronger domestic actors who support the reforms due to either their material interests or normative commitments. This argument is demonstrated by an in-depth study of liberal reforms for Christian minorities in Turkey in the 2000s. [R]
64.3219 KIM Sung Chull —
The institution of nuclear power in Japan persists. For the past 60 years, conservative politicians, technologists, and electric companies have acted in concert, for different reasons, to achieve a full nuclear fuel-cycle: specifically technology for reprocessing and uranium enrichment. Their pursuit has eroded the bottom-line spirit of peaceful use; to be sure, it has been excessively ambitious for Japan's status as a non-nuclear-weapon state. The mastering of the full nuclear fuel-cycle has resulted in a competency trap, excluding or delaying development of alternatives to nuclear power. Furthermore, this situation has heightened nuclear power's sunk costs. The critical conjuncture of the 11 March 2011 [Fukushima] incident has had a limited impact only. Anti-nuclear activists try to dramatize their movement for “exit from nuclear”, but have failed to bring about electoral changes. [R, abr.]
64.3220 KING, James D.; RIDDLESPERGER, James W., Jr. —
This paper examines in-term appointments from the perspective of how the political environment and specific circumstances surrounding the vacancy affect the [US] president's choice when replacing a Cabinet officer. Specifically, what factors might lead the president to appoint a new Cabinet officer from outside the administration rather than appointing a current member of his administration to a new post? [R]
64.3221 KLITGAARD, Michael B.; ELMELUND-PRAESTEKAER, Christian —
We hypothesize that decisions to constrain government revenue may constitute an attractive strategy, especially to right-wing governments, when pursuing a preference for welfare state retrenchment. Whereas programmatic retrenchment in social policy programs imposes concentrated losses in return for diffuse gains, the distributive profile of systemic retrenchment via tax cuts might entail concentrated benefits for specified groups financed by diffuse losses for larger groups in a distant future. Consequently, the electorate may accept or even desire tax cuts and associated initiatives to curb government income relative to retrenchment measures of services and benefits. Our empirical analysis supports such theoretical propositions. In an extensive comparative analysis of all tax laws adopted by four Danish governments, we find clear partisan differences. [R, abr.]
64.3222 KNAGGÅRD, Åsa —
This article explores how policy-makers are managing scientific uncertainty in policy-making. This is done through a case study of the Swedish climate-change policy process from 1975 to 2007, based on interviews and an extensive review of official publications and documents. Scientific uncertainty played a very marginal role in the development of Swedish climate politics. When faced with scientific uncertainty, policy-makers came to rely more on knowledge of what was politically possible to do, than on what was desirable from a scientific perspective. Thereby, policy-making became incremental in character. The article argues that in order to understand the dynamics involved, we need to pay attention to how scientific knowledge and uncertainty are translated from a scientific context into a political one. [R, abr.]
64.3223 KONG Tat Yan —
This article traces the failure of economic reform in North Korea to the prevailing system of political governance based on Monolithic Leadership System (MLS) reinforced by Military First Politics (MFP). The political risk-aversion of the MLS-MFP system permits only an ultra cautious reform strategy, but the potential of even ultra cautious reform cannot be fully realized. The detrimental effects of the MLS-MFP system include: excessive restriction of the development of grassroots capitalism; entrenchment of the wasteful economics of militarization and the perpetuation of international isolation. The combination of stubborn regime under economic duress sets off a vicious circle of economic failure, anti-marketization, and external confrontation. [R, abr.]
64.3224 KRINER, Douglas L.; SCHICKLER, Eric —
Members of [the US] Congress have long sought to combat assertions of presidential power and alleged executive misconduct through committee investigations. But do such investigations have systematic effects on the course of politics? We argue that congressional investigations of the executive branch damage the president's support among the public, making investigations a useful tool in interbranch battles. Marshaling an original data-set of more than 3,500 investigative hearings and over 50 years of public opinion data, we show that increased investigative activity in the hearing room significantly decreases the president's job approval rating. A survey experiment both confirms our assertion that investigations decrease public support for the White House and shows that committee-led charges of misconduct have a greater influence on public opinion than identical charges not attributed to a congressional actor. [R]
64.3225 KURRILD-KLITGAARD, Peter —
All democratic systems are theoretically open to so-called election inversions, i.e., instances wherein a majority of the decision-makers prefer one alternative but where the actual outcome is another. The paper examines the complex 1975 Danish government-formation process, which involved five rounds of negotiations and at least five competing alternatives. We demonstrate that in terms of party preferences, the final outcome was not the Condorcet winner but rather one that could have been beaten by at least three other government alternatives in head-to-head comparisons. The Danish procedural system of “negative” parliamentarism combined with simple plurality rule to produce the electoral inversion. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3053]
64.3226 KWARTENG, Charles —
Ghana's presidential election in 2012, and the tension that it generated, have enhanced the democratic dispensation of that country, through the testing and trial of institutions, such as Ghana's Electoral Commission and the Supreme Court. The article examines the background of Ghana's presidential electoral dispute, and the petition that was filed in court. Further, it highlights some of the implications for Ghana's political development, and assesses the political value of the Court's verdict for Africa's democratic dispensation. While the verdict is of questionable precedential value, the petition itself demonstrated the potential for peaceful resolution of post-political election conflict in Ghana. [R]
64.3227 LABAN, Matthew —
The office of Speaker at Westminster is one which has been used as a model for those who preside over the parliaments and assemblies of the countries that make up the Commonwealth. While the Westminster speakership has evolved and adapted itself to changing needs, those within the Commonwealth have stuck more rigidly to their origins. This paper compares and contrasts the different speakerships in the parliaments that follow the Westminster tradition. It analyzes just how closely they have managed to keep to those long-established traditions and assess how successful they have been in achieving the impartiality that is necessary for a neutral umpire. The duties and responsibilities both within and beyond the legislature are also explored, as are the ceremonies associated with this office. [R]
64.3228 LADI, Stella —
Greece was the first EMU country to sign a Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) with the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) in order to secure financial assistance and prevent a total collapse of its economy following the severe international economic crisis. The MEFP (2010) and the more detailed Memorandum of Understanding on Specific Economic Policy Conditionality (SEPC) (2010) offered elaborate steps of structural reforms that have affected all public services in Greece. The lack of major results has made Greece a unique case study for evaluating both the recipe of the international lenders and the domestic capacity for reform. A historical institutionalist approach and the concept of “policy paradigm” are combined in order to evaluate what the conditions for a major administrative reform in time of crisis are. [R, abr.]
64.3229 LARUELLE, Marlène —
This article takes its inspiration from the concept of patronal presidentialism, as defined by H. Hale, in order to revisit the debate on neopatronalism through the case of the post-Soviet states of Central Asia. The five countries combine, at different levels, a high concentration of political power, the control of the main economic resources by the presidential circle, and the myth of the father of the nation. The paper examines the relevance of the concept of patronal presidentialism by focusing on two of the criteria that define a neopatrimonial regime: the informal nature of operating of public administrative apparatuses, and mixed character, both “traditional” and “modern”, of these informal relations; and the influence of practices for harnessing resources used by the established elites. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3924]
64.3230 LAZIC, Sladjana —
Decentralization and regionalization have been hotly debated topics in the political discussions concerning the position and status of the Bosniak minority in Serbia. Led by elites, these debates have usually centered around accusations of discrimination and the fear of the country's territorial dismemberment. But how these processes, and the way they manifest themselves in local communities, affect ordinary people has not attracted much attention. By focusing on everyday life, this article sheds some light on how ordinary Bosniaks negotiate the right measure of state involvement in local affairs. It explores the questions of when and where state involvement is welcomed and when and where the Bosniaks would prefer to have it withdrawn. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3988]
64.3231 LEE Jongkon —
Despite growing environmental problems in the US, an environmental legislative standstill has been prevalent in US politics for about 20 years. Several studies on lawmaking have argued that this legislative standstill has been caused by conflicts among elected officials, such as legislators and the president (institutional gridlock). This paper suggests a different view in terms of bureaucratic politics. Using a case study on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding hazardous waste-disposal and the Superfund, the study contends that the EPA's collaborative efforts to resolve interest conflict expansion have led to legislative standstill. [R]
64.3232 LEWIS, J. P. —
In contemporary Canada, the idea of the powerful first minister is widely acknowledged. The recent debate has focused on D. Savoie's thesis that the concentration of power to the center has accelerated and ministers have effectively lost their influence on decision-making in cabinet. This article identifies two research gaps. First, the study combines both the experiences of federal and provincial cabinet ministers to construct an understanding of Canadian cabinet decision making at both levels of government. Second, the research investigates the new generation of cabinet ministers; no study has yet consulted ministers of the 2000–2010 decade. [R]
64.3233 LOXBO, Karl —
Several scholars argue that Europeanization, by transferring political authority to non-partisan supra-national institutions, leads to depoliticization, and even party system cartelization, at the national level. Other scholars, however, maintain that European integration instead is likely to boost partisan conflicts over time. This article tests these rival hypotheses — depoliticization or politicization — using a case study of Swedish European Affairs Committee between 1995 and 2012. If Europeanization results in depoliticization and a waning of opposition, the article argues that the Swedish experiences are likely to confirm this tendency. Yet, in contrast to these expectations, the article presents evidence indicating that partisan struggles on Europeanization in Sweden — particularly on issues of relevance to the left-right divide — has intensified significantly over time. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3497]
64.3234 MARQUET, Vincent; SALLES, Denis —
Climate change has established itself as a central object of research for the scientific community and a high profile social and political question. Closely associated with the work of the IPCC, two dominant modes of action have supplied the institutional response: attenuation and adaptation. Drawing upon a comparative approach, I examine climate-change adaptation policies as an emerging framework structuring global, transversal and multi-level public action. I examine the convergent process by which climate-change adaptation policies have been institutionalized in France and Quebec. I consider the issues involved in the spread of climate-change adaptation via territorial risk-management policies and water resource governance. Ultimately, the new requirements imposed by adaptation are in contradiction with the interests and shorter temporalities still prevailing within local management activities. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.2869]
64.3235 MARSTEINTREDET, Leiv —
Through a conceptual and comparative analysis of 14 presidential interruptions in Latin America between 1980 and 2010, this article improves the current conceptualization of executive instability in presidential regimes and provides contingent answers to three debates: (1) “Do political institutions or pressure from below constitute the greater peril to presidential survival?”; (2) “Do presidential interruptions constitute a solution to an ongoing crisis, or further deepen the crisis?”; and (3) “Are presidential interruptions good or bad for democracy?” These questions have not been answered satisfactorily because the literature has assumed unit homogeneity, when in fact the cases of interruption demonstrate heterogeneity on these issues. The article presents a typological map of crises and interruptions that helps define the scope conditions of the concept, captures the heterogeneity between the cases and provides a useful tool for analysis. [R, abr.]
64.3236 McALLISTER, Ian —
There is a vigorous international debate about lowering the voting age to 16, with some jurisdictions already moving in this direction. The issue of the voting age also intersects with broader normative and empirical approaches to youth political engagement. Using evidence from Australia, this article evaluates empirically the arguments for lowering the voting age. There is no evidence that lowering the voting age would increase political participation or that young people are more politically mature today than they were in the past. The absence of empirical support for the arguments in favor of lowering of the voting age has implications for how to transform democracy in order to attract greater youth engagement. [R, abr.]
64.3237 McCARTNEY, Helen B. —
The image of the First World War soldier as a cowed victim, caught in the grip of a meaningless, industrialized war, is one that has become entrenched in the British popular imagination. This article examines how the portrayal of the soldier changed during and after the First World War and proposes that the victimized soldier motif has been reinforced today by the coalescence of [several] trends: the growth of the family history industry that encourages an individualized and empathetic approach to the First World War; an increasing public interest in psychological reactions to war. A range of interest groups have cast the contemporary British soldier as a victim in recent years; the explicit linking of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq with the First World War has reinforced this victim image for each conflict. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3882]
64.3238 MEKKI, Mustapha —
The most recent private and public sphere scandals (Cahuzac, Woerth, Mediator) that have dominated the headlines have revealed the gradual and insidious inset of a “society of mistrust”. One of the main causes of this mistrust towards political, judicial or economic decision-makers is to be found in the existence of numerous illegitimate conflicts of interests. Both private and public laws are now trying to impose greater transparency in order to restore the trust that is essential to the development of a society and a state of law. However, in order to fight bad conflicts of interests efficiently, one must choose the appropriate weapons. Otherwise, the remedy might be worse than the disease. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3239]
64.3239 MÉNY, Yves —
France has often ignored not just the reality but the very concept of conflict of interests. In the name of the virtues of “synthesis”, it has legitimized and justified the accumulation of positions of power both in private and public spheres. That approach is one of the many manifestations of the lack of interest of French society — and in particular its elites’ — in pluralism. As a result, conflicts of interests, when taken into account, are less considered for prevention and awareness purposes than for the punishment of a few potentially criminal cases. Gradually, under media and public opinion pressure and because of the internationalization of the debates, the French approach, albeit reluctantly, has tended to move closer to the historically more advanced Anglo-Saxon practices. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Conflicts of interests [in France]”. See also Abstr. 64.2835, 2920, 2967, 2994, 3002, 3193, 3238, 3267, 3305, 3488]
64.3240 MIKLIN, Eric —
This study discusses how politicization of EU decision-making can be achieved and how it affects the way national parliaments fulfill their citizen- and government-related functions in EU decision-making. First, it is argued that politicization requires legislative Commission proposals that polarize between center-left and center-right actors. By changing the incentive structure of national parties, such proposals help to overcome parties’ reluctance to discuss European issues publicly and hence provide citizens with electoral alternatives in EU decision-making. Second, it is argued that the higher salience of polarizing proposals also increases national parliaments’ attention for, and hence control over, the processes on the European level. The plausibility of the arguments is evaluated empirically through a comparative case study of the discussions in Germany and Austria on the Services directive. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3129]
64.3241 MONDOU, Matthieu; SKOGSTAD, Grace; HOULE, David —
This paper contributes to our understanding of why delegitimizing focusing events, combined with the mobilization of policy losers, does not always result in major policy change by undermining a monopolistic policy image and policy subsystem. Based on a close enquiry of American biofuel policy development, it argues that we can make headway in this endeavor by focusing on three factors: (1) the congruence of a policy image with core values of the polity; (2) the multidimensionality of a policy image; and (3) policy-image management strategies that maintain cohesion among coalition supporters and respond to outside criticism. In understanding better why some policy images (and policy monopolies) prove resilient when they come under assault, this paper offers a singlecase plausibility probe supported by indicative evidence from other policy studies. [R]
64.3242 MONTOUROY, Yves; SERGENT, Arnaud —
In 2008, climate change forecasts led the EU to establish the “Climate and Energy Package” to increase the share of renewable energy in the energy supply and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. France [sought] to bring together industrial electricity production projects based on cogeneration. Yet such a policy would ultimately strain the wood supply, questioning current models of forestry. This new energy strategy involves the redefinition of relations that have been stabilized upstream within an industry resembling a network of independent actors organized around wood as a resource. We focus on the paper industry and the manner in which it has problematized the question of wood energy and climate change at the European, national and sub-national levels in order to position itself as an indispensable actor in the development of wood-energy. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.2869]
64.3243 MOURAVIEV, Nikolai; KAKABADSE, Nada K. —
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are new in Russia and represent project implementation in progress. The government is actively pursuing PPP deployment in sectors such as transportation and urban infrastructure, and at all levels including federal, regional and especially local. Despite the lack of pertinent laws and regulations, the PPP public policy quickly transforms into a policy paradigm that provides simplified concepts and solutions and intensifies partnership development. The article delineates an emerging model of Russia's PPP policy paradigm, whose structure includes the shared understanding of the need for long-term collaboration between the public sector and business, a changing set of government responsibilities that imply an increasing private provision of public services, and new institutional capacities. It critically appraises the principal dynamics that contribute to an emerging PPP policy paradigm. [R, abr.]
64.3244 MÜGGE, Liza; DAMSTRA, Alyt —
Women and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in national parliaments around the world. Interestingly, in the Netherlands, ethnic minority women are better represented than ethnic minority men and ethnic majority women. The Netherlands did not adopt gender quotas, but some parties implemented target numbers. Drawing on document-analysis and interviews, this article explores whether parties that encourage women's representation are also likely to increase the number of ethnic minority representatives. It finds that party-specific factors such as a left or social democratic ideology, the institutionalization of gender and/or ethnicity within the party and the party's vision on group representation are intertwined. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.2856]
64.3245 MULGAN, Aurelia George — Bringing the party back in: how the DPJ [Democratic Party of Japan] diminished prospects for Japanese agricultural trade liberalization under the TPP. Japanese Journal of Political Science 15(1), March 2014: 1–22.
Changes to the institutional structure of trade policy-making are important to understanding why Japan remained largely on the sidelines of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) negotiations in 2010–2012. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) [instituted] changes to policy-making institutions, which initially empowered the prime minister and cabinet at the expense of pro-agriculture backbenchers in the ruling party. However, the potential for a breakthrough on farm trade substantially diminished as the institutional reforms were reversed, allowing political supporters of domestic farm interests once more to assert their voice and influence in trade policy-making. Tracing the process of DPJ government decision-making on the TPP reveals that “bringing the party back in” was a major factor in preventing Japan's formally joining the TPP negotiations, despite the strong pro-TPP sentiments of DPJ prime ministers. [R, abr.]
64.3246 MUSELLA, Fortunato —
Italy is rightly considered as an ideal-type case of the presidentialization process that is changing many parliamentary democracies, with the quasi-direct election of the Prime Minister and the strengthening of his hold on both the party and the government. Yet, a stronger, premier-centered government also means depriving Parliament of many of its long-entrenched prerogatives. This article analyzes how the executive has gained control of the legislative function, through the expansion of decree-laws and delegated legislation. Executive predominance, however, has also alienated the loyalty of the Prime Minister's majority, thus resulting in a “divided Premier”. As it is often the case with the American presidential system, strong leaders may become very weak if they lack parliamentary support. A lesson S. Berlusconi has had to learn at his own expenses. [R]
64.3247 MUTHOO, Abhinay; SHEPSLE, Kenneth A. —
We elaborate on a strategic view of institutional features. Our focus is on seniority, though we note that this general approach may also be deployed to understand other aspects of institutional arrangements. We have taken the initial game-theoretic model of seniority of R. McKelvey and R. Riezman [“Seniority in legislatures”, American Political Science Review 86(4), Dec. 1992: 951–965; Abstr. 43.1155], simplified it in order to characterize its fundamental implications, generalized these results in several ways, and extended the model by deriving additional implications. [R, abr.]
64.3248 NADASH, Pamela; DAY, Rosemarie —
Under the [US] Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), consumer choice drives the competitive market in health insurance plans operating through health insurance exchanges. As of 2014, states can either allow the federal government to manage an exchange on their behalf; take on a minimalist role by managing a state exchange or partnering with the federal exchange; or assume an activist role — by aiming to influence the price, design, and quality of the health insurance options available through exchanges and taking steps to support consumers’ ability to choose among these options. This article discusses states’ choices and describes the extent of discretion that states have in shaping the range of health plans on offer as well as the issues they will need to consider in choosing an exchange model. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3286]
64.3249 NAVARRO, Julien; BROUARD, Sylvain —
This study is based on the idea that the effective involvement of national MPs in EU affairs is as important for the capacity of national parliaments to adapt to the consequences of European integration as the elaboration of new institutional mechanisms. It investigates the attention given to Europe in parliamentary questions as an indicator of the Europeanization of the French National Assembly. Have French MPs developed a greater degree of attention to Europe in their ordinary work? What are the factors behind individual variations in MPs’ attention to Europe? The empirical analysis of more than 334,000 questions from 1988 to 2007 shows the limited Europeanization of French MPs’ work, revealing that the type of questions (oral, written, to the government) is the most significant factor explaining the level of attention given to Europe. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3129]
64.3250 NEWELL, Peter —
Going beyond a narrow account of the institutions and decision-making processes which formally govern the Clean Development Mechanism, this article explores the deeper politics and political economy of Argentina to show how relations of power within and beyond the state significantly configure the nature of carbon markets and their scope to enable broader transitions to lower carbon development pathways. This is done through thick description of relevant policy processes based on original fieldwork research and analysis of their implications for our understanding of the governance of carbon markets. [R]
64.3251 NEYER, Jürgen —
Parliamentarism in the EU is in crisis. The pooling of powers at the European level is not matched either by the new powers of national parliaments to scrutinize governmental policy-making or by the expansion of the authority of the EP. What is needed is a new approach to strengthening parliamentarism in the EU that places national parliaments at the heart of the constitutional process. Strengthening the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the EU (COSAC) and transforming it into a constitutional body with the power to stimulate the development of the European constitutional order is the appropriate strategy. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3129]
64.3252 ÖHBERG, Patrik; WÄNGNERUD, Lena —
How can one explain the transformation of elected assemblies like national parliaments? We argue that much can be gained from taking the assumption of political generations more seriously when trying to explain transformations of the political agenda — for example, of themes and topics brought up in the parliamentary process. The article launches the concept of “parliamentary political generation” where the core element is the combination of an influx of large numbers of newcomers into the elected assembly and a formative electoral context — that exhibits characteristics that distinguish the election from other elections. Second, an empirical test is conducted where other factors such as party affiliation and social background characteristics are controlled for. Finally, the test on the impact of parliamentary political generations is conducted in the Swedish Riksdag, where parliamentary party groups are strong. [R, abr.]
64.3253 OLDS, Christopher —
The president often seems unsuccessful at rhetorical leadership efforts to direct public opinion. In particular, presidential issue rhetoric expressing an ideological viewpoint on policy issues appears to shape the public's policy preferences only when specific contextual conditions exist in the political environment. This project proposes that moral rhetoric, a more simplified form of issue-discussion engaging with widely held and fundamental values in an accessible way, should be more effective at consistently directing public issue attitudes in a direction congruent with the views of the president. In contrasting the dynamics of presidential usage of moral rhetoric expressing liberal issue positions and public policy mood for liberal domestic policies between 1960 and 2008, the analysis finds even a specialized form of presidential issue-discussion like moral rhetoric struggles to guide public opinion. [R, abr.]
64.3254 OLESKER, Ronnie —
This article explores the role of law-making in the securitization of ethnic identities in Israel. It examines the laws passed and bills proposed between 2000 and 2011 by the Israeli Knesset. The evidence suggests that despite consistent attempts to securitize the ethnic identity of the state, they have, for the most part, failed. A brief comparison between Israel and other liberal democracies also reveals that the banality of securitization, i.e., the use of ordinary rather than extraordinary measures in the securitization process, is not unique to Israel. This article demonstrates most clearly how the process of securitization contributes to the ease with which illiberal practices can creep into the democratic system without the need to resort to exceptional action. [R]
64.3255 ORTÍZ MÁRMOL, Egda; MOCLETÓN OLIVAREZ, Mayrú; VILLEGAS OROPEZA, Lisnery —
Concern about human rights situation points to a greater interest in considering democracy as a political system. Even though the human rights were preeminent in the 1999 Constitution, which represented a great advance, the government, with its actions from 1999 to 2012, weakened democracy and fractured rule of law. However, citizens have demanded their rights and defended democratic values. [R, abr.]
64.3256 ÖZDEMIR, Burcu —
This paper analyzes Turkey's legislative reforms on violence against women (VAW) with particular focus on the EU role and impact in triggering the reform process. By using a bottom-up Europeanization approach, the paper traces the reform process from the 1980s until 2005 in terms of the interaction of external and domestic factors. The empirical evidence shows that the impact of external factors (be it the EU accession process or the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)) has been conditioned by the domestic factors and processes and it is hard to grasp the EU impact without considering its interaction with other domestic and external factors. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3325]
64.3257 PALANZA, Valeria; SIN, Gisela —
This article analyzes the use of vetoes in multiparty presidential systems. It suggests that the nature of executive-legislative bargaining is fundamentally altered when multiple parties compose the legislature and when presidential veto prerogatives are extended to incorporate partial (line-item) vetoes. Using a data-set that includes all bills passed by the Argentine Congress in the past 25 years, we estimate veto occurrence under different scenarios. Our findings are at odds with received expectations: whether the President holds a majority in Congress or not fails to explain variations in the likelihood of vetoes. Instead, the level of significance of legislation is relevant for predicting vetoes, with landmark legislation being more likely to be vetoed regardless of levels of support for the president in Congress. [R, abr.]
64.3258 PALAU, Anna M. —
This article measures the Europeanization of the legislative agenda in Spain, across the various levels of government and in various policy areas. The results show that since Spain's entry into the EEC in 1986 to 2007, the percentage of Europeanized legislation has progressively increased, in issues related to the single market and the environment. The legislative agenda of the autonomous regions — Andalusia, Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country — is weakly Europeanized compared to the central executive-legislative relations. European integration has strengthened the predominance of the government. [R, abr.]
64.3259 PEDERSEN, Mogens N. —
In real political life, “killer amendments” are very rare. W.H. Riker was the first political scientist to draw systematic attention to this special “heresthetic” phenomenon, but he was himself able to identify only a handful of successful “killer amendments”. Subsequent systematic empirical research has brought a few more to attention. In this article what may be the first successful example from outside the US context is described. It took place, when the Danish Constituent Assembly in 1849 discussed, if a proper judicial review procedure should be institutionalized in the Danish Constitution. The motion was defeated by means of what looks like a nicely orchestrated “killer amendment”. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3053]
64.3260 PELIZZO, Riccardo; STAPENHURST, Rick —
This note first claims that the impact of the availability of oversight tools and of the most broadly understood legislative capacity (availability of material, technical, financial resources; availability of well-trained staff) on the effectiveness with which legislative oversight is performed is conditional. The second claim, after reviewing a rich body of work on executive-legislative relations and legislative oversight in West Africa, is that, of the various conditions that promote or prevent the effective use of oversight tools and capacity, political will is the single most important. These claims have both theoretical and practical relevance, for if political will is as important as is claimed for the effective performance of the oversight function, then international organizations may have to reconsider their approach to legislative strengthening. [R]
64.3261 PÉREZ-LIÑÁN, Aníbal —
This article analyzes the conditions that facilitate the ousting of Latin American presidents and the mechanisms that prevent their downfall. Drawing lessons from the impeachment of Paraguayan President F. Lugo, it extends previous arguments about the “legislative shield” to show that the same forces that sometimes conspire to terminate an administration at other times work to resist its demise. The argument underscores the interaction between legislators and social movements, two prominent actors in the literature on presidential instability. It presents a two-level theory to identify possible configurations of mass and legislative alignments, and tests some implications of the theory with data for 116 Latin American presidents over 28 years. [R, abr.]
64.3262 POGODDA, Sandra; MAC GINTY, Roger; RICHMOND, Oliver P. —
The rise of India and the EU as global actors has sparked growing interest in their peace-building approaches. This paper compares the objectives and effects of the EU's and India's engagement in different conflict contexts within and alongside their borders. It examines whether their practices of conflict-resolution or peace-building strive for more than conflict-management or “governmentality”. This article asks whether there is sufficient consistency across either actors’ governance interventions to even speak of a distinct “strategy” or “governance culture”. It illustrates the close relationship between governance and conflict response initiatives but finds that the relationship is often dysfunctional. [R]
64.3263 POGREBINSCHI, Thamy; SAMUELS, David —
Political theorists and empirical scholars have long assumed that democracy and participation are necessarily in tension. Partly for this reason, research on participatory democracy has focused on “mini-publics” — relatively small-scale and/or local practices. Through an exploration of Brazil's National Public Policy Conferences, we provide the first evidence that participatory governance practices can directly shape important national public policy outcomes at the national level. Our findings call into question the longstanding critique that participatory practices are impractical on a large scale and thus unimportant to the overall functioning and quality of democracy. We find that participatory practices can deepen democratic regimes by opening the doors for greater and more direct civil society input into the substantive content of national governance. [R]
64.3264 POLLAK, Johannes; SLOMINSKI, Peter —
Since the legislative and control functions of national parliaments have largely fallen prey to party politics in domestic as well as in EU politics, the information function could be a last resort for the justification, explanation and communication of executive politics. National parliaments could provide the missing link between a national electorate and ever more supranationally acting executives. But parliamentary communication can also be perceived along the lines of government and opposition, or Europe considered to be outside the area of national parliamentary responsibility. Focusing on the Austrian parliament, this study investigates the communication strategies of three different sets of actors: the parliament as an institution; parliamentary party groups; and individual MPs, and shows how these strategies have changed over time, notably in the context of the EU Treaty ratification debates. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3129]
64.3265 PORTELLI, Hugues —
The 1958 Constitution placed Parliament under the authority of the government, not just concerning its jurisdiction and decision-making procedures, but also the control of its working time, whether it regards the length of the sessions, the setting of the agenda or the speaking arrangements. It took until the 2008 constitutional revision for a rebalancing to be introduced, much to the advantage of the Parliamentary majority. The parliamentary majority now deals on an equal footing with the government — with the exception of financial issues that remain the prerogative of the latter — regarding the setting of its agenda or the sharing of speaking time. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3266 PÖRZGEN, Gemma —
Russia has been trying to improve its image for years. To this end, its foreign media have been expanded, PR firms contracted. But an overall strategy and a basic understanding of how a democratic public works is lacking. Despite partial successes, Moscow will not achieve much without political change and social modernization in Russia. A look at some of the players in state image policy in Germany shows this as well. [R]
64.3267 PRAT, Michel-Pierre; JANVIER, Cyril —
Conflicts of interests among elected officials are usually discussed in terms of repression: they are only punishable if perpetrated. A more constructive approach, likely to restore the essential link of trust between the citizens and their representatives, would require a well-organized preventive policy drawing on the work of the Sauvé and Jospin Committees, for instance. The bill regarding a code of conduct and the prevention of conflicts of interests in public life is much more limited than these proposals, and so has been the first parliamentary debate about them. The law is likely to prove insufficient and will not satisfy the expectations of citizens. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3239]
64.3268 QUADAGNO, Jill —
In March 2010, [US] President B. Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Did the ACA signify a government takeover of the health care system, a first step on the road to socialism, as conservative critics charged? Or was it, rather, a sellout to the right wing, as liberal single-payer advocates proclaimed? The ACA's key provisions, the employer mandate and the individual mandate, were Republican policy ideas, and its fundamental principles were nearly identical to the 1993 bill promoted by Republican senators to deflect support for President B. Clinton's Health Security plan. Yet the ACA was also a policy legacy of the Clinton administration in important ways that rarely are acknowledged, notably Medicaid expansion and insurance company regulation. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3286]
64.3269 RAYMOND, Christopher; HOLT, Jacob —
Several theories of legislative organization have been proposed to explain committee selection in American legislatures, but do these theories travel outside the US? This paper tests whether these theories apply to data from the Canadian House of Commons. It was found that the distributive and partisan models of legislative organization explain committee composition in Canada. In many cases, committees in the House of Commons are made up of preference outliers. As predicted by partisan models, it was also found that the governing party stacks committees with its members, but this is conditional upon the strength of the governing party. [R]
64.3270 RHEAULT, Ludovic —
This study examines the enduring claim that firms exert influence on immigration policies, prompting governments to open the doors to foreign labor. Although intuitively appealing, this claim has received little empirical support so far, the actual channels of influence from special interests to policy-makers being usually opaque to public scrutiny. To address this problem, I rely upon the vector autoregression methodology and make use of fine-grained quarterly data on lobbying, skills-based immigration and temporary workers in Canada, between 1996 and 2011. A key result is the positive and robust response of temporary worker inflows to the intensity of corporate lobbying, even after accounting for labor market conditions. In contrast, there is no conclusive evidence that lobbyists carry weight when it comes to permanent migrants. [R]
64.3271 RICH, Timothy S. —
How do mixed-member legislative systems influence legislator voting? While the literature remains inconclusive, this article suggests party influence as an intervening variable. Through an analysis of roll-call data from Taiwan and Korea, no deviation is evident between district legislators and legislators elected by proportional representation. Further disaggregation of what it means to vote against one's party again finds little evidence of a tier distinction, while party variables remain significant. The findings are suggestive of a contamination effect between tiers, consistent with the influence of parties. [R]
64.3272 RIGBY, Elizabeth; CLARK, Jennifer Hayes; PELIKA, Stacey —
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) passed with no Republican votes and was accompanied by intense criticism that the reform was “rammed through” the legislative process. By contrast, many Democrats argued that the final bill represented a compromise of good ideas from both parties. We undertake a policy-centered analysis to help reconcile these conflicting reports of this legislative episode. Drawing on real-time accounts published in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, we compare the success of Democratic and Republican Parties’ policy proposals in terms of centrality to the policy agenda and inclusion in the enacted legislation. Our findings indicate that Republican-backed proposals were more present on the policy agenda than in the final legislation — although both were dominated by Democratic policy proposals. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3286]
64.3273 ROMERO, Vidal —
Presidents should prefer to be positively remembered in history for improving their country's conditions, rather than to be hated for generations. Few, however, succeed. Why? The inquiry goes beyond historic accounts or mere intellectual curiosity; it is a key part of understanding presidential decision-making. We answer this question using data from an expert survey on the Mexican presidency, the first of its kind for Mexico. Problem-solving capacities and presidents’ ability to change the existing institutions are the main determinants of success. Corruption is barely punished by experts. Negative remembrance in history is associated [with] authoritarianism and economic crises. [R]
64.3274 ROUTRAY, Bibhu Prasad —
The continued incapacity of the central police forces remains an important reason behind persistent failures of India to deal with the challenge posed by violent extremists. Despite past successes, police-led counterinsurgency responses in the country's internal wars remain riddled with problems. Years of experience in being deployed in conflict-affected areas and considerable numerical strength notwithstanding, the central police forces have failed to emerge as able security providers. Decades of neglect, a slow modernization process, a vacuum in leadership, and recurrent command-and-control problems continue to hamper building the country's counterterrorism architecture around these men in uniform. [R]
64.3275 SCHEURER, Katherine Felix —
Although a wide body of research examines whether gender influences judicial decisions, past studies do not analyze whether a critical mass of female judges affects the voting behavior of the US Court of Appeals. I examine whether a critical mass of female judges influences the voting decisions of Court of Appeals judges in civil rights and economic activity cases. Providing support for critical mass theory, I find that female judges are more likely to vote liberally in civil rights and economic activity cases when there is a critical mass of female judges. [R]
64.3276 SCHRÖDER, Hinrich —
The amendment of the EUZBBG had become necessary after the Federal Constitutional Court in 2012 had interpreted the information rights of the Bundestag under the Basic Law wider than in the previous EUZBBG. Overall, the EUZBBG now contains a number of significant improvements compared to the previously applicable version. The newly worded definition of “Affairs of the European Union” is not only broad in its reach but also open for new developments of the term and thus the principles of information should ensure that the information rights of Parliament are guaranteed by ordinary law in the event of further integration steps. [R, abr.]
64.3277 SCHULZE, Kai —
The advancing internationalization of environmental politics has triggered increasing interest in factors that lead countries to participate in international environmental agreements. But do partisan differences matter for such ratification decisions? An analysis of the ratification responses of 21 OECD countries toward 64 treaties shows that partisan environmentalism matters for ratification behavior whereas left-right differences do not play a significant role. More precisely, while the likelihood of ratification increases when overall government positions are more pro-environment, pro-environment veto-players and environmental ministers are not found to play a role. These results hold against a number of controls and correcting for potential error in the measurement of party positions. [R]
64.3278 SERVILLO, Loris; LINGUA, Valeria —
The paper investigates the changes in the Italian planning system in the last two decades. It is of interest because different directions of changes and combination of modes, tools and approaches have been developed and experimented. Such a plethora of changes however has been developed without a sound national reform capable to provide a legislative, disciplinary and cultural framework. At the same time, though, the condition of legislative immobility at the national level has characterized an unexpected experimenting ground for different actors and approaches at different administrative levels. In order to present its arguments, the paper combines an institutionalist approach with a strategic-relational perspective as starting point for the identification of the main interpretative categories for the processes of change. [R, abr.]
64.3279 SHAIR-ROSENFIELD, Sarah; MARKS, Gary; HOOGHE, Liesbet —
We set out a fine-grained measure of the formal authority of intermediate subnational government for Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand that is designed to be a flexible tool in the hands of researchers and policy-makers. It improves on prior measures by providing annual estimates across ten dimensions of regional authority; it disaggregates to the level of the individual region; and it examines individual regional tiers, asymmetric regions, and regions with special arrangements. We use the measure and its elements to summarize six decades of regional governance in Southeast Asia and conclude by noting how the Regional Authority index could further the dialogue between theory and empirics in the study of decentralization and democratization. [R]
64.3280 SHENK, Elaine M. —
In 2010, the US House of Representatives passed The Puerto Rico Democracy Act, a bill that ostensibly focused on the authorization of a plebiscite on the Island's future political status in relationship to the US. Nevertheless, the final text included language policy on (1) ballot language, (2) official language legislation, and (3) language ideologies favoring English as the “language of opportunity”. Using CDA, this paper examines the House discussion of the bill on 29 April 2010. It focuses on how the discussion of the bill shifted from political status issues to the inclusion of language policies to be imposed on the Island, the role of the Burton Amendment in shaping these policies, and the ways in which the construction of identity with and through language was both promoted and erased on the House floor. [R, abr.]
64.3281 SHIMIZU, Kay; KUSHIDA, Kenji E. —
We contend that Japan's new financial system is best characterized as syncretic, due to the coexistence of new, old and hybrid forms of practices, norms and modes of organization. The old were not simply replaced by the new, nor entirely morphed into hybrid forms. While the breadth of the new has expanded, and significant hybridization is occurring, large portions of very traditional organizations, norms and practices remain. Syncretism, therefore, is a specific form of diversity. It is not simply hybridization, which is a melding of the old and the new, but instead represents the continued coexistence of old, new, and hybrid elements as distinct forms. [R] [See Abstr. 64.2850]
64.3282 SHINODA, Tomohito —
Employing a two-level game framework, this study examines the decision-making process of the Hatoyama government on the replacement of the US Marine air base in Futenma, Okinawa. Before reaching the final decision to revert to the existing plan of relocating it to Nago City, the cabinet members explored different possible alternatives. Prime Minister Hatoyama simultaneously pursued different international and domestic goals. Misperception and miscommunication between Tokyo and Washington were at play. A two-level game framework provides a clear picture of what Hatoyama tried to pursue and why he failed. [R]
64.3283 SHIPAN, Charles R.; ALLEN, Brooke Thomas; BARGEN, Andrew —
Although the selection of [US] Supreme Court nominees is of tremendous importance, the amount of time it takes presidents to select nominees varies dramatically across nominations. We argue that the timing of nominations is a function of the political constraints the president faces, and we focus in particular on partisan or ideological disagreement between the president and the Senate. We test our argument using all Supreme Court nominations since 1882, and find that disagreement increases this duration. In addition, we control for a variety of other factors that can affect timing. [R, abr.]
64.3284 SKOVGAARD, Jakob —
In the period 2009–2011, Member States discussed whether the EU should increase its emissions-reduction target for 2020 beyond the existing 20%. [However], the different actors were deeply divided between those calling for a step-up to a higher target and those opposed to any kind of increase. The division can be seen as a result of a conflict between policy frames. The economic crisis has deepened the division between those who see climate-change policy as detrimental to growth and those seeing it as beneficial to growth. Whereas the latter group subscribe to the green growth policy frame, the former subscribe to the “trade-off policy frame”. Many Member States have been internally divided between proponents and opponents of a step-up, often with environment ministries in the former camp and finance and economics ministries in the latter. [R, abr.]
64.3285 SMITH, Joseph L. —
This article argues that the threat of review and reversal by supervising courts affects circuit court judges differently in disputes focusing on law compared to disputes focusing on facts. Because fact-bound cases are less likely to be reviewed than law-bound cases, lower court judges are freer to indulge their policy preferences in fact-bound cases. I test this argument using computer-assisted content-analysis to measure the extent to which legal disputes are based on interpretations of facts and interpretations of relevant legal standards, respectively. The results are then used as independent variables in a model predicting the outcomes of legal challenges to the actions of administrative agencies. The results indicate that highly fact-bound decisions amplify the effects of judicial ideology while highly law-bound decisions constrain the effects of ideology. [R]
64.3286 SMYRL, Marc E. —
Interest-based arguments cannot explain the surprising reticence of major US employers to [be] more active in the debate surrounding the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Comparing the Bismarckian systems of France and Germany, on the one hand, and the 1950s and 1960s in the US, on the other, this article concludes that while institutional elements do account for some of the observed behavior of big business, a necessary complement is a fuller understanding of the historically determined legitimating ideology of US firms. From the era of the “corporate commonwealth”, US business inherited the principles of private welfare provision and of resistance to any expansion of government control. These principles are now mutually exclusive: employer-provided health insurance increasingly is possible only at the cost of ever-increasing government subsidy and regulation. [R, abr.] [First of a series of articles on “Political puzzles and policy hope in the [US] Affordable Care Act”, edited and introduced by Colleen M. GROGAN, pp. 1–4. See also Abstr. 64.3187, 3215, 3248, 3268, 3272, 3288]
64.3287 SMYTH, Russell; MISHRA, Vinod —
We examine the relationship between gender of the barrister and appeal outcomes on the High Court of Australia. We find that an appellant represented in oral argument by a female barrister, opposed to a respondent represented in oral argument by a male barrister, is less likely to receive a High Court justice's vote. However, we also find that the appellant disadvantage of having a female barrister present oral argument is (partially) offset in the case of liberal justices and on panels having a higher proportion of female justices. The extent to which the disadvantage is offset, and potentially turns from being a disadvantage to an advantage, depends on the degree to which the justice is liberal and the proportion of female justices on the panel. [R]
64.3288 SORENSON, Corinna; GUSMANO, Michael K.; OLIVER, Adam —
Efforts to use comparative effectiveness research (CER) have been promulgated at various times over the last forty years. Following a resurgence of interest in CER, recent health care reforms provided substantial support to strengthen its role in US health care. Given recent investments in CER and the debates surrounding its development, the time is ripe to reflect on past efforts to introduce CER in the US. This article examines previous initiatives, highlighting their prescribed role in US health care, the reasons for their success or failure, and the political lessons learned. Current CER initiatives have corrected for many of the pitfalls experienced by previous efforts. However, experience points to a number of issues that must still be addressed to ensure the long-term success and sustainability of CER. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3286]
64.3289 SOVDAT, Jadranka —
This article analyzes the position of EU law in the constitutional order of the Republic of Slovenia. It focuses on positions on individual questions that have already been adopted by the Constitutional Court of Slovenia and indicates possible directions of the future constitutional review. [R, abr.]
64.3290 SPANGER, Achim —
For years, the Russian head of state has objected to criticism of his contempt for democracy and rule of law. But now the Kremlin has gone on the offensive. Russian President V. Putin claims not only an independent way for Russia, he has declared his country guardian of “traditional values”. The attempt to evoke Russia's 19th-c. role as “gendarme of Europe” is obvious. Thus the Kremlin is also finding new allies, namely on the right of Western Europe's political spectrum. The search for partners for a long-term democratic course of development in Russia has become more difficult. This search must not be abandoned. [R]
64.3291 STEIN, Elizabeth A.; KELLAM, Marisa —
This article examines how media and partisan mechanisms of accountability influence presidential agendas in Latin America. We argue that responsiveness increases in powerful presidential systems when opposition parties and free media help citizens hold presidents accountable between elections. Where presidents must contend with a cohesive, ideological opposition and effective constraints to their power, they turn to valence issues with broad appeal and over which they have greater control. Free media pressure the president to respond to the electorate's concerns, which include crime and corruption due to the incentives that motivate news content and the media's agenda-setting powers. Analyzing more than 50 presidential terms across 18 countries, we show that when Latin American presidents face either free and competitive media or strong legislative oppositions, homicide rates and the level of perceived corruption tend to be lower. [R, abr.]
64.3292 STEINBERG, Alan —
The use of mass media plays a crucial role in the American presidency — first as a tool utilized during elections and then again wielded while executing the office. Recent elections have taken more advantage of the internet and the social media outlets that the Web 2.0 environment offers, but the president has not used these tools in regards to executing the office. While a field of study focuses on the use of new media in campaigning, there is virtually none concerning the use of the same resources once in office. This paper examines the context and change between the B. Obama campaigns that embraced these new media while the Obama administration has avoided it, and to explore the value of new media engagement for the American presidency. [R]
64.3293 STENSDAL, Iselin —
China's domestic climate-change policy has changed remarkably since 1988. In the late 1980s, the central government viewed climate change as a highly scientific, foreign affairs issue, and any policies were limited to scientific investigations. A mere decade later, climate change was seen as a developmental issue. By 2007 climate change had become a national priority. Since then, climate-change policies have expanded in measure and in scope. I employ the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to explain the policy changes. The ACF takes into account the overall sophistication of socioeconomic conditions in China as well as the climate-change advocacy coalition's communications and active use of their amassed knowledge to influence policy. [R]
64.3294 STIGLITZ, Edward H. —
Scholars have advanced a wide range of theories regarding the role of Senate confirmation in judicial appointments. I directly test the predictions of these models using a novel measure of the ideology of judges on the US Courts of Appeals. The main results indicate that the filibuster and majority party have predominated in appointment politics. Prompted by recent events, I also conduct a simulation-based exercise to examine the ideological composition of the judiciary under a confirmation regime in which the filibuster is not present. This exercise suggests that the Senate filibuster induces moderation in judicial appointments; the elimination of the filibuster is likely to result in a more contentious, if less dilatory, confirmation process and a more polarized judiciary. [R]
64.3295 STRASHEIM, Julia; FJELDE, Hanne —
Does the institutional design of interim governments influence postconflict democratization? Based on the logic of political engineering we examine whether designing interim regimes to incorporate inclusive representation of all warring parties, constraints on executive power, and decentralized governance enhances the prospects of post-conflict democratization. By analyzing 15 interim regimes between 1989 and 2006, we find that while inclusiveness is not associated with democratization, executive constraints and decentralization are. These results point to the importance of establishing institutions that diffuse political power and reduce the zero-sum character of the political contest during transition. [R]
64.3296 TAGHIZADEH, Jonas Larsson; LINDBOM, Anders —
The “new politics” perspective in welfare state research holds that class-based parties and unions have lost some of their influence and have been replaced by client organizations capable of resisting retrenchment pressures. However, scholars within the “power resource tradition” contend that class is still fundamental and that client interests are weak in corporatist countries with a strong labor movement. We argue that scholars within the power resource approach have focused too much on social insurance programs and traditional forms of political participation, and that this has made them blind to client protests. An empirical study of political efforts to close down nighttime emergency surgery in Swedish hospitals is presented. [R, abr.]
64.3297 TAMA, Jordan —
Scholars have found that, even when a crisis creates demand for reform, a focal point is often necessary to overcome obstacles to change. I argue that, with surprising frequency, US blue-ribbon commissions use their bipartisan political credibility to provide this focal point and thereby catalyze post-crisis government reform. Since commission-inspired reform is often designed to integrate or centralize policy-making, I further explain that commissions can be useful presidential tools for asserting power over agencies. I test my argument on an original data-set that includes new measures of commission influence. [R]
64.3298 TAŞ, Hakki —
Highlight the importance of hidden power networks behind the façade of parliamentary democracy. Dubbed as “deep state” in the Turkish context, the phenomenon suffers from a scarcity of scholarly analyses. This paper demonstrates the lack of academic interest in this complex issue in Europe, and Turkey in particular. After reviewing the central currents in the academic literature on the Turkish deep state, it offers an analysis of the Ergenekon affair in continuity with Turkey's recent past. [R]
64.3299 TORRES RAMÍREZ, Blanca —
During the first decade of this century, Mexico showed increasing activism on climate change. It strongly supported working within the UN system, convinced that this is the best path to confront the problem. It also participated in smaller, informal forums dealing with this vital but divisive issue. Mexico was more successful in its efforts to contribute in rebuilding the capacity of the multilateral system at this crucial moment than it was in its attempts to become a bridge between developed and developing countries, while some of the latter saw it leaning far toward the developed world. [R]
64.3300 TRABER, Denise; HUG, Simon; SCIARINI, Pascal —
This study investigates the connection between legislative and electoral politics in Switzerland. The authors postulate that party unity is higher in an election year, and more specifically in votes on issues that are important for the party platform and that are of greater visibility to voters. The authors analyze the entire voting record of the Swiss parliament (lower house) on legislative acts between 1996 and 2007, which consists of roll call votes as well as unpublished votes. The authors find a strong effect of elections on voting unity among certain parties, and also find encouraging support for the hypotheses that this effect is mediated by the visibility of the vote and related issue salience. [R]
64.3301 TRÄGER, Hendrik —
Electoral systems transfer data of votes into parliamentary seats. This happens in a specific manner and in principle it is possible to distinguish majority systems and proportional representation. The various systems have different effects on the composition of the parliament and the opportunities for possible coalitions to govern. In the case of a majority system or a proportional system without a threshold, the German Bundestag would have a different appearance [from what] it has now. To demonstrate to which in part drastically different results the various systems would lead, eleven model calculations are conducted with the results of the German National Election 2013. [R]
64.3302 TRAVERS, Mark; VAN BOVEN, Leaf; JUDD, Charles —
Three experiments demonstrate that in the context of US foreign policy decision-making, people infer informational quality from secrecy. In Experiment 1, people weighed secret information more heavily than public information when making recommendations about foreign political candidates. In Experiment 2, people judged information presented in documents ostensibly produced by the Department of State and the National Security Council as being of relatively higher quality when those documents were secret rather than public. Finally, in Experiment 3, people judged a National Security Council document as being of higher quality when presented as a secret document rather than a public document and evaluated others’ decisions more favorably when those decisions were based on secret information. Discussion centers on the mediators, moderators, and broader implications of this secrecy heuristic in foreign policy contexts. [R]
64.3303 TREMBLAY, Manon; STOCKEMER, Daniel —
This article probes two aspects of women's ministerial careers in federal, provincial, and territorial cabinets from 1921 to December 2010. Logistic regression-analysis shows that women holding cabinet portfolios differ from female legislators with no ministerial responsibilities with respect to education, parliamentary experience, and age when first elected. Women legislators elected in Quebec, and more so at the federal level, were less likely to become ministers than women legislators nominated in other provinces. Second, we consider what portfolios women had over time, and how many different portfolios they were assigned to. The results are sobering: women ministers are still largely concentrated in socio-cultural and socio-economic portfolios, and most only occupy one or two of these portfolios. [R, abr.]
64.3304 TREVIÑO RANGEL, Javier —
This paper explores the many factors that caused the process of transitional justice in Mexico to result in impunity. It examines the historical development of the process of transitional justice since the creation of the Special Prosecutor's Office in 2001 until it was closed down in 2006. The guiding question is: what factors allowed this process of transitional justice to protect rather than punish perpetrators of past crimes in Mexico? [R]
64.3305 TRICOT, Daniel —
The rules of ethics applying to regulated legal professions are meant to avoid conflicts of interests in the independence exercise of their activities. Yet, when conflicts arise, they should be identified and evaluated in order to deal with them and avoid sanctions. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3239]
64.3306 TURGEON, Luc; GAGNON, Alain-G. —
This article investigates how the struggles of national groups have affected the politics of bureaucratic representation of ethnic minorities in Belgium and Canada, and vice-versa. It argues that the politics of multinational representation in Belgium limited the adoption of measures seeking to guarantee a greater representation of ethnic and racial minorities. In contrast, the politics of multiculturalism in Canada associated with the political mobilization of ethnic groups, contributed to the rejection of measures of guaranteed representation of Francophones in the federal bureaucracy. Measures adopted to increase the representation of Francophones, however, did not impede later attempts to augment representation of visible minorities in the civil service. [R]
64.3307 TZELGOV, Eitan —
I focus on the issue of European integration and its impact on party strategy in the 1992–1997 British House of Commons. Utilizing both voting and rhetorical data, the analysis reveals that both government and opposition were split on the issue, and thus the opposition was not able to use it. This, I argue, stems from the complexity of the issue, i.e., the fact that it combines redistributive cleavages with pre- and post-material ones, which cannot be suppressed by party leaders. The results demonstrate the importance of taking into consideration both the government's and the opposition's cohesion in modeling party strategies. Further, the combination of voting and rhetorical data adds to our understanding of the dimensionality and structure of partisan ideologies in Europe. [R, abr.]
64.3308 UDOVIČ, Boštjan; LOVEC, Marko —
The characteristics of the institutional organization of Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs) enable to reflect on the general conditions influencing the operation of the foreign ministries and on the way the institutional profiles as such influence the foreign policies of individual countries. To establish the differences and patterns in institutional profiles of the MFAs, this article observes the vertical and horizontal concentration in their organizational structures, the role of political mandate based leadership and the balance between the main foreign policy focus areas. In the empirical [section], the MFAs of the 28 EU member states are put into comparison. The article reflects on the empirical and theoretical implications of the proposed characteristics of the institutional profiles. [R]
64.3309 URIBE OTALORA, Ainhoa —
The present article describes the impact of the Spanish gender quota law of 2007, five years after its approval. It examines the behavior of the main political parties, as well as the features of the Spanish electoral system and the design of the gender quotas, so as to assess the improvement of the women's empowerment. [R]
64.3310 URVOAS, Jean-Jacques —
The relationship between the government and the permanent committees of the two Chambers has evolved. In the past, according to the Constitution, the legislative branch was limited to rubber stamping the will of the executive branch; today, the executive branch is forced to negotiate. Yet, while the work of the committees has clearly changed, the government remains in a position of strength during the plenary sessions. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3311 VAN GERVEN, Minna; VANHERCKE, Bart; GÜROCAK, Susanna —
This article investigates variations in the domestic impact of the EU's largest financial instrument, the European Social Fund (ESF), in The Netherlands and Spain. We find that, despite the large differences between the two in terms of “goodness of fit”, the ESF had significant effects on both The Netherlands and Spain. These effects, however, occurred through rather different dynamics: intermediate variables such as leverage, learning and aid conditionality determine how the ESF actually “hits home”, in addition to the degree of institutional, political and policy (mis)fit. At the same time, we qualify our analysis by exploring the role of countries’ past experiences with the ESF, their problem load, the availability of (EU and domestic) resources and member states’ uploading capacities. These factors have not yet been sufficiently explored for the ESF. [R, abr.]
64.3312 VASCONCELOS ROCHA, Carlos —
This paper compares the Spanish Autonomy model with the Brazilian Federative one. The characteristics of the two systems are set out with an evaluation of the real center-constraining capacity of their institutions, taking into account both the scale of the institutional structure and the scale of the political process. The intention is to evaluate how well-suited the institutions and political processes are to the requirements commonly considered necessary to the make-up of a federation. In the case of Spain, intergovernmental relations are defined less by a given institutional structure than by a political process of a highly centrifugal character, based on social characteristics divided into multiple ethnic and cultural identities. Brazil, the territorial distribution of power is better balanced, partly because it has a more solid underlying national identity. [R]
64.3313 VELÁZQUEZ GOMAR, José Octavio; STRINGER, Lindsay C.; PAAVOLA, Jouni —
Regime complexes or overlapping regimes relating to a common subject matter create policy coherence challenges at the national level. Recent research has observed a positive correlation between regime complexes and policy coherence: improved regime integration enables greater policy coherence and vice-versa. Policy coherence has nonetheless been approached as a problem of foreign policy and not yet as a problem of public policy. This article examines the co-evolution of regime complexes and (public) policy coherence in the context of international biodiversity governance, with a focus on the cluster of biodiversity-related conventions and their implementation in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It shows that global synergies in the biodiversity cluster have advanced more rapidly than national coordination of implementation activities. [R, abr.]
64.3314 VERPEAUX, Michel —
The controls over mayors are numerous but not really different from those exercised over the action of other decentralized local authorities. However, mayors can be suspended by the state in case of serious misconduct in the exercise of their function. These administrative, budgetary and managerial controls do not always reach their goals and they should be integrated to a process of collaboration between the elected officials and the State rather than take the form of a more or less efficient system of surveillance. They would thus probably gain in credibility. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3367]
64.3315 VIDAL-NAQUET, Arian —
Despite the constitutional recognition of the opposition and its obtaining specific rights, the renewal of the opposition has not occurred. It exercises with difficulties the new power it has been granted and it is limited to a function of blockage. A genuine renewal of the opposition calls for both the emancipation of the majority and the adaptation of a real parliamentary culture. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3131]
64.3316 VINING, Richard L., Jr.; MARCIN, Phil —
We hypothesize that information about the [US] Supreme Court is newsworthy when it has lower production costs and qualities attractive to the audiences and advertisers desired by news organizations. We examine Supreme Court news in elite newspapers, television news broadcasts, and online news sources during the October 2008 and 2010 terms. The results of our quantitative analyses indicate that all three types of news outlets are more likely to provide content about Supreme Court decisions with substantive importance but vary in their responses to costs and qualities appealing to the lay audience. We discuss the similarities and differences among news outlets with regard to their selection of Supreme Court information as news content. [R, abr.]
64.3317 VIVEKANANDAN, B. —
In the 1990s, the Finnish state experienced an economic crisis, borne out of flawed economic reforms like the deregulation of the financial market and other changes that aimed at hastening Finland's EU membership. The crisis forced the government to tighten the preconditions for availing of welfare benefits. Some notable changes made during the crisis have not yet been rescinded even after it ended. Nevertheless, the crisis underlined the value of the welfare state system in helping ordinary people to successfully insulate themselves against any serious hardship during the period. As a result, the system is very popular in Finland. The Finnish welfare system today faces new challenges emanating from globalization, the EU, demographic changes and structural unemployment. [R, abr.]
64.3318 WEINMANN, Philipp —
Starting from the assumption that, independent of a specific election result, the electoral system should place parliament as close as possible to the regular size of 598, simulations have been run based on poll data since the election of 2009. Certain constellations would result in very large numbers of seats, hence, another reform of the recently reformed electoral law is up for discussion. The simulations show that two possible reform options indeed lead to smaller parliaments. While the consequences of introducing a single-vote-system are hard to predict, the calculation method suggested by R. Peifer et al. exhibits [fewer] side effects and is principally recommendable. However, it would have to be combined with additional measures to avoid under certain conditions vastly oversized parliaments. [R, abr.]
64.3319 WENDLER, Frank —
National parliaments are arenas both for the discursive justification of European integration and its party political contestation. This article harnesses a discourse-theoretical framework to investigate the links between both dimensions in debates about the revision of the EU treaties in the parliaments of four member states (Austria, France, Germany and the UK). Two arguments are proposed: first, a distinction between discursive perspectives and related mobilizing arguments helps to disentangle different thematic layers of debate, characterized as “problem-solving debates” on the effectiveness of political action in the EU, “directional debates” about the substantive goals of EU governance, and “legitimacy debates” about the compatibility of supranational institutions with domestic democracy. Second, the empirical data show that each of these debates is linked to characteristic patterns of polarization along institutional and party political divides. [R, abr.]
64.3320 WHITFIELD, Lindsay; BUUR, Lars —
Economic transformation is driven by successfully implemented industrial policy, but industrial policy is inherently political. We cannot understand why some governments pursue and implement industrial policy better than others without understanding its politics. This article addresses the conditions under which industrial policies are successfully implemented. It presents an analytical approach to understanding why some ruling elite-capitalist alliances lead to better economic outcomes than others. Sub-Saharan African countries present a particular puzzle, given their low productive capabilities and the relatively small number of successful productive sectors. The article examines the most successful productive sectors in Mozambique and in Ghana in order to illuminate the conditions under which such alliances occur and their specific characteristics and outcomes. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3003]
64.3321 WILSON, David C.; BREWER, Paul R. —
Voter ID laws require individuals to show government-endorsed identification when casting their ballots on Election Day. Whereas some see these laws as necessary to prevent voting fraud, others argue that fraud is extremely rare and that voter ID laws can suppress voting. The relative newness of the laws, along with variance in their substance, suggests that the public may possess low information about voter ID laws; thus, opinions on the issue may be influenced by political information, group predispositions, and the media. Using data from a [US] national poll, this study investigates what underlies opinion on voter ID laws. The results indicate that political predispositions, including ideology, party identification, and racial attitudes, influence support for such laws. [R, abr.]
64.3322 WILSON, Walter Clark; CARLOS, Roberto Felix —
Achieving greater female presence in influential positions is a commonly discussed strategy for gender reform in institutions such as the US Congress. Using theory adapted from research on gender in the workplace, this study examines whether women representatives, as “managers” of congressional offices, alter patterns of gender representation in Congress by hiring and promoting more women staffers compared with men representatives. Cross-sectional logistic regression analyses during 2007–2010 reveal a positive relationship between women representatives and female presence on congressional staffs. However, the relationship does not hold with respect to the most influential staff positions. These findings provide only limited support for theories that women representatives act as “change agents” by directly facilitating opportunities for women, and highlight the importance of exploring alternative strategies for empowering women and regendering legislative institutions. [R]
64.3323 WIMMEL, Andreas —
Referendums on issues of European integration have become more and more important in recent years, particularly after the failed referenda on the EU Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands. This paper examines the impact of direct democracy in national contexts on the decision of governments and parliaments to conduct EU referendums. The results of a qualitative-comparative analysis of 30 countries since 1945 show that this form of path dependency exists only in part: While some nation states with plebiscitary traditions also grant their citizens direct participation in major EU decisions, others do not convene EU referendums or call for EU referendums even though they have no experience with direct democracy in national politics. [R]
64.3324 XYDIAS, Christina —
This article asks to what extent do generational differences among legislators produce variation in their representational activities on behalf of women, and what kinds of shifts in gender policy are they likely to produce over time? In order to address these questions, it builds upon the literature on both political generations and women's substantive representation. It tests the influence of generational membership on women's substantive representation with a content analysis of 416 speeches delivered in plenary sessions of the German Bundestag, 1998–2009. [R]
64.3325 YILMAZ, Gözde; SOYALTIN, Diğdem —
Since the credibility of the EU conditionality for Turkey has significantly weakened after 2005, compliance with the EU requirements has become less likely. However, we observe continuing reforms in the fight against corruption and minority rights, which is rather puzzling. Given the limited impact of the EU incentives, this paper brings back the “domestic” into the analysis by exploring the role of various domestic actors, such as Turkish state elites, civil society and the media. Yet, as the empirical evidence suggests, policy change in the fight against corruption and minority rights has been driven by the domestic agenda of the governing party, the Justice and Development Party, and its political preferences based on strategic calculations. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “The devil is in the domestic? European integration studies and the limits of Europeanization in Turkey”, edited and introduced by Basak ALPAN and Thomas DIEZ. See also Abstr. 64.3256, 3586, 3730, 3778, 3818, 3984]
(b) State, regional and local institutions/Institutions locales et régionales
64.3326 ANDERSON, Malcolm; THAM Joo-Cheong —
Calls for increased regulation are sometimes made in response to what is dubbed an “arms race” in elections — a cost explosion in electoral expenditure driven by the competitive dynamics of elections. In 2010, New South Wales (NSW) adopted the first comprehensive caps on electoral expenditure in Australia on this basis. This paper examines the evidence for a cost explosion over the course of three NSW elections (1999–2007). It finds a significant but unevenly distributed increase in electoral expenditure — over 3 per cent per annum over and above inflation and the growth in voter population. In terms of explaining this spending increase, it finds a close relationship between electoral expenditure and the availability of campaign funds but a less clear one between such expenditure and the “winnability” of the elections. [R]
64.3327 AULICH, Chris; SANSOM, Graham; McKINLAY, Peter —
This article draws from a major research project examining the impact of various forms of municipal consolidation in Australia and New Zealand. Its wide-ranging research involved studies of 15 cases of different forms of consolidation, including amalgamation, together with a series of interviews with senior practitioners from the local government sector. Data revealed little evidence of consistent economies of scale from consolidation, however both case studies and interviews indicated that consolidation generated economies of scope and what may be termed “strategic capacity”. While it was not possible to disaggregate the data for particular sizes of local authority, enhancement of strategic capacity was more obvious through processes of consolidation in larger ones and less so in smaller, more remote ones. [R]
64.3328 BÉHAR, Laurie; LEROY, Pieter —
I study the interactions between public actors, local associations and renewable energy experts, the manner in which this interface has been institutionalized and what this process means in terms of knowledge-acquisition among the actors involved. Theoretically, I shed light on neoinstitutionalist and sociology of science approaches. By drawing upon the “policy arrangements” framework of analysis, I show that three of the dimensions characterizing the policy arrangement of renewable energy — coalitions among actors, the distribution of resources and the legal framework — have gradually been modified. This has led to changes in a fourth dimension: dominant discourse. Finally, even if interactions between experts and local associations may play a decisive role in the initial phase of the construction of energy policies, public actors gradually succeed in bringing the implementation of these policies under their control. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.2869]
64.3329 BELLANGER, Emmanuel —
The Third Republic was a period of enhancement and promotion of the figure of the mayor. Its history highlights the essential political and social mediating role played by municipal magistrates. The State would not have been able to fulfill its missions without the support of these elected officials protected by the municipal charter of 1884. Contrary to common beliefs, the recognition of local liberties did not come with the launching of the decentralization process. On the contrary, it stems from the sedimentation of texts and practices which reveal a long history of compromise and mutual consent linking the state to its territorial and local authorities. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3367]
64.3330 BONNEAU, Chris W.; LOEPP, Eric —
This paper considers the implications of the straight-party voting option (STVO) on participation in judicial elections. Voters using straight-party options (by definition) do not vote for candidates in nonpartisan elections. Consequently, ballot roll-off in these elections is more likely to occur when people are given the chance to vote the party ticket and complete the voting process quickly. This is the case because nonpartisan judicial elections are considerably less salient than statewide and federal partisan elections. This article separates out the effects of the institutional structure of the election on political participation with the effects of ballot design. We find that in nonpartisan elections, the straight-party option decreases voter participation since voters who utilize the straight-ticket option may erroneously believe that they have voted for these nonpartisan offices, or simply ignore them. [R, abr.]
64.3331 BUKVE, Oddbjørn; SAXI, Hans Petter —
Our article investigates whether the change from the alderman model to parliamentary rule in Norwegian counties affects decision-making style, steering capacity, accountability and democracy. We also ask how the legitimacy of the political system is affected. Our findings indicate a more majoritarian style of decision-making. Influence is concentrated within the political majority, and particularly in the executive. Improved accountability is reported, but the factors behind this increase are difficult to determine. Regarding democracy and legitimacy, we could not measure any external effects of the reform. The politicians in opposition show a high degree of frustration, caused both by internal factors in the organization of county politics and in constraints on county politics imposed at national level. In the long run this may lead to decreased legitimacy for the political system. [R]
64.3332 CADIOU, Stéphane —
Nowadays, city mayors seemed to be massively engaged in the elaboration of public action projects that could help them to mobilize support. The article discusses the thesis of output-based political legitimization often presented as a response to a more differentiated pluralistic society. In order to do so, it discusses the investments necessary for a political use of public action before drawing attention to the uncertainties implied by such a form of government. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3367]
64.3333 CANES-WRONE, Brandice; CLARK, Tom S.; KELLY, Jason P. —
Most US state supreme court justices face elections or reappointment by elected officials, and research suggests that judicial campaigns have come to resemble those for other offices. We develop predictions on how selection systems should affect judicial decisions and test these predictions on an extensive dataset of death penalty decisions by state courts of last resort. Specifically, the data include over 12,000 decisions on over 2000 capital punishment cases decided between 1980 and 2006 in systems with partisan, nonpartisan, or retention elections or with reappointment. As predicted, the findings suggest that judges face the greatest pressure to uphold capital sentences in systems with nonpartisan ballots. Also as predicted, judges respond similarly to public opinion in systems with partisan elections or reappointment. [R, abr.]
64.3334 COPUS, Colin —
The paper sets out a history of the development of London government, the current arrangements for governing London that were created by the 1999 Greater London Authority Act and examines the role of the London Assembly and Mayor, including the most recent set of 2012 London elections. It also considers whether the current London arrangements represent a new and more imaginative way for citizens to engage with the political processes, or whether any public participation in a representative democracy will face political problems. [R, abr.]
64.3335 DE MOOR, Joost; MARIEN, Sofie; HOOGHE, Marc —
The number of female councilors has increased significantly since the introduction of gender quotas for local elections in the Flemish region of Belgium. However, a strong underrepresentation of women remains in the most important position in local politics: the mayoralty. Consequently, the underlying goal of the quota laws — equal representation of women and men in politics — has been realized only to a limited extent. We investigate which factors influence the inclusion or exclusion of women within three crucial stages of the recruitment process for mayors: (1) the composition of party-lists and the nomination of the first candidate on the list; (2) the acquirement of preferential votes; and (3) the appointment of the mayor. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.2856]
64.3336 DEZMAN, Zlatan —
This paper deals with anomalies of criminal law supervision of the legality of actions of local community officials in Slovenia. It highlights some of the dilemmas that concern the limits of central state control over local self-governing bodies. I analyze: (1) the fundamental characteristics of the relationship between the central state and local self-governing entities; (2) the monitoring of the autonomy of local self-governing bodies when they decide on matters within their original jurisdiction; (3) the role of the mayor as a representative, executive and supervisory individual authority; and (4) existing Slovenian criminal case-law in that regard. [R]
64.3337 DOBERSTEIN, Carey —
This article introduces the concept of “metagovernance” into the Canadian public administration literature. The term captures the relationship and tension between the willingness of the state to engage with civil society representatives in substantive policy-planning and decision-making via purpose-focused governance networks, while maintaining some degree of control over their activity consistent with traditional notions of democratic accountability. Examples of fifteen cases of network governance at the local level from all regions in Canada and various policy domains are compared. The article identifies patterns in the management of governance networks by the state and reflects on the implications for network governance and accountability. [R]
64.3338 ELLISON, Nick; HARDEY, Michael —
This article assesses and [considers] the role played by new forms of internet-based communication in UK local governance. Drawing on a survey of all English local authorities the article examines the utilization of social media before asking what potential these media might hold for the enhancement of local participation. Amid contemporary debates about the nature of local governance, not least those prompted by the recent preoccupation with the Big Society, Web 2.0 platforms such as Facebook and Twitter afford new opportunities for online interaction that could contribute to the reinvigoration of the local public sphere. In particular, these platforms could encourage forms of participation that would bridge the divide that has emerged in recent years between residents as consumers of local services and residents as citizens, or local democratic actors. [R]
64.3339 EVANS, Matt —
Governance by directly elected mayors differs from that of their predecessors, with greater power and increased interaction with a variety of other actors. [Despite] research on the effect of a shift to direct elections on mayors, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the impact of this kind of reform on local councils. While these reforms are relatively new in Europe, Israel enacted similar reforms more than three decades ago. This research examines the effect of the adoption of direct election of mayors in Israel and the way in which it affected voting behavior and the roles of local councils. The research shows that the move to directly elected mayors led to greater political fragmentation by reducing the incentive to vote for the larger national parties, which virtually disappeared from local councils. [R, abr.]
64.3340 GOEMINNE, Stijn; SMOLDERS, Carine —
This article offers new evidence on the political determinants of local government's public investment policy. A public infrastructure investment function was estimated using data for 307 out of 308 Flemish municipalities covering the period 1996–2009. The results reveal that government composition and the timing of the elections matter. The presence of the Liberal Party decreases investments, whereas fragmentation of the government has the opposite effect. Significantly higher investment levels were recorded in years preceding elections contrary to post-election years, which show important slowdown in investment policies. Finally, the analysis shows that local governments are sensitive to the investment policy of neighboring municipalities. The positive spatial interaction effect implies that a municipality's investments increase on average with 26.2% of changes in investment levels by neighboring municipalities. [R]
64.3341 GOUPIL, Paul —
The relationship between mayors and journalists is one of contentious proximity. The dual dependency which characterizes it has increased with the growing role played by communication specialists. A careful understanding of the functioning of local democracy could bring about a compromise which would be satisfying for these two important local players. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3367]
64.3342 GUARNEROS-MEZA, Valeria, et al. —
Since devolution in 1999, the Welsh Government has developed a distinctive approach to the management of local government policy. Alongside an emphasis on welfarism and partnership, local authorities have been exhorted to put the citizen at the center of public service delivery. Drawing on the notion of assemblage, developed in the governmentality literature, this paper identifies two different rationalities running through Welsh Government policy documents. On the basis of a series of interviews with government officials and their counterparts in the Welsh Local Government Association we find evidence of important tensions in the Welsh approach. While the emphasis on the citizen has worked in building a “political rationality”, the evidence from our interviews suggests that it works less well as a “government technology”. [R]
64.3343 HALL, Melinda Gann —
This project evaluates whether televised attack advertising has detrimental effects on the electoral performance of [US] state supreme court justices seeking re-election. I examine this question by estimating theoretically specified models of vote-shares that include all televised messages for incumbents and challengers in 76 partisan and nonpartisan elections in 19 states from 2002 through 2006. I also rely on Campaign Media Analysis Group advertising data and campaign finance measures to disentangle the effects of advertising from campaign spending. Results show that attacks have deleterious effects on the incumbency advantage but only in nonpartisan elections. [R, abr.]
64.3344 HARCOURT, Haude d’ —
There are 36,000 municipalities whose extreme diversity is a French exception, and 36,000 mayors who symbolize a more accessible form of power and represent a close link of proximity to which French citizens are strongly attached. How are they organized in order to be heard by government officials at a time when numerous reforms are calling into question the system of representation of the various territories and the distribution of competences to govern them? Will the mayors, in particular the mayors of rural areas, be able to keep control over their clustering within a chosen territory and maintain the ability to be heard in the public debate if they no longer have access to Parliament? [R] [See Abstr. 64.3367]
64.3345 HARM, Katrin; JAECK, Tobias; ADERHOLD, Jens —
The political work undertaken as a member of a local parliament is demanding, sometimes difficult and more and more often linked to personal challenges and stress in terms of time-management and organization. Although exogenous as well as endogenous reasons have been identified as causes of this stress, it is as yet unclear to what extent local politicians themselves actually perceive stress as mental overload. Our results show that the difficult circumstances or excessive time expenditure one experiences when working as a council member do not necessarily lead to the personal impression of being a burden to representatives, even though we were actually able to measure stress objectively. [R, abr.]
64.3346 HAY, Robert; MARTIN, Steve —
The level of local fiscal autonomy is widely regarded as an important indicator of the state of central-local relations and the capping of council tax increases has proved to be one of the most contentious of all of the constraints placed on local authorities by UK central government. Over the last decade the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales have moved away from capping in favor of a more consensual approach. This decision reflects the difference in scale and nature of their policy communities and appears to have been at least as successful in controlling increases in local taxes as the more directive, top-down strategy favored by policymakers in England. The current UK government's proposals to promote local referenda as the means of controlling council tax levels represents a new but unproven approach. [R, abr.]
64.3347 HEINMILLER, B. Timothy —
In 1996, the Alberta legislature passed the Water Act, a landmark piece of legislation that introduced a number of significant water policy reforms, including a variety of eco-support instruments: regulatory mechanisms that can be used to define and preserve a share of water for environmental protection and restoration purposes. This article explains the inclusion of eco-support instruments in the Water Act by combining the Advocacy Coalition Framework with J. Nye's distinction between “hard” and “soft” power. It identifies two main advocacy coalitions in the Alberta water policy subsystem, the “Greens” and the “Aggies”, and argues that the development of the Water Act can be characterized as a contest between Green soft power and Aggie hard power. [R, abr.]
64.3348 IM, Tobin, et al. —
This article measures the extent to which the service priorities of citizens of Seoul, South Korea, are reflected in corresponding resource-allocations in the city's budget, despite virtually no participation by citizens in the budget-creation process. We find a less-than-perfect congruence between budget allocations and citizen preferences at both the city and district level. Given these results, we discuss the potential for participatory budgeting to address discrepancies in resource allocation by focusing on the unique demographic and cultural makeup of Seoul constituencies. [R]
64.3349 JACOBSEN, Dag Ingvar —
While our knowledge on the form and functioning of networks increases, we have little knowledge on the effects of network context on the impact of governance networks. This study focuses on contextual elements and their effect on perceived network outcomes on three dimensions — service-provision, solving “wicked” problems, and exerting external influence — controlling for trust and consensus. Data from eleven governance networks in Norway are combined with individual data on trust, consensus and outcomes. Results indicate that contextual factors have significant effects on network outcomes, particularly on the ability to solve complex problems and on external influence. [R, abr.]
64.3350 JAS, Pauline; SKELCHER, Chris —
This article addresses differences in regulatory regimes in the devolved nations of the UK. It focuses on the divergence between rhetoric and practice around improving performance of local authorities. By discussing general understanding of public sector quality and the possible role for regulators in ensuring quality, it shows that Scotland and Wales have developed different approaches since devolution of power in 1999. By comparing case studies from each of the nations, it shows that practices vary much less than could be expected based on the previous research. This is likely to be due to shared underlying assumptions about performance and how to improve it, rather than the regulatory regimes themselves. External pressure and support are vital: these functions can be damaged by reducing involvement of the state in safeguarding quality of public service delivery. [R, abr.]
64.3351 JONES, Tricia; ORMSTON, Christianne —
Since the establishment of subsidiarity in the early 1990s, the Europeanwide move to devolve governance has been interpreted by previous and present UK governments adopting differing ideological positions within a “localism agenda”. Interpretations have changed the dynamics of the community right to challenge, as well as the structure and mechanisms for community accountability. This article adopts the typology of forms of local governance developed by Lowndes and Sullivan [“How low can you go? Rationales and challenges for neighbourhood governance”, Public Administration, 86 (1), 2008: 1–2; Abstr. 59.629] to explore the hypothesis that the localism agenda realigns the synergy between neighborhood rationales; citizen engagement in service delivery and the opportunity for public scrutiny and accountability. [R, abr.]
64.3352 KJAER, Ulrik; ELKLIT, Jørgen —
Choosing the number of seats in a legislature is a balancing act between efficiency and representativeness. This article focuses on representativeness and hypothesizes that the larger the assembly, the higher the vote-seat proportionality, the higher the number of parties represented, and the higher the representation of otherwise under-represented groups. An approach using simulations of elections is introduced and applied in testing the hypotheses in the case of Danish local elections. Two thousand six hundred and forty-six elections are simulated, and a positive, but non-linear, relationship is demonstrated between number of seats and proportionality, number of parties, and percentage of women councilors. [R]
64.3353 KOEBEL, Michel —
An analysis of the data of the National Directory of Elected Officials (2008 local elections) crossed with other demographic data and the findings of several other recent surveys allows us to develop different aspects of the social profile of French mayors. It enables us to study its evolution over time and to highlights the social dynamics which make it stagnate rather than change. The most prestigious positions remain in the hands of local social and political elites, mostly composed of elderly men and which have hardly been transformed by demographic evolutions and the call for gender equality. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3367]
64.3354 LINDSEY, Iain —
Achieving effective local collaboration, a strong theme of the previous Labour government, may actually become more important given Coalition government policies emphasizing decentralization and encouraging alternative providers of public services. Therefore, it remains essential to learn from experiences of collaboration, especially as few studies explicitly identify guidance for improving this practice that is of specific relevance to local policy actors. A decentered and ethnographic approach was adopted to examine collaboration in a case study of a Sport and Physical Activity Alliance in Casetown, a medium-sized city in the south of England. Drawing on the suggestions of those involved in the alliance, an alternative vision of collaboration is advocated, focused on shared learning and bottom-up implementation within more fluid and open structures. [R, abr.]
64.3355 LOAYZA, Norman V.; RIGOLINI, Jamele; CALVOGONZÁLEZ, Oscar —
This article builds on a comprehensive dataset for Peru that merges municipal fiscal accounts with information about municipalities’ characteristics such as population, poverty, education, and local politics to analyze the leading factors affecting the ability of municipalities to execute the allocated budget. According to the existing literature and the Peruvian context, we divide these factors into four categories: the budget size and allocation process; local capacity; local needs; and political economy constraints. While we do find that all four factors affect decentralization, the largest determinant of spending ability is the adequacy of the budget with respect to local capacity. The results confirm the need for decentralization to be implemented gradually over time in parallel with strong capacity-building efforts. [R]
64.3356 MAJIC, Samantha —
The Offender Prostitution Program in San Francisco allows men arrested for their first prostitution offense to pay a fine and to attend a day of classes about the consequences of participation in prostitution, in lieu of prosecution. Others have replicated First Offender, and supporters (particularly feminists) praise it for promoting gender equality. However, the findings suggest that First Offender both replicates and contests competing and often contradictory gender ideologies and patterns of power. Specifically, the program's practices and content imply that men who purchase sexual services are rational sexual agents, while women who sell these services are (mainly) victims. The program thus illustrates the contested and contradictory ideological dynamics of gender-sensitive institutional reforms. [R, abr.]
64.3357 MALESKY, Edmund J.; NGUYEN Cuong Viet; TRAN Anh —
Comparative political economy offers a wealth of hypotheses connecting decentralization to improved public service delivery. In recent years, influential formal and experimental work has begun to question the underlying theory and empirical analyses of previous findings. At the same time, many countries have grown dissatisfied with the results of their decentralization efforts and have begun to reverse them. Vietnam is particularly intriguing because of the unique way in which it designed its recentralization, piloting a removal of elected people's councils in 99 districts across the country and stratifying the selection by region, type of province, and urban versus rural setting. We take advantage of the opportunity provided by this quasi experiment to test the core hypotheses regarding the decision to shift administrative and fiscal authority to local governments. [R, abr.]
64.3358 MAO Yuping; ADRIA, Marco —
Selecting participants is a key component in the design, operation, and outcomes of public-deliberation events to reflect the diversity of opinion in the larger public. This article examines how the City of Edmonton selected the members of its Citizen Panel on budget priorities in 2009 to inform Edmonton's 2010–2011 budget. The organizers relied on random selection stratified by gender, age, length of residence in the city, educational attainment, and income. This article also reports on the findings from pre-event and post-event public-opinion surveys sent to 5,000 citizens. It argues that the selection method for the Citizen Panel was justified because there were distinct views on key issues among different groups of citizens. [R]
64.3359 McGHEE, Eric —
In recent decades, the literature has coalesced around either symmetry or responsiveness as measures of partisan bias in single-member district systems. I argue neither accurately captures the traditional idea of an “efficient” gerrymander, where one party claims more seats without more votes. I suggest a better measure of efficiency and then use this new measure to reconsider a classic study of partisan gerrymandering. Contrary to the original study findings, I show that the effects of party control on bias are small and decay rapidly, suggesting that redistricting is at best a blunt tool for promoting partisan interests. [R]
64.3360 MELGAR, Teresa R. —
Participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre has long been held up as a model of how grassroots social movements, in alliance with a Left party in power, have deepened democracy in a highly clientelist context. But what happened to this democratic reform when the Partido dos Trabal-hadores (Workers’ Party, PT), which supported this initiative, lost political power? This article examines the shifting fortunes of the participatory budgeting process following the defeat of the Workers’ Party in the 2004 local elections. It explores how and why succeeding local administrations weakened participatory budgeting amid the changing political configuration of Porto Alegre, underscoring the critical role played by considerable executive branch powers in the process. The article examines what questions this raises for the sustainability of local democratic reforms. [R]
64.3361 MORDEN, Michael —
Direct protest actions by Indigenous peoples in Canada have rarely yielded the specific gains that were targeted. In the aftermath of conflict, Canadian governments have typically proven to be intransigent. An exception to this general tendency is the Anishinabek occupation of Ipperwash Provincial Park, which began in 1995. In 2007, the government of Ontario agreed to return the parkland to the First Nation, making it an unusually successful instance of direct action. It is argued here that this outcome can best be explained by drawing on the “symbolic politics” theory of intergroup conflict. The Ipperwash inquiry, acting as a postconflict truth commission, generated a micro-narrative shared by both groups, which altered the political incentive structure and enabled the outlier accommodative outcome. [R]
64.3362 NASSMACHER, Hiltrud —
After the latest mayoral elections in large German cities brought about meager results for the CDU, the media's interest in local elections grew. Does voting behavior at the local level differ from that at other levels? Which factors are important? Using the latest election results of all cities with 50,000 and more inhabitants, this article shows that long-term factors of voting behavior in general elections are relevant as well at the local level. However, the major local actors, especially the mayor, activists in the political parties and the local media, create a special environment in each municipality due to their skills, personality, capacity to communicate with people and professionalization. Mobilization of voters is much easier, if the governing elite has been able to create trust in the local political system. [R, abr.]
64.3363 NGUYEN Thao —
This paper explores the government-led community/shequ project in urban Shanghai as a new social institution designed to solve some of the emerging social problems associated with economic reforms. Community-building seeks to move away from a model based on direct government towards a model of structured self-governance. Together with the family and the schools, shequ form a bulwark against moral degeneration in the society. More importantly, infusing shequ with “moral purpose” also revitalizes the Party's legitimacy at the grassroots. This paper elucidates the ways in which shequ governance attempts to make up the spiritual and moral shortfall in society through the example of “civilizing campaigns” (wenning huodong). [R, abr.]
64.3364 OGUZ, Candan; SONMEZ, Ipek Ozbek —
The Greater Municipality Law (no. 5216) was enacted in 2004 in order to coordinate the governance of metropolitan areas in Turkey. In fact, this law has been a part of the restructuring process of the government in public domain as well as of the centralization and metropolitan governance approaches. However, the evaluation of this law displays many conflicts and uncertainties discussed by this study. Analyzing the Law no. 5216, this study explores the case of Izmir Greater Municipality from the aspects of metropolitan governance approaches. [R, abr.]
64.3365 PETRIWSKYJ, Andrea M., et al. —
Increasing expectations of citizen involvement as well as demographic changes brought by population ageing make evidence about the factors impacting on seniors’ participation increasingly important for local governments. In particular, knowledge about motivations for involvement can assist local governments in attempting to attract input, and to determine whose interests are represented. This article reports on an Australian study exploring seniors’ motivations for participation in governance processes, using a two-phase mixed method approach. Findings suggest that seniors’ participation was motivated by both self- and other-directed, and both practical and abstract factors. Comparison of the sources highlighted nuances in the data which reflect questions about representation, representativeness and inclusion. [R, abr.]
64.3366 PINSON, Gilles —
In the past, mayors formed a homogeneous group, united by a similar system of bilateral and vertical relationships with the state. For the mayors, these relationships implied a legal subordination to the center, but also a greater access to that center, in particular through the holding of several mandates. This relational system has collapsed and given way to a new one which is more multilateral, and in which the state has lost the monopoly of relations with the mayors. This multilevel governance is much more open, pluralistic, but at the same time more prone to logics of differentiation and inequality in the allocation of resources. The large urban centers and their mayor-presidents are the biggest winners of this emerging system. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3367]
64.3367 PORTELLI, Hugues —
In France, mayors represent primarily an administrative authority. Their prerogatives are those of agents of the state before being those of the executive branch of a territorial authority. The administrative structure of the municipality allows mayors to accumulate extended powers, either in their own capacity or delegated by another authority, without any real system of checks and balances. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Le Maire ([French] Mayors)”. See also Abstr. 64.3314, 3329, 3332, 3341, 3344, 3353, 3366, 3372, 3377]
64.3368 PORTER, Jennifer —
This article analyzes the extent to which contemporary Australian state parliaments observe the procedures and practices of the British House of Commons and the potential reasons for departures from those procedures. It considers a recent example of significant divergence from House of Commons practice. In Western Australia's state parliament, the speaker exercised the casting vote on a motion of closure (a “gag” motion). The article examines this procedural divergence for possible insights into the nature of, and reasons for, Australian departures from House of Commons practice. [R]
64.3369 PORTNEY, Kent E.; BERRY, Jeffrey —
Our expectation is that across a range of cities, where nonprofit environmental groups have been included or incorporated into the local policy-making process, there is greater commitment to environmental protection, and more extensive adoption and implementation of local policies and programs designed to protect the environment. To test this idea, we draw on our research that combines two original data-sets. First, we collected information on what programs and policies are in place in America's large cities. Second, for 50 large American cities, we also surveyed top city administrators. We find that inclusion of environmental groups in city policy-making is strongly linked to city administrators’ perceptions of city commitment to environmental protection. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 64.3070]
64.3370 PRILLAMAN, Soledad Artiz; MEIER, Kenneth J. —
State fiscal policy frequently focuses on stimulating a healthy business environment with the assumption that this is linked with long-term economic growth. The conventional wisdom is that a state's tax rates are negatively correlated with economic development, prompting states to decrease business-targeted taxes to stimulate the economy. Surprisingly, however, very few studies have documented the long-term effects of these tax policies on different facets of the state economy and overall business atmosphere. In short, we do not know how the level of business taxation actually affects the economies of states. Using panel data for all 50 US states from 1977 to 2005, this article examines the impact of state business taxes on the overall economic position of the state, specifically looking at their effect on economic development and business growth. [R, abr.]
64.3371 RAZIN, Eran; HAZAN, Anna —
The impact of governance attributes on frequently overlooked attitudes of local councilors towards local governance reform agendas is assessed, based on the MAELG survey of approximately 11,000 councilors in 15 European countries and Israel. Eighteen policy statements are grouped into six reform agendas, followed by analyses of their explanatory factors. Europe's north-south divide is found meaningful for the understanding of variations in attitudes towards reform, being most profound in notions of democracy, participation and devolution. The impact of present institutional practices is far from universal. Councilors in liberal regimes are not pro-privatization and cautious attitudes towards reform are shared by northern decentralized and centralized countries. [R, abr.]
64.3372 RICHARD, Alain —
Born as a simple extension of municipalities with restricted powers, at the end of the 20th c., inter-communality became a tightly regulated pooling together of municipal competences and means. The current reforms represent a real reversal of roles as the municipality would lose a great deal of its decision-making capabilities. The citizen, for whom the municipality is the main forum of democratic participation, might feel dispossessed. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3367]
64.3373 RIGON, Andrea —
Community and democratic participation are still an essential component of current mainstream development interventions. However, elite capture seriously undermines the outcomes of development projects. This article analyzes the effects on (in)equality of the implementation of policies that are technically participatory, in the context of an internationally-funded urban development program in Nairobi, which was implemented in the aftermath of the post-election violence of 2007–2008. Ethnographic data reveal how the institutionalization of pre-existing power imbalances between landlords and tenants is accomplished through the creation of structures of community governance and “participatory enumeration”. The article concludes that without the resources to challenge powerful interests within the settlement, the program is likely to worsen the condition of a large section of the residents. [R, abr.]
64.3374 SAMFORD, Steven; ORTEGA GÓMEZ, Priscila —
Focusing on Mexico, this article makes two departures from existing studies of the determinants of FDI: (1) it disaggregates investment into three types (resource-, market- and efficiency-seeking); and (2) it models variation in investment subnationally, across the 32 Mexican states. Using panel data for foreign investment between 2000 and 2009, we find that the predictors of subnational variation in investment go beyond simple geographic and economic conditions and include factors such as local political party control, social stability and the perceived effectiveness of state authorities. Moreover, the three types of investment are shaped by distinct social, political and economic dynamics. [R, abr.]
64.3375 SWIANIEWICZ, Pawel —
The most widely used typologies of European local government systems are based on research conducted in the 1980s. This article offers a comprehensive picture of the variation within the Eastern European region and suggests a typology of around 20 countries of the region. The criteria for this typology refers to those used in earlier classifications of the Western European systems and include: (1) territorial organization and tiers of elected local governments, (2) scope of functions provided by local governments (functional decentralization), (3) financial autonomy, (4) horizontal power relations within local government institutions (election systems and relationships between mayors and councils). [R, abr.]
64.3376 TUROVSKY, Rostislav —
The author analyzes the intricate combination of repression and co-optation policies conducted by Russia's ruling elites in their relations with the opposition on the regional level. The structural features of electoral authoritarianism not only ensure the victories of “approved” candidates but also make the rare oppositional winners to adapt to the existing regime and change the political affiliation. If the regime gets more authoritarian the oppositional party can still be a tool to win a local election. But after being elected, the winner finds himself in another political environment of existing patron-client relations, and has no other choice than to become a dependent member, or an agent (according to principal-agent theory) in higher-level clientele. As a result, oppositional party has become useless in the recruitment of influential executive power elite. [R, abr.]
64.3377 VALLETOUX, Philippe —
Although they are globally responsible for the management of budgets which represent more than 6% of the national gross domestic product, mayors are financiers of a different kind. With no prior training in this field, they have to learn to go beyond (and often distrust) hazardous financial techniques in order to exercise fully their financial responsibility. The latter calls for a synthesis between short-term solutions and the need for multi-annual strategies, and is the key to the effective functioning of the public services they have the duty to run for their citizens. The article offers some reflections that may provide guidance in that domain. [R] [See Abstr. 64.3367]