Abstract
(a) Central institutions /Institutions centrales
73.1888 ALLEN, Susan H. ; GALLAGHER, Maryann E. —
The authors compare Donald Trump’s leadership traits to those of other recent US presidents. They argue that even though Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric and actions may seem to indicate a leader deliberating challenging existing institutions, they were instead outcomes of a deeply distrustful individual focused primarily on maintaining the support of loyalists, not policymaking. [R]
73.1889 ARMALY, Miles T. ; LANE, Elizabeth A. —
Supreme Court vacancies are now characterized by great partisan efforts to confirm — or impede — the nomination. Amid a politicized vacancy before the 2020 election, there was cause to question the conclusion that these vacancies do not harm the judiciary in the public’s eyes. We utilize panel data collected before and after Justice Ginsburg’s death to investigate the effects of the vacancy and partisan posturing to fill it. We find that the battle over the vacancy yielded decreases in diffuse support among Democrats, particularly among those who read a story about Senate Republicans’ willingness to fill an election-year vacancy after refusing to in 2016. Support for federal judicial elections decreased across survey waves, but only among certain subsets of respondents. [R, abr.]
73.1890 ARMINGEON, Klaus ; SAGER, Fritz —
This article explores why the Swiss Federal Council and the Swiss Federal Parliament were reluctant to follow the majority views of the scientific epidemiological community at the beginning of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. We propose an institutionalist take on this question and argue that one major explanation could be the input overload that is characteristic of the Swiss federal political system. We define input overload as the simultaneous inputs of corporatist, pluralist, federalist and direct democratic subsystems. Adding another major input — this time from the scientific subsystem — may have threatened to further erode the government’s and parliament’s discretionary power to cope with the pandemic. We assume that the federal government reduced its input overload by fending off scientific advice. [R]
73.1891 ARTER, David ; SÖDERLUND, Peter —
This article addresses a curiously neglected question, namely why do the vast majority of Finnish MPs — one of the highest levels in the world — hold a seat on the municipal council? The basic presumption is that Finnish parliamentarians are not first and foremost ‘office-seekers’; they do not seek municipal council office as a primary goal. Rather, they view municipal elections as a means of attaining localness, either as a personal voteearning attribute (PVEA) or then as a representational attribute, bolstering their credentials as ‘local MP’ for the municipality. To test this reasoning, the analysis focuses on MPs’ decisions on whether to contest the four municipal elections between 2008 and 2021 (n = 796). [R, abr.]
73.1892 BAER, Emily C. —
In January 2019, the House of Representatives voted 418-12 to respond to widespread bipartisan criticism of the inner workings of the legislative branch by creating a Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress. This article examines the leadership, participation, and salience of the Select Committee by key reform stakeholders, including individual members, party factions, leaders, interest groups, and the national media that cover Congress. I identify bifurcated participation patterns that overrepresent the interests of junior members, party leaders, and Democratic Party factions. I also find limited salience of Select Committee activities among key stakeholders. The findings raise normative and theoretical questions about procedural reform and reveal a significant challenge to coalition-building efforts in future sessions of Congress. [R]
73.1893 BARBER, Michael ; DYNES, Adam M. —
A growing concern among municipal officials across the US is that their policymaking capacity is under attack by state legislatures who are increasingly likely to pre-empt those municipalities. However, determining the extent to which municipalities are pre-empted is challenging. We overcome this by surveying a large sample of municipal officials from across the US. We find that officials from municipalities that are more ideologically distant from their state overall are more likely to report being pre-empted by their state government. Moreover, this pattern is driven by more liberal municipalities in both Republican and Democratic states reporting higher rates of pre-emption. Additionally, municipalities under unified state governments are more likely to report pre-emption, especially those under unified Republican control. [R, abr.]
73.1894 BASS, Leeann ; CAMERON, Charles M. ; KASTELLEC, Jonathan P. —
While longstanding theories of political behavior argue that voters do not possess sufficient political knowledge to hold their elected representatives accountable, recent revisionist studies challenge this view, arguing that voters can both follow how their representatives vote and use that information intelligently. We apply the revisionist account to the study of Supreme Court nominations in the modern era. Using survey data on the nominations of Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, we ask whether voters can and do hold senators accountable for their votes on Supreme Court nominees. While our results for Thomas are ambiguous, we find strong evidence for accountability in the cases of Sotomayor and Kagan. In particular, we show that voters on average can correctly recall the votes of their senators on these nominees, and that correct recall is correlated with higher levels of education and political knowledge. [R, abr.]
73.1895 BIRD, Christine C. ; McGEE, Zachary A. —
Significant changes to the federal judicial confirmation process have manifested over the past decade, including multiple procedural reforms in the US Senate. We argue the “nuclear option,” the reduction of the votethreshold required to proceed to a final confirmation vote on judicial nominees from three-fifths to a simple majority, contributed to a renewed escalation of partisan confirmation battles on which the Federalist Society capitalized. Pundits and politicians alike show growing concern about the role of interest groups, especially those associated with the conservative legal movement, in judicial nominations. The intersection of these two sets of changes raises questions about the contemporary judicial nominations process. Utilizing a novel dataset of Federalist Society (FedSoc) affiliates drawn from event listings (1993-2020), we analyze the interactive role of FedSoc affiliation with Senate procedural changes to the judicial confirmation process. [R, abr.]
73.1896 BOCHEL, Catherine —
This article utilises the idea of procedural justice (‘fair processes’) as a tool for analysing the ways in which Parliament engages with the public. It concludes that the engagement work of individual services in Parliament often reflects such ideas, and suggests that procedural justice could have value in bringing new insights to the work of Parliament in this area. [R]
73.1897 BRANCATI, Emanuele, et al. —
We identify as political transformists the Italian members of parliament (MPs) who cross the aisle and vote for legislation opposed by their own political group — i.e., MPs who transform from the political opposition to the ruling parties (or from government supporters) into a force supporting the government (or opposition) — thus representing sources of party and governmental instability. Transformism, which characterized 471 MPs over the period considered, does not coincide with the broader phenomena of party switching already studied in political science. Once we disentangle the distinct behaviors, we study whether transformism helps extend the tenures of all 7128 MPs observed from 1946 to 2013. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first work to consider the role of transformism in the survival of politicians. Our results suggest that transforming MPs suffer marked reductions in their survival probabilities, especially when compared with their fellow parliamentarians. [R, abr.]
73.1898 BROCK, Kathy —
The pandemic caused governments worldwide to respond quickly to a greater array of health, economic and social issues in a more concentrated time span than previously. The Canadian public sector had developed many of the tools needed to act with agility to support the government agenda response to these challenges. With the consent of political parties, Parliament modified its operations and passed empowering legislation to provide the executive branch with sweeping powers to act. In this turbulent time, government accountability was delayed but never forgotten as a series of conversations with senior public servants revealed. This article delves into those reflections on the first year of the pandemic to discern how government operations changed and how both Parliament and the public sector can adapt. [R, abr.]
73.1899 CALDEIRA, Gregory A. ; LEMPERT, Daniel —
Although the literature on US Supreme Court agenda-setting is sizable, justice-vote-level multivariate analyses of certiorari are almost exclusively limited to samples of discussed cases from 1986 to 1993. Moreover, these studies have done very little to explore justice-level heterogeneity on certiorari. Here, we address these lacunae by analyzing the predictors of individual justices’ cert votes on all paid cases from the 1939, 1968, and 1982 terms. We find substantial justice-level heterogeneity in the weight that justices place on the standard set of forces shaping the cert vote. We also show that some of this heterogeneity is associated with justices’ experience and ideological extremism, largely in theoretically predicted ways. In closing, we sound a note of caution on drawing conclusions about effects of justice attributes, when the number of justices is relatively small. [R]
73.1900 CASH, Jordan T. —
The vice-presidency is often viewed as constitutionally devoid of any importance or power. Most research on the vice-presidency argues that it is only as the vice-presidency moved into the executive branch and became more tied to the president that the office gained significance. Yet this significance has come at the cost of the vice-presidency’s agency. Vice-presidents are more powerful now, but also more subordinate to the president. By drawing out the theory underlying the structure, duties, and powers of the vice-presidency, I demonstrate that the Constitution positions the vicepresident to be an independent institutional actor with the capacity for autonomous action apart from the president and Congress. Furthermore, the vice-president’s potential for acting with agency remains salient despite subsequent constitutional amendments and changes in political practices. [R, abr.]
73.1901 CASTANHO SILVA, Bruno ; PROKSCH, Sven-Oliver —
Twitter is a prominent communication tool for politicians with two potential uses: as a “substitute” channel to circumvent constraints from other political arenas, or as an “amplifier” that reinforces party messages. Using a novel dataset containing tweets and parliamentary speeches by members of parliament (MPs) in seven countries, we estimate politicians’ positions and intra-party dissent on European integration. We find that MPs’ sentiment about Europe on Twitter is a valid measure of their party’s position, while also uncovering intra-party disagreements. Our results suggest that most MPs amplify the partisan message, but MPs who participate less in parliamentary debate tend to have larger differences with their party on Twitter. Social media thus can free politicians from their party’s grip. [R]
73.1902 CAUTHEN, James N. G. —
Federalism scholars have increasingly recognized the impact of state attorneys-general in national politics. State attorneys-general also are in a unique position to contribute to the development and application of state law through their advisory opinion duties. I examine advisory opinion activity on [US] state constitutional questions across all states for 2016-2018 in the context of legal, institutional, and political explanations developed in studies of attorney general behavior and judicial decision-making. Most opinions addressed issues of finance, legislative power or local power and were most often issued to state legislators and local officials. Republican attorneys-general in Southern states with similar political cultures were most active issuing opinions, with significant party collaboration between requesters and attorneys general. [R]
73.1903 CHAISTY, Paul ; POWER, Timothy —
Is legislative power flowing to the executive branch over time? Beginning in the 1990s, comparativists began to investigate delegation to the executive under different executive formats. Hypothesized causes include collective action problems due to legislative fractionalization, the presence of a dominant pro-executive faction, preference congruence vis-à-vis the head of government, and challenges posed by economic crises. We test these four hypotheses on a data set containing 2,020 country-year observations of democracies and semi-democracies between 1976 and 2014. Using V-Dem data, we derive annualized measures of shifts in executivelegislative relationships. Contrary to stereotypes of executive dominance, relative gains by legislatures are no less frequent than gains by executives, and economic crises do not advantage political executives in consistent ways. Surprisingly, some of the factors expected to benefit executives seem to enhance assembly authority as well. [R, abr.]
73.1904 CHANEY, Paul ; JONES, Ian Rees ; FEVRE, Ralph —
This study is concerned with the substantive representation of non-human species in parliamentary business. It applies Leston-Bandeira’s legislative functions perspective (LFP) to a data-set of 2500 public petitions on animal welfare, submitted over three terms of the UK parliament. The wider significance of this work lies in: (1) underlining the utility of the LFP to petitions analysis; (2) showing that, while few directly secure policy change, e-petitions perform valuable legislative functions including campaigning, scrutiny and policy-influencing roles, foremost of which is linkage and fostering citizen engagement in parliamentary business. And (3) Showing how, over the past decade, public petitions have significantly contributed to the increasing salience of animal welfare in UK politics. [R]
73.1905 COLE, Rose —
To what extent can the public service bargain framework be applied to nonpartisan ministerial advisors? Public service bargains are defined as ‘explicit or implicit agreements between public servants — the civil or uniformed services of the state — and those they serve’. The public service bargain framework has increasingly been used as an analytical tool with which to examine the elements of the bargain as experienced by various actors in different jurisdictions. The elements of the public service bargain framework are explored through the experiences of a distinct subgroup of non-partisan advisors — portfolio private secretaries — serving in the politicised environment of ministers’ offices. The minister’s office has been characterised as the ‘purple zone’ where politics (represented by the colour blue) and administration (represented by the colour red) converge to transform political will into administrative action.[R, abr.]
73.1906 CORMACK, Lindsey ; MEIDLINGER, Kirsten —
This article [addresses] important questions surrounding how differently situated legislators discussed the outbreak of the novel coronavirus of 2019 and resultant pandemic of COVID-19 with their constituents in official communications. We assess a theory of responsive representation as well as a theory positing that co-partisan legislators took their cues from the president, which we call follow the leader politics. To facilitate this study, we have created a new dataset of COVID-19 deaths by congressional district. We find that legislators who saw more in-district fatalities in the earlier parts of the pandemic sent more COVID-19 communications than others. We also find that co-partisans were more likely to use derogatory terminology to refer to COVID-19 in official communications and were more likely to tout hydroxychloroquine. [R, abr.]
73.1907 CURRIE, John S. G. ; CLARKE, Ben —
Analyses on news media data in Conceptual Metaphor Theory have highlighted several frequent metaphors used to understand climate change including climate change is conflict. This article analyses the frequency of that conceptual metaphor in a corpus of UK parliamentary debates on climate change. The language of political decision-makers is important to scrutinise because this group have the social and legislative power needed to deal with the issue. Our analysis shows the conceptual metaphor itself, and all three of its most frequent linguistic realisations (‘challenge,’ ‘impact,’ ‘tackle’), increased in use between 2015 and 2019. Additionally, three notable semantic and pragmatic trends were observed: first, apparently little recognition of human behaviour as a cause of climate change; second, a narrative of Us/People vs Climate Change; and third, that political decision-makers are taking climate change increasingly seriously. [R, abr.]
73.1908 EDELSON, Chris —
The federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic raises questions about accountability for a president who fails to competently perform central duties of the office. This paper considers the following questions: (1) Does President Trump’s response to the pandemic demonstrate a failure to perform central duties of the presidential office that, even if not impeachable, requires accountability? (2) If so, what does accountability mean in this context, and has Trump in fact been held to account by Congress? and (3) If Trump has not been held to account, what does that suggest for the US constitutional system and in particular the principle of presidential accountability as contemplated by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison? [R]
73.1909 EGEROD, Benjamin C. K. —
Does the potential for a successful private sector career induce legislators to leave office? How does this affect the representation voters receive? I show that when former US senators — who now work as lobbyists — become more successful, currently serving senators with similar characteristics are more likely to take private sector employment. I replicate all results on data from the House. A number of tests suggest that senators react to the opportunity costs of holding office. Investigating selection effects, I find that legislative specialists are attracted the most in the Senate. Preliminary evidence suggests that the least wealthy respond most strongly in the House. This suggests that the revolving door shapes the skill set of legislators and the representation voters receive. [R]
73.1910 FAZEKAS, Zoltán ; HANSEN, Martin Ejnar —
The ability to hold MPs accountable for their actions is one of the cornerstones of modern representative democracy. While it is important for MPs to send signals to both their constituents and to their party, a large number of MPs remain absent from votes. Those absences are an important part of the MP’s toolbox, but absences carry limitations, rooted in electoral and political constraints. We investigate how — conditional on the electoral cycle — some well-established political constraints along the government and opposition lines vary in strength. We examine the absence probabilities of MPs in the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2015, and find that as the next elections are approaching, political constraints somewhat weaken and electoral ones take over, but marked differences emerge between parliamentary sessions. [R]
73.1911 GIACOMELLI, Giorgio, et al. —
The positive impact of public service motivation on several individual work outcomes of public sector employees has been documented. Recent research into the ‘dark side’ of such an individual trait, however, has led some scholars to suggest that organizational conditions such as procedural constraints could affect one’s motivation, thus leading to the resignation of other-oriented employees. This study explores the relationships between one of the dimensions of public service motivation — namely, selfsacrifice — procedural constraints and organizational commitment by expanding the job demands–resources model of organizational commitment to different institutional settings. The study employs a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative (structural equation modelling) and qualitative (focus groups and in-depth interviews) data from three industries in Italy (health, local public administration and non-profit organizations). [R, abr.]
73.1912 GORNICZ-MULCAHY, Agnieszka ; BIENIEK, Bohdan —
The Polish justice system has waited many years for the institution of an assistant judge to be restored. Despite this, the legislature has already modified the manner of their appointment, which may give the impression that there is no coherent concept of the position of assistant judges. Such doubts coincided with reconstruction of the mechanism for selecting judges, including depriving the judges’ self-government of its influence on the method of selecting members of the National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ). This change provoked several critical statements in legal literature and case law. Therefore, the authors try to explain whether taking up a position of an assistant judge carries a risk of stating that a court formed in this way will be deprived of its attribute (independence), especially from the perspective of the role played by the NCJ in the process of selecting assistant judges. [R, abr.]
73.1913 GROSSMAN, Guy ; SLOUGH, Tara —
When and how do governments deliver public goods and services in response to citizen preferences? We review the current literature on government responsiveness, with a focus on public goods and service delivery in developing countries. We identify three types of actors that are commonly present in these accounts: politicians, bureaucrats, and citizens. Much of this literature examines interactions between dyads of these actors. The study of electoral accountability and constituency services emphasizes relationships between citizens (or voters) and politicians. Studies of bureaucratic incentives and political oversight of bureaucrats emphasize interactions between politicians and bureaucrats. Finally, studies of bureaucratic embeddedness and citizen oversight of bureaucrats elaborate the interactions between bureaucrats and citizens. [R, abr.]
73.1914 HAGLUND, Evan T. —
With each presidential transition and subsequent rush of presidential appointments, the long-running debate about presidential preferences and senatorial advice and consent becomes front-page news. The political science literature has long examined the nomination and confirmation process, especially for cabinet and judicial appointments, and a growing quantitative literature evaluates political and personal factors shaping that process. Yet we lack a systematic understanding of how ex ante statutory requirements, in addition to the ex post confirmation process, affect presidential choices and how senators might seek to enforce compliance with those requirements. Using a new dataset that combines ambassadorial nominee qualifications provided by the State Department to the Senate with nomination and confirmation data, this article provides an initial glimpse of the competing perspectives of presidents and senators on the bounds Congress can set for ambassadorial appointees’ characteristics. [R, abr.]
73.1915 HIBBARD, Patrick F. ; BLOMGREN AMSLER, Lisa ; SCOTT JACKMAN, Michael —
Studies of representative bureaucracy (RB) argue public organizations reflective of the public they serve exhibit better outcomes, especially when serving underrepresented groups. RB theory attributes improved outcomes either to the actions representative bureaucrats take (active representation), or a greater perception of trust and legitimacy toward them by service recipients (symbolic representation), largely treating active and symbolic representation as separate phenomena. We explore the intricate relationship between bureaucracies and the populations they serve by observing the cross-influence between active and symbolic representation, as revealed by self-reported outcomes in discrimination complaints (N = 1,372) referred for voluntary mediation in the United States Postal Service, the REDRESS© program, a context in which mediators are highly limited in representing a claimant’s interests given the requirement of impartiality. [R, abr.]
73.1916 HOGAN, Thomas L. —
Economic projections by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) were very inaccurate in the years during and after the Great Recession. Relying on a model of collective prediction that weighs the “wisdom of crowds” against shared biases, we examine GDP forecast errors in a panel dataset of FOMC projections from 1992 through 2016. Consistent with the model, we find that diversity of projections reduces collective error, while shared bias magnifies collective error. Collective error is associated strongly with errors by the Federal Reserve Board staff. The benefits of diversity often are statistically significant, especially for projections with terms longer than 1 year. [R]
73.1917 KALAF-HUGHES, Nicole ; MacDONALD, Jason A. ; SANTORO, Lauren M. —
Research indicates that congresswomen are more effective at moving bills through the lawmaking process than their male counterparts. To investigate why, we discuss what legislative entrepreneurship involves and explain why it can serve as the basis for problem-solving and effective lawmaking in the US Congress. We also examine the entrepreneurial work that members of Congress did on behalf of bills that they sponsored from 1973 to 2008. Among other findings, we observe that congresswomen, especially those in the minority party, are more entrepreneurial than their male colleagues. This finding enhances our understanding of why female lawmakers are more effective lawmakers. [R]
73.1918 KIRSOP-TAYLOR, Nick A. ; HEJNOWICZ, Adam P. —
Public organizations are compound bodies characterized by competing endogenous dynamics of governance. This study makes two main contributions. First, it contributes to an organizational approach to studies of public policy and administration by conceptualizing compound agency governance. Second, by determining how variation in agency governance reflects endogenous organizational factors. Based on a study of the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA), two observations are highlighted: Firstly, DSA staff are torn between two competing behavioural logics: A governmental and a transnational logic. Moreover, portfolios of core state powers are more closely monitored by parent ministries than portfolios that relate to non-core state powers. Secondly, the study suggests that organizational factors are vital determents in balancing behavioral logics in agency governance. [R]
73.1919 KJØNDAL, Kjerstin ; TRONDAL, Jarle —
Public organizations are compound bodies characterized by competing endogenous dynamics of governance. This study makes two main contributions. First, it contributes to an organizational approach to studies of public policy and administration by conceptualizing compound agency governance. Second, by determining how variation in agency governance reflects endogenous organizational factors. Based on a study of the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA), two observations are highlighted: Firstly, DSA staff are torn between two competing behavioural logics: A governmental and a transnational logic. Moreover, portfolios of core state powers are more closely monitored by parent ministries than portfolios that relate to non-core state powers. Secondly, the study suggests that organizational factors are vital determents in balancing behavioral logics in agency governance. [R]
73.1920 KLÜSER, K. Jonathan —
How does ministries’ capacity to draft legislation affect the political output of modern governments? This article combines a novel dataset describing the capacity of ministerial bureaucracies to attend to about 250 distinct policy issues with content-coded data on government legislation. The sample consists of Danish, Dutch and German governments, jointly spanning the time from 1995 to 2013. The analysis reveals three main findings: firstly, issue-specific bureaucratic capacity unconditionally increases governments’ legislative activity; secondly, legislative activity is stifled if bureaucratic capacity is spread across different ministries; thirdly, against theoretical expectations the productive effect of bureaucratic capacity is not positively related to governments’ issue salience. The results indicate that the design and resources of ministerial portfolios affect policy making in western governments. [R]
73.1921 KOTZE, Martina —
The study investigates the mediating role of psychological capital in the relationship between personal resources (mindfulness, self-leadership) and psychological well-being (burnout, work engagement) for a sample of 226 public sector employees in South Africa. Both mindfulness and selfleadership have a statistically significant positive influence on psychological capital, while psychological capital mediated the relationship between both mindfulness and work engagement, and mindfulness and burnout. psychological capital also mediates the relationship between both selfleadership and engagement, and self-leadership and burnout. Psychological capital has a statistically significant positive influence on work engagement and a statistically significant negative influence on burnout. The results show that mindfulness and self-leadership strategies can enhance psychological capital, reducing burnout and increasing engagement. [R]
73.1922 LI Ruoxi —
In the latest round of the apportionment of the US House of Representatives following the 2020 Census, the State of New York lost a seat by an extremely small margin. Political observers pointed to the tendency of the US Census to undercount minority and immigrant populations as the primary culprit. However, New York’s seat loss is as much an issue of apportionment as it is of counting. The current apportionment method used by the federal government, Huntington-Hill’s method, is biased against more populous states such as New York. If an alternative apportionment method were used, such as Webster’s method, New York would have kept the seat. This article discusses four historical apportionment methods: Hamilton’s method, Huntington-Hill’s method, Jefferson’s method, and Webster’s method. [R, abr.]
73.1923 LIM,Jae Young ; MOON Kuk-Kyoung ; CHRISTENSEN, Robert K. —
Although the relationships between public service motivation and work-related outcomes are contingent on an employee’s psychological state, little empirical evidence exists on whether psychological empowerment conditions the relationship between public service motivation and perceived organizational performance in public organizations. This study addresses this gap by examining data from the 2010 US Merit Principles Survey on psychological empowerment’s moderating role between public service motivation and the perceived achievement of organizational goals, as well as the perceived quality of work-unit products and services in the US federal government. First, the findings indicate that public service motivation and psychological empowerment improve both of these perceived organizational performance measures. Second, the findings indicate that the link between public service motivation and perceived organizational performance is slightly enhanced when public employees feel more psychologically empowered. [R]
73.1924 LIN, Nick ; YORDANOVA, Nikoleta —
Existing research largely agrees that to minimize ministerial drift, political parties in multiparty governments tend to use parliamentary committees to monitor each other. Particularly, they strive to chair parliamentary committees corresponding to ministerial departments to keep tabs on their ruling partners. Yet, policing ministerial activities through a chair-based monitoring system requires perfect correspondence of jurisdictions between ministries and committees. We suggest that when perfect correspondence is absent, ministerial parties may strategically circumvent committee oversight. Specifically, motivated by policy preference divergence with the coalition partner, ministers can draft proposals to make their referral to a friendlier committee more likely than referral to a hostile watchdog committee chaired by the partner. Our analysis of committee referrals of over 2800 ministerial proposals from the Finnish Eduskunta (2001-2015) confirms this expectation. [R, abr.]
73.1925 LIU Huchen ; KASTELLEC, Jonathan P. —
We examine the role of former clerks to Supreme Court justices on the Court’s agenda-setting process. We find that when a former clerk is the attorney on either a cert petition or an amicus brief, the Court is more likely to hear a case, compared to advocacy by a non-former clerk. To help explain these patterns, we draw on the broader literature on “revolving door” politics. We argue that the most plausible mechanisms are either that former clerks are more effective advocates or that their presence in a case signals its importance to the Court. Alternatively, former clerks may select into cases that the Court is likely to grant. [R, abr.]
73.1926 LIU Lianlian ; GAMMON, Jessica —
How to optimize China’s protective mechanism for overseas citizens has become the top agenda of China’s public administration. A comparison of the evacuation policies of China and the US in the 2010s reveals that the Chinese government’s operations attach more importance to the actual effects of evacuation and the feelings of citizens, while considering the responsibility of citizens and cost burden less. This generous evacuation policy can be partly rationalized by China’s domestic factors, such as the “Going Global” policy, its contemporary image as a populous rising power, and its traditional family-country narrative, which generates a familial conception of state-citizen relations and encourages the government to take extra responsibility for citizens. While the familial conception of state-citizen relations is conductive to building national identity and cohesion, it blurs the dividing line between civic responsibility and governmental responsibility, undercuts the efficiency of public administration, causes waste of public resources, and overburdens governmental agencies. [R, abr.]
73.1927 MASSACO KOGA, Natália, et al. —
Using data from a large-n survey with Brazilian federal bureaucrats we uncover associations between sources of information and factors shaping their preferences, such as policy work and policy capacities. We find that in a civil law system such as the Brazilian administration homemade sources rule: there is a prevalence of use of government sources, especially among bureaucrats performing analytical and oversight tasks, and those in higher positions. Academic sources are associated with higher analytical capacity (of the individual and organisation), but not with any particular policy sector. By investigating an important yet often neglected issue in EBP — the role of different types of information and how they inform policy — this article contributes to the literatures on policy work and policy capacity, especially given its empirical focus on Brazil. [R, abr.]
73.1928 McINTYRE, Stuart ; MITCHELL, James ; ROY, Graeme —
September 2022 marks twenty-five years since the referendum on the creation of the Scottish Parliament. From the early days of devolution, debates over Holyrood’s tax powers have been a recurring theme. Recent reforms to the Parliament’s tax powers have been driven by the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Conservatives, an indirect coming together of arguments from two unlikely political allies. Both have, however, embraced arguments for greater autonomy and fiscal responsibility within Scottish devolution. This article reflects upon the experience of enhanced tax devolution in Scotland through the lens of three competing ‘logics’ of devolution, namely: a logic of ‘accumulating competencies’; ‘delivering fiscal responsibility’; and ‘capacity to pursue distinct policies’. [R]
73.1929 MENCARELLI, Alberto —
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated digital transformations in all spheres of public and private life, providing a strong incentive also for parliaments to adopt digital and remote working methods. The entry of the virtual paradigm into parliamentary work is part of a scenario already marked by a crisis of the traditional political representation model, also as a consequence of the disintermediation phenomena induced by the digital revolution. This article investigates some conceptual links between the crisis of parliamentary representation and the digital transition and at analysing pros and cons of virtual/hybrid parliamentary proceedings and investigating with a non-empirical approach some potential systemic effects that could derive from maintaining them even after the current pandemic is over. [R, abr.]
73.1930 MOYNIHAN, Donald, et al. —
We examine the administrative burdens created when individuals attempt to match themselves to state-created categories. Matching requires time and effort, and failure to match to an advantageous category can mean a loss of material benefits. The matching problem may sometimes result from obscure categories, or an overwhelming number of categories. The matching problem is also amplified when the state uses identity categories — such as self-employed or unemployed, a retiree, parent, spouse or disabled — where individuals hold pre-existing beliefs about such identities that map poorly onto equivalent state categorizations. To study the matching problem and ways to reduce it, we undertook a field experiment in a California welfare program, CalFresh, the state version of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). [R, abr.]
73.1931 NETHERY, Amy, et al. —
A career in parliament is inherently a transitory vocation, and parliamentary turnover is critical for a healthy democracy. Yet many MPs fail to prepare for the time when they must leave parliament. This lack of preparedness exacerbates the challenges of post-parliamentary life. Drawing on research conducted with former members of the Parliament of Victoria, Australia, this article reports on the experiences of MPs leaving parliament. Former MPs, particularly those who leave the parliament involuntarily, experience serious challenges including a loss of identity, a fracturing of social relationships, and employment and financial stress. These outcomes may have democratic implications by discouraging highly capable candidates from diverse backgrounds from pursuing a career in parliament. [R, abr.]
73.1932 OTJES, Simon —
Little is known about the staff who support MPs in their work. The literature suggests that these staff serve different important roles in democratic systems. This article compares the size of parliamentary staff in 48 countries and in 66 houses over an eight-year period. It compares three explanations of staff size, which reflect different roles they can have: firstly, that these staff serve MPs as compromise facilitators, planners and scribes. In that case, their number reflects the number of MPs. Secondly, that staff members function as information brokers and advertisers and as such act as intermediaries between the population and MPs. In that case, staff size reflects population size. And thirdly, that these staff primarily serve as a source of independent advice for MPs. In that case, staff size reflects the strength of the house they serve. Population size is found to be the dominant driver of the size of parliamentary staff. [R]
73.1933 PARRADO, Salvador ; REYNAERS, Anne-Marie ; RAMA, José —
This research assesses the impact of the degree of publicness on hospital performance in a specific ‘mixed market’ of public health. This market is characterized by patient choice, capitation financing for private hospitals, and funding through ‘soft’ budgets (public authorities partially cover deficits or appropriate profits) for public hospitals. Previous studies on ownership (economic theory), market logic (on choice), and welfare orientation (role of professionals) offer inconclusive results as to the differences of performance among hospitals with different degree of publicness. We contrast statistics related to several dimensions of efficiency and survey data on different aspects of patient satisfaction. Logistic regression models demonstrate that a higher degree of publicness is correlated with a lower degree of perceived quality. However, hospitals with a varying degree of publicness are similarly efficient. These results indicate that divergences of performance differ amongst performance dimensions and the theoretical expectations need to consider differently these dimensions. [R, abr.]
73.1934 PHAUP, Marvin —
This paper develops and supports the thesis that the performance of the federal budget process would be improved by the criteria of efficiency and stability by the addition of an explicit budget constraint with ex ante budgeting for fiscal shocks. Adding a constraint would nudge policymakers to choose more efficient policies, while reducing the risk of a fiscal crisis. Anticipating and provisioning for shocks in advance of occurrence would avoid undermining the constraint ex post. Both changes could be effected by a behaviorally-informed version of a proposal originally advanced and endorsed by economists in the 1950s. [R]
73.1935 PICCORELLI, Justin T. ; McGREGGOR CAWLEY, R. —
In 1964, after a group of psychiatrists questioned Barry Goldwater’s mental health during the presidential campaign, the Goldwater rule became part of American Psychiatric Association’s medical ethics. The events surrounding the Goldwater rule indicate changes in the practice of psychiatry, but also politics. More recently, thirty-seven psychiatrists were compelled to question the mental health of President Donald Trump believing their greatest responsibility is to the well-being of the citizenry. These psychiatrists point to the intertwining of politics and professional ethics, a relationship, which our paper attempts to better understand. [R]
73.1936 POLVERARI, Laura ; PIATTONI, Simona —
The Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), in close alignment with the 2021-2027 Cohesion policy framework and Council recommendations, represents an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen the capacity of the Italian public administration in a systematic fashion. However, are the measures foreseen adequate to deliver the anticipated objectives? Will the short timeframe of the plan be sufficient to attain a lasting strengthening of the Italian public administration? Will a synergy be created with the parallel investments realized under the EU’s cohesion policy? In answering these questions, we highlight some shortcomings of the plan that might hamper the reforms. We conclude by wondering whether the strategy pursued by the NRRP marks a return to a New Public Management model that is now considered by many as obsolete. [R] [See Abstr. 73.2689]
73.1937 SCHMID, Christian S. ; CHEN, Ted Hsuan Yun ; DESMARAIS, Bruce A. —
The significance and influence of US Supreme Court majority opinions derive in large part from opinions’ roles as precedents for future opinions. A growing body of literature seeks to understand what drives the use of opinions as precedents through the study of Supreme Court case citation patterns. We raise two limitations of existing work on Supreme Court citations. First, dyadic citations are typically aggregated to the case level before they are analyzed. Second, citations are treated as if they arise independently. We present a methodology for studying citations between Supreme Court opinions at the dyadic level, as a network, that overcomes these limitations. This methodology — the citation exponential random graph model, for which we provide user-friendly software — enables researchers to account for the effects of case characteristics and complex forms of network dependence in citation formation. We then analyze a network that includes all Supreme Court cases decided between 1950 and 2015. We find evidence for dependence processes, including reciprocity, transitivity, and popularity. [R, abr.]
73.1938 SCHOBESS, Richard —
Although evaluations of MPs’ parliamentary work have gained increasing public popularity, the academic literature on the concept and measurement of parliamentary performance is surprisingly scarce. This article introduces a conceptual framework of parliamentary performance as well as a more encompassing measurement approach, and provides a first empirical test of theoretically expected underlying dimensions on 325 Belgian MPs. This study proposes an innovative method relying on the collective expertise of MPs through peer assessment while controlling for potential rater effects. I demonstrate that parliamentary performance cannot be captured by parliamentary activity indicators alone. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses show that apart from three factors of parliamentary activity, two more qualitative factors (content and policy-making effectiveness) can be identified. [R, abr.]
73.1939 SHELDON, Jack —
At UK general elections, parties and candidates standing in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales give prominence to pledges to act on behalf of those territories. This article examines how far and in what ways MPs with constituencies in those parts of the UK actually seek to give representation to these territorial units once elected. A typology of forms of substantive parliamentary representation of sub-state units such as these is outlined, and results of a content analysis of Commons contributions by backbench MPs between 1992 and 2019 are presented. It is found that MPs from the parts of the UK with devolved legislatures focus extensively on the substate territorial level and that these MPs have adapted their representational styles to the changed institutional context following devolution. [R, abr.]
73.1940 SHEPHERD, Robert P. —
This article summarizes and expands on the work of one of three dialogue study teams organized by the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS), Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC), and the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration (CAPPA). The Internal Accountability Dialogue Study Team explored the rationale and effects of the performance management regime of the Canadian federal government starting the fall of 2021. In particular, the study team wanted to know whether and in what ways the performance management regime provided information and other support to decision-makers during the pandemic, and in what ways the efficacy of the function post-pandemic could be improved. [R, abr.]
73.1941 SHORTELL, Christopher ; VALDINI, Melody E. —
While we know that women’s presence in the legislature positively impacts how citizens view the institution, little is known about the impact of women’s presence on the legitimacy of high courts. We argue that despite differences in public expectations for courts, women’s presence on the high court does impact citizen perceptions of legitimacy. However, this effect is dependent on both the level and the type of bias held by citizens. That is, when a person feels hostile bias toward women, the bias disrupts the potential legitimacy that the court could gain. On the other hand, we argue that benevolent sexism does not trigger any change in how citizens view the high court in a democracy. Using evidence from an experiment, we find that the presence of women on the high court has a strong positive impact on citizen perceptions of court legitimacy, though not among those with hostile gender bias. [R]
73.1942 SHPAIZMAN, Ilana —
During a crisis, the public expects the government to handle the situation. In parliamentary democracies, these expectations are directed to the cabinet and its ministers. Cabinet ministers are expected to be highly involved in policy making under their jurisdiction and in general. During periods of politics as usual, ministers differ in their policy involvement. This paper asks whether that changes during a crisis. Based on an analysis of cabinet ministers in Israel during the first wave of the COVID19 crisis, this paper finds that ministers’ policy involvement during a crisis is relatively low. Most ministers are little involved in issues outside their jurisdiction. Ministers less central to the crisis management are also little involved in issues under their jurisdiction. [R, abr.]
73.1943 SMITH, Kelly B. —
How and under what conditions might bureaucrats look to other states? Using a novel dataset of state early learning standards, I conduct dyad analysis to explain across-state citations in bureaucratic documents. Federal government programs can affect which states are looked to for ideas by defining which states are successful through competitive grant programs. Furthermore, the success of programs within the state affect whether bureaucrats look to other states. This article makes two important contributions to our understanding of policy. First, it explores how bureaucrats can participate in policy knowledge diffusion by looking to other states for information. Second, it sheds light on how we measure states as laboratories by marshaling an innovative dataset of citations within state documents. The article suggests states may also innovate as laboratories of bureaucracy. [R, abr.]
73.1944 STRAWBRIDGE, Michael G. ; LAU, Richard R. —
Former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated vote-fraud claims following the 2020 presidential election divided the Republican Party. Numerous Republicans supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, others did not. These futile attempts reached a flashpoint during the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Even in the wake of such violence, many House Republicans continued to amplify Trump’s baseless claims by voting to exclude the election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania. This article analyzes these roll-call votes to determine the likely motivations for why some House Republicans were still willing to support Trump’s position following the Capitol riot. We then replicate our analysis with the January 13 impeachment and the May 19 vote to establish a bipartisan National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex (January 6 Commission) to investigate the insurrection. [R, abr.]
73.1945 TANTARDINI, Michele —
This article examines the mediating role of public service motivation (PSM) between organizational social capital and performance information use. This topic is worth studying since it allows to understand how organizational level factors and individual level traits interact. Using a multiple informant survey distributed to county managers in Florida, this article finds support that organizational social capital is an important predictor of performance information use, and that this relationship is mediated by the role of PSM. The article concludes with recommendations on how to capitalize on these internal resources for the effective implementation of performance management reforms and practices. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on "Managing government performance". See also Abstr. 73.1692, 2653, 2672, 2702]
73.1946 TEIXEIRA DE BARROS, Antonio, et al. —
The study aims to analyse the strategies adopted by the Brazilian Federal Chamber of Deputies during the period 2019-2022 (56th legislature) on social media platforms. The survey with political advisers includes the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram and LinkedIn. The sample consists of 155 informants, 30.21% of the total of 513 parliamentary offices. The conclusions show that 65% of the offices adopt specific strategies for each type of social media, although there is a wider principle, which is the constitution of multi-networks, in a coordinated and complementary way. Within these strategies, the disclosure regarding the parliamentarian’s own actions and the agenda of their electoral bases is prioritized over institutional legislative activities. [R]
73.1947 TURNBULL, Lori ; BERNIER, Luc —
Beginning in March of 2020, the unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift in the ways in which governments, and all organizations, performed many of their functions, including the ways in which they make decisions. In Westminster parliamentary democracies, the executive branch — with the support of the public service — has the capacity to respond quickly and decisively to matters at hand, which can make the system particularly well suited to deal with emergencies. However, the expedited approach can come at some cost in the sense that a higher tolerance for risk earlier in the process can create an increased need for problem-solving later on. This article explores how the Canadian government approached decision-making during the COVID-19 period, specifically within the period between March and August of 2020. [R, abr.]
73.1948 URA, Joseph Daniel ; WOHLFARTH, Patrick C. —
A growing body of empirical research shows an association between public support for the US Supreme Court and both judicial independence and congressional court curbing activity. At the same time, studies of jurisdiction stripping show Congress’ efforts to limit federal courts’ jurisdiction are principally related to courts’ workloads rather than ideological differences between courts and Congress. Here, the authors connect these streams of inquiry by testing the hypothesis of a negative relationship between public support for the Supreme Court and jurisdiction-stripping legislation. Contrary to prior studies, the authors find a positive relationship between Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court and jurisdiction stripping. This result indicates the need for additional research on the interactions among public opinion, federal courts, and Congress. [R]
73.1949 VAN THIEL, Sandra —
Despite high expectations about the results of agencification and a legal obligation to evaluate executive agencies, ministers and MPs seem not very interested in evaluating agencies’ results. Hood’s theory on blame avoidance is used to explain the lack of evaluation in the case of the Dutch ZBOs. Only one in seven ZBOs is evaluated as frequently as mandated. Findings show that ZBO evaluations are more an administrative than a political process. Reports do not offer hard evidence and are seldom used in parliamentary debates. There are no clear patterns as to which ZBOs are evaluated more, or less, often. [R]
73.1950 VERCESI, Michelangelo —
Career patterns in politics are relatively stable and tend to reproduce themselves over time; this leads to the persistence of core background traits among the members of the political elite. The lack of profile renewal seems at odds with the claim of democratic theory, which asserts that democratic competition is open, inclusive, and expansive. Despite its relevance, the causal mechanisms behind career patterns’ stability among political elites have received little systematic attention. This article clarifies the core concepts for the study of political elites and careers. Second, it proposes an understanding of the formation and stability of chief executives’ career patterns as functions of path-dependent institutional effects. Third, it uses this theory to investigate persistence and renewal of the background characteristics of all US presidents. [R, abr.]
73.1951 VINING, Richard L. ; BITECOFER, Rachel —
In the 1980s and 1990s, supporters of Supreme Court nominees tended to characterize their views in non-ideological terms while opponents relied more on ideological justifications. Since then, the judicial appointment process has been increasingly entangled with partisan conflict. Given the heightened focus on nominees’ ideological preferences, we expect that citizens are now more likely to rely on political over apolitical justifications, even if they support the nominee. We use data from a telephone survey in 2017 after the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to test this proposition. We find that contemporary citizens rely more frequently on political justifications for their support of nominees than then they did in the Reagan-Bush era. Opponents remain more likely to invoke political orientations, but the disparity has declined. [R, abr.]
73.1952 WINTER, Søren C. ; FALK MIKKELSEN, Maria ; ROHDE SKOV, Peter —
This paper develops and tests a parsimonious micro-theory of street-level bureaucrats’ individual implementation behavior. By systemizing and synthesizing theoretical insights from Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior, from Bandura’s theory of perceived self-efficacy, and from implementation literature, we claim that street-level bureaucrats’ policy implementation behavior is a function of their individual evaluation of the efficacy of the policy and of their own ability to implement the policy measures in terms of their perceived self-efficacy. We test our theory on a panel data-set capturing teachers’ implementation of the wide-scale Danish public school reform of 2014. We use administrative data and a five-wave panel survey (2014-2018) of 2,055 teachers in approx. 200 schools as well as their school leaders. [R, abr.]
73.1953 WITESMAN, Eva M. ; SILVIA, Chris ; CHILD, Curtis —
What role does sector play in citizens’ perceptions of products or services in mixed-market settings? Where governments compete with for-profit and nonprofit vendors, or when governments partner or contract with privatesector providers, do the public and nonprofit sectors have an advantage over for-profit providers? Do the public and nonprofit sectors have an advantage over for-profit providers? Using choice-based conjoint analysis with a nationally representative paid consumer panel, we examine the relevance of sector to consumers and compare it other signals of quality; namely, price, third-party certifications, and consumer ratings. Of these, subjects are most sensitive to information from consumer ratings. Regarding sector, we find that subjects generally prefer nonprofit to government providers and government to for-profit providers. [R, abr.]
(b) State, regional and local institutions/Institutions locales et régionales
73.1954 ARRIETA, Tania —
This article explores the resilience of local government in England and its ability to cope during the Covid-19 pandemic. The resilience of local government is explored in three areas: its ability to cope financially; contain and manage risks; and promote civic engagement and collaborations with other sectors. By drawing on the evolutionary perspective of resilience, the article explores whether local government in England was well-equipped to overcome a crisis of such scale. In particular, it does so by exploring the institutional context of local government and how it shaped the resilience of local government and influenced its ability to develop the type of resources needed to cope with the Covid-19 crisis. The analysis shows a mixed and complex picture. [R, abr.]
73.1955 BACHTIAR, Rizqi ; LISTININGRUM, Prischa —
This research focuses on analysing the importance of amalgamation of local governments and critically examine the current neglect of the amalgamation of local governments in Indonesia. By using a case study approach, the investigation on the importance of local government amalgamation in Indonesia found that amalgamation is an alternative policy to be taken by the government, and can be contrasted with the policy practiced until recently, which permitted extensive proliferation in the numbers of local governments. There is no evidence to suggest any specific attempt from the government to implement amalgamation. The government’s objective is to uphold a moratorium on proliferation, even though the government’s target has been broken by the approval of some new local governments during the moratorium period. Adverse economic motives, intertwined with political factors, are the main reasons for the failure to adopt a policy of amalgamation of local governments in Indonesia. [R, abr.]
73.1956 BRUNNER, Eric J. ; SCHWEGMAN, David J. —
We examine how county governments respond to plausibly random increases in the local tax base generated by wind energy installations using data on the universe of US installations from 1995 through 2017. Wind energy installation led to large increases in county revenue and expenditures, with county governments using this revenue to prioritize spending on highways and hospitals. We also find that wind energy installation led to increases in county property values, suggesting that residents value the enhancements to local public services, property tax reductions, or other changes to local amenities that accompany wind energy installation. [R]
73.1957 GALLEGATI, Marco ; TAMBERI, Massimo —
Adopting an international historical perspective, this study aims to identify the main empirical regularities in the long-run growth pattern of government expenditure. The application of parametric and non-parametric analyses to a sample of developed countries observed over the period 1880– 2018 allows us to detect two main findings. The first is that, beyond the long-term growth of government expenditures in absolute terms, there is evidence for three expansionary long waves corresponding to the booms before and during the twentieth century’s two world wars, along with the ‘golden age of public sector intervention’. The latter refers to the decline in cross-country heterogeneity in the trends and composition of absolute growth of government expenditure since the 1960s. The ‘ratchet phenomenon’ in the pre-WWII period and the shift in ideological focus from market to government failures in the last decades of the twentieth century provide explanations that complement Wagner’s law and are consistent with the observed long-term evolution of the growth of government expenditure. [R]
73.1958 GROSS, Martin —
Coalition governments prevail at the European subnational level. Although some studies explain the formation of subnational government coalitions, we know little about the determinants of individual parties’ likelihood of joining such coalitions. This article aims to fill this gap in empirical and theoretical ways. It shows that an important institutional constraint matters for political actors’ strategies when forming subnational coalitions: the party affiliation of the directly elected head of the executive. Being the party of the head of the executive or being ideologically close to that party significantly increases a party’s likelihood of joining a coalition. The empirical evidence results from multinomial choice models using a novel data set on subnational parties’ likelihood of joining 92 coalition governments at the local level in Germany between 1999 and 2016. The findings have substantive implications for subnational institutional settings resembling ‘mixed’ political systems (i.e. neither purely presidential nor purely parliamentarian). [R]
73.1959 HOFFMAN, István ; KARPIUK, Mirosław —
E-administration became on important issues of the development of the municipal administrations. In this paper we examined the regulation of Poland and Hungary to examine the challenges of these reforms. The Polish and Hungarian municipalities have been strongly influenced by the digitalisation. In the fields of administrative decisions, decision-making and public service provision new tools and methods have been introduced. We should emphasise, that the centrally operated platforms can be even interpreted as a new, ‘soft’ tool of the centralisation. However, the Polish and Hungarian systems are similar, but there are differences which are related to the different competences and spatial structure of the municipal systems of the two countries. [R]
73.1960 HUANG Zuyu —
This article aims to uncover an important yet under-researched governance field during the massive wave of internal migration in China. In contrast with abundant studies that explore the governmentality of migrant workers in urban China, rare scholar attention is dedicated to the group of migrant farmers who only move within rural China. Drawing on a detailed analysis of governance dynamics of Lianhua village, Hunan province, this study finds that migrant famers could undermine village governance in the place of destination from three dimensions: by disturbing social orders; overpricing or exploiting farmland; and paralyzing operation of village affairs. The critical factor deciding whether migrant farmers commit such acts is the degree of their spontaneous solidarity. [R, abr.]
73.1961 IVONCHYK, Mikhail —
US states grant their local units different levels of autonomy in several dimensions including fiscal, functional, structural, and legal discretion. This study uses a comprehensive, multidimensional measure of autonomy to test its association with the fiscal behavior of over 19,000 municipalities in the US. Competing theoretical predictions range from significant increases in government size (Leviathan model), to no effect (median-voter model), and even smaller governments (institutional collective action model). Quantile regression analysis is implemented to test the association between autonomy and fiscal behavior for different city sizes. The empirical findings indicate that cities with more autonomy tend to spend less and have lower taxes and debt. The strength of this relationship, however, varies by city size. [R]
73.1962 JAMNIK, Anton —
Rawls’ completely original argument of “justice as fairness” is always up to date as modern ethics and political philosophy are faced with the so called procedural ethics where everything is arranged and determined with adequate procedures, legal legislation, acts and regulations, but very often there is a lack of “ethical humus” of why and how these things should be done. Particular situation of a certain local area is often too dependent on capital and under too much pressure by its power. All of the above makes Rawls’ theory a great challenge as well as ethical and legal humus of how to form local self-government where all basic principles of fairness, freedom, dignity of every individual and social aspect of interpersonal relations are considered, where there is particular stress on caring for all those who are in the worst position, who are the most fragile, most vulnerable, most overlooked and for whom nobody cares. [R]
73.1963 KIMHI, Omer ; BEERI, Itai ; REINGEWERTZ, Yaniv —
Central governments often restrict municipalities’ ability to raise or reduce taxes, but, in many jurisdictions, municipalities can ask the central government’s permission to set aside these limitations. Using an Israeli dataset, we explore this prevalent, yet unexplored, mechanism we call Permission to Override (PtO). We find that in Israel, at least, the central government’s approval and rejection of these permission requests seem to be equitable and non-political. However, despite the central neutrality, municipalities with lower socio-economic status and fewer political connections tend not to submit requests. Municipalities are also reluctant to submit requests before elections and tend to submit them only afterwards. These socio-economic and political biases may create inequalities and hinder a successful use of the PtO mechanism. We discuss the limited use of this mechanism and its shortcomings and draw conclusions from the Israeli case study. [R, abr.]
73.1964 KLEMSDAL, Lars ; ALM ANDREASSEN, Tone ; BREIT, Eric —
Managers of street-level organizations play an important role in the successful implementation of public reforms. A prevailing view within the public administration literature is that this work involves the adaptation between reforms and local contexts, where divergence is viewed as a form of resistance to change. The article challenges this prevalent reform-centric view by introducing a situation-centric perspective and coining the concept of situational work as a significant form of managerial work during implementation. Situational work encompasses managerial actions that ensure functional and well-ordered service delivery in local street-level organizations by accommodating everyday situational contingencies, including reform objectives, but also the interests and expectations of workers, clients, and local service partners. The article draws on an extensive multiwave study of a major organizational reform in Norway. [R, abr.]
73.1965 KUROKI, Makoto ; ISHIKAWA, Keiko ; YAMAMOTO, Kiyoshi —
Accompanying the spread of “new public management” since the 1980s, accrual accounting and results-based management has become a global standard. However, whether accrual accounting results in successful outcomes and which drivers lead to the intended impacts of the reform have been contested. Given the mixed arguments in the literature, we set out two research questions: (1) “Have public sector organizations realized any positive impacts on management practices by adopting mandatory accrual accounting?”; and (2) “What are the primary drivers of such impacts?” To answer these questions, we examine the impact on management practices by analyzing a survey to ascertain how financial department officers in Japanese local governments perceive the benefits of adopting mandatory accrual accounting on management practices. The results indicate that they have so far not recognized the intended benefits, though they had expected higher benefits in internal control. Then, we use technical-rational, socio-political, and institutional isomorphic perspectives in a comprehensive approach to understand the impacts on management practices. [R, abr.]
73.1966 LI Dongquan ; LAN G. Zhiyong —
Urban planning in China, as well as in many other countries, is viewed as a distinctive governmental function, making strategic and land-use plans for urban development. In recent decades, the urbanization process has intensified, especially in densely populated countries in Asia. Urban centers have often grown faster than the planners’ wildest imagination, creating an enormous amount of urban problems, such as congestion, traffic jams, infrastructure shortfalls, service inconveniences, and pollution. By reviewing the dynamics between urban planning models and urban development policy issues and priorities in Beijing, China’s mega-capital city, this article demonstrates the importance of viewing urban planning as an essential component of public policy and the importance of striving for the better integration of planning and urban governance. The planning profession itself also needs to be innovated to enable domestic and international learning, to embrace planners with varying disciplinary backgrounds, and to use new and open planning methods. [R, abr.]
73.1967 LIN Wanlin —
Local governments in autocracies typically undercompensate residents for their land and take it through eminent domain, while residents lack effective formal channels for bargaining with them. I find that some residents nonetheless can defend against such predation through extralegal land bargaining. By sending resistance signals to challenge the legitimacy of local governments, publicize their grievances, and garner public sympathy, such residents embarrass governments, make it likely higher-level governments will punish local governments, and spur concessions. Such signals, however, are often costly or unavailable, so only resistant entrepreneurs can send them. I illustrate the argument by treating ‘nail-house resistance’ in China as a resistance signal: by refusing to vacate their houses, engaging in violence or self-burning, or turning to the media, some residents stop land takings or gain compensation. [R, abr.]
73.1968 LOMBARDO, Rosetta ; RICOTTA, Fernanda —
The impact of trust on economic performance has been widely explored, but the reasons for its variability across countries are not well understood. We analyse the effect of the quality of government at the regional level on individual generalized trust in a multi-country context across regions in Europe. Social phenomena are often subnational and a number of public services are provided at a subnational level; the trust of individuals living in the same country may, therefore, differ by region depending also on the quality of the local government. As a proxy of the quality of institutions, we use the European Quality of Government Index, calculated at the regional level over 27 EU countries. The analysis conducted on data extracted from the European Social Survey 2012 refers to 142 regions from 15 EU member states. Considering the clustered nature of the data, a multilevel approach is used. The findings show that living in a region with high-quality local government positively influences individual trust. This positive association survives the inclusion of several contextual regional variables. [R]
73.1969 MITCHELL, David, et al. —
Implemented in over 200 North American local governments, prioritybased budgeting (PBB) reflects a contemporary attempt to systematically determine and implement desired budgetary reallocation. The study utilizes a lagged dependent variable alternative to difference in difference analysis to examine reallocation patterns for 32 early-adopting US cities before and after PBB implementation. The findings suggest that PBB fulfills its promise, as low-priority departmental budgetary allocations shrink by 2%-3% following PBB implementation. These PBB early adopters offer evidence that PBB can effectively transcend the marginal, transactional nature of incremental budgeting practices; however, its effectiveness must be weighed against potentially substantial costs of implementation. [R]
73.1970 MORAVEC, Lukáš, et al. —
Local fees and tax income are one of the income sources of a municipality budget. Their size and collection is regulated by the municipality and a particular state. 12 municipalities of the South Bohemian District were chosen according to their size to find out the efficiency of the collection of the higher mentioned income. Next, a relationship between individual shares and size of selected municipalities in number of inhabitants was calculated based on shares among city fees, tax income and total income. The size of yields in local fees differs and the size of municipality (based on the number of inhabitants) is not the main factor of the difference. Yields of municipalities are also influenced by geographical and economic factors (e.g.: growth of tourism, Český Krumlov). Furthermore, absence of any relationship among local fees, tax income and total income was found within selected municipalities. [R]
73.1971 OLEJNIK, Maciej —
The goal of the paper is to examine whether lobbying is effectively regulated in the regional self-governments in Poland. The article analyses two cases: Opolskie and Podkarpackie regional self-governments (2014-2020). For the purpose of the article, three types of material were gathered (1) A legislation regulating lobbying in Poland (the Law on Lobbying); (2) The results of the semi-structured interviews with sixty councilors from both regional chambers; (3) The websites and public social media accounts of the legislators and major lobbyists and the correspondence with heads of the regions’ organizational departments. Two scientific methods were adopted (institutionally-legal analysis and comparative method) to examine the material. An outcome of the research revealed that lobbying is ineffectively regulated. [R, abr.]
73.1972 PARK Soonae ; LEE, Don S. —
Scholars have debated the question of what influences bureaucrats’ policy implementation in provincial government, some taking the top-down and some the bottom-up approaches. However, less well understood in this debate is the impact of governors’ characteristics, particularly at a time of national political crisis. Given that their roles have been proven important for the performance of provincial governments, this is a significant oversight. To fill this gap, we examine the effect of governors’ political characteristics on provincial bureaucrats’ responses to the center by leveraging a unique setting, that of presidential impeachment in South Korea. Using original survey data on 655 civil servants from all 17 provincial governments, gathered as part of a representative survey, we find that bureaucrats are less responsive to the central government after impeachment. [R, abr.]
73.1973 PAVELEA, Alina Maria ; NEAMȚU, Bogdana ; HINȚEA, Călin Emilian —
The last decades have seen an increse in the number of studies that investigate the factors that make cities attractive. This was also the initial aim of the present study. However, the initial results were striking. Cities that do not possess the characteristics that are usually attributed to attractive cities were ranked among the most attractive ones in Romania. Thus, it became evident that the first step should be to determine which is the most appropriate measure of attractiveness in the Romanian context. The results show that in Romania the historical and legal context, as well as the current way in which official data are provided affect the reliability of well-known measures of city attractiveness. More specifically, international migrants who regain their citizenship artificially inflate the data regarding population growth and migration for cities in the Easter part of the country. The study provides recommendations for improving the capacity of municipalities to take evidence-based decisions. [R]
73.1974 QI Zhang ; HOU Linke —
Land fiscalization in China is a local development strategy intended to tilt the distribution of interests disproportionately toward local officials. We propose that the degree of power concentration among provincial Chinese leaders affects their need for support from lower-level bureaucrats. The more that power is dispersed among provincial leaders, the more they are incentivized to dispense benefits to local officials. To test this hypothesis, we used provincial-year panel data spanning 2003-2012 to examine how power concentration among provincial leaders affected land fiscalization within their jurisdictions. The empirical results robustly supported the hypothesis. [R]
73.1975 SAPORITO, Salvatore ; MALINIAK, Daniel —
This paper provides a novel and systematic technique for differentiating legislative districts that are “naturally packed” with racial minorities from those that are “unnaturally packed.” Unnaturally packed districts — called segregated districts in this paper — contain greater shares of racial minorities than the share of racial minorities in the geographic regions in which they are located. By contrast, “naturally packed” districts are the ineluctable result of the geographic concentration of large numbers of minorities (often in urban areas) and are thus non-segregated. Differentiating segregated from non-segregated districts requires observing the average share of racial minorities among the nearest neighbors of a district’s. This paper explains how to measure segregation for individual legislative districts, provides a test, and shows how measuring segregation provides information different from typical ways of detecting gerrymanders. [R, abr.]
73.1976 SCICCHITANO, Sergio —
The surge on the Working From House (WFH) is changing the geography of work. In this study, we investigate how a permanent increase in WFH may affect the urban structure in Italy. We show that remote working has an asymmetric impact, with large cities more exposed to its possible adverse effects. We demonstrate that the share of workers able to work remotely, the relative house prices and the congestion are higher in large cities. Accordingly, there is a risk that the diffusion of the remote work can kick-start quitting from the Italian cities. In this context, the role of National Recovery and Resilience Plan in providing financial support to design the future of smart and inclusive cities in the post COVID-19 age is crucial. [R] [See Abstr. 73.2689]
73.1977 SEGAARD, Signe Bock ; KJAER, Ulrik ; SAGLIE, Jo —
The article explores why women are better represented in municipal councils in Norway than in Denmark. This comparative case study offers a most similar systems design, as these two countries are similar on most relevant institutional variables, such as local government systems, electoral systems, party systems and societal gender equality, but they deviate on the dependent variable of women’s representation. Two unique comparative data sets are analysed: representative voter surveys and register data on all candidates (from the 2019 Norwegian and 2017 Danish municipal elections). [R, abr.]
73.1978 STRUTHERS, Cory L., et al. —
Research on political control over government bureaucracy has primarily focused on direct exercises of power such as appointments, funding, agency design, and procedural rules. In this analysis, we extend this literature to consider politicians who leverage their institutional standing to influence the decisions of local field officials over whom they have no explicit authority. Using the case of the US Forest Service (USFS), we investigate whether field-level decisions are associated with the political preferences of individual congressional representatives. Our sample encompasses 7,681 resource extraction actions initiated and analyzed by 107 USFS field offices between 2005 and 2018. [R, abr.]
73.1979 VERHOEVEN, Imrat ; STRANGE, Michael ; SILES-BRÜGGE, Gabriel —
This article focuses on the conflictual relations at the heart of what we call ‘municipal contestation’. This global phenomenon sees cities and other local governments — sometimes together with non-governmental players — contest policies proposed or implemented by higher governmental authorities, which they perceive as threats to their policy positions or local communities. Bridging public policy studies and social movement theory, we develop a new typology identifying conservative, moderate and radical ideal types of municipal contestation. In addition, we explore the dynamics of contestation. The article illustrates this typology and contestation dynamics by drawing on case studies involving resistance to central COVID-19 restrictions in England; municipal opposition to carbon capture and storage in the Netherlands; and a European campaign against a proposed EU-US trade agreement. [R, abr.]
73.1980 WOLAK, Jennifer ; PARINANDI, Srinivas —
Past studies debate whether governors are substantively evaluated based on their performance in office, with some arguing that the origins of approval may be idiosyncratic to particular governors. These studies typically consider gubernatorial approval in a handful of states or patterns of approval in the aggregate. We improve on this research by drawing on a richer data source: the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We consider both individual-level and state-level explanations of gubernatorial popularity with a sample of over 300,000 respondents across the 50 states from 2006 to 2018. We explore how party, policy outcomes, and government performance shape levels of gubernatorial approval. We show that people evaluate governors based on the ideological direction of policy outcomes in the states. [R, abr.]
73.1981 YANG Zhenjie ; LIANG Yuqing ; YU Mengyan —
How to balance the market and the government to promote local economic development and provide sufficient public services has always been a challenging issue for leaders, in face of the existence of varied interests and values of different stakeholders. Conflicting values between the market and the government are directly related to the competing logics between market orientation and bureaucratic/administrative dominance. Since China’s transition from the planned economy or government dominance to marketization in 1978, a series of national and local innovations has been launched. Among those reforms, policy entrepreneurs played a critical role. Through a local case in administrative licensing reform, this study explores how a policy entrepreneur at local level applied reform strategies to balance conflicting values and constrain the self-interested bureaucracy to achieve the marketization reform. [R, abr.]
73.1982 ZAMBRANO-GUTIÉRREZ, Julio C. ; PUPPIM DE OLIVEIRA, Jose A. —
Understanding the effects of different sources of knowledge acquisition in public organizations has become widely promoted for overcoming sociotechnical challenges through innovation. This study divided the sources of knowledge into external and internal learning mechanisms to assess their divergent effects on incremental and transformative innovations in 82 local governments involved in green and blue infrastructure projects. First, the study tests whether more diverse external sources of knowledge acquisition are more effective in increasing transformative innovation than internal learning mechanisms. The second proposition tests whether internal changes in organizational routines are associated with incremental rather than transformative innovation. [R, abr.]