Abstract
(a) Central institutions /Institutions centrales
74.298 ANGELICI, Marta, et al. —
We compare the intergovernmental health system responses to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and Spain, two countries where healthcare is managed at the regional level and the impact of the first wave was highly localized. However, whereas in Italy the regional government allowed for a passively accepted central level of coordination without restricting autonomy (‘‘decentralized coordination’’), in Spain, the healthcare system was de facto centralized under a ‘‘single command’’ (‘‘hierarchical centralization’’). We argue that the latter strategy crowded out incentives for information sharing, experimentation and regional participation in decision-making. This article documents evidence of important differences in health outcomes (infected cases and deaths) and outputs (regular and emergency hospital admissions) between the two countries, both at the national and regional levels. We then discuss several potential mechanisms to account for these differences. [R, abr.]
74.299 ARANA ARAYA, Ignacio —
Research has found that the context in which presidents govern explains the relaxation of term limits. However, presidents have strong motivations to retain power, and a minority of leaders from different world regions have actively attempted to overstay in office. I propose that the individual differences of the presidents explain why some of them challenge their term limits. Building on semistructured interviews with former presidents, I hypothesize that leaders who have a dominant personality and are politically inexperienced are more likely to attempt to overstay in office. Using a novel data-set, I conduct discrete-time duration models that test the hypotheses for the 1945-2012 period in Latin America. The results confirm the expectations, suggesting that we need to consider both the context and the personal characteristics of chief executives to understand term extensions. [R, abr.]
74.300 ASKIM, Jostein ; BACH, Tobias ; CHRISTENSEN, Jørgen Grønnegård —
A change of government or minister constitutes a stress test for the relationship between ministers and bureaucrats. The new political masters may question the loyalty of incumbent bureaucrats and seek to replace them. However, the relationship between political changes and administrative turnover is poorly understood in meritocratic systems. This article analyses how changes of either government or minister affect the turnover of permanent secretaries in Denmark and Norway (1970-2020). Whereas ministers are completely reliant on career bureaucrats in pure meritocratic systems, they are supported by political appointees in hybrid meritocratic systems. The article investigates whether the effect of political changes on administrative turnover is mediated by the presence or absence of political appointees. Changes of government increase the risk of administrative turnover in Norway (hybrid system), but there are no such effects in Denmark (pure system), suggesting that political appointees potentially undermine the permanence of career bureaucrats. [R]
74.301 BARBERA, MariaCaterina La ; ESPINOSA-FAJARDO, Julia ; CARAVANTES, Paloma —
Although feminist scholarship has discussed intersectionality extensively, few studies have addressed its implementation in public policies. This article fills that gap with an empirical study of the obstacles and enabling factors in implementing intersectionality in the Madrid City Council. We focus on the multiple meanings, actors, and structures involved in translating policy planning into concrete measures. Through a content analysis of policy documents, interviews, focus groups, and participant observation, our qualitative study identifies five key factors that hinder the implementation of intersectionality-informed policies: the absence of a legal framework and precise guidelines; the multiple and contrasting interpretations of intersectionality; the lack of training; the compartmentalized work structure and culture; and the unavailability and misuse of data. These findings contribute to the scholarship on the implementation of intersectionality in public policies and provide empirical-based recommendations to overcome the identified obstacles. [R]
74.302 BARTELS, Brandon L. ; HOROWITZ, Jeremy ; KRAMON, Eric —
Public support is central to the emergence of judicial power. Conventional wisdom holds that citizen commitment to democracy and the rule of law sustains this support. An implication is that such commitments should protect courts from partisan backlash following contentious rulings. But this remains largely untested. The Kenyan Supreme Court’s historic 2017 elections rulings provide an unusual opportunity to test this expectation. After annulling the incumbent president’s victory, the Court upheld his controversial repeat-election win. With data from a national panel survey — conducted before and after the repeat election — we find important partisanbased withdrawals/increases in judicial-power support. There is no evidence that democratic principles attenuated partisan backlash; some were associated with its amplification. However, partisan losers maintain moderately high support despite backlash. [R, abr.]
74.303 BATTEGAZZORRE, Francesco —
The article reassesses the role played by parliaments and other representative structures in the European state-building processes. It points to a need of going beyond the traditional antagonist conception of the relationships between rulers and social forces rooted in comparative historical political science, substituting it with a theory grounded in the concept of political exchange. A preliminary analysis of four cases (Brandenburg-Prussia, Dutch Republic, Poland, and Sweden) is conducted, with the purpose of singling out the “internal” determinants — that is, institutional properties of the assemblies — that allowed them to integrate into the institutional framework of the states in formation, or that hindered such an integration. These determinants are found to consist in three main factors: organisational centralisation, working autonomy, and a significant interdependence relationship with a distinct and relatively autonomous governmental centre. [R]
74.304 BENOÎT, Cyril ; SZILAGYI, Ana-Maria —
Independent regulatory agency has become the standard institutional choice in Western Europe. Little is known, however, about the involvement of legislators in their design and in their monitoring. In this paper, we analyse ex-ante and ex-post legislative involvement for 48 regulatory agencies enacted in France. We show that legislators debate and design more substantially agencies for which the government bill has already granted them more powers to appoint members to their board, or to be appointed as board members themselves. Once enacted, agencies that allow greater participation by legislators in their decision-making are subject to greater scrutiny, and this even after controlling for routine oversight activities. Regulatory domains matter, though only for ex-post legislative oversight. These results suggest that legislative involvement is selective and driven by strategic considerations. More fundamentally, they imply that legislative involvement could be more important in regulatory agency activities than usually assumed. [R]
74.305 BETZ, Timm ; POND, Amy —
How do democratic institutions shape financial market regulation? Focusing on the government’s fiscal motives in financial market regulation, we present a new dataset documenting policies that governments use to place their own debt in an advantageous position on financial markets. These policies, which we call borrowing privileges, commonly require that banks and institutional investors hold their own government’s debt, and take a place in-between prudential and repressive regulation. Drawing on data for 58 non-OECD countries, we document that borrowing privileges are more likely to be implemented in countries with democratic institutions. Focusing on the mechanisms for this association, we show that several characteristics typically associated with democracies — increased revenue needs from trade liberalization, political competition and transparency, and the growth of financial markets — make these policies attractive to policy-makers. [R, abr.]
74.306 BLIDOOK, Kelly ; KOOP, Royce —
Service representation — the extent to which Members of Parliament (MPs) assist constituents with problems they have related to the government — is an increasingly important role of MPs in developed democracies. We explore the practice of service representation through comparison of the service orientations and activities of two MPs in different countries, New Zealand and Australia, observed during periods of participant observation with them in their electorates. Constructing service connections between MPs and their constituents is often a crucial aspect of MPs’ overall representational styles. Our comparisons in this research depict the multi-dimensionality of service representation with respect to MPs’ emphasis on service, the nature of their service activities, and in the factors that shape those activities. The democratic implications of our comparisons are also addressed. Deep exploration of only two cases is used in this research to develop theoretical understanding to inform future analysis of service representation and its increasing importance in the overall representational and democratic process. [R]
74.307 BLIJLEVEN, Wieke —
Public servants in local governments, including policy experts, are increasingly expected to facilitate public participation and citizens’ initiatives. At the same time, critical research points out that their dominant or hesitant attitude and emphasis on rules and expert knowledge might hamper authentic participation. Based on shadowing and in-depth interviews, this article explores what tensions expert public servants (planners, lawyers, designers and historians) in Dutch municipalities experience when engaging the public, and how they handle these tensions in practice. The analysis shows that for expert civil servants, facilitating interactive governance means constantly finding a balance between their role as a bureaucrat, facilitator and expert. The findings show how expertise can both constrain but also enable facilitation, by mediating tensions between municipal and citizens’ demands. In addition, the findings shed new light on the close relationship between knowledge and trust in interactive governance. [R] [See Abstr. 74.496]
74.308 BOCHSLER, Daniel —
After the 2021 parliamentary elections, the Kosovo Supreme Court annulled some 5800 votes expressed for three minority lists running for guaranteed seats of the Bosniak and the Roma minorities. The court considered it impossible that they were cast by members of the respective ethnic communities. This court ruling has wider implications for consociational theory, as it makes novel normative prescriptions about group representation in divided societies. The debate in Kosovo closely mirrors similar controversies elsewhere, such as the ‘Sejdić-Finci’ case in the elections of the state presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or the reserved parliamentary seats in Lebanon. [R]
74.309 BONVECCHI, Alejandro ; SIMISON, Emilia —
How does lawmaking work in personalist dictatorships? Assuming that legislative institutions established within power-sharing arrangements become costly for dictators to ignore and are consequently likely to affect lawmaking processes and outcomes, we argue that while legislatures in personalist dictatorships may approve most government initiatives, they can affect lawmaking via amendments, which signal factional disagreement and may prompt dictators to kill their own bills. We test this argument by analysing the performance of the Cortes under Franco’s regime in Spain. We find that while its members intervened only in a share of the legislative agenda, and rarely rejected government bills, they still introduced many consequential amendments that reduced the likelihood of bill enactment. [R]
74.310 BOWMAN, Daniel ; ROE-CRINES, Andrew S. —
In dramatic and unprecedented circumstances, a former British Prime Minister has been investigated by the House of Commons Privileges Committee for breaking laws set by his own government by socialising and partying whilst the rest of the country toiled during the Covid lockdowns. The lockdown laws were clear, saying we ‘must stay at home, protect the NHS, and save lives’. Socialising of any kind was outlawed, with high fines imposed. Yet, for Boris Johnson, it was unclear whether such restrictions applied to his administration. After the submission of evidence from witnesses in Number Ten and testimony from the defendant himself, a ground-breaking verdict that will reverberate around Westminster and the Conservative Party for months and years to come was delivered — namely, that Boris Johnson knowingly misled Parliament on multiple occasions about the social activities and that he should be held in contempt of Parliament. The fallout of this verdict will cause division within the Conservative Party and will remind voters of a lengthy period most would rather forget. [R, abr.]
74.311 BOWRA, Bethany ; MAKSE, Todd —
Studies of ambition often frame decisions to run for reelection, seek higher office, or retire in terms of the nature of those opportunities and the risks associated with them. However, career decisions can also be framed in terms of the value of one’s present position, which depends on what we refer to as institutional attachments. In contrast to institutional positions (leadership, committee chairs), institutional attachments relate to social position in the legislature. We explore how factors related to institutional attachments influence career decisions. Specifically, we ask whether a legislator’s cohort, including its size, compatibility, and experience in possessing majority status affect the propensity to exhibit static ambition. Looking at a sample of more than 5500 state legislative open-seat opportunities in 47 states between 2003 and 2016, we find some but not all these traits are predictive of career decisions. [R]
74.312 BRACIC, Ana, et al. —
How does a judge’s identity affect perceptions of their ability to preside fairly? We theorize that identity categories operate as ideological cues and that the public views judges perceived as ideologically proximate to be fairer, more impartial, and more inspiring of trust in courts broadly. Using a conjoint survey experiment with a diverse national sample, we find support for this theory and show that race, gender, and especially sexuality are used as ideological cues. The effect of identities is conditioned by respondent partisanship. Democratic respondents trust judges with marginalized identities more than judges with dominant identities. Republicans are relatively indifferent to judges’ race or gender but are significantly less trusting of gay judges. We also uncover limited effects when judges preside over a case in which their identity is salient. [R, abr.]
74.313 BYERS, Jason S. ; SHAY, Laine P. —
Students of legislative politics are divided over the relationship between electoral vulnerability and the type of “home style” members of Congress adopt in terms of their district staffing decisions. The conventional wisdom asserts that an increase in electoral vulnerability corresponds with a legislator increasing the number of district staffers. However, another body of works implies that the inverse relationship should occur. To settle these competing claims, we explore the staffing decisions of legislators serving in the House of Representatives between the 101st and 113th Congress. We find that an increase in electoral vulnerability is associated with a decrease in district staffers. These results cast doubt on the widely held view that a legislator’s electoral vulnerability results in an increase in district attentiveness at least in terms of their district staff. Additionally, our findings provide several insights into the relationship between elections and representation. [R]
74.314 CHILDS, Sarah —
The UK Government’s decision to establish the Women and Equalities Committee in 2015 redressed an institutional deficit at Westminster — the lack of a Departmental Select Committee holding the Women’s Minister and Government Equalities Office to account. This ‘effective’ reform was by no means a foregone conclusion, however. A feminist institutionalist (FI) approach demonstrates the limitations of traditional accounts of institutional change in accounting for this reform. With greater analytical space given to women’s agency and introducing the concept of gendered parliamentarianism, FI captures the gendered constraints and conducive conditions that marked this moment of parliamentary re-gendering: identifying the critical role of women MPs; the new relations between them and women parliamentary Clerks and officials and the wider — crucially gendered — (extra) parliamentary actors and dynamics in play. [R]
74.315 CHIRU, Mihail —
This review article takes stock of the research analysing the resilience of parliamentary oversight during the COVID-19 pandemic in 31 democracies. The extant research shows that parliaments were better able to fulfil their oversight roles in states with a higher quality of democracy and where constitutional and procedural rules provided more space for parliamentary scrutiny (e.g. incongruent bicameralism). Scholars have also argued that unified executives often attempted to bypass legislative oversight, while on the contrary the checks and balances embedded in coalition governance have acted as a break on attempts to marginalise parliaments. Parliaments struggling to assert their autonomy and fulfil their scrutiny role in normal times saw these issues exacerbated during the health crisis. Finally, the resilience of parliamentary oversight also depended on the extent to which opposition parties adopted a ‘rally around the flag’ or a politicisation strategy, the latter appearing more likely as the pandemic progressed. [R]
74.316 CHO, Ahyoung —
This study analyzes the formation of climate change co-sponsorship networks among South Korean legislators from the 18th to the 20th National Assembly and provides a comprehensive understanding of the interdependent co-sponsorship behaviour to address climate change at the domestic level. Legislators’ formal ties are defined by their political party membership whereas informal ties are defined by other shared characteristics such as re-election status as well as regional (jiyon) and educationbased (hakyon) ties. While it has been commonly viewed that Korean climate politics did not experience major conflicts between political parties, this study observes that Korean legislators demonstrate strong party homophily in their climate change co-sponsorship networks. This study also finds that rational legislators are influenced by their informal social relations. [R, abr.]
74.317 CONNOLLY, John ; FLINDERS, Matthew ; JUDGE, David —
Between 2017 and 2020 a comprehensive review of the framework of investigatory scrutiny committees in the House of Lords was undertaken. This process led to a far-reaching set of recommendations and reforms. Although carefully couched in the language of evolutionary change, this article argues that these reforms possess a transformational dynamic that is difficult to deny. The challenge, however, is likely to emerge from the existence of a largely hidden disjuncture between the accountability ambitions embedded within this reform agenda and the institutional, constitutional and political matrixes within which the ‘new’ committee system in the Lords is expected to operate. A three-dimensional lens emphasising inter-, intra-, and extra-institutional dimensions is utilised to expose and dissect the existence of potential disjuncture and, through this, offers a ‘review of the review’ informed by broader literatures on legislative organisation and policy analysis that will be of interest to both practitioners and scholars. [R]
74.318 COTTLE OMMUNDSEN, Emily —
Congressional staff have often been called the “invisible force” behind members of Congress, earning themselves the title of “unelected lawmakers.” I explore the link between US Senate committees’ level of productivity and the experience of their staff. Utilizing publicly reported data on Senate staff experience and a new measure of committee productivity I find that a committee’s average years of staff experience is a significant predictor of committee legislative effectiveness. I find, however, that greater levels of staff experience only increase committee effectiveness when assessing the experience of senior or high-ranking staff. As non-senior staff experience increases, however, committees become less effective. These findings suggest that when making hiring decisions, Senate chairs and ranking members should prioritize years of experience in their senior staff while foregoing experienced general and administrative staff in order to achieve greater levels of committee productivity. [R, abr.]
74.319 CURRY, James M. ; ROBERTS, Jason M. —
Do interpersonal relationships among and between representatives and senators affect legislative collaboration in the contemporary Congress? The extant literature on Congress suggests interpersonal dimensions of life on Capitol Hill should play a minimal role in the legislative process. However, research in other fields, including psychology, finds that relationships are crucially important within organizations. In addition, many contemporary accounts of congressional deal-making highlight the role of personal relationships. Drawing on interviews with high-level congressional staff, and data on CODEL trips taken by members of Congress, we show that interpersonal relationships help promote collaboration across the aisle. These findings have implications for how we understand the contours of conflict and cooperation on Capitol Hill. [R]
74.320 DAVIDOVITZ, Maayan ; COHEN, Nissim —
The study explores whether elected officials’ involvement in the way streetlevel bureaucrats implement policy affects social equity. This question is addressed empirically through interviews and focus groups with 84 Israeli educators and social workers. Findings indicate that elected officials involve themselves directly and indirectly in street-level bureaucrats’ policy implementation and their involvement reduces social equity in the provision of services. The study contributes to the literature on policy implementation by enabling a deeper understanding of the factors that shape the decision-making process of street-level bureaucrats when providing services and their ultimate impact on policy outcomes. [R]
74.321 DICHIO, Michael A. ; SOMIN, Ilya —
This article challenges the conventional wisdom about of the Supreme Court’s impact on federalism and centralization. In particular, we argue that the centralization impact of the Court is far less pronounced if decisions that uphold federal and state/local laws against challenge are classified as neutral rather than as centralizing and decentralizing, respectively. This reclassification dramatically alters our understanding of the Court’s role in establishing federal-state boundaries of power. After presenting our theoretical arguments, we briefly discuss the potential empirical effects of these revisions. Our analysis calls into question the traditional picture of the Court as a consistent force for centralization. It also challenges the conventional wisdom about the Court’s impact on centralization during specific key periods of American history. [R]
74.322 DIETRICH, Bryce J. ; HAYES, Matthew —
We explore whether the presence of Black legislators influences symbolic representation in the US House. We ask three questions. First, do Black and white members of Congress talk about issues involving race at different rates? Second, when Black and white members of Congress talk about race, do they do so in different ways? Third, do these rhetorical differences matter for Black constituents? Using data from 790,654 US House floor speeches, the Cooperative Election Study, and data from an original survey experiment, we demonstrate that Black legislators are more likely to talk about civil rights, and they employ significantly more symbolic references when they do. This symbolism is linked to an increase in Black voter turnout as well as changes in the evaluations of Black constituents, underscoring that symbolic responsiveness is an important facet of representation for African-Americans. [R, abr.]
74.323 DOREY, Peter —
The 1911 Parliament Act decreed that Lords reform was ‘an urgent question which brooks no delay’, yet the subsequent 112 years have witnessed only sporadic and inchoate reforms. The issue has invariably suffered both from interparty disagreement between the Conservatives and Labour and, more importantly, intraparty disagreements owing to the divergent views and irreconcilable disagreements among Labour MPs over ‘what is to be done?’, and recognition that any reform which enhanced the legitimacy of the second chamber would threaten the pre-eminence of the House of Commons and a Labour government therein. A similar fate is likely to befall the Labour Party’s latest proposal for replacing the current House of Lords with an elected second chamber. Meanwhile, the Conservative peer, Lord Norton, is seeking to place the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC) on a statutory basis and impose stricter criteria on prime ministerial nominations for peerages. Yet, this would still leave any Prime Minister with considerable powers of patronage in appointing members of the second chamber. [R, abr.]
74.324 DULAY, Dean ; MALESKY, Edmund —
Despite strong theoretical foundations, randomized evaluations demonstrate that subnational performance assessments have a mixed record in improving governance. We suggest that a key factor influencing this disappointing result has been the omission of facilitation — working with bureaucrats on how to use subnational performance assessments (SPAs) effectively and encouraging collaboration across government agencies. The argument is tested on a nationally representative panel of townships in precoup Myanmar. Facilitation workshops were conducted in 20 randomly assigned townships, bringing together officials from multiple government agencies and introducing them to the results of the Myanmar Business Environment Index (MBEI), an SPA that scored a panel of 60 townships on 92 governance indicators. [R, abr.]
74.325 EGEROD, Benjamin C. K. ; TRAN, —
Board appointments represent highly lucrative career opportunities for former politicians. We investigate how board service relates to the strength of ideological partisanship for former members of Congress. We find that strong ideological partisanship is associated with a lower likelihood of being appointed to a board after Congress and that this holds for both liberals and conservatives. In addition, we use a difference-in-differences design to show that when the supply of senators willing to accept a directorship increases, firms become less likely to appoint ideological extremist senators to their boards. The results show that extremist legislators are effectively shut out of one of the most lucrative post-elective career paths, placing a cost on radical behavior. [R]
74.326 ELSTON, Thomas ; ZHANG, Yuxi —
The Public Accounts Committee is the oldest and, reputedly, most influential oversight committee in the British parliament. Since 2012, the government has published an unprecedented volume of data explaining its actions in response to the PAC’s inquiries. By tracking all 615 of the Committee’s recommendations from 2010 to 2012 across the first 14 of these ‘progress reports’, we explore how effectively this novel reporting mechanism serves to inform parliament about the executive’s responsiveness to scrutiny. We find the reports to yield rich data on the fate of many individual recommendations, but only limited information on the overall timeliness and quality of implementation. Flexibilities and inconsistencies in reporting style also make the arrangements vulnerable to gaming. We identify potential improvements and research opportunities. [R]
74.327 ERIKSEN, Andreas ; KATSAITIS, Alexander —
The increased authority delegated to independent agencies raises questions about the conditions of politically accountable governance, and specifically parliament’s role as a representative institution. Focusing on committee hearings as an accountability mechanism, we ask: How can a parliament employ hearings to ensure that the ends pursued by agencies have a democratic foundation? We propose a model of “mutual attunement” where accountability relations presuppose a process of working-out shared understandings of the ends, means and circumstances of policy needs. We test our argument through a case study assessing the interaction between the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic & Monetary Affairs and the European Securities and Markets Authority. Theoretically, we contribute to discussions on agency accountability and European governance, while providing a novel conceptual model and the first analysis of its kind. [R]
74.328 FEHRLER, Sebastian ; HAHN, Volker —
Leaks are pervasive in politics. Hence, many committees that nominally operate under secrecy de facto operate under the threat that information might be passed on to outsiders. We study theoretically and experimentally how this possibility affects the behavior of committee members and decision-making accuracy. Our theoretical analysis generates two major predictions. First, a committee operating under the threat of leaks is equivalent to a formally transparent committee in terms of the probability of supporting the adoption of a new policy. Second, the threat of leaks leads to status quo bias. In our experimental analysis of a committee with possible leaks, individual behavior is often less strategic than theoretically predicted, which leads to frequent leaks. However, despite these deviations on the individual level, our experiment confirms the two major theoretical predictions. [R]
74.329 FEIERHERD, Germán ; LUCARDI, Adrián —
A burgeoning literature finds that incumbency effects reflect mostly a personal rather than a partisan advantage. We attribute this to incumbents’ mobilization incentives. Incumbents have weaker incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of their co-partisans in national races than in local ones, where their local power is at stake. We examine these implications in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s largest subnational unit, where midterm elections give mayors a strong incentive to help their co-partisans running for the local council, but much weaker ones to support those running for a national seat. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find a large positive effect of incumbency in local mayoral and midterm elections. In contrast, local incumbents neither help nor hurt their co-partisans running for the presidency or the national legislature. [R]
74.330 FEULNER, Frank ; GUÉGUIN, Marine —
Research of parliaments regularly focuses on larger, well-known parliaments. Practices of parliaments of small jurisdictions are often overlooked. This paper investigates public engagement by parliaments in small island states and seeks to answer: how effective public engagement is built by parliaments? What are the opportunities for meaningful engagement? Can public engagement be possible despite serious resource challenges and other barriers? For effective public engagement to happen, parliamentary administrations in these locations need to consider a number of issues and overcome some barriers. Therefore, the paper analyses common contextual themes, like institutional barriers and sociological issues. The paper presents successful approaches applied by parliaments, as well as tools and practices that can be effective in leading to tangible results. The authors argue that effective public engagement by parliaments in small island states is in fact possible and concludes by providing some significant lessons for legislators, parliamentary staff, and civil society. [R] [See Abstr. 74.352]
74.331 FLEMING, Thomas G. —
Incumbent prime ministers who win re-election often reshuffle their cabinet ministers. These post-election cabinet reshuffles have important implications for policymaking and present a puzzle: why would prime ministers alter the ‘winning team’ that has just received an electoral mandate? Existing literature has largely overlooked post-election reshuffles, so offers few compelling answers. At most, a plausible but under-theorised and untested conventional wisdom suggests that electoral success increases prime ministers’ authority over their ministers. This article thus provides the first systematic study of post-election cabinet reshuffles in single-party governments. It argues that re-elected prime ministers use a temporary increase in their authority to pre-empt future leadership challenges by moving or sacking cabinet rivals. Larger election victories should thus produce larger reshuffles. However, analysis of post-election cabinet reshuffles in four ‘Westminster’ democracies since 1945 shows no support for this expectation, suggesting that further work is needed to understand these important political events. [R]
74.332 FLEMING, Thomas G. ; GHAZI, Tasneem —
Recent years have seen an increase in the use of delegated legislation to implement major policy decisions in the UK. This has exacerbated the longstanding criticism that Westminster lacks sufficiently robust procedures for parliamentary scrutiny of delegated legislation. However, the UK is not the only country to use delegated legislation, or to face the challenge of ensuring it receives adequate parliamentary scrutiny. This article therefore places the UK system in wider context by comparing it to six other national parliaments. We highlight one comparative strength of the UK system, two weaknesses it shares with the other six cases, and one way in which the UK might learn lessons from elsewhere. Overall, our evidence suggests that no one country offers a clear template for more rigorous parliamentary scrutiny of delegated legislation. Successful reform of the UK’s system is likely to require creative procedural innovation. [R]
74.333 FONG, Christian —
Congressional rules can be violated by majority vote, but the application of those rules often leads to different outcomes than would prevail under direct majority rule. Why does Congress enact rules in the first place, and why would not a majority violate those rules whenever it disliked the outcomes they produced? Drawing from work in psychology, I argue legislators become angry and engage in socially costly retaliation when unfavorable outcomes are produced by discretionary authority but not when they are produced by the application of fixed rules. Consequently, rules sometimes inefficiently allocate congressional resources, but they also reduce costly conflict within the institution. I present a model that provides conditions under which the legislature prefers to enact and defer to rules and derive its empirical implications. [R]
74.334 FOSTER, Helen ; KNOX, Colin —
Devolution in the UK has now been in place for over 20 years. A key support mechanism for the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is the Public Account Committees (PACs). Aside from their formal role in ensuring financial regularity and probity, they aim to strengthen accountability at the regional level. This study examines the effectiveness of the PACs measured through the perception of key stakeholders (PAC members, witnesses, auditors and officials). Using Q methodology, it identifies four clusters of participants: Team Players, Peace Makers, Bureaucrats and Attention Seekers, and captures their perceptions of what makes the devolved PACs most effective. [R]
74.335 FRANTZESKAKIS, Nikolaos ; SEEBERG, Henrik Bech —
While African legislatures have been receiving increasing academic attention in recent years, efforts to expand our understanding of these institutional bodies have been hampered by a dearth of reliable quantitative data regarding their activity and output. To rectify this issue, we have collected and issue-classified data on the legislative agenda in 13 African countries. We leverage this new dataset to explore how democratic development affects the legislative agenda. We show that legislatures in more democratic countries have a larger, broader, and more dynamic agenda, and we propose an extensive future research agenda for legislative politics in Africa. [R]
74.336 FU, Shu ; HOWELL, William G. —
We investigate whether the filibuster stimulates public debate and discussion within Congress, as its advocates argue, or whether, instead, it discourages legislators from devoting time and attention to bills they know will not pass, as its critics attest. To do so, we exploit multiple sources of variation in the filibuster, measures of legislative discussion, and identification strategies. In the preponderance of analyses, we observe null effects. Where significant differences are observed, they nearly always suggest that a strengthening (weakening) of the filibuster coincides with a reduction (increase) in the volume of floor speeches or time devoted to legislative affairs. Whatever benefits the filibuster may confer, they do not appear to include enhanced discussion on the floors of Congress. [R]
74.337 GHERGHINA, Sergiu ; VOLINTIRU, Clara ; SIGURJONSSON, Throstur Olaf —
The COVID-19 crisis and countries’ reactions led to analyses about how governance systems influenced the management of the pandemic and how COVID-19 influenced businesses. The concept of institutional resilience transcends these directions of research, but we know little about what it means and how to measure it. This paper proposes an innovative framework to conceptualize and assess institutional resilience based on three organisational traits: preparedness, agility and robustness. This approach provides the opportunity to sequence actions before, during and after the pandemic. This framework will be applied through various cases studies in Europe in the contributions to this symposium. [R]
74.338 GIBSON, Michael ; VAN LIER, Felix-Anselm ; CARTER, Eleanor —
Over the last 25 years, central government has attempted to join up local public services in England on at least 55 occasions, illustrating the ‘initiativitis’ inflicted upon local governments by the large volume and variety of coordination programmes. By analysing and mapping some of the characteristics of these initiatives, we have uncovered insights into the ways central government has sought to achieve local coordination. We observe a clear preference for the use of funding and fiscal powers as a lever, a competitive allocation process, and a constrained discretion model of governance, with some distinct patterns over time. These choices made in the design of initiatives are likely to be shaped by the perceived and real accountability structures within government, and so offer an opportunity to consider how accountability affects, and is affected by, particular programmatic efforts at a local level. This article makes a significant contribution to our understanding of coordination programmes at a central-local government level. By identifying patterns in the approach of government over the last 25 years, it offers an empirical lens to map the ‘glacial and incremental’ reframing of central–local relations and associated shifts in public accountability. [R, abr.]
74.339 GRANT, Wyn —
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) experienced a reputational crisis after a number of allegations of sexual harassment. Leading members of the organisation resigned and its resources were depleted. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) attempted to fill the void. The organisation survived a confidence vote, but the result may be a permanently weakened organisation. Apart from the 2023 crisis, there are deeper structural problems in business representation. [R]
74.340 HARBRIDGE-YONG, Laurel ; VOLDEN, Craig ; WISEMAN, Alan E. —
We confront the puzzle of why bipartisanship is alive and well in Congress, despite notable increases in party polarization and rising primary election threats. The answer is remarkably simple — bipartisanship unambiguously helps individual legislators who seek to advance their policy goals. We show that members of the House and Senate from the 93rd to 114th Congresses (1973-2016) who attract a larger portion of their bill cosponsors from the opposing party are much more successful at lawmaking. We show these patterns to be remarkably robust to both majority-party and minorityparty lawmakers, under changing legislative and electoral conditions and over time. Moreover, a clear path to attracting bipartisan cosponsors involves reciprocity, making cosponsoring others’ bills across party lines attractive. [R]
74.341 ISLAM, Monirul ; TAREQUE, Mohammad —
This research investigates the role of public sector innovation outcomes, e.g. trademark innovation, information and communication technology (ICT), renewable energy, and governance, in the sustainable development of Bangladesh during 1980-2019. Utilising the dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (DARDL) simulation approach, this study divulges a favourable long-term influencing profile of public sector innovation outcomes, i.e. trademark innovation, ICT, and renewable energy on sustainable development, while governance has a heterogeneous impact. Besides, the findings from the DARDL simulations area plots display 10% counterfactual shocks to the public sector innovation outcomes on sustainable development. Furthermore, the Kernel-based regularised least square machine learning algorithm approach used in the study examines the marginal effects of the public sector innovation outcomes on sustainable development for robust findings. Therefore, the policy suggestions are solely concerned with the public sector’s adoption of more innovation dynamics through appropriate policy formulation. [R]
74.342 KING, Aaron S. ; LEE, Daniel J. —
Studies of candidate entry in the USA have either focused on the major parties and their primaries, non-major parties, or both but separately. We extend the research on American party politics by analyzing how potential candidates weigh different routes to the general election: major party primaries versus non-major party paths. We develop a theoretical model of candidate entry that recognizes the option to run outside of major party primaries and argue that increased primary competition can drive potential candidates to seek an alternative route to the general election. A districtlevel analysis of candidate entry (i.e., number of candidates) in US House elections (2008-2018) supports our hypotheses. By looking beyond traditional pathways to office, we uncover new evidence on the permeability of major parties and show how non-major party actors and institutions play an integral role in the two-party system. [R]
74.343 KING, Janna ; GAILMARD, Sean ; WOOD, Abby —
Congressional oversight is a potentially potent tool to affect policy making and implementation by executive agencies. However, oversight of any agency is dispersed among several committees across the House and Senate. How does this decentralization affect the strategic incentives for oversight by each committee? And how do the strategic incentives of oversight committees align with the collective interest of Congress as a whole? We develop a formal, spatial model of decentralized oversight to investigate these questions. The model shows that when committees have similar interests in affecting agency policy, committees attempt to free ride on each other, and oversight levels are inefficiently low. But if committees have competing interests in affecting agency policy, they engage in “dueling oversight” with little overall effect, and oversight levels are inefficiently high. Overall, we contend that committee oversight incentives do not generally align with the collective interests of Congress, and the problem cannot be easily solved by structural changes within a single chamber. [R]
74.344 KLINT, Thorkil, et al. —
Elections determine the composition of legislatures, but the study of legislative representation has long been hampered by limited individual-level data on legislators. Recent innovations have vastly increased opportunities for studying legislators, but often have limited historical coverage. We introduce the Danish Legislators Database (DLD), a database of members of Denmark’s parliament, Folketinget, for every electoral term since its inception in 1849. Relative to most existing databases, the DLD is rare in covering the entire history of a parliamentary body going back more than 170 years. The DLD thus enables analyses of parliamentary representation with full temporal coverage. We describe the development and content of the DLD and present a set of analyses illustrating the potential uses of the database in the study of representation. [R]
74.345 KORNBERG, Maya ; SIEFKEN, Sven T. —
Committees are important units of parliaments around the world, but their use in public engagement has been underexplored. Committees can conduct public hearings, which have been analysed as tools for information processing. Following a conceptual overview, the article analyses data collected for the 2022 Global Parliamentary Report on hearings as a tool for public engagement. Based on the survey responses of 69 parliamentary chambers and interviews with MPs and staff, it explores how, and where hearings are used for engagement. Spotlighting innovations such as committee field hearings and core issues from committee practice, such as digital hearings, and mechanisms for the involvement of CSOs, it becomes clear that the perspective on hearings must be broadened beyond legislation and oversight and their role in public engagement must be taken seriously — both for academic study and political practice. [R] [See Abstr. 74.352]
74.346 KREWSON, Christopher ; SCHROEDEL, Jean Reith —
Men and women diverge in their political behavior and attitudes. We test whether gender-based variation in political attitudes extends to perceptions of US Supreme Court legitimacy. Using a dataset covering the years 2012-2017, we show that one’s identification as a man or a woman predicts their diffuse support for the Court. In particular, women almost always extend less legitimacy to the Court than men do. This is true within both Republican and Democratic identifiers, and regression analysis shows the gender gap holds when controlling for partisanship, ideology, race, age, education, income, and Supreme Court approval. Additionally, we included a series of questions in a 2021 Cooperative Election Study (CES) module to explore why the gender gap in perceived legitimacy exists. We find that differences in perceptions of the Court’s representation of women and its fairness drive the gender gap in legitimacy. [R]
74.347 KROEGER, Mary ; SILFA, Maria —
Do bureaucratic actions trigger political engagement by firms? From 2005 through 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission conducted a pilot study, for which they exempted a third of the stocks in the Russell 3000 Index from short-selling price restrictions. This case presents a unique opportunity to study the connection between governmental regulation and firms’ costly political engagement in an experimentally manipulated setting. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that firms exempted from price restrictions on short selling are more likely to lobby than the rest of the firms in the pilot study. In contrast, there is no discernible effect on treated firms’ political action committee contribution patterns. This study helps clarify the strategic motivations behind why firms differentially engage in political activity. [R]
74.348 KROEGER, Mary A. ; KARCH, Andrew ; CALLAGHAN, Timothy —
Recent media reports imply that corporations, industry groups, and think tanks exercise outsized influence in state legislatures by promoting model legislation. Before making sweeping claims about how special interests dominate the legislative process, it is essential to compare their purported influence to that of other sources. This article performs such a comparison by applying textual analysis to two original datasets — one including over 2400 state bills that challenge 12 national policies and one including more than 1000 model bills. It finds that lawmakers are more likely to develop legislation internally or rely on legislation from other states than to use model bills. These results suggest that while special interests can sometimes exploit the safeguards of federalism to advance their partisan goals, that dynamic is far from the norm. [R]
74.349 KUIPERS, Nicholas —
I surveyed the universe of recent applicants to the Indonesian civil service to study the effects of high-stakes examinations on political attitudes. Leveraging applicants’ scores on the civil service examination, I employ a regression discontinuity design to compare the attitudes of applicants who narrowly failed with those who narrowly passed. I show that the simple fact of failure on the civil service examination decreased applicants’ belief in the legitimacy of the process and levels of national identification while increasing support for in-group preferentialism. Next, I find that applicants who were offered — and accepted — employment in the civil service reported higher satisfaction with the process, greater amity toward outgroups, and higher national identification. [R, abr.]
74.350 LASTRA-ANADÓN, Carlos X. ; PETERSON, Paul E. —
Federalism theorists debate the desirability of funding local services from local revenues or inter-governmental grants. Tiebout expects efficiency gains from local funding, but Oates says it perpetuates inequalities. Research using data from national probability samples has yet to show whether efficiency-equity trade-offs are associated with funding sources. We describe the trade-off in education by estimating the effect of revenue share from local sources on math and reading achievement. Data come from national probability samples of student performances on tests administered between 1990 and 2017. Relationships are estimated with OLS descriptive models, event study models of school finance reforms, and geographic discontinuity models that exploit differences in state funding policies. For every ten-percentage point increase in local revenue share, mean achievement rises by 0.05 standard deviations (sd) and socio-economic achievement gaps widen by 0.03sd. [R, abr.]
74.351 LEE, Boram ; POMIRCHY, Michael ; SCHONFELD, Bryan —
Are US legislators responsive to public opinion on trade? Despite the prevalence of preference-based approaches to international trade, not much work has directly assessed the relationship between constituency opinion and positioning by members of Congress on trade bills. We assess dynamic responsiveness (whether shifting constituency opinion on trade yields corresponding changes among legislators) by exploiting an original dataset on the positions of members of Congress on the North American Free Trade Agreement at various points leading up to the November 1993 roll-call vote. We find no evidence of dynamic re-sponsiveness to shifting constituency opinion on even a highly salient piece of trade legislation. We provide qualitative evidence that interest group influence may instead be the predominant source of shifting legislator positioning on trade. [R]
74.352 LESTON-BANDEIRA, Cristina ; SIEFKEN, Sven T. —
Public engagement has become a noticeable activity for parliaments across the world. However, we lack understanding of its role despite considerable developments in scholarly work on public engagement in the sciences and on deliberative and participatory democracy by social scientists. This article provides a framework to understand the significance of parliamentary public engagement and to evaluate its effectiveness. It explains how parliamentary public engagement has emerged because of a representational shift in who is doing the representing in parliament and in what is represented, following key societal changes. We define parliamentary public engagement, showing the importance of differentiating between the activity, its effects and broader democratic ideals. We identify information and education as the types of engagement activity most developed by parliaments, with much still to do in consultation and participation activities. The article finishes with a discussion of seven key challenges in developing and implementing effective institutional parliamentary public engagement practices. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on "Public Engagement in the Work of Parliaments: global practitioner perspectives", introduced by MARTIN CHUNGONG. See also Abstr. 74.330, 345, 372, 380, 390]
74.353 LIBGOBER, Brian ; RASHIN, Steven —
Public comments on proposed federal regulations are thought to influence bureaucratic policy choices, but why? While reelection incentives give politicians straightforward reasons for catering to public preferences, regulators lack similarly direct incentives to accede to demands from stake-holders. We argue commenters may adopt several different tactics to try [to] persuade regulators. Broadly, they may either describe policy consequences or threaten the regulator with sanctions, especially by the Courts or Congress. But which tactics do members of the public — especially firms and interest groups — use during commenting, and why? We explore this question by extensive manual coding of comments submitted by strategic actors during high-stakes financial rulemaking. We find that the vast majority of comments have purely informational content, with very limited threats to involve political principals. [R, abr.]
74.354 LICHTMANNEGGER, Christina ; TOBIAS, Bach —
Administrative reform policies cutting across several sectors are commonplace in the public sector. However, reform policies do not necessarily result in organizational change. This article examines intra-organizational change within the Austrian Ministry of Agriculture in a longitudinal case study covering a period of three decades, which allows us to study shortterm and long term-effects of administrative reforms. Whereas existing research mainly uses single-factor explanations for inter- and intra-organizational change, this article emphasizes the interplay of various drivers of organizational change within government organizations. In analytical terms, we draw on the multiple streams framework to study intra-organizational decision-making which is embedded in government-wide administrative reform policies. We find that reform leads to intra-organizational change when a political entrepreneur is able to couple solutions and problems in a decision window, which may happen decades after the initial reform attempts, underscoring that short-term reform failure may turn into success in a long-term perspective. [R]
74.355 LÓPEZ-SANTANA, Mariely —
Recent fiscal crises in Detroit and Puerto Rico have brought Financial Oversight Boards (FOBs) to the forefront. In spite of these developments, there is a notable gap in the literature as social scientists have barely studied this type of oversight organization and its implications. This article highlights intergovernmental and political dynamics that arise with the imposition of FOBs in localities facing fiscal distress by studying the case of the Puerto Rican FOB, commonly known as la junta. By focusing on the governance of the largest debt restructuring in the history of the US bond market, in the context of a newly established territorial bankruptcy regime, this article explores how the presence of the Puerto Rican FOB has been linked to contentious dynamics that challenge local autonomy and democratic principles. [R, abr.]
74.356 LUCARDI, Adrián ; MICOZZI, Juan Pablo ; SKIGIN, Natán —
When (and why) do legislators quit their jobs? Previous answers to this question have focused on retirements. Looking at voluntary resignations instead, in this article we argue that leaving Congress to assume an elected (executive) office or a position in the (sub)national bureaucracy may be a career-advancing move motivated by progressive ambition. We document this claim with data from Argentina, where roughly 12% of elected deputies leave voluntarily before their term ends, but rarely become unemployed. Consistent with expectations, we show that resignations tend to follow instances of executive alternation at the (sub)national level, and are driven by legislators placed at the top of party lists as well as those elected in midterm years. [R]
74.357 MAGALHÃES, Pedro C., et al. —
How do people respond to different decision-making processes in high courts? One long-standing view suggests that citizens expect courts to be neutral arbiters of legal controversies. Although the relevance of such “myth of legality” has been challenged, we know very little about the relationship between the portrayals of the motives of courts and justices and public attitudes in civil law countries. We explore this question in a pair of experiments in Norway and Portugal where we isolate the effects of different institutional frames from outcome favorability. We find that while partisan frames are detrimental to fairness perceptions and acceptance of decisions, depictions of judicial decision-making that emphasize policy goals do not adversely affect citizens’ responses in comparison with legalistic frames. [R, abr.]
74.358 MARYUNI, Maryuni —
A women’s parliamentary caucus works to strengthen the goals of women in a legislative body. It trains female members of the parliament in legislation and facilitates communication among feminists in parliament and civil society in pursuing common goals through collective action to enact feminist legislation. Qualitative research in Indonesia over the parliamentary term 2009-2014 has suggested that active communication is vital for the performance of such functions. Poor communication in the study term resulted in an inability to initiate collective action, a mismatched design of capacity-building activity and diminishment of the relationship between feminists in parliament and civil society. The existence of a caucus alone is insufficient. A functioning caucus is essential for substantive representation of women. [R]
74.359 MAVROT, Céline ; HADORN, Susanne —
The non-implementation of political decisions is a major challenge of contemporary political life. Policy analysis has devoted careful attention to implementation gaps resulting from administrative non-compliance with political orders. However, the fact that political authorities actually want to enforce all policies should not be taken for granted. This article proposes a conceptual model that systematically accounts for cross-agency divergence and convergence processes both at the political and at the street levels. We find that in inter-sectoral policies, dissent between different heads of agencies (political level) or between groups of implementing bureaucrats (street level) rather than dissent between the political and the street-level can be a major cause of non-compliance. Based on a comparative dataset on the implementation of the smoking ban in 12 Swiss states, the article analyzes cross-agency fragmentation processes. It advocates a stronger dialogue between street-level bureaucracy and policy coordination literatures, and nuances the conceptualization of (non-)compliance in a cross-agency context. [R]
74.360 McCRAIN, Joshua ; O’CONNELL, Stephen D. —
More than half of the current members of the US Congress served in their state legislature prior to holding federal office. We quantify the relationship between state legislative service and career progression to Congress. Using close elections for exogenous assignment of political experience across otherwise similar candidates, we show that serving in the state legislature more than doubles an individual’s probability of eventually contesting a Congressional seat relative to a similar candidate who lost in a comparable election; it also doubles the individual politician’s probability of eventually winning a Congressional seat. State legislatures thus create national politicians out of otherwise marginal political entrants. We then show that the effect of state legislative service on career progression is larger in more professionalized legislatures, highlighting the role of institutions in facilitating political career progression. Our results hold important implications for representation and accountability, and confirm that prevailing institutions can affect political selection via career progression. [R]
74.361 McLAUGHLIN, Peter T. —
In 2010, the United States Congress placed a moratorium on earmarks — congressionally mandated spending projects. But did the earmark moratorium actually rid public policy of earmarks? I use earmark data and 2010-2020 state-level highway funding metrics to examine the relationship between previously expired transportation earmarks and federal highway funding during the earmark moratorium. Earmarks in the 2005 surface transportation law (SAFETEA-LU) continued to benefit certain states in 2020, even though the projects technically expired in 2009. This is because the funding “formulas” established by all post-2009 surface transportation laws were fully determined by the highway allocation percentage each state received in the preceding year, inclusive of earmarks. Further, I find the relationship between SAFETEA-LU earmarks and state funding disparities strengthened from 2010 to 2020, meaning the expired earmarks increased in policy significance during the moratorium. Highly earmarked states became even more advantaged after the earmarks were institutionalised into the highway funding formula. [R]
74.362 McMULLIN, Caitlin —
Previous literature on co-production tends to position the professional as engaging in core service delivery activities, while the citizen co-producer may contribute to either complementary or core tasks. Bringing together insights from the literature on co-production and the facilitation of citizen initiatives, I present a typology of the complementary tasks undertaken by professionals, focusing on professionals who work for third sector organisations. Based on an analysis of qualitative data, I posit that third sector professionals may undertake three categories of complementary tasks — training, administrative support and budget management. These professionals experience tensions between balancing core/complementary tasks and skilled/unskilled tasks, and between co-producing with citizens or doing the work on their own. This article makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of the professional as a facilitator in co-production, as a means to more effectively engage citizens in designing and delivering public services. [R] [See Abstr. 74.496]
74.363 McNABB, Danielle —
With the patriation of the Constitution in 1982, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) inherited extraordinary political powers. In response to the Court’s expanded power of judicial review, there was a sizeable increase in the number of political actors “intervening” in SCC cases. Scholars of Canadian law and politics are deeply divided on whether civil society participation in the courts — particularly as intervenors — is democratically legitimate. This important debate cannot be settled without an empirical evaluation of who intervenes. This research note provides an analysis of all the Charter cases heard by the SCC between 2013 and 2021. In contrast to the field’s dominant theory on interest-group legal mobilization — the Court Party thesis — the findings reveal that equity-deserving interest groups, such as those representing women, have an irregular presence in Court. Instead, powerful actors such as governments and legal associations make up a majority of the “repeat player” intervenors. While further research is warranted, the research note concludes that without the maintenance of sufficient support structures, intervention may be unable to perform a democratizing function. [R]
74.364 MICHELSON, Noam —
Previous studies on the “revolving door” phenomenon primarily focused on politicians and high-ranking civil servants. This paper comprehensively surveys the transition of all ranks of civil servants and political figures into the private sector, investigating the determinants and implications for firm value. Using a comprehensive dataset of former government officials hired by publicly listed firms in Israel from 2007 to 2015, the study reveals that 60% of these firms hire former government officials, constituting 9% of all directors and executives. Findings indicate that firms with higher regulatory burdens are more likely to hire former government officials. Additionally, the appointment of a former government official to a firm’s management is associated with an increase in firm value. Notably, the value increase is not dependent on the appointee holding a high-ranking government position. The effect is more significant when the appointee is the first former government official hired by the firm, and it diminishes with the time elapsed since their departure from the political or civil service positions. [R, abr.]
74.365 MILLER, Banks ; CURRY, Brett —
We assess the influence professional background — specifically, having been a prosecutor or a public defender — exerts on decision-making by federal district court judges. Focusing on search and seizure cases, we analyze nearly 1500 motions to suppress evidence from 2000 to 2022. In addition to controlling for judicial ideology and a judge’s prior experience as a prosecutor or public defender, we utilize matching to address endogeneity concerns related to one’s ability to self-select into one of these positions — which may itself be influenced by that individual’s ideological predispositions. We find that having been a former prosecutor, as well as the length of time that service spans, makes a judge significantly more likely to rule against a motion to suppress. Former public defenders are significantly more likely to grant that suppression motion. [R, abr.]
74.366 MILLER, Michael G. —
Growing evidence suggests that extreme candidates perform worse, in part because their party’s share of turnout declines. But does candidate ideology affect the decision of whether to abstain in a House race among voters who already turned out in the presidential election? I examine the relationship between candidates’ ideology and voter abstention in the House contest, reporting two main results. First, fewer voters abstain in elections featuring more ideologically polarized House candidates. A consideration of party effects reveals more nuance, however: In most cases, roll-off is lower when extreme candidates run, but the effect of an extreme Republican is substantially larger than that of an extreme Democrat. Further analysis suggests that decreased roll-off is probably due to extreme candidates mobilizing out-partisans. [R, abr.]
74.367 MUELLER, Sean ; VATTER, Adrian ; DICK, Sereina —
Second chambers frequently form part of national institutional configurations, but their impact on policy making can vary from negligible to all-important veto players. The standard approach is to assess their importance via two dimensions: formal powers and compositional differences vis-à-vis the first chamber. In this paper, we conceptualise a third dimension: the legitimacy of second chambers. We subsequently measure the strength of second chambers in 14 countries and develop a new index of bicameralism. Running several quantitative analyses with a total sample of 29 OECD countries, we show how this index is significantly correlated to lower state intervention in the economy and greater regional autonomy. [R]
74.368 MURANA, Asimiyu Olalekan —
Legislature-executive impasse is one of the challenges Nigeria’s democracy has been facing since its transition back to civil rule on May 29, 1999. The polity has been witnessing conflicts between the legislature and the executive over budget matters. Despite certain provisions of the 1999 constitution aimed at rectifying some of the problems identified with legislature-executive relations in the previous Republics, the Fourth Republic also followed the confrontational and conflictual power relations between the executive and the legislature. This study seeks to look beyond a constitutional solution to manage the intermittent imbroglio between the legislature and the executive with a view to fostering good governance and development. The study relies on secondary data. The paper investigates the factors responsible for legislature-executive conflictual relations; and the effects of this impasse on budget, governance and development. It also examines the mechanisms for legislature-executive collaborative relations. [R]
74.369 NG Yi Ming, et al. —
Who speaks for marginalised communities in dominant-party parliaments, where electoral accountability is weak? While existing work demonstrates the persistent salience of a legislator’s personal identity in such settings, we build on recent ‘critical actor’ theory to argue for factors beyond identity-based selection to explain why representatives might speak for marginalised communities. To this end, we use a mixed-methods approach to analyse the representation of six marginal communities in Singapore’s dominant-party system. A quantitative content analysis of all 8246 parliamentary questions filed from 2011 to 2020 shows that in addition to representative gender and ethnics identities, prior careers and political tenure also influence marginal community representation. In-depth interviews with seven Member of Parliament help identify precise mechanisms for such representation, including shared experience, career-derived awareness, political freshness and representative philosophies. [R, abr.]
74.370 NOBLE, Benjamin S. —
Does increasing executive power necessarily decrease accountability? To answer this question, I develop a two-period signaling model comparing voter welfare in two separation-of-powers settings. In one, the executive works with a median legislator to change policy; in the other, the executive chooses between legislation or unilateral action. Both politicians may have preferences that diverge from the voter’s, yet I find that increasing executive power may increase accountability and welfare, even in some cases when the legislator is more likely to share the voter’s preferences than the executive. Unilateral power allows a congruent executive to overcome gridlock, implement the voter’s preferred policy, and reveal information about the politicians’ types — which can outweigh the risks of a divergent executive wielding power for partisan ends. [R]
74.371 O’BROCHTA, William —
When do politicians respond to individuals’ public service complaints? Technological solutions — termed e-governance — have been shown to help increase responsiveness in some developing nations where they serve to connect individuals, politicians, and bureaucrats for the first time. I argue that in country-contexts like India, where personal connections to bureaucrats and politicians are common, politicians are less responsive to complaints registered with e-governance systems than to complaints delivered via personal connections. Using data from public complaints, complaint responses, and field interviews in Delhi, I show that politicians are not responsive when complaints submitted to e-governance systems increase, but that they are responsive to complaints submitted to them through personal connections. This result suggests that the introduction of an e-governance system does not necessarily increase government performance. [R, abr.]
74.372 ODEYEMI, Temitayo Isaac ; OLORUNSHOLA, Damilola Temitope ; AJIBOLA, Boluwatife Solomon —
Previous research and observed practices demonstrate that as hubs of public participation in governance, parliaments are devising means and prioritising resources that promote more public-facing initiatives to reach out to different segments of society. The diverse means through which these happen, across contexts, pose the ‘danger’ of randomness and spontaneity which ultimately limits institutional memory and consistency. This article explores how parliaments can enhance content and outcomes through the institutionalisation of public engagement. It demonstrates how legal and institutional frameworks — as a system of rules and formalised standards — are combined to set clearly defined templates, and how these align with processes for enhanced public engagement practices. In using South Africa to frame its analysis, the article draws on the 2022 IPU-UNDP Global Parliamentary Report interviews and document analysis of relevant frameworks and reports. We show how leveraging historical, geographic, social-linguistics, and demographic contexts help to strengthen parliament-public interface through institutionalisation. [R] [See Abstr. 74.352]
74.373 OZKALELI, F. Murat —
On 1 March 2003, the Turkish government’s war power motion failed in Parliament even though most legislators had voted in favour of it, keeping Turkey out of the war in Iraq. This outcome reflected the anti-war sentiment among the Turkish public but confounded Turkish-American relations. The Turkish case shows that, contrary to one of the main assertations of the actor-specific perspectives, parliaments can play an important role in foreign policy decision making. How can Turkish legislative war powers be explained? This study argues that the distinct position of the Parliament can best be analysed by exploring the historical evolution of war powers across the constitutions since the late Ottoman period, focusing on several critical junctures during a long path that turned Parliament into a key veto player in foreign policy making, capable of frustrating the executive’s intention to join a war. [R]
74.374 PANARO, Angelo Vito ; VACCARO, Andrea —
In recent decades, there has been an institutional shift in the literature on authoritarian regimes, with scholars investigating the role of political institutions, such as elections and political parties, in shaping regime stability and economic performance. However, scant attention has been devoted to the effect of political institutions on policy outcomes, and more specifically, on income inequality. This paper adds to this debate and sheds light on the role of formal and informal institutions, on the one hand, and state capacity, on the other, in influencing levels of income inequality in autocracies. We argue that, while the presence of elections and multiparty competition creates more favourable conditions for the adoption of redistributive policies, state capacity increases the likelihood of successfully implemented policy decisions aimed at reducing the level of inequality. Our empirical analysis rests on a time-series cross-sectional dataset, which includes around 100 countries from 1972 to 2014. The findings indicate that both political institutions and a higher level of state capacity lead to lower levels of income inequality in authoritarian contexts. [R]
74.375 PAPENFUSS, Ulf ; SCHMIDT, Christian Arno —
Corporatization has great potential for public service provision, but governments face severe challenges in recruiting executive directors (EDs) with relevant human capital. Debates arise about the roles of sector-switching and politicization in public corporation governance, but a critical research gap exists. ED pay (EDP) is a crucial governance factor and signifies the valuation of ED human capital. This study links debates on sector-switching and politicization with human capital theory discourses and analyzes a panel dataset of 1832 ED observations in 291 German public corporations. Political mandate holders and former private-sector EDs receive significantly higher EDP, whereas political human capital is valued even higher. Operating in a profit context strengthens the pay effects for political mandate-holders but, contrary to widespread assumptions, not for former private-sector EDs. [R, abr.]
74.376 PEDRAZZANI, Andrea ; ZUCCHINI, Francesco —
Not all governments survive until the next scheduled election. Some are replaced during their term in office by executives with a different party composition and/or portfolio distribution. Others are able to be ‘reborn’ as the successor government, undergoing only minimal changes. Such variation has to date received scant attention in studies on government durability. By classifying non-electoral replacements according to the degree of ministerial turnover, this article shows that new cabinets are often similar to their predecessors. It hypothesises that the likelihood of this pattern occurring is greater: when members of the current cabinet face bargaining problems in forming a very different cabinet, as in the case of surplus (unnecessary) parties in oversized coalitions; when the policy distance between the parliamentary median party and the current opposition widens; and when the executive’s economic performance discourages opposition parties from forming new coalitions with some incumbent parties. The risk of experiencing different types of replacement is estimated using data on Western European cabinets (1946-2021). [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 74.826]
74.377 PEREIRA, Carlos ; BERTHOLINI, Frederico ; MELO, Marcus —
The received wisdom on executive-legislative relations in multiparty presidential systems is that the size of the president’s majority in Congress is the key factor explaining governance patterns, particularly the president’s legislative success. However, in many cases presidents enjoying a nominal majority have been unable to pass legislation and have faced institutional instability. The article departs from a conventional definition of divided government and focuses on the preference incongruence between the governing coalition and the floor of Congress. It argues that the ideological distance between the floor and the coalition is a key factor explaining the president’s cost of governing (which includes factors such as the distribution of cabinet portfolios and budgetary transfers to coalition partners). The article provides an empirical test with data from Brazil that find that the greater the ideological incongruence, the higher the cost of governing for the president. [R]
74.378 PÓCZA, Kálmán, et al. —
The article addresses the budgetary implications of constitutional adjudication by analysing the decisions of the Hungarian Constitutional Court (HCC) between 1990 and 2018. Our results highlight that the HCC does not narrow the parliamentary majority’s room to manoeuvre by blocking policies with serious budgetary consequences, and the potential budgetary consequences of a decision do not weigh in with the judicial output. At the same time, right-leaning courts are more likely to declare a law unconstitutional passed by a left-wing parliamentary majority, whereas left-wing courts adjudicate unconstitutionality with about roughly the same likelihood in cases of right- and left-leaning parliaments. [R]
74.379 PORTER, Rachel ; STEELMAN, Tyler S. —
The electoral dominance of “quality” candidates — political insiders with a history of holding office — is well-established. However, research on the recent rise in successful political neophytes is less studied. Despite longstanding trends in the predominance of experienced candidates in primary elections, nearly half of all quality candidates who ran in non-incumbent races lost to a candidate without prior electoral experience in 2018. We investigate the success of political newcomers in elections for the US House of Representatives by examining a topic often overlooked in the growing literature on primaries: campaign finance. We show that, from 2016 to 2020, political newcomers saw (1) greater success in future fundraising, and (2) an increased likelihood of primary election victory when they garnered more early contributions from outside their district. [R, abr.]
74.380 PRIOR, Alex ; SIVASHANKAR, Maanasa —
Parliaments are physical symbols of nationhood and democracy. Public access to these spaces is often strictly regulated, yet it remains highly influential to public experiences of parliament (and their engagement with it). Drawing on data collected for the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s 2022 Global Parliamentary Report, this article discusses ways in which parliamentary ‘space’ can be utilised to encourage public engagement. This encompasses the effective use of physical space, virtual reality and augmented reality for the purpose of public engagement. In doing so, we show the most important and effective strategy for (re)using, and opening up, parliamentary spaces: the complementary use of physical and virtual methods in not only bringing publics to parliament, but also bringing parliament to publics. [R] [See Abstr. 74.352]
74.381 RAVANILLA, Nico ; HICKEN, Allen —
Research in legislative politics suggests that the desire to get reelected encourages legislators to “bring home the pork” — by delivering electorally rewarding, targeted spending. This is particularly true where the electoral system encourages incumbents to cultivate a personal vote. We analyze how Philippine Senators spend their Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and using the staggered elections to identify variation in reelection status, we show that senatorial reelectionists do not always bring home the pork. Because Philippine Senators are elected by plurality-at-large voting by the national electorate, they tend to spend their CDF allotments closer to elections but avoid allocating them disproportionately to their local strongholds. These findings illustrate how electoral rules can deter targeted spending but lead legislators to find alternative ways to build a personal vote. [R]
74.382 REICH, Gary M. ; SCOTT, Michael C. —
We examine patterns of county participation in immigration enforcement across the Obama and Trump administrations and responses to the Trump administration’s efforts to mandate local compliance with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directives. We focus on the policy that directly speaks to local discretion in enforcing federal law — namely, the willingness of local officials to render immigrant detainees to ICE. We find that underlying patterns of detainee transfers from counties to ICE were largely consistent between the Obama and Trump administrations. Nonetheless, the rate of detainee transfers increased during the Trump administration, an outcome associated with county support for Trump in the 2016 election. The findings suggest that partisanship is an entrenched source of diverging county enforcement practices, increasing intergovernmental conflict and undermining the “steam valve” potential of immigration federalism. [R]
74.383 RICH, Jessica A. J. —
The solution to weak bureaucratic capacity in developing countries is often presumed to be more accountability. This paper shows how accountability initiatives, intended to reduce corruption, can actually hinder the development of capable government agencies by making it harder for directors to recruit experts and spend their budgets. It further highlights a common way public servants escape the accountability rules that limit their effectiveness: outsourcing bureaucracies to nonstate organizations. This practice of outsourcing bureaucracy to avoid accountability rules creates what I call “shadow” state capacity and, paradoxically, it may help explain “pockets of effectiveness” among government social programs in developing countries. Drawing on in-depth interviews and descriptive statistics, I show how outsourcing was a critical factor in producing two of Brazil’s most vaunted social sector programs. [R, abr.]
74.384 RIESE, Dorothee —
Opposition parties in parliamentary democracies act as controllers of the executive. Consequently, executive secrecy should be a pressing issue as it deprives them of information for public scrutiny. This article investigates how parliamentary opposition parties and individual politicians discuss executive secrecy using the example of the German Bundestag. Given disagreement about secrecy’s legitimacy, especially in actual political practice, the article systematises opposition strategies. The analysis reveals two distinct ones: active cooperation strategies, where opposition parties cooperate with the governing majority to legally define secrecy’s framework and oversight, and passive coping strategies where MPs develop scrutiny practices that function despite secrecy. [R]
74.385 ROSENSTIEL, Leah —
In the US, state and local governments receive over $700 billion annually in federal grants, yet relatively little is known about how Congress designs these programs. I formalize a theory of congressional bargaining over grants and test the theory using an original dataset of Senate amendments. The results suggest that congressional rules and political considerations shape, and at times distort, federal grant programs. While grant programs may be intended to improve education or provide health care, I find that members of Congress treat these programs as opportunities to procure more funding for their constituents. Further, I show how coalitions are shaped by the status quo policy and the distribution of population, poverty, and other demographic characteristics across states. These results have important implications for our understanding of the policymaking process and who benefits from federal programs. [R]
74.386 RUTHERFORD, Amanda ; HAMEDUDDIN, Taha —
Attention to vacancies in appointee positions subject to US Senate confirmation has grown dramatically. Research regarding appointee vacancies commonly assumes negative consequences — loss of political control, promotion of second-rate subordinates, undermined teamwork — for public agencies though little empirical work exists to confirm such expectations. This study tests whether vacancies at the top of US federal agencies influence job satisfaction and turnover intention among upper-level employees. Using vacancy data and multiple waves of the Federal Human Capital Survey/Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, we find that upperlevel employees report marginally higher levels of satisfaction when vacancies occur. Further, these vacancies have a negative association with individual-level intent to leave an agency for another job in the federal government, signaling a higher likelihood that institutional knowledge is maintained. [R]
74.387 SAARI, Muthanna —
This article explores the ways in which the suspension of standing orders is being practised in the Dewan Rakyat (House of Representatives) of Malaysia during part of the 14th Parliament from 2018 to 2020, with regard to its ultimate goal in achieving legislative functions, rather than as a shortcut to advance legislative or other business. This paper examines the legitimacy of having specific provisions in the Standing Orders of the Dewan Rakyat that would allow a suspension of standing orders to be carried out. Comparable to practices in the Australian and the New Zealand House of Representatives, it is suggested that a clear procedure for the suspension of standing orders in the Dewan Rakyat needs to be devised as part of achieving the proper legislative function of Parliament. [R]
74.388 SANDERS, David —
The article reviews the character of Johnson’s constitutional violations during his period as prime minister. Using data from a recent survey of UK voters, it then explores the damaging effect that his period in office has had on UK public opinion. Despite his removal from office, Johnson retains a hard core of support across the wider electorate and, in particular, among grassroots Conservative supporters and party members. These supporters remain largely unaware of Johnson’s constitutional crimes, and where they do know about them, they forgive them. This creates the real danger either that Johnson may at some future date return to office to repeat his offences, or that a similarly populist successor might deploy the same anti-democratic devices that Johnson himself used in his desperate attempts to cling to power. [R]
74.389 SENDRA, Mariana ; BOHIGUES, Asbel —
Due to the historical centrality of presidents in Latin America, we argue that presidential approval can be a source of group membership among citizens, creating a division between “ingroups” and “outgroups.” We test the effects of such division on tolerant attitudes toward the rights of system critics to participate in political life in four ways (from the least to the most threatening for the ingroup): voting, giving speeches on television, running for office, and demonstrating peacefully. We further argue that this effect is conditioned by the economic context, and that the ingroup/outgroup divide is activated when an economy performs poorly. Analysis of the AmericasBarometer 2018/2019 survey is consistent with our expectations. Specifically, our results suggest that the main predictor for tolerant attitudes is presidential approval, and that the individual-level effect dissipates in a context of good performance of the economy, which causes the presidential ingroup to not feel threatened by any outgroup. [R]
74.390 SHELDON, Christine —
Are parliamentary engagement initiatives effective? Do they add to the quality of democracy? And how can they reach a wider audience? These are key questions which, when answered, can improve a parliament’s engagement strategy significantly. This article illustrates that the answers to these questions can be found by establishing a feedback loop, through which a parliament can not only improve the quality of engagement, but in doing so, boosts participation. It draws on the data derived from research conducted for the IPU Global Parliamentary Report (GPR). More precisely, this concerns a focus group, a parliaments survey, as well as a plethora of interviews which were conducted to get individual, accounts of engagement. The findings indicate that through careful evaluation, impact assessment, and transparent reporting of findings, parliaments can finetune engagement practices and generate incentives for engaging. Additionally, guidelines are presented on how best to establish a public engagement feedback loop. [R] [See Abstr. 74.352]
74.391 SILVA, Thiago N. —
Recent studies provide evidence that the absence of a no-confidence procedure in presidential systems is crucial for understanding why the allocation of portfolios does not follow the same pattern in both parliamentary and presidential democracies. In this study, I argue that distinctions within presidential systems must be used to explain the substantial variation in the allocation of portfolios to presidential parties. I theorize that when the president is more dependent upon the legislature to make and enact policies, the balance of power in presidential cabinets is more likely to reflect the balance of power in the legislature. In this case, the presidential cabinet can resemble the proportional cabinets usually formed in parliamentary systems. With new data from 20 presidential democracies worldwide spanning more than 70 years, the results support the expectation of a greater formateur’s advantage when presidents have greater institutionallygranted powers to influence the policy agenda in the legislature. [R]
74.392 STOLZ, Klaus ; LINHART, Eric —
Territorial representation, the representation of local entities in the Westminster Parliament, lies at the heart of British democracy. In the recent academic debate, it has been asked whether local representation also needs a local representative and which specific characteristics would constitute ‘localness’ in this context. Investigating the biographies of 1108 Westminster MPs between 2010 and 2019 and exploring different dimensions of local base, this study examines the extent to which the demand for a local representative is actually fulfilled in the British Parliament. We discover a slow yet stable increase in the descriptive representation of the local (DRL) over time as well as notable variations across party and regions, especially among the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. Applying a genuine territorial perspective to our results, we link the detected DRL increase to the general territorialisation of politics in the UK. [R, abr.]
74.393 THÜRK, Maria ; KRAUSS, Svenja —
The vast majority of elections in parliamentary systems result in minority situations. During cabinet formation, parties have three options: building a winning coalition, a genuine substantive minority cabinet without support, or a formal minority with institutionalised long-term support partnerships. Even though the use of permanent support partners has increased substantially, there is still comparatively little knowledge about the circumstances under which parties choose to enter such formalised support partnerships instead of winning coalitions. This article aims to close this gap by analysing how the party system, the institutional configuration, as well as the bargaining environment influence which cabinet type forms. The dataset includes 469 cabinets from 27 Eastern and Western European countries between 1970 and 2019. The hypotheses are tested with the help of multinomial model estimations. While only few of the traditional explanations can explain the formation of formal minority cabinets, the results show that there is a time-trend towards more formalisation. [R] [See Abstr. 74.826]
74.394 TRUMM, Siim ; BARCLAY, Andrew —
The 2016 European Union referendum revealed fundamental divisions in British politics and society more broadly. It also raised key questions around representation and the role of Members of Parliament. Should they follow their own judgement or their constituents’ preferences when the two are not aligned? This study uses data from the Representative Audit of Britain Survey to examine what parliamentary candidates believe the answer to this question should be. We find that most candidates expect Members of Parliament to prioritise their own views. This belief is particularly prevalent among incumbents and those who do not think of Members of Parliament as career politicians. We also find a gender effect as male candidates are more likely to think that Members of Parliament should prioritise their own views than female candidates. Interestingly, however, there is no evidence of a Brexit effect when we compare the views of 2015 and 2017 general election candidates. [R]
74.395 VAZ LOPES, André ; MOTA VIEIRA, Diego —
This manuscript analyses the parliamentary scrutiny of the presidential appointments to the direction of independent Brazilian Regulatory Agencies from an in-depth case study of the heads of the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency — ANVISA, between 1999 and 2021. In Brazil, the Senate has the final decision on these appointments, exercising a dual function: parliamentary control over presidential patronage and selecting future heads of agencies. The article explains how the parliament exercises these functions and interferes in the appointment process. The results indicate that, although the formal process of parliamentary scrutiny seems like a game of marked cards, where it is already known in advance that the result will be approval, the Parliament plays an anticipatory role of presidential decisions, interfering in the timing of appointments and the possibility of influence over the choice of nominees. [R]
74.396 VITTORI, Davide —
Although Europeans are favourable towards the idea of being governed by ‘independent experts’, and despite the burgeoning literature on technocratic ministers, we still miss important information about the profiles of technocrats in government. This article provides new insights into the characteristics of non-partisan, non-elected ministers and the roles they perform once in government based on a Technocratic Ministers’ Dataset covering all governments in 31 European countries from 2000 to 2020. First, we show that average share of technocratic (as opposed to partisan) ministers in European cabinets rose from 9.5% to 14.2% over the last two decades. This increase is characteristic of all macro-regions, except Scandinavian countries. Second, technocratic ministers are assigned to a diversity of portfolios and not just finance and economy, which, respectively, account for only 15% of technocratic ministers. Finally, technocratic ministers do not hold office for shorter periods of time than partisan ones, except when they are part of caretaker cabinets. [R]
74.397 WARD, Joseph ; WARD, Bradley —
Many commentators have suggested that the first 18 months of the Johnson government were characterised by a propensity to centralise power. However, few accounts have situated the administration in the historical context of the British state or systematically examined these centralising tendencies. This article attempts to address these omissions. First, through a critical assessment of the literature on authoritarian neoliberal ism, the concept of ‘executive centralisation’ is developed within the context of the British state. Second, the article applies this revised framework to the early stages of the Johnson government. While a dominant executive is a long-standing feature of the British political system, it is argued that Johnson has pursued a multifaceted centralisation strategy facilitated by the context of Brexit and COVID-19. In identifying the role of consent in this process, the article augments scholarship on ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ as a moment in neoliberal governance characterised by the ascendance of coercive governing strategies. [R]
74.398 WYCKOFF GAYNOR, SoRelle —
Intraparty caucuses in the US Congress are often recognized for the information sharing, voting blocs, and personal relationships they facilitate. This article introduces an additional benefit to joining intraparty caucuses: campaign donations. Applying social network analysis and exponential random graph models to the 115th and 116th Congresses, I find that members are more likely to donate to their fellow caucus members than other members in Congress. In addition, I find that party leaders, particularly Republican party leaders, are less likely to donate to members that join intraparty caucuses, indicating that Leadership PAC funding is strategic for rank-and-file members and party leaders alike. This article adds to our understanding of intraparty caucuses, particularly their role in facilitating member-to-member campaign donations, and the relationship between caucus members and party leaders. [R]
74.399 ZHU Lin ; YANG Feng —
People’s willingness to forgive corrupt government officials has intrigued many researchers. According to a prominent explanation, citizens tolerate corrupt officials in exchange for their ability to deliver public benefits, such as promoting economic development. We contextualize this corruptioncompetence tradeoff thesis by assessing individuals’ evaluations of local officials in China. We conduct a nationwide vignette experiment with 5527 citizens, and find that the corruption-competence tradeoff exists and is hierarchical. Respondents prefer competent but corrupt low-level officials over those who are honest but incompetent, but this relative preference vanishes when they evaluate high-level local officials. Our interviews reveal that proximity to citizens and position in the power hierarchy primarily drive citizens’ sophisticated assessments of officials at different levels. [R]
(b) State, regional and local institutions/Institutions locales et régionales
74.400 AGGER, Annika ; TORTZEN, Anne —
A growing number of public professionals are now expected to facilitate co-production processes with affected citizens to produce robust policies and services. Yet the role of ‘front-line co-producers’ and how their mindset and ability to cope with the cross-pressures affects co-production remains under-theorised and empirically understudied in the scholarly literature. The article provides concepts and empirical evidence of how ‘frontline co-producers’ navigate cross-pressures by exploring the enabling and inhibiting factors for co-production. Empirically, we draw on a case study of a Danish municipality consisting of qualitative interviews with 18 public professionals at different levels, all of whom have experience working with co-production. The findings contribute to the small but growing academic literature on the role of public professionals in co-production and how their individual-level practices, together with organisational and management factors, can enable or inhibit ‘co-production on the outside’. [R] [See Abstr. 74.496]
74.401 ANDONOSKA, Ljubinka —
The purpose of this study is to test the relationship between local elections and local government budgets. Using dataset of all Macedonian municipalities for the period 2007-2015, this study examines whether the overall spending and the composition of local government expenditures are systematically manipulated just before elections. The results show that spending during the pre-election period shifts toward more desirable categories such as permanent and temporary employment, capital projects, and individual transfers and subsidies. Very few studies relate pre-electoral fiscal manipulation to clientelistic linkages. This paper fills the void by adding empirical evidence from a transitional democracy. [R]
74.402 ARAPIS, Theodore ; CHATTERJEE, Vaswati —
For all governments — federal, state, or local — natural disasters impose significant costs. Among the three, local governments typically respond first using their own resources. Thus, a proactive fiscal mechanism providing resources for initiating disaster response (e.g., emergency debris removal, medical services, rescue) appears necessary, especially for governments vulnerable to disasters. This study explores the role of natural disasters on fiscal savings strategy using data collected by Pennsylvania municipal executives via our Pandemic Management Survey. Following our findings, Pennsylvania local governments appear to weigh both their experiences and preparedness level to face a disaster. While more disaster experiences motivated fiscal savings accumulation, lower savings were retained among prepared governments. As such, disaster learning and adaptation not only could limit loss of life and property, but also lead to an efficient fiscal savings strategy. [R]
74.403 BAXTER, Susan, et al. —
Creating conditions to empower local people is an important determinant of health, and crucial in addressing health inequity. Yet, experimentation with initiatives to support public participation at a local level is threatened by enduring global economic instability. A better understanding of how different participatory approaches might address the social determinants of health would support future prioritisation of actions and investment. We reviewed recent literature and theories on initiatives to increase peoples’ influence in local decision-making and on social determinants of health. Our synthesis found little detail about the form and function of initiatives, but diverse factors deemed influential in achieving outcomes. Studies highlighted that pressure on resources undermines individual and community capacities to participate, and requires organisational leaders to think/act differently. [R, abr.]
74.404 BERGE, Dag Magne ; TORSTEINSEN, Harald —
This article explores how agencification, in terms of increasing arm’s length governance, may influence governance control with municipal service-provision if the principal and the agent develop different institutional logics. The basic expectation is that structural separation between principal and agent will challenge the principal’s control of the agent, and that this challenge will be accentuated if the structural change also leads to cultural separation, conceptualised as different institutional logics. Our findings lead to the conclusion that the relationship between formal structure and institutional logics is reciprocal; structural separation creates a separation in culture and identity, thereby accentuating the perceived distance between principal and agent, which stimulates their sense of belonging to different types of organisations. Still, development of appropriate control mechanisms is in its infancy. Formally, output control exists, but receives scarce political attention. Informal control may also work depending on adherence to a common community logic. [R]
74.405 BYNNER, Claire ; ESCOBAR, Oliver ; WEAKLEY, Sarah —
Practitioners who facilitate public participation in governance operate at the interface of three policy agendas: public service reform, social justice and democratic innovation. Scotland offers a paradigmatic site for studying this interface through the role of officials who work as facilitators of public participation. Reforms in the last two decades have generated new spaces for engaging citizens and communities while challenging official facilitators to reconcile grassroots community action with institutional engagement. This article draws on empirical research from the What Works Scotland dataset (2014-2019), which is the first to examine the nature of this role across Scotland. Our analysis unpacks the tensions of interactive modes of governance and explores facilitators’ agency in responding to cultural practices that are resistant to change. The paper argues that official facilitators are more than process designers and discursive stewards; their work involves challenging and changing the cultural practices of the state at the frontlines of democratic upheaval and renewal. [R] [See Abstr. 74.496]
74.406 CARIA, Andrea ; CERINA, Fabio ; NIEDDU, Marco —
Using a rich database covering all local politicians in Italian municipalities, we implement a regression-discontinuity analysis to evaluate the causal effect of monetary incentives on political selection in local parliamentary systems. We find that higher expected wages lead to the selection of more educated council members and executives, but do not result into better educated mayors. Low-wage councils tend to elect mayors with almost two years more schooling than the median councillor, but this difference vanishes in high-wage councils. We rationalize this finding in a model where better educated councillors shy away from better-paid but full-time positions (such as mayor) and prefer less-paid but part-time positions (executives) that allow them to devote more time to work while in office. An analysis by politicians’ occupation and retirement status supports this explanation. Our findings thus highlight that the effects of monetary incentives are not invariant across different institutional settings, especially when the election systems include a parliamentary stage. [R]
74.407 CIFUENTES-FAURA, Javier ; LÓPEZ, Bernardino Benito ; GUILLAMÓN LÓPEZ, María-Dolores —
There are few studies that relate tax revenues to corruption at the municipal level due to their great complexity and the difficulty in obtaining data. Continuing the research we started years ago, the main objective of this article is to analyse whether municipal political corruption influences some or all tax revenues. A panel database of all Spanish municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants is compiled for the period 2002-2013. The most outstanding result is that municipalities with cases of corruption obtained higher revenues in construction-related taxes than those where there have been no political corruption cases, which shows the close relationship between this sector of economic activity and political corruption. [R]
74.408 CONNELL, Andrew —
The concept of policy advisory systems (PAS) has been applied almost exclusively at national level. This article demonstrates that it can also be employed to analyse the development and dynamics of policy advice in a subnational government. Our empirical study of the externalisation of policy advice by the Welsh Government shows that it has been shaped by distinctive historical, institutional and political factors, and its impacts are different to those reported by studies of out-sourcing national policy advice. In our case study, external policy advice was seen as complementing rather than competing with the civil service. Instead of deinstitutionalising policy advice — that is, dislocating it from the usual sites where knowledge for policy is produced — new formal routes have been established for external sources of expertise to influence policy decisions. Contrary to the findings of some previous studies, externalising policy advice has not been a centralising force. Nor has it fundamentally challenged existing assumptions and values or increased politicisation of the policy process. [R, abr.]
74.409 DAVIES, Matt ; PONTES NOGUEIRA, João —
This article engages with debates about the role of ‘global cities’ in international relations and in the governance of global capitalism. Much of the discourse on global cities reproduces the hierarchical stratifications of the international system that divide the ‘global’ from the ‘local’ along a North-South or centre-periphery axis. We argue that while Rio de Janeiro’s ‘Porto Maravilha’ urban regeneration project apparently follows the global city model, its failure suggests the articulation of the international and the urban presents complexities that escape recent attempts to rethink world politics from the point of view of cities. In our analysis we consider how Rio’s mayor took up the notion of ‘Olympic City’, articulating narratives of a global urban condition as part of the strategies of integration for an emerging power into world politics and the neoliberal reconfiguration of capitalism. [R, abr.]
74.410 De WULF, Nicolai ; VOETS, Joris ; MOLENVELD, Astrid —
The topic of policy integration has become an important component of several distinct lines of policy research. However, the concept of policy integration is notoriously difficult to specify and observe. This article provides valuable insights that explore the subjectivity of responses by political and administrative officials at the local level charged with policy integration. In response to its central question: ‘How do local politicians and civil servants perceive politico-administrative barriers facing policy coordination and integration?’ the study reveals political and managerial perceptions of key politicians and civil servants in local governments about the barriers to achieving policy integration. By contrast with other studies involving politico-administrative relations, it draws on a broader institutional context, inclusive of the complex and dynamic environment and local level environment. Its findings show that significant barriers to coordination and integration continue to limit the policy coordination and integration needed to address complex societal challenges. [R, abr.]
74.411 GIRALDI ROCHA COELHO, Giulia, et al. —
Because electoral abstention may generate a difference between the preferences of general voters, i.e., those who are eligible to vote, and the preferences of effective voters, i.e., those who do vote, policies adopted by incumbents may differ according to differences in turnout rates across the electorate. The Brazilian biometric electorate update offers an innovative opportunity to explore exogenous variations in abstention rates, allowing us to verify its impact on public policies, especially local public expenditures. By combining propensity score matching, differences-in-differences and instrumental variables models, we find that the electorate biometric update decreased abstention rates in local elections in Brazil, which, in turn, changed local public spending composition towards expenditures on education. The remaining categories of public expenditures explored in this study, however, seem not to be affected by the change in the electorate composition. [R]
74.412 HE, Jianzi ; JAROS, Kyle —
County-to-district mergers (chexian gaiqu), a major form of ‘administrative division adjustment’ (ADA), have occurred with striking frequency across Chinese cities in recent decades. Despite the high stakes of county mergers, scholars have yet to systematically analyze the political variables that shape where and when such reforms occur. Addressing this gap, the authors assemble a novel dataset to examine the relationship between institutional and leadership factors at different government levels and the incidence of county mergers. This analysis highlights the importance of national leadership priorities in shaping the frequency and regional distribution of county mergers. It also finds that, at least in times of greater central policy permissiveness, the bargaining power of cities is a strong predictor of which localities carry out county mergers. [R]
74.413 JONG, Jaehee, et al. —
This field note provides both a foundation for discussion about the role of townships in local governance and empirical evidence of their unique and embedded role. Drawing on a survey administered to Illinois township supervisors, administrators, and assessors, it presents baseline indicators about the range of township services, managerial practices, assessment, and collaboration for services to better illuminate current services, capacities, and challenges. A greater understanding of the complexity of delivering township services can guide policymakers in their deliberations about the future of township governments and provide research propositions for investigating township governments in the US. [R]
74.414 JORGE, Susana ; CERQUEIRA, Pedro ; FURTADO, Sofia —
This paper investigates which factors affect revenue over-budgeting in the local government, considering budgetary, political, and institutional determinants. It applies dynamic panels analysis to data from Portuguese municipalities between 2005 and 2017. Regarding budgetary arrangements, over-budgeting has implications for several years, taking up to three years to dissipate. The difference between budgeted revenues and the ones collected in the previous year is a good predictor that revenue is overestimated. The ratio of own-source over total revenue is directly related with over-budgeting; however, this effect comes from the municipality’s wealth. About political factors, municipal Executives with political majorities and in electoral years are more prone to over-budget; however, ideology does not seem to be important. As for institutional arrangements, participation in any debt restructuring program is inversely related to over-budgeting, while excessive debt does not seem to play any role. Overall, the only mechanism which reduces over-budgeting misbehavior is external control. [R]
74.415 KLIMOVICH, Stanislav —
Since the revival of direct gubernatorial elections in 2012, regional governors in Russia have two formal principals: the president and the people of the region. The principal-agent theory defines this situation as a common agency problem. In the context of authoritarian federalism, direct elections pose a two-fold challenge to Vladimir Putin’s vertical power. First, even if manipulated, elections can lead to unpredictable outcomes for the federal center. Second, in the long run, popular legitimacy incentivizes regional leaders to become more independent from the Kremlin. This study argues that the federal center in Russia has addressed the common agency problem not only by limiting the freedom of choice for the local populations through restrictive electoral law, but also by adopting a recruitment pattern that prefers outsider governors who lack personal connection to the regions of service. [R, abr.]
74.416 LANGARITA, Jose Antonio ; GRAU, Jordi Mas ; ALBERTÍN, Pilar —
In recent years, local government administrations in Spain have strengthened their commitment to putting into effect policies that favour the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people. This has happened not only in large cities, but in small rural municipalities as well. Based on the discourses, representations and practices of professionals in health and social services, this article is organised around two interrelated axes of analysis. First, we assess the extent of knowledge regarding public policies among professionals and LGBTQ+ people. And second, we examine the rural area as a specific setting for the application of LGBTQ+ policies. This leads us to the conclusion that such legal changes are important but not sufficient in themselves to ensure the well-being of LGBTQ+ people. Moreover, LGBTQ+ policies need to consider local contexts and avoid transferring the rationale of the big city into rural environments. [R]
74.417 LEE, Alexander —
How do historical inequalities influence modern public goods provision? This paper analyses a new panel dataset of local public goods provision in a single North Indian district with observations at the village-decade level going back to 1905 and detailed information on colonial land tenure institutions and demographics. The presence of large colonial landowners is positively associated with rural public goods provision when the landlord was resident in the early 20th century and has a null effect when the landlord was an absentee. Villages inhabited or owned by upper castes had an advantage in the colonial and immediate post-independence eras, but not afterward. The results suggest that within unequal societies, economic and status inequalities can have positive effects on public goods provision when they link elites to extralocal decision-makers. [R]
74.418 LEE, Nathan ; LANDGRAVE, Michelangelo ; BANSAK, Kirk —
An ongoing debate in American politics concerns the extent to which subnational politics has become “nationalized.” We advance this debate by collecting issue-position data on four distinct policy topics from unprecedented national surveys of public officials at both the local and state levels. We then combine this survey data with precinct-level presidential voteshare data that is tabulated to match the boundary of each survey respondent’s government jurisdiction. In doing so, we demonstrate that national party sorting of subnational officials is substantively and statistically significant across a range of issues with national salience, that it is consistent across local and state levels of government and it cannot be explained by the party sorting of constituents. These findings have implications both for the scope of nationalization as well as its implications for substantive representation. [R]
74.419 LIU Yongzheng ; WANG Liyan ; YE Maoliang —
This study examines how an important reform of local governance — village democracy — in the world’s most populous areas has affected the happiness of residents in rural China. We find that introducing elections per se has no significant impact. In comparison, direct nomination of local leaders by villagers, which is a form of competitive election involving a high degree of public participation in political decision making, leads to higher levels of happiness. Further mechanism analyses show that direct nomination improves the local accountability of elected leaders by boosting the quality and effort of village heads and their governance performance by lowering the tax burden of villagers and vitalizing local public services. Our results highlight the importance of public participation in democracy and the underlying role of local accountability in affecting the subjective wellbeings of citizens. [R]
74.420 MALIČKÁ, Lenka ; REIS MOURAO, Paulo —
This paper discusses the strategic composition of Slovak municipalities’ revenues and expenditures and the role of political budget cycles. We found that Slovak municipalities tend to have significantly higher capital revenues and capital expenditures in periods close to municipal elections. We also found strategic management of current expenditures and revenues depending on the time of municipal elections. We have controlled these estimations with several dimensions identified in the literature, from socio-economic variables to political characteristics of the incumbent mayors. [R]
74.421 MANCINI, Anna Laura ; TOMMASINO, Pietro —
We document that Italian public administrations systematically overestimate capital expenditures, and that the introduction of a cap on this spending item improves the accuracy of their plans. Our analysis relies on a unique dataset including budgetary figures (both planned and realized) for all Italian municipalities, and exploits a national reform which introduced a limit on realized capital expenditures only for municipalities above a given population threshold (5000 residents). One possible interpretation of our results is that by exploiting the imperfect knowledge of voters, policymakers benefit from promising overly ambitious investment plans. The introduction of some form of capital-expenditure limit makes these promises less credible, and helps to bring spending plans in line with reality. Furthermore, we find that capital revenues are also overestimated, and that the forecast accuracy of these revenues improves due to the reform. This is in line with our political-economy interpretation: as there is less room to inflate expenditures, politicians also have fewer incentives to indulge in window-dressing on the revenue side. [R]
74.422 MATTHEWS, Peter, et al. —
Local governments around the world are increasingly coproducing services with citizens, commonly as a response to austerity. A common approach is to use ‘citizen sensors’, relying on citizens to report issues digitally through web portals or apps. There is mixed evidence about how different citizens act in different environments with concerns about resulting (in)equity in outcomes. This paper examines citizen-reporting of maintenance of the public realm through a UK digital platform (FixMyStreet.com). We find service requests follow a parabolic relationship between neighbourhood deprivation levels and reporting, but ignoring the contributions of ‘superusers’ there is a more linear relationship, with more reports in less-deprived areas. We find that the presence of significant infrastructure (transport, schools) leads to more reports, suggesting guardianship over journeys as well as residential neighbourhoods. We conclude that local government, when directly coproducing services with citizens, need to be careful to ensure equitable outcomes between neighbourhoods. [R]
74.423 McDONNELL, Joshua —
Guided by participatory and deliberative conceptions of democracy, local governments have embraced the need for increased citizen participation in decision-making. Yet, at the same time, a systematic reduction in the number of councillor seats has seen a precipitous decline in opportunities to participate in the council chamber. With specific reference to the Australian case, this paper seeks to explain this incongruity, suggesting that the answer lies in the wide adoption of democratic theorists’ narrow conceptualisation of the role of the councillor. Viewed solely as representatives, whether in the corporate, mirror, or delegate mode, councillors are valued only insofar as they prove instrumental to an efficient and responsive system of governance. This paper argues that when due regard is afforded to councillors’ participatory role, a normative case for widespread — and more inclusive — officeholding emerges. [R, abr.]
74.424 McQUESTIN, Dana ; DREW, Joseph ; IIBOSHI, Hirokuni —
Amalgamation has been a cornerstone of many local government reform programmes internationally. However, there has been a lack of consensus in the academic literature surrounding the outcomes associated with amalgamation. One potential explanation for this is the difference in the length of time over which the evaluation takes place. In order to determine if the impacts of boundary reform are indeed temporally dependent on nature, we collected and analysed a 17-year panel of empirical data from a largescale amalgamation programme in 2008. Our results indicate that the outcomes arising from the program do indeed display variation over time, with initial savings being negated by increased costs in the medium-term and ultimately an insignificant impact over the long term. The public policy implications and recommendations suggested by our analysis have important implications for the design and evaluation of future local government boundary reform programmes. [R]
74.425 ORNSTEIN, Joseph T. —
In this article, I investigate a puzzling feature of American urban politics: cities with more liberal residents tend to enact more restrictive zoning policies and permit fewer new housing units each year than similar conservative cities. To help explain this puzzle, I develop a formal model in which local governments regulate the size of their population to balance the benefits of agglomeration with the costs of congestion. To defend against congestion externalities imposed by new residents, cities enact zoning policies that undersupply housing relative to the social optimum. In liberal cities, where residents value the benefits of agglomeration the most, this undersupply of housing is the most severe. [R]
74.426 OTJES, Simon ; NAGTZAAM, Marijn ; VAN WELL, Rick —
In recent years, political scientists have gained greater understanding of how national parliamentary parties use their parliamentary tools: that is under what conditions they submit parliamentary questions or amendments to legislation. We know surprisingly little about how local councillors use the tools at their disposal: under what conditions do these local councillors submit questions to the local executive? When do they submit amendments to local ordinances? We examine to what extent the use of amendments and questions reflects differences between local party groups’ ideologies in terms of anti-elitism and the left-right dimension, and differences between coalition and opposition parties. On the basis of an analysis 454 local council groups in 53 Dutch municipalities we find considerable evidence for differences in the use of council tools between coalition and opposition parties. [R]
74.427 OTT, Marc A. —
We have been fundamentally changed by the crises of the past several years from the pandemic and its effects to the climate crisis and we have the opportunity to improve exponentially because of them. It is our challenge to reimagine local government in a way that “builds back better” in partnership with the private, non-profit, and state and federal government sectors and through dedicated, effective public engagement. [R]
74.428 PARK Sungho —
The effect of state fiscal restrictions on local governments is often debatable. While the institutional heterogeneity of such controls is often thought to generate variations in outcomes, more theoretical and empirical attention is imperative. This study aims to address the needs with a particular focus on state-imposed tax and expenditure limitations on municipal governments (municipal TELs), one of the long-standing forms of state preemption in the United States. Specifically, it adopts a rule design approach to institutions to capture different institutional designs of municipal TELs, and disentangles their impacts on municipal revenues and expenditures. The results of this study extend the extant literature, suggesting that the fiscal impact of municipal TELs, and more broadly fiscal restrictions, is dependent upon their rule design rather than their presence or stringency. [R]
74.429 RESNICK, Danielle —
Enforcing party loyalty is particularly difficult in settings where parties are not strongly differentiated by policy or ideological platforms, as is the case in many African countries. Instead, the system of party nominations serves an important role in maintaining loyalty and discipline. Yet, direct mayoral elections at the subnational level affect these dynamics by expanding the range of positions that politicians can occupy, thereby creating opportunities for them to forge greater visibility within their party or enabling them to defect and create an independent political identity. Drawing on the case of Zambia, which shifted in 2016 from indirect to direct mayoral elections for its district councils, this article discusses how the change in electoral rules contributed to more independent mayoral candidates and growing intraparty frictions, especially among mayors governing large urban areas. Additional case studies from Senegal, which shifted to direct elections in 2022, and Mozambique, which reverted to indirect elections in 2018, further underscore the external validity of the analysis while refining its scope conditions. [R, abr.]
74.430 ROUNDY, Philip T. ; TRUSSEL, John M. ; DAVENPORT, Stephan A. —
This study explores the factors that contribute to the text complexity of local government communication and whether text complexity varies with governments’ financial performance. We first identify factors associated with text complexity, including the local government’s size, external monitoring, organisational complexity, and financial complexity. We then explore if text complexity varies with the financial performance of local governments. We find that the annual reports of poor-performing governments are less understandable, but that performance is not related to the amount of information content. Our findings contribute to research on local government communication, accountability, and transparency and have practical implications for those who interact with local governments through government documents. [R]
74.431 SCHONE, Katharina —
The article aims to investigate whether social segregation in urban areas can be reduced by transferring jurisdiction over urban planning from municipalities to the inter-municipal level. Specifically, we analyse the evolution of social segregation between 1968 and 2010 in French inter-municipal cooperation structures exercising jurisdiction over urban planning since at least 1995 and compare it with that of groupings of municipalities that do not have this competence. In order to minimise the risk of selection bias we use difference-in-difference matching methods. The effects revealed by the analysis are mixed and show that the success of this transfer of competence depends on the communities’ intentions as well as on the extent of responsibilities that have been transferred. [R]
74.432 STEIN, Jonas ; BRODERSTAD, Troy Saghaug ; BJØRNÅ, Hilde —
The focus of this study is the political trust implications of territorial reforms, approaches to territorial reform, and the effects of the mobilisation of political-territorial collective identities. We focus on the political trust effects of political-territorial mobilisation grounded on territorial reforms, and of voluntary and forced structural reforms. The case examined is that of Norway, a country characterised by high levels of trust before a recent county reform. Utilising four survey waves from 2013 to 2019, we measure trust in national politicians both pre- and post-reform, giving us a quasiexperimental design. The findings indicate that political trust was not affected by whether the reform was forced on counties or they accepted it voluntarily. However, political trust was negatively affected by forced structural reforms in combination with regionalism, i.e., mobilisation of politicalterritorial collective identities. This finding provides new insight about how territorial reforms may affect political trust. [R]
74.433 TAGHIZADEH, Jonas Larsson —
This article argues that previous public administration and political science research might have missed important class-based inequalities by primarily focusing on ethnic discrimination among public officials and ignoring discrimination based on socioeconomic status (SES). A large-scale field experiment on the presence of SES discrimination among local Swedish public officials is presented. A total of 3430 Swedish elementary school principals were randomly contacted by parents with low- or high-SES professions and with Arabic- or Swedish-sounding names. The fictional parents were considering moving to the municipality and were interested in placing their children at the school. The results show clear signs of SES discrimination, particularly in regard to the more qualitative aspects of the replies. The findings also show interactions between SES and ethnicity, in which primarily the more formal aspects of the replies suggested that SES discrimination could be more prevalent against ethnic minority aliases than against other aliases. [R]
74.434 TEJEDO-ROMERO, Francisca ; FERRAZ ESTEVES ARAÚJO, Joaquim Filipe —
This article provides an analysis of the moderating role played by political ideology in transparency, thereby contributing to the growing body of literature on the topic of local government transparency. Although previous research has indicated that transparency in local governments depends on a variety of political factors, the influence of political ideology on transparency shows some inconsistencies. This paper argues that, among various political issues that affect the disclosure of information, political ideology acts as a moderator of active information disclosure. The empirical analysis is based on unbalanced panel data from 308 Portuguese municipalities. The results of this study confirm that political ideology moderates the relationship between political factors and active information disclosure. Specifically, they indicate that political ideology plays an important role in improving levels of transparency in municipalities governed by left-wing politicians. [R]
74.435 TRAN, Carolyn-Thi Thanh Dung ; DOLLERY, Brian —
While a voluminous empirical literature has investigated municipal efficiency, much less attention has focused on the impact of administrative intensity on municipal performance. In this paper we seek to contribute to the empirical literature by examining the relationship between operational efficiency and administrative intensity in the Victorian local government system over the period 2014/15 to 2018/19 using a second stage bootstrapping Data Envelopment Analysis fractional regression model. We find that administrative intensity negatively affects the performance of local councils for the bias-corrected efficiency model. Moreover, administrative intensity exhibits a U-shaped relationship with municipal efficiency. We also find that administrative intensity has a differential impact on the efficiency of rural councils in contrast to urban councils. Various public policy implications are considered. [R]
74.436 VAKULENKO, Veronika ; BOURMISTROV, Anatoli ; GROSSI, Giuseppe —
For decades, amalgamation has remained at the top of the international reform agenda. Seeking to enhance local governments’ economic efficiency and democracy, municipal mergers were encouraged in numerous countries. However, the results of such reforms remain controversial. The paper aims to extend the understanding of reasons for municipalities’ diverging responses to financial incentives under amalgamation. In this way, the study adds to local public administration literature, by showing the influence of psychological factors and individuals’ cognition on the result of mergers in the context of two Ukrainian local governments. [R]
74.437 XING Puyao ; XING Hua —
This study investigates how local decision-makers influence the impact of high-level government meta-governance tools on environmental inter-local collaboration when the collective benefits of inter-jurisdictional collaboration conflict with the selective benefits of decision-makers. We address this issue focusing on empirical cases of inter-provincial watershed environmental collaborations in China. Using a difference-in-differences model for the analysis, we find that meta-governance tools of high-level government can facilitate the adoption of environmental inter-local collaboration arrangements. However, this facilitation decreases when local decisionmakers lack progressive ambition or face peer competition. This study demonstrates the strategic responses of local decision-makers in environmental inter-local collaboration influenced by high-level government. [R]
74.438 YASUN, Salih —
Does co-partisanship with mayors influence citizen trust in local governance institutions in new democracies? I answer this question through conducting a case study in Tunisia. I evaluate Arab Barometer (2018) survey data on trust in local governance institutions, and interview data with mayors, council members and civil society organizations (CSOs). The results indicate that Tunisians who support the same political party as their mayors tend to develop greater levels of trust in local governance institutions. Both quantitative evidence through a mediation model and qualitative evidence link a substantive portion of this relationship to the perceptions of institutional performance, such as their degrees of corruption, clientelism, inclusivity and efficiency. The findings identify the role and mechanism of co-partisanship in shaping trust in local governance institutions among the emerging democracies. This contributes to understanding the influence of parties in new democracies despite their weaknesses. [R]
74.439 YIMENU, Bizuneh —
This article measures regional policy autonomy and explains the factors that drive autonomy variation in land policy from 1995 to 2020, taking Ethiopia, the late 20th-c. adoption of federalism and a federation of very diverse regions, as a case. By comparing three regions, Benishangul-Gumuz, Oromia, and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples, the article shows that de facto regional policy autonomy varies, although the regions are constitutionally symmetrical. Why do some regions have less de facto autonomy than others? Contrary to conventional expectations, party noncongruence appears less important in explaining the regional autonomy variation. Regional capacity, national integration goals and development objectives appear to have played a major role in generating de facto regional policy autonomy variation without a constitutional amendment. Regions lacking capacity and peripheral regions tend to face more centralization than others. [R, abr.]
74.440 YU Seungwon ; KIM Suhee ; SIM Yeonwoo —
Government relief aid policies are vitally important in response to disasters. Based on the literature on the politics of natural disasters, this article examines the effect on the election results of local governments’ policy announcements in response to a pandemic. Using data from the 2020 Korean general election with the Instrumental Variable methodology, both the announcement and the provision of relief aid contributed to the victory of the ruling party’s candidates. Management of both supply-side and demand-side relief aid policies affects election results. Lastly, the relationship between the announcement and the election is also affected by the characteristics of local governments (e.g. population size and partisanship). [R]
74.441 ZHAO Taotao —
Contrary to the arguments in most of the literature, the central government of China applies diversified rather than homogenous measures to govern its Ethnic Tibetan Autonomous Areas (ETAA). Applying the analytical framework of ‘inner and outer peripheries’, this research argues that the central government has favoured the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), particularly in state fiscal assistance, over the other ETAAs, due to its unique governance challenge. This research analyses the central government’s fiscal assistance to the ETAAs from 2010 to 2019 and reveals an increasing fiscal gap between them. Not only has the TAR been consistently in the lead but fiscal inequality has also grown among ETAAs in the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu. Fieldwork in the TAR, Yunnan, Gansu and Sichuan reveals that the fiscal gap, combined with varied local circumstances, has created multifaceted social and economic unevenness in the ETAAs. [R]