An Analysis of Institutional and Political Factors Affecting State Capital Expenditure

Abstract

This article examines state government spending patterns for capital projects during the late 1970s and early 1980s as a function of some of the institutional arrangements and procedural characteristics of state legislatures. The analysis is informed by the literature on distributive policymaking, which argues that lawmakers seek to send targetable benefits, such as capital projects, to their constituencies in pursuit of personal electoral benefits. Using a pooled, cross‐sectional time‐series approach, the authors find that states with a large number of seats in the lower chambers of their legislatures devoted a somewhat smaller portion of their state budgets to capital projects than did states with smaller lower chambers, ceteris paribus. Contrary to some log‐rolling models, the number of appropriations bills employed by a legislature seems to discourage capital spending, as does membership turnover in the upper chamber. This indicates that the capital budgeting process is not nearly as dominated by the executive branch as is commonly believed.     

二元社会结构与政治稳定

中国的城乡二元社会结构在很大程度上起源于特定历史条件下维持社会政治稳定的需要 ;在二元结构条件下形成的城市“压力转移”和农村“精英转移”的互动机制的确发挥过重要的政治稳定功能 ;然而 ,这一稳定机制具有内在的局限性 ,迫切需要在从城乡分治到城乡统筹发展的进程中 ,再造中国政治稳定的社会基础     

墨西哥革命制度党失去政权的原因

对墨西哥来说,20世纪是革命制度党的世纪。在其领导下,墨西哥创造了“奇迹”,不仅政治稳定,而且经济迅速发展。但这个单独连续执政71年的大党却在2000年失去了执政地位。之所以如此,主要有以下几个原因:一是它放弃了党的指导思想和原则,削弱了党的社会基础;二是经济政策的失误,诱发了一系列经济社会危机,动摇了党的阶级基础;三是党的职团结构功能弱化,党内派别斗争激烈,严重破坏了党的团结统一;四是治党不严,为政不廉,层出不穷的腐败丑闻降低了党的影响力;五是连续实施的政治改革,大大加速了革命制度党的失败进程。     

国家治理与政治稳定——以吉尔吉斯斯坦转轨为视角

苏联解体后,西方政治制度在吉尔吉斯斯坦不仅未能开花结果,相反,政治结构体系却发生了功能紊乱与协调失灵,并导致政治持续动荡,整个国家出现治理危机;对民主化与执政能力,政治参与同国家制度化的比例,国家治理的模式与稳定繁荣的目标三对范畴重新进行考察,有利于进一步分析吉尔吉斯斯坦在具体治理困境中的症结,为维护社会稳定提供一个理论依据。     

Constitutional Dynamics in the European Union: Success,Failure, and Stability of Institutional Treaty Revisions

ABSTRACT

Despite high institutional hurdles for constitutional change, one observes surprisingly many EU treaty revisions. This article takes up the questions of what determines whether a treaty provision is successfully changed and why provisions are renegotiated at subsequent Intergovernmental Conferences. The article presents an institutionalist theory explaining success and renegotiation and tests the theory using all core institutional provisions by means of Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The causal analysis shows that low conflict potential of an issue is sufficient for successfully changing the treaties. Furthermore, high conflict potential of an issue and its fundamental change are sufficient for it to be renegotiated.     

The Locusts of Corruption

Never before in history have China and Japan been great powers at the same time. Today they must figure out how to live together as equals. The promise of mutual prosperity ties them together; the remembrance of bad things past pushes them apart. If that wary dance were not complicated enough, a nuclear provocateur from neighboring North Korea intrudes. A legendary figure of Japan's post‐war miracle, Tsuneo Watanabe, weighs in on these big questions. Hans Blix, a former UN arms inspector and the former South Korean prime minister and Nobel laureate, Kim Dae Jung, address the North Korean conundrum.     

Corruption in India: Control measures and consequences

Much has been written on corruption in the Third World. Studying the phenomenon of transactional corruption, however, is fraught with many shortcomings. The insidious corruption of subverting the regimes or abusing the constitution for political or partisan gain is paid little attention. This article analyses corruption in India within its social, cultural, and political contexts. The workings of the various anti‐corruption measures are also examined. The concept of regime corruption is studied. The article concludes that curbing corruption largely depends upon the social attitudes. In particular, the political parties should not only take the blame for the current situation, they should also play an active role in correcting the pernicious practice of corruption.     

Corruption and the Mexican political system: Continuity and change

Thanks to the nature of its political system, Mexico has had a long history of political corruption. Yet recent changes in the patterns of corruption and broader political changes have seemingly altered the equation. Anger over rampant corruption under President Carlos Salinas contributed to the stunning electoral defeat of the PRI in July 1997, while the outcome, the PRI's loss of majority control of the Chamber of Deputies, will add to the structural pressures that have mounted in recent years against institutionalised corruption. This article explores these trends. It sets out the historical and theoretical foundations of corruption in Mexico, examines changes in the incidence and patterns of corruption, and discusses the impact of recent political changes on this aspect of the system. Though cautiously optimistic regarding the impact of Mexico's political breakthrough on efforts to deal with the problem of corruption, the essay concludes on a cautious note, highlighting the difficulties other Latin American countries have encountered in strengthening the rule of law and reining in corruption.     

Corruption,Privatisation and Economic Growth in Post-communist Countries

Abstract

This article empirically investigates the effects of corruption and privatisation on economic growth in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR. We use a corruption and privatisation augmented open-economy leader–follower endogenous growth model to derive our research hypotheses. In this setting, corruption, privatisation and external openness jointly determine the per capita income in the follower economy. This model predicts that economies with higher shares of private ownership, lower corruption, and higher external openness enjoy higher rates of growth. Our empirical verification of these predictions is based on a panel of 29 post-communist countries during the period 1996–2014. Our estimation results confirm the negative effects of corruption, while the positive effects of privatisation are limited to small-scale privatisation.     

Institutional duration and growth in Africa

We argue that there are strong reasons to believe that continuous competitive, multiparty elections produce different growth dynamics than first competitive elections. We test this conjecture by looking at the effects of competitive elections and their endurance on growth rates in African countries from 1970 to 2001. We find that initial competitive elections do not offer a growth dividend over having no elections at all, although noncompetitive elections may result in a growth penalty. However, over time, countries that hold competitive elections slowly begin outperforming those without them—especially those that hold noncompetitive elections. Africa’s poor growth experience may therefore be related less to an unwillingness to experiment with democracy, than to an inability to consolidate democratic reforms once in place. Karen E. Ferree is assistant professor of political science at University of California, San Diego. She specializes in the study of elections in new democracies, especially those in Africa. Her work has examined the political economy of elections as well as the role of ethnicity in elections. Smita Singh is Special advisor to Global Affairs at the William and Flora Hewlett Foudation. Her research interests include the political economy of development and violence in Africa and Southeast Asia. We wish to thank Robert Bates for support and advice at all stages of this project. Thanks also to Macartan Humphries, Naunihal Singh, two anonymous reviewers, and the editors atStudies in Comparative and International Development for helpful comments.     

Corruption and reforms: A case of Poland's medical sector

This study focuses on the effects of Poland's reforms in the period 1990–2005 on corruption in the health care system. In the last 15 years Poland has transformed its economy drastically, introducing market-oriented reforms into almost every aspect of its economy. In this study we consider how different reforms changed incentives and mechanisms facilitating corruption in the medical care sector. Our conclusion is that corruption in Poland's medical sector has worsened since the onset of the marketization reforms. We support this conclusion primarily by analyzing changes in incentives for corruption and the number of mechanisms facilitating it. In addition, where available, quantitative data are provided, though we recognize that numerical estimates of corruption are subject to substantial error. We focus on three major forms of corruption: patient payments to secure medical treatment or improve its quality, payments from industry (mostly pharmaceutical and medical equipment producers), and the use by physicians of free public facilities for private patients.     

Institutional Arrangements and State and Local Financial Forecasting

Abstract

The articles in this symposium present various consequences that effectively result in changes from adopted budgets during the implementation phase, which derive from institutional structure. The institutional structures referred to include such attributes as internal policy, procedural methodology, longevity in office, and reward and incentive systems related to performance outcomes

For local governments, structural influences studied include changes in leadership in the executive and legislative branches, longevity in office of budget administrators, and differences related to mayor-council vs. council-manager forms of government. Internal policies reported on cover methodology used to forecast revenues such as quantitative methods versus informed judgment, budgetary controls and spending policy related to mandated spending beyond local government control, and procedures for benchmarking within the agency as well as with peer groups and professional standards.

Consortia of governments are referenced regarding performance evaluation as is the process for gaining consensus between the executive and legislative branches, including expert outside opinion. Other influences on performance outcomes reported on are those tied to the risk-reward system built in to the institutional structure, which includes risk tolerance of the individuals who make pension fund investments.     

腐败与东欧共产党的衰败

东欧各国党自身存在的问题是导致东欧剧变的多种因素中的一个重要方面.各种腐败现象的滋生和蔓延腐蚀了党的肌体,削弱了党与群众的联系,影响了党的纯洁性、先进性、感召力和战斗力.     

Corruption,Centralization and Competition: Evidence from Russian Public Procurement

ABSTRACT

This paper estimates the impact of corruption on the incentives of procurers to maintain honest competition in tenders. Customers, who procure for themselves, and Agencies, who procure for the customers in their region are considered. Basing on a large dataset of open auctions conducted by Russian regional-level authorities in 2011, the analysis shows that in highly corrupt regions, Agencies fail to arrange competitive tenders and most of auctions have one bidder. Customers attract more bidders for large contracts, but rebates are usually low. Therefore, procurement centralization may reduce the corruption of Customers, but cannot solve the problem of low competition.