Experiment-based policy making or conscious policy design? The case of urban housing reform in China

The public policy literature has long debated whether policy change results from conscious policy design or is contingent upon a political process involving both state and non-state actors. An experiment-based policy-making model based on China’s experience attempts to reconcile such debate by arguing that policy makers can consciously make policies without deliberately designing them. That is, policy makers can encourage or initiate multiple small-scale experiments that will cumulatively translate into incremental policy changes. Through a case study of urban housing policy changes in China, this paper investigates the underlying logic of incremental policy changes, specifically the role of policy makers in successive policy experimentation. Our case study illustrates that the role of local policy experimentation has been overestimated because the central government controls the experimental variables, judges what constitutes the success of the experiment, and chooses which experiments are replicated at the national level.     

Dilemmas in Policy Support for the Arts and Cultural Sector

This article questions the specific challenges that the management of culture poses for government.² Unlike some ‘public good’ policy domains, such as prisons, defence or infrastructure, or benefit provisions such as unemployment, disability or health measures, the complex area of cultural policy cannot be justified in instrumental terms as an essential ‐ or unavoidable ‐ policy of government. Nonetheless, the cultural lobby is an effective and indefatigable pressure on government. The area of culture is just one small component of the public agenda that governments are obliged to support. Given other pressing portfolios, why do governments continue to take an interest in culture? Moreover, recent government policies seem to be setting up problems for the future such that governments will find it hard if not impossible to extricate themselves from a problematic relationship. So, what is the hold that culture has over governments? Traditionally, the answer seemed to be a combination of boosterism and cultural capital. Governments liked to bask in the reflected glory of cultural success believing that it contributed to their legitimacy and cultural competence. The glow of elite culture was seen to rub off onto political incumbents and their regimes. But in an age of pressures on government to justify public expenditure and meet accountability regimes, cultural support continues to appear on the funding agenda and governments continue to become embroiled in debates about competing support formulae. This relates to both the nature of ‘culture’ and broader definitions under the banner of ‘cultural policy’ as well as the nature of the sector which is, at once, elitist, institutionalized, commercial, highly specialist, niche and industry ‐ all premised on intangible nature of ‘creativity’. Paradoxically, contrary to other trends in public policy, arts and cultural funding has reverted to forms of patronage as the centrepiece of broadly defined policies of access, equity and self‐sufficiency. How has this policy portfolio managed to buck the trends of other domains of government attention? This article attempts to open some new ways of examining the question.³     

Local Government Innovation and Revealed Ideas of Political Legitimacy: a Comparative Study between the United States and China

This study constructs a typology of innovation from the winning nominations of local government innovation award programs in the US and China, two countries with histories of subnational policy innovation, to reveal what types of policy initiatives local officials believe will improve governance in each country. I argue that improving governance is important as it serves as a main source of modern political legitimacy, regardless of regime type. To analyze if ideas of good governance differ by regime type, I classify local government innovation into six thematic areas, and then examine how each of these are expected to improve governance and thus contribute to political legitimacy. In China, I find that the predominant local innovations are in the area of governance and management, which demonstrate that government officials believe that reforming the democratic governance process will solve governance problems and enhance political legitimacy. In the United States, however, economic, social, cultural, and environmental areas occupied a larger proportion of government innovation, illustrating that local officials pay more attention to enhancing political legitimacy through improving the performance and quality of government services. This analysis shows that ideas of good governance, as revealed by local government innovation awards, differ across these two regime types. Although government officials in both regimes desire improved governance as a way to enhance political legitimacy, what that means in each country differs.     

Frontiers of social policy in Europe and America

The cumulative growth of social programs and public income distribution is leading to a grave need for policy harmonization, i.e., efforts to take into account interdependencies across formerly distinct areas of public and private activity. This need is particularly severe with regard to income support programs, labor market relations and taxation systems. While any fundamental backlash against the welfare state is unlikely, so too is any comprehensive solution through negative income taxation or other abstract forms of economic planning. Prospects for coping with problems of policy harmonization differ among nations, but all countries face the challenge of building consensus around noneconomic values lying at the heart of social policy. Without this cushion of legitimacy, increased policy complexity and higher public expectations threaten to overwhelm democratic political systems.     

When industrial policy shapes public sector reform: Total quality management in Britain and France

Approaches seeking to explain the development of TQM ideas in government are very much ‘business‐centric’. The goal of this article is to show that in reforming the public sector, policy‐makers did not simply follow the lead of the private sector because ‐ in the case of TQM ‐ the private sector was itself, to some extent at least, led by government. In the mid‐1980s, Britain and France launched nationwide ‘quality initiatives’ which provided money for businesses to buy management consulting expertise. Through the implementation of these policies, consultants built channels of communication with the state, and this subsequently opened possibilities for consultants to help transfer TQM ideas from the industrial policy area to the field of public sector reform.     

Uneven local implementation of federal policy after disaster: Policy conflict and goal ambiguity

As climate change continues to increase both the frequency and intensity of environmental hazards and disasters, the need for a cohesive national mitigation policy grows. As the environmental federalism scholarship indicates, the inherent tension in federal, state, and local policy implementation highlights that despite a national need, environmental quality is a local public good. To complicate matters, there is disagreement about the optimal level of decision-making regarding the adoption and implementation of environmental policy. This study addresses this gap by considering the role of policy ambiguity and conflict in policy implementation. The analysis relies on primary qualitative data collected from open-ended interviews with 22 local government officials in 12 municipalities following Hurricane Harvey. Through the lens of policy ambiguity and conflict, we find confirmatory support for the idea that policies with less ambiguous goals are more likely to be implemented. Furthermore, we find that policy conflict arises when local governments perceive there is little for the community to gain by implementing the federal program. Thus, the level of protection afforded to citizens varies greatly between communities and is influenced heavily by politics. This research supports the Ambiguity-Conflict Model of policy implementation, an oft-cited but rarely tested theoretical framework for assessing the intergovernmental politics of policy implementation. It also demonstrates the barriers to local implementation of federal environmental policy in a nested system of government.     

Variation in policy success: radical right populism and migration policy

How do radical right populist parties influence government policies in their core issue of immigration? This article provides a systematic analysis of the direct and indirect effects of radical right anti-immigration parties on migration policy reforms in 17 West European countries from 1990 to 2014. Insights from migration policy theory serve to explain variations in the migration policy success of the radical right. While previous studies mostly treat migration policy as uniform, it is argued that this approach neglects the distinct political logics of immigration and integration policy. This article reveals significant variations in policy success by policy area. While immigration policies have become more liberal despite the electoral success of the radical right, when the radical right is in government office it enacts more restrictions in integration policies. Accordingly, anti-immigrant mobilisation is more likely to influence immigrants’ rights than their actual numbers.     

TTIP and legislative‒executive relations in EU trade policy

Abstract

This paper analyses Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in order to assess how the move towards tighter economic integration within the EU?US strategic partnership impacts on legislative?executive relations in EU trade policy. The analysis examines the institutional, substantive and party political dimensions of national parliaments’ scrutiny of the Common Commercial Policy. Based on insights into both domestic and EU channels of parliamentary monitoring of TTIP negotiations, the paper argues that, although the government remains the central object of democratic control, the involvement of national parliaments in transatlantic trade extends to encompass the EU’s own transatlantic and trade policies. This is rooted in the legislatures’ legal capacity to constrain the executive in the negotiation, conclusion and, where applicable, ratification phases of EU trade agreements. It is argued that national parliamentary influence takes the shape of politicisation of the legitimacy of the expected policy outcomes of these agreements.     

COVID-19 and American Attitudes toward U.S.-China Disputes

The COVID-19 outbreak has fueled tension between the U.S. and China. Existing literature in international relations rarely focuses on virus outbreaks as factors affecting international relations between superpower countries, nor does research examine an outbreak’s potential influence on the public’s opinion about their country’s foreign policy. To bridge this research gap, this study explores the extent to which the American public may be prone to favor policies that “punish” China via existing U.S.-China disputes, such as the South China Sea dispute and the U.S.-China trade war. I conducted an online survey using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and ran multinomial and ordered logit models to estimate the association between an individual’s preferred policies and the country or government an individual blame for the impact of the pandemic. After controlling several essential confounding factors, such as one’s levels of nationalism and hawkishness, I found strong evidence that there is a positive association between people’s attribution of blame to the Chinese government and the likelihood of supporting aggressive policy options in the two disputes with China. That is to say, U.S. citizens who believe that the Chinese government is solely culpable for the outbreak in the U.S., compared to those who think otherwise, are more likely to support hawkish policy options, such as confrontational military actions, economic sanctions, or higher tariff rates. The research provides a glimpse into where Americans may stand in these disputes with China and the potential development of U.S.-China relations in the post-pandemic era.

     

中央-地方互动与“十一五”节能目标责任考核政策的制定过程分析

节能目标责任考核政策是我国"十一五"期间用以保障实现单位国内生产总值能源消耗降低20%这一约束性指标的重要政策,本文从中央-地方互动视角研究该政策的制定过程。研究发现,节能目标责任考核政策的制定过程呈现出"中央政府提出方针——地方政府进行创新性政策实践——中央政府肯定创新并颁布新政策——地方政府进行政策复制"的中央-地方互动特征,具有地方政策创新和自上而下政策复制相结合的特点。源自省级政府的政策实践是我国节能目标责任考核政策建立的主要学习源,为中央政府的政策出台提供了参照与经验,加速了中国节能考核政策的发展。但这些作为政策备选项的地方实践,总体上比较单一,并在中央节能目标责任考核政策出台后迅速进行了复制式修订。此外,节能目标责任考核政策的地方创新性实践主要发生在省级政府层面,地市级政府和更低层次的政府更多起到的是政策执行的作用。本文从动力机制的角度对此现象进行了初步解释。     

Public policy for dangerous inventions

This study explores the relationship between dangerous invention characteristics and US local, state, and federal government safety policy-making patterns and effectiveness. When an invention prototype appears and its existence is recognized, an initial policy direction is established quickly if the invention is treated by society as being similar to a previous way of doing things. In this case the invention's dangers will be regulated within the established legal and administrative framework. If an invention is perceived as being entirely new, its introduction tends to be followed by governmental inaction for years or even decades. When government finally responds it is likely to be at the federal level.     

公民政策参与的功能分析

公民政策参与是指公民参与和影响公共政策过程的行为和活动。公民政策参与对于实现民主价值、保障公民权利,维护和增强政府合法性,保证政策的科学制定和顺利执行,保证政策的公共价值和提高公共服务的品质和效能等方面都有重要的积极意义。但公民政策参与并不必然对所有方面的政策问题解决都带来积极的效果,它也可能会使政策的质量、成本、利益取向以及政府效率和权威方面产生问题。重要的是要把握好“度”,尽可能地因势利导,使其扬长避短。     

Foreign aid and the politics of participation in economic policy reform

Research suggests that borrower ‘ownership’ of reforms is highly correlated with the success of reforms in developing countries. One of the most important components of ownership is the nature of public–private relations and consultation with interest groups. Yet participatory reform must overcome several political dilemmas, including problems of credibility, collective action, and distributive (in)justice. The characteristics of reforms also affect the possibilities for participation. Democratic governments interested in making policy reform more participatory and presumably more sustainable can draw on several strategies, including the selective use of incentives and compensation, public education and communications, capacity building in society, institutional mechanisms for consultation, and political sequencing of reforms. These strategies have implications for the foreign aid agencies who often fund reforms. They suggest that donors need to recognize the political rationality behind cross‐payments and spending to maintain important constituencies; that political sustainability may require reform sequences that are out of step with current orthodoxy; that policies ought to create winners before creating losers; that democratic consultation will require much more time in achieving consensus; and that outside actors need to refrain from intervening too directly in the political process by throwing their support behind particular interests. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public policy and competition amongst foreign investment projects: A case study of the Daya Bay economic development zone in South China

By the second half of the 1980s, economic reform in China had produced differentiated interests between regions and a decentralized authority in the country. The central government had increasingly delegated its powers over funding, foreign exchange, resources and investment to local governments, and local governments in different regions had gained more autonomy to control the resources. This situation resulted in the proliferation of power centres at local levels where independent policies were generated to protect and pursue regional interests and resist the general policies of the centre. Conflicts of interest and competition intensified and became more popular than during previous periods. This tendency particularly manifested itself in local policy making concerning the introduction of foreign investment and projects. The case of the founding and evolution of the Daya Bay economic development zone in South China indicates the extent to which the competition between different coastal regions, and between the coastal regions and the central government had been generated. In this case study, the contextual changes that created a competitive environment will be reviewed briefly; the general conditions and motivation to establish the zone will be introduced; then the focus will be on analysing a series of policy formulations surrounding the competition for foreign investment projects. The case study is concluded by an assessment of the ‘incremental’ nature of Chinese policy making.     

Candidates' policy platforms and election outcomes: The three faces of policy representation

Abstract.   Recent empirical studies by Alvarez and Nagler, Erikson and Romero, and others conclude that candidates' and parties' policy platforms only modestly affect their electoral support. This suggests that candidates/parties can win elections even when their policies differ sharply from the policy beliefs of the constituencies that elect them. This raises the question: How can voters exercise control over government policies via elections? We report applications to American and French presidential election data that suggest three paradoxical conclusions. On the one hand, we find that presidential candidates can moderate their policies with at most a modest change in vote share, but if they move by the same amount to a more extreme position, they face severe vote losses that could cripple their election prospects. Alternatively, movement by both candidates in the same direction or a policy shift by the voters may have a major effect on the outcome.     

Electoral Backlash against Climate Policy: A Natural Experiment on Retrospective Voting and Local Resistance to Public Policy

Retrospective voting studies typically examine policies where the public has common interests. By contrast, climate policy has broad public support but concentrated opposition in communities where costs are imposed. This spatial distribution of weak supporters and strong local opponents mirrors opposition to other policies with diffuse public benefits and concentrated local costs. I use a natural experiment to investigate whether citizens living in proximity to wind energy projects retrospectively punished an incumbent government because of its climate policy. Using both fixed effects and instrumental variable estimators, I identify electoral losses for the incumbent party ranging from 4 to 10%, with the effect persisting 3 km from wind turbines. There is also evidence that voters are informed, only punishing the government responsible for the policy. I conclude that the spatial distribution of citizens' policy preferences can affect democratic accountability through ‘spatially distorted signalling’, which can exacerbate political barriers to addressing climate change.     

Social rehousing policy in britain: Needs,rights, and choices

Abstract

When selecting among competing applicants for rehousing in social rented property, the perceived wisdom in Britain since the 1940s has been to award priority to households in the greatest housing need. “Need” is often defined in highly complex ways. However, a shift has occurred in local authority and housing association rehousing policies away from allocations made solely on the basis of need. This shift comes in response to the changing context in which social rented housing has operated in the past 15 years and to perceived weaknesses in needs‐based systems. Present policies are designed to address wider objectives, including developing stable communities and minimizing housing management problems.

This article examines these policy changes and the extent to which local housing allocations are used to address not only individual household needs, but also the concerns of local communities and wider housing management issues.     

Habit formation, strategic extremism, and debt policy

We suggest a probabilistic voting model where voters’ preferences for alternative public goods display habit formation. Current policies determine habit levels and in turn the future preferences of the voters. This allows the incumbent to act strategically in order to influence the probability of reelection. Comparing to a benchmark case of a certain reelection, we demonstrate that the incumbent’s optimal policy features both a more polarized allocation between the alternative public goods and a debt bias.     

The effects of administrative linkages on implementation: Welfare policy in Israel

This article focuses on the interaction between local-national relations and the implementation of welfare policy in Israel. It studies the administrative linkages between different levels of governmental jurisdictions involved in the implementing of certain policies of the Ministry of Welfare. It seeks to understand their impact on the original goals and programs of the national government and on actual services provided at the municipal level. These linkages include the arrangements for provision, funding, employment, regulations, and inspection. Without denying the importance of other explanations, the article emphasizes the significance of administrative linkages for understanding welfare policy and practices. In effect, the present study evaluates the extent to which the administrative linkages enable the national government to implement its policies on the one hand, and local authorities to influence national policies and programs on the other.The findings and analysis of administrative linkages suggest four conclusions. First contrary to Government policy the welfare system involving the Ministry, local municipalities and their agencies, is very inegalitarian; services are neither uniform nor adjusted to need. Second, the administrative linkages maximize local output and undermine the ability of the Ministry to implement its policies. Third, it is questionable whether the Israeli government can use its present Welfare Ministry to cope with major aspects of the problem. Fourth, it appears that the operations of the Israeli Welfare Ministry system are more similar to the federal than unitary model.     

Participatory innovations and maxi-publics: The influence of participation possibilities on perceived legitimacy at the local level in Finland

Participatory innovations (PIs) have been introduced as one possible cure to democratic malaises. Empirical research on these mechanisms for citizen participation has, however, focused on their effects on individuals and policy outcomes, leaving aside their consequences for the wider public. This article fills part of the gap by examining the effect of PIs on perceived legitimacy. The article acknowledges that citizens value not only outcomes but also the inclusiveness of decision-making processes, and defines procedural fairness and outcome satisfaction as the key evaluative criteria behind perceived legitimacy. Both total number and type of PIs are considered as possible factors shaping legitimacy evaluations. By analysing data from 9,022 citizens in 30 Finnish municipalities, the article reveals that introducing PIs is not a simple fix for legitimacy of local governments. The type of participation matters, with discursive participation generating the strongest effects on procedural fairness. However, attention should also be paid to citizens’ awareness of participation possibilities.