A Critical Comment on Niskanen's Model

Niskanen's model has been largely criticized, but it still remains a standard explanation of bureaucracy's behaviour. In this paper we criticize the monopoly power that Niskanen assigns to the bureaucracy. A bilateral monopoly between bureaucrats and politicians might be a much more adequate framework for explaining the bureaucracy's behaviour than Niskanen's original formulation of a perfect discriminating bureaucracy. In a bilateral monopoly model, in no case the type of relationship which holds between the sponsor and the bureau leads to an oversupply of output. Should an excess output occur, it would be a consequence of the political decision-making mechanisms. This result stands in sharp contrast to the Niskanen's model, but, at the same time, it is coherent with the fact that, when the sponsor introduces control and monitoring mechanisms, the sponsor does not pretend to decrease the output but rather to supervise and to reduce the costs of producing the output.     

Political authority, expertise and government bureaucracies

By applying the Revelation Principle, we focus on how a sponsor, who possesses political authority, could minimise the efficiency losses when bureaucrats are experts - that is, when they control information about the true costs of public services production. Our results come in striking contrast to those in the literature on bureaucracies and public procurement. In a two-types setting, and in the absence of monitoring and control mechanisms, we find that the agency is productively efficient. Under certain conditions, the agency is also allocatively efficient, while, under others, the low-cost bureau oversupplies and the high-cost agency undersupplies its output.     

Determinants of legislative success in House committees

We examine the factors that are associated with whether a bill passes the committee stage in the U.S. House of Representatives. Probit results for the 97th and 98th Congresses show that a bill is more likely to pass (1) if the sponsor chairs the committee that considers the bill or a subcommittee of that committee; (2) the higher the number of Democratic cosponsors who sit on the committee; (3) if the bill has bipartisan cosponsorship from members who sit on the committee that considers the bill. However, in the multivariate probit model including the above mentioned variables, other variables previously found to be important, e.g., the total number of cosponsors, whether or not the sponsor sits on the committee that considers the bill, and the party affiliation of the sponsor, are not statistically significant. Also a variable related to a public choice model of committee behavior, the difference between the sponsor's ideology (as measured by ADA score) and the ideology of the committee's median member, has no effect on a bill's probability of committee passage.     

Voluntary environmental programs: A comparative perspective

Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) are institutions for inducing firms to produce environmental goods beyond legal requirements. A comparative perspective on VEPs shows how incentives to sponsor and participate in VEPs vary across countries in ways that reveal their potential and limitations. Our brief survey examines conditions under which VEPs emerge, attract participants, and improve participants' environmental performance. We focus on the costs and bene‐fits for actors seeking to supply (or sponsor) these governance mechanisms as well as the costs and benefits for firms who are considering joining VEPs and adhering to their program obligations. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

What Do Bureaucrats Like Doing? Bureaucratic Preferences in Response to Institutional Reform

How do bureaucrats respond to administrative reform in relation to their overall administrative goals? The authors test the bureau‐shaping thesis, which holds that bureaucrats’ preferences for certain kinds of roles and tasks motivate their support for bureau reform. Drawing on attitudinal and behavioral data from a survey of English local government officials, the findings underscore how bureaucrats with different interests and motivations sort themselves into job types. Their preferences drive support for reform, which, in turn, strengthens the executive structure of English local government. Drawing on the literature on bureaucratic responses to institutional reform, the authors offer a more nuanced portrayal of bureaucratic preferences in line with the bureau‐shaping model. A key conclusion: political principals need improved empirical awareness of bureaucratic preferences when undertaking public institutional reforms.     

The Singapore Mutiny (1915) and the Genesis of Political Intelligence in Singapore

This paper describes how political intelligence evolved in Singapore and the establishment for the first time of a political intelligence bureau, the forerunner of the Singapore Police Special Branch and the present-day Internal Security Department (ISD). It is an example of British imperial practice as the early roots of intelligence in Singapore owed much to the experience gained earlier in British India in dealing with intelligence matters. The establishment of an intelligence bureau in Singapore came about as a direct result of the Singapore Mutiny (15 February 1915), and in the following year the newly-established bureau was renamed the Criminal Intelligence Department and absorbed into the Straits Settlements Police. In September 1933, it became the Singapore Special Branch, the forerunner of present-day Singapore's Internal Security Department.     

Buying National Ink

Abstract

Advertorials are paid messages in the media sponsored by organized interests to create and sustain a favorable political environment to pursue their respective goals. Advertorials, a form of outside lobbying, take two broad forms: (1) image advertorials designed to create a positive impression of the sponsor and a favorable climate of opinion, and (2) advocacy advertorials intended to win support for an interest's viewpoints on controversial issues. We analyze the population of 3,375 advertorials placed from 1985 through 2000 by organized interests to reach the mass audience of TIME, the most widely circulated and read weekly newsmagazine in the United States. Typologies of advertorials (11 categories), organized interests (21 categories), corporate and non-corporate economic interests (29 categories), and policy content (28 categories) are used to document over time the placement of advertorials, what types of advertorials are being used, what interests avail themselves of advertorial campaigns, which issue areas are receiving attention, what images and policy messages are being communicated, which organizations sponsor the most advertorials, and the timing of such political advertising campaigns. It is apparent by their popularity that organized interests consider advertorials to be an effective form of political communication. We find over time an increasing number of advertorials, an increasing number and diversity of sponsoring interest organizations, an increasing trend in the placement of image rather than advocacy advertorials, and a continuing but somewhat declining dominance by corporations and their associations.     

It’s All in the Name: Source Cue Ambiguity and the Persuasive Appeal of Campaign Ads

As strategies for campaign political advertising become more complex, there remains much to learn about how ad characteristics shape voter reactions to political messages. Drawing from existing literature on source credibility, we expect ad sponsorship will have meaningful effects on voter reactions to political advertisements. We test this by using an original experiment, where we expose a sample of student and non-student participants to equivalent ads and vary only the paid sponsor disclaimer at the end of the message. The only thing that differs across stimuli is whether a political candidate, a known interest group, or an unknown interest group sponsors the advertisement. Following exposure to one of these ads, participants complete a posttest battery of questions measuring the persuasiveness of the message, source credibility, and message legitimacy. We find that ads sponsored by unknown interest groups are more persuasive than those sponsored by candidates or known interest groups, and persuasion is mediated by perceived credibility of the source. We conclude by discussing our findings and their implications for our understanding of contemporary campaigns.     

The ``Power of the Purse' and its Implications for Bureaucratic Policy-Making

A dilemma of the ``Power of the Purse'' is thatcutting an agency's budget may make a desired policyinfeasible. I examine the implications of thisdilemma with a repeated game in which a bureau choosesunobservable policies after a legislature sets itsbudget. The bureau is work-averse and has its ownpolicy preferences and therefore may cheat, but thelegislature may perform an audit to recover ``slack''funds. A main result is that if the legislaturedesires a higher policy level than the agency, then itfaces a trade-off between ``good'' but wasteful policiesand ``bad'' but efficient ones.     

Attacks without Consequence? Candidates,Parties, Groups,and the Changing Face of Negative Advertising

Prior work finds that voters punish candidates for sponsoring attack ads. What remains unknown is the extent to which a negative ad is more effective if it is sponsored by a party or an independent group instead. We conducted three experiments in which we randomly assigned participants to view a negative ad that was identical except for its sponsor. We find that candidates can benefit from having a party or group “do their dirty work,” but particularly if a group does, and that the most likely explanation for why this is the case is that many voters simply do not connect candidates to the ads sponsored by parties and groups. We also find that in some circumstances, a group‐sponsored attack ad produces less polarization than one sponsored by a party. We conclude by discussing the implications our research has for current debates about the proper role of independent groups in electoral politics.     

Rent seekers who demand government production: Bureaucratic output and the price of complements

Many goods and services produced by government bureaus are sold at prices which do not maximize net revenues (maximize profits or minimize losses). Indeed, bureaucratic institutions typically create incentives to expand production beyond that which would maximize net revenues. Furthermore, many of the products sold by government bureaus are highly complementary to privately produced goods and services. If a bureau's output is not priced to maximize net revenues, then private sellers of various complements may be in a position to extract rents by adjusting their prices. This paper explores the implications of bureaucratically generated rents for privately produced complements. First, rent seeking can materialize when private sector interests apply pressure for expanded bureau production and lower bureau prices. Second, if the bureau does expand its production capacity beyond the net revenue maximizing level, and if a private producer obtains exclusive rights to supply complements, then the extraction of rents will result in an inefficient mix of resources in bureaucratic production. The basis of the inefficiency is not the reason often given, however. Rather, inefficiencies arise because the actual level of use is less than that which the ‘bureaucratic plant’ was constructed to produce due to the relatively high price of the complementary services.     

Inferring Transition Probabilities from Repeated Cross Sections

This paper discusses a nonstationary, heterogeneous Markov modeldesigned to estimate entry and exit transition probabilitiesat the micro level from a time series of independent cross-sectionalsamples with a binary outcome variable. The model has its originsin the work of Moffitt and shares features with standard statisticalmethods for ecological inference. We outline the methodologicalframework proposed by Moffitt and present several extensionsof the model to increase its potential application in a widerarray of research contexts. We also discuss the relationshipwith previous lines of related research in political science.The example illustration uses survey data on American presidentialvote intentions from a five-wave panel study conducted by Pattersonin 1976. We treat the panel data as independent cross sectionsand compare the estimates of the Markov model with both dynamicpanel parameter estimates and the actual observations in thepanel. The results suggest that the proposed model providesa useful framework for the analysis of transitions in repeatedcross sections. Open problems requiring further study are discussed.     

Control and controls: A reexamination of control patterns in budget execution

Consistent choice in an inconsistent world requires processes both for rational calculation and effective control. The budgetary process incorporates both of these functions. However, students of public sector budgeting tend either to ignore budget execution or to view the time expended by budgeteers on the execution of budgets - as opposed to their construction - as a gross misallocation of resources. In the authors' opinion this perspective - or lack thereof - seriously undervalues the control function and the budgeteer's role in preventing control loss. At the same time, the authors acknowledge that budgeteers frequently misuse the controls at their disposal and that in certain cases (i.e., where competitive supply of a public service is justified and in effect) expenditure controls are redundant and serve no real purpose.Budget execution is primarily concerned with two kinds of expenditure controls, allotment controls and fund reports, and is supported by position controls. The immediate purpose of these controls is to insure that purchases are limited to the amounts and purposes specified in the budget act. However, given the typical relationship between the budget agency and the operating bureau, we argue that their ultimate function is to prevent the bureau from distorting or concealing cost and production information so as to increase its bargaining power, thereby permitting the budget office to insure that the preferences of the state are at least approximately met. Performance standards and control rules also serve to avoid inconsistency in the dealings between the budgeteer and the bureau and to stabilize expectations about the ground rules for bargaining and the likely outcomes of the bargaining process so as to reduce the costs of uncertainty to both sides.     

Negative Advertising and the Dynamics of Candidate Support

Scholars have spent a great deal of effort examining the effects of negative advertising on citizens’ perceptions of candidates. Much of this work has used experimental designs and has produced mixed findings supporting one of two competing theories. First, negative ads may harm candidates who sponsor them because citizens tend to dislike negativity. Second, negativity may drive down citizens’ support for the targeted candidate because the attacks give people reasons to reject the target. We argue that the mixed findings produced by prior research may be driven by a disregard for campaign dynamics. We present a critical test of these two theories using data drawn from 80 statewide elections—37 gubernatorial and 43 U.S. Senate contests—from three election years and public opinion polling collected during the last 12 weeks of each campaign. We find that a candidate’s support declines as her advertising strategy includes a higher proportion of negative ads relative to her opponent and that this process unfolds slowly over the course of the campaign.     

Sponsoring Private Member's Bills in Finland and Estonia: The Electoral Context of Legislative Behaviour

This article examines the degree to which sponsored private member's bills (PMBs) in parliament can be explained by electoral incentives. Such bills are a peculiar piece of draft legislation – technically simple, topically unimportant and with negligible passage rates. Yet members of parliament (MPs) sponsor them in large numbers. One possible explanation for this behaviour is the electoral context arising out of the variance in electoral district size and electoral list types, which makes a strong personal reputation comparatively more important for some MPs. Sponsoring bills that have no realistic chance of becoming actual regulations could be a form of personal reputation‐building and/or vote‐seeking behaviour. Evidence is examined on the sponsoring of such bills in Finland between 2003 and 2007 and in Estonia between 1999 and 2007 in order to determine if the electoral context explains why some MPs do this more frequently. The results suggest that the electoral system does have an effect. MPs who have been elected under rules where personal reputation is not central in getting elected are less likely to sponsor such bills the larger their electoral district becomes.     

Issues and Institutions: "Winnowing" in the U.S. Congress

“Winnowing” is the pre‐floor process by which Congress determines the small percentage of bills that will receive committee attention. The vast majority of proposals languish in this vital agenda‐setting stage, yet our understanding of winnowing is nascent. Why do some bills move forward while most fail? I examine that question here by developing and testing a theoretical framework of winnowing grounded in bounded rationality, which includes institutional and sponsor cues and also incorporates the unique issue milieu. A heteroskedastic probit model is utilized to analyze the winnowing fate of all bills introduced across five issue areas in the House and Senate from 1991 to 1998. The findings counter much received wisdom and suggest that the process is indeed cue based. The majority party helps structure this critical process in both chambers, though party effects appear stronger in the House. Contrary to recent work on the rise of Senate individualism, the seniority of the sponsor has significant effects in both the Senate and House, but again exhibits a stronger effect in the House. Surprisingly, presidential proposals are no more likely to survive than typical bills. The findings further suggest that the entrepreneurial efforts of bill sponsors breathe life into this process.     

北京市局级领导干部胜任力状况及培训对策研究

本文依据问卷调查数据,从必备知识、必要工作能力和个人特征三个方面考察了北京市局级领导干部胜任力的优势和不足,并从培训的原则、课程体系、教学方法、组织管理等方面提出了提高北京市局级领导干部胜任力的对策建议。     

Australia's Progress Undefined: A Critical Review of Measures of Australia's Progress (MAP)

Indicator systems to report on concepts such as sustainability and progress have become a key policy response by governments to concerns over environmental degradation and social and economic instability. When developed by a national bureau, public service imperatives suggest that concepts such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘progress’ should be addressed without offending the ideology of political actors. We offer a case study of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Measures of Australia's Progress (MAP) indicator system. The ABS has chosen to avoid offering a clear definition of what progress means, or a conceptual framework linked to a definition to explain the selection of indicators. ‘Progress’, however, is a socially defined, normative concept. Such concepts cannot be understood without reference to cultural and political processes. By seeking to avoid a perception of cultural or political bias the ABS has limited MAP's capacity to measure progress. We conclude with suggestions on how MAP might be improved.     

A program to improve analytic methods related to strategic forces

In an effort to improve the strategic assessment capabilities of the U.S. Department of Defense, contractors were asked to integrate advanced wargaming techniques with other analytic approaches. This paper sets out the deficiences in past and current analysis methods which the project sponsor wished to have the contractors address.     

Death for a Terrorist: Media Coverage of the McVeigh Execution as a Case Study in Interorganizational Partnering between the Public and Private Sectors

In June 2001, the Federal Bureau of Prisons helped to carry out the execution of Timothy McVeigh for his role in the infamous 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The intense national and international media attention that the execution received was virtually unprecedented in the bureau's history, and it put the bureau in the difficult position of having to carry out two potentially conflicting responsibilities: facilitating coverage of the execution by hundreds of reporters, producers, and technicians, while maintaining the safety and security of the maximum security penitentiary in which the execution was held. Historically, the Bureau of Prisons has preferred to maintain a low media profile and had no experience managing a large-scale media event. This article examines how the bureau met this challenge by forming a partnership with the news media through the creation of a Media Advisory Group. It analyzes the goals, functions, and achievements of the Media Advisory Group by employing the Dawes model of interorganizational relationships.