The effects of hierarchy,centralization and formalization on municipal fiscal health: An empirical test of the bureaucratic ideal

This research examines the effects of three defining features of bureaucratic organizations – hierarchy, centralization of decision‐making, and the formalization of administrative procedures and rules – on the fiscal health of city governments in the US. It utilizes data from a national survey of top appointed city officials in the US to measure the bureaucratic features of city governments, and assesses budgetary solvency using actual financial data from audited financial reports. Using factor analysis to develop a composite bureaucracy index, and addressing unobserved heterogeneity and possible simultaneity bias through least squares dummy variable regression and instrumental variable regression, the empirical analysis shows that excessive bureaucracy leads to poorer fiscal health. Analysing the effects of the individual components of the index, the results indicate that centralization and formalization exert a statistically significant and negative effect on city budgetary solvency.     

Family Deviance,Self-control,Deviant Lifestyles,and Youth Violent Victimization: A Latent Indirect Effects Analysis

Research increasingly explores more complex relations of low self-control and context factors, such as structural constraints that limit behavioral lifestyle options, with violent victimization. The authors extend extant research by examining indirect effects of low self-control and family deviance on violent victimization via deviant lifestyles. The hypothesized full indirect effects model is tested for 233 African American and Hispanic 11th-grade students using latent variable analysis. Results offer strong support for the full indirect effects hypothesis. Results generally support the utility of an integrative framework that includes structural constraints arising from the family setting.     

Bubbling up or cascading down? Public servants,political advisers and politicization

One of the strands in the growing scholarship on political advisers in parliamentary democracies proposes that advisers can reduce the risk of civil service politicization by furnishing partisan advice to ministers, freeing civil servants to focus on the provision of expert competence. This benign narrative generates a significant hypothesis, which is that the institutionalization of the partisan role diminishes the risk of civil service politicization. That hypothesis has yet to be fully tested. Several studies have assessed the impact of advisers' actions on civil service impartiality, but the consequences of bureaucrats' own agency for that dependent variable have received far less attention. Drawing on data from a survey of New Zealand public servants, this article challenges the assumption in the political advisers literature that civil service politicization is primarily driven by exogenous factors and calls for a more nuanced theoretical approach to endogenous aspects of politicization.     

Intermunicipal cooperation,public spending and service levels

ABSTRACT

Local governments can increase size in particular policy fields through cooperation with other local governments. This is often thought to improve efficiency, but there is little empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis. We study the case of the Netherlands, which has been a veritable laboratory of intermunicipal cooperation (IMC), using panel data for 2005–2013. We find no evidence that IMC reduces total spending of the average municipality. Indeed, IMC seems to increase spending in small and large municipalities, leaving spending in mid-sized municipalities unaffected. In one specific field, tax collection, spending may be reduced through IMC. Spending in this field is low, which may explain why total spending is unaffected. Instead of lowering spending, municipalities may have used possible cost savings as a result of IMC to improve public service levels. We do not find evidence substantiating this hypothesis, however.     

Demolition and Dispossession: Toward an Understanding of State Violence in Millennial Mumbai

Slum clearance campaigns and demolition drives have been understood as an integral part of the governance of the Indian city, but little effort has been made to analyze why the Indian state periodically invokes its monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force in this manner. To answer this question, this article analyzes three periods of heightened demolitions in post-independence Mumbai: the mid-1950s, amidst independent state formation; the mid-1970s, during the period of authoritarian rule referred to as the Emergency; and the mid-2000s, when Maharashtra’s Chief Minister initiated a campaign to “transform Mumbai into a world class city.” In each of these periods—as well as during the smaller-scale demolitions that are a consistent feature of life in the city—this article argues that slum evictions cannot be explained solely by what David Harvey and others have referred to as “accumulation by dispossession,” whereby the urban poor is dispossessed to initiate potentially lucrative urban development. Rather, it demonstrates that demolitions are embedded in contestations over authority and sovereignty in the governance of the Indian city. Furthermore, it demonstrates that despite a heightened awareness about this type of state violence, the explanations for demolition drives remain fairly consistent in the current globalizing or neoliberal era.     

Government structure in large U.S. cities: are forms converging?

This article examines changes in form of government and other structural elements over a fifteen year period for all cities with a population greater than 100,000. No evidence is found to support current theories related to form changes in large cities during this period. Some convergence between the council-manager and mayor-council forms has occurred in the use of district city council elections, directly-elected mayors, and professional management positions. However, disparities still exist between forms in the use of nonpartisan elections, mayoral voting power, and city council size. The changes in structural design reflect an increased blending of representation and efficiency values.     

Direct investment and industrial concentration

Cross‐national comparison of industrial concentration is considered here in terms of two hypotheses. The ‘technology/market size’ hypothesis [Merhav, 1969] predicts greater concentration in less developed countries than in the larger markets of developed countries. The ‘miniature replica’ hypothesis predicts that, when the degree of foreign ownership is high, industries in less developed countries may be less concentrated than their counterparts in advanced countries. Most cross‐national comparisons of firm size distributions support a predominance of ‘technology/market size’ effects. In this paper, data from the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil and other less developed countries are used to suggest that under certain conditions ‘miniature replica’ effects may prevail.     

The decentralisation of city government and the restoration of political trust

Abstract

‘Local politics’ has specific features that are conducive to the generation of trust, more so than ‘centralised politics’. Local politics is characterised by processes that occur on a small scale, within institutions that enjoy a certain autonomy, that are imbedded in a social community with which the citizens can identify, and that offer the possibility of more democratic participation. Where is the threshold between local and central politics? Clearly, if a city grows to the size of almost half a million inhabitants, as was the case in the port city of Antwerp, it becomes too large for local politics. It also becomes vulnerable to the lure of political distrust, as was manifested by the amazing rise of the extreme right in the 1990s. At least this was the theory that prompted the political leaders of the city to introduce a certain degree of decentralisation. To a certain extent they were right. Our evidence shows that the district councils generate more trust than the city council. Moreover they generate trust among sections of the population that were and remain distrustful of central politics. Will this capital of local political trust overflow into the trust in the higher authorities? Some of the data point in that direction but they are far from conclusive. Anyway it is too early to tell. The decentralisation reform in Antwerp is an interesting experiment but a very recent one.     

The Trade-Induced Learning Effect on Growth: Cross-Country Evidence

One of the important trade effects on growth is technology diffusion through learning by doing. Chuang [1998] proposed a trade-induced learning theory in which the nature of traded goods and the trading partners are two key factors determining the effectiveness of the trade-induced learning. The former conveys the characteristics that a country can learn; the latter determines the level of technology from which a country can learn. Using cross-country data, this article constructs a set of the trade-induced learning variables by taking into account trading partners and the characteristics of the traded goods and further tests the trade-induced learning hypothesis. The results show that holding other variables constant, trade-induced learning has a positive and significant effect on growth and the estimated effect implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in the trade-induced learning variable is estimated to generate an effect of between 0.4 to 1.0 percentage points on the annual growth rate. Robustness test shows that the trade-induced learning variable passes the extreme-bound analysis and also outperforms other conventional trade variables advocated in the literature.     

WHY PERCEIVED SIZE MATTERS FOR AGENCY TERMINATION

Agency size is generally assumed to be positively correlated with survival: the bigger an agency, the less likely it is to be terminated. Yet, recent research finds a very small effect of size on survival. The reason, we argue, is that it only addresses size in terms of overall operating budget – what this article calls objective size. By contrast, we use an interpretive historicist approach to show how perceived size – the meanings and beliefs of key actors concerning an agency's size – affects termination. Drawing on a case study of Australia's independent aid agency, AusAID, which endured a tumultuous history of cuts, reorganizations and rebirths, culminating in termination, we show how perceptions of the agency's size mattered. These findings both support and extend recent research showing that adaptation and reputation are critical to the survival of government agencies.     

Backward‐bending supply curves and behaviour of subsistence farmers

This paper formulates a model of the peasant economy to test the hypothesis that subsistence farmers are not responsive to economic opportunities and behave according to the notion of a backward‐bending supply curve. The productivity of farmers is analysed with respect to farm size, tenancy, off‐farm income, and other variables. The hypothesis is then tested using data from three paddy areas in Malaysia, each differing in the level of social and economic development. The results indicate that farmers in the more subsistence‐oriented area behave according to the backward‐bending supply curve hypothesis, while the more commercialised farmers do not.     

Performance Management and Deficit Adjustment in U.S. Cities: An Exploratory Study

Performance management or PM has been promoted as a tool to transform government. Claims that PM will enable governments to “do more with less,” “increase efficiency,” provide “value for money,” and make “rational budget decisions” abound. Has PM helped city governments in the United States cope with the effects of the 2007–2009 Great Recession? Theory suggests that PM can provide the informational and analytical foundation necessary for city officials to implement comprehensive but conflictive budget-cutting and revenue-raising strategies. By facilitating deep expenditure cuts and tax increases, PM can indirectly influence budget deficits. Using data from a national survey of city governments and multiyear audited financial reports, the empirical analysis shows that PM cities favored what are essentially decremental responses to fiscal crises that lead to marginal changes in revenues and expenditures. Not surprisingly, there is no evidence that PM influences the size and change in budget shortfalls.     

Testing The Limits of Incrementalism: An Empirical Analysis of Expenditure Decisions by English Local Authorities, 1981–1996

Studies of budgetary outputs in public organizations are dominated by the theory of incrementalism. This perspective suggests that expenditure decisions are based on simple rules of thumb. We evaluate the validity of incrementalism by examining the annual spending decisions of 403 English local authorities over 15 budgetary cycles. Two budgetary norms are tested empirically: protect the real level of service provision, and follow central expenditure guidelines. Each of these norms is translated into two decision rules: marginality, or the size of deviations from the norm, and regularity, which refers to the consistency of such deviations over time. Few of the statistical results support the hypothesis that local expenditure decisions are dominated by general budgetary norms or specific decision rules. Our evidence therefore casts doubt on the validity of incrementalism as a theory of local budgetary outputs, and as an explanation of spending decisions in the public sector as a whole.     

Urban development in czecho-slovakia: some background conditions for local level public administration

Concepts and skills from the Public Administration field are in strong demand by local governments in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic. After forty years in which local level initiatives in government and in business were squelched, there now exist extensive opportunities. After discussing the extent of past centralization, population trends and local public spending by city sizes are defined for the Czech Republic. A comparative analysis of a single Czech city with a German city of similar size points out some special limitations in land use employment and tax base facing local public policy makes. In conclusion, the need for attention to institution-building and for local area information as part of technical assistance efforts is discussed.     

Independent Mayors and Local Lists in Large Polish Cities: Towards a Non-partisan Model of Local Government?

The enormous success of local independent lists and independent mayors in Poland suggests it is important to examine their distinctive features, analyse the place they occupy in local politics, and explore the model of local government they encourage. This paper deals with these topics by investigating some extreme cases of non-partisanship at the local level. Research was conducted in three arbitrarily chosen Polish cities governed by independent mayors and dominated by independent lists in the local legislatures. Mixed quantitative and qualitative methods were used: a survey among city councillors; and individual key-informant interviews (IDI). Non-partisans appear to be a separate category of local politicians, different in terms of their views on politics. They explain their non-partisanship using anti-partisan, historical or tactical justifications. It seems that non-partisanship can be a means of institutionalising a particular manner of understanding and engaging in politics. Local lists organised by independent mayors are informal, concentrating on the leader and performing only some of the traditional functions of parties. This paper demonstrates that, due to the vague nature of the links between local politicians and their administration, independent councillors may serve only as a ‘democratic addition’ to a local administration headed by a skilful manager.     

The Roots of Global Inequality: The Role of Biogeography and Genetic Diversity

This paper adds further evidence supporting Jared Diamond’s hypothesis that global technological differences in the pre-modern era were fundamentally due to bio-geographic factors: the time elapsed since the onset of agriculture and husbandry, the size of the population relative to the territories, the shape of continents. An alternative hypothesis, that genetic diversity within populations is the ultimate cause of global inequalities, is also examined. Results show how there is no robust evidence supporting a possible effect of genetic diversity on international differences in population density and technology in the pre-modern era.     

The national identity of post-communist small states in the process of accession to the European Union: the case of Slovenia

The article discusses, through conceptual elaboration and empirical investigation, the interplay between the perception of smallness and the concept of national identity in the case of Slovenia’s integration into the European Union. Unlike the prevailing literature on Slovenia, the authors do not take Slovenia’s smallness for granted. They argue that, in the particular case of Slovenian identity-building, smallness as an independent variable does not feature frequently at all. The research is based on methodological pluralism, with a special emphasis on political discourse, the mass media and public opinion in Slovenia.     

Intimate Encounters with the State in Post-War Luanda,Angola

Abstract

Since the end of the war in 2002, Luanda has become an iconic site of urban transformation in the context of a particularly entrenched oligarchic regime. In practice however, urban dwellers are often confronted with a ‘deregulated system’ that fails to advance a coherent developmental agenda. The paper narrates the trajectory of a family forcibly removed from the old city to the periphery. It shows how city-dwellers experience the control of the party-state through a series of encounters with authority across the city. Questioning the intentionality of a state that appears at the same time omnipotent and elusive, openly violent and subtly hegemonic, the paper reveals the fine mechanisms through which consent is fabricated in the intimacy of the family.     

Why Are Some States More Generous in Offering R&D Tax Credits than Others? An Empirical Answer

This article examines political cost factors that affect a state's propensity to adopt a corporate income tax credit to encourage research and development (R&D) activities in the United States. Assuming state elected officials are vote-maximizers, this article hypothesizes that politicians' consideration of potential revenue losses and influence from organized interests are critical in a state's decision to provide a R&D tax credit. To test the hypothesis, two statistical models are specified. With a dichotomous dependent variable of whether or not a R&D tax credit is offered, a Logit regression model is utilized. For the interval level dependent variable of effective R&D credit rates, this article specifies a Tobit model. The results show that politicians' concerns about revenue losses loom much larger than private organized interests.