Against Localism: Does Decentralising Power to Communities Fail Minorities?

The continued decline in levels of political engagement among British citizens has led many politicians, commentators and academics from across the political spectrum to advocate a move toward a more direct form of democracy via some kind of localism. The claim is that citizens feel increasingly estranged from the democratic process, and from those organisations on which they have historically relied to represent them within the political system. Consequently, localists argue, there now exists a gap between the people, the institutions which are supposed to work on their behalf, and the decisions made in their name, so the system needs to be reformed in such a way as to give individuals and local communities more of a direct input into the decision-making process. Calls for a more direct form of democracy via localism are popular among members of the progressive left and the 'new Conservative' right, and have become so dominant in political discourse that it is often suggested that 'we are all localists now'. This article raises questions about the localist agenda, and suggests that the adoption of a more direct form of democracy in Britain may not only fail to address the decline in political engagement, but may also result in the exclusion, marginalisation, and oppression of minority groups.     

The importance of input and output legitimacy in democratic governance: Evidence from a population-based survey experiment in four West European countries

The study of subjective democratic legitimacy from a citizens’ perspective has become an important strand of research in political science. Echoing the well-known distinction between ‘input-oriented’ and ‘output-oriented’ legitimacy, the scientific debate on this topic has coined two opposed views. Some scholars find that citizens have a strong and intrinsic preference for meaningful participation in collective decision making. But others argue, to the contrary, that citizens prefer ‘stealth democracy’ because they care mainly about the substance of decisions, but much less about the procedures leading to them. In this article, citizens’ preferences regarding democratic governance are explored, focusing on their evaluations of a public policy according to criteria related to various legitimacy dimensions, as well as on the (tense) relationship among them. Data from a population-based conjoint experiment conducted in eight metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom is used. By analysing 5,000 respondents’ preferences for different governance arrangements, which were randomly varied with respect to their input, throughput and output quality as well as their scope of authority, light is shed on the relative importance of different aspects of democratic governance. It is found, first, that output evaluations are the most important driver for citizens’ choice of a governance arrangement; second, consistent positive effects of criteria of input and throughput legitimacy that operate largely independent of output evaluations can be discerned; and third, democratic input, but not democratic throughput, is considered somewhat more important when a governance body holds a high level of formal authority. These findings run counter to a central tenet of the ‘stealth democracy’ argument. While they indeed suggest that political actors and institutions can gain legitimacy primarily through the provision of ‘good output’, citizens’ demand for input and throughput do not seem to be conditioned by the quality of output as advocates of stealth democratic theory suggest. Democratic input and throughput remain important secondary features of democratic governance.     

Effectiveness of fiscal incentives for innovation: Evidence from meta‐regression analysis

This article examines the microeconometric evidence on the impact of government support for R&D and innovation. Our meta‐regression analysis uses a dataset of empirical evidence on the effects of government R&D policies on innovation and investigates the factors that may explain the differences in the estimated effects. The meta‐analysis is structured to include both the direct and indirect government support for R&D and innovation. The estimated results reveal the heterogeneity of empirical studies with respect to the type of incentive, data, and econometric methodology used. The results indicate that the output additionality effect is on average stronger for R&D tax incentives than subsidies. Studies that use the subsample of high technology sector show a stronger additionality effect of fiscal incentives on innovation. Moreover, small and medium enterprises have a stronger input additionality effect. The results also suggest that studies considered endogeneity issues have on average stronger additionality effect.     

Economic Crisis and Support for Democracy in Europe

The study of the impact of the economic crisis on attitudes toward democracy tends to be focused on satisfaction with specific democratic institutions. This article expands upon previous research to explore how the current economic crisis can affect core support for democracy as a regime. Based on European Social Survey data for the Eurozone countries, the findings are twofold. It is shown, firstly, that perceptions of the state of the economy have an impact both on satisfaction with and support for democracy, and, secondly, that citizens’ support for democracy is greater in bailed-out countries. In countries that have experienced intervention, the more critical citizens and those less satisfied with the outputs of democracy are the stronger advocates of democracy. The article argues that this is connected with the tendency of critical citizens in bailed-out countries to blame external agents for the economic situation while increasing the saliency of democratic rules as a reaction to the imposition of unpopular measures.     

Oil,elections and fiscal transparency

How does governments’ ability to gain financing from oil income affect their behaviour? Numerous studies have explored the effects of oil wealth on countries’ political characteristics, especially the level of democracy. Oil has also been associated with a significant electoral incumbency advantage across different political regimes. However, the relationship between oil wealth and incumbent governments’ behaviour, including election-year fiscal manipulation, has been studied to a lesser extent. This article argues that higher oil rents increase election-year public spending as they provide national governments both with direct revenue and increased financing opportunities. However, fiscal transparency mitigates this effect. Consequently, oil-induced electoral budget cycles decrease as fiscal transparency increases. Using a high-quality measure of fiscal transparency in a panel of countries, robust evidence in favour of this argument is found. The findings suggest that many of the previous results on the political effects of oil, including incumbency advantage, might run through an election-year spending channel, and that fiscal institutions might matter substantially for the political effects of oil.     

Fiscal Institutions,Credit Ratings,and Borrowing Costs

This paper investigates the impact of fiscal institutions on state government borrowing costs. We find that institutions have both a direct and indirect effect on interest costs paid by state governments. Revenue limits are associated directly with higher interest costs; expenditure limits, stricter balanced budget rules, and restrictions on state debt issuance are indirectly associated with lower interest costs because they lead to higher credit ratings. It appears that investors and bond raters incorporate information on fiscal institutions into their assessment of state government credit quality.     

Can service providing NGOs build democracy? Five contingent features

This article studies the role of service providing NGOs in the Middle East in promoting democracy. Challenging the assumption that service providing NGOs are apolitical, the authors argue that service providing NGOs play important roles in promoting democracy. They do so by serving as public arenas, or spaces in which members and beneficiaries practice democratic habits such as discussion and debate, collective problem solving, free expression, rights claiming, and the like—all of which contribute to the cultivation of a participatory form of democracy. Drawing upon existing literature, interviews, and participant observation of NGOs in Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine, the authors argue that five features shape the role of service providing NGOs in promoting democracy. These include: (1) organizational readiness, or the organization's embeddedness in its beneficiary community and its organizational capacity; (2) organizational governance, or organization's commitment to participatory representation and transparency; (3) the nature of service an organization provides; (4) an NGOs' collaboration with other NGOs and the government; and (5) donor risk tolerance. The article's analysis contributes to our understanding of the varied, and often overlooked, roles of service providing NGOs, advancing the literature on NGO-state relations, NGO-donor relations, and democracy promotion.     

Designing institutions to improve well-being: Participation,deliberation and institutionalisation

Social accountability institutions are at the forefront of democratic reformers’ efforts to improve well-being by harnessing the power of citizen participation. This article builds on recent research identifying a positive relationship between participatory budgeting (PB) and well-being. The article is the first large-N study to identify relationships between specific rules of PB programme design and well-being. A unique dataset of 114 Brazilian municipalities with PB programmes from 2009 to 2016 is constructed to evaluate whether internal mechanisms within PB explain variation in local infant mortality rates – an outcome associated with wellbeing. Hypotheses are tested that correspond to citizen participation, the scope of deliberation and embeddedness within local institutions. It is found that PB programmes are associated with lower infant mortality rates when they broaden participation, expand deliberation and embed the new institutions in ongoing policy-making venues. The results offer a framework for designing PB programmes and other social accountability institutions to maximise impact.     

The devil is in the shadow. Do institutions affect income and productivity or only official income and official productivity?

This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy. Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative impact on the size of the underground economy. However, once output is corrected for the shadow economy, the relationship between institutions and output becomes weaker. The impact of institutions on total (“corrected”) factor productivity becomes insignificant. Differences in corrected output must then be attributed to differences in factor endowments. These results survive several tests for robustness.     

Barriers for Crowd’s Impact in Crowdsourced Policymaking: Civic Data Overload and Filter Hierarchy

While crowdsourcing is an increasingly common method of open-government practices to strengthen participatory democracy, its impact on governance is unclear. Using data from a crowdsourced city-plan update by the City of Palo Alto, California, this article examines the impact of a crowd’s input on policy changes. We used an enacted policy change to quantify government’s response to crowd suggestions, whether crowd suggestions are adopted in the policy changes or not. While the city responded to less than half of the crowd’s suggestions, the likelihood of its doing so increased by 51.42 percentage points when the crowd’s ideas were amplified by a citizen advisory committee (CAC), a panel of residents working with the city in the policy update. We also found that the government is more likely to respond to crowd suggestions that are perceived as actionable. These two factors—CAC and the perceived data quality—constitute a filter which the crowd’s suggestions have to pass to make into the policy. This filter created a hierarchy in the participatory practice. Although crowdsourcing intends to create equality and inclusiveness in policymaking, our findings reveal that the civic data overload and the filter hierarchy complicate the adoption of crowdsourcing as a democratic innovation in governance.     

Authoritarian Attitudes, Democracy, and Policy Preferences among Latin American Elites

This article examines the prevalence and consequences of authoritarian attitudes among elites in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. We focus on the connection between antidemocratic elite attitudes and support for democracy; the causes and effects of authoritarian attitudes among elites and their implications for authoritarianism; and the impact of authoritarian attitudes beyond social policy preferences to other policy areas that have indirect implications for order. Contrary to some of the literature, we find that antidemocratic attitudes affect elites' support for democracy. Our analysis also speaks to the debate on the origins of authoritarianism. Much of the evidence supports Altemeyer's notion that perceived threat raises levels of authoritarianism, rather than Feldman's contention that threat strengthens the influence of authoritarian attitudes. Finally, we demonstrate that there is a broader influence of authoritarian attitudes on economic policy preferences, but only where those policies appear to have implications for social order.     

What can deliberative mini-publics contribute to democratic systems?

Can deliberative mini-publics contribute to deepening the democratic dimensions of electoral democracies? The question is framed in this article using a problem-based approach to democratic theory–to count as democratic, political systems must accomplish three basic functions related to inclusion, communication and deliberation, and decision making. This approach is elaborated with an analysis of a real-world case: a deliberative mini-public with a citizens’ assembly design, focused on urban planning convened in Vancouver, Canada. This example was chosen because the context was one in which the city's legacy institutions of representative democracy had significant democratic deficits in all three areas, and the mini-public was a direct response to these deficits. It was found that Vancouver's deliberative mini-public helped policy makers, activists and affected residents move a stalemated planning process forward, and did do so in ways that improved the democratic performance of the political system. Depending on when and how they are sequenced into democratic processes, deliberative mini-publics can supplement existing legacy institutions and practices to deepen their democratic performance.     

Nonpunctuated and Sweeping Policy Change: Bhutan Tobacco Policy Making from 1991 to 2009

This paper examines policy outputs associated with the 2004 Bhutan antitobacco law, including 2009 amendments, to determine if the law is congruent with punctuated equilibrium or social policy realism theories of policy change. There was no direct and sudden tobacco policy output change in Bhutan due to a shock to the policy system contrary to what punctuated equilibrium theory would predict. Rather, policy change was sweeping but nonpunctuated. This paper reconfirms prior findings of social policy realism theory that various and complex policy output patterns occur due to a mixture of contingent and complex factors. Under social policy realism, a complex interplay of factors drive policy with the state, corporate actors, and interest groups, and the market often playing a primary role. These complex policy outputs have a direct impact on society and the natural environment reflected in government policy output actions or inactions.     

Neglecting results? A critical view of the literature on organised interests in the European Union

Much research has been undertaken to cast light on to the role of interest groups in the European Union and elsewhere. However, only a few researchers have focused their energy on the practical effects of involvement—effects on the legal output of the political process. Thus, we have a good knowledge of interest groups as input factors, and we have a language to asses their weight in terms of input legitimacy. However, we do not understand their actual impact on the substance of legislation: does involvement make laws more efficient? This question seems especially relevant in the European Union as this organisation is often said to be much dependent on the effective and efficient functioning of its rules—its output legitimacy. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can't get no satisfaction with the Westminster model? Winners,losers and the effects of consensual and direct democratic institutions on satisfaction with democracy

Are citizens in consensus democracies with developed direct democratic institutions more satisfied with their political system than those in majoritarian democracies? In this article, individual‐level data from the second wave of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and an updated version of Lijphart's multivariate measure of consensus and majoritarian democracy covering 24 countries are used to investigate this question. The findings from logistic multilevel models indicate that consensual cabinet types and direct democratic institutions are associated with higher levels of citizens' satisfaction with democracy. Furthermore, consensus democracy in these institutions closes the gap in satisfaction with democracy between losers and winners of elections by both comforting losers and reducing the satisfaction of winners. Simultaneously, consensus democracy in terms of electoral rules, the executive–legislative power balance, interest groups and the party system reduces the satisfaction of election winners, but does not enhance that of losers.     

Explaining non‐participation in deliberative mini‐publics

This article investigates citizens’ refusal to take part in participatory and deliberative mechanisms. An increasing number of scholars and political actors support the development of mini‐publics – that is, deliberative forums with randomly selected lay citizens. It is often argued that such innovations are a key ingredient to curing the democratic malaise of contemporary political regimes because they provide an appropriate means to achieve inclusiveness and well considered judgment. Nevertheless, real‐life experience shows that the majority of citizens refuse the invitation when they are recruited. This raises a challenging question for the development of a more inclusive democracy: Why do citizens decline to participate in mini‐publics? This article addresses this issue through a qualitative analysis of the perspectives of those who have declined to participate in three mini‐publics: the G1000, the G100 and the Climate Citizens Parliament. Drawing on in‐depth interviews, six explanatory logics of non‐participation are distinguished: concentration on the private sphere; internal political inefficacy; public meeting avoidance; conflict of schedule; political alienation; and mini‐public's lack of impact on the political system. This shows that the reluctance to take part in mini‐publics is rooted in the way individuals conceive their own roles, abilities and capacities in the public sphere, as well as in the perceived output of such democratic innovations.     

NGOs invite attention: From the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to the Human Rights Council

This article first reviews and compares Human Rights Council and University Period Review (HRC/UPR) research published during and shortly after the institution-building period (2006–2009) to more recent work (2010–2014) to identify patterns of scholarly interest in NGO roles and behavior at the HRC/UPR. It divides research into that which either “ignores” NGOs or offers “indirect” attention, “direct” attention, or “foregrounds” NGO activity, concluding that NGOs are surprisingly underexamined, given remarkable new participatory opportunities in the HRC/UPR and the centrality of NGO information provision to the success of the new body. Empirical analysis of NGO statements from the CHR to the HRC indicates sharply increasing NGO participation, particularly among domestic, regional, and Southern NGOs. The increased volume and changing characteristics of participating NGOs may have important effects on the HRC/UPR and should also encourage further analysis.     

Gauging the Impact of Transparency Policies

To what extent do transparency policies generate positive impacts? This seemingly rhetorical question has become the subject of increasing contention, partly because of two research‐based biases. First, researchers have been blinded by metrics and method. Using tools that are often ill suited to gauging the gradual, diffuse, and indirect effects of most transparency policies, research has found—unsurprisingly—spotty evidence of impact. Transparency studies would benefit from greater use of complementary approaches, such as careful tracing of impact processes and indicators, combined with sensible counterfactual reasoning. Second, researchers have been looking for impact with blinkered vision. In particular, a thematic fixation on accountability and participation has monopolized attention. Key preconditions—such as compliance with and implementation of transparency policies—remain relatively neglected, as do other areas of potential impact, including capacity building, how actors are leveraging previously restricted streams of information, and transparency's role in improving policy coordination and communication.     

When Does Transparency Generate Legitimacy? Experimenting on a Context‐Bound Relationship

We analyze the main rationale for public administrations and political institutions for supplying transparency, namely, that it generates legitimacy for these institutions. First, we discuss different theories of decision making from which plausible causal mechanisms that may drive a link between transparency and legitimacy may be derived. We find that the common notion of a straightforward positive correlation is naïve and that transparency reforms are rather unpredictable phenomena. Second, we test the effect of transparency on procedure acceptance using vignette experiments of representative decision making in schools. We find that transparency can indeed generate legitimacy. Interestingly, however, the form need not be “fishbowl transparency,” with full openness of the decision‐making process. Decision makers may improve their legitimacy simply by justifying carefully afterward the decisions taken behind closed doors. Only when behavior close to a deliberative democratic ideal was displayed did openness of the process generate more legitimacy than closed‐door decision making with postdecisional justifications.     

The aftermath of Heysel: The 1985 Belgian election

The institutional approach to generalised trust creation is based on the assumption that only institutions with certain features give people reason to trust strangers. This article offers a revised version of this approach by arguing that there is an indirect rather than a direct link between the properties of institutions and trust among strangers. Referring to a neo-institutional idea of institutions, it is suggested that the potential of institutions for enabling people to trust strangers rests on institutions' power to structure individual action. The endurance and efficacy of institutions rather than their normative principles give us significant clues that our anonymous fellow citizens think about institutions as we do and accordingly feel committed to the rules of action. This, in turn, provides good reasons to believe that most of them will behave in an ‘appropriate’ manner so that we can trust them even if they are strangers.