Cooptation or Transformation? Local Policy Networks and Federal Regulatory Enforcement

Local policy networks can aid federal agencies, but they can also coopt federal resources for unintended purposes. Our empirical study finds that effective local networks increase both enforcement and compliance rates for the Clean Water Act. We discuss the circumstances under which effective networks can transform political culture, enhancing enforcement and compliance even in conservative areas generally opposed to regulation. The modified detection-controlled estimation procedure enables us to utilize official enforcement records from 1994 to 2000 to study both enforcement and compliance.     

Voting Rights for Whom? Examining the Effects of the Voting Rights Act on Latino Political Incorporation

This study applies insights from principal‐agent models to examine whether and how the language assistance provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Sections 203 and 4(f)(4), affect Latino representation. Using panel data from 1984–2012, we estimate two‐stage models that consider the likelihood and extent of Latino board representation for a sample of 1,661 school districts. In addition, we examine how policy design as well as federal oversight and enforcement shape implementation and compliance with the language assistance provisions. Our findings not only provide the first systemic evidence that the language assistance provisions have a direct effect on Latino representation, but also link the efficacy of the language assistance provisions to the duration and consistency of coverage and the presence of federal elections observers. Overall, our study underscores the continued need for federal government involvement in protecting the voting rights of underrepresented groups, in this case, language minority citizens.     

Civil Rights,Federalism, and the Administrative Process: Favorable Outcomes by Federal,State, and Local Agencies in Housing Discrimination Complaints

Some theorists argue that cooperative intergovernmental relations are critical to policy implementation in the United States. This assertion is explored in the context of fair housing enforcement by comparing favorable administrative outcomes in fair housing complaints at the federal, state, and local levels from 1989 to 2004. What conclusions can be drawn from this systematic comparison of intergovernmental enforcement in one policy area over an extended period of time? First, cooperative federalism works well in fair housing enforcement. Second, of special significance, state civil rights agencies resolve complaints in favor of complainants nearly as often as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and localities sometimes do so even more frequently.     

Civil Society Actors and EU Fundamental Rights Policy: Opportunities and Challenges

This paper examines how civil society actors in the EU utilize the political and legal opportunities provided by the EU’s fundamental rights policy to mobilize against discrimination, notably racism, and xenophobia. It emphasizes the multiple enabling roles that this policy provides to civil society associations engaged in judicial activism, political advocacy, and service delivery both at the EU and Member State levels, and assesses their effectiveness. It describes several factors that hinder the implementation of EU fundamental rights policy and reviews the strategies of civil society to overcome them. It highlights the reluctance of parts of public opinion to combat ethnic prejudice, considers reactions against what at a time of crisis is perceived as a costly project of social regulation, and examines civil society responses. The data sources consist of interviews with bureaucratic and civil society actors at EU level.     

Advancing Human Rights Policy: Does Grassroots Mobilization and Community Dispute Resolution Matter? Insights from Chiapas,Mexico

This research examines the impact of grassroots organizing at the community level in Chiapas, Mexico, to address problems associated with human rights advocacy and implementation. Traditionally, the nation‐state has had the primary responsibility to address issues pertaining to human rights violations and the enforcement of international human rights principles and treaties. Local political struggles and acts of resistance by disenfranchised groups in Mexico offer insight to understand the impact of indigenous and other social movements in furthering human rights. Indigenous populations in the state of Chiapas use local community dispute resolution to contest the inadequacy of the state in responding to the problems that give rise to poverty, lack of human dignity, educational access, racial and ethnic discrimination, lack of political participation in government and the right to equality in economic, social, and political sectors. Drawing from research based on participant observations in Chiapas, Mexico, there is some evidence to suggest that since the 1994 EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army) uprising several micro‐level political and social movements have contested the power of the state through symbolic and pragmatic organizing efforts. These groups include, but are not limited to, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), women's groups, and indigenous groups. After the Zapatista uprising, these groups were instrumental in making claims against the state through numerous activities: protests to end the war, the development of NGOs to observe human rights violations, civilian‐based Zapatista support groups (base de apoyo), peace camps, and open dialogue with the EZLN. I argue that collective mobilization in local communities serves both symbolic and pragmatic efforts in helping disenfranchised groups empower themselves to address economic, social, and political inequality. Local‐level activism has fueled a sense of self‐empowerment to change state institutional responses and to involve sectors of civil society domestically and internationally to initiate a proper resolution of issues that are fundamentally related to human rights.     

THE INFLUENCE OF BLACKS IN STATE AND LOCAL FAIR HOUSING POLICY-MAKING

The influence of black officials and organizations on public policy varies among political settings. Factors responsible for this variation include the relatively limited political resources still available to blacks, the size of the black population in a location, the representation of blacks in elective office, the control of political gate keepers, and prevailing ideology. The ability of blacks to influence fair housing policy is further predicated upon the level of government addressed. Black individuals and organizations were in- strumental in gaining agenda status for the passage of federal fair housing legislation in the 1960s. Experiences in Cleveland and Ohio reveal a less prominent role for blacks in state and local fair housing policy. Two major factors peculiar to this topic, inattention of traditional civil rights groups and diminished public support for civil rights policies, combine with repre- sentational issues to require a broader coalition for support of these policies. The lead in advocacy has been assumed by black/liberal white coalitions that promote managed residential integration contrary to the preferences of black-dominated interests that prefer equality of housing opportunity regardless of racial impact. The latter group, lacking the politi- cal resources of the former, usually reacts to policy rather than initiating policy. Black elected officials, who play a pivotal role in responding to the demand-protests of their constituents, may be hampered or helped by the political resources available in state and local settings. The theory of politi- cal incorporation helps to explain the incremental gains of blacks as com- pared to long-term policy responsiveness in state and local policy-making.     

Campaign‐Style Enforcement and Regulatory Compliance

This article examines the recoupling mechanism of campaign‐style enforcement and its effects on environmental regulatory compliance. Drawing on the policy implementation literature and institutional theory, the authors develop a conceptual model of campaign‐style enforcement in which both resource mobilization and power redistribution are theorized to address decoupling problems in regulatory compliance. The two‐pathway recoupling mechanism is evidenced by an empirical investigation of the implementation of China's energy conservation and emission reduction policy as part of that country's 11th Five‐Year Plan. Findings suggest that campaign‐style enforcement can effectively improve regulatory compliance when it addresses the efficiency/legitimacy conflict by providing policy incentives and reorganizing a clear hierarchy of political authority. The article concludes with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of campaign‐style enforcement.     

Domestic legislatures and international human rights law: Legislating on religious symbols in Europe

This article examines the dynamics of domestic legislatures' application of international human rights law. Specifically, this article asks the following: What factors shape how domestic legislatures apply international human rights law while they enact national law and policy? Lawmakers have a variety of motives for invoking and deliberating international law. Given these motives, the article identifies two factors — civil society actors and legal experts and the flexibility of international law — that are likely to contribute to if and how national legislatures interpret and apply international human rights law while legislating. These factors are examined through case studies on religion in schools in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. This article argues civil society actors and legal experts and the flexibility of international law inform lawmakers' estimation of political costs related to compliance and thus how they apply international human rights law to domestic legislation.     

Sunlight or Window Dressing? Local Government Compliance with South Africa's Promotion of Access to Information Act

Institutional reforms often face challenges of poor compliance and implementation at the local level. I analyze these in a context where weak state capacity and limited enforcement make widespread compliance unlikely. South Africa's 2000 Promotion of Access to Information Act tasked the South African Human Rights Commission with monitoring and promoting compliance, but with limited resources and no authority to sanction. I argue that local political competition can generate endogenous incentives for compliance, even under conditions of weak capacity and limited external enforcement. Using data on 234 South African municipalities over 10 years, I find higher levels of compliance among more politically competitive municipalities. The results are not simply a function of differences between African National Congress–governed municipalities and others, and are robust to numerous controls for different forms of local state capacity.     

Schoolhouses,courthouses, and statehouses after Serrano

The constitutionality of public school finance systems has been challenged in 43 states in the 25 years since the landmark Serrano decision. Using data on revenues from more than 16,000 school districts over the 1972-1992 period, this article assesses the impact of court-mandated reform on the role of the states in school finance. We find that resources from the state increased while revenues from local districts were roughly unchanged after successful litigation. States also followed a more aggressive redistribution policy in the aftermath of court-mandated reform; after successful litigation, state aid to the poorest districts increased and aid to the wealthiest districts remained unchanged. Finally, we find that reforms that were initiated by the states without judicial prodding were typically ineffective.     

The politics of regulatory enforcement and compliance: Theorizing and operationalizing political influences

There is broad consensus in the literature on regulatory enforcement and compliance that politics matters. However, there is little scholarly convergence on what politics is or rigorous theorization and empirical testing of how politics matters. Many enforcement and compliance studies omit political variables altogether. Among those that address political influences on regulatory outcomes, politics has been defined in myriad ways and, too often, left undefined. Even when political constructs are explicitly operationalized, the mechanisms by which they influence regulatory outcomes are thinly hypothesized or simply ignored. If politics is truly as important to enforcement and compliance outcomes as everyone in the field seems to agree, regulatory scholarship must make a more sustained and systematic effort to understand their relationship, because overlooking this connection risks missing what is actually driving regulatory outcomes. This article examines how the construct of “politics” has been conceptualized in regulatory theory and analyzes how it has been operationalized in empirical studies of regulatory enforcement and compliance outcomes. It brings together scholarship across disciplines that rarely speak but have much to say to one another on this subject in order to constitute a field around the politics of regulation. The goal is to sharpen theoretical and empirical understandings of when and how regulation works by better accounting for the role politics plays in its enforcement.     

Treating Poorly Healed Wounds: Partisan Choices and Human Rights Policies in Latin America

Despite the common trauma of systematic human rights violations under military rule, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay have responded in markedly different ways to their troubling pasts. This paper explains differences in human rights policies over time and across countries by looking at varying domestic conditions, including the ideological orientation of the governing party and the structure of party competition, as well as constraints and opportunities presented by external events. Government support for human rights derives in part from ideological proclivity but even more from the ability to build popular support for such a policy. Conservative and center-right politicians lack credibility among voters on human rights and therefore have little political incentive to adopt an activist stance on this issue. Leftist politicians are ideologically predisposed toward championing human rights but may be hamstrung by concerns about alienating centrist voters. Leftist politicians will only come out strongly in favor of human rights when they enjoy a clear political majority; leftist leaders who rely upon centrist allies will adopt a low-profile approach to human rights. Conversely, centrist political leaders who rely upon leftist allies have a strong political incentive to emphasize human rights. Once political momentum begins to shift to the right, however, centrist politicians will downplay human rights. Finally, external events may significantly alter national discourse on human rights, allowing cautious governments to gain political cover for more progressive human rights policy. By drawing attention to the important role of ideology and the structure of party competition, this paper offers a more complete explanation of the sources of human rights policy. It also provides a novel perspective on the ways in which external and international influences are filtered through national political systems.     

Tax Evasion from a Policy Perspective: The Case of the Motor Fuels Tax

In recent years, many state legislatures have proposed, considered, and adopted legislation intended to thwart fuel tax evasion. Despite the recent political activity of state legislatures to increase fuel tax compliance, there is relatively little research examining the evasion of excise taxes in general or the motor‐fuel tax in particular. This article examines the issues of fuel tax evasion from a policy perspective. We discuss the vulnerability of the fuel tax to evasion and examine how state legislatures in the southern region have responded to the tax evasion issue. We focus the examination on four major initiatives implemented at the federal level in four broad policy areas: tax administration, penalties and punishments, liability, and visibility and enforcement. These findings provide important insight for developing new strategies to enhance compliance to the fuel tax in particular and excise taxes in general. Furthermore, we discuss how issues of fuel tax compliance can be extended to other compliance issues such as Medicare fraud.     

Trajectory of Civil Service Development in Kazakhstan: Nexus of Politics and Administration

Although Kazakhstan's civil service reforms have the explicit objective of depoliticizing administrative personnel, they have had limited success in achieving that end. Contrary to the formal objective, they make the worlds of political and administrative executives all but indistinguishable. A considerable gap between formal rules and their informal understanding creates loose boundaries of permitted behavior and allows discretionary enforcement and influence. The failure to reach the stated policy objective underscores the paradoxical coexistence of two political environments: one marked by its de jure centralized political structure and another by its de facto decentralization at various levels of civil service.     

When Missions Matter: Professional Priorities and the “Stepchild” of Supervisory Programs

If there is a clear bottom line to the literature on political control of the bureaucracy, it is that control is never complete. Principals can be multiple, priorities diverse, preferences for policy incomplete and not articulated, and intentional choice lost in the muddle. Yet as long as bureaucratic studies remain focused upon outside political actors, or at best, the political appointee at the helm of an agency, we will not make many advances in our understanding of important organizational dynamics that act as an independent force upon the phenomenon of bureaucratic behavior. This article suggests a politically cognizant return to the bureaucracy by examining the distinct management efforts of the Fed, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the FDIC to supervise the consumer and civil rights obligations of banks, known collectively as “compliance” obligations. The same mandates, issued and overseen by the same political principals, and implemented within common professional cultures, have been managed in ways that vary in the context of each agency's organizational mission. It is argued that organizational mission provides an empirical link between the priorities and mandates imposed from a system of “overhead democracy,” and the influential priorities of a common professional group (bank examiners) in each of the agencies.     

Participation,Dialogue, and Civic Engagement: Understanding the Role of Organized Civil Society in Promoting Active Citizenship in the European Union

Abstract

This article looks at current policies concerning the civic and political participation of youths, women, migrants, and minorities in the European Union. It highlights the ways in which active citizenship and civic engagement have become a political priority for European institutions. Representation of local policy actors at the supranational level and strategies for the inclusion of civil society provide a platform for evaluating the impact of Europeanization at the national and subnational level. The article focuses on key discourses and narratives associated with specific policy frames (e.g. European citizenship, European social policies, and the European public sphere (EPS)). Some of the key questions addressed by the article are: What are the strategies that are employed, both by the European institutions in Brussels and organized civil society (OCS), to enhance participation and reciprocal communication? What vision of governance do practices such as active engagement and civil dialogue represent? Drawing on current theories of governance, our article contributes to the debate about the EPS by evaluating the role of OCS in bridging the gap between European institutions and national polities. Equally, our focus on traditionally marginal groups provides a platform for assessing the institutionalization of the ‘European social dimension’.     

The politics of denial: the use of funding penalties as an implementation device for social policy

Conclusion The standard literature on implementation offers a number of variables usually associated with successful policy-making.⁵⁰ Roughly, the variables can be sorted into three broad categories: the nature of the problem to be solved, the causal theory for problem solution embodied in the statute, and the execution of that statutory solution in practice. These categories will supply a framework helpful in highlighting the empirical similarities across the cases of oblique funding denial discussed above and also for revealing important differences. The similarities will show both the conditions which lead to the use of this particular policy device and the manner of its use; the differences will show the conditions under which it can be used most effectively. Discussion will then turn somewhat more theoretical, inquiring into the legitimacy of funding denial as a political means and the capacity of the state apparatus that employs it. First, the specific social problem addressed in each of the cases of funding denial was relatively intractable. Each involved a matter of moral purpose - how fast is it safe for one to drive? At what age is one responsible enough to drink? What is the extent of one's military obligation? What is meant by the principle of equal respect for all individuals? American government is naturally reluctant to confront such difficult moral decisions and to impose an authoritative determination upon its citizenry. Not surprisingly, therefore, each case of funding denial was the product of a perceived national emergency, accompanied by a dramatic mobilization of public opinion - the energy crisis of 1973; the campaign against drunk driving led by MADD; the sudden presumption of military inadequacy; the civil rights movement, especially the Birmingham marches. The widespread belief that something must be done gave to politicians the incentive to enact policies placing concentrated costs upon some particular population group as a prerequisite for achieving diffuse societal ends. Strong ideological justification remained essential even after initial threshold barriers were overcome. In the speed limit case, for instance, the necessary shift in rationale from energy conservation to traffic safety somewhat weakened the defense for concentrated costs and left the legislation much more vulnerable to challenge and exemption. American politics might well exhibit a general propensity toward particularistic preferences and so-called distributional policies, which award concentrated group benefits and impose diffuse social costs, but there do regularly exist circumstances that help enact policies embodying the exact opposite pattern. A further problem exists, however, when designing a feasible strategy for implementation. In each of the cases considered above, funding denial was adopted because of the perceived insufficiency of the normal, judicial means of coercive implementation - a legislated national 55 M.P.H. speed limit or a direct prohibition against interstate alcohol sales to individuals younger than 21 years old would mandate a significant federal police role and might burden the federal courts; prosecutions under the 1980 Selective Service Act and litigation under the 1954 Brown decision had been deemed incapable of forcing adequate levels of compliance. The alternative next proposed was cash incentives, making it lucrative for the designated actors to adapt their behavior. But, it was found, the political price of Southern school desegregation was not sufficiently counterbalanced by the promise of federally funded technical assistance; the prospect of increased highway aid funds was not enough to induce states to alter their drinking laws. It was then logical for lawmakers to turn to the disincentive power of financial sanctions. Oblique funding denial offered a simple and quite attractive theory of policy cause and effect: by threatening to withhold money from tangentially related concentrated benefits, the target population would be impelled to accept the entailed concentrated costs of social reform. In the two examples using highway funds, the states as intermediaries were constrained to impose policy costs upon certain of their citizens or else face penalties themselves. In the two other examples, the impulsion was applied to the targeted individuals or institutions directly. As a causal theory for solution, however, the funding denial strategy has its own inherent weakness. In all the cases considered, the population designated for enforcement was not the same as the total population whose compliance was needed in order to achieve the social end. For example, the Solomon amendment affected only non-registrant college student aid recipients, a distinct subset of draft law violators. Moreover, all college aid recipients, even if not formally eligible for the draft, were made subject to penalties if they did not sign the specified form. The provision was on one dimension too narrow and on another much too broad, leading to claims of unfair treatment. Similarly, the 21-year-old drinking age affected only a portion of adults who might drink and drive, yet it imposed sweeping limits on all members of a specific age group regardless whether they were drivers or not. The civil rights regulations were applied with inequitable narrowness, for Title VI enforcement affected only the institutions and programs supported by federal grants, and affirmative action under Executive Order 11246 was required only of federal contractors. The 55 M.P.H. speed limit, by contrast, was initially applied with inequitable breadth, uniformly restricting highway speeds irrespective of the type of terrain, the quality of the road or its safety record. Supporters of these provisions often justified them in terms of mere expediency. Chief Justice Burger's defense of the Solomon amendment, that funding denial was a rational tool to encourage compliance among a major group of lawbreakers, was basically the same as the one employed by civil rights advocates on behalf of Title VI. Expediency, nevertheless, is political as well as merely technical. Those who were targeted for the funding denial strategy not only exhibited a certain dependence upon government finance, they also tended to be politically weak. Youths, for example, have been subjected to the strategy both as students and as drivers. This political weakness was further exaggerated by the stigmatization of the victim. Teenage drivers, it was implied, were uniquely irresponsible; college students were unpatriotic; and Southern aid recipients lacked a fundamental respect for the constitution. The exception to the rule was interstate trucking, and thus it is not unexpected that truckers did win some relaxation in the speed limit when first proposed in 1973, and that the portion of the highway regulations that most affect them have recently proved susceptible to attack. Finally, turning to practical execution, it is obvious that federal administrators tend not to want to impose funding sanctions. In all the cases examined, the express legislative intent was to encourage increased voluntary compliance, and ample provision was always made to allow the violator to correct his behavior or to negotiate a compromise in good faith. Moreover, federal grant agencies see their primary function as that of giving away authorized money. Exogenous conditions placed upon the use of such money involved an uncomfortable and often unwanted conflict among agency priorities. The exercise of funding denial interferes with laudable program operations and risks jeopardizing relations with Congress and clients. Counterveiling pressures for vigorous action, from social movements or presidential initiative, have proved fleeting. Thus the actual withholding of authorized dollars has been usually considered somewhat drastic action, to be reserved for dire situations. The Transportation Department, for example, has not yet deducted the required share from state highway funds for violations of the 55 M.P.H. speed limit, despite the findings of an administrative law judge and a suit in federal court to force it to do so. The education division of HEW had a short period of remarkable enforcement activism during the late 1960s but suffered severely for it, and no other agency has been as aggressive in pursuing civil rights. Of course, program effectiveness should not be judged solely by the number of sanctions imposed. The declaration made by the law itself, supported by the threat of possible punishment, can sometimes be sufficient. On the other hand, excessively protracted negotiations and a clear reluctance to apply funding penalties can give credence to the excuses of violators and effectively undermine the incentive for recipients to obey. As V.O. Key observed regarding the funding weapon, The mere existence of the power may have considerable effect, but these indirect results are not so great if the power is not used now and then to give substance to the threats of its use. When conditions appearing to warrant discontinuance of grants are tolerated, the implied threat of federal withdrawal ceases to have potency'.⁵¹ It also should be noted that the standard for judging what constitutes satisfactory performance is not entirely fixed. Only half of the drivers must obey the maximum speed limit for a state to retain its full allocation. Draft registration compliance in the 90% range, monitored by self-certification by college aid recipients, has been considered a success. A similar standard for affirmative action by federal contractors would generate a storm of criticism. Therefore, it appears, funding denial is a potentially powerful weapon in the government arsenal that generally has been applied to relatively intractable problems but in an uneven causal manner by somewhat reluctant administrative agents. The examples discussed above, however, do permit some differentiation. The intractability of the problem addressed varied with the resolve of the target group and the extent of behavioral change required. The difficulties of practical execution varied with the leverage available to the government and the attitude of administrative superiors. On both dimensions, civil rights presented the greatest challenge. Finally, the causal construction of the statute, itself, varied in ways that affected its ability to overcome barriers to successful implementation. The funding denial instrument was sometimes linked to explicitly specified compliance standards and time horizons for their achievement. In those cases, there was least ambiguity regarding the expected behavior of the target group, and least opportunity for administrative footdragging or political veto. The drinking age and draft registration stipulations were presented as simple, dichotomous matters of yes-or-no; either the states passed the requisite law and the students signed the required form, or else they were automatically subject to penalties. The highway speed limit started as dichotomous, but when a number of states complied formally while intentionally promoting circumvention, the law was altered so as to impose partial penalties contingent upon more detailed performance criteria. With civil rights, however, the statute neither defined illegal discrimination, nor established performance standards to be met, nor dictated a timetable for acceptable progress. Thus it gave to executive agencies an enormous amount of independent discretion. The tempting conclusion is that the funding denial device should always be used with tight compliance standards and unavoidable violator consequences. This is not quite true. There can be situations in which the extent of the entailed behavioral change and the sensitivity of the issue require a more subtle approach. There can be situations in which the strictest enforcement rules will engender a legislative reaction sufficient to win repeal once popular momentum wanes, and situations in which implementation at less than full enforcement will nevertheless bring a policy response deemed adequate by the initial intention. Although the bias should be towards specificity, especially given the lamentable record for Title VI, the optimal strategy must be decided on a case-by-case basis. The critical question, however, is not whether the funding denial instrument can be used more effectively, but whether it legitimately can be used at all. There is a sense of impropriety linked to the implicit assertion that the federal government's promises can be later revised through the attachment of technically unrelated performance criteria, and of arbitrariness in the exact nature of the contingencies attached. Critics have regularly protested that funding denial rests upon the unfair strategy of ‘bait-and-switch’, and have claimed that it establishes precedent for the limitless exercise of federal power. On the other hand, it has proven a useful instrument for social policy implementation in cases where more conventional methods have failed. Critics have charged that funding denial is discriminatory in practice, applying only to the vulnerable, politically and by their strong dependence upon government aid. On the other hand, it is a potentially effective means by which at least certain groups can be induced to act in a manner appropriate for the achievement of a desirable diffuse social good, and half a loaf is often preferable to none at all. Critics have asserted that funding denial infringes upon traditional prerogatives and individual freedoms, permitting the aggrandizement of federal authority through devious means. On the other hand, it is quite normal within budget politics for the recipient of government money to aggressively seek maximum discretion over its use, and for the grantor of that money to impose constraints in the pursuit of the public interest. It would seem that support for the oblique funding technique depends largely upon one's view of the diffuse social good pursued. Liberals and conservatives alike, although for different policy ends, have found it a useful instrument in the federal repertory. The more important the end and the greater the demand to achieve it, the less American legislators appear to be deterred by the device's potential limitations. Nevertheless, something more systematic can be said. American statebuilders have always sought to construct institutional forms sufficient to the policy task yet with recognition of the abiding national fear of bureaucratic authority and the preference for private organization and community government.⁵² American liberal ideology posits a state apparatus imbued with a monopoly of legitimate force which nevertheless exists to serve private interests without dominating them. Capitalist economics and constitutional rights establish relatively protected spheres for independent behavior. The state, even when acting on behalf of a clear social good, is simultaneously committed to maintaining a balance with civil society, which inherently limits its dominion and reduces its policy-making capacity. Turning specifically to budgetary instruments, the growth in federal spending over the 20th century is usually taken as an indicator of the increase in central government power. A larger budget implies control over a greater percentage of social resources, extracting more funds from primary earners in the marketplace and reallocating them to serve publicly determined ends. That power, however, is far from absolute. The American state is dependent upon a flourishing private sector for the revenues it expends, and is dependent upon cooperative private actors for the policies implemented through the budget to have their desired effects. Government, in essence, manipulates money that it directly controls in order to influence behavior over which it lacks direct control. This is the wellspring of the ambivalence intrinsic to oblique funding denial. The device is used when lesser means are deemed insufficient, for they would not induce societal actors to bear the concentrated costs of social reform, but when stronger ones would invade traditional state government preserves or require a considerable expansion of judicial power. Coercion is the expected means when government seeks to implement policy ends over an unwilling population. However, in many policy areas, the federal government is relatively weak in its ability to apply coercion and is often averse to the very notion. The American commitment to constitutional federalism and to individual rights significantly circumscribes the power of central dictation. Self-restricted by the rules of its own political system, the federal government must, if it wishes to be effective, then turn to somewhat novel and incomplete instruments. As a policy instrument, funding denial rejects the subservience of pure incentives, placing the burden of proof on potential recipients to show that they have fulfilled stipulated requirements and thus are deserving of funds. Yet denial also suffers strict limitations, as it is constrained by the populations that are susceptible to its leverage and by the extent sanctions actually can be applied. The consequence is a policy dynamic in which the federal government seeks to exercise the greatest possible influence consistent with the structured separation of state from society and of central from local government; and in which the subject group seeks to preserve the greatest possible freedom of choice consistent with support for the federal government's diffuse social policy goal. The dynamic, which engenders intense political controversy and gives rise to dramatic rhetoric, must not be thought the product of faulty policy design. Rather, it is inherent to the logic of an implementation means founded upon the attempt to achieve a complicated philosophical straddle. Ultimately, the American public has but three basic choices. It can revise its political system to greatly expand the power of the federal government. It can abandon the effort to achieve broad social goods when societal interests and local officials maintain sufficient autonomy to resist. Or it can continue to experiment with the awkward instruments of central government leverage. With full recognition of the dangers of abuse and of discrimination, and with full awareness that the results will be less than ideal, social reformers must consciously work to expand the middle ground. Public policy is not just the product of state-and-society relationships. It also reflects the form of those relationships. Ironically, oblique funding denial, for all the appearance of imperious power, is an expression of the institutional tensions fundamental to a liberal political regime. It is a natural consequence of the distinction between central state superintendence but private and local responsibility that is so heralded in American ideology. Funding denial, a complex federal policy instrument which simultaneously leads opponents to claim arbitrary manipulation and supporters to doubt enforcement adequacy, must therefore be seen as a systematic product of the society that invented it. with the assistance of David M. Dudar     

‘They come here to work’: an evaluation of the economic argument in favor of immigrant rights

Advocates commonly highlight the exploitation that hard-working undocumented immigrants commonly suffer at the hands of employers, the important contribution they make to the US economy, and the fiscal folly of border militarization and enhanced immigration enforcement policies. In this paper, I unpack these economic rationales for expanding immigrant rights, and examine the nuanced ways in which advocates deploy this frame. To do so, I rely on statements issued by publicly present immigrant rights groups in six places: California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington, DC. I also draw on interviews with immigrant advocates in San Jose, CA and Houston, TX, press releases from two alternative national immigrant rights organizations, and an ethnographic photo-documentation of immigrant rights mobilizations in 2012–2014. Economic rationales, I emphasize, can be found in each of these contexts, but are not mutually exclusive to other justifications, including narratives about civil, human, and family rights for immigrants. However, I argue that an economic framing of immigrant rights nonetheless runs the risk reifying work over conventional understandings of criminality, often relies on a narrow definition of economic worth, and could have negative consequences for coalition building.     

Civil Society Mappings by Government: A Comparison of Ecuadorian and Colombian Cases

Scholars argue that we cannot see civil society organizations (CSOs) as legitimate players in policy if we have no clear ways to define them and if we lack information explaining their functions. Thus, scholars and practitioners alike have encouraged the ‘mapping’ of civil society. Mapping civil society consists of gathering and collating information on CSOs and often making it publicly available. There is little scholarship about such mapping efforts implemented by government. This article compares new mapping efforts in two countries—i.e., registries of CSOs created by governments in Ecuador and Colombia. The article examines the intentions of civil society mapping by government, identifying three key goals: to collect data, to regulate, and to foster collaboration. It discusses the differences across civil society mappings by government and in comparison with other mapping projects. The article argues that registries are increasingly positioned as a link between government and civil society not only to collect data for transparency but also to implement regulatory measures and to foster various degrees of collaboration. Thus, greater research attention to civil society mappings by government and their possible implications on civil society development and civil society/state relations is needed.     

Political markets, property tax referenda, and local school spending

For better or worse, fiscal decisions made through property tax referenda allow local political markets to work. Demand, supply, and voting process components of such markets are estimated for those Oregon K-12 school districts that held referenda between 1981 and 1986. Various attributes of the median voter were related to school spending, but supply decisions by school boards and administrators were also important. Large districts used state aid to substitute for local property tax revenues on nearly a one-for-one basis, while relying on reversion budgets (inadequate property tax bases and implicit threats of school closures) to extract greater-than-desired spending levels from the median voter.