Agent heterogeneity and consensual decision making on the Federal Open Market Committee

The consensual aspects of decision making are essential for understanding policy made by administrative organizations that take the form of a commision or board. Consensual decision making reflects the degree of policy cohesion exhibited by high-level officials within administrative organizations. It is proposed here that this type of behavior may differ between heterogeneous agents. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve System serves as a salient setting for testing these propositions in a time series context. The empirical results indicate that major intra-institutional differences exist between Board of Governor (BOG) and Regional Bank President (RBP) members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) regarding consensual behavior. In terms of policy decision making, the econometric evidence clearly demonstrates that the consensual behavior of these agents are fundamentally different from one another. This in turn has important implications for the study of other commission and board policy making bodies that consist of agents who are not all homogeneous.     

Experiential Learning and Presidential Management of the U.S. Federal Bureaucracy: Logic and Evidence from Agency Leadership Appointments

Presidents become increasingly effective at managing the bureaucracy because of the information and expertise that they acquire from on‐the‐job experience. In their appointment choices, this theory predicts that presidents become better at reducing information asymmetries incurred from the bureaucracy (Agent Selection Learning), improve the vertical balance of leadership agent traits between top supervisory positions and subordinates directly beneath them (Agent Monitoring Learning), and place a greater relative premium on loyalty in response to horizontal policy conflict between the White House and the Senate (Common Agency Learning). This logic obtains empirical support from the analysis of bureaucratic agent traits for Senate‐confirmed presidential appointees serving in leadership positions covering 39 U.S. federal government agencies from 1977 to 2009. Presidents’ appointment strategies reflect their increasing effectiveness at managing the bureaucracy, thus complementing their increasing reliance on administrative mechanisms to achieve policy objectives as their tenure in office rises.     

Democracy and development: With Special attention to Korea

Academic discussions on the relationship between regime type and economic growth of developing countries have been drawn to three linkages, the contribution of a certain type of political authoritarianism to rapid industrial transformation, the trend towards democracy after a long period of sustained economic development, and possible negative economic consequences of democratization itself. There are theoretical reasons to support the first two assertions, but the third proposition is less tenable. The case of Korea shows that democratic changes have resulted in higher consumption, have induced inflationary policy, and have led to wage increases in excess of productivity gains. However, these might well be transitional rather than steady-state phenomena. Political learning can prevent young democracies from becoming captives to distributional coalitions.     

Über Sklaverei,Rassismus und die Segmentierung der Gesellschaft. Tocquevilles Analyse sozialer Ausgrenzung in der Demokratie

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville gives an explanation why the liberation of slaves was promoted in the northern states of the US in the Jackson era and why, nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of the blacks still remained excluded from society. He thoroughly describes the different forms of social distinction that enabled the Whites to maintain social hierarchies, even if the legal barriers fall. Not only privileges, educational differences and lifestyles create social hierarchies, but also language, taste and an awareness of tradition. Tocqueville clarifies these manners of boundary making on a concrete example: the attitude of the white Americans towards labor. The paper presents Tocqueville’s differentiated picture of those hidden social mechanisms that preserved and even intensified the existing social differences.     

Drivers of Policy Instrument Selection for Environmental Management by Local Governments

Local governments commonly pursue environmental objectives that exceed state and federal minimum requirements. Although research informs our understanding of factors that lead cities to adopt such policy goals, the underlying mechanisms employed to achieve them are not well understood. This article examines factors that drive the choice of policy instruments that cities use to pursue local environmental objectives. The literature links the structure of the local governing body, characteristics of the community and target populations, and the nature of the policy problem to instrument selection. Building on this, the authors model the dynamics shaping cities' use of regulations, financial incentives, or combination thereof, to pursue a variety of different environmental objectives. Results indicate that community racial composition and political leaning influence instrument choice when policy targets the public at large. Alternatively, when policy targets particular stakeholder groups, such as developers, the characteristics of the local governing body are of greater importance.     

Christian Wolff and the classics of“scientific socialis”

The paper analyses the reception of Christian Wolff in the work of the founders of scientific socialism. It is discussed how Marx, Engels and Lenin thought about a leading representative of German Enlightenment. The author argues that the classics of scientific socialism knew about Wolff in an off-handed and secondary way. As the case of Wolff shows their studies regarding philosophical, legal, sociological and economic theories and those who represented them were strongly influenced by thinking with the logic and in the categories of class antagonism and struggle. The Wolff treatment by Marx, Engels and Lenin determined his reception in the philosophy and economics of the state socialism.