Do Formulas Reduce Political Influence on Intergovernmental Grants? Evidence from Tanzania

Sub-national governments usually depend on the central government for a large share of their revenues. Therefore, a fair allocation of intergovernmental grants is essential for financing vital local services like education and healthcare. In Tanzania, and many other countries, regions that are better represented in the national parliament receive significantly more funds than others. Recently, Tanzania replaced the previously existing discretionary method of grant allocation by allocation formulas. We study whether this has reduced the effect of malapportionment on grant allocation. Surprisingly, we find that formula allocation does not significantly change this effect. This has important policy implications.     

Decentralisation,Governance and the Structure of Local Political Institutions: Lessons for Reform?

Many governments are devolving power to elected local councils, hoping to improve service delivery and citizen representation by bringing officials closer to the people. While these decentralisation reforms hold the promise of improved governance, they also present national and sub-national leaders with a complex array of options about how to structure newly empowered local political institutions. This article draws on cross-national experience and the latest research to identify the trade-offs inherent in structuring local political institutions. The study's specific interest is in the impact of strong, locally elected councils on governance and representation. Proceeding from an empirical basis that competitive elections are vital for the legitimacy and efficiency of local political institutions, the analysis first questions the impact of four institutional features – central versus local control, local executive versus local council authority, local council structure, and the role of parties – on service provision and fiscal solvency. The article's second section analyses the impact of decentralisation on political representation, with a particular focus on the role of institutional design in combating the threat of extremist parties. A final section summarises empirical findings and advances some policy-relevant conclusions.     

Performance-Related Payments in Local Governments: Do They Improve Performance or Only Increase Salary?

Personnel policies in public sector organizations are fundamental to improving public services, since they have an impact on both individual and organizational performance. Within the broad area of Human Resources Management (HRM), Performance-Related Pay Systems (PRPSs) are widely considered one of the cornerstones of public sector managerial reforms. Monetary incentives should be paid for performance achievements of single employees and/or teams, according to a defined set of objectives. While the role and appropriateness of PRPSs in the public sector have been widely discussed in the literature, in some countries monetary incentives have been used as a tool to increase individual salaries, without considering them as a motivating instrument in a wider HRM system. A small number of studies have been conducted to understand the limitations of this form of incentives and to investigate whether it can be replaced by different and more effective incentives in order to avoid the de-motivating effect caused by money, as recognized in the literature. This study tries to fill this gap investigating, through twenty-five interviews to informed respondents the effectiveness of existing PRPSs at Local government level in Italy both in terms of performance and motivation and the possibility to substitute monetary with non-monetary incentives. The findings suggest that the limitations of monetary incentives have been widely recognized, but it is still difficult to replace them with different and more effective alternatives.     

Citizens’ Initiatives: How Local Governments Fill their Facilitative Role

In the context of drastic cutbacks many Dutch municipalities consider citizens’ initiatives (CIs) as an attractive alternative for municipal policies aimed at improving the livability and safety in neighbourhoods, simultaneously building responsible citizenship. In this paper we combine different theoretical perspectives to analyse the institutional settings in which CIs are being realised, and how municipalities try to facilitate such initiatives. Municipalities can do this by either trying to structure the relevant networks or by various forms of process management. This analysis sheds light on how municipalities use a variety of instruments to mobilise citizens to participate in CIs. In using such instruments they can influence various factors (like motivations, personal resources, social capital and expected responsiveness; cf. Lowndes et al.’s CLEAR model) that increase the likelihood of civic engagement.     

Local Government Size and Political Efficacy: Do Citizen Panels Make a Difference?

Democratic theorists typically suggest that citizens served by small local governments have high levels of political efficacy. However, it is conceivable that large governments can overcome the burden of bigness by introducing structures that involve citizens more closely in decision-making. This paper analyses whether jurisdiction size influences political efficacy in Welsh local government, and whether the presence of a citizen panel makes a difference to the size-efficacy relationship. Multi-level analyses suggest that size is negatively associated with internal and external political efficacy, but that the use of citizen panels bolsters the external efficacy of citizens served by larger local government.     

What Drives Intermediate Local Governments’ Spending Efficiency: The Case of French Départements

The restructuring of the allocation of governmental competencies in France has increased the importance of subnational governments by transferring additional tasks. We analyse the efficiency of public spending on the intermediate government level for the 96 départements in metropolitan France in 2008. Spending efficiency is measured using Data Envelopment Analysis. Results indicate significant room for improvement and we detect an average spending inefficiency of 12%. To explain efficiency, a bootstrapped truncated regression is applied. The second-stage regression shows that efficiency is also determined by exogenous factors and identifies the distance to the national capital, inhabitants’ income and the share of inhabitants older than 65 as significant determinants of efficiency.     

The Initiation of Local Authority Referendums: Participatory Momentum or Political Tactics? The UK Case

Local authority-initiated referendums have been a cornerstone of the UK Government's drive to improve citizen participation at the local level. Authorities have increasingly made use of local referendums since the 1990s, but little research has been carried out to explain and qualify this surge. Focusing on a case study of a recent referendum in Greater Manchester, and comparing it to other significant local referendums, this article analyses their initiation according to Morel's (2007) functional model. Findings reveal that referendums were most often held to smooth over divisions within local parties or assemblies, to legitimate a controversial decision or to weaken political adversaries. Local authorities therefore never employed referendums as genuine participatory tools, but rather as a pragmatic and tactical solution to a given political problem. Consequently, the long-term impact of local referendums on citizen participation remains questionable.     

The decreasing number of candidates at Danish local elections: Local democracy in crisis?

While the qualitative dimension of local political recruitment is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature, little attention has been paid to the quantitative aspect, i.e., how many candidates run for local elections. Using Danish local politics as a case study, this analysis of election report data demonstrates that the political parties show substantial rational actor behaviour when deciding the number of candidates to be put forward. The number of candidates running at Danish local elections has for the last four decades been continuously decreasing. Applying demand-side hypotheses derived from Rational Choice Institutionalism led to the conclusion that some, but not all, of the decline in the number of candidates can be attributed to changes in the institutional set-up of the Danish local elections.     

Local Political Decision-Making: A Case of Rationality or Appropriateness?

The party and trustee principles are two representational styles used to describe how politicians make decisions. Swedish politicians have historically relied more on the party principle than the trustee principle. This article studies the decision-making practices of local Swedish politicians by exploring to what extent they rely on these principles when making decisions on two issues that diverge in political dignity: tax level and organisational change in the municipal administration. The study draws on new institutional theory, in which theories from rational choice and sociological institutionalism were used for modelling and performing a large study. The results indicate that, although Swedish politicians still rely on the party principle when making decisions, there is a significant difference as to what extent they do so in regard to the two policy issues. The trustee principle is more frequently used when deciding on organisational change than on tax levels. This result is valid for all Swedish parties, except for a relatively new political party at the extreme right of the ideological spectrum. Future research of the two decision-making principles in relation to other policy issues, as well as research that delves deeper into the deviant results of the different political parties, is encouraged.     

The Impact of ‘Boss’ Candidates and Local Political Machines on Elections in Ukraine

The business sector has strongly influenced Ukrainian electoral campaigns since the founding post-communist elections. This article investigates the role of influential, local business-sector candidates, whom we label ‘boss’ candidates, in illicit campaign activities, using unique biographical, electoral, and crowd-sourced data from the 2012 parliamentary elections. The analysis shows that higher levels of competition among candidates with ‘boss’ characteristics are associated with elevated reports of voter manipulation, specifically vote buying. The findings add to extant research on election integrity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, presenting quantitative empirical evidence that is consistent with narratives about Ukrainian electoral corruption.     

Symposium Introduction: Local Responses to ‘Austerity’

This introduction to the symposium sets out the context for local government in the United Kingdom at the current time. It outlines the scale of the reductions in funding since 2010, showing how uneven these cuts have been across the country and the reasons for this. It also describes the increased exposure to risk of both local government and of the citizens and communities it serves. The central question for the papers which follow is how local government is responding to these twin challenges. The papers provide insights from a number of detailed studies of individual authorities, exploring the strategies adopted to manage in response. The analyses focus on the distributive consequences for individuals and communities, but they also reflect on the wider consequences for local government itself. A particular concern is whether local responses are changing as austerity moves from its initial to its later phase.     

Terror and the Liberal Conscience: Political Fiction and Jihad—The Novel Response to 9/11

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington, D.C. in 2001 the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication devised a new classification. The category, September 11 Terrorist Attacks 2001-Fiction, responds to a distinct genre of political novels. In the light of the philosopher Richard Rorty's contention that the Western novel can clarify the moral and political options that confront the West, the article examines what insight, if any, into the motive for violence, and the capacity to recuperate a sense of liberal progressive purpose, the novels of 11 September afford?     

Death of Rationality: The Social Networks’ Factor in Policy Response to Ebola

The sociopolitical role of social networks in public decision-making is far from fully understood. Their fast-pace and elusive nature makes the situation fluid and therefore susceptible to rushed theorization. The emerging dominant view is that social networks increase mass political polarization. A new view proposes that social networks increase harmony and tolerance. By examining the role of social networks in the policy response to Ebola in the United States, this paper suggests that social networks play a dual role: increasing polarization around politically divisive issues and promoting tolerance regarding less contentious issues. The paper also expanded the definition of social networks to include online discussions forums. Using the public choice theory and its rational model as a frame of reference, the study focused on six online forums during the peak of Ebola scare, October 2014 through January 2015.     

“Institutions and Economic Performance: The Use and Abuse of Culture in New Institutional Economics”: A Response to Heydemann

Applications of institutional analysis to the explanation of economic performance come in many flavors. Some economists have made use of an economics-oriented flavor in treating culture as one component of that analysis. Steven Heydemann uses a more political flavor of institutional analysis to argue that two of these economists, Douglass North and Avner Greif, have overly simplified and homogenized the concept of culture and the way in which it affects economic performance. He goes on to identify several instances in both the economic history and contemporary experience of the Middle East where he claims that such over-simplification has led to shortcomings in the analysis. This paper suggests that while some of Heydemann’s claims have merit, several others are exaggerated.

Local Expenditure Interaction in Italian Municipalities: Do Local Council Partnerships Make a Difference?

This paper investigates interdependence among local councils in Italy in their public spending and distinguishes between possible sources of this interdependence. We find significant positive interaction among neighbouring local councils in regard to both spending at the level of total expenditure and spending on different sub-categories. Attempts to identify the source of this horizontal interaction seem to reject the yardstick competition hypothesis. Addressing the role that local council partnerships may play in internalising fiscal externalities, we suggest that expenditure interaction may be driven by spill-over.     

Why Do Municipalities Cooperate to Provide Local Public Services? An Empirical Analysis

Intermunicipal cooperation is being increasingly adopted in various countries as a part of local service delivery reforms. This article draws on survey data from Spain's municipalities to examine the reasons underpinning the decisions of local governments to engage in intermunicipal cooperation and privatisation. Our empirical analysis indicates that small municipalities prefer to rely on cooperation for reducing costs, while their larger counterparts prefer to privatise the delivery of services. By cooperating, scale economies can be achieved with lower transaction costs and fewer concerns for competition than is the case via private production.     

The Correlates of Local Government Responsiveness Under Decentralization: Do Performance Ratings Matter in the Philippines?

To improve local service delivery under decentralization, performance ratings are often introduced. In this article, performance ratings and other correlates of the citizens’ assessment of the responsiveness of their local governments are investigated with a regression analysis of survey data collected during the pilot test of a performance rating scheme in 12 Philippine cities and municipalities in 2001–2003. The local governments in the eight sites where the ratings were announced are assessed less responsive by their own constituents than those in the four control areas by theirs. Possibly, the citizens exposed to the ratings expected better performances from their officials.     

Do Electoral Risks Moderate the Effect of Partisan and Electoral Cycles on Debt-Financed Local Spending?

Governments’ use of debt as a political instrument has been widely studied from the perspective of partisan and electoral cycles, mainly concerning central government. On the whole, previous studies have attempted to determine the effects of political ideology and the proximity of elections on the opportunistic use of public spending. The current study aims to broaden the scope of attention to the effect of partisan and electoral cycles on debt, by means of a broader consideration of the motives that lead politicians to take on a deficit and that are usually linked to the associated electoral risk. More particularly, we examine whether, during the electoral period, greater confidence in re-election can modify party behaviour concerning the use of public spending, and if so, whether the change is greater or smaller depending on the ruling party’s ideology. The results obtained show that local administrations need to incur debt, although politicians take on more liability than is appropriate to their demographic and economic characteristics, especially in an election year. It was also found that political stability favours a reduction in the public deficit, a pattern that is maintained in electoral periods. This effect was found to be independent of the partisan cycle.