Transactions costs and the optimal instrument and intensity of air pollution control

Conclusions To what extent do the transactions costs of implementing alternative instruments for pollution control affect the choice of the optimal instrument and the efficient intensity of control under that instrument? In a comparison of Least-Cost Regulatory Standards and Revenue-Neutral Pigouvian Taxes, it is the higher transactions costs of implementing the taxes that make Pigouvian Taxes the more costly of the two instruments. However, a more practical comparison of instruments is between Politically Feasible Standards, Marketable Discharge Permits, and Revenue-Raising Pigouvian Taxes. Here, the relationship between the transactions costs of implementation and total pollution costs are in an almost linear inverse relationship. The lower the pollution costs associated with a particular instrument, and therefore the more desirable the instrument, the higher the transactions costs of implementation. Other factors such as political distortion and welfare gains prove to be more important than the transactions costs of implementation.Assuming that variable transactions costs decrease with the optimal level of pollution for regulatory standards but increase with the optimal level for market oriented instruments, an accounting of transactions costs results in less stringent control in the case of regulatory standards and more stringent control in the case of market oriented instruments. However, the percentage effect is very small. Moreover, it is smaller in both cases if marginal pollution damage rises with the level of pollution, as it is usually presumed to do, rather than remain constant as assumed in this paper for purposes of aggregation. A major conclusion of this paper is that Pigouvian Taxes are the superior instrument for pollution control when the raising of public revenues is a desired objective. However, the various conclusions of this paper should be viewed as tentative because the data on which they are based are no longer current. Moreover, the critical estimates of transactions costs are somewhat dubious. It is hoped that new data will be collected for answering the questions raised in this paper. When this is done, a more powerful approach, one that obviates the need for the artificial, one-dollar-damaging, aggregate pollutant, would be an expanded linear programming model in which the transactions costs are treated as separate coefficients of the individual pollution control methods. Separate sets of such coefficients, each corresponding to a different policy instrument such as Least-Cost Regulatory Standards, Revenue-Neutral Pigouvian Taxes, etc., would enable the investigator to directly derive solutions that specify the optimal policy instrument as well as the optimal set of pollution control method activity levels.I am grateful to William Ascher, Murray Weidenbaum, and two anonymous referees for helpful guidance on the paper.     

Blunt force regulation and bureaucratic control: Understanding China's war on pollution

In the past decade, China has increasingly resorted to top‐down, “blunt force” solutions to environmental problems; officials forcibly shutter or destroy factories to reduce pollution, at immense cost to local growth and employment. Why would a high capacity state like China resort to such a costly method of pollution control? I argue that blunt force enforcement is targeted at overcoming principal–agent problems in the bureaucracy. When institutions are too weak to hold bureaucrats accountable, political leaders increase oversight by drastically reducing the number of steps and resources required to produce a regulatory outcome—resulting in blunt force measures. I illustrate this logic through case studies from China's multiyear war on pollution. Using original data on blunt force measures, I then show how localities with lower bureaucratic compliance face greater blunt force pollution enforcement. These findings reveal that when bureaucratic accountability is weak, states pay a very high cost for cleaner air.     

Political obstacles to a clean environment

Abstract

Three wrongs of American politics are discussed—the fragmentation of policy‐making and implementation, its domination by business elites, and a tendency to muddle through public problems. After presenting evidence that environmental deterioration is widespread, despite many laws and substantial spending to combat it, I argue that these three wrongs are obstacles to environmental cleanup. Cleanup would require producers to internalize their environmental costs; it would slow growth and take privileges away from and impose heavy new obligations on the most important and powerful actors in the political system. Our present politics cannot produce such decisions. Environmental conditions will worsen until people feel the severe consequences of environmental deterioration and change old political patterns. I suggest ways to ameliorate the wrongs of American politics and our system of regulating environmental hazards before these systemic changes occur.     

Pyongyang: Rules of engagement

The article attempts to re-construct the motivation behind the current North Korean policies, especially in the domestic sphere. It is argued tht North Korean leaders have valid political reasons not to imitate the Chinese-style reform, and are likely to limit themselves to moderate changes which would not jeopardize political stability and the domination of the present-day elite. The most critical factor is the maintenance of control over the access to information.     

The political feasibility of full ownership property rights: The cases of pollution and fisheries

The present paper investigates the political feasibility of policies to control pollution and fishing. It first hypothesizes the following: when common or usufruct property rights are changed to full ownership, the new policy is not an unadulterated charge or auctioned license because of the implied wealth transfer. This hypothesis is “tested” by reviewing the cases in which full ownership rights have been established and is found to be consistent with the evidence. The paper then investigates the conditions that facilitate the development of full ownership rights. It concludes that proposing policies that are simple and incremental increases political feasibility, in large part because of greater understanding by fishermen and polluters.     

Tax and direct expenditures: Perspectives on prepayment proposals

Abstract

If the government were committed to replenishing the inventory of project‐based assisted housing units when losses occurred, owners’ prepayment rights, with prepayment penalties, would be a desirable feature of the program. Additional unsub‐sidized housing units would be created every time a prepayment occurred, the freed‐up subsidies and insurance commitments would support a replacement low‐income unit, and prepayment penalty income could be used to offset mortgage insurance losses and thereby reduce the cost of mortgage insurance.

Under the much less than ideal conditions now prevailing, with no replacement project‐based housing available and no buy out arrangements in place, federal policy must attempt to limit prepayment by the owners of subsidized projects over the next few years.

An approach to establishing a “maximum price” that the government should be prepared to pay to induce each prepayment‐eligible building owner not to prepay is presented.     

Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

The police restructuring efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina driven by the international community, using in particular the leverage of European integration, attempted to achieve a reform that would transform a very fragmented police system into a de-politicized single structure and ended in the signing of a rather weak political agreement. The main reason why the process proved to be so difficult was that police restructuring touched upon the fundamentals of a delicate ethno-political power-sharing model in a post-conflict situation. But also, the approach chosen by the international community had serious deficiencies as the international community was far from speaking with one voice, thereby limiting its leverage.     

Leading or Following?

Abstract

While research exists on how political parties use political marketing instruments, there is a lack of emphasis on strategic marketing, especially with regard to theoretical frameworks of political marketing orientation. This can be seen as problematic in the development of political marketing research as a subdiscipline of marketing and political science. A concept is suggested that defines a party's orientation towards political marketing management using two crucial elements of strategic marketing theory regarding customer orientation: leading and following. Three generic types of political parties are characterised by their strategic postures using their stance on these two elements. The implications of strategic postures for the fulfilment of certain political marketing functions and organisational issues are briefly discussed. While traditional parties with a rigid content-based approach towards policy-making can be characterised as Convinced Ideologists, contemporary catch-all parties have moved towards being Tactical Populists.

Whilst both these postures are prone to being perceived as dogmatic or untrustworthy and fickle, a third posture, that of Relationship Builder, is proposed. This integrates leading and following, by using a relational approach towards marketing, as suggested in the evolving literature on strategic marketing and marketing orientation. This Relationship Builder stance constitutes a theoretical posture that needs to be clarified by empirical research in the political arena. Thus, to foster further empirical and theoretical research, several propositions have been derived in a process that is in line with the demands of theory-building and hypothesis-driven exploration as suggested for this comparatively new discipline of political marketing.     

Political Marketing

ABSTRACT

Political marketing is a relatively new approach to analysing political activity that draws upon management marketing assumptions to describe political behaviour. These assumptions are explicitly grounded in neoclassical economic assertions about behaviour. In political science these assumptions are utilised by orthodox rational choice theory. Thus, political marketing can be located within this perspective. Rational choice provides a series of analytic models through which ontological implications can be derived, and predictions made. Yet, the political marketing approach seeks to build upon orthodox rational choice accounts, by introducing a normative element to this perspective, prescribing the internalisation of these assumptions in order to achieve the desired objective. Further, this normative aspect claims that the adoption of marketing improves the democratic process. However, rational choice is an analytical ‘toolkit’ which does not seek to make normative claims. Indeed, normative arguments are inconsistent with rational choice, which seeks to provide a scientific, value-free approach to political analysis, and, consequently, the analytical and normative aspects of political marketing need to be rendered explicit and such normative aspects challenged.     

The ‘Bubbling Up’ of Subterranean Politics in Europe

This article presents the findings of a collaborative research project involving seven field teams across Europe investigating a range of new political phenomena termed ‘subterranean politics’. The article argues that the social mobilizations and collective activities in 2011 and 2012 were probably less joined up, more heterogeneous, and, perhaps, even, smaller, than similar phenomena during the last decade, but what was striking was their ‘resonance’ among mainstream public opinion—the ‘bubbling up’ of subterranean politics. The main findings included:

• ??Subterranean political actors perceive the crisis as a political crisis rather than a reaction to austerity. Subterranean politics is just as much a characteristic of Germany, where there are no austerity policies, as other countries.

• ??Subterranean political actors are concerned about democracy but not as it is currently practised. They experiment with new democratic practises, in the squares, on the Internet, and elsewhere.

• ??This new political generation not only uses social networking to organize but the Internet has profoundly affected the culture of political activism.

• ??In contrast to mainstream public debates, Europe is ‘invisible’ even though many subterranean political actors feel themselves to be European.

The research concludes that the term ‘subterranean politics’ is a useful concept that needs further investigation and that Europe needs to be problematized to seek a way out of the crisis.     

Kenneth B. Clark and the problem of power

ABSTRACT

During the early 1960s African American psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, known primarily for his involvement in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education US Supreme Court desegregation decision, began organizing an ambitious anti-poverty programme called Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Inc. (HARYOU). Dissatisfied by the lack of progress in school desegregation in New York City and discouraged by the inability of traditional social welfare organizations to address the problems of race and poverty, Clark argued that a new approach had to be developed to mobilize the black poor to gain the political and economic power that would solve their problems. At the same time, he theorized that a new form of racial segregation was beginning to develop in urban areas that foreshadowed increasing social isolation, economic dependence and declining municipal services for many African Americans. He called this new development ‘internal colonialism’ and hoped that HARYOU would be a demonstration project in the Kennedy–Johnson administration's War on Poverty that would address these problems from multiple perspectives. Nonetheless, the plan aroused the political opposition of Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. The dispute with Powell drove Clark from HARYOU and caused him to re-evaluate his thinking regarding African American leadership. He increasingly viewed the ‘ghetto’ as both a prison and a cocoon that satisfied white and black social, economic, political and psychological needs. By the end of his HARYOU experience, Clark coined the term ‘the new American dilemma’ to describe and theorize about an increasingly isolated and powerless black population in many urban centres. The term also signified his belief that the problem of power was intricately tied up in, while also separate from, the problem of race.     

Collective and Private Resources and the Inequalities of Non-violent Political Protest in European Countries

Abstract

Political participation is deemed to be a fundamental component of democratic regimes. The literature on political participation has shown that some social groups of citizens tend to be less involved in politics than other social groups, and the consequence is that the interests of these specific groups of less involved citizens are underrepresented in the political process. Given the increasing popularity of non-violent protest in contemporary democracies, it is important to understand whether political inequalities are present in this form of political engagement. In this article, we argue that non-violent protest may present inequalities, that examining the consequences of public social spending can help in understanding the cross-national differences in the levels of non-violent political protest, and that political inequalities in non-violent protest may vary according to public social spending. We test our argument using sources that include the European Values Study (1980–2009), multilevel models, and contextual data provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.     

Equality,value pluralism and relevance: Is luck egalitarianism in one way good,but not all things considered?

Abstract

Some luck egalitarians argue that justice is just one value among others and is thus not necessarily what we should strive for in order to make the world better. Yet, by focusing on only one dimension of what matters – luck equality – it proves very difficult to draw political implications in cases where several values are in tension. We believe that normative political philosophy must have the ambitionto guide political action. Hence, in this paper we make a negative and a positive point. Negatively, we argue that the inability to offer recommendations on what to strive for potentially weakens Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen’s account of luck egalitarianism. In order not to be irrelevant for political practice, a more serviceable version of luck egalitarianism that would allow for all-things-considered judgments is needed. Positively, we examine two possible routes toward such a view. One would be to stick to pluralism, but to discuss possible clashes and find a rule of regulation in each case. Another would consist in giving up value pluralism by identifying an over-arching value or principle that would arbitrate between different values. We suggest that Lippert-Rasmussen’s foundation of equality carries the potential for such an overarching principle.     

A Revenge of the Generals. The Rebalancing of the Civil-military Relations in France

ABSTRACT

While academic debate on the political control of military forces tends to oppose the poles of ‘integration’ or ‘separation’, the French military tradition is most often described as a case of subordination to political authorities. I examine the indicators of the rebalance of power in favour of the military by adopting an inductive approach based on the observation of the institutionalization of Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC). The focus on o?cers’ professional trajectories and collective resources, gives an alternative explanation of the adaptation of the military organizations to the security environment, that no longer only relies on usual realist and functionalist theories.     

Kant and the critique of the ethics-first approach to politics

Abstract

Contemporary ‘realists’ attack the Kantian influence on political philosophy. A main charge is that Kantians fail to understand the specificity of politics and neglect to develop a ‘distinctively political thought’ that differs from moral philosophy. Instead, the critics say, Kantians are guilty of an ‘ethics-first approach to politics,’ in which political theory is a mere application of moral principles. But what does this ethics-first approach have to do with Kant himself? Very little. This article shows how Kant’s approach to political theory at a fundamental level includes political institutions, power, and coercion as well as disagreement, security, and coordination problems. In contrast to realists, Kant has a fundamental principle, which can explain why and guide how we ought to approach the political question, namely the norm of equal freedom. Yet, Kant’s theory does not take the form of a moralistic ought addressed to the isolated individual, but concerns a problem that we share as interdependent beings and that requires common institutions. The fruitfulness of the Kantian approach, then, is that it can take the political question seriously without being uncritical of actual politics and power, and that it can be normative without being moralistic.     

An important failure: knowledge limits and the financial crisis

Abstract

This paper introduces a theme section on knowledge limits in and after the financial crisis. It explores how and why practitioners have generally responded less conservatively to crisis than academics, and argues that academics within a variety of problematics could do more by reflecting critically on the heroic ideas about the role of knowledge which were current across the social sciences in the decade before the crisis. It then turns to introduce the section's papers before finally raising the possibility of a more explicitly political approach to understanding finance.     

The Lost Treasure of Arendt's Council System

Abstract

Hannah Arendt's On Revolution offers a critique of modern representative democracy combined with a manifesto-like treatise on council systems as they have arisen over the course of revolutions and uprisings. However, Arendt's contribution to democratic theory has been obscured by her commentators who argue that her reflections on democracy are either an aberration in her work or easily reconcilable within a liberal democratic framework. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive outline of Arendt's writing on the council system and a clarification of her work outside the milieu of the post-Cold War return to Arendt. Her analyses bring to light a political system that guarantees civil and political rights while allowing all willing citizens direct participation in government. Framing her discussion within the language of the current renewed interest in constituent power, her council system could be described as a blending together of constituent power and constitutional form. Arendt resists the complete dominance and superiority of either element and argues that the foundation of a free state requires nothing less than the stabilization and persistence of constituent power within an open and fluid institution that would resist either the bureaucratization of politics or its dispersal into a revolutionary flux. Although one may conclude that her institutional suggestions are far from flawless, her political principles allow a conceptualization of democracy in more substantial ways than current liberal political philosophy.     

When Politics Fails: Hyper-Democracy and Hyper-Depoliticization

Although declining political engagement has been identified as a key problem for advanced liberal democracies, this article suggests that a more profound tension needs to be addressed. Specifically, it identifies interdependences between growing political pressures on national governments, and the tendency to delegate decisions away from control by elected politicians. These processes of “hyper-democracy” and “hyper-depoliticization” arguably create and re-enforce political tensions, magnifying a risk of central government “overload.” Through analyzing the arguments of prominent scholars of democracy, the article picks apart these interdependencies and argues for a more balanced approach to democratic governance.     

Of(f) Course: Michel Foucault,the Mobile Philosopher and his Dreamworlds

Foucault extolled the Iranian revolution and, anticipating the havoc that his public intervention in favour of the revolution would create, he wrote: “I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong”. Examining Foucault’s (so unlikely) valorisation of certainty and the partisan affectivity it bestows upon knowledge and truth, I read his unusual engagement with the Iranian revolution against the grain. A major tendency is to approach Foucault’s Iranian writings as aberration; against this tendency, I read them as an effect of Foucault’s specific epistemic and utopian optics. Through a critical reading of neglected aspects of Foucault’s comments on Iran, I argue that much nuance is missing when damning critiques fail to see why and how Foucault’s interest in an active rather than folklore non-European political identity unveils deeper tensions of his own worldview and outlook on international politics and interrogates mainstream appraisals of Foucault’s political philosophy.     

Japan’s ‘pro-nuclear civil society’: Power in the analysis of social capital and civil society

ABSTRACT

Civil society research can be categorized into a school in the tradition of Gramsci focusing on social movements and a Tocquevillean school focusing on associations and social capital. The author reviews both schools’ research on the Japanese case and analyses a number of pro-nuclear citizen groups built up by the Japanese nuclear industry. The author analyses their financial data and historical development to demonstrate that they have been built up as countermovement by the nuclear industry. The author traces their mobilization processes to criticize the social capital approach. In Japanese political science, traditionally a dense web of hierarchical associations and ties of obligation have been seen as enforcing clientelism and top-down political control. This makes Japan an interesting case for the social capital approach. Social capital researchers have reinterpreted hierarchical networks as indicators of a strong civil society. Taking into account Bourdieu’s notion of social capital challenges this view and supports arguments of state influence forwarded by parts of the Gramscian school.