Judicious Incentives: International Public Policy Responses to the Globalization of Environmental Management

Public policymakers and regulators worldwide are grappling with the desire to improve environmental quality through appropriate regulation of business, while also streamlining government. Concurrently, environmentally conscience consumers are calling for improved environmental performance by industry. As a result of these pressures, regulators and lawmakers worldwide are attempting to craft effective policies that create adequate incentives for environmental protection on the part of firms, in the face of decreasing budgets and an increased demand for the use of market‐based incentives. To aid decision makers as they struggle with these concerns, this study provides a detailed case examination of the dilemmas and responses of national‐level regulators as they try to develop appropriate responses to the rise of international and “voluntary” management regimes. To accomplish these goals, this article compares the public policy responses of governments around the world to one such voluntary international environmental regime: ISO 14001. ISO 14001 is a form of industry self‐regulation in response to market forces calling for harmonization in environmental management and as a result of consumer and trade‐partner demands. This study examines the relationships between regulators and the regulated in order to understand if ISO 14001 certified firms are receiving regulatory relief or other forms of public policy/regulatory benefits as a result of their certification. It will also examine the impact that government incentives (or their absence) are having on the certification decisions of firms around the world. This information helps us to begin to understand how the trends toward smaller government and voluntary environmental regimes are affecting one another.     

WOLF'S MODEL: Government Failure and Public Sector Reform in Advanced Industrial Democracies

Many developed nations have embarked on public sector reform programs based on the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm. This article seeks to evaluate the efficacy of NPM reform strategies as a means of dealing with the problem of “government failure” in public sector hierarchies by examining these strategies through the analytical prism provided by Wolf's theory of nonmarket failure. Drawing on the New Zealand experience, we explore the potential for NPM reform initiatives to mitigate the problems of nonmarket supply. Moreover, we examine how “autonomous policy leadership” and “advocacy coalition networks” can overcome the various obstacles to the successful implementation of reform strategies delineated by Wolf under his “conditions of nonmarket demand”. The article then focusses on the efficacy of NPM in removing, or at least reducing, the various forms of government failure identified in Wolf's taxonomic catalogue of nonmarket failure. We conclude by assessing some of the likely tradeoffs involved in the application of NPM reform programs.     

Institutional competitiveness,social investment,and welfare regimes

Are the rather generous welfare regimes found in most European countries sustainable; that is, are they competitive in a globalizing economy? Or will they, on the contrary, be crowded out by the more austere and less expensive regimes generally found in liberal Anglo‐Saxon countries? We first discuss this issue conceptually, focusing on the notions of institutional competitiveness, social investment, and short‐term and long‐term productivity. We then briefly present the results of an empirical study of 50 social indicators of policies and outcomes in 20 Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries during the early 2000s. We conclude that welfare regimes have not been forced to converge through a “race to the bottom.” There remain three distinct ways to face the “trilemma” of job growth, income inequality, and fiscal restraint: Nordic countries achieve high labor market participation through high social investment; Anglo‐Saxon countries attain the same objective through minimal public intervention; while Continental European countries experience fiscal pressures because their social protection schemes are not promoting participation to the same extent.     

Markets and politics in France's declining regions

France has adopted an explicit policy of countering the decline of its old industrial areas, by encouraging a process of reindustrialization in those regions. The French experience illustrates the challenge that such an approach encounters, including dificulties arising out of policies of the European Community, the efforts of the government to achieve national growth targets, the locational preferences of potential “replacement” industries, and political and financial constraints on regional governments when they assume an entrepreneurial role. In the end, the effect of government intervention proves complex. Although the principal effort is directed at cushioning the pressures of market forces, the net result of public policy is often to transmit such forces more directly than in the past.     

Political Competition,Path Dependence,and the Strategy of Sustainable Energy Transitions

Previous research emphasizes the importance of path dependence for sustainable energy transitions, but their strategic nature is frequently overlooked. We examine formally how exogenous shocks, such as changes in international energy prices, interact with positive reinforcement factors, such as the growing strength of the renewables advocacy coalition. We find that political competition modifies the effect of path dependence on policy and outcomes. Specifically, while “green” governments can use positive reinforcement mechanisms to lock in policy commitments (by creating green constituencies), “brown” governments strategically underprovide public support for renewable energy (to avoid creating green constituencies). The effect of positive reinforcement also decreases with international energy prices. Our empirical analysis shows that (1) political competition conditions the policy response to exogenous shocks and market failures, while (2) governments strategically exploit path dependence for political gain.     

The failure of market failure

The concept of market failure was originally presented by economists as a normative explanation of why the need for government expenditures might arise. Gradually, the concept has taken on the form of a full‐scale diagnostic tool frequently employed by policy analysts to determine the exact scope and nature of government intervention. For some time, economists have known that the market failure idea is conceptually flawed. The authors of this article demonstrate why this is so, employing concepts drawn from the perspective of transaction costs. In a review of empirical studies, they further show how the market failure diagnostic leads analysts to make generalizations that are not supported by facts. Transaction cost analysis helps to explain the underlying processes involved. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

“Tell It Like It Is”: Decision Making,Groupthink, and Decisiveness among U.S. Federal Subcabinet Executives

In addition to difficulties gathering and evaluating complete information, cognitive limitations and biases preclude individuals from making fully value‐maximizing choices when making decisions. It has been suggested that, done properly, involving advisors can compensate for individual‐level limitations. However, the “groupthink” tradition has highlighted ways group‐aided decision making can fail to live up to its potential. Out of this literature has emerged a paradigm Janis calls “vigilant problem‐solving.” For this article, we interviewed 20 heads of subcabinet‐level organizations in the U.S. federal government, asking questions about how they made important decisions. Ten were nominated by “good‐government” experts, 10 chosen at random. We wanted to see whether there were differences in how members of those two groups made decisions, specifically, to what extent executives in the two categories used a “vigilant” process. We found, however, that similarities between the two groups overwhelmed differences: As best as we were able to measure, decision making by U.S. subcabinet executives tracks vigilant decision making recommendations fairly closely. The similarity reflects a common style of senior‐level decision making, which we theorize grows out of government bureaucracy's methodical culture. We did, however, develop evidence for a difference between outstanding executives and others on another dimension of decision making style. Outstanding executives valued decision making decisiveness—“bias for action”—more than the comparison group. Perhaps, then, what distinguishes outstanding executives from others is not vigilance but decisiveness. Contrary to the implications of the groupthink literature, the danger in government may be “paralysis by analysis” as much or more than groupthink.     

Institutional Characteristics and Regime Survival: Why Are Semi‐Democracies Less Durable Than Autocracies and Democracies?

Previous studies report that semi‐democratic regimes are less durable than both democracies and autocracies. Still, mixing democratic and autocratic characteristics need not destabilize regimes, as three highly plausible alternative explanations of this correlation remain unaccounted for: (a) semi‐democracies emerge under conditions of political instability and social turmoil; (b) other regime characteristics explain duration; and (c) extant democracy measures do not register all regime changes. We elaborate on and test for these explanations, but find strikingly robust evidence that semi‐democracies are inherently less durable than both democracies and autocracies. “Semi‐democracies are particularly unstable political regimes” should thus be considered a rare stylized fact of comparative politics. The analysis yields several other interesting results. For instance, autocracies and semi‐democracies are equally likely to experience “liberalizing” regime changes more specifically, and once accounting for differences in degree of democracy, there is no robust evidence of differences in duration between military and single‐party regimes.     

The domestic origins of human rights trials: A case study of the Second Boer War

What explains decisions taken by states around the world to prosecute members of their own armed forces for human rights violations? The dominant trend in existing literature suggests that a “justice cascade” best explains the growing prevalence of human rights trials. However, while norm diffusion offers some explanatory power in the contemporary era, other mechanisms are necessary to explain many early human rights trials. Through an analysis of one of the first recorded instances of what we now term “human rights trials” — the court-martials of six British Empire officers for the murder of POWs, civilians, and a missionary in the Second Boer War — this article identifies other crucial mechanisms driving prosecutions that retain relevance in the contemporary era. I find that signaling to domestic audiences, both at “home” and in recently conquered territories, can be critical motivators in elite or government decisions to pursue human rights trials.     

The design of rent-seeking competitions: Committees,preliminary and final contests

The paper examines the common practice in multi-contest rent- seeking competitions, where “finalists” are selected, based on rent-seekers' efforts in a preliminary contest. We find that for any single-contest design, rent-seeking expenditures could be reduced by introducing a preliminary contest, if the marginal returns to rent- seeking effort in the preliminary contest is sufficiently low. In addition to other reasons, the paper argues that this may explain why such multi-contest designs are common. We argue that rent-seeking expenditure in the preliminary stage represents the cost of reducing the number of contestants. We also find that the practice of setting a higher “quality” standard in the final contest than the “quality” standard in the preliminary contest reduces rent-seeking waste. We derive an expression for the optimal number of finalists; under certain conditions we find that the optimal number of finalists is directly proportional or equal to the square root of the number of potential contestants. Finally, we show that whether rent-seeking expenditures rise or fall when the rent is awarded by a committee instead of a single administrator depends on the sensitivity of the committee relative to that of the single administrator.     

Emotional Substrates of White Racial Attitudes

A steep decline in biologically based racial animus over the past four decades has not led to a softening of opposition to race‐conscious policies such as affirmative action. One explanation for this is that a new racial belief system—referred to as symbolic racism or racial resentment—has replaced “old‐fashioned racism.” Another is that nonracial values such as ideology and a preference for small government now drive policy opinions. Our theory suggests that whereas disgust once accompanied ideas about “biologically inferior” groups, anger has become fused to conservative ideas about race in the contemporary period. As a result, anger now serves as the primary emotional trigger of whites’ negative racial attitudes. We experimentally induce disgust, anger, or fear using an apolitical task and find anger is uniquely powerful at boosting opposition to racially redistributive policies among white racial conservatives. Nonracial attitudes such as ideology and small government preference are not activated by any of these negative emotions.     

我国矿产资源管理政策范式变迁研究

矿产资源是支撑国民经济发展的重要物质基础,系统探究矿产资源管理政策范式变迁历程、变迁机制与变迁逻辑,对优化当前矿产资源管理政策具有重要意义。基于政策范式变迁理论框架,以1986年到2019年年间中央层面颁发的511份矿产资源管理政策文本为研究对象,运用政策文献量化的分析方法,对我国矿产资源管理政策的范式变迁与演变逻辑进行研究。研究发现:自1986年《中华人民共和国矿产资源法》颁布实施以来,中国矿产资源管理政策范式经历了“规范化—市场化—集约化—战略化”四个阶段的变迁,每个阶段的政策问题、政策目标和政策工具各有侧重;理念转变和体制改革是推动政策范式变迁的主要原因,其变迁规律体现为政策问题由“基础性”到“战略性”、政策目标由“单一”到“多元”、政策工具由“严格管控”到“宏观调控”的演变逻辑。     

Can the hidden hand of the market be an effective and legitimate regulator? The case of animal welfare under a labeling for consumer choice policy approach

In Australia, labeling for consumer choice, rather than higher government regulation, has become an important strand of the policy approach to addressing food animal welfare. This paper illustrates the usefulness of “regulatory network analysis” to uncover the potentials and limitations of market‐based governance to address contentious yet significant issues like animal welfare. We analyzed the content of newspaper articles from major Australian newspapers and official policy documents between 1990 and 2014 to show how the regulatory network influenced the framing of the regulatory problem, and the capacity and legitimacy of different regulatory actors at three “flashpoints” of decisionmaking about layer hen welfare in egg production. We suggest that the government policy of offering consumers the choice to buy cage free in the market allowed large‐scale industry to continue the egg laying business as usual with incremental innovation and adjustment. These incremental improvements only apply to the 20 percent or so of hens producing “free‐range” eggs. We conclude with a discussion of when and how labeling for consumer choice might create markets and public discourses that make possible more effective and legitimate regulation of issues such as layer hen welfare.     

Categorical Municipal Expenditures with a Focus on the Flypaper Effect

Using data for Wisconsin cities and villages the effects of grants in aid from state government on 10 categories of municipal expenditures are examined. We build on the traditional grants in aid public finance literature by looking for evidence of the flypaper effect. By focusing on the Wisconsin state shared revenues program, a pure grant of considerable size for many Wisconsin municipalities, we offer a clean test of the flypaper effect. We find a positive flypaper effect on 8 of the 10 categorical expenditures. We also find the impact of unconditional grants on categorical expenditures is stronger on nonessential “luxury” goods (e.g., parks and recreation, culture, and educational services) than on essential “normal” municipal goods (e.g., police and fire protection).     

理解治理多样性：一种国家治理的新科学

现代社会及其公共事务的复杂性对治理构成了严峻的挑战。为了应对公共事务的复杂性、多规模性、嵌套性和动态性,很多研究者提出了不同的治理理论,并且都试图寻找“治理万能药”,以一种治理方式适用所有情景。然而人类要真正解决所面临的公共事务治理难题,就需要实现“认识论哲学”的转型,以“多样性”的思维范式取代“单一性”思维范式,按照“治理多样性”的新范式来重构治理体制“。治理多样性”分析范式是一种治理的新科学,其分析框架主要包括“行动者、机制、物品属性、结构和绩效”等要素,核心是公共事务与治理系统的有效匹配,实现基于“多行动者——多机制——多属性——多结构——多目标”的治理,多样性是其内在逻辑。治理本身是一个复杂演进和相互调适的过程“。治理多样性”要应用于治理实践,就需要发展出“诊断、设计和学习模型”。     

Does the Network Centrality of Government Actors Matter? Examining the Role of Government Organizations in Aquaculture Partnerships

The growth in the use of collaborative governance arrangements has been accompanied by burgeoning scholarship in the field of public affairs that seeks to understand the benefits of engaging diverse stakeholders in common venues. However, few scholars have formally assessed the role of government actors in facilitating outcomes for individual participants in such efforts. Moreover, little work on collaborative governance examines how individual incentives and barriers to collective action are formed within the nested nature of these contexts. We contribute to the study of collaborative governance by formally investigating how the relative centrality of government actors in collaborative policy‐making venues affects individual relationship building and learning for participants therein. We find that government actor centrality is positively associated with relationship building and learning. However, in testing two different conceptualizations of “centrality,” we find that the definition of this construct clearly matters.     

Divided Government,Legislative Productivity,and Policy Change in the USA and France

The concept of “divided government” is more complicated than scholars have allowed. In the USA, truly unified government, where the president enjoys a filibuster‐proof majority in the Senate as well as a majority in the House, is rare. In France, truly unified government has been more common, but divided government has also occurred several times. Democratic governance requires that parties address important issues and they do so regardless of the patterns of institutional control. Nevertheless, policy changes or important laws are affected by the higher level of institutional friction associated with divided government. Looking at both the USA and France, we find that periods of unified government show higher levels of production of important laws in the USA, but we find no difference for overall legislative productivity.     

The Semiconstrained Court: Public Opinion,the Separation of Powers,and the U.S. Supreme Court's Fear of Nonimplementation

Numerous studies have found that elite and popular preferences influence decision making on the U.S. Supreme Court; yet, uncertainty remains about when, how, and why the Court is constrained by external pressure. I argue the justices are constrained, at least in part, because they fear nonimplementation of their decisions. I test this theory by utilizing a recent study of judicial power, which finds the Court enjoys greater implementation power in “vertical” cases (those involving criminal and civil liability) than in “lateral” cases (all others; e.g., those involving schools or government agencies). I find that Court constraint is strongest in important lateral cases—those cases in which implementation depends on support from nonjudicial actors. My findings suggest that Supreme Court constraint is driven by the justices' fear of nonimplementation and is, therefore, dependent on institutional context.     

Codes in context: How states,markets, and civil society shape adherence to global labor standards

Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs – such as certification regimes and codes of conduct – that diffuse global standards. However, little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We conduct one of the first large‐scale comparative studies to determine which international, domestic, civil society, and market institutions promote supply chain factories' adherence to the global labor standards embodied in codes of conduct imposed by multinational buyers. We find that suppliers are more likely to adhere when they are embedded in states that participate actively in the International Labour Organization treaty regime and that have stringent domestic labor law and high levels of press freedom. We further demonstrate that suppliers perform better when they serve buyers located in countries where consumers are wealthy and socially conscious. These findings suggest the importance of overlapping state, civil society, and market governance regimes to meaningful transnational regulation.     

半嵌入性互动治理的形成逻辑与主要类型——以H街道四个社区的业委会与物业管理运作为例

城市基层治理涉及多元治理主体的复杂互动关系,这种复杂的互动关系内蕴着权力结构与秩序的演变。国家、市场、社会三方主体力量在中国强国家弱市场弱社会的现实背景下,呈现出以结构性非对称性形式相互依赖、三角权力关系稳定、相互弥补各方失灵为特点的互动形态。文章将此互动形态在基层社区中的运作概括为“半嵌入性互动治理”。基于国家-市场-社会三维分析视角,通过多案例比较方法研究H街道四个社区的业委会与物业管理运作,发现“半嵌入性互动治理”在现实运作中呈现多种类型。国家、市场、社会在基层社区治理中的互动关系会根据现实需求与权力博弈进行平衡与调试,最终保证社区内部安全与有效治理。