Public management: What do we know? what should we know? and how will we know it?

The field of public management draws on a rich and varied trove of intellectual resources. Applying scholarship and imagination, its students can recognize, interpret, and predict the reality of managing governmental organizations with considerable acuity. If the field is to advance, however, researchers must do more than reverently assemble and digest practice wisdom. More emphasis must be placed on disciplined, theory-based inquiry.     

Affirmative action: What do we know?

An Erratum for this article has been published in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management,26(1), 215.     

Decomposing political knowledge: What is confidence in knowledge and why it matters

While political knowledge has been conceptually defined with two constructs – accuracy and confidence in factual information – conventional measurement of political knowledge has relied heavily on retrieval accuracy. Without measuring confidence-in-knowledge, it is not possible to rigorously identify different types of political informedness, such as misinformedness and uninformedness. This article theoretically explores the two constructs of knowledge and argues that each construct has unique antecedents and behavioral consequences. We suggest a survey instrument for confidence-in-knowledge and introduce a method to estimate latent traits of retrieval accuracy and confidence separately. Using our original survey that includes the measure of confidence-in-knowledge, we find that misinformed citizens are as engaged in politics as the well-informed, but their active involvement does not guarantee informed political choices. Our findings warrant further theoretical and empirical exploration of confidence in political knowledge.     

马克思主义中国化:"是什么"与"不是什么"

推进马克思主义中国化的理论创新,必须弄清马克思主义中国化"是什么"与"不是什么"的问题.作为马克思主义中国化之对象的"马克思主义"是"马克思列宁主义",而不是仅指"马克思的马克思主义"或"马克思恩格斯创立的马克思主义".马克思主义中国化,是"马克思主义的中国化"与"中国化的马克思主义"的统一,是不同于马克思主义"西方化"的马克思主义"中国化"、"民族化",是马克思主义的"大众化"、"通俗化",而不是"精英化"、"学术化",是马克思主义的"具体化",而不是"教条化",是马克思主义的"科学化"、"整体化",而不是"图谱化"、"肢解化".     

Japan and identity change: why it matters in International Relations

Abstract

Two approaches to identity have been employed to explore issues in Japan's international relations. One views identity as constituted by domestic norms and culture, and as constitutive of interests, which in turn cause behaviour. Proponents view Japan's ‘pacifist’ and ‘antimilitarist’ identity as inherently stable and likely to change only as a result of material factors. In the other approach, ‘Japan’ emerges and changes through processes of differentiation vis-à-vis ‘Others’. Neither ‘domestic’ nor ‘material’ factors can exist outside of such identity constructions. We argue that the second, relational, approach is more theoretically sound, but begs three questions. First, how can different identity constructions in relation to numerous Others be synthesised and understood comprehensively? Second, how can continuity and change be handled in the same relational framework? Third, what is the point of analysing identity in relational terms? This article addresses the first two questions by introducing an analytical framework consisting of three mutually interacting layers of identity construction. Based on the articles in this special issue, we argue that identity entrepreneurs and emotions are particularly likely to contribute to change within this model. We address the third question by stressing common ground with the first approach: identity enables and constrains behaviour. In the case of Japan, changes in identity construction highlighted by the articles in this special issue forebode a political agenda centred on strengthening Japan militarily.     

Party policy diffusion in the European multilevel space: what it is,how it works,and why it matters

ABSTRACT

Almost since the end of World War II, transnational cooperation among political parties has been a common feature of European politics. This paper makes the case for studying transnational partisan cooperation in the European multilevel space, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of “party policy diffusion.” At the heart of the paper is a conceptual discussion of party policy diffusion in the EU. Specifically, we look at the (1) aims that lead parties to learn from or emulate parties in other countries; (2) the mechanisms through which this may work; and (3) the wider implications of this practice both for domestic and European politics. Drawing on this conceptual discussion, the paper then goes on to offer leads as to how the phenomenon of party policy diffusion can be studied in the European multilevel space. To this end, we briefly point to possible ways of testing hypotheses about party policy diffusion using spatially explicit modeling strategies such as spatial regression models and exponential random graph models for transnational party networks.     

Local Economic Development: What is Proposed, What is Done, and What Difference Does it Make?

This paper assesses the comparative policy insights gained from the articles in the symposium in terms of three dimensions: policies proposed, actions taken, and impacts scored. Local economic development interventions are classified in terms of a five-way categorization in terms of geographic breadth of action and reliance on complementary private action as a prerequisite to lasting impact. The nine symposium cases are then examined for their evidence on development efforts' accountability to the public and lessons about efficient use of public funds. The paper concludes that the cases demonstrate that most development efforts have wasted public funds, offering at best the limited success resulting from efforts to beggar neighboring local economics with which competition for development continues.