Do female politicians empower women to vote or run for office? A regression discontinuity approach

Persistent gender gaps in political officeholding and mass political participation jeopardize women's equal representation in government. This paper brings new evidence to the longstanding hypotheses that the presence of additional female candidates and officeholders helps address these gaps by empowering other women to vote or run for office themselves. With a regression discontinuity approach and data on 3813 US state legislative elections where a woman opposed a man, I find that the election of additional women in competitive US state legislative elections has no discernible causal effects on other women's political participation at the mass or elite levels. These estimates are precise enough to rule out even substantively small effects. These results stand in stark contrast to a number of findings from India, suggesting that although electing the first women in a society can have these empowering effects, remaining barriers to women's inclusion in American democracy go beyond what further increases in female officeholding can themselves erode.     

Is ‘competitive’ corporatism an adequate response to Globalisation? Evidence from the low countries

The Dutch practice of negotiated wage restraint and welfare state reform is often held up as a model for effective labour market adjustment. This article examines the distribution of adjustment costs under the Dutch model to determine whether it is stable in the long run ‐ both directly and by analogy with the situation in Belgium. The conclusion is that while the Dutch have succeeded in effecting a remarkable adjustment in the distribution of value‐added, the costs of this adjustment have been skewed against increasingly large sections of society. Should these groups outside the distributional coalition find representation at the national level, the Dutch model for negotiated wage restraint and welfare state reform is likely to revert to political alternation and tit‐for‐tat economic competition.     

Can Light-Touch College-Going Interventions Make a Difference? Evidence from a Statewide Experiment in Michigan

I conduct a statewide experiment in Michigan with nearly 50,000 high-achieving high school seniors. Treated students are mailed a letter encouraging them to consider college and providing them with the web address of a college information website. I find that very high-achieving, low-income students, and very high-achieving, minority students are the most likely to navigate to the website. Small changes to letter content affect take-up. For example, highlighting college affordability induces 18 percent more students to the website than highlighting college choice, and 37 percent more than highlighting how to apply to college. I find a statistically precise zero impact on college enrollment among all students who were mailed the letter. However, low-income students experience a small increase in the probability that they enroll in college, driven by increases at four-year institutions. An examination of persistence through college, while imprecise, suggests that the students induced into college by the intervention persist at a lower rate than the inframarginal student.     

Are elections in autocracies a curse for incumbents? Evidence from Chinese villages

Are elections in autocracies a curse for incumbents? Using panel data from village elections in China, the OLS regression shows that introducing competitive elections has a relatively small effect on the removal of autocratic incumbents. However, the effect becomes much larger when the endogenous timing is instrumented with the passage of provincial election laws and village-specific election cycles. Additional evidence also suggests that removing incumbents through competitive elections enhances local governance. I interpret these results as suggesting that political selection matters in electoral autocracies.     

Do impersonal mobilisation methods work? Evidence from a nationwide Get-Out-the-Vote experiment in England

While face-to-face mobilisation has a demonstrable effect on voter turnout, a series of field experiments show that impersonal methods, such as telephoning and direct mail, are less effective. This paper provides a new test of the effectiveness of telephone and direct mail on voter turnout, which uses a large nationally representative Get-Out-the-Vote two-wave field experiment. We find that impersonal methods are more effective, though the magnitude depends on electoral context. Moreover, these effects accumulate both within and across elections as voters are exposed to multiple contacts. However this is an incremental and cumulative process, not the product of synergy.     

Do barriers to candidacy reduce political competition? Evidence from a bachelor’s degree requirement for legislators in Pakistan

In the 2002 election, candidates for Pakistan’s federal legislature had to possess at least a bachelor’s degree. This policy disqualified 60 out of the 207 incumbent legislators from running for election again. Using a difference-in-differences approach with panel data on all electoral constituencies in Pakistan, I find that this ballot access restriction does not affect political competition across all constituencies with disqualified incumbents equally. Stronger political competition is defined as a larger number of candidates contesting election, a smaller vote share and vote margin for the winning candidate, and a less concentrated candidate field, as measured by a Herfindahl–Hirschman index (HHI) of vote shares. Competition declined significantly in constituencies where the disqualified incumbent belonged to a small party and where literacy levels were lower (signifying a smaller pool of substitute candidates). However, political competition increased in areas where the disqualified incumbent was stronger in terms of his winning vote margin.     

Do Conditional Cash Transfers Affect Electoral Behavior? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Mexico

This article reexamines the argument that targeted programs increase pro‐incumbent voting by persuading beneficiaries to cast ballots against their first partisan choice. The evidence comes from the randomized component of Progresa, the pioneering Mexican conditional cash transfer (CCT) program. Experimental data show that early enrollment in the program led to substantive increases in voter turnout and in the incumbent’s vote share in the 2000 presidential election. The experiment also reveals that opposition parties’ vote shares were unaffected by the program. Thus, the electoral bonus generated by CCTs may be best explained by a mobilizing rather than persuasive mechanism. These findings are difficult to reconcile with the notion that the electoral effects of CCTs are a result of prospective concerns triggered by threats of program discontinuation or endogenous program enrollment. Instead, the evidence in this article suggests that CCTs’ mobilizing effects are compatible with programmatic politics.     

Is there a selection bias in roll call votes? Evidence from the European Parliament

We examine the magnitude and significance of selection bias in roll call votes. Prior to 2009, all recorded (roll call) votes in the European Parliament had to be requested explicitly by European Political Groups. Since 2009, a roll call vote has been mandatory on all final legislative votes. We exploit that change in the rules and compare differences between final legislative votes, amendment votes and non-legislative votes before and after 2009, using a difference-in-differences approach with extensive controls. Using data from the Sixth (2004–2009) to Seventh (2009–2014) European Parliaments, we fail to find any large differences in voting cohesion for the main political groups. We find even less significance when we control for changes in parliamentary membership between those two periods. The results suggest that selection biases in the European Parliament associated with strategic choices are negligible.     

Privatisation in France 1993–94: New departures,or a case of plus ça change?

The present article focuses on the privatisation programme currently being implemented in France. It seeks to isolate the principal ways in which this programme differs from its predecessor of 1986–88, and to consider its likely impact on the French corporate landscape. This study finds the latest round of privatisations to be budget‐driven and ideologically spent, as the convergence criteria for economic and monetary union specified by the Maastricht Treaty become top government priorities in the countdown to 1997 (or 1999). The interest the programme has generated is almost entirely restricted to which purposes are to be served (and which are not) by its receipts. Those who look to it for new departures may well be disappointed: all the signs are that dirigisme is alive and well in France, with establishment solidarity representing as powerful a force in French capitalism as it ever did.     

Does Labor Migration Improve Access to Public Goods in Source Communities? Evidence from Rural China

What is the effect of out-migration on drinking water provision in rural China? Despite concerns about the ability of migrants to contribute to collective action for public goods provision, this study demonstrates that villages with higher rates of labor migration are more likely to have public drinking water than those with little migration. Temporary labor migration reduces isolation and increases connections outside the village. External funding sources including county governments favor villages where they have contacts as well as villages that need more support because most working-age adults are working outside the village. As a result, villages with high rates of out-migration are more likely have public access to drinking water. The findings are based on data from a survey of more than 50 natural villages in two townships of Southwest China.     

Sector Switching from a Business to a Government Job: Fast‐Track Career or Fast Track to Nowhere?

This paper examines the career consequences for public managers of having had full-time private sector work experience. We find positive career outcomes for public managers with private sector experience: Individuals with such experience are more likely to have been recently promoted relative to peers and to supervise somewhat greater number of employees, especially if their most recent job was in the private sector. While experience in the private sector enhances such career outcomes, the length of such experience diminishes them. The authors conclude by identifying three career scenarios emerging from the models and discussing the managerial and theoretical implications of "sector-switching careers."     

Can decision transparency increase citizen trust in regulatory agencies? Evidence from a representative survey experiment

Decision transparency is often proposed as a way to maintain or even increase citizen trust, yet this assumption is still untested in the context of regulatory agencies. We test the effect of transparency of a typical decision tradeoff in regulatory enforcement: granting forbearance or imposing a sanction. We employed a representative survey experiment (n = 1,546) in which we test the effect of transparency in general (providing information about a decision or not) and the effect of specific types of transparency (process or rationale transparency). We do this for agencies supervising financial markets, education, and health care. We find that overall decision transparency significantly increases citizen trust in only two of the three agencies. Rationale transparency has a more pronounced positive effect only for the Education Inspectorate. We conclude that the overall effect of decision transparency is positive but that the nature of the regulatory domain may weaken or strengthen this effect.     

A Checkpoint Effect? Evidence from a Natural Experiment on Travel Restrictions in the West Bank

Does nonviolent repression prompt subject groups to obey or rebel? By what mechanism does it do so? To address these questions, we exploit a natural experiment based on a 2009 policy toward the “easement” of checkpoints—nonviolent impediments to movement—in the West Bank. We sample populations across 17 villages (n = 599), beside one checkpoint slated for easement (treatment) and one that will undergo no change (control), before and after the intervention. We then pursue difference‐in‐difference estimation. This design is experimental, as easement was orthogonal to Palestinian attitudes; for robustness, we test our findings against an independent panel (n = 1,200). We find that easement makes subject populations less likely to support violence; we suggest humiliation as the mechanism bridging nonviolent repression with militancy. This warrants rethinking Israeli security policy, as short‐term concerns over Palestinian mobility may be compromising Israel's long‐term interests. By extension, checkpoint easement may positively affect peace negotiations.     

Do refugees impact voting behavior in the host country? Evidence from Syrian refugee inflows to Turkey

Public Choice - We study how individual political preferences changed in response to the influx of over 3.5 million Syrian refugees to Turkey during 2012–2016. Using a...     

Are Voters More Likely to Contribute to Other Public Goods? Evidence from a Large‐Scale Randomized Policy Experiment

Voting has been described as a contribution to a public good. Are people who vote frequently therefore more likely to contribute to other public goods? Does partisanship affect how likely a person is to engage in these cooperative behaviors? Although surveys suggest that the answer to these questions is “Yes,” few empirical studies examine these questions using observed behaviors. We examine them in the context of a large‐scale, randomized controlled trial to induce voluntary action in a common‐pool resource dilemma. During a drought in the southeastern United States, pro‐social messages that encouraged water conservation were randomly assigned to 35,000 out of 106,000 households. Frequent voters in primary and general elections (1990–2008) were substantially more responsive to the messages, but there was no detectable difference in the responses of Republican and Democrat households. Our results suggest that internalized pro‐social preferences promote action for the public good across behavioral contexts.     

Is it a Pearl or a Kidney Stone? Intelligence Reform and Embassy Reporting,from Moscow to Baghdad

A July 1990 cable from the US Embassy in Moscow that anticipated the collapse of the Soviet Union is a case study for an analysis in this article that seeks to make three points: 1) major failures in intelligence analysis are more likely to result when all elements of the intelligence community speak with one voice than when they disagree; 2) embassy reporting can play an essential role independent of that of the intelligence community in shaping Washington thinking about international events, but a variety of developments have made this increasingly difficult; 3) probability analysis plays too great a role in intelligence products and risk management too little.     

Are 16-year-olds able to cast a congruent vote? Evidence from a “voting at 16” initiative in the city of Ghent (Belgium)

An often used argument against lowering the voting age to the age of 16 is that this age group would lack a sufficiently high level of “political maturity” and therefore would not be able to cast a vote that is in line with their political opinions. In this paper, we use a unique initiative set up by the city of Ghent (Belgium) to invite 16- and 17-year-olds to take part in a mock election to investigate whether adolescents are able to cast an ideologically congruent or “correct” vote. Our results do not show differences in proximity voting between adolescents and adult respondents. Furthermore, we find no evidence of socio-economic stratification in the extent to which adolescents cast a congruent vote. Our conclusion, therefore, is that this recurrent argument against lowering the voting age lacks empirical validity.     

Does Public Service Motivation Lead to Budget Maximization? Evidence from an Experiment

ABSTRACT

One of the most enduring theories in public management is Niskanen's model of the budget-maximizing bureaucrat. While popular, the image of bureaucrats relentlessly advocating for larger budgets has been frequently attacked. A chief criticism is that the assumption of self-interest does not align with budget maximization, since bureaucrats have little direct way to benefit from larger budgets. A more plausible assumption that offers a stronger causal logic for maximization behavior is that bureaucrats are motivated to help others. If they believe that spending on public goods is beneficial to society, public employees may be likely to advocate for larger budgets. Using vignette-experiment methodology, this article finds that individuals with higher levels of public service motivation do not advocate for significantly higher budgets. The results undercut an alternative theoretical means to support Niskanen's original theory, thereby further undermining the budget maximization model.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of International Public Management Journal for the following free supplemental resource: Survey Text with Vignettes.]