Joblessness and poverty in America's central cities: Causes and policy prescriptions

Abstract

Two paradigms pervade the policy debate on the causes of urban joblessness and poverty: (1) a structural, nonvoluntaristic perspective emphasizing the roles of urban economic change, residential segregation, and spatial and skills mismatches, and (2) a rational‐choice, voluntaristic perspective contending that the generosity and ready availability of welfare programs have removed the incentive for poor persons to accept low‐paying jobs. This article brings together propositions of each paradigm into a comprehensive theoretical model. The study measured and tested key causal operators of the model for a sample of 67 large U.S. cities, with special attention to race and gender.

Results show that structural and welfare disincentive perspectives are not in conflict but rather operate side by side to reinforce joblessness and poverty. Race and gender, especially the role of urban space for women's work, are important. The article raises pertinent policy issues derived from the two perspectives and from the analysis.     

Choosing the path of austerity: how parties and policy coalitions influence welfare state retrenchment in periods of fiscal consolidation

What are the conditions under which some austerity programmes rely on substantial cuts to social spending? More specifically, do the partisan complexion and the type of government condition the extent to which austerity policies imply welfare state retrenchment? This article demonstrates that large budget consolidations tend to be associated with welfare state retrenchment. The findings support a partisan and a politico-institutionalist argument: (i) in periods of fiscal consolidation, welfare state retrenchment tends to be more pronounced under left-wing governments; (ii) since welfare state retrenchment is electorally and politically risky, it also tends to be more pronounced when pursued by a broad pro-reform coalition government. Therefore, the article shows that during budget consolidations implemented by left-wing broad coalition governments, welfare state retrenchment is greatest. Using long-run multipliers from autoregressive distributed lag models on 17 OECD countries during the 1982–2009 period, substantial support is found for these expectations.     

Postmodern policy analysis: Discourse and identity in welfare policy

Postmodern inquiry into the discursive construction of identity has the potential to make a distinctive, democratizing contribution to public policy analysis. More so than conventional approaches, a postmodern policy analysis offers the opportunity to interrogate assumptions about identity embedded in the analysis and making of public policy, thereby enabling us to rethink and resist questionable distinctions that privilege some identities at the expense of others. Public policy analysis can benefit from postmodernism's emphasis on how discourse constructs identity. A review of postmodernism and postmodern approaches to interrogating identity is followed by an exercise in postmodern policy analysis. Social welfare policy in contemporary postindustrial America is shown to participate in the construction and maintenance of identity in ways that affect not just the allocation of public benefits, but also economic opportunities outside of the state. Mired in old, invidious distinctions (e.g., independent/dependent, contract/charity, family/promiscuity), welfare policy discourse today helps to recreate the problems of yesterday, particularly as a critical factor in reproducing women's poverty.     

Charitable giving in the German welfare state: fiscal incentives and crowding out

There are two ways that government activities influence private charitable giving: (1) government spending on the provision of public goods may cause crowding out of private charitable contributions; and (2) tax incentives may boost private charitable giving. From a sample of German income tax returns, we estimate the elasticity of charitable giving relative to tax incentives, income, and government spending. Using censored quantile regression analysis, we derive results for different points of the underlying distribution of charitable giving. Evaluating overall treasury efficiency, the tax deductibility of charitable donations fosters enough private giving to offset foregone tax revenues.     

Reluctant policy innovation through profit concession and informality tolerance: A strategic relational view of policy entrepreneurship in China's urban redevelopment

This paper engages with the theoretical perspective of policy entrepreneurship to examine the pattern and process of policy change in the context of China's urban redevelopment. Drawing upon a strategic-relational reinterpretation of policy entrepreneurship, this paper identifies a distinctive form of reluctant policy innovation in the “three old renewals” scheme initiated in Guangzhou where profit concession and informality tolerance were practiced to create a small window of opportunity for the project of urban redevelopment to break ground. The motivation of policy entrepreneurship in the successful urban renewal projects in Guangzhou was heavily contingent upon the geographically important location of the project site and the historically incidence of hosting the 2010 Asian Games, which forced municipal government to become entrepreneurial and innovative in decision making and income redistribution in order to get things done as quickly as possible. The distinct fashion of policy innovation identified in the case of Guangzhou points to the polymorphous and dynamic nature of policy entrepreneurship and advocates a relational treatment of the strategies and motives of policy entrepreneurs embedded in concrete geographical and historical context.     

New evidence on the soft budget constraint: Chinese environmental policy effectiveness in SOE-dominated cities

Public Choice - This paper analyzes the efficiency of a set of environmental measures introduced by China’s 11th Five-Year Plan in 2006, using a rich and unique data set assembled from the...     

政策网络:公共政策创新的视角

引入政策网络分析的方法可以真实地认识到公共政策创新过程中的现实图景.我国某些公共政策创新失败的原因正是其忽略了政策网络的存在,忽略了政府对政策网络中个人和组织的依赖属性.我们应当重视政策网络在政策创新过程中的作用,通过培育网络主体的公共理性.构建协商民主与政策网络的良性互动,加强政策网络的学习机制等,从而形成合理、优良的创新政策,保证公共政策创新对社会的持续作用.     

Formula budgeting: The economics and analytics of fiscal policy under rules

The dramatic change in aggregate fiscal policy in recent years has contributed to a shift from process rules to allocation rules in federal budgeting. Although the allocation rules inherent in formula budgeting seem to offer fairness in times of fiscal constraint, they actually impose arbitrary program-level budgets that reflect the peculiarities of baselines, accounting conventions, and time horizons. Formula budgeting also changes the analytical environment, forcing policy analysts to pay greater attention to institutional arrangements.     

Political and institutional determinants of fiscal policy in the European Community

In recent theoretical and empirical research the variation in political and institutional arrangements which may affect the process of national policy formation is examined, in order to explain cross-country differences with respect to fiscal policies pursued. In this paper we build upon this literature and examine whether and how cross-country differences in debt accumulation and public sector size of Member Countries of the European Community during the 1980s can be explained. We conclude that the growth of government debt is positively related to the frequency of government changes and negatively to sound budgetary procedures. In countries with left-wing governments the growth of the share of government spending in total output generally tends to be higher.     

Citizen participation and judgment in policy analysis: A case study of urban air quality policy

The emphasis currently placed on citizen participation in planning results in part from the recognition that planning requires judgments that have both value and technical components. This article describes a case study of a citizen participation process in which planners' judgments, rather than the judgments of the members of a citizens' task force, seemed to dictate the outcome. Although citizens were supposed to be influential in the policy analysis, they were, in effect, excluded from a meaningful role in the process. The analysis was actually guided by planners' supposedly technical judgments. Those judgments had important value implications, however, and those implications were not made clear to the citizens' task force. Examples are given of judgments made by planners at each stage of the analysis and the value components of those judgments are discussed. In each example, the judgments resulted in elimination of alternatives, selection of information, or integration of information. Two examples of methods of citizen participation which can increase the influence of citizens' judgments are also described.The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.     

The ethical poverty of cost-benefit methods: Autonomy,efficiency and public policy choice

The principle of efficiency holds as the basic standard of market decision-making. Routinely however, it has been applied as a standard of judgement to public choices as well. This essay proceeds on the basis of four assumptions. First, that efficiency, outside the market context, has two manifestations (Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and Cost-Benefit Methods) which are made distinct by one's concentration on judging the most cost-effective means to policy ends otherwise arrived at, and the other's use of efficiency to judge both the means and end of policy choice. Second, that although efficiency is a fit primary decision standard within a competitive market a principle with more distinctly moral weight is needed to judge ends outside of markets. Third, that one possible source of this moral weight is individual autonomy or freedom that is a fit ethical principle upon which to set the ends of public policy. Fourth, that the use of cost-benefit methods rather than cost-effectiveness analysis implies that it can satisfy the requirements of both efficiency and autonomy. If the efficient policy choice also provided protection of individual autonomy then cost-benefit methods could be used for the analysis of public policy ends, but if it fails to have a deeper moral justification then the role of efficiency in the public sector must be limited only to its judgement of cost-effective means to policy ends arrived at by a non-efficiency standard. I will argue that the autonomy of individual choice in a market is a thin and morally impoverished ethical standard of judgement that adds no additional moral weight to market efficiency for the judgements of policy ends. This conclusion limits efficiency to the consideration of public means alone, eliminating cost-benefit methods as a fit approach to policy analysis while simultaneously promoting cost-effectiveness analysis and the search for an independent moral standard for the assessment of public ends.This essay was originally prepared for the 1989 meeting of the APSA in Atlanta and I wish to thank all those who read and commented on my work at that time. In addition, I would like to thank those who participated in its evolution to this form: Douglas MacLean, Mark Sagoff, Brian Barry, Alan Donagan, Russell Hardin, Maurice Wade, Andy Gold, Thomas Reilly, Diana Evans, an anonymous reviewer at Policy Sciences and its two editors, William Ascher and G. Brewer.     

Career cohorts and inter-jurisdictional innovation diffusion: an empirical exploration in China

Abstract

Previous research on policy innovation diffusion generally focuses on organizational-level mechanisms while disregarding the actor-level diffusion channels. The current study explores how career cohorts among subnational leaders, who are classified based on political ranks and ages, shape inter-jurisdictional innovation diffusion in China. Compared with subnational leaders from different cohorts, those from the same cohort tend to share relatively homogeneous policy information and compete with one another intensely because of the overlapping future career opportunities, thereby creating a particular pattern of policy interdependence across multiple jurisdictions. We perform a directed dyad-year event history analysis to evaluate the diffusion of China’s provincial-level administrative licensing centers from 1999 to 2015. Empirical analysis shows that after controlling for multiple previously identified diffusion mechanisms and internal determinants, the cohort effect among provincial party chiefs significantly increases the likelihood of innovation diffusion in China.     

Transitioning policy: co-production of a new strategic framework for energy innovation policy in the Netherlands

This article describes policy–science interactions in a transition process in which we were involved as scientists. We describe the interactions that occurred in a project for the fourth National Environmental Policy Plan in the Netherlands. The project was successful in that it produced a new concept and set of principles for policy to deal with persistent problems such as global climate change, which were used in the national policy plan. The new concept was that of transition and the principles were: policy integration, long-term thinking for short-term action, keeping multiple options open and learning-by-doing and doing-by-learning. Retrospectively, we ask ourselves: what factors facilitated the acceptance of the first ideas about transition management? Reconstructing the events and drawing on interviews with key individuals involved, we have tried to find the key factors for the adoption of the ideas developed in the project. Finally, we reflect upon our role as scientists-advisors and the role of others in the development of a new story line and set of principles for policy. Our own assessment, 8 years later, is that we were engaged in boundary work.     

Governance in Crisis and withering of the welfare state: the legacy of the policy sciences

The introductory essay to this special issue on Governance in Crisis has three objectives. Firstly, it tries to show that current dilemmas of governance in advanced industrial Western nations can be analysed within the common framework of the thesis of the withering of the modern welfare state. Secondly, it argues that the policy sciences have a legacy of problem-oriented and value-conscious scholarship, bestowed by Lasswell and others, which can and should be taken up in the analysis of the comprehensive problems of governance confronting advanced industrial nations. Thirdly, it considers the requirement that the policy sciences go significantly beyond a managerial perspective and take up the timely but challenging task of linking up problem-orientation to contextuality. Contributions to this issue are seen to constitute a promising step in this direction.     

Visibility and facticity in policy diffusion: going beyond the prevailing binarity

Quantitative-oriented diffusion studies, either focused on diffusion patterns or mechanisms, take for granted that policy adoptions are manifest and therefore directly observable in the legislation. A more nuanced perspective of policy adoption taking into account gradual differences between adoption and non-adoption is proposed with this paper, valid for diffusion among communities and states in federal settings and among countries on the global level. Besides the aspect of visibility, intentions are also important when measures are adopted. While some measures are transferred with a clear instrumental aim, others are rather transferred for symbolical reasons. Looking at specific processes, the paper proposes a concept that disentangles the current understanding of policy diffusion and provides empirical evidence that current diffusion research misconceives instances. The four different transfer types are illustrated with empirical evidence from sub-national energy policy-making in Switzerland. The systematic investigation of the cases allows to finding explanations for the different transfer types.     

Human rights and the city: Including marginalized communities in urban development and smart cities

The idea that the city belongs to all individuals inhabiting the urban space is grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the New Urban Agenda, and it is referred to as “right to the city” or “rights in the city.” This article discusses how human rights relate to the city and its inhabitants, examines the meaning of the right to the city and human rights in the city in today’s urban environment, and deliberates how to transform cities into spaces that reflect fundamental human rights principles. By looking at the situation of marginalized groups in cities, the article focuses on the questions of how to build inclusive, fair, and accessible cities and how to eliminate inequalities seen in urban communities. Because technology is often cited as one way to foster integration of marginalized communities, special attention will be given to the smart city and the opportunities and challenges presented by information and communication technologies (ICTs) for human rights, accessibility, and inclusion. Using the case of persons with disabilities as an illustration, the article argues that urban development needs to be fundamentally transformed to live up to human rights standards. Only a multi-stakeholder urban design process will produce truly inclusive urban spaces that fulfill the right to the city.     

Exploring political personalities: The micro-foundation of local policy innovation in China

This article argues that policymakers' individual attributes influence their willingness to engage in policy innovation, and that this influence is responsive to, but not determined by, changes in the institutional structure. We derive these findings by employing principal component analysis of original data from surveys of local policymakers in China, to inductively locate different personalities. We find statistically significant personalities that influence a willingness to innovate, and that this influence is responsive to changes such as heightened risk. In addition to parsing the influence of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations on policy innovation, we further find that the traditional risk-acceptant policy-entrepreneur personality does not explain innovation well.     

The administrative state and fiscal policy: A comparative analysis of political issues in China and the United States

This article examines the budgetary politics in China and the United States. It illustrates the inherent political nature of fiscal policies produced by different political and economic systems. Although both countries are concerned with the distributive effects of reform, the study indicates that the central government of China confronts issues related to the distribution of power between the center and the provinces during economic transformation. In contrast, the debate in the United States is produced by the distribution of costs and benefits brought about by federal fiscal policy. The context of the debate is influenced, in part, by the administrative state.