Citizen participation and the redistribution of public goods

This study investigates whether citizen participation in public budgeting resulted in increased redistributive outcomes when compared with bureaucratic decision‐making. We focused on a specific budget item (i.e., the installation of surveillance cameras for crime prevention) and examined whether participatory budgeting yielded larger budget allocations to low‐income neighbourhoods. Results indicate that such participatory budgeting results in larger budget allocations for low‐income neighbourhoods when compared with allocations produced by bureaucratic budgeting practices. The results also indicate that budgets allocated through citizen participation may be no more or even less effective for advancing public goals. These findings suggest a potential trade‐off between equity and public service effectiveness. Citizen participation improves budget equity, but may be less effective for achieving public goals than bureaucratic decision‐making. To explain this, we offer the ‘social pressure hypothesis’, which posits that social pressure during public‐forum discussions can influence participating citizens to make redistributive decisions.     

Do Citizens really care about federalism? public preferences for the administration of governmental programs

In this paper we present a secondary analysis of a survey of Alabama residents. The focus of that survey was individual attitudes toward a variety of policy areas, five of which could reasonably be administered at either the state or national level. Rather than simply asking what level of government should have responsibility, we asked respondents to construct national and state budgets which might, or might not, include appropriations for these and other policy areas. In general, individuals allocated funds to each policy area at both the state and national level. This means either that most citizens favor cooperative federalism, or more likely, people are primarily interested in seeing that certain programs are funded and do not much care what level of government administers a policy area. This latter interpretation is supported by the fact that no theory taken from the current fed-eralism literature is able to explain individual attitudes toward federalism as measured by these budget allocations. Most people simply do not have very strong feelings about which level of government should be responsible for any given program.     

Thailand's Quest For Results-focused Budgeting

Abstract

Budgeting in Thailand is highly centralized. The powerful Bureau of the Budget (BOB) controls each agency's spending in detail through numerous separate budget allocations (detailed line itemizing). After a failed program budget reform in the late 1990s, the Thai Government attempted to introduce a performance-based reform into this centralized, controlled setting. The reform followed a “hurdle” whereby line entities could gain greater discretion over their budgets (and move towards a performance management approach) upon “clearance” of specific hurdles—achieving minimum levels in budget basics. This article examines why this approach did not work.     

E-Government to Combat Corruption: The Case of Seoul Metropolitan Government

Abstract

The Seoul Metropolitan Government adopted a reform measure to combat corruption, called the “OPEN” system, an acronym for the “Online Procedures ENhancement for civil applications,” in January 1999, and the new system went into operation in April 1999. The OPEN system is a Web-based internet service to transact civil applications for permits, registrations, procurements, contracts, and approvals submitted online by citizens. It places transparency and accountability in the core of the management system of civil applications by providing open access for anybody, anytime, and anywhere to file applications and monitor the review and approval processes on real time online until the decision on the applications is finalized according to the timetable set by the officials in charge. The citizens accepted the OPEN system instantly and the users of the service and visitors to the site have grown rapidly. More importantly, both the citizens who used the system and the city officials who were involved in managing the system tended to have favorable opinions on its corruption control effect as attested by the survey findings. The OPEN system is an e-government innovation with a rich potential for diffusion, for corruption in government (or in business as well) is believed to be prevalent and it neither respects geographical boundaries nor discriminates cultural differences.     

Citizen involvement in public policy: Does it matter how much is at stake?

Public administrations increasingly try to find new ways to involve citizens in policy-making. However, many democratic innovations draw in only a fraction of the public. Why? I hypothesize that we observe such low participation rates because there is often not enough at stake for citizens. I test this with a preregistered survey experiment on citizens' intentions to participate in participatory budgets in the Netherlands. I fielded the experiment among a sample of citizens that had just experienced a participatory budget (N = 225) and among a population-based sample (N = 1369). I operationalized the stakes as the amount of public money about which citizens can decide. The results show that more money generally does not increase citizens' intention to participate. Supplementary analyses confirm the experimental findings and provide reasons how and why the stakes involved (do not) matter for citizens' involvement.     

The Income Lever and the Allocation of Aid

Abstract

The article develops a concept and a measure of the monetary capacity of a country to reduce its own poverty and shows how these tools can be used to guide budget allocations or the allocation of aid. The authors call this concept the income lever. Making use of tax and distributive theory, the article shows how different redistributive criteria correspond to the different normative criteria of the income lever. It then constructs various income lever indexes based on these criteria and uses such indexes to rank countries according to their own capacity to reduce poverty.     

From the Executive Board to the Classroom. What Debt Relief Means for Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

ABSTRACT

This analysis re-assesses the IMF’s decision to grant debt relief to the DRC in 2010 based on the country’s poverty reduction and growth performance: would the IMF come to the same conclusion given the current knowledge available about the impact of the debt relief process on public governance and service delivery? First, it shows that, whereas the direct resource effect of this aid modality was minimal, the indirect effect was more significant: the conditionalities attached to the process helped to stabilize the economy and increased the overall budget of the Congolese state. This increased resource availability also sustainably percolated to the education sector. Second, however, the impact on social development was minimal: school enrolment increased but was hardly accompanied by extra budget per pupil, whereas more complicated challenges like disparities in access or quality of schooling were left untouched. The government’s strategy was also partly short-circuited by the electoral process.     

Energy conservation policy in the united states and Sweden: Comparing research and development responses

This study assesses the comparability of public sector responses to energy conservation research and development (R&D) in the United states and Sweden. Using the evaluative criteria of policy objectives, organizational structure, and funding, the extent to which the institutional context for R&D either constrains or fosters conservation as an element of each nation's energy policies is examined. Sweden, unlike the United States, appears to have been successful in achievement consensus primarily through an open, deliberative process of mutual partisan adjustment regarding where specific allocations should be made in the energy R&D budget for optimal conservation results. To a great extent, it is within these differing institutional contexts of policy uncertainly that the content of specific energy conservation policies and strategies should be evaluated.     

The threat of polluted air and the policies to control the problem in the Seoul metropolitan area

Air pollution is a serious problem in the Seoul Metropolitan area and other major urban centers in Korea. Heavy concentration of industries, a large population in excess of 11 million in high density, and an explosive growth of automobiles have contributed to air pollution in Seoul along with the neglect of environmental issues in the process of industrial and social changes. Although the official statistical data do not show that air pollution has reached a critical level, a survey data of public opinion indicates that a concern for environmental pollution is serious.

The central government of Korea has taken some major policy measures to address the environmental pollution problem. The government expenditures for environmental programs have significantly increased throughout the 1980's. The government has adopted policies to switch fuels for industrial, commercial, and domestic use from high pollution coals and heavy oil to nonpolluting natural gas. The government has adopted incentive programs to offer economic benefits to those buying electric cars and cars running on compressed natural gas or alcohol.

It is not clear how effective these policy measures will be in curbing environmental pollution. But it is clear that the choice of the citizens for a new life style which is environmentally clean is a new imperative for survival in the same way as economic development at any cost was the imperative for economic survival in the 1960's and the 1970's.     

The boom-bust cycle in wyoming county spending: Implications for budget theories

This paper presents a case study of county spending in Wyoming during the 1970s and 1980s to test the applicability of several competing perspectives upon budget policy derived from higher level and more visible governments in the United States. Our findings about the consequences of Wyoming's boom and bust cycle during the 1970s and 1980s for county finances possess several implications for the competing theories of budget policy.

Concerning how budgets are made, they confirm the growing consensus that models of “budgetary incrementalism” are inadequate, as well as providing some evidence consistent with the “garbage can” model of decision-making. However, they also suggest that “the baby should not be thrown out with the bath water,” since temporal consistency and incrementalism are evident in several areas. Turning to the factors affecting budget substance, resource base turned out to be the most important factor influencing Wyoming county budgets. Several instances of special social needs and political leanings could be discerned as well. However, most of these also suggested that resource constraints were the principal driving force behind county budgeting in Wyoming.     

Case-mix nursing home reimbursement: a technical “fix” for a policy inadequacy?

Most state Medicaid programs, in many cases the largest fundors of long term care, reimburse nursing homes or home health agencies on negotiated flat rates. However, several states have implemented or are planning to use reimbursement methods using case-mix indices to adjust for the different variable costs (e.g., resource utilization groups, RUGs) incurred in caring for different types of patients. Advocates contend that such methods can simultaneously help contain costs and enhance access by motivating the nursing home to keep costs below predetermined rates and mitigating providers’ reluctance to admit “heavy care” residents. The numbers of such residents putatively have increased as a result of incentives in the Prospective Payment System for hospitals to more quickly discharge sicker patients. However, the potentially negative effects of case-mix reimbursement (CMR) on quality of care have not gone unnoticed, and the costs (as yet undetermined) of mechanisms to avert these effects likely are nontrivial.

This paper examines the effects of CMR on cost (to states and nursing homes), access and quality. A preliminary review of the available evidence seems to indicate mixed results; yet, CMR obviously appeals to some Medicaid programs and representatives of the nursing home industry. We suggest that the allure of CMR may be due to a mistaken belief that, to borrow from Brandon (1990), such “tech fixes” obviate irksome negotiation on the part of policy elites.

An alternate reimbursement policy is proposed: a negotiated prepayment, based on a facility's global budget, with periodic allocations and an end of period adjustment to compensate the provider for unanticipated costs.     

An Evaluation of Performance-Based Budget Reform in Asian Countries

This article investigates the effects of performance-based budgeting (PBB) adoption on the spending of the central government in eleven Asian countries over an 18-year period. The theoretical argument is that PBB does not permanently change the spending structure for various reasons, including but not limited to the lack of clear linkages between performance results and resource allocation. This hypothesis is supported by the study’s results, which suggest that PBB temporarily changes the spending size in some programs. However, such changes are not permanent; there are no structural changes in the baseline budget. These findings suggest that PBB may not be different than other budget reforms.     

Public Value as Rhetoric: A Budgeting Approach

The public value theory has been accused of serving as a “rhetorical device” for public managers to advance their interests and influence vis-à-vis politicians. This article uses Legislative Budget Offices (LBOs) as a lens to re-examine the theme of “public value as rhetoric”. It examines how an LBO can relegate itself to a lower public value-creating position that avoids conflict with politicians, which then allows politicians to employ rhetoric such as fiscal “sustainability” and “responsibility”, without making actual budget choices that incur political costs. The findings of the article suggest that the use of public value as rhetoric is a function of contradictory values held by citizens, which politicians and public managers must reconcile by choosing to divert either resources or rhetoric. Furthermore, rhetoric is bidirectional, and employable not just by public managers, but by politicians as well.     

Resource Wealth,Democracy and Mobilisation

The impact of resource wealth on society remains highly contested in the literature. Some perspectives suggest that resource wealth is associated with political apathy, while others indicate that resource wealth fosters violent civil conflicts. We leverage these seemingly contradictory impacts of natural resources on society by expanding the scope of inquiry to explore different types of resource wealth (oil and minerals) as well as other dimensions of political life (protest). Utilising a global dataset for the period 1950–2006, we test the impact of resource wealth on mobilisation. We find that while oil wealth demobilises citizens in all regime types, mineral wealth strongly correlates with higher levels of mobilisation in democracies, though not in autocracies. In addition, using survey data, we examine individual-level attitudes toward protest participation in two resource-rich states, Peru and Ecuador. The results indicate that an individual living in a mineral-rich country like Peru is more likely to participate in a protest compared to an individual living in an oil-rich country like Ecuador. Our findings highlight the contributions of the resource activism framework for understanding the connection between natural resources and mobilisation.     

Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Disease Among Koreans Residing in California and Seoul

Abstract

The objectives of this study are to assess (1) the prevalence of six cardiac risk factors among California residents of Korean descent and Koreans living in Seoul, Korea; and (2) the differences in risk factors by gender, and acculturation. Participant selection used probability sampling to represent the adult populations of California and Seoul, Republic of Korea, and administered a telephone survey to 2,830 adult Korean Californians and 500 adult Koreans living in Seoul. Male gender significantly predicted tobacco use, BMI, exercise, passive smoke exposure (PSE), hypertension (Californians only), and number of risk factors. Californian residence significantly predicted higher smoking prevalence in women and lower smoking prevalence in men, higher BMI, higher fat diet, a sedentary lifestyle, and greater number of risk factors. Acculturation significantly predicted lower smoking prevalence (men only), lower prevalence of PSE exposure (women only), lower BMI (women only), more exercise, a higher fat diet, higher prevalence of hypertension, and increased number of cardiac risk factors. This comparative survey highlights the need for early cardiovascular risk reduction among Koreans living in Seoul and in California.     

The politics of a windfall: allocating special offshore oil and gas receipts in four southern states facing fiscal retrenchment

Windfall receipts represent unusual opportunities either to help resolve current budget needs or to provide more long-term budget stability. This paper uses a set of state case studies to clarify the windfall phenomena. The windfall program under study is a special Federal-State offshore oil and gas revenue sharing program. At the time of the windfall receipt, each affected state faced significant current account retrenchment. Under both public choice and resource scarcity reasoning, windfall receipts are vulnerable to current account spending. The results indicate, however, that prior windfall experience or existing decision-rules governing windfall receipts provide an incentive to allocate a windfall differently than current revenues. In each case studied, part, or all, of the windfall was dedicated into an unexpendable trust fund. The implications for future study are discussed.     

Gains of the Green Revolution : How they have been Shared in Punjab

It is fashionable for sociologists and political economists these days to malign the ‘green revolution’ technology on the grounds of its effects upon the agricultural income distribution, which are claimed to affect small farmers and agricultural labourers adversely. No doubt the income effects of a technological change should be a valid concern for a society inflicted with mass poverty and unemployment, yet to condemn an improvement in production technology alone seems misplaced. Inequality in income distribution depends not only on the nature of the technology, on its degree of scale‐neutrality or labour intensity, but often arises from resource allocations and fiscal policies. In India green revolution technology is unfortunately being condemned out of all proportion. The policy measures that emanate out of this thinking are throttling the development of the agricultural sector. This article is an attempt to examine the recent changes in employment and agricultural labourers and farmers in the Punjab State, which is the area most favourably affected by the green revolution technology in India.     

The Institutional and Psychological Foundations of Natural Resource Policies

Abstract

The pressures of political interests which drive the resource curse are well-understood. But ordinary citizens are usually cast both as the innocent victims of this process, and as the potential solution if only governments could be made more accountable to them. This paper draws upon recent developments in social psychology to discuss the formation of mass opinions on two aspects of resource ownership. One is the spatial assignment of ownership between local and national claims, which has been a significant cause of conflict. The other is the assignment of revenues between current consumption and future investment, which has usually been excessively biased towards the former. I suggest why, in the absence of an active government communications policy to offset them, known psychological biases may interact with resource discoveries to generate mass opinions which contribute to these problems.     

The Olympic Games,human rights and democratisation: Lessons from Seoul and implications for Beijing

The experience of the Seoul Olympics in 1988 has led major games boosters to boldly assert their liberalising potential, especially in the context of the Beijing Games of 2008. This paper examines whether in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 eras, there is a sound basis for such arguments. It begins by re-examining the lessons of the Seoul Olympics to clarify the Games' contribution to the democratisation of Korea, as catalyst though not cause. It then assesses the applicability of the lessons of Seoul to Beijing given the different contexts of their 'Olympic journeys'. Finally, based on this comparison it considers the ways in which the 2008 Games may affect prospects for human rights improvements and political liberalisation in the People's Republic of China. While the outcomes of this process are likely to be quite different from the western-style liberal democratisation that occurred in South Korea, the process of engagement between 21st Century China and 21st Century Olympism holds the possibility of stimulating a fruitful, dialogic, and progressive exchange on rights issues.     

The Flypaper Effect: Do Political Institutions Affect Danish Local Governments’ Response to Intergovernmental Grants?

Abstract

Despite a large number of empirical studies on the flypaper effect, it remains disputed whether the effect exists and to what extent it is asymmetrical. The flypaper effect suggests that intergovernmental grants tend to result in higher increases in public expenditures than a similar increase in citizens’ private income would have led to. An asymmetrical effect exists when the fiscal response differs depending on whether grants are increased or decreased. By considering political institutions that moderate the effect of intergovernmental grants, this article offers a theoretical explanation that accounts for the mixed empirical evidence. The local response to intergovernmental grants is tested using a reform of the Danish intergovernmental grant scheme in 2007. In line with the expectation, the article finds a strong asymmetrical effect, but more surprisingly, this effect is found both when subnational budget institutions are centralised and when they are fragmented.