Legitimacy crises and the temporal dynamics of bureaucratic representation

The representation of specific groups and social interests within (or by) the civil service has long been a concern of public administration scholarship. Yet, much of this literature focuses on representation at a single point in time. In this article, we propose a more dynamic perspective. In terms of theory, we postulate specific temporal relationships between triggering cues (e.g., a crisis event) and the representation decisions of civil servants. We specify two complementary mechanisms underlying these relationships: that is, a sensemaking process whereby the perceived meaning and relative salience of distinct groups and interests changes over time; and a shift in bureaucrats' discretion to represent specific groups or interests changes over time. We illustrate these time-dependent processes using interview and survey data from the European Commission.     

A Leadership Selection Index for multi-ballot political party conventions in Canada

Eugene McGregor (Journal of Politics 35, 459–478, 1973) recognized a regularity in multi-ballot leadership conventions in the United States. He hypothesized that the change in absolute votes between the first and the second ballot could be used to forecast the eventual winner of a leadership race. When the McGregor model is applied to the Canadian multi-ballot conventions the prediction rate is only 57 per cent. This paper seeks first to discuss the qualitative similarities found between these Canadian conventions and then use this as a basis to develop and to apply a model that extends on McGregor's work. The developed model is called the Leadership Selection Index (LSI). We find that the winner of most Canadian multi-ballot conventions (86%) could be forecasted after the second ballot by using the LSI method of analysis. Based on the evidence from the literature and a survey of Canadian political conventions, we develop a hypothesis of ‘two critical conjunctures' for multi-ballot leadership conventions. This hypothesis provides a suitable theoretical framework to interpret the performance of our empirical model.     

Radical Moderation: Recapturing Power in Two‐Party Parliamentary Systems

We estimate the parameters of a reputational game of political competition using data from five two‐party parliamentary systems. We find that latent party preferences (and party reputations) persist with high probability across election periods, with one exception: parties with extreme preferences who find themselves out of power switch to moderation with higher probability than the equivalent estimated likelihood for parties in government (extreme or moderate) or for moderate parties in opposition. We find evidence for the presence of significant country‐specific differences. We subject the model to a battery of goodness‐of‐fit tests and contrast model predictions with survey and vote margin data not used for estimation. Finally, according to the estimated model parameters, Australia is less than half as likely to experience extreme policies and Australian governments can expect to win more consecutive elections in the long run as compared to their counterparts in Greece, Malta, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.     

Autonomy and Control in Australian Agencies: Data and Preliminary Findings from a Cross‐National Empirical Study

This article is developed from data gathered through the analysis of a survey of ‘agencies’ at Commonwealth and Australian Capital Territory (ACT) levels of government, undertaken as the Australian component of a cross‐national empirical study of autonomy and control in non‐departmental public sector organisations. It presents preliminary findings from one part of what is potentially a very important enterprise in comparative research, along with discussion of methodological issues which need to be confronted in many such comparative exercises. The data reveal that Australia agencies have been granted more autonomy than agencies in other countries contributing to this survey, though that autonomy varies markedly across functions such as personnel management and financial management. While the article represents just a snapshot in time in agency autonomy, we believe it provides a robust baseline for future changes in the way agencies are managed in the Australian public sector.     

Opinion formation in foreign policy: the Swiss experience

Applying John Zaller's model of opinion formation to survey data covering 15 years (1981–95) of direct democracy in Switzerland, this paper provides a contribution to the debate about opinion formation in foreign policy. On the one hand, the Swiss experience contradicts the widespread view that citizens are poorly informed about and little interested in foreign affairs. On the other hand, direct democracy often translates into governmental defeats in this field. We address these mixed results and show that opinion formation in foreign policy is not a special case, and differs from that in domestic policy only with respect to the circumstances under which it occurs. In particular, we highlight the unusual type and level of conflict within the elite on foreign policy issues, which translates into distinct patterns of attitudes among the public.     

Overcoming the Barriers to Cooperation: Intergovernmental Service Agreements

Interlocal cooperation through service‐sharing agreements has a long history, but its use has increased in popularity during the last 20 years. The decisions of local government units to collaborate through intergovernmental service agreements are best understood as a two‐stage process. The first stage, in which communities decide whether to consider interlocal cooperation, involves the nature of the immediate problem faced plus specific demands for performance and efficiency gains that can result from service cooperation. In the second stage, communities confront a question of institutional supply, and hence must overcome inherent bargaining and collective action issues in order to forge interlocal agreements. Heckman probit estimates of such complex relationships using data drawn from a 2003 ICMA survey suggest strong support for this model. The authors conclude by discussing the role of network relationships among local actors for reducing transaction costs and facilitating intergovernmental collaboration.     

Different encounter behaviors: Businesses in encounters with regulatory agencies

Studies on regulatory encounters have shown that the interaction between regulator and regulatee is important for implementation of public policy. Much of this research examines how the behavior of frontline workers in such encounters affects regulatee compliance, that is, an outcome of the encounter, but we know less about the behavior that regulatees bring to these encounters. This paper therefore examines how businesses behave in encounters with regulatory authorities, and whether we can identify distinct, multidimensional types of encounter behavior. Using survey data from representative samples of Danish businesses and an exploratory cluster analysis, we identify five types of encounter behavior. We label these “Cooperators,” “Accommodators,” “Game players,” “Protesters,” and “Fighters.” We believe this framework provides a useful next step in a research agenda on businesses' behavior in regulatory encounters.     

Party Brands and Partisanship: Theory with Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Argentina

Scholars disagree about the nature of party attachments, viewing partisanship as either a social identity or a rational maximization of expected utility. Empirically, much of this debate centers on the degree of partisan stability: findings of partisan fluctuations are taken as evidence against the social‐identity perspective. But drawing such conclusions assumes that the objects of identity—parties—are fixed. If we instead allow party brands to change over time, then partisan instability is consistent with a social‐identity conception of partisanship. To demonstrate this, I develop a branding model of partisanship in which voters learn about party brands by observing party behavior over time and base their psychological attachment to a party on these brands. The model suggests that convergence by rival parties, making their brands less distinguishable, should weaken party attachments. I test this implication using a survey experiment in Argentina and find evidence consistent with the model.     

The balancing act of establishing a policy agenda: Conceptualizing and measuring drivers of issue prioritization within interest groups

Interest groups are important intermediaries in Western democracies, with the potential to offer political linkage and form a bridge between the concerns of citizens and the agendas of political elites. While we know an increasing amount about the issue‐based activity of groups, we only have a limited understanding about how they selected these issues to work on. In this article, we examine the process of agenda setting within groups. In particular, we address challenges of conceptualization and measurement. Through a thorough review of the group literature, we identify five main factors that are hypothesized to drive issue prioritization. We operationalize items to tap these factors and then empirically assess this theoretical model relying on data from a survey of national interest groups in Australia. Our findings, from a confirmatory factor analysis, provide support for the multidimensional nature of agenda setting. We discuss how this provides a firm conceptual and methodological foundation for future work examining how groups establish their policy agenda.     

Institutional Analysis of Neighborhood Collective Action

Sublocal governance organizations may provide a way for some urban neighborhoods to stabilize and improve property values. Recent advances in collective action theory, spatial statistical methods, and data availability now make it possible to more directly evaluate the effects of these organizations. The analysis combines geocoded assessor's data and data from a survey of neighborhood and homeowner associations to analyze a model of prices of single‐family homes in Little Rock, Arkansas, from 2012 to 2016. The results show that neighborhood and homeowner associations both have significant positive effects on neighborhood property values relative to unorganized neighborhoods and that the effect of neighborhood associations is at least as large as that of homeowner associations. Moreover, the results indicate that neighborhood association structure mediates the effect on property values, although this is not the case for homeowner associations.     

Cognitive Biases in Governing: Technology Preferences in Election Administration

Cognitive biases are heuristics that shape individual preferences and decisions in a way that is at odds with means‐end rationality. The effects of cognitive biases on governing are underexplored. The authors study how election administrators’ cognitive biases shape their preferences for e‐voting technology using data from a national survey of local election officials. The technology acceptance model, which employs a rational, means‐end perspective, suggests that the perceived benefits of e‐voting machines explain their popularity. But findings indicate that cognitive biases also play a role, even after controlling for the perceived benefits and costs of the technology. The findings point to a novel cognitive bias that is of particular interest to research on e‐government: officials who have a general faith in technology are attracted to more innovative alternatives. The authors also find that local election officials who prefer e‐voting machines do so in part because they overvalue the technology they already possess and because they are overly confident in their own judgment.     

Revisiting the Political Theory of Party Identification

Recently, Lewis-Beck et al. (The American Voter Revisited, 2008b) re-created The American Voter using contemporary data. Although these scholars ultimately conclude that voters today behave in ways that are consistent with the account of voting behavior presented in The American Voter, their work nonetheless highlights the importance and value of re-examining past ideas. Given that Lewis-Beck et al. have re-tested the findings of The American Voter, it is both timely and worthwhile to re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification, which is often seen as a critique of the theory of party identification presented in The American Voter, using newly available panel data. In this paper, I re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification using data from the 2000–2002–2004 NES panel study. In addition to applying Fiorina’s approach to party identification to new data, as a more robust test of Fiorina’s theory, I develop a model of party identification where changes in party identification are modeled as a function of the actual changes in retrospective political evaluations. Overall, my findings are broadly consistent with the findings from Fiorina’s original model of party identification; however, my analysis suggests that the distribution of opinions in the electorate and elite signals may be important to changes in party identification.     

Does Twitter Increase Perceived Police Legitimacy?

Social media use has become increasingly popular among police forces. The literature suggests that social media use can increase perceived police legitimacy by enabling transparency and participation. Employing data from a large and representative survey of Dutch citizens (N = 4,492), this article tests whether and how social media use affects perceived legitimacy for a major social media platform, Twitter. A negligible number of citizens engage online with the police, and thus the findings reveal no positive relationship between participation and perceived legitimacy. The article shows that by enhancing transparency, Twitter does increase perceived police legitimacy, albeit to a limited extent. Subsequent analysis of the mechanism shows both an affective and a cognitive path from social media use to legitimacy. Overall, the findings suggest that establishing a direct channel with citizens and using it to communicate successes does help the police strengthen their legitimacy, but only slightly and for a small group of interested citizens.     

A measure of survey mode differences

We evaluate the effects of different survey modes on respondents’ patterns of answers using an entropy measure of variability. While measures of centrality show little differences between face-to-face and Internet surveys, we find strong patterns of distributional differences between these modes where Internet responses tend towards more diffuse positions due to lack of personal contact during the process and the social forces provided by that format. We introduce an entropy measure of dispersion for survey responses and illustrate its utility with election data from 2012. Our results provide clear evidence that mode matters in modern survey research, and we make recommendations for interpreting results from different modes.     

Survey Research in Public Administration: Assessing Mainstream Journals with a Total Survey Error Framework

Survey research is a common tool for assessing public opinions, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors for analyses in many social science disciplines. Yet there is little knowledge regarding how specific elements of survey research methodology are applied in practice in public administration. This article examines five mainstream public administration journals over an eight‐year period regarding current methodological practice, organized around the total survey error framework. The findings show that survey research in the field of public administration features mainly small‐scale studies, heavy reliance on a single data collection mode, questionable sample selection procedures, and suspect sample frame quality. Survey data largely are analyzed without careful consideration of assumptions or potential sources of error. An informed evaluation of the quality of survey data is made more difficult by the fact that many journal articles do not detail data collection procedures. This study concludes with suggestions for improving the quality and reporting of survey research in the field.     

How Trust Matters: The Changing Political Relevance of Political Trust

Americans most often think about government in terms of its ability to grapple with issues of redistribution and race. However, the September 11 terrorist attacks led to a massive increase in media attention to foreign affairs, which caused people to think about the government in terms of defense and foreign policy. We demonstrate that such changes in issue salience alter the policy preferences that political trust shapes. Specifically, we show that trust did not affect attitudes about the race‐targeted programs in 2004 as it usually does, but instead affected a range of foreign policy and national defense preferences. By merging survey data gathered from 1980 through 2004 with data from media content analyses, we show that, more generally, trust's effects on defense and racial policy preferences, respectively, increase as the media focus more attention in these areas and decrease when that attention ebbs.     

Managerial Ambivalence and Electronic Civic Engagement: The Role of Public Manager Beliefs and Perceived Needs

This article addresses an important yet often neglected component of electronic civic engagement efforts: managerial ambivalence about public participation. We examine how managers’ beliefs about public participation and their perceived needs for participation in agency decision making work together to shape electronic engagement efforts. Based on observational data collected in 2010 and 2014 and data from a 2014 survey of managers in 500 U.S. municipal governments, we find that managerial beliefs about participation and their perceived needs for participation are two valid and separate constructs. There is a positive relationship between managerial beliefs and electronic engagement. Perceived needs for participation interact with managers’ beliefs to affect electronic civic engagement. A high level of perceived needs for participation reinforces the effect of managerial beliefs on electronic engagement efforts, but a low level does not offset the effect of managerial beliefs on electronic engagement.     

Support for Performance‐Based Funding: The Role of Political Ideology,Performance, and Dysfunctional Information Environments

As performance‐based mechanisms for accountability have become increasingly commonplace in the public sector, it is apparent that administrative reactions to these reforms are central in determining their effectiveness. Unfortunately, we know relatively little about the factors that drive acceptance of performance‐based accountability by administrative actors. This article employs data collected from an original survey instrument to examine the perceptions of presidents at American public colleges and universities regarding performance funding. The author finds that acceptance of performance as a basis for funding is driven by a variety of factors, including the partisanship of the state legislature, organizational performance (measured by institutional graduation rates), dysfunction in the external information environment, and the political ideology of university presidents.     

Do Policy Makers Use Academic Research? Reexamining the “Two Communities” Theory of Research Utilization

Academics and policy makers in many Western countries are perceived as occupying separate communities, with distinct languages, values, and reward systems. However, data from a survey of more than 2,000 policy officials and 126 in‐depth interviews with public servants in Australia suggest that the “two communities” conceptualization may be misleading and flawed. More realistically, there is a range of interaction between policy and academia, with some individuals valuing and using academic research more than others. Furthermore, this relationship is complicated by the internal division between the political and administrative components of the public policy process.