The contingent effect of institutions: Electoral formulas,ethnic polarization,and election quality

This paper builds on existing studies linking formal electoral institutions to democracy. It reveals that there is an interactive effect between the electoral formula and the levels of ethnic polarization that systematically influences the quality of elections and the probability of government turnover. Proportional representation is associated with better elections and more frequent government turnover than single-member district majority formulas in ethnically polarized countries. However, the opposite is true when ethno-cultural groups are not numerous or polarized. This study contributes to the existing literature on formal political institutions by presenting evidence that the electoral formula's impact on governance is contingent on the context in which such institutions operate.     

Socialism,knowledge, the instrumental valuation principle and the enhancement of individual dignity

Abstract

Socialism is frequently associated with central planning, public ownership, anathema to markets and the emasculation of the individual. Recent market socialist contributions attempt to overcome socialism's seeming resistance to markets. However, such contributions are frequently undermined by Hayek's invocation of fragmented knowledge. This article endeavours to contribute to a broadly conceived socialism that is not grounded in a particular array of institutions, but one which, via the instrumental valuation principle, the capabilities approach and Dewey's conceptualization of knowledge, offers the prospect of enhancing individual dignity. The instrumental valuation principle is viewed as key to socialism's engagement with dignity as it provides the framework for the enhancement of egalitarianism, democracy and the undermining of invidious institutional arrangements.     

The biology-policy interface: Theories of pathogenesis,benefit valuation and public policy formation

This paper reviews some of the basic concepts of cost and risk-benefit analysis in the context of toxic chemical regulation and discusses several critical complexities inherent in the practical application of this methodology. The broad qualitative use of risk-benefit analysis can be an important aid to the decision-making process. It is concluded, however, that the full-scale incorporation of a rigorous form of risk-benefit analysis into the regulatory process is inappropriate at this time and could have significant and unintended consequences.The authors wish to express their gratitude to their colleagues, Professors Norm Carruthers, Denton Marks and Dean Uyeno, and an anonymous referee for their instructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

‘Cleaning up’ while cleaning up? Pollution abatement,interest groups and contingent trade policies

This paper analyzes the political economy of environmental-policy formation in a trading economy with established rules for administered protection. We argue that the social costs associated with the adoption of an inefficient environmental regime are likely to be compounded by induced restrictions on trade when the effected industries are import competing. The preferences of interest groups for alternative environmental regimes tend to be linked to the legal-institutional setting in which trade policy is conducted. Under existing rules and practices in the area of administered protection, there is reason to believe that interest group preferences for an inefficient approach to pollution control will be strengthened because the adoption of such a regime is more likely to lead to a concomitant increase in trade barriers.     

Public resource allocation,strategic behavior,and status quo bias in choice experiments

Public Choice - Choice experiments, a survey methodology in which consumers face a series of choice tasks requiring them to indicate their most preferred option from a choice set containing two or...     

Auctions or grandfathering: the political economy of tradable emission permits

Despite the prevalence of grandfathered permits, we still observe that a hybrid policy, in which a fraction of initial emission permits is distributed through auctions, is adopted in some cases. We also observe that some polluting industries support auctioned permits, and that most environmental groups support grandfathered permits. This paper attempts to explain these phenomena from the perspective of political economy, and investigates the conditions under which grandfathering, auctions, or a hybrid instrument will be the equilibrium policy. By constructing a two-stage lobbying game, in which the type of policy instrument (auction, grandfathering, or a hybrid instrument) is determined in the first stage, and then the number of permits is decided in the second stage, we highlight the strategic interaction of the lobbying activities between the two stages in explaining the behavior of the lobbying groups.     

The economy,corruption, and the vote: Evidence from experiments in Sweden and Moldova

How does corruption affect voting behavior when economic conditions are poor? Using a novel experimental design and two original survey experiments, we offer four important conclusions. First, in a low corruption country (Sweden), voters react negatively to corruption regardless of the state of the economy. Second, in a high corruption country (Moldova), voters react negatively to corruption only when the state of the economy is also poor; when economic conditions are good, corruption is less important. Third, respondents in Sweden react more strongly to corruption stimuli than respondents in Moldova. Finally, in the low corruption country, sociotropic corruption voting (or voting based on corruption among political leaders) is relatively more important, whereas in our high corruption country, pocketbook corruption voting (or voting based on one's own personal experience with corruption, i.e., being asked to pay bribes) is equally prevalent. Our findings are consistent with multiple stable corruption equilibria, as well as with a world where voters are more responsive to corruption signals more common in their environment.     

Social pressure, surveillance and community size: Evidence from field experiments on voter turnout

Citizens participate in elections, at least partly, because they perceive voting as a social norm. Norms induce compliance because individuals prefer to avoid enforcement mechanisms—including social sanctions—that can be activated by uncooperative behavior. Public visibility, or surveillance, increases the likelihood of norm-compliant behavior and applies social pressure that impels individuals to act. Some scholars have linked social pressure to community size, advancing the notion that pressure to conform to social norms is heightened in smaller, less populous communities in which citizens interact frequently and where monitoring behavior is less onerous. Others argue that even highly-populated communities can exhibit “small world” properties that cause residents to be sensitive to social pressure. In this paper, I analyze data from a recent field experiment designed to test the impact of social pressure on voting taking interactions with community size into account. The findings I report suggest community size does not moderate the impact of social pressure.     

当前地方政府开展绩效评估的难点与对策分析

政府绩效评估是政府管理创新的一种重要模式,开展政府绩效评估已成为一种世界性潮流,如何促进我国地方政府绩效评估的开展越来越为大家所关注。当前各级地方政府开展绩效评估面临着许多问题和难点,如何克服这些困难将对我国推进地方政府绩效评估具有重要影响。     

Organised interests in the media and policy congruence: The contingent impact of the status quo

While a multitude of studies have investigated the link between opinion and policy, we have little knowledge of how and when organised interests affect this linkage. We argue that the alignment of organised interests affects opinion–policy congruence by influencing the weight decision-makers attach to citizen preferences. Moreover, we propose that alignment between majorities of groups and the public matters the most when status quo bias must be overcome for the public to obtain its preferred policy. We test our theoretical claims drawing on a comprehensive media content analysis of 160 policy issues in Germany and Denmark. Our results present a more sceptical picture of the ability of groups to suppress the opinion–policy linkage than the one frequently presented in the academic literature and public debate. We find that the capacity of groups to affect whether policy is congruent with the majority of the public is restricted to situations where the public supports a change in the status quo. In these cases, policy is less likely to end up reflecting public opinion if the majority of interest groups do not support the public position. In cases where the public is supportive of the policy status quo, the position of interest groups does not affect the likelihood that policy will eventually reflect the preferred position of the public. Our findings expand existing knowledge of organised interests in the study of policy representation and have important implications for understanding democratic governance.     

The contingent morality of war: establishing a diachronic model of jus ad bellum

According to most accounts of just war theory, jus ad bellum is concerned with the morality of initiating war. This gives jus ad bellum a temporal dimension, making it a set of principles that are applied to judge belligerents’ actions at the outset of a war, but that cannot be revisited after a war begins. I challenge this synchronic conception of jus ad bellum by arguing that the considerations the principles of jus ad bellum are meant to judge can, and often do, change substantially over the course of wars. It is inappropriate to determine the ad bellum justice of a war solely based on how the principles of jus ad bellum are satisfied at a war’s outset. Because of the mercurial nature of war, jus ad bellum principles should be applied diachronically, as moral norms that can be used to guide or to judge belligerents even after a war has been initiated.     

Randomized experiments by government institutions and American political development

Public Choice - Are the methods of causal inference and, in particular, randomized controlled trials, compatible with the study of political history? While many important questions regarding...     

The unstable core of global finance: Contingent valuation and governance of international accounting standards

Accounting standards are the foundations of the financial regulatory edifice, and global financial governance is no more stable than the asset valuations that feed it. Yet for two decades and up to this day, no international accounting rule for financial instruments – the bulk of banks' balance sheets – has emerged that was more than a temporary fix, to be succeeded by further reforms. We show how banking regulators have been central to this dynamic and how their support for applying fair value accounting to financial instruments, the cornerstone of regulatory debate, has oscillated throughout the whole period. The two common international political economy approaches to global financial governance, which analyze it either as interest‐based bargaining or as ideas‐driven expert governance, fail to account for this pattern. In contrast, we show how the contingency of financial valuations itself has made it impossible for regulators to embrace or reject a stable set of accounting rules.     

Testing proximity versus directional voting using experiments

A long-running debate about how voters use issues to evaluate candidates pits the proximity theory of voting against directional theory. Using surveys, both sides of the debate have found support for their preferred theory, but disagreement remains because of differing ways of analyzing the data. Lewis and King (2000) point out that these researchers make assumptions that bias results in favor of their theory. To avoid these difficulties, our approach creates fictitious candidates with controlled positions, presents these candidates to randomly-assigned subjects, and examines the relationship between subjects’ evaluations of these candidates and their ideological beliefs as a neutral test of proximity and directional theory. Our results provide reasonably strong support for proximity theory but little for directional theory.