Yan,Xuetong. Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

The British Labour Party and leadership election mandate(s) of Jeremy Corbyn: patterns of opinion and opposition within the parliamentary Labour Party

This paper offers the first systematic evaluation of opinion within the 2015–2017 parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) towards the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. We do this by identifying whether individual parliamentarians remained supportive of Corbyn as their party leader or not, and then relating opinion on this to a series of variables that form the basis of a unique data set on the PLP. By constructing this data set we are able to test, via logistic regression analysis, a series of hypotheses based around (1) demographic variables – i.e. age, gender and trade union membership; (2) political variables – i.e. year of entry, constituency region, marginality, main competition and the endorsement of their constituency Labour Party (CLP) in the leadership election of 2016 and (3) ideological variables – i.e. views on continued European Union [EU] membership, immigration, intervention in Syria and the renewal of Trident.     

God, Mammon and the Rise of Nationalism

Books reviewed in this article:
David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800
Liah Greenfeld, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth
Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam
Tariq Ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity
Maurizio Ferrera and Martin Rhodes (eds.), Recasting European Welfare States
Evelyn Huber and John Stephens, Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets
Paul Pierson (ed.), The New Politics of the Welfare State
Duane Swank, Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States
John Ramsden (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century British Politics
Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society
Giles Radice, Friends and Rivals: Crosland, Jenkins and Healey
Michael McManus, Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire     

Valence,Policy Ideas,and the Rise of Sustainability

This article introduces to policy studies the concept of valence, which we define as the emotional quality of an idea that makes it more or less attractive. We argue that valence explains why some ideas are more successful than others, sometimes gaining paradigmatic status. A policy idea is attractive when its valence matches the mood of a target population. Skilled policy entrepreneurs use ideas with high valence to frame policy issues and generate support for their policy proposals. The usefulness of the concept of valence is illustrated with the case of sustainability, an idea that has expanded from the realm of environmental policy to dominate discussions in such diverse policy areas as pension reform, public finance, labor markets, and energy security. As the valence of sustainability has increased, policy entrepreneurs have used the idea to reframe problems in these various policy areas and promote reforms.     

Jeremy Wallace,Cities and Stability: Urbanization,Redistribution, and Regime Survival in China

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

A Response to Jeremy Waldron's Law and Disagreement

This article offers a critical response to arguments developed by Jeremy Waldron on the subject of democracy and constitutional rights. In particular it responds to three claims made by Waldron: first, he claims contemporary Western societies are characterised by deep and intractable disagreement; second, collectively binding decisions should be reached by democratic means alone; and third constitutional devices, such as bills of rights, should be rejected because they act as constraints on democracy. I argue that Waldron is unable to argue for the primacy of democracy from the baseline of intractable disagreement that he posit. He implicitly relies upon a position of moral consensus to confirm the priority of democracy over alternative decision-making procedures. Further, the moral stance that Waldron takes towards democracy is based upon a Kantian theory of justice which is shared by liberal-constitutional theorists, such as Rawls and Dworkin, who advocate bills of rights. Finally, Waldron does not provide the arguments necessary to justify the rejection of bills of rights. Good reasons exist for tempering democratic procedures with constitutional devices. However, this conclusion is qualified. It depends upon counterfactual claims that can be resolved only by taking into account the specific institutional and cultural practices of particular political systems.     

Testing the Influence of Autocratic Leadership,Democratic Leadership,and Public Service Motivation on Citizen Ratings of An Agency Head’s Performance

Abstract

Research is lacking concerning the impact of leadership styles on citizen attitudes toward the performance of government leaders. To address this gap, an online experimental survey was conducted to determine the effect of leadership styles on respondents’ perceptions regarding a fictitious superintendent’s performance in a school district. The results demonstrate that democratic leadership practices enhanced the performance reviews of the superintendent, while autocratic leadership practices decreased them. Respondents’ level of public service motivation (PSM) was also found to have a positive effect on the superintendent’s performance ratings. Furthermore, democratic leadership style moderated the relationship between PSM and the performance ratings assigned by respondents. In particular, individuals with high PSM rated the performance of democratic leaders higher as compared to individuals with low PSM. However, autocratic leadership was not found to moderate the relationship between PSM and the superintendent’s performance. These results are thoroughly discussed in the paper.     

Loyalty and competence in public agencies

Competent public agencies are associated with better economic outcomes. Beyond competence, political leaders need to secure the loyalty of their agencies. Unfortunately, several theories predict a tradeoff between these two valued features. This paper finds that recruitment into agencies is meritocratic where (1) agency officials have poor outside options, (2) careers in agencies are long-lasting, and (3) agency loyalty is important. Moreover, agency competence is lower when (4) loyalty is important but the time horizon is short, and (5) outside opportunities improve but the time horizon is long. This evidence fits best with a theory of loyalty as non-contractible behavior.     

Terrorist Threat,Leadership, and the Vote: Evidence from Three Experiments

From 9/11 in the U.S. to train, subway, and airport bombings elsewhere, individuals frequently must make political decisions in the shadow of terrorist attacks. To date, few studies have examined how times of terror threat influence voters’ decision-making processes. Using data generated from three experiments we show that, in times of terrorist threat (compared to good times), individuals weight leadership more heavily in the voting booth. Our results also shed light on how much weight is given to other determinants of the vote (issues and partisanship) across these two conditions.