Analyzing Greens in power: Setting the agenda

Abstract.  What are the key questions that political scientists investigating Green parties in government have to address? What are the possible contributions of a variety of theories and approaches to the explanation of the Green governmental experience, in a cross-national context? The international experience with Green party governmental participation is reviewed, followed by a discussion of past work and future challenges to explain Green parties' entry into government, their performance in government, the impact of government on them, and the conditions for their survival in or exit from government.     

Parties and policy in Belgium

Abstract. An overview of the literature on the party-policy link suggests a weak, non-existent or even perverse relationship between parties in government and governmental policies in Belgium. It is argued that this weak relationship could be due to the methodology applied in this type of research, i.e. the treatment of the party variable on a much too high level of aggregation. The relative strength of the coalition parties, the parties' general ideological profile on a specific moment, the relative strength of the factions within the parliamentary party and in the Cabinet are not taken into account. On the other hand, several organisational factors with regard to the relation between parties, parliamentary groups, ministers and the administration tend to facilitate the impact of parties on policies in Belgium. Interview data with ministers suggest that the policy variable also needs further disaggregation. In particular, the qualitative aspects of policies should be more closely investigated.     

Multiple Institutional Embeddedness in Europe: The Case of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Government Officials

The questions posed in the current study are (1) whether, and (2) how, participation within Commission expert committees and Council working parties of the European Union (EU) affects the coordination behaviour of the participants. Based on organizational theory arguments, the coordination role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is arguably weakened by institutional dynamics existing within Commission expert committees. The opposite is argued to be the case within Council working parties. Empirically, this study is based on 160 questionnaires and 47 face-to-face interviews with Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish domestic government officials attending EU committees. Secondly, this study also includes answers from 49 officials at the permanent representation to the EU of these three Scandinavian countries. Being excluded from attending Council working parties, Norwegian civil servants participating within Commission expert committees are shown to coordinate considerably less with the foreign ministry than their Danish and Swedish counterparts. Notwithstanding these observations, this study also reveals how the coordination behaviour evoked by national civil servants reflects their domestic institutional affiliations. In addition to showing how EU committees affect coordination behaviour among the participants, the current analysis also shows how responses to integration requirements are filtered – and even conditioned – by a prior state of affairs at the domestic level of governance.     

Introduction to Jesse Burkhead Symposium

Government budgeting is one of the major processes by which the use of public resources is planned and controlled. To the extent that this is done well, governmental programs are brought increasingly to the service of its citizens, enhancing their material and cultural status.
The study of government budgeting is a study in applied economics—in the allocation of scarce resources. This study must look at operations and begin with organization and procedure, the routines which have been established for decision–making in government. It should extend to an examination of the influences, governmental and nongovernmental, that come to bear on the decision-making process.
Ours is both an organized society and a society of organizations. The significance of organization is nowhere more evident than in the public sector. Here organizational arrangements bring together the learning of all social scientists. The patterns for decision-making do not provide separate compartments for economic knowledge, for political knowledge, for social knowledge. These are merged in the organizational arrangements which have been established for the conduct of governmental affairs.1     

Local Government in Tasmania: Reform and Restructuring

Tasmania has a long history of failed attempts at restructuring local government boundaries yet managed a major reform process of 'modernisation' between 1990 and 1993 that incorporated major changes to council operations together with a restructuring of boundaries and a reduction from 46 to 29 councils. This process can be compared with a recent attempt to reduce further the number of local governments. In April 1997 the Liberal Premier announced reforms ('Directions for Tasmania') that led to a further reduction in the number of councils. This process collapsed following legal challenges and the proroguing of parliament prior to the 1998 state election. The defeat of the Liberal government saw the abandonment of the proposed amalgamations and establishment of 'partnerships' between the new ALP state government and councils. This paper compares the 1990–93 and 1997–98 reform processes and evaluates the outcomes of the amalgamations in 1990–93. It argues that the success of amalgamation and reform in local government has been strongly influenced by the degree of local government involvement and support in the reform process, lessons that have wider application.     

政府创新：社会资本视角

社会资本理论是研究政府与公民、民主与信任等之间关系的一种新范式。布迪厄从微观层面上将社会资本概括为一种资源集合;科尔曼从中观层面上将社会资本概括为一种社会结构;帕特南从宏观层面上将社会资本概括为一种价值规范。从本质上讲,政府创新是一个政府与社会互动的过程,与社会资本之间存在内在的结构性关联。社会资本是政府创新的基本变量,其中的信任因素是政府创新合法性的重要来源,支持信念因素是政府创新的基本条件,参与网络因素是政府创新的重要基础。在社会资本视角下进行政府创新的途径在于加强社会制度建设,实现传统社会资本的现代转型;支持公民参与网络建设,培育公共精神和发展基层民主;培育第三部门力量,以转变政府职能和增强政府能力。     

Distribution of income in advanced capitalist states: political parties, labour unions, and the international economy

Abstract. Hypotheses about determinants of income inequality in advanced capitalist societies are tested with data from the World Bank for 1975–80 across virtually the complete population. The results support most of the propositions of a model that takes into account differences in partisan control of government, the organization strength of labour, and the openness of the economy to international market forces. Hypotheses derived from global models of income distribution are not supported. The major findings are (1) that labour organization has no direct effect on income inequality; (2) that strong socialist parties have a negative effect on the size of the gap between the rich and the poor but no effect on the gap between the rich and the middle class; (3) that the governmental strength of conservative parties is unrelated to the size of the gap between the rich and the poor but has a very strong positive effect on the gap between the rich and the middle class; and (4) that, regardless of partisan control of government, relatively small trade dependent economies are more egalitarian than relatively large economies which are less dependent on international trade.     

From support to pressure: The dynamics of social and governmental influences on environmental law enforcement in Guangzhou City,China

This paper examines how changes in governmental and social influences affect environmental enforcement in Guangzhou city, China, between 2000 and 2006. The paper finds that a form of “decentered regulation” has developed. Regulatory enforcement is no longer the sole affair of the government and the regulatory bureaucracy, but has been increasingly influenced by societal forces. The transformation over time shows the promises and limits of decentered regulation in Guangzhou's dynamic authoritarian setting. Analyzing a set of longitudinal survey data and qualitative interviews, the paper finds that by 2006, the rise of civil society and its increased support for protecting the environment had a double‐edged impact on the enforcement of environmental regulations. The paper demonstrates that on the one hand, by 2006, when government support for enforcement was low, societal forces developed an ability to counterbalance such lack of governmental support and positively influence enforcement. However, it also shows that when government support was high, a concurrent rise in societal support created a negative effect on enforcement. Thus too much societal support can become an enforcement burden.     

Monitoring across Sectors: Examining the Effect of Nonprofit and For‐Profit Contractor Ownership on Performance Monitoring in State and Local Contracts

What is the effect of contractors' nonprofit and for‐profit ownership on the scope and nature of performance measurement used by government agencies? Quantitative and qualitative data were generated through semistructured interviews administered to a sample of state and local public agencies and private contractors across five jurisdictions. The findings of this study suggest that monitoring officers working with nonprofit rather than for‐profit contractors are more likely to rely on qualitative performance data and examine equitable access to services, contractors' reputation, and compliance with industry rules and regulations. Although organizational ownership may not be well understood by practitioners, performance appears to be conceptualized differently across sectors. The author calls for a better understanding of the impact of the identified differences in performance measurement on the effectiveness of contract monitoring.     

Office and Policy at the Expense of Votes: Plaid Cymru and the One Wales Government

This paper will examine Plaid Cymru's experience in government from 2007 to 2011. Drawing on literature on autonomist parties, parties in government for the first time, and Strøm and Müller's policy/office/votes framework, the paper examines where strategic 'trade-offs’ were made and what the consequences of such trade-offs were. The paper takes a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interview and documentary data. The paper finds that Plaid Cymru valued the policy-seeking potential of office at the expense of vote-seeking ones because of the importance of 'autonomist' goals, namely the 2011 referendum which saw primary law-making powers granted to the Welsh Assembly. Furthermore, the experience of governmental office exposed organizational vulnerabilities in the party's leadership structures which undermined the ability to construct an effective vote-winning strategy at the 2011 Welsh election, where the party lost four seats.     

Democracy and local political participation in Sumedang,Indonesia

Indonesia is a country that implements a democratic political system. As such, the involvement of society in the political process becomes very important. The purpose of this article is to research the democracy and local political participation in Sumedang. The study uses qualitative methods with primary data obtained from field observations and direct interviews of several informants. Additionally, the researchers use secondary data as a complement to the analysis. The results of this study indicate that the community at the local level truly understands the importance of political participation. However, due to disappointment in government performance, a part of the community has become discouraged from participating in the political process conducted by local governments. Several factors hinder efforts to encourage political participation. These include limited access to political aspirations that are still rare and the process of political education that is still low.     

Legitimating beliefs: Sources and indicators

The more a government is effective and fair, the more legitimacy that government is likely to attain, and the more it will possess the potential to elicit compliance without excessive monitoring or punitive action. We explore this proposition using contemporary survey data from sub‐Saharan Africa. In particular, we are interested in the conditions that promote popular legitimating beliefs that provide support for governments that are attempting to serve their entire populations competently and in a manner that is relatively impartial and equitable. This article provides empirical support for a long hypothesized link between the extent of government effectiveness, procedural justice, and citizens' willingness to defer to governmental tax authority. The sample, drawn from a continuum of developing societies in Africa, allows us to analyze the impact of variations in government effectiveness and citizen perceptions of fairness on the sense of obligation to comply with the tax authorities, our indicator for legitimating beliefs.     

The Lega Nord in the second Berlusconi government: In a league of its own

For regionalist populists like the Lega Nord, participation in coalition at national level requires striking a delicate balance between being a party of government and a movement of opposition. The key to this is choosing the right ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’ within government. In contrast to its previous time in power in 1994, in the second Berlusconi government (2001–05) the Lega cast itself as the Forza Italia leader's most faithful ally, while being seen to be in almost constant conflict with its fellow junior coalition partners: Alleanza Nazionale (AN) and the UDC. Indeed, as AN repositions itself within a respectable governmental ‘European’ Right, so the Lega appears ever more in a league of its own within the Italian centre-right. Based on exclusive recent interviews, this article examines the Lega's relationship to its heartland and its positions on issues such as immigration, Europe, globalisation and constitutional reform. We argue that the party has transformed itself into an ‘institutionalised’ populist movement that has successfully walked the tightrope of being seen to have ‘one foot in and one foot out’ of government.     

Why so few, and why so late? Green parties and the question of governmental participation

Abstract.  Green parties have been represented in the parliaments of European Union countries since 1981, but it was not until recently that a few have entered national governments. Using a data set comprised of 51 government formation opportunities (where the Greens were represented in parliament), the authors of this article show that the parties involved in these bargaining situations are more office-oriented than earlier studies had found. As Green parties are seen to be less office-seeking than other parties, this general tendency for office-seeking behaviour in government formation may partly account for the scarcity of Greens in government. Furthermore, a number of hypotheses derived from theories that account for the specific nature of Green parties in terms of their office-, policy- and vote-seeking orientations are tested. It is found that Greens participate in government when they have lost votes in at least one election, when the main party of the left identifies them as a clear electoral threat and when the policy distance between the Greens and either the formateur party or the main left party is small (the latter condition must be accompanied by a substantial proportion of seats for the Green party in parliament). As most of these simultaneous conditions only materialized recently, and in a few countries, it is argued that this analysis, which is the first comparative and multivariate test focused on this question, explains the scarcity and the delay of Green governmental participation.     

Cracked Ceilings, Firmer Floors, and Weakening Walls: Trends and Patterns in Gender Representation among Executives Leading American State Agencies, 1970–2000

Trends of female access to and presence in responsible governmental positions have gained substantial attention. The research reported here assesses and seeks convergence on several issues associated with gender representation. It extends the research by focusing on top executive posts in American state governments. In particular, the presence of women agency heads in all 50 states is examined from 1970 through 2000 using the lenses of passive representativeness and active representation. The authors find, first, that women face fewer blockages in securing top posts—the glass ceilings are cracking. Second, women's access to peak executive positions springs from more solid educational, career, and organizational foundations or "floors." Third, lateral career movements are penetrating the "walls" surrounding traditionally male-dominated agency types. The essay concludes with a framework for understanding relationships involving passive representativeness, active representation, and representative results. That framework assists in shifting attention toward the consequences of both passive and active representation.     

Organizational and Spatial Determinants of Fiscal Stress: An analysis of Norwegian Municipalities

Two types of factors are thought to lead to fiscal stress of municipalities in Norway: municipal organization and spatial characteristics. Organizational and political factors include the rationality of the agency of government, the ability of the resource coordinator to achieve a balance, and the coordination of governmental policies. Spatial factors include industrial presence and north-south regional differences. Only the two spatial variables are significantly correlated with the budget difficulties. Case studies, though, show organizational factors and the interplay between organizational and spatial factors can be important determinants for fiscal stress.     

Examining Relationships Between Legislative and Presidential Influences and Organizational Probity: Evidence from South Korean Central Government Agencies

In public management, few empirical studies have been conducted on the effects of the most influential political authorities—the legislature and the president—on government organizations, despite the theoretical and practical significance of these effects. This study tests the relationships between legislative and presidential influences and organizational probity in South Korean central government agencies, on the basis of political transaction-cost and principal–agent theories. We use three measures of legislative influence—inspectional influence (total annual days of legislative inspection), statutory influence (rules-to-laws ratio), and budgetary influence (ratio of reprogramming budget to total budget), and one measure of presidential influence (annual number of substantive meetings with the president). Then, these independent variables are linked to the organizational probity measure from audited archival data. The two-time-point panel data analysis reveals a positive link between legislative inspectional influence and probity but a negative relationship between the presidential influence measure and probity; the results support theoretical arguments for control over administrative agencies. Thus, the evidence suggests that governments should be cautious of implementing reforms that increase organizational or managerial autonomy.     

Veto players, electoral incentives and international commitments: The impact of domestic institutions on intergovernmental organization membership

Abstract.  The conventional literature on international cooperation in general, and intergovernmental organization membership in particular, depicts a regular, positive relationship between wealthy capitalist democracies and participation in international institutions. While empirical evidence supports this assertion, it says little about the mechanisms, and the accompanying variation among them, by which states enter into international institutions. This study distinguishes industrialized democracies along two dimensions: the nature of their constitutional structures and the organization of their electoral politics. Variations in these features produce variations in the institutional constraints and electoral incentives that matter in determining state participation in international organizations. Results of a pooled cross-sectional time series analysis of 23 democracies in 1981 and 1992 indicate that the structure of governing institutions and the nature of electoral systems account for much of the variation in intergovernmental organization membership. This study concludes that domestic institutions matter in determining international cooperation through international organizations – a novel insight overlooked by most international relations theories.     

Organized Grour>Government Relations in Norway: On the Structured Selection of Participants, Problems, Solutions, and Choice Opportunities *

This article reviews the nature of direct interest organizational participation in government in Norway. Organizational involvement, while high, varies markedly across different kinds of associations and issues. Activities are concentrated in the two organizational forms of the committee and remiss systems. The analysis of the linkage patterns with the ministries suggests that corporatism is a somewhat inadequate concept for describing the Norwegian system in general.