On distinguishing between Leviathan and Public Interest governments in a federal state

The purpose of this paper is to derive testable implications for the proposition that provincial governments in a specific federal system are Leviathans, that is, revenue maximizers. The Leviathan model, associated with Brennan and Buchanan (1980) hypothesizes that governments behave like monopolies who seek to maximize their revenue. This model is contrasted with an alternative hypothesis, the Public Interest Theory. A theoretical model of a federal state, based on the Canadian system, is constructed and testable implications are derived. The principal feature of the model is that it is set in the context of a particular game involving the federal government, provincial governments and a consumer. In attempting to model this situation, care has been taken to try to incorporate as many institutional features of the Canadian federal system as possible, while still allowing the model to be somewhat parsimonious. With some modification, the model may be applicable to other countries with similar federal systems.     

Some political aspects of taxation and distribution in federal governments: An application of the theory of the core

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to study questions about taxation and revenue sharing n federal systems. It is particularly concerned with the effect of the heterogeneity of regions on the pattern of taxation and distribution and on the capacity of the central government to retain revenue for its own purposes. It is argued that one useful way to study such questions is to treat federations as coalitions that try to maximise their returns from taxations schemes. This approach is developed using the theory of the core from cooperative game theory. Emphasis is placed on the political constraints on the capacity of the central government.     

Camels and gnats: The malthusian fundamentalism insurgency

His research has included the use of census microdata to profile important but relatively unstudied sectors of the older population. He has served as a reviewer of research proposals funded by the National Institute on Aging; and he is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Gerontology, Research on Aging, Comprehensive Gerontology,and the Journal of Applied Gerontology.     

Tax exporting,federal deductibility,and state tax structure

This paper studies the interaction between the federal and state tax systems during the 1980s and, in particular, considers how the Tax Reform Act of 1986 affected state tax structure. Using a panel data set on state governments over a nine-year period, I estimate tax share equations for six categories of taxes. I find that the state personal income tax is sensitive to changes in its tax price, but find a much smaller sensitivity to changes in tax prices for the general sales tax. I then consider various reasons why the sales tax does not exhibit a sensitivity to changes in tax price and consider the implications of these results for policymakers. The regression results suggest that different income groups are concerned with different tax instruments. Moreover, the results motivate a possible benefit approach to taxation at the state level. Linking taxes, about which a particular income group is most concerned, to services received by that group might generate additional political support for state tax systems during a time when many states are facing fiscal crisis.     

Interaction between federal taxation and horizontal tax competition: theory and evidence from Canada

The aim of this paper is to determine to what extent and how federal taxes affect local tax decisions. Testing the impact of an increase in the federal tax on horizontal tax competition with Canada-US data for 1984–1994, it finds evidence that an increase in federal tax makes horizontal tax reactions weaker. This is because an increase in federal tax raises the cost, in terms of utility of income, of a unit increase in the province’s tax rate. On the methodological side, it is possible to estimate the impact of the federal tax on the fiscal policy of the province without neglecting control for year effects, which cannot be used in the empirical literature because they are perfectly collinear with the federal tax.     

The theory of the state and politics: a central paradox of Marxism

It is commonplace to observe that while Marx saw the withering away of the state as necessary for communism, the state in ‘Communist’ societies has done anything but wither away. This seems to indicate a paradox in the Marxian theory, whose resolution would probably tend to undermine the theory itself. It is, however, argued that the expansion of the state in ‘Communist’ societies is only apparently contradictory to the Marxian theory, and that the theory in fact provides the basis for a most adequate account of this phenomenon. But the theory does have a genuinely paradoxical quality which lies in the tension between the political and its social basis, in the socialist movement. The fundamental component of the Marxian theory is its demonstration of the dependence of the state and politics on society; the problem then is the very status of ‘the political’ as a category, and especially the meaning of a ‘marxist politics’. Marxism itself demonstrates that the very existence of ‘politics in the direct and narrow sense of the word’ is the product of an alienated society, and yet it posits a politics which necessarily exists partly in this very sense. This paper considers the Marxian theory and the problems it tries to deal with, and attempts to show that the solution to its paradox lies in resolving the real tension between the social movement and its political expression. It will be argued that terms of the dilemma are being modified by changes in the relations between the state and society. These changes make a political solution of social contradictions more possible, precisely because they reduce the abstraction of politics from society.     

The economic theory of regulation and trucking deregulation: Shifting to the state level

Federal deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980 created a general gain in economic welfare at the expense of the monopoly rents of powerful interests, leading some scholars to ponder the limitations of the economic theory of regulation. However, analyzing only the federal changes excludes evidence from the significant intrastate sector of the trucking industry, regulation of which remains largely unchanged from that prior to 1980. This paper argues that after a decade of clear federal policy success, truckers continue to capture most state regulators, sustaining monopoly rents in what would otherwise be an inherently competitive industry. Using data from the fifty states, we demonstrate the extent to which the economic theory is in fact consistent with trucking industry evidence.     

Correlated payoffs in the inspection game: some theory and an application to corruption

The inspection game as formulated by Tsebelis (Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 83:77–91, 1989) has the counterintuitive implication that crime is unaffected by the magnitude of the penalty. This paper demonstrates that to attain this outcome, it is necessary to assume independence of enforcer and offender payoffs. Given correlated payoffs, the comparative statics of the equilibrium yield an inverse relationship between crime and the severity of the sanction. In an application, we enrich the framework of Tsebelis by adding corruption stages and show that this can imply such a correlation of payoffs. Another interesting finding is that harsher anticorruption measures can increase crime incentives.     

Public choice in a federal system

Except for the mobility constraints imposed on political decisions of lower-level governments, public choice analysts assume that the working of the political process under federalism remains the same at all levels of governments as under unitary state. This paper argues that one dimension of the political process in a federalist framework lends itself to specific economic analysis, namely the fact that, once constitutional limits break down and functions overlap, two or more levels of government compete for the same voters in the supply of services in a given territory. Viewing votes as inputs in the production of political outputs, the conventional analysis of allocation under common-property rule should shed light on the outcome of this process. The analysis shows that it is in the interest of both suppliers to seek to gain the votes in being first to implement programs. There are thus two forces operating in a typical federalist system, an expansionist one rooted in the political dynamics analysed here, and a restrictionist one based on the mobility of resources among decentralized entities. This may explain why the empirical record is rather mixed on the contribution of federalism to containing government growth. The consequences of this process are derived and possible avenues for improvement are explored.     

Critical theory and the capitalist state

This article is an overview of Michel Callon's contribution to the reformulation of economic sociology and anthropology. It contextualizes Callon's concepts within science and technology studies, and indicates the main lines of influence on his thinking about economic processes. Callon's work also opens up a number of debates and challenges to current perspectives within economic sociology. Finally, the article considers the way in which Callon's perspective reconfigures both the relation of politics and economics, and the nature of politics itself.     

Constitutional order in a federal republic

A review article on Vincent Ostrom, The political theory of a compound republic: Designing the American experiment (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987). xxx + 240 pages. 22.50 cloth;22.50 cloth; 8.95 paper.     

An application of the multicandidate calculus of voting to the 1972 and 1976 German federal elections

Two important assumptions underlying the Riker-McKelvey-Ordeshook, expected-utility-based, multicandidate calculus of voting are that citizens decide whether or not and for whom to vote in a single-member district (SMD), plurality-winner electoral system and that they ignore aggregate outcomes, that is, how citizens in other districts may vote. Aranson modifies this calculus by investigating citizens' decisions in proportional-representation (PR) systems and/or situations in which aggregate outcomes require parties to form parliamentary coalitions to govern. This study operationalizes and applies the probability and utility components of this modified calculus to data on the 1972 and 1976 West German federal elections, which combine features of SMD and PR systems and of which coalition politics is an integral part. Expected-utility calculations used to predict reported voting decisions achieve reasonably good levels of aggregate accuracy. Further analysis reveals that gradations in respondents' expected utilities, as well as in their utilities and surrogate measures of the subjective probabilities of electoral outcomes, relate significantly to reported voting decisions. Also, variables that model coalition considerations are commonly the most significant.     

Election outcomes under different ways to announce preferences: an analysis of the 2015 parliament election in the Austrian federal state of Styria

We use preference data from the 2015 parliament election in the Austrian federal state of Styria to analyze different voting rules. An exit poll right after the election collected data on ordinal and cardinal preferences from approximately 1000 actual voters. Our analysis is threefold. First, we determine the hypothetical social outcomes under different voting rules; second, we investigate the stability of the outcomes under those rules. Finally, we provide a categorization of different types of parties and analyze the impact of certain voting rules (Plurality Rule, Plurality Run Off, Hare System, Condorcet Method, Approval Voting, Borda Rule, Evaluative Voting, and Majority Judgment) on the performances of parties in those scenarios.     

Regulating public procurement in Brazil,India, and China: Toward the regulatory-developmental state

Since the 1990s, emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and China have adopted transparency-enhancing public procurement regulations in line with international norms. Yet they have hesitated to join the World Trade Organization's legally binding Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). Based on the Special Issue framework, this article scrutinizes the underlying domestic and international determinants, and how they influence emerging countries’ positions in two overlapping international procurement regimes. In particular, reform-oriented state actors, societal pressure, and lesson-drawing from international templates have induced a strengthening of domestic procurement institutions and turned emerging countries into “promoters” of the international transparency regime. Conversely, the rising powers have remained, to varying degrees, reluctant “spoilers” of the GPA-based market access regime in order to keep policy space and use procurement for domestic development objectives. The article suggests that this regulatory-developmental layering of rule-based governance and interventionist ambitions characterizes the variegated regulatory state in emerging countries.     

Towards a critique of the theory of state monopoly capitalism

Marx and Engels's writings on Ireland are usually associated with their positive support for Irish nationalism. This article seeks to examine the extent and depth of their knowledge of Ireland, politically and economically, by focusing attention on Marx's analysis of post-famine agricultural readjustment. Comparing the latter's comments in Capitaland elsewhere with actual developments, it is suggested that Marx and Engels's understanding was less than accurate. The source of their misinterpretation lies principally with their inadequate analysis of tenants, agrarian capitalism, and land fever.     

The changing role of the federal and state courts in safeguarding the rights of the mentally disabled

From the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, federal courts havegreatly expanded the rights of persons who have been institutionalizedfor treatment of mental illness. The rights have included dueprocess in commitment proceedings, provision of services, andtreatment in the least restrictive environment. Federal courtshave based their decisions on federal statutes and constitutionalprinciples of due process, equal protection, and protectionfrom harm. More recently, however, the U.S. Supreme Court haseffectively closed the federal courts as a forum for advancingthe rights of the mentally disabled. Federal courts must, inessence, defer to the states for decisions about treatment ofthe mentally disabled. State courts may decide what servicesare required under state law, while state mental health officialsmay decide specific treatment questions for individual patients.Consequently, advocates for the mentally disabled are turningto state courts to advance client rights. In 1984 two significantcases decided by the New York State Court of Appeals have thepotential for significantly expanding the rights of the mentallydisabled.     

Parties,candidates and issues in the German federal election of 1980: An application of normal vote analysis

An application of the concept of a normal vote to the West German political system is attempted. Normal vote parameters for West Germany are calculated and the 1980 Federal election is analysed by means of this newly established baseline. Furthermore, a modified version of the well-known Boyd formula for the computation of short-term effects will be proposed since under some circumstances Boyd's S may be seriously inflated. Finally, the formula will be extended to multivariate relationships. Applying the resulting partial short-term coefficient shows quite clearly that the outcome of the 1980 German Federal election was more strongly influenced by candidate evaluations than by issue orientations.