A Model of Farsighted Voting

I present a new method of interpreting voter preferences in settings where policy remains in effect until replaced by new legislation. In such settings voters consider not only the utility they receive from a given policy today, but also the utility they will receive from policies likely to replace that policy in the future. The model can be used to characterize both long-term preferences and distributions over policy outcomes in situations where policy is ongoing and voters are farsighted.     

Policy errors in executive and legislative decision-making

Policy makers get information about the likely outcomes of policy options from experts before they make their decisions. In the executive branch, policy experts tend to reflect the views of the chief executive, whereas in the legislative branch members seek policy advisors whose views reflect their own. The result is a more diverse group of policy advisors in the legislative branch than in the executive branch, which under plausible conditions generates more accurate policy projections. Policy errors will tend to be smaller in legislative than in executive decision-making, providing an argument for making policy decisions in the legislative branch rather than the executive branch.     

Biased beliefs and retrospective voting: why democracies choose mediocre policies

There are two well-established empirical regularities about voters. First, they entertain systematically biased beliefs about how public policies affect economic outcomes. Second, voters vote retrospectively: they punish the incumbent for poor and reward him for good macroeconomic performance. Thus, political parties face a trade-off: offering popular yet economically harmful policies increases the chance of being elected today, but decreases the chance of re-election. We provide the first rigorous game-theoretical analysis of the trade-off. The model addresses two questions: How can biased beliefs and retrospective voting be explained consistently? What policy outcomes emerge in party competition? To micro-found persistently biased beliefs we introduce the psychological concept of mental models. Deviating from earlier studies, we allow parties to choose strategic mixtures of populist (i.e., bad yet popular) and good (but less popular) platforms. We show that retrospective voting provides a self-correction mechanism, so that parties offer strategic mixtures of policies in equilibrium rather than purely populist or purely good policy platforms. Thus, democracy is characterized by mediocre policy choices and half-hearted reforms. An incumbent bias or unclear responsibilities weaken the self-correction mechanism.     

PARADIGMS, POLICIES, AND PEOPLE: EXPLORING THE LINKAGES BETWEEN NORMATIVE BELIEFS, PUBLIC POLICIES AND UTILITY CONSUMER PAYMENT PROBLEMS

This article takes a step toward unifying normative and empirical policy analysis by examining the convergence of societal metatheories, public policy models, and empirical data on consumers. It begins with the premise that policies rest on a foundation of normative beliefs or metatheories that, in turn, put boundaries around the possible and give social meaning to the policies and programs that flow from them. The interaction of social metatheories about poverty and existing policies to deal with people with utility payment problems is examined. The article continues with the idea that good policy arguments are supported with empirical data and factual evidence. An empirical cluster analysis of a representative sample of consumers provides a basis for identifying the extent to which the empirical clusters conform to any or all of the metatheory‐policy linkages. The ultimate message is that theory and practice ought to demarcate where they are deductively metaphysical, based on beliefs about a subject, where they are inductively empirical, based on objective measurements relevant to the situation to which applied, and where a mixed approach is used. Linkage of the three types of information allows policy research to identify options in light of the values and metatheories on which they are based and the objective characteristics and effects on their objects of action. The implications are that when policies are based on beliefs that reflect only a part of empirical reality, implementation may fail or be inefficient and ineffective.     

Inter-disciplinary contradictions and the influence of science on policy

Policy conclusions of two or more disciplines often appear to contradict one another, and so cancel out one another's influence on policy. This article investigates the degree to which the contradiction is only apparent, in the sense that the disciplines answer different questions. In many instances the disciplines are complementary; some measure of reconciliation can be obtained by defining more sharply the assumptions and data that lie behind their questions, and hence the theoretical domains over which their answers are valid. By showing that those domains are non-overlapping, disputes can often be understood and opposing views reconciled.For some scholars empathy with the aims and methods of another discipline is possible; for others the advance of their own discipline is too important an objective to allow limiting its applicability. By uncompromising arguments, however, they may harm their own cause. For when different disciplines publicly press for opposite policies they weaken the credibility and influence of science in all fields, including their own.     

Good times,bad times: Taxation and electoral accountability

In this article we address two important and related questions. First, do economic hard times make defeat inevitable for any incumbent? And, second, do voters sanction incumbents for a poor economy whatever the economic policy pursued? To answer these questions, we propose a new theory about the ways in which taxation policies, clarity of responsibility, government ideology, and economic conditions come together to shape election outcomes. We address these questions with a new set of data collected on elections, government policies, and economic measures before and during the current economic crisis. Our findings indicate that taxation policies have effects on incumbent electoral patterns net of economic performance measures, but that these effects differ in theoretically-expected fashions depending on clarity of responsibility, government ideology, and whether or not there has been a recession in the year before an election is held.     

Contagious COVID-19 policies: Policy diffusion during times of crisis

The COVID-19 crisis demanded rapid, widespread policy action. In response, nations turned to different forms of social distancing policies to reduce the spread of the virus. These policies were implemented globally, proving as contagious as the virus they are meant to prevent. Yet, variation in their implementation invites questions as to how and why countries adopt social distancing policies, and whether the causal mechanisms driving these policy adoptions are based on internal resources and problem conditions or other external factors such as conditions in other countries. We leverage daily changes in international social distancing policies to understand the impacts of problem characteristics, institutional and economic context, and peer effects on social distancing policy adoption. Using fixed-effects models on an international panel of daily data from 2020, we find that peer effects, particularly mimicry of geographic neighbors, political peers, and language agnates drive policy diffusion and shape countries' policy choices.     

The public finance of healthy behavior

Lifestyle can often affect the likelihood an individual will have a future illness. Subsidies often mitigate the consequences of poor lifestyle choices. In this paper we explore tax-subsidy policies that lower the consequences of incurring ill health. We find that a funding mechanism consistent with current US policy lowers the investment in healthy lifestyles by both the wealthy, who pay taxes, and the poor, who receive subsidies. We also explore alternative policy interventions such as investing in research to lessen the impact or probability of the disease.     

Breaking the rules and making the rules: Evasion, avoidance, and policy reform

Rule evasion and avoidance can have a significant impact on policy outcomes, and therefore on the design, implementation, and enforcement of policies. The purposes of this paper is to assess the causes and consequences of evasion and avoidance in general settings, including their implications for policy reform. Evasion of rules often serves a socially useful role, and can promote efficient policies. Small-scale evasion typically provokes one of three responses: it is either effectively ignored, enforcement is increased, or the rule is revised. Large-scale evasion, alternatively, tends to meet with major policy shifts. Avoidance and evasion frequently temper the anticipated impacts of policy reforms, but are unlikely to render reform futile. Indeed, ongoing processes of reform might be required to maintain effective policies.     

Long-term care: common issues and unknowns

All industrialized countries are grappling with a common problem—how to provide assistance of various kinds to their rapidly aging populations. The problem for countries searching for models of efficient and high-quality long-term care (LTC) policies is that fewer than a dozen countries have government-organized, formal LTC policies. Relatively new surveys focused on the elderly populations of about 25 countries could become the basis for research on which LTC policy design choices have desired outcomes for individuals and society and might be replicable in other countries. As in earlier decades when U.S. researchers created the Current Population Survey (CPS) modules and the Survey of Income and Program Participation to answer policy questions, researchers and policy analysts are now at a point where a concerted effort is needed to generate questions that international comparative research on LTC could answer as well as the data needed to address the questions.     

Making Data Speak: Lessons for Using Numbers for Solving Public Policy Puzzles

There is a vast increase in the production of policy analysis in government, but behind the rising volume is a deep paradox: We are generating information faster than we are devising strategies for hearing what it tells us and helping policymakers act on it. There are 10 big issues in using numbers for solving policy problems, and they lead to important lessons: Analysts need to speak in a language that policymakers can understand, capture the inevitable ambiguity of analysis without muddying their message, use analysis to help policymakers discover the opportunities for collaboration across interrelated policies, and speak to the questions that policymakers most want to have answered, instead of the questions they most want to study. These are the keys to defining what an information‐age government truly means.     

The Effect of Administrative Burden on Bureaucratic Perception of Policies: Evidence from Election Administration

This article argues that administrative burden—that is, an individual's experience of policy implementation as onerous—is an important consideration for administrators and influences their views on policy and governance options. The authors test this proposition in the policy area of election administration using a mixed‐method assessment of local election officials. They find that the perceived administrative burden of policies is associated with a preference to shift responsibilities to others, perceptions of greater flaws and lesser merit in policies that have created the burden (to the point that such judgments are demonstrably wrong), and opposition to related policy innovations.     

The Limits to Evidence‐Based Policy: Evidence,Emotion and Criminal Justice1

While ‘evidence‐based’ or ‘rationalist’ approaches to criminal policy may appeal to technocrats, bureaucrats and a number of academics, they often fail to compete successfully with the affective approaches to law and order policies which resonate with the public and which appear to meet deep‐seated psychological needs. They also often fail to recognise that ‘policy’ and ‘politics’ are related concepts and that debates about criminal justice are played out in broader arenas than the academy, the bureau or the agency. To be successful, penal reform must take account of the emotions people feel in the face of wrongdoing. Further, successful reform must take into account changes in public ‘mood’ or emotions over time and be sensitive to different political and social cultures. This article argues that criminal justice policies are more likely to be adopted if, in addition to the gathering and presentation of evidence, they recognise and deal with the roles of emotions, symbols, faith, belief and religion in the criminal justice system. It also recognises that evidence alone is unlikely to be the major determinant of policy outcomes and that the creation and successful implementation of policy also requires extensive engagement and evidence‐based dialogue with interested and affected parties. This necessitates a different kind of modelling for evidence‐based policy processes.     

FEDERAL POLICY IN LOCAL CONTEXT:PUZZLING THROUGH THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PARADIGMATIC POLICY REFORM

Although comprehensive reform programs (CRPs) have been influenced by theories of government failure, they pose some puzzles for these theorists. My purpose is to address puzzles that relate to observed characteristics of the timing, radicalism, implementation, rhetoric and democratic consequences of reforms. The long period of paradigm stability which typically precede them is explained in terms of the institutional and political risks associated with radical policy reform while the reforms themselves are explained in terms of factors that generated opportunities for new sources of policy leadership. This leadership was collectively supplied by a network that sought to break the hold of a fragmented structure of policy communities over the policy process.     

Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties' Policy Shifts, 1976–1998

Do “niche” parties—such as Communist, Green, and extreme nationalist parties—adjust their policies in response to shifts in public opinion? Would such policy responsiveness enhance these parties' electoral support? We report the results of statistical analyses of the relationship between parties' policy positions, voters' policy preferences, and election outcomes in eight Western European democracies from 1976 to 1998 that suggest that the answer to both questions is no . Specifically, we find no evidence that niche parties responded to shifts in public opinion, while mainstream parties displayed consistent tendencies to respond to public opinion shifts. Furthermore, we find that in situations where niche parties moderated their policy positions they were systematically punished at the polls (a result consistent with the hypothesis that such parties represent extreme or noncentrist ideological clienteles), while mainstream parties did not pay similar electoral penalties. Our findings have important implications for political representation, for spatial models of elections, and for political parties' election strategies.     

AN ASSESSMENT OF GOVERNMENT INNOVATION POLICIES

The authors compare the innovation policies of industrialized countries along several dimensions: the policy tools (e.g., supply, demand, environment) they use or prefer, and their national philosophies, especially whether they have explicit policies toward the development of specific industries or technologies. They also identify the principal difficulties that existing innovation policies have suffered. Among them are the lack of market know-how among policymakers, bias toward research and development-oriented stimuli rather than other aspects of innovation such as demand, and vulnerability of policies to changes in political philosophy. They conclude with a list of questions that governments initiating policies of technological choice should consider to avoid some of these pitfalls.     

More, Less, or More of the Same? Trends in State Social Welfare Policy in the 1990s

Major reforms to cash assistance and other welfare programsin the 1990s raise questions about whether states gained newflexibility in setting social policies, and, if so, how theyexercised this flexibility. We extend prior research on statesocial policy by examining trends during the middle to late1990s in five areas of cash or near-cash policy affecting theeconomic security of low-income families. We find evidence ofsubstantial change in the generosity and the availability ofthese benefits between 1994 and 1999, along with evidence ofgreater divergence or cross-state variation in policy choices.By considering several forms of assistance simultaneously, wealso find evidence that states constricted traditional welfare-basedassistance while expanding some forms of non-welfare supportfor the working poor.     

INADEQUACIES IN THE PROCESSES OF POLICY DEVELOPMENT IN AUSTRALIA

Abstract: Policy and policy development have received considerable attention in Australia over the last decade or more. This attention has resulted in many recommendations on policy in the series of major public service inquiries of the 1970s, in a number of books and journal articles on varied aspects of public policy, and in the considerable strengthening of the policy development capacities of many government agencies. This attention has to date been inadequate, because it has in almost all cases concentrated on the questions of where within the bureaucratic structure policy development should occur and what procedural mechanisms are needed to allow ministers or cabinet to choose between alternative policies and to facilitate the coordination of policies. These questions are of course important, but questions of how a well-considered policy option that can be considered by a cabinet or a minister is actually developed appear to have been almost totally ignored. In the public service inquiries, in the published literature, and in public accounts of the work of policy units, there appears to be virtually no analysis of the process of policy development. There is little or no discussion of how the standard formal models of policy development match or fail to match the techniques used in Australia, and although there have been many individual case studies of policy issues, there are no comparative case studies from which general observations might be drawn. Lastly, there are very few positive suggestions as to how policy development in Australia could be improved. Overcoming these inadequacies provides a major challenge to Australian policy workers.     

Why Have Policies Often Remained Symbolic? Understanding the Reasons for Decoupling between Policy and Practice

Why have policies that are unquestioningly accepted as appropriate remained symbolic? To answer the research question, I suggest two possible reasons for decoupling between policy and practice: the characteristics of normative pressure as “the weak enforcement mechanism of law” through the implementation stage and jurisdictions’ capacity to infuse the stories of success based on others’ use to their own day‐to‐day realities. In this article, I seek to reintroduce a seminal contribution of the early institutionalists by challenging the assumption that dimensions of adoption and implementation are synonymous or positively correlated. Empirical findings contribute to provide scholars and practitioners with a larger picture of policy diffusion and support the arguments by Nicholson‐Crotty and Carley that policy learning takes place based on policymakers’ assessment of both “policy actions” and “outcomes” in previously adopting jurisdictions.