Budgetary Consequences of Selling Federal Power Assets

This article reports on an analysis of the long-term budgetary effects of selling federal power programs at market value. The analysis looks at changes in future budgetary receipts and costs for power operations and at changes in future federal taxes as a result of new ownership. Under current rate-setting policy, federal agencies must generate a future operating surplus (and hence, budgetary income) worth about $46 billion in today's dollars to repay past capital investments. With optimistic assumptions about rising power rates, market values for all federal power assets (including the power-generation assets of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers) could be as high as $62 billion. In that case, their sale would produce long-term budgetary savings of about $16 billion, in today's dollars. The analysis also notes that budgetary savings are not a measure of the gains in economic efficiency from privatization. Such considerations as efficiency or fairness to particular groups will be important in any debate about the future of federal power programs.     

Budgetary Policy With Unified and Decentralized Appropriations Authority

The divestiture of the House Appropriations Committee in the1880's has received considerable attention of an empiricalnature. This paper presents a formal model of legislativedecisionmaking, using a common agency formulation to representinterest group lobbying of legislators. This framework is usedto analyze the effects of decentralizing appropriationsauthority. The conditions under which decentralization leadsto higher spending are characterized. It is argued that theconventional view that divestiture caused higher levels ofspending only holds if decentralization created barriers tolobbying and political bargaining across different committees.In addition, the role of specialized committee knowledge isexamined.     

Testing the Policy Capacities of Budgetary Agencies: Lessons from Finance

The Commonwealth Department of Finance, together with the Treasury from which it was hived off in 1976, constitutes the central budgetary agency at the Australian federal level. For the purposes of this article, I identify Finance as a convenient working model of central budgetary agencies, at least in their traditional Australian incarnation. I accept that Finance is unlikely to be fully representative of all such Australian agencies, and I acknowledge that the federal government's annual budget is officially introduced into parliament by the Treasurer, and that the Treasury is deservedly regarded as the core budgetary agency. But my focus here is on Finance's special responsibility for the public management framework, and Finance's role in providing policy advice to government organisations on how to make the best use of budget funding. This article then presents the findings of a recent evaluation of selected policy-advising activities with the department.     

Coming Apart: Fiscal and Budgetary Policy Processes in the Johnson Administration

Budgeting in the 1980s seems very different from budgeting in the 1960s. The differences have more to do with economic conditions than with the techniques of budgeting. In the article published below, David C. Mowery and Mark S. Kamlet present their interpretation of how budgeting was transformed during the Johnson administration. The editors of this journal, both of whom have conducted research on the Johnson administration, do not share the point of view expressed in this article, but believe that the readers of Public Budgeting and Finance should be provided a diverse range of viewpoints. The editors invite comment on this article and expect to publish articles presenting different interpretations in subsequent issues of the journal.     

Comments on John Uhr, 'Testing the Policy Capacities of Budgetary Agencies: Lessons from Finance'

These comments derive from a seminar specifically on evaluation policy review organised by the Public Policy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, in May 1996. Both John Uhr and Hal Colebatch presented their views on the evaluation process and it was felt appropriate to include Hal Colebatch's comments here. John Uhr declined the offer to reply, indicating he would allow the original article to stand on its merits.     

Post-Industrial Changes in Policy Style

The article discusses central characteristics of the way in which western democracies formulate their public policy. This is done by presenting a preliminary typology of policy styles. An attempt is made to classify some European countries according to their dominant policy style as well as according to changes in this respect during the post-industrial period. Overcrowding and unconventional participation are identified as two important factors behind this development. The essay, which is mainly based on British and Swedish data, concludes with a discussion of the question of whether societies are able to exercise any choice in determining their policy style.     

Budgetary Practices in Smaller Units of Government

Budgetary practice in smaller units of local government has not been the subject of systematic examination. A survey of 122 towns, villages, and cities less than 25,000 population in upstate New York was conducted in spring 1987. This survey indicates that most key policymakers are satisfied with current practices and have been involved with budgeting for more than three years. Budgetary innovation has affected smaller governmental units, and the actual application is related to the educational levels of the official charged with budget preparation.     

城市电竞产业发展的空间布局与政策联动

电子竞技产业能够引领城市经济的整体发展、带动其他产业发展并对当地的社会凝聚力等具有正向作用,近年来部分城市将其作为本地经济发展的重点乃至关键环节进行了多层次的空间布局:宏观维度下的电竞小镇,应当覆盖电竞产业链各个环节并促进其整体发展、实现关联产业的融合发展等;中观维度下的电竞场馆,应当开拓复合式的投资方式、探索复合式的运营理念等;微观维度下的电竞酒店,则应以电竞用户为基准制定差异化的价格策略、以顾客需求为基准实现差异化的功能设定等。通过梳理各地方政府颁布的18部电竞专项文件可知,细化各个维度的政策和资金支持、明确相应领域的审批和规范方案,并形成三重维度间的联动措施,是推动电竞及关联产业蓬勃发展的重要途径。     

Revenue Cyclicality and Changes in Income and Policy

The past two recessions have proved alarming to state government finances. In 2001, a relatively shallow national recession led to a severe downturn in state revenues that took three years to unwind. In the wake of the recent economic downturn, signs of fiscal stress are readily apparent. In this paper, we investigate whether the revenue patterns surrounding these two recessions are the result of state government revenues having grown more sensitive to economic conditions. We find that the responsiveness of revenues to measures of business cycle conditions has grown since the 1990s. We use data on state government revenues, state‐specific information on economic conditions, and measures of state policy to examine fiscal performance and budgeting practice over the economic cycle. Our findings suggest that increasing income cyclicality, in particular of investment income, has made state revenues more responsive to the business cycle since the mid‐1990s. We also find that changes in policy making have served to increase revenue cyclicality.     

The Strange Budgetary Politics of Agricultural Research Earmarks

This article explores how members of the House and Senate Subcommittees on Agricultural Appropriations use the appropriations process to earmark special grants for agricultural research projects without forming a majority logroll. It also shows how subcommittee members coerce the USDA into administering individual earmarked research grants even though the precise allocation of these grants does not have the force of law. This article makes an important contribution because it analyzes an institutional development within the appropriations process that has not been explored in the existing literature, and it examines the consequences that this development has had on the quality of USDA‐funded agricultural research.     

Budgetary politics in the federal republic of Germany

The purpose of this article is to advocate a more careful approach towards the analysis of the factors that are decisive for the comparative evaluation of system performance and the reasons given for output variations. Using budgetary politics in the Federal Republic of Germany as an example, it is argued that the majority of the ‘Does politics matter?’ literature is oversimplifying reality by overlooking the institutional variable.     

Policy Alternatives in Adaptive Communities: Simulating the Environmental Justice Consequences of Hazardous Site Remediation Strategies

Many governments have implemented environmental justice mandates requiring agencies to consider the implications of cleanup decisions for poor and/or minority populations. To the extent that this mandate alters decisions, it usually does so by considering the composition of a community in the present without adjusting for potential demographic changes that may occur over time. However, communities change and these changes are likely to affect how well an agency meets its environmental justice mandate over the long term. In this research, an agent‐based model is introduced to simulate how alternative environmental remediation scenarios may affect environmental justice outcomes in a dynamic residential environment with two demographic classes with preferences for living in proximity to neighbors similar to themselves. Under these circumstances, there is unlikely to be one best strategy to achieve both environmental improvement and environmental equity, and a focus on valuable land is the least effective over the long run.     

The Quality of Representation and Satisfaction with Democracy: The Consequences of Citizen-Elite Policy and Process Congruence

Citizen-elite congruence has long been considered an important yardstick for the quality of democracy. The literature on citizen satisfaction with democracy, however, has reduced congruence almost exclusively to one of its components, policy congruence. Just as citizens are considered to have positions on policy issues, there is growing scholarly interest in the preferences they have about the process of representation. Yet studies inquiring into the impact of the divergent preferences that citizens and elites have regarding the representational process thus far have been few and their results inconclusive. Combining new, unique data from the 2014 Belgian Election and Candidate Studies, we seek to address this lacuna. Our findings indicate that we cannot understand citizen satisfaction without also taking process into account—even as the policy gap has the greater effect. They should be of interest to scholars of democracy, those concerned about citizen disengagement from politics, and political practitioners.     

The Cartography of Opportunity: Spatial Data Science for Equitable Urban Policy

As evidence of the contextual effects of place upon individual outcomes has become increasingly solid over time, so too have urban policies and programs designed to connect underserved people with access to spatial opportunity. To this end, many attempts have been made to quantify the geography of opportunity and quite literally plot it on a map by combining evidence from studies on neighborhood effects with spatial data resources and geographic information systems (GIS) technology. Recently, these opportunity maps have not only become increasingly common but their preparation has been encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. A closer look at the foundations and methods that underlie these exercises offers important lessons I examine the practice of opportunity mapping from both theoretical and methodological perspectives, highlighting several weaknesses of the common methods. Following this, I outline a theoretical framework based on Galster’s categorization of the mechanisms of neighborhood effects. Using data from the Baltimore metropolitan region, I use confirmatory factor analysis to specify a measurement model that verifies the validity of the proposed theoretical framework. The model provides estimates of four latent variables conceived as the essential dimensions of spatial opportunity: social-interactive, environmental, geographic, and institutional. Finally, I develop a neighborhood typology using unsupervised machine learning applied to the four dimensions of opportunity. Results suggest that opportunity mapping can be improved substantially through a better connection to the empirical literature on neighborhood effects, a multivariate statistical framework, and more direct relevance to public policy interventions.     

A Semantic Network Analysis of Changes in North Korea's Economic Policy

To shed light on the inner workings of policymaking in North Korea, this study examined the process behind economic policy change through an analysis of the official state economics journal. Semantic networks are used to trace the introduction and evolution of policies during four distinct economic periods in North Korean history between 1986 and 2009. Although reform is catalyzed by political and economic crises, the emergence of new policy topics occurs incrementally prior to change. Specifically, new policy discourse tends to emerge in gradual and cautious ways but policy change occurs swiftly in periods of crisis. During periods of stability, the state retreats to the centralized socialist economic system, often through coercion and force. This view of the policy process suggests that foundations of economic reforms in North Korea are yet weak and instable, and policy reform will continue to be vulnerable to the political influence of conservatives.     

深圳两次政府审批制度改革的作法与成效

1997年,深圳开始进行政府审批制度改革,拉开了全国审批制度改革的序幕。时至今日改革已进行了两次。1997年和1998年进行第一次改革,2001年进行第二次改革。深圳通过前后两次改革,审批核准事项大大减少,两次改革共减少审批核准事项696项,减少幅度已达63．8%。     

Structural Changes to the Public Sector and Cultural Incompatibility: The Consequences of Inadequate Cultural Integration

Structural changes are commonly undertaken to achieve gains, such as enhanced efficiency and performance. In this paper, we explore the cultural issues associated with a structural change in the Australian Public Service. We argue that cultural differences across merged functions were disruptive and challenging to overcome. We posit, however, that these challenges were exacerbated by the lack of systemic effort to integrate cultures, thus impeding synergy realization. Our findings are consistent with the private sector literature that warns mergers and acquisitions undertaken with too much haste and without adequate planning can lead to cultural issues when not managed appropriately.     

Policy Changes on Canada's Rivers: Different but not Isolated

I address two questions in this article. First, how do policy changes in Canada differ from those in the United States? Second, are such changes isolated from American influence? I argue that Canadian policy changes will be more driven by subnational bureaucrats, more dependent upon fortuitous alignments of interests and institutions, and less quickly emulated by other jurisdictions than policy changes in the United States. I will also argue that policy changes in Canada are not completely isolated from those in the United States, not given the ability of ideas to cross international borders to change the framing of issues. I examine these arguments in the context of changing river management policies in British Columbia and Ontario.