Competition and switching in public service markets: Can they reduce inequalities?

Regulatory reforms to public infrastructure services across European Union (EU) countries were aimed at increasing consumer welfare by introducing competition and choice into service markets. However, empirical evaluations have questioned whether these reforms have benefitted all consumers, suggesting that vulnerable groups of service users (especially those with lower levels of formal education), might be locked into poorly performing services. We assess the relationship between the level of competition in electricity and fixed telephony markets in EU countries and evaluate the affordability of these services for different socio‐educational layers. Our findings show that – although in countries where there is a relatively high frequency of switching, inequalities between socio‐educational groups are smaller and eventually disappear – competition as such does not play a part. These results suggest that demand‐side regulation that successfully enables consumer switching has the potential to equalize social welfare, thereby reflecting a possible convergence of regulatory instruments and the central aims of the welfare state in this context.     

Do text messages increase voter registration? Evidence from RCTs with a local authority and an advocacy organisation in the UK

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, text messages have become an increasingly attractive tool of voter registration. At the same time, in countries without automated registration, advocacy organisations play a more prominent role in supplementing the efforts of official bodies in registering voters. However, most available, robust evidence on whether voter registration campaigns work is based on campaigns conducted by official bodies charged with electoral registration. We present the results of two RCTs that aimed to increase voter registration in the UK using SMS-text messages, relying mainly on behavioural messaging. One was conducted by a local authority, while the other was implemented by an issue advocacy organisation that had no prior involvement in voter registration. In line with previous findings, the local authority’s text messages resulted in an increased registration rate of eight percentage-points, which translates into a three percentage-point increase in voter turnout. However, the advocacy organisation’s text messages neither increased voter registration, nor turnout, no matter whether the text message offered a personal follow-up conversation, or not. Given that many voter registration campaigns are run by advocacy organisations and text messages are an increasingly important mobilisation tool, this raises questions about the scope conditions of existing findings.     

Simple politics for the people? Complexity in campaign messages and political knowledge

Which parties use simple language in their campaign messages, and do simple campaign messages resonate with voters’ information about parties? This study introduces a novel link between the language applied during election campaigns and citizens’ ability to position parties in the ideological space. To this end, how complexity of campaign messages varies across parties as well as how it affects voters’ knowledge about party positions is investigated. Theoretically, it is suggested that populist parties are more likely to simplify their campaign messages to demarcate themselves from mainstream competitors. In turn, voters should perceive and process simpler campaign messages better and, therefore, have more knowledge about the position of parties that communicate simpler campaign messages. The article presents and validates a measure of complexity and uses it to assess the language of manifestos in Austria and Germany in the period 1945–2013. It shows that political parties, in general, use barely comprehensible language to communicate their policy positions. However, differences between parties exist and support is found for the conjecture about populist parties as they employ significantly less complex language in their manifestos. Second, evidence is found that individuals are better able to place parties in the ideological space if parties use less complex campaign messages. The findings lead to greater understanding of mass‐elite linkages during election campaigns and have important consequences for the future analysis of manifesto data.     

The prison in economics: private and public incarceration in Ancient Greece

Recent histories of Ancient Greece describe a transition from customary law to public criminal justice between 800 and 400 B.C. This narrative contains three pieces of evidence against the presumption that prisons are a public good and government must provide incarcerations. First, before the rise of a formal government, Ancient Greece had a functioning system of criminal law enforcement. Second, the timeline surrounding the rise of government institutions in Ancient Greece originated with Solon’s penal reforms. Lastly, the rise of a government system was more the result of private rather than public interest.     

England's green and pleasant land? examining racist prejudice in a rural context

Popular constructions of rural England have perpetuated images of idyllic, problem-free environments that have largely masked the process of ‘othering’ that works to marginalize particular groups within rural society. Drawing on the findings of studies conducted in two rural English counties, Chakraborti and Garland assert that racist prejudice is very much part of the reality of rural living for minority ethnic groups whose presence in the countryside tends to be overlooked. They discuss the perceptions of established white rural communities and those of the victims of racial harassment to illustrate the disturbing nature, extent and impact of racism in rural areas, and suggest that the enduring ‘invisibility’ of the problem is compounded both by the under-reporting of such racist incidents and the reluctance of agencies to acknowledge the needs of minority ethnic groups in the countryside. Consequently, racist prejudice in the rural context will only be recognized as a significant issue through a greater appreciation of the diverse complexity of rural space, and the abandonment of singular, outdated notions of rurality.     

Can Agencies Work Together? Collaboration in Public and Nonprofit Organizations

Books reviewed:
Jane Arsenault, Forging Nonprofit Alliances .
Eugene Bardach, Getting Agencies to Work Together: The Practice and Theory of Managerial Craftsmanship .
Seymour B. Sarason and Elizabeth M. Lorentz, Crossing Boundaries: Collaboration, Coordination, and the Redefinition of Resources .     

Exclusion or interests? Why females in elected office reduce petty and grand corruption

Disappointed by the numerous failures of anticorruption reforms, international organisations, scholars and policy makers increasingly place their hopes on measures aimed at enhancing gender equality and in particular increasing the inclusion of female representatives in elected assemblies. Yet most studies to date focus on aggregate measures of corruption and fail to explain why the correlation between women's representation and levels of corruption occurs. Using newly collected regional-level, non-perception-based measures of corruption, this study distinguishes between different forms of corruption and shows that the inclusion of women in local councils is strongly negatively associated with the prevalence of both petty and grand forms of corruption. However, the reduction in corruption is primarily experienced among women. This suggests that female representatives seek to further two separate political agendas once they attain public office: the improvement of public service delivery in sectors that tend to primarily benefit women; and the breakup of male-dominated collusive networks.     

Can Amnesties and International Justice be Reconciled?

When states are attempting to recover from periods of serioushuman rights abuse, they often must try to reconcile the competingdemands of different stakeholders. These demands may range fromclaims that complete impunity is a necessary sacrifice to achievepeace, to the belief that without justice no meaningful peacecan be reached. This paper will attempt to highlight the waysin which international courts and quasi-judicial bodies addressthe dilemma of peace versus justice, in relation to amnestylaws. The discussion will consider the main international standardson impunity, the international jurisprudence relating to amnestiesand whether international courts should recognize amnestiesthat are accompanied by alternative forms of justice. This paperwill argue that international courts should recognize amnestiesthat are introduced with democratic approval to promote peaceand reconciliation, provided that they are accompanied by mechanismsto fulfil the victims' rights.     

Can George dance? Biosemiotics and human exceptionalism with a lyrebird in the viewfinder

Are the movements of the Australian Albert’s lyrebird “George” best identified as dance, “dance,” proto-dance, or functional gestures? I draw on the tools of biosemiotics to shed light on human signifying practice vis-à-vis dance – specifically, how humans make sense of avian dance, how they compare and contrast it with human dance, and what a definition tells us about its makers. In both the natural sciences and humanities, competing discourses abound to the contention that animal movements could fruitfully be considered as dance. A trend emerges in some definitions of dance (which may also invoke human exceptionalism) of characterizations that ignore extant reports of animal abilities – of a classificatory rather than an evaluative posture. I argue that in overcoming the limitations of human exceptionalism in analytic frameworks by explicitly incorporating animal efforts into theory development, validation, and revision (theories often dominated by human and elite Western concerns), we will arrive at a less-distorted version of the multimodal behavior we call dancing.     

Can citizens care too much? Investment in election outcomes and perceptions of electoral legitimacy

Might there be a downside to citizen engagement with elections? The tendency for citizens who supported a winning candidate or party to be more supportive of the democratic system and more trusting of government than supporters of the losers has been well documented. I test the extent to which individual-level investment in a presidential election campaign amplifies effects of winning or losing using the online component of the 2008 NAES to track the same individuals' from pre-election to post-election. The analysis provides strong evidence of amplifying effects of investment on the relationship between winning or losing and perceptions of electoral legitimacy. Certain types of investment—policy agreement and participation—appear to hold significant implications only for losers and not winners.     

Can Rights-Based Approaches Enhance Levels of Legitimacy and Cooperation in Conservation? A Relational Account

Rights-based approaches (RBAs) are increasingly gaining favour among practitioners in the field of natural resource conservation and management. RBAs are a non-binding operational framework through which conservation actors can integrate human rights standards and principles into the design, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of projects and programmes. In addition to promoting the human rights of local populations, it is also argued that RBAs may hold benefits for conservation initiatives. This article draws on existing research on the social psychology of procedural fairness to develop a relational account of how and whether RBAs may enhance levels of legitimacy and cooperation in conservation. This relational account stresses the importance of fair experiences for generating positive feelings of legitimacy and associated cooperative behaviour among individuals interacting with organisations or authorities. On the whole, this article suggests that if RBAs can ensure respect for the human rights of local populations, they have the potential to engender fair experiences and related positive institutional effects, thereby significantly strengthening the overall effectiveness of conservation initiatives.     

Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?

Voluntary policy compliance is an important yet rarely studied topic in public administration. To address the paucity of research, this article proposes and empirically tests a conceptual framework that ties policy transparency and policy understanding to voluntary policy compliance intentions. The reasoning is that the extent to which citizens understand a policy contributes to their intentions to comply with that policy. Further, the authors argue that policy transparency indirectly influences voluntary policy compliance intentions through a positive effect on citizens’ levels of policy understanding. To enhance the validity of the findings, the authors assess these relationships across two policy domains. The findings reflect an indirect positive effect of transparency on voluntary compliance occurring through policy understanding. However, this emerged only for one policy domain. These results suggest that the effects of policy transparency on policy understanding and voluntary policy compliance intentions may depend on the policy domain.     

Can New York and Los Angeles learn from Kumasi and Bangalore? Costs and benefits of rent controls in developing countries

Abstract

This article presents comparative static estimates of the costs and benefits of rent controls for four developing‐country cities: Cairo, Egypt; Kumasi, Ghana; Bangalore, India; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The results are compared with those from four U.S. cities: New York; Los Angeles; Santa Monica; and Washington, DC.

Rent control regimes and their effects vary widely across cities and countries. Whatever the “average” cost or benefit of controls, all markets have large variances about the average, and the variation is rarely strongly related to income or other household characteristics in a way most people would find desirable. In the countries for which there was direct evidence, landlords were richer than tenants on average, but not remarkably so, and there was considerable overlap in the two income distributions. In Cairo, where there was direct evidence, key money made up much of the difference between controlled rents and market rents. In very strict regimes, substantial reductions in rents were sometimes largely or completely offset by losses in consumer's surplus (Kumasi). Controls that give differential treatment to favored groups like civil servants were found to distribute substantial benefits to those groups without much benefit to others (Bangalore). In countries willing to incur substantial transactions costs of indexation and renegotiation of rents for leases beyond market periods, control may make little difference on average, although a wide variance of benefits remains (Rio).     

Broadcasting party information: Can the introduction of community radio reduce the effective number of parties?

The introduction of a more majoritarian electoral system is expected to result in the consolidation of a party system as predicted by institutionalists. However, voters must have information on party viability and be able to coordinate with other voters within a constituency for an electoral system reform to have the expected outcome. I argue that the introduction of independent local radio frequencies can promote party consolidation by enabling coordination on viable candidates because of better information that becomes common knowledge. The effective number of parties (ENEP) is expected to be lower in constituencies where a larger proportion of voters listen to local radio. To test this hypothesis, access to television signals is used as an instrument for radio listening behavior to address potential reverse causality. Using 2SLS, I find that an increase in one standard deviation in regular radio listening is associated with a decrease of 0.42 ENEP in Thailand.     

Can Comprehensive Immigration Reform Be Both Liberal and Democratic?

Social Science and the Public Interest

Social Science and the Public Interest March/April 2010     

Can electors combat corruption? Institutional arrangements and citizen behaviour

Studies interested in the cross‐national levels of corruption have concluded that specific institutional characteristics drive the aggregate variation. In countries with high institutional clarity and plurality electoral systems, corruption tends to be lower since increased voter monitoring and clarity of responsibility incentivise politicians to deliver virtuous policies. However, the underlying accountability mechanism has never been tested at the individual level. It is still unclear whether (1) voters do place voting weights on corruption, and (2) whether these weights vary in response to aggregate institutional characteristics. In this article, survey data from 23 democracies is used to put the accountability micro‐mechanism to this test. While there is some evidence that voters do vote on the basis of corruption, the moderating effect of institutional characteristics is not as strong as previously thought.