The Dynamics of State Policy Liberalism, 1936–2014

Applying a dynamic latent‐variable model to data on 148 policies collected over eight decades (1936–2014), we produce the first yearly measure of the policy liberalism of U.S. states. Our dynamic measure of state policy liberalism marks an important advance over existing measures, almost all of which are purely cross‐sectional and thus cannot be used to study policy change. We find that, in the aggregate, the policy liberalism of U.S. states steadily increased between the 1930s and 1970s and then largely plateaued. The policy liberalism of most states has remained stable in relative terms, though several states have shifted considerably over time. We also find surprisingly little evidence of multidimensionality in state policy outputs. Our new estimates of state policy liberalism have broad application to the study of political development, representation, accountability, and other important issues in political science.     

Predicting Political Influence on State Ethics Commissions: Of Course We Are Ethical—Nudge Nudge,Wink Wink

This article explores the ability of elected officials to affect the autonomy of state ethics commissions. The author examines autonomy as a function of the capacity of ethics commissions to control their finances and personnel decisions and how the presence or absence of that capacity affects whether bureaucratic structures can function independently of politics. Using data from the 2011 State Integrity Investigation, the analysis extends previous arguments concerning political actors’ desire to affect ethics commissions. Findings suggest that elected officials use their positions to control the makeup of commission leadership and financial resources, with the goal of decreasing commissions’ ability to act autonomously.     

Crowdfunding industry—History,development, policies,and potential issues

Crowdfunding has gained a great deal of attention from policy makers, researchers, and practitioners. This paper attempts to provide an overview of the history and development of the industry and discusses different types of crowdfunding and their public policies. It is identified that the operation of peer‐to‐peer lending and equity‐based crowdfunding is regulated by the Financial Authority; the reward‐based crowdfunding (RBC) and donation‐based crowdfunding (DBC) is yet to be regulated, neither in the United Kingdom or United States. The lack of rules and regulations in the latter two models highlights the burning issues such as potential fraud and malpractice. Therefore, we suggest that it is timely to consider regulating the two types of crowdfunding possibly by governance mechanism with reporting requirements to keep track of the fund and to provide timely information. Additionally, it is advisable that practitioners to work on an agreed framework to establish industry standard, so potential investors can compare and assess the quality of projects easily. Finally, the management of crowdfunding platforms especially the RBC and DBC platforms should be improved. The ease of launching campaigns has made it difficult for both initiators and investors to succeed in the crowdfunding process. Further research to develop some form of assessment framework would be useful to both parties.     

State Capacity,Bureaucratic Politicization,and Corruption in the Brazilian State

Responding to recent articles in Governance highlighting the need for improved measurement of bureaucratic characteristics, this article describes efforts to map Brazil's federal agencies on three dimensions—capacity, autonomy, and partisan dominance—derived from data on more than 326,000 civil servants. The article provides a “proof of concept” about the utility of agency‐level measures of these variables, demonstrating how they relate to an output common to all agencies: corruption. The article provides a first step in the direction of building a comparative research program that offers objective evaluation of bureaucracies within nation‐states, with the intent of better disentangling their impact on governance outcomes.     

Sexual Violence,Competitive State Building,and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

ABSTRACT

This article examines the practices of rape, sexual enslavement, and forced marriage used by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Most research see wartime sexual violence as solutions to battlefields challenges. Studies of civil war and competitive state building during civil wars have largely overlooked the implications of such violence for rebel governance. This article explores how efforts to regulate sexuality figure within processes of violent state formation. ISIS’s practices of sexual violence mirror previous efforts by the Iraqi and Syrian state to substantiate ethno-sectarian domination through violence. But ISIS creates new gendered and ethno-sectarian hierarchies. Repertoires of sexual and gender-based violence can help to sustain and create structures of state control and are thus integral to competitive state building.     

State intervention and neoliberalism in the globalizing world economy: lessons from Singapore's regionalization programme

The recent 1997-98 Asian economic crisis has thrown Asia's divergent pathways to development into serious question. Protagonists of neoliberalism argue that their agenda is now becoming a global orthodoxy when several ailing Asian economies have accepted IMF packages which come with neoliberal economic programmes. Drawing on lessons from Singapore's regionalization programme, this article contends that it is far too early to conclude that Asian developmental states are giving up their governance of domestic economies. Instead, there is evidence that these Asian developmental states are re-regulating their domestic economies to ride out of the economic crisis. The article first starts with the debate between neoliberalism and state developmentalism in our understanding of global political economy. It then examines the political economy of Singapore's regionalization programme through which Singapore-based transnational corporations are strongly encouraged by the state to regionalize their operations, followed by a critical discussion of the impact of the recent Asian economic crisis on the re-regulation of the regionalization programme by the state in Singapore. Some lessons for Asian emerging economies are suggested in the concluding section.     

Institutional development in the era of economic policy reform: Concerns,contradictions and illustrations from Malawi

The article argues that the essence of economic policy reform programmes—both their substance and their pace—runs counter to the central notions of sound institutional development. Attention is first given to some fundamental concerns about the relationship between the two processes, in particular focusing on questions of culture, speed of change and the political environment. The article then provides some illustrations from Malawi, looking in turn at collateral institutional damage, the new generation of semiautonomous organizations, confusing incentives systems in the areas of salaries, housing and training, and lack of serious concern for the sustainability of the reforms. The conclusion calls for returning ‘part-ownership’ of the reform programme to the local officials, and trying to reduce some of the institutional unreality, which seems to adhere to the implementation of the reforms.     

Top‐Down Self‐Organization: State Logics,Substitutional Delegation,and Private Governance in Russia

This study investigates the counterintuitive emergence of self‐regulation in the Russian construction sector. Despite its proclivity for centralizing political authority, the government acted as the catalyst for the delegation of regulatory powers to private industry groups. The article argues that a factor little considered in extant literature—namely, a weak and corrupt bureaucracy—is key to explaining why the normally control‐oriented executive branch began to promote private governance despite industry's preference for continued state regulation. The article's signal contribution is to theoretically explain and empirically demonstrate how a government's prior inability to establish intrastate control over an ineffective and bribable public bureaucracy creates incentives for political authorities to search for alternative means for policy implementation outside of existing state agencies. These findings are important for understanding the impetus and logic behind particular regulatory shifts in countries where the state apparatus is both deficient and corrupt.     

What Stabilizes State General Fund Expenditures in Downturn Years—Budget Stabilization Fund or General Fund Unreserved Undesignated Balance?

This article strictly defines the budget stabilization fund (BSF) as a counter-cyclical reserve, and with a panel data set examines the effects of BSF and general fund unreserved undesignated balances (UUB) on stabilizing state general fund expenditure during downturns. The article finds that BSFs bolster spending in lean years: each percentage point increase of BSF balance as a percent of general fund expenditure can minimize negative expenditure gap by a quarter percentage point. But the article does not find evidence that UUB is a counter-cyclical fiscal tool, indicating that wide adoption of BSF may have changed the nature and use of UUB.