Gender,actors, and institutions at the local level: Explaining variation in policies to address violence against women and girls

Research on gender equality policy has generally focused on actors and institutions at the national and international levels. This article considers the role of local‐level actors and institutions in explaining different policy responses to violence against women and girls (VAWG). The literature on gender policy trajectories identifies the particular importance of executive actors in influencing “status policies” like VAWG. Quantitative data are analyzed to show how local Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales have responded to demands for policy action. The focus is on the interaction between the 41 elected commissioners and the new institutional arrangements for police governance introduced in 2012. The article shows that variation in policy outcomes is related (a) to the gender of executive actors and (b) to the way in which actors interpret elements of the institutional framework, regardless of their own gender.     

Political institutions and Central Bank independence: A cross-country analysis

Using three quantitative measures of Central Bank independence, we apply OLS and TSLS regression methods to investigate the possible correlation between political liberty, political instability and central bank independence. For a sample of Western democracies and highly democratic developing countries we show that Cukierman's legal independence index is positively correlated with political freedom and regime political stability. It is negatively correlated with party political stability. For a sample of developing countries that excludes dictatorships we show that a special index of legal central bank autonomy is positively associated with political freedom and political stability. Finally, we observe that, for the same sample of nations, the turnover index of central bank independence is not sensitive to our political variables.     

A Contagious Concept: Explaining the Spread of Privatization in the Telecommunications Sector

Qualitative studies suggest that the spread of privatization of public utilities is due to a change of the economic paradigm and institutional isomorphism pressures. However, current quantitative studies mostly account for domestic factors. These factors can explain differences in national privatization trajectories but cannot explain the large trend. Based on a quantitative analysis of privatizations in the telecommunications sector in 21 OECD countries, the article argues that emulation pressures can explain the trend toward privatization. The analysis suggests that privatization gained legitimacy as more and more governments emulated privatization policies they observed in countries they perceived as similar. However, the article finds no evidence of cross‐sectoral diffusion. Thus, according to the analysis, telecommunications privatization diffused within the same sector between countries, but not within the same country between different sectors.     

Non-global social contracts: A note on inefficient social institutions

This paper explores some perverse features that can emerge when social contracts are moved from a social vacuum to a setting of social interdependence. In particular we note incentives that might exist in conjunction with externality problems that yield situations in which: (1) social contracts reduce social wealth; (2) sub-global social contracts are Pareto inferior to the absence of social contracts; (3) there are no incentives for global social contracts. While previous works emphasized the benefits of contracts, this paper focuses on their costs. A conclusion reached is that perhaps justice and efficiency demand not a single global social contract but rather a rich melange of sub-global contracts with appropriate interstices of anarchy.     

China's defence spending: new questions

China has rapidly expanded its spending on defence over the past decade, at a pace that has closely mirrored its economic growth. However, a slowdown in growth over the past year has raised new questions over the implications for defence spending.     

Explaining migration: theory at the crossroads

The author presents the case that the study of migration over the past century has become too diverse. He reviews works by writers from the several disciplines covering the topic, then cites the need to develop a consistent classification of the types of migration and their origins using standardized terminology. (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

Explaining near-universal turnout: The case of Malta

Abstract. Even though voting is not compulsory, Malta has the highest turnout of all democratic nations. This study examines characteristics of the Maltese electorate, the country's governmental institutions and electoral system, and the nature of its politics to identify the most powerful factors (or combination of factors) responsible for the high voter turnout. Among these are: (1) intense and pervasive partisanship; (2) concentration of political power in a single elective institution; (3) highly competitive elections resulting in one-party governments despite PR.; (4) maximization of the impact of a single ballot because the number of votes a candidate needs to be elected is very low and because the voter's lower-order preferences count under STV, and (5) unusually intense campaigning by individual candidates because they compete against other candidates of the same party, and by parties because the electorate is polarized, which leaves few uncommitted voters while rendering voter conversion unlikely, thus making mobilization of all existing supporters vital to electoral success.     

The puzzle transformed: Explaining declining turnout

This analysis of the decline in aggregate voting turnout in the United States between the 1950s and the 1980s attributes the decline to changes in the generational composition of the electorate. In particular, the post-New Deal generation (first presidential vote in 1968 or later), which continues to grow in size, votes at a rate well below that of older generations. A minor part of the generational differences in turnout can be attributed to generational differences in party identification and social connectedness (as measured by such indicators as home ownership and church attendance). The larger portion of generational turnout differences cannot be directly explained with variables contained in the National Election Studies. The generational differences in turnout arenot reflected in preelection participation (informal campaigning, doing party work, etc.) and they cannot be accounted for by a declining sense of political efficacy or citizen duty or by lessened interest in campaigns and election outcomes.     

Explaining Swedish Corporatism: The Formative Moment

The question addressed in this article is how to explain major intentional changes in national political systems. The theoretical point of departure is that political systems are usually so tightly structured that the prospects of actors introducing such changes are very small. The argument put forward is that only under certain periods of crisis can such changes occur; it is only during such formative moments that political actors change the institutional parameters or the nature of the 'game'. Empirically, the article extends this argument in an attempt to explain why Sweden's political system became highly corporatist. It has been shown that from a rationalistic approach, collective action - e. g. why individuals join and support interest organizations - is difficult to explain. Instead, an institutional explanation is offered. The empirical analysis shows how centrally placed politicians in Sweden during the 1930s, by changing the payoffs, could solve the 'free-rider' problem for both farmers' and workers' interest organizations. Contrary to earlier studies, the analysis shows that the breakthrough of corporatist principles in Swedish politics took place under a Liberal government strongly supported by the Conservative Party. The traditional connection between the Swedish Social Democrats and the corporatist nature of Swedish politics is thus questioned and the alliance between the Social Democrats and the Farmers' League in 1933 is given a new explanation.     

Explaining the Enhanced HIPC Initiative: A Response to Michaelowa (2003)

Michaelowa (2003, 2002) proposes a political-economy model to explain the re-design of the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) debt reliefinitiative in 1999. The principal assumption justifying the adoption of thisalternative approach is an alleged paucity, if not non-existence, of applied economic research on sustainable debt levels. This note challenges that assumption.     

Governance and Growth: A Simple Hypothesis Explaining Cross-Country Differences in Productivity Growth

Cross-country evidence shows that a subset of developing countries isgrowing very rapidly, taking advantage of opportunities to ``catch-up'' atthe same time that other developing countries are growing slowly. We arguethat this is due to differences in the quality of governance. Inparticular we show that productivity growth is higher in better-governedcountries.     

Projects as instruments of development administration: A qualified defence and suggestions for improvement

Projects have become an important instrument of international assistance and of development administration because they seem to offer major advantages over other forms of planning and management. But projects have also come under increasing criticism in recent years. The benefits they offer to various interests involved in development ensure, however, that they are unlikely to be abandoned or to diminish in importance in the near future. Thus, ways must be found to make them more flexible and responsive methods of planning and managing social and human development activities. This can be done by planning, appraising and implementing projects as policy experiments, making their design and administration more learning-oriented, and using them as instruments of strategic planning and management.     

Explaining Capitalism: The Method of Marx's Political Economy

The central thesis of this article is that Marx's explanation of the significant phenomena of the capitalist economy draws upon a basic theoretical syntax of a determinist/latent functionalist type. This conclusion has three consequences. First, it extends the range of functionalist explanation in Marx beyond its traditional loci, namely the theory of history and the analysis of the role of the state and other institutions in stabilizing capitalism, into the very heart of Marx's project, his political economy. Secondly, it has a powerful, though indirect, impact on our understanding of what might loosely be called the normative component of Marx's writings in as much as it identifies a specific sort of unfreedom peculiar to capitalist society. Thirdly, it shows just how great a challenge is mounted against Marx's project by those who seek to recast its method of explanation along methodological individualist lines. For if the first two points are accurate, rational-choice Marxists are drawn into a critique of both the explanatory and normative core of Marxism.     

Explaining voter turnout patterns: An information theory

Voting research is rich in empirical regularities yet a parsimonious theory of voter turnout that can match the facts has proven to be elusive. This paper argues that voter turnout patterns can be explained by extending the traditional rational voter model to include limited information. A model is presented in which utility-maximizing consumers receive higher payoffs from voting the more confident they are of their vote choice. The model provides an explanation for the most important cross-sectional voter turnout patterns. In addition, it suggests a novel explanation for the post-1960 decline in U.S. participation.     

The Global Climate Regime: Explaining Lagging Reform

There have been growing calls for reform of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). How have governments met the demand for action on climate change despite the lagging pace of UNFCCC reform? New qualitative data demonstrate that the institutional, sectoral, and technical characteristics of multilateral institutions have guided government choices in managing climate change issues. Institutional resources and sectoral participation in multilateral institutions have enabled governments to handle climate change issues outside the UNFCCC, reducing the need to invest in its reform as demand for action has grown. These specialized institutions are able to mitigate political disputes and facilitate greater efficacy in handling specific issues such as financing and emissions mitigation. They have mandates that overlap with the cross‐cutting nature of climate change, requiring no new mandates, which mitigates political disputes in managing specific climate issues.     

Explaining Privatization: Notes Towards a Predictive Theory

This article starts from the assumption that some of the theoretical work used to explain welfare-state expansion can be used 'in reverse' to explain privatization, here seen as welfare state contraction, i.e., the transfer from the public to the private sector of the responsibility for certain activities involved in welfare provision. To this end, valiants of the 'power resources' approach are examined. Finding that the 'labour movement' thesis does not have a strong predictive value, I then discuss the 'game theoretical' variant of the 'power resources' approach. Its usefulness for predicting privatization patterns seems limited because of the reductionism built into it. Following the neo-Institutionalists' argument that actor preferences and strategies both reflect and form institutional arrangements of the welfare state, some institutional typologies are developed which are relevant to the course and patterns of privatization. An ideal-type dichotomy between 'pluralist' and 'corporatist' institutions is discussed, in connection with a further delineation of decision-making, financing, and implementing structures. In conclusion, an effort is made to combine actor-oriented and institutional approaches to formulate some preliminary predictions about when and where certain patterns of privatization will occur.