Toward a new constitution for a future country

This paper outlines a preliminary radical plan for a constitution based primarily on recent contributions on mechanisms for choice of public goods and on constitutional rules and concepts, but based also on experience with present constitutions, corporate charters, and private arbitration procedures. It uses the standard economic perspective, disregarding such motives as herd instincts and the desire to serve the public interest. The result is markedly different from existing constitutions.     

Towards a stages theory approach to privatization

In analysing the path of optimal sequencing of privatizations by public administrations, it is too simplistic to characterize the process as one in which in the early phase small state-owned enterprises are disposed of and, in the later stage, the larger enterprises. Such a dichotomy fails to capture fully the market failure elements, technological dimensions, sociological imperatives and political constraints that help to determine the choice and timing of enterprises to be privatized. Rather, the privatization experience of the developing and developed countries, including the former centrally planned economies, can be eclectically analysed as traditional, transitional and transformation stages in an almost inexorable movement towards a pure capitalist economy. In the traditional stage, countries have tended to privatize those enterprises for which the private sector has an obvious comparative advantage. In the transitional stage, the privatization programme includes certain important enterprises, which, despite a considerable amount of government subsidy or tariff protection, have performed ‘inefficiently’. In the stage of transformation from a still basically mixed economy to a near pure capitalist economy, there is privatization of the strategic enterprises. Although the stages approach varies between countries, the above-mentioned sequencing allows for more effective cumulative internalization of the learning experience.     

Correlated payoffs in the inspection game: some theory and an application to corruption

The inspection game as formulated by Tsebelis (Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 83:77–91, 1989) has the counterintuitive implication that crime is unaffected by the magnitude of the penalty. This paper demonstrates that to attain this outcome, it is necessary to assume independence of enforcer and offender payoffs. Given correlated payoffs, the comparative statics of the equilibrium yield an inverse relationship between crime and the severity of the sanction. In an application, we enrich the framework of Tsebelis by adding corruption stages and show that this can imply such a correlation of payoffs. Another interesting finding is that harsher anticorruption measures can increase crime incentives.     

Electoral competition and the oversight game: A transaction cost approach and the Norwegian experience

Abstract. The central question addressed by this article is whether the absence of active competition changes the forces that shape the institutional landscape at the parliamentary level, and thereby the landscape itself. Based on a transaction cost approach, the study investigates whether the bolstering of parliamentary oversight procedures occurs in situations in which there is no credible alternative to the incumbent government, and whether opposition impotence contributes to the development of oversight institutions. The article argues that the strengthening of parliamentary oversight procedures is most likely to occur when there is a minority government but the opposition MPs are not in a position to form or envisage a credible alternative. An analysis of changes in oversight arrangements in Norway during 1993—1996 strongly supports this argument.     

The emergence of administrative science in the USSR: Toward a theory of organizational emulation

Emulation is a specific linkage pattern between an entity and its inter-organizational environment. It represents a genre of adaptation, i.e., purposive, goal-oriented activity designed to recreate the behavioral attributes in a referent. Emulation can also be symbolic—a legitimization of change within the receiving system. Soviet administrative theorists have consciously drawn from American experience in order to promote and develop a counterpart discipline at home. This constitutes an emulative linkage pattern. The metamorphosis of administrative science in the USSR is charted here as sequential stages in the innovation process—initiation, implementation, institutionalization. Emulation has had a specific impact at each stage.The general arguments in this essay have been abstracted from various parts of my doctoral dissertation, The Science of Management in the USSR: Emulation and the Role of Americanizers. A six-month trip to the Soviet Union was an invaluable opportunity to gather research materials and consult with specialists.     

Constitutionalism and common knowledge: Assessment and application to a future European constitution

The purpose of the paper is to advocate that constitutions should be established through a contractarian process, rather than through conventions. To achieve it, they are studied from the perspective of the concept of common knowledge. We refer to its political philosophy and game theory dimensions. The making of common knowledge relates to communication and induction problems. The argument is applied to European constitutional integration, with a particular focus on administrative law.     

Toward a Theory of Performance Reporting to Achieve Public Sector Accountability: A Field Study

Governments in many countries are implementing performance reporting systems. Many advocates claim that performance reporting results in accountability and effectiveness. There is no theory to justify these claims and guide implementation. This paper presents five field studies of five performance‐reporting systems to begin building theory. Four locations are optimistic; one is not. Mere adoption of performance reporting is not effective. Broad involvement across all government levels is important. Communication and integration with strategic planning and agency management are essential. Two theoretical streams, accounting in organized anarchies and the constitutive role of accounting, are useful theoretical bases.     

Policy analysis: A conceptual base for a theory of improvement

The purpose of reason or rationality in the analysis of resource allocation decisions is to provide decision makers with guidance on policy decisions which result in improvement, i.e. a net increment in social welfare. The difficulty with what might be called the microrationality of cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis as conventionally practised is that unless the context of such rationality is established in the larger framework of what might in turn be called the macrorationality which reflects an awareness of the properties of the whole system, the policy analyst cannot know whether his recommendation will upgrade (constitute an improvement in) or degrade (constitute a deterioration in) the system as a whole. The paper attempts to suggest a first conceptual approach, and an implied research agenda, addressed to developing a more effective general context for policy analysis. The suggested approach has four major components; first, the establishment of the basis for policy analysis in the explicit specification of a general weighted objective function for national policy and a corresponding set of functions for particular programs and projects; second, the development and incorporation in cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis of a set of analytical parameters which establish the basis for policy analyses which are in the first instance comparable, and in the second instance consistent with the national objective function; third, the development of a general analytical framework for cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis which recognizes the essential interdependency of policy decisions, including the financing implications of expenditure policies; and, finally, the explicit recognition of the need for a criterion of overall system improvement in the development of an analytical framework for the measurement of the trades-off or opportunity costs between alternative policy mixes.     

Legislative systems with absolute party discipline: Implications for the agency theory approach to the constituent-legislator link

This paper examines how the presence of absolute party discipline forces one to re-examine some of the issues surrounding the constituent-legislator link. With absolute party discipline, slack at the individual district level is determined by the policy choices of a political party, rather than by the choices of the individual legislator. This party discipline not only has implications for the representational effectiveness of individual legislators, but also results in the terms “slack” and “shirking” no longer necessarily being synonymous. The empirical work shows that Canadian political parties engaged in wide scale shirking on the 1988 U.S.–Canada Free Trade Agreement.     

Distributional coalitions,state strength,and economic growth: Toward a comprehensive theory of economic development

High-performing economies in the Asia-Pacific region together with only mediocre economic development in Latin America prompts the question of what explains differential economic growth rates among developing countries. Combining a statist perspective with Olson's theory of interest group formation, this research hypothesizes that nations with weak distributional coalitions will more likely experience high growth and state intervention will be effective. Using a longitudinal research design, this secondary analysis involves a comparative and interactive examination of eight Asian-Pacific and twelve Latin American countries. By considering the role of the state in interaction with distributional coalitions in society, the results indicate that approximately two-thirds of the variance in national economic growth is explained.     

Community structure and the behavior of transnational sustainability governors: Toward a multi‐relational approach

Hundreds of transnational private governance organizations (TPGOs) have emerged in recent decades to govern social and environmental conditions of production using voluntary standards. A debate persists over whether the ties among different TPGOs and other organizations create a professional community that affects the behavior of TPGOs. To help resolve this debate, we analyze multiple ties among agriculture TPGOs to offer a more robust exploration of community structures and their potential effects for three forms of TPGO behavior – coordination, collaboration, and isomorphism. Our aggregate measure of ties reveals a thin community dominated by older TPGOs and TPGOs advancing a broad notion of sustainability that were created by Solidaridad, the World Wildlife Fund, and/or Unilever. The clearest community structures are built from ties that exhibit the potential for not actual collaboration, coordination, and isomorphism. Thus, while there exists convergence toward an emergent TPGO‐community, obstacles remain to more intense behavioral effects for TPGOs.