Is the Department of Homeland Security an Intelligence Agency?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) applies a variation of the intelligence cycle – the process of planning, collecting, processing, analysis, and dissemination of information characteristic of intelligence agencies – to mitigate the risk of terrorist attack and respond to national security breaches. The intelligence cycle helps DHS encourage voluntary security measures, serve its customers, and avoid economic disruption, but the Department's program setbacks and failures illustrate the difficulty of applying the intelligence model to the needs of homeland security. The Department's particular means of producing intelligence and information challenge the conventional conception and definitions of the intelligence cycle.     

Is Rule by Majorities Special?

One way of making decisions is for political associates or their representatives to vote on each issue separately in accordance with the majority principle and then take the cumulative outcomes of such majority decision making to define the collective choice for public policy. We call such a system one of majorities rule. Thought of in spatial terms, majorities rule is equivalent to the principle of making decisions according to the issue-by-issue median of voter preferences. If popular control and political equality are core democratic values, they can be rendered as requirements on a collective choice rule, involving resoluteness, anonymity, strategy-proofness and responsiveness. These requirements entail that the collective decision rule be a percentile method. If we then add a requirement of impartiality, as exhibited in a collective choice rule which would be chosen behind a veil of ignorance, then the issue-by-issue median is uniquely identified as a fair rule. Hence, majorities rule is special. Some objections to this line of reasoning are considered.     

Madeira Regional Elections 2015: A Polity Tyrannized by Majorities or the End of an Era?

The 2015 Madeira regional elections, held on 29 March, saw the re-election of the Social Democratic Party (PSD/M), for the twelfth regional government. This was despite the incumbent party's vote share falling to 44.36%. For almost 40 years of regional elections in Madeira, the PSD/M has won consecutive absolute majorities without once losing power. The result of the 2015 election reinforced the tendency over the last 40 years of politics in Madeira: the emergence of a viable electoral challenger to the ruling party continues to be unlikely and the incumbent continues to mobilize the regional electorate and win the electoral contest.     

Is the Tax Collection Effort an Indicator of the Financial Condition of Spanish Municipalities?

ABSTRACT

The financial crisis beginning in 2007 drastically affected the financial resources of different governmental organizations, causing critical imbalances between resources and expenditure needs. This study aims to analyze whether the municipal tax collection effort in Spain could be an indicator of the financial condition of these institutions. As a preliminary step, a new methodology is used to assess their financial condition. We test tax collection effort as an indicator on a sample of more than 5,000 Spanish municipalities with fewer than 75,000 inhabitants. Results confirm that the budgetary solvency dimension is associated with the tax collection effort for all municipalities studied. Furthermore, in municipalities with populations of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, the level of the tax collection effort is indicative of most of the financial condition dimensions.     

How can leaders’ perceptions guide policy analysis in an era of governance?

One of the challenges facing policy analysts is how to improve policy processes in the era of governance. The present article examines how “perceptions analysis,” i.e. the identification of perceptions of different leaders in a specific policy field, may contribute to policy analysis. The article focuses on two questions: What explains leaders’ support for different policy options? Can the examination of leaders’ perceptions help in identifying potential bases for collaboration? Based on mixed methodologies, the study includes interviews with 103 people who influence the policy process and policy discourse in Israel. The findings reveal the importance of the perceptions of causes in explaining leaders’ policy preferences and suggest that identifying their perceptions may help analysts distinguish bases for promoting collaboration and trust among different actors in the policy process, as well as enhancing the legitimacy of the policy process as a whole.     

Voter uncertainty and failure of Duverger’s law: an?empirical analysis

Real-world simple plurality elections rarely bear out the strong Duvergerian prediction that, in equilibrium, only two competitors receive votes. Recent advances in strategic voting theory demonstrate that voter uncertainty about competitors’ true support levels in the constituency may lead to limited strategic voting, and hence incomplete desertion of trailing parties. This is the first attempt to estimate empirically the impact of uncertainty on incentives to vote strategically. Calibrating a model of strategic voting to voting results from simple plurality elections in German constituencies, it is found that strategic voters operate under high levels of uncertainty. These results support the proposition that uncertainty about party support impedes formation of Duvergerian equilibria.     

Is private production of public services cheaper than public production? A meta‐regression analysis of solid waste and water services

Privatization of local government services is assumed to deliver cost savings, but empirical evidence for this from around the world is mixed. We conduct a meta‐regression analysis of all econometric studies examining privatization of water distribution and solid waste collection services and find no systematic support for lower costs with private production. Differences in study results are explained by differences in time period of the analyses, service characteristics, and policy environment. We do not find a genuine empirical effect of cost savings resulting from private production. The results suggest that to ensure cost savings, more attention be given to the cost characteristics of the service, the transaction costs involved, and the policy environment stimulating competition, rather than to the debate over public versus private delivery of these services. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Social or political cleavages? A spatial analysis of?the?party system in post-authoritarian Chile

Lipset and Rokkan??s (Party system and voter alignments: cross national perspectives, Lipset and Rokkan eds., New York: Free Press, pp. 1?C64, 1967) sociological model of cleavages and the so-called ??freezing hypothesis?? dominate theorizing about party system formation. Torcal and Mainwaring (Br. J. Polit. Sci. 33:55?C84, 2003) show the relevance of a purely political cleavage for structuring the party system in the case of Chile, challenging the freezing hypothesis??s claims. They also dispute case-specific research that argues Chile??s party system still reflects a ??three-thirds?? division between Left, Right, and Center. Revisiting this debate, our study employs spatial maps of the party system. Such political-economy models are rare in studies of Latin American politics. The application here supports a democratic/authoritarian political cleavage in Chile.     

Is there an incumbency advantage or cost of ruling in proportional election systems?

This paper investigates the effects of political representation on electoral outcomes at the party and coalition levels in proportional election systems using data from Swedish local government elections. There are two notions of representation, namely, to hold seats and to belong to the ruling coalition. I refer to the effect of the former as the incumbency effect and the effect of the latter as the ruling effect. The discontinuous variation in the seat share as the vote share varies for parties is used to isolate exogenous variation in incumbency. The discontinuous variation in ruling at the 50% seat share cutoff for coalitions is used in order to exogenous variation in ruling. I find that incumbency determines the distribution of 12% of the total vote, which is similar to the advantage found in majoritarian systems. I find no ruling effect, contrary to the commonly found cost of ruling in proportional systems.     

Power to the legal professionals: Is there an Americanization of European law?

Twelve years ago, Robert Kagan asked “Should Europe worry about adversarial legalism?” He answered this question with a qualified “no,” and identified a number of sources of resistance to such a trend. More recently, he broadened the issue in this journal by asking whether European countries experience an “Americanization” of their legal systems. The articles in this Symposium on the Americanization of European Law all revisit that question. The present article introduces the topic, discusses the elements that make up adversarial legalism, and summarizes and compares the findings of the articles in the Symposium. The articles find an increase in one dimension of adversarial legalism, namely, more legalism, that is, more litigation, more formalism, and more verdicts interfering with politics, but hardly any increase in adversarialism. Tenacious pre‐existing national legal and political cultures and institutions resist a further move in the direction of American style adversarial legalism. The mix of more litigation, more legalism, and more politicization, overlaid on the pre‐existing hierarchic authority of courts and legal functionaries has, however, strengthened the societal and political power of the judiciary vis‐à‐vis other powers. A professional elite is increasingly making the political choices that in a democratic society ought to be made by democratic representatives. Perhaps Europe should worry about this.     

What Is Patronage? A Critical Reexamination

Despite a long and storied history, patronage and the functions it plays in American politics and public administration are still very much a mystery. This paper examines how patronage has been used and understood in American political science and public administration. The author calls for a reexamination of the concept based on developments found in the field of anthropology. In an effort to generate future scholarship, the author introduces a typology of patronage styles based on this reexamination.     

Is there an export‐ or import‐led growth in emerging countries? A case of BRICS countries

The BRICS economies could be considered a world number one trading group in one respect and emerging economies in another. The study applied both Johansen cointegration methodology for the long‐run relationship and Granger causality test for the direction of causality for the period of 1979–2018. The study findings confirmed that the growth‐led exports (GLE) hypothesis model is relevant for India, South Africa, and China, while exports‐led growth (ELG) hypothesis model is relevant for both Brazil and Russia. The growth‐led imports (GLI) hypothesis model is relevant for Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, while import‐led growth (ILG) hypothesis model is relevant for Russia. Hence, based on the findings, we confirmed that trade‐led growth hypothesis is valid. Finally, the results show that domestic and global demand contributes to a larger trade; countries that are labor‐abundant generate employment and foster economic growth.     

A practical analysis of shared‐appreciation mortgages

Abstract

When the development of large‐scale public housing projects was discontinued in the 1970s in both Canada and the United States, the policy response was very different. This article reviews the nature of the dissimilar low‐income housing policy paths, documenting the role of federal housing policy in the evolution of a significant nonprofit “third sector” in Canada's housing system; the decision of the U.S. federal government to rely on the private sector for subsidized rental supply; and, with very little help from the federal government, the ‘bottom‐up” attempt to develop a nonprofit housing sector in communities throughout the United States. In Canada, a permanent stock of good‐quality, nonprofit social housing was created along with a growing and increasingly competent community‐based housing development sector.

The Canadian experience demonstrates that it takes time to build the capacity of the nonprofit sector. The U.S. experience demonstrates that there is a great deal of community‐based talent ready and willing to provide nonprofit housing if reliable and adequate funding is available. Canada has made outstanding progress relative to the United States in the area of affordable housing supply, creating yet another small but significant difference in the quality of life for lower income households. The general Canadian approach to consistent national support of nonprofit and cooperative housing can be applied in the United States. Canada's relative success is not based on unique structural or systemic differences—that is, it is a matter of political choice and political will. The United States should look to Canada's 20‐year experience to determine whether some of the mechanisms used to support Canada's nonprofit sector might be transferable to the United States.     

Is Representation Enough? Racial Disparities in Levels of Force and Arrests by Police

The research in representative bureaucracy that examines the extent to which racial congruence impacts bureaucrats’ decisions is mixed. This study adds to this literature by examining the impact of representative bureaucracy on the level of force that police officers use and whether they make an arrest in use of force encounters, while taking into consideration key situational conditions. Using individual-level data from New Orleans to estimate this impact, the authors find that racial congruence and incongruence impact policing outcomes even in the presence of situational shortcuts that cue decision-making. The findings show that the benefits of representation are conditional on the outcome. Black officers are less likely to use higher levels of force on Black civilians. Yet both Black and White officers are less likely to arrest White civilians in use of force encounters. This suggests that interactions in which bureaucrats have less discretion (e.g., arrests) may offer limited opportunities for active representation.     

Higher education and confidence in institutions: A secondary analysis of the ‘European values survey’, 1981–83

A secondary analysis of the ‘European Values Survey’ tests some of the theoretical conclusions regarding the rationality of trust and distrust in established institutions. A reanalysis of the data set's question relating to confidence in ten particular institutions shows that the expected impact of higher education on confidence in institutions to punish governments for breach of trust applies only to those countries with a long, uninterrupted tradition of upholding civil liberties. In these countries multivariate analyses reveal a latent pattern of ‘civil society’ which is the most important dimension of how institutions are perceived by respondents.     

Do populist parties support referendums? A comparative analysis of election manifestos in Europe

Earlier research refers to populist parties as being advocates of a greater use of referendum. Yet, there has been no large-scale systematic test of this claim. This article addresses this gap in the literature and tests the relationship between populism and greater use for referendums in party manifestos. It analyzes 824 manifestos of 187 populist and non-populist parties in 27 Member States of the European Union between 1994 and 2018. We test if populist parties are virtually all in favor of a greater use of referendums and whether they would talk about referendums much more than non-populist parties.     

A multimodal discourse analysis of international postgraduate business students’ finance texts: an investigation of theme and information value

Thematic progression patterning and the composition of information value facilitate the development of well-structured messages. The text-based research of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) into textual features has been confined to language learning and workplace contexts. Empirical research studies involving finance have investigated students’ performance in finance courses and the effects of class attendance on their performance. However, no published studies have yet explored or analysed the textual features of tertiary finance texts. This study investigated the Theme and information value in 6 group assignments in finance, written by 19 Master's students in accounting. Underpinned by Halliday's SFL and Kress and van Leeuwen's system of the composition of information value, this study employed a systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) of the texts. The SF-MDA revealed a high frequency of Theme reiteration patterns, the rare occurrence of a linear Theme pattern, and the minimal use of a multiple-Theme pattern. These findings have both theoretical and pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of writing, particularly in the context of teaching English for business purposes.