Bitter Harvest: Intergovernmental Dimensions of the Farm Crisis

The recent and deep recession in American agriculture seriouslyaffected state and local government finances and services in1986. Sharp declines in farm land values began to erode thelocal property tax base in many rural communities, while rapidlyrising property tax delinquencies created more immediate cashflow problems. Many farm states experienced serious budgetaryshortfalls as revenue receipts from state income and sales taxesdeclined or failed to grow at expected rates. Both state andlocal fiscal problems were exacerbated by federal aid reductions,regional economic conditions, and rising service demands. Suchproblems made agricultural policy a major issue in the 1986elections and prompted a proliferation of new policy initiatives,especially by state governments. Some of the policy approachesadopted or being considered raise fundamental questions aboutintergovernmental relations and methods of public service provisionin a rapidly changing policy environment.     

Targeting Federal Assistance to Local Governments in Rural and Low-Income Areas, 1972-1983

Two questions have predominated policy discussions about theallocation of federal aid to rural local governments duringthe last two decades: whether rural areas were getting their"fair share" and whether the aid was appropriately targetedto deserving communities. An analysis of data for 1972–1983shows that although the position of rural governments apparentlyimproved during the 1970s, the gains were principally due tosharply increased loans to rural areas, while urban areas benefitedfrom increases in grants-in-aid. Conversely, the aid reductionsof the early 1980s, by cutting into loans, which are less valuablethan grants, appear to have hurt rural areas less than urbanareas. A modest amount of income-targeting in federal developmentfunds was evident in the early 1970s, but it deteriorated duringthe following decade. By 1983 counties with higher incomes andmore satisfactory levels of public services received higherlevels of aid than places that might have been considered moreneedy. While the reasons for the generally diminished targetingare not clear, several possibilities, including the increasingimportance of loans as a federal aid mechanism, are considered.     

State support under the new federalism

The new federalism will reduce total intergovernmental revenues to local governments. The reduction will be due to both the transfer to the states of much of the federal aid which previously flowed directly to local governments and reductions in total federal aid levels. Pass-through requirements on the shifted aid will not affect this general result but may soften the impact in many states. Because of differences in the extent to which state governments substitute federal pass-through aid for state aid from own-source revenues and in the degree to which different sources of revenues are treated differently by the states, local revenue reductions will vary greatly from state to state. The losses for local governments will range from 100% of the shifted aid in some states to as little as 15–20% in others.     

Federal Aid to Local Governments in the West: An Irony of the Reagan Revolution

Despite the fact that the Reagan election was viewed as a power shift toward the West, the decade of the 1980s produced cruel disappointment. The region was generally left out of the economic recmery of the nation because of the bust in the agricultural and mineral industries. These state and local gmernments which sufferfrom high costs and low resources were particularly dependent on the national gmernment at the very time when the Reagan Administration was cutting federal aid and transferring power to the states. Unlike Nixon's New Federalism which helped the state and local governments of the West, Reagan's policies caused their relative position in federal aid flows to deteriorate. Although the Reagan revolution in cutting domestic programs was viewed as the embodiment of western rugged individualism, the region lost in terms of federal aid to small rural local governments.     

Subsidizing the affluent: the case of medical education.

State and federal funds are important sources of revenue for medical schools, and a strong case can be made for public support for these institutions. Although the federal role is more widely known, the states in fact provide the bulk of direct support for medical training. The nature of aid from the two sources differs in significant ways. Most federal aid supports research or patient care, but much of state aid goes to support unconditional tuition subsidies. The primary beneficiaries of these subsidies are relatively affluent nonminority students who are beginning lucrative careers in the medical field--careers that would be lucrative even if no subsidies were provided. Nor does it appear that general subsidies are needed to attract poor and minority applicants. While targeted loans and scholarships to individuals may be justified, general tuition subsidies are not.     

BEATING THE ODDS: MAYORAL LEADERSHIP AND THE ACQUISITION OF POWER

During a time of dwindling resources, Boston Mayor Kevin White acquired a significant amount of power. This was in contrast to the experiences of other mayors during the 1960s and 1970s and to the predictions for mayoral leadership in general. Examining the paradox of White's administration underscores the need for politically skillful executives. Effective political skills include the ability to perceive resource opportunities, to select the appropriate strategies and to choose the best arena in which to operate. While all mayors have access to resources, they do not always use them effectively. Resources must be conserved, protected, and pyramided. Focusing on White's role as a power accumulator, his use of federal money, and his shift from audience and media politics to constituent and organization politics, this article examines how a mayor expands his political capital in an environment of limited resources. The major themes that emerge are the importance of political skills and political organization to strong mayoral leadership.     

When Mayors Matter: Estimating the Impact of Mayoral Partisanship on City Policy

U.S. cities are limited in their ability to set policy. Can these constraints mute the impact of mayors’ partisanship on policy outcomes? We hypothesize that mayoral partisanship will more strongly affect outcomes in policy areas where there is less shared authority between local, state, and federal governments. To test this hypothesis, we create a novel dataset combining U.S. mayoral election returns from 1990 to 2006 with city fiscal data. Using regression discontinuity design, we find that cities that elect a Democratic mayor spend a smaller share of their budget on public safety, a policy area where local discretion is high, than otherwise similar cities that elect a Republican or an Independent. We find no differences on tax policy, social policy, and other areas that are characterized by significant overlapping authority. These results suggest that models of national policymaking are only partially applicable to U.S. cities. They also have implications for political accountability: mayors may not be able to influence the full range of policies that are nominally local responsibilities.     

THE RELATIVE RESPONSIVENESS OF STATE AND FEDERAL AID TO DISTRESSED CITIES

Both the states and the federal government distribute significant aid to cities. Federal agencies generally offer direct assistance to cities, bypassing the states. Many federal programs operate under the assumption that the federal government is more responsive to urban problems than are state governments. This paper demonstrates that this assumption is probably not true. Federal aid administered through the states has benefitted "distressed" cities more than federal assistance which goes directly to urban areas.     

The Role of Federal Budget and Trust Fund Institutions in Measuring the Effect of Federal Highway Grants on State and Local Government Highway Expenditure

Federal highway financing institutions affect the response of state and local government spending to federal highway aid. Most previous studies of the spending effects of federal highway grants consider federal highway expenditure as the highway grant variable, disregarding the reimbursement nature of this expenditure and the multiyear availability of highway aid. This article argues that obligations of federal highway aid to states rather than actual federal expenditure should be used in models assessing the spending effects of federal highway grants. Considering federal obligations rather than expenditure results in a greater effect of highway grants on spending than reported in previous studies.     

Mandates As Both Hardship And Benefit: The Clean Water Program In Small Communities

No other intergovernmental policy has been so costly and difficultfor small local governments to implement as the 1972 versionof federal Clean Water legislation. This legislation has requiredthousands of localities to construct new or upgraded sewagetreatment systems. Rural governments have been hard pressedto cope with the demands of the anti-pollution standards, becauseof limited fiscal and managerial capacities and local valuesoften in conflict with national and state policy goals. Yet,as this study of eight rural California communities suggests,implementation can bring local benefits as well as hardship.As a result of their decade-long experiences with the CleanWater program, the small municipalities generally improved theirsewer system finances, acquired new organizational skills andresources, and increased their capacity to accommodate populationgrowth and stimulate economic development. These were long-runimpacts, occurring after initial problems and delays in theplanning, funding, and construction of the new plants.     

The State of U.S. Federalism, 2000-2001: Continuity in Crisis

Despite the 2000 presidential-election crisis, basic continuityprevailed in American federalism, including survival of theelectoral college and furtherance of the more recent shift offederal policymaking from places to persons during today's eraof coercive or regulatory federalism. The year revealed theenduring salience of political parties and the prominent roleof interest groups in the politics of federalism, as well asthe ways in which the federal system shapes, and is shaped by,policy debates. The U.S. Supreme Court continued its state-friendlydecision-making while Congress continued to preempt state authority,attach new conditions to federal aid, federalize criminal law,and nationalize power even while giving state and local governmentsmore administrative discretion. The year also illustrated thedeclining impact of federal aid on state-local revenues comparedto the increasing fiscal impact of the federal government'ssubstantive, monetary, and fiscal policies.     

Fiscal policy and reelection in Brazilian municipalities

This paper uses a new panel of more than 2,000 Brazilian municipalities over 13 years to analyze the influence of public expenditures on the probability of mayors’ reelection. We examine Brazilian municipal elections from 1988 to 2000 using a logit fixed-effects model. The results suggest that mayors who spend more during their terms of office increase the probability of their own reelection or of a successor of the same political party. In particular, higher capital spending over the years preceding elections and current expenditures in election years are beneficial to Brazilian incumbent mayors.     

The Future of Belgian Federalism as Seen Through the Eyes of the Social Partners: A Continuing Obstacle to Social Policy Decentralization?

In this article, we take a look at the discussion on the devolution of social policy. Despite the pressure of strong nationalist movements to decentralize socio-economic matters, the federal welfare state does not erode. In their study up to the early 2000s, Béland and Lecours explain this relative standstill by pointing to the institutionalization of neo-corporatistic organizations. These organizations, which are strongly involved in the management of the welfare state, have not split along language lines and prevent the decentralization of socio-economic policies in order to preserve their power. Based on empirical evidence, this paper shows that federal social partners are an important obstacle to social policy decentralization in Belgium while the regional social partners have differing opinions on the devolution debate.     

THE RURAL POOR

The rural poor made especially great strides in the 1970s; unlike earlier decades. Primarily as a result of federal income transfer programs, rural poverty has lost much of its harsh personal impact. Nonetheless, the residual hard core of the poor still exist, being too costly and too difficult to reach.     

Carving Out Policy Space for State Government in a Federation: The Role of Coordination

To be a player in federal negotiations, state governments needsophisticated internal coordination skills. The more intensethe federal agenda, the greater the demands made on state governmentmachinery to prepare comprehensive policy advice for those representingthe state. This study argues that moves in Australia to reformfederalism, by dealing with jurisdictional overlap, also produceda significant upgrading of state coordination capacity. A casestudy of one state, Queensland, in the Council of AustralianGovernments (COAG) experiment suggests how states carve outa space in negotiations by rethinking their internal governancearrangements.     

Devolutionary Federalism and Elazar's Typology: The Arkansas Response to Reagan's New Federalism

This article examines the relationship between the federal andstate governments with regard to the Reagan administration'sNew Federalism. The underlying concern centers on the financialrelationship among governments portrayed by Elazar's typologyof federal aid. The focus of this investigation is directedtoward the adjustments being made by the states to accommodatethe financial and administrative changes occurring on the nationallevel, as illustrated by the case of Arkansas. The analysiscenters on two questions: 1) Has the New Federalism initiativeachieved Reagan's goals of decentralizing governmental authorityback to the states? 2) Has a major redirection in the federalsystem been achieved by reducing the federal financial obligationin the intergovernmental system? The changes being made in thefederal system, as reflected by the adjustments occurring amongthe states, may signal an important realignment of federalism.     

New Federalism and Midwestern Cities: 1981-1985

President Ronald Reagan introduced a major new domestic initiativeduring his first term. The intent was to reduce the size andscope of the federal government and to increase the fiscal responsibilityof local governments. Mail questionnaires were sent to mayors,city managers, and finance officers in cities over 25,000 populationin Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin asking the respondentsto indicate their perception of the impact the Reagan programhad had on their cities in the previous year and their perceptionof its anticipated impact. Response rates were nearly 50 percentfor each survey. The respondents consistently overestimatedthe impact the Reagan program would have on their cities. Thefollowing analysis explores the relationship between perceivedeffects and city and respondent characteristics, such as size,partisan identification, and state. While the Reagan policieshave had a substantial impact on these cities, the impact isnot as negative as the respondents originally thought.     

单位化背景下的乡村关系——杨村调查

本文在简单回顾乡村关系制度变迁的基础上，考察了BJ市城乡结合部农村单位化现象，探讨了在单位化背景下乡村关系的表现形态及其意义。文章认为，改革开放以来，中国农村出现了两种倾向，一种是以个体经营为主的分散农户的原子化，而另一种倾向是以集体经营为主的村民单位化。在单位化乡村社区，村民的地缘意识、血缘意识在下降，而单位意识在提升和凸显。在城市化进程中，单位化了的村民担心自己被排斥在单位体制之外，而小心呵护着单位与村民之间的庇护与被庇护关系。本文的基本结论是，在单位化村庄中，乡村关系表现为单位体制下的上下级关系，具有强烈的行政色彩，村民自治的自治空间因此变得极为有限。     

The Fiscal Impact of Federal and State Aid to Large U.S. Cities: An Empirical Analysis of Budgetary Response

This article examines four types of aid programs to thirty-nine large U.S. cities federal revenue sharing, federal categorical aid, state general aid, and state categorical aid. The central finding is that there is significant variation in the magnitude of property tax reduction resulting from different types of state general aid. Property tax credits and exemptions are less effective approaches in reducing local property taxes than are state lump-sum aid or city use of piggybacked taxes Categorical state and federal aid mostly fund additional city spending and have small but important stimulative effects on the revenue side These results suggest that differences in the design of aid programs have important implications for their fiscal impact and their effectiveness in reducing property taxes.     

美国高等教育资助之“资助包”制度的运作及理念

促进教育的公平是美国联邦政府教育政策的核心,为达到此目的,联邦政府通过提供各种助学金和贷学金等方式,为美国大学生接受高等教育提供支持和保障。在具体操作上,联邦政府通过优化整合一系列的资助,形成一个包含几种方案的"资助包"配发给学生供其选择,从而达到资助的合理、公正与公平。