Territorial Finance and the Future of Barnett

This article traces the changing funding relationships between Scotland and the UK government. Beginning from the Barnett Formula, it examines how the changing support within Scotland for greater political autonomy from Westminster has influenced the mechanisms that have determined Scotland's fiscal structure. Increasing support for the SNP, and then for the Yes campaign in the September 2014 independence referendum, has led to a mixture of new powers being granted to the Scottish Parliament. The Scotland Act 2012 extends the Scottish government's control over income tax and some other small taxes. Although independence was rejected by the Scottish people in September 2014, the ‘Vow’ made by the Westminster parties immediately before the vote is leading to far‐reaching changes in the UK's fiscal structure. This will cause a very substantial change in intergovernmental relations within the UK, which the Barnett Formula may not survive.     

Do Voters’ Coalition Preferences Affect Government Formation?

Studies on coalition formation assume that political parties have two major goals: they aim to maximise office and policy payoffs. This paper shows that decision-making in the government formation game is also determined by the voters’ coalition preferences. Since the coalition formation process is not a one-shot game, parties have to take the coalition preferences of the electorate into account when they evaluate the utility of potential coalitions. If parties fail to comply with the coalition preferences of voters, they are likely to be penalised in future elections. The argument is tested by an analysis of government formation in the 16 German states between 1990 and 2009. The results support the argument: the formation of coalitions – at least in the German states – is not only determined by office- and policy-seeking behaviour of political parties, but also by the preferences of voters regarding their preferred outcome of the coalition game.     

National security and surveillance: the public impact of the GCSB Amendment Bill and the Snowden revelations in New Zealand

Abstract

In New Zealand, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extraordinary scope of the National Security Agency’s surveillance capabilities and the facilitating role of the Five Eyes alliance converged with increasing public concerns about the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment and Related Legislation Bill in 2013. This generated an intense and sustained debate in the country about surveillance policy. It was a debate in which Prime Minister John Key has featured prominently. While apparently unable to clearly refute Snowden’s claims concerning mass surveillance in New Zealand, Key’s vigorous public interventions helped counter the short-term political and diplomatic fallout. However, the long-term impact of public concerns over the surveillance policies of the Key government may be much harder to predict in what is an intimate democracy, and the prospect of substantial political blowback cannot be ruled out.     

The impossibility of a desirable minimal state

The amount of control the general public exerts over government depends on accepted government procedures as determined by the political constitution and prevailing public opinion. It has not been the purpose of this paper to suggest ways of providing the public more control over government but to consider some implications of changes in that control. It is obvious that it would be desirable for the general public to have more control over political decisions; i.e., for the political process to be more responsive to the broad based benefits and costs that result from government action. The question is; what does more public control over government imply about the desirable size of government? For the natural rights advocate the answer is nothing. Government should be only large enough to protect citizens against force and fraud. The purpose of the present paper, however, has been to argue that the desirable size of government can be either positively or negatively related to the control exerted over it by the public. If this argument is accepted, it casts doubt on the possibility of a desirable minimum state.When there is little public control over government, organized special interest will have disproportionate political influence and will use this influence to expand government into activities that are detrimental to the public interest. Obviously, given this situation, it will be desirable to use additional public control over government to reduce the size of government by restricting its activities. But just as obvious is that this situation is one in which control over government is inadequate to the task of achieving a minimal state.     

锦标赛体制、晋升博弈与地方剧场政治

政治锦标赛体制是中国政府官员的一种压力性激励范式与不容选择的政治生态。行政发包并进行量化考核、绩效排名与择优提拔,是政治锦标赛体制的主要表现形式。但实地调查表明,基层政府官员晋升往往是前台与台后多重原因作用的结果。派系关系、政治背景、社会网络等后台因素往往能左右基层干部的晋升。文章以一个县级市的乡镇干部为观察对象,检验了官员激励分析范式———锦标赛体制在基层地方官员晋升竞争中的解释力,重点对地方官员晋升博弈研究提供一个初步的描述类型学,认为推选博弈、排名博弈与借势博弈是地方官员晋升博弈的三种基本类型。本文初步提出了一个地方官员晋升决定因素的剧场分析模型,并指出,在政治锦标赛体制下,民主集中制在未来地方官员的选拔、任用中的积极作用将日益凸显。     

Complex management contracts: the case of customs administration in Mozambique

The literature suggests that management contracts for public services work best when payment to the contractor is performance‐related and when there is minimal involvement by government in daily management. However, as this case study of Mozambique illustrates, neither of these principles can be straightforwardly applied in management contracts for organizational reform in a developing country. First, establishing successful performance‐related payment is difficult in a contract with multiple objectives and poor information. The value in setting up performance‐related payment appears to be more in focusing the objectives of the contract than in improving the contractor's performance. Second, a virtually ‘hands on’ role is required for the government agency supervising the contract, in the numerous political, legal and staffing issues which arise. The capacity of the agency to carry out this function is critical to the performance of the contract. It faces the challenge of completing the reorganization, sustaining initial achievements and running the new system economically. There are grounds for guarded optimism. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Weapon of Mass Distraction: New Zealand’s National Security System

The New Zealand’s National Security System (NSS) document is presented as the central framework for New Zealand’s whole of government approach to national security and crisis management. This article asserts that the NSS fails to be the central framework it purports to be and proposes the true objective of the NSS is to establish clear lines of authority within New Zealand’s national security architecture. The New Zealand government’s exercise of political authority within the security sector aligns with Weber’s theory of “charisma of office” for public acceptance. Using the legitimacy of charisma of office, the New Zealand prime minister can exert significant influence over New Zealand’s national security discourse and blur the lines of it liberal democratic institutions.     

United We Stand? Governance Challenges for the United Kingdom Coalition

Coalition government is an unfamiliar experience for Whitehall and Westminster. All actors are still adapting to the rules of this new political game. A number of governance challenges confront the United Kingdom's Conservative‐Liberal Democrat coalition. It must strike a balance between the visions of two distinct parties and blend these into a coherent strategy for government. Like any government, it will expect to resolve most differences internally and then to show a united face to the world. Effective consultation and dispute‐resolution processes within the executive will therefore be at a premium. But the separate political identities of the two parties also need to be preserved, and sufficient resources must be provided to each side within the government to enable this to happen. This article assesses the response of the coalition to these challenges in its first six months and draws lessons from relevant international experience.     

Government 'strength' and budget deficits in advanced democracies

Abstract. Roubini and Sachs provided the first systematic test of the idea that political structure the size, composition, diversity, and/or stability of a governing cabinet - is related to budget deficits. In this paper, we take issue with several of Roubini and Sachs' choices concerning data and operationalization, and argue that their approach cannot offer clear conclusions about the relationship between national political structure and budget deficits. We test the 'strength of government' hypothesis using central government finance data on 16 countries, 1959–1990. We measure deficits in a way that maximizes comparability across countries but avoids the potential problems of standardizing by GDP. We examine carefully the definition and measurement of 'strength of government', in light of recent theoretical and empirical work in comparative politics. We perform pooled time-series regression analysis of deficit change in 16 OECD countries for the period 1959–1990. We argue that while structural differences between governments may have little impact on deficits during good economic times, they may become especially noticeable and influential during periods when governments struggle to cope with severe economic problems.     

国际贸易谈判的政治经济分析:一个初步的框架(6)

加入WTO将给中国的改革开放进程带来深远的影响,也将会对中国的经济管理体制改革和政府管理体制改革带来巨大的挑战。对国际政治经济学有关贸易与国内政治的研究、国际贸易理论关于贸易政策之形成的研究、国际关系理论和博弈论关于国际谈判的研究进行了评述,并从国际政治经济学的角度提出分析国际贸易谈判的一个初步的分析框架。通过强调国内政治、策略行为和国际规则的重要性,并从公民政策偏好的形成、利益集团集体行动、两国贸易谈判之间的双层博弈、国际规则的制约因素等多方面讨论了如何分析贸易谈判。     

Shadow boxing in family politics: reply to Martin Durham

In his writings on government foucault commonly uses term ‘political’ as if it were equivalant to a certain understanding of governmental. Thus, in the title of his cotribution to the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, ‘Omnes et Singulatim, towards a criticism of ”political reason“, the object of Foucault's usage of the term ‘political’ to refer to a kind of govrmetal reason. Second, I argue that the practice of what Foucault understands by political reason in fact creates coditions for the emergence of a politics and a political reason of a very different kind. The appearance of this latter political reason poses a range of problems which must be addressed by any political (in the sense of governmental) reason but which play little part in Foucault's discussion. It Suggests, in particular, that Foucault's account of the liberal rationality of government is seriously incomplete. Third, I consider the grounds for Foucault's counterposition of political reason to liberation, noting that his critique of political reason as a principle of subjectivation raises a more general issue, which he describes as ‘the politics of ourselves’ (Foucault 1993: 223). I conclude by noting that Foucault's discussions of political reason lead in two very different directions: towards a powerful analysis of the practices and rationalities of government in the modern West or towards a radical critique of most forms of government, including the modern government of oneself.     

Trends in the Study of Public Administration: Empirical and Qualitative Observations from Public Administration Review, 2000–2009

What are the apparent research and methodological trends in PAR’s content over the past decade? From the perspective of the journal’s 70‐year history, with its aim to “mesh” practitioner and academic knowledge creation, topical coverage since 2000 reflects striking continuity, emphasizing many of the “bread and butter” administrative issues such as planning, human resources, budgeting, and public management. A marked increase in coverage is apparent in the application of more sophisticated quantitative statistical methodology, as well as in the number of female authors, while the number of practitioner authors declined sharply. Throughout the first turbulent decade of the twenty‐first century, three intellectual themes stood out: evaluations of New Public Management, connections between practitioners and academicians, and responsiveness to immediate social, economic, and political challenges. Given the constant demand for usable knowledge, scholars seem to have marginalized attention to the historical context and epistemological foundations of the study. The central challenge in the years ahead will be to effectively use research methods in response to the big questions of government and society that defy measurement. Since many [empiricists], especially the younger, do not know very much about epistemology, they tend to be quite dogmatic about the one set of canons that dominate them. —C. Wright Mills, 1959     

Deliberation,Citizen Science and Covid-19

Rather than aiming to produce more ‘rational’ or more ‘other-regarding’ citizen judgements (the outcome of which is uncertain), deliberative democratic exercises should be re-designed to maximise democratic participation. To do this, they must involve citizens and experts, a novel arrangement that will benefit both cohorts. For the former, a more inclusive form of deliberation will offer an opportunity to contribute to political discussion and be listened to by people with political or policy-based authority. For the latter, it will provide a venue through which expertise can be brought to bear on democratic decision making without risk of scapegoating or politicisation. More broadly, deliberation that prioritises dialogue (over, say, opinion change) affirms the principle that political decisions reflect value judgements rather than technically ‘right’ or technically ‘wrong’ answers—judgements that are legitimate if arrived at through discussion involving the people due to be affected by the resultant policy. This article sets out the advantages of this form of deliberation—which bears some similarity to certain types of citizen science—in the context of the UK government’s responses to Covid-19; both the confused decision making evident to date, and the forthcoming re-opening phases that will prioritise or advantage some constituencies over others.     

Antigovernment Networks in Civil Conflicts: How Network Structures Affect Conflictual Behavior

In this article, we combine a game‐theoretic treatment of public goods provision in networks with a statistical network analysis to show that fragmented opposition network structures lead to an increase in conflictual actions. Current literature concentrates on the dyadic relationship between the government and potential challengers. We shift the focus toward exploring how network structures affect the strategic behavior of political actors. We derive and examine testable hypotheses and use latent space analysis to infer actors’ positions vis‐à‐vis each other in the network. Network structure is examined and used to test our hypotheses with data on conflicts in Thailand from 2001 to 2010. We show the influential role of network structure in generating conflictual behavior.     

Modelling Secessions from Municipalities

Under what conditions are quests for secession successful? Current debates in Scandinavia on the appropriate size of municipalities are taken as a point of departure for answering this question. I set out to analyse what processes are triggered through mergers of small political units into larger ones. The Swedish experience is analysed as an empirical illustration. A game‐theoretical model is constructed, in which I highlight questions of ideology, power and strategy when analysing secessions. I conclude that mergers, such as those in Sweden between 1952 and 1974, create a built‐in conflict in the larger unit. Certain geographical parts of the political unit get the worst of it in a conflict concerning resources, which will create tension based on geographical location. If these conflicts are not solved, questions of secession will inevitably be raised. In the Swedish context the law is phrased in such a way that the government decides whether or not secession will be allowed. The game‐theoretical model therefore suggests that campaigns for secession will be successful if the seceding part (SP) (a) meets the required physical criteria (which concern size and financial predisposition), (b) the quest for secession enjoys strong public support and (c) the party in government takes a benevolent view of municipality separations.     

When politics prevails: Parties,elections and loyalty in the European Parliament

In many political systems, legislators serve multiple principals who compete for their loyalty in legislative votes. This article explores the political conditions under which legislators choose between their competing principals in multilevel systems, with a focus on how election proximity shapes legislative behaviour across democratic arenas. Empirically, the effect of electoral cycles on national party delegations’ ‘collective disloyalty’ with their political groups in the European Parliament (EP) is analysed. It is argued that election proximity changes the time horizons, political incentives and risk perceptions of both delegations and their principals, ‘punctuating’ cost‐benefit calculations around defection as well as around controlling, sanctioning and accommodating. Under the shadow of elections, national delegations’ collective disloyalty with their transnational groups should, therefore, increase. Using a new dataset with roll‐call votes cast under legislative codecision by delegations between July 1999 and July 2014, the article shows that the proximity of planned national and European elections drives up disloyalty in the EP, particularly by delegations from member states with party‐centred electoral rules. The results also support a ‘politicisation’ effect: overall, delegations become more loyal over time, but the impact of election proximity as a driver of disloyalty is strongest in the latest parliament analysed (i.e., 2009–2014). Furthermore, disloyalty is more likely in votes on contested and salient legislation, and under conditions of Euroscepticism; by contrast, disloyalty is less likely in votes on codification files, when a delegation holds the rapporteurship and when the national party participates in government. The analysis sheds new light on electoral politics as a determinant of legislative choice under competing principals, and on the conditions under which politics ‘travels’ across democratic arenas in the European Union's multilevel polity.     

Political business cycles and macroeconomic credibility: a survey

There is clear evidence that government popularity and election performance is affected, in part, by economic performance, suggesting that governments may manipulate the economy to political advantage. Simple models incorporating adaptive expectations which allowed the government to exploit this relationship were developed in the 1970s, but fell out of fashion with the advent of new-classical economics. However, modern theories of the political business cycle, which are closely related to the macroeconomic policy game literature, assume rational expectations, and lead to forms of political business cycle, driven by the existence of uncertainty of one type or another. The international evidence suggests that some aspects of the theories apply, although definitive conclusions are – as we might expect – hard to come by.     

Two ways of realizing justice and democracy: linking Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom

In The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen advocates democracy defined as ‘public reasoning’ and ‘government by discussion’. Sen’s discursive approach facilitates the exercise of political freedom and development of one’s public capacities, and enables victims of injustice to give public voice and discussion to specific injustice. It also responds to the contested nature of ‘universal human rights’ and the need to clarify and defend them via public reasoning. However, Sen’s approach leaves intact the hegemony of a liberal form of democracy that prioritizes political and civil rights over social and economic rights and thus precludes alternative democratic forms, most notably a form of cooperative democracy that politicizes social and economic activities in the pursuit of local and global justice. Sen’s ‘government by discussion’ must combine with cooperative democracy and a global ethos emphasizing cooperation (and action) over privatization in order to address our most serious global injustices, including exploitation, inequality and poverty in the Global South, accelerating destruction of the environment and biodiversity, and global warming and climate change.     

转型社会的政治决策：期权博弈与公平均衡解释

在转型社会中,政治决策是拥有主要政治权力的行政主体,与反映主要群体利益的社会主体之间的博弈均衡。现实的各种政治后果可以从考虑期权价值的延迟均衡和抢先均衡来说明,也可以表现为考虑心理动机的“公平均衡”。在如同海峡两岸博弈这样复杂的均衡组合中,作者推论存在可以称为“虚妄公平”的均衡概念。转型社会的各个主体因此必须寻求“真实公平”策略选择,才能实现真正公平的政治决策目标。