Reapportionment and Redistribution: Consequences of Electoral Reform in Japan

Does reapportionment in a legislature affect policy outcomes? We examine this question from a comparative perspective by focusing on reapportionment associated with the electoral reform in Japan. First, we show that the reform of 1994 resulted in an unprecedented degree of equalization in legislative representation. Second, using municipal‐level data, we present evidence that municipalities in overrepresented districts received significantly more subsidies per capita, as compared to those in underrepresented districts, in both prereform and postreform years. Third, by examining the relationship between the change in the number of seats per capita and the change in the amount of subsidies per capita at the municipal level, we show that the equalization in voting strength resulted in an equalization of total transfers per person.     

Income Inequality and Demand for Redistribution: A Multilevel Analysis of European Public Opinion

This article employs multilevel modeling to assess the importance of income inequality on the demand for redistribution in a sample of 22 European countries. According to standard political economy models of redistribution – notably the Meltzer-Richard model – inequality and demand for redistribution should be positively linked. However, existing empirical research has disputed this claim. The main advantages of this article is that demand for redistribution is measured at the individual level, and that the relevant interaction between inequality and own income is considered. The main findings are that inequality is positively associated with demand for redistribution, and that the median income person is sensitive to the level of inequality. These findings are robust to the inclusion of a range of relevant control variables. The results are relevant in relation to the increase in inequalities in many European countries, and especially relevant to the current debate about the importance of directly observable differences in public preferences for social policy outcomes.     

Competency, Bureaucracy, and Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis

Competency can be considered a central theme in contemporary public service reforms. This article analyzes the development of competency frameworks for senior public servants at the national–government level in three countries (the U.S., the U.K., and Germany). By tracing the development of competency as an idea, it is shown that competency reforms drew selectively on management ideas, and by tracing the nature and time-patterns of competency reform developments in the three countries, it is shown that competency came onto the reform agenda at different times and by various routes rather than by a simple pattern of international policy transfer or business-to-government transfer. It is argued that the adoption of competency frameworks took place at critical junctures for preexisting public service bargains or agreements in each case and that they were shaped by the particularities of institutional context. However, although competency is arguably central to public service reform, it is far from clear that the competency frameworks in these three cases contributed to the declared aims of many contemporary public service reformers.