Yellow versus Orange—Never a Fair Fight: An Assessment of Two Contributions to Liberal Politics Separated by Three-quarters of a Century

British Liberals have a thing about colours, especially yellow and orange. Two publications, separated by over seventy years and known by the colour of their respective covers, mark special periods in the history of British liberalism, times when liberals have appeared to be on the comeback trail. The article sets out to make the case that the authors of The Orange Book (published in 2004) have a great deal to learn from their liberal predecessors. Yellow Book liberalism was more radical, better informed and better matched to the most pressing political concerns of its day. It was also more open to arguments and ideas from those who had no particular allegiance to either the Liberal Party or to its political philosophy. Liberals, it is argued, need to be far more concerned about refashioning and revitalising liberalism than about reclaiming or reasserting their exclusive ownership of the fundament of liberal thought.     

Tanzania's expert-led planning: An assessment

In common with most other African nations, a combination of expanding aid inflows and critical manpower shortages in Tanzania has enabled foreign planning experts to exert a growing strategic influence over the design of regional and rural development. Despite certain undoubted benefits attributable to the work of these experts, this broader assessment concludes that their contribution is often ineffective in the shorter term, and frequently damaging and distorting in the longer term. Widespread procedural problems ranging from time and logistic constraints and relative ignorance, together with the difficulties arising from the role of outside experts vis-à-vis the local planning bureaucracy, including elitism, poor communication and excessive demands, partly explain this. More fundamental distortions are the result of their tendency to displace rather than supplement local capacity, the perpetuation of dependence mentality, their removal from the implementation process and unfortunate demonstration effects consequent upon their privileged working and personal lifestyles. The negative outcome of Tanzania's continuing expertise dependence is discussed, and doubt is cast on the transferability of planning expertise from rich to poor nations.     

RegData 2.2: a panel dataset on US federal regulations

Public Choice - How much regulation exists? Can short- and long-term growth trends in regulation be identified? Which agencies produce the most regulation? Are some sectors of the economy more...     

An explanation of the continuing federal government mandate of single-member congressional districts

A formal rational expectation model is developed to explain why congressional single-member districts (SMD’s) were mandated in 1842 and why that mandate has repeatedly been re-affirmed. The tendency of voters to moderate the dominant party in the federal government combined with the single-party sweep effect of multi-member districts (MMD’s) creates the incentives for the strongest party to support a SMD mandate. This model performs empirically much better than alternative theories. The model’s prediction that the current SMD mandate is permanent is an example of how an institutional change can endure even if it no longer reflects voter preferences.     

Never a dull moment: Pim Fortuyn and the Dutch parliamentary election of 2002

The 2002 parliamentary election in the Netherlands will always be associated with the name of Pim Fortuyn. His murder only nine days before the election was the first political assassination in the Netherlands in more than 300 years. The sudden success of the new party he had founded, coupled with the major losses for the Labour and Liberal parties, made this an historic election. This article attempts to understand the motivations of the voters at this election, in particular the voters of the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). It is first shown that the conventional wisdom, which assumes voting based on religion and social class, and voting along ideological issue lines, has lost its ability to explain voter behaviour in the Netherlands. An explanation based on retrospective economic voting is also rejected. The success of the LPF is accounted for by the popularity of Fortuyn and his appeal among those who had cynical attitudes towards government or who were dissatisfied with the performance of the incumbent government. The popularity of Fortuyn is shown to have been related to political issues, in particular those relating to asylum seekers and the integration of foreigners in the country.     

Provoking insurgency in a federal state: theory and application to India

This paper presents a model of provocation in a federation, wherein the state government triggers an insurgency with a view toward acquiring control of some economic assets with the help of the central government. Some econometric support for this model is found using data on the Naxalite conflict in eight states of India. The tests performed control for endogeneity of the state government’s police force interventions. They suggest that the latter are meant to trigger the violent activity of the insurgents, so as to lure the central government into intervening and helping clear the ground for mining purposes in the lands of tribal people.     

Some political aspects of taxation and distribution in federal governments: An application of the theory of the core

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to study questions about taxation and revenue sharing n federal systems. It is particularly concerned with the effect of the heterogeneity of regions on the pattern of taxation and distribution and on the capacity of the central government to retain revenue for its own purposes. It is argued that one useful way to study such questions is to treat federations as coalitions that try to maximise their returns from taxations schemes. This approach is developed using the theory of the core from cooperative game theory. Emphasis is placed on the political constraints on the capacity of the central government.     

Beneficiaries of federal housing programs: A data reconnaissance

Abstract

This article reports on a reconnaissance of information systems containing data on the beneficiaries of direct and indirect federal housing expenditures. It covers data in the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, and the Treasury; the Resolution Trust Corporation; financial regulatory agencies; and secondary mortgage market actors.

Data varied widely across agencies in availability, accessibility, and quality. Data are more systematically collected for low‐income beneficiaries of housing programs than for the more affluent beneficiaries of indirect housing expenditures. The systems need improvements in data quality and coverage and database format, though they have improved recently. Many research topics can be explored with new and underused data systems: the characteristics of beneficiaries of rural housing programs, urban rental housing programs, low‐income homeownership programs, and mortgage guarantee and insurance programs. But the lack of information on the systems themselves makes data difficult to locate and access.     

Parties,candidates and issues in the German federal election of 1980: An application of normal vote analysis

An application of the concept of a normal vote to the West German political system is attempted. Normal vote parameters for West Germany are calculated and the 1980 Federal election is analysed by means of this newly established baseline. Furthermore, a modified version of the well-known Boyd formula for the computation of short-term effects will be proposed since under some circumstances Boyd's S may be seriously inflated. Finally, the formula will be extended to multivariate relationships. Applying the resulting partial short-term coefficient shows quite clearly that the outcome of the 1980 German Federal election was more strongly influenced by candidate evaluations than by issue orientations.     

The checks and balances of party federalism: German federal government in a divided legislature

Abstract In this study, we assess the potential for policy change of the German government of Helmut Kohl after unification combining party positions with formal bicameral settings in a spatial model of legislative action. We distinguish between two policy areas and two types of legislation, mandatory and non–mandatory legislation imposing either a symmetric or asymmetric power distribution between both German chambers. In order to identify German legislators' party positions in different policy areas, we use data from ECPR Party Manifesto research covering the period from German unification in 1990 to the end of the government of Helmut Kohl in 1998. We find that the federal government of Helmut Kohl had a policy leadership position until April 1991 with no procedural differences, but the gridlock danger for governmental proposals was higher on the societal than the economic dimension. Afterwards, the government's potential for policy change was considerably determined by the type of legislation, independently from the policy dimension. At the end of the Kohl era, the governmental policy leadership position was limited to policies that left even the opposition majority of German states better off. The procedural settings mattered greatly on the economic dimension, and the danger of gridlock on societal policy was smaller only for non–mandatory legislation.     

The checks and balances of party federalism: German federal government in a divided legislature

In this study, we assess the potential for policy change of the German government of Helmut Kohl after unification combining party positions with formal bicameral settings in a spatial model of legislative action. We distinguish between two policy areas and two types of legislation, mandatory and non–mandatory legislation imposing either a symmetric or asymmetric power distribution between both German chambers. In order to identify German legislators' party positions in different policy areas, we use data from ECPR Party Manifesto research covering the period from German unification in 1990 to the end of the government of Helmut Kohl in 1998. We find that the federal government of Helmut Kohl had a policy leadership position until April 1991 with no procedural differences, but the gridlock danger for governmental proposals was higher on the societal than the economic dimension. Afterwards, the government's potential for policy change was considerably determined by the type of legislation, independently from the policy dimension. At the end of the Kohl era, the governmental policy leadership position was limited to policies that left even the opposition majority of German states better off. The procedural settings mattered greatly on the economic dimension, and the danger of gridlock on societal policy was smaller only for non–mandatory legislation.     

An assessment of voting system simulations

In applying the results of the social choice theory to voting procedures, the question arises as to how often the various anomalies can be expected to occur. Computer simulations and probability modelling are common approaches to address this problem. This article is an attempt to find out the robustness of the so-called impartial culture assumption. For this purpose first a major perturbation of the impartial culture assumption is considered and, thereafter, we focus on a few minor modifications of the assumption.     

Privatizing housing: An assessment of U.K. experience

Abstract

This article describes the way in which the government of the United Kingdom has implemented the policy of privatization with respect to housing since coming to power in 1979. It details the main elements and diversity of the policy; it evaluates the results in terms of tenure change, allocation of housing services, prices, and investment; it examines the emerging problems of affordability and access; and it suggests that there have been considerable benefits from both privatization and deregulation in terms of greater efficiency and responsiveness.

However, it also stresses the extent to which government involvement in housing, although undoubtedly shifting away from direct provision, has reemerged through both income‐related and supply subsidies to other landlords. The article concludes that in the United Kingdom, unlike the United States, the provision of adequate housing for all is still regarded as a government responsibility.