An examination of the factors affecting the formation of interest groups in OECD countries

Public Choice - Perhaps the best way to summarize the empirical results is to classify the hypotheses into three groups: those which can be readily accepted because they are supported in all tests;...     

Market factors affecting spatial heterogeneity among urban neighborhoods

Abstract

Institutional factors perpetuating segregation in urban neighborhoods— redlining by lenders and insurers, steering by brokers, and discrimination by owners—have attracted much attention recently. But natural market forces (demand, supply, and equilibrium price adjustment) can also create neighborhood heterogeneity in income, race, and housing characteristics.

This article establishes a framework to examine the market forces that create spatial clustering of households. On the demand side, differences in resident preferences and incomes lead to clustering; on the supply side, differences in cost functions, created by market specialization or location‐specific features, are important. Equilibrium price adjustment reinforces tendencies toward heterogeneity and leads to differential affordability patterns. Bid‐rent and other models of residential location, discrimination in urban housing markets, and the Tiebout model are discussed. A research agenda is proposed to measure neighborhood heterogeneity, isolate its influence on educational and employment opportunities, and evaluate policies for ameliorating its adverse effects.     

Institutional factors affecting biophysical outcomes in forest management

Although there is considerable interest in the impact of diverse policies affecting the biophysical outcomes in forests, gaining a substantial sample over time of forests under different institutional arrangements has been difficult. This article analyzes data from 46 forests located in six countries over time. In forests where policies have been adopted for conservation, active monitoring and sanctioning by locals is associated with positive forest conditions. Forests that allow user group harvesting, perhaps counterintuitively, are also shown to be associated with positive forest conditions. However, conditions in community‐managed forests are not statistically different from government‐ or privately managed forests. This implies that local communities can play an important role in achieving positive forest conditions but that full management responsibilities need not be given to achieve these results. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

An analysis of the impact of registration factors on turnout in 1992

In 1993 Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The law contained provisions for uniform mail registration, changes in purge procedures, and changes in some forms of agency registration including motor-voter registration. Using the 1992 National Election Study, I estimate the impact of several of these changes in addition to same-day registration. Same-day registration and motor-voter registration both show strong, positive relationships to turnout, while the results are mixed for mail registration and changed purge procedures.     

公共政策制定中影响政策认同的因素分析

政策认同是指一项政策在被政策主体制定出来之后获得目标群体接受的情况,在政策的制定和执行当中发挥了十分重要的作用,目标群体的政治社会化程度、目标群体的思想认识水平、对政策的合理性的看法、政策对目标群体利益的影响、政府权威性的情况以及社会环境的变化等,都可以对政策认同造成影响。     

Temporary legislation,better regulation,and experimentalist governance: An empirical study

This article presents the findings of an extensive multi‐method empirical study that explored the relationship between temporary legislation, better regulation, and experimentalist governance. Temporary (or “sunset”) legislation – statutory provisions enacted for a limited time and set to expire unless their validity is extended – is often hailed as a key tool for promoting experimental and better regulation. Despite the importance of temporary legislation and the burgeoning theoretical scholarship on the subject, there is still a dearth of empirical studies about how temporary legislation is used in practice. The lack of empirical evidence creates a lacuna in at least three areas of theoretical scholarship, concerning temporary legislation, better regulation, and experimentalist governance. This paper is a first step to fill this gap.     

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.     

略论规范性文件的监督立法

规章以下的规范性文件在行政管理中起着举足轻重的作用 ,但是由于没有完整统一的立法对其进行规范和制约 ,因而在实践中产生很多问题 ,对其进行监督立法已是当务之急。本文根据现阶段规章以下规范性文件存在的问题 ,分析了对其进行立法规制的原因 ,探讨了监督立法的思路 ,设计了立法内容 ,并对目前不宜立法的内容进行了初步分析。     

Technology assessment and policy analysis

Technology assessment involves questions that are in principle beyond the capacity of science to answer. Because available data and models are ambiguous, ability to evaluate the strength and fit of evidence and the adequacy of arguments assumes paramount importance. In this sense, analysis becomes a sort of generalized jurisprudence. Moreover, the impact of a technology depends on the institutional framework within which it is used. Hence, the analyst must also pay attention to institutional constraints and to peoples' attempts to manipulate them.     

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.     

The political economy of sugar legislation

The findings of this paper are a rather straightforward account of the political economy of senatorial voting on the sugar program. In the spirit of Stigler and Peltzman's accounts of interest group activity, voting on sugar is indeed related to the concentration of economic interests in the Senators' states. States with high concentrations of sugar growers and processing tend to vote for the program, those with high concentration of users tend to vote against it. The emergence of corn syrup as a sugar substitute and its subsequent interests in the program further supports this perspective. These concentrated interests are associated with conditions ripe for overcoming the collective action problem and, we infer, use their organizations to influence senatorial behavior. The political variables suggest countervailing forces which can be interpreted, at least in part, as further examples of organized (here, politically organized) influences on the interests of Senators. Thus, while the model is one of opposing interests, those of producers and users tend to influence different Senators. The major group-interest trade-off, then, is between the pull of organized interests in the constituency with that of party organization at the national (or national institutional level), at least for those for whom the pull is in opposite directions.It is clear, then, that variables representing (concentrated) consumer interests as well as variables representing grower and processor interests as well as variables representing grower and processor interests are significant in determining voting patterns on sugar legislation in the Senate. This model, therefore, is not one in which one-sided organizational interests operate politically uncontested. That, even so, consumer interests are not powerful enough to prevent sugar programs from passing is clear at one level, due to the existence of the program over most of this period. The existing level of the transfers from consumers to producers and of deadweight losses must be reflective of the magnitude of their respective free rider problems. Yet voting on the program to renew or alter those benefits at any level clearly reflects these interests and their interplay.     

Negotiation and accommodation in expert medical risk assessment and regulation: An institutional analysis of the benoxaprofen case

Taking an institutional approach, this article examines the assessment and regulation of the risks of onycholysis and photosensitivity associated with the medical drug benoxaprofen in the United Kingdom and the United States. The process by which technical experts in circles of industry and government negotiate risk assessment is here analyzed with specific reference to the role of institutional discretion and the political penetration of scientific knowledge. A number of policy changes are recommended as means of improving the regulation of medical risk.     

Stimulus differentiation versus stimulus complexity as factors affecting turnout in two-candidate and multicandidate races

Rational incentives and psychological involvement are hypothetical alternative motives for voting participation. The relationship of these alternative motives to turnout is explored in the presidential elections held between 1952 and 1976. Rational incentives as such are not more productive of turnout than other stimuli to psychological involvement in the electoral situation.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Turnout, San Diego, California, May 16–19, 1979.     

合法性视野中的政治文明

人类政冶文明的发展呈现出由低级到高级的排列顺序 ,当今世界的现代政治文明由晚期资本主义政治文明和社会主义政治文明共同构成 ,与晚期资本主义政治文明相比 ,以中国为代表的社会主义政治文明具有突出的开放性、广泛性、适应性和先进性。这种政治文明主宰着现代政治文明的发展趋向 ,并随时准备调适自身的发展 ,从而向更高一级政治文明平台跃迁。因此 ,不断发展与完善的社会主义政治文明能够从根本上满足社会民众对政权本身的合法性诉求