Terminating entitlements: Veterans' disability benefits in the Depression

A new term, entitlement, has appeared in the federal lexicon with increasing frequency during the last few years. Although in common use, its definition receives little attention in agency glossaries and its impact even less by those who legislate and administer them. This article first considers the pragmatic meaning of the term and then analyzes the difficulty of limiting such benefits once they have been authorized, by examining a short-lived attempt to reduce entitlement benefits for veterans during the era of the Depression. After documenting the social and political conditions which facilitated the entitlement reduction, attention is directed to the process through which political pressure was mobilized and focused in order to force a reversal of congressional action. This historical episode is then compared to an ill-fated, modern-day attempt by DHEW to limit free social service programs under the terms of the Social Security Act.     

Applying for entitlements: Employers and the targeted jobs tax credit

The Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC) is probably the most outstanding example of a generous entitlement program with a very low participation rate. Only about 10 percent of eligible youth hired are claimed as a tax credit by their employers. The causes of the low participation rates are analyzed by estimating a Poisson model of the number of TJTC-eligibles hired and certified during 1980, 1981, and 1982. Information costs, both fixed and variable, are found to be key barriers to TJTC participation. The cost-effectiveness of TJTC is low because of the stigma attached and the very high recruitment costs of hiring additional TJTC-eligibles. Because employers find it relatively cheap to certify after the fact eligible new employees who would have been hired anyway, this passive mode of participating in TJTC predominates.     

The narrative structure of policy analysis

This paper holds that the prior development of clear external criteria or principles is not always a useful avenue to the resolution of policy dilemmas, and that external criteria are sometimes as likely to emerge from proposed resolutions to policy issues as they are to govern those resolutions. In the absence of external criteria, stories meeting certain characteristics (truth, richness, consistency, congruency, and unity) can integrate necessary considerations, explain the development of current dilemmas, and point the way to resolutions. Not all policy analyses need to be in the narrative form-some analyses appropriately make tenseless arguments for particular principles. However, these principles invariably allow for many possible actions, and only a narrative can explain which particular course of action is desirable and why.     

The structure of the Banks set

We consider a new solution set for majority voting tournaments recently proposed by Banks (1985), and we examine its internal structure. In particular, we demonstrate that, in the absence of a Condorcet winner, there is always a cycle including precisely the points in the Banks set. We introduce the concept of “external stability” in order to facilitate analysis.     

The formation and structure of political belief systems

Do large numbers of people possess the ability to relate to political events in a systematic way? Is this ability shown in the formation of relatively coherent systems of beliefs about politics? To deal with these questions, this article develops and tests a model of the cognitive process by which individuals form and organize beliefs about politics. The model explains the formation of political belief systems and successfully predicts their structure. The model also provides an integrative focus for the literature on political rationality and “issue voting,” and on the relationship between political attitude and political behavior.     

The political opportunity structure of the Dutch peace movement

This article analyses the political opportunity structure of the Dutch political system with respect to new social movements in general, and the Dutch peace movement in particular. It is shown that the prevailing strategy of the Dutch political system is one of integration, and that the dominant party on the left (the Social Democratic Party) went through a process of transformation which opened it up to the new challengers at precisely the moment when the cycle of protest of the new social movements took off. The consequences of the high degree of openness of the Dutch system are then documented on the basis of a detailed analysis of the alliance structure of the Dutch peace movement.     

The effect of school district structure on education spending

This paper develops a theoretical and empirical model of local spending on education that analyzes the effect of institutional structure on education spending. It attempts to determine whether the theory of bureaucratic behavior is consistent with school district spending decisions by testing the hypothesis that the number of school districts in a county has a negative effect on per pupil expenditures. The results are not consistent with the theory, but indicate that a fragmented school district structure serves to increase expenditures.     

社会主义民主政治建设的内在结构

发展社会主义民主政治是党的执政能力的重要体现。民主政治建设是一个复杂的系统性工程,其中政治价值、政治制度和政治主体是三个根本性的维度。社会主义政治价值的确立和发展是与之相适应的民主政治体系得以确立的一个重要的前提条件;社会主义政治制度建设体现这一政治价值,并为这一政治价值的实现提供保障;社会主义政治价值和政治制度都应是为实现绝大多数政治主体的根本利益服务的,离开政治主体,政治价值的创新和政治制度的维系都是不可能的。推进社会主义民主政治建设,要注意这一系统内不同方面、不同层次诸多内容的统筹兼顾。     

The impact of government structure on local public expenditures

Though the relationship between local government structure and expenditure has received considerable attention, there is little consensus as to how the features of representative government affect local expenditure. An exception is city council size, which has consistently been found to be positively related to spending. Previous results rely on cross-sectional estimation which may be subject to omitted variable bias. This paper analyzes three components of municipal governments—the form of government, the size of the city council, and the election method of city councilors. Once fixed effects estimation is employed, the positive relationship between city council size and expenditure disappears.     

The Egyptian public sector: The control structure and efficiency considerations

The Egyptian public sector is labouring under a mass of legal controls which are proving an obstacle to its efficient running. A variety of government agencies, as well as the Board of Directors and the General Assembly, are burdening each company with regulations and demands for information. The little latitude thus allowed company managers in deciding upon such essential problems as finance, the size of the labour force and the price of output has had severe effects in decreasing the efficiency of each company and of the sector as a whole. Some dynamic company managers are trying to find a way around the system, but this is having negative efficiency and welfare effects. Examples of the negative effects of the mass of controls on problems such as finance and pricing are given in the article. Attempts at forming joint ventures, in order to escape the oppression of belonging to the state, have been made by some companies, but these have met with union opposition in some cases although the state seems to encourage the reduction in investment outlay which this policy might have. The article develops the analysis of the politico administrative framework of economic activity presented by Ayubi (1982).     

The extension method to calculate the error of industrial structure

The industrial structure shows the service efficiency of economic resources and the rationality of its development. It has been one of the important works for governments to calculate the error of industrial structure and adjust it. The dependent function is the core of extension set, which shows the extent of objective property, and explains the easiness to be variated quantitatively or qualitatively. By using the dependent degree, the error of industrial structure shows not only the magnitude but also the easiness to correct it, then the decision-makers can discriminate the difficulty of industrial adjustment and select the emphasis, and the orientation of adjustment may be clearer and the operation may be more maneuverable. The paper analyzes the orientation to adjust the industrial structure and proposes some simple suggestions by using the calculation results.     

中国民航产业市场绩效与市场结构浅析

本文定量分析我国主要航空公司市场份额的变化情况，计算出我国航空运输业市场2006-2008年的行业集中度、HHI指数，认为我国航空运输业是一个集中程度较高的寡头垄断型产业，同时分析民航业的市场行为，对我国民航业的绩效以及现状进行阐述。     

中国社会阶层结构变迁中存在的问题

建国以来，中国社会阶层结构变迁中产生过和仍存在诸多问题，对其清醒的认识，有助于提供政治制度改革视角，促进政治发展。     

Committee structure and political preferences: The case of Norwegian local government

Abstract.  In Norway, as in the other Nordic countries, sector-based policy making in local government is considered a problem as it is alleged to take place at the expense of a more integrated approach. Inspired by American rational choice theories on committee power, this article first sets out to establish whether the distributive rationale of the present committee system actually does promote sector-orientation among local politicians. This approach is challenged by alternative theories on committee power, focusing on the informational rationale in specialisation and the relevance of partisanship . The findings suggest that all the three theories explain in part committee member' preferences, but partisanship is most important for explaining both spending preferences and preferences on organisational forms. The article goes on to explore whether recent local council reforms, intended to replace the sector-oriented system with strong committees by a new de-specialised system with weaker committees, are likely to curb the effect of sector on committee members' preferences. The conclusion here is not easy to draw, but it is clear that sector-orientation is not encouraged by the reforms; in fact, the opposite seems to be the case. What local councils may have overlooked, however, is the influence of the informational rationale on committees and their members. The analyses are based on data obtained from a random sample of 119 of Norway's 435 municipalities.