What Should We Do? Public Attitudes about How Local Government Officials Should Confront Fiscal Stress

Despite strong scholarly interest in the topic of fiscal stress, little attention has been paid to understanding how the general public thinks local governments should respond to situations where declining revenues endanger service levels. This study reports findings from a survey of 660 residents undertaken between November 2006 and January 2007 in the US state of Michigan to examine their support for eight potential strategies to cope with fiscal stress in five different local government services. We find that the public has a surprisingly nuanced perspective about these strategies and on their use for different services. Our findings may provide local policymakers with some insights about how to respond to fiscal stress.     

Islam in Tanzania and Kenya: Ally or Threat in the War on Terror?

This article explores the historical emergence of Islam in East Africa, details the political background of Tanzania and Kenya, the role of Islam in each country, and U.S. foreign policy in the region. The recent U.S. strategy of intelligence-sharing with Kenya, training and military support to both Kenya and Tanzania, and air strikes in Somalia are assessed. In addition to the current military emphasis, the United States should incorporate more “soft” options, such as the promotion of democratic governance in these nascent democracies through political assistance in constitutional, judicial, and law-enforcement reform, as well as encouraging greater inclusion of Muslims in the political system.     

Are Daughters Always the Losers in the Chore War? Evidence Using Household Data from Vietnam

Abstract

We examine the gender gap in housework in Vietnam among siblings aged less than 18 years. We show daughters undertake 5.25 minutes more unpaid housework per day than sons. However, the gender gap in housework is negligible for children aged less than 14 years. A decline in the gender gap at 15 years of age suggests parents eventually begin to consider the education of their daughters. Before then, however, the gender gap increases with age and can be even greater if daughters also engage in paid work.     

How dependent are the rural poor on the employment guarantee scheme in India?

An analysis of the ICRISAT data for two villages in the Indian state of Maharashtra points to mistargeting of the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS). There was a marked deterioration in it over the period 1979–89, reflected in not just a larger concentration of the more affluent among the EGS participants but also their much larger gains from participating in this scheme. Nevertheless, a large subset of the chronically poor depended heavily on EGS as an additional source of income, with significant welfare gains, during 1979–84. But a large subset — especially of relatively low income participants ‐ also withdrew from EGS when overall economic conditions improved. Besides, EGS earnings varied consistently with economic conditions. Although the present analysis raises some concerns about the mistargeting of EGS and, in this context, about the design and implementation of this scheme, the presumption that such public support makes the poor perpetually dependent on it seems somewhat exaggerated, if not mistaken.     

How Did the Automotive Component Suppliers Cope with the Economic Crisis in Hungary?

This article studies the reaction of automotive component suppliers in Hungary to the 2008–2009 economic crisis. We find that the global suppliers viewed the crisis as an opportunity to reinforce the competitiveness of their Hungarian affiliates by engaging in product and process upgrading, and upgrading through research and development. The regional suppliers combined defensive strategies aimed at reducing costs with offensive measures in the form of product upgrading, production upgrading and expansion into new markets. The local suppliers reduced costs and reduced their workforce, but also reacted offensively by expanding into new markets, upgrading their activity and collaborating with other local suppliers.     

War Minus the Shooting? The politics of sport in Lebanon as a unique case in comparative politics

In the literature on sport and politics the potential of sport to unite fragmented societies is emphasised. Lebanon is a counter example. Sport does not unite but further divides people. Confessionalism, the political system of this ‘mosaic state’ with 18 state-registered sects, produces conditions that only allow for competition within sects. The sport sector, especially the professional men's teams in football and basketball, serves as a tool for competition within and between sects. In a middle-income country with only four million inhabitants, club revenues from ticketing and broadcasting are almost non-existent. Therefore professional sport teams are completely dependent on sponsors. Within a patron–client relationship system, political leaders finance the clubs but expect complete loyalty from the teams, implemented through such practices as choosing their party colours as team colours or posting large pictures of themselves in the arenas. While national sports teams often have the potential to unite societies, in Lebanon this can only happen if first steps from a sectarian to a secular state are taken. Then a common national identity (including general support for the national sports teams) might gradually develop and later transform the confessional subsystems such as the media, schools and sports clubs towards non-sectarian entities.     

When and How Do Militias Disband? Global Patterns of Pro-Government Militia Demobilization in Civil Wars

The research to date on pro-governm`ent militias demonstrates that numerous pro-regime militia groups were actively deployed in civil wars over the last half a century. As hundreds of militia groups emerged amid civil warfare, hundreds more were disbanded, integrated into regular military, or transformed into political forces. This study seeks to improve our understanding of global patterns of militia demobilization. In contrast to the growing body of literature that explores the emergence of militias or examines their relationship with the state, studies on the demise of pro-government militias are notable by their absence. Statistical analysis of 220 pro-government militias involved in seventy-five civil wars from 1981 to 2011, based on a recent database of pro-government militias, demonstrates that the disappearance of militias has little to do with the termination of armed conflict. This study is the first to investigate when and under which conditions militias created to assist governments in fighting civil wars disband.     

Only If We Agree? How Value Conflicts Moderate the Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Public Service Motivation

Existing studies find positive associations between transformational leadership and public service motivation (PSM), but value conflict may moderate the relationship. This is investigated for Danish University Colleges using a mixed-methods design. These colleges educate future teachers, pedagogues, nurses, and social workers, and their strong public service-oriented missions and potentially conflicting public values make this sector a well-suited case to test whether consensus on public values is a precondition for a positive association between transformational leadership and employee PSM. Based on a survey of 968 employees combined with qualitative interviews concerning specific public values, we find that the less value conflict, the stronger the positive relationship between the direct managers’ level of transformational leadership and the employees’ PSM. This is also the case for the top management. This implies that transformational leadership might be a way for managers to enhance employee PSM, but only if there is no severe value conflict.     

Do Citizens Trust the Civil Service Differently? Comparing the Determinants of Confidence in Political-Administrative Institutions

This paper asks whether citizens judge public administration to be trustworthy using different criteria from other political institutions. Using survey data, we estimate ordered logistic and multivariate regressions to compare the determinants of trust in six different political-administrative institutions. Findings show that social trust, political interest, as well as other individual characteristics, have very similar effects on trust regardless of the institution. The evidence shows that people who are older and more educated, interested in politics, and employed in the public sector, are only slightly more likely to make some sort of distinction. Implications for non-discriminant judgement mechanisms are discussed.     

War and state formation in Lebanon: can Tilly be applied to the developing world?

State formation in the developing world can be explained as growing centralisation and institutionalisation. To understand why some states struggle with state formation, or the processes of centralisation, the model provided by Charles Tilly, in his analysis of state formation in Western Europe, is applied to Lebanon, starting at the onset of the 1975 civil war and concluding with an analysis of the post-Syrian occupation environment. With the appropriate conditions it is possible to use Tilly’s model of war making and the state to measure state formation, or the lack thereof, in the developing world. Conclusively, in the case of Lebanon, it is evident that progress towards strong state formation has been made because of processes of war that are similar to those Tilly outlines in his historical analysis of Western Europe.     

The final triumph of the Pax Americana? Western intervention in Yugoslavia and Russia's debate on the post-Cold War order

This paper addresses the question of world order by considering how Western military actions in Yugoslavia were perceived from a different cultural perspective. It traces how the NATO-led bombing campaign during March–June of 1999 affected various visions of world order that had existed in Russia before the campaign and describes the discursive change this campaign produced. The argument is made that Russia's foreign policy elites, from Westernizers to Neo-Communists and Expansionists, perceived Western goals in Yugoslavia differently from their counterparts in the West. However, they differed in their recommendations regarding Russia's response and lessons to be drawn from the Kosovo crisis. The paper also identifies several points where the different perspectives can converge. More specifically, all Russian schools of thought viewed the NATO campaign as a dangerous precedent potentially destabilizing the existing world order. They also shared the conviction that Russia should play a larger role in world affairs and that without Russia's involvement there could be no peace and stability in the Balkans and in Europe. They point to the United Nations as the only forum for debating the legitimacy of military interventions and for preventing interventions carried out without the approval of the UN.     

Whom Do They Recruit?: Profiling and Recruitment in the PKK/KCK

Terrorist organizations use a proactive strategy in identifying potential candidates for recruitment. In such a strategy, miscellaneous vulnerabilities, grievances, and feeling destitute, inter alia, render certain individuals perfect candidates for terrorist organizations. It is therefore crucial to have an integrative approach to understand the interplay between the profiles of terrorists and their reasons to join terrorist groups on the one hand and processes of recruitment on the other. Proceeding from such a fulcrum, this article provides a general profile of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party [PKK]/Kurdistan Communities Union [KCK] members and various recruitment techniques used by this group. To this end, records of 2,270 group members were content analyzed, in addition to face-to-face interviews with 42 group members and a range of individuals from public and private institutions. Our findings suggest that a variety of individual and organizational factors influence individual paths toward terrorism.     

Analysing the Impact of Price Shocks in Rural Economies: Do Household Responses Matter?

We analyse the impact of higher food prices on rural households in Tanzania focusing on the often neglected role of households’ behavioural responses. We introduce a new framework which considers the production response jointly with substitution effects in consumption and takes into account households’ market participation choices. Taking into account behavioural responses on consumption and production can significantly alter the sign and magnitude of the welfare impact in the long run.     

Do Smaller Firms Pay Less in the Caribbean? The Case of Trinidad and Tobago

This article constitutes the first study of the employer size wage effect for a Caribbean country, namely the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Using a rich micro-level data set we estimate the firm size wage premium in an empirical model of wage determination. Despite exploring a variety of theories, samples, estimation techniques and tests, we find that, consistent with the empirical literature, larger firms in Trinidad and Tobago pay higher wages than smaller firms, for equally productive workers.     

How do municipal amalgamations affect turnout in local elections? Insights from the 2015 municipal reform in the Austrian state of Styria

In this paper, we evaluate the effect of municipal amalgamations on election turnout in local elections. Following recent studies, we argue that municipal mergers can lead to less information about the election being made available to citizens and less influence for individual voters. That is, while citizens in the local context usually rely on their own direct contacts in local offices and among political candidates, the subsequent increase in population size due to a merger reduces opportunities for establishing such contacts and for having decisive influence on political decisions. Consequently, voters are less informed and less engaged, resulting in lower levels of electoral turnout in local elections. We test our argument empirically by using aggregate level data from the municipal level from the 2010 and 2015 local elections in Styria, Austria, which followed the amalgamation of some, but not all, municipalities in January 2015. The empirical results support our argument.     

Unpacking the Diaspora Channel in New Democracies: When Do Migrants Act Politically Back Home?

Migrant influence on politics back home has arguably become broader and deeper in the wake of a widespread convergence between out-migration and democratization. This article seeks to identify the structural conditions under which migrants from post-1980 democracies are likely to activate the “diaspora channel” of political influence back home. Specifically, I identify, explain, and code two sets of incentives likely to induce migrants to engage in home-country politics from abroad: (1) socioeconomic incentives generated by cross-border linkages and migrant characteristics likely to predispose them toward broader forms of transnational engagement and (2) political incentives generated by diaspora politicization and formal access to the political process in the home country. I score these incentives in 40 developing countries and then generate hypotheses about the degree to which migrants from these countries are likely to activate the diaspora channel through participation in home-country elections, lobbying for policy changes by the home-country government, or transnational coproduction.