The causes of legal rents extraction: evidence from Spanish municipalities

This paper analyzes the causes of legal political rent extraction by using a direct measure of it, namely, local top politicians’ wages. In particular, we investigate whether local politicians’ incentives to extract rents by setting their own wages are influenced by the degree of political competition and voter information. We use a sample of the largest Spanish municipalities over the years 2008–2010. The results indicate that weaker political competition and lesser voter information are related to more rent extraction. In an additional analysis, we show that higher wages do not ensure better financial management. These findings confirm that when politicians can set their own salaries, higher wages do not mean better management, but they are just political rents.     

Is the government exhausting its powers? An empirical examination of eminent domain exercises in New York City pre- and post-Kelo

A controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) which did not limit the use of state's eminent domain powers, led to an unprecedented legislative reaction by almost all 50 states. Of all, New York State stands out as one of the single states not to respond with a legislative amendment. In this study, I ask whether the state's predation was greater in the years following these legal and political developments, in light of the freedom which was granted to local politicians by both the Supreme Court and the state's legislators. The article hypothesizes that contrary to common perceptions, judicial decisions impact local government actions even when no limits on the use of powers are being posed. I use rigorous statistics and scrupulously defined data to expand scholarly understanding of the aftermath of the judicial decision in Kelo. The main finding is that the decision has in fact affected political behavior, but in the opposite direction than commonly expected: politicians in New York City acted consistently with public opinion, which was hostile too Kelo, not by changing the law, but by changing their practice. Studying all known taking exercises in New York City between 1991 and 2019, the paper finds no increase in the number of development projects involving condemnations after 2005. In fact, the probability of a taking for economic development or urban renewal dropped by 90%. The use of eminent domain for such projects declined even when both state and federal courts refrain from interposing any actual limit on its use. The paper lends qualified support to an alternative assertion that takings decisions by government officials are largely shaped by planning and political needs and that officials are sensitive to revealed public preferences even when there is no constitutional or legal impediment on their exercise of power.     

Motivation of politicians and long-term policies

We analyze the motivation of politicians in democracies when long-term policies are socially desirable. Politicians receive utility from holding office and from the success of their projects. We refer to the two extreme types of politicians as “populists” and “policy success-seekers”. One result is that inefficiencies in the political process are smaller when a politician is of the populist type. When politicians offer incentive contracts, the problem of inefficient decision-making may be solved. The amount of money necessary to induce the incumbent to undertake the socially optimal project decreases with the degree of populism he displays.     

Social Media and the Paradox of Fear: An Exploratory Study of Political Relationship Marketing Within South Wales

This paper explores the key challenges of social media use by politicians in relation to political relationship marketing. Utilising a case study of the online footprint left by Welsh politicians and their attitude towards social media based on three business based rationales – engagement, level of control, and return on investment – the paper offers an expanded conception of the perceptions and fears influencing the use of social media by politicians in terms of political relationship marketing. The article concludes with some critical thoughts regarding the understanding of relationship marketing principles by politicians.     

Expert knowledge use and deliberation in local policy making

This article analyzes the extent to which public administrators make use of expert knowledge (i.e., research or evaluation reports) when they prepare policy advice, and the extent to which politicians deliberate on the information provided to them by the administrators. The study is based on original, quantitative data from local politics in Sweden. We find that expert-informed policy advice from the administrators and critical reflection by the politicians are more pronounced when there is a lot of public attention. Furthermore, administrators use expert information more when they operate in a context in which there are large political disagreements. However, politicians deliberate less on the administrators’ policy advices in such environments. Thus, conflict seems to generate a pressure on the administrators to search for expert knowledge. But at the same time, within a context of political disputes, politicians make less effort to understand and critically reflect over the information provided to them by the administration, and are less inclined to change their opinions even if good arguments are presented to them. Thus, the empirical analysis indicates that what role expertise gets in policy making is very much a consequence of the local political environment.     

Competitive Tendering in the Welfare State: Perceptions and Preferences among Local Politicians

Competitive tendering for public services has triggered a heated academic debate. In political economy, competition is claimed to improve efficiency. If this is true, why are most governments faithful to the monopoly model? Political economists suggest that public sector employees and unions influence the preferences of the elected politicians. In new institutional theory, competition is claimed to undermine democratic governance. If this is true, why do some elected governments make use of competitive tendering? In this tradition, organisational solutions are seen as expressions of autonomous values and perceptions about the outcomes of organisational solutions – not as manifestations of vote–maximising politicians subject to self–interested interest groups. When governments use competition, it is due to misconceived management fads that have temporarily penetrated long–established perceptions and value systems. These propositions have not been subjected to proper empirical testing. We have analysed extensive data about Norwegian local politicians, and found support for the notion that the perceptions of elected politicians affect their preferences for tendering for residential care services for elderly people and hospital services. But we found support for the political economy propositions as well. Party affiliation, interest group background and economic situation influence the perceptions and organisational preferences of elected politicians. Reform may be a question of political values and perceived consequences, but these values, perceptions and policy preferences are influenced by political self–interest and can be changed by exogenous economic shocks.     

What a Political Scientist Can Tell a Policymaker about the Likelihood of Success or Failure

A political scientist can introduce a focus on politics into policy analysis. However, the pervasity of politics in policymaking defines one of the outer boundaries of policy analysis. Politicians tend to think about specific needs and how they may be furthered by concrete projects more than they tend to think about principles or empirical findings. The position of policy analysis in policymaking and program implementation is to be won in a competitive setting amid individuals with training in other professional specialties and politicians who may have to professional training. Where politics is pervasive, policy analysts must have a tolerance for ambiguity, obfuscation and frustration.     

Think global,talk local: getting the party political message across in the age of the internet

This paper seeks to test the view that the Internet will provide politicians and political parties with a means of directly communicating with electors, so circumnavigating the perceived bias of the mass media, and explores how the political use of the Internet will impact on campaigning, particularly at the local/personal level. The evidence surveyed shows that political use of the Internet is, despite the hype, still in its infancy, but that more extensive use will lead to changes in the style and mode of political communications. The Internet will eventually enable politicians and parties to address a mass audience in qualitative new ways, tailoring their message and information dissemination to individual and local concerns. But this will bring all the consequences of direct communication, such as increased workloads and the danger of atomising the political process. Politicians and parties may hanker for the days when the traditional mass media intervened in the process of political communications. This paper is an edited version of the one presented to 'On Message: A Conference on Political Communication and Marketing sponsored by the Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group, Loughborough University, September 2000. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Elite perceptions of mass preferences in The Netherlands; biases in cognitive responsiveness

Abstract. Several studies have shown dissimilarities between political leaders and voters in terms of political attitudes and policy preferences. Though many explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, the knowledge factor has been overlooked. The basic question of this paper is how knowledgeable politicians are of the political opinions of their voters as well as of the general public. Forty-six national Dutch politicians were asked to estimate the percentage of the public at large and of their own voters who agree with specific political statements. These estimates were then compared with the actual distribution of opinions. Though using a rather strict criterion it has been found that politicians tend to give inaccurate estimates of the public's support for various political issues. The inaccuracy does not differ between members of the government and members of parliament, but politicians of parties in office appear to perform worse than members of opposition parties. The data do not support the hypothesis about politicians' ability to correctly estimate majority and minority opinions, or to accurately localize their own voters relative to the public at large. Furthermore it is observed that politicians overestimate rather than underestimate differences in opinion between the electorate and their own voters. No difference is found in politicians'estimates of political issues which can or cannot be classified in terms of 'left' or 'right'. In addition, politicians do not judge their voters to be more right-wing than they actually are. Contrary to our hypothesis, Social-Democratic politicians are not more likely to show a 'conservative bias' in estimating their voters' preferences compared to politicians from the Christian-Democratic and Liberal parties. Finally, the relevance of our findings for political sciences as well as some normative consequences are briefly discussed.     

Foreign Aid and Undeserved Credit Claiming

Politicians in developing countries misuse foreign aid to get reelected by fiscally manipulating foreign aid resources or domestic budgets. Our article suggests another mechanism that does not require politicians to have any control over foreign aid in order to make use of it for electoral purposes: undeserved credit claiming. We analyze the conditions under which local politicians can undeservedly take credit for the receipt of foreign aid and thereby boost their chances of reelection. We theorize that politicians can employ a variety of techniques to claim credit for development aid even when they have little or no influence on its actual allocation. Using a subnational World Bank development program in the Philippines, we demonstrate that credit claiming is an important strategy to exploit foreign aid inflows and that the political effects of aid can persist even when projects are designed to minimize the diversion or misuse of funds.     

What Draws Politicians’ Attention? An Experimental Study of Issue Framing and its Effect on Individual Political Elites

What politicians devote attention to, is an important question as political attention is a precondition of policy change. We use an experimental design to study politicians’ attention to incoming information and deploy it among large samples of elected politicians in three countries: Belgium, Canada, and Israel. Our sample includes party leaders, ministers and regular members of parliament. These elites were confronted with short bits of summary information framed in various ways and were then asked how likely it was that they would read the full information. We test for three frames: conflict, political conflict, and responsibility. We find that framing moderates the effect of messages on politicians’ attention to information. Politicians react more strongly (i.e., they devote more attention) to political conflict frames than to non-political conflict frames and they react stronger to political responsibility attributions than to non-political responsibility attributions. Conflict frames attract more attention than consensus frames only from members of opposition parties. Political conflict frames attract more attention from government party politicians. These effects occur largely across issues and across the three countries.     

Media and politics in French political science

Abstract. The study of the relationship between media and politics has long been marginal in French political science. The take–off of research has been stimulated by the impact of the Presidential election under the Fifth republic and by the increasing role of television and spin–doctors in this new electoral context. If French studies on political communication converge with international research, they are also characterised by strong peculiarities. The material of case–studies is not campaign–centred, but gives room to various TV programmes, to a wide range of media uses by French politicians. The contribution of historians, the influence of a literary tradition of 'textual' analysis of political speech are important. The publishing of books on this topic also reveals a surprisingly intense participation from spin– doctors, journalists and even politicians. Three main 'schools' are contributing to the dynamics of French research. Linked to the tradition of semiological and literary studies the first one focuses on the study of political discourse in the media. Merging the legacy of English–speaking studies and the French tradition of electoral studies a second one develops an analysis of the campaigning process and of its effects. More recently, a new generation of researchers has widened the object of research to the complex network of relations between politicians, journalists and consultant. Linking successfully the most recent developments or international research and the peculiarities of academic tradition, research on political communication appears as one of the most dynamic areas of French political science.     

Politicians’ outside earnings and electoral competition

This paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians’ outside earnings. In our framework, politicians face a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings. The main hypothesis is that the amount of time spent on outside work is negatively related to the degree of electoral competition. We test this hypothesis using a new dataset on outside earnings of members of the German federal assembly and find that politicians facing low competition have substantially higher outside earnings.     

Do elections lead to informed public decisions?

Democracies delegate substantial decision power to politicians. We analyse a model in which the electorate wants an office-motivated incumbent to design, examine and implement public policies. We show that voters can always encourage politicians to design projects. However, they cannot always induce politicians to examine projects. In fact, politicians who would examine policies without elections, say because of a concern about the public interest, may shy away from policy examination with elections.     

Does it Matter Who Works at the Center? A Comparative Policy Analysis of Executive Styles

This article develops the concept of executive style to explore how variations in the relationships between politicians, career civil servants, and political appointees affect the types of policy outputs. A comparative analysis of home care policies in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia finds that the former’s civil service executive style – where professional civil servants work in close partnership with politicians in all phases of the policy process – led to the development of an innovative home care program with a long-term vision, whereas the latter’s politicized executive style – where politicians marginalize the role of civil servants in favor of political appointees – led to frequent changes in policy largely driven by short-term considerations.     

Politicians,professionalization and anti-politics: why we want leaders who act like professionals but are paid like amateurs

Why are politicians so unpopular? One common explanation blames a professionalized political class that is increasingly detached from ‘ordinary citizens’. But, there is very little empirical investigation of what it is about the professionalization of politics that engenders distrust. This article uses 12 focus groups and 15 interviews with civil servants from the Australian Public Service—‘insiders’ with first-hand knowledge and experience of the political system—to reflect on political professionalization and its impacts. As a group, civil servants’ views on this question remain largely unexplored yet their proximity to the political process gives them a distinct vantage point from which to reflect on current explanations for rising anti-political sentiment. We find both positive and negative attitudes towards professionalization that destabilize prevailing explanations: on the demand side, civil servants share first-hand experience and knowledge of how the political process works but remain cynical about politicians, whilst on the supply side, they value governing competence more than demographic representation yet still want more ‘amateur’ politicians. Our reflections on these findings highlight contradictory expectations: we want politicians who act like professionals, but who are paid like amateurs.     

Are we witnessing a paradigm shift in the analysis of political competition?

This presidential address assesses the crisis of the Downsian model of political competition in light of the mounting evidence on policy divergence and evaluates the possibility that the new theories of politicians’ quality and political selection provide an alternative theoretical conceptualization of political competition. Based on a critical review of the literature and on the author’s works on content analysis of policy speeches, income redistribution, politicians’ quality, and political legislation cycles, this address concludes that multidimensional Downsian models of political competition are adequate to explain policy divergence and points out the serious theoretical and empirical problems that models of political selection have to solve.     

A judges' revolution? Political corruption and the judiciary in Italy

Abstract. During the investigations into political corruption in Italy, judges emerged in the eyes of the public as the 'heroes' of a peaceful revolution against the 'villainous' politicians. The established explanation for the active role of the judiciary against corruption stresses the unusual degree of independence of Italian judges. Without denying the importance of this institutional variable, analysis of the interactions between politicians and judges in the history of the Italian Republic allows one to discuss the role of other two important variables: the informal networking between politicians and judges, and the professional culture of the magistracy. The three sets of variables are in fact used to explain two different strategies adopted by Italian judges in their interaction with the political system: a strategy of 'role substitution', acccording to which some judges act as a surrogate power for the protection of the citizens against corrupt politicians, and a 'collusive strategy', consisting of various levels of hidden exchanges between judges and politicians. This article is based on an examination of judicial documents relating to 40 episodes of political corruption, in–depth interviews with experts, reports of relevant Parliamentary Inquiry Commissions, requests for indictment of Members of Parliament, official statistics and the daily and weekly press.     

How politicians see their relationship with top bureaucrats: Revisiting classical images

The relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is an enduring concern in political science. Central to this debate, Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman (APR) in 1981 developed four images to characterize political-bureaucratic relations. We argue that the one-dimensional focus on roles in their images comes with important limitations. To deal with these limitations, we collect survey responses from 3,384 local politicians from four countries on seven dimensions of the political-bureaucratic relationship. We then use cluster analysis to develop six images bottom-up. Five of our images are largely consistent with APR's image II and III. Yet, they differ in the extent to which politicians trust the bureaucracy, consider them loyal, and see them as an important source of information. A sixth image is not consistent with any of APR's images. We find that both systemic (country, municipality size) and individual factors (ideology, position, seniority) contribute to differences in images. Overall, our images suggest that political-bureaucratic relations vary more between and within political systems than suggested by APR's images.     

Treating Poorly Healed Wounds: Partisan Choices and Human Rights Policies in Latin America

Despite the common trauma of systematic human rights violations under military rule, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay have responded in markedly different ways to their troubling pasts. This paper explains differences in human rights policies over time and across countries by looking at varying domestic conditions, including the ideological orientation of the governing party and the structure of party competition, as well as constraints and opportunities presented by external events. Government support for human rights derives in part from ideological proclivity but even more from the ability to build popular support for such a policy. Conservative and center-right politicians lack credibility among voters on human rights and therefore have little political incentive to adopt an activist stance on this issue. Leftist politicians are ideologically predisposed toward championing human rights but may be hamstrung by concerns about alienating centrist voters. Leftist politicians will only come out strongly in favor of human rights when they enjoy a clear political majority; leftist leaders who rely upon centrist allies will adopt a low-profile approach to human rights. Conversely, centrist political leaders who rely upon leftist allies have a strong political incentive to emphasize human rights. Once political momentum begins to shift to the right, however, centrist politicians will downplay human rights. Finally, external events may significantly alter national discourse on human rights, allowing cautious governments to gain political cover for more progressive human rights policy. By drawing attention to the important role of ideology and the structure of party competition, this paper offers a more complete explanation of the sources of human rights policy. It also provides a novel perspective on the ways in which external and international influences are filtered through national political systems.