Examining the Logic Behind the Self‐Help,Self‐Taxing Movement: Business Improvement District Formation

An institution that has shown great promise in addressing the revitalization of declining central cities is Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). These private governments provide supplemental municipal services such as sanitation, security, and marketing to independent businesses in underserved commercial areas. By 1999, 44 U.S. states had legislation that enables and dictates the formation process and structure of BIDs. The surprising element of this legislation is the wide variation in approval needed to form a BID over a proposed geographical area. Some states require as little as 20 percent approval of proposed members and others as much as 75 percent approval to allow formation of a BID. This variation in state statutes likely influences the use of BIDs. Results highlight that relatively easier state enabled collective action positively impacts the creation of BIDs, the limited effects of tax expenditure limitations on the formation of BIDs and the positive impacts that new development has on the number of BIDs per state.     

Reform of Press Self‐regulation

In July 2011 following the revelations about phone hacking, all three political party leaders called for radical reform of the current system of press self‐regulation. Those within the press itself, including the Daily Mail, also conceded that serious changes were necessary. At the same time both politicians and press stressed the importance of protecting the freedom of the press and preventing undue government interference. Starting with both these pre‐requisites in mind—the creation of a new independent system and the protection of press freedom—this essay suggests four possible models of reform. For each model the essay sketches the basic parameters of reform and then suggests three problems associated with each. It argues against those who claim that anything more than small changes to the status quo would be too costly, would threaten press freedom, or would be technologically impractical.     

Independence and Responsiveness – Re‐tying the Gordian Knot

Striking the Balance: Public Service Independence and Responsiveness ‐ an Institute of Public Administration Australia roundtable in conjunction with the Australia and New Zealand School of Government and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, 14 March 2008. The roundtable consisted of around 60 participants consisting of former federal and state/territory ministers, ministerial advisers, current and former public servants, media and think tank representatives and a multi‐disciplinary range of academics.     

Self‐Provision of Public Services: Its Evolution and Impact

This article establishes a framework for explaining the ways in which citizens, as clients of public services, attempt to deal with situations of combined market and government failures. Under certain conditions, citizens are driven to create self‐production mechanisms that often are extralegal or illegal. When faced with such social initiatives, politicians often support them, either passively or actively, by institutionalizing the new mechanisms. The article explains the evolution of the self‐provision model and its implications. The analysis includes a theoretical framework and a practical intervention scheme.     

Re‐evaluating the relationship between electoral rules and ideological congruence

Two new studies challenge the prevailing consensus that proportional representation (PR) systems produce greater ideological congruence between governments and their citizens than majoritarian ones. This has led to what has become known as the ‘ideological congruence controversy’. G. Bingham Powell claims to resolve this controversy in favour of PR systems. Specifically, he argues that the results from the two new studies are based on an anomalous decade and that PR systems generally do produce greater government congruence. In addition, he also asserts that PR systems exhibit less variability in government congruence. In this article, the empirical evidence for these two claims is re‐evaluated using exactly the same data as employed by Powell. The analysis indicates that although PR systems produce better and more consistent representation in the legislature, they do not hold an advantage when it comes to representation at the governmental level.     

Citizen co‐production of cyber security: Self‐help,vigilantes, and cybercrime

Given the limited resources and capabilities of states to maintain cyber security, a variety of co‐production efforts have been made by individuals or by collectives, of varying degrees of organization and coordination. This article identifies different forms of citizen co‐production of cyber security and notes the risk of unintended consequences. Safeguards and principles are proposed in order to facilitate constructive citizen/netizen co‐production of cyber security. Although co‐production of security can contribute to social control, only those activities within the bounds of the law should be encouraged. Activities of private citizens/netizens that test the limits of legality should be closely circumscribed.     

Strategic Re‐framing as a Vote Winner: Why Vote‐seeking Governments Pursue Unpopular Reforms

Most political science accounts assume that governments in Western democracies avoid unpopular reforms to protect their re‐election chances. Nevertheless, governments sometimes embark on electorally risky reforms – even in times when they have no slack in the polls. In this article, it is argued that pursuing unpopular reforms can be a perfectly rational strategy for vote‐seeking governments. Based on a simple game theoretical model that compares strategic framing with the classic blame avoidance strategy, it is demonstrated that unpopular policy reforms allow governments to pursue gains of both policy and votes by opting for a highly visible strategy of reframing the substantive reform issue in question. This general argument is illustrated with the substantial 2011 retrenchment of Danish early retirement benefits. This particular welfare state programme was highly popular. Nevertheless, the incumbent Liberal prime minister proposed to abolish it only a few months prior to a national election while his government was trailing significantly in the polls.     

Reading for Life and Adolescent Re‐Arrest: Evaluating a Unique Juvenile Diversion Program

We present results of an evaluation of Reading for Life (RFL), a diversion program for nonviolent juvenile offenders in a medium‐sized Midwestern county. The unique program uses philosophical virtue theory, works of literature, and small mentoring groups to foster moral development in juvenile offenders. Participants were randomly assigned to RFL treatment or a comparison program of community service. The RFL program generated large and statistically significant drops in future arrests. The program was particularly successful at reducing the recidivism of more serious offenses and for those groups with the highest propensity for future offenses.     

Explaining Self‐Interested Behavior of Public‐Spirited Policy Makers

Public choice theory (PCT) has had a powerful influence on political science and, to a lesser extent, public administration. Based on the premise that public officials are rational maximizers of their own utility, PCT has a quite successful record of correctly predicting governmental decisions and policies. This success is puzzling in light of behavioral findings showing that officials do not necessarily seek to maximize their own utility. Drawing on recent advances in behavioral ethics, this article offers a new behavioral foundation for PCT's predictions by delineating the psychological processes that lead well‐intentioned people to violate moral and social norms. It reviews the relevant findings of behavioral ethics, analyzes their theoretical and policy implications for officials' decision making, and sets an agenda for future research.     

The Politics of Technology Decline: Discursive Struggles over Coal Phase‐Out in the UK

The decline of carbon intensive technologies is a key element in the ongoing energy transition and our attempts to tackle climate change. At the same time, our understanding of technology decline and of the associated policies and politics is still limited. This paper builds on the sustainability transitions perspective, a novel approach to analyze socio‐technical transformation, including the complex interplay of policy and technology change. We study the decline of coal‐fired power generation in the United Kingdom from 2000 to 2017 by analyzing the discourse in The Guardian. We find scientists and environmental NGOs criticizing coal for climate and health reasons. Government and incumbent businesses tried to re‐legitimate coal but eventually, their resistance collapsed and coal was almost completely abandoned in just a few years. Particularly devastating for coal were failed promises around carbon capture and storage, rapid diffusion of wind energy, and pressure from various policies. This study contributes to better understanding the contested nature of decline, and the interplay of discursive struggles, technology change, and public policy in sustainability transitions.     

Re‐imagining Geographic Labour Mobility through ‘Distance Labour’

Geographic labour mobility is necessary for increasing productivity in Australia. Long‐distance commuting has been found to be especially significant. However, important considerations are being excluded from policy discussions within the Productivity Commission on this topic. This commentary covers these important omissions. They are, namely, the problematic conflation of the terminologies of ‘fly‐in, fly‐out’ and ‘long‐distance commuting’ with mining, and a lack of qualitative research investigating the material impacts of these labour practices on people's lives. This commentary puts forward a new terminology, ‘distance labour’, to better include those industries on the margins of distance commuting. By accounting for the social worlds of workers engaged in distance labour, the Productivity Commission could increase the validity of its datasets, and provide more egalitarian policy recommendations.     

Top‐Down Self‐Organization: State Logics,Substitutional Delegation,and Private Governance in Russia

This study investigates the counterintuitive emergence of self‐regulation in the Russian construction sector. Despite its proclivity for centralizing political authority, the government acted as the catalyst for the delegation of regulatory powers to private industry groups. The article argues that a factor little considered in extant literature—namely, a weak and corrupt bureaucracy—is key to explaining why the normally control‐oriented executive branch began to promote private governance despite industry's preference for continued state regulation. The article's signal contribution is to theoretically explain and empirically demonstrate how a government's prior inability to establish intrastate control over an ineffective and bribable public bureaucracy creates incentives for political authorities to search for alternative means for policy implementation outside of existing state agencies. These findings are important for understanding the impetus and logic behind particular regulatory shifts in countries where the state apparatus is both deficient and corrupt.     

What Makes Popular Government Self‐reinforcing?

This article explores the ongoing debate on whether popular government is a continually improving or a continually deteriorating constitutional principle in Scandinavian politics. In particular, three recent articles that address this question are reviewed. One puts an almost entirely positive light on developments in Denmark. By contrast, the authors of the articles on Sweden and Norway are less inclined to see any parallel between economic growth, a sustainable welfare state and good public finances, on the one hand, and improved popular government, on the other. The aim here is to bring some clarity into this paradoxical picture by distinguishing between popular government as such and the prerequisites for popular government's long-term legitimacy. What makes popular government self-reinforcing, this article concludes, is the underlying, more fruitful question to pose. This query should be brought into the open and answered.