Welfare Reform: Assessing its Political, Economic, and Social Effects

Books reviewed: Rebecca M. Blank, It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty Anne Marie Cammisa, From Rhetoric to Reform?: Welfare Policy in AmericanPolitics Martha Shirk, Neil G. Bennett, and J. Lawrence Aber, Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet Robert M. Solow, Work and Welfare     

The Georgia Lottery and State Appropriations for Education: Substitution or Additional Funding?

This article examines the use of lottery proceeds for funding public education in Georgia, with specific focus on the state's effort to guard against fungibility of lottery proceeds. The Georgia lottery earmarks proceeds for education and Georgia is among the states requiring a high level of transparency at each stage of the budget and appropriations process. Based upon comparisons of spending before and after the lottery was put in place, we conclude that lottery spending has not been completely offset by substitution. Lottery funds appear to have stimulated additional spending in the target areas. Budget fungibility has been constrained by the transparency of the budget and appropriations process, gubernatorial commitment to supplement not supplant, the policy architecture of the lottery–for–education program, and a relatively strong state economy that renders substitution unnecessary.     

Economic Sanctions and Political Repression: Assessing the Impact of Coercive Diplomacy on Political Freedoms

This article offers a thorough analysis of the unintended impact economic sanctions have on political repression—referred to in this study as the level of the government respect for democratic freedoms and human rights. We argue that economic coercion is a counterproductive policy tool that reduces the level of political freedoms in sanctioned countries. Instead of coercing the sanctioned regime into reforming itself, sanctions inadvertently enhance the regime’s coercive capacity and create incentives for the regime’s leadership to commit political repression. Cross-national time series data support our argument, confirming that the continued use of economic sanctions (even when aimed at promoting political liberalization and respect for human rights) will increase the level of political repression. These findings suggest that both scholars and policy makers should pay more attention to the externalities caused by economic coercion.

The Political Economy: Political Attitudes and Economic Behavior

It has long been recognized that voters bring their political behaviors in line with economic assessments. Recent work, however, suggests that citizens also engage in economic behaviors that align with their confidence—or lack thereof—in the political system. This alignment can happen consciously or, as we suggest, unconsciously, in the same way that positivity carries over to other behaviors on a micro-level. Using monthly time series data from 1978 to 2008, we contribute further evidence of this relationship by demonstrating that political confidence affects consumer behavior at the aggregate level over time. Our analyses employ measures more closely tied to the theoretical concepts of interest while simultaneously accounting for the complex relationships between subjective and objective economic indicators, economic behavior, political attitudes, and the media. Our results suggest that approval of the president not only increases the electorate’s willingness to spend money, but also affects the volatility of this spending. These findings suggest that the economy is influenced by politics beyond elections, and gives the “Chief Economist” another avenue by which they can affect the behavior of the electorate.     

Political Institutions and Economic Performance: The Effects of Accountability and Obstacles to Policy Change

Numerous analyses have been conducted on how political institutions affect economic performance. In recent years the emphasis has been on a causal logic that emphasizes institutional obstacles to policy change, such as those presented by multiple veto points. This has especially been the case when it comes to the important question of how political institutions influence governments' responses to exogenous economic shocks. We make the case for a substantial broadening of focus and show that when it comes to a major type of exogenous shock, a forced exchange-rate devaluation, variations in the breadth of accountability of the chief executive are more robustly associated with the post-shock growth recovery than variations in obstacles to policy change. We first argue that the size of the winning coalition will be positively associated with growth recoveries following forced devaluations. We then use a newly developed measure of the size of the winning coalition to test our claim. Our statistical analysis is based on a study of the responses of 44 countries to forced exchange-rate devaluations in the late 1990s.     

Political Support: Social Capital, Civil Society and Political and Economic Performance

This article assesses two main theories of the decline of political support that is found in many western democracies. The first is society centred and built on the concepts of social capital, trust and civil society. The second is politics centred and focuses on the performance of government and the economy. The two theories are not necessarily incompatible, but they are usually treated in a mutually exclusive way. In this article they are tested against a combination of aggregate cross-national comparative data and detailed case studies of four countries that have suffered exceptional decline of political support for politicians, political institutions and the systems of government. The puzzle is that cross-national comparative evidence about a large and diverse number of nations supports social capital theory, whereas in-depth study of four countries that have experienced substantial decline of political support does not. The erosion of support coincides in all four with poor economic and/or political performance. A way of reconciling the two theories and their supporting evidence is suggested, arguing that while social capital is a necessary foundation for democratic support, it is not a sufficient cause.     

How Political Stability Shapes Administrative Performance: The Italian Case

During the last decade in many European Union countries it has clearly emerged that states with weak administrative capacity at the subnational level are more likely to have serious problems with the mismanagement of Structural Funds, or even with accessing them. As a result, some member states such as Italy have embarked upon a programme of institutional and administrative reforms aimed at increasing their administrative capacity. However, retrospective data shows that even though some regions have implemented all the required reforms, their performance has remained unchanged. Along with administrative requirements, are political conditions as such to guarantee that administrative capacity can produce the desired effects? What happens if we do not have political stability that allows for continuity and coherence in administrative actions? Political stability is a controversial variable and theories within the literature present ambiguous results. Some authors strongly claim that stability hinders performance because it fosters the practice of clientelism and the entrenchment of distributional coalitions. In contrast, I aim to explore whether and why, in some cases, stability is actually a variable that accounts for better and improved administrative performance.     

行政问责制:政治意蕴、现实困境与制度创新

行政问责制蕴涵着深刻丰富的政治价值与理念,是民主政治发展的逻辑必然,是改善中国政治生态的现实需要.但目前各级政府在实施行政问责制的进程中面临着问贲要素界定不合理、问责环境发育不全、问贲配套制度缺失等诸多困境,因此亟须创新其制度设计,通过合理界定优化问责要素,培育良好的问责环境,健全配套制度等途径实现行政问责制度创新,使行政问责真正走向规范化、制度化、法制化.     

Public Administration as an Interdisciplinary Field: Assessing Its Relationship with the Fields of Law,Management, and Political Science

Public administration is an interdisciplinary field, building on a variety of disciplinary approaches and values. But how well does the field of public administration reflect those values and processes? In contrast to previous arguments regarding the degree to which the field does or should incorporate values and lessons from other academic disciplines, this study provides a systematic assessment of the field’s reliance on research and theory from the fields of law, management, and political science. An analysis of journal citations across these fields suggests that research in public administration is largely isolated from the three disciplines that are commonly believed to form its foundation.     

行政审判权：一种具有政治性的司法权力

行政审判权是商品经济和民主政治的产物,是国家的统治者通过立法机关的授权赋予法院解决行政纠纷的权力。行政审判权涉及到社会个体和政府之间关系的定位,与具有政治性的行政权之间具有密切的联系。正确认识行政审判权是一种具有政治性的司法权力,有利于揭示行政诉讼制度的特有规律,有利于充分发挥行政诉讼制度的作用。     

The Health Services System: The Interaction of Medical, Socio-Cultural, Economic, and Political Logics*

Health sector research has increased in quantity over recent years: qualitatively, however, it has scarcely escaped from traditional disciplinary boundaries. Since the health sector has become a meeting ground for several disciplinary research traditions, it would seem necessary now to attempt to view the sector as an entirety. This paper suggests how the health services system may be viewed as a whole, and sketches a possible theoretical foundation for, and possible topics within, an integrated health sector framework.     

我国行政问责制度及其对问责程序机制影响的研究

行政问责并非只是单一的制度,而是一种机制,它涉及行政决策、行政过程、行政结果的问责控制,需要多个方面的行为主体以相应的法定方式予以完成.完善的行政问责机制需要清晰具体的行政问责制度和可以将行政问责制度有效执行的行政问责程序机制.在国内行政问责理论研究明显不足的情况下,行政问责的制度设计呈现出实践先于理论的特点.实践先于理论的特点决定了行政问责制度还处于不成熟状态,存在明显的局限性:问责发起程序的缺失导致问责发起存在障碍,问责启动主体的制度缺陷加大了行政问责程序的随意性和不确定性,责任标准的缺乏影响制度严谨性、公正性,等等.     

Partisanship, Political Control, and Economic Assessments

Previous research shows that partisans rate the economy more favorably when their party holds power. There are several explanations for this association, including use of different evaluative criteria, selective perception, selective exposure to information, correlations between economic experiences and partisanship, and partisan bias in survey responses. We use a panel survey around the November 2006 election to measure changes in economic expectations and behavioral intentions after an unanticipated shift in political power. Using this design, we can observe whether the association between partisanship and economic assessments holds when some leading mechanisms thought to bring it about are excluded. We find that there are large and statistically significant partisan differences in how economic assessments and behavioral intentions are revised immediately following the Democratic takeover of Congress. We conclude that this pattern of partisan response suggests partisan differences in perceptions of the economic competence of the parties, rather than alternative mechanisms.     

Learning More from Political Communication Experiments: Pretreatment and Its Effects

Research on political communication effects has enjoyed great progress over the past 25 years. A key ingredient underlying these advances is the increased usage of experiments that demonstrate how communications influence opinions and behaviors. Virtually all of these studies pay scant attention to events that occur prior to the experiment—that is, in “pretreatment events.” In this article, we explore how and when the pretreatment environment affects experimental outcomes. We present two studies—one where we control the pretreatment environment and one where it naturally occurred—to show how pretreatment effects can influence experimental outcomes. We argue that, under certain conditions, attending to pretreatment dynamics leads to novel insights, including a more accurate portrait of the pliability of the mass public and the identification of potentially two groups of citizens—what we call malleability reactive and dogmatic.     

The Case Against Participation Income—Political,Not Merely Administrative

This article develops the position we have taken in debate with Anthony Atkinson that a participation income (PI) would be problematic from an administrative and political point of view. We argue that Atkinson remains far too optimistic about the magnitude of administrative difficulties a PI would face. Negotiating these difficulties will inevitably involve the sort of political trade‐offs PI is supposedly able to avoid when compared to its more controversial cousin, the unconditional basic income. The enduring significance of ‘The case for a participation income’, we argue, lies in the often neglected point that Atkinson intends a PI as a supplement to an eroding contribution‐based welfare state. In the current political and fiscal environment, the case for a universal support scheme set below the rate of subsistence, and supplemented by other forms of welfare support, deserves careful re‐examination.     

行政指导及其改进思路——以行政管理窗口部门的实践为视角

我国的行政指导,旨在通过指导尽可能地取代强制执法,从而强化对行政管理权力的约束,推动政府部门由以管理为主向以服务为主的治理转型。从近几年各地行政管理窗口部门的实践来看,行政指导取得了良好的效果,但也暴露出行政指导权的设立程序缺乏规范、行政指导的实际操作缺乏量化标准、行政指导的责任机制有待完善等问题。解决这些问题,应引入由人大领导的听证机制,健全行政指导权的设立程序;建立累积制度,确立行政指导在实际操作中的量化标准;试行附随式司法审查,完善行政指导的责任机制。     

Government Reform,Political Ideology,and Administrative Burden: The Case of Performance Management in the Bush Administration

This article examines how ideological differences between political officials and agencies may have affected the implementation of an ostensibly nonpartisan, government‐wide administrative initiative: the George W. Bush administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) review of federal programs. The analysis reveals that managers in agencies associated with liberal programs and employees (“liberal agencies”) agreed to a greater extent than those in agencies associated with conservative programs and employees (“conservative agencies”) that PART required significant agency time and effort and that it imposed a burden on management resources. Further analysis reveals that differences in reported agency effort can be explained partly by objective differences in the demands that PART placed on agencies—liberal agencies were required to evaluate more programs and implement more improvement plans relative to their organizational capacity—and partly by the ideological beliefs of employees—on average, liberal managers reported more agency effort, even after accounting for objective measures of administrative burden.