An Experimental Investigation of Electoral Delegation and the Provision of Public Goods

How effectively do democratic institutions provide public goods? Despite the incentives an elected leader has to free ride or impose majority tyranny, our experiment demonstrates that electoral delegation results in full provision of the public good. Analysis of the experimental data suggests that the result is primarily due to electoral selection: groups elect prosocial leaders and replace those who do not implement full contribution outcomes. However, we also observe outcomes in which a minimum winning coalition exploits the contributions of the remaining players. A second experiment demonstrates that when electoral delegation must be endogenously implemented, individuals voluntarily cede authority to an elected agent only when preplay communication is permitted. Our combined results demonstrate that democratic delegation helps groups overcome the free‐rider problem and generally leads to outcomes that are often both efficient and equitable.     

Social Heterogeneity and Optimal Mix Between Public and Private Provision of Public Goods

With a framework of incomplete contract, this paper shows that for provision of public goods such as medicare and education, pure privatization may not promote competition. On the contrary, the co-existence of public and private provision may enhance de facto competition. Two competitive effects are identified. When consumers are heterogeneous, the co-existence of public and private ownership gives consumers freedom to choose from different ownership, improving allocation efficiency (Tiebout effect). While consumers are homogeneous, the co-existence can promote yardstick competition, squeezing out information rents from both ownerships, improving production efficiency (benchmarking effect). In either case, the co-existence dominates unique ownership. The paper ends up with some implications for China.s medicare and education reforms. Yongqin Wang is an assistant professor at China Center for Economic Studies, Fudan University and Haibo Xu is a M.A. student in economics at the same center. We thank Te Bao, Zhao Chen, Sujian Guo, Ming Lu, Yew-Kwang Ng and Teague Savitch, and anonymous reviewers for valuable comments.     

Electoral Voting Preferences and Political Orientations of Athenians in Greece: A Three-Perspective Model*

Using a three-perspective model of stratification, group and issue-oriented variables, an effort was made to examine the relevance of three perspectives in predicting voting behaviour among Athenians in Greece. The model was based on an analysis of 478 cases from data collected in Athens in the spring and summer of 1977. Pro-Western attitudes and politics of friends were found to be the most important variables in predicting vote among the Athenians. Unlike other European countries, education and occupation were not important while income and age were. The primary group variable of father's politics had important indirect effects while the secondary group variable of workers’ membership in political or occupational organisations had a significant direct effect. The interdependence of the variables in the three-perspective model were also delineated in the analysis.     

The Expenses Scandal and the Politics of Electoral Reform

The scandal over MPs' expenses that erupted in 2009 was followed by a surge in discussion of electoral reform. A range of reforms to Westminster's existing electoral system are now high on the political agenda. This article examines the extent and the nature of the scandal's impact on the electoral reform debate and draws out comparative implications for the sorts of conditions that can force politicians to accept electoral reforms that they do not want. It finds that the expenses scandal significantly changed debate about some electoral reform topics, but not about others. It proposes three factors likely to increase the impact of scandal in sparking reform: that the scandal is seen as harming ordinary people in their daily lives; that reforms can readily be understood as likely to mitigate the sources of scandal; and that those reforms do not seriously harm politicians' own perceived interests.     

Correction to: Mass Media and Electoral Preferences During the 2016 US Presidential Race

Political Behavior - This erratum provides additional analysis and clarification relating to the original version of the article.     

Electoral Politics and The Corporate System: The Question of Support*

Much analysis has pointed to the impact of interest organisations on policy-making. This paper focuses on the importance of interest organisations at the mass level. The sympathies of citizens for parties and interest organisations are compared, and it is shown (a) that organisations more often than parties are 'neutral objects'; for the citizens and (b) that most citizens — even members of the organisations — rate parties higher than they do interest organisations. Finally, it is shown that organisational membership only has a small impact on political views in a policy field (labour market relations), which should be highly relevant for the organisations. In sum, interest organisations have hardly at the mass level replaced parties as main objects of affection and orientation.     

The Political Frame for Negotiated Capitalism: Electoral Reform and the Politics of Crisis in Japan and Sweden

This article examines the impact of political institutions on the strength of executive governments as well as the consequences of that strength for policymaking. It argues that both political changes and electoral reforms in Japan and Sweden have weakened the political frame for “negotiated” or “coordinated” decision making in these nations. In Sweden, however, the complete demolition of the old political frame has opened up opportunities and incentives for new modes of governance. In Japan, by contrast, reforms have buttressed rather than dismantled the old frame, impeding the transition to a new approach.     

Pollution,Politics, and Preferences for Environmental Spending in the States

While state environmental and natural resource spending is designed to address actual environmental problems, the budget process is also inherently political. Thus, in the following article we ask a simple question: to what extent does state environmental and natural resource spending respond to the scope of environmental problems in a state, versus the demands of the political process? Unlike the bulk of previous research, we consider both aggregate spending and program‐specific spending. We also consider how the severity of environmental problems and the political environment may interact to determine spending. The findings show that politics, specifically the strength of the environmental movement, is a more important determinant of state environmental spending than pollution severity. However, for some program areas, it appears that strong environmental groups make state budgets more responsive to the severity of environmental problems.     

Towards a New Politics: Citizenship and Rights in Contemporary Argentina

The emergence of a human rights movement represented a cultural turning point in many Latin American societies. The movement's struggle acted as a catalyst for political learning, triggering a profound renovation of the region's democratic traditions. The most impressive development has been the emergence of a rights-oriented discourse that reunites two elements that populist forms of self-understanding had kept separate: democracy and the rule of law. Cultural innovation gave birth to a new form of politicization that greatly differs from the movementist and corporatist practices of past populist movements, for the former is guided by a liberal concern: establishing clear institutional boundaries between state and civil society. Through the analysis of a series of citizens' initiatives and movements, the paper analyzes this new form of politicization and its contribution to the authorization and effectivization of rights as institutions.     

公共性、公共物品和自利性的概念辨析

公共性、公共物品和自利性等概念是公共行政学和公共管理学中的基本范畴。在现实的社会生活中,公共性、公共物品和自利性等问题都是历史地生成的,是在公私领域、公私部门分化分立的过程中被提出来的。所以,这些概念仅仅适用于对近代社会的分析。公共性是指公共部门、政府的属性;公共物品是由公共部门、政府提供给社会的具有公共性的物品;自利性的概念则是指人的行为动机,至于组织机构和部门则不存在着自利性的问题。