China's corporate credit reporting system: A comparison with the United States and Germany

Corporate credit reporting (CCR), which aims at increasing trust in corporates, constitutes an intriguing, yet understudied set of regulatory institutions as it is both a regulatory object and subject at the same time. Differences in national CCR systems pose challenges for multinational companies and have increasingly become a subject of international conflicts on regulatory standards. In this context, the case of China deserves special attention since the country pursues both institutional divergence and convergence with international examples. Hence, the characterization of China's regulatory regime remains difficult. By comparing the institutional context of CCR in China to those in the United States and Germany, this paper sheds light on a specific aspect of China's complex regulatory regime. At the same time, it provides insights into the Chinese manifestation of CCR, which are important for the international business community.     

Debt in just societies: A general framework for regulating credit

Debt presents a dilemma to societies: successful societies benefit from a substantial infrastructure of consumer, commercial, corporate, and sovereign debt but debt can cause substantial private and social harm. Pre‐crisis and post‐crisis solutions have seesawed between subsidizing and restricting debt, between leveraging and deleveraging. A consensus exists among governments and international financial institutions that financial stability is the fundamental normative principle underlying financial regulation. Financial stability, however, is insensitive to equality concerns and can produce morally impermissible aggregations in which the least advantaged in a society are made worse off. Solutions based only on financial stability can restrict debt without accounting for the risk of harm to persons least able to bear the risk, worsen preexisting inequalities, destroy or impair the net worth of households, and impose unfavorable distributive consequences. This article offers a new approach to assist policymakers in developing and evaluating regulation to take criteria in addition to financial stability into account, but which do not undermine the aim of financial stability. It calls for a luck egalitarian approach, offering policymakers options to take the debtor's choices into account while still accounting for cognitive mistakes people often make in debt decisionmaking. It offers a general framework for the underlying principles for the regulation of debt: its focus is not on any particular forms of debt or its regulation but in structuring debt regulation more generally. It offers a set of recommendations on how regulators can take concerns about luck and equality into account in regulatory design.     

Demand for credit,international financial legitimacy,and vulnerability to crises: Regulatory change and the social origins of Iceland's collapse

By analyzing how credit in Iceland expanded to culminate in the country's 2008 financial collapse, this article advances theories about financial crises, regulatory change, and the role of credit. It also complicates popular accounts of Iceland's collapse that focus on the actions of unrestrained bankers by examining the larger context that facilitated these banking practices. After financial liberalization, Icelandic businesses and households had strong demand for credit as a result of: (i) the institutional meaning of credit, (ii) an emergent growth strategy of aggressive international expansion, and (iii) increasing consumption. Incorporating business demand for credit extends demand‐side theory of crises and shows how dominant strategy and shared government and business orientation toward opportunity shaped credit expansion. Credit‐based consumption also stabilized social relations despite increasing inequality. Notwithstanding warnings of risk, regulation did not restrain risky leverage. International market reactions reinforced beliefs about Icelandic success to limit regulatory reach, as Iceland's international financial legitimacy produced market‐based measures that leaders interpreted as signals of economic success.     

The difference that empire makes: institutions and politics of citizenship in Germany and Austria

Austria has had much higher naturalization rates than Germany. Two arguments are made based on institutional regime theory and left political power. First, the imperial experiences of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that colonized 11 different nations explains Austria's relative openness, and the monocultural experience of the German Reich that tried to impose German language and culture on partitioned Poland casts light on Austria's open and Germany's rather closed approach to ethnic integration. This first argument covers initial state formation focusing on ethnicity, the Austrian colonization versus German occupation, different ethnicities and languages in the military and bureaucracy, and comparisons involving the partition of Poland and religion in Bavaria. The second argument is a political analysis of legislation concerning how institutionalized regime types and left/green party power influenced the naturalization policies that were enacted into law from 1946 to 2005. The post-World War II analysis shows the positive effects of left/green party power on naturalization, but the institutional regime hypothesis is still necessary to fully explain these differences. In the end, regime differences, and in the later period, left/green party power demonstrate why these two very similar countries have such different naturalization policies.     

European elites and the narrative of the Greek crisis: A discursive institutionalist analysis

This article examines elite European discourses during the Greek financial crisis from its pre-history in September 2008 up to the arrival of the SYRIZA government in January 2015. The article employs the conceptual literature on Discursive Institutionalism (DI) and Historical Institutionalism (HI). Having coded 1,153 unique quotes drawn from a dataset of 15,354 news wires from Reuters, the authors argue that the communicative discourse of 63 senior European (and IMF) officials on the Greek crisis during that period demonstrates significant volatility. Four distinct narrative frames are identified: ‘neglect’, ‘suspicious cooperation’, ‘blame’ and ‘reluctant redemption’, punctuated by three discursive junctures in 2010, 2011 and 2012, which reflect the content of the changing communicative discourse of the Greek crisis. The article's contribution is twofold: empirically, it is the first to provide a systematic analysis of the protagonists’ communication of the Greek crisis; and theoretically, it combines DI and HI in an effort to conceptualise an important part of our understanding of ‘bail-out politics’ throughout the Eurozone crisis.     

The winners of legislative mandate: An analysis of post-parliamentary career positions in Germany and the Netherlands

Little is known about the careers of parliamentarians after they leave parliament. We analyse the post-parliamentary careers of German and Dutch parliamentarians over the last 20 years and document the presence of a persistent and substantial gender gap. This gap exists regardless of party, country or political position and persists even when the status of the pre-parliamentary profession and achievement within parliament are controlled for. Aside from demonstrating our findings, we offer new insights into possible explanations for the dynamics behind them. Additionally, we show that parliament only serves as a stepping stone for a more successful career for a relatively small share of politicians: only 32 per cent of MPs obtain more attractive positions in the public or private sector after their legislative service.     

How to change other people's institutions: discursive entrepreneurship and the boundary object of competition/competitiveness in the German banking sector

Abstract

The paper explores recent public debates about the structure of the financial system in Germany. It pays particular attention to their symbolic-strategic dimension, that is, to attempts by several institutional entrepreneurs to reformulate the criteria of organizational legitimacy, concentrating on the sense-making and legitimization processes involved in institutional persistence or change. The paper discourse-analyses a campaign by institutional entrepreneurs – mainly representatives of commercial banks – who attempted to homogenize the criteria of organizational legitimacy in the German banking sector by questioning the fundamentals of the three-pillar system and the non-commercial banks. Institutional entrepreneurs are understood as discursive entrepreneurs whose actions refer to institutionalized generalizations of value. In the case of the financial sector in Germany, it was the generalized value of competition/competitiveness that served as a discursive device to legitimize the attempts of commercial banks to alter the institutional structure.     

The limits and variety of risk‐based governance: The case of flood management in Germany and England

Risk‐based governance is argued by many to hold the promise of a more rational and efficient state, by making explicit the limitations of state interventions and focusing finite resources on those targets where probable damage is greatest. This paper challenges the assumption that risk‐based governance has the potential for universal and uniform application, by comparing contemporary flood management in Germany and England. On first inspection, flooding appears to be a paradigmatic case of risk colonizing European policy discourses, with the traditional notion of flood defense giving way to flood risk management in the context of climate change, increasingly frequent flood disasters, political and cost pressures on flood protection, and publicly available European‐wide flood assessments. Drawing on in‐depth empirical research, this paper shows how the role, and even the definition, of “risk” is institutionally shaped, and how the respective institutional environments of German and English flood management practices impede and promote risk colonization. In particular, the use and conceptualizations of risk in governance are variously promoted, filtered, or constrained by the administrative procedures, structures, and political expectations embedded within flood management and wider polities of each country. The findings of this research are important for the design and implementation of supranational policies and regulations that endorse risk‐based approaches, such as the recent EU Flood Directive, as well as scholarly debate as to how to legitimately define the limits of governance in the face of uncertainty and accountability pressures.     

In search of reliable results: Socialist values and political trust in unified Germany – A comment on Campbell's analyses and conclusions

In a recently published article in this journal, Ross Campbell argues that adherence to socialist values establishes a hitherto neglected factor when it comes to the explanation of differences in East and West German citizens’ political trust. As the results of his study indicate, adherence to socialist values impacts negatively on citizens’ political trust, this effect is more pronounced and more stable over time for East German as compared to West German citizens and is sufficiently strong to eliminate aggregate‐level differences in political trust between East and West Germany. However, this research note suggests that Campbell's article contains several substantial inconsistencies and obscurities that question the reliability and validity of the empirical findings presented. It provides a re‐analysis of Campbell's main arguments and shows to what extent his initial conclusions can be upheld after the shortcomings have been remedied. The results of this re‐analysis suggest that socialist values indeed exhibit a negative impact on German citizens’ political trust, which is relatively stronger for East as compared to West German citizens. However, contrary to Campbell's initial results, the negative effect of socialist values on political trust is robust over time for both East and West German citizens. What is more, there is no empirical evidence confirming that differences in adherence to socialist values between East and West German citizens are sufficiently strong to account for aggregate‐level differences in political trust. In light of these findings, two of Campbell's three main conclusions are dubious and call for further examination.     

Federal Dynamics of Changing Governance Arrangements in Education: A Comparative Perspective on Australia,Canada and Germany

Abstract

Education policy is a highly interesting field from the point of view of governance, given the substantial changes that have been made throughout the world to the governance of such policy over the last 30 years or so. Western governments in particular have made significant changes in the governance arrangements of their education policy in order to achieve two fundamental goals: increased efficiency and greater accountability. In this process, the role of governments has changed but not diminished. This paper explores such developments by comparing the trajectories of governance reforms in three federal countries (Australia, Canada and Germany). What emerges is that the role of governments is key to all governance mixes modelled by the reform processes in the three analysed countries, and that there is greater “national” coordination than before, but also significant differences in the strategies adopted and in the content of reform, due to the differing nature of such countries’ federal dynamics.     

Explaining subnational parliamentary scrutiny powers: A fuzzy-set analysis of German Landtage

While the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty has important implications for regional parliaments with legislative competences, most studies have focused on cross-country differences or examined the activities of regional parliaments at the EU level. This contribution shows the existence of substantial intra-country differences in the formal scrutiny rights of regional parliaments. We analyse how German regional parliaments (Landtage) have addressed the challenge of controlling their governments in EU affairs. Using fuzzy-set comparative qualitative analysis, we find that institutional and partisan factors (vote share in the second chamber, economic potential, and conservative governments) explain the differences found among German Landtage particularly well. Landtage with otherwise weak parliamentary prerogatives were successful in using the reform momentum to strengthen their rights in the field of EU policy. Combined with the party political salience of EU policy-making, the integration process has thus empowered formally weaker Landtage.     

Federalism,Physicians, and Public Policy: A Comparison of Health Care Reform in Canada and Brazil

Abstract

This article uses comparative historical analysis to explore physicians’ involvement in health care reform in Canada and Brazil. Drawing on historical institutionalism, the analysis stresses how, beyond partisanship, physicians build consensus around and promote specific policy ideas, and how federal institutions shape physicians’ mobilization. In both countries, physicians’ mobilization shaped the emergence of universal health care coverage, but in quite different ways, because of the differing federal institutions. Although the Brazilian medical lobby was far more heterogeneous than the Canadian profession, one faction was able to mobilize at the local level to pursue policy ideas favorable to universal health coverage.     

共享经济中供需双方的信用风险管理研究——以知识技能共享为例

共享经济正在成为“双创”的重要切入点。较之实物商品,知识技能更容易通过互联网平台分享,但也更容易因为供需双方的信息不对称而引发各种纠纷,进而导致共享平台难以为继。解决这些问题的根本在于强化市场经济有效运行的基础——信用风险管理体系,包括对供需双方身份、交易和评价内容的信息审核机制,充分反映双方交易历史、交易能力和信用现状的信用评价体系,动态保证金、第三方资金托管和商业保险相结合的信用保障机制,有第三方参与仲裁的在线争议处理机制,及平台、政府和行业协会协调运行的三方联合监管等五个方面。这些内容,也构成了共享平台风险管理和控制的重要内容。     

Horses and hippos: Why Italian government bills change in the legislative arena, 1987–2006

Scholars interested in legislative processes pay relatively little attention to the changes made to bills in parliamentary democracies. On the one hand, comparative research has often described parliamentary institutions as ineffectual vis‐à‐vis cabinets throughout the lawmaking process; on the other hand, for a long time the rational choice literature has focused more on the formal rules regulating amendatory activity than on amendatory activity itself. Hence, very few studies have tried to explain how much government bills are altered in parliament and why. This article investigates the changes made to governmental legislation in Italy. Taking the modifications occurring during the legislative process as the dependent variable, a number of explanatory hypotheses derived from both existing scholarship and original arguments are discussed and tested. This also allows the identification of some usually unobserved aspects of the decision‐making process within the cabinet. The findings can also be relevant for comparative research since Italy has been characterised during the period under scrutiny (1987–2006) by two distinct electoral systems, two extremely different party systems (pivotal and alternational), governments with various ideological orientations and range, and both partisan and technical ministers.     

Continuity,change, and priorities: The quality and use of regulatory analysis across US administrations

This paper compares the quality and use of regulatory analysis accompanying economically significant regulations proposed by US executive branch agencies in 2008, 2009, and 2010. We find that the quality of regulatory analysis is generally low, but varies widely. Budget regulations, which define how the federal government will spend money or collect revenues, have much lower‐quality analysis than other regulations. The Bush administration's “midnight” regulations finalized between Election Day and Inauguration Day, along with other regulations left for the Obama administration to finalize, tended to have lower‐quality analysis. Most differences between the Bush and Obama administrations depend on agencies' policy preferences. More conservative agencies tended to produce better analysis in the Obama administration, and more liberal agencies tended to do so in the Bush administration. This suggests that agencies more central to an administration's policy priorities do not have to produce as good an analysis to get their regulations promulgated.     

Large firms as political actors: A comparative analysis of the chemical industry in Britain,Italy and West Germany

Large firms as political actors are compared in the chemical industry in three countries. In West Germany, co‐ordinated action through the industry associations is important, but firms are developing their own political capabilities. In Italy links with political parties are important, but the operating environment of firms has become less politicised. Britain conforms more to a ‘company state’ model, with the government relations divisions of firms playing a key role. The greatest divergence between the three countries is in terms of relationships with political parties. In general, there is a trend towards greater convergence in government‐business relations in the industry in the three countries, internationalisation being a key factor.     

Foreign corporate accountability: The contested institutionalization of mandatory due diligence in France and Germany

In the recent past, European states have adopted mandatory due diligence (MDD) laws for holding companies accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of their supply chains. The institutionalization of the international due diligence norm into domestic legislation has, however, been highly contested. Our contribution analyzes the discursive struggles about the meaning of due diligence that have accompanied the institutionalization of MDD in Germany and France. Based on document analysis and legal analysis of laws and law proposals, we identify a state-centric, a market-based, and a polycentric-governance discourse. These discourses are based on fundamentally different understandings of how the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights should be translated into hard law. By outlining these discourses and comparing the related policy preferences, we contribute with a better understanding of different ways in which MDD is institutionalized, with important consequences for the possibilities to enhance corporate accountability in global supply chains.     

法治框架下德国地方治理：权力、责任与财政——以德国莱茵-法尔茨州A县为例的分析

力图在实地调研的基础上,参考德国相关的法律、法规和政策,以公共品供给为线索,描述德国乡村公共品供给的决策、实施与监督的全过程,着力分析公共品供给过程中的权力分配、责任结构和融资途径,以及公共品供给过程中的监督。认为,影响德国乡村公共品供给的因素主要是明确规定不同层级政府权力、责任的法律体系,乡村治理的结构,以及政府间的财政关系。其明显的特点可以归纳为:法治化、辅助性、市场化、公共利益取向、财政主导的融资渠道、健全的监督体制,以及良好的政府间关系。中国地方治理的转型则应该更多地从制度规定、公共财政体制和转移支付制度的建立、地方自主性的发挥、普遍的参与,以及有效的监督等几个方面来思考。     

Bureaucratization and administrative development in Africa: A reading of Riggs' theory of prismatic society

Poor bureaucratization in prismatic (transitional) societies is attributed to malintegration of the ideal bureaucratic principles with subsisting traditional sociocultural features by Fred Riggs. Riggs has been severely criticized on many fronts, yet aspects of his theory remain relevant towards explaining persistent poor administrative behaviour in most African countries. This article applies Riggs' notion of poly‐communalism and poly‐normativism to explain the contribution of low state identity to persistent poor administrative behaviour in Africa. Historical institutionalism theory is also used to attempt at resolving the challenge of equilibrium for which Riggs' theory is commonly criticized. The author avers that communalism, a value that supports group interest in a traditional society, subsists in most poly‐communal transitional African countries, leading to distortions in administrative behaviour. A good number of African countries were mobilized through colonialism but poorly assimilated, thus lacking strong common state identity, which leads to ineffective public administration. The article suggests that resolving the trapping of the administrative system in Africa requires resolving the challenge of poly‐communalism and lack of common identity among a state population.     

Public administration,context and innovation: A framework of analysis

Innovation in public administration (PA) has played a pivotal role in building good governance and has attracted significant attention in the academia. The literature on PA innovation is burgeoning; however, this article argues that there is ‘a missing link’ in the extant literature in that the impacts of variation in context on PA innovation have not been sufficiently investigated. This article elaborates the analytical perspectives on the influences of various contexts over PA innovation and the mechanisms through which impacts may take place. Both theoretical and methodological complexities and challenges are apparent in disentangling contextual influences from other factors. The article proposes a research agenda for a context‐orientated comparative analysis of PA innovation and offers a brief illustration regarding contextual differences between China and the European Union in existing studies. The article calls for further studies in this direction.