Explaining Institutional Change: Policy Areas,Outside Options,and the Bretton Woods Institutions

I propose and test a theoretical framework that explains institutional change in international relations. Like firms in markets, international institutions are affected by the underlying characteristics of their policy areas. Some policy areas are prone to produce institutions facing relatively little competition, limiting the outside options of member states and impeding redistributive change. In comparison, institutions facing severe competition will quickly reflect changes in underlying state interests and power. To test the theory empirically, I exploit common features of the Bretton Woods institutions—the International Monetary Fund and World Bank—to isolate the effect of variation in policy area characteristics. The empirical tests show that, despite having identical membership and internal rules, bargaining outcomes in the Bretton Woods institutions have diverged sharply and in accordance with the theory.     

Sharpening a Knife Cleverly: Organizational Change, Policy Paradox, and the "Weaponizing" of Administrative Reforms

Prior research has leavened substantially our understanding of how, why, and with what consequences public organizations respond to pressures for administrative reforms. Left underdeveloped theoretically, however, is the hypothesis that agency actors may also assess the ability of administrative reforms both to advance their policy goals and to become "weapons" in battles within agencies for advancing them. To illustrate this possibility, this article analyzes how the Clinton administration's National Performance Review and related Defense Reform Initiative interacted with its efforts to "green" the U.S. military in the post–Cold War era. Analysis of this clash between defense and environmental values indicates that (1) agency actors did evaluate the potential impacts of administrative reforms on their policy goals before supporting or opposing them; (2) they tried to hijack those reforms as weapons for advancing their policy goals in intraorganizational battles; and (3) the "weaponizing" of these reforms produced policy complications and consequences that proponents neither anticipated nor welcomed. Thus, reform in the administrative domain created unanticipated consequences by spilling over into the policy domain and being hijacked, weaponized, or otherwise miscarried or used opportunistically in intraorganizational policy battles. The study concludes by arguing that these dynamics merit more attention than they have received from either administrative reform proponents or researchers seeking to develop theories of administrative reform.     

The Dynamics of Top‐Down Organizational Change: Donald Rumsfeld's Campaign to Transform the U.S. Defense Department

Drawing upon interviews with 69 defense policymakers and close observers, this article develops an extrapolation‐oriented case study of Donald Rumsfeld's campaign to transform the development of the U.S. Defense Department's future capabilities. This reform effort, launched by President George W. Bush during his first presidential campaign, encountered difficulties in developing and promoting the content of the proposed transformation and in executing it. Following Eugene Bardach's work on institutional craftsmanship and Michael Barzelay's efforts to further develop Bardach's methodology for extrapolation‐oriented case studies, the article explores the sources of the transformation campaign's difficulties, identifying several mechanisms linking common process context factors, exacerbated by process design features, to these negative outcomes. It also offers suggestions for rendering the design of change campaigns more robust to these vulnerabilities.     

Gender,actors, and institutions at the local level: Explaining variation in policies to address violence against women and girls

Research on gender equality policy has generally focused on actors and institutions at the national and international levels. This article considers the role of local‐level actors and institutions in explaining different policy responses to violence against women and girls (VAWG). The literature on gender policy trajectories identifies the particular importance of executive actors in influencing “status policies” like VAWG. Quantitative data are analyzed to show how local Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales have responded to demands for policy action. The focus is on the interaction between the 41 elected commissioners and the new institutional arrangements for police governance introduced in 2012. The article shows that variation in policy outcomes is related (a) to the gender of executive actors and (b) to the way in which actors interpret elements of the institutional framework, regardless of their own gender.     

The Danes and Europe: From EC 1972 to Euro 2000 – Elections, Referendums and Attitudes

Within Europe, the Danish electorate is the one that has most often expressed its opinion about the European Union in elections and in national referendums. Votes and attitudes are analysed for the five elections to the European Parliament between 1979 and 1999 and in the six referendums – from the first on membership of the EC in 1972 to the September 2000 referendum on acceptance of the euro, the European single currency. The article gives an overview of the development of Danish public opinion in relation to the European Union from 1960 to 2000, the turnouts at referendums, and the elections and results for the European Parliament. It is shown that since Denmark joined the EU, public opinion has fluctuated greatly, although the balance among Danish European Parliament members has remained stable. The reasons for the frequent use of referendums in Denmark and a thematic outline of the six referendums are put forward. The article concludes with a comprehensive analysis of public attitudes towards the referendum on the euro in 2000. It is shown that regional electoral patterns have vanished, but underlying attitudes are manifested in the public.     

If you ask,they will come (to register and vote): Field experiments with state election agencies on encouraging voter registration

We address the frequent critique that voter registration is a barrier to participation in the US. Institutional reforms to voter registration produce only small impacts on participation. We show the registration barrier can be reduced without changing laws or administrative processes using official communication seeking to change individual political behavior. In collaboration with state election agencies in two states, we conducted large-scale field experiments using low cost postcards aimed at increasing registration among eligible but unregistered citizens. The experiments find statistically and substantively significant effects on registration and turnout in subsequent elections. The research partnership with election officials is unusual and important for understanding electoral participation. Further, the population targeted for registration is broader than prior experiments on voter registration in the US. The results provide important insights about voter registration as a barrier to political participation, plus practical guidance for election officials to reduce this barrier.     

The Dynamics of Change: Class, Politics and Civil Society—From Marx to post-Marxism

This paper discusses how Marxist understandings of politics and civil society, particularly Marx's own work, can contribute to understanding the dynamics of political change in contemporary capitalist democracies. While briefly exploring the conceptual problems contained in the political-philosophical agenda set out in Marx's earliest works, the paper argues that his subsequent examinations of civil society and class relations are grounded in a political economy of capitalist development which retains considerable salience. The possibilities of a post-Marxist politics of civil society are assessed in this light, using the example of recent neo-liberal and neo-conservative assaults on the welfare state to indicate the ways in which membership of civil society is itself a critical focus of political contestation. A politics of civil society (for example, contemporary 'third way' strategies) lacks any substantive democratic potential, without the type of radical political economy developed by Marx.     

‘It's the Demography,Stupid’: Ethnic Change and Opposition to Immigration

It is often forgotten that, regardless of time or place, periods of high immigration are almost always periods of high anti‐immigration sentiment. When ethnic change is rapid, driven by immigration or differences in ethnic natural increase, the ethnic majority often responds with a politics of immigration. This was true, for instance, in Britain in the 1960s, in the US during 1890–1925 and in interwar Scotland. I show that White British people in locales experiencing rapid ethnic change are more likely to call for lower immigration and to vote BNP. On the other hand, where there is already a high level of ethnic minorities, white opinion is less hostile to immigration: UKIP does poorly among whites in diverse areas. Habituation to change, typically within a decade, and assimilation—especially of Europeans—over a generation reduces hostility to immigration. If the rate of ethnic change slows, we should therefore expect a reduction in the salience of immigration. Ironically, because the children of European migrants are more readily accepted into the ethnic majority than is the case for non‐Europeans, a shift from EU free movement to non‐European skilled migrants, as is advocated by UKIP, could run counter to the wishes of its own supporters.     

We’re Not all Happy Yet: Attitudes to Work,Leadership, and High Performance Work Practices among Managers in the Public Sector

This article explores the attitudes of male and female managers in the public sector toward high performance Human Resource Management (HRM) policies and practices, work, and organisational leadership, and compares these attitudes to those of managers in the private sector. It finds that female public sector managers are most positive about high performance HRM policies and practices. Male public sector managers are less positive than female managers in the public sector and male and female managers in the private sector across all the measures. Psychological contract theory suggests either the changes associated with high performance HRM policies and practices, or attempts to decrease the disadvantage felt by women in the public sector may have resulted in a sense of disadvantage among some men in the sector, and created a changed, more transactional psychological contract between these men and their organisation. Strategies are needed to reengage public sector men.