Neutrality and advocacy in policy research

The naive scientism which has dominated federal policy research and most policy research institutes has become a self-blinding dogma, an armchair philosophy which fabricates and distorts reality and has failed at its task of understanding our social and economic problems. Broader approaches are needed which do not artificially isolate and arbitrarily quantify selected factors but examine them in their social and historical context. The vain search for “objectivity” should be replaced by an honest avowal of the interests being served. The sanctimonious assertion of an undefinable “public interest” should be replaced by a definable fairness doctrine setting forth the status of the draft and final reports, project finances, and institute and sponsor controls. Such a doctrine could provide the basis for a new professional consensus and self-regulation in the policy research community, and for new IRS tax regulations governing nonprofit research institutions.     

Social Capital and Regional Economies in Britain

Is social capital a prerequisite for prosperity? This paper analyzes social capital and economic performance in the British regions. Like Italy, Britain has a north–south economic divide. Are these differences caused by unequal stocks of social capital? This paper provides limited support for the hypothesized relationship between some indicators of social capital (especially trust and civic associations) and economic performance. Economic associations, however, are negatively correlated. This highlights shortcomings in social capital theory in terms of transferring the concept to new settings, the mechanisms linking social capital to production and the translation of social capital into public policy.     

Marketing in Emerging Market Economies

This paper presents a literature review on the marketing concepts and strategies applied in the emerging economies. The focus of the research was the stage of development and the application of marketing principles in emerging economies, with an emphasis in specific countries, cultures and industries concerned. Issues such as marketing research and its implementation, marketing opportunities, role of distribution channels and communications, marketing strategies and policies in different cultural contexts, marketing specifics compared to developed countries and marketing in specific industries, were reviewed. It was concluded that emerging markets represent a huge opportunity for local and multinational companies. It was also proved that the marketing in general in these countries remains underdeveloped compared to Western countries of established market economies. Despite the fact that emerging market economies represent group countries with same features in some sense, a specific country and industry approach as far as marketing concerns was suggested.     

The geographic scope of migration in Mexico City

"This paper reports some results of analyzing migratory dynamics in the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City, which ever since the 1970-1980 decade have affected other regions of the country, mainly the State of Mexico. The analysis describes different types and modes of migratory movement: metropolitan (from Mexico City), inter-county (within each state), and interstate (between Mexico City and other states). Data was provided by the XI Population and Household Census of 1990." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

The Welfare State in Transition Economies and Accession to the EU

Welfare state reform in East-Central Europe can be divided into two phases: in the first phase, when liberalisation, stabilisation and privatisation were of primary importance, only minor or absolutely necessary reform steps were taken. This soon led many countries into fiscal problems that triggered the second phase of substantial pension and health system reforms. Having been already part of the European welfare state tradition in the pre-communist period, the countries of East-Central Europe were not prepared to take over the essentially private three pillar model of the World Bank. Instead the forerunners of reform, such as Hungary, Poland and Latvia, are developing, together with some incumbent EU members, a new European four pillar model with a specific public-private mix. Even if the social acquis communautaire is not very restrictive for the candidate states, they seem keen to join the European welfare state culture.     

Capital, Trade, and the Political Economies of Reform

Existing approaches to the study of economic reform have focused on the mobilization of special interests that oppose liberalization and have tended to assume that reform dynamics follow a similar logic across distinct policy arenas. Analysis of the dynamics of capital account and trade liberalization in 19 Latin American countries between 1985 and 1999 demonstrates otherwise. Movement toward liberalization is shaped systematically by the timing and salience of each reform's distributional costs and partisan political dynamics. In turn, the timing and magnitude of costs are mediated by the economic context, while salience depends on the informational environment. Our findings thus differ from the conventional wisdom on several scores, particularly by emphasizing the ways in which good rather than bad economic conditions can facilitate reforms, the conditionality of legislative politics of reform enactment on whether reforms are characterized by ex ante conflict or fears of ex post blame, and how the type of reform shapes its political dynamics .     

Coordination as a Political Problem in Coordinated Market Economies

The purpose of this article is to explore the political dynamics of employer coordination in three well‐known “coordinated market economies.” We examine differences in how employer coordination has been organized in Sweden, Germany, and Japan in the area of industrial relations, and we examine the extent to which such coordination represents a self‐sustaining equilibrium, as some of the most influential treatments suggest. To preview the findings, we argue that precisely the intensification of cooperation between labor and management in some firms and industries (that the “varieties of capitalism” literature correctly emphasizes) has paradoxically had deeply destabilizing collateral effects that have undermined or are undermining these systems as they were traditionally constituted. All three cases are characterized not so much by a full‐blown breakdown of coordination so much as a very significant reconfiguration of the terms and scope of such coordination. Specifically, all three countries feature the emergence of new or intensified forms of dualism—different in each case based on different starting points—in which continued coordination within a smaller core has in some ways been underwritten through the breaking off of other, more peripheral, firms and workers.     

Social analysis,project development and advocacy in U.S. foreign assistance

In 1975 the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), the principal administrative agent for American bilateral development assistance, mandated a social analysis component to the project preparation and approval process.¹ Although 'social soundness analysis' is now a required dimension of project identification and design its presumed positive effects are not yet apparent on the output side. Post project impact evaluations reveal that there continue to be negative social effects from AID'S development efforts, regardless of project type. In the process by which projects are identified, framed, approved, and ultimately implemented, important signals identified by pre-project social analysis get displaced. This occurs because anticipating social impact is only one of several goals or functions served by pre-project design analysis. This essay interprets the role of social analysis in the dynamics of project preparation, identifying structures and procedures which attenuate its influence.     

Institutions and Market Reform in Emerging Economies: A Rent Seeking Perspective

The role of institutions as determinants ofrent seeking success is well established. In this paper, we focus on institutionsthat have received little attention in theliterature, namely electoral institutions. We examine three measures of electoralinstitutional structure that arehypothesized to be instrumental indetermining the level of rent seekingsuccess. These are the type of electoralsystem, pluralistic or proportional; methodof selection of the chief executive,presidential or parliamentary; and thenumber of electoral districts. An index ofeconomic freedom is used as the metric forrent seeking opportunities created bygovernments. Theoretical implications ofvariation in these electoral institutionsare developed. These implications areempirically tested employing data from 29countries classified as having emergingmarket economies. Countries with emergingeconomies are expected to exhibit moreinstitutional flexibility that moredeveloped countries whose property rightsare well established and defended. Theempirical results are controlled fordifferences in a number of demographic andhistorical factors. Plurality electoralsystems are more resistant to the politicaldemands of rent seeking than proportionalsystems. Fewer election districts seem toreduce rent seeking opportunities. However, conditional on the type ofelectoral system, presidential systems arefound to be no more resistant to rentseeking than parliamentary systems. Finally, we find strong control effects. Literacy increases a country's resistanceto rent seeking while military spending andyears of institutional entrenchment reduceit.     

深圳公有制与非公有制经济良性发展的理论启示

随着社会主义市场经济的发展 ,公有制与非公有制经济的地位和作用都发生了引人注目的变化。深圳特区经过 2 0几年的市场取向的经济改革实践 ,公有制经济得到积极发展 ,非公有制经济也获得充分的发展空间 ,形成了国企、外资、私营三分天下的局面 ,实现了公有制经济与非公有制经济的良性发展。深圳经济的繁荣 ,给我们以深刻的理论启示。在建设社会主义市场经济体制的过程中 ,对待公有制与非公有制经济的发展 ,必须把思想从传统的僵化认识的窠臼中解放出来 ,以保障社会主义市场经济长期、快速、健康发展为目标 ,研究探索建立适应市场经济新机制…     

An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-oriented learning therein

There has been a great deal of research in recent years concerning the use of substantive policy analysis in public policy-making. This paper seeks to integrate those findings - e.g., the enlightenment function of policy research - into a more general model of policy-making over periods of a decade or more. The conceptual framework focuses on the belief systems of advocacy coalitions within policy subsystems as the critical vehicle for understanding the role of policy analysis in policy-oriented learning and the effect, in turn, of such learning on changes in governmental programs.     

Funding the Welfare State: Globalization and the Taxation of Business in Advanced Market Economies

Theorists assert that international capital mobility creates substantial pressure for all democratically elected governments to decrease tax burdens on business. I explicate and critique the general version of this theory and offer an alternative view. Empirically, I explore whether or not the globalization of capital markets has resulted in decreases in business social security, payroll, and profit taxes. I also investigate whether or not capital mobility has intensified government responsiveness to domestic investment and profitability. Evidence suggests that business tax burdens have not been reduced in the face of rises in capital mobility nor is tax responsiveness to profitability and domestic investment intensified by more open capital markets. To the contrary, analyses indicate that business taxation has become subject to new 'market conforming' policy rules that developed in tandem with liberalization of markets. These new policy orientations reduce the economic management roles of business taxation while leaving the revenue-generating roles intact. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of the findings for questions concerning the structural power of internationally mobile capital, redistributive policies, and the autonomy of democratically elected governments in a global economy.     

Policy making and collective action: Defining coalitions within the advocacy coalition framework

Research on policy communities, policy networks, and advocacy coalitions represents the most recent effort by policy scholars in North America and Europe to meaningfully describe and explain the complex, dynamic policy making processes of modern societies. While work in this tradition has been extraordinarily productive, issues of collective action have not been carefully addressed. Focusing on the advocacy coalitions (AC) framework developed by Sabatier (1988) and Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993) as an example of a productive research program within the policy network tradition, this article (1) examines the potential of the AC framework, with its emphasis on beliefs, policy learning, and preference formation, to provide richer explanations of policy making processes than frameworks grounded exclusively in instrumental rationality; (2) suggests that paradoxically, however, the AC framework can more fully realize its potential by admitting the explanations of collective action from frameworks based on instrumental rationality; (3) incorporates within the AC framework accounts of how coalitions form and maintain themselves over time and of the types of strategies coalitions are likely to adopt to pursue their policy goals; and (4) derives falsifiable collective action hypotheses that can be empirically tested to determine whether incorporating theories of collective action within the AC framework represents a positive, rather than a degenerative, expansion of the AC framework.     

Banking on Accountability? Strengthening Budget Oversight and Public Sector Auditing in Emerging Economies

This study reviews a decade of support by the World Bank and the Inter‐American Development Bank to parliaments and external audit agencies in Latin America. It underscores recent developments in development finance reflecting a broader understanding of the determinants of fiscal credibility and financial integrity. It reveals a learning curve in multilateral assistance to budget oversight institutions. It argues that there exists unexplored potential to improve the effectiveness of multilateral assistance to budget oversight institutions, including in the choice of strategies and instruments. More fundamentally, it underscores the need to tackle the underlying political economy of public finance accountability.     

Charismatic Economies: Pentecostalism,Economic Restructuring,and Social Reproduction

Pentecostalism is one of the world's fastest growing religions, expanding most quickly in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia. To make sense of this expansion in so many developing regions, I suggest that Pentecostalism fosters norms and behaviors that harmonize with neoliberal economic restructuring. I frame this theoretically with Polanyi's notion of double movement. In our current era of weakened state governance vis-à-vis neoliberal trade and fiscal policy, non-state sites of reaction have emerged. Pentecostalism is one such site, and, in contrast with Polanyi's example, I suggest that Pentecostalism has embedded the self-regulated aspects of neoliberal capitalism. I make this argument by using the feminist political economy theorization of social reproduction to interpret a number of empirical studies of Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism addresses dilemmas of social reproduction engendered by neoliberalism, and so may be said to embed this form of economic organization in human social life in a way that reinforces neoliberal capitalism.     

The scope of political jurisdictions and violence: theory and evidence from Africa

Public Choice - Is there more violence in areas with many small countries or only a single large one? I build on Bernholz (The international game of power: past, present and future 1985) to create...     

Red green prospects in Ireland

“Ireland is the “Emerald Isle” in popular imagination. There is certainly some truth in this, since of all European countries the Republic of Ireland is the least ecologically ravaged. Ireland has been spared many of the ecological problems that afflict other Western capitalist countries due principally to its relatively underindustrialized nature. It is therefore a rather special case in the general development of red!green political dialogue of the type that typifies the realignment of European oppositional politics along an emerging continuum stretching from red/green/new social movements to conservative/christian democratic/neo‐fascist parties. The decks have now been cleared for the construction of a viable Irish eco‐social politics.”     

Multi-Year Budgeting: A Review of International Practices and Lessons for Developing and Transitional Economies

In recent years, many developed countries have moved to develop their annual budget process in a strategic multi-year framework. While a common feature of multi-year budgeting approaches is the inclusion of revenue forecasts and expenditures estimates for two or three years beyond the current year, multi-year budget practices vary substantially between countries. This article reviews multi-year budgeting practices in six developed countries (Australia, Austria, Germany, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the United States) and attempts to draw lessons from these experiences for the potential application of multi-year budget techniques by developing and transitional countries. We draw five lessons from the multi-year budget practices of developed countries that are relevant for developing and transitional economies: (1) a multi-year dimension could be a valuable fiscal policy and management tool for developing and transitional countries; (2) the approach chosen in each developing or transitional economy should reflect the country's policy objectives, unique budget institutions and traditions, and administrative capabilities; (3) the introduction of a multi-year budget dimension is a gradual process; (4) the multi-year budget should be used to encourage the constructive involvement of line ministries in the budget process; and (5) the usefulness of the multi-year budget approach will crucially depend on the reliability and accuracy of the medium-term budget estimates.