It’s not me,it’s you: the functioning of Wall Street during the 2008 economic downturn

Public officials have blamed Wall Street and its complex financial products for causing the 2008 economic downturn. This article addresses three popular claims saying that complex financial markets are at fault and need more regulation. It argues that even in the midst of a major economic downturn, the much-maligned mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and unregistered hedge funds functioned almost exactly as designed. When macroeconomic conditions worsened, firms and investors that were paid to assume certain risks had to assume them. Those that opted for safer investment vehicles with more levels of private protection faced fewer problems. Although many investment vehicles lost money, one must differentiate between problems that manifested themselves in markets and problems with the market itself. Even though government policies caused many of the problems, public officials always have an incentive to point the finger at Wall Street and to argue for more regulations when their policies negatively affect markets.     

The persecution of German Romanies: the case of Osnabrück, 1933–46

Studies of racial persecution in Germany, particularly during the Nazi period, now appear on almost a daily basis, so that every victimized minority has received attention. Antisemitism remains the main focus of research but the Romanies have now begun to attract scholars. While historians have studied Jews in virtually every location and over short time periods, they have tended to examine the situation of the Romanies at the national level using a longer time frame, recognizing the continuities of racial persecution that link the Nazi years with the rest of the twentieth century. Panayi brings out these longer-term patterns by focusing on the case of Osnabrück. He begins with an account of the historiography of Romanies at both the local and national level, and contrasts this with the general attention that German history of the first half of the twentieth century, especially the Third Reich, has received. The narrative then moves on to use the limited information available on the Osnabrück Romanies to carry out a detailed examination of the realities of their everyday life and the attitudes of the authorities towards them in the town between 1933 and 1946. Panayi’s study falls into the German social history approach of Alltagsgeschichte, which uses the specific to draw out the realities of the general national picture.     

Performance of Public–Private Partnerships and the Influence of Contractual Arrangements

This article seeks to answer two research questions: does public-private partnerships (ppp) live up to its promises to government? How do contractual arrangements affect ppp performance? We propose a conceptual framework to evaluate ppp performance by comparing actual project outcomes to government goals in initiating the partnerships, and to explore how a set of contractual arrangements affect the ppp performance on each identified goal. The framework is applied to a comparative case analysis of highway ppp experiences in the commonwealth of virginia (us) since the 1990s. The results show that these ppp cases were successful in accessing innovative finance, but their performance was mixed on reducing construction risk and transferring revenue risk. Generally improved over time with later projects, the ppp performance was affected not only by interaction among contractual arrangements –private partner selection, financial arrangements, role division, risk allocation, and project characteristics – but also by authorizing and supportive legislation in the policy domain.     

On the political economy and limits of crisis insurance: the case of the 2008–11 bailouts

The bailouts of 2008–10 are the most recent in a long series of insurance-like policies designed to limit the losses of those harmed by a crisis of some kind—but enacted after a crisis is under way. This paper analyzes the economics and politics of “crisis insurance” programs. The analysis helps explain why ex-post insurance is popular, why it tends to be undersupplied by private markets, and why governments may be better able to provide it. The analysis also points out that there are limits to what losses can be covered. The routine adoption of new programs to limit losses from crises tends to require greater expenditures through time because of moral hazard problems and the nature of crises. Eventually, this trend may produce “uninsurable” crises. The analysis of this paper suggests that such problems can be moderated, although not eliminated, through appropriate standing polices for ex-post funding of crisis insurance.     

Trending economic factors and the structure of Congress in the growth of government, 1930–2002

We investigate the role of Congress in the growth of federal public expenditure since 1930, building on the work of Kau and Rubin (Public Choice, 113:389–402, 2002). The model incorporates majority party strength and the extent of party control of Congress in addition to the median ideological position of elected representatives. We first provide estimates of the relative importance of the state of Congress and of trending supply and demand-side economic factors in the evolution of federal spending. The resulting models are then used to simulate the consequences of the radical and historically unprecedented shift to the right of Congress in 1994/95.     

Proceeding in hardship: the trilateralism–bilateralism nexus and the institutional evolution of China–Japan–South Korea trilateralism

In recent decades, the development of trilateral institutions among China, Japan and South Korea has begun to take shape. This study analyzes its strengths and weaknesses with regard to the nexus between trilateralism and bilateralism. A well-functioning trilateral grouping needs to overcome two structural limitations – dilution effects and bilateral constraints – both of which are triggered by embedded bilateral approaches. The critical juncture approach is effective in terms of elevating the payoffs of cooperative trilateralism during times of exigency. However, once common crises have dissipated, trilateralism has revealed starkly different performances with respect to functional and political-diplomatic cooperation. This article adopts a dichotomous approach between the two. Functional trilateralism has been steadily growing, and has proven to be less subject to fluctuations in the nations’ political relationships. Its outcomes are positive and worthy of praise. However, the outcomes of trilateralism have been less convincing in fields of middle and high politics. Trilateralism is overwhelmingly subject to fluctuations when its embedded bilateral relations change, and cooperative outcomes within a trilateral grouping are prone to being diluted by bilateral approaches. China–Japan–Korea trilateralism at diplomatic levels remains more an extension of bilateral relations than a mature form of minilateral arrangement.     

Habermas and the pragmatics of communication: a Deleuze–Guattarian critique

The intention in this article is to explore, explicate, and, ultimately, critique Jurgen Habermas' communication theory. Drawing on the pragmatics of Deleuze and Guattari we will propose that Habermas' defence of the importance and priority of communicative action is problematic to the extent that it implicitly involves the issuing of an imperative order that cannot be accounted for within the normative framework that he envisages. In other words, we will be suggesting—with the help of Deleuze and Guattari—that Habermas, undoubtedly against his best intentions, precipitates, what we will call, a strategic levelling of communicative action.     

Managing the MedUSA: comparing the political economy of US–Japan,US–German,and US–UK relations

Abstract

International experience tells that public services often fail to work for those in need. To make things work requires complex institutional changes that are difficult to come by, let alone sustain. This paper examines the situation of rural public service provision in China and a local attempt to revamp the service provision institution through adjusting the mix of state and the market. It reveals the dialectical process of policy evolution whereby innovation, and resistance to it, has emerged.     

Ideological change and the economics of voting behavior in the US, 1920–2008

This paper tests the proposition that voters advance a more liberal agenda in prosperous times and turn more conservative in dire economic times. A reference-dependent utility model suggests that, with income growth, the relative demand for public goods increases and the median voter is more likely to vote Democrat. With slowing income growth, the median voter derives increased marginal utility from personal income—making taxation more painful—and is more likely to vote Republican. Ordinary and instrumented analyses of a new time series for the US median voter are encouraging of this income growth model. This work links voting behavior to economic business cycles and shows that ideological change is endogenous to income growth rates.     

Governance within public–private partnerships and the politics of urban development

Public-private partnerships are the preferred vehicles for the planning, financing and implementation of contemporary urban development. Scholarship on public-private partnerships tends to examine their activities in advancing development. Less attention is accorded to their internal dynamics or governance. While partnerships are intended to build internal consensus and obtain consent in order to carry out urban development, this premise assumes that coordinated public and private interests are in play. This paper examines the internal governance of two public-private partnerships in Rochester, New along three dimensions: conformity to a collective purpose or vision, leadership structure and organizational style.     

Party organizational development and the electoral performance of the radical right: exploring the role of local candidates in the breakthrough elections of the Sweden democrats 2002–2014

It is today commonplace to view radical right parties as masters of their own fates. However, whereas most authors in the field focus on dominant leaders, the impact of party organizations remains understudied. To remedy some of this, we study the impact of three unique measures of organizational development on the electoral performance of the Sweden Democrats (SD) in four consecutive local elections between 2002 and 2014. When controlling for crucial demand- and supply-side factors, while holding the appeal of the national leadership constant, we find that the size, competence, and stability of the local candidate base were all decisive for explaining the success of the SD. These findings suggest that a developed organizational base not only matters to the long-term persistence of radical right parties, but also to their electoral breakthrough. Additionally, we suggest that party organizations are likely to have a greater impact in countries where radical right parties are already established. We conclude by arguing that our findings potentially provide insights into mechanisms that explain how new parties in general establish themselves.     

The French presidential election of 24 April–8 May and the general election of 5–12 June 1988

The French presidential and legislative elections of 1988 and their aftermath provided a full test of the constitutional arrangements of the Fifth Republic. This article describes the tactical considerations behind President Mitterrand's own campaign for re-election and behind the manoeuvrings of the various candidates on the right. It reports on the conduct and outcome of the presidential campaign and on the decision to move on to an immediate dissolution of the National Assembly. The campaign and the paradoxical outcome of the return to scrutin à deux tours are fully examined.     

Extreme idealism and equilibrium in the Hotelling–Downs model of political competition

In the classic Hotelling–Downs model of political competition, no pure strategy equilibrium with three or more strategic candidates exists when the distribution of voters’ preferred policies is unimodal. I study the effect of introducing two idealist candidates to the model who are non-strategic (i.e., fixed to their policy platforms), while allowing for an unlimited number of strategic candidates. Doing so, I show that equilibrium is restored for a non-degenerate set of unimodal distributions. In addition, the equilibria have the following features: (1) the left-most and right-most candidates (i.e., extremists) are idealists; (2) strategic candidates never share their policy platforms, which instead are spread out across the policy space; and (3) if more than one strategic candidate enters, the distribution of voter preferences must be asymmetric. I also show that equilibria can accommodate idealist fringes of candidates toward the extremes of the political spectrum.