从2019年大选看英国政治的制度韧性

脱欧公投后,英国政党政治一度出现传统两党党内分歧加剧、地区型及议题型政党力量上升、政党政治极化等变化趋势,议会制度及政治社会共同体都受到冲击。经由2019年大选,英国政党政治格局有所回归和趋稳,脱欧与独立公投未来短暂明晰,政党党纲再度向中间路线靠拢,具有深厚历史积淀的英国政治制度韧性于此再度彰显;然而在正式脱欧后,能否以更高的治理绩效解决其国内“民主赤字”问题,或将成为未来英国政治制度韧性的真正考验。     

Righting the Resource Curse: Institutional Politics and State Capabilities in Edo State,Nigeria

Abstract

The poor record of liberal reforms sponsored by the international community in postcolonial settings underscores the real politik of institutional change. What we call a ‘new normal’ in development policy and practice foregrounds the role of agency – leadership, networks of connectors and convenors, entrepreneurs and activists – but it has less to say about the political and economic conditions of possibility in which agents operate. The putative powers of agency seem most challenged in contexts of extreme resource dependency and the resource curse. The particular case of Edo, a state in the oil rich Niger delta region of Nigeria, illustrates the intersection of agency and structural conditions to show how ‘asymmetric capabilities’ can emerge to create, constrain and make possible particular reform options.     

Civil–Military Relations and Institutional Decay: Explaining Russian Military Politics

The Russian military's extraordinary decline is widely known. The changing political role of high-ranking officers and the different treatment they have been subjected to by Russian presidents has received relatively little scholarly attention, however. This article analyses this phenomenon—including the military elites' electoral participation, relationship to the executive, and opposition to state policy—and offers a method for explaining it. To generate a more penetrating understanding of Russian particularities while expanding our theoretical reach, the article combines the civil–military relations literature with that of the institutionalist approach, and more specifically, the concepts of path dependence and institutional decay.     

Social Structure and Ideology: Cognitive and Behavioral Responses to Servitude among the machube of Northern Dahomey

Les présidentielles de 2019 au Sénégal, pays considéré comme la vitrine de la démocratie en Afrique notamment pour ses alternances politiques pacifiques, semblent susceptibles de modifier cette perception. La transhumance politique, élevée au rang de religion au mépris de la moralité, pourrait aujourd’hui en menacer la stabilité. Les réseaux sociaux dominés par de jeunes militants engagés dans la société civile développent un plaidoyer auprès de l’électorat local centré sur la bonne gouvernance et la démocratie. Antisystèmes, ils proposent une rupture avec un système politique qu’ils qualifient de néocolonial, une justice accusée de partialité et un Conseil constitutionnel qui serait dévoué au gouvernement. Après avoir présenté les conditions de l’élection présidentielle de 2019, analysé les éléments en présence et leur évolution, nous présenterons le nouveau paradigme que représente cette nouvelle génération connectée et globalisée qui réactive sans complexes les théories de Frantz Fanon et de Sankara.     

Privileged Exclusion in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan: Ethnic Return Migration,Citizenship, and the Politics of (Not) Belonging

This article explores issues of citizenship and belonging associated with post-Soviet Kazakhstan’s repatriation programme. Beginning in 1991, Kazakhstan financed the resettlement of over 944,000 diasporic Kazakhs from nearly a dozen countries, including Mongolia, and encouraged repatriates to become naturalised citizens. Using the concept of ‘privileged exclusion’, this article argues that repatriated Kazakhs from Mongolia belong due to their knowledge of Kazakh language and traditions yet, at the same time, do not belong due to their lack of linguistic fluency in Russian, the absence of a shared Soviet experience, and limited comfort with the ‘cosmopolitan’ lifestyle that characterises the new elite in this post-Soviet context.     

Grass-Root Organisations,Intergovernmental Collaboration,and Emergency Preparedness: An Institutional Collective Action Approach

Abstract

This paper examines the importance of grass-root emergency response groups in emergency preparedness. Consistent with the Institutional Collective Action framework, we highlight key constraints associated with local government strategies of mutual resource exchange and barriers to intergovernmental collaboration. We examine local governments’ emergency preparedness using survey data collected in the North Central Texas region. We employed a simple OLS analysis to determine mutual exchange and Poisson estimations on the likelihood of local governments receiving and providing external assistance. Findings showed that the presence of grass-root organisations in a jurisdiction is associated with emergency preparedness, highlighting the importance of norms of volunteerism. Local political institutions and participation in federally funded programmes also have an effect on local government decisions.     

Vulnerability to Multi-Dimensional Poverty: An Empirical Comparison of Alternative Measurement Approaches

This paper investigates whether different measures of ex-post poverty and ex-ante vulnerability to poverty provide consistent estimates of poverty and vulnerability to poverty across households. Moreover, if there is some heterogeneity in the identification of households as poor and vulnerable, it investigates the degree of mismatch between measures? The ex-post monetary poverty (MP) and multidimensional poverty (MDP) measures are used to identify poor households. Likewise, the ex-ante vulnerability to monetary poverty (VMP) and vulnerability to multidimensional poverty (VMDP) measures are used to identify vulnerable households. Using a large household survey data-set of about 90,000 households from the Punjab province of Pakistan, we find that most of the vulnerable households are accurately identified by the ex-ante measures of vulnerability to poverty. However, the ex-post measures of poverty identify different households as poor. Our results show that 18 percent households experiencing MDP are not captured by the one-dimensional measure of MP. The important implication of this study is that the choice of measures does matter in ex-post poverty identification, but not as much in the identification of ex-ante vulnerability to poverty.     

Globalization and Labor in Four Developing Regions: An Institutional Approach

This paper is the introduction to a SCID special issue on “Global Pressures, National Response, and Labor Rights in Developing Countries.” We focus on the potentially conflicting demands that developing countries face from international institutions for better labor standards versus more labor flexibility. This is studied through a comparative analysis of four regions: Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East. The major international institutions we examine are the International Labor Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements, and multinational corporations. This introductory paper presents a review of existing literature on labor standards and labor flexibility with particular focus on the role of international institutions in promoting the two processes and their impact on labor market outcomes. It also describes our project and its contribution to the debates, including a discussion of our main methodological innovation, namely, the construction of new indices for labor standards and flexibility. In empirical terms, it compares the indices across the four regions and provides an analysis of the impact of the indices on labor market outcomes.     

Capitalism and Civil Society Revisited or: Conceptualizing a Civil,Sustainable and Solidary Economy

International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society - After a brief reconstruction of the discourse on civil society, the notion that civil society and the economy are two separate spheres is...     

Caught Between Agendas: GPRA,Devolution, and Politics

Abstract

Despite the optimism that has surrounded the performance movement, there are signals that these expectations are not easy to achieve. This paper focuses on performance activities within the federal government and the accountability concerns that have been attached to the federal‐level Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). It highlights the special problems that are raised in an environment in which federal programs are devolved to state and local government. It reviews the context from which this reform effort has emerged, the constraints surrounding it, highlights several problems in federal performance activities, and suggests an alternative approach to performance instead of GPRA.1–3 Radin, B. A. 2000. The Government performance and results act (GPRA) and the tradition of federal management reform: square pegs in round holes?. J. Publ. Adm. Res. Theor., 1: 111–135. Radin, B. A. 2000. Intergovernmental relationships and the federal performance movement, PUBLIUS. The Journal of Federalism, 30 Radin, B. A. 1998. The Government performance and results act (GPRA): hydra‐headed monster or effective policy tool?. Public Admin. Rev., 58(4): 1–10.       

Ethnic differentials: Sri Lanka,Malaysia, and Israel

Studies in Comparative International Development -     

An Empirical Study of E-Government Service Adoption: Culture and Behavioral Intention

This study seeks to identify and understand the important factors that influence citizens’ behavioral intention to take up e-government services. We adopted a research model empirically tested in the United States. The model integrates three established constructs—the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), trust, and computer self-efficacy. We conducted the research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a leader in e-government development in the Arab world. Our findings are mostly different from the U.S. study and suggest that behavioral intention may be influenced by citizens’ cultural context. This study contributes to a better understanding of citizens’ behavioral intention and adoption factors in e-government, in particular from a cultural perspective. The findings may help governments formulate effective strategies to improve the level of citizens’ uptake of e-government services. This study paves the way for further research on an e-government adoption model that is robust across cultures.     

Conceptualizing throughput legitimacy: Procedural mechanisms of accountability,transparency, inclusiveness and openness in EU governance

This symposium demonstrates the potential for throughput legitimacy as a concept for shedding empirical light on the strengths and weaknesses of multi‐level governance, as well as challenging the concept theoretically. This article introduces the symposium by conceptualizing throughput legitimacy as an ‘umbrella concept’, encompassing a constellation of normative criteria not necessarily empirically interrelated. It argues that in order to interrogate multi‐level governance processes in all their complexity, it makes sense for us to develop normative standards that are not naïve about the empirical realities of how power is exercised within multi‐level governance, or how it may interact with legitimacy. We argue that while throughput legitimacy has its normative limits, it can be substantively useful for these purposes. While being no replacement for input and output legitimacy, throughput legitimacy offers distinctive normative criteria—accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness—and points towards substantive institutional reforms.     

Conceptualizing Interagency Coordination as Metagovernance: Complexity,Dynamism, and Learning in Australian and British Statistical Administration

Top-down methods of interagency coordination are inadequate in contemporary public administration, where multiple departments and agencies interact across loosely coupled networks to solve complex problems. The concept of metagovernance suggests governments can employ combinations of coordination instruments to steer dispersed actors toward common goals. This article asks how officials in Australian and British statistical administration addressed problems with traditional coordination methods. Interviews with senior official statisticians show a transition from traditional interagency coordination to metagovernance, driven by failures and learning. Metagovernance captures how interagency coordination is increasingly practiced, though existing theories should give more attention to learning and adaptation.