奥巴马政府对华政策展望

奥巴马执政初期仍将会延续布什政府的对华友好政策,但在对华贸易逆差、人民币汇率和人权等问题上可能与中国发生摩擦和分歧。随着时间的推移,奥巴马在这些问题上将逐渐回归灵活和务实的政策。鉴于美国内忧外患的困境及中国综合国力的提升,奥巴马的“非敌非友”对华战略定位将会被逐渐扬弃,其对华政策也将目趋理性和现实,并致力于发展美中战略性伙伴关系。     

Post-communist transition of local government in Hungary: Managing emergency social aid

Tensions are embedded in post-communist transitions. Public policies exhibit the disharmony between two different and often competing objectives: (1) developing a fully operational market economy within a democratic context and (2) maintaining social protections in the form of a wide array of social benefits. One challenge for post-communist regimes is the management of this tradeoff. This challenge is observed through an analysis of the administration of emergency social aid in Hungary. The analysis shows that post-communist transitions, as exemplified by the efforts to build local government capacity in Hungary, experience problems of sequencing. In particular, equity decisions are difficult to manage not only because they have their roots in socialist ideology and the policies of the former regime, but also because the increasing number of vulnerable populations makes welfare considerations a politically sensitive task now more than ever before. Meanwhile, the institutional processes needed to manage tensions are fluid and immature. Ultimately the success of the post-communist transition in Hungary (and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe) will be measured by the ability to build institutions that can manage and consolidate political pressures.     

Reapportionment: A study in comparative government

The periodic redrawing of electoral boundaries is a necessity in any equitable single-member representative system. It is approached in very different ways in the United States and in Britain. In America, against a background of continuous intervention by the courts, party politics and legislative fixing are endemic. Britain (and the other established democracies of the Commonwealth) have all turned increasingly to neutral commissions that are in theory (and, on the whole, in practice) blind to considerations of party advantage. This article explores how this contrast has developed. The reasons behind the profound differences in procedure offer unexpectedly rich insights into comparative government.     

电子化政府:政府再造新范式

电子化政府不仅是一个新概念,而且是一种新的政府管理模式,其内涵在于建立一个虚拟政府,为公民提供方便、 高质量的公共服务。电子化政府的建立成为世界范围内政府再造的新趋势。本文分析了电子政府对政府治理和服务的创 新,进一步提出了我国构建电子政府的政策选择。     

Modeling government behavior in collective bargaining: A test for self-interested bureaucrats

This paper tests for self-interested behavior by local-government bureaucrats engaged in collective bargaining with public employee unions. A theoretical model is developed that shows the effect of Niskanen-style bureaucratic self-interest in the two standard bargaining models: the demand-constrained model and the efficient-bargain model. These predictions are then tested using national cross-section data on unionized police, fire, and sanitation workers.We wish to thank the Institute for Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois for its support of this research. Also, we thank Larry Kahn, Fran Blau, and Pablo Spiller for useful comments. Errors, of course, are ours.     

Democracy and the demand for government redistribution: A survey analysis

This article uses survey data to study the impact of democracy on the demand by poor citizens for government redistribution. Taking the well‐known Meltzer‐Richard theory as the point of departure, three arguments are presented as to why such a demand should be stronger in democracies than in autocracies: in democracies low‐income groups are: (1) exposed to elections that can make a policy difference: (2) better informed about the income distribution; and (3) better equipped to process such information. The argument receives empirical support in a Bayesian multilevel analysis which combines 188 World Values Surveys with cross‐sectional and longitudinal macro data from 80 countries.     

Science vs. government: A reconsideration

A content analysis is made of arms control arguments made in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and its Subcommittee on Disarmament by five groups: government scientists, academic scientists, politicians, military persons and citizens.It is found that government scientists are closer in their argumentation to other government persons than to their fellow scientists. It is argued that access rather than professionalism is the important independent variable to consider in predicting policy-related behavior.The author wishes to thank Professor Davis Bobrow for his advice throughout the course of this study.     

A simple estimation method for aggregate government outsourcing

The scholarly and popular debate on the delegation to the private sector of governmental tasks rests on an inadequate empirical foundation, as no systematic data are collected on direct versus indirect service delivery. We offer a simple method for approximating levels of service outsourcing, based on relatively straightforward combinations of and adjustments to standard statistical series, primarily the National Income and Product Account and the Government Finances series produced by the Department of Commerce. The method permits us to separately estimate state and local from federal service outsourcing and (within the federal government) to distinguish between defense and non‐defense services. Alternative estimates, both including and excluding Medicare and Medicaid, are included, as are estimates of outsourcing from 1959 through 2000. The method confirms the general view that the privately provided share of public services has increased, particularly in the last two decades of the past century. But this increase has been shallower than many observers suggest, and as of 2000 more than two‐thirds of the government's service budget was still devoted to employee compensation. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.