Predicting Organizational Actual Turnover Rates in the U.S. Federal Government

ABSTRACT

This study expands the level of analysis on turnover in public administration, especially in the U.S. federal government, from the individual level to the organizational level by using organizational actual turnover rates. Some scholars argue that public employees' turnover intention generally reflects actual turnover. However, very little empirical evidence supporting this argument has been provided in public administration, especially in a broad array of public agencies. This study has rejected this argument by showing insignificant or weakly significant correlations between organizational actual turnover and weighted turnover intention rates. In addition, overall, the two regression results for organizational actual turnover and turnover intention also show different results from those in the existing literature on individual-level turnover intention. The significant predictors of organizational actual turnover rates are goal ambiguity, pay satisfaction, and diversity policy satisfaction. The correlation and regression results imply that research on predictors of turnover may need to consider the differences that may result from using different units of analysis and to make a distinction between turnover intention and actual turnover.     

The Planning and Implementation of the Rule of Law Mission of the European Union in Kosovo

Abstract

This article evaluates the planning process and initial implementation of the Rule of Law Mission of the European Union in Kosovo (EULEX). It shows that the original intention was to have a smaller presence than the predecessor United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Yet as a result of a lack of settlement on the international status of Kosovo, the European Union ended up with a robust mandate and it was unable to make a fresh start in order to distinguish itself from the United Nations. EULEX has, nonetheless, successfully established itself, but it remains too early for a final judgment.     

Towards a Critical Theory of Cultural Pragmatics: The Márkus Road

ABSTRACT

At the time of his death in 2016 György Márkus’s magnum opus on the culture of modernity that he laboured on throughout his post-Budapest period remained unfinished. This paper attempts to reconstruct the theory of Cultural Pragmatics that lay at the core of this immense project. The intention is to retrieve the key ideas of Márkus’s understanding of modern cultural relations by reviewing the terms of his critique of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on the issue of authorship. A distinctive Márkus road in the study of cultural modernity offers itself as a rich contemporary research programme for the future.     

The OECD and “The Rest”: Analyzing the Limits of Policy Transfer

Abstract

Prompted by the rise of the emerging economies and the growing importance of the G20, the OECD has formally announced its intention of establishing itself as a key actor in global policy coordination. As part of this ambition, it has embarked on cultivating closer relations with five G20 countries it designated as key partners through the so-called “Enhanced Engagement” programme: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa. This article mobilizes concepts from the policy transfer literature to explain why the OECD’s attempts to increasingly involve all five countries in its policy have fallen short of its original ambitions, and also why the transfer of its policy work has been uneven across policy and country issue.     

Rising start-up costs of voting: political inequality among first-time voters

Abstract

Research on voting behaviour stresses that whether citizens become habitual voters depends on the very first elections in their adult life. This article focuses on the increasing participation gap of first-time voters with low and high levels of resources. Looking first at 14 European countries and second at long-term dynamics in Germany, the turnout rate of first-time and older voters over time is compared. It is shown that the turnout gap has increased substantially since the 1980s. In contrast, educational differences in electoral turnout among older citizens are still comparatively small. It is argued and shown that the turnout gap among the young is due to rising ‘start-up’ costs of voting, which affect mainly those who are resource poor.     

Afghanistan’s Taliban – Legitimate Jihadists or Coercive Extremists?

ABSTRACT

The military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 was portrayed as a fight to oust the extremist Taliban. But the Taliban have long been regaining influence, with the military victory of the Afghan government and its foreign allies now seeming less likely than ever. In light of these developments, this article investigates what the affected people – rather than the foreign interveners – think about the Taliban, and whether they perceive them as coercive or legitimate. Building on a conceptual understanding of legitimacy that has been adjusted to the dynamics of conflict-torn spaces, the article suggests that people judge the Taliban on the basis of how their day-to-day behaviour is perceived. While the Taliban are a coercive threat in urban centres and other areas where they launch attacks, they nonetheless manage to construct legitimacy in some of the places which they control or can access easily. A major source of their legitimacy in these areas is the way in which they provide services – such as conflict resolution – which some people consider to be faster and fairer than the state’s practices.     

Public Service Motivation,Task, and Non-task Behavior: A Performance Appraisal Experiment with Korean MPA and MBA Students

ABSTRACT

Appraisals of public employees are important for a host of reasons, and particularly so with the increasing emphasis on pay-for-performance systems and performance-based management in the public sector. However, managerial appraisals of employees can be somewhat subjective and our understanding of the appraisal process in the public sector is largely U.S.-centric. In this study, we explore whether characteristics of managers, like a rater's public service motivation (PSM), affect appraisal outcomes for their subordinates. Using a mixed experimental design, we analyze these dynamics in a non-U.S. context with MBA and MPA students enrolled in one of Korea's top universities. We find that rater PSM moderates the influence of both task and non-task behavior on an employee's performance appraisal.     

Morality without Intention

Abstract

An examination of how, in literature, silence and veiling are related to moral significance. The paper emphasizes Walter Benjamin’s essay on Goethe’s Elective Affiniites and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” and poses the question of how the literary can possess moral meaning or effect when, as in these two works, silence and veiling appear as a means of refusing or denying intention. Benjamin’s and Hawthorne’s different critiques of the symbol are presented as the central issue around which the possibility of moral meaning is decided as an intentionless act. Benjamin’s preservation of the moral is interpreted as the cause of the paradoxical and contradictory sources of the expressionless and its critical violence as well as the veiling and secrecy he identifies as forming the true work of art. Against this account, Hawthorne’s story is read as the refusal of any preceding secret as the basis of a moral claim and thus as the defining category of the work of art.     

“Willing the Event”

Abstract

A major problem threatens Deleuze’s project in The Logic of Sense. He makes an ontological distinction between events and substances, but he then collapses a crucial distinction between two kinds of events, namely, actions and mere occurrences. Indeed, whereas actions are commonly differentiated from mere occurrences with reference to their causal dependence on the intentions of their agents, Deleuze asserts a strict ontological distinction between the realm of causes (including psychological causes) and the realm of events, and holds that events of all types are incorporeal happenings which are inseparable from expressed sense. For Deleuze, what counts as one’s action thus does not depend on one’s intention, but rather on a process of “making sense” of that action. Nevertheless, Deleuze continues to speak of the need to “will” the event. In order to resolve this apparent contradiction, I will read a conception of “expressive agency” into The Logic of Sense.     

Private market provision of low‐income housing: Historical perspective and future prospects

Abstract

The unaided private market provision of new low‐income housing is substantially a fantasy. There is little on the horizon to alter this situation in the next decade. The income/cost gap is so substantial as to overcome the decline in household formation and positive changes in job patterns that have been advanced as bridge mechanisms.

To set the debate in context, an overview of the demographic and economic future of the United States is provided and mainstream forecasts of economic and demographic trends affecting housing supply and demand are reviewed. Particular attention is given to demographic maturation and shrinkage, household diversification and segmentation, and income and poverty dynamics.     

Energy diplomacy under scrutiny: parliamentary control of intergovernmental agreements with third‐country suppliers

Abstract

Research on legislative?executive relations in foreign affairs has generally assumed that parliaments are more active in ‘intermestic’ affairs than in traditional foreign policy issues. This paper revisits this assumption by examining whether parliaments in European countries scrutinise crucial decisions on a typical intermestic domain: external energy policy and, more specifically, intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) on energy. Contrary to the expectation, the study finds high variation in the level of parliamentary scrutiny across and within countries. To account for this variation, the paper focuses on the role of issue framing, particularly the impact of securitising and/or depoliticising moves by members of parliament and government. The paper argues that, in contrast to traditional foreign policy matters, securitisation attempts in areas with a strong economic component are likely to increase politicisation and hence also parliamentary engagement. Conversely, parliamentary disengagement is likely to come from the opposite dynamics: successful depoliticisation of governmental responsibilities.     

Structural Models of Voter Behavior in the 2000 Polish Presidential Election

Abstract

The data of the 2000 Polish presidential election have been analyzed according to Newman and Sheth's model of voter's choice behavior (1985). Although this model was originally interpreted within the statistical perspective of discriminant analysis, it could be also extended within the framework of structural equation methodology. Namely, if the seven cognitive domains (Issues and Policies, Emotional Feelings, Candidate Image, Current Events, Epistemic Issues, Social Imagery and Epistemic Issues) are assumed to be distinct and separate, they can be treated as independent (predictive) variables with the voter's intention as a dependent or predicted variable. The three models were tested and the resuits of path analysis show the complex pattern of mutual interdependence between the cognitive domains and voter behavior. The specificity of the cause-effect relationship obtained by the structural equation methodology presented in the paper allows us to put forward some practical suggestions regarding the way electoral campaigns should be conducted.     

Books received

Challenges to the Arab boycott have tested whether Jews are covered by Dutch race relations legislation.     

The importance of personal vote intentions for the responsiveness of legislators: A field experiment

Individual legislators can be important agents of political representation. However, this is contingent upon their responsiveness to constituency requests. To study this topic, an increasing number of studies use field experiments in which the researcher sends a standardized email to legislators on behalf of a constituent. In this paper, we report the results of an original field experiment of this genre with the members of the German Bundestag. Supplementing previous research, we explore whether constituency requests in which voters mention a personal vote intention (rather than a partisan vote intention) increase legislators’ responsiveness, and how this treatment relates to electoral system's incentives. We find that legislators treated with a personal vote intention were more likely to respond (67 per cent) and respond faster than those treated with a partisan vote intention (59 per cent). However, we also show that the treatment effect is moderated by electoral system incentives: it is larger for nominally-elected legislators than for those elected via a party list. Our results suggest that electoral system's incentives matter for legislators’ responsiveness only when constituents explicitly signals an intention to cast a personal vote.     

Still better together? Purpose and power in intergovernmental councils in the UK

ABSTRACT

Intergovernmental relations in the United Kingdom were intended to be predominantly informal, but a machinery of intergovernmental councils (IGCs) developed alongside informal relations. This article examines the development, purpose and dynamics of the UK’s IGCs, with a particular focus on the multilateral Joint Ministerial Committee and the bilateral Joint Exchequer Committees. These IGCs remain weakly institutionalized and multilateral forums, in particular, are regarded by the devolved governments as providing limited opportunities for exercising influence. By contrast, bilateral IGCs have enabled devolved governments to utilize a range of non-constitutional resources to exert influence, irrespective of their relative constitutional weakness. The Brexit referendum generated an intensification of multilateral IGCs while exposing their weaknesses as forums for the exercise of shared rule. The purpose and dynamics within IGCs are shaped by the asymmetrical distribution of power, continued constitutional hierarchy, party competition and competing nationalist projects.     

The Use of Indirection in Televised Political Debates

ABSTRACT

We examine the use of indirection in the three televised debates between George Bush and Al Gore during the 2000 American presidential race. Indirection is a discursive process that enables a speaker to perform a nonliteral “primary” speech act by performing a literal “secondary” speech act. Eight mechanisms of indirection are characterized and explained using examples from the debates. Their occurrence in the debates is also analyzed. The indirection used most often saw the speaker promising to perform an action by expressing his intention to do so. A comparison is made between the American debates and Canadian and Quebec debates. Also questioned is the persuasive effect of indirection in political communication and its potential for strategists and for future research in light of the presented results.     

Are inequalities between us and the dead intergenerationally unjust?

Abstract

This paper looks at whether inequalities between us and the past can be unjust. We show why they can be pro tanto unjust, both when the now dead generation transferred more than it had inherited to its descendants (savings) and when it transferred less (dis-savings). However, we also argue that characterising an intergenerational inequality as unjust neither commits us to the claim that it merely involves bad luck, nor implies that it is the current generation that acted unjustly towards the previous one, nor entails that (members of) the dead generation acted unjustly towards us. The paper ends with a discussion on whether we should do something about such unjust inequalities with the past.     

Individual integrity,freedom of association and religious exemption

ABSTRACT

Of the many questions Cécile Laborde addresses in her magisterial Liberalism’s Religion, several relate to what she describes as ‘the puzzle of exemptions’. I examine some of the issues raised by her efforts to solve that puzzle: whether her ideal of moral integrity squares with the nature of religious belief; whether we should find the case for collective religious exemptions in freedom of association and the ‘coherence interests’ of associations; how much significance we should give to the ‘competence interests’ of organised religions; and by which criteria we should assess individual claims to religious exemption.     

Statebuilding in Divided Societies: The Reform of Dayton in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Drawing from the literature on conflict regulation and other plural society theories, this paper provides a framework of analysis to explore the dynamics involved in the external statebuilding process in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The analysis is based on a three-level framework whereby patterns of conflict regulation are analyzed at the inter- and intra-ethnic levels, as well as what this article terms the ‘supra-national’ ethnic level, where interactions between domestic and external actors are considered. In order to explore these issues empirically, this paper examines the process of constitutional reform in BiH over the course of 2005–6, drawing from personal interviews. The paper concludes that, while the assistance provided by external actors has proven substantial, the neglect of intra-ethnic dynamics and other related considerations have often rendered external actors’ efforts at shaping the statebuilding process in BiH ineffective.     

The Impact of Political Debate on Government Trust: Reminding the Public What the Federal Government Does

Americans' confidence in government is low by historical standards. We fielded a national telephone survey to examine influences on government confidence and whether public discontent was affected by altering the salience of specific government operations. We used a question order experiment where we alternated between first asking a general question about confidence in government and first asking about confidence in specific government operations. We found that posing the specific policy questions first elevated general confidence more than the reverse. The largest and most noticeable effects were observed for Republicans and those most knowledgeable and attentive to politics. Findings of context effects and the partisan subgroup differences are consistent with existing theories on public opinion change as well as with previous question order experiments. But, evidence that the cognitive elite was especially influenced by question order challenges previous theories that presumed that its sophistication made it immune to influence. We suggest that education and political knowledge expand rather than contract the opportunities for priming.