A constitutional view of legislative pay

The distinction between constitutional rules and post-constitutional laws is often a fine line. However, this analysis suggests that, in the case of state legislative pay, constitutional rules are much more binding than post-constitutional restrictions. Further research in the area of constitutions from an economic point of view may yield fruitful results. As Tullock (1988: 140) has stated, The real importance of such an evaluation could be as a first step toward developing improved constitutional rules. Evaluating other areas of policy from a constitutional point of view might shed light on the path towards the development of optimal rules in a democratic process.Thanks go to Randy Holcombe for helpful comments and suggestions.     

Tollison costs and technological innovation: The case of environmental regulation

This paper departs from the Tullock cost paradigm that views competition for monopoly privilege as a welfare-inimical process that wastefully dissipates preexisting producers' surplus and, occasionally, leads to inefficient increases in costs and counterproductive uses of scarce resources. The potential availability of rent-seeking may bring about the elimination of inefficient regulatory regimes that retard or prevent the introduction of cost-reducing innovations. Air quality management is but one area in which innovation rent-seeking holds promise for concrete welfare gains. Researchers may wish to focus on institutional mechanisms designed to overcome the transactions costs and free rider disincentives to the formation of a coalition to seek innovation rents. An example of such a mechanism might be a joint venture that requires all venture members to engage in lobbying and to contribute to collective research efforts. These unaddressed questions await future research.The authors are grateful for the insightful comments of Gordon Tullock, Robert D. Tollison, Michael T. Marlow and J.R. Clark. The usual caveats apply. The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors and should not be taken to represent the views of their employers.     

Single-issue voting: Elite-mass linkages

In this paper we consider the abortion and E.R.A. issues as examples of single-issue politics, as well as the nature of single-issue politics in general. We argue that many single issues are what others have called easy issues but that hard-issue voting as well as easy-issue voting may be occurring on both issues. We test this hypothesis using both mass and elite data sets. Our findings suggest that political activists may be cuing the masses into a pattern of single-issue voting, and hence keeping the battle over abortion and the E.R.A. intense.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1981 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, September 3–6, 1981.     

International trade policy in Israel: Another model — Reply

The aim of this study was to examine the tariff structure in Israel in terms of the four main theoretical models of endogenous commercial policy. The empirical results for levels of protection in Israel support several of the models. In particular the pressure group model performs well and especially the variable that represents the lobbying power of the Histadrut/public sector in Israel. This is consistent with the longstanding political power of the Histadrut in Israel. The Histadrut's role in the Israeli economy rises above the western concept of a labor union and takes on a quasi-governmental function. The clearest example of this elevated status is seen when the government included the Histadrut as part of the commission charged with the responsibility of carrying out the nominal liberalization process of the 1960s. Evidently it is this kind of political-economic power that allowed the Histadrut to affect the level of protection Histadrut-dominated industries received.The displacement costs model is also supported suggesting that officials, when deciding on tariff rates, are sensitive to the displacement costs (e.g., amount and average duration of unemployment), associated with different levels of protection for various industries. This result stands in contrast to the goals set out in the New Economics Policy of 1962 discussed earlier. Apparently tariff setting authorities desired to increase efficiency by reducing protection but were also willing, perhaps for political reasons, to trade off lower displacement costs with higher tariff rates.     

The possibility of a desirable minimal state

There is a near consensus that organized special interests use influence to expand government into activities that are detrimental to the public at large. Consequently, as Lee (1989) suggests, it would be desirable if the general public had more control over political decisions — if government were more responsive to the public interest. However, the public interest like rent-seeking, is a subjective concept (Pasour, 1987).The possible existence of a desirable minimal state is not disproved by an approach that assumes utilities are interpersonally comparable. Individual utilities are subjective and ordinal and hence, cannot be added or weighted to determine the level of government that is socially optimal. If one accepts the subjectivist approach, it follows that no one can decide upon any policy whatever in the absence of an ultimate ethical or value judgment (Rothbard, 1982: 212). In this respect, determining the desirable minimal state is no different from determining whether an individual government program is desirable (or whether it represents rent-seeking waste).     

Incentives and political contributions

Two implications from this research are noted. First, from a researcher's viewpoint, our research suggests the importance of age, wealth, tax rates, and marital status as determinants of political contributions by top U.S. wealth-holders. Therefore, these factors should be included in aggregated models that attempt to analyze the relations between such variables as voting, campaign expenditures and the outcomes of elections. Second, from politicians' viewpoints, this research suggests that individual economic variables such as marginal tax rates and wealth are major determinants of individual decisions to contribute to politicians. Assuming that such contributions reflect votes, this research suggests the relative importance of focusing campaign promises on economic variables — a strategy that low tax politicians like Ronald Reagan and George Bush may keenly be aware of.The views presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Treasury Department.     

Ideology and the construction of nationality: The Canadian elections of 1993

Canada is one nation, but it is in many ways two communities, one Francophone and the other Anglophone. We employ a formal model of ideology and analyze how nationality is constructed in people's minds. The magnitude of the changes in expressed preferences in terms of ideology depends on the salience of the new issue, the extent to which it confirms with the existing ideological cleavage, and the difference between the perceived status quo on the new dimension and the voter's most preferred alternative. Using data from the 1993 Canadian National Election Study, we consider the relative importance of different policy dimensions in explaining voting decisions among educated Canadians. The issue of Quebec sovereignty, alone, is shown to have significant power for predicting vote choice. A plausible explanation, confirmed here by regression analysis, is that Quebec sovereignty stands for other issues in voters' conception of Canadian politics.     

The meaning of party labels

To determine the meaning(s) of the concepts Republican, Democrat, and Independent, the most frequently cited attributes of each party label were scaled in terms of their semantic centrality. An analysis of the magnitude scale values demonstrates that the labels Republican and Democrat have unique cognitive properties which easily discriminate one label from another. The most characteristic and discriminating properties refer to (1) voting, (2) electioneering, and (3) other forms of electoral behavior. Although these two labels have many strong properties over which there is considerable agreement, such consensus is lacking for the fewer and weaker properties which characterize and discriminate the label Independent. Whereas Republican and Democrat are sharply delineated, semantic inversions of one another, the concept Independent is ambiguously defined and only weakly distinguishable from other concepts.     

Public opinion and presidential responsibility for the economy: Understanding personalization

The general mechanisms which underlie the psychological phenomenon ofpersonalizing (cognitive simplification and defensive attribution) would seem to have great utility in explaining attributions of presidential control over the economy. Yet previous research has generated inconsistent and inconclusive empirical results. This study identifies several sources of inconsistency and then attempts to clarify the approach by focusing separately on the object and the subject of personalizing. Our findings suggest that the determinants of personalizing to the president are different from the factors that explain personalizing to the incumbent. In addition, we find that the impact of the two psychological mechanisms differs substantially within economic subject areas.Paper prepared for delivery at the 1984 Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Political Science Association, Fort Worth, Texas.     

The median and the competitive equilibrium in one dimension

Two alternative models of legislative outcomes are the minimum winning coalition and the competitive equilibrium (Koford, 1982). In a unidimensional setting, the outcome under the former is the median, while the outcome under the latter is the highest net demand location.This paper describes the competitive equilibrium in a unidimensional model, and shows that under some common conditions it coincides with the median, in particular for pure redistributive issues. However, for distributive issues, the two equilibria will differ. Finally, the comparative statics of the two models are examined; while the winning coalition is sensitive only to changes in the location of the median, for distributive issues the competitive equilibrium has the standard economic comparative statics that the outcome adjusts in the direction of the change in preferences.     

Do the polls affect elections? Some 1980 evidence

This paper finds that the relatively favorable standing of Ronald Reagan in the preelection polls helped to generate a bandwagon effect in the 1980 presidential election. The models tested here suggest that this effect was most pronounced among voters who had the weakest prior political opinions and hence were most susceptible to suggestion through the media. While the bandwagon effect that is generated is modest, after controlling for an array of other political biases, it is substantial enough to warrant further attention as the dissemination of poll results becomes an increasingly attractive news event.     

Elections and government spending

It is widely believed that electoral pressures cause legislators to favor government spending programs. This electoral theory of spending is shown to encompass two core hypotheses: (1) the electoral consequences hypothesis, which states that support for spending programs improves the representative's electoral showing; and (2) the legislator insecurity hypothesis, which states that greater electoral insecurity leads representatives to be more in favor of spending programs. A test of these ideas using spending scores for U.S. representatives in 1986 finds that neither hypothesis is supported by the data.     

University admission requirements as rent-seeking

The paper argues that admission requirements into public universities are best viewed as rent-seeking by several groups, in contrast to the conventional rationing rationale. The rents are principally nonfinancial for some of the groups. The paper concludes by showing why admission requirements are not set too high.Discussions with Joe Jadlow, Scott Turner and Larkin Warner, and comments by colleagues on an earlier version in our departmental Workshop helped clarify the issues. I thank them, emphasizing that the normal caveat is not pro forma.     

Policymaking and technology transfer: The need for national thinking laboratories

The objectives of this paper are to understand what is meant by better policymaking and more efficient technology transfer, to explore what is needed for their achievement, and to suggest an operational mechanism for improving the two processes.The author introduces a few new terms: (1) Inter-context information is defined, and its importance in decisionmaking, policymaking, technology transfer and education is pointed out; (2) a distinction is drawn between incidental technology transfer—initiated by the donor—and organized technology transfer—initiated by the recipient.The author suggests that National Thinking Laboratories should be established to promote organized technology transfer and to act as catalysts to organized policymaking. Their charter should be to match needs in one context to capabilities in another context. This charter is outlined in operational terms by five general objectives listed by the author. The National Thinking Laboratories are most urgently needed, particularly in the developing countries.     

Policy termination as a political process

The problem of how to terminate ineffective or outdated public policies, programs, or organizations is increasingly important. This paper argues that it is helpful to conceive of termination as a special case of the policy adoption process: there is a struggle to adopt a policy A, the substance of which is to eliminate or curtail policy B. The main distinguishing feature of this class of policy contests is the activity of vested interests who are able to advance a peculiarly powerful moral claim concerning the inequity or unfairness of change.     

Dilemmas in a general theory of planning

The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems. They are wicked problems, whereas science has developed to deal with tame problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about optimal solutions to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no solutions in the sense of definitive and objective answers.This is a modification of a paper presented to the Panel on Policy Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Boston, December 1969.     

The debate on World Dynamics: A response to Nordhaus

In a recent paper published in the Economic Journal, Professor William D. Nordhaus of Yale University reviewed World Dynamics by Jay W. Forrester. In his criticism, Nordhaus signals three serious problems and several additional questionable assumptions of sufficient importance to undermine the usefulness of Forrester's book. However, a careful examination of his analysis shows that each point made by Nordhaus rests on a misunderstanding of World Dynamics, a misuse of empirical data, or an inability to analyze properly the dynamic behavior of the model by static equilibrium methods.The three serious problems raised by Nordhaus concern the assumptions that connect industrialization to net birth rates in World Dynamics, the representation of technology and production within the world model, and the impact of prices on global resource use. The analysis presented here refutes the Nordhaus arguments and shows that World Dynamics is consistent with his references to real-world data on population, production, and capital accumulation.This paper is a response to William D. Nordhaus, World Dynamics: Measurement Without Data, published in the Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, December 1973. An earlier, unpublished, version of the Nordhaus paper, bearing the same title, was widely circulated hand-tohand within the United States, Canada, and Europe. A response to the original Nordhaus paper (System Dynamics Group Memorandum D-1736-4) was written in February 1973 and is available from Jay W. Forrester, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. 02139. The present paper, a revised version of the earlier response, deals with several new or modified arguments contained in the Economic Journal article by Nordhaus.     

Political arenas,life styles,and the impact of technologies on policymaking

Public policies are often founded upon or employ specific technologies. Two basic types of technology are distinguished—behavioral and physical technologies—and their contributions to policy and policymaking are discussed. The attractiveness of a technology to policymakers depends on how politically significant groups view the technology's impact on life styles and its implications for the allocation of values. Following Theodore Lowi's groundwork, behavioral technologies generally are perceived to redistribute values (power, respect, wealth, status) and regulate styles of living, while physical technologies generally appear to distribute values, opportunities, and freedom to pursue desired life styles. The policy sciences are given separate treatment as a behavioral technology with both distributive and redistributive aspects. The creative use of physical technology, development of multidisciplinary policy studies, and efforts towards more distributive behavioral technologies are discussed as more relevant and productive for policymaking.     

Characteristics of migrants within the framework of current migration direction in the United States: Some evidence from micro-data analysis

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the phenomenon of an apparent population distribution reversal in the United States. This paper examines the characteristics of migrants participating in such moves between 1969 and 1977, based on data from a longitudinal nationwide household sample survey conducted by the University of Michigan. The data show that the amount of ruralward migration outweighs that of urbanward migration. While the ruralward migration was particularly prevalent in the Northeast, the direction of migration in the South was predominantly urbanward. Ruralward migrants appeared to be young single people and young married people without children, as well as stable families. The most ruralward migrants tended to be from the most highly urban environments. This new pattern of migration is independent of both white suburban flight and the sun-belt phenomenon. The findings suggest an important societal reorganization towards a newer post-industrial and less urban population distribution.     

Subformal warning systems in the species Homo politicus

A political activist needs to pick up early warning signals that something is happening which might require his attention. The something could be an emergent danger or opportunity. An ideal-typical warning system is postulated to account for what is believed to be the extraordinary infrequency of activists being caught off guard under most routine conditions. Such a system would ideally meet four criteria: rapidity, comprehensiveness, validity, and selectivity. The postulated system rests on what Anthony Downs has called subformal communications channels among individuals and groups interrelated by principles of specialization and the division of labor.I am very grateful to Janice Holve for her valuable assistance in gathering data and in helping to sharpen my ideas. In the early stages of this project, Gene Bretton helped conduct a review of the literature. Aaron Wildavsky, David Kirp, Marcel Teitler, and Jack Citrin read and commented on various drafts. Financial support from the National Institute of Mental Health is also gratefully acknowledged.