IMF Conditionality,Government Partisanship,and the Progress of Economic Reforms

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) often seeks to influence countries' domestic public policy via varying levels of conditionality—linking financial support to borrowing governments' commitment to policy reforms. When does extensive conditionality encourage domestic economic reforms and when does it impede them? We argue that, rather than universally benefiting or harming reforms, the effects of stricter IMF conditionality depend on domestic partisan politics. More IMF conditions can pressure left‐wing governments into undertaking more ambitious reforms with little resistance from partisan rivals on the right; under right governments, however, more conditions hinder reform implementation by heightening resistance from the left while simultaneously reducing leaders' ability to win their support through concessions or compromise. Using data on post‐communist IMF programs for the period 1994–2010, we find robust evidence supporting these claims, even after addressing the endogeneity of IMF programs via instrumental variables analysis.     

Explaining Levels of Local Government Involvement in Service Delivery: The Dynamics of Cross‐Sector Partnerships in Malawi

This study explores how local governments and their development partners—that is, donors, non‐governmental organisations and private companies—structure their partnerships as they work together to provide services to communities. Cases of collaboration between four organisations working in the rural water supply sector and six local governments in Malawi are studied. Using a cross‐case qualitative methodology, we illustrate how power and control translate into practices, leading to different levels of local government involvement in service delivery. This study contributes to the literature on cross‐sector partnerships in particular by developing empirically‐based propositions that help explain the dynamic trajectories that partnerships between local governments and their development partners can take. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Global norms in domestic politics: environmental norm contestation in Cambodia's hydropower sector

Policymakers in many developing Asian countries have commonly relied on investment incentives as a major policy instrument to attract foreign investment. Using comparative case studies of Asian transnational corporations (TNCs) in Southeast Asia, this paper argues that investment incentives per se are ineffective in attracting foreign investment. The paper first examines the role of government incentives in the inflow of foreign investment, with particular reference to the Southeast Asian region. It then provides a comparative study of Hong Kong and Taiwanese investments. Hong Kong TNCs are shown to have invested in Southeast Asia because of market or market‐related reasons, not investment incentives per se. To these firms from Hong Kong, investment incentives are more a kind of post hoc rationalization of their decision making. For the Taiwanese investors in Malaysia, government incentives are less important than the existence of market access and the friendly host country environment. The paper also suggests some implications and specific policy recommendations for policymakers in host country governments. Instead of over‐reliance on investment incentives, host country governments should be more concerned with: 1) a commitment to internationalization through the promotion and marketing of international images; 2) the upgrading of domestic resources through continuous training and development; 3) a more efficient allocation of resources; 4) supra‐national coordination and promotion.     

Using Cultural Theory to Analyze the Metagovernance of the Nuclear Renaissance in Britain,France, and the United States

The governments of Britain, France, and the United States are seeking to promote renewed investment in nuclear power through metagovernance. Metagovernance describes the way governments can leverage state power and resources to shape the behavior of networked actors to advance policy goals. To metagovern, governments use a variety of policy tools but the factors shaping the design of these policy tools remains unclear. Grid‐group cultural theory is used to show that the design of the policy tools used in metagovernance reflects both an underlying cultural bias within government and prevailing institutional circumstances. The paper demonstrates the utility of cultural theory in the study of metagovernance.     

The Influence of Political Parties on Policy Coordination

Despite an increasing interest in party‐state relations, the functions political parties as organizations fulfill in the government apparatus are rarely theorized or empirically examined. Instead of focusing on citizen demands toward parties, this article focuses on the demands of government. It argues that party organizational linkages help integrate an increasingly complex government apparatus. To substantiate this claim, it analyzes the impact of party linkages on policy coordination within and across subnational governments in the United States, Canada, and Switzerland. The analysis shows that: (1) the extent to which processes within different policy fields are connected—policy integration—is shaped by the relative strength of party organizational linkages rather than being a mere reflection of institutional divisions and (2) depending on the party configurations predominantly governing at the subnational level, policy integration within subnational governments either facilitates intergovernmental policy coordination or accelerates cross‐jurisdictional conflict between them.     

FROM DONORSHIP TO OWNERSHIP? BUDGET SUPPORT AND DONOR INFLUENCE IN RWANDA AND TANZANIA

In this article, I analyze the relationship between budget support and ownership, or recipient‐country control over policy outcomes, by exploring how budget support donors in Rwanda and Tanzania attempt to exert influence over domestic policy processes. In contrast to the conventional rhetoric about budget support, my empirical analysis finds little evidence that budget support decreases the influence that donors try to exert over recipient‐country governments. Instead, semi‐structured interviews with donor and government representatives in each country suggest that the aid modality is often used as a tool by which donors attempt to increase their leverage over domestic decision‐making. In particular, I identify three mechanisms frequently used by budget support donors to influence domestic policy processes: voice amplification, a seat at the table, and a license to ask questions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Participant or Spectator? Victim‐Focused Political Activity since 2010

The public significance of the victim has shifted over successive governments. Each party, when in power, has utilised and politicised the victim to support its policy and legislative agenda. However, on the whole, this attention has been reserved for those who are victims of serious crime (such as murder, sexual violence and domestic abuse) and not volume offences (such as burglary, criminal damage, theft). Recent years have seen the inquiry rising in popularity, a ‘quick political fix’ to satisfy victims—and the public—that action on societal ills is being taken. However, in so doing, successive governments have, perhaps inadvertently, tended to replicate the ‘hierarchy of victimisation’ that is witnessed in frontline criminal justice activities. This has the result of affording victims only a spectator role when policy and legislative changes are being developed in their name. By contrast, the actions taken in developing expert and practitioner‐led policy around victim experience have proved to be more ‘successful’ in generating lasting change. This article suggests that there is no single ‘right’ approach to involving victims in policy development, but that each particular incident or situation needs consideration as how most ‘effectively’ to involve first‐hand victim experience.     

The Impact of Parties and Elections on Municipal Debt Policy in Mexico

Opportunistic electoral fiscal policy cycle theory suggests that all subnational officials will raise fiscal spending during elections. Ideological partisan fiscal policy cycle theory suggests that only left‐leaning governments will raise election year fiscal spending, with right‐leaning parties choosing the reverse. This article assesses which of these competing logics applies to debt policy choices. Cross‐sectional time‐series analysis of yearly loan acquisition across Mexican municipalities—on statistically matched municipal subsamples to balance creditworthiness across left‐ and right‐leaning governments—shows that all parties engage in electoral policy cycles but not in the way originally thought. It also shows that different parties favored different types of loans, although not always according to partisan predictions. Both electoral and partisan logics thus shape debt policy decisions—in contrast to fiscal policy where these logics are mutually exclusive—because debt policy involves decisions on multiple dimensions, about the total and type of loans.     

The Future of Four Wheels: Government and the Automobile Industry in France and West Germany, 1971–1985

The concept of a "policy community" is useful in understanding the joint efforts of national governments and domestic business interests to secure industrial competitiveness in world markets. The definitional debate accompanying the increased use of the term in political studies, on the other hand, is of marginal value in appreciating the substance of government-industry collaboration. An analytic account of the actions of two national governments grappling with the needs of industries subject to similar circumstance, as in a sectoral crisis, provides the opportunity to apply the term in a practical manner. Policy communities are no more than the institutionalized expressions of long-established relationships between private and public interests, subject to national idiosyncracies and accumulated experience. They are not the product of a deliberate and coherent design for the attainment of specific industrial goals. This point can be illustrated by reconstructing the actions of two national policy communities in crisis, that is in situations where established relationships come under greater strain than found under "normal" circumstances and, indeed, might be expected to break down entirely. A comparison of government intervention in the automobile industries of West Germany and France, 1971–1985, demonstrates the resilience of industrial policy communities. The maintenance of established relationships is shown to be part and parcel of the emerging industrial solution. Institutions and organizations involved in crisis resolution in the French and German motor industries are revealed to have dissimilar, overarching political objectives beyond the specific and immediate needs they seek to address. The imposition of such political factors onto industrial problems is not necessarily a disservice to an industry's long-term vitality.     

When do governments trade domestic reforms for external rewards? Explaining policy responses to the Millennium Challenge Corporation's eligibility standards

Journalistic reports and case study evidence suggest that governments have made policy and institutional reforms to achieve or maintain eligibility for assistance from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). However, the empirical scope of the “MCC Effect”—across countries, policy domains, and time—remains a subject of speculation and debate. There is also little rigorous evidence about the conditions under which the MCC eligibility standards have influenced the reform efforts of developing country governments. To address this challenge, we construct an original data set that measures whether, when, and how governments in low‐income and lower‐middle‐income countries responded to the eligibility requirements for MCC assistance between 2004 and 2010. Our econometric analysis of the data set calls attention to an underappreciated factor that shapes the adoption and implementation of externally influenced reforms: the presence of a technocratic reform team with executive authority to introduce disruptive changes to the status quo.     

Institutional Capacity and Choice in Australia's Integrity Systems

This article examines recent debate over core or ‘independent’ integrity institutions in the Victorian and Commonwealth governments to highlight some of the need, and potential, for more careful deliberation over options for building the capacity of integrity systems ‐ the second of the analytical themes used in Australia's national assessment. The first part compares resourcing of major integrity institutions by Australian governments over the past 15 years. Staffing and finances are seen as a useful basic measure of capacity, helping lift attention away from the assumption that creation of new bodies necessarily increases capacity. The data also show that some jurisdictions—including Victoria—may yet have some way to go if they wish to match other governments. The second part of the analysis identifies eight further issues for consideration in deliberations on institutional design. Our conclusion is that by working through such issues more systematically, it may be possible to identify new or different institutional options for configuring integrity resources. This could help avoid inappropriate choices—whether unnecessary new bodies, overloads on existing ones or the import of frameworks that do not necessarily ‘fit’ local conditions—of particular relevance to current proposals for a new Commonwealth anti‐corruption agency.     

Regulating Finance: Who Rules,Whose Rules?

This project has embedded in it an explanation of the structural and relational power transmission process stemming from “micro-actions” in global financial relations. This paper is about domestic policy adaptation in international and domestic finance and how it occurs. The fundamental contention of this paper is that the way to understand power in global finance is to provide an answer to the question: Who makes the rules in finance—state actors or nonstate actors? The answer to this question is problematic in the IPE literature because of both the enormous influence of finance in the councils of the industrial democracies and the information asymmetries that favor power in finance. Finance, it is argued, has the determining influence on the rules governing its industry. The dependent variable in this analysis is the policy output—the regulation and liberalization decisions of states. The behaviors of the state and of other policy actors in the policy process are the independent variables.     

Regulatory Competition and the Politics of Financial Market Reform in Britain and Japan

This article examines the impact that the internationalization of jnance has had on the regulation of domestic securities markets in Japan and Britain. In particular, it seeks to explain the apparent incompatibility of two distinct trends: deregulation (and state retreat) on the one hand, and increased regulation and state involvement in markets on the other.
Much of the literature about the efects of internationalization on domestic policymaking has drfjculty explaining these two distinct regulatory frends. First, there has been no uniform "competition in regulatory laxity." Second, the United States does not appear to have exerted hegemonic influence over outcomes. Finally, domestic-level explanations which deny the importance of systemic-level influences on domestic policy choices are unable to explain the similarity of policy choices undertaken by governments with very different regulatory traditions.
I argue instead that regulatory reforms have been undertaken primarily for the benefit of a particular set of private economic actors—mobile consumers of financial services, including both holders of liquid investment capital and large multinational borrowers. Internationalization has systematically strengthened their influence over the policymaking process by making "exit" from one political marketplace to another a more realistic and more potent bargaining strategy than the alternative of exercising "voice."     

Governments and unpopular social policy reform: Biting the bullet or steering clear?

Abstract. Under which conditions and to what extent do governments pursue unpopular social policy reforms for which they might be punished in the next election? This article shows that there exists substantial cross‐cabinet variation in the degree to which governments take unpopular measures and argues that current studies cannot adequately explain this variation. Using insights from prospect theory, a psychological theory of choice under risk, this study hypothesises that governments only engage in unpopular reform if they face a deteriorating socio‐economic situation, a falling political position, or both. If not, they shy away from the risk of reform. A fuzzy‐set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) of the social policy reform activities pursued by German, Dutch, Danish and British cabinets between 1979 and 2005 identifies a deteriorating socio‐economic situation as necessary for unpopular reform. It is only sufficient for triggering reform, however, if the political position is also deteriorating and/or the cabinet is of rightist composition. This study's findings further the scholarly debate on the politics of welfare state reform by offering a micro‐foundation that helps one to understand what induces political actors aspiring to be re‐elected to engage in electorally risky unpopular reform.     

In Search of Successful Reform: The Politics of Opposition and Consensus in OECD Parliamentary Democracies

Why are some governments able to undertake controversial policy reforms and others are not? Conventional wisdom argues that single-party majority governments are best able to implement reforms because there are fewer veto actors within the government that can block the reforms. However, these accounts fail to consider the veto power of societal actors and particularly of trade unions, which can stall reform even in the presence of a unified executive. This paper argues that controversial reforms require broad societal and, consequently, political consensus, which are easier to achieve under minority governments or governments of broad coalitions. Evidence from 22 OECD parliamentary democracies over 35 years shows that minority and large coalition governments have been more successful in reducing social security contributions and pensions than narrower majority governments. This is especially true in countries where trade unions are militant and often resort to industrial action.     

The Iraq Coalition of the Willing and (Politically) Able: Party Systems,the Press,and Public Influence on Foreign Policy

Media outlets in multiparty electoral systems tend to report on a wider range of policy issues than media in two‐party systems. They thus make more competing policy frames available to citizens. This suggests that a “free press” is insufficient to hold governments accountable. Rather, we should observe more challenges to the governments’ preferred frames and more politically aware citizens in multiparty democracies. Such citizens should thus be better equipped to hold their leaders accountable, relative to their counterparts in two‐party democracies. I propose a mechanism through which democratic publics can sometimes constrain their leaders in foreign policy. I test hypotheses derived from my theory with cross‐national data on the content of news coverage of Iraq, on public support for the war, and on decisions to contribute troops to the Iraq “Coalition of the Willing.” I find that citizens in countries with larger numbers of parties confronted more critical and diverse coverage of Iraq, while those with more widespread access to mass media were more likely to oppose the war and their nations likely to contribute fewer troops to the Coalition.     

Beyond Kyoto: Climate Change Policy in Multilevel Governance Systems

Climate change policy has commonly been framed as a matter of international governance for which global policy strategies can be readily employed. The decade of experience following the 1997 signing of the Kyoto Protocol suggests a far more complex process involving a wide range of policy options and varied engagement by multiple levels of governance systems. The respective experiences of the United States and Canada suggest that formal engagement in the international realm of policy is not a good indicator of domestic policy development or emissions reductions. The different contexts of intergovernmental relations, varied resources available to subnational governments for policy development and implementation, and role of subnational leaders in policy formation have emerged as important factors in explaining national differences between these North American neighbors. Consequently, climate change increasingly presents itself as a challenge not only of international relations but also of multilevel governance, thereby creating considerable opportunity to learn from domestic policy experimentation.     

Accounting for coalition‐building in the European Union: Budget negotiations and the south

Which parameters affect coalition building in budgetary negotiations? In this article, three distinct levels of analysis are identified to account for coalition building patterns, associated with domestic politics, domestic socioeconomic structures and EU politics. At the level of domestic politics, ideology points to cross‐governmental affinity of a partisan nature; at the level of socioeconomic structures, similarity of policy interests, generated by cross‐national socioeconomic convergence with EU policy standards, informs coalition formation patterns; at the EU politics level, the intergovernmental power balance influences the political aspirations of each Member State in the integration process and coalition‐building decisions. Two sets of parameters affect the evolution of EU coalition patterns, corresponding to the integration impact on the EU (new cleavages) and on the Member States (the impact of Europeanisation). This analytical framework is used to examine the southern coalition (Spain, Greece, Portugal) in the four multi‐annual financial frameworks (1988, 1992, 1999 and 2005).     

Policy Formulation in Australian Government: Vertical and Horizontal Axes

Studies of the policy process in Australia have focused on particular institutions or decisions rather than on its overarching properties. One such property is the vertical and horizontal ‘axes’ of policy‐making. The former comprises hierarchical relationships whereas the latter comprise relationships of bargaining, negotiation and persuasion. Vertical axes enable governments to take and enforce technically rational decisions in pursuit of consistent goals whereas horizontal axes permit governments to make broadly‐based decisions that have group assent and electoral support. Vertical axes have strengthened in recent years and have brought increased technical rationality and consistency. This has come at a cost of limiting of the scope of political debate and a loss of electoral support for government though.