Voting in the rain: the impact of rain on participation in open-air assemblies

ABSTRACT

The analysis of how weather conditions influence participation at the ballot and whether bad weather influences ballot decisions has recently gained momentum. This paper analyses the influence of rain on participation in the Landsgemeinde – the main decision-making body of two Swiss cantons, wherein citizens meet on the main square in order to debate and decide bindingly on political matters of all sorts. We rely on a survey with an in-built conjoint experiment that presents citizens with several hypothetical Landsgemeinde situations characterized by randomly varied combinations of weather and other conditions such as outcome favorability, the expected closeness of the vote and the company available during the event. We find that rain not only decreases overall participation but it also lowers participation when votes are expected to be uncontested and for individuals who do not primarily attend the Landsgemeinde for political reasons.     

The Fungibility of Health Aid: Reconsidering the Reconsidered

Lu et al. found that health aid displaces domestically-raised government health expenditure, which renders health aid at least partially fungible. These findings are questioned in The Fungibility of Health Aid Reconsidered. Van de Sijpe’s emphasis on disaggregating on- and off-budget aid is a valid contribution, although his empirical conclusions are overstated. We re-evaluate the data he criticises and find they sufficiently capture on-budget aid. To re-measure health aid fungibility, we update the Lu et al data, adding 23 countries and four years of data. Despite the confidence we have in these data, we employ two estimation specifications, each of which addresses the measurement error discussed by Van de Sijpe. The extended data and alternative methods show that development assistance for health channelled to governments remains significantly fungible.     

The Applicability of Best Value in the Nigerian Public Sector

We examine the applicability of Best Value practices in the Nigerian public sector and present a Best Value Model for Nigeria. We find the literature does not extend to the Nigerian context. We make contributions towards understanding stakeholder perceptions of public service delivery best practice. We show Best Value as a significant initiative for improving public service delivery. The mixed methods survey reveals Nigerian Best Value initiatives do not exist significantly, but are applicable. Outcomes are exploration of a new area for Best Value application, incorporation of implementation issues into the model and the seven-stage process for its implementation.     

Social Networks and Factor Markets: Panel Data Evidence from Ethiopia

We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. We use detailed longitudinal household survey data and employ fixed effects estimation approaches to identify the effect of iddir membership on factor market transactions among farmers. We find that joining an iddir network improves households’ access to land, labour and credit transactions. Our findings also hint that iddir networks may crowd-out borrowing from local moneylenders (locally referred as ‘Arata Abedari’), a relatively expensive credit source. These results suggest that non-market institutions can play crucial roles in facilitating market transactions.     

Crime and Philanthropy: Prosocial and Antisocial Responses to Mass Shootings

ABSTRACT

Mass shootings have a strong impact on public discourse and perception, affecting more than their direct victims. We use data on charitable contributions and criminal activity in the U.S. over the last decade to identify and quantify the effect of mass shootings on prosocial and antisocial behavior. We find that the effect of mass shootings on prosocial behavior, measured primarily by monetary contributions, is positive and statistically significant. However, the directly affected localities react to mass shootings differently than their neighboring communities, decreasing their charitable contributions. Additionally, we are unable to find a statistically significant effect of mass shootings on antisocial behavior, as measured by various crime rates. Furthermore, we show that mass shootings are different than any other type of criminal behavior, including all other violent offenses, in terms of its effect on prosocial behavior.     

Consumption and Happiness

We examine the relationship between (relative) consumption and happiness using panel data for China, an important developing country. We find that consumption has a positive effect on happiness. An increase in the average consumption of those of the same age, education and gender at the community level has a positive effect on happiness, consistent with a signalling effect, while an increase in the consumption of the highest spenders in this group engenders a jealousy effect. There is mixed evidence that conspicuous consumption and consumption that increases social connectedness increases happiness, while relative deprivation in visible consumption has strong negative effects on happiness. Our findings add to the literature on the effect of relativities in influencing individual happiness.     

How to Attract Donations: The Case of US NGOs in International Development

We assess the determinants of private donations across a large sample of US based NGOs with foreign aid activities. Our results show that donations do not depend in the expected way on publicly available information on NGO characteristics that reveal an efficient and targeted use of funds, notably the efficiency price of NGO aid and the degree of specialisation. Private donors rather rely on the frequently offered option to designate donations to preferred purposes – even though this is unlikely to tie the NGOs' hands.     

No end to poverty

This commentary is designed to provide a critique of Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen In Our Lifetime, highlighting in particular the difficulties that arise from his focus on absolute poverty and his proposed recipe for its elimination. It begins by emphasising the many strengths of Sachs' arguments, but then suggests that these could usefully be tempered by greater attention to relative conceptualisations of poverty and the ethical grounds upon which his arguments are based. Six main issues are subsequently addressed: his use of the notion of a ladder of development; his concentration on countries rather than people; his understandings of geography and of history; his relative lack of attention to social and cultural dimensions of development; the inability of poor countries to absorb the levels of aid that he proposes; and the damage caused by suggesting that it is indeed possible to end poverty.     

Contracting out local road and park services: economic effects and their strategic,contractual and competitive conditions

ABSTRACT

The economic rationale for contracting out local services is increasingly contested by empirical research. This article aims to contribute to this literature, first by scrutinising the economic effects of contracting out in local road and park services and, second, by exploring how characteristics such as markets, contracts, municipal strategies and contracting history influence these outcomes. Drawing on original survey data from Danish municipalities, we find that competitive tendering has on average reduced costs. Further analysis shows that savings are not associated with lower quality, thus indicating that ‘quality shading’ was not taking place. Another finding is that municipalities that repeatedly contract the services experience smaller savings, suggesting that competitive tendering is subject to declining marginal returns. Finally, we find that larger municipalities and those emphasising expenditure cuts realise larger savings, whereas the characteristics of markets and contracts do not seem to explain variations in cost savings.     

Advocacy coalitions,beliefs and climate change policy in the United States

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) asserts that disagreement over policy core beliefs divides organizations into competing coalitions. We apply Discourse Network Analysis to 1,410 statements in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today to investigate what kinds of beliefs contribute to coalition formation in the climate change policy debate in the news media in the United States. We find that the beliefs concerning the reality of anthropogenic climate change, the importance of ecology over economy and desirability of governmental regulation divide organizations into three advocacy coalitions: the economy, ecology and science coalitions. Policy preferences such as cap and trade do not; they find support across coalition lines. Based on these findings, we suggest that ACF theory could be clarified to better account for how beliefs concerning policy instruments contribute to coalition formation. In some policy domains, policy instruments are where opposing coalitions find agreement. In others, they are more divisive.     

W.B. Gallie,T.H. Marshall and the contested concepts of fairness and citizenship: examining the parameters of debate in Newport City Council’s Fairness Commission and citizens’ views on fairness

The paper examines Newport City Council’s Fairness Commission’s (NFC) understanding of fairness, alongside a survey of Newport citizens’ views on fairness. These views focus on two parameters of debate identified by the NFC – equality versus differential treatment, and the accountability and transparency of decision-making – reflecting competing interpretations of the political concept of fairness, and as explored by W.B. Gallie. Moreover, these contested interpretations also have a profound bearing on post-1945 debates about citizenship instigated by T.H. Marshall. While many contemporary policy-recommenders and politicians reject Marshallesque social rights to citizenship, dismissing these rights as encouraging so-called passive conceptions of citizenship emphasising unconditional individual entitlements to local services, the views of Newport citizens tend to broadly support these rights. These rights are distinct from ‘active’ conceptions, emphasising the values of interdependency and reciprocity, and citizens’ obligations to positively participate in community life which then underpin conditions for receiving entitlements.     

How Economists Help Central Government Think: Survey Evidence from the UK Government Economic Service

Economic thinking is widely used now across most areas of government activity, though there is not much research on what professional economists do. This paper, therefore, develops and reports on a survey of over 500 members of the UK Government Economic Service, which we use to shed light on the activities and thinking of practitioners. We find, inter alia, that professional economics can be seen as drawing on at least four distinct economic paradigms, that the uses of economics vary significantly between areas of government and that whilst significant use of research can be made, this is not necessarily a defining aspect of professional practice.     

The impact of tax structures on deficits: tax elasticity and fiscal illusion in sixteen oecd countries

This paper represents the first systematic attempt to link revenue structure to deficits cross-nationally. Recent analyses of the causes of increased budget deficits in the industrialized countries have focused on the factors that influence government spending, ignoring the possibility that chronic deficits might also be caused by shortfalls in revenue. In this research, using data from sixteen OECD countries during the period 1959-1990, we test hypotheses regarding the linkage between a country's revenue structure and its experience with deficits. We find evidence that countries heavily dependent on direct taxes had more difficulty keeping spending and revenues in line, particularly during times of high unemployment. We find no evidence, however, of a “fiscal illusion” impact on deficits.     

The Relationship Between State Government Performance and State Quality of Life

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between government performance and quality of life in the American states. We contend that the management capacity of state governments should have direct, tangible impacts on the overall social and economic well‐being of state citizenry. In order to test this idea, we examine the influence of state management capacity (using the 1999 Government Performance Project grades), alongside other economic and political variables, on two prominent measures of state quality of life—The Morgan Quitno “Most Livable State” Index and State Policy Reports' (SPP) “Camelot Index.” We find that both state economic conditions and governmental policy priorities have significant impacts on state performance levels. But, our results clearly indicate that the management capacity of state governments also contributes directly to improving the overall quality of life for state citizens.     

Transfer payments,mothers' income and child health in ecuador

We evaluate the impact of the Bono Solidario, a transfer payment scheme in Ecuador, on children's nutritional status. In addition to testing for pure income effects, because the programme transferred money to mothers of young children, we test whether mother's income has a stronger effect on children's heights and weights than ordinary household income. We draw two main conclusions: that the Bono Solidario transfer payment scheme has had a statistically significant but quite modest impact on children's nutritional status, and that this impact is no different than any other income effect on height and weight. In particular, the fact that the Bono is transferred to mothers has not made it more efficacious at reducing malnutrition than other household income.     

Implementing Electronic Notification in Los Angeles: Citizen Participation Politics by Other Means

Abstract

This paper considers whether new information and communication technologies have significant effects on citizen participation by evaluating the development of a major innovation in electronic governance. We analyze the creation of an electronic system in Los Angeles to provide stakeholders a warning of upcoming political decisions and an opportunity to furnish feedback. We evaluate this innovation not only as a technological innovation that affects citizens’ capacity and motivation for participation but also as an alternative institutional means for involving citizens in policy making and public administration. To place this experiment within this larger institutional perspective, we draw upon the lessons of historical reforms aimed to expand citizen participation. We find that although technology does positively affect individuals’ capacity and motivations, technology, by itself, does not overcome the political, institutional, and behavioral impediments that have limited previous participatory reforms.     

Business,Brokers and Borders: The Structure of West African Trade Networks

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to show how a formal approach to networks can make a significant contribution to the study of cross-border trade in West Africa. Building on the formal tools and theories developed by social network analysis, we examine the network organisation of 136 large traders in two border regions between Niger, Nigeria and Benin. In a business environment where transaction costs are extremely high, we find that decentralised networks are well adapted to the various uncertainties induced by long-distance trade. We also find that long-distance trade relies both on the trust and cooperation shared among local traders, and on the distant ties developed with foreign partners from a different origin, religion or culture. Studying the spatial structure of trade networks, we find that in those markets where trade is recent and where most of the traders are not native of the region, national borders are likely to exert a greater influence than in those regions where trade has pre-colonial roots. Combining formal network analysis and ethnographic studies, we argue, can make a significant contribution to the current revival of interest in cross-border trade in the policy field.     

Citizen involvement in public policy: Does it matter how much is at stake?

Public administrations increasingly try to find new ways to involve citizens in policy-making. However, many democratic innovations draw in only a fraction of the public. Why? I hypothesize that we observe such low participation rates because there is often not enough at stake for citizens. I test this with a preregistered survey experiment on citizens' intentions to participate in participatory budgets in the Netherlands. I fielded the experiment among a sample of citizens that had just experienced a participatory budget (N = 225) and among a population-based sample (N = 1369). I operationalized the stakes as the amount of public money about which citizens can decide. The results show that more money generally does not increase citizens' intention to participate. Supplementary analyses confirm the experimental findings and provide reasons how and why the stakes involved (do not) matter for citizens' involvement.     

Foreign threat and political party change: Russia and changes in party manifestos

How do political parties react to foreign security threats? There has been very little attention paid in the literature generally to how parties react to international events, particularly how parties react to foreign policy threats. Using data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, we examine how political parties in countries in Europe have reacted to Russian actions in terms of their emphasis on security issues. Based upon our analysis of the manifestoes from 331 parties in 36 countries we find that, generally, interstate threats have no significant effect on the military position adopted by political parties, although these effects vary by party type and by the type of threat. Russian based threats appear to be associated with the Far Left becoming more dovish (which is consistent with what would be expected by the literature) and the Far Right becoming significantly less hawkish.     

The DPA: Perspectives on its past and present

This essay examines the origins, development and current issues involving U.S. doctoral education in public administration by focusing particularly upon the DPA degree-—the first doctorate offered in the field. The article argues that the growth of the DPA coincided with the rapidly expanding needs for professionals in governmnt and the growth of American higher education in the postwar era. As a result, early DPA education contained a significant “professionalixing component” in its course work and dissertation research. The sharp public reactions against government professionals and professionalism in the late 1970s and 1980s combined with a new scientific research emphasis for doctoral education stressed by NASPAA's Comprehensive Schools Section, October 20, 1981, called into question the older professional assumptions upon which the DPA was created as a degree program. These trends now raise fundamental intellectual issues regarding its future and serve to fragment the once cohesive programmatic orientation of PA doctoral education today.