State political culture, primary frontloading, and democratic voice in presidential nominations: 1972–2000

In light of the notorious “frontloading” phenomenon in U.S. presidential nominating elections, this paper examines the relationship between state political culture and state primary scheduling, for the purpose of understanding how differences in institutionalized community values may have affected the equity with which democratic voice has been distributed in modern presidential nominations. Using stratified event history analyses of nomination campaign schedules from 1972 to 2000, we find that “moralistic” states tend to schedule primary dates earlier in the campaign season than do individualistic or (especially) traditionalistic states, particularly in states with more ideologically liberal elites. Moreover, this tendency toward frontloading among moralistic states becomes more dramatic as racial homogeneity increases relative to other states. These results disturbingly reveal that the democratic voices of racial minorities have often been muffled under the modern institution of presidential nominations.     

Political Cultural Variations in State Economic Development Policy

The impact of political culture on state politics has been investigatedwidely, but little is known about the relationship between politicalculture and economic development policy, even though such policiesplay a prominent role in contemporary state politics. DrawingonDanielJ. Elazar's analysis of American political subcultures,I suggest that moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalisticvalues imply quite different strategies for promoting economicgrowth Empirical evidence shows that moralistic states pursuestrategies that emphasize solidarity, while individualisticstates employ policies that confer particularistic benefitson investors. For their part, policymakers in traditionalisticstates prefer exclusionary incentives that tend to reinforceexisting patterns of domination. Whether any of these strategiessucceed in realizing their cultural objectives remains to beseen; however, actions that positively affect economic performancemay lead to the erosion of cultural values by triggering migrationsthat bring new values into play.     

Exploring State Differences in Groundwater Policy Adoptions, 1980-1989

This article explores a set of variables, based on alternativeconceptions of state policymaking, that distinguishes betweenstates adopting groundwater policy changes and states not adoptingpolicy changes during the 1980s. States adopting groundwatersupply-management policy changes used and depended on groundwatersupplies to a significantly greater extent than non-adoptingstates. States adopting groundwater quality-protection policychanges had significantly larger numbers of types of identifiedgroundwater contaminants, and were significantly more likelyto have a moralistic political culture. Results suggest differentpatterns of state policymaking with respect to these two policies,and that intergovernmental relations are affected accordingly.     

廉洁政治:内涵、结构与运行逻辑

十八大报告在党的重要文献中第一次提出"廉洁政治"这个概念,要求做到干部清正、政府清廉、政治清明。从政治发展角度来看,廉洁政治是现代国家治理的必然要求。廉洁政治内涵具有三个理论维度:政治设计、价值取向和实践状态。政治设计为廉洁政治建设提供合法性,价值取向为廉洁政治建设提供发展方向,实践状态让政治设计和价值取向实现统一,从而为廉洁政治建设开辟道路。廉洁政治的内在结构包括廉洁政治观念、廉洁政治关系和廉洁政治行为三个部分,这三个部分具有一定的逻辑关系,从廉洁政治观念到廉洁政治关系再到廉洁政治行为,一个比一个更接近于政治生活现实。建设廉洁政治应遵循并实现法治逻辑、制度逻辑和治理逻辑的统一:法治逻辑要求依法治腐,把所有廉政建设事务纳入法制框架;制度逻辑要求制度反腐,推进宏观层面的行政体制改革、中观层面的廉政制度建设以及微观层面的分权机制探索;治理层面要求实现廉政组织重构、廉政资源配置、廉政信息公开、廉政主体合作等。     

Kant and the critique of the ethics-first approach to politics

Abstract

Contemporary ‘realists’ attack the Kantian influence on political philosophy. A main charge is that Kantians fail to understand the specificity of politics and neglect to develop a ‘distinctively political thought’ that differs from moral philosophy. Instead, the critics say, Kantians are guilty of an ‘ethics-first approach to politics,’ in which political theory is a mere application of moral principles. But what does this ethics-first approach have to do with Kant himself? Very little. This article shows how Kant’s approach to political theory at a fundamental level includes political institutions, power, and coercion as well as disagreement, security, and coordination problems. In contrast to realists, Kant has a fundamental principle, which can explain why and guide how we ought to approach the political question, namely the norm of equal freedom. Yet, Kant’s theory does not take the form of a moralistic ought addressed to the isolated individual, but concerns a problem that we share as interdependent beings and that requires common institutions. The fruitfulness of the Kantian approach, then, is that it can take the political question seriously without being uncritical of actual politics and power, and that it can be normative without being moralistic.     

The Political Ecology of Opinion in Big-Donor Neighborhoods

Major campaign donors are highly concentrated geographically. A relative handful of neighborhoods accounts for the bulk of all money contributed to political campaigns. Public opinion in these elite neighborhoods is very different from that in the country as a whole and in low-donor areas. On a number of prominent political issues, the prevailing viewpoint in high-donor neighborhoods can be characterized as cosmopolitan and libertarian, rather than populist or moralistic. Merging Federal Election Commission contribution data with three recent large-scale national surveys, we find that these opinion differences are not solely the result of big-donor areas’ high concentration of wealthy and educated individuals. Instead, these neighborhoods have a distinctive political ecology that likely reinforces and intensifies biases in opinion. Given that these locales are the origin for the lion’s share of campaign donations, they may steer the national political agenda in unrepresentative directions.     

Reform or Resistance? Local Government Responses to State-Mandated Ethics Reform in Kentucky

Although several studies have examined state and federal regulationof political corruption andethics reform, few studies have extendedtheir focus to local governments. In this study, we examinethe local government response to stale-mandated ethics reformin Kentucky during the 1990s. Based on a quantitative analysisof local government ethics codes in 288 cities, we concludethat local compliance with state-mandated ethics reform hasbeen largely driven by local political factors. Cities withrelatively developed democratic institutions, characterizedby high levels of electoral competition and a strong media presence,were significantly more likely to construct strict ethics ordinances,as were cities reflecting moralistic political cultural values.     

Political Culture and the Pattern of Congressional Politics Under the Articles of Confederation

This article brings a broad tradition of sociocultural analysis,commonly identified with Louis Hartz, Bernard Bailyn, SeymourMartin Lipset, and Daniel J. Elazar, to bear in understandingthe pattern and character of congressional politics in the firstAmerican national government. This approach, centering on thestudy of political culture and the role of ideas in shapingthe performance of institutions, attempts to place values, orconflicts between alternative value systems, at the heart ofdiscussions of political development and change in RevolutionaryAmerica. I deploy both traditional historical argument and quantitativeevidence to demonstrate that the three political subculturesdescribed by Elazar—moralistic in New England, individualisticin the Middle Atlantic states, and traditionalistic in the South—providethe basis for an explanation of factional divisions which appearedin the Congress of the Articles of Confederation.     

STATE ENERGY POLICIES: FEDERAL FUNDS FOR PAPER PROGRAMS

Taking their policy cues from the federal government, the states have done little to effectively deal with energy problems. In fact, their programs could be styled "federal funds for paper programs." inasmuch as the state programs have been written to conform to federal language, but not to attack energy problems in a serious fashion. There is great variation among the states in energy program expenditures, but these are not related to economic or political structures. However, the more urbanized, economically growing, and energy "rich" states spend the most on energy problems.     

Rethinking “Structural Violence”

The concept of structural violence first developed in the 1960s as a way to explain disparities in health and development between wealthy countries and impoverished postcolonial states. This idea emerged out of Dependency Theory and defined poverty and disease in the developing world as the product of exploitation by colonial or neocolonial powers. Contemporary researchers continue to invoke structural violence to explain international health trends, but a review of recent literature reveals that the concept is increasingly outdated and poorly theorized. It is especially problematic when used to describe contemporary epidemics of infectious disease. In this paper I offer a brief overview of the concept of structural violence and critique the way it has been used to explain the political economy of two recent outbreaks: Ebola in West Africa and cholera in Haiti. Ultimately the paper concludes that these scholars claim to be explaining epidemics but instead use their research as a form of moralistic storytelling that leaves the structural dimensions of health unexplored.     

Globalization and legal change: The “Americanization” of European law?

Intensified global economic competition, economic liberalization, and the rise of EU governance have led some observers to argue that there has been a trend toward the “Americanization” of the European “way of law.” This article addresses that contention, focusing on legal change in European member states. It first describes ways in which the American legal tradition has differed most sharply from the national legal systems of Western Europe (including Great Britain) and the political and economic factors that account for this “American legal distinctiveness.” Similar political and economic factors currently are at work in Europe, the article acknowledges, creating incentives for legal convergence. But it also argues that European legal culture and the political organization of European national states generate path‐dependent forces that impede European movement toward American ways of law, and it discusses six important differences between European and American law that remain entrenched and are unlikely to disappear.     

Industrial Policy and the States

The emergence of industrial policy proposals on the nationalscene raises the prospect of a greater role for the states inAmerican economic policy. Four types of industrial policy proposalsare described, each representing a distinctive strategic orientation.After describing the implied role of states in each type, weargue that state involvement is politically necessary if anyproposal is to succeed in the national policymaking arena. Weassess the four strategic proposals in light of that contentionand conclude that two of the approaches—infrastructureinvestment and subnational jurisdiction proposals—havean advantage over the better known trade policy and sectoraltargeting strategies.     

When Government Subsidizes Its Own: Collective Bargaining Laws as Agents of Political Mobilization

Government policies can activate a political constituency not only by providing material resources to, or altering the interpretive experiences of, individual citizens, but also by directly subsidizing established interest groups. We argue that state laws mandating collective bargaining for public employees provided organizational subsidies to public sector labor unions that lowered the costs of mobilizing their members to political action. Exploiting variation in the timing of laws across the states and using data on the political participation of public school teachers from 1956 to 2004, we find that the enactment of a mandatory bargaining law significantly boosted subsequent political participation among teachers. We also identify increased contact from organized groups seeking to mobilize teachers as a likely mechanism that explains this finding. These results have important implications for the current debate over collective bargaining rights and for our understanding of policy feedback, political parties and interest groups, and the bureaucracy.     

Surrogate Versus Direct Measures of Political Culture: Explaining Participation and Policy Attitudes in Illinois

To date, there has been little persuasive validation of Elazar'sconcept of political subcultures as it applies to mass publics.This study represents an attempt to establish an agenda forfuture research utilizing this popular formulation of the relationshipbetween the citizen and government. A statewide sample of 805residents of Illinois was given agree-disagree statements representingElazar's individualistic, moralistic, and traditionalistic subcultures.The data are used to explore three basic research questions:Do individuals discriminate themselves along the political subculturedimensions suggested by Elazar? Can region of residence, religion,or ethnicity be used as surrogates for individual level politicalculture? And, can political culture, measured directly at theindividual level, add significant independent explanation ofpolitical behavior and opinions beyond that of socioeconomiccharacteristics?     

Contextual orientation in policy analysis: The contribution of Harold D. Lasswell

Criticized for its generally positivist and technocratic orientation, the literature of public policy analysis has begun to generate proposals that would create a convergence between the field and the wider movement for a post-positivist restructuring of social inquiry. Ironically, critics have often focused on policy science as the epitomy of positivism and technocracy, giving little attention to the actual position of the figure responsible for the term - Harold D. Lasswell. Centering on Lasswell's key concept of contextual orientation, this article argues that, despite positivist influences, he developed an approach to inquiry and a proposal for a policy science profession which together clearly transcend positivism and technocracy- which, indeed, anticipate recent post-positivist proposals. Implications for policy analysis of a project of contextual orientation are also considered, along with problems in Lasswell's focus on professionalization.     

Desperate equilibrium: on guilt,law and rationality

Abstract

This paper is about the role of guilt in relation to practical reason. It analyses guilt not as a passive emotion but as a particular kind of strategy at the level of subjective rationality. The concept of guilt occupies a complex and contested semantic space with other concepts, most notably shame. There have been many attempts – philosophical, psychological, sociological – to define these concepts in relation to each other. This paper suggests that whilst guilt is a moral concept that is oriented towards a certain kind of legalism, shame is a moralistic concept. As such, the relations between guilt and shame are discussed in relation to some literary examples, for instance Macbeth's guilt and Conrad's Lord Jim. The conclusion is that on the one hand our confusion over the concept of guilt comes down not least to what may be our confusion over the difficult concept of law and that on the other hand this has consequences that can ultimately be political.     

Uninterested Youth? Young People's Attitudes towards Party Politics in Britain

Following the outcome of the 2001 and 2005 general elections, when the numbers of abstainers outweighed the numbers of Labour voters on both occasions, much attention has focused upon the state of British democracy and how to enthuse the electorate, especially young people. Whilst the government is exploring ways to make the whole process of voting easier, it may be failing to tackle the real problem – that youth appear to find the business of politics uninviting and irrelevant. This paper examines data derived from a nationwide survey of more than 700 young people in order to shed light on what lies at the heart of young people's apparent disengagement from formal politics in Britain – political apathy or a sense of political alienation. The findings reveal that they support the democratic process, but are sceptical of the way the British political system is organised and led and are turned off by politicians and the political parties. However, there is no uniform youth orientation to politics, and the data indicate that views differ according to social class, educational history and also gender. However both ethnicity and region of the country in which young people live seem to have little influence in structuring political attitudes and behaviour.     

Durable Governors as Political Leaders: Should We Limit Tenure?

"Durable governors," that is, governors who have had more thaneight years of continuous service and won three or more electionsin the past four decades, are of major importance for debatesover limits on gubernatorial tenure. This study examines hypothesesregarding the socioeconomic, political, and individual characteristicsassociated with the emergence of durable governors and theirdegree of political success during their later terms of office.Major differences exist between states which have produced durableDemocratic governors and states which have produced durableRepublican governors. Surprisingly, however, durable governorsdo not emerge more frequently in less competitive states. Thelevel of success which the durable governors have had in maintainingelectoral support and partisan legislative majorities giveslittle indication of a general decline of performance duringlengthy tenure. The performances of the durable governors andthe conditions which have facilitated their emergence lend supportto the movement away from constitutional limitations on gubernatorialreelection.     

The Progressive Ratcheting of Environmental Laws: Impact on Public Management

One of the problem-making tendencies in environmental policymaking has been an incremental approach to regulation and control. Either because the full dimensions of an environmental problem are not perceived or because political resistance compels step-by-step action, environmental controls tend to be applied progressively, beginning with nominal, largely ineffectual, retroactive declarations. Failing to meet objectives, laws are toughened and extended year by year until the severty of sanctions begins to defeat their intended effects. The fractionized state of environmental law, focusing on specific problems of pollution and subject to changes in interpretation, makes observance and enforcement difficult. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 could have facilitated the unification of environmental policy; unfortunately presidents and congresses have not chosen to use it for this purpose. Meanwhile, because environmental protection per se is relatively new to public law and policy and has few roots in the common law, private citizens aggrieved by political obstruction of their expectations have appealed to the courts for relief and compensation. Conservative courts have granted this relief under the "taking" clause of the Constitution. Extraordinary measures in constitutional law may be necessary to resolve an impasse in public policy resulting from conflict between public interests and private rights as interpreted by the judiciary.     

Europeanisation with Many Unknowns: National Company Law Reforms after Centros

Negative integration through the expansive interpretation of European market freedoms is said to undermine domestic social regulation – by vertically imposing a strictly liberal interpretation of EU rules and by pushing EU member states into horizontal regulatory competition. This article analyses domestic policy responses to one particularly prominent instance of negative integration: the CJEU’s case law on the freedom of establishment since its first landmark ruling on Centros in 1999. The analysis shows that national company laws have only converged downwards in one particular subfield – minimum capital requirements – but they remain strikingly diverse across, and increasingly within, member states on most other issues, such as workers’ codetermination rights. Legal uncertainty about the Court’s case law, the mixed economic incentives it provides for firms and political disagreement about appropriate policy responses leave considerable space for differential Europeanisation. The crisis adds to these uncertainties and thus reinforces the trend towards differentiation rather than convergence.