Institutional development in the era of economic policy reform: Concerns,contradictions and illustrations from Malawi

The article argues that the essence of economic policy reform programmes—both their substance and their pace—runs counter to the central notions of sound institutional development. Attention is first given to some fundamental concerns about the relationship between the two processes, in particular focusing on questions of culture, speed of change and the political environment. The article then provides some illustrations from Malawi, looking in turn at collateral institutional damage, the new generation of semiautonomous organizations, confusing incentives systems in the areas of salaries, housing and training, and lack of serious concern for the sustainability of the reforms. The conclusion calls for returning ‘part-ownership’ of the reform programme to the local officials, and trying to reduce some of the institutional unreality, which seems to adhere to the implementation of the reforms.     

转型时期的农民工住房问题——一种政策过程的视角

从政策过程的视角论述农民工住房问题纳入国家政策层面的可行性,可为解决农民工住房问题提供政策方向。本文从杜布林冲突的系统分析模型出发,建构“黑匣子”公共政策过程分析模型,并运用成本-收益分析、政府分权理论等,从政策执行的角度来检验政策方案。通过政策输入过程分析,识别形成农民工住房问题的实质因素,并分析农民工住房问题转变为政策问题的实践约束条件。通过对政策执行约束条件的分析得出：农民工住房政策的逻辑起点不是农民工住房质量,而是附加在户籍制上的城乡二元体制结构。研究认为农民工住房问题本身无法作为良好的政策问题纳入中央政府决策范围。建立农民工住房保障体系并允许农民工有条件地享受城市住房保障政策,或直接取消城乡二元结构,都不是解决农民工住房问题的最优政策,但前者作为渐进的决策途径,还是有助于缓解社会转型矛盾的;政府应当制定改革户籍制的长远目标,并在此框架下坚持改革和创新,逐步实现住房保障的城乡一体化。     

经济适用房"内循环"制度——住房政策社会保障性的回归

《北京住房建设规划(2006-2010)》中提出了经济适用房的“内循环”制度,这一制度的构建标志着经济适用房政策由政策性商品房向保障性公共住房转变。这一转变在实践中将有利于在制度上实现经济适用房的循环使用,切实有效地保障城镇中低收入家庭的基本住房需求。此外,这一制度创新在理论上是从经济政策向社会政策的一次回归,有利于政府应对住房领域日益复杂化的社会问题。     

Three Decades of Policy Layering and Politically Sustainable Reform in the European Union's Agricultural Policy

The study of policy reform has tended to focus on single‐stage reforms taking place over a relatively short period. Recent research has drawn attention to gradual policy changes unfolding over extended periods. One strategy of gradual change is layering, in which new policy dimensions are introduced by adding new policy instruments or by redesigning existing ones to address new concerns. The limited research on single‐stage policy reforms highlights that these may not endure in the postenactment phase when circumstances change. We argue that gradual policy layering may create sustainability dynamics that can result in lasting reform trajectories. The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has changed substantially over the last three decades in response to emerging policy concerns by adding new layers. This succession of reforms proved durable and resilient to reversal in the lead‐up to the 2013 CAP reform when institutional and political circumstances changed.     

Creating an enabling environment for housing: Recent reforms in Mexico

Abstract

A recent World Bank policy statement on housing advocates the reform of government policies, institutions, and regulations to enable housing markets to work more efficiently. The policy statement identifies several instruments that governments can use to address housing market constraints, and to improve the performance of the housing sector as a whole, while paying particular attention to the needs of the poor.

In recent years, the government of Mexico has employed many of the enabling instruments described in the World Bank's housing policy statement. This article reviews the role of housing in the Mexican economy and the major reforms that the Mexican government has implemented to improve the operation of the housing market so that private lenders and home builders can play an expanded role in addressing the country's housing needs. The World Bank has supported the government's reform program, and since 1985 it has lent more than $1.2 billion to Mexico for low‐income housing projects.     

The formation of housing policy in New York City, 1960–1970

During the 1960s, policy makers at three levels of government attempted to place New York's public housing in middle-income neighborhoods. The high cost of providing public housing, a desire for economically segregated neighborhoods and racial prejudice caused voters to reject this reform of housing policy.Since voter rejection caused a reduction in public housing construction, deterioration and abandonment of existing housing acquired added significance. By 1970, the consensus view among public leaders was that rent control caused housing abandonment and that liberalization of rent control was needed. Thus, public policy targets in the low-income housing market shifted from emphasis on construction programs to emphasis on preservation of existing housing. In the future, further information on the cost and difficulty of housing preservation is likely to require additional adjustments in housing policy targets.I am grateful to Frank Kristof for comments on an earlier draft and to Don Sexton and John Keith for their helpful suggestions on the topic. Comments by an anonymous referee were most appreciated.     

Networks and nonprofits: Opportunities and challenges in an era of federal devolution

Abstract

Community development corporations and other nonprofit organizations are increasingly responsible for producing and managing low‐income housing in urban America. This article examines the network of governmental, philanthropic, educational, and other institutions that channel financial, technical, and political support to nonprofit housing sponsors. We analyze the relationships among these institutions and propose an explanation for their success. We then consider challenges the network must confront if the reinvention of federal housing policy is to succeed.

Block grants and rental vouchers, the dominant emphases of federal policy, present opportunities and constraints for nonprofit housing groups and their institutional networks. While states and municipalities are likely to continue to use block grants for nonprofit housing, the viability of this housing will be severely tested as project‐based operating subsidies are replaced by tenant‐based vouchers. We recommend ways that the federal, state, and local governments should help the institutional support network respond to this challenge.     

Rebuilding public administration in the New German Länder: Transfer and differentiation

The rebuilding of public administration in the new German Länder can be described as a process of increasing differentiation. The new states share the common legacy of ‘democratic centralism’ and face similar reform challenges; but the analysis of the establishment of state administrations, local government reform and personnel policy reveals important differences amongst the states. West‐East institutional transfer plays a decisive role in creating effective institutions of governance in the East. However, it does not imply the imposition of a uniform West German ‘model'; rather, institutional transfer encourages administrative differentiation.     

Transparency and Openness: A Reform or Education Policy?

Current policies are developed through complex and dynamic historical processes and conflicts originating in these processes. In 2002 a new Act on Transparency and Openness in education was put into effect in Denmark. The Act is a formalised system of performance measurement, and introduced a new feature to the governing of the Danish education system. All educational institutions are obliged to publish on the Internet average grades of final examinations. The historical institutional concept of path dependency shows how the outline of the Act is made at an earlier stage. The Act is layered as a new institutional arrangement on top of pre-existing institutions. By focusing on how institutional and political processes interact and are combined, new contributions to historical institutionalism are further developed without considering institutional reproduction and innovation as opposites. It is elaborated how the Act, with respect to certain dimensions, respectively reproduces, breaks with and combines two formerly outlaid paths of education policy and reform policy.     

FEDERAL POLICY IN LOCAL CONTEXT:PUZZLING THROUGH THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PARADIGMATIC POLICY REFORM

Although comprehensive reform programs (CRPs) have been influenced by theories of government failure, they pose some puzzles for these theorists. My purpose is to address puzzles that relate to observed characteristics of the timing, radicalism, implementation, rhetoric and democratic consequences of reforms. The long period of paradigm stability which typically precede them is explained in terms of the institutional and political risks associated with radical policy reform while the reforms themselves are explained in terms of factors that generated opportunities for new sources of policy leadership. This leadership was collectively supplied by a network that sought to break the hold of a fragmented structure of policy communities over the policy process.     

Policy makers,policy choices,and policy outcomes: The political economy of reform in developing countries

This article presents an analytic model for understanding the role of decision makers in bringing about significant policy and institutional changes and in understanding how processes of agenda setting, decision making, and implementation shape the content, timing, and sustainability of reform initiatives. Central to the model is the assertion that policy elites and the policy making process are important determinants of reform. The framework indicates that circumstances surrounding issue formation, the criteria that decision makers use to select among options, and the characteristics of specific policies are analytic categories that explain a considerable amount about reform outcomes. The model is based on cases developed by participants in twelve initiatives to bring about policy and institutional change in a variety of developing countries.     

中国城市住房货币化政策：经济增长与社会公正的博弈

自1998年中国实行住房货币化改革以来，城市居民的住房条件有很大的改善。但近几年，由于城市房价的持续上涨，住房供给的结构性失调以及住房不公平等问题日渐凸显，使住房货币化政策本身成为公秉关注的焦点。住房政策的价值导向是一味地追求经济的增长远是兼顾住房公正，是我们必须深刻反思的重要课题。     

Mandatory Versus Incentive-Based State Zoning Reform Policiesfor Affordable Housing in the United States:A Comparative Assessment

To break the chain of exclusionary zoning and produce affordable housing, mandatory state zoning reform policies have been in place for a couple decades in the United States. Their success is often constrained by local resistance and noncompliance. Some scholars argue that the lack of incentives to communities for affordable housing production is one of the main reasons for their resistance to state mandates. At present, no incentive-based state zoning reform policy is at work except in Massachusetts. Inclusionary zoning policies do offer incentives to developers but not to communities. This article examines the strengths and weaknesses of mandatory state policies and Massachusetts's incentive-based policy and offers policy insights for the future.     

Ripples Not Waves: A Policy Configuration Approach to Reform in the Wake of the 1998 Sydney Water Crisis

The aim of this article is to understand why, in the aftermath of the 1998 Sydney water contamination crisis, policy and institutional reform was comparatively minor—despite intense scrutiny and criticism of the framework of water policy in New South Wales (NSW). The article should be of serious interest to scholars interested in crisis and policy change, rather than simply those with a particular interest in water policy in Australia. It frames the Sydney case as a disconfirming one but finds that an understanding of the stability/change relationship in NSW water policy can only partially be understood through applying key contemporary institutional, actor, and interest‐centered explanations. Therefore, it probes the plausibility of an additional explanation and develops the rudiments of a new “policy configuration” approach to help explain policy stability and change. It concludes by suggesting that there is potential for a policy configuration perspective to be tested against other cases.     

Policy Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change: Multilevel Governance of Central Banking Reform

Recent studies on institutional theory and the public policy field called for efforts to pry open the black box of institutional and policy change. This article offers a response to this call. It demonstrates that historical and discursive institutionalist approaches are complementary to explain how and why institutional change occurs. In addition, it shows how these approaches can add value to and benefit from the public policy and administration fields that seek to explain policy change and success. In particular, it emphasizes the interactions between structure and agency that contribute to the change. The empirical finding is based on qualitative analysis of central banking reform in Turkey. It suggests that institutional and policy change is more likely to occur when policy entrepreneurs, with joint membership in domestic and transnational policy communities, mediate various ideas and discourse within and among these communities in a punctuated institutional equilibrium.     

Decision‐making Italian style: The new code of criminal procedure

Government action in Italy is notoriously slow in most policy areas, but, when necessary, the government can act both decisively and effectively. This article is a case‐study of the decisional process surrounding such an issue, the new code of criminal procedure that was implemented in late 1989. Factors other than the alluring explanations of government longevity and coalition stability account for the success of this institutional reform. In the case of the new code, a sense of urgency was created and a champion for the cause was found in government; these two factors and public demand for changes generated a momentum towards implementation of major institutional reform that survived onslaught by interest groups and even the fall of two governments.     

The Evolution and Continuing Challenges of E‐Governance

E‐governance comprises the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support public services, government administration, democratic processes, and relationships among citizens, civil society, the private sector, and the state. Developed over more than two decades of technology innovation and policy response, the evolution of e‐governance is examined in terms of five interrelated objectives: a policy framework, enhanced public services, high‐quality and cost‐effective government operations, citizen engagement in democratic processes, and administrative and institutional reform. This summary assessment of e‐governance in U.S. states and local governments shows that the greatest investment and progress have been made in enhanced public services and improved government operations. Policy development has moved forward on several fronts, but new policy issues continually add to an increasingly complex set of concerns. The least progress appears to have occurred in enhancing democracy and exploring the implications of e‐governance for administrative and institutional reform. ICT‐enabled governance will continue to evolve for the foreseeable future providing a dynamic environment for ongoing learning and action.     

Holes in the safety net,leaks in the roof: Changes in Canadian welfare policy and their implications for social housing programs 1

Abstract

This article surveys recent reforms to Canadian social policy at the national level and welfare programs at the provincial level to determine how social housing policy and programming are being affected. The survey considers Canada's Social Security Review consultation process, which played out over 1994 and 1995. The article outlines various concerns raised over the Canada Health and Social Transfer, a fundamental reform to intergovernmental fiscal and policy relations announced in the 1995 federal budget and elaborated on in the 1996 budget.

The transfer of administrative responsibility for federally funded social housing to provincial and territorial governments is discussed and recent developments in welfare programs across Canada are described, noting housing elements within these programs.     

Policy Innovation of Local Officials in China: the Administrative Choice

Local policy innovation is considered one of the major drives for China’s rapid economic development, especially during the first 35 years of reform in China. Given the new central policies and constant anti-corruption campaigns under the Xi administration, this article examines a timely question of why and how local officials continue to develop new innovative policies and projects. Based on previous theoretical building, the article analyzes such key institutional factors as new rules of game and their impact on local officials’ competition for survival and career advancement. Selecting cases across all the districts from a typical city in China, this article compares and identifies the changing patterns in local policy innovation. Policy innovations are administrative choices made by local officials in response to new and changing institutional opportunities and constraints. The discussion in this article makes significant contributions both theoretically and empirically to the China studies.

     

The credibility of monetary reform – New evidence

The history of monetary policy is characterised by crisis and reform. The paper is dedicated to an explanation of what makes monetary reforms successful. A cross-sectional econometric analysis is chosen to deal with this problem. It is based on a standard macroeconomic model of commitment and credibility. As the dependent variable, we calculate a post-reform inflation rate. The exogenous variables are the degree of legal commitment, the constraining influence of institutions and a new variable for ex-ante credibility of the reform. The paper allows for the conclusion that monetary commitment, the consideration of institutional constraints and abstinence from the money press are crucial for the success of a monetary reform.