The regulation of lobbyists

The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from Charles Rowley, Robert Tollison, and a referee of this journal.     

Participation in local politics in Norway: Some do,some don't; some will,some won't

Using data from two national surveys conducted in 1990 and 1993, this article investigates seven modes of sociopolitical behavior and one form of potential political participation in the context of Norwegian local government. Results indicate that factors associated with alternative modes of activity vary; different types of people tend to choose different channels of involvement. The most pronounced difference is found between activities directed toward influencing public opinion and those intended to influence political decision making more directly. Whereas the former mode is more typically chosen by younger, well-educated single women living in urban areas, the latter is more characteristic of married, better educated men living in smaller municipalities. Findings are characterized by a high degree of stability over the period considered. Only in the case of voting is there a suggestion of some possible change. After decades in which socioeconomic status variables have been of little significance for voting in Norway (a situation explained by the mobilizing effects of organizations), an effect of education was found in the 1993 survey. Also noteworthy is the distribution of participation among the population: rather than being cumulative, different forms of political involvement are relatively widespread.     

Balancing inside and outside lobbying: The political strategies of lobbyists at global diplomatic conferences

This article seeks to explain the use of inside and outside lobbying by organised interests at global diplomatic conferences. At first sight, the lobbying at these venues is puzzling as it does not seem to be a very fruitful way to acquire influence. The use of outside strategies especially is perplexing because most aspects of international negotiations fall outside of the purview of national constituencies. It is argued in this article, however, that the presence of outside lobbying is not so puzzling if lobbying is seen both as a way to attain influence and as a way to pursue organisational maintenance goals. Empirically, the article draws on interview data with 232 interest group representatives that participated at either the 2012 session of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Geneva, or the 2011 (Durban) and 2012 (Doha) United Nations Climate Conferences. The analysis demonstrates that organisational needs, and especially the competition actors face in obtaining resources, significantly affects the relative focus of organised interests on inside and outside lobbying.     

How prices matter in politics: the returns to campaign advertising

The apparent ineffectiveness of incumbent campaign spending in congressional elections is one of the enduring puzzles in the political economy literature. Previous work in this area has assumed that advertising prices are uniform across congressional districts, and therefore that campaign spending alone is a good proxy for campaign advertising. However, candidates in different districts face widely different advertising prices and this paper shows that differences in advertising costs are one source of the apparent ineffectiveness of campaign spending. Accounting for the price of advertising, this paper shows that campaign spending is productive for both incumbents and challengers.     

How elections matter: A study of U.S. senators

Policy representation implies not only congruence between constituent and representative preferences, but also the ability of representatives to perceive and adjust to changing constituent preferences. This paper examines the extent of such representation among U.S. senators. It shows that a senator's voting behavior strongly affects his chances of election, but that senators demonstrate only a limited ability to adapt to changing constituent preferences.     

Institutions and representation: How institutional rules shape political recruitment in French regional elections

This article attempts to develop an approach to political recruitment that combines the study of strategies deployed by candidates, party officials and local leaders, with an analysis of the effects induced by the institutional environment within which they act. It is suggested that institutional ‘rules’ specific to French political life shape the competition among political actors who participate in the selection of candidates standing for regional election. More specifically, political recruitment can be fully understood only if three kinds of institutional variables are combined: the rules of the regional electoral system; the organisational features of political activity at the local level; and, above all, the variety of non‐codified norms and criteria which orient the perceptions and beliefs of the political groups involved in the selection process. The main empirical conclusion is that institutional variables engender ‘unexpected effects’ which modify traditional mechanisms of local elite recruitment.     

States and PACs: The legacy of established decision rules

The growth of political action committees (PACs) and their growing role in campaign finance have led to calls for placing limits on campaign contributions by PACs. State decisions regarding whether to limit PAC contributions appear to result from established policy orientations regarding other campaign finance issues: states with a history of previous efforts to regulate campaign finances are more likely to limit PAC contributions.     

The political economy of taking and just compensation

By creating an implicit right to judicial review and lowering the transaction costs a property owner must incur to challenge a taking, the just compensation restriction on eminent domain limits the tendency of political decision-makers to avoid the subjective costs their actions inflict on property owners and moves the level of taking closer to the social optimum. Its impact, however, is partially to completely erased by the risk aversion of the property owner and the fiscal illusion of the political decision-maker, unless there are additional constraints in the fiscal constitution.     

Homelessness old and new: The matter of definition

Abstract

The contemporary emphasis on the pathologies of shelter denizens and street‐dwellers tends to conceal the great variety of makeshift ways of life that have characterized “homelessness” over the centuries. Diversity notwithstanding, those considered “vagrants” were historically marked as suspect members of a poor apart, even when their numbers increased sharply. Because kin ties have consistently proven to be the first line of defense against “literal homelessness,” skid row researchers thought their absence (along with the lack of associated ties to work and community) to be diagnostic of the condition. Indeed, earlier research tended to see as “homeless” any “disaffiliated” persons, housed or not, who lived alone in unconventional dwellings. Not only have the new homeless poor, by contrast, proven to be more diverse—their geographic locus, age, gender, ethnicity, and signal disabilities having all changed—but their common element is less often ascribed to faulty social connectedness than to sheer absence of shelter. This paper discusses such changes and reviews definitions of homelessness and several approaches to its social construction. The paper argues that, although definitions owe as much to political as to logical considerations, it makes both practical and historical sense to view the streets and shelters as but one variant of a class of informal or makeshift residential settings that increasingly characterizes the marginally situated.     

Responsiveness and the rules of the game: How disproportionality structures the effects of winning and losing on external efficacy

This paper investigates how casting a winning or losing vote affects perceptions of external efficacy across varying conditions of electoral disproportionality. I find that as a political system's electoral mechanisms become more disproportional—that is, when institutional rules produce an increasingly unequal ratio of votes cast to the percentage of seats won—individuals who voted for losing parties become significantly less efficacious than their winning counterparts. Under these conditions, electoral winners are more likely to perceive that it matters what party is elected, while losers' attitudes about the meaningfulness of electoral representation sour. However, when disproportionality is minimal, no significant difference between winners' and losers' perceptions of external efficacy is observed, suggesting that the winner-loser framework has context-specific utility. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of these findings.     

The successful use of consultancies in aid‐financed public sector management reform: a consultant's eye view of some things which matter

Independent consultants, often contracted through consultancy firms, are important players in donor attempts to trigger and guide institutional change processes in recipient government structures and practices. However, little is known about the efficacy or ‘success’ of such consultancies. This article explores some of the issues involved. Following a discussion of the problems of defining ‘success’, we present an analytical framework which can be used in all kinds of contexts to generate information relevant to institutional change programmes, and to the design of consultancies to help carry the change processes along. Such information can be used to predict the likely success of intervening at all, for designing the elements of an intervention, and for ongoing monitoring of implementation. We apply the framework to eight consultancies which were undertaken in three different change contexts: post‐communist regimes in the early transitional period; aid‐dependent regimes committed to ‘politics‐as‐usual’ and the longer‐term highjacking of donor funds by patron – clientelist structures. We summarize the main lessons which emerge from our case studies in the form of criteria for judging whether and how (responsible) donors and/or consultants should get involved in change projects. Donors, consultancy companies and consultants should all be thinking of ways to exclude irresponsible parties and behaviour from aid‐financed institutional transformation processes. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Formula budgeting: The economics and analytics of fiscal policy under rules

The dramatic change in aggregate fiscal policy in recent years has contributed to a shift from process rules to allocation rules in federal budgeting. Although the allocation rules inherent in formula budgeting seem to offer fairness in times of fiscal constraint, they actually impose arbitrary program-level budgets that reflect the peculiarities of baselines, accounting conventions, and time horizons. Formula budgeting also changes the analytical environment, forcing policy analysts to pay greater attention to institutional arrangements.