Are Politics and Geography Related?: Evidence from a Cross-Section of Capital Cities

With a few prominent exceptions, a capital city is typically alsothe biggest city of its country. This might suggest that a capitalcity is more attractive than other cities because of thecapital city function. In the paper, we test this hypothesis bylooking at employment growth in a sample of capital cities.Employment growth might indicate outmigration from the politicalhinterland and immigration into the capital city. Specifically, welook at a sample of regional capitals that consists of West-Germancounty seats. These county seats underwent reform in the latesixties and early seventies. In this sample, we can rejectthe idea that the county capital role does not have apositive influence on local employment growth.     

THE PROBABILITY OF PLACEMENT BY THE PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT SERVICE

In a typical year, the United States Employment Service places over 4 million persons from among 16 million applicants. This investigation of which applicants are most likely to be placed shows that placement occurs in two labor market segments, corresponding roughly to the primary and secondary labor markets described in the economic literature. The equity and efficiency implications o f devoting a substantial percentage o f Employment Service resources t o secondary labor market placements are considered. Several states currently use Employment Service data as a source of local labor market information. An argument is made that these states are misusing this data and suggestions for improvements are offered.     

The Impact of Local Economic Structure on Community Philanthropy

This article explores how local economic structure directly and indirectly affects community philanthropy. Drawing on campaign data for local United Way (UW) affiliates at three points in time (1990, 2000, and 2010), the article tests the degree to which the relationship between economic structure and community philanthropy is mediated through local stocks of human resources and social capital. The results suggest that retail employment and industrial concentration negatively affect local UW campaigns, while nonlocal ownership positively affects UW campaign size. These measures of economic structure also indirectly influence local UW fund‐raising activities by affecting the levels of human resources and social capital. In the midst of global efforts to increase community‐based philanthropy, these findings have important policy implications for efforts to promote community solutions to social issues in changing economies.     

The convergence of fiscal regimes and the decline of the Tiebout effect

A measure of waste from the competitive rent-seeking activity of special interest groups in federal, state and local budgets was calculated over the period 1900–88. This period in U.S. fiscal history is characterized by constitutional changes that have made for more transparency in governmental fiscal activities and for greater diffusion of taxes. The XVI Amendment to the Constitution created the progressive individual income tax (the corporate income tax was judged to be an excise tax in 1909 and passed the test of constitutionality). High marginal tax rates are a justification for a high average level of taxation. The Full Employment Act of 1946 insitutionalized government deficits as a means of meeting a political objective. As a result, opportunities for rent-seeking through budgetary reallocations rose in the United States. In the first two decades of the 20th century, waste at all levels of government represented about 10 percent of incremental national output. Today, waste is three times that amount.The transparency and diffusion of taxes are highest at the federal level and least at the local level. Rent-seeking through budgetary reallocation has followed the public purse. One explanation for the observed centralization of government in the 20th century may be that opportunities to concentrate benefits and diffuse taxes are highest at the federal level.     

PROGRAM COORDINATION IN THE EMPLOYMENT SERVICE: A STATE AND LOCAL POLICY PERSPECTIVE

This paper analyzes the role of coordination criteria in employment and training service delivery within the Job Training Partnership Act system. The evolution of coordination criteria is related to current initiatives in the Employment Service at the state and local levels. An operational set of program outcome measures for monitoring coordination efforts is discussed. This set of outcome measures is formulated in the broad context of stabilizing employment and averting the "structuralization" of unemployment impacts wrought by fundamental economic change in the labor market. The assessment and monitoring of such coordination efforts is discussed.     

Managing economic reform: An alternative perspective on structural adjustment policies

The structural adjustment policies of international development organizations have been undermined in many developing countries by weaknesses in administrative capacity to manage economic reforms. If economic reform policies are to be implemented more effectively in the future, international organizations must take a broader view of the development process and assess more carefully the administrative and political capacity of the state to guide the decisions of public and private organizations toward development goals in four policy arenas. The experience of developing countries that were more successful at economic and social development during the 1970s and early 1980s, indicates the characteristics of development administration that policy analysts must assess in order to determine governments' capacity to implement economic reform policies effectively.     

Positive engagement and support for single‐parent families: Building bridges across sector boundaries

The high rate of joblessness among single‐parent families in Australia, relative to other organisation for OECD countries has resulted in the development of various government initiatives designed to support single parents to prepare for and gain employment. The ParentsNext pilot program that began in March 2016, in 10 socially and economically deprived areas throughout Australia, is the most recent Federal Government program aimed at connecting parents with young children into local activities that will build their confidence, skills, and networks and ultimately prepare for future employment. The ParentsNext pilot program is delivered through contracted providers in each of the 10 disadvantaged areas. WISE Employment, a national not‐for‐profit organization together with its local partner, Youth Family and Community Connections, delivers the pilot program in Burnie, Tasmania. This article discusses the findings of a study, which examined the implementation of ParentsNext in Burnie and provides insights to inform and improve practice outcomes.     

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.     

Federalism and the Strong-State/Weak-State Conundrum: Canadian Economic Policymaking in Comparative Perspective

The areal dispersion of power and constitutional division ofresponsibilities in federal arrangements are generally feltto limit the ability of federal systems to improve economicperformance. Examining Canada within a comparative framework,we assess "the federations as weak states" hypothesis as wellas the utility of the "strong-state/weak-state" model itself.Although some aspects of the Canadian federal system—namelythe combination of federal with parliamentary traditions andthe resulting adverse policy styles—inhibit the adoptionof effective economic adjustment policies, these features arenot necessarily found in other federal arrangements. Comparisonswith Switzerland, Austria, and West Germany suggest that, undercertain circumstances, federal power sharing may be conduciveto bringing about broad agreement on both goals and policiesamong national, regional, and local governments and major economicactors.     

The Politics of “Fracking”: Regulating Natural Gas Drilling Practices in Colorado and Texas

This article focuses on the politics of regulating natural gas fracking operations in Colorado and Texas. Between‐state differences in the economic importance of natural gas production, political traditions, environmental impacts of drilling activities, and local governmental responses to risk reduction, and entrepreneurial activities are discussed in relation to policy‐making initiatives. In the concluding section, I suggest that Colorado's regulatory approach offers a greater degree of environmental protection than Texas. Key reforms adopted in 2007–8 can be largely attributed to electoral victories that ensured unified party control over state government and the determined efforts of the proenvironmental governor to make changes in both the regulatory commission and in the substance of natural gas drilling policies.     

The interaction of municipal labor markets in the state of Tabasco: an approximation via the use of gravitational models

Employment is an important factor in state planning and a variable in both economic activity and population. Multiregional methodologies which incorporate territorial variables in functional type analyses may be used to study the interactions between municipal labor markets, helping identify those that should receive priority assistance in developing their sources of employment. This work uses a gravitational model to analyze interactions between the local labor markets of 17 seats of municipios in the state of Tabasco as demonstrated with data from the census of 1990. The working hypothesis was that alternatives for labor market growth are distributed hierarchically in descending order of supply as a function of the size of the economically active population in each locality, the relative participation of the unemployed in each locality, and the distance between the localities. The modeling of interaction between local labor markets is achieved in three stages. First, a gravitational model is adjusted with restrictions in the origins. The next step requires use of the parameters resulting from the first step to predict the number of trips to each destination, as a function of levels of unemployment in each locality producing trips. The third stage consists of predictive application of a gravitational model restricted in both origin and destination to define the magnitude of flows between each point of origin and each point of destination. The general character of the gravitational model is described for each step. The model suggests that the main interactions between local labor markets at the level of seats of municipios are located in the center of the state. Three municipal seats in particular had great potential for labor market growth. A separate system of labor market interaction was observed in the southern part of the state. The coastal zone did not appear to offer an alternative for labor market growth.     

Instituting Peace: Third Party Principles and the Mitchell Effect

Abstract

The notion of legitimacy in international peacebuilding is an assumed one; there is an expectation that the formal, Weberian state institutions advanced therein will automatically be condoned by those in whose name they are delivered. But such bodies have, since at least colonial times, been suspect in many postconflict spaces and have routinely been ignored, resisted and bypassed when their local propriety does not reflect social preferences, and the empirical evidence does not suggest this pattern has stopped. The persistence of this null legitimacy derives from the exclusionary nature of liberal interventionism, which neither seeks local knowledge from which to design institutions nor considers their requirements important in relation to popular legitimacy. This article uses survey data drawn from Southern Sudan to discuss how legitimacy is seen from within and what it might look like.     

What Is a Summer Job Worth? The Impact of Summer Youth Employment on Academic Outcomes

This paper estimates the impact of New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) on school attendance and other educational outcomes in the following school year for a large sample of low‐income high school students. The program provides summer jobs and training to youth aged 14 to 21, and due to high demand allocates slots through a lottery. Analyses focusing on 36,550 students who applied in 2007 indicate that SYEP produces small increases in attendance in the following school year, with larger increases for students who may be at greater educational risk: those aged 16 and older with low baseline school attendance. For this group, SYEP also increases the likelihood of attempting and passing statewide high school math and English examinations. Findings suggest that although SYEP's explicit goals focus on workforce readiness rather than academics, the program fosters engagement and success in school.     

How nonprofits grow: a model.

When nonprofit organizations operate in a field of service that might otherwise be provided by government or by for-profit organizations, such as schools, hospitals, or museums, their decisions on the type and amount of services to be delivered are motivated by factors that are quite distinctive. Because they must operate on a break-even basis with revenues raised on a voluntary basis, nonprofit organizations typically take on activities from which they derive no satisfaction in order to subsidize activities that they regard as of higher value. As a result, the mix of services they offer and the charges they impose will generally be quite different from those of a government institution or a for-profit organization.     

The Fourth Level of Government: on the Standardization of Public Policy within International Regions*

Both in the literature and in public documents one usually operates with three levels of government: local, regional, and national. This may be partly due to a common perception of coordination and standardization as something that takes place only through hierarchical forms of organization. However, if we realize that coordination and standardization may also take place through other organizational forms, as for instance bargaining, consultation, and autonomous adjustment, we can add A fourth level of government. At the same time, hierarchy seems considerably modified at the national levels. Thus, a central argument is that 'national' policies cannot be adequately explained by 'national' politics alone. Some data from the Norwegian context are used to illustrate this argument.     

‘Marching from all governorates’: labour lacunae in Mubarak’s Egypt

Abstract

Starting in 1991, Egypt undertook ‘structural adjustment’ reforms at the behest of international financial institutions and the country’s foreign donors. These reforms have often been included in a larger discussion of economic reforms and the withdrawal of the state from the Egyptian market. While certainly market-based, these reforms were interpreted and implemented in a uniquely Egyptian context and moved forward not through a market logic but with a specific understanding of political feasibility. Despite these local peculiarities, Egypt experienced a backlash familiar to researchers of structural adjustment internationally. How did Egypt’s structural adjustment and other ‘liberalizing’ reforms produce spatialized and sectoral backlash and drive workers from quiescence to militancy? Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted in 2011–2013, this paper argues that the choices made by the Egyptian regime from 1991 to 2010 generated ‘labour lacunae’ – spaces in the political-economic structure where methods of interest aggregation were replaced by coercion or neglect – allowing militancy to flourish. I explore how labour entrepreneurs exploited these ‘lacunae’ to redefine ‘local’ protest in the run-up to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.     

LOCAL REGIMES: Does Globalization Challenge the “Growth Machine”?

This article explores the possible impacts that globalization might have upon the nature of local governments and the economic development policies that they adopt. We begin by outlining the theory of how “corporate regimes” dominate most urban centers, why they implement skewed economic development policies, and why globalization appears to be exacerbating these problems. Research on state‐and‐local economic development outside urban centers indicates that several types of business development exist and that they differ significantly in their implications for improving conditions in a community. This suggests that other types of corporate regimes are possible. The logic of globalization points toward the need to establish more progressive corporate regimes willing to implement some of the reforms advocated by critics of the “growth machine.”     

‘Left behind’ people,or places? The role of local economies in perceived community representation

Modern economics attributes importance to spatial inequality: yet in studying discontent with politics, existing research has mostly neglected local contexts and attitudes people hold about them. I use British Election Study data to investigate the factors leading people to believe their community is ignored by the political process. Firstly, real economic contexts play a role, since residents of low-income communities tend to take more negative views about how well their community is represented. Secondly, negative perceptions of the local economy are associated with more negative views of community representation, whereas equivalent ‘egotropic’ measures of people's personal economic situation have no such effect. Thirdly, I observe a ‘grievance’ effect wherein people are particularly negative about community representation when they believe that the national economy is more successful than that of one's local community.     

Re-Stating the problem of regulation and re-regulating the local state

In recent years a substantial body of literature has grown up around the application of the theorectical insights of regulation theory to the evolution of patterns of local governance and the structures of the local state (Geddes 1988: Goodwin, Duncan and Halford 1993; Painter 1991: Peck and Tickell 1992: Stocker 1989 inter alia). These new patterns of local governance are characteristically seen to be associated with the replacement of the formallly accountable, democracitcally elected structures of local government with a plethora of unaccountable and non-elected agencies involving public-private sector ‘part-nership’, Within this literature the emergence of new patterns of local governance is accounted for in terms of a response to the crisis of Fordism. In this article it is argued that regulation theory's principal analytical strength lies in its analysis of the internal contradictions and dynamics of modes of regulation, but that it has thus far failed to develop an adequate explanation of the transition between modes. As a consequence, existing accounts of the emergence of new modes of local governance couched in terms of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism (or after-Fjordism) have tended to fail to reveal the complex mechanisms and processes linking global economic dynamics and the transformation of the structures of the national and local state. By interrogating the concept of ‘crisis’ in regulation theory and by considering the processing of the failures of Foprdism through the state at national and local level as a condition of any response to crisis, it is hoped to begin to develop a theory of the transition between modes of regulation. Such a theory, as it is hoped to demonstrate, might provide the basis for a more nuanced understanding of the complex process and mechanism resulting in the transformation of political and economic structures at the local level.     

NOT JUST BRICKS AND MORTAR: EEO IN HOMESWEST

Abstract: Moves by both state and federal governments to implement private sector management practices in government administration have received attention from a number of writers. Feminist critics of corporate management argue that, in very devolved situations, public sector management concentrates on the achievement of program outcomes to the detriment of other management objectives and Equal Employment Opportunity is ignored. The contention that efficiency and effectiveness are promoted at the expense of equity under a regime of public sector corporate management will be addressed through a case study of the West Australian Housing Commission, Homeswest. This paper examines the results of Equal Employment Opportunity programs in a highly corporatised state government agency.