Farm Expansion in Lithuania after Accession to the EU: The Role of CAP Payments in Alleviating Potential Credit Constraints

The impact of the introduction of EU Single Area Payments (SAPs) on farm expansion strategy in Lithuania is investigated, utilising farm accounting and survey data. The introduction of the SAP has a positive influence on farmers' intentions to expand their area compared to a baseline scenario of the hypothetical continuation of pre-accession policy. The switch in policy has a more pronounced effect on farms that were previously credit constrained. While the SAP has been presented as a support that is decoupled from production, its introduction may have ex post coupled effects, through an income multiplier effect on credit constrained farmers.     

Avoiding the Economic Crisis: Pragmatic Liberalism and Divisions over Economic Policy in Poland

Although liberalism has been the dominant economic ideology in post-communist Poland, liberal parties have tended to struggle to win political majorities. After winning the 2011 parliamentary elections, Citizens' Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) became the first party in Poland's democratic history to win two consecutive elections. Despite its liberal ideological background, Platforma Obywatelska took a more pragmatic and cautious approach to economic policy, avoiding the introduction of strong austerity economic policies. This paper considers the debate within the liberal camp about Platforma Obywatelska's economic policies, with particular reference to the reform of pensions. It also looks at the plans of the government for more strident liberal economic reforms in its second term, at what impact these will have on the popularity of Platforma Obywatelska and at how this reflects a tension between the party's pragmatic concerns of government and commitment to liberal ideology.     

The dilemmas of market socialism: Capital market reform in China ‐ part II: Shares

This two‐part article analyses the attempts to reform the socialist financial system in China by diversifying financial assets and introducing capital markets. The approach used is that of political economy, in the sense of elucidating the interplay between political and economic interests, actors and issues in the reform process.

Part I discusses the issue of bonds by governments and enterprises. Although the reform era has seen gradual progress towards something resembling a bond ‘market’ in terms of a diversification of bond types and growing competition between bond issues, there is no evidence that this has improved allocative efficiency in the economy. Rather, bonds have functioned as one instrument in a complex struggle for resources between political, institutional and economic actors in the context of a continuing ‘shortage economy’. This competitive system falls far short of a true ‘market'; rather it embodies powerful systemic factors reflecting the basic structural and institutional features of a semi‐reformed socialist economy.

One of these systemic factors is the institution of social ownership of the means of production which has been called into question by the emergence of shares and share markets, a process we discuss in Part II. Share issues have in the event been economically unimportant but politically important since they challenge the ideological and institutional underpinnings of a ‘socialist’ economy. The key to the future of this form of financial liberalisation depends not merely on further progress in complementary areas of economic reform policy, but also on a resolution of these fundamental political issues.     

Reshaping State Structure and Strategy: The Reform of Railway Policy in Germany and Italy

For almost four decades, the reform of the state has been a recurrent and relevant topic for social sciences. Has the s.c. positive state been replaced by a regulatory state, or have hybrid configurations emerged? Based on a comparative analysis of German and Italian railway policies, this article aims to contribute to the literature on regulation, considering the possibility of policy mixes in which elements of the positive and the regulatory state are interrelated. Such hybridization is the result of multiple-actor policy arenas, where regulatory tools are used to restructure state’s direct intervention rather than to bring about its retreat.     

“Getting it Together”… or Not. An Analysis of the Early Period of Tanzania's Move Towards Adopting Performance Management Systems

Abstract

Budget reform fits into a broad context of public sector improvement in Tanzania. This article discusses the progress in reforms up to the end of 2002 and attempts to explain such progress. The discussion indicates that while there have been many steps forward, overall reform progress has been slow. Two approaches to explaining this are presented. The first suggests that the Tanzanian case is a prime example of a reform “work in progress,” with reformers choosing a measured, gradual approach that accommodates necessary improvements in capacity and the development of reform structures and coalitions along the way. The second approach suggests that reform implementation has not been quite so purposeful, and that its slow pace is more a function of problems experienced and not sufficiently dealt with, including capacity limitations, varying reform support and will, and problematic reform coordination.     

TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR ESTABLISHING POLICY SUCCESS

Claims that a particular policy has been a ‘success’ are commonplace in political life. However, a few of these claims are justified in any systematic way. This article seeks to remedy this omission by offering a heuristic which practitioners and academics can utilize to approach the question of whether a policy is, or was, successful. It builds initially on two sets of literature: Boyne's work on public sector improvement; and the work of Bovens et al. on success, failure and policy evaluation. We discuss the epistemological issues involved in whether it is possible to produce an objective measure of ‘success’. Subsequently, we present a framework for assessing success, focusing on three dimensions: process success; programmatic success; and political success. We then move on to raise a series of what we term complexity issues in relation to success for whom; variations across time, space and culture; and methodological issues.     

Thailand's Quest For Results-focused Budgeting

Abstract

Budgeting in Thailand is highly centralized. The powerful Bureau of the Budget (BOB) controls each agency's spending in detail through numerous separate budget allocations (detailed line itemizing). After a failed program budget reform in the late 1990s, the Thai Government attempted to introduce a performance-based reform into this centralized, controlled setting. The reform followed a “hurdle” whereby line entities could gain greater discretion over their budgets (and move towards a performance management approach) upon “clearance” of specific hurdles—achieving minimum levels in budget basics. This article examines why this approach did not work.     

Reform: health care

The Italian National Health Service was established in 1978 as three-tier system, involving State, Regions, USLs (Unità sanitarie locali, Local Health Care Units). The division between the responsibility of determining the general features of health care policy and financing it, on one side (the State), and that of managing services, on the order side (Regions and USLs), was bound to lead to increasing levels of expenditure and large financial deficits. An important reform has been carried out over the last five years, aiming toward a more decentralized system, which, although still public, were based on competition among suppliers and free choice for consumers. We argue that although the reform seems to have been successful in containing public expenditure, it has left some important issues still unresolved: the relationship between patients' freedom of choice and competition among providers, and the definition of a model of rationing the bundle of health services financed by the public sector.     

The EU's Response to the International Court of Justice's Judgment on Kosovo's Declaration of Independence

In this essay an evaluation of the content and determinants of the EU's response to the ICJ is provided. Two core questions are addressed: firstly, did the ICJ's judgment alter EU policy towards Kosovo and Serbia and, secondly, was EU policy towards Kosovo and Serbia effective? It is argued that the EU's response to the ICJ's judgment in 2010 has been consistent and effective, but that the underlying determinants of the policy have not changed since 2008. It is argued that the EU's response to the ICJ's judgment in 2010 has been consistent and effective and that the ICJ judgment has had a catalytic effect on the EU's influence over Serbia and the Serbia–Kosovo relationship. Overall, EU policy has been effective, despite being periodically ad hoc.     

Divergent Outcomes of Labor Reform Politics in Democratized Korea and Taiwan

This article seeks to explain the conditions that determine the divergent fates of union actors under democratic governments by examining union activism around four labor reform episodes (union rights recognition, wage increases, workweek reductions, and job protection/anti-privatization) in democratized Korea and Taiwan. This study first describes that labor reform politics in these two new democracies involved contrasting processes and produced divergent outcomes. Korean unions that have resorted to contentious mobilization have been more successful in areas where their sheer mobilizing strength matters (such as company-level bargaining of wages and other material benefits), but less successful in national policy reforms. On the contrary, Taiwanese unions have been more effective in securing labor policy concessions, while obtaining less drastic changes at the company-level gains. This article contends that these divergent outcomes for unions’ gains would not have been possible without the differences they faced in the degree of permeability within their respective formal political institutions and partisan interests that draw these unions into these labor reform politics.

Market-Oriented Reforms as a Tool of State-Building: Russian Pension Reform in 2001

Despite domestic opposition and several policy alternatives, in 2001 the Russian government adopted a pension reform that was potentially costly and had uncertain long-term benefits. Demographic and fiscal pressures created the desire to reform and a more cooperative Duma made it possible to do so. These points do not explain why Putin chose the pension privatisation option. Russia's pension reform is best understood as part of a state-building strategy to diminish the role of powerful bureaucracies. Russia's welfare state was not merely the product of a powerful and popular president, but rather a tool to create a stronger executive.     

Constructing Policy Networks: Social Assistance Reform in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Czech social insurance and family transfers experienced fundamental reform in 1995 but Czech social assistance benefits still lack comprehensive change. This article explains the delay in Czech social assistance reform by appling policy network studies in a postcommunist context. Although few organizations perticipate in the Czech social assistance policy network, they are divided: they lack the common interests and exchangable resources necessary to create dialogue and compromise. The organizations of disabled citizens are the only interest group active in the policy network, with the operators of state social care institutions their primary opponents. In the late 1990s, this already fragmented issue network suffered further division when the EU entered as a powerful network actor with another set of policy goals. Until the policy network structure facilitates more dialogue and consensus‐building, hopes for comprehensive social assistance reform will linger unfulfilled.     

EU trade and development policy beyond the ACP: subordinating developmental to commercial imperatives in the reform of GSP

Following the stagnation of negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific states, the centrepiece of the European Union's (EU's) trade and development strategy has been a reform of the Generalised System of Preferences. Although policy-makers in the Commission's Directorate General for Trade have argued they are ‘refocusing’ these preferences on the ‘neediest’, by rendering a significant proportion of emerging economies' exports ineligible for the scheme, this article argues that the reform is actually part of a broader ‘reciprocity’ agenda being pursued in the context of the current economic crisis. This is about ensuring the EU possesses sufficient offensive leverage in ongoing free trade agreement negotiations, rather than representing any mercantilist move towards greater domestic protection. In arguing that the EU's developmental trade agenda is increasingly subordinated to commercial imperatives, this article adds to a literature that has situated the study of EU trade and development policy within the field of political economy.     

International patron-client relationships: A conceptual framework

Dependency theory has cast new light on the workings of the international political economy, and on the relations between more and less developed countries. Insofar as dependency theory aims at specifying generalsystemic constraints on the behavior of Third World states, its ability to explain/predict how particular Third World states respond to these constraints is limited. Our concern is with the foreign policy responses of the LDCs. The comparative foreign policy approach to this question has attempted to account for cross-national variation in foreign policy responses of LDCs with variation in theirdomestic features, i.e., attributes, capabilities, and regime types. Here we suggest that an understanding of the foreign policies of the LDCs can be enhanced by adding an explicitly dyadic perspective to dependency and comparative foreign policy approaches, conceptualized as a form of patron-cliency.     

Challenging the European Union: the rising powers and the USA in the Doha Round

In this article, the challenges posed to the European Union's (EU) role in trade policy and its implications for development policy during the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda, also known as the Doha round, are highlighted. The authors argue that transformed power relations have created a situation characterized by role uncertainty, for the emerging powers but also for the EU. Priorities among multiple possible roles – in the existing trade regime, in relation to the global South and in the ongoing negotiations – become subject to redefinition. For the EU, heavily wedded to a multilateralist and reformist mission because of its own history, this process is particularly difficult. The EU's traditional role conceptions as a leader and a benign partner to developing countries have been challenged and partly replaced by a more realist approach.     

Policy reforms in sub-Saharan Africa: Conditions for establishing a dialogue

Third World debt continues to be a critical and intractable issue. A particularly interesting aspect of the story is the effort by external donors and lenders to promote specific policy changes in exchange for assistance in dealing with indebtedness and promoting economic development. This study looks at the interactions between donors and decision-makers in sub-Saharan African countries, an area where donors rather than private banks play a dominant role. Donors have been learning from the uneven response to the reforms and are attempting to tailor the reforms somewhat to different contexts and to encourage more consultations. To succeed in these efforts they need to reexamine their view of analysis as a purely technocratic exercise among experts. They can learn from recent changes in the policy sciences, here called an interactive approach to policy analysis. It makes three assumptions: policy relevant knowledge includes time and space information and is diffused; participants can reason together and learn from each other; and there is a need for procedures and institutions to facilitate interaction and learning. The study explores the assumptions implicit in donor actions and proposes that an interactive approach, with its more open-ended perspective on knowledge, can stimulate greater dialogue and expand the kinds of information that are fed into the process. Louise G. White is associate professor in the department of public affairs at George Mason University, Fairfax VA 22030–4444. Her research is in the general areas of development management and policy analysis. Her most recent books areCreating Opportunities for Change: Approaches for Managing Development Programs, andPolitical Analysis: Technique and Practice. She has recently published articles inPublic Administration Review andWorld Development.     

Decentralization and municipal governance: Suggested approaches for cross-regional analysis

The study of decentralization and municipal governance has captured much scholarly attention. This article highlights the importance of factors that have been generally ignored, and, in the process, suggests dimensions that facilitate comparison, including at the cross-regional level. First, regarding the creation and reform of decentralization policy, scholars may compare cases based on thehorizontal andex-post vertical political processes of reform. Second, cases can be compared based on the degree of center-statepolicy fluctuation, i.e., the institutions and incentives generating continual policy change and delayed outcomes, over time. Finally, I encourage scholars to scale down to the municipal level, comparing cases based on the following variables: historical state-municipal fiscal relations, institutional innovations, and the policy-making process. I close by explaining the various benefits associated with these approaches and the new research questions and challenges that they pose for comparative scholars. Eduardo J. Gómez is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Brown University. His research interests are in federalism, decentralization, and the politics of economic and welfare reform in developing nations. I would like to thank James Mahoney, Richard Snyder, Melanie Cammett, Jonathan Rodden, Kent Eaton, Tyler Dickovick, Steven Webb, Stephan Haggard, Philip Oxhorn, William McCarten, Thomas Bossert, Javier Corrales, and four anonymous reviewers for excellent comments and suggestions.     

Place-Shaping by Local Government in Developing Countries: Lessons for the Developed World

The Lyons Inquiry into local government in Britain represented a significant contribution to the debate on local government reform, with policy ramifications well beyond contemporary Britain. This article considers the Inquiry's concept of “place-shaping” as a mode of local government reform which captures the experience of a number of developing countries in recent years. By way of illustrative examples, we examine these processes in the specific contexts of South Africa and Indonesia. In particular, we consider whether the devolution of functions to municipalities in developmental settings constitutes place-shaping, and how this bears on processes of local government reform in developed nations.     

Participatory Democracy or Pseudo-Participation? Local Government Reform in Ireland

Since 1996 local government in the Republic of Ireland has undergone extensive reform. One of the central aims of this reform is the enhancement of local and participatory democracy through generating new forms of participation by communities in local authority decision-making processes, and through strengthening the decision-making role of city and county councillors. Drawing on comparisons with current British local government reforms and on key community governance frameworks, this paper questions the validity of this aim, given the ‘top-down’ nature of the reforms, the ongoing weakness of Irish local government vis-à-vis central government, and the increasingly contractual and consumerist approach of the state towards the voluntary and community sector. It argues that the reforms consolidate Irish local government as a system of local administration rather than local democracy, and that they may threaten the development of participatory democracy, rather than facilitate it.     

Rethinking the ‘open functional’ approach: Ideas,problem pressure and reform in the contemporary welfare state

Recognition that welfare states continue to change has fostered debate about the relationship between ideas and policy problems in driving governments towards reform. To move the debate forward, this article proposes a modification of Barbara Vis and Kees van Kersbergen's ‘open functional approach’. It first argues that while policy problems may provide ‘functional pressure’ to reform, this pressure is significant only in so far as inaction would risk electoral punishment. Reform pressure is hence best evaluated with reference to contemporaneous expert advice, public opinion data and the timing of elite and media attention. Second, it suggests that ideas may also lead parties to act as reform seekers, using policy problems as justification for cherished solutions or long‐held programmatic goals. The modified approach is demonstrated through comparative application to two case studies, attempts at pension reform in Sweden and the United States.