The Impact of Unified Party Government on Campaign Contributions

This article examines the connection between unified party government and campaign contributions. Our central argument is that unified party government confers a substantial, but previously overlooked, fundraising advantage to intra‐chamber majority parties. We examined data on corporate campaign contributions to U.S. House incumbents and state legislators in 17 different legislative chambers. We found a strong fundraising benefit accruing to intra‐chamber majority status across all of these legislatures, but the benefit is heavily conditioned by the presence of unified or divided government. The results offer important implications for our understanding of the financial balance of power in American politics and for the vast scholarly literature on unified party government.     

From Government to Governance? A Comparison of Environmental Governing in Swedish Forestry and Transport

From government to governance is a grand story line about the changing role of the state, which has had a great impact upon researchers and practitioners. This article is an empirical assessment of this story line. Three critical dimensions are elaborated into indicators of government and governance: governing styles and instruments, public–private relationships, and policy levels. These indicators are used to assess the role of the state in environmental governing using Swedish forestry and transport as examples. The results show that the story line is too simple; the role of the state is not changing in a unidirectional way. Instead, the comparison shows that environmental governing within the two policy areas is characterized by both government and governance modes of governing, thus questioning the usefulness of the story line as a guideline when framing empirical studies or political decisions.     

PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS: ADDED VALUE BY ORGANIZATIONAL FORM OR MANAGEMENT?

The central idea of public private partnerships (PPPs) is that added value can be achieved from greater co‐operation between public and private actors. In general, the literature speaks of PPPs in which public and private actors develop a more or less sustainable co‐operation through which they realize products, services, or policies together, share risks, and develop an organizational form to arrange this. The assumption is that a higher degree of PPP leads to more and better outcomes because public and private actors combine their knowledge and resources. One can find a wide array of organizational forms in which this co‐operation is organized and the literature pays a great deal of attention to these forms. But is this organizational form really so important, or are the intensity and type of managerial strategies more important for the outcomes? Based on a large survey of individuals involved in Dutch environmental projects, we show that although the degree of PPP correlates positively with the outcomes of projects, this correlation disappears when we include in the analysis the number of managerial strategies employed. The organizational form does not have significant impact on outcomes and the conclusion we draw is that scholars and practitioners of public private partnerships should pay greater attention to the managerial efforts necessary to develop and implement PPPs.     

Political differentiation and the problem of dominance: Segmentation and hegemony

At first glance, one might view the political differentiation in the European Union as a reflection of the autonomy of its member states, signifying flexibility and the dispersion of democratic control. However, under conditions of complex interdependence and economic integration, political differentiation can undermine the fundamental conditions for democratic self‐rule. Political differentiation may cause dominance. It is argued in this article that we must move beyond Philip Pettit's conception of dominance as the capacity to interfere with others on an arbitrary basis, in order to properly identify the undemocratic consequences of differentiation. Political freedom is also a question of institutional provisions to co‐determine laws. From this vantage point, differentiation raises the spectre of dominance in the form of decisional exclusion and the pre‐emption of political autonomy. Drawing on a re‐conceptualisation of dominance, the effects of differentiation on the possibility of self‐rule are examined, and two systematic effects of political differentiation are identified. It is argued that segmentation is the systemic effect of differentiation in the vertical dimension of integration. Here, dominance occurs in the form of exclusion from decision‐making bodies and the denial of choice opportunities. In the external horizontal dimension, the systemic effect of differentiation is hegemony. Some states are vulnerable to arbitrary interference and the pre‐emption of public autonomy. The article discusses developments within the Eurozone as a case of segmentation and the statues of associated non‐members as a case of hegemony. With regard to the latter, we are faced with the phenomenon of self‐incurred dominance.     

Do terrorist attacks feed populist Eurosceptics? Evidence from two comparative quasi-experiments

Over recent years, Europe has experienced a series of Islamic terrorist attacks. In this article, conflicting theoretical expectations are derived on whether such attacks increase populist Euroscepticism in the form of anti-immigration, anti-refugee and anti-European Union sentiment. Empirically, plausible exogenous variation in the exposure to the 2016 Berlin attack is exploited in two nationally representative surveys covering multiple European countries. No evidence is found for a populist response to the terrorist attack in any of the surveyed countries. On the contrary, people in Germany became more positive towards the EU in the wake of the Berlin attack. Moreover, little evidence is found that ideology shaped the response to the attack. The findings suggest that terrorist attacks are not met by an immediate public populist response.     

Legitimation as justification: Foregrounding public philosophies in explanations of gradual ideational change

In accounts of institutional change, discursive institutionalists point to the role of economic and political ideas in upending institutional stability and providing the raw material for the establishment of a new institutional setup. This approach has typically entailed a conceptualisation of ideas as coherent and monolithic and actors as almost automatically following the precepts of the ideas they hold and support. Recent theorising stresses how ideas are in fact composite and heterogeneous, and actors pragmatic and strategic in how they employ ideas in political struggles. However, this change of focus has, until recently, not included how foundational ideas of a polity, often referred to as ‘public philosophies’, are theorised to impact on institution-building. Drawing on French Pragmatic Sociology, and taking as a starting point recent efforts within discursive institutionalism to conceptualise the dynamic nature of public philosophies, this article seeks to foreground moral justification in accounts of ideational and institutional change. It suggests that public philosophies are reflexively used by actors in continual processes of normative justification that may produce significant policy shifts over time. The empirical relevance of the argument is demonstrated through an analysis of gradual ideational and institutional change in French labour market policy, specifically the development from the state-guaranteed minimum income scheme of 1988 to the neoliberal make-work-pay logic of the 2009 scheme, Revenu de solidarité active. The analysis shows that public and moral justifications have underpinned and gradually shaped these radical changes.     

Electoral Influences on Legislative Behavior in Mixed‐Member Systems: Evidence from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada

Abstract: This article addresses how mixed‐member systems that combine proportional representation (PR) and single‐member districts (SMD) into a single election can influence legislators' voting behavior. Scholars have generally extended standard expectations of behavior to mixed‐member systems by assuming that legislators occupying PR seats in mixed‐member parliaments should be more cohesive than those occupying SMD seats. I argue that controlling for seat type alone does not take into account the interaction between PR and SMD in mixed‐member systems. Using voting data from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, I show that controlling for dual candidacy and the “safety” of the deputy's district or list position increases our understanding of the factors motivating legislative cohesion.     

DIFFUSION OF STANDARDS: THE IMPORTANCE OF SIZE,REGION AND EXTERNAL PRESSURES IN DIFFUSION PROCESSES

Organizational standards or guidelines, although commonly applied in public sector organizations, are rarely studied systematically. We report insights gained here into the circumstances present when organizations adopt standards by studying the diffusion of the Common Language Standard (CLS). Neo‐institutional organization theory constitutes the theoretical framework, which highlights the empirical phenomenon that standards occasionally spread extremely rapidly to some – but not all – organizations within the same field. Empirical evidence from quantitative surveys of civil servants and elected officials in Danish municipalities is used to analyse the field and organizational levels. The levels of external pressure and organizational resources are important in order to understand why some municipal organizations have adopted the CLS whereas others have not. We find that the initial source of the standard as well as regional pressure play a strong role, something which contradicts other studies indicating that diffusion from organization to organization is more significant.     

Family Values: How Children's Lawyers Can Help Their Clients by Advocating for Parents

Children's lawyers too often view themselves as standing in opposition to parents in dependency proceedings. In this article, the authors argue that child advocates do a disservice to their clients by not using their considerable skills, role advantages, and moral authority to actively help parents. Noting that areas of common ground far exceed those places where the children's bar and the parents' bar might part company, the authors contend that children's lawyers have an obligation to actively fight for parents' rights. In particular, spending time early in a case to ensure that appropriate reunification services are being offered is well worth the investment, as it redounds to the benefit of all parties. Several concrete practice tips are offered regarding how children's lawyers can better serve their clients by regularly advocating for parents.