Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting: Has Its Time Really Come?

In April 1994 GASB released Concepts Statement No. 2, Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting , bringing required SEA external financial reporting a very large step closer to reality. Before long, public financial officials may be required to annually report measures of performance. We are now about halfway through the experimentation phase established in Statement 2. This article summarizes the status of GASB's SEA experimentation process. It then suggests important behavioral, auditing, and other issues which GASB ought to address before proceeding with any formal pronouncements regarding SEA reporting requirements.     

The tax-spend debate: Time series evidence from state budgets

This paper examines the temporal relationship between revenues and expenditures for the forty-eight contiguous states over an annual period 1942 to 1992. Using an error-correction model, we find that the tax-spend hypothesis is supported for twenty-four states. The spend-tax hypothesis is valid for eight states while the fiscal synchronization hypothesis is supported for eleven states. The remaining five states failed the diagnostic tests for error-correction modeling.     

On the Nature of Tolerance: Dichotomous or Continuous?*

The purpose of this article is to reconsider the claim made recently by Mondak and Sanders that political tolerance ought to be thought to be a dichotomous rather than continuous variable. Using data from both Russia and the United States, I demonstrate that those Mondak and Sanders regard as uniquely tolerant are most likely no more than people who were given insufficient opportunity to express their intolerance. Even if such a phenomenon of “absolute tolerance” exists (all ideas expressed in all ways are to be tolerated), it is sufficiently rare that few practical implications are indicated for those doing empirical work on political tolerance and intolerance. * I appreciate the valuable comments of Jeffcry Mondak on an earlier version of this paper.     

Research Note: Libertarian-authoritarian Value Change in Britain, 1974–2001

This research note explores the mechanisms behind age differences and changes over time in one of the two major value dimensions in British politics, libertarian-authoritarianism. I show that the British electorate has become substantially more libertarian over the last 30 years, but that older people have remained more authoritarian than younger people over this period. Conventionally, due to the problem of the under-identification of models containing age, period and cohort variables, it is difficult to assess whether this indicates generational differences, and generational change, or not. This paper overcomes some of these problems however, by measuring social ageing factors, such as marriage, and using panel data to rigorously assess how individuals change due to these social ageing factors. I find little evidence of psychologists' claims that social ageing leads to increases in authoritarianism, and conclude that both age differences and changes over time are generational in nature.     

A Framework for Assessing Incentives in Results-Based Management

Many governmental results-based management systems have not produced the expected positive effects. This article analyzes the reasons for this common disappointment by looking at three components of results-based management—results-specific information, capacities, and incentives—and concludes that incentives are often the least developed. It then synthesizes a simple framework for evaluating the efficacy of results-oriented incentives. To be successful, results-specific incentives must be tailored to fit four program characteristics: timeliness, political environment, clarity of the cause-and-effect chain, and tightness of focus. This framework suggests that some systems put too exclusive an emphasis on budgetary incentives and could be strengthened by emphasizing personnel-system rewards, especially those that look beyond business models.     

Economic Threats or Societal Turmoil? Understanding Preferences for Authoritarian Political Systems

Why do some individuals prefer to be governed in an authoritarian political system? One intuitive answer is that citizens prefer authoritarian rule when the economy and society are in turmoil. These are common explanations for democratic backsliding, and the emergence and success of authoritarian leaders in the twentieth century. Which of these explanations better explains preferences for authoritarian rule? Both types of threat coincide in small samples and high-profile cases, creating inferential problems. I address this by using three waves of World Values Survey data to look at individual-level preferences for different forms of authoritarian government. Using multiple macroeconomic and societal indicators, I find that economic threats, especially increasing income inequality, better explain preferences for authoritarian government. I conclude with implications for understanding the emergence of support for authoritarianism in fledgling democracies.