Power in Public Implementation: A Complex, but Important Part of Power Studies

Based on data disclosing differential treatment of regulated companies, this article shows that it is important to look at the implementation phase as well as the political decision-making phase when one talks about distribution of power in Western democracies. Doing so gives a more nuanced picture of the distribution of power. However, explaining differential treatment throughout the implementation phase with variation in the possession of different power resources gives a more or less kaleidoscopic picture and calls for a complex theory of power. Local economic strength, networks, knowledge and organizational similarity do lead to more lenient regulatory inspection, but the effect depends on whether the company is public or private. Therefore, to have power and influence, one must possess the right resources, understand how to use them and be able to handle the fact that people might expect something different from you than they expect from others – not because of what you do, but because of who you are.     

Rethinking governmental licensing of higher education institutions

In many countries around the world, governmental authorities control the market entry of new providers of higher educational services. By means of ex-ante licensing in the higher education sector, government ensures that students are only confronted with academic programs and institutions that at least meet certain minimum quality standards. This quality-assuring intervention by government may be taken for granted. From an economic viewpoint, however, it seems worthwhile to scrutinize the regulatory status quo. In order to rethink existing licensing arrangements’ raison d’être, the present paper addresses the question whether governmental market entry control in the higher education industry is necessary at all.

Experience Versus Expectation: Economic Insecurity,the Great Recession,and Support for the Death Penalty

Scholars have theorized that people who report past economic hardship and those who forecast future economic instability will be more likely to support punitive criminal justice policies than those who do not. Only recently have researchers begun to empirically examine this association, and the findings from this small literature have been highly inconsistent. The current study contributes to this line of inquiry by investigating a uniquely rich set of economic insecurity measures included in a very large national survey (N = 9,060) fielded during a time period of special theoretical salience: the Great Recession of 2007–2009. Specifically, using survey data from the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, we explore the effects of experienced and expected personal, vicarious, and societal economic insecurity on support for the death penalty. Contrary to the hypotheses, expectations of future economic insecurity are negatively associated with death penalty support, but this relationship is conditional on respondents’ demographics.     

On the political economy of national tax revenue forecasts: evidence from OECD countries

Sustainable budgets are important quality signals for the electorate. Politicians might thus have an incentive to influence tax revenue forecasts, which are widely regarded as a key element of national budget plans. Looking at the time period from 1996 to 2012, we systematically analyze whether national tax revenue forecasts in 18 OECD countries are biased due to political manipulation. Drawing on theories from the field of political economy, we test three hypotheses using panel estimation techniques. We find support for partisan politics. Left-wing governments seem to produce more optimistic, or less pessimistic, tax revenue forecasts than do right-wing ones. Contrary to the theoretical prediction based on the “common pool” problem, we find that more fragmented governments and parliaments tend to produce more pessimistic, or less optimistic, tax revenue forecasts. We find no empirical evidence that political business cycles play a role in tax revenue forecasts.     

Testing responsive regulation in regulatory enforcement

The policy ideals of responsive regulation have been developed on the basis of substantial empirical evidence. The overall formulation of responsive regulation theory itself, however, has rarely been empirically tested. This article sets out the theoretical concept of responsive regulation in the context of business regulation enforcement and discusses how we might operationalize and empirically measure it. We develop two alternative theoretical interpretations of responsive regulatory enforcement: “tit for tat” responsive regulation and “restorative justice” responsive regulation. We then measure business firms' perceptions of the reactions and counter‐reactions of a regulatory enforcement agency throughout the investigation and enforcement process. We find little evidence of tit for tat responsiveness actually occurring in practice. To the extent that tit for tat responsiveness does exist, we find a small amount of evidence that it has the hypothesized effects on behavior but not on attitudes. We find clearer evidence of restorative justice responsiveness having the hypothesized effects on attitudes but not on behavior.     

The protection of marriage and family: a constitutional responsibility to enable all-embracing interaction as a means without an (objective) end

China-EU Law Journal - The constitutional duty to protect marriage and family is a rather recent task for public authorities. While these particularly personal forms of social interaction have...     

Youth,culture, negotiation and politics

The following paper was motivated by a series of seminars held in 2004 at University of Bayreuth on the Harvard Negotiation Concept of Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton (R. Fisher, W. Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without giving in, 2nd edn, Penguin Books, New York 1991). When comparing the advices of the Harvard Negotiation Concept with my own negotiation experiences in youth politics, I realized that the Harvard Concept is rather useless in many forms of intercultural negotiations. It does not sufficiently address how much culture influences our perceptions of negotiations. Politics is not the only, but surely the most prominent field of intercultural negotiation. Therefore my focus of research was: does culture influence politics? In the first chapter, I describe the reason for the science of negotiation, the validity of universal negotiation concepts, the definition of culture and the existing research on intercultural negotiations. In the second chapter, I discuss concrete examples of how culture allegedly influences politics, such as in International Youth Politics and in the ASEM process. I also give some results from a survey that I carried out in 2004 (The extended version of the paper can be found at my webpage at http://www.karsten-wenzlaff.de). All examples cast a doubt on whether culture really influences politics.     

Observer Sensitivity and Early Radicalization to Violence Among Young People in Germany

Social Justice Research - Personal sensitivity to injustice from either a victim or an observer perspective shapes political attitudes and actions. Yet, little is known about the link between...