Limits of regulatory responsiveness: Democratic credentials of responsive regulation

Responsiveness and accountability constitute the process of democratic representation, reinforcing each other. Responsiveness asks elected representatives to adopt policies ex ante preferred by citizens, while accountability consists of the people's ex post sanctioning of the representatives based on policy outcomes. However, the regulatory literature tends to interpret responsiveness narrowly between a regulator and regulatees: the regulator is responsive to regulatees’ compliance without considering broader public needs and preferences. Democratic regulatory responsiveness requires that the regulator should be responsive to the people, not just regulatees. We address this theoretical gap by pointing out the perils of regulatory capture and advancing John Braithwaite's idea of tripartism as a remedy. We draw out two conditions of democratic regulatory responsiveness from Philip Selznick – comprehensiveness and proactiveness. We then propose overlapping networked responsiveness based on indirect reciprocity among various stakeholders. This mechanism is the key to connecting regulatory responsiveness with accountability.     

Experimentalism in transnational forest governance: Implementing European Union Forest Law Enforcement,Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreements in Indonesia and Ghana

Over the past decade, the European Union (EU) has created a novel experimentalist architecture for transnational forest governance: the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative. This innovative architecture comprises extensive participation by civil society stakeholders in establishing and revising open‐ended framework goals (Voluntary Partnership Agreements [VPAs] with developing countries aimed at promoting sustainable forest governance and preventing illegal logging) and metrics for assessing progress toward them (legality standards and indicators) through monitoring and review of local implementation, underpinned by a penalty default mechanism to sanction non‐cooperation (the EU Timber Regulation that prohibits operators from placing illegally harvested wood on the European market). This paper analyzes the implementation of VPAs in Indonesia and Ghana, the two countries furthest advanced toward issuing FLEGT export licences. A central finding is the reciprocal relationship between the experimentalist architecture of the FLEGT initiative and transnational civil society activism, whereby the VPAs’ insistence on stakeholder participation, independent monitoring, and joint implementation review, underwritten by the EU, empowers domestic non‐governmental organizations with local knowledge to expose problems on the ground, hold public authorities accountable for addressing them, and contribute to developing provisional solutions.     

Economic Voting in Latin America: Rules and Responsibility

The impact of institutions on the economic vote stands as a well‐established proposition for the advanced democracies of Europe. We know less, however, regarding the institutional effects on the economic vote in the developing democracies of Latin America. Carrying out an analysis of presidential elections in 18 Latin American countries, we offer evidence that the usual Eurocentric conceptualization of the clarity of responsibility is not ideal for understanding the economic vote in this region. There does exist a powerful effect of institutions on the economic vote within Latin American democracies, but one uniquely associated with its presidential regimes and dynamic party systems. Rules for these elections—such as concurrence, term limits, and second‐round voting—suggest that we should reconceptualize the notion of the clarity of responsibility in Latin America, focusing more on individuals in power and their constraints, and less on the political parties from which they hail.     

Time for a New Paradigm? Past and Present Transitions in Economic Policy

This article seeks to place the UK's present economic ‘moment’ in historical context. Over the course of the decade since the 2007 financial crisis, it has increasingly been acknowledged that a cyclical crisis has become a structural crisis. The failure of most economists to predict the financial crash in the first place, and the inadequacy of economic policy in responding to its lasting effects, has led many to conclude that economics itself is in crisis. This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the present period of disjuncture. Drawing on theories of paradigm shift from both the physical and social sciences, we argue that the speed of change in UK economic policy is comparable to the two major historical transitions that ended with the post‐war consensus and neoliberalism. We conclude by offering some remarks on how and where the present change might take us.     

Government Communication Effectiveness and Satisfaction with Police Performance: A Large‐Scale Survey Study

For the last two decades, performance management theories and practices have focused on outcome‐oriented management but have paid little attention to the role of public communication. Using multiple large data sets from Kansas City, Missouri, for 2009–14, this research suggests that the perceived effectiveness of public communication has a more substantial impact on public satisfaction with police protection and crime prevention than neighborhood crime rates and broken windows factors and that perceived effectiveness moderates the negative impact of crime rates. After controlling for residents’ demographic characteristics, the authors find that the perceived effectiveness of communication is associated with public satisfaction with the content and quality of the city website and the government television channel. The implications for public safety management and police–citizen relations as well as directions for future research on public communication strategies and public performance management are presented.     

The Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Power Plant Emissions on Birth Weight: Evidence from a Pennsylvania Power Plant Located Upwind of New Jersey

To examine the infant health impact of prenatal exposure to power plant emissions, we draw scientific evidence on the impacted region downwind of a large polluter, a coal‐fired power plant located on the border of two states and proven to be the sole contributor to the violation of air quality standards of the impacted region. Our results show that among all live singleton births that occurred during 1990 through 2006, those born to mothers living as far as 20 to 30 miles away downwind from the power plant (which is also an affluent region) during pregnancy are at greater risks of low birth weight (LBW) and very low birth weight (VLBW): the likelihoods of LBW and VLBW could increase approximately by 6.50 and 17.12 percent, respectively. In light of the continual efforts of The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in reducing cross‐state air pollution caused by transboundary power plant emissions, our study is aimed at broadening the scope of cross‐border pollution impact analysis by taking into account adverse infant health effects of upwind polluters, which can impose disproportionate burdens of health risks on downwind states due to air pollutants transported by wind.     

Child Health in Elementary School Following California's Paid Family Leave Program

We evaluate changes in elementary school children health outcomes following the introduction of California's Paid Family Leave (PFL) program, which provided parents with paid time off following the birth of a child. Our health outcomes—overweight, ADHD, and hearing‐related problems—are characterized by diagnosis rates that only pick up during early elementary school. Moreover, our health outcomes have been found to be negatively linked with many potential implications of extended maternity leave—increased breastfeeding, prompt medical checkups at infancy, reduced prenatal stress, and reduced non‐parental care during infancy. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS) within a difference‐in‐differences framework, our results suggest improvements in health outcomes among California elementary school children following PFL's introduction. Furthermore, the improvements are driven by children from less advantaged backgrounds, which is consistent with the notion that California's PFL had the greatest effect on leave‐taking duration after childbirth mostly for less advantaged mothers who previously could not afford to take unpaid leave.     

Fiscal Austerity and Rental Housing Policy in the United States and United Kingdom, 2010–2016

After the 2008 global financial crisis, both the United States and the United Kingdom introduced austerity policies targeted at particular elements of their national budgets. The purpose of this article is to compare the nature of this retrenchment; the similarities and differences in how it was implemented; and its initial impacts on one of the expenditure areas particularly affected: affordable rental housing programs and housing support for low-income households. Using a wide range of data sources, we find evidence of political and fiscal policy analogies in the timing and forms of the initial policy choices and how these were modified in the face of economic and political pressures. There are considerable similarities both in the instruments used to reduce housing expenditures and in the early impacts on support mechanisms and recipients. However, we find different histories and trajectories of support between the two countries that suggest that the longer term differences in outcomes may be more important.