Improving Performance in New Zealand's Public Corporations: The Effect of Governance Practices

This article examines whether the corporate governance practices recommended by the New Zealand Securities Commission (NZSC) in 2004 have affected the financial performance of public sector corporate entities in New Zealand. The findings indicate that these entities have universally adopted the Securities Commission recommendations by establishing subcommittees for audit and remuneration, and having a majority of independent directors on the boards. The results show that leverage has a statistically significant positive effect on all performance measures. Both the Remuneration Committee and dividend payout have positive effects on performance when measured by sales to total assets. Board size and an Audit Committee have a positive effect on reducing agency cost. Results also show that entity risk and industry type also have a positive effect on performance and agency cost reduction. Entity size has a consistent negative effect across all performance measures.     

Comparison of Status and Delinquent Offenders

National studies suggest that our college students do not have sufficient awareness or knowledge of international affairs, and this appears to be true of criminal justice students as well. A survey of programs in criminology-criminal justice indicates that we have not been giving sufficient attention to the international field in our curricula. This paper discusses the need for international courses in criminal justice, citing the vast increase in international crime and criminal activity, the increasing internationalization of crime, and the recent, rapid development of international agencies of crime control and prevention. The paper also suggests an outline and sketch of what should be covered in international courses of the field, and indicates suitable reference sources.     

Still Causing Trouble: The Conservative Parliamentary Party

There have been relatively few backbench rebellions on the Conservative benches in the Commons since 2001, but division manifested itself on three significant occasions: over the Children and Adoption Bill (when the leadership insisted on applying a whip to a vote that many thought should have been 'free'), over Lords reform (where on a free vote a majority of Conservative MPs voted against their leadership's preferred position) and over Iraq (where the divisions were smaller than on the Labour side of the House but where there was a qualitative dimension to the rebellion). Most importantly of all, the events of October 2003, when Iain Duncan Smith was removed as party leader, showed how much power remained with Conservative MPs: they initiated the vote of confidence, in which they alone participated, and the emergence of Michael Howard as the 'unity' candidate meant that the grassroots were denied any role in the change of leadership.     

Mobilising support when the stakes are high: Mass emails affect constituent-to-legislator lobbying

Mass emails are frequently used by advocacy groups to mobilise supporters to lobby legislators. But how effective are they at inducing constituent-to-legislator lobbying when the stakes are high? We test the efficacy of a large-scale email campaign conducted by the UK's main anti-Brexit organisation. In 2019, the group prominently displayed a ‘Write to your MP’ tool on their website and assigned 119,362 supporters represented by legislators with incongruent views to one of four email messages encouraging them to write to their MP or a control condition (no email). Messages varied across two factors: whether the MP's incongruent position was highlighted, and if urgency was emphasised. We find that 3.4 per cent of treatment subjects contacted their representative, compared to 0.1 per cent of those in the control, representing an additional 3,344 emails sent to MPs. We show that there was no substitution away from the most frequently used online legislator contact platform in the United Kingdom. While, on average, position and urgency cues had no marginal effects above the standard email, the most engaged supporters were more mobilised when informed that their MP held incongruent views. This study shows that advocacy groups can use low-cost communication techniques to mobilise supporters to lobby representatives when the stakes are high.     

THE EFFECT OF VICTIM IMPACT PANELS ON DUI REARREST RATES: A FIVE‐YEAR FOLLOW‐UP*

Victim Impact Panels (VIPs) were introduced by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1982 and have since spread throughout the United States in an attempt to reduce drunk driving. The objective of a VIP is to expose DUI offenders to the pain and suffering caused by drunk driving without necessarily condemning the DUI offender. The few scientific evaluations of the effectiveness of VIPs have produced mixed results. The present investigation draws on evidence from a quasi‐experimental design and a five‐year follow‐up to probe further the effects of VIPs on DUI recidivism. Results show that 33.5% of the comparison group, but only 15.8% of the VIP group, were rearrested over the five‐year period. Discrete‐time event history analyses suggest that VIPs are associated with a 55.7% overall decrease in the hazard of rearrest; the VIP effect is strong in the first two years but then wanes dramatically. Methodological threats stemming from the study's design are considered. The implications of the differing styles of VIP and the resultant outcomes are also discussed.     

Treating Voters as an Afterthought? The Legacies of a Decade of Electoral Modernisation in the United Kingdom

Over the past decade, the UK's New Labour government has been at the forefront of efforts internationally to modernise electoral procedures, promising to deliver 'an e-enabled, multi-channel general election by 2006'. This paper considers the origins and the impacts of reforms to UK electoral procedures with a particular focus on the adoption of postal voting on demand and pilots of electronic voting and counting since 2000. The paper concludes that the principal legacy of the modernisation agenda to date is likely to have been a negative impact on public confidence in the electoral process.     

Forced Exits: Accounting for the Removal of Contemporary Party Leaders

This article seeks to account for the remarkably high number of British party leaders who have been forced to leave office in recent years. In particular it seeks to explain why numerous leaders have felt compelled to resign following pressure from party colleagues. It is suggested that four general factors may be of importance: i) the increased importance of perceptions of leadership; ii) the rise of ‘celebrity’ politics; iii) erosion of traditional public–private divides, and; iv) increased professionalism amongst parliamentarians. The article refers to both the forced exit of leaders of all the major British political parties as well as the removal of leaders of parties within the devolved regions of the UK.     

Crises and Paradigm Shift

Crises can force leaders and technocrats together, highlight failures and, more rarely, precipitate changes in ideological worldview and the prevailing consensus. In 2007–8, the worst financial and economic crises since the Great Depression of 1929 caused a paradigm shift in financial and regulatory ideology. G20 leaders and central bankers reasserted collective power and authority over financial markets and global banks to an extent and in a manner not seen since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. The retreat of state authority reversed direction. The spell of the ‘mystical Anglo‐Saxon model of liberalisation and deregulation’ was broken. In 2014 the paradigm shift is still underway and still under attack by recalcitrant bank CEOs and their lobbyists, but the shift may be durable—signalling a major change in international regulation of the world's largest financial markets and firms.