“God of vengeance and of reward?”: The economy and presidential popularity

The relationship between the economy and the political fate of incumbents is reexamined empirically by proposing seven multivariate statistical models representing major approaches found in the literature. These models are tested empirically to determine the influence of aggregate economic conditions on presidential popularity as measured by Gallup Poll data from 1950 to 1974. Analysis suggests (1) that inflation and military expenditures constitute consistently significant influences on popularity and (2) that this influence is best detected in an Almon distributed-lag model which allows for an initial political response that increases cumulatively and remains strong for several months before diminishing.The title quotation comes from V. O. Key, Jr.,Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (5th ed), New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1964, p. 568. I am indebted to Edward R. Tufte for calling it to my attention.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the Public Choice Society in New Orleans, March 1977.     

Econometric analyses of electoral behavior: A critical review

This paper reviews the major econometric analyses of electoral behavior in the United States. After a discussion of the early works in this area, analysis focuses on the recent debate precipitated by Kramer's 1971 work. The most important econometric works are summarized so that political scientists not working in this area but still interested in understanding the economic influences on voting can become acquainted with the substantive conclusions of each work and learn something of the different variables and methodologies employed in the analysis. For scholars engaged in research in this field, the paper will serve as a useful summary of previous works. The conclusion discusses major points of controversy and suggests specific research questions toward which future work should be directed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1978 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 20–22, 1978.     

Economic influences on presidential popularity among key political and socioeconomic groups: A review of the evidence and some new findings

This paper analyzes presidential popularity among important political and socioeconomic groups in the United States from 1965 to 1980, making use of the Gallup Poll indicators of support for the incumbent president among the main socioeconomic, regional, generational, sexual, and racial groups, and among Democratic, Republican, and independent voters. The analysis allows fully for both economic and noneconomic influences on incumbent popularity and includes in an integrated rational model underlying partisan orientations. The conclusions suggest the strong importance of partisanship, with the public's political response to the economy depending largely on the political affiliation of the incumbent president. Beyond this, we find economic predictors generally are more important than any of the systematic political or cyclical predictors tested here, with unemployment the single most important influence on presidential popularity. For all presidents, macroeconomic conditions have greater political significance than do the government's redistributive policies designed to influence economic well-being. And with minor exceptions, the economy's political importance is equally strong for all economic classes in American society.     

Privatization in British Columbia: lessons from the sale of government laboratories

Abstract: Among the more controversial privatizations that the Province of British Columbia announced in March 1987 were the sale of the soil, dairy and environmental laboratories. The last two performed testing to monitor private firms' compliance with provincial health and environmental regulations. A review of the three transactions offers lessons concerning both the process of privatization in British Columbia and the limits to privatization by contracting-out. Privatization of elements of government regulatory functions presents three problems: first, private sector contractors may be subject to conflict of interest; secondly, complex and costly contract-monitoring arrangements may be required to ensure the quality of work performed by contractors; and finally, failure of the contractual arrangements will have implications beyond the contract itself, ultimately affecting the government's ability to achieve its regulatory objectives. A striking feature of the privatization process was the inducements offered to government employees to get them to become private-sector contractors. The province even accepted uncompetitive bids from employee groups, contradicting its own primary objective of privatization, to increase efficiency based on competition. The case studies also demonstrate that transaction and transition costs of privatization may be substantial, particularly for small operations. Sommaire: L'une des privatisations les plus controversées annoncées par la Colombie-Britannique en mars 1987 fut la vente des laboratoires d'analyse des sols, des produits laitiers et de I'environnement. Il incombait aux deux derniers de ces établissements de procéder à des tests dans les entreprises privées pour s'assurer que les réglenients provinciaux sur la santé et l'environnement y étaient respectés. L'étude de ces trois transactions est révélatrice du processus de privatisation en Colombie-Britannique et des contraintes pouvant résulter de la sous-traitance. La privatisation de certains éléments de la fonction gouvernementale de réglementation présente trois probèmes: premièrement, les entrepreneurs du secteur privé peuvent se trouver en situation de conflit d'intérêt; deuxièmement, des dispositions complexes et coûteuses de surveillance des contrats peuvent s'avtrer nécessaires pour vérifier la qualité des travaux effectués par les entrepreneurs; et finalement, le manquement aux dispositions du contrat a des répercussions qui touchent non seulement celui-ci, mais nuit également à la capacité du gouvernement d'atteindre ses objectifs de réglementation. Un fait étonnant a accompagné le processus de privatisation: les employés du gouvernement ont t été invités à devenir des entrepreneurs privés. La province a même accepté des offres non concurrentielles de groupes d'employés, contredisant ainsi l'objectif premier de la privatisation, soit accroitre l'efficacité par la concurrence. En outre, les études de cas montrent que les coûts de transaction et de transition de la privatisation peuvent être considérables, surtout pour des opérations de petite emergure.     

Reviews

Janos Kornai, Highways and Byways. Studies on Reform and Post‐Communist Transition. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1995, xv + 241 pp., £26.95

Ha‐Joon Chang & Peter Nolan (eds), The Transformation of the Communist Economies: Against the Mainstream. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1995, xii, + 438 pp., £47.50.

Paul Cook & Frederick Nixson (eds), The Move to the Market?: Trade and Industry Policy Reform in Transitional Economies. London: Macmillan, 1995, xvi + 280 pp., £45.00.

Tom Gallagher, Romania after Ceausescu. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995, viii + 267 pp., £16.95.

Carol Barner‐Barry & Cynthia A. Hody, The Politics of Change. The Transformation of the Former Soviet Union. New York: St Martin's Press, 1995, xi + 371 pp., £14.99.

Daniel Orlovsky (ed.), Beyond Soviet Studies. Washington: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995, xi + 349 pp., £20.50.

Aleksandr Gurov, Krasnaya Mafiya, Moscow: Samotsvet, 1995, 328 pp., no price.

Beatrice F. Manz (ed.), Central Asia in Historical Perspective. Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1994, x + 245 pp., £40.95.

H. B. Paksoy (ed.), Central Asia Reader—The Rediscovery of History. Armonk and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, ix + 206 pp., $60.00 h/b $21.95 p/b.

Peter Ferdinand (ed.), The New States of Central Asia and Their Neighbours. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, for The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994, 120 pp., $14.95.

Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), Central Asia and the World—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994, 251 pp., $16.95

Stephen Kotkin & David Wolff (eds), Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995, xxiii + 356 pp., $65.00 h/b, $24.95 p/b.

Suzanne Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post‐Soviet Disorder. London: Zed Books, 1994., xvi + 233 pp., £14.95.

Levon Chorbajian, Patrick Donabedian & Claude Mutafian, The Caucasian Knot: The History and Geo‐politics of Nagorno‐Karabagh. London: Zed Books, 1994, xxi + 198 pp., £14.95.

Shireen T. Hunter, The Transcaucasus in Transition. Nation‐building and Conflict. Washington, DC: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1994, xiii + 223 pp., $19.95.

Edward Allworth (ed.), Muslim Communities Reemerge. Historical Perspective on Nationality, Politics and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, trans. Caroline Sawyer. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1994, xii + 365 pp., £57.00 h/b, £23.50 p/b.

S. Frederick Starr (ed.), The Legacy of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xiii + 313 pp., $22.95.

Vladimir Shlapentokh, Munir Sendich & Emil Payin (eds), The New Russian Diaspora: Russian Minorities in the Former Soviet Republics. London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xxv + 221 pp., £48.00 h/b, £19.00 p/b.

Michael Rywkin, Moscow's Lost Empire. New York & London: Armonk, M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xiii + 214 pp., £40.00 h/b, £16.00 p/b.

Tobias R. Philibin III, The Lure of Neptune. German‐Soviet Naval Collaboration and Ambitions, 1919–1941. University of South Carolina, 1994, xxi + 192 pp., $34.95.

Yu. L. Dyakov & T. S. Bushueva, The Red Army and the Wehrmacht. How the Soviets Militarised Germany, 1922–1933, and Paved the Way for Fascism. New York: Prometheus Books 1995, 348 pp., £21.00.

Iosif Stalin v ob"yatiyakh sem'i: iz lichnogo arkhiva (Sbornik dokumentov), compiled by Yu. G. Murin, edited by V. N. Denisov. Moscow: Rodina, 1993, 222 pp., no price.

Donald Rayfield, The Literature of Georgia. A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, xvi + 360 pp., £35.00.

Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, xiii + 354 pp., £40.00.

Arto Luukkanen, The Party of Unbelief: The Religious Policy of the Bolshevik Party 1917–1929. Helsinki; Studia Historica 48, 1994, 274 pp., no price.

John Fennell, A History of the Russian Church to 1448. London: Longman, 266 pp., £12.99.     

The World Bank, Governance and Theories of Political Action in Africa

This article considers the World Bank as a political thinker. This involves an interpretation of the values, methodologies, and theoretical references contained within the Bank's governance documentation. Generally, the Bank steers away from a serious engagement with the nature of states, or the dynamics of reform execution, even in its more detailed policy documents in reform areas such as administrative reform. But, by looking at the World Bank's involvement in African states, we can understand the ways in which the World Bank works with certain expectations concerning how reforms will work. The article critically analyses the Bank's 'political vision' by comparing it with prominent theories of African politics. The article concludes that the World Bank's governance agenda misses three pivotal aspects of African politics: the unity of political and economic power, the extreme openness of African states to external pressures, and the salience of historically-embedded cultural and political relations. These three points directly raise important questions about the prospects of good governance reforms in Africa, and the involvement of the Bank therein.     

Reviews

Paul R. Gregory, Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy. Soviet Interview Project Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, xii+181 pp., £25.00, $37.50.

Thane Gustafson, Crisis Amid Plenty—The Politics of Energy under Brezhnev and Gorbachev. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989, xxv+362 pp., $29.95.

John M. Kramer, The Energy Gap in Eastern Europe. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1990, xiii+200 pp., $39.00.

William Moskoff, ed., Perestroika in the Countryside: Agricultural Reform in the Gorbachev Era. New York and London: M. E. Sharpe Inc., 1990, xii+135 pp.

Wlodzimierz Bras & Kazimierz Laski, From Marx to Market. Socialism in Search of an Economic System. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, 177 pp.

B. P. Kurashvili, Strana na rasput'e. (Poteri i perspektivy perestroiki). Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literature, 1990, 176 pp., 60K.

Lajos Héthy, Mária Ladó & John E. M. Thirkell, eds, New Collective Forms of Work Organisation in Eastern Europe. Budapest: Institute of Labour Research, 1989, 210 pp.

Michael Kraus & Ronald D. Leibowicz, Perestroika and East‐West Economic Relations: Prospects for the 1990s. Geonomics Institute for International Economic Advancement Studies. New York: New York University Press, x+357 pp., $44.00.

George E. Hudson, ed., Soviet National Security Policy under Perestroika. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990, xv+343 pp., £38.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Christoph Bluth, New Thinking in Soviet Military Policy. London: Pinter Publishers, 1990, viii+118 pp., £19.50 h/b, £7.95 p/b.

David E. Albright, Vanguard Parties and Revolutionary Change in the Third World: Soviet Perspectives and Their Implications. Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley: Policy Papers in International Affairs, No. 38, 1990, 126 pp., $9.50 p/b.

George Ginsburgs, ed., Soviet Administrative Law: Theory and Policy. Law in Eastern Europe, No. 40, issued by the Documentation Office for East European Law, University of Leiden. General Editor: F. J. M. Feldbrugge, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1989, 516 pp., £92.50.

Albert J. Schmidt, ed., The Impact of Perestroika on Soviet Law. Law in Eastern Europe, No. 41, issued by the Documentation Office for East European Law, University of Leiden. General Editor: F. J. M. Feldbrugge, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1990, 558 pp., £117.00.

Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990, xxix+306 pp., $37.50.

Hans Günther, ed., The Culture of the Stalin Period. London: Macmillan, 1990, xxi+291 pp., £47.50.

George Sanford, ed. and trans., The Solidarity Congress, 1981: The Great Debate. London: Macmillan, 1990, x+270 pp., £40.00.

Ronald I. Kowalski, The Bolshevik Party in Conflict. London: Macmillan, 1991, x+244 pp., £35.00.