Bargaining Power, Political Transaction Costs and Institutional Change: Private and Public Dental Care in Denmark1

Rational choice institutionalism underexposes institutional change as well as the interaction between institutions at different levels, and this article therefore investigates national and local institutional change. In the Danish dental care sector private and public provision of services have coexisted since the establishment of a publicly financed dental health care system, and the fight between supporters of the two solutions has generated many institutional changes, both nationally and locally. This article analyses all Danish parliamentary proposals and local decisions regarding dental care coverage and provision. The general finding is that increasing pro-public bargaining power seems to promote higher coverage and public provision, while increasing pro-private bargaining power leads to stable coverage and private provision. The institutions do not, however, change whenever bargaining power changes, and national institutional change does not necessarily result in local change. The article explains this in terms of political transaction costs. These costs might also explain why national institutions change more often than local ones, and why local pro-public changes are faster and more frequent than local pro-private changes.     

Malice in Maasailand: The historical roots of current political struggles

Current struggles for power, land and resources in Kenyan Maasailandcan only be understood in a one hundred-year context, by returningto the forced moves and land losses of the 1900s and closelyexamining subsequent complaints about their alleged illegalityand long-term impacts. Drawing upon archival research and oraltestimony, this article explains why the Maasai community'ssense of loss and betrayal is so enduring. Maasai grievancesstem from a feeling that they have been betrayed by the British,from the political ambitions of particular Maasai leaders, andfrom historical divisions between different groups of Maasai.Entangled with all these reasons for grievance is the use ofhistory and myth in constructing nationalist and bounded identities.     

Political Myth and the Sacred Center of Human Rights: The Universal Declaration and the Narrative of “Inherent Human Dignity”

This paper will explore the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an exemplar of political mythmaking, a genre of narrative designed to channel and thereby to quell social anxiety and to orient select groups toward desirable beliefs and practices. One of the Declaration’s most fundamental and forceful elements is its enshrinement of the “inherent dignity” of each member of the human family. Drawing upon contemporary theorizations of mythmaking and sacralization, this article will elucidate the manner in which inherent dignity functions as the central item of sacredness within what we might call the “secular morality” of universal human rights.     

Only When We Agree! How Value Congruence Moderates the Impact of Goal‐Oriented Leadership on Public Service Motivation

Questions of how and when managers can motivate the workforce of public organizations are fundamental for scholars and practitioners alike. A dominant assertion is that goal‐oriented leadership strategies, such as transformational leadership, foster public service motivation (PSM). However, existing studies rely on designs that are vulnerable to endogeneity and rarely investigate the scope conditions of the leadership‐PSM relationship. Combining a field experiment with 364 managers and surveys of their 3,470 employees, the authors show that transformational leadership and transactional leadership, when induced experimentally, do not have the claimed positive effect on PSM. In fact, the results indicate that goal‐oriented leadership can have demotivating effects when employee and organizational values are incongruent. Public managers should therefore carefully assess existing levels of value (in)congruence before implementing goal‐oriented leadership strategies, and—in case of value conflicts—seek to align perceptions of the desirable among members of the organization.