Analysing credit risk in large local governments: an empirical study in Spain

In governments throughout the world, bank lending excesses, solvency issues and worsening credit ratings have all contributed to raising risk premiums and impeding access to credit, thus provoking a major financial problem in the public sector. Accordingly, tax authorities and regulators need to analyse the causes of public sector bank debt, doing so through the joint study of idiosyncratic and systematic variables, an area that has been neglected in previous research. This paper examines idiosyncratic and systematic factors that may influence local government credit risk through an empirical study of the performance of 148 large Spanish municipalities during 2006–2011. We identify individual factors relevant to the probability of local government default (such as dependent population, per capita income and debt composition) and also determinants associated with macroeconomic developments, such as gross domestic product and the risk premium.     

Judicial alignment and criminal justice: evidence from Russian courts

This paper investigates the effect of informal ties between judges (as represented by regional court chairpersons) and prosecutors on the repressive implementation of criminal justice in Russia in the area of fraud convictions. The authors utilize criminal law statistics of Russian regional courts for 2006–2010 to determine the alignment between chairpersons and prosecutors by measuring the length of their mutual career paths. The informal ties have a strong impact on trial outcome, which, however, changes over time. During periods of high bureaucratic risks and uncertainty, regions with a higher extent of informal ties between judges and prosecutors exhibit more repressive law enforcement. If external risks decrease, informal coalitions seem to increase the independence of the courts, insulating them from bureaucratic pressures and limiting their repressiveness.     

Risk Factors and Drivers of Financial Sustainability in Local Government: An Empirical Study

The current international crisis in public finances has made financial sustainability a key issue for governments. Although the European Union (EU) and other international organisations have recommended governments to monitor demographic and economic variables, few studies have considered the influence of these variables on financial sustainability. This paper seeks to identify and analyse the drivers and risk factors that influence the financial sustainability of local government. The findings identify both risk factors (unemployment and population aged under 16 years) and drivers (budgetary outcome) of financial sustainability, which may constitute a useful basis for decision-taking by managers and policy-makers.     

Families in multi-problem situations: Backgrounds,characteristics, and care services

The article reviews practical experiences and theoretical reflections from the Dutch child and youth care sector on the provision of care for families with multiple problems. Emphasis is laid upon the complex relations between socioeconomic and psychosocial problems, and subsequent issues that may arise in arranging child and youth care. Furthermore, the current state of discussion in program development for the target group in the Netherlands is introduced. The originally English concept of families with multiple problems has been used only modestly in German-speaking countries. This is remarkable from an international perspective, especially considering the re-emerging prominence of social policies that define families as a site of social work practice in English-speaking countries. We conclude that the themes, as derived from our review open up possibilities for further international comparisons, and can provide valuable reference for the transnational discourse about child and youth care services for families with multiple problems.     

Navigating the dichotomy: The top public servant's craft

How in their day‐to‐day practices do top public servants straddle the politics–administration dichotomy (PAD), which tells them to serve and yet influence their ministers at the same time? To examine this, we discuss how three informal ‘rules of the game’ govern day‐to‐day political–administrative interactions in the Dutch core executive: mutual respect, discretionary space, and reciprocal loyalty. Drawing from 31 hours of elite‐interviews with one particular (authoritative) top public servant, who served multiple prime ministers, and supplementary interviews with his (former) ministers and co‐workers, we illustrate the top public servants’ craft of responsively and yet astutely straddling the ambiguous boundaries between ‘politics’ and ‘administration’. We argue that if PAD‐driven scholarship on elite administrative work is to remain relevant, it has to come to terms with the boundary‐blurring impacts of temporal interactions, the emergence of ‘hybrid’ ministerial advisers, and the ‘thickening’ of accountability regimes that affects both politicians and public servants.     

Can the cultural environment affect governmental transparency on sustainability? Useful measures for policy makers and practitioners

The aim of this study is to provide useful knowledge to policy makers and practitioners on how to promote the practices of sustainability transparency in local governments, based on the influence of the cultural environment on the disclosure of governmental information on sustainability, including social, environmental and economic information. We perform a comparative analysis of the effects of four types of variables (demographic, sociological, economic and financial) on the disclosure of information on sustainability in two different contexts: Anglo-Saxon and Nordic administrative cultures. Our results show that the factors of the administrative culture context do influence practices of transparency on governmental sustainability. In the Anglo-Saxon environment, the explanatory variables are population size, dependent population and education level. For the Nordic area countries, the main variables are unemployment, dependent population, financial autonomy and debt per capita. Taking into account the study results obtained, we propose measures to facilitate the dissemination of sustainability information in each cultural environment.     

The Young Turk revolution: comparisons and connections

This article consists of a comparative analysis on the one hand, and an attempt to trace influences and connections, on the other. In the comparative part, it seeks to determine the place of the Ottoman constitutional revolution of July 1908 in the global wave of revolutions in the decade before the First World War. It accepts that there is a high degree of similarity in the liberal constitutionalist ideology of the revolutionary movements, but emphasizes the differences in the social bases of the revolutionary movements. In the part on connections, the influences on the Young Turks' ideology, organisation and revolutionary methodology are traced, as well as the influence they exerted on other revolutionary movements.     

Democracy and the Preparation for War: Does Regime Type Affect States' Anticipation of Casualties?

Immanuel Kant and more recent expositors of the democratic peace thesis suggest that citizens in a republic sanction leaders for resorting to war because, in part, citizens are loath to shed their own blood. This Kantian thesis in turn implies substitution. Just as consumers confronted with price shocks shift consumption to less affected goods rather than simply curtailing consumption, democratic leaders facing retribution for casualties can limit losses, not just by avoiding military contests, but also by substituting capital (ships, tanks, aircraft) for labor (soldiers, sailors, airmen) in the provision of security. A simple consumer choice model shows that citizens' leverage over leaders implies that democracies should consume disproportionately more capital in preparing for—and conducting—defense. Numerous anecdotes assert that democracies do shelter labor with capital, especially during war, but tests of defense-factor allocations on factor endowments, regime-type, and other variables show that defense-factor usage is explained by basic economic theory and not by democracy.