Does the Increase in Competition between Schools Improve the Quality of the Service? The Role of Educational Reform in Chile

We analyse the effect of geographic competition between schools on academic performance in Chile. The analysis controls for prior pupil performance, and a range of school and municipality characteristics. We allow for the endogeneity of voucher school location, using the number of local Catholic churches as an instrument. We find that a larger number of public schools positively affects the quality of education of other schools located in the same area, particularly amongst middle-class families and in middle-ranking schools. However, the number of voucher schools is associated with lower performance in neighbouring schools, which we attribute to pupil sorting.     

Organizational Learning Capacity and Its Impact on the Results in a Government Agency in Chile

ABSTRACT

Rising demand for quality, efficiency, and openness in the management of collective problems and their solutions has prompted successful government agencies to consider knowledge as a key resource. Government agencies make intensive use of human capital and knowledge in the performance of their duties. Knowledge represents the most important strategic resource, and its skillful management is a key capability in institutional performance. Using structural equation modeling, we analyze the relationship between the learning capability of an organizational system, characterized by the dynamic interaction of stocks and flows of knowledge, and its impact on performance. Our results support the view that learning capability, especially knowledge flows and stocks, has a positive impact on the performance of public institutions.     

Agenda Power,Executive Decree Authority,and the Mixed Results of Reform in the Brazilian Congress

This article examines how institutional change in the use of extraordinary legislation affects delegation of power and unilateral action in new democracies. From 1988 to 2001, Brazilian presidents were able to reissue decrees indefinitely and thus had substantial legislative power. In 2001, Congress amended the constitution so as to restrict the president to a single reissue of each lapsed decree. This reform has had mixed results: although it ended the practice of infinite reissues, it induced Presidents Cardoso and Lula to use more decrees than previous executives had. Presidential agenda power, rather than being reduced, has been sharpened. By analyzing patterns of presidential initiatives from 1995 to 2005, we demonstrate the mixed results of this constitutional reform.     

Political Representation and Gender in Brazil: Quotas for Women and their Impact

In the 1990s, Brazilian Congress approved an electoral quota for female candidates in parliamentary competition (with exception of the Senate). The reticence of the law and the peculiarities of the Brazilian open lists electoral system have given rise to concern that the quotas will fail. In fact, there has been no great increase in the number of women in Brazilian legislatives – there has been some change in the municipalities, a little less in the states and almost nothing at the federal level. Analysing in detail the results of four elections to the federal Chamber of Deputies, two before and two after the quotas, it becomes apparent that, in Brazil, the impact of quotas is mediated far more than in other countries. Quotas provide, above all, an incentive to party elites to support an increase in the number of female political leaders, and the results may appear only at mid term.     

The visibility of agricultural subsidies and market illusions in the Common Agricultural Policy: Some evidence from farmers' views in Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom

Abstract.   This article demonstrates that the design and nature of agricultural support schemes has an influence on farmers' perception of their level of dependence on agricultural support. While direct aid payments inform farmers about the extent to which they are subsidised, indirect support mechanisms veil the level of subsidisation, and therefore they are not fully aware of the extent to which they are supported. To test this hypothesis, we applied data from a survey of 4,500 farmers in three countries: the United Kingdom, Germany and Portugal. It is demonstrated that indirect support, such as that provided through artificially high consumer prices, gives an illusion of free and competitive markets among farmers. This 'visibility' hypothesis is evaluated against an alternative hypothesis that assumes farmers have complete, or at least a fairly comprehensive level of, information on agricultural support schemes. Our findings show that this alternative hypothesis can be ruled out.     

Do we need warm leaders? Exploratory study of the role of voter evaluations of leaders’ traits on turnout in seven European countries

Previous research on leader effects has focused exclusively on the impact of voters’ evaluations of leaders on vote choice, disregarding possible effects on the prior step of deciding whether or not to turn out to vote. In line with the personalisation of politics thesis, leaders have a higher impact among dealigned voters. Previous studies have demonstrated that leader effects are stronger among voters who voice their dealignment – namely party switchers. However, the potential impact of leaders among those who exited (i.e., who have abstained) is still unstudied. Could leaders have a mobilisation effect and therefore trigger turnout decisions? What characteristics of party leaders are more relevant in this regard? This article is the first comparative study to examine how the evaluation of party leaders’ traits influences voter turnout in general elections. The work incorporates data from election studies across seven countries with different social contexts (Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and Hungary). Characteristics of leaders were grouped into two dimensions – competence and warmth – in accordance with the stereotype content model and relevant studies on leaders’ traits evaluation. Multiple binary logistic regression models were performed to analyse the predictive power of competence and warmth on turnout, controlling for sociodemographic, political ideology variables and voters’ past political behaviour. Results reinforce the personalisation of politics theory, showing the utmost relevance of warmth personality traits of leaders in voter turnout decisions. Competence personality traits were found to be relevant only in some situations. Interaction effects were also demonstrated between warmth evaluations and identifying with a right-wing party as well as past political behaviour with both warmth and competence.     

Explaining the electoral effects of public investments: The case of the expansion of the underground in Madrid, 1995–2007

According to the literature, governments have strong incentives to use the public budget tactically in order to either obtain the electoral support of new voters or strengthen the loyalty of their traditional supporters. Yet vote‐seeking strategies only become rational when voters follow their self‐interest and reward governments when their constituency benefits from public transfers. The literature has focused on the governments' incentives, largely ignoring the importance of knowing whether the electorate is responsive to public investments. This study tests empirically whether incumbents strategically use public investments to gather more electoral support; and whether voters take these investments into account at the polls. These two questions are pursued simultaneously by using as a case study the expansion of the underground network in Madrid, Spain. Only a little evidence is found to support the idea that regional governments constructed new metro stations in neighbourhoods where they had more to gain electorally. Also, the inauguration timing strictly followed the electoral cycle, something that indicates a strategic calculus on the part of the incumbent. However, the models are also consistent with the idea that the government's investments were primarily driven by motives of efficiency. Indeed, although governments are tempted to follow vote‐seeking strategies, they are also aware that they cannot deviate too much from an efficiency‐based allocation of public resources. From the perspective of the voters, robust evidence has been found to show that regional voters rewarded this policy at the neighbourhood level. Neighbourhoods that received new metro stations voted in higher numbers for the incumbent than those quarters without new investments. All in all, these findings may have some implications for normative democratic theory.     

Regional autocratic linkage and regime survival

In this article, the effects of regional autocratic linkage on the survival of autocratic regimes are analysed. Scholars have suggested that regional factors shape regime survival through processes of diffusion. However, in most accounts, diffusion is simply derived from characteristics of the region, such as the number or proportion of regional autocracies. In contrast, it is argued here that it is the actual linkages between countries that must be examined. Regional political, economic and social ties between autocratic regimes create domestic and external stakes in the regime, counterweigh democratisation pressure and facilitate autocratic learning. The study employs the average volume of trade, migration and diplomatic exchanges between autocratic regimes within a region as proxies for regional autocratic linkage, and asserts that regional autocratic linkage is on the rise. Applying Cox survival models on a dataset of regional autocratic linkage and regime survival between 1946 and 2009, it is found that regional autocratic linkage significantly reduces the likelihood of autocratic regime breakdown. These effects hold when the proportion of autocratic regimes within a region is controlled for, suggesting that one must look beyond the characteristics of the countries within a region and focus on the ties and linkages between them.