Reform,Demokratisierung, Stabilität oder Kollaps? Literaturbericht zur Entwicklung des chinesischen Herrschaftssystems

Politische Vierteljahresschrift - Der Literaturbericht gibt eine Übersicht über die internationale Debatte zur aktuellen innenpolitischen Entwicklung Chinas und zur möglichen...     

Parliament Scrutiny of Government Performance in Australia

This article examines how the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia seeks to hold responsible ministers directly and senior public servants indirectly accountable for the performance of departments and programs on the basis of published performance data and inquiries conducted by parliamentary committees. From the perspective of an outsider, the scrutiny process in the Australian parliament, although not without its problems, is more systematic and substantive than is the case in other parliamentary systems such as Canada. Creating a more meaningful dialogue in the Australian parliament on performance issues will depend more on changes to the intersecting cultures of the legislature, government and the public service than on organisational and procedural reforms to any of those institutions.     

Perceived Interparental Conflict and Early Adolescents’ Friendships: The Role of Attachment Security and Emotion Regulation

Although there is strong evidence for the effect of interparental conflict on adolescents' internalizing and externalizing problems, little is known about the effect on the quality of adolescents' relationships. The current study investigates the link between adolescents' friendships and interparental conflict as reported by both parents and adolescents. It considers early adolescents' emotion regulation ability and attachment security as mediators. The analysis is based on a longitudinal study with two waves separated by 12?months. The participants were 180 two-parent families and their adolescent children (50.5?% girls), the average age of the latter being 10.61?years (SD?=?0.41) at the outset (Time 1). Binomial logistic regression analysis revealed that perceived interparental conflict increased the risk of instability in friendship relationships across the 1-year period. Structural equation modeling analysis indicated that the association between perceived interparental conflict and friendship quality was mediated by emotion regulation and attachment security. The discussion focuses on mechanisms whereby interparental conflict influences early adolescents' friendship relationships.     

Geschlechtsspezifische Lohnungleichheit in Betrieben, Berufen und Jobzellen (1993–2006)

Whereas educational inequalities between women and men and differences in labor market participation shrinked or even diminished during the last decades, the gender pay gap remained stable over time. This is remarkable because the pay gap has attracted much more attention as the main target of anti-discrimination policies. Using data from the IAB (Institute for Employment Research), we analyze whether the average pay gap between women and men working full-time can be explained by their employment in different industries, occupations, and firms. As the smallest level of analysis we focus on occupations within firms (job cells). This strategy of analysis yields the best possible approximation to the concept of “within-job wage gap”. The results show that women with equivalent training and occupational experience earn wages that are 12 percent less than the wages of men in such job cells. Even though the educational participation of women rose to that of their male counterpart, the gender composition of labor market participation changed and the pressure of equal employment policies grew, the gender wage gap does not decrease within our observation period (1993–2006). In conclusion, we discuss theoretical and methodological reasons for this finding.     

Improving the Managerial Capacity of the Federal Government: A Public Administration Agenda for the Next President

The reputation of a president can be enhanced or diminished depending on the quality of federal management. This transition memorandum draws on the insights of the fellows of the National Academy of Public Administration. It urges the next president to (1) set a tone and strengthen organizational infrastructure to promote effective management across government, (2) create an office to monitor potential major risks and ensure adequate response, and (3) pass on to his successor more capable government than he found. Only then can the incoming administration form the basis for short‐term success and longer‐term effectiveness to implement the president’s policy agenda.     

Selling favors in the lab: experiments on campaign finance reform

Campaign advertising can provide benefits to constituencies when used to fund the distribution of useful information, but voters can be harmed if candidates finance such advertising by trading policy favors to special interests in exchange for contributions. We report data from novel laboratory campaign finance experiments that shed light on this tradeoff, and that provide rigorous empirical evidence on formal campaign finance theory. Our key finding is that voters respond to advertising differently between special interest and publicly-financed campaigns, and that the nature of this difference is qualitatively consistent with formal models’ predictions.     

An effectiveness‐based evaluation of five state pre‐kindergarten programs

Since 1980, the number of state pre‐kindergarten (pre‐K) programs has more than doubled, with 38 states enrolling more than one million children in 2006 alone. This study evaluates how five state pre‐K programs affected children's receptive vocabulary, math, and print awareness skills. Taking advantage of states' strict enrollment policies determined by a child's date of birth, a regression‐discontinuity design was used to estimate effects in Michigan, New Jersey, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and West Virginia. For receptive vocabulary, only New Jersey and Oklahoma yielded significant standardized impacts, though two of the three other coefficients were in a direction indicating positive effects. For math, all the coefficients were positive but only Michigan and New Jersey yielded reliable results. The largest impacts were for print awareness, where all five coefficients were positive and four were reliable in Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina, and West Virginia. The five states were not randomly selected and, on average, have higher quality program standards than non‐studied states, precluding formal extrapolation to the nation at large. However, our sample of states differed in many other ways, permitting the conclusion that state pre‐K programs can have positive effects on children's cognitive skills, though the magnitude of these effects varies by state and outcome. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.