The Kuomintang's secret service in action in South China: operational and political aspects of the arrest of Liao Chengzhi (1942)

The arrest in May 1942 of Liao Chengzhi – a CCP spy chief as well as the son of a celebrated KMT elder assassinated in 1925 – is considered a Big Case in China. Using the original KMT case file on Liao Chengzhi, van de Ven describes how the KMT's secret service turned the Jiangxi Provincial Committee and then arrested leading members of the CCP in south China and thereby eliminated its organization there. The article further uses letters by prominent CCP and KMT personalities involved in the case to suggest the existence of a revolutionary aristocracy bound by personal relations and with an elite code of conduct. When the political will was present, members of this elite deployed their personal connections in the search for solutions to complex political problems.     

Managerial autonomy: does it matter for the performance of water utilities?

The public administration literature asserts that autonomy is central to performance. In this article we develop a managerial autonomy index, which we apply to 22 water utilities in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The 16 items that underlie our composite autonomy index display a high degree of internal consistency. This speaks for the validity of the autonomy concept. We find that the autonomy scores of the 22 utilities vary widely. We also find strong and positive associations between autonomy scores and six out of eight key performance indicators. Our results support the idea that autonomy is central to the performance of water service providers. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Disposable income,unemployment, inflation and state spending in a dynamic political-economic model

This paper formulates a medium-term macroeconomic model of disposable income, unemployment, inflation and state spending, proposes a theory of qualitative choice to explain electoral popularity in terms of these variables and develops three approaches to the formulation of political-economic policy. The first approach is static, sets the tax rate to reconcile the interests of various pressure groups and yields a political trade-off between the private and public sector. The second approach relies on maximizing the probability of winning the next election and gives rise to a political business cycle unless the electorate votes strategically. The implications of crowding out of private investment under alternative monetary rules, autonomous behaviour of the state bureaucracy and tax-indexation for the political business cycle are also examined. The third approach analyzes the objective of maximizing the uninterrupted length in office. It yields a short-run political cycle superimposed on a longer cycle.     

Comparison of Anonymous Versus Confidential Survey Procedures: Effects on Health Indicators in Dutch Adolescents

Self-report questionnaires are frequently used in youth research, but doubt remains whether total anonymity affects the results. This study compared the responses of 704 mainly 16–17-year-old adolescents to self-report measures of various health indicators in 2 groups: anonymous and confidential collection. For most health indicators no significant differences were found. Perceived health, use of alcohol, and aggressive behavior (for boys) were reported significantly less frequently in the confidential group (small effect size). It appeared that pupils with high scores on social desirability do not respond differently at most health indicators in the 2 conditions. For most health characteristics, epidemiologically useful outcomes may be derived from confidential self-report measures, which are also valuable for detecting individual at-risk children. Similar studies in lower grades and other types of education should confirm the results.Youth Department, Municipal Health Service Rotterdam area. Main research interests are emotional and behavioral problems of adolescents, youth health care, monitoring.Youth Department, Municipal Health Service Rotterdam area. Main research interests are emotional and behavioral problems of adolescents, youth health care, monitoring.Research Department, Municipal Health Service Rotterdam area. Major research interests include emotional and behavioral problems of adolescents, suicidal behavior, youth health care, monitoring.     

Die Rationalität von Gefühlen,Routinen und Moral

Im Gegensatz zum Handlungsmodell des homo sociologicus kann ein Modell rationalen Handelns eine Erklärung dafür anbieten, warum Akteure Regeln für ihr Zusammenleben brauchen, denn gerade durch ihr eigennützig kalkulierendes rationales Handeln geraten sie in dilemmatöse Situationen, denen sie gerne entkämen. Aus diesem Grund wird hier ein Modell rationalen Handelns als Basis eines allgemeinen Modells soziologischer Erklärung empfohlen; gleichzeitig aber sollte das verwendete Handlungsmodell auch erklären können, wie sich Lösungen solcher Abstimmungsprobleme etablieren lassen. Hierfür aber stünden rationale Akteure viel besser da, wenn es ihnen gelänge, nicht immer rational zu sein. Man käme in die kollektive Gewinnzone, wenn man Gefühlsbindungen eingehen, Routinen entwickeln oder moralische Regeln befolgen könnte. Im Rückgriff auf drei einschlägige Untersuchungen unternimmt der Aufsatz den Versuch, das Zustandekommen von Selbstbindungen aufzuzeigen, ohne den Kern des Modells rationalen Handelns — die Verfolgung der eigenen Interessen — aufgeben zu müssen.     

Some reflections on the next twenty-five years of public choice

I gratefully acknowledge the comments of Jan Potters and Joep Sonnemans on an earlier version of this paper.