Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Challenging the Property Rights Paradigm in Botswana

Recent work in international studies and comparative politics scrutinizes the relative importance of ideas, interests, and institutions as sources of policy change. A growing body of scholarship identifies ideas as the main causal factors, influencing perceived interests as well as perceived policy options. Others contend that policies can best be understood as products of institutions. Neither explanation can account for both policy choice by politicians and the implementation strategies of administrators. In Botswana, the use of professional criteria for hiring and advancement encourages adherence to international professional norms within the bureaucracy, but electoral competition gives politicians more reason to be attentive to local political concerns. The institutions that define relations of authority among actors with different motivations shape the outcomes of policy choice and implementation. Institutions influence the attentiveness of policy-makers to ideas when making decisions, the degree of attention particular policy-makers give to ideas from particular sources, and the degree of acceptance that ideas must achieve to affect policy. Better evaluations of political development can be achieved through attentiveness to the mix of actors involved in policy decisions, the diversity of institutions and ideas that affect their policy preferences, and the relations of authority that shape their relative influence over policy choice and implementation.     

Grant Levels and Debt Issuance: Is There a Relationship? Is There Symmetry?

Although previous work on fiscal federalism and grants has focused on the effects of grants on expenditures, no published research examines the impact of decreasing grants on state financing. This research addresses how decreasing levels of federal grant money to states affect states' long-term debt issuance, and whether the relationship is symmetric for increasing and decreasing grants. The model is tested with time series, cross-sectional data from 1984 to 1999. The results show that grants affect debt issuance, the effect is asymmetric, and direction of the effect differs for different types of debt issuance.     

Terrorism and Transportation Policy and Administration: Balancing the Model and Equations for Optimal Security

September 11 was the catalytic event that clearly demonstrated that transportation security was a virtual myth. We had obviously overinvested in efficiency-based mechanisms and procedures while the security and safety standards provided by effectiveness considerations were being increasingly ignored. This article analyzes the increasingly dangerous situation as it unfolded and provides an Emerging Entrepreneurial Management and Public Policy Model designed to provide insights towards rebalancing our transportation security and public policy considerations as we attempt to design, implement, and pay for optimal security systems to deal with the terrorism threats we face in the early twenty-first century. Rebalancing the model and the equations will require increased focus, will, and skills. It will also be a lot more expensive . . . in both the private and the public sectors.     

A Public Choice Analysis of Endangered Species Listings

Sizable economic consequences may resultfrom listing under the Endangered SpeciesAct (ESA). Potentially adversely affectedparties will attempt to use the politicalprocess to protect their interests. Thequestion is, “are listing determinationssubject to political manipulation?” Inthis paper, we explore empirically thepossibility that implementation of the ESAis determined, in part, by politicalconsiderations. Specifically, weinvestigate whether states with strongcongressional representation are able touse their political muscle to reduce thenumber of listings in their states, ascompared to states with weak congressionalrepresentation. Controlling for otherfactors, we find that states with greaterrepresentation on the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service’s budgetary oversightsubcommittee in the U.S. House ofRepresentatives have significantly fewerESA listings than states with weakerrepresentation on that subcommittee.     

Under Two Flags: Symbolic Voting in the State of Mississippi

Participants in a specialelection held in the State of Mississippion April 17, 2001, voted overwhelminglyagainst changing the design of the state'sflag, which incorporates a symbol of theConfederacy. The determinants of voting onthe flag are analyzed and turnout rates inApril 2001 are compared with those forrecent gubernatorial and presidentialelections. We find that the flag votedivided Mississippians sharply along linesof race, class and political ideology. Akey empirical implication is that voterpositions in issue space tend to be morepolarized when political choices haveexpressive as opposed to instrumentalconsequences.     

Reframing privatisation: Deconstructing the myth of efficiency

In the context of ongoing scandals about public versus private ownership, we review the rise and fall of British nationalised industries, and the subsequent rise of privatisation based on perception of market-based efficiency as a means of improving public service. We evaluate the theoretical and empirical arguments around privatisation and find that the argument of privatisation as a vehicle for efficiency gains is a myth. Instead, we suggest that efficiency is not solely a matter of ownership, but requires a complex interplay of social and commercial variables to make it possible. We call for a more inventive and flexible approach in the search for efficiency in the public sector.     

Accepting Authoritative Decisions: Humans as Wary Cooperators

Why are people more willing to accept some governmental decisions than others? In this article, we present results from a series of original experiments showing that people's reactions to a given outcome are heavily influenced by the procedure employed to produce the outcome. We find that subjects react much less favorably when a decision maker intentionally keeps a large payoff, thereby leaving the subject with a small payoff, than when that same payoff results from a procedure based on chance or on desert. Moreover, subjects react less favorably to outcomes rendered by decision makers who want to be decision makers than they do to identical outcomes selected by reluctant decision makers. Our results are consistent with increasingly prominent theories of behavior emphasizing people's aversion to being played for a “sucker,” an attitude that makes perfect sense if people's main goal is not to acquire as many tangible goods as possible but to make sure they are a valued part of a viable group composed of cooperative individuals.