The Priority of Participation: A Friendly Response to Professor Gargarella

A response to Roberto Gargarella’s review of Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury, by Albert W. Dzur.     

Show Them Your Teeth First!

This paper investigates the choice of an interestgroup between lobbying (``words'') and pressure(``actions'') in order to influence a policymaker. Both lobbying and pressure are modeled asstrategic means of transmitting information that isrelevant to the policymaker. However, only pressure isdirectly costly to the policymaker. The interactionbetween the interest group and the policymaker isframed as a repeated signaling game. In equilibriumpressure – in contrast to lobbying – only occurswhen the interest group's reputation is sufficientlylow, and always improves its reputation. It is shownthat (repeated) lobbying cannot completely substitutefor pressure, and that the interest group may beforced to sustain its reputation through lobbying. Weconclude that pressure is typically used to build upa reputation, lobbying to maintain a reputation.     

Authority and Authorisation

The core of Kelsen's strong views onauthority emerging from his concept of law is this:Authority of law, authority in law andauthority about law are one and the same thing.The conceptual problems suggested by these threedifferent prepositions must and can be solved in onefell swoop. Kelsen's core view will first be probed bygiving an account of what is a promising approachoffered in a fairly early text, Das Problem derSouveränität, namely, what it means to`set' or `posit' the law. Inevitably, this leadsto an interpretation of the Grundnorm, one thatintends to accommodate as many Kelsenian emphases aspossible. The Grundnorm will be presented as ashield against hypostatising authority. From there,some characteristics will be inferred of the type ofauthority that arises from Kelsen's account of legalknowledge, which will be called, somewhat polemically,authority without an author.     

Does the Wage Tax System Cause Budget Deficits A Macro-Economic Experiment

In this paper we investigate experimentallythe economic functioning of a wage taxsystem for financing unemployment benefits in aninternational economy, in particular inreaction to budget deficits and taxadjustment. Our results support the hypothesisthat due to out-of-equilibrium priceuncertainty producers are reluctant toemploy inputs. We also observe a downward pressureon wages exacerbated by an over-supply of labor by consumers. Theseobservations can explain the budgetdeficits found. Furthermore, we find that taxadjustments in order to facilitate abalancing of the budget has strong adverse effects onunemployment and real GDP.     

Fiscal Adjustments and Their Effects During the Transition to the EMU

The transition phase to EMU hasbeen accompanied by considerable monetaryand fiscal consolidation efforts in the EU.This paper analyses this consolidationprocess and its effects on economicactivity in the EU. It is tested to what extent fiscal retrenchment efforts havedepressed or stimulated private spending. Inthe case of the latter non-Keynesian effectsdominate the traditional Keynesianexpenditure effects of government spending,taxation and transfer payments.     

Understanding the changing role of public sector performance measurement in less developed countries

This article develops a framework for understanding changes in the demand for and supply of performance information in public sector organizations in less developed countries (LDCs). New Institutional Sociology (NIS) is used to argue that pressures from specific stakeholders stimulate organizations to produce particular performance information. The article distinguishes three groups of stakeholders (i.e. funding bodies, statutory boards and purchasers), and elaborates on the performance dimensions these stakeholders are interested in. The group of funding bodies, with their interest in financial performance information, used to be the most important group of stakeholders. However, statutory boards and purchasers are gaining importance as a result of recent public sector reforms, which include decentralization, marketization and the implementation of anti‐corruption programs. As a consequence of pressures coming from these stakeholders, new performance dimensions, such as the quality and quantity of services and the political governance structure, will be added to organizations' performance measurement (PM) systems. Whether these and other—often more traditional financial—performance dimensions will be balanced and integrated throughout organizations depends on the power positions of the various stakeholders. The arguments presented in this article intend to stimulate public sector organizations in LDCs to design and redesign PM systems as a response to changing stakeholder interests. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Citizen involvement in public policy: Does it matter how much is at stake?

Public administrations increasingly try to find new ways to involve citizens in policy-making. However, many democratic innovations draw in only a fraction of the public. Why? I hypothesize that we observe such low participation rates because there is often not enough at stake for citizens. I test this with a preregistered survey experiment on citizens' intentions to participate in participatory budgets in the Netherlands. I fielded the experiment among a sample of citizens that had just experienced a participatory budget (N = 225) and among a population-based sample (N = 1369). I operationalized the stakes as the amount of public money about which citizens can decide. The results show that more money generally does not increase citizens' intention to participate. Supplementary analyses confirm the experimental findings and provide reasons how and why the stakes involved (do not) matter for citizens' involvement.