The Rise of Public–Private Partnerships in China: An Effective Financing Approach for Infrastructure Investment?

The rise of public‐private partnerships (PPPs) in China has spurred heated debates about their purpose and effectiveness. This article traces the fluctuation of China's PPPs over several decades and finds that PPPs have played a supplementary role in China's infrastructure investment, as a response to the pressures of fiscal shortfalls and government debts. The resurgence of PPPs in recent years aims to bridge the infrastructure gap and alleviate ballooning local debts. These expectations, however, are hard to realize. China's PPPs mainly involve state‐owned enterprises and place increasing financial burdens on the government. The central government has taken measures to attract private sector investment to mitigate the financial risk, but the prospects for PPPs remain unclear.     

When risk‐based regulation aims low: Approaches and challenges

Risk‐based regulation is becoming a familiar regulatory strategy in a wide range of areas and countries. Regulatory attention tends to focus, at least initially, on high risks but low‐risk regulatees or activities tend to form the bulk of the regulated population. This article asks why regulators need to address low risks and it outlines the potential difficulties that such risks present. It then considers how regulators tend to deal with lower risks in practice. A body of literature and survey‐based research is used to develop a taxonomy of intervention strategies that may be useful in relation to low‐risk activities, and, indeed, more widely. In an article to be published in the subsequent issue of this journal, we will then develop a strategic framework for regulators to employ when choosing intervention strategies and we will assesses whether, and how, such a framework could be used by regulatory agencies in a manner that is operable, dynamic, transparent, and justifiable.     

Paradoxes and Failures: ‘New Governance’ Techniques and the Financial Crisis

This article examines the performance of four ‘new governance’ techniques of regulation in the period leading up to the financial crisis: principles based regulation, risk based regulation, meta‐regulation and enrolment. These techniques have been advocated on the basis that they are responsive, flexible, and in enrolling others in the regulatory project thereby expand its capacity, and even its legitimacy. However, experience in the crisis revealed that in their implementation they can be out of touch or indulgent, focus heavily on auditable systems and processes, and that in enrolling others they can increase vulnerabilities and the potential for negative endogenous effects. The argument is not that there should be a return to adversarial ‘command and control’ regulation, rather that experience of these strategies in the crisis suggests a need to understand in greater depth the refractive effects of the organisational, technical/functional and cognitive dimensions of regulatory governance, if we are to understand and adapt its performance in different contexts.     

Continuity,change, and priorities: The quality and use of regulatory analysis across US administrations

This paper compares the quality and use of regulatory analysis accompanying economically significant regulations proposed by US executive branch agencies in 2008, 2009, and 2010. We find that the quality of regulatory analysis is generally low, but varies widely. Budget regulations, which define how the federal government will spend money or collect revenues, have much lower‐quality analysis than other regulations. The Bush administration's “midnight” regulations finalized between Election Day and Inauguration Day, along with other regulations left for the Obama administration to finalize, tended to have lower‐quality analysis. Most differences between the Bush and Obama administrations depend on agencies' policy preferences. More conservative agencies tended to produce better analysis in the Obama administration, and more liberal agencies tended to do so in the Bush administration. This suggests that agencies more central to an administration's policy priorities do not have to produce as good an analysis to get their regulations promulgated.     

Parliament and foreign policy 1739–1763

Summary

An assessment of the influence of Parliament in a crucial period for the development of British foreign policy. Aside from its formal role, Parliament had an important indirect influence. Parliament was frequently cited in contemporary discussion of foreign policy, whether by ministers stressing the need to settle matters before the session, British diplomats concerned about the detrimental consequences for their government's image of parliamentary contention, or foreign diplomats seeking to assess the stability and intentions of the British Ministry. Parliament's role can only be understood in the context of British foreign policy and of other domestic political struggles, especially those within the Ministry. The parliamentary history of the period and the nature of the eighteenth‐century British state in general can be better understood through offering such an assessment.     

Longitudinal investigation of the relationship among maternal victimization, depressive symptoms, social support, and children's behavior and development

This article is a longitudinal investigation of the relationships between maternal victimization, maternal functioning, and children's behavior and development. Participants include 203 mother-child dyads from a low-income population recruited from pediatric primary care clinics. Data are collected when children are 4 and 8 years of age. Child outcomes are evaluated using maternal, teacher, and child self-report and objective measures of cognitive and academic functioning. Maternal victimization history is associated with maternal depressive symptoms, low levels of maternal social support, child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, and low levels of child socialization. Child behavior problems identified at age 4 are enduring and persist to age 8. The effects of maternal victimization history on both internalizing behavior problems and socialization are mediated by maternal depressive symptoms. The effects of maternal depressive symptoms on externalizing behavior problems, socialization, and anger are mediated by maternal social support. Clinical implications of findings are discussed.