Book Reviews

Mauricio Font, The State and the Private Sector in Latin America: The Shift to Partnership. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Figure, bibliography, appendixes, index, 318 pp.; hardcover $100, ebook $79.99. Tracy Beck Fenwick, Avoiding Governors: Federalism, Democracy, and Poverty Alleviation in Brazil and Argentina. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. Tables, figures, acronyms, bibliography, index, 277 pp.; hardcover $75, paperback $29. Michael Reid, Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016 [2014]. Illustrations, 352 pp.; paperback $22. Ben Ross Schneider, ed., New Order and Progress: Development and Democracy in Brazil. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Tables, figures, bibliography, index, 328 pp.; hardcover $99, paperback $31.95, ebook. Anthony P. Maingot, Race, Ideology, and the Decline of Caribbean Marxism. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015. Index, 368 pp.; hardcover $79.95. Sebastián Ureta, Assembling Policy: Transantiago, Human Devices, and the Dream of a World‐Class Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015. Photographs, figures, abbreviations, bibliography, index, 224 pp.; hardcover $39, ebook $27. Carlos de la Torre, De Velasco a Correa: insurreciones, populismos y elecciones en Ecuador, 1944–2013. Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 2015. Tables, bibliography, 243 pp.; paperback. Sebastian E. Bitar, US Military Bases, Quasi‐Bases, and Domestic Politics in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Map, figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 220 pp.; hardcover $110, ebook $79.99.     

The International Monetary Fund: A review of the recent evidence

A review of recent quantitative studies on the International Monetary Fund reveals that much of the conventional wisdom is incorrect. Recent studies have demonstrated a new degree of methodological rigor, have drawn more heavily upon insights from political science, and have asked a number of new questions. We review studies of participation in IMF programs, design of IMF conditionality, implementation and enforcement of IMF conditions, conventional program effects and catalytic effects. At every stage, we find substantial evidence of the influence of major IMF shareholders, of the Fund’s own organizational imperatives, and of domestic politics within borrowing countries. We conclude that very little is known with certainty about the effects of IMF lending, but that a great deal has been learned about the mechanics of IMF programs that will have to be taken into account in order to obtain unbiased estimates of those effects.

Reformfähigkeit messen? Konzeptionelle Überlegungen zu einem Reformfähigkeitsindex für OECD-Staaten

In the present article, I propose to determine reform capacity based upon policy outcomes and the governing performance of executives. Both components shall be measured through expert assessments and quantitative data for the 30 OECD member states in order to construct an index of reform capacity. The concepts underpinning the index are explained and compared with existing approaches of performance and governance measurement. Criteria are developed to assess the strategic capacity of governments and the accountability-generating functions of political actors surrounding the government. The envisaged measurement and aggregation methods are described and the potential of the proposed approach is discussed.     

Measuring Street Cleanliness: A Comparison of New York City's Scorecard and Results from a Citizen Survey

Public administrators at the local level often rely on citizen surveys to measure the outcomes or accomplishments of their service delivery efforts. However, many remain skeptical about the value of survey-based measures of local government performance, in large part because of the low empirical correlation between objective and subjective performance measures reported in the literature. Using data from New York City's street cleanliness scorecard, a well-established outcome measure, combined with responses from more than 4,000 respondents to a citizen survey, the authors find a clear and consistent correlation between the scorecard and citizen ratings of street cleanliness in their neighborhoods. Moreover, the street cleanliness scorecard is a much stronger predictor of citizen ratings than demographic factors, trust in government, or contextual effects. These results demonstrate that citizen judgments about government performance can correspond closely with more objectively measured outcomes—and that citizen surveys can provide valid and useful performance measures, at least for some local government services.     

Back to the Archives? A Critique of the Danish Part of the Manifesto Dataset

The dataset of the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) is one the best known and often used datasets in comparative studies of Western Europe. However, the Danish part of the data is very problematic. On average, nearly a third of the content of the Danish manifestos is deemed impossible to code. A close examination of the Danish data reveals large variations in the number of coded sentences across time and parties. An analysis of the manifestos on which the coding is based sets all the warning lights flashing. First, not all manifestos are in fact manifestos; a number consist of other political texts (i.e. speeches, drafts) or even stem from different elections (e.g. municipal manifestos masquerading as national manifestos). Second, the large variation in the length of the manifestos across time suggests that the information derived from them is not readily comparable. This leads to a distorted picture of the positions of the Danish parties. The conclusion of this article is that in order for the Danish part of the CMP dataset to become more trustworthy, it is necessary to search the archives, find the actual manifestos and recode them.     

Institutional Effects on State Behavior: Convergence and Divergence

We develop a new typology for examination of the effects of international institutions on member states' behavior. Some institutions lead to convergence of members' practices, whereas others result, often for unintended reasons, in divergence. We hypothesize that the observed effect of institutions depends on the level of externalities to state behavior, the design of the institution, and variation in the organization and access of private interests that share the goals of the institution. We illustrate these propositions with examples drawn from international institutions for development assistance, protection of the ozone layer, and completion of the European Union's internal market. We find that significant externalities and appropriately designed institutions lead to convergence of state behavior, whereas divergence can result from the absence of these conditions and the presence of heterogeneity in domestic politics.     

Intergovernmental Grants and Public Expenditures: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

The relationship between intergovernmental grants and public expenditures is one of the most studied phenomena in the local public finance literature. However, little is known about whether the impact of unconditional grants is fundamentally different from that of other sources of municipal revenue. We study this question by means of a large-scale randomised survey experiment among Danish local politicians, which allows for a comparison of the impact of changes in various sources of municipal revenue. Our findings challenge the conventional conception in the public finance literature that money works differently depending on which sector they are generated in. Instead, ideology plays an important role in explaining how local politicians want to allocate resources when faced with changes in local government revenue.