Chi Wang,George W. Bush and China: Policies,Problems and Partnership

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Ethics by Design: The Impact of Form of Government on Municipal Corruption

While trust in government at all levels is at an all‐time low, actual corruption at the municipal level has been declining. One factor often credited with this decline is the introduction of the council‐manager form of government. One of the key reasons the council‐manager form was created in the early 1900s was to act as an antidote to the corruption prevalent in the big‐city machine politics of the era. Despite this, no one has tested whether the council‐manager form has in fact influenced the decline in corruption rates. This article uses a rare events logit model to analyze corruption convictions in municipalities between 1990 and 2010 to determine which factors, including form of government, affect the probability that a corrupt act will occur. The findings indicate that municipalities with the council‐manager form are 57 percent less likely to have corruption convictions than municipalities with the mayor‐council form.     

Downsizing the civil service in developing countries: the golden handshake option revisited

In recent years, more and more calls are being heard in a growing number of developing countries to downsize their civil services. It is argued that downsizing is needed because of the increasing shortfalls in government recurrent and development budgets. This situation results in underutilized, underfunded staff and often in the siphoning-off of donor funds in the development budget for recurrent expenditure. The main problems addressed in this article are why should and how can the civil service in developing countries be downsized. The questions of how much to trim the bureaucracy and how to redeploy redundant public servants in the private sector are also addressed. The article examines alternative strategies for significantly downsizing the civil service. It is contended that problems in this area are indeed common to many developing countries. Various golden handshake options for civil service leavers receive particular attention. It is suggested that economic jumpstart is a better term than golden handshake to characterize the incentives package offered to induce staff to accept voluntary redundancy. Civil service reform is not presented here as a panacea for all developing countries' ills. The article makes a number of mostly untried but nevertheless attractive suggestions that bring some fresh thinking to bear on a difficult issue. Paths and avenues worth exploring when starting to design civil service trimming operations are presented, including some of their limitations. The point is finally made that this type of downsizing is overdue in many places. The article should be considered as a contribution to demystifying the process of downsizing the civil service in developing countries. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Local supply,temporal dynamics,and unrealized potential in teacher hiring

We explore the dynamics of competitive search in the K–12 public education sector. Using detailed panel data on teacher hiring from Boston Public Schools, we document how teacher labor supply varies substantially across vacancies even within a single district depending on position type, school characteristics, and the timing of job postings. We find that early-posted positions are more likely to be filled and end up securing new hires that are better qualified, more effective, and more likely to remain at a school. In contrast, the number of applicants to a position is largely unassociated with hire quality, suggesting that schools may struggle to identify and select the best candidates even when there is a large pool of qualified applicants. These patterns persist even when we restrict comparisons to only positions within an individual school using school fixed effects. Our findings point to substantial unrealized potential for improving teacher hiring.     

The Politics of Dominant Party Formation: United Russia and Russia's Governors

This article analyses the emergence of United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) as a dominant party by examining the behaviour of Russia's governors. Using original data on when governors joined United Russia, the article demonstrates that those governors with access to autonomous political resources were more reluctant to join the dominant party. By showing that Russian elite members made their affiliation decisions on the basis of calculations about their own political resources rather than simply being coerced by the Kremlin, this article provides evidence for a theory of dominant party formation that casts the problem as a two-sided commitment problem between leaders and elites.     

Rejecting the gift horse: international politics of disaster aid refusal

This is a study of the increasingly common phenomenon of developing states refusing some or all international aid following serious natural disaster. Aid refusal by the Myanmar junta following a 2008 cyclone is only the most recent prominent example of this practice, and I present here an original dataset of all cases of disaster aid refusal occurring between 1982 and 2006. Through quantitative analysis, I show that although poorer states are indeed less likely to refuse aid than wealthier states, recipient need does not alone drive the decision-making process. Nor are autocratic regimes any more or less likely to refuse aid than democratic regimes. Rather, just as recently transitioned states have been shown by other scholars to be particularly likely to engage in military conflict, I find that they are also particularly likely to publicly and explicitly refuse aid and insist on their own ability to handle disaster relief and recovery. Aid refusal, much like aid provision, is at its core a political act.     

Contribution of parkland trees to farmers’ livelihoods: a case study from Mali

Native species of trees and shrubs contribute significantly to farmers' livelihoods by supplying food, medicinal products, fodder, and wood. In the case study reported in this article, this contribution to farmers' annual revenue varied from 26 per cent to 73 per cent, and was as high as US$ 650 a year for households for which agroforestry products were the primary source of revenue. Household consumption was not quantified in the study, but farmers' comments confirmed that native trees also played an important role in assuring food security, especially in the ‘hunger period’ when grain stores are low and farmers are waiting for the next harvest.     

Systemic Dissemination of Injected Foreign Material

A 32‐year‐old woman collapsed following an intravenous injection of material that included crushed pharmaceutical tablets. Resuscitation was attempted but was unsuccessful. She had an extensive past medical history of complications resulting from intravenous drug use. Death was due to mixed drug toxicity. The major findings at autopsy included a 10 mm deep skin sinus over the right femoral vein that was used as an injection site. Polarizable foreign material was present at the injection site and also within the lungs with a granulomatous reaction. Of note, a probe‐patent foramen ovale had permitted paradoxical embolization of this material into the systemic circulation with lodgement within the liver, portal lymph nodes, myocardium, spleen, kidneys, and pancreas. This case highlights the importance of checking for any intracardiac shunts, which may be quite small, and systemic dissemination of foreign material to multiple organs in intravenous drug users who present for medicolegal assessment.