Privatization of public-sector services in practice: Experience and potential

Privatization—the transfer of assets and service responsibility from the public to the private sector—has been expanding at the state and local level. Empirical studies document significant cost savings, apparently due to incentives introduced by competition. The outlook is for continued expansion of privatization, including such areas as highways, transit, water supply, and education.     

The dynamics of financial globalization: Technology,market structure,and policy response

The development of increasingly transnationalized (globalized) financial markets raises several key issues for the analysis of politics, public policy, and the national state. This article suggests that financial globalization increasingly constrains policymakers and circumscribes the policy capacity of the state. After looking briefly at a range of approaches to the process of financial globalization itself, the author suggests that technological change is the main independent variable, by reducing transaction costs and dramatically increasing the price sensitivity of financial markets across borders, while at the same time making possible a range of economies of scale. These very developments have a knock-on effect throughout the domestic and international economies. They in turn make obsolescent the political economies of scale — the governance structures — which have characterized economic policy in modern nation-states, undermining the capacity of the state to produce public goods. At the same time, globalized financial markets interact with rapidly changing interest group structures and divided state structures, especially through regulatory arbitrage. Without the development of transnational regimes capable of regulating global financial markets, the structural basis of the national state itself is being undermined, and Polanyi's Great Transformation is over.     

Pension Reform and the Fiscal Policy Stance

The increased budget deficit caused by the privatization of a public pension plan does not imply a relaxation of the stance of fiscal policy. The reform's impact on the fiscal stance and national saving depends primarily on its effect on the sum of explicit and implicit public debt and on the postreform payroll tax and private system contribution rates. Its impact also depends on the difference between the rate of interest on implicit and that on explicit public debt, among other influences. Pension privatization, if not offset by fiscal consolidation, can loosen the fiscal stance in some circumstances.     

Environmental policy and the reduction of hazardous waste

Environmental policy encouraging hazardous waste reduction began in 1976 with an Environmental Protection Agency statement promoting source reduction as the preferred method of hazardous waste management. In 1984, Congress included a policy statement supporting waste reduction in the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA). However, the cornerstone of HSWA was the land disposal restrictions (LDRs)—a command and control policy prohibiting land disposal of untreated hazardous waste. Consideration of the hazardous waste generation decision in the aggregate would suggest that the price effect resulting from the LDR program and increased hazardous waste management prices in general would lead to source reduction. Although at the firm level there may be interdicting factors, statistical analysis of generation data for Tennessee support this hypothesis. Both the institution of the LDRs and waste management prices have significant negative effects on the level of generation. The analysis, however, reveals the existence of large industry and firm effects, indicating that the response to public policy may exhibit significant variance, especially at the individual generator level.     

Monitoring,Money and Migrants: Countering Post-Accession Backsliding in Bulgaria and Romania

Using cross-national governance indicators and evidence from a recent Bulgarian survey, this essay examines political reforms in Bulgaria and Romania since EU accession and, in particular, the ‘backsliding’ hypothesis—that these countries have abandoned or reversed the reforms they introduced in order to qualify for membership of the European Union. It finds no systematic evidence either that these countries have been backsliding or that their trajectories differ significantly from their first-wave Central and East European neighbours, though governance reforms have slowed after accession. The second part of the essay focuses on the mechanisms responsible for the lack of significant backsliding, emphasising the role of continued conditionality through the safeguard clauses, EU funding and increasing linkage between new and old EU members, including opportunities for East Europeans to work and travel in Western Europe.     

The United States as a Plural Society: Towards a Consociational Solution?

Although the United States is not a consociational democracy, it is of considerable interest to consociational scholars. Not only is it in many respects a plural society, its political practice and thought include rudimentary elements of consociationalism’s four defining characteristics. That these institutions and practices have not developed further is unsurprising, given the generally unfavorable conditions for racial or ideological consociationalism there. Furthermore, factors such as the U.S.’s competitive political culture and its history of racial inequality present special challenges for consociational theory and practice. Meanwhile, the possibilities for addressing current ideological polarization by consociational means are limited, while ideological cleavage as such presents its own challenges. Nevertheless, several areas for reform remain possible, while changing ethno‐demographic conditions could make U.S.‐American consociationalism more likely in the next several decades. Furthermore, these considerations open up several potentially fruitful lines for further research into consociational democracy and the conditions that foster it.     

A Life Sentence in Installments: A Qualitative Analysis of Repeat Offending Among Short-Sentenced Offenders

Short-sentenced (less than 12 months) offenders in the United Kingdom consistently account for the greatest number of discharges from prison and demonstrate the highest risk and rate of reoffending. Moreover, until recent changes in UK legislation in 2015, individuals serving short sentences were released into the community with little support postrelease. The present study presents an exploration of (re)offending in individuals who have already served multiple short sentences in custody and aims to understand their experiences, perceptions, and insight into their offending. Is there anything apropos short sentences specifically, or those who continually serve them, that can explain the high rates of reoffending in this population? Semistructured interviews were conducted with eight prisoners currently serving short custodial sentences. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was implemented deriving three superordinate themes from the rich dataset: (a) living short sentences, (b) “You’d do the same if you were me,” and (c) negotiating an identity.