Conceptualising the policy engagement of interest groups: Involvement,access and prominence

While much progress has been made in empirically mapping and analysing a variety of interest group activities in the last decade, less attention has been devoted to conceptual work that clearly defines and distinguishes different forms of policy engagement. This article contributes to this endeavour by developing a theoretical framework that explicitly links currently available measures of the policy engagement of groups to the distinct concepts of group involvement, access and prominence. It argues that greater conceptual clarity will lead to better accumulation of knowledge in the sub‐field and a better understanding of the role of interest groups in political systems.     

The Impact of Parties and Elections on Municipal Debt Policy in Mexico

Opportunistic electoral fiscal policy cycle theory suggests that all subnational officials will raise fiscal spending during elections. Ideological partisan fiscal policy cycle theory suggests that only left‐leaning governments will raise election year fiscal spending, with right‐leaning parties choosing the reverse. This article assesses which of these competing logics applies to debt policy choices. Cross‐sectional time‐series analysis of yearly loan acquisition across Mexican municipalities—on statistically matched municipal subsamples to balance creditworthiness across left‐ and right‐leaning governments—shows that all parties engage in electoral policy cycles but not in the way originally thought. It also shows that different parties favored different types of loans, although not always according to partisan predictions. Both electoral and partisan logics thus shape debt policy decisions—in contrast to fiscal policy where these logics are mutually exclusive—because debt policy involves decisions on multiple dimensions, about the total and type of loans.     

Job Choice and Performance: Revisiting Core Assumptions about Public Service Motivation

Although there has been considerable enthusiasm for public service motivation (PSM) research in recent years, two of PSM's fundamental assumptions have been relatively untested: its impacts on job choice and on job performance. Using panel data from two different studies, we offer stronger observational tests of these core assumptions. The findings provide mixed evidence. When testing PSM's effect on employment choice, we find that PSM measured during a law student's first year predicts the sector in which they are employed after graduation three years later. In a separate study investigating PSM's effect on job performance, we find that government employee PSM does not predict employee absenteeism or supervisor assessments of their in-role and extra-role performance. Our findings support recent calls for a more nuanced theory and analyses of PSM to help better understand its implications for recruiting, retaining, and motivating the workforce used to provide public goods and services.     

Fiscal Austerity and Rental Housing Policy in the United States and United Kingdom, 2010–2016

After the 2008 global financial crisis, both the United States and the United Kingdom introduced austerity policies targeted at particular elements of their national budgets. The purpose of this article is to compare the nature of this retrenchment; the similarities and differences in how it was implemented; and its initial impacts on one of the expenditure areas particularly affected: affordable rental housing programs and housing support for low-income households. Using a wide range of data sources, we find evidence of political and fiscal policy analogies in the timing and forms of the initial policy choices and how these were modified in the face of economic and political pressures. There are considerable similarities both in the instruments used to reduce housing expenditures and in the early impacts on support mechanisms and recipients. However, we find different histories and trajectories of support between the two countries that suggest that the longer term differences in outcomes may be more important.     

Does Reacting to the Past Increase Student Engagement? An Empirical Evaluation of the Use of Historical Simulations in Teaching Political Theory

Within the teaching of political theory, an assumption is emerging that Reacting to the Past simulations are an effective tool because they encourage greater student engagement with ideas and history. While previous studies have assessed the advantages of simulations in other political science subfields or offered anecdotal evidence of their effectiveness in political theory courses, less attention has been paid to the empirical assessment of simulations in political theory. This study uses data — in the form of presimulation and postsimulation surveys, as well as focus groups — collected from two political theory courses in order to gauge levels of student engagement inside and outside of the classroom. We ask if students’ levels of engagement increase during the simulation in their political theory courses. We also explore the mechanisms involved in driving higher levels of student engagement during the simulation. We conclude by arguing that it is the liminal nature of the Reacting to the Past simulations that most likely explains increased levels of student engagement.     

The political roots of domestic environmental sabotage

In this paper, we demonstrate that when environmentalist niche parties compete in a given constituency over a number of elections, but continually fail to win seats, then environmental sabotage becomes more frequent in that constituency. When mainstream tactics fail, radical tactics are used more frequently. Using a new data-set on the success rates of all Green Party candidates in US states, we show that environmental sabotage occurs more often when Green Party candidates fail to win even minor offices. This is true even when we control for other political expressions of environmentalism, such as interest group activity, and when we define ‘success’ through votes not seats. We discuss the implications of this for environmental politics, for social movements and democracy, and for political violence in the US.     

Gone with the Wind: Federalism and the Strategic Location of Air Polluters

In federal systems, both state governments and firms have incentives to strategically locate polluting facilities where the environmental and health consequences will be borne as much as possible by residents of other jurisdictions. We analyze air polluter location in the United States using a spatial point pattern model, which models where events occur in latitude and longitude. Our analyses indicate that major air polluters are significantly more likely to be located near a state's downwind border than a control group of other industrial facilities, results that are robust to a wide variety of model specifications and measurement strategies. This effect is particularly pronounced for facilities with toxic air emissions. The observed pattern of polluter location varies systematically across states and time in ways that suggest it is responsive to public policy at both the national and state levels.     

Civil society knowledge networks: how international development institutions reshape the geography of knowledge

What role have the processes and institutions of international development played in creating and propagating ideas around the world? This paper demonstrates that networks of development-focused civil society institutions can form global epistemic bridges even where communication technology, global markets, infrastructure, or state services do not reach. Given the penetration of these ‘civil society knowledge networks’ throughout the world, it is crucial to understand how these networks form, and how they create and spread ideas, mediating between global discourses and local needs. This paper builds on a multi-sited case study of one such civil society knowledge network, which includes an international foundation, its partner non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Kenya, and one village where these NGOs run a forest conservation project. The case study provides a closely textured analysis of the mechanisms of knowledge production and consumption in the network, including personality politics, language, technology, political connections and the power dynamics of knowledge flows. It demonstrates the ways remoteness and disconnection are overcome through the epistemic reach of institutional networks involved in development interventions.     

People with disabilities working in the disability sector in Timor Leste: a study of ‘lived experience’ using PhotoVoice

Perspectives on disability originating from non-Western cultures are beginning to appear in disability literature, however discussions may become lost in rhetoric unless grounded in experiences of people with disabilities themselves. The purpose of this study was to investigate the lived experience of physical disability in Timor Leste with the assistance of a group of Timorese participants with disabilities who were employed in the disability sector. These participants recounted experiences of disability from their own lives together with their observations of people with disabilities living in remote parts of Timor Leste who often lived with stigma or deprivation. The participants thus described their own lived experiences against a backdrop of a non-Western culture. A picture emerged of a stigmatising culture where acceptance of disability is uncommon yet where significant attempts are being made to change attitudes to disability within the culture of Timor Leste.