The election timing advantage: Empirical fact or fiction?

Do non-fixed election dates in Westminster parliamentary democracies create an unfair incumbent advantage? The consensus in the literature is that the incumbent party can gain an advantage at the ballot box by controlling election timing (Bakvis, 2001; Docherty, 2010; Smith, 2004; White, 2005; Wolinetz, 2005). Surprisingly, however, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this claim. We address this lacuna by providing an empirical test of whether the election-timing power matters for incumbent vote support. We do so by employing an innovative web-based voting experiment. Our findings show that the government does gain an advantage by timing an election when it is to their advantage, but the context is limited to conditions where the election follows immediately after a heightened level of positive government coverage.     

Fiscal Decentralization and Intergovernmental Transfers in Less Developed Countries

This article addresses the issue of fiscal decentralizationin developing countries, and the use of intergovernmental transfersto achieve this objective. We find that developing countrieshave more centralized fiscal structures and argue that thisis consistent with the theory of fiscal federalism. Economicdevelopment, however, does push the advantage toward decentralization.We also show that developing countries use a wide variety oftransfer instruments to fund local governments, and that theseinstruments give the national government varying degrees ofcontrol over local government finances.     

Fiscal Decentralization as Development Policy

Fiscal Decentralization is a popular economic development strategy among transition and developing countries. This article reviews the advantages of fiscal decentralization in a theoretical context, but critiques the relevance of the standard theory of federalism as it applies to emerging economies. It is argued that the macroeconomic benefits of fiscal centralization, the absence of good instruments of local government finance, and the centralist politics that characterize most low income countries have been strong enough to hold back increased emphasis on local government finance.     

Changing aid patterns in Southern Africa

The paper argues that the increase in official development assistance to South Africa following its transition to majority rule was largely at the expense of other countries in the region. While this refocusing of aid has been aimed at disadvantaged black groups, it will also reinforce the regional dominance of the South African economy. Aid to Botswana, Lesotho, and Namibia has also become far more concentrated on human resource investment than on, for example, assistance for industrial development. It is argued that this will create a skill base which will benefit South African business expansion and which, when placed in the context of liberalised trade regimes, will tend to favour those already well placed in market terms who will often be white, male, and South African. Only a properly coordinated gender- and poverty-sensitive regional aid programme will help to counterbalance the polarisation in favour of established South African business interests that seems the likely consequence of present policies.