Defining subnational open government: does local context influence policy and practice?

Policy Sciences - What is open government? The contemporary conceptualization of open government remains rooted in transparency and accountability, but it is embedded within the political economy...     

Non‐Governmental Monitoring of Local Governments Increases Compliance with Central Mandates: A National‐Scale Field Experiment in China

Central governments face compliance problems when they rely on local governments to implement policy. In authoritarian political systems, these challenges are pronounced because local governments do not face citizens at the polls. In a national‐scale, randomized field experiment in China, we test whether a public, non‐governmental rating of municipal governments' compliance with central mandates to disclose information about the management of pollution increased compliance. We find significant and positive treatment effects on compliance after only one year that persist with reinforcement into a second post‐treatment year. The public rating appears to decrease the costs of monitoring compliance for the central government without increasing public and media attention to pollution, highlighting when this mode of governance is likely to emerge. These results reveal important roles that nonstate actors can play in enhancing the accountability of local governments in authoritarian political systems.     

What can deliberative mini-publics contribute to democratic systems?

Can deliberative mini-publics contribute to deepening the democratic dimensions of electoral democracies? The question is framed in this article using a problem-based approach to democratic theory–to count as democratic, political systems must accomplish three basic functions related to inclusion, communication and deliberation, and decision making. This approach is elaborated with an analysis of a real-world case: a deliberative mini-public with a citizens’ assembly design, focused on urban planning convened in Vancouver, Canada. This example was chosen because the context was one in which the city's legacy institutions of representative democracy had significant democratic deficits in all three areas, and the mini-public was a direct response to these deficits. It was found that Vancouver's deliberative mini-public helped policy makers, activists and affected residents move a stalemated planning process forward, and did do so in ways that improved the democratic performance of the political system. Depending on when and how they are sequenced into democratic processes, deliberative mini-publics can supplement existing legacy institutions and practices to deepen their democratic performance.     

Suited to Serve: The Antecedents and Perceptions of Public Service Motivation in National Service

While research suggests that public service motivation may be a dynamic trait in individuals, particularly early in their careers, other recent research has found that PSM may be relatively stable upon entry into the workforce (Vogel and Kroll 2016). To identify more precisely the decision point among individuals considering a public service career, the present study uses the antecedents of public service motivation framework (Perry 1997) to predict participation in AmeriCorps, a voluntary national service program in the United States. Findings reveal that antecedent conditions of PSM, including the prevalence of seeing family members and mentors help others as well as participation in student government, predict whether an individual will join an AmeriCorps programs. Many of these self-reported motivations support the argument that people attracted to public service hold strong other-regarding values. These findings suggest that human resources managers would be wise to consider these antecedent conditions to public service motivation when identifying pools of talent for recruiting and selecting prospective employees.     

Does intellectual property lead to economic growth? Insights from a novel IP dataset

While policymakers often make bold claims as to the positive impact of intellectual property (IP) rights on both developed and developing country economies, the empirical literature is more ambiguous. IP rights have both incentive and inhibitory effects that are difficult to isolate in the abstract and are dependent on economic context. To unravel these contradictory effects, this article introduces an index that evaluates the strength of IP protection in 124 developing countries for the years 1995 to 2011. We illustrate the value of this index to economics study and show evidence that is consistent with IP leading to increased growth. Our results are further consistent with two causal pathways highlighted in the literature: that IP leads to greater levels of technology transfer and increased domestic inventive activity. Yet other aspects of our study fit uneasily with this simple story. For example, we find evidence suggesting that increased levels of growth lead to greater levels of IP protection, contradictory evidence in the literature linking IP with growth, a lack of evidence that increased levels of IP protection lead to actual use of the IP system, and problems with what IP indexes measure. Because of this, we suggest another – and so far undertheorized – explanation of the links between IP and growth: that IP may have few direct effects on growth and that any causality is a result of belief rather than actual deployment of IP.     

Governing Unconventional Oil and Gas Extraction: The Case of Pennsylvania

Over the past decade, directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing enabled an unconventional oil and gas extraction (UOGE) boom in many regions of the United States, including parts of Pennsylvania. This revolution has created serious concerns about the capability of existing institutions to govern important societal outcomes associated with UOGE. We present a conceptual framework for assessing key societal outcomes influenced by UOGE governance. In applying this framework to Pennsylvania, we discern certain institutional strengths that have allowed the Commonwealth to reap appreciable short‐term economic growth from rich resource endowments. We also find, however, that several institutional weaknesses have allowed costs externalized to the environment, public health, and community integrity to offset some proportion of those economic benefits. Likewise, we find that governance of UOGE in Pennsylvania has contributed to a bifurcated sociopolitical landscape wherein adversarial coalitions dispute the legitimacy of the industry and its governance.     

On the measurement of friend behavior in research on friend influence and selection: Findings from longitudinal studies of adolescent smoking and drinking

The principles that behavior is strongly influenced by the behavior of friends, and that people select each other to be friends on the basis of common characteristics, are based in large part on the many studies of adolescents that found the behavior of friends to be similar. In most of these studies, subjects were asked to describe, the behavior of their friends, and this information was then related to subjects' reports of their own behavior. The research on adolescent smoking and drinking described in this paper departs from that tradition by including friend reports of friend behavior so that results based on the different sources for measuring friend behavior can be compared. Subject report of friend behavior is a stronger correlate, of adolescent behavior than friend report of friend behavior, but the two sources for measuring friend behavior produce the same correlations with subject behavior when using longitudinal designs and controlling for prior subject behavior. The findings are discussed in the context of theoretical and methodological considerations of peer influence and selection.This research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA04099) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA02480) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.Received his Ph.D. from Florida State University. His research interests include adolescent health and evaluation research.Received her M.A. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include methodology and analyses in behavioral sciences and applied social and developmental psychology.     

Adolescents’ Frequency of Alcohol Use and Problems from Alcohol Abuse: Integrating Dating Partners with Parent and Peer Influences

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Despite the centrality of dating relationships for teens, it is unclear whether the influence of romantic partners’ alcohol use on adolescents’...