Rail Franchises,Competition and Public Service

The use of franchises to deliver rail services has raised major problems. Franchises restrict competition in the market, whilst competitive bidding for franchises has met with difficulties, notably in relation to risk transfer and the recent use of short‐term contracts that have not been awarded competitively. Further, franchise agreements are detailed and highly stipulative and do not achieve the flexibility and opportunities for innovation originally intended. This reflects an underlying lack of trust resulting from the arrangements adopted on privatisation. By contrast, in Sweden regional services have been procured through contracts with limited risk transfer, and in Italy provision of services has been entrusted to a dominant operator with comparatively limited detailed service specifications; both seem to have been more successful. For the future in the UK, possibilities include greater use of competition, a return to public ownership, regionalisation, and the use of concessions with limited risk transfer to secure stability.     

Culture and Consumerism: Citizenship, Public Service Broadcasting and the BBC's Fair Trading Obligations

The authors examine the future of public service broadcasting in the context of current debates about, and commercial pressures on, the BBC. They describe the European Community constraints on public service broadcasting and the need for a clearer definition of such broadcasting, noting that such a definition is not currently provided in UK law. The BBC is also under increasing pressure from fair trading rules derived from competition law, some of which may weaken its ability to deliver its public service mission. Original research undertaken within the BBC suggests that external and internal pressures have undermined the conditions for a distinctive public service output, although there remains the basis for such an output within the culture of programme-making. The authors develop theoretical bases for a redefinition of public service broadcasting centred on the principles of citizenship, universality and quality in relation to services and output, and examine the implications for the structure of channels in the digital era. Finally, the authors discuss the legal and regulatory implications of their analysis in the context of the Government's Communications White Paper, arguing that the social and cultural purposes of public service broadcasting must not be made subordinate to competition-based concerns.     

RUSSIA AND CHINA: AN AXIS OF INSECURITY

The juxtaposition of a declining power with a rising power has a number of historical parallels e.g. the Ottoman Empire, the UK/US relationship. This article examines the decline of Russia and the rise of China, countries whose links go back some 400 years. They share many attitudes to the rest of the world, but the bilateral relationship has to accommodate China's vertiginous economic growth and the growing hydrocarbon dependence of Russia's economy, as well as the interests of both countries in the Russian Far East and Central Asia. For the moment both sides seem prepared to make the effort needed to sustain the relationship, but there must be doubts about the sustainability of this essentially benign scenario in the longer term.     

Against the Grain of Urban Bias: Elite Conflict and the Logic of Coalition Formation in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa

The theory of urban bias was a major contribution to the evolution of contemporary theories of political economy that remains highly relevant today. Yet theorists of urban bias have still not produced a general explanation that accounts for anomalous cases of what we call “rural incorporation,” or coalition strategies based on modest rural producers. These anomalous cases suggest that the collective action underpinnings of urban bias theory underdetermine outcomes. This paper advances a new explanation of the anomalous African cases of Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Zimbabwe. After detailing the costs of rural incorporation, we theorize the conditions that would motivate state elites to overcome their pro-urban biases and offer substantial material benefits to non-elite agrarian producers. Rural incorporation is an optimal strategy only when state elites are locked in unusually intense conflict with their rivals. Most nationalist movements in Africa did not meet this condition and their leaders followed pro-urban policies. The three outliers are all cases of settler colonialism: bitter rivalry between European settlers and native planters created the conditions for rural incorporation. We show how native planters and their political allies selected rural incorporation as a political-economic instrument of commercial competition and political supremacy. Case studies of Ghana and Nigeria demonstrate that in the absence of political and economic rivalry with settlers, African leaders selected the “default” strategy of urban bias.     

Doctors with borders: occupational licensing as an implicit barrier to high skill migration

Research on the political economy of immigration overlooks the specificity of human capital in skilled occupations and its implications for immigration preferences and policymaking. Conclusions that skilled Americans are unconcerned about labor market competition from skilled migrants build on a simple dichotomy between high and low skill migrants. In this article we show that natives turn to occupational licensing regulations as occupation-specific protectionist barriers to skilled migrant labor competition. In practice, high skill natives face labor market competition only from those high-skill migrants who share their occupation-specific skills. Licensure regulations ostensibly serve the public interest by certifying competence, but they can simultaneously be formidable barriers to entry by skilled migrants. From a collective action perspective, skilled natives can more easily secure sub-national, occupation-specific policies than influence national immigration policy. We exploit the unique structure of the American medical profession that allows us to distinguish between public interest and protectionist motives for migrant physician licensure regulations. We show that over the 1973–2010 period states with greater physician control over licensure requirements imposed more stringent requirements for migrant physician licensure and, as a consequence, received fewer new migrant physicians. By our estimates over a third of all US states could reduce their physician shortages by at least 10 percent within 5 years just by equalizing migrant and native licensure requirements. This article advances research on the political economy of immigration and highlights an overlooked dimension of international economic integration: regulatory rent-seeking as a barrier to the cross-national mobility of human capital, and the public policy implications of such barriers.     

Regulation and Social Solidarity

Justifications for regulation are commonly based on the identification of market failures. This is however inadequate to account for much regulation, and sees regulation as inherently second best to market allocations. This article argues that, although some regulation will be based on market failure, other justifications can be found in the protection of rights and in the maintenance of social solidarity. Theoretical support for this last rationale can be found in the work of Durkheim and Duguit and the concept of public service. To accept this rationale for regulation has important implications both for regulatory policies and regulatory instruments.