E‐government and public service quality in Ghana

This article contributes to the growing discourse on the potential of e‐government to transform the operations of public sector institutions, thereby improving public services. It does so by conceptualizing public service quality into efficiency, economy (cost reduction), customer satisfaction, and service accessibility and draws on qualitative data from the Ghanaian narrative for illustration. As previous studies have demonstrated, this study also affirms the potential of e‐government in improving public services delivery by increasing efficiency, reducing the cost of operations, expanding access to services, and achieving customer satisfaction. Yet, there remains a repertoire of challenges such as weak ICT infrastructure especially in towns and villages, incessant power outages and illiteracy, which are drawbacks to fully harnessing the benefits of e‐government in Ghana. The study recommends that these challenges should feature prominently in e‐government policies to increase the chances of solving them.     

Competition and switching in public service markets: Can they reduce inequalities?

Regulatory reforms to public infrastructure services across European Union (EU) countries were aimed at increasing consumer welfare by introducing competition and choice into service markets. However, empirical evaluations have questioned whether these reforms have benefitted all consumers, suggesting that vulnerable groups of service users (especially those with lower levels of formal education), might be locked into poorly performing services. We assess the relationship between the level of competition in electricity and fixed telephony markets in EU countries and evaluate the affordability of these services for different socio‐educational layers. Our findings show that – although in countries where there is a relatively high frequency of switching, inequalities between socio‐educational groups are smaller and eventually disappear – competition as such does not play a part. These results suggest that demand‐side regulation that successfully enables consumer switching has the potential to equalize social welfare, thereby reflecting a possible convergence of regulatory instruments and the central aims of the welfare state in this context.     

Fascism as Action through Time (Or How It Can Happen Here)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how fascism may be identified by its actions, the stages through which a fascist rule takes power, and how to recognize it before it does so. The thesis is that a fascist takeover of a democratic government is rapid and unexpected. Its goal is a revolutionary reversal of representative government in the name of the people, while it accomplishes the opposite: a single-party corporate regime that replaces individual liberty with subtle, bureaucratic, and overt types of coercion. Rather than generate a generic definition of the many types of fascism, it is more useful to study how it affects the lives of ordinary people, the milieu out of which it develops, and what its precursors look like. Understanding fascism entails studying it from the point of view of those who lived under it and recorded their experiences, as well as from the analytic perspectives of social scientists. As Robert O. Paxton observes: “The fascist phenomenon was poorly understood at the beginning in part because it was unexpected.”¹Robert O. Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism,” in Fascism: Critical Concepts in Political Science, edited by Roger Griffin, vol. I (2004), Chapter 14, 305–26.View all notes We are facing the question again in 2017 with the surprise election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States by a minority of the popular vote and the evident support of the white nationalist milieu. Paxton proposes a five-stage theory for understanding fascism in its many varieties. A developmental sequence is proposed against which current events in the United States may be assessed.     

历史主义的解释学问题

在19世纪,除了浪漫主义的解释学外,还有历史主义的解释学。它们之间的一个重要的联结点是解释学循环。除此之外,二者的密切关系在其师承和道统方面。布克、德罗伊森和狄尔泰三人的思想代表了西方19世纪下半叶解释学的一个重要的特点,那就是突出与人文科学的联系,这是以历史意识的逐步确立为中介的,但是他们,尤其是德罗伊森和狄尔泰最终都没能摆脱历史的局限。     

Emancipatory rural politics: confronting authoritarian populism

A new political moment is underway. Although there are significant differences in how this is constituted in different places, one manifestation of the new moment is the rise of distinct forms of authoritarian populism. In this opening paper of the JPS Forum series on ‘Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World’, we explore the relationship between these new forms of politics and rural areas around the world. We ask how rural transformations have contributed to deepening regressive national politics, and how rural areas shape and are shaped by these politics. We propose a global agenda for research, debate and action, which we call the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI, www.iss.nl/erpi). This centres on understanding the contemporary conjuncture, working to confront authoritarian populism through the analysis of and support for alternatives.     

Limits of regulatory responsiveness: Democratic credentials of responsive regulation

Responsiveness and accountability constitute the process of democratic representation, reinforcing each other. Responsiveness asks elected representatives to adopt policies ex ante preferred by citizens, while accountability consists of the people's ex post sanctioning of the representatives based on policy outcomes. However, the regulatory literature tends to interpret responsiveness narrowly between a regulator and regulatees: the regulator is responsive to regulatees’ compliance without considering broader public needs and preferences. Democratic regulatory responsiveness requires that the regulator should be responsive to the people, not just regulatees. We address this theoretical gap by pointing out the perils of regulatory capture and advancing John Braithwaite's idea of tripartism as a remedy. We draw out two conditions of democratic regulatory responsiveness from Philip Selznick – comprehensiveness and proactiveness. We then propose overlapping networked responsiveness based on indirect reciprocity among various stakeholders. This mechanism is the key to connecting regulatory responsiveness with accountability.     

The European Union’s trade and investment policy in Asia: new challenges and opportunities in a changing global environment – or: following individual roadmaps

Asia is Europe’s largest trading partner and EU-Asia trade relations have undergone a rapid change since the global financial crisis. On a global scale, the new multilateral trade agreements such as the now stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) involving European Unions’ (EU) major trading partners such as Japan, Singapore and Vietnam also have the potential to change the trade equations. In this paper, we evaluate the new EU trade policy which has been designed to ensure that the EU benefits from the changing global trade scenario and also look at the steps which have been taken by the EU to promote trade relations with its major trading partners in Asia in the predicted ‘Asian century’. We look into the Free Trade Agreements, which are being negotiated with its Asian partners and seek to understand the reasons which have resulted in delays in their signing and negotiations. We evaluate new policies pushed forward by its Asian partners such as the One Belt One Road policy by China and Japan’s policy of securing a large number of trading agreements in the America. Moving ahead, we also shed light on the indirect factors that may influence the success of EU trade negotiations in Asia such as the EU policy on granting China market economy status and the commencement of the ‘Brexit’ process. Lastly, we try to present a list of immediate priorities for EU in Asia, which will ensure that it secures a toehold in trade with the region. All in all, it is shown that the EU has not one and the same approach for all Asian countries but it negotiates flexibly and individually country by country. Because of this “country by country approach” the EU is also not ready to enter into general EU-ASEAN trade negotiations again.     

Economic Voting in Latin America: Rules and Responsibility

The impact of institutions on the economic vote stands as a well‐established proposition for the advanced democracies of Europe. We know less, however, regarding the institutional effects on the economic vote in the developing democracies of Latin America. Carrying out an analysis of presidential elections in 18 Latin American countries, we offer evidence that the usual Eurocentric conceptualization of the clarity of responsibility is not ideal for understanding the economic vote in this region. There does exist a powerful effect of institutions on the economic vote within Latin American democracies, but one uniquely associated with its presidential regimes and dynamic party systems. Rules for these elections—such as concurrence, term limits, and second‐round voting—suggest that we should reconceptualize the notion of the clarity of responsibility in Latin America, focusing more on individuals in power and their constraints, and less on the political parties from which they hail.