Coalition government and electoral accountability

Single-party governments are commonly thought to be more clearly responsible for government policy than coalition governments. One particular problem for voters evaluating coalition governments is how to assess whether all parties within a coalition should be held equally responsible for past performance. As a result, it is generally argued that voters are less likely to hold coalition governments to account for past performance. This article uses data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project to assess whether and how the composition of coalition governments affects the way in which people use their votes to hold governments to account, and which parties within coalitions are more likely to be held to account for the government’s past performance.     

The Age Gap in the 2008 Presidential Election

The 2008 presidential election suggests a significant realignment among voters entering the electorate, with younger voters deviating considerably from older voters in their partisan preferences. Barack Obama won the vote of those under 30 years old by a 66% to 32% margin and first time voters favored him by an overwhelming margin of 69–30%. The fact that the age gap between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination contest was also among the largest age gaps in American electoral history suggests that part of the age gap was undoubtedly due to the appeal of Obama with younger Americans. Part of the age gap, however, was also due to the unpopularity of the George W. Bush administration. The strong youth vote for Obama in 2008 was thus both pro-Obama and anti-Bush in nature. The huge age gap in 2008 suggests a split of the electorate along generational lines and the long-term consequences of the age gap appear to overwhelmingly favor the Democratic Party. George W. Bush’s unpopular and divisive presidency helped to make the youngest generation of American voters increasingly Democratic in their vote preference. This suggests that if younger Americans follow other generations in keeping the same partisan voting patterns throughout their life, the Democrats are potentially poised to make considerable gains in future elections.     

A Preliminary Examination of Citizen Orientation and Multiple Dimensions of Organizational Performance

In this article, I discuss citizen orientated public management in relation to extant frameworks and theories in public management and organization research, including the role of the public servant, collaborative public management, citizen coproduction, and relational bureaucracy. Following the discussion, I hypothesize about the relationship between public organizations’ citizen orientations and multiple dimensions of organizational performance. I use data from approximately 900 New York City elementary and middle schools from 2008 to 2011 to examine the relationship. Preliminary findings indicate that a citizen orientation is positively related to multiple dimensions of public organization performance.     

The Heathrow Case in the Supreme Court: Climate Change Legislation and Administrative Adjudication

In R (on the application of Friends of the Earth Ltd and others) v Heathrow Airport Ltd the UK Supreme Court allowed an appeal against the Court of Appeal's decision that there had been a series of legal errors in the designation of the Airport National Policy Statement. This case note analyses the case from an ‘internal’ doctrinal perspective and argues that the Supreme Court could have engaged more explicitly with the legal issues that arise from climate change legislation for administrative law adjudication. For courts to adjudicate well in such circumstances they need to be prepared to develop administrative law doctrine, particularly in light of the issues of integrating climate change into public decision-making and of scientific/policy uncertainty which lie in the background of climate change legislation.     

Tension in democratic administration: Does managerial confidence in administrative capacity reduce citizen participation in organizational decision-making?

The tension between bureaucratic and democratic values has characterized significant debates in the field of public administration. In this article, we ask, does public managers' confidence in their organizational administrative capacity affect citizen participation? Using managerial confidence in organizational response capacity (ORC) during crises as a vehicle to investigate the tension between democratic and administrative values, we examine whether an administration-centric approach to management influences citizen participation. We posit that higher levels of managerial confidence in organizational administrative capacity can lessen the pressure from political stakeholders which, in turn, might allow managers the autonomy to isolate themselves from the general public. The empirical analysis uses a structural equation model (SEM) to examine survey data from senior managers in 500 US cities. We find that managerial confidence in ORC reduces citizen participation, but only indirectly through diminishing influence from other governmental actors or by allowing managers to win the trust of political principals.     

Constituent Communication Through Telephone Town Halls: A Field Experiment Involving Members of Congress

Telephone town halls are an increasingly prevalent method for members of Congress (MCs) to communicate with constituents, even while garnering popular criticism for failing to facilitate engagement and accountability. Yet scholars have paid little attention to the events and their effects, and even less to how they might be improved. To remedy this problem, we report on a field experiment in which four MCs joined their constituents in telephone town halls. Overall, participation in an event improved constituents’ evaluations of the format in general, and of the MC in particular. Furthermore, we studied how these events might be improved by evaluating a reform—a single‐topic focus with predistributed briefing materials—designed to enhance deliberative interaction. This reform enhanced effects on opinions of the format without significantly altering effects on attitudes toward the MC. Our results suggest that telephone town halls hold promise for constituents, officeholders, and democratic practice.