All voting is strategic

All voting is strategic because the shared outcomes are note within the choice set of any voter, the elements of which can only be strategies. Voting behavior need not re- flect the individual's ordering of outcomes, and the conventional distinction between sincere and sophisticated voting is misguided. In voting choice, the ordinal ranking of outcomes must be supplemented by intrapersonal evaluation of utility differences among these outcomes and also by predictions concerning the behavior of other participants in the nexus of interdependence.     

The lost generation: How the government and non-governmental organizations are protecting the rights of orphans in Uganda

Millions of Ugandan children have become orphaned over the last two decades, the primary cause being the increasing HIV/AIDS epidemic. This phenomenon has prompted the government to institute numerous legal reforms. These internal reforms, implemented in a legal environment based on English common law and increasingly, international standards, greatly influence the legal inheritance rights of Ugandan orphans and their chances for prosperity. In many regions, however, the traditional local mores trump both national and global standards, meaning that while Ugandan parents may own appreciable property upon death, their children rarely receive it, but rather fall victim to “property grabbing” or mismanagement by relatives. The key impediments to solving this problem and to Uganda’s adoption of a more egalitarian system of inheritance include the ineffectiveness of local councils, the inadequate enforcement of the Children Stature, and the heavily centralized and cumbersome structure of the national government. Therefore, significant reforms are needed, including the pronouncement of a national policy regarding orphans, the reduction of national reliance on NGOs, and the restoration of a national legislative effort to codify orphans’ property rights.     

The Political Frame for Negotiated Capitalism: Electoral Reform and the Politics of Crisis in Japan and Sweden

This article examines the impact of political institutions on the strength of executive governments as well as the consequences of that strength for policymaking. It argues that both political changes and electoral reforms in Japan and Sweden have weakened the political frame for “negotiated” or “coordinated” decision making in these nations. In Sweden, however, the complete demolition of the old political frame has opened up opportunities and incentives for new modes of governance. In Japan, by contrast, reforms have buttressed rather than dismantled the old frame, impeding the transition to a new approach.     

Efficiency Measurement in Spanish Local Government: The Case of Municipal Water Services

In this work, we established a procedure for evaluation of the efficiency of the water supply. This procedure has allowed us to find that the proposed indicators have a discriminating capability in the analysis of the service, and to reject criticisms traditionally assigned to the sensitivity of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique in relation to degrees of freedom. The results obtained show that the population density, as a factor that defines one of the particular characteristics of the surroundings of each municipality, has a statistically significant impact on the indexes of efficiency, this affirmation not being extended to the public or private ownership of the service. The scale inefficiency is higher than the technical inefficiency. These typologies of efficiency are, principally, motivated by the supply side of the service, which is specially linked with the necessary infrastructure. The demand of the citizens is satisfied with a behavior close to optimal.     

Development of Local Government Debt Financing Markets: Application of a Market‐Based Framework

Needed is clear guidance on how to develop market‐based debt financing systems in transitional and developing countries. We propose an analytical framework useful for identifying constraints to financial development and providing recommendations to overcome constraints to develop municipal financing capacity. The proposed framework is applied to five country case studies: Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, and South Africa. The thesis of this paper is that municipal credit market development is related to improvements in the legal/regulatory framework governing local borrowing, the capacity of financial institutions to assess risk, and borrower capacity to support and manage debt.     

Presidential Party,Incumbency, and the Effects of Economic Fluctuations on House Elections, 1916–1996

There is little professional consensusregarding the effect of economic conditionson House Elections. We argue that recentwork still uses the paradigm of Party toorganize their data and tests. Given thatrecent developments in the theory ofcongress emphasize the paradigm ofIncumbency, we investigate the empiricalrelevance of that competing paradigm. Weshow that (1) Incumbency matters in a purePresidential Party Model of HouseElections, (2) Presidential Party mattersin a pure Incumbency Model, (3) Once bothParty and Incumbency are accounted for,economic conditions exert a highlysignificant and temporally stable influenceon House elections, (4) Return Rates aremore affected by economic fluctuations thanare Vote Shares, and (5) Not allPresidential Party incumbents face the samedegree of electoral accountability foreconomic fluctuations.     

Car ownership and welfare‐to‐work

This study examines the role of car ownership in facilitating employment among recipients under the current welfare‐to‐work law. Because of a potential problem with simultaneity, the analysis uses predicted car ownership constructed from two instrumental variables, insurance premiums and population density for car ownership. The data come from a 1999–2000 survey of TANF recipients in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The empirical results show a significant independent contribution of car ownership on employment. The presence of an predicted ownership is associated with a 9 percentage point increase in the odds of being employed. Moreover, the results indicate that lowering insurance premiums by $100 can increase the odds of employment by 4 percentage points. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.