Political business cycles at the municipal level

The present article tests predictions of rational political business cycle models using a large and previously unexplored data set of Portuguese municipalities. This data allows for a clean test of these predictions due to the high level of detail on expenditure items, an exogenous fixed election schedule, and homogeneity of Portuguese local governments with respect to policy instruments and institutions. Estimation results clearly reveal the opportunistic behaviour of local governments. In pre-electoral periods, they increase total expenditures and change their composition favouring items that are highly visible to the electorate. This behaviour is consistent with an effort to signal competence and increase chances of re-election.     

The efficiency of an X-ray screening system at a mass disaster

This is a study to determine the efficiency and efficacy of using an X-ray security screening system to locate both dental fragments and other foreign objects that might be commingled with fragmented remains in a mass disaster. A controlled study by the Pennsylvania Dental Identification Team (PADIT) revealed that a manual examination of simulated body bags containing commingled dental parts and foreign objects by a team of trained forensic odontologists was very effective in locating dental fragments and in finding foreign objects. Although this was effective, it was not efficient, because it was very time consuming. With the use of an X-ray security screening system, the time factor could be reduced. This study also revealed that even though this sophisticated equipment could reduce the time factor in locating commingled dental and foreign objects, a forensic odontologist should be utilized to be most effective.     

Leveling the Odds: The Effect of Quality Legal Representation in Cases of Asymmetrical Capability

How much does attorney quality influence the outcome of cases in which one litigant is significantly more capable than the other? Using a unique dataset of all asylum merits decision from 1990 to 2010, we find that high quality representation evens the odds for asylum applicants and that not being represented by legal counsel is actually better than being represented by a poor lawyer. In this analysis, we draw on a modified party capability theory and create new measures of attorney capability. We find that variation in attorney capability is a primary driver of the disparity in asylum outcomes in U.S. immigration courts and that a likely causal mechanism for this influence is the judge‐specific reputation of an attorney.     

What Causes the Local Fiscal Crisis in China: the role of intermediaries

Local governments in China are seriously under-funded relative to their assigned expenditure responsibilities for public services, resulting in the infamous ‘revenue–expenditure gap’. The dominant explanation of local fiscal difficulties given in the literature refers to central government behaviour, namely the excessive centralization of tax revenue, but it does not tally with the large flows of central subsidies to local coffers in more recent years. The alternative account we put forward stresses the working of an intermediary level embedded in the multi-tiered governance structure of a large country, and the interaction between local officials' fiscal behaviour and the revenue–expenditure gap. Employing fine-grained analysis of aggregate statistics and local case data, we argue that broader intergovernmental dynamics and practices of local intermediaries, and not only central government policy, are critical to fiscal health and government performance at the county level.     

Singapore Inc: A success story

The success of Singapore's government‐led and managed economy has allowed it to box above its weight in the international trade and financial arena for decades. However, globalisation and technology are forcing a policy shift.     

The US Rebalancing to Asia and Transatlantic Public Opinion

The US policy of ‘rebalancing to Asia’ is likely to have major implications for transatlantic relations as well as for the role of rising powers, such as China. US public opinion and leaders are largely aware of this eastward shift in attention and this awareness can be considered, albeit in a somewhat indirect way, an indicator of support for the policy. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, Europeans seem to be less aware of the fact that the Far East is becoming the main chessboard of international relations in a multipolar global order. Nevertheless, when objectively informed about China, people on both sides of the Atlantic are less in favour of a shift in interests toward Asia and their negative perceptions of China are significantly correlated to a hesitancy in supporting a rebalancing policy. Moreover, if people perceive Beijing as a threat, especially an economic threat, they are even less likely to support a shift of interests to the Far East, the only exception being American elites, who tend to increase their support for the rebalancing strategy in the presence of a Chinese economic threat.     

Rural and Regional Policy: A Case of Punctuated Incrementalism?

The rural policy environment has many of the conditions that might suggest a tendency towards punctuated equilibrium. The Commonwealth has little direct power over rural space and industries, there has been a long tradition of state support for agriculture and decision‐making has generally been kept within a tight policy community, dominated by rural interests. In our review of the PAP data and policy history, we find instead an underlying movement across time and governments towards an expectation of self‐reliance for rural businesses and communities. On top of the long‐term incremental movement towards this expectation, issue attention has shifted according to political, climatological and market conditions, rather than necessarily in line with changes in policy content.     

Governed interdependence: Rethinking the government‐business relationship in East Asia

Analyses of East Asia's high‐performance economies have highlighted the advantages of a coordinated approach to market failures. With states dominating the process, both public and private agencies are increasingly involved. The recent literature sees public‐private cooperation as a limit to state capacity and thus a challenge to statism. Within an institutionalist framework, this paper proposes a fresh view of the government‐business relationship which avoids the statist premise of domination, but without relying on ‘weak state’ arguments. Through an examination of key organizational features of state and industry in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, the paper proposes a theory of ‘governed interdependence’ in which both state and capital are taken seriously; where both strong state and strong industry go hand‐in‐hand; and where the capacities of both are mutually enhanced. The article identifies four principal types of government‐industry cooperation in the East Asian experience — some apparently ‘state‐led’, others apparently ‘business‐led’ — all of which can be accommodated by the theory.     

Developmental states in transition: adapting,dismantling, innovating,not ‘normalizing’

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasingly vigorous debate by a wide range of participants over the past, present and future of Japanese security and the national defence policy. Ever since the end of the Cold War, international relations theorists have cast their gaze to Japan, and have been given to re-examining ‘comprehensive security’ with a particular eye for the meaning of ‘security’. The 1990s were a particularly interesting time for this scholarly revisionism, while events of September 2001 have cast an entirely different spectre on the nature and expectations of Japanese security, both domestically and internationally. This article is particularly concerned with the developments in the 1990s as scholars sought to reassert the ‘defence’ component of the comprehensive security policy hitherto pursued by Japan. This re-examination has elevated former Japanese Defence Agency (JDA) bureaucrat Kubo Takuya as the key architect in crafting Japan's security policy. Tsuyoshi Kawasaki's contributions to the debate are especially interesting on this point. He rightly challenges the short-comings of the so-called ‘domestic-constructivists’, especially Berger and Katzenstein. However, in attempting to demolish their cases for ‘selective biases’ he then proceeds to selectively argue a similarly biased case in asserting the superiority of yet another derivation of the realist cause – ‘postclassical realism’. His key premises are based on his interpretations of the architect of Japan's National Defence Program Outline, Kubo, and in doing so ‘proves’ the military aspect of Japan's security policy and its ‘inherent superiority’ as an explanatory framework. Equally, one can mount a case for the ‘comprehensive security’ proponents by citing the work and presence of the late Okita Saburo in his contributions to understanding post-war security policy. This article will demonstrate a similar argument to that of Kawasaki's based on an analogous analytical framework which grounds Japanese security consciousness in a deeper historical context. It is part of a larger project which seeks to give empirical substance to constructivist interpretations of Japanese security.