Some talk: Money in politics. A (partial) review of the literature

The financing of political campaigns is an area of active scholarly study. I review some of the recent literature and discuss important methodological issues that arise in empirical research on campaign expenditures and campaign contributions. The effects of campaign expenditures and advertising on candidate and ballot-measure elections are summarized, as are the impacts of contributions on contributors’ welfare. Many states have changed their campaign finance laws in the past few years, and I describe work that exploits variations in these laws. A discussion of the strategies used by interest groups to allocate their campaign contributions provides insights into contributors’ motives.     

Zur statistischen Analyse von Vollerhebungen

When analyzing superpopulation data, inferential statistical methods should be used. Empirical tests of hypotheses are subject to a variety of stochastic processes, or “errors”, even if the data involved in those tests are not the product of random sampling. Assumptions about the nature of these processes have to be an explicit part of the analysis and need to be justified. Using several examples of published research, we make transparent that all substantive conclusions are conditional on the assumptions about the nature of the stochastic processes that are at work in generating superpopulation data.     

Political Trust, Ideology, and Public Support for Government Spending

This article analyzes the relationship between political trust, ideology, and public support for government spending. We argue that the political trust heuristic is activated when individuals are asked to sacrifice ideological as well as material interests. Aggregate- and individual-level analysis shows that the effects of political trust on support for government spending are moderated by ideology. Consistent with the unbalanced ideological costs imposed by requests for increased government spending, we find that the effects of political trust are significantly more pronounced among conservatives than among liberals. The analysis further demonstrates that ideology conditions the effects of political trust on attitudes toward both distributive and redistributive spending. Our findings suggest that political trust has policy consequences across a much broader range of policy issues than previously thought.     

Trends and mechanisms of corruption in South Korea

Corruption remains one of the key obstacles to democratization and good governance. Given the nature of the subject, corruption is notoriously difficult to study. International comparisons and rankings of good governance such as the World Bank World Governance Indicators, the Bertelsmann Sustainable Governance Index, or Transparency International's Global Corruption Index are very useful for providing the big picture on corruption. To understand trends and mechanisms of corruption, however, it is necessary to conduct case studies on both successful and failed cases of anti-corruption policies. This paper investigates the successes and challenges of the fight against corruption in South Korea since the beginning of democratization in 1987. The investigation shows that Korea has generally been successful in controlling corruption. The paper argues that the remaining problems can be largely explained by the legacy of authoritarian rule and the undermining of state autonomy through the concentration of economic power.     

Administrative ethics as justice

This paper presents an ethical framework for decision-making in public administration based on the preeminent value of justice. In discussion of this framework, the paper deals with three major issues. The first of these is the character of the just administrative decision,, the second is the character of of the just public organization, and the third is the impact of a justice-based administrative ethic on the role of the responsible administrator.     

SOUTH ASIA

For nearly a hundred years, to many foreigners “Peking” meant the foreign legation quarter and its colourful western inhabitants. The article gives details of the extraordinary life they led a stone's throw from the Emperor's palace in a city that remained virtually untouched by the modern world. After the Boxer Rising of 1900, the legation quarter became a Treaty Port with its own laws and administration. That status continued through the First World War and beyond. But just as the foreigners were at last beginning to value Peking's uniqueness, the end was in sight. Life changed a lot after the 1937 Japanese invasion of China and, for many, internment followed the attack on Pearl Harbour. But the end came when Treaty port status was abolished for good at the end of the War