Public pensions and immigration policy in a democracy

The paper analyzes the link between the public pension system and the immigration policy. In a pay-as-you-go system, the incentives for immigration vary significantly between individuals at different lifetime periods. In the framework of an overlapping generations model, we show that the median voter's choice in general leads to inefficient levels of immigration. The median voter neglects the effects of the externalities within the pension system on other generations. An immigration policy that is not affected by the median voter's choice but instead is constitutionally determined will avoid welfare losses. The expected lifetime income of each generation can be increased by applying a rule of steady immigration.     

Regulation vs Symbolic Policy-Making: Genetically Modified Organisms in the German States

Germany’s federal states can enforce stricter regulations on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) than does the national government. Empirically, the study analyses two outcomes at the state level: the symbolic accession to the GMO-free network, in which regional units mobilise against the EU’s regulatory approach, and hard GMO policies/regulations. Besides focussing on political parties and environmental interest groups, the article provides various additional theoretical explanations for the variation in outcomes. The research questions are the following: what conditions a state’s accession to the GMO-free network? What conditions a state’s adoption of GMO regulations? To assess these questions, the study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. One finding is that the inclusion of the Green Party in government is not a predominant condition for the adoption of regulations, but ministers affiliated with the Greens are dominant drivers of symbolic policy-making. The study reveals differing regulatory action by CDU/CSU ministers in the western and eastern states, which can be explained by the differing interests of farmers. Other findings reveal that SPD ministers regulated GMOs to much the same extent as CDU/CSU or Green ministers. Environmental interest groups were also found to have positively conditioned symbolic policy-making, having no effect, however, on the adoption of concrete regulations.     

America's Palimpsest: Ground-Zero Democracy and the Capitol Mall

This article examines the history of the Capitol Mall from its inception in 1791 to recent legislation prohibiting further development along the Mall's primary axes. This movement to restrict further development of the Mall's massive open spaces derives from concerns that fail to fully articulate the iconographic significance these spaces represent. Drawing from the Mall's 200-year history of master planning, this article examines the Mall's palimpsestic and emergent qualities and presents planning criteria that make it possible to build future commemorative works within the Mall's primary open spaces while retaining the overall integrity of its grandeur.     

鹅细小病毒VP2基因原核及真核表达载体的构建

将鹅细小病毒VP2基因克隆到原核表达载体 pPROEX HTb及真核转移载体pFASTBAC HTb中 ,重组真核转移载体在DH10BAC 中经转座作用 ,成功构建了表达VP2基因的原核表达载体pPROEX HTb VP2和杆状病毒表达载体BAC VP2。经限制性内切酶酶切及PCR分析 ,确定为阳性重组子     

Only When We Agree! How Value Congruence Moderates the Impact of Goal‐Oriented Leadership on Public Service Motivation

Questions of how and when managers can motivate the workforce of public organizations are fundamental for scholars and practitioners alike. A dominant assertion is that goal‐oriented leadership strategies, such as transformational leadership, foster public service motivation (PSM). However, existing studies rely on designs that are vulnerable to endogeneity and rarely investigate the scope conditions of the leadership‐PSM relationship. Combining a field experiment with 364 managers and surveys of their 3,470 employees, the authors show that transformational leadership and transactional leadership, when induced experimentally, do not have the claimed positive effect on PSM. In fact, the results indicate that goal‐oriented leadership can have demotivating effects when employee and organizational values are incongruent. Public managers should therefore carefully assess existing levels of value (in)congruence before implementing goal‐oriented leadership strategies, and—in case of value conflicts—seek to align perceptions of the desirable among members of the organization.     

Mapping and Explaining Parliamentary Rule Changes in Europe: A Research Program

We outline a comprehensive research program on institutional reforms in European parliaments. Original data show that parliamentary rules in Western European parliaments have been changed frequently and massively during the period from 1945 to 2010 suggesting that actors use institutional reforms as a distinct strategy to pursue their substantive goals. We discuss how institutional instability affects existing theoretical and empirical arguments about institutional effects. Furthermore, we present four ideal‐typical approaches to analyzing rule changes, present new software tools for identifying and coding changes in large text corpora, and demonstrate their usefulness for valid measurement of the overall change between subsequent text versions.