Are regulatory agencies independent in practice? Evidence from board members in Spain

Are the board members of regulatory agencies (regulators), taken as a particular cluster within the public sphere, independent of elected politicians and tenured bureaucrats? How can we assess their independence in practice, beyond formal rules? To address these questions, this paper delves into two key dimensions: board members' social connections and their security of tenure in office. Firstly, we focus on regulators' identity as policy adjudicators and examine their political and administrative relations. In doing so, we expect to understand better how regulators' social and political situations may influence their behavior. Secondly, we assess their political vulnerability through political cycles in order to measure their de facto independence over time. Additionally, variations in these two dimensions are compared with respect to the effect of different de jure appointment rules. We contrast these expectations with the empirical evaluation of board members of regulatory agencies in Spain (1979–2010). Thus, we confirm that regulators who have an administrative profile are more vulnerable to political changes than those with political ties, while appointment rules have an influence on their political vulnerability.     

关联理论视角下语气词“吧”在祈使句中的话语功能探析

语气词"吧"在祈使句中的作用是明示协商的交际意图,祈使句中的"吧"字出现与否,既与说话者的身份地位有关,更与说话者的交际意图密切相关.     

网络共同犯罪若干疑难问题探讨

网络空间中的共同犯罪,由于犯罪人之间往往是单纯的技术配合,彼此之间互不相识,甚至永生不会谋面,从而使该类犯罪在共同犯罪故意的认定上、网络单位犯罪与网络共同犯罪的区别上、共同犯罪的聚合形式上均产生了困难.犯罪方法和犯罪手段呈现出的网络化特征,使网络环境中的共同犯罪问题成为刑法理论急需给予关注并加以及时解决的一个重要问题.从计算机网络共同犯罪的含义及特点的分析入手,网络共同犯罪故意的认定网络单位犯罪问题网络聚合性犯罪的性质及其认定等几个方面展开了较为深入的探讨.     

Ministerial Turnover and Why Reshuffles Matter for Parliament

Reshuffles are a relatively common occurrence in British politics. We expect to see them whenever a new Prime Minister enters Downing Street, after elections and following ministerial resignations. Recent research from the Institute for Government warns that the regular churn of ministers has negative consequences for policy making and for parliamentary accountability. This article summarises their latest research and what this tells us about the potential implications of Boris Johnson’s February 2020 reshuffle on government and Parliament.     

Turnover Intentions of Volunteer Resource Managers: The Roles of Work Motivations,Person–Organization Fit,and Emotional Labor

Volunteer management careers and the influence of workplace factors on volunteer manager turnover intentions have received relatively little attention in the empirical research literature. This study uses original survey data collected from over 400 volunteer managers to examine relationships between turnover intention and work motivation factors, person–organization fit (P-O fit), and emotional labor. Work motivation factors includes perceptions of advancement opportunities, task significance, autonomy, and pay satisfaction. P-O fit reflects the degree of congruence between an individual’s values and goals, and the characteristics of their workplace. Emotional labor reflects the degree to which employees are engaged in the management of emotions to adhere to the emotional expectations of their jobs. Results emphasize a lack of advancement opportunities as the primary driver of turnover, and P-O fit as a main factor for retention. In addition, the ability to regulate emotions was found to result in reduced quit intentions.     

Electoral alliance with sworn opponent political party: factors impacting voting intention

Alliance with sworn political opponents is becoming a growing phenomenon within the realm of political alliances. Here, two or more competitive political parties join hands to defeat a particular common opponent. During election, alliance partners face election together and distribute electoral seats mutually to avoid vote share. However, ensuring vote in favour of opponent alliance candidate is only possible when voters prefer to cast vote for the alliance candidate. Thus, this is crucial to know influencing factors that shape voters’ voting intention in favour of opponent alliance candidate. This study is an attempt to empirically investigate factors that have significant influence to shape voters’ voting intention for opponent alliance. The result shows that opponent alliance perceived fit impacts opponent alliance voting intention positively. Opponent alliance brand trust has a positive impact on opponent alliance voting intention. In addition, opponent alliance preference impacts opponent alliance voting intention positively.     

Organizing to rule: structure,agent, and explaining presidential management styles in Africa

Recent studies of comparative presidentialism have emphasized the importance of informal relationships between presidents and other political actors in explaining how presidents build governing coalitions. What has generally been under-investigated in the literature is how the characteristics of “presidents as agents” impact how they interact with other political actors – in particular, how presidents relate to their cabinets in terms of turnover and inclusiveness. We hypothesize that presidents who were former rebel leaders will behave very differently from presidents that do not have such backgrounds. To test our hypotheses, we collected data from 36 countries that are classified either as presidential or semi-presidential systems in Africa with 93 individual presidential administrations from 1990 to 2009. We found that presidents who were former rebel leaders were less likely to have major cabinet turnovers than other presidents. However, former rebel leaders did not have less politically inclusive cabinets (at least in partisan terms) but did have less ethnically inclusive cabinets than presidents with other backgrounds. The results suggest that agent characteristics, that is, the previous experiences of the president as a decision maker, are as important as the structural constraints he or she faces.     

Examining the Mediating Roles of Affective and Normative Commitment in the Relationship between Transformational Leadership Practices and Turnover Intention of Government Employees

The purpose of this study was to investigate the indirect effect of transformational leadership practices on turnover intention of government employees through affective and normative commitment to the organization. A total of 201 respondents were surveyed from the state and local governments in the east region of a mid-Atlantic state in the United States. The results from bootstrapping mediation analysis supported that transformational leadership fosters employees’ affective and normative commitment, which in turn lowers their turnover intention. Furthermore, the strength of the indirect effect of transformational leadership on turnover intention tends to be greater for baby boomers than other generations.