Pollution,Politics, and Preferences for Environmental Spending in the States

While state environmental and natural resource spending is designed to address actual environmental problems, the budget process is also inherently political. Thus, in the following article we ask a simple question: to what extent does state environmental and natural resource spending respond to the scope of environmental problems in a state, versus the demands of the political process? Unlike the bulk of previous research, we consider both aggregate spending and program‐specific spending. We also consider how the severity of environmental problems and the political environment may interact to determine spending. The findings show that politics, specifically the strength of the environmental movement, is a more important determinant of state environmental spending than pollution severity. However, for some program areas, it appears that strong environmental groups make state budgets more responsive to the severity of environmental problems.     

Electoral Risk and Redistributive Politics in Mexico and the United States

What strategy does a rational party follow in allocating discretionary expenditure? This article conceives redistributive politics as an investment strategy where expenditure allocations respond to electoral risk. To show the effects of risk, it provides evidence from Pronasol in Mexico and an analysis of New Deal spending in the United States. The analysis finds that the federal administrations in both countries responded to systematic electoral risk. Spending diversification into risky voters was a rational response to chances of losing elections. The analysis hence connects electoral volatility with redistributive spending.     

COPS GRANTS AND CRIME REVISITED*

Using 6 years of panel data, Zhao, Scheider, and Thurman (2002) found that funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), reduced property and violent crime in large U.S. cities. We merged their COPS data with 11 years of panel data from a sample of 189 large cities, such that the period before the COPS program was covered. We also controlled for pre‐existing effects on crime of police spending. Finally, we performed various robustness checks and explored state‐specific effects of COPS spending. Our findings suggest that COPS spending had little to no effect on crime.     

The Institute for Fiscal Studies Report: English Council Funding: What’s Happened and What’s Next?

The article reviews the recent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IfFS) report, English Council Funding: What’s Happened and What’s Next. The article provides an overview of the main themes and findings of the report which examines the consequences of a sustained period of austerity for English local government and the impact of austerity on certain key council services. The article explores what the report has to say about the way councils have responded to reductions in government funding and the strategies they have developed to protect certain frontline services. The article reviews the suggestions made in the IfFS report for changing English local government funding and finds that they reflect a form of centralist thinking which lacks a radical edge when it comes to reform.     

Government Type and Public Spending in Africa

How does government composition affect government spending in Africa’s democracies? Many scholars have examined the political, institutional, and ideological determinants of government spending, finding that government attributes can affect government spending levels. However, many of these studies have focused on OECD countries, largely overlooking the link between government spending and government composition in African democracies. I examine support for two existing theories about the characteristics of governments that can lead to increases in spending levels: the number of parties in government and the number of ministers. I assess empirical evidence for these theories using original data on government composition in 19 African countries from 1990 to 2015 and data on government spending from the World Bank. I find that a coalition at the time the budget is passed is associated with increased spending, but the number of cabinet ministers does not appear to systematically affect levels of government spending.     

Political linguistics and events research

In an early study of the impact of defense spending on economic growth in Latin America, it was suggested that the military burden hampered growth (Lieuwen, 1962). Recent studies, however, have found the relationship to be positive (Biswas and Ram, 1986; Frederiksen and Looney, 1983). The present study differs from those by considering the relationship between “guns and growth” over time, and by looking at both the overall and externality effects of military spending. The findings demonstrate that defense spending has both positive and negative impacts on economic growth in Latin America, but that there is no net positive effect. This finding will be obscured by research designs which do not disaggregate the effects of military spending into both its size and externality components.     

New Labour Legacy: Comparing the Labour Governments of Blair and Brown to Labour Governments since 1945

The election of the Conservative–Liberal coalition in May 2010 provides the opportunity to start to map out the record of the Labour governments between 1997 and 2010. This paper deals with the specific question how the Brown/Blair governments performed on public expenditures when compared to the records of UK Labour governments since 1945. Did the public expenditure record of the 1997 represent a departure from that of previous Labour governments? This is important to ascertain since there are strongly held beliefs that New Labour was not committed to Labour's historic commitments of income redistribution and universal benefits. The analysis that follows is constructed around five major public expenditure programmes that reflect Labour's priorities. These include total expenditure, expenditure on health, education, housing and social security.     

Public Choice Failure and Voter Incompetence in France

This article explains failures of politics and government through the incompetence of voters and their perception biases. It illustrates this argument using the French case. If voters lack knowledge and develop irrational beliefs, then voting is probably not effective as a mechanism for sanctioning public policy. The incompetence of French voters and their anti‐capitalist bias is well documented. This incompetence can be partly explained by the low cost of holding irrational beliefs in politics. Voters’ anti‐capitalist attitudes are explained by the utility they obtain from expressing themselves in favour of state intervention, and by France's prohibitive level of justification costs of holding pro‐capitalist views. The resulting biases contribute to the failure of public choice.     

Social spending,partisan bias and vote choice. Evidence from the US

Most models in political science and political economy assume that benefiting from public spending increases the likelihood of voting for the government. However, we do not have much empirical evidence on the conditions under which recipients of public spending reward governments for their public transfers. This article studies the electoral implications of welfare spending cuts in the early years of the Reagan Presidency, when public spending changes were particularly pronounced. Using 1982 NES data, this paper demonstrates that voters who lost public benefits punished Reagan but this only occurred when they identified with the Democratic Party. By contrast, benefit recipients not affected by government cuts were more likely to support Reagan, but again this was only significant among voters identifying with the party of government. This paper thus finds that governments cannot automatically “buy” votes by using welfare spending, the influence of which is instead cushioned by party identification.     

公共安全支出对陆疆国防支出影响的实证研究——基于陆疆9省(区)的面板数据

以陆疆9省(区) 2007-2016年国防支出与公共安全支出的面板数据作为样本数据,采用最大似然估计方法对短面板数据进行了随机效应回归分析,结果发现,公共安全支出对陆疆9省(区)国防支出具有显著性作用,陆疆经济发展水平制约着陆疆国防支出。公共安全支出与陆疆国防支出呈现负相关关系。陆疆安全稳定在一定程度上受到了城乡差距的影响。地方财政支出与国防支出的关系为正,财政支出的增加能为国防支出提供更多支持,但并不显著,说明地方财政支出对国防支出影响因子较小,国防支出在陆疆安全上有一个比较稳定的投入,也印证了陆疆国防支出与地方经济发展的关系。陆疆国防支出的增加对犯罪率的下降有促进作用,社会犯罪行为是陆疆另一个社会稳定影响的因素,一些国际犯罪、宗教类犯罪行为会影响陆疆国防安全。