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.     

Building A Reasonable Power

正China’s military spending is growing moderatelyChina’s defense spending, despite rapid increases, matches the legitimate nationa defense needs of a large country.Chinese President Xi Jinping made these remarks in response to a question on China’s rising defense budget after a speech sponsored by the Koerber Foundation in Berlin on March28 during his two-day state visit to Germany.In early March, the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, passed the     

Advancing Fiscal and Tax System Reforms

正China Economic Weekly Issue No.33,published on August 25,2014On June 30,a plan for reforming China’s fiscal and tax systems was reviewed and adopted by the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.Its priorities include improving management and supervision of government budgets,deepening tax system reform,and adjusting fiscal relations between central and local governments to make     

Reconsidering the Relationship Between Welfare Spending and Serious Crime: A Panel Data Analysis with Implications for Social Support Theory

Several researchers have found an inverse relationship between welfare spending and serious crime. With few exceptions, these findings have been based on cross‐sectional designs, single measures of welfare spending, and few indicators of crime. In response to these limitations, the relationship between welfare spending and crime was reconsidered using panel data from California counties. Fixed‐effects regressions revealed virtually no relationship between several measures of welfare spending and five types of serious crime: (1) homicide; (2) robbery; (3) assault; (4) burglary; and (5) larceny. The estimates were resistant to numerous robustness checks and alternative specifications. The most plausible explanation for the findings is that heterogeneity was not controlled for in previous studies. Implications for social support theory are discussed.     

县级财政科技投入结构及其动力研究——基于安徽省C县的实证调查

县域财政科技投入主要体现为财政局拨付、科技局统筹管理的分配模式,但农林等其他县直单位同样也存在科技投入。县本级科技支出居主导地位,其他资金主要来自于上级部门的科技专项。科技推广体系呈现以县级科技集群为轴心的向下辐射形态,与企业、各类生产合作社、个人发生复杂的供需互动,相应对各类需求主体也产生不同的效益。以科技考核竞争、“发展一晋升”竞争、建楼面子之争和邻区比对等构成的混合竞争系统,是影响县域财政科技投入的主要动力。     

Race,Sophistication, and White Opinion on Government Spending

The conventional wisdom in public opinion research suggests that the white public views government spending as a single race-coded issue. This article develops an alternative theory that rests on two propositions. First, the white public sees government spending not as a single issue, but rather, as two distinct issues: spending on the deserving poor and spending on the undeserving poor. Second, political sophistication strengthens the impact racial stereotypes have on attitudes toward spending on the undeserving poor, and it does not affect the relationship between stereotypes and attitudes toward spending on the deserving poor. These hypotheses are tested using data from the 1996 and 1992 NES surveys. The empirical results provide strong support for both propositions.     

A catch to the war trap: Great powers in conflict with one another appear not to act as expected‐utility maximizers

According to calculations marshalled to support Bueno de Mequita's expected‐utility model of interstate conflict, and contrary to its basic proposition, great powers in conflict with one another during 1815–1974 do not appear to have acted as expected‐utility maximizers.     

The Post-Coup Military Spending Question Revisited, 1960–2000

Do military regimes spend more on the military than other regime types? All leaders cater to their winning coalition. For military leaders, core supporters are other members of the military. To solicit support from this group, first, leaders are persuaded to spend more on the military to ensure their political survival, while other autocratic leaders tend to view the military as a competing power center. Second, the cost of repressing challenges from the public in military regimes is cheaper than in other regimes; therefore, leaders in military regimes allocate more resources to the military to satisfy them. We test this argument by examining military spending in different regime types for 1960–2000. The empirical results from Prais-Winsten regression with panel-corrected standard errors indicate that military regimes allocate more, on average, to the military than other regimes and that military rulers brought into power through military coups or who have experienced military coup attempts against them increase their military resource allocation.     

Legislative Fragmentation and Government Spending in Presidential Democracies: Bringing Ideological Polarization into the Picture

We claim that, in presidential democracies, the effect of increasing fragmentation on government spending should be conditional on polarization, defined as the ideological distance between the government's party and other parties in Congress. We build a model where this result follows from negotiations between the legislature and an independent government seeking the approval of its initiatives—as in presidential democracies. Using cross‐country data over time, we test the empirical validity of our claim finding that, in presidential democracies, there is indeed a positive effect of fragmentation only when polarization is sufficiently high. The same is not true for parliamentary democracies.