State-building and patronage networks: how political parties embezzled the bureaucracy in post-war Kosovo

ABSTRACT

Why has the internationally promoted Weberian-style bureaucracy failed to replace patronage as the dominant principle of state organization in post-war Kosovo? This article explores how international actors’ rule-promotion activities and local actors’ strategies of resistance play out and interact to explain the failure. The empirical analysis focuses on rules of recruitment in the civil service system in the period 2000–2016. The analysis juxtaposes two consecutive stages of the state-building process, which are marked by different degrees and forms of international involvement: the pre-independence period, 1999–2008; and post-independence period, 2008–2016. Evidence from the case suggests that during the pre-independence period, legal inconsistencies embedded in the internationally promulgated legislation enabled local actors’ formal and informal strategies to recruit political cronies in the newly created civil service system. The transfer of authority from international administrators to elected local authorities, especially after Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, did not solve the problem of legal inconsistencies, and instead, served to consolidate governing parties’ strategies of control over recruitment in the state bureaucracy. More often than not, patron–client relationships that thrive at the borderline between formality and informality of political behaviour, continued to undermine external rule transfers.     

The Eurozone crisis and the European corporate elite: bringing corporate actors into focus

This paper uses a framework referred to as the ‘corporate reconstruction of European capitalism theory of integration’ to analyse the European Union’s response to the Eurozone crisis. Most political economy analyses of the Eurozone crisis have focused on political leaders, clashes between creditor and debtor member states and public opinions in analysing the handling of the crisis. This paper focuses instead on the input of corporate actors. It is argued that both the setting up of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the handling of its crisis were congenial to corporate preferences. Europe’s nascent corporate elite was concerned with eliminating currency risk when the EMU was set up and therefore did not push for fiscal federalism. When the flawed architecture of the Eurozone transformed that currency risk into sovereign credit risk, corporate preferences adapted and now favoured fiscal liability pooling and ultimately the setting up of a fiscal union.     

转轨国家政府俘获理论与中国公共管理变革

政府俘获理论虽然上世纪70年代就已提出,但对转轨国家政府俘获问题的研究却开展得较迟,直到90年代末,在世界银行组织的支持下,丹尼尔·考夫曼等人才以东欧和前苏联为调查研究对象就此进行了专门的研究.本文概述了他们的主要研究成果,并分析政府俘获带来的主要危害,然后结合正处于转轨过程中的中国存在的类似政府俘获现象,提出为了防止落入高掠夺国家的陷阱,中国公共管理需要进行的相关变革.     

浅议法学本科精英型人才培养模式

目前,我国高等教育法学本科人才培养模式已不适合我国未来发展的需要,更难适应全球化趋势对法学专业人才的要求,因此,必须反思现行的法学人才培养模式中存在的问题,从根本上改变教学观念,实事求是地分析法学人才培养上的障碍性因素,借鉴发达国家的法学人才培养经验,立足于我国国情提出可行的改进方法。本文认为,精英型人才是我国高等法学教育的培养目标,应以此为方向改进法学本科人才的培养模式。     

Beyond regulatory capture: Coproducing expertise for critical infrastructure protection

Complex industries such as petroleum production, civil aviation, and nuclear power produce “public risks” that are widely distributed and temporally remote, and thus tend to be ignored by the risk producers. Regulation is perhaps the most common policy tool for governing such risks, but requires expert knowledge that often resides solely within the industries. Hence, many scholars and policymakers raise concerns about “regulatory capture,” wherein regulation serves private interests rather than the public good. This paper argues that regulatory capture framing has tended to limit understanding of expertise and its role in governing public risks. Most studies of regulatory capture treat expertise as a source of knowledge and skills that are created exogenously to political processes, and which can therefore be politically neutral. By contrast, we draw on work in science and technology studies that highlight the value‐laden and relational nature of knowledge and expertise, showing how its formation is endogenous to political processes. Thus, we argue for both broadening analyses of regulatory capture to consider the historically contingent and uncertain process of creating expert knowledge, and going beyond the capture framing by considering the challenge of negotiating different epistemologies and ways of life. We illustrate this analytic strategy by examining the history of and current debate about critical infrastructure protection standards to protect the United States electric power grid from cyberattack. We conclude by considering the broader implications of these findings for governing public risks.     

How do gender quotas affect public support for women as political leaders?

Gender quotas have shown themselves to be an effective means of getting more women into political office. Less clear is the broader effect of gender quotas on egalitarian attitudes. This article uses a cross-national dataset of 48 countries worldwide to examine the role of gender quotas in the generation of individual-level attitudes to women as political leaders. Firstly, gender quotas appear to improve perceptions of women’s ability as political leaders in countries where they are present, having controlled for a range of individual-level and contextual influences. Second, this effect differs by sex. For women, the presence of gender quotas alone increases their support for women’s political leadership, something theorised as a ‘vote of confidence’ effect. Thirdly, this effect is not dependent on the type of quota implemented and holds for quotas adopted voluntarily by political parties and those that are brought about via a broader legal change.     

Anti‐elite parties and political inequality: How challenges to the political mainstream reduce income gaps in internal efficacy

There is growing interest in political inequality across income groups. This article contributes to this debate with two arguments about political involvement: poverty depresses internal political efficacy by undermining cognitive and emotional resources; and dissent in the party system reduces the efficacy gap to higher incomes. Specifically, conflict is to be expected between anti‐elite and mainstream parties to simplify political decisions and stimulate political attention among poor voters. These arguments are supported with comparative and experimental analyses. Comparative survey data shows that the income gap in efficacy varies with a novel measure of the anti‐elite salience in the party system. The causal impact of anti‐elite rhetoric is established though a representative survey experiment. Finally, the article investigates how these mechanisms affect both electoral and other forms of political participation.     

The Capture Theory of Regulations—Revisited

Amidst the rekindled interest in regulating the market that has emerged since the 2008 financial crisis, most attention has been paid to the debate between those who call for more regulation of the private sector in order to protect the public good, and those who claim that such regulations would do further damage to the economy by unduly constraining business. This essay seeks to refocus the debate about regulation by examining an alternative criticism––the theory of regulatory capture––which argues that regulations are routinely and predictably 'captured' and manipulated to serve the interests of those who are supposed to be subject to them, or the bureaucrats and legislators who write or control them. Ample evidence suggests that regulatory capture is indeed widespread and takes a variety of forms, which are reviewed here. Rather than debating whether more or less regulations are needed, the paper suggests that what is needed is a way to make regulations stronger––more capture-proof. It closes with a major policy change that would help accomplish this goal.

Institutionalization of the authoritarian leadership in China: a power succession system with Chinese characteristics?

To transfer power successfully at the top and prevent a leadership split during this process has always been extremely challenging for authoritarian regimes. Yet, power succession in China has demonstrated a high degree of stability in the past two decades. How did the authoritarian regime in China perform its leadership transition in an orderly and smooth manner? This paper argues that 30 years of institutionalization has resulted in the development of a power succession system with Chinese characteristics. By offering a large amount of primary and secondary data on Chinese elite politics, this paper analyses the institutional development of succession politics and its impacts on regime stability and legitimacy in China. The case of the Chinese succession system provides a dramatic example in understanding ‘authoritarian resilience’.     

从破坏性冲突到建设性冲突——老旧小区加装电梯的突围之道

老旧小区如何成功加装电梯日益凸显为城市社区治理中的老大难问题,代表不同利益的高低层住户之间的冲突在所难免。W市D小区一波三折的电梯加装过程显示:公共冲突既有正功能也有负功能;冲突的化解要采取整合的方式而非控制或妥协的方式;积极的制度环境对电梯加装工作起到了指导和推动作用;社区能人在冲突的化解中充当整合者的角色。在处理冲突时,要促使其从破坏性向建设性转变,努力整合各方利益,促进多方对话,同时充分发挥好制度环境和社区能人的作用。