Discovering the Dark Side of Power: The Principal’s Moral Hazard in Political-Bureaucratic Relations

Principal agent (PA) is among the most prominent concepts for analyzing the relationship between politics and bureaucracy. Nonethelesss, the inherent bias of PA scholars to attribute moral hazard almost exclusively to the agent, usually referred to as “bureaucratic drift”, requires re-examination. Building on the spare literature in which moral hazard of the principal is considered, this paper provides empirical evidence for a neglected aspect of the PA concept. Three cases of German regulatory agencies responsible for drug control, financial services and rail safety are analyzed in critical situations which were largely perceived as bureaucratic failures. The analysis reveals that a good deal of these failures, ranging from negligence to suppressing crucial information, has to be attributed to the political principal. This is called the dark side of power because the intention is to shift blame or to dodge political responsibility. Turning conventional PA reasoning upside down, the conclusion is that the principal’s moral hazard should be considered more routinely as a potential explanation for political-bureaucratic interactions.     

Voting Advice Applications and the Estimation of Party Positions – A Reliable Tool?

Data contained in Voting Advice Applications (VAA s) is not only a prerequisite for the vote recommendations they provide but can also be used for estimating party positions in low‐dimensional spaces. Given that VAA s can be designed differently in terms of their number of items and their measurement level, how much can one trust the party positions obtained from this source? We tackle this question by exploiting relevant variation in a real‐world setting: three VAA s offered at the 2017 Lower Saxony election. Despite substantial design differences, the policy spaces extracted through an inductive scaling approach are highly convergent. Simulated random item removal from the pooled dataset of all three VAA s furthermore suggests that about 40 items yield satisfactory reliability of the party positions. Finally, we find that a priori assigning VAA ‐items to ideological dimensions is potentially problematic as the interpretation of resulting party spaces may differ from the ones derived inductively.     

It Takes a Coalition: The Community Impacts of Collaboration

Members of Congress frequently collaborate on policy initiatives, reaching out to colleagues in both parties to find common ground on solutions for the problems faced by their constituents. Using a novel dataset of over 30,000 “Dear Colleague” letters sent by members of the 111th Congress, I use the collaborative relationships that exist in the earliest stages of the policy process to measure the social influence of legislators. I demonstrate that districts represented by members of Congress who are better connected to their colleagues receive a greater share of federal grant money. I argue that this is because collaborative legislators are well‐positioned to be influential allies to strategic bureaucrats who want to maintain a broad base of support for their programs in Congress. Thus, devoting resources to building relationships with their colleagues is one way members of Congress can more effectively support the communities they represent.     

State transformation and cross-border regionalism in Indonesia’s periphery: contesting the centre

Abstract

This article examines how the decentralisation and fragmentation of the Indonesian state and resultant central–local dynamics affect cross-border regionalism in Indonesia’s periphery. It argues that cross-border regionalism projects are best understood as sites for scalar contestation over regulatory control between central and local government. Moreover, scalar contestation around cross-border regional projects is characterised by the struggles to control relationships with transnational capital between elites operating at different tiers of the state. When elites at different scales have conflicting interests and strategies, this can cause policy incoherence, inhibiting the development of cross-border regionalism. Conversely, when they align, and intersect with the interests of transnational business, cross-border regionalism can succeed. To illustrate the argument, this article utilises the comparative case studies of the Batam free trade zone and West Kalimantan–Sarawak cross-border cooperation.     

The politics of landscape as ways of life in the ‘divided’ city: reflections from Mostar,Bosnia–Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

‘Divided’ cities – places of extreme exclusion and polarization – are sites where the paradox of both fragmentary and cosmopolitan capacity of the city comes to the fore. This article asks: What practices-in-landscape consolidate, construct and deconstruct the impression of a divided city? Drawing insights from the post-conflict Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the main argument I put forward is that urban infrastructures are a crucial medium through which social divisions and cohesions are performed and rearticulated on the ground. The article attends to the everyday of youth in Mostar turning to the politics of landscape as ways of life in the city.     

How is it Possible for Democracies to Effectively Tackle Long-Term Problems?

ABSTRACT

The aim of this essay is to examine if and how it is possible for the political system of democracy to effectively tackle long-term public problems that are wicked in nature, taking climate crisis as an example. It consists of four sections. The first section is devoted to a brief historical overview of the conflict between eco-authoritarianism and ecological democracy. The following section examines if and to what extent “environmental pessimism” – disillusionment with the ability of liberal/capitalist democracies to effectively tackle long-term environmental problems – which has made a remarkable comeback since late 1980s, is empirically grounded, on the basis of performance evaluation of the contracting parties to the Kyoto Protocol (adopted on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005), and the Climate Change Performance Index that evaluates and ranks the climate mitigation performance of 58 countries responsible for over 90 per cent of global energy-related CO₂ emissions, released every year by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe. The third section focuses on more theoretical/normative issues, critically examining the cogency of a claim, made by no small number of environmental pessimists, that democratic institutions, due to their myopic tendencies, usually work systematically to the disadvantage of future generations. The last section is devoted to the examination of measures thus far advocated and partly put into practice for correcting the myopic tendencies of democracy, emphasizing the vital need for non-representative measures, or self-restraint mechanisms built into democracy itself, whose primary function lies in preventing democracy from degenerating due to the influence of the myopic majority, thereby protecting ecological sustainability and the well-being of future generations.     

‘Without Education You Can Never Become President’: Teenage Pregnancy and Pseudo-empowerment in Post-Ebola Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the emergence of ‘teenage pregnancy’ as a new policy focus in post-Ebola Sierra Leone and explores how Sierra Leoneans interpret the problem of ‘teenage pregnancy’. I argue that the new policy focus is not indicative of changing or new problems. Rather, ‘teenage pregnancy’ has created opportunities for donors and the Government of Sierra Leone to continue cooperation in gender politics. At the same time, Sierra Leoneans are clearly concerned about ‘teenage pregnancy’, and many agree with sensitization campaigns that responsibilize young women and girls while downplaying structural factors that render them vulnerable to arrangements involving transactional sex.     

Of Distributive Politics and Pork Barrel System: Why Not Epistemic Governance Approach?

The paper attempts to situate distributive politics in the context of epistemic governance. The paper also seeks to analyze the various structures and systems, actors, agents and stakeholders, and norms and behaviors involved within the realm of theory and praxis in distributive politics. It borrows from the epistemic work targets espoused by Alasuutari and Qadir (2014), namely the environment, actors and virtues. Finally, the paper proposes an epistemic governance as policy approach in distributive politics as it tries to argue the shift of power from the hands of the political elites to the hands of the politically astute epistemes.     

试论儒家德治思想基础、特征及其局限

儒家政治思想是中国传统意识形态的基石,儒家的德治思想又是这个基石的内核,由此形成了独特的德治思维.儒家思想家们把从事政治活动的每个人都想象成为在道德方面完善的主体,这也是中国传统政治中的主流意识形态.本文在分析儒家德治思想的基础和特征的同时,从政治思维、政治理性、方法论等方面又进一步分析了儒家德治思想的局限.     

“坚持以人民为中心”的创新理念和重大实践对民办高校思政教育队伍建设的启示

习近平总书记在福建工作期间形成了极为宝贵的创新理念和重大实践。这些理念和实践具有前瞻性、开创性、战略性,其中“坚持以人民为中心”的理念和实践对民办高校思想政治教育队伍的建设有重要的指导意义。目前,民办高校思想政治教育队伍存在理论学习不深入、学生思想动态调研不充足、专业技能学习不及时、融入学生群体不顺畅、思想政治辅导员队伍不稳定、辅导员与思想政治理论课教师之间的思想政治教育不融合等薄弱点。针对这些问题,应将“坚持以人民为中心”作为民办高校思想政治教育工作的理念和实践,将一切工作的初衷紧紧围绕着学生这个群体,促进思想政治教育队伍的建设。