The Effects of Blaming Others for Legislative Inaction on Individual and Collective Evaluations

Legislators commonly blame others for gridlock. We posit that legislators may engage in this type of rhetoric to minimize the individual reputational risks associated with legislative inaction or to boost the relative standing of their party. In a series of six survey experiments, we find that blaming others for inaction undermines voters’ evaluations of individual legislators who engage in this rhetorical strategy. This effect is particularly pronounced among out-partisans and independents. However, blaming rhetoric can also enhance the standing of the blamer’s party relative to the opposing party across all groups (including out-partisans), in large part by undermining the reputations of these other actors. Ultimately, we show that when an individual legislator engages in blaming rhetoric, the immediate net electoral effects are null. This suggests that coordinated efforts by a party to blame opponents may improve the party’s relative standing, while imposing few costs on those engaged in blaming.     

海洋命运共同体思想的内涵和实践路径

海洋命运共同体思想是人类命运共同体思想在海洋领域的细化,反映了国际海洋法的发展趋势和价值目标。它创造性的继承并发展了和而不同思想以及共同体思想,为全球海洋治理提供了新的价值指引。海洋命运共同体是共同体成员基于海洋共识和共同的海洋利益产生认同感和归属感,通过在海洋领域的共同合作形成的联合体,包括海洋政治、安全、经济、文化和生态命运共同体。中国在区域可以通过实施多边海洋行动,构建区域海洋命运共同体,实现区域合作关系的升级。海洋命运共同体是超越民族和国家的海洋观,中国在全球可以通过构建海上丝路命运共同体、提升国际制度性话语权和形成国际海洋法律新制度来践行海洋命运共同体思想。     

打破政策“黑箱”的制度设计——基于广州政策兑现实践的研究

如何打破政策“黑箱”是学界和社会关注的重要议题。以广州市政策兑现改革实践为例,探讨如何从制度设计层面来打开公共政策过程中的政策“黑箱”。研究发现,虽然公共政策过程是一个动态且复杂的过程,但是通过统筹政策制定和政策落地两端、主观要素客观化、模糊标准明确化、重塑政府流程等,能够形成确定的决策环境,控制非理性因素,约束自由裁量权,并压缩权力寻租空间,从而可以从源头消除政策“黑箱”的形成土壤。广州市政府政策兑现改革过程中,通过“输入—转化—输出”的制度框架设计,形成了从政策制定到政策执行再到政策结果与评估的政策闭环,并对政策兑现的相关责任单位、流程和时限都进行了严格把控,进而实现对政策“黑箱”内部决策要素的控制。从政策“黑箱”本身入手,破解政策“黑箱”难题,实现政策的阳光承诺和给付,最终形成极具特色和借鉴意义的广州模式。     

“粤港澳大湾区”三地制度建设路径探索

2019年中央颁布《粤港澳大湾区发展规划纲要》,将粤港澳大湾区计划初步建设成为世界一流湾区。改革开放以来,广东与港澳的关系一直非常紧密,尤其在经贸合作领域,香港和广东的关系犹如“前店后厂”。与长三角、京津冀地区实践不同,粤港澳大湾区是“一国两制”下的一次重大探索式发展。粤港澳大湾区有其特殊地位,粤港澳三地三种不同的关税区具有不同的制度和法律,应在维护“一国两制”的前提下探索三地的深度融合。     

农村信用社向合作银行的转制研究——绩效、原因、问题与政策建议

该文对农村信用社向农村合作银行的改制进行了分析,指出改革取得成功的主要原因,并对存在的问题进行了剖析。农村信用社向农村合作银行改制的改革,必须解决好合作银行性质与定位、省级联社的定位和功能、服务“三农”、县域范围市场竞争过度、以及人员素质难以适应金融发展需要和债务负担过重等问题,针对上述问题,该文提出相应的政策建议。     

The origins of severance pay in unemployment compensation: a comparative analysis

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to an under-developed field in the social policy literature through an analysis of the origins of severance pay (SP)/redundancy pay schemes and, more specifically, their first designs in nine countries—Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal. It has two objectives: first, to identify the key actors who shaped the design of the first SP schemes; second, to explain variations in terms of their mode of regulation, generosity and coverage. By building on the state-centric and power-resource perspectives, it identifies the conditions under which the state had an autonomous role vis-à-vis organized labour in SP reforms and the circumstances under which organized labour was the main actor. When the state was the key actor, it preferred legislation for the regulation of SP either to legitimize its apparatus in a ‘revolutionary’/‘potentially revolutionary’ context or to facilitate structural transformations of the economy in a ‘reformist’ context. When organized labour was the key actor, its preference was to regulate SP through ‘only collective bargaining’ or ‘legislation’, subject to the degree of unionization. Lastly, the paper argues that key actors (the state or organized labour) took into account the distributive structure of existing UI schemes when designing the coverage and generosity structure of the first SP schemes during the post-war era.     

An Ideational Approach to Gendered Institutional Change: Revisiting the Institutionalization of a New Prostitution Regime in Sweden

Recent work in the field of feminist institutionalism has made important progress in furthering our understanding of gendered institutional change. I argue that gradual ideational changes play an essential role in processes of gendered institutional change, and that examining the interaction between ideas and gendered institutions is of great importance for gaining a better understanding of processes of this type. This article revisits an empirical study of gendered institutional change in Swedish prostitution policy in the effort to specify two idea-based mechanisms that are conducive to gendered change, namely, consensus concerning the problem and gendering of the problem.     

What Mothers Do: Motherhood as a Resource for Negotiating Sick-Leave Legitimacy in Swedish Sickness Insurance Interactions

Sick leave in the Nordic countries is a gendered issue. Alongside other explanations, women’s higher levels of sick leave have been linked to their far-reaching family responsibilities. Meanwhile, studies have shown how such responsibilities induce questioning of the legitimacy of sick leave, indicating that normative aspects linking these categories cannot solely be approached in terms of causal explanations. The current study suggests an alternative way of studying this relationship, approaching motherhood as something being “done” in situated ways, to particular ends; a resource for interaction. By analysing naturally occurring interactions—meetings held by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency—the study renders visible the collaborative production of sick leave as a gendered matter, and motherhood as part of the negotiation of sickness insurance. The analysis shows the meaning and import of motherhood for sick leave to be a live issue for participants, drawing attention to how these categories are neither culturally predefined, nor dispositional, but flexibly assembled for certain purposes. Motherhood functions as a resource in two ways: (1) displaying restricted ability to care for children supports claims of impairment; (2) invoking motherhood works to account for slow or inactive rehabilitation. However, occasioning motherhood in the examined context is also risky: (3) displaying extensive mothering may be treated as indicating low commitment to rehabilitation, and (4) displaying limited mothering may be taken as indicating unfitness as a parent.     

External Pressures and Internal Dynamics in the Institutionalization of Performance-Based Budgeting: An Endless Process?

The well-known practice of performance-based budgeting (PBB) is a relevant component of the New Public Management (NPM) reform agenda and has become widespread, with varying approaches and results across countries. However, its variation within specific countries has remained largely unexplored. This study analyzes three organizations operating within the same context—three ministries in Italy—to contribute to a new understanding of PBB variation by illustrating why the same PBB practice can or cannot be implemented and internalized similarly across these organizations and thus become (or not) fully institutionalized. The study adopts and enriches the institutional approach by extending beyond isomorphic convergence toward PBB and explaining practice variation, linking the interactions between external pressures and internal dynamics at the organizational level to PBB institutionalization. The empirical analysis shows how a lack of alignment between external pressures and internal dynamics contributes to an unfinished and apparently endless process of institutionalization.     

The enabling role of institutional entrepreneurs in the adoption of IPSAS within a transitional economy: The case of Estonia

In the light of neoinstitutional theory and by adopting case study research methodology, this article explains the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards for modernizing public sector accounting in Estonia. This article reveals that the smooth—yet gradual—adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards‐compliant accounting systems was enabled by the involvement of powerful actors (i.e., institutional entrepreneurs) with foreign and/or business backgrounds. In addition, the change in public sector accounting in Estonia was facilitated by the developments in its international positioning, characterized by the transition from a Soviet communist to a market economy and subsequent European Union membership and by the absence of past accounting practices, which could potentially hinder the change.