Legislative Transparency and Credit Risk

Open governance requirements are designed to improve accountability, which implies that transparent governments are more trustworthy stewards of their publicly invested power. However, transparency may also reduce institutional effectiveness and inhibit political compromise, diminishing the capacity to manage resources responsibly. We assess empirical support for these competing perspectives in the context of American state legislatures, many of which have become exempt from state sunshine laws in recent decades. We leverage variation in the timing of these legislative exemptions to identify the effect of removing transparency in a crucial governing institution on investors’ risk perceptions of states’ general obligation bonds. Our analysis of these data during the period 1995–2010 suggests that removing legislative transparency reduces state credit risk. We conclude that while openness in government may be normatively desirable, shielding legislative proceedings from public view may actually be better for states’ debt repayment capacity, improving their overall fiscal health.     

The Strategic Logic of Credit Claiming: A New Theory for Anonymous Terrorist Attacks

In theory, terrorism is a political communication strategy for groups to convey their grievances and the costs of ignoring them. In practice, though, terrorist groups take responsibility for just a small portion of their attacks. Rather than getting credit for the violence, terrorist leaders generally deny their operatives committed it. This theoretical and empirical disconnect may explain why scholars have ignored the subject of unclaimed attacks despite these being the norm. With a mixed-methods research design, our study helps to fill this lacuna by proposing and testing a new theory to help account for variation in which attacks are claimed.     

RNICE Model: Evaluating the Contribution of Replication Studies in Public Administration and Management Research

Replication studies relate to the scientific principle of replicability and serve the significant purpose of providing supporting (or contradicting) evidence regarding the existence of a phenomenon. However, replication has never been an integral part of public administration and management research. Recently, scholars have called for more replication, but academic reflections on when replication adds substantive value to public administration and management research are needed. This article presents the RNICE conceptual model, for assessing when and how a replication study contributes knowledge about a social phenomenon and advances knowledge in the public administration and management literatures. The RNICE model provides a vehicle for researchers who seek to evaluate or demonstrate the value of a replication study systematically. The practical application of the model is illustrated using two published replication studies.     

Private Water,Public Good: Water Privatization and State Capacity in Chile

In the global policy debate over whether water services in developing countries should remain public or be privatized, advocates for privatization call for reducing the role of the state in water services, while civil society groups argue that privatization violates the human right to water. This article examines water privatization in Chile, a crucial case in the debate over the role of markets and states in water services. Chile is known as a water privatization success story due to its high coverage of drinking water and sanitation under a fully privatized system. The article addresses two questions: How effectively does Chile meet the standard for fulfilling the human right to water within the privatized system? To what extent has privatization in Chile reduced the role of the state in water service provision? I find that the human right to water, narrowly defined, is fulfilled in Chile; however, this outcome is not attributable to the merits of privatization. Chile’s strong state capacity to govern the water sector in the public interest by embedding reforms in state interventions explains the relative success of the Chilean water sector. These findings support the argument that a strong state role is necessary to fulfill the human right to water, even in a privatized water sector.