Red Tape,Rule Burden,and Legitimate Performance Trade-Offs: Results from a Vignette Experiment

Abstract

Goals in the public sector are complex and managers can face situations in which pursuing one legitimate goal necessitates performance trade-offs in other areas. This study tests how knowledge of legitimate performance trade-offs shapes the perception of red tape. Using a vignette experimental design and a sample of university students, between group t-tests and regression analyses suggest that, when evaluating increased rule burden, individuals that are provided with information about how objectively burdensome rules serve alternative values such as equity and effectiveness associate them with lower levels of red tape. A series of Monte Carlo simulations suggest that this effect is substantial.     

创设利益制度是社会和谐的法治基础——和谐社会利益关系问题的法学思考

利益矛盾和冲突不仅是社会转型期国家的显著特征,同时,也是形成不受以往制度约束的和谐环境的重要前提。本文以分析和谐社会利益制度的法律根源作为出发点,在此基础上从利益博弈的机理层面上探寻利益制度形成的逻辑起点和实体条件,以及政府如何在利益群体博弈过程中作出创新性的实验安排,进而为在我国社会转型过程中,形成社会和谐与经济发展的基础性力量,以及进一步提高政府执政合法性的问题提供必要的实践依据和理论支持。     

Restoring accountability in pretrial release: the Philadelphia pretrial release supervision experiments

As drug arrests and jail overcrowding added pressure to increase pretrial release in localities during the 1980s and 1990s, the need to manage a larger and higher-risk pretrial population of defendants awaiting adjudication in the community became a high priority for justice agencies. In the late 1990s Philadelphia officials sought to discover the ingredients of a successful supervision strategy through four interlinked field experiments to provide an empirical basis for a major reform of the pretrial release system. The results of the linked randomized experiments question common assumptions about “supervision,” its impact and effectiveness, about the underlying nature of the noncompliant defendant, and deterrence implications. The study emphasizes the importance of interpreting the findings in the context of implementation of the policy reform. Findings suggest that facilitative notification strategies wield little influence on defendant behavior and that deterrent aims are undermined by the system's failure to deliver consequences for defendant noncompliance during pretrial release. The most significant contribution of the article is its illustration of a major evidence-based policy reform undertaken by a major court system.     

Lecture Versus Simulation: Testing the Long-Term Effects

Abstract

Active learning techniques are being use with increasing frequency in the classroom and more time is being dedicated to designing and implementing them. However, the literature still suffers from a lack of rigorous empirical methods to test the effects of simulations. Most of the claimed benefits of utilizing simulations, and other active learning techniques, are improved soft skills and higher order thinking like empathy, confidence, public-speaking abilities, and interpersonal skills—all of which don’t lend themselves well to scientific measurement. This gap in the literature is especially troubling considering that time spent using simulations is time not spent using other methods. This article seeks to test the differing impacts of simulations versus traditional lectures over the long-term using a simple 30-minute simulation and rigorous experimental methods. The most important results show that students learn more initially from a lecture, but that students who were exposed to the simulation were better able to retain that information over the long-term.     

Partisan Media and Engagement: A Field Experiment in a Newly Liberalized System

How does media exposure affect political engagement in newly liberalized systems? Some celebrate newly vibrant and diverse media, believing that they mobilize citizens. Others worry that these outlets, which are often partisan, dampen engagement. We theorize that exposure to political programming engenders interest in politics irrespective of program bias, but that interest does not necessarily beget action. Partisan media affect participation only when altering attitude strength, and thus motivations. To evaluate media effects on interest and participation, we conducted a field experiment in Ghana, in which subjects in tro-tros (commuter vans) were randomly exposed to different types of live talk radio. We find that partisan and nonpartisan media increased political interest, but not participation. Instead, exposure to alternate perspectives on cross-cutting media (i.e., those biased against subjects’ partisan preferences) heightened ambivalence and dampened participation, measured as signing a petition to parties. Partisan media simultaneously increased interest and decreased participation.     

在经验与规范之间:试验立法及其类型化——一种立法进路的提倡

立法理想与法律运行实践间背离的中国境遇,以文本法律不完全是"能用之法",且立法承诺在执法中不能全部兑现之困局为现实表征。以进化论理性主义的哲学立场和无知论的知识假设为理论支撑,采取反复试错、吸纳建议、对话商谈等自发性工具,将实践证明可行的执法经验提炼与抽象,进而升华为普遍性规则的试验立法进路,是修正建构论唯理主义立法进路并撬动当前格局的一个支点。试验立法进路以"采纳—辐射"这个简式架构为运作逻辑。目前的试验立法主要有尝试探索型试验立法、落实测试型试验立法与示范效仿型试验立法三种模式。试验立法的实践性意味着多数立法活动将建立在证据或实证研究的基础上,也将具有方法论的意义,有望成为我国立法方法法定化的发展方向。     

The Effects of Local Government Consolidation on Turnout: Evidence from a Quasi‐Experiment in Switzerland

In the last decades, municipal mergers have been one major element of local government reforms in Switzerland and beyond. In this article, we describe and analyze the political effects of this development. We use a quasi‐experimental setting to test the impact of municipal mergers on electoral participation. We find that in merged municipalities, the decrease in turnout is significantly stronger than in non‐merged municipalities. Further, the effect is more pronounced in relatively small localities. There is a temporal dimension to this effect—that is, turnout drops mainly in the first election after the first merger, but not so much after the second or third merger. Hence, the study provides a skeptical yet differentiated perspective on the democratic consequences of municipal mergers and points to further research avenues to develop a more comprehensive understanding of local government consolidation.     

Two sides of the same coin: can campaigns generate support for both human rights and retributive violence?

ABSTRACT

Do framing strategies that are effective at encouraging pro-social behavior, such as participation in human rights campaigns, also mobilize support for violence within the same subjects? We use an experimental research design to examine individuals’ reactions to personal, humanizing narratives about past victimization. Participants are randomly assigned to one of eight treatment groups, which variously highlighted the humanity of the subject, the intensity of the past violence, and/or an evocative photograph of the subject that underscores her loss and vulnerability. We expect narratives that emphasize the subject’s humanity will encourage the audience to see the subject as innocent and as a victim, but also to feel angry about her experience. As a result, individuals will be more likely to defend the subject’s human rights, and to condone her use of retributive violence. We find that humanizing narratives lead respondents to simultaneously support a human rights appeal on the subject’s behalf and her use of retributive violence. Perceiving the subject in the narrative as innocent or as a victim mediates these effects, but anger often does not.     

Effects on Knowledge of Nudging Citizens with Information

Nudging is a policy instrument that can affect citizen behavior, often by providing information. We argue that nudging can also affect citizens’ knowledge, which can become the basis for future choices. In this manner, providing information can make the nudging initiative stick. We test the effect of an information treatment on three types of knowledge in a field experiment. The treatment consists of information on reading strategies designed to nudge parents to read with their children, randomly assigned to 1438 families. We show how nudging by providing information does in fact increase parents’ knowledge, irrespective of socio-economic background.     

Intergovernmental Grants and Public Expenditures: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

The relationship between intergovernmental grants and public expenditures is one of the most studied phenomena in the local public finance literature. However, little is known about whether the impact of unconditional grants is fundamentally different from that of other sources of municipal revenue. We study this question by means of a large-scale randomised survey experiment among Danish local politicians, which allows for a comparison of the impact of changes in various sources of municipal revenue. Our findings challenge the conventional conception in the public finance literature that money works differently depending on which sector they are generated in. Instead, ideology plays an important role in explaining how local politicians want to allocate resources when faced with changes in local government revenue.