bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
From Social Theory to Policy Design
Authors: Linder Stephen H. , Peters B. Guy 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTLittle attention has been given in policy analysis to the creative process of designing solutions to public policy problems. There are a number of difficulties in applying macro-level theories – whether from economics, sociology, philosophy or macro-systems theory – in the policy process. Any macro-level theory will tend to provide inadequate guidance in one or more of three aspects of policy-making: a model of causation, a model for evaluating alternatives and outcomes, and a model of how interventions operate. Our current knowledge about which policy strategies work best under which conditions is at best rudimentary. Academic disciplinary perspectives focus on a narrow repertoire of policy instruments. What is required is a design focus which draws on instruments associated with a range of disciplines and professions. A design perspective involves both a systematic process for generating basic strategies and a framework for comparing them. Such an approach will require at least the following elements: (1) the characteristics of problems (scale, collectiveness, certainty, predictability, independence); (2) characteristics of goals (value-laden, operational, process of goal-setting); (3) characteristics of instruments (suitability of different instruments).
Analysing Public Expenditure: (2) Operating Purposes and Statistical Design
Authors: Copeman Harold 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe first of these papers (Copeman, 1981) gave a general description of the British system of public expenditure, and of the different price bases required in times of inflation, and considered recent changes and possible simplification.The present paper considers how and why the figures (on a given price base) are designed as they are, relating this to requirements of Parliamentary or governmental control (central or local), to operational efficiency, and to the need for open exposition of intentions and restraints. Examples are given from allocations to the Health Service. There are various degrees of control and audit of money voted to non-governmental bodies; where does public expenditure end? Are their accounts in line with control requirements? The comprehensiveness of expenditure planning in the United Kingdom, compared with most other countries, and the extension beyond the year ahead, has been a severe technical challenge. There is an interesting field of research into up-to-date international comparisons. An appendix discusses figures published for public expenditure, general government, central government and local authorities and provides a guide to sources of data about all aspects of public expenditure in Britain.
Incremental Budgeting: Antecedents of Change
Authors: Greenwood Royston 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe article examines the variables which preclude or facilitate shifts or change in patterns of budgeting within governments. Emphasis is placed upon the connection between systems of budgeting and underlying structures of ideas and values which constitute organisational ‘myths’. Drawing upon the literatures of political science and organisational analysis the paper identifies a combination of factors which facilitate the erosion of the legitimacy of prevailing myths and lead to their displacement. This thesis is empirically examined using data from twenty English local authorities.
From the Dark to the Light: The Open Government Debate in Britain
Authors: Bennett Colin 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe campaign in Britain to reduce official secrecy has had a number of broad and ill-defined objectives. This article argues that four basic values underpin demands for more open government: to promote more ethical conduct; to enhance executive accountability; to advance more informed policy-making; and to help individual citizens and groups advance particular rights and interests. This analytical framework is then applied to the three main strategies of open government that have so far been pursued. First, it is argued that the reform of Section 2 of the 1911 Official Secrets Act, while legally desirable, will not promote any of the above values. Second, a freedom of information act would principally satisfy the fourth objective, while providing more executive accountability on a pragmatic basis. Finally, an analysis of official publications released under the Croham Directive reveals that the British interpretation of open government, the discretionary release of consultative documents, has been designed and implemented to reinforce the dominant policy style of bureaucratic accommodation.
Local Government Reorganization and the Development of the Welfare State
Authors: Kjellberg Francesco 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis article attempts to analyze the reorganization of local government, perceiving it as a general phenomenon in the modern state. While occurring in most developed societies, the reforms at the sub-national level do not seem to have followed a common pattern; they have been introduced and combined in different ways. Accordingly, two main questions have to be raised. Why have so many developed societies gone through some kind of reorganization? And why has the reorganization taken place at different stages and in different forms? A general, but somewhat unsatisfactory answer is that this trend reflects the expansion of the public sector. A more specific answer requires a differentiation between (a) various categories of reform, (b) different stages in the development of the welfare state and (c) varying ideological perspectives. After an elaboration of these analytical tools, the article illustrates such a structural approach through a description of the reorganization process in Norway and Sweden.
Contention and Compromise: a Comparative Analysis of Budgetary Politics
Authors: Cusack Thomas R. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper attempts to place the role of defense spending within the overall context of the budgetary process. Using an extended version of the ‘Competing Aspirations Level Model’ based on the behavioral theory of decision-making, major budgetary aggregates, total spending, defense spending, exhaustive civilian expenditures, and capital outlays, are modelled as outcomes of independently generated aspirations, based on parochial organizational and environmental influences, and a reconciliation process reflecting the bargaining power of budgetary agents. An empirical assessment of the model's performance is conducted using the experience of thirteen national governments, including seven western industrialized states and six developing states. The results of this statistical analysis suggest that the model provides a useful basis for understanding and comparing budgetary processes and outcomes.
From the Positive to the Regulatory State: Causes and Consequences of Changes in the Mode of Governance
Authors: Majone Giandomenico 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTSince the late 1970s European governments have been forced to change their traditional modes of governance in response to such trends as increasing international competition and deepening economic and monetary integration within the European Union. Strategic adaptation to the new realities has resulted in a reduced role for the positive, interventionist state and a corresponding increase in the role of the regulatory state: rule making is replacing taxing and spending. The paper's first part identifies three sets of strategies leading to the growth of the regulatory state as external or market regulator, and as internal regulator of decentralised administration. The second part examines major structural changes induced by changes in regulatory strategies. The institutional and intellectual legacy of the interventionist state is a major impediment to the speedy adjustment of governance structures to new strategies. It would be unwise to underestimate the difficulties of the transition from the positive to the regulatory state, but it is important to realise that international competition takes place not only among producers of goods and services but also, increasingly, among regulatory regimes. Regulatory competition will reward regimes in which institutional innovations do not lag far behind the new strategic choices.
International Games With National Rules: How Regulation Shapes Competition in ‘Global’ Markets
Authors: Vogel Steven K. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTIn the most global of industries, such as telecommunications and finance, international competition remains governed primarily by national regulations. When multiple national regulators govern international markets, the regulators themselves compete. But do they compete in laxity, trying to reduce regulation as much as possible, or do they compete in regulatory subsidy, trying to rig regulations to favor domestic firms? These questions are examined in Britain and Japan. In telecommunications and finance there has been no single global trend toward regulatory laxity or regulatory subsidy; national regulations still set the terms for international competition; the game of regulatory competition is so complex that it is difficult to find any single strategy for winning; and national authorities will continue to have difficulty in shifting regulation to the international level.
Direct Democracy and Public Policymaking
Authors: Wagschal Uwe 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTWhat is the impact of direct democracy, e.g. referendums, on public policymaking? The study will present data for Switzerland, the United States, Australia and Germany leading to the conclusion that direct democracy is an effective, but flexible veto player against expansive spending and taxation. The level of public expenditure and taxation is significantly lower in countries that have elements of direct democracy compared to pure representative democracies. Several theoretical arguments support this finding. For example, the social discount rate of voters is lower than that of politicians. Also direct democracy is related to the benefit principle in public finance. Taxpayers want their payments to be related to public services they receive. They are therefore inclined to veto projects not reflecting their preferences. Moreover, referenda have an implicit restraining effect on governments and the mere threat can reduce their capacity to act.
Industrial Policies in OECD Countries: An Overview
Authors: McKay David , Grant Wyn 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTSince the financial economic crises of the early 1970s the debate about economic and industrial affairs has intensified everywhere with, in many countries,the focus of economic policy shifting from demand to supply side remedies. What is striking about the post-1974 pattern is the extent to which countries have diverged in economic performance. The results of attempts to explain these differences are contradictory both between and within academic disciplines, though there is general agreement that the microeconomic policies of government can, and in most cases have, affected economic performance. The objectives of the papers in this special issue are (1)to describe the nature of the industrial policy agenda in each country; (2) to describe the instruments available and the scale of assistance provided to industry directly or indirectly; (3) to provide an outline of the institutional and political context in which policy is formulated in each country. Three broad comparative conclusions can be drawn: (1) we should not be too dogmatic about inferring the preconditions (e.g. type of party competition or bureaucratic structure) for apparently ‘successful’ policies; (2) the pursuit of a coherent industrial strategy appears to depend on socio/political condition which have been present in some countries but absent in others, such as a broad acceptance among political elites on the need to play an active part in helping industry to adapt to change and the existence of good communications between political/bureaucratic and economic actors, including a broad acceptance by private investors of the need for government intervention ; (3) even in countries which meet these conditions, particular industrial strategies change over time, sometimes dramatically, though this suggests that these countries have a greater capacity to adapt to change, particularly in response to external events, than countries characterised by policy inertia or policy confusion.
French Planning and Industrial Policy
Authors: Estrin Saul , Holmes Peter 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper deals with the contribution of economic planning to French industrial policy and performance. This was highly significant until the mid 1960s but declined thereafter due to a combination of economic and political factors. The inherent problems of across-the-board regulation in a complex industrial economy reinforced the displacement of the planners from the traditional French elite. In the late 1970s, planning had begun again to provide an informational support to other policies for restructuring industry in the face of the world market. The paper ends with an evaluation of the Mitterrand government's aspirations for more dirigiste industrial planning.
Regulation and Regime: A Comparative Analysis
Authors: Elkin Stephen L. 
Published: November 2008

AbstractTwo frameworks for understanding the debate on regulation are discussed. In the first, an economizing perspective, various institutional arrangements are seen as instruments and the question posed is which is the most efficient in achieving public objectives. The second, a political perspective, begins from economizers' lack of interest in the basic organizing principles of the political structure within which the choice of regulatory arrangements occurs. Conceptions of such principles in the American case are considered and the implications of each for the choice of regulatory institutions are addressed. A parallel discussion is undertaken for the United Kingdom. The paper concludes by noting, among other things, that from a political perspective, an extensive regulatory sector looks more attractive than it does from an economizing perspective.
Satellite Broadcasting Policies and the Question of Sovereignty in Western Europe
Authors: Dyson Kenneth , Humphreys Peter 
Published: November 2008

AbstractThe article examines the manner in which public-policy for satellite broadcasting has been made in West Germany and France, the two countries currently leading developments in satellite broadcasting technology in Western Europe. A special theme of the two case studies is that of the complex relations and potential contradictions between industrial/technological policy and broadcasting policy, between the wider economics of satellite broadcasting and its cultural dimension. The article demonstrates a common pattern, as policy makers in both countries have been constrained to develop a broker role between competing aims and between national/regional pressures and international pressures. Nevertheless, both ideological and structural differences remained of enduring importance in establishing the parameters of policy making, and produced different, as well as similar, policy outcomes in the two countries. The question of ‘sovereignty’ is also set within the wider European context and the article examines responses at this latter level, in particular the European Community.
Creeping Universalism in the Welfare State: Evidence from Australia
Authors: Goodin Robert E. , Grand Julian Le 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThere are good reasons to suppose that the non-poor will infiltrate welfare programmes originally targeted on the poor. This paper discusses this phenomenon of ‘creeping universalisation’ and provides a number of possible explanations for it. Evidence is used from Australia to show that creeping universalisation does indeed occur, and to test the competing explanations. It is concluded that the most likely explanation for the phenomenon is individual behavioural responses: that is, the non-poor respond to the imposition of a means-test by re-arranging their affairs, legitimately or illegitimately, so as to pass the test.
Mrs. Thatcher's Employment Prescription: An Active Neo-Liberal Labor Market Policy
Authors: Robertson David Brian 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThough each of the capitalist democracies has developed a similar battery of programs for mitigating labor market problems, politically significant differences in strategy underlie superficial similarities. By the 1970s, labor market strategies could be distinguished by three models: a passive social democratic orguardianstrategy (Britain), an active social democratic oregalitarianstrategy (Sweden), and a passive neo-liberal orbusiness-centeredstrategy (United States). In response to high unemployment, the Thatcher government has resurrected a long dormant fourth strategy that combines neo-liberal principles with an active state. This active neo-liberal ormarket-centeredapproach seeks a workforce that is less organised, has greater wage disparities, and is more adaptable to business needs. The government's activism is evident in the growth of the Manpower Services Commission, both in absolute terms and relative to passive compensatory measures. Its neo-liberalism is evident in reducing structural impediments to lower wages, increasing incentives for individual initiative, and revamping employment and training schemes along neo-liberal lines. These efforts correlate with decreasing levels of union membership, increasing self-employment, and increasing wage disparities in the British economy, trends that are, by the government's criteria, improvements.
Popular Sovereignty and the Search for Appropriate Institutions
Authors: March James G. , Olsen Johan P. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper is about criteria for assessing alternative political institutions in a society committed to popular sovereignty. The issues are classic, and we do not attempt a comprehensive review of the ways in which they run through political and economic thought since Aristotle. An aggregative perspective on political institutions, which describes politics in terms of aggregating exogenous, prior preferences of citizens, is contrasted with an integrative perspective, which describes politics more in terms of the development of preferences within a framework of rights and norms. The evaluation of aggregative processes and institutions highlights questions of efficiency, preferences, and endowments. The evaluation of integrative institutions focuses on questions of competence and integrity. Many of the most influential contemporary discussions of political institutions are based on an aggregative framework that is relatively inattentive to issues of political integration. This contemporary emphasis on metaphors of aggregation, however, represents a phase in a history of oscillation between aggregation and integration in politics and political theory, and there are signs that the emphasis may shift in the next few decades to a greater consciousness of integration. Although the cyclic process is not escaped through awareness of it, such awareness may provide a basis for a more thoughtful approach to the search for appropriate institutions within a political system dedicated to popular sovereignty.
The Middle Classes and the Welfare State under Conservative and Labour Governments
Authors: Grand Julian Le , Winter David 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe Conservative Government elected in Britain in 1979 wished to change the extent and pattern of government expenditure. We use econometric techniques to investigate whether it did so in the period up to 1984, concentrating attention on the welfare state. We also test the hypothesis that the observed changes favoured the middle classes. After discussing the channels by which the middle classes influence government policy, a model of government behaviour is outlined. The theoretical model indicates the forms of specification error that we might expect in our econometric results, which, in turn, suggest that the Conservatives tended to favour the middle classes, while the previous Labour administrations did not. However, the estimates for the Labour period appear to be misspecified, but those for the Conservative period survived tests of misspecification.
Income Security Policies in the United States: The Inevitability and Consequences of Retrenchment
Authors: Palmer John L. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTDuring the 1960s and early 1970s, strong economic growth and highly expansionary income security policies led to considerable progress for the entire American population with respect to major income security goals. However, in the last fifteen years much of this progress has been either arrested or reversed, particularly for the non-aged, as economic growth slowed and income security policies ceased to expand and, in some cases, contracted. This retrenchment was the inevitable consequence of numerous phenomena which preceded, and were reinforced by the Reagan era. American income security policies are not likely to contract generally in the future, nor to resume expanding in a direction characteristic of many Western European welfare states. Rather, the prospects are for slow economic growth, higher targetting of programs by income in some areas, and marginal expansions requiring minimal new commitments of public resources in others. Major income security problems, especially among the lower income population, will remain.
Outcomes of Nuclear Technology Policy: Do Varying Political Styles Make a Difference?
Authors: Rüdig Wolfgang 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe paper looks at the outcomes of nuclear technology policies in five advanced Western industrialised countries which have developed major nuclear construction industries. The genesis, development and dissemination of thermal nuclear reactors is examined and found to be influenced by a range of non-technical factors. Various concepts of ‘political styles’ are explored. Different styles of technological development are identified with reference to the networks of actors relevant to the development of thermal reactor technology, taking particular account of the resources of different actors and their interrelationship. Three distinctive styles are found, associated with three different technological outcomes, two of which are associated with policy success. We conclude that political styles do make a difference, but that their applicability to the explanation of outcomes of technology policy is dependent on the resources of individual actors and the specific demands set by the technological, economic and political context.
Lumpy Goods and Cheap Riders: An Application of the Theory of Public Goods to International Alliances
Authors: Thompson Fred 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTMancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser's ‘An Economic Theory of Alliances’ has been described as ‘the best known application of the theory’ of collective (or public) goods. In that article, Olson and Zeckhauser advanced the claim that America's Western European Allies (and by implication, Japan as well) are all, more or less, ‘free riders.’ Yet, more than twenty years later, the meaning of this claim remains very much in doubt. This article outlines Olson and Zeckhauser's basic argument and conclusions and the evidence against their argument; explains how application of the ‘free rider’ thesis to the problem of collective security can be revised in the light of contemporary thinking about the provision of collective goods; presents some preliminary tests of this formulation; and suggests a few of the implications of this analysis for the formulation of United States defense policy.