bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Comparing Profitability in the Public Utilities, Defence and Pharmaceuticals1
Authors: Martin Stephen , Hartley Keith 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe United Kingdom's system of utility regulation – controlling prices rather than profits – is under increasing criticism. At the same time, the government continues to employ rate of return controls when purchasing from the defence and pharmaceutical industries. The existence of alternative regulatory regimes raises three questions. First, has price cap regulation enabled the UK utilities to earn excessive profits? Second, has profit regulation prevented excessive profitability in the defence and pharmaceutical industries? Third, how does profitability compare between price cap (utilities) and rate of return (defence/pharmaceuticals) regulation? Our results suggest that three of the four utilities studied have been able to earn rates of return that are considerably greater than in the corporate sector as a whole. Price caps have been far too lenient. In defence and pharmaceuticals there is less evidence of excessive profitability but these suppliers still earn 25 per cent more than comparable firms elsewhere.
Decentralization and Privatization: Education Policy in Chile
Authors: Parry Taryn Rounds 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTMany countries have experimented with decentralization and privatization policies in hopes of increasing public sector efficiency. This article explores the impact of decentralization and privatization of education in Chile. Decentralization did have some benefits such as improved administrative efficiency and greater productive efficiency. However, government size, as measured by the total personnel working in the education sector, increased under decentralization. Privatization of education in Chile created a type of voucher system. Although educators are more accountable to parents who compare products, the greatest problem is that schools do not necessarily respond to competition by promoting better quality education. Comparisons of student performance in public and private schools in Chile is not conclusive, but national average scores have not risen even though private provision of education has expanded dramatically while public education has waned. Finally, both decentralization and privatization resulted in greater inequity in expenditures and in the performance of students from different income groups.
Industrial Policy and Non-policy in the United States
Authors: McKay David 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTIn the context of declining relative output and productivity there have been increasing calls for the American government to play a greater role in industrial policy in recent years. Traditionally, however, US government intervention has been ad hoc and reactive rather than planned and strategic. Regulation policy has rarely been linked to economic growth, and most recently has evolved in a policy context separate from and largely antagonistic to business. Direct and indirect government aid is largely a result of the lobbying activities of diverse economic interests operating in an open but fragmented policy system. Of the various industrial policy options open to federal governments only one, facilitative or positive adjustment policy, is politically and ideologically possible. Even this, however, will be difficult to implement in a pluralistic and fragmented political system.
The Industrial Policy of Japan
Authors: Hills Jill 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTJapan has been characterised as the most successful industrialised country in its ability to attain growth in GNP, even during a world recession. This article explores the background to the Japanese economic success of postwar years. It emphasises in particular the part played in that success by the Japanese banking sector and cheap credit extended to expanding industries. The article discusses the respective roles of the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Finance. It concludes that both domestic and international pressures are producing changes within the Japanese economy which are reflected in alterations in the tasks and influence of these institutions.
Regional Implications of Industrial Policy: The Italian Case
Authors: Faini Riccardo , Schiantarelli Fabio 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPrior to 1974/5 the industrial problem of Italy was clearly seen as that of trying to industrialise the South. However, the end of cheap labour and cheap energy meant that Mezzogiomo industrialisation could no longer be seen in isolation from the rest of the country. Underpinning the new policy was the compromise set of measures approved at the end of 1977 to deal with the problem of ‘industrial reconversion and restructuring’. It is not clear that the more general approach now in effect adds up to a coherent industrial strategy. However, a quantitative evaluation of past investment policies reveals a considerable flexibility in the policy response to the new economic conditions.
Policy Entrepreneurship in Government: An American Study
Authors: Marmor Theodore R. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis essay contrasts the careers of Robert Ball and Wilbur Cohen, two American public administrators who have devoted fifty years to America's social insurance institutions, with other types of public actors, especially the in and outer rising spirally across departments, policies and administrations. America's separation of powers and federalism reward with influence those who combine entrepreneurial energy, long-term program commitment, and managerial skill; other political structures provide different patterns of opportunities and constraints. It then applies this perspective to Ball and Cohen's participation in three periods of American social policy history: the formation of federal social insurance policy (1935 to 1950); the expansion period (1950–1970); and the turbulent period of stagflation and fiscal stress (1972 to the present).
The Politics of Blame Avoidance
Authors: Weaver R. Kent 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPoliticians are motivated primarily by the desire to avoid blame for unpopular actions rather than by seeking to claim credit for popular ones. This results from voters' ‘negativity bias’: their tendency to be more sensitive to real or potential losses than they are to gains. Incentives to avoid blame lead politicians to adopt a distinctive set of political strategies, including agenda limitation, scapegoating, ‘passing the buck’ and defection (‘jumping on the bandwagon’) that are different than those they would follow if they were primarily interested in pursuing good policy or maximizing credit-claiming opportunities. These strategies in turn lead to important policy effects, including a surrender of discretion even when it offers important credit-claiming opportunities.
Social Experiments and the Habitual Force of Law
Authors: Rhoads Steven E. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTAdvocates of pervasive social experimentation neglect to consider the effect that suchexperimentation might have on citizens' respect for the law and their inclination to obey it. Since habit plays a large part in law abidingness, frequent alterations in law, even when substantively justified on narrow policy grounds, weaken the power of law in general. Because of their great utility, we should use social experiments occasionally when they can shed light on crucial dimensions of truly important policy questions. But because pervasive experimentation threatens law abidingness and citizen support for the regime, we should decide against some otherwise justifiable experiments and neither expect nor wish for the sort of experimenting society advocated by many social scientists.
A Game-Theoretical Interpretation of Inflation and Unemployment in Western Europe
Authors: Scharpf Fritz W. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe paper aims at a more complete, yet still parsimonious, explanation of macro-economic policy failure and success during the ‘stagflation’ period of the 1970s. Focusing on four countries, Austria, Great Britain, Sweden and West Germany, it is shown that both runaway inflation and rising unemployment could be avoided whenever it was possible to achieve a Keynesian concertation between fiscal and monetary expansion on the one hand and union wage restraint on the other. The actual policy experiences of the four countries are then explained in terms of the linkage between a ‘coordination game’ played between the government and the unions in which macro-economic outcomes are determined, and a politics game in which the government tries to anticipate the electoral responses of different voter strata to these outcomes.
Does Corporatism Really Matter? The economic crisis and issues of political theory
Authors: Therborn Goran 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTIn spite of a recently growing interest in corporatism as a political explanation of cross-national variations of economic performance and as a device for successful crisis management, there is little evidence that corporatism matters as a determinant of economic outcomes. Two kinds of corporatism – as a pattern of interest intermediation or industrial relations, and as a system of concerted public policy-making – are distinguished and tested with OECD data from the 1973 – 85 crisis. Little or no support for either corporatist explanation was found. Alternative perspectives of industrial relations, labour organisations, public policy concertation, state administration, and politico-economic institutions are discussed as offering more promising explanations of differences in governments’ responses to economic crisis.
The Political Appraisal of Employment Policies
Authors: Rose Richard 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTBecause employment is a problem of public policy, it involves elected politicians as well as economists designing policy instruments. The political appraisal of economic policies is necessary and often decisive in the selection of government policies. It first considers what we mean by saying that employment is a public policy problem. Secondly, it considers two attributes for appraising policies: political desirability, and economic effectiveness. In the third section alternative models of choice in conditions of uncertainty are presented, depending upon whether or not there is consensus among politicians about political desirability, and whether or not there is consensus among economists about the effectiveness of a policy. The concluding section considers conditions for integrating political and economic appraisals in government decision making.
Political Immobilism and Labour Market Performance: The Dutch Road to Mass Unemployment
Authors: Braun Dietmar 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTA political-institutional explanation of the deteriorating labour market performance of the Netherlands during the economic crisis of the 1970s is suggested. By comparing the macroeconomic and labour market strategies of the Netherlands and full employment countries the economic feasibility of Dutch solutions to the unemployment problem is estimated. Dutch strategies turn out to have been of a fragile and contradictory character, while full employment countries could rely on rather coherent and consistent strategies. This difference in strategy-building is very likely a result of differences in the political-institutional structures of countries. The policy-making process in the Netherlands has been subject to political immobilism. Institutional ineffectiveness after the first oilcrisis, a balance-of-power situation, concertation without consensus and internal contradictions within the Christian Democratic party have resulted in the failure to control the labour market.
Improving Implementation Through Framing Smarter Statutes
Authors: Ingram Helen , Schneider Anne 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTStatutory design is the source of many problems encountered in implementation, yet policy scholars have not made much headway in providing coherent and consistent advice for framing smarter statutes. There is a great deal of disagreement about how much discretion statutes should leave to implementers, and four distinct and conflicting schools of thought have emerged. This article advises that none of the perspectives is always correct and patterns for allocating discretion should take into account the implementation context. Contexts vary from statute to statute and may change for different policy elements within particular policies. The core elements in policy content are identified and linked in a scheme that is more comprehensive and relevant to policy results than previous work. The article also provides a ‘value-added’ conception of implementation in which the extent of discretion exercised by implementers is measured by changes they make in the core elements of policy.
Federalism Versus Centralisation: Organizational Design and Public Broadcasting in America and Australia
Authors: Davis Glyn 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTFollowing Wildavsky's argument that a federal bias is often the best principle for organising public policy, this study compares two national public broadcasting systems: the diffuse pattern of multiple agencies used in the United States of America and the highly centralized design employed in Australia. The paper examines whether each structure can respond to an audience while resisting the partisan demands of politicians. Significant advantages are found in the American model, though the question arises of whether participation and editorial independence in public broadcasting are bought at the cost of efficiency and effectiveness.
How States Utilize Foreign Evidence
Authors: Bennett Colin J. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis article examines how evidence about Program A in Country A may be utilized in Country B, and thus how utilization may explain the adoption of the same program. Elites and activists have a number of interests in using policy evidence from another country: to put an issue to a systemic or institutional agenda, mollify political pressure, provide an exemplar, indicate the range of options or reinforce conclusions already reached. The interests of the importer dictate the nature, timing and origins of the evidence injected into policy debate. This framework is applied to the case of freedom of information policy. An analysis of how and why evidence about the United States Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was utilized in Canada and Britain reveals that FOIA was used as an exemplar in Canada and the reverse in Britain.
Sleeping with an Elephant: The American Influence on Canadian Environmental Regulation
Authors: Hoberg George 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the American influence on Canadian environmental regulation in order to show the international sources of domestic public policy, especially the manner in which Canadian policy development is influenced by the United States, and the specific dynamics of Canadian regulatory policy. The United States influences Canadian domestic public policy by the export of costs and the export of knowledge. An analysis of major developments in the areas of air pollution, water pollution, pesticides, toxic substance regulation, and environmental impact assessment demonstrates that American influence over Canadian environmental regulation is pervasive. The most frequent pattern is emulation, where value convergence combined with U.S. leadership leads to Canadian borrowing of U.S. policy innovations. This process can be either elite-driven or activist-driven, the latter being characterized by an enlarged scope of conflict, media exposure, and pressure campaigns on policymakers.
Social Policy in Transition from Plan to Market
Authors: Holzmann Robert 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe reforms initiated in Central and Eastern European countries imply dramatic changes at social, economic and political level. The transition from a centrally planned to a market–based economic system requires profound reformation of all economic and social institutions, amongst them, in prominent place, the way social benefits are provided and financed. Social programs in these countries are challenged from two sides: Firstly, they have to provide a social safety net for the most vulnerable in society during economic transition in order to support the reform program in social and political terms; secondly, social programs have to be restructured in order to be financially sound, socially equitable and economically efficient in a more (or fully) market-oriented environment.
Democracy, Market and Social Safety Nets: Implications for Postcommunist Eastern Europe
Authors: Rupp Kalman 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPast discussions of market versus planned economies in terms of the efficiency/equity tradeoff missed the adverse equity implications of totalitarian political systems and the importance of pluralistic political decisionmaking structures. The paper demonstrates the role of the paternalistic party–state in creating nonmarket inequities, limiting the articulation of political preferences concerning social safety nets, and restricting nonstate sources of welfare. The transition to pluralistic market economies implies potential improvements both in equity and efficiency. The distinct problems of the transition are primarily rooted in uncertainties arising from the scarcity of resources and the fluidity of political preferences.
In and Out of the Revolving Door: Making Sense of Regulatory Capture
Authors: Makkai Toni , Braithwaite John 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe concept of regulatory capture is multidimensional according to data from Australian nursing home inspectors. There are three empirically distinct forms of capture: identification with the industry, sympathy with the particular problems that regulated firms confront in meeting standards, and absence of toughness. Inspectors who have prior senior management experience in the industry tend to be less tough in their attitudes to regulatory enforcement. For the other two types of capture, it is not coming in the revolving door (from an industry job), but aspirations to go out of the revolving door (to an industry job) that predicts capture. Captured regulatory attitudes and revolving door variables have little power, however, in explaining the toughness of actual enforcement practices. We do find that over time tougher inspectors are more likely to leave the regulatory agency than softer inspectors. These data are used to inform a policy analysis of capture and corruption. It is concluded that there is limited analytical merit in a conception of capture as an enduring unitary character trait that is structurally determined by a history of interest group affiliations. Capture, we attempt to show, is instead a situational problem that requires situational solutions. Constraining the free movement of the revolving door by restricting regulatory appointments from or to the regulated industry is an example of a flawed policy grounded in an overdrawn structural determinism.
Individual Irrationality and Public Policy: In Search of Merit/Demerit Policies
Authors: Walsh Cliff 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTIn the context of a re-examination of the conceptual and political foundations of merit/demerit goods, this paper attempts to identify how far they might take us in understanding, explaining, and providing normative justification for, public sector intervention. If merit/demerit influences are to be discovered in actual policies they must be capable of being isolated, at least at the margin, from other policy influences, such as conventional sources of market failure, pure paternalism, and pressure group activities.
Fighting Political Terrorism by Refusing Recognition
Authors: Frey Bruno S. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTTerrorists act rationally; one of their dominating goals is to attract public attention to their cause. As a consequence, the authorities should refrain from attributing a particular terrorist incident to any one group. They should stress that many different actors must be considered as the possible perpetrators. Such an information policy sharply reduces terrorists'rewards. The terrorists are therefore likely to cut down on such activities or must undertake riskier acts, which increase their chance of being caught. The approach suggested is complementary to the policies currently in use; it does not make police measures unnecessary. The strategy is, however, active while the traditional approaches are passive responses to terrorist activities. In contrast to other anti-terrrorist measures, it does not violate human liberties, civil rights or the freedom of the press.
European Monetary Union and Macroeconomic Policy in Southern Europe: the Case for Positive Integration
Authors: Gibson Heather D. , Tsakalotos Euclid 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the prospects of Greece, Portugal and Spain completing stage 1 of the Delors plan. Much of the academic literature on the removal of capital controls seeks to extend the experience of the ERM countries in the 1980s. We argue that its applicability for southern Europe is not straightforward, because these countries have not had the same experience of operating the ‘old’ ERM with capital controls, and examine the implications for these countries of removing capital controls for macroeconomic, and especially, fiscal policy. Intermediate institutional arrangements may be necessary and we consider how EC-wide measures may help these countries in this transitional phase. For the next phase of European integration, the focus of the EC should be on developing appropriate public institutions at the European level to promote positive integration.
Guessing and Choosing: A Multicriterion Decision on Disposal Technology for Low-Level Radioactive Waste
Authors: Coates Dennis , Munger Michael 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPublic officials faced with difficult and technologically complex decisions often resort to decision rules that purport to aggregate disparate judgements. Such multicriterion decisions are only as good as the procedures used to perform such aggregation, however. We examine the use of one such decision-making tool, a variant of the Delphi technique, in the choice of a disposal technology for low-level radioactive waste for the Southeast Compact Commission in the United States. The case focuses on the danger when officials guess when they think they are choosing. Choosing occurs when all participants understand the implications, and sensitivities, of the technique used to aggregate judgement; guessing occurs when the participants choose randomly or without full knowledge of the properties of the process.
Differing European Unemployment Rates: the Case of the Netherlands and Norway
Authors: Fløystad Gunnar 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTIn discussing unemployment problems the current literature tends to emphasise supply shocks and real wage rigidity, hysteresis, failure of relative wages to adjust to market conditions and labour market regulations as important reasons of unemployment. By making a comparative study of the unemployment problems in the Netherlands and Norway, this study emphasises the protection of industries, real interest rates and government fiscal policy as important factors explaining the difference in unemployment between the two countries.