bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Political Conflict and Lesson-Drawing
Authors: Robertson David Brian 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPolitical adversaries have reason and opportunity to use foreign lessons to gain advantage in political conflicts. Political factors strongly affect the way public policy lessons are drawn and transformed into public policy. Political opponents contest the value, practicality, and transferability of policy initiatives in order to bias the outcome. The paper hypothesizes that (i) the politicization of lesson-drawing induces issue experts to emphasize the descriptive and technical aspects of programs; (2) gives an incentive to advocates of change to use lessons to advance their position during the agenda-setting process; and (3) gives opponents of change an incentive to draw counterbalancing negative lessons from foreign experience when a proposed lesson reaches the point where adoption is entirely possible. The 1988 Congressional debate over mandatory plant closing prenotification provides evidence supporting hypotheses. The paper further hypothesizes: (4) most polities will not adopt both conservative and liberal programs even when theoretically they could do so; and (5) the degree to which a population of polities adopt a particular lesson will be a function of the program's economic and politicial feasibility. The diffusion of labor market and income maintenance policies across the American states supports both of these claims.
Military Expenditures Worldwide: Determinants and Trends, 1972–1988
Authors: Hewitt Daniel 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper examines trends in world military expenditures and offers an econometric examination of their determinants in 125 countries from 1972 to 1988. A simultaneous equation framework based on a public choice model shows military expenditures as a ratio of GDP to be influenced by the level of GDP, central government expenditures, other financial indicators, the form of government, and geographical characteristics of countries. The study also examines the opportunity cost of military expenditures and analyzes the budgetary trade-off between military, social, and development expenditures. Although military expenditures may benefit a given country, they may also have a negative impact on the welfare of rival nations. Hence a coordinated reduction in military expenditures that does not alter the strategic balance will increase economic wellbeing in the world.
Labor Force Attitudes in the Transition to the Market: the Czechoslovak Case
Authors: Večerník Jiří 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTChanges of labor market attitudes in a post-centrally planned economy are examined on the basis of survey data in terms of the production and utilization of human capital; work incentives and rewards; private ownership and job allocation; work perspectives and unemployment; and the role of the state. The transitory period is confused. The transformation of post-communist countries is being carried out when the era of market regulation is over in the West and state guardianship in the labor market is being eroded, but in Central and Eastern Europe the inheritance of institutions and attitudes from the era of central planning remain palpably present, and surveys show that the population of working age has not yet fully perceived the extent of what is required to achieve the transformation to a market economy.
Inequlity, the National Health Service and Health Policy
Authors: Maynard Alan , Ludbrook Anne 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe National Health Service (NHS) was founded in 1948 to replace an inefficient, ill-coordinated and financially unstable health care system and to reduce the barriers to the consumption of health care. In this article, it is argued that the geographic and social class equity objectives of the NHS have been poorly specified and that attempts to achieve them through government policy have been inadequate. The renewed interest in inequalities in health and health care and the problems of formulating and implementing policies aimed at reducing inequalities are discussed in general terms in section 1. Section 2 examines the inequalities of health care provision that were inherited in 1948, the development of policies to mitigate the problem and the current situation. Alternative demand and supply side policies to reduce inequalities in health and health care are presented in section 3. A summary of the proceeding arguments is set out in section 4.
Policy Learning and Failure
Authors: May Peter J. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTMultiple knowledges are available for utilisation in policy choice. The rank ordering of knowledges for use in decisionmaking is thus a fundamental predecision. This article shows how this predecision necessarily constrains the processes associated with a politics of ideas, using cases from American international commodity policy. Even when the supposed preconditions of this sort of politics are present, policy change did not occur when the proposed ideas arose from a knowledge accorded secondary status in policymaking circles. Several implications are discussed for the influence and the study of ideational politics. Ultimately, the politics of ideas, so often portrayed through cases of innovation, may be quite conservative, contained by knowledge hierarchies which reflect prior politicaxl circumstances.
Corporatism, Pluralism and Political Learning: A Systems Approach
Authors: Stewart Jenny 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTWhether corporatism matters or not is one of the most difficult and intriguing questions confronting policy analysts. One approach to the problem not previously adopted is to use systems analysis as a means of teasing out the implications of general structural differences between corporatist and pluralist polities. By using a framework derived from the systems analysis of Easton but incorporating elements of political competition and accountability, it is shown that corporatist and pluralist states differ significantly in the ways in which they process information and generate support. The combination of centralisation and consensus proves to be the key to the apparently greater learning capacity of corporatist systems. The analysis suggests that policymaking may itself be better understood as a learning mechanism rather than as an allocative process.
The Influence of Financial Measures on UK Railway Policy
Authors: Lapsley Irvine 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the tension between social and commercial criteria and the importance of the nature of available information in influencing policymaking towards commercial or quasi-commercial activities such as transport undertakings. The importance of financial criteria as key indicators which influence railway policy is established by reference to significant landmarks in the corporate existence of British Rail. An underlying conflict between this information and the declared policies of successive governments is exposed. This reveals that, not only are policy-makers constrained by the difficulties of providing more appropriate information, but they are also the victims of their own reluctance to implement effectively policies which would actually improve existing sources of information.
The Transition to Democracy in Central Europe: A Comparative View
Authors: Ágh Attila 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe has also caused the collapse of old-fashioned studies of Communist systems that subscribed to a simple notion of totalitarian uniformity, or a static belief in the continuance of self-equilibrating cycles within socialist states. To understand what is happening in Central and Eastern Europe today we need to be discriminating in a choice of paradigms. European conceptions of democracy as having a socio-economic as well as political dimension are more relevant than formalist American definitions. Moreover, Europe, in the form of the European Community, is also a much more immediate influence than the United States upon what is happening in Central or Eastern Europe. The transition to democracy in Southern Europe provides encouraging models for ex-Soviet satellites. The failure of Latin American countries to democratize provides warnings, such as the risk that Presidential government can produce dictatorship or instability, a risk that is present in new democracies in Europe too.
Reconsidering Policy Design: Policies and Publics
Authors: May Peter J. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTOne of the emerging areas in the public policy literature concerns new modes of thought about the construction and analysis of public policy. This article extends notions about politics within the ‘policy design’ literature by considering the implications of different political environments for policy design and implementation. Two different political environments – policies with and without publics – that form ends of a continuum of policy publics are discussed. A contrast is drawn between these two polar political environments with respect to differing policy design and implementation challenges, as well as with respect to differing opportunities for policy learning.
Public Choice Theory Applied to National Energy Policy: The Case of France
Authors: Feldman David Lewis 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTPublic choice theory offers a conceptually important means of examining policy decisions and their social and economic consequences in the field of natural resources. Through a public choice analysis of France's ambitious program to nuclearize its electrical industry by the year 2000, I examine the origins, merits and deficiencies of French nuclear policy. Public choice theory's major assumptions – that a policy's costs and benefits are a function of resource abundance and level of development and that a resource's management is shaped by its character and availability – are largely valid. However, the need to reconcile competing social values and to distribute policy benefits fairly may be insufficiently accounted for by current public choice approaches, a fact exemplified by French experience with nuclear power.
Privatization: Towards a Concept for Comparative Policy Analysis
Authors: Lundqvist Lennart J. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTAffected by the ideological symbolism and political controversy surrounding privatization, much of the work on this subject is marred by definitional uncertainty; what should be included in the concept? To get away from this, and to prepare the ground for meaningful comparative analysis of the phenomenon, I propose both a definition and a taxonomy. I argue that it is the active and conscious transfer of reponsibility from the public to the private realm that should form the core of the concept. Furthermore, I argue that neither the principles for, nor the level of, provision of goods and services should be included in the definition. Finally, I propose that the taxonomy should be based on the public/private dichotomy of responsibility allocation included in the definition, as well as on three main activities in goods and services production which the government could privatize; regulation, financing, and production.
The Economic Content of Security
Authors: Luciani Giacomo 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe economic content of security, i.e. to what extent security is influenced by economic variables, is a difficult and widely debated one. There has been a tendency, to broaden the concept of security to include certain purely economic interests. The paper is concerned with a precise understanding of the difference between a narrow and territorial definition of security, and a broader definition of security encompassing economic interests. The first section defines security and its economic ramifications and the second discusses the subject within the context of a general equilibrium model. The policy dilemmas of security are then considered at the conceptual level, including the dilemmas in the general equilibrium model.
Explaining Policy Failure: Japan and the International Economy, 1969–1971
Authors: Angel Robert C. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the determinants of Japan's most serious postwar blunder: failure to define and implement effective and timely counter-measures to deal with its change from deficit to surplus international monetary status during the 1969–1971 period. It concludes that intense bureaucratic compartmentalization and a lack of supra-ministerial leadership of national policy were key determinants of this failure, leaving Japan's political system dependent upon irresistible external pressure (gai-atsu,) in this case from the United States, to define and force implementation of necessary policy changes. This critical but largely ignored episode illustrates a negative aspect of the traditional insulation of Japan's national bureacracy from political (as opposed to administrative) interference in the definition and pursuit of basic national policy objectives.
Path Dependency, or Why History Makes It Difficult but Not Impossible to Reform Health Care Systems in a Big Way
Authors: Wilsford David 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe idea of path-dependency is applied to an examination of health policy reform in Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States. In the path-dependent model, actors are hemmed in by existing institutions and structures that channel them along established policy paths. Therefore, in any system, big (non-incremental) change is unlikely. However, sometimes we do observe big change. Why? By developing the interplay of structure with conjuncture, the occasional accomplishment of big change - in spite of path dependency - can be systematically understood.
Policy Networks and Industrial Revitalization: High Speed Rail Initiatives in France and Germany
Authors: Dunn James A. , Perl Anthony 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTUsing Atkinson and Coleman's typology of policy networks, this article shows how many of the differences in policy outcomes can be traced to the structure of the policy environment in each nation. French and Germany policy makers adopted a strategy of investing in high speed passenger transport to revitalize their declining railway sectors. The French TGV was developed in a state-directed policy network which insisted on cost containment and commercial viability. In Germany a corporatist style of policymaking in the rail sector led to delays and higher costs for the ICE train. A separate clientele pluralist network led by the Research Ministry developed the Transrapid maglev option, but in order to finance and deploy an operational system, the Chancellor and cabinet had to create a concertation network. The policy network approach provides a useful framework for conducting comparative analysis. In addition, these detailed cases suggest that it is useful to add a dynamic, cross-temporal dimension to the static typology.
Creeping Competence: The Expanding Agenda of the European Community
Authors: Pollack Mark A. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe article attempts to explain the expansion of the European Community (EC) policy agenda to new policy areas such as the environment, regional development and research and technological development, and the variations in policy development from one area to another. Lowi's classification of policy types-regulatory, redistributive and distributive-is adapted for use in the EC context. Each policy type, it is argued, deals with a distinct arena featuring different actors, different institutional decision rules, and different types of Council bargaining, and each therefore corresponds to a distinctive pattern of task expansion. Thus, regulatory policies can be explained in terms of functional spillover from the Internal Market, while redistributive policies can be understood as side-payments in larger intergovernmental bargains, and distributive policies are the result of the Commission's policy entrepreneurship and log-rolling Council bargaining. These three patterns of task expansion are examined in an empirical study of policy development across six areas.
Convergence in Policy Outcomes: Social Security Systems in Perspective
Authors: Overbye Einar 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTA central question in the welfare state debate has been whether or not social policies in industrialized countries converge. Originally linked to the logic of industrialism perspective, this idea has been criticized by researchers focusing on differences in timing and differences in the institutional set up of social security schemes across countries. Nonetheless, I argue that social security arrangements in European as well as Anglo-American countries may gradually become more similar. Using pension politics as the primary example, the article locates similar social and political mechanisms at work in different countries, pushing toward convergence in policy outcomes, despite persistent variation in institutional arrangements. In the final section of the article, I extract a model from the analysis, aimed at explaining political change while maintaining a connection between the micro and macro level of analysis.
Don't Toss Coins in Garbage Cans: A Prologue to Policy Design
Authors: Dryzek John S. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThreats to effective policy-making arising from ubiquitous circumstances of complexity and uncertainty are often taken as reasons to eschew both the attacking of social problems through public policy and cogitation, such as policy analysis, in the policy process. It is suggested here that, as complexity and uncertainty increase, more cogitation is required, not less; but it is crucial that cogitation be of the appropriate sort. Greater use should be made of policy design, as opposed to methods emphasising selection among prespecified alternatives. The required design task varies with the level of difficulty – defined by complexity, uncertainty, and lack of feedback – in any case at hand. A taxonomy of levels of difficulty is developed, together with a preliminary outline of the design task required at each level.
Appraising Selective Financial Assistance to Industry: A Review of Institutions and Methodologies in the United Kingdom, Sweden and West Germany
Authors: Grant R. M. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThe ability to forecast and evaluate the impact of selective financial assistance is crucial to the formulation of effective policies of selective industrial intervention. A survey of institutions and methodology across the three countries reveals inadequacies in the quality and the extent of governments’ appraisal of industrial assistance measures. The principal problems of quantitative appraisal are identified and discussed and suggestions are made for improvements in the procedures and methods of appraisal, with the purpose of improving the formulation and the implementation of policies of selective industrial assistance.
The Impact of Old Politics and New Politics Value Orientations on Party Choice – A Comparative Study
Authors: Knutsen Oddbjørn 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTRelationships between five central value orientations and party choice are examined in a comparative West European setting by using the second wave of the European Values Study from 1990. These orientations comprise two central conflict lines related to the Old Politics model for political cleavages, namely religious/secular and left-right materialist value orientations, and three new sets of value orientation which, according to theories of New Politics, should become important in advanced industrial society. The research problems are: To examine the comparative strength of the impact of the various value orientations on party preference in a comparative West European setting; To examine how voters of different party families are grouped along the various value orientations. Which parties have the most secular or religious, leftist materialist and post-materialist electorate, and are there consistent comparative patterns concerning where the voters for given party families are placed?; To focus upon the impact of the New Politics value conflicts.
The Declining Role of Western Powers in International Organizations: Exploring a New Model of U.N. Burden Sharing
Authors: Kwon Gi-Heon 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTCollective-action theory suggests that a country's economic size determines its contribution to international organizations, with large economies paying a disproportionate percentage of their GNP for maintenance of these organizations. This paper argues against this reigning paradigm, finding that it fails to predict current contribution patterns in the United Nations (UN). Instead, the paper offers a more elaborate model of burden sharing that takes into account the domestic political setting and international setting that helps determine a nation's contribution to international organizations.
Paradigm Shifts and Policy Networks: Cumulative Change in Agriculture
Authors: Coleman William D. , Skogstad Grace D. , Atkinson Michael M. 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTThis article presents an alternative trajectory to policy paradigm change to that outlined by Peter A. Hall's social learning model, in which unsuccessful efforts by state officials to respond to policy failures and anomalies in the existing paradigm eventually trigger a broader, societal, political partisan debate about policy principles. From this society-wide contestation over policy goals, problems, and solutions, a new policy paradigm emerges. Drawing on the conceptual tools of policy feedback and policy networks, this article describes an alternative route to paradigm shift in which change is negotiated between state actors and group representatives. Discussions of change are largely confined to sectoral policy networks and the result is a more managed series of policy changes that culminate in a paradigm shift. This argument for a second, cumulative trajectory to paradigm shift is developed by examining agricultural policy change in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Instruments of Government: Perceptions and Contexts
Authors: Linder Stephen H. , Peters B. Guy 
Published: November 2008

ABSTRACTGovernment uses a wide variety of instruments to reach its policy goals, ranging from indirect methods, such as moral suasion and cash inducements, to more direct ones involving government provision of services. Although there has been a fair amount of writing on the nature and use of various policy instruments, there is very little work on either the meaning ascribed to these instruments by the decisionmakers who use them (or the experts who design them) or the processes by which some come to be favored over others. Characteristics of the political system, such as national policy style, the organizational setting of the decisionmaker, and the problem situation are all likely to have some influence over the choice of instruments. The relative impact of these variables, however, is likely to be mediated by subjective factors linked to cognition. Perceptions of the proper ‘tool to do the job’ intervenes between context and choice in a complex way. Efforts to account for variation in instrument choice, then, must focus not only on macro level variables but on micro ones as well.