Showing papers in "Governance in 2021"
TL;DR: The authors argue that when institutions are too weak to hold bureaucrats accountable, political leaders increase oversight by drastically reducing the number of steps and resources required to produce a regulatory outcome, resulting in blunt force measures.
Abstract: In the past decade, China has increasingly resorted to top-down, “blunt force” solutions to environmental problems; officials forcibly shutter or destroy factories to reduce pollution, at immense cost to local growth and employment. Why would a high capacity state like China resort to such a costly method of pollution control? I argue that blunt force enforcement is targeted at overcoming principal-agent problems in the bureaucracy. When institutions are too weak to hold bureaucrats accountable, political leaders increase oversight by drastically reducing the number of steps and resources required to produce a regulatory outcome—resulting in blunt force measures. I illustrate this logic through case studies from China’s multi-year war on pollution. Using original data on blunt force measures, I then show how localities with lower bureaucratic compliance face greater blunt force pollution enforcement. These findings reveal that when bureaucratic accountability is weak, states pay a very high cost for cleaner air.
46 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Ord identifies the most serious anthropogenic existential risks, which are nuclear war, climate change, other environmental risks, bioengineered pandemics, and artificial intelligence.
Abstract: Ord's view of humanity's potential not only shapes much of his moral argument for prioritizing existential risks,[4] but also the comparative analysis of existential risks. While humanity may face serious "unknown" or "other" existential risks, Ord does not explain why they should be treated a priori as greater risks than either nuclear war or climate change. Secondly, Ord identifies the most serious anthropogenic existential risks, which are nuclear war, climate change, other environmental risks, bioengineered pandemics, and artificial intelligence. Personally, I see Ord's book as making a valuable contribution to a particular understanding of existential risk, shaped largely by the author's conception of "humanity's potential.". [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Governance is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
33 citations
TL;DR: Li et al. as mentioned in this paper examined how the local state in China uses information to amplify legibility and bolster social control, and they found that legibility depends not only on the state's ability to collect information, but to integrate it as well.
Abstract: How do regimes employ information to govern society and maintain control? Recent scholarship argues that legibility is a fundamental component of state capacity, but the politics of information collection and use remain incompletely understood. This article examines how the local state in China uses information to amplify legibility and bolster social control. Extant literature focuses largely on information collection, but Chinese officials have adopted high-tech information management platforms to solve a different issue: inadequate information integration across bureaucracies (“information islands”). Information integration platforms strengthen the local state’s ability to govern by enhancing intra-bureaucratic accountability and improving the local state’s ability to demobilize contention. At the policy level, adoption of these platforms has implications for the Chinese party-state’s ambitions for social stability; their global spread could affect trends in governance worldwide. Theoretically, our findings indicate that legibility depends not just on the state’s ability to collect information, but to integrate it as well.
27 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used the European Quality of Government Index (EQI) data for 56,925 citizens in 174 European regions and found that government impartiality positively influences perceived public service quality.
Abstract: Government impartiality is considered a core feature of government quality that leads to favorable macro-level outcomes. We still have limited knowledge, however, of how impartiality affects citizens’ perceptions of public service quality. Understanding this relationship is important because citizens are the main beneficiaries of public services and are directly affected by administrative impartiality. Using the European Quality of Government Index (EQI) data for 56,925 citizens in 174 European regions, results of multilevel analysis show that impartiality positively influences perceived public service quality. However, we also find that such positive impacts of impartiality are contingent on the socioeconomic backgrounds of citizens. Impartiality does not lead to positive evaluations of public services among citizens with low educational background. The findings are robust across regions even after controlling for lagged service quality level and individual and regional factors. Results suggest the importance of impartiality, but all citizens do not benefit equally from impartiality.
23 citations
18 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on felt accountability, denoting the manager's expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived to be (b) legitimate and (c) to have the expertise to evaluate those decisions.
Abstract: The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top-down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the manager's (a) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived to be (b) legitimate and (c) to have the expertise to evaluate those decisions. We explore felt accountability of agency-CEO's and its institutional antecedents with a survey in seven countries combining insights from public administration and psychology. Our bottom-up perspective reveals close connections between de facto control practices rather than formal institutional characteristics and felt accountability of CEO's of agencies. We contend that felt accountability is a crucial cog aligning accountability holders' expectations and behaviors by CEO's.
17 citations
16 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply exponential random graph models to network data from the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal to investigate which types of organizations are favored sources of scientific information and whether actors obtain scientific information from those with similar beliefs as their own.
Abstract: Scientifically informed climate policymaking starts with the exchange of credible, salient, and legitimate scientific information between scientists and policy makers. It is therefore important to understand what explains the exchange of scientific information in national climate policymaking processes. This article applies exponential random graph models to network data from the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal to investigate which types of organizations are favored sources of scientific information and whether actors obtain scientific information from those with similar beliefs as their own. Results show that scientific organizations are favored sources in all countries, while only in the Czech Republic do actors obtain scientific information from those with similar policy beliefs. These findings suggest that actors involved in climate policymaking mostly look to scientific organizations for information, but that in polarized contexts where there is a presence of influential denialists overcoming biased information exchange is a challenge.
15 citations
14 citations
TL;DR: Moldogaziev, Tima T; Liu, Cheol June, 2020Public sector corruption and perceived government performance in transition,Article,Wiley Periodicals, Inc as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Moldogaziev, Tima T; Liu, CheolJune, 2020Public sector corruption and perceived government performance in transition,Article,Wiley Periodicals, Inc
14 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose an alternative understanding of individual behavior in representation that emphasizes knowledge sharing instead of patronage, but leads to similar outcomes: their societal background provides officials with advanced social knowledge about the group(s) they represent, including both informational knowledge (facts about culture, history, politics) and relational knowledge (how people interact).
Abstract: Funding information Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Grant/Award Number: EC 506/1-1 Abstract Bureaucratic representation theory holds that civil servants are not “neutral” in a Weberian sense. Bureaucrats are thought to “actively” represent their communities by trying to make them better off. This article proposes an alternative understanding of individual behavior in representation that emphasizes knowledge sharing instead of patronage, but leads to similar outcomes: Their societal background provides officials with advanced social knowledge about the group(s) they represent, including both informational knowledge (facts about culture, history, politics) and relational knowledge (how people interact). Bureaucratic knowledge linkage is the process of sharing information and managing relations internally and with citizens. An extreme case serves to illustrate knowledge linkage empirically: Survey data from an international organization yield high levels of knowledge asymmetries within staff bodies and subsequent observation of knowledge linkage mechanisms. In generalizing findings, the risks (knowledge distortions) and benefits (attaining public value) of knowledge linkage are discussed for both international and domestic administrations. Received: 16 May 2019 Revised: 31 December 2019 Accepted: 10 February 2020
TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluate three explanations for differences in patterns of policy integration and administrative coordination reforms across countries and policy sectors over time, and find that left parties are particularly likely to pursue policy integration reforms.
Abstract: Policies to integrate and coordinate across sectors have become important in recent years, but we know little about the drivers of these reforms. This paper evaluates three explanations for differences in patterns of policy integration and administrative coordination reforms across countries and policy sectors over time. Reform activity could reflect: (1) the fragmenting effects of agencification; (2) a strategy of governments to regain policy control; or (3) partisan agendas. We test these explanatory scenarios using multilevel probit and structural equation models on an original dataset of policy integration and administrative coordination reforms. Our findings support the claim that reforms are a reaction to the institutional fragmentation produced by agencification and that agencies drive these reforms. Furthermore, we find that left parties are particularly likely to pursue policy integration reforms. We also find that policy integration and administrative coordination reform frequencies are linked but have different path dependencies. Claims that policies are fragmented and government is “siloed” are ubiquitous (Peters 2015a). Such claims range across nearly every policy sector, from environmental and climate policy (Adele and Russel 2013), to health policy (Carey and Crammond 2015), and social policy (Cejudo and Michel 2017). This fragmentation is charged with contributing to policy incoherence (May, Sapotichne, and Workman 2006), policy failure (Peters 2015b) and weak responses to complex or wicked public problems (Head and Alford 2015). A common view is that these challenges have been accentuated by New Public Management (NPM) reforms (Verhoest, Bouckaert and Peters 2007; Christensen and Laegreid 2007a). Scholars point to different solutions for policy fragmentation and government “siloism.” Prominent concepts include joined-up government (Pollitt 2003; Perri 6 2004; Davies 2009), policy integration (Briassoulis 2004), policy coordination (Peters 2018), whole-of-government reform (Christensen and Laegreid 2007), agency collaboration (Bardach 1998), network governance (Sørensen and Torfing 2016) and boundary-spanning policy regimes (Jochim and
TL;DR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors investigated the impact of information disclosure on influencing citizen cooperation crucial for emergency management during the COVID-19 pandemic in China and found that information disclosure significantly enhanced citizen coproduction as measured by aggregated search queries of COVID19-related information, and earlier disclosure yielded greater effect more quickly.
Abstract: While information campaigns have been widely recognized as a pillar of public health crisis management and heightened by the current COVID‐19 pandemic, an insufficient number of studies have investigated the impact of information disclosure on influencing citizen cooperation crucial for emergency management. Focusing on generic information disclosure practices during the recovery period from January 19, 2020, to February 29, 2020, in China and by employing a difference‐in‐difference method, this study finds that information disclosure significantly enhanced citizen coproduction as measured by aggregated search queries of COVID‐19‐related information, and earlier disclosure yielded greater effect more quickly. Moreover, government capacity and citizens' trust in government at the local level significantly moderate the positive impact of information disclosure. This study uncovers the novel relationship between information disclosure and citizen coproduction during emergencies in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Governance is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
TL;DR: Li et al. as mentioned in this paper argue that policymakers' individual attributes influence their willingness to engage in policy innovation, and that this influence is responsive to, but not determined by, changes in the institutional structure.
Abstract: This article argues that policymakers’ individual attributes influence their willingness to engage in policy innovation, and that this influence is responsive to, but not determined by, changes in the institutional structure. We derive these findings by employing principal component analysis of original data from surveys of local policymakers in China, to inductively locate different personalities. We find statistically significant personalities that influence a willingness to innovate, and that this influence is responsive to changes such as heightened risk. In addition to parsing the influence of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations on policy innovation, we further find that the traditional risk-acceptant policy-entrepreneur personality does not explain innovation well.
TL;DR: The credibility of think tanks is grounded in their image as independent experts as mentioned in this paper, but in order to gain authority to act, think tanks must be seen as independent, but in the same way, they also need to exert influence and gain influence.
Abstract: The credibility of think tanks is grounded in their image as independent experts. In order to gain authority to act, think tanks must be seen as independent, but in order to exert influence and gai ...
TL;DR: The results demonstrate that citizen groups with formal members are more prone to share the position of the broader public compared to concentrated interest groups such as business associations, especially if they involve their members in advocacy activities and when issues are salient in the media.
Abstract: This article asks to what extent and under which conditions interest groups are congruent with public opinion. We argue that interest groups can be caught in a balancing act between engaging with their constituency on the one hand and aligning their position with the broader public on the other hand. We contribute to previous studies by arguing that the effect of interest group type on congruence is moderated by the degree to which constituencies are involved in advocacy processes and the salience of policy issues. We test these expectations by analyzing 314 media claims made by Belgian interest groups regarding 58 policy issues. The results demonstrate that citizen groups with formal members are more prone to share the position of the broader public compared to concentrated interest groups such as business associations, especially if they involve their members in advocacy activities and when issues are salient in the media.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study the role of intra-organizational bargaining within the IMF bureaucracy in over-ambitious reform programs and find that the number of conditions is a robust predictor of implementation failure.
Abstract: Why do governments fail to implement policy commitments in contractual agreements with international organizations? While scholars have scrutinized domestic factors as obstacles to compliance, we argue that reform programs may be unimplementable by design. We study this hypothesis in the context of International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs, in which borrowing countries must commit to far‐reaching economic policy reforms for access to credit. We collect detailed compliance data on individual policy conditions to assess the determinants of compliance failures of IMF programs from 1980 to 2009. Controlling for a host of borrower‐specific variables, features of the loan, unexpected shocks during implementation, donor influence, and bureaucratic interest, we find that the number of conditions is a robust predictor of implementation failure. Our theoretical explanation for these findings is that over‐ambitious program designs are the result of intra‐organizational bargaining within the IMF bureaucracy. While an area department within the IMF drafts the initial reform program, functional departments use their amendment power to include policy conditions that they care about, without due consideration of local circumstances, which leads to over‐ambitious programs. These findings have important implications for theories of compliance as well as for policymaking in international organizations.
TL;DR: In this article, a comparison of South Africa and Botswana, using in-depth interviews and primary sources, traces public debt processes to argue DMOs are unlikely to significantly affect the link between political interests and these two key public debt outcomes over time.
Abstract: Some use the model of independent central banks to posit that independent Debt Management Offices (DMOs) can enhance public debt sustainability. This study argues this is unlikely in developing countries. Developing country DMOs have limited space to apolitically manage (a) debt levels and (b) borrowing strategies. A comparison of South Africa and Botswana, using in-depth interviews and primary sources, traces public debt processes to argue DMOs are unlikely to significantly affect the link between political interests and these two key public debt outcomes over time. This argument has three implications. First, it gives rise to questions about the role of institutions in the governance of public debt. Second, it adds to recent literature on developing country external borrowing preferences by highlighting ideological effects. Third, it reinforces the idea that political economy theories of the relationship between interests, institutions, and policy outcomes should vary by policy area and national income level.