III Governmental and Administrative Institutions Institutions Politiques ET Administratives
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002083451806800403 |
| Subject Matter | Abstract |
495
III
GOVERNMENTAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE INSTITUTIONS
INSTITUTIONS POLITIQUES ET ADMINISTRATIVES
(a) Central institutions /Institutions centrales
68.4852 BERGMAN, Gwyneth ; MacFARLANE, Emmett — The
impact and role of officers of Parliament: Canada's con-
flict of interest and ethics commissioner. Canadian Public
Administration 61(1), March 2018 : 5-25.
Officers of Parliament play a vital role in providing parliamentarians with
access to critical information and resources that allow them to hold the
government of the day to account. Critics have argued officers have
exceeded their mandates and even threaten to supplant the opposition.
Canada's Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner (CIEC) holds a
unique mandate, given that her primary focus concerns the behavior of
public office holders. This article draws on a comprehensive examination
of the commissioner's reports and recommendations, and a content
analysis of com mittee appearances to analyze and understand the
impact and role of the CIEC. In c ontrast to the portrayal of other officers
in the extant literature, we find that the office of the CIEC is constrained
in its mandate a nd its impact limited by the nature and extent of its
relationship with Parliament. [R]
68.4853 BROOKES, Marissa — Explaining employer responses to
transnational labor activism: Indonesia and Cambodia
compared. Comparative Political Studies 51(6), May 2018 :
699-729.
Attempts to expand labor rights are rarely met with automatic acceptance
by employers who benefitted from past practices. Workers, thus, some-
times engage in transnational activism in an attempt to secure labor
rights on the local or national scale. This article investigates why s ome
employers alter their behavior in response to such activism. I hypothe-
size that an employer will concede to a transnational labor campaign
only when workers fully shift that employer’s attention onto the interna-
tional scale and directly threaten the emp loyer’s core, material interests.
Evidence from a controlled comparison of labor disputes at luxury hotels
in Indonesia and Cambodia during a period of institutional transition in
the early 2000s supports this argument. [R, abr.]
68.4854 CAUGHEY, Devin ; WARSHAW, Christopher — Policy
preferences and policy change: dynamic responsiveness
in the American states , 1936-2014. American Political Sci-
ence Review 112(2), May 2018 : 249-266.
Using eight decades of data, we examine the magnitude, mechanisms,
and moderators of dynamic responsiveness in the American states. We
show that on both economic and (especially) social issues, the liberalism
of state publics predicts future change in state policy liberalism. Dynamic
responsiveness is gradual, however; large policy shifts are the result of
the accumulation of incremental responsiveness over many years.
Partisan control of government appears to mediate only a fraction of
responsiveness, suggesting that, contrary to conventional wisdom,
responsiveness occurs in large part through the adaptation of incumbent
officials. Dynamic responsiveness has increased over time but does not
seem to be influenced by institutions such as direct democracy or cam-
paign finance regulations. [R, abr.]
68.4855 FATAI, Adeleke Gbadebo — A critical assessment of
electoral processes in the Fourth Republic’s (1999-2015)
democratic dispensation in Nigeria. Africa Insight 47(1),
2017 : 13-27.
This study examines factors underlying the poor electoral processes and
the increasing rate of voters’ apathy towards democratic participation
(1999-2015) in Nigeria. Electoral processes are a determining factor in
democratic advancement; they either encourage or discourage majority
participation. Both participatory and institutional theories provide theo-
retical frameworks. In this paper, issues of electoral processes were
critically examined using secondary sources of data, and at the end of
the study, ways to improve on the quest for ideal democracy were pro-
vided. The paper argues that poor electoral processes have made a
mockery of Nigeria’s democratic system. Electoral and political institu-
tions’ lack of transparency, inadequate funding, poor voters’ registration
process, inadequate voter education and poor election scheduling are
the shortcomings identified. [R, abr.]
68.4856 FOGARTY, Brian J. ; MONOGAN, James E., III — Patterns
in the politics of drugs and tobacco: the [US] Supreme
Court and issue attention by policymakers and the press.
Politics 38(2), May 2018 : 214-231.
Past research has demonstrated lasting effects of important Supreme
Court decisions on issue attention in the national media. In this light, the
Court has served as an important agenda setter. We significantly expand
on these findings by arguing that these salient Court decisions can raise
the perceived importance of political issues and induce heightened,
short-term policy attention in the broader political system. Using meas-
ures of media attention, congressional policy actions, and presidential
policy actions, we utilize dynamic vector autoregressive modelling to
examine the Court’s impact on issue attention in the macro policy system
regarding tobacco and drug policy. Overall, this study suggests that the
Supreme Court’s most important decisions might significantly affect
broader issue attention in the American political system. [R]
68.4857 GANGHOF, Steffen — A new political system model:
semi-parliamentary government. European Journal of Po-
litical Research 57(2), May 2018 : 261-281.
Semi-parliamentary government is a distinct executive-legislative system
that mirrors semi-presidentialism. It exists when the legislature is divided
into two equally legitimate parts, o nly one of which can dismiss the prime
minister in a no-confidence vote. This system has distinct advantages
over pure parliamentary and presidential systems: it establishes a
branch-based separation of powers and can balance the "majoritarian"
and "proportional" visions of democracy without concentrating executive
power in a single individual. This article analyzes bicameral versions of
semi-parliamentary government in Australia and Japan, and compares
empirical patterns of democracy in the Australian Commonwealth as well
as New South Wales to 20 advanced parliamentary and semi-
presidential systems. It discusses new semi-parliamentary designs, some
of which do not require formal bicameralism, and pays special attention
to semi-parliamentary options for democratizing the EU. [R]
68.4858 GANGHOF, Steffen ; EPPNER, Sebastian ; PÖRSCHKE,
Alexander — Australian bicameralism as semi-
parliamentarism: patterns of majority formation in 29
democracies. Australian Journal of Political Science 53(2),
2018 : 211-233.
The article analyzes the type of bicameralism we find in Australia as a
distinct executive-legislative system — a hybrid between parliamentary
and presidential government — which we call "semi-parliamentary
government". We argue that this hybrid presents an important and
underappreciated alternative to pure parliamentary government as well
as presidential forms of the power-separation, and that it can achieve a
certain balance between competing models or visions of democracy. We
specify theoretically how the semi-parliamentary separation of powers
contributes to the balancing of democratic visions and propose a concep-
tual framework for comparing democratic visions. [R, abr.] [First article of
a symposium on "Majority formation in semi-parliamentary regimes". See
also Abstr. 68.4674, 4685, 4869, 4870, 4887]
68.4859 HÄUSERMANN, Silja — The multidimensional politics of
social investment in conservative welfare regimes: family
policy reform between social transfers and social in-
vestment. Journal of European Public Policy 25(6), 2018 :
862-877.
While we have many studies on social investment policies and their
effects, we still know fairly little about the politics of social investment,
especially in conservative welfare states, which provide the hardest
ground for these reforms. What are the key conflicts in social investment
politics? How do they intersect with compensatory welfare state conflict?
Which coalition potentials exist? Based on a newly collected dataset, this
contribution analyses actor configurations in German family policy reform
processes since 1979. It shows that the development of social invest-
ment in conservative welfare regimes can only be understood if we
conceptualize its politics in a multidimensional space. Income protection
and social investment can be, and oftentimes are, two distinct conflict
lines. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 68.4641]
68.4860 HEGELE, Yvonne — Multidimensional interests in hori-
zontal intergovernmental coordination: the case of the
German Bundesrat. Publius 48(2), Spring 2018 : 244-268.
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