The response of decentralized health services to demand uncertainty and the role of political parties in the Spanish public health system

Decentralization of the public health system should lead to health resources being managed more in line with citizens’ preferences. A decentralized system is more flexible in that it can better adapt resources to local needs. Moreover, if regional political parties have responsibility for public health policies, citizens will be able to elect those parties whose positions are more in line with their preferences. However, the role of political parties in public health management has received little attention in the literature. Focusing on the decision to provide reserve service capacity to deal with demand uncertainty, we analyse whether there have been differences between central and decentralized health authorities in Spain and whether these can be explained to some extent by the way different political parties manage the trade-off between being able to cover demand and the economic costs involved. Using data on Spanish public hospitals for the period 1996–2006, we model the difference between observed and potential output using an output-oriented distance function. Reserve capacity is modelled as a function of demand uncertainty, economic costs and the political party in power. We find differences in the way resources are managed by central government and decentralized authorities, even within the same political party. We also find differences between the decentralized authorities themselves according to the political party in power. We conclude that decentralization of public health in Spain has provided regional political authorities with greater flexibility to manage reserve capacity in line with citizens’ needs and preferences.     

Endogenous party structure

This paper proposes a model of two-party representative democracy on a single-dimensional political space, in which voters choose their parties in order to influence the parties’ choices of representative. After two candidates are selected as the median of each party’s support group, Nature determines the candidates’ relative likability (valence). Based on the candidates’ political positions and relative likability, voters vote for the preferable candidate without being tied to their party’s choice. We show that (1) there exists a nontrivial equilibrium under natural conditions, and (2) the equilibrium party border and the ex ante probabilities of the two-party candidates winning are sensitive to the distribution of voters. In particular, we show that if a party has a more concentrated subgroup, then the party tends to alienate its centrally located voters, and the party’s probability of winning the final election is reduced. Even if voter distribution is symmetric, an extremist party (from either side) can emerge as voters become more politically divided.     

Governance, Democracy and Poverty Reduction: Lessons Drawn from Household Surveys in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America

Public statistics face quite a challenge when it comes to measuring new dimensions of development (institutions, governance, and social and political participation). To take up this challenge, modules on Governance, Democracy and Multiple Dimensions of Poverty have been appended to household surveys by National Statistics Institutes in twelve African and Latin American developing countries. This paper presents the issues addressed and the methodological lessons learnt along with a selection of findings to illustrate this innovative approach and demonstrate its analytic potential. We investigate, for instance, the population's support for democratic principles, the respect for civil and political rights and the trust in the political class; the ‘need for the State’, particularly of the poorest; the extent of petty corruption; the reliability of expert surveys on governance; the perception of decentralization policies at local level; the level and vitality of social and political participation, etc. The conclusive appraisal made opens up prospects for the national statistical information systems in the developing countries. The measurement and tracking of this new set of objective and subjective public policy monitoring indicators would benefit from being made systematic.     

Towards a New Methodology of Estimating Party Policy Positions

In the last twenty years, an international group of political scientists has coded nearly 2000 party manifestos with the help of one single coding scheme based on 56 categories which covers all main topics of these documents. However, there is a growing awareness of the shortcomings of the underlying coding scheme, such as overlapping and missing categories, which cannot be repaired without coding all manifestos all over again. Some have presented an alternative for manifesto-research by means of expert opinions on party policy positions, but these are unable to provide reliable time series for subsequent election years. The unborn solution to some of the problems with the coding scheme would be the computerised content analysis on digitalised party manifestos. This would open up a new universe of infinite possibilities for recodings and reanalyses. The extended consequences from full computerisation of textual analysis are mind boggling. But at the present, these possibilities are merely potentials as the computerised techniques are still underdeveloped. This article explores the possibilities for computerised content analysis in such a way that all postwar manifestos in established democracies can be compared with each other with the help of flexible coding schemes.     

通向社会主义的波兰道路的启示——以政党执政规律为视角

从政党执政规律的视角,考察战后初期波兰工人党"国内派"提出并付诸于实践的波兰道路,可以获得一些有益的启示。这就是执政党应坚持走适合本民族特点的发展道路,执政党要实行符合具体国情的政党体制,执政党确立的所有制结构要适应生产力的发展水平,执政党要始终代表最广大人民的根本利益。     

网络民主对我国政党制度的影响和对策研究

网络民主对我国政党制度的影响有积极和消极两个方面,在坚持我国政党制度的基础上,要加强对网络民主的管理,推动网络民主的繁荣健康发展,建立和完善网络化政党。     

量块定位方式对坐标测量机精度的影响

量块的定位方式对校准坐标测量机的尺寸测量参数有着重要影响。本文首先分析了标准量块的两种定位方式对校准精度的影响。在实际校准工作中,以不同尺寸的标准量块采取不同的定位方式来减少定位误差提高校准精度,并进行不确定度分析。     

Developed stock market reaction to political change: a panel data analysis

This paper utilized panel data to examine the effects of political change in developed stock market. According to Hausman test, we capture the stock return by the fixed-effect model to fit the stock market. Political change was originally intended as an incumbent party impetus to create opportunities for progress. However, this has caused great political party distress, creating political change with an inverse stock return relationship in developed countries.     

企业物流业务外包中存在的问题及解决方法

文章通过大量的调研实践,将物流业务外包的各种情况作了归纳介绍,通过分析物流业务的外包方即客户（制造）企业和承接外包业的第三方物流企业,指出企业物流业务外包中存在的问题,并进一步指出通过外包前的审计来降低风险,提前发现和解决外包过程存在的问题,提高外包的成功率。     

高校学习型党组织建设的问题分析与路径选择

高校学习型党组织建设,是贯彻落实建设马克思主义学习型政党的基础工程。高校作为党的教育的前沿阵地,学习型党组织建设的探索将对我国学习型政党、学习型社会的建设具有一定的借鉴意义。本文主要介绍了学习型党组织建设的内涵,分析高校学习型党组织建设存在的问题,从而给出高校学习型党组织建设的路径选择。     

What Makes a Good Mediator? Insights from a Mediation Training Program Participant

Mediation is a popular form of alternative dispute resolution for settling conflicts occurring in employment settings. Such workplace conflicts handled by mediation, for example, include discrimination, wrongful termination, as well as various labor-management issues. Defined as a structured process where a neutral third party assists the two conflicting parties in arriving at a voluntary resolution, individuals have undergone mediation training in order to become mediators. While research exists on how mediation-training programs should be structured, the purpose of this research is to determine the key attributes required to develop good mediators and whether such characteristics can be acquired through mediation-training program participation. Utilizing an autoethnographic methodology as a mediation training program participant, it was discovered that effective mediators demonstrate strong communication skills, flexibility, neutrality, composure and ethicality during the mediation process which can be attained through participation in mediation-training programs.     

Assessing the economic knowledge and economic opinions of adults

This study investigates public knowledge of basic economics and public opinion on economic issues. The primary data sources are five national surveys, administered from 1992 to 1999, which contain a rich set of questions to conduct multiple tests and comparisons of the factors that affect economic knowledge and public opinion. As a whole, the results offer significantly stronger evidence of factors that influence knowledge and opinion than is possible from a study of a particular sample of adults using a single set of survey questions.The analysis proceeds in two ways following methods that were originally used with one of the five data sets, a 1992 survey of adults (Walstad, 1997). First, a regression model is specified and estimated with each data set to identify how personal characteristics, general education, course work in economics, income, and political party affect economic knowledge. Second, probit analysis is used to evaluate the effect of economic knowledge on public opinion on selected economic issues after controlling for the above variables. The results from the 1992 data serve as the baseline for comparing the findings across the other surveys.     

战后初期波兰工人党与社会党基本主张的相近性及其启示

战后初期,波兰工人党与波兰社会党关于波兰未来发展道路的基本主张有着许多的相近之处。当时,两党都同意波兰将沿着社会主义的方向前进,政治上主张多党联合执政,经济上主张多元混合经济,都希望以两个工人政党的合作为基础,通过和平的民主方式,走一条符合波兰特点的社会主义道路。比较和总结波兰两个工人政党基本主张的相近性,对于共产党探索执政规律来说,能够获得一些可以借鉴的有益启示。     

Political parties' use of web based marketing: some preliminary findings relating to first‐time voters in the 2005 general election

• This paper examines the marketing of political parties, via websites, in the 2005 UK general election with specific reference to first‐time voters (age 18–24). Common perception views young voters as predominantly politically apathetic and less likely to vote than older generations. However, research literature suggests given the right message and medium, the group will engage in the political process. Could the Internet provide a path to engaging younger voters and will websites become a key marketing vehicle for political parties?
• Young voters were asked to review political party websites using an extended web assessment method (EWAM), which is an evaluation tool created to determine both the importance and presence of website evaluation criteria. Preliminary research suggests that respondents felt the Internet had a significant role to play in the election process and marketing of campaign messages. However, while political parties scored well in relation to the technical/software aspects of website design, participants felt website material had little appeal and were ineffective in influencing voter intent.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does the nationalization of party systems affect the composition of public spending?

Do political institutions shape the structure of public spending? Based on a sample of elections in eighteen Western European countries over the period 1970–1998, this paper shows that governments’ margin of maneuverability to design and implement fiscal policies depends on the level of party linkage or the nationalization of party systems, defined as the extent to which parties are uniformly successful in winning votes across districts. The mechanism behind this argument is that in weakly nationalized countries there are additional transaction costs to change the structure of budgets as a consequence of the survival of local parties and interests. Therefore, the composition of public spending is more rigid here than in highly nationalized countries.     

The long‐run effect of government ideology on economic freedom

According to popular attitudes in Western democracies, the choice between right‐wing and left‐wing parties is a choice between socialism and unbridled free markets. In contrast, the cold and staid research of academia has frequently concluded that particular political parties do not really matter, as whichever party is elected will be closely tethered to the will of the median voter. This article considers the effects of the ideology of parties in power over the long run (1928–95) on economic freedom in subsequent periods. Right‐wing governments are found to have modest, positive effects on economic freedom, but the effects are not particularly robust. The findings here are consistent with others elsewhere, which conclude that there is minor, uneven evidence of an effect. Nonetheless, historically small effects may not be indicative of the future, should these effects be poorly indicative of today's tumultuous political landscape.     

Business Groups: An Integrated Model to Focus Future Research

abstract    Business groups are the primary form of managing large business organizations outside North America. This paper provides a systematic and integrative framework for understanding business groups. We argue that existing theoretical perspectives of business groups pay attention to four critical external contexts, each of which draws from a specific theoretical perspective: market conditions (transaction cost theory), social relationships (relational perspective), political factors (political economy perspective), and external monitoring mechanisms (agency theory). Business groups adapt to these external forces by deploying various internal mechanisms along two key dimensions: one focuses on the distinctive roles of the group affiliates (horizontal connectedness) and the other focuses on coupling and order between the parent firm and its affiliates (vertical linkages). Based on these two dimensions, a typology of business group forms is developed: network (N-form), club (C-form), holding (H-form), and multidivisional (M-form). Utilizing this model we provide research questions which facilitate an improved future research agenda.     

The efficacy and efforts of interest groups in post elections policy formation

This paper presents a new model of interest groups and policy formation in the legislature. In our setting, the already given party ideological predispositions and power distribution determine the expected policy outcome. Our analysis applies to the case of un-enforced or enforced party discipline as well as to two-party and multi-party (proportional representation) electoral systems. The interest groups’ objective is to influence the outcome in their favor by engaging in a contest that determines the final decision in the legislature. Our first result clarifies how the success of an interest group hinges on the dominance of its ideologically closer party and, in general, the coalition/opposition blocks of parties under un-enforced party or coalition/opposition discipline. Such dominance is defined in terms of ideological inclination weighted by power. Our second result clarifies how the success of an interest group hinges on the dominance of its ideology in the ruling coalition (party) in a majoritarian system with enforced coalition (party) discipline. We then clarify under what condition an interest group prefers to direct its lobbying efforts to two parties or the two coalition and opposition blocks of parties under un-enforced discipline rather than to the members of the ruling coalition (party) under enforced discipline. The lobbying efforts under un-enforced and enforced party discipline are also compared. Finally, we clarify the effect of ideological predispositions and power on the efforts of the interest groups.     

浅谈党员在加强企业青年员工思想工作的作用——以金雁电工有限公司为例

多年来,金雁电工公司党总支在深入细致地做好职工思想政治工作的同时,结合企业青年工人多的实际,以党员与职工挂钩联系活动为载体,有针对性地开展形式多样的党员挂钩联系活动。     

Complexity in local government change

Abstract

This article discusses empirical research findings indicating that complexity is a dominant characteristic in local government change and addresses that the current complexity sets limits to rational reform processes and gives way to political leadership.

During the recent decade, intermunicipal co-operation has emerged as a major issue in local governance in Finland. Despite the fact that the need for intense co-operation is acknowledged in most surveys, practical steps are often difficult to take due to complexity of the interorganizational action. Actors come upon complex situations involving many issues; situations where the issues are continuously changing and complicatedly interdependent. Circumstances are further blurred by the fact that actors often hide their preferences.

In the changing local governance, complexity, paradoxes and uncertainty decrease the prospective of managerial and expert knowledge, because rational calculations do not give definitive support for decision making. From this perspective, we have reached the limits of rational, clear-cut reforming. More than before, the implementation of change depends on the emergence of political leaders willing and able to take responsibility for reforms.