The Political Implications of State Political Ideology: A Measure Tested

A bstract Four different state political ideology measures are estimated and evaluated on the basis of their reliability and consisteny. The state political ideology measure accounting for constituency economic interest, legislator shirking , and political party loyalty is found to be the one with the most predictive power. Using this preferred ideology measure states were classified according to their political ideology along a conservative-liberal continuum. The state rankings showed there are distinct regional differences in ideology. The Northeast and Pacific regions are very liberal, the South and Mountain regions are very conservative, and the Midwest region is relatively moderate. States in the Mountain region are found to be the most ideologically homogeneous, while the more heavily populated states tend to be more liberal. In addition, the United States citizens are found to have a moderately conservative political philosophy . Finally, the results suggest that a Democratic candidate would need to win Illinois, California, and Ohio plus all the liberal states to become President of the United States. The 1996 presidential note sustains the analysis herein.     

Local Political Leadership: Nordic Style

In a context where changes brought about by globalization and Europeanization, and where local governments increasingly operate in a governance mode, different countries place increasing stress on the importance of strong local leadership. This article reviews local political leadership in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Outside of a few major (mainly capital) cities, local government in the Nordic area remains small scale and frequently rural, is strongly partisan, yet relies on a strong tradition of consensual, corporatist style of decision‐making. Furthermore, this social democratic consensus places a stress on the continued production and delivery of high quality welfare state services. This domestic environment produces a style of local leadership which is essentially collective in nature and in which the strong mayor concept is alien. The article reviews the experience of local political leadership in the four Nordic countries and concludes that, though there is some small country variation and without many examples of strong mayors, local political leaders play an important role, especially in managing and maintaining the consensual style of politics. Mondialisation et européanisation créent des changements qui, à l'instar des gouvernements locaux, opèrent de plus en plus selon un mode de gouvernance, poussant plusieurs pays à faire une place plus importante à une forte autorité locale. L'article étudie l'autorité politique locale au Danemark, en Finlande, en Norvège et en Suède. A l'exception de quelques rares grandes villes (essentiellement les capitales), un gouvernement local dans les pays nordiques garde une échelle réduite et souvent un caractère rural, tout en étant fortement partisan même s'il s'appuie sur une solide tradition décisionnelle consensuelle de type syndical. Par ailleurs, ce consensus social démocratique agit sur la poursuite et la qualité de la fourniture de prestations dans le cadre de l'État‐providence. Cet environnement national génère un style d'autorité locale de nature principalement collective, qui exclut toute notion de pouvoir propre au maire. L'article étudie les formes d'autorité politique locale dans les quatre pays scandinaves concluant que, malgré quelques légères variations nationales et la quasi‐absence de maires puissants, les leaders politiques locaux jouent un rôle important, en particulier dans la gestion et la préservation d'un style politique consensuel.     

Political entrepreneurship: entrepreneurship ecosystem perspective

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - We use the entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective to study political entrepreneurship as a form of alignment between disruptive and...     

审计监督的政治学思考

审计监督具有鲜明的政治意义,审计监督本身及其所反映出的种种问题的实质就是“围绕公共权力而展开的活动”,应结合政治学来探索审计监督的本质和发展规律,并推进审计工作进一步发展。     

治疗顽症:政策药方可期

何黎明建议,应该建立强有力的综合协调机制,形成各部门共同解决问题的合力,才有可能攻克我国物流业的顽症。5月9～22日,中央电视台财经频道(CCTV2)多个栏目联动,连续播出了聚焦中国物流顽症系列节目,集中并生动反映了我国物流业现存的方方面面的矛盾和问题,引起了社会各界的广泛关注。央视财经频道在长达两周的时间对物流业如此高密度的关注,这在国家级媒体尚属首次。此次系列节目引起的社会反响和热议程度亦是空前。中国物流与采购联合会(以下简称中物联)为此做了     

Political regimes: a coalition formation approach

What leads to the stability of a particular regime and what causes its demise? With the aid of formal modeling, the paper illustrates the necessary and sufficient conditions for different political regimes to exist. The game involves two factions representing the differing interests of the civil society and the armed forces of a nation. We illustrate the emergence of political regimes that includes both unconstrained and constrained democracies, both military and civilian autocracies and an alliance formed by a segment of the civil society and the military.     

Political Failure: The First Diagnosis?

1986 sees the 90th anniversary of the publication by the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell's of a path-breaking and prophetic analysis of the failure of the political process. Wicksell's compatriot, the economist Peter Stein, assesses his seminal contribution to the branch of economics that has since become known as 'Public Choice'.     

Political Taxes: Abolition, not Reform

Much of the burden of taxation could be removed with long-term benefit to the economy and yet with little short-term difficulty. Dr Barry Bracewell-Milnes, a consultant on tax and business issues, outlines the scope for reduced taxation, beginning with taxes imposed for political satisfaction rather than economic necessity.     

Feminist Economics: Theoretical and Political Dimensions

Feminist economics is a school of economic thought and political action that gained important visibility during the 1990s, although its origins can be dated back to the mid‐19^th century. Since then, feminist economics has developed its own concepts, analytical frameworks, and methodologies. With gender as a central category, it seeks a more integral and humane comprehension of the economy and of the processes of inclusion and exclusion taking place in it. In addition, feminist economics has grown into a political practice that aims at improving the functioning of the economic system so that all people can have access to a dignified life on the basis of equality. This article presents a general systematization of these theoretical and political dimensions, particularly focusing on the critique of the neoclassical paradigm and its political correlates. We connect the epistemological, methodological, and conceptual contributions of feminist economics, as well as its propositions for transformative action, to specific debates on economic issues, such as the ecological emergency, crisis and austerity, the commodification of life, and the liberalization of trade.     

Behavioural Economics: A Virginia Political Economy Perspective

Behavioural economics offers a critique of modern neoclassical economics by providing empirical evidence that the model of rational choice does not accurately describe human decision‐making processes. The existence of cognitive biases, what we might term ‘agent failure’, becomes reason to doubt the efficacy of unhampered markets, and is seen by some as a sufficient condition for government intervention. This article offers a critique of this argument from an Austrian and public choice theory comparative institutions perspective. Agent failure arguments are analogous to market failure arguments of the mid‐twentieth century and the same kinds of responses made against the latter are applied to the former. Behavioural economics arguments for intervention ignore the cognitive biases of political actors, neglect the comparative perspective that results from such biases, and do not examine the ways in which markets are superior to politics in providing the information and incentives actors need to become aware of their errors and correct them. The existence of imperfectly rational agents, like the existence of imperfect markets, is therefore not a sufficient condition for government intervention into the market.     

Political Bargaining: Bricks, Bluff and Blackmail

The market does not always work well but, argues Rosalind Levačić of the Open University, neither does its alternative – jostling for advantage by interest groups. She draws on a case study to demonstrate that the bluff and blackmail of political bargaining leads to results that should be examined as closely as market failure.     

Political Hybrids: Tocquevillean Views on Project Organizations

ABSTRACT For the past decade, project organization has become increasingly central to management and organization studies, particularly as these seek to discern the contours of post‐modern organizations. Yet, these contours frequently seem to be sighted without bearings on the current realities of project management. In this paper we take such bearings, using data derived from detailed qualitative, ethnographic enquiry into the experience of project management. From this data we construct the contours of project management more sharply. Rather than being a harbinger of an autonomous and more democratic future, free from extant bureaucratic organization controls, we find that project management has distinct modalities of control that we outline in the paper: reputational, calculative, and professional. Indeed, rather than foreshadowing a future transformational form, we find traces of a much older design: that of de Tocqueville.     

Capital Budgeting and Political Risk: Empirical Evidence

This paper surveys and investigates Swedish firms' use of capital budgeting techniques for foreign direct investments. We document that the use of the theoretically correct net present value method decreases with the political risk in the host country, and that the use of the Payback method increases with the political risk. We conclude that in the presence of capital market imperfections, unsystematic and country-specific political risks are important. Because these risks are difficult to estimate (rendering high deliberation costs) managers are inclined to use simple rules of thumb for their capital budgeting decisions. Our results can partly explain why surveys find that alternative methods such as the Payback method are frequently used despite their theoretical drawbacks.