Party Discipline and Environmental Policy: The Role of “Smoke‐filled Back Rooms”*

We adopt the view that greater party discipline induces legislators to commit to promised policies after being elected. We then develop the hypothesis that the effect of party discipline on the stringency of environmental policy is conditional on the degree of government corruption. Our empirical work suggests that greater party discipline results in more stringent environmental policies when the level of corruption is relatively low, but in weaker policies when the level of corruption is comparatively high.     

Constitutional coordination in unstable party systems: the Brazilian constitution of 1988

Constitutional assemblies are a common feature of many democratic transitions. However, the goal of coordinating constitutional choice would seem nearly impossible when assemblies are comprised of highly fragmented and volatile political parties. Building on Knight’s bargaining model, this article argues that the main challenge to coordination in unstable party systems is the procedural disequilibrium that results from incomplete information over breakdown payoffs. The likelihood of compromise in such circumstances is a function of the ideologies that frame constitutional choice and inform coalition-building. Thus, unstable party systems are not chaotic, although they may be deeply conflict-laden. These issues are illustrated empirically via the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, which demonstrates the possibilities for a stable constitutional order emerging from a fragmented and volatile party system.

How local leaders matter: Inter-provincial leadership transfers and land transactions in China

We study how local leaders matter for economic growth by examining the impacts of exogenous transfers of leaders across China’s provinces on land transactions in the primary market. We find that new provincial leaders attract investment in industrial land from the provinces of their previous positions. The leaders’ impacts are greater when their freedom to deploy their business connections in the land market is greater. More importantly, we find evidence of positive impacts of land transactions on economic growth, which should bode well for the careers of the local leaders, albeit there is some evidence of rent seeking among officials especially when they are too old for further promotion.     

Ethnic identities,public spending and political regimes

Do democracies discriminate less against minorities as compared to non-democracies? How does the dominance of an ethnic group affect discrimination under various political regimes? We build a theory to analyse such questions. In our model, political leaders (democratically elected or not) decide on the allocation of spending on different types of public goods: a general public good and an ethnically-targetable public good which benefits the majority ethnic group while imposing a cost on the other minorities. We show that, under democracy, lower ethnic dominance leads to greater provision of the general public good while higher dominance implies higher provision of the ethnically-targetable good. Interestingly, the opposite relation obtains under dictatorship. This implies that political regime changes can favour or disfavour minorities based on the ambient level of ethnic dominance. Several historical events involving regime changes can be analysed within our framework and are consistent with our results.     

产业结构调整的政治经济学诠释

本文主要在马克思主义政治经济学的框架下,对产业结构调整进行重新诠释,提出目前我国产业调整过程中出现的问题是由于相关参与主体在调整过程中角色＂易位＂或＂缺位＂造成的,明确指出企业是整个过程中的主体,而市场需求则是结构调整的源泉,产业结构调整是资本在各个部门间流动,追逐利润的结果。     

经济发展中的地方官员行为研究——基于政治晋升、财政分权与腐败的视角

本文同时考虑财政分权、政治晋升和腐败三个因素对地方官员行为的影响,进而构建了理论模型。从中得到的主要结论是,在基本模型中,地方官员对政治晋升的偏好程度越高,则其努力程度越高、腐败程度越低。而财政分权程度越高,官员的努力也越高,但对腐败水平影响却是不确定的。在进一步假设腐败会被惩罚的拓展模型中,基本模型的大部分结论都没有发生太大变化,只是分权程度的对努力的影响也变得不确定了。除此之外,我们进一步研究了,对官员腐败惩罚的力度和对官员腐败的惩罚准确程度的影响,相关命题表明,如果对官员腐败惩罚的越严厉,并且对官员腐败的惩罚越准确,官员努力水平和官员腐败程度都会变低。通过对研究结论的分析,我们还对以往文献的结果进行了重新解释。     

Political trust as rational belief: Evidence from Chinese village elections

Democratic governance is believed to improve government responsiveness to citizens’ demand for public goods. In China, villagers’ committee elections represent a major progress in China’s development toward good governance. We develop a rational model to explain villagers’ participation. Utilizing a national survey of rural residents in 2005, this paper tests the insights of the model. Two findings are of interest to the students of voting and elections. First, there is disagreement over the causal relationship between political trust and voting. This paper offers a rational interpretation of political trust by emphasizing the informational aspect of the concept. Second, voting is generally theorized as a process of overcoming various costs. The prospect of benefits figures more prominently in Chinese village elections. Our findings highlight the pivotal role of township governments in China’s rural politics and reveal the inner dilemma of democratization in China.     

Water scarcity, social power and the production of an elite suburb: The political ecology of water in Matadepera, Catalonia

This article investigates the history of land and water transformations in Matadepera, a wealthy suburb of metropolitan Barcelona. Analysis is informed by theories of political ecology and methods of environmental history; although very relevant, these have received relatively little attention within ecological economics. Empirical material includes communications from the City Archives of Matadepera (1919-1979), 17 interviews with locals born between 1913 and 1958, and an exhaustive review of grey historical literature. Existing water histories of Barcelona and its outskirts portray a battle against natural water scarcity, hard won by heroic engineers and politicians acting for the good of the community. Our research in Matadepera tells a very different story. We reveal the production of a highly uneven landscape and waterscape through fierce political and power struggles. The evolution of Matadepera from a small rural village to an elite suburb was anything but spontaneous or peaceful. It was a socio-environmental project well intended by landowning elites and heavily fought by others. The struggle for the control of water went hand in hand with the land and political struggles that culminated - and were violently resolved - in the Spanish Civil War. The displacement of the economic and environmental costs of water use from few to many continues to this day and is constitutive of Matadepera's uneven and unsustainable landscape. By unravelling the relations of power that are inscribed in the urbanization of nature (Swyngedouw, 2004), we question the perceived wisdoms of contemporary water policy debates, particularly the notion of a natural scarcity that merits a technical or economic response. We argue that the water question is fundamentally a political question of environmental justice; it is about negotiating alternative visions of the future and deciding whose visions will be produced.     

Environment versus growth — A criticism of “degrowth” and a plea for “a-growth”

In recent debates on environmental problems and policies, the strategy of “degrowth” has appeared as an alternative to the paradigm of economic growth. This new notion is critically evaluated by considering five common interpretations of it. One conclusion is that these multiple interpretations make it an ambiguous and rather confusing concept. Another is that degrowth may not be an effective, let alone an efficient strategy to reduce environmental pressure. It is subsequently argued that “a-growth,” i.e. being indifferent about growth, is a more logical social aim to substitute for the current goal of economic growth, given that GDP (per capita) is a very imperfect indicator of social welfare. In addition, focusing ex ante on public policy is considered to be a strategy which ultimately is more likely to obtain the necessary democratic-political support than an ex ante, explicit degrowth strategy. In line with this, a policy package is proposed which consists of six elements, some of which relate to concerns raised by degrowth supporters.