Are people in the SADC region willing to pay more tax to fund public healthcare?

ABSTRACT

For Africa to develop and achieve sustainable development, African governments have to prioritise spending on public health. However, the current spending data shows that health spending is a continuing struggle for African countries. Many researchers have the view that African governments have to collect more tax to spend enough on public healthcare. The question here is what extent people are willing to pay more tax to increase spending on public healthcare? Employing a multilevel regression model on Afrobarometer survey data, this paper examined to what extent individual and country level factors influence people’s willingness to pay more tax to increase spending on public healthcare in 12 Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states. This study found that peoples’ trust in their government is an important determinant of willingness to pay more tax, while factors such as the country’s quality of democracy, economic condition, and current per capita health expenditure have no influence.     

(In)equality and the South African Constitution

ABSTRACT

Does the South African Constitution constrain or empower government, courts and citizens in addressing systemic social and economic inequalities? This article argues that the Constitution is explicitly ‘transformative’, but is an enabling document, providing ‘scaffolding’ for political and legal activities. It is government, strong institutions and civil society that are ultimately responsible for securing its equality aspirations. Here the Constitution admits of different understandings of equality and different economic and social policy choices. This article identifies these contested meanings of equality and suggests that a liberal egalitarian/social democratic version is dominant in policy choices and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. It illustrates this with reference to the Court’s jurisprudence on equality, and suggests that more radical and transformative interpretations remain possible. However, it concludes that we cannot escape politics, the need for good policy choices and effective implementation and enforcement.     

Political Entrepreneurship and the Democratic Allocation of Economic Resources

Political entrepreneurship occurs when an individual acts on a political profit opportunity. These profit opportunities can be divided into two categories: productive, and predatory. Productive opportunities enable entrepreneurs to profit from enhancing the efficiency of government, while predatory opportunities enable entrepreneurs to profit from forcibly transferring resources from some to others. This analysis shows that political institutions tend to favor predatory over productive political entrepreneurship, and shows that what is sometimes referred to as political exchange does not have the same efficiency characteristics as voluntary exchange in private markets.     

The relevance of democracy to organizational management

The relationship between democratic ideals and organizational structuring and functioning receives attention in this article. After a brief historical consideration of liberal democracy in the United States, we analyze social, managerial, ethical, and economic issues defining the relevance of democracy to organizational management. These issues lead to a presentation of specific purposes that particular mechanisms of organizational democracy can serve. Because of other scholarly attention to participative management and employee ownership, hierarchical constraints receive emphasis here.     

Adverse selection in group insurance: The virtues of failing to represent voters

Compared with non-union workers, union workers take more of their compensation in the form of insurance. This may be because unions choose democratically, and democratic choice mitigates adverse selection in group insurance. Relative to individually-purchased insurance, we show that group insurance chosen by an ideal profit-maximizing employer can be worse for every employee, while group insurance chosen democratically can be much better. The reason is that democracy can fail to represent the preferences of almost half the group.Received: January 2003, Accepted: September 2004, JEL Classification: J51, D82, G22     

浅析我国"红顶商人"现象

“红顶商人”是市场经济不成熟的产物。“红顶商人”与民争利 ,利用特权敛聚财富 ,不但严重破坏市场经济秩序而且滋生政治腐败。要彻底清除“红顶商人”现象 ,应采取促进民主政治建设、制定“国家公务员法”、规范行业协会行为、增加地方财政收入和加强监督力度等有力措施。     

民主政治与社会和谐

社会和谐问题的关键,是搞好以民主法治为中心的国家治理。中国的制度变迁是经济和社会层面的变迁,是自上而下推动的改革型的变迁,在由权力集中到权力分散的制度转型过程中,稳中求进是中国实现社会和谐的经验总结,制度的设计不宜过于完美。民主政治是社会和谐的前提和归宿,是执政合法性的来源,没有民主政治就没有和谐社会。     

论村民自治制度的完善与民主政治的发展

村民自治是我国农民的伟大政治创造,它有力地推动了中国基层民主政治发展和民主化进程。从《村民委员会组织法》的实施来看,村民自治制度还存在诸多需要迫切解决的问题。正确处理村党支部和村委会的关系,建立有效完善的冲突解决机制和监督保障机制,消除宗族势力、家族利益对村民自治的负面影响,解决好村民自治与乡镇政权的衔接等问题,将积极促进村民自治制度和民主政治的健康发展。     

民主决策：新世纪条件下的战略选择

民主决策是新世纪条件下领导方式的一个战略选择。要实现决策民主，不仅领导者必须具有较高的民主素养，而且要完善和发展民主集中制，加强法律控制，改革决策机制，健全群众监督制度。在实行民主决策过程中，还应处理好集体决策与个人拍板、民主与集中先后顺序、连续性与创造性、抓大与放小的关系。     

The initiative,referendum, and distribution of income: An empirical analysis of Swiss cantons

This study examines how direct democratic institutions affect income distribution before and after taxes. Based on a panel of Swiss cantons from 1945 to 2014, we test the effects of the constitutional reforms of direct democratic instruments. Our findings show that better voter access to the initiative induces policy shifts that significantly decrease top incomes and benefit the upper middle class. For the popular referendum we do not find such effects. The income effects of direct democracy are not a consequence of shifts in fiscal redistribution, but rather result from policy changes affecting pre-tax incomes.