Governance-An International Journal of Policy Administration and Institutions最新文献

Different disciplines ask why public sector corruption occurs, addressing diverse phenomena. However, how different approaches and factors at micro, meso, or macro levels relate to each other in causally complex, context-dependent ways is seldom theorized. This article develops an integrated “Corruption Hexagon” model with six dimensions. The analytically relevant context provides a not directly causal background that influences the interplay of the pressure to act corruptly, the opportunity to benefit from corruption, the capability to exploit the opportunity, the supply of corruption, and the rationalization of one's corrupt behavior. Using secondary data from 23 European countries, we operationalize the Hexagon to explain differences in procurement-related corruption risks. Results corroborate the Hexagon's expectations: whereas the circumstances enable corruption, their interplay with personal characteristics or rationalization triggers corruption. The Hexagon offers a flexible, context-dependent, complexity-informed model for cumulative research integrating different methods and theoretical assumptions about the agency underlying corruption.

In what ways, if at all, does transparency influence how politicians cooperate with interest organizations? While there are convincing normative arguments stressing the importance of transparency in politics, empirical evidence for how transparency in practice affects how politicians reason regarding cooperating with interest organizations is scarce. In this article, I address this gap by conducting a mixed method survey experiment with 1659 Swedish politicians. The findings indicate that a lack of transparency, as explored in this study, diminishes politicians' willingness to closely cooperate with interest organizations by submitting policy proposals drafted by these organizations. However, the central concern for most politicians, in both the transparent and untransparent conditions, was whether they had exercised independent political judgment rather than blindly accepted the interest organization's suggestion. These results contribute to the literature by showing how a specific form of transparency influences cooperation between politicians and interest groups, while also offering theoretical insights into the critical role of political judgment in this cooperation.

Liberal democracies increasingly restrict civil society organizations (CSOs), a trend frequently linked to illiberal governments. But when do ideologically liberal governments resort to such restrictions? Linking research on state traditions, party ideology and crisis governance, we theorize factors enhancing liberal governments' propensity to adopt normatively contentious CSO restrictions. Distinguishing formal-legal restrictions on CSO voice from those on CSO existence, we show that nearly 90 such restrictions were adopted by 17 cabinets in France and the United Kingdom over the last 2 decades. In line with theoretical expectations, restrictions on CSO existence are more prominent in statist France, while governments in the United Kingdom tend to restrict CSO voice. More right-wing governments adopt more CSO restrictions, while restrictions go up with government crisis pressure. Overall, understanding how liberal governments use CSO restrictions requires considering contextual opportunity structures and ideological dispositions in conjunction.

In the mid-2000s, the Single Market Program and European Monetary Union lost momentum, as public services advocates increasingly succeeded in tempering attempts to liberalize public utilities through legislative amendments and Court of Justice rulings. After the 2008 crisis, however, the EU's shift to a new economic governance (NEG) regime provided EU executives with a new tool to advance their objectives. Unlike EU directives, country-specific NEG prescriptions require neither the approval of the European Parliament nor their transposition into law, making it more difficult for social forces to contest them. Our analysis of NEG prescriptions for public utilities in two sectors (rail and water) and four countries (Germany, Ireland, Italy, Romania) across 10 years (2009–2019) shows that the shift to NEG provided EU executives with new extra-parliamentarian and extra-juridical tools that allowed them to revive their stalled commodification agenda; at the price of accentuating the EU's democratic and justice deficits.

The prevailing view that authoritarian regimes primarily respond to threats of instability is challenged by our research, which posits that such regimes also take citizen complaints seriously, even when they do not pose a direct threat. Based on 238,835 citizen claims from China's largest national online petition platform from 2020 to 2021 and 793,119 citizen claims from Wuhan's local petition website, this study reveals that online complaints result in greater governmental responsiveness, compared to non-complaints. This institutionalized feedback mechanism is driven by a mix of factors: the upper-level officials' expectation for negative feedback, combined with bureaucrats' efforts to preserve themselves and avoid punitive consequences. Our findings thus enhance the understanding of what drives authoritarian responsiveness and signal a caution that an overreliance on managing complaints may deepen a stability-maintenance mechanism, potentially impeding substantial reform.