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

This study conducts a randomized survey experiment to examine the impact of budgeting professionalism, environmental shocks, and fiscal transparency on citizen blame attributions during government fiscal crises. Theoretically, we distinguish between two logics of responsibility attribution: causal responsibility stresses the causal link between an actor's actions and specific phenomena; functional responsibility underlines an actor's legal, moral, or social obligations in relation to such phenomena. Our experiment focuses on empirically testing causal responsibility. Moreover, fiscal transparency may shape citizens' perceptions regarding government fiscal performance and subsequently influence blame attributions. The experimental results show that citizens attribute less blame to government leaders when professional experts play a more important role in the budgeting process, when localities experience severe environmental shocks, or when governments exhibit greater fiscal transparency. These findings support inferences based on the logic of causal responsibility and establish a clear relationship between fiscal transparency and citizen perceptions of government performance.

Migration, in general, is not a salient political issue in West Africa. However, one migration aspect that remains highly controversial and unpopular is cooperation on the deportation of undocumented emigrants with the EU and its member states. In this paper, we set out a typology of justification frames for studying how political actors in West Africa might frame their support or opposition to cooperation on deportation. We distinguished three types of justifications: identity-related, moral, and utilitarian. While the moral (human rights) and utilitarian (political, economic, securitarian, labor) frames are rather classic justifications in migration politics and governance, our analysis shows that identity-related (‘neo-colonial resistance’ and ‘neo-colonial compliance’) justification frames highlight how historical path dependencies matter in understanding the drivers of (migration) politics and governance in West Africa. This is particularly evident when the images of cuffed and shackled deportees from Europe evoke memories of dark historical pasts.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the economic contribution of migrant workers in maintaining essential services and access to goods. This new perspective on migrants as essential workers raised expectations in migration studies that it could reinvigorate an inclusive setting in terms of migration debates and policies. Building on this potential, we examine migration debates in the political party arena with a focus on centrist parties. The analysis focuses on Austria, a country with a high dependence on migrant labor in key sectors and a long-standing contestation of migration across the political party spectrum. Drawing on an analysis of parliamentary contributions and press releases by the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) during the pandemic, the study finds that the debates did not change fundamentally. Whilst external shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic have a limited potential to reverse the focus on unwanted migration in European party politics, crises can lead the political center to reemphasize bifurcation strategies in response to shifts in public discourse, as this study of the Austrian case during the pandemic suggests.

This study firstly examines the causal effect of environmental information disclosure on political trust and then provides a novel psychological mechanism through which the effect occurred. Exploiting the staggered rolled-out implementation of a national program in China that provides real-time air-pollution information to the public, we find that air pollution adversely moderates the positive effect of information disclosure on political trust. Notably and surprisingly, this “adverse moderation” is concentrated in less polluted areas, where the lack of visible smog led citizens to remain unaware of the actual pollution levels until information is disclosed. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the adverse moderation is more pronounced among urban residents using Internet, an important source for pollution information. Furthermore, we establish that the causal effect operates through the channels of citizens' mental well-being, demonstrated by a large and statistically significant increase in the risk of mild depression due to heightened concern over pollution.

The success of populist parties in national elections puts pressure on political leaders and their administrations, both at the central and sub-national levels. This paper explores the political tensions between two administrative levels—a central level governed by a populist party, and the city level headed by a liberal party—and the strategies populists use to challenge local political leaders and their city administrations. This paper analyzes three case studies: Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest. In all three cities, opposition candidates are visible challengers to the populist parties in government. The results show that city administrations face increasing tasks, cuts in budget transfers, higher scrutiny from central government, and administrative bottlenecks.

Freedom of information (FOI) laws are known to expose governmental weaknesses, but do they improve the structural workings of public administration, professionalizing governance? This study examines FOI's effect on a cornerstone of effective governance—bureaucratic hiring. Using coarsened matching methods to compare over 5400 municipalities in Brazil—approximately half possessing FOI regulations and half without—we identify significant reductions in discretionary patronage-based appointments. Municipalities with FOI regulations reduce both higher level “political control” and lower-level “electoral rewards” hires. Our explanation, tentatively supported by a comparison of early versus late FOI adopters, centers on sequencing: in the short term, leaders view FOI as a supplement to administrative control and thus reduce higher-level hires. As FOI becomes more institutionalized and exposures more probable, leaders reduce lower-level hires. Contributing to scholarship on transparency and bureaucracies, our results enjoin policymakers to double-down on commitments to FOI policies.