Citizen Choice Research Articles

Parties, Partisanship, and Democratic Politics

On the Side of the Angels makes two core arguments, first for the of politics, and second for the moral distinctiveness of partisanship (p. 7). By creativity, Rosenblum means that political parties are entrepreneurial and agonistic institutions that are essential to representative democracy because they create, not just reflect, political interests and opinions (p. 7). She derives from this notion a sharp rebuke to theorists of deliberative democracy who simply take it for granted that political parties have no role to play in reasoned exchange precisely because they are partisan. Rosenblum asserts, to the contrary, that parties do for democratic deliberation the work that philosophy cannot: They hone conflict so that it is politically pertinent and cast it in an oppositional frame to focus citizen choice (p. 307). She praises partisans, in turn, for lending urgency to public debate. They generate conflicting positions and advance opposing arguments within a framework designed for adversarial show (p. 307). Although their explicit partiality is likely aversive to some, it nonetheless lends interest and urgency that deliberation can have only when it is about choosing sides (p. 310). Rosenblum arrives at her first core argument, the party creativity thesis, in surprising ways. She finds initial inspiration for it in one of two glorious traditions of antipartyism, and then proceeds to elaborate it by an unusual but compelling synthesis of the ideas of J. S. Mill and E. E. Schattschneider (p. 25).

The ID card debate

The latest news on ID cards – which saw Home Secretary Alan Johnson announce that holding ID cards should be a personal choice for British citizens – has kicked off the long-standing debate once again. Davey Winder takes a look at the pros and cons of the controversial initiative

Spatial Voting in the 2004 Presidential Election

The theory of spatial voting has played a large role in the development of important results across many areas of political science. Directly testing the foundational assumptions of spatial voting theory, however, has not been possible with existing data. Using a novel survey design, this article obtains estimates of voter ideology on the same scale as candidate positions. The results of this scaling demonstrate that voters possess meaningful ideologies and, furthermore, that these beliefs are strongly related to the sorts of policy proposals considered in Congress. These ideology estimates are then used to uncover the actual relationships between ideology and vote choice for citizens of various types in the 2004 presidential election. Although the choices of independent voters are shown to be largely consistent with the assumptions of spatial voting theory, the decision rules used by partisans differ strongly from what unbiased spatial voting would imply. Although partisans do converge toward the behavior of independents, and hence toward the assumptions of spatial voting theory, as information levels increase, we see that even highly informed partisans show significant differences from what would be implied by unbiased spatial voting theory.

Do Better Paid Politicians Perform Better? Disentangling Incentives from Selection

The wage paid to politicians affects both the choice of citizens to run for an elective office and the performance of those who are appointed. First, if skilled individuals shy away from politics because of higher opportunities in the private sector, an increase in politicians' pay may change their mind. Second, if the reelection prospects of incumbents depend on their in-office deeds, a higher wage may foster performance. We use data on all Italian municipal governments from 1993 to 2001 and test these hypotheses in a quasi-experimental framework. In Italy, the wage of the mayor depends on population size and sharply rises at different thresholds. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the only threshold that uniquely identifies a wage increase – 5,000 inhabitants – to control for unobservable town characteristics. Exploiting the existence of a two-term limit, we further disentangle the composition from the incentive component of the effect of the wage on performance. Our results show that a higher wage attracts more educated candidates, and that better paid politicians size down the government machinery by improving internal efficiency. Importantly, most of this performance effect is driven by the selection of competent politicians, rather than by the incentive to be reelected.

Political and Public Acceptability of Congestion Pricing: Ideology and Self Interest

Studies of the “stated preferences” of households generally report public and political opposition by urban commuters to congestion pricing. It is thought that this opposition inhibits or precludes tolls and pricing systems that would enhance efficiency in the use of scarce roadways. This paper analyzes the only case in which road pricing was decided by a citizen referendum on the basis of experience with a specific pricing system. The city of Stockholm introduced a toll system for seven months in 2006, after which citizens voted on its permanent adoption. We match precinct voting records to citizen commute times and costs by traffic zone, and we analyze patterns of voting in response to economic and political incentives. We document political and ideological incentives for citizen choice, but we also find that the pattern of time savings and incremental costs exerts a powerful influence on voting behavior. In this instance, at least, citizen voters behave as if they value commute time highly. When they have experienced first-hand the out-of-pocket costs and time-savings of a specific pricing scheme, they are prepared to adopt freely policies which reduce congestion on urban motorways.

Electoral Simultaneity: Expressing Equal Respect

The principle of simultaneity—that citizens should vote as far as possible at the same time—is more significant than is usually appreciated. It is based on a fundamental value of democratic theory, and it has substantial implications for electoral practice. It also invites further normative and empirical research. The most important value that simultaneity expresses is a form of equality—equal respect. First, if citizens have only information they would have had if they were voting at the same time, the value of each citizen's choice is no greater than that of any other citizen. Second, when citizens go to the polls on the same day, publicly participating in a common experience of civic engagement, they demonstrate their willingness to contribute to the democratic process on equal terms. Taking simultaneity seriously has implications for electoral practices. It would limit the practice of media projections of election results, including the reporting of exit polls, and the calling of elections before all the polls close. It also casts doubt on the increasingly widespread use of early voting—absentee ballots and voting by mail. Early voting weakens the value of the experience of participating in a civic activity. Voting alone may be worse than bowling alone.

Transformational Government? The role of information technology in delivering citizen-centric local public services

Following on from five years of ‘electronic government’, the Labour Government has recently announced a new five year plan for ‘transformational government’. Like its predecessor, t-government emphasises the important role of information technology in enabling the delivery of modernised public services. Modernisation is defined as an increasing emphasis on citizen choice, personalisation of services and understanding and responding to service user needs. This paper explores the appropriateness of the t-government agenda by drawing upon lessons learned from the preceding e-government era. Arguably the most significant citizen-focused technology of the e-government era was customer relationship management. The potential of CRM to support service transformation is explored and co-production, an alternative approach to citizen-centric service design, is examined both as a way of addressing weaknesses in IT-enabled service transformation and as a candidate later stage in the evolution of citizen-centric local public services.

Promoting well-being: Time for a paradigm shift in health and human services

The promotion of personal, relational, and collective well-being has evolved markedly in the last three decades. However positive and needed, recent developments in health promotion require further conceptual clarification and synergistic applications. To assist with conceptual clarification, this article proposes to distinguish among sites, signs, sources, and strategies of well-being. With respect to applications, progress is discussed along four domains: temporal, ecological, participation, and capabilities. The temporal domain refers to the timing of interventions and entails a continuum from reactive to proactive strategies. The ecological domain pertains to the site of interventions, ranging from person-centered to community-centered. The participation domain refers to voice and choice of citizens and consumers in delivery of services and access to resources. At one end of this continuum there is empowerment, while at the opposite end we see disempowerment and detachment. Finally, the capabilities domain refers to the concentration on either strengths or deficits. This article argues that a singular focus on strength, prevention, empowerment, or community conditions is insufficient. It presents a framework for the conceptual integration of these four approaches, while illustrating the benefits of their synergy and the risks of their fragmentation. It is high time for a paradigm shift in health and human services, and this article argues that only a new approach that focuses on strengths, prevention, empowerment, and community conditions can make considerable progress towards the achievement of well-being for all.

Foreword: Modernisation in the Public Sector

This special issue of FAM is about the contribution of accounting to the modernisation of the public sector. The following three principles are crucial to the UK modernisation programme: a free choice for citizens, simplicity and responsiveness of the public system and delivery of value for money. As will become clear from this special issue of FAM, the concept of modernisation is controversial. On the one hand, modernisation refers to progress and improvement, but these constructs are – at least to some extent – value-laden. On the other hand, modernisation of the public sector seems to be intertwined with the introduction of technologies and practices commonly used in the private sector. Then modernisation is strongly related to the adoption of business-like management and accounting instruments, often denoted as New Public Management. It may even be that modernisation is just a euphemism for the public sector’s wish to look alike the private sector, or a New Labour’s adage for slightly changing but basically continuing the Conservative agenda to restructure government. A main question to be addressed is to what extent and in what way modernisation will lead to (management) accounting innovations, or is it the other way around: are certain accounting innovations enablers for modernisation? A related question refers to the effectiveness of newly developed accounting techniques within a public sector context. Four of the five papers in this special issue directly relate to modernisation. Three, particularly, are concerned with devolution as a main strand of modernisation, but each with a different viewpoint. Arthur Midwinter analyses the budgeting of the Scottish parliament under devolution. On the one hand, budgetary scrutiny has been improved in comparison with the pre-devolution stage, implying that the parliament can dispose of better financial and performance information and its role in the consultation process about the Executive’s budgets has been strengthened. On the other hand, outcome-oriented budgeting is only limitedly implemented, whereas performance information does not play any role in budgetary choices between programmes. Midwinter relates the latter findings to unrealistic assumptions about what modernisation is supposed to achieve.

What Is the New Public Management?

True, there is a defined (if unwieldly) set of ideas that usually gets conjured up whenever NPM is the topic of discussion: competition between public and private service providers; decentralization and delayering of government bureaus; more choice for citizens; benchmarking and output measurements; performance contracts and other financial incentives for public servants; creation of inter-nal markets; and assimilation; within the public sector, of private-sector management techniques including better risk-management. Yet despite this emergent consensus on NPM's specific content, several scholars have concluded that NPM embodies radically different, indeed conflicting goals (Kettl 1995, 14) or that it dis-plays a disparate, and at times contradictory, set of traits.... Indeed, sometimes the new public management seems like an empty canvas: you can paint on it whatever you like. There is no clear or agreed definition of what the new public management actually is .. . (Ferlie et al. 1996, 10). These statements imply that, notwithstanding the agreed-upon specifics, NPM seems prey to a lack of clarity at a more theoretical level.

Revisiting the “Laboratories of Democracy” Movement: Are the States More Democratic Today Than in the Past?

Nearly sixty years after Justice Louis Brandeis suggested that the states are “laboratories” for public policy experimentation, journalist David Osborne (1988) also described the states as laboratories. His vision suggests that the states are “laboratories of democracy” in which governments should work with the private sector to promote economic growth and “an attractive quality of life” In addition to promoting growth, they need to guide growth so that the poor are brought into the political process. This commentary explores important points in Osborne’s argument and weighs their validity by discussing several measures of state-level democratization, particularly the notion that political participation is an issue of ethical importance. It also explores the repercussions of state involvement in social and economic programs and concludes with a frank discussion of the current role of the states in the federal system. A critical look at the states as “laboratories” suggests that innovations in the states have occurred to the detriment of the principles that lay at the heart of democratic ideals and citizen choice—fairness, justice, and equality—contrary to the notion suggested by Brandeis.

Networks to Nowhere: Segregation and Stratification in Networks of Information about Schools

Theory: Public sector reforms expanding citizen choice are hypothesized to create many of the benefits of private markets, in part by increasing the incentives of citizens to search for information about the quality of public services. Social scientists have shown that networks can provide valuable shortcuts to the information necessary to participate in this expanded market for public goods. Critics of public sector markets argue, however, that choice will heighten existing inequalities, increasing stratification by education and income and racial segregation. This criticism is particularly evident in debates about school choice. Hypothesis: The quality of networks in school districts with choice is hypothesized to be higher than in school districts without choice and to increase with parental education levels. Networks are also hypothesized to be segregated by race. In addition, differences in networks as a function of education and the segregation of networks by race may be greater in choice districts than in districts with no or little choice. Methods: Two stage generalized least square techniques are used to predict the quality of discussants and racial patterns in education networks while controlling for the problem of nonrandom assignment inherent in different levels of parental involvement in school choice. Results: Higher socioeconomic status individuals are more likely to have higher quality education networks. Education networks also exhibit a high degree of racial segregation. Institutional incentives do not markedly affect the nature of information networks about education-but where effects are found, they tend to indicate higher levels of class stratification and racial segregation.

Tanzania's 1995 Multi-Party Elections

In 1995 Tanzania held its first multi-party elections since the 1965 constitution formally established a one-party system. This article seeks to assess the emerging party system in Tanzania and examines the question of whether the competition that emerged represents an expansion of political choice for citizens and a broader representation of societal forces. The emerging party system is assessed in view of several salient features of the Tanzanian political system. The legal and institutional framework strongly favours the govering party. The conclusion argues that in view of the nature and capacities of the new political parties and the legal/institutional framework, the expansion of both choice and representation is very limited. The most we can expect from the Tanzanian transition is a dominant-party system with the governing party flanked by marginal opposition parties

The Fiscal Organization of Metropolitan Areas: The Allegheny County Case Reconsidered

Is consolidation of local governments within metropolitan areas desirable? The reform approach advocates greater consolidation to promote efficiency and equity. However, recent studies by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR), relying on a public choice approach, argue that formally fragmented systems can produce self-determination, citizen choice, competition, fiscal equivalence, accountability, and representation. This study reassesses the evidence presented in the ACIR study on Allegheny County. While concurring that traditional reform efforts are poorly conceptualized, the findings show that fiscal disparities among Allegheny County municipalities persist and have significantly increased over the past decade. These findings, taken together with those from citizen surveys, challenge the conceptual foundations and policy implications of both approaches.

The Fiscal Organization of Metropolitan Areas: The Allegheny County Case Reconsidered

Is consolidation of local governments within metropolitan areas desirable? The “traditional reform approach” advocates greater consolidation to promote efficiency and equity. However, recent studies by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR), relying on a “public choice approach,” argue that formally fragmented systems can produce self-determination, citizen choice, competition, fiscal equivalence, accountability, and representation. This study reassesses the evidence presented in the ACIR study on Allegheny County. While concurring that traditional reform efforts are poorly conceptualized, the findings show that fiscal disparities among Allegheny County municipalities persist and have significantly increased over the past decade. These findings, taken together with those from citizen surveys, challenge the conceptual foundations and policy implications of both approaches. F or more than half a century, scholars

Congruence between Citizens and Policymakers in Two Visions of Liberal Democracy

This paper explores two quite different visions of the democratic processes that can create congruence between citizen preferences and public policies. In theMajority Control vision, electoral competition and citizen choices result in the direct election of governments committed to policies corresponding to the preferences of the median voter. In theProportionate Influence vision, election outcomes result in legislatures that reflect the preferences of all citizens; legislative bargaining results in policies linked to the position of the median voter. The authors give more explicit theoretical form to those visions and link them empirically to specific types of modern democracies. They then attempt to test the success of each vision in bringing about congruence between citizen self-placements and the estimated positions of governments and policymaker coalitions on the left-right scale in twelve nations in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although the analysis reveals weaknesses in each approach, it suggests a consistent advantage for the Proportionate Influence vision.

European parties' performance in electoral competition

Abstract: This article focuses on competition for votes between parties, as it existed in Western Europe in the period of the direct election to the European Parliament in 1989. Following earlier research by Van der Eijk and Niemöller, an instrument is introduced to measure the probability of party choice of EC citizens which establishes the likelihood of respondents to vote for any of the nationally relevant options/parties. A number of substantive conclusions about political parties'competitive performance result from this research. First, a single mechanism seems to structure electoral competition in all EC member‐countries. Second, the competitive performance of political parties is not affected by their governmental status, their ideological position, and the degree of politicisation of the electoral environment. And third, parties'competitive performance is strongly affected by the degree of uniqueness of their electoral potential, their mobilising capacities, their ideological extremity and their sheer size.

Metropolitan Organization and Governance

New conceptualizations are needed to encompass cumulating research findings that complex, multijurisdictional, multilevel organization is a productive arrangement for metropolitan areas. A local public economy approach recognizes (I) the distinction between provision and production, and the different considerations that bear on each; (2) the distinction between governance and government, and the multiple levels of governance; (3) the difference between metropolitan fragmentation and complex metropolitan organization, and the prevalence of the complex organization over fragmentation; and (4) the necessity for citizen choice and public entrepreneurship in crafting productive organizational and governance arrangements. It may contribute to a rethinking with respect to governance structures adapted to the diversity characteristic of American metropolitan areas.

Acoustic tumor management in senior citizens.

We reviewed records of 116 consecutive acoustic tumor surgery patients aged 65 and older during the 10 years ending in 1984. One hundred six had total removal. Ninety-four (81%) had no intraoperative complications and 66 (57%) had no postoperative complications. Only one patient, who had previously undergone partial removal elsewhere, died. Because tumors grow at 2 mm per year, and because elderly patients can expect to live up to 18 more years, we recommend planned total removal of an acoustic tumor as the management of choice for senior citizens in good health. We feel that the advantages of immediate surgery outweigh the risks of delayed surgery when age is advanced, the tumor is enlarged, and general health may be declining.

Relations between private practice and the NHS: a personal view.

I have been chairman of the Joint Consultants Committee/ Central Committee for Hospital Medical Services Independent Practice Subcommittee for six years. But, as I have now retired from the National Health Service and private practice, I handed over this role to Mr John Chawner last month. I feel strongly about the importance and legitimacy of private practice in this country and think that this is an opportune moment to record my views on the subject. Some people believe that in a country with a national health service private practice should not exist. If honestly held this view must command respect. Unfortunately, at least some of those who hold such a view will not concede that there is an alternative view that deserves consideration. I believe that the continuation of private practice may be justified on three counts. Firstly, choice is essential in a free society. Economic con? siderations may preclude such a choice for many citizens, but that is a criticism of the financial structure of society rather than an argument against the existence of choice. Apart from the very poor, many people who elect to use the NHS have the means to use the private service but prefer to spend their money on consumer durables or foreign holidays. This is entirely a matter for them: they are merely exercising their fundamental right to freedom of choice. Secondly, it is essential for staff and patients of the NHS that it should not be a monopoly provider of health care. For the staff?especially those whose professions are exclusively applicable to the care of patients?there must be alternative ways for them to earn a living. There must be a market place where an independent valuation may be put on their services, lest they find themselves tied inescapably to an unjust level of remuneration. Indeed, it may be argued that the recent problems relating to the pay of non-medical staff in the NHS, particularly nurses, arose because the NHS is a near monopoly. If the balance between the NHS and private practice was more equal market forces would protect incomes more efficiently than a review body ever could. For patients, the existence of an alter? native to the NHS provides a vital comparison against which the standards of NHS care may be judged. It is, of course, equaUy true the other way round. The NHS provides extremely well for emergency patients and those who are gravely ill and this is a great challenge for the private sector. On the other hand, the private sector provides extremely well for the more routine problems and must always be consumer oriented to a greater degree than the NHS. This competition is advantageous to NHS and private patients. I would not like to see it replaced by a monopoly in health care. Thirdly, British patients who seek private health care have paid their full share in the cost of the NHS. If, either by direct payment or by subscription to a provident association, they pay again for private service they are increasing the total pool of resources for the provision of health care and leaving much needed time and facilities in the NHS for others. It might be supposed that they would be particularly welcome in NHS hospitals on such terms but, sadly, this is often not the case. I see great merits in this arrangement, compared with a system that allows rebate of health contributions to those seeking other methods of insurance. It provides a clear protection against the accusation that the NHS subsidises the cost of private health care.