Distributive Policies Research Articles

Deserving the Option to Give

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that people can deserve the option to give. Discussions of desert tend to focus on the benefits and burdens that people might, in some sense, receive, like wealth and jobs. But intuitively, people can also deserve the ability to decide what to do with their wealth or to select who gets a job. Shaping distributive policies and outcomes in accordance with desert is more complicated than philosophers have realised.

Taking the car out of the countryside: Understanding opposition to climate policy in rural Finland

There is an urgent need to decarbonize mobility. Yet, the necessary policies risk compounding existing vulnerabilities and controversies and creating new ones, potentially leading to political polarization. One affected population consists of people living in rural peripheries. Drawing from a Finnish public consultation survey (n = 18,378), we explore how rural participants (n = 4995) experience policies and proposals to decarbonize mobility: how they perceive the problem and what they propose as solutions. We draw on Noortje Marres' concept of attachments to understand the socio-material, discursive and subjective attachments that coalesce in rural experiences of policies and proposals to decarbonize mobility. We contribute to previous research on spatial inequalities in the mobility transition by showing how electric vehicles might not simply replace internal combustion engines in rural areas. We also show how distributive policies, i.e. subsidies, might not solve the problems, because different dimensions of attachments are intertwined and serve to maintain each other and thus reinforce existing experiences of inaccessibility and injustice. We conclude with suggestions for how to better address just and acceptable mobility transitions for rural dwellers.

Will the poverty‐related UN Sustainable Development Goals be met? New projections

AbstractIn this paper, we discuss the literature and consider the historical relationship between growth and a set of poverty‐related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically extreme monetary poverty, undernutrition, stunting, child mortality, maternal mortality and access to clean water. We then make projections for 2030. We find that it is very likely that global poverty‐related SDGs will not be met and by a considerable distance. The implication of this, we argue, is that more emphasis is needed on both policies to raise growth rates (i.e., build productive capacities) and distributive policy measures such as the introduction or expansion of income transfers, and ensuring investments in public goods are sufficient.

Рец. на кн.: James Ferguson. Presence and Social Obligation: An Essay of Share. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2021. 85 p.

Developing an idea of his previous book Give a Man a Fish (2015), the new publication by James Ferguson deepens the theoretical basis for such a distributive policy as universal basic income. The author considers it necessary to review the prevailing grounds for the distribution of resources, namely labor and citizenship. Referring to materials from southern Africa and scholarly works about huntergatherer societies, Ferguson introduces yet another ground for distribution — presence. A rather open-ended “Being here, among us” in a literal sense of the word can be enough to guarantee the rightful share. Providing anthropological arguments Ferguson not only explains the necessity and possibility of a new global distributive policy, but also declares that the analytical potential of the presence concept should be developed. In the review this approach is associated with the theory from the south by John and Jean Comaroff. Besides, from the reviewer’s point of view, in Presence and Social Obligation Ferguson creates one possible theoretical ground for anarchism. Therefore it is noted that the book under review could be a starting point for rethinking the place and the role of anthropology in political projects.

Campaign communication and legislative leadership

Abstract Do policy priorities that candidates emphasize during election campaigns predict their subsequent legislative activities? We study this question by assembling novel data on legislative leadership posts held by Japanese politicians and using a fine-tuned transformer-based machine learning model to classify policy areas in over 46,900 statements from 1270 candidate manifestos across five elections. We find that a higher emphasis on a policy issue increases the probability of securing a legislative post in the same area. This relationship remains consistent across multiple elections and persists even when accounting for candidates' previous legislative leadership roles. We also discover greater congruence in distributive policy areas. Our findings indicate that campaigns provide meaningful signals of policy priorities.

Overcoming Resource Competition Among Co-Ethnics: Elites, Endorsements, and Multiracial Support for Urban Distributive Policies

When can we expect multiple racial groups to find common ground in the face of potentially unequal distributive urban policies? While we understand a great deal about the role of elites in inter-ethnic coalition building, we know less about the conditions under which cooperative behavior among their co-ethnic voters is more likely. Research has found that multiracial coalitions are critical to the political incorporation of racial/ethnic minority group interests at the local level but conflict between minority groups persists due to both real and perceived competition for resources. In this paper, we argue that elite co-ethnic endorsements can increase co-ethnic voters' support for urban distributive policies that disproportionately benefit outgroups over one’s own ingroup. We test our theory using a survey experiment from a representative sample of more than 1800 Los Angeles County voters. We find that respondents are less likely to support policy proposals that exclusively target benefits toward ethnic outgroups compared to when their ethnic ingroup exclusively benefits from an identical proposal. But we also find that the presence of co-ethnic endorsements can increase support for proposals that benefit an ethnic outgroup. We find this effect among Black, Latino, and Asian Americans in our sample.

15 years of degrowth research: A systematic review

In academia and political debates, the notions of ‘degrowth’ has gained traction since the dawn of the 21st century. While some uncertainty around its exact definition remains, research on degrowth revolves around the idea of reducing resource and energy throughput as a unifying theme. We employ a mixed-methods design to systematically review the scientific peer-reviewed English literature from 2008 to 2022 that refers to ‘degrowth’ or ‘post-growth’ in title, keywords or abstract (N = 951). We find a lack of concrete distributional and monetary policy proposals in the sample analyzed, and a low overall degree of collaboration among authors in relation to degrowth's age and size. The scientific peer-reviewed literature analyzed can be grouped into seven clusters along two major gradients, one along methodology (qualitative-quantitative) and the other along scale-of-analysis (individual-societal). We conclude that the academic literature about degrowth would benefit from a more prominent discussion of the political implications of its ideas and proposals, and that in particular the debate about distributional policy implications of degrowth should be more prominent and concrete, with a stronger focus on distributional policies in a degrowing economy.

Distributive policies in cities: legislative behavior of city councilors in the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba

RESUMO Introdução: Analisamos o efeito das variáveis territoriais e da capacidade fiscal municipal nas proposições legislativas e na destinação das políticas distributivas pelas Câmaras dos Vereadores de quatro municípios selecionados da Região Metropolitana de Curitiba. Perguntamo-nos se há associação entre proposições legislativas de caráter distributivo de iniciativa de vereadores e características socioeconômicas, demográficas e fiscais dos municípios estudados. Materiais e métodos: Foram analisadas proposições legislativas de diferentes tipos tais como indicações, requerimentos e projetos de lei de iniciativa de vereadores. Classificamos essas proposições entre distributivas e não distributivas. Foram analisados também dados geográfico-territoriais, demográficos, socioeconômicos e fiscais de Mandirituba, São José dos Pinhais, Fazenda Rio Grande e Campo Largo. Empregamos estudo de casos comparados, estatística descritiva e análise de correlação para estimar a relação entre as variáveis dos municípios e as variáveis legislativas no período entre 2012-2019. Resultados: Os resultados demonstraram que a capacidade fiscal e as características territoriais municipais são fatores que podem orientar o comportamento político e a produção legislativa municipal, sendo que vereadores do município de Mandirituba, menos urbanizado, com piores indicadores socioeconômicos e menor capacidade fiscal produziram mais políticas distributivas comparativamente aos municípios de São José dos Pinhais, Fazenda Rio Grande e Campo Largo, mais urbanizados, com melhores indicadores e mais capazes fiscalmente. Discussão: Os achados apontam para uma explicação complementar às encontradas na literatura para as variações da proposição de políticas distributivas. Para além da conexão eleitoral, a destinação dessas políticas pode estar relacionada ao desenvolvimento socioeconômico e fiscal, às características demográficas e às necessidades desiguais e demandas específicas dos municípios. O estudo corrobora a literatura sobre a importância da incorporação do território nas análises da política e dos resultados das políticas públicas.

The Battle of Interests between The Central Government and Local Governments: The Case of Drafting the Archipelagic Regions Law in Indonesia (2005-2014)

This paper discusses about conflict of interest between Central Government and local governments in the case of drafting the Archipelagic Regions Law in Indonesia (2005-2014). This study uses a qualitative approach using power interplay theory by Lowi (2009). The demands of archipelago region began in 2005 by requesting policy affirmation to The Central Government. The culmination of the archipelago region demands was the submission of the Draft Law on the Acceleration of Islands Regional Development to the House of Representatives in 2012-2013. Based on the research findings, there are several interests of the archipelagic regions in the submission of the Draft Law (RUU), as follows: the need for special regulations and the determination of budget allocations according to the characteristics of the archipelagic region. The Central Government’s rejection of the Draft Law (RUU) was based on the consideration that the substance of the demands of the archipelagic regions has been contained in various other laws, the phrase ‘archipelago’ is unidentify, recognised and regulated by international law of the sea and the 1945 Constitution. The conflict between the regional government of the eight islands and the central government occurred behind closed through government administration mechanisms and open conflicts through arguments in the mass media. Based on the findings of this research, the assumptions of power interplay theory are confirmed in the distributive policies model. In this model, the policy- making process tends to involve peaceful and collaborative negotiations. This is evident because there is no significant conflict between The Central Government and the islands in Indonesia. The impact of the rejection of Draft Law (RUU) on eight island regions is the inequality of development and the small development budget and many achievements of macro development indicators that are still below national achievements.

How clientelism undermines state capacity: Evidence from Mexican municipalities

Does clientelism perpetuate the weak state capacity that characterizes many young democracies? Prior work explains that clientelistic parties skew public spending to private goods and under-supply public goods. Building on these insights, this article argues that clientelism creates a bureaucratic trap. Governments that rely on clientelism invest in labor-intensive, low-skilled bureaucracies that can design and implement relatively more straightforward distributive policies. Although such bureaucracies are useful to win some elections, they lack the administrative capacity to sustain economic and human development. Empirically, the article examines the wage structure of municipal bureaucracies as a proxy for the personnel’s education and skills in Mexico between 2012 and 2018. During this period, turnover in the party in power in municipalities was frequent, a situation that also allows investigating how resilient the bureaucratic trap is to increased competition. The results show that all political parties invest in labor-intensive, low-skilled bureaucracies. However, the bureaucratic trap has a different grip on the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a quintessential clientelistic party, compared to other parties. After an electoral turnover, PRI’s bureaucracies have a larger proportion of low-wage personnel compared to the bureaucracies of other parties. Moreover, after an electoral turnover, the PRI allocates more resources to social assistance, subsidies, and internal transfers that are more conducive to clientelism. The overall size of the bureaucracy and the total wage bill are not affected in the same way, suggesting that there is indeed a trade-off between hiring lower and higher skilled employees. While prior work has proposed other clientelism-induced negative equilibria, this article offers a more direct path from clientelism to state capacity. The results help explain why more fiscal resources, political competition, and demand-side strategies to fight vote buying are insufficient and underscore the importance of civil service reform to tame clientelism.

Did the citizenship income scheme do it? The supposed electoral consequence of a flagship policy

AbstractIn the aftermath of the 2022 Italian legislative elections, but also during the entire electoral campaign, several claims were made that much of the electoral support for the Five Star Movement had been triggered by the ‘Reddito di cittadinanza’ – the welfare policy introduced in 2019 by the yellow–green government. This research note first distinguishes between distributive politics and policy voting, and then explores the empirical relationship between the geographical provision at the municipal level of the citizenship income and the vote for the party led by Giuseppe Conte. While traditional multivariate analyses fail to reveal any spurious relationship, matching techniques help highlight the absence of any causal relationship between the two variables.

Demand-growth in support of structural change: Evidence from Nigeria's formal manufacturing sector

An emerging literature on demand-led structural transformation and structuralist macroeconomics finds that demand-growth can positively complement industrial policy and drive structural transformation but there is no firm consensus which policies can achieve a sustained virtuous circle of demand-, output- and productivity growth. Looking at evidence from manufacturing companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), this paper supports the view that demand-growth can effectively complement industrial policy but only if demand problems of different nature are addressed simultaneously. Increases in government spending need to be combined with distributional policies favouring the disposable income of workers and subsistence communities and with policies that can address country-specific and historically formed supply-side problems in vertically linked sectors to counteract external demand problems manifesting through the balance of payments.

Understanding patterns of stakeholder participation in public commenting on bureaucratic policymaking: Evidence from the European Union

AbstractWhat explains the levels and diversity of stakeholder participation in public commenting on bureaucratic policymaking? We examine a novel dataset on a stakeholder engagement mechanism recently introduced by the European Commission containing information about 1258 events organized between 2016 and 2019. We highlight the importance of administrative acts' characteristics and acknowledge the role of policy area type. Acts corresponding to early policy stages, broader in scope, less technical, and more explicit about feedback loop rules, that is, roadmaps, inception impact assessments and delegated acts, generate significantly more comments, from more diverse stakeholders, relative to legislative proposals, and draft implementing acts. Regulatory and distributive policies generate significantly more comments than interior and foreign policies. Diversity is significantly higher in distributive policies but only relative to foreign policies. We contribute by showing the power of administrative acts in influencing stakeholder participation and diversity across decision stages and policy areas and shaping bias in interest representation.

Budgetary politics in the National Assembly of South Korea: who gets what from legislative budgets?

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to shed light on budgetary politics in the National Assembly of South Korea by examining what we call a legislative budget. For analytical purposes, a legislative budget is defined as an increased or newly added budget at the comprehensive review stage of the Special Committee on Budget and Accounts. Using budget review reports from FY 2012 to FY 2015, we analyzed who benefits from legislative budgets and what types of policies and budgets are prioritized in legislative budgets. The results show that budgets for public agencies and a variety of institutions in the private sector prevailed over national and local budgets and that budgets for distributive policy accounted for an overwhelmingly larger portion than budgets for regulatory and redistributive policy. The study also finds that the ruling party and its home region secured more legislative budgets than the opposition parties and their regions.

The politics of policy failure in Ghana: The case of oil palm

The paper argues that political economy factors have hindered the development of the oil palm value chain in Ghana, which has consistently underperformed despite significant policy support and the sector's strategic importance to the national economy. These factors include political instability between the mid-1960s and early 1980s, as well as the emergence of a competitive clientelist political settlement since the country's return to constitutional rule. Drawing on key informant interviews and documentary sources, the paper demonstrates that policies over the past two decades have failed to address the peculiar nature of the value chain, which is bifurcated into a smallholder/artisanal sub-sector and an estate/industrial processing sub-sector. Since the 1990s, one aspect of policy failure in the sector has been the ‘paradox of good intentions’ that arises from the simultaneous pursuit of economic transformation and inclusive development in a political context described by some scholars as 'strong democracy, weak state'. The logic of electoral competition shortens politicians’ time horizons, predisposing them to prioritise highly visible distributive policies (like input subsidies) over structural reforms (like land tenure issues or solving market frictions). Consequently, despite almost two centuries of continuous policy support, the sector’s productivity remains at the same level it would have been if it had been left to operate without any state assistance.

Importance of Caste-Based Headcounts: An Analysis of Caste Specific Demographics Transition in India

Caste has always been a subject of socio-political segregation in India. Inequality across caste is prominent for varying health and development outcomes, which is a subject less researched till date. Four rounds of National Family Health Surveys (1–4) conducted in the last 25 years are analysed to portray the fertility and mortality differentials across castes/ tribes. The article signifies, that distinct inter and intra-caste differences in association with the region of residence are present that must be taken into consideration while understanding the health outcomes. Despite a decline in the fertility and child mortality rates in India, caste-wise differentials suggests that the decline is associated with the socio-economic position and transition experienced by these groups. Though schemes and benefits are targeted towards backwards castes, however, sub-castes under each caste are far from realization of those benefits at equal pace. Realization of the developmental processes among castes is a matter of proper enumeration and intricate research that rationalize the distributive and affirmative policies of India.

What Can GVC Literature Learn from Stratification Economics?1

The SE approach can be extended to the Global Value Chain (GVC) case. Given recurring evidence that low value-added activities tend to take place in low-income nations while high value-added activities take place in high-income nations, much of the Global Value Chain literature advocates for firm-level economic upgrading as a national development strategy. The key observations of SE extend to the GVC case. As such, SE provides GVC literature with a more appropriate social and political context and explains the inconsistent outcomes of economic upgrading strategies. Furthermore, the SE lens allows us to conclude that ahistorical analysis may be favored among economists to, consciously or not, generate an illusion of legitimacy to inequality between the so-called ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’. Ultimately, standard conclusions from SE suggest a wealth distributive policy approach, indicating that a move toward reparations and loan forgiveness may be a more effective strategy for national development.

Non-linearities in the relationship between public debt and inequality

ABSTRACT This paper examines the possible nonlinear relationship between public debt and income inequality. The literature extensively examines the non-linear growth effects of public debt, whereas its inequality effects are not investigated sufficiently. Public debt can be used to finance distributive policies, thereby improving income equality. However, high public debt levels can also harm economic growth and decrease the fiscal space due to sustainability concerns, high risk premia, and large debt service burden. Hence, it is possible that public debt can have non-linear effects on inequality. The empirical analysis documents that the relationship between public debt and inequality is positive with a declining marginal effect in the case of advanced countries. However, developing countries display a U-shape relationship, implying that public debt is initially associated with declines in inequality, while higher levels of debt are associated with higher levels of inequality. The analysis also shows that the determinants of inequality can differ greatly between advanced and developing countries.

4차산업혁명시대하의 한국 물류산업의혁신정책 우선순위에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to analyze priorities of the recent Korean distributional policies to contribute establishment of the efficient midꠓand long term distributional policies. For this purpose, the important factors on the distributional policies were selected through the literature review, and conducted questionnaire to the experts on distributional industry using these factors. The factors selected for the first level AHP analysis were Promotion and Support of Distributional Industry, Establishment and Maintenance of Distributional Infra, Development and Proliferation of High frontier Distributional Technology, and Creation of Distributional Industry Environment. And factors selected for the second level AHP analysis were 15 factors. The results are as follows: The first level weighted value and relative importance degree showed that Promotion and Support of Distributional Industry was the highest on priority, Establishment and Maintenance of Distributional Infra was the second, Development and Proliferation of High frontier Distributional Technology was the third, and Creation of Distributional Industry Environment was the fourth. And most of lower level factors meet high position of 50 percent are Promotion and Support of Distribution Industry and Establishment and Maintenance of Distributional Infra. Through the results of this study, to establish the long time sustainable distribution policy for the growth and improvement of efficacy of domestic distribution industry, it needs to present intensive counter-move strategies on the each areas shown the higher priorities.

Public Policies for Renewable Energy: A Review of the Perspectives for a Circular Economy

The development and implementation of public policies towards renewable energies are crucial in order to address the contemporary challenges faced by humanity. The 3Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle), as a circular economic practice, are often cited as one of the best solutions for sustainable development. Therefore, this study analyzed public policies for renewable energy from the perspective of the circular economy. Accordingly, a systematic review of the literature was carried out with respect to the beneficiaries and convergences of circularities, with a focus on public policies for renewable energies. The sample had public policies classified into three types (distributive, redistributive, and regulatory policies). The results showed that the first studies began in 1999, with a significant increase in publications during the 2010s, in which Germany was the country with the greatest contribution. The analyses associated with space showed the countries committed to the use of renewable energies and the 3Rs of the circular economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The economic analyses revealed that the circular economy for the generation of renewable energy has a positive economic return in terms of social well-being and the mitigation of environmental degradation. There is a barrier to the circular economy’s development posed by the cost of its implementation in the private sector and the resistance to raising awareness in society, requiring strong public sector engagement in decision making and the constant evaluation of public policies. It is concluded that the circular economy facilitates more efficient, productive structures and public policies, promoting alternatives for energy security and sustainability for the world energy matrix.