Political Executives Research Articles

The ladder of disproportionate policy

AbstractDisproportionate policy responses—policy over‐ and underreaction—are ubiquitous in policy affairs, yet detecting their full spectrum remains uncharted territory. To this end, I developed a descriptive‐analytical framework centering on a novel conceptual tool, the Ladder of Disproportionate Policy, based on assessing the gap between the scope of the audience that the policy ostensibly serves and the degree of policy (mis)fit, that is, how the policy tools are set and adjusted to serve the actual audience. This scale assumes that policymakers can “game” these two policy dimensions before and during policy implementation. Political executives can climb up and down this conceptual Ladder and ascend or descend one dimension independently of the other in addition to moving from one side to the other. The case of the 2021 food voucher policy in Israel illustrates the feasibility of the Ladder.

Trust in president – a different case? Individual-level patterns of trust in political executives in Central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT People seem to trust the president more than other national political institutions. In the context of semi-presidential regimes, it is plausible that the role of the president being “above party politics” is an explanatory factor behind this pattern. This study challenges the argument by analysing the impact of citizens' party preferences and attitudes towards the political system on trust in president in select CEE countries. The results confirm that trust in president is often context specific and cannot be disassociated from partisan factors. In general, similar patterns are found between trust in president and trust in prime minister.

Authoritarian multiparty governments

ABSTRACT In 2020, almost 50% of dictatorships included multiple parties in their government. Existing research has not studied this systematically, and generally considers granting outsiders access to ministerial cabinets a risky and costly strategy. This article provides evidence of authoritarian multiparty governments (AMGs) being a global and increasingly common phenomena. We argue that AMGs are a power-sharing strategy whereby autocrats co-opt outsiders through cabinet appointments to divide the opposition and consolidate their rule. Using individual-level data on ministers' partisan affiliation in autocracies worldwide, we show that AMGs positively correlate with ethnic divides, civil war, and “democratic” institutions, and we use new measures of power sharing to demonstrate that coalition partners often exert a real influence through their ministerial mandates. Our findings suggest that AMG is an overlooked survival strategy for autocrats and highlight the need to focus more on the organization and composition of the political executive in autocracies.

Relationship between Political Executive and Administrative Executive in Panchayati Raj in Karnataka

Relationship between Political Executive and Administrative Executive in Panchayati Raj in Karnataka

Decabinetisation as a presidentialisation strategy: a process-tracing analysis of the executive state law in Greece

ABSTRACT This paper develops and empirically tests the novel concept of ‘decabinetisation’, a type of depoliticisation reform that affects the advisory and support offices of executive politicians. Reforms that restrict and constrain the work of ministerial advisers and reduce the political resources of ministers are puzzling, even more so when pressure to reform ministerial offices is absent. To understand why governments undermine a system that has been put in place to serve them, this paper investigates the provisions of Law 4622/2019 on the Executive State in Greece, using ‘theory-building process-tracing’ based on data collected from government documents and 23 elite interviews. Initially selected as an extreme case of second-order decabinetisation in the absence of pressure to reform, the study morphed into a more typical case that exemplifies how ministerial office reforms can be the result of strategic forms of presidentialisation. Decabinetisation can be triggered by the Prime Minister’s intention to ‘presidentialise’ the core executive in face of centre-of-government dysfunctionalities; policy entrepreneurs couple the problem and politics stream with the decabinetisation policy; but the reform becomes possible only in the presence of a critical juncture during which the power asymmetry between the head of government and other members of government is big.

Historic British Royal Memes

Historic British Royal Memes

Political Institutions and Long-Term Policymaking: How Parliamentary Future Committees Can Make a Difference

AbstractResponding to the need to make democratic governance more anticipatory, during recent decades parliaments have increasingly made efforts to involve elected legislators directly in addressing future risks and envisioning long-term developments. At the level of general democratic-institutional principles, engaging legislators in national-level foresight is expected to enhance the general legitimacy of future-regarding policymaking almost automatically by broadening the scope of democratic actors involved in policy work. However, even the basic mechanisms through which the impact of legislature-based foresight activities could traverse to policymaking remain largely uncharted and unknown. To develop a preliminary framework for detecting and comparing such mechanisms, we draw from the experiences of the most institutionalised and influential legislature-based foresight unit, the Committee for the Future in the Finnish Eduskunta. We extract three general mechanisms through which parliamentary future committees could make a valuable contribution to national-level strategic foresight: (1) they can improve the quality of future-regarding policymaking by broadening and consolidating national foresight “ecosystems”; (2) they can strengthen the transparency and accountability of the foresight work of political executives; and (3) they can enhance the legitimacy of anticipatory governance by connecting broader democratic publics to foresight work through more inclusive participatory processes.

Bureaucratic politics, risk management, and agency strategy: a study of agency management in a gale

ABSTRACT The outbreak of Covid-19 holds important lessons for general understandings of specialised agencies and their interactions with the political executive in a context of high political salience and uncertainty of the knowledge upon which agencies can base its professional decisions and pursue its policy preferences vis-à-vis the political principal. This case study analyses the behaviour of the Danish Health Authority (DHA) during two critical series of events in 2020 and 2021. Based on unique document access and interviews with key actors, the article makes a triple contribution to the literature on agencies by showing that: (1) interactions within the governmental hierarchy are transactional rather than rule-bound; (2) agency impact in interactions with the political executive depends on the agency head’s skill in forming a strategically neutral approach; (3) a strong agency reputation with key audiences is not sufficient for ensuring political influence or avoiding political interference.

The politics of glyphosate regulation: lessons from Sri Lanka’s short-lived ban

BackgroundGlyphosate is the world’s most used herbicide and a central component of modern industrial agriculture. It has also been linked to a variety of negative health and environmental effects. For instance, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. This has motivated widespread political demands for stricter glyphosate regulation but so far few governments have followed through.MethodsWe conduct a case study of Sri Lanka, which in 2015 became the first and so far only country in the world to adopt and implement a complete glyphosate ban. But this ban proved to be short-lived, as it was partially reversed in 2018 (and later fully revoked in 2022). To explain the political causes of Sri Lanka’s pioneering glyphosate ban and its subsequent reversal, we employ process tracing methods drawing on publicly available documents. Our analysis is theoretically guided by the multiple streams framework and the concept of self-undermining policy feedback.ResultsGlyphosate regulation rose to the top of the Sri Lankan political agenda in 2014 when a local scientist linked glyphosate exposure to an epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin (CKDu). A glyphosate ban was eventually adopted in June 2015 by the newly elected government of Maithripala Sirisena. The ban was a political commitment made to the Buddhist monk Rathana Thero and his party, which had supported Sirisena during his presidential campaign. The ban’s partial reversal in 2018, implemented through sectoral exceptions, was the result of continued lobbying by export-oriented plantation industries and increased political concerns about potential negative effects on the large and structurally powerful tea sector. The reversal was further aided by the scientific community’s failure to corroborate the hypothesized link between glyphosate and CKDu.ConclusionsThe case of Sri Lanka suggests that strict glyphosate regulation becomes more likely when coupled with locally salient health risks and when decision-making authority is de-delegated from regulatory agencies back to the political executive. Meanwhile, the short-lived nature of the Sri Lankan ban suggests that strict glyphosate regulation faces political sustainability threats, as the apparent lack of cost-effective alternative herbicides motivates persistent business lobbying for regulatory reversal.

Factors Affecting Public Sector Investment in the Livestock Industry in Malaw

The dominant narrative is that public financing and investment in the public sector depend on the political leadership of the government executive because of the incentives gained in public finance management. The executive arm of the government includes elected political leaders and technocrats. Using the case of the agricultural sector, this paper examines the role of technocrats and elected leadership in investment choices. This paper uses, in support of quantitative findings, qualitative evidence from a case study designed in the Department of Animal Health and Livestock Development in Malawi. The variables were used to analyze the quantitative data, and content analysis was used for qualitative data. The finding reveals that seniority, authority, political affiliation, and technical expertise of civil servant leadership significantly influence public investment choices in the livestock sector in Malawi. Both elected political executives and technocrats had self-interests in delivering goods with swift and visible returns. The study concludes that Malawi's public sector investment arena is a ‘war zone’ with various actors vying for dominance. The paper recommends a critical review of the reforms in the livestock sector to bring the investment culture on course in Malawi. More studies are needed to resolve issues around privatization models of services in the livestock sector and the role of government and transactional actors.

Coping with the unforeseen: bounded rationality and bureaucratic responses to the COVID-19 crisis

AbstractThe outbreak of COVID-19 unleashed a severe crisis in society. The suddenness and speed with which the disease spread into a global pandemic makes it an outstanding case for showing how bureaucracy acts in response to a crisis marked by uncertainty and urgency. This article focuses on the role played by the central government bureaucracy in preparing and enacting the Danish government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. It is based on full access to internal government files related to crisis management during the winter and spring of 2020. These files include memos, e-mails, decision notes, and draft decisions from key civil servants. The article demonstrates the strength of the theory of bounded rationality when it comes to analyzing the interaction between top civil servants and political executives. Moreover, it shows how administrative and political executives can mold a governmental organization to overcome the inertia inherent in bureaucratic organization and procedures.

Do political connections or elite capture matter in access to financial services? Evidence from Indian households

The extant literature has witnessed that local political executives tend to misallocate and limit information and public goods sources for their private gains rather than the overall public interest in developing economies. This results in the development of political connections by the households to access more benefits. Using nationwide household survey data in India, we examine whether households with political connections, also termed elite households, have preferential treatment when they access borrowings and investments from different sources. Using linear and non-linear models, we find that elite capture or political connections significantly influences access to financial services. Elite capture is significantly present when individuals borrow from financial institutions. Political connections play an important role when the borrowing amount is large. Our results provide important policy-level implications to decide whether decentralization in the policies will be more appropriate when designing any plan for financial inclusion.

Bureaucratic autonomy and the policymaking capacity of United States agencies, 1998–2021

AbstractDespite a renewed interest in the health of the US administrative state, the absence of meaningful time-series measures of bureaucratic capacity hinders the testing of core theories of bureaucratic and executive politics. Using over 190 million personnel records, I estimate 5590 yearly policymaking-capacity scores for 261 unique agencies from 1998 to 2021. These measures provide an invaluable tool as either an independent or dependent variable in studies of administrative policymaking. To illustrate the value of these measures, I test longstanding theories about the relationship between bureaucratic autonomy and capacity. In contrast with emerging survey research, this study demonstrates that agencies with higher levels of structural independence have higher levels of policymaking capacity.

Deliberate disproportionate policy outcomes and regulating deforestation in Queensland, Australia

AbstractThis paper analyses the strategic interests that inform deforestation policies in Australia, and the variance in policy selections over time. A theory of deliberate policy disproportionality is used to analyse 20 years of regulatory reform in Queensland, focusing on the Vegetation Management Act (VMA) 1999. Application of the framework to this case suggests that political executives were prone to deliberately adopt (dis)proportionate policies as a strategic response to either manage or capitalise on stakeholder support or opposition to any proposed legislative change. The high variance in (dis)proportionate deforestation policies is attributed to how political executives respond to claims made by competing constituencies regarding the costs versus benefits of successive reforms. During key reform phases, policy under‐reaction was the norm, and political executives intentionally limited the scope and effectiveness of the VMA 1999 due to perceived impacts on the agricultural sector. Political executives were highly responsive to the emotional investment of rural constituents and averse to introducing policies that required difficult trade‐offs. Elections offered strategic opportunities for delivering more proportionate policies that balanced public environmental benefits with economic impacts, as evidenced by a conditional deforestation ban introduced between 2004 and 2012 and reinstated in 2018.Points for practitioners Variance in Queensland's deforestation policy over time can be attributed to the intentional decisions by political executives to limit or expand the scope of regulations as a strategic response to stakeholder expectations. Political executives were responsive to the costs versus environmental impacts/benefits of any deforestation reforms, but prone to policy under‐reaction when the priority was managing the emotive reactions from rural constituencies. More proportionate regulations, such as the partial deforestation ban of 2004, aimed to balance environmental benefits with compensation for landholders but were only implemented when electorally beneficial. Stakeholders have a significant influence on disproportionate deforestation policy design and governments will need to manage competing claims to deliver more durable policy outcomes.

From Gender Equity to Gendered Assignments? Women and Cabinet Committees in Canada and the United Kingdom

Abstract This article explores women's access to ministerial power in an important but understudied arena of executive politics: cabinet committees. Specifically, we analyse the gendered patterns in the distribution of cabinet committee assignments in two ‘typical’ Westminster cases, Canada and the United Kingdom, and under two prime ministers, Justin Trudeau (2015–2021) and David Cameron (2010–2016), who both made explicit gender-equity pledges. Informed by previous research into gendered allocation of ministerial portfolios, we investigate the overall extent of women's committee assignments, the gendered dimensions of these assignments and the status of assignments, namely the ‘prestige’ of committee remits, whether committees were chaired by the prime minister and the allocation of chairing responsibilities across committees. In both cases, overall assignment broadly matched shares of women ministers at the cabinet level, but less so during the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition in the UK (2010–2015). Women's shares of committee assignments were likely to be lower on ‘masculine’ and ‘high-prestige’ committees compared to ‘neutral’, ‘feminine’ and ‘low-prestige’ committees, but commitment to gender equity is more evident in the Canadian case. While our aim is exploratory and descriptive, we offer several explanations for these patterns, including the supply of women ministers, departmentalism, party branding and the low public profile of cabinet committees.

Executive politics in an era of democratic crisis

The author declares no conflict of interest.

A Contemporary Legal Overview of Party Switching of Elected Legislators of the National and State Assemblies Under the Nigerian Constitutional System

The 1999 Nigerian Fundamental law came into effect on May 29 1999. It provides that an elected legislator in the National and State Assemblies shall vacate his legislative seat if he switches from the sponsoring political party to another political party during his tenure in the legislative house, save on the ground of division or factionalisation in the sponsoring party. The Constitution is, nevertheless, mute on the issue, regarding political executives, including a governor. The relevant statutory provisions, that is sub-section (1)(g) of sections 68 and 109 of the Constitution above have been abused, as some Nigerian courts have utilised them to sack elected legislators above for party switching of the same during their tenure in the legislative houses despite their constitutional rights, including the equal protection of the law and not to be discriminated against right, as enunciated in section 42(1) of the Constitution above. The article undertakes a contemporary legal overview of party switching of elected legislators of the assemblies above against the backdrop of relevant case-law and statutory provisions. The research methodology used by the authors is fundamentally doctrinal analysis of relevant primary as well as secondary sources. The article finds that the sacking of elected legislators above by some Nigerian courts on account of party switching as indicated above is unconstitutional. The article suggests that Nigeria should expunge from its Constitution the said relevant statutory provisions in tune with what obtains in other countries such as the United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), Canada and Australia.

Broadening Perspectives in Studies of American Governance

That section membership in Legislative Studies and Presidential & Executive Politics has been persistently lacking in racial, ethnic, and gender diversity is no secret. Recent work by Powell, Schwindt-Bayer, and Sin, among others, has sought to bring attention to and increase the number of women scholars in the legislative studies section (LSS). In these introductory comments to the Special Issue, we draw a link between the demographic diversity of scholars and the research questions, topics, and approaches that the subfields consequently produce or overlook. This focus on what we are calling, “New Perspectives in Studies of American Governance,” is one outcome of a collaboration between American University, Purdue University, and The William and Flora Hewlett to invite broader participation in panels, conferences, memberships, and meetings within historically homogenous subfield specific associational groups. In addition to presenting the results of a novel survey of more than 200 faculty respondents from political science departments across the country to better understand perspectives on diversity and inclusion in LSS, we also highlight the set of outstanding papers published in this issue that exemplify the broadened landscape we seek to encourage.

Ministerial Advisers as Power Resources: Exploring Expansion, Stability and Contraction in Westminster Ministers’ Offices

Abstract In this article, we argue that the entourage of ministerial advisers available to prime ministers and other ministers is an institutional power resource that can serve as a useful indicator to measure the changing nature of the political executive. Two novel contributions are made utilising four new datasets on ministerial advisers coupled with a comparative analysis of 21 governments in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, in varying dates between 1997 and 2020. First, by using ministerial advisers as a proxy indicator, we chart how the offices of executive politicians can either expand, remain stable or contract. As a corrective to the general long-term narrative that ministers’ offices continually expand, our evidence shows this expansion has in some cases been interrupted and more generally manifests in different patterns from one government to the next. Second, we interrogate these patterns against the background of four typical assumptions from the party family, government tenure, parliamentary control and leadership stability literature. The new datasets, typology and analysis provide fresh comparative insights to advance our understanding about the evolving nature of the political executive in the four classic Westminster family countries.

Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications from Governance Capacity and Legitimacy

This paper examines the crisis management learning by the Norwegian government after the COVID-19 pandemic by focusing on types of learning based on the concepts of governance capacity and legitimacy. Using unique interview data with 36 elite administrative and political executives in Norway, the study finds varied learning by the involved actors, and most learning about coordination between ministries and agencies, which are amplified by the lack of knowledge related to analytical capacity. The study contributes to advance the analytical understanding of crisis management learning and provides insight into what a high performing government in the pandemic attempts to learn.