Political Logic Research Articles

Budgeting in Public Organizations: The Influence of Managerial and Political Aspects

We study the use of budgets in public organizations with governance shaped by democratic structures. In particular, we examine political variables – electoral cycle, majority government, and ideology – and managerial variables – past performance and peer performance – in the context of city governments. Using data from 170 municipalities over a period of seven years (two electoral cycles), the study documents the simultaneous effect of these two types of variables. We find evidence that budget increases are more pronounced right before and right after elections (political). Furthermore, our findings suggest that ideology affects not only resource allocation decisions but also how municipalities manage the budgeting process; indicating the potential role of ideology in management practices (political). We also find evidence for ratcheting (managerial): the deviation between last period’s actual and budgeted performance is associated with upcoming budgets. However, this effect is symmetric, in contrast to the more common asymmetric structure previously documented in for-profit organizations. Relative target setting (managerial) is also present in public organizations and varies with the relative debt level of the city. The findings of this study are also informative to for-profit organizations as they open up their governance to more democratic structures and begin to experience the competing managerial and political logics in interacting with stakeholders.

Pathways to hybridization: Assimilation and accommodation of public financial reforms in Brazil

This paper examines the evolution of the institutional logic of public finance in Brazil, adopting both an historical time frame and a short time frame of recent reforms. We find that a bureaucratic logic of budgeting at the level of the organizational field has blended historically with a political logic of patrimonial power at the societal level to form a succession of hybrid institutions. Adopting a shorter-term perspective, we observe the processes by which hybridization occurs in response to reforms for fiscal responsibility and accruals reporting. Our analysis reveals two pathways to hybridization: by the assimilation of compatible institutional logics and by the accommodation of contradictory logics. We explain reform outcomes as the product of the agency of actors performing social roles across the organizational field. These generate a ‘package’ in which the accommodation of change in some respects is facilitated by the persistence of operational routines in other respects. In reviewing our contribution, we propose that more attention should be given to studies at the level of the organizational field which reveal agency as the product of the structural position of role-holders to complement studies of specific organizations which tend to suggest strategic agency.

Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico. By Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 349p. $105.00 cloth, $34.99 paper.

Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico. By Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 349p. $105.00 cloth, $34.99 paper.

The strategy of protest against Covid-19 containment policies in Germany.

ObjectivesThe article analyzes the epidemiological and political logics of protest against containment policies in Germany. To maximize the mobilization potential, protest organizers organize more protest events when Covid‐19 mortality rates are low, the stringency of containment policies is high, and in districts in which the vote share of mainstream parties is traditionally low.MethodUsing a negative binomial model, we analyze the number of protest events in a sample of 401 German districts over the period from March to May 2020.ResultsWe find robust positive predicted effects of the stringency of containment policies and negative predicted effects for the mortality rate and the strengths of mainstream parties.ConclusionWe interpret these findings as evidence of the strategic behavior of protest organizers that target protest participation and mobilization to keep the movement alive and potentially grow it.

Valuation practices and the cooptation charge: Quantification and monetization as political logics

Market-like devices that enact quantification and monetization processes (QM) underpin a growing number of valuation practices, but the widespread take-up of QM has given rise to the ‘cooptation charge’: for all the good intentions and results produced by those who deploy QM, they are complicit in reinforcing problematic neoliberal tendencies. A political discourse-theoretical perspective, combined with a pragmatist scholarship that has made significant advances in our understanding of QM, suggests that the cooptation charge relies on an overly simplified picture of both QM and neoliberalism. However, while we acknowledge this as an important advance, we argue that the normative, political, and ideological significance of QM remains surprisingly underspecified. We still lack a convincing theoretical framework that provides a more rounded multi-dimensional critical perspective within which to navigate the evaluative dilemmas produced by these increasingly widespread techniques, including cooptation worries. Drawing on the logics approach of the Essex school of political discourse theory, we develop a framework that brings together the strategic, normative, and ideological dimensions that otherwise tend to be treated separately in the literature, allowing a fuller assessment of such technologies.

Sino-U.S. Decoupling: The Roles of U.S. Congress.

The Sino-U.S. relations tumbled during the Trump Administration. The talk of decoupling permeated the decision-making circle in Washington D.C. Many factors have contributed to the free fall. The roles Congress has played are undoubtedly one of them. Based on the new institutionalist approach, this study provides three analyses of recent China-related legislative activities. First, the historical analysis of legislative data illustrates a surge in congressional activism on China-related legislative activities. Second, the content analysis reveals some of the triggers in the deterioration of bilateral relations in recent years. Third, the political analysis of the critical congressional players and the structures and procedures Congress created provides some insight into the domestic and political logic of the congressional crusade against China. Finally, the paper ends with assessing the impact of the surge in Congressional activism on the new Biden Administration.

The logics of COVID-19 travel restrictions between European countries.

ObjectivesThe article analyzes the existence of bilateral travel restrictions between European countries during the second wave of the Sars‐CoV‐2 pandemic. The paper tests three sets of theoretically derived predictions, which follow epidemiological, economic, and political logics.MethodWe analyze a sample of directed bilateral travel restrictions between 27 European countries: 27.26 = 702 country dyads over a period of 6 months during the second wave of the pandemic.ResultsWe find robust and relevant results for the difference in incidence rates, for income from tourism, for trust in government and public administration and for political inclusiveness.ConclusionOur analyses demonstrates that economic and political logics exert a strong influence on containment measures and thus stress the relevance of forming a large societal and political coalition against the pandemic.

What can public administration scholars learn from the economics controversies in public-private partnerships?

ABSTRACT Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is the label often applied to long-term contractual arrangements when the private sector provides management and operating services for public infrastructure and puts private finance at risk. Political and economic logics have long been applied when analysing the success of such infrastructure delivery mechanisms. Mixed empirical performance results has been a recurring theme. Decades of PPP implementation experience has improved our knowledge of the political and policy “logic” of PPP success, but public administration scholars know less about the logic of the economist, about how economic thinking has evolved and its effects on PPP evaluation. This article explores discussions and debates analysing the economics of PPPs. It challenges the PPP economic efficiency argument, not from the perspective of public administration or public policy (which now repeat well-rehearsed arguments) but from the perspective of economics itself. The article argues overall that there are strongly competing economics logics relevant to PPPs, and that public administration scholars need to be more aware of these internal economics controversies and debates rather than assuming that economics is a settled homogenous discipline. Furthermore, it argues that this heterogeneity of economic logics is a central reason why PPP performance debates continue to be unresolved.

The Origins of the EPRDF and the Prospects for the Prosperity Party

This paper presents the historical development of the authoritarian Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) with particular attention to its origins in civil war and its use of multi-national federal structures to balance centralizing dynamics and demands for regional autonomy. It argues that the reform process launched by Prime Minister Abiy and the formation of the successor Prosperity Party failed to overcome the challenges and political logics that undermined the EPRDF. The article concludes by examining the prospects of the center to manage these contradictions and bind together the distinct and highly polarized regions and political interests.

Political and community logics jointly affect ‘social distancing’ compliance

If conservative ideology encourages resistance to social distancing orders meant to mitigate a pandemic's spread, then under what conditions could this ideology cause people to obey such orders? We posit that community logic (i.e., community commitment, collective belief, and reciprocity) promotes compliance with public health policies in conservative communities. We analyzed residents’ compliance with social distancing orders in 3053 U.S. counties during the period between a governor issuing stay-at-home orders and April 24th, 2020. Our findings show that the interaction between regional political logic (i.e., political behavioral commitment and ideology) and community logic affects compliance with public health policies. Specifically, conservative ideology and political behavioral commitment lead to non-compliance with social distancing only in communities with weak community logic. Our insights contribute to the literature by highlighting the importance of community logic in promoting compliance with public health policies. Thus, policymakers should consider the joint effect of political logic and community logic when creating and implementing public health edicts.

Conceptualising uncertainty and the role of the teacher for a politics of climate change within and beyond the institution of the school

ABSTRACT This predominantly conceptual paper explores “uncertainty”: it foregrounds students engaged with climate change, in all its socio-political and more-than-human complexity, as political subjects within and beyond the school. It combines conceptual work on Rancièrian political philosophy with empirical work on teaching climate change in a range of schools in the Southeast of England. The paper makes the case for the educational importance of engaging with a Rancièrian logic of politics as a democratic mode of twenty-first century existential engagement. This takes seriously citizenship as a dynamic of schooling, which occurs through momentary rupture that can never be fully pre-determined or foreclosed. The paper applies ideas of a “thing-centred pedagogy” to pay deep attention to the unbounded subject matter of climate change. It explores how such an approach opens the scope of engaging with issues of adapting to, and living with, the ontological uncertainties of human-induced climate change, including the tensions and complexities of how to act within and beyond the school. This includes political subjectification as transformation, by which students (and teachers) take up their freedom to act. The paper integrates interviews with nine teaching staff working with students aged between 4–18 years-of-age, including in local authority controlled schools, academies and the private sector. While the fieldwork was conducted in England, its conceptual emphasis has international relevance, focusing as it does on a politics of schooling for global climate change.

Higher education, violent modernities and the ‘global present’: the paradox of politics and new populist imaginaries in HE

ABSTRACT Higher Education (HE) constitutes a space that calls urgently for new understandings in the contemporary political moment. One way of establishing such an understanding of HE is to consider more fully the work of political theorists in relation to questions of power in the modern nation-state, particularly as these impinge upon the key problem of the rise of populism in the twenty-first century. In this task, I argue that a productive conceptual approach is to be found in the recurring idea of political paradox in the political philosophy literature, an idea which I utilize to explore the role of conflicted national politics, moralising state practices, and scientific rationalities in reconfiguring the governing rationales of HE. While most definitions of populism are remarkably consistent, the underlying reasons, processes and contextual particularities amongst institutions and groups are contested. Importantly, this definition cannot therefore suffice on its own in comprehending the place of populism in HE. Rather we need to conceptualise HE as an experimental ‘problem space’ (Scott 1997, 2004). Fundamental to this problem space are the political paradoxes that inhere within the aspirations of liberal democracy globally, within nation states, and within liberal institutions such as the university. In this paper, I engage the work of political thinkers who have sought to understand the role of modern nation building, the changing features of modern power and authority, and the rise of bureaucracy and technocratic rationalities as they impact upon political institutions – in this case, how they impact particularly upon HE. I draw chiefly from Hannah Arendt, Bonnie Honig, Chantelle Mouffe, Etienne Balibar, Frederiche Nietzsche, Michel Foucault and Achilles Mbembe, amongst others, to articulate the paradox that concerns us – to consider how and why populist strains of national and transnational governance may find a home in HE as a consequence of unresolved and contradictory political dilemmas and conflicts. Importantly, in this context, the paradox of politics in HE is not necessarily the naming of a discrete conflict between two political logics or the process of a mass movement seeking to overtake HE in the name of a popular constituency. Rather, it involves a highly complex set of forces – emerging out of the bureaucratic machinery of modernity and the fundamental paradox of liberalism itself - that positions the university as a testing ground for the tasks of politics and governance, particularly in relation to state crises, crises in knowledge making and in critique and geo-political conflicts.

The Neoconservative Party, or Conservatism without Tradition?

AbstractThis article argues that the Conservative Party finds itself in a period of ideological crisis. The last significant period of intellectual realignment in the party led to the dominance of Hayekian market theory as a structuring logic for government. Under Boris Johnson, this economic logic is challenged by the political logic of neoconservatism, which restores the political through appeals to authority, hierarchy and quite particular articulations of the nature of the (national) community. To demonstrate this tension, the article examines how Brexit and the ‘levelling‐up’ agenda can be understood as structured by this division between the economic and the political. Both of these logics are incompatible with older, traditional forms of conservatism and whichever is ultimately successful, this signals a major shift in the character of British conservatism and potentially ushers in a new era of conservatism without tradition.

Cycles of Conflict, a Century of Continuity: The Impact of Persistent Place-Based Political Logics on Social Movement Strategy

The women’s liberation movement hotly debated both the cause of women’s oppression and the best approach to changing it. When treated as a moment within 1960s political polarization, these debates ...

Geographies of Marketization in Higher Education: Branch Campuses as Territorial and Symbolic Fixes

The role of higher education institutions as active agents of globalization and marketization remains relatively little explored. Economic geographic perspectives are particularly well placed to investigate globalizing higher education as an important economic sector, in addition to its supportive role in the knowledge economy. Drawing on political economic and cultural economic perspectives on marketization and geographic fixes, the study analyzes the motivations and spatial strategies for geographic expansion of universities through the establishment of branch campuses. Based on qualitative interviews with key decision-makers of English universities, I argue that (international) branch campuses enable a range of geographic fixes for higher education institutions: a territorial fix through the geographic expansion and construction of segmented markets and a symbolic fix through the relocation of campuses to places that promise reputational gains. The rapid growth of British branch campuses abroad and domestically (in the global city of London) involve substantial financial and reputational risks and as fixes constitute only temporary stabilizations. The conceptualization of symbolic fixes, in addition to territorial fixes, may enable a more nuanced understanding of the role of space in the construction of segmented, yet relational markets that combines intersecting political economic and cultural economic logics.

Riders on the storm: the role of populism in the global crisis of democracy and in the functioning of electoral autocracies

Abstract It is my contention that populism could be an appropriate framework to describe, explain and connect the phenomena of global crisis of democracy and functioning of electoral autocracies. In order to substantiate this claim, with the method of literature review, I examine first the characteristics of these phenomena. Then I focus on the nature of the relationship between them, in particular on the complex system of new types of autocracies’ stability, in which populism could play a crucial role. Populism, understood as an autocratic (re-)interpretation of democracy and representation, could be a particularly dangerous Trojan Horse for democracy. First and foremost, because its idea of a single, homogeneous and authentic people that can be legitimately represented only by the populist leader is a moralised form of antipluralism which is contrary to the pluralist approach of democracy (i.e. polyarchy). For precisely this reason, populism could play a key role in autocracies, especial in electoral autocracies which may use its core elements. Namely, the Manichean worldview, the image of a homogeneous people, people-centrism and the autocratic notion of representation are very compatible with electoral autocracies, since these regimes hold general elections and their power is built largely upon the alleged will of the people. By using populism, it is possible for these regimes to camouflage and even legitimise their autocratic trends and exercise of power behind the formally multi-party but not fair elections and democratic façade. As a radical turn towards closed autocracies (without de facto multiparty elections) would be too expensive, electoral autocrats need manipulated multi-party elections and other plebiscite techniques that could serve as quasi-democratic legitimation. Because of this, they tend to use the political logic of populism which could transform political contestation to a life- and- death struggle and provides quasi-democratic legitimation and other important cognitive functions. Therefore, populist electoral autocracies, as a paradigmatic type of electoral autocracies, could remain with us for a long time, giving more and more tasks to researchers, especially in the Central and Eastern European region.

Three Types of Culture Wars and the Populist Strategies in Central Europe

Since the ‘migration crisis’ in 2015 at the latest, the politics of a broadly conceived Central Europe has been marked by conflicts over symbols, values and norms. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Austria, and the Czech Republic have witnessed divisive debates and campaigns over refugee quotas, women’s and gay rights, abortion laws and public monuments. As the term ‘culture wars’ was becoming ubiquitous, it remained ambivalent in its meaning and usage. The aim of this article is to identify a political logic of recent Central European cultural conflicts without leaning solely on the ideological explanation, e.g. the anti-liberal backlash thesis of Rupnik, and Krastev and Holms. By borrowing R. Brubaker’s conceptualizations of identity and populism, the article contends that it is possible to analyze culture wars as a repertoire of a populist political style. To do so, the article develops a critical perspective on culture wars, defined as polarizing conflicts in the arenas of the politics of memory, politics of identity and politics of morality. Culture wars are analyzed as a strategy of re-politicization of memory (especially of World War II), (civilizational) identity and public morality and a code used in struggles for political and cultural hegemony.

Politically directed accumulation in rural China: The making of the agrarian capitalist class and the new agrarian question of capital

AbstractWe study the formation of the agrarian capitalist class in the pig farming sector in a Chinese county. We propose a new framework for analyzing the dynamics of accumulation and class formation in agriculture that focuses on the role of the state and public resources. In what we call “politically directed accumulation,” local states in China, driven by a political logic of maximizing fiscal resources and improving performance record, select actors who either have accumulated non‐agrarian capital or possess political capital to serve as their agents (political selection) and then capitalize their farming operations by transferring to them public resources (political capitalization), creating a new agrarian capitalist class. The accumulation in this case happens largely without the dispossession of other agricultural producers but instead is assisted by the state's mobilization of public resources. This study advances the call for the renewal of the agrarian question of capital and proposes that the role of the state is now the most important factor in creating different paths of agrarian transition.

Kettle Logic

This article unearths the political logic of the police kettle. Rather than add to the mundane debate about civil liberties or models of policing, this article argues that the kettle reveals nothing less than the police war at the heart of modernity. This is a police war carried out as a logic of containment against the enemy within—within the kettle and within society. The kettle is a microcosm of the police war of containment.

The Theological and Political Logic of John 11:47–53

ABSTRACT In the Gospel of John, Jesus’s opponents interact with him as a false teacher and deceiver of Israel. From this perspective, the standard interpretation of the gathering of the Sanhedrin in John 11:47–53 as a description of political pragmatism must be rethought in order to allow for the Jewish leaders to express and enact an opposition to Jesus that is both theologically and politically motivated. If this reading is correct, then the Fourth Gospel engages directly with one of the most persistent reasons that “the Jews” rejected Jesus.