Preferred Policy Outcomes Research Articles

Audit firm executives under pressure: A discursive analysis of legitimisation and resistance to reform

The UK audit profession is facing a crisis of public trust and legitimacy following a series of high-profile audit failures. This resulted in the executive leadership of UK audit firms being summoned before a House of Commons Select Committee as part of its inquiry into ‘the future of audit’. During this inquiry the audit executives walked a tightrope, to both defend the social contract from an existential threat and attempt to influence policy reforms in their favour. This paper draws on ‘neutralisation techniques’ from deviance theory and the ‘grammar of legitimation’ from legitimacy theory to inform a discursive analysis of how auditors use strategic rhetoric to defend their professionalism and maintain their social contract to operate, all the while attempting to affect policy outcomes to align with their firms’ economic interests. Data for this study are drawn from the ‘oral evidence sessions’ and submitted ‘written evidence’ provided by the audit firm leadership. Our findings illustrate how the auditors construct a variety of strategic rationalisations, couched in moral ideals, to effectively deny responsibility for corporate financial scandals while simultaneously identifying with the ‘victims’ of audit failures and representing themselves ‘heroically’, as indispensable solution-bearers, not problem-causers. Their application of logic and language is cleverly designed to defend existing practices, neutralize the allegations of the inquiry, and provide the basis for advocating preferred policy outcomes. We show how, in this UK regulatory context, the Big Four are again successful in diluting and delaying reform, especially that which would legislate a full legal and economic split of their lucrative advisory service business from their audit business - a union which has grown in prominence in recent decades and been the focus of accusations of conflicted interests detrimental to audit quality. Evaluating legitimacy as a rhetorical and communicative process can aid regulators to render visible the means by which auditors use rhetoric to influence reform, and thereby improve democratic oversight over the profession.

Why Do Comparative Public Policy and Political Economy Scholars Need an Analytic Eclectic View of Structure, Institution and Agency?

This article illustrates an analytic eclectic value of structure, institution and agency (SIA) framework in comparative public policy. It engages and utilizes certain structural, institutional and agential perspectives from past literature to specify how elements of their causal properties coexist as part of a more complex argument. It argues that desired or preferred policy and/or institutional outcomes are most likely when multiple structural and institutional complementarities (from structures and institutions to agents) and multiple structural, institutional and agential enabling conditions accompany one another in motivating and empowering actors (from agents to structures and institutions) to engage in purposeful agential actions.

From Four Horsemen to the Rule of Six: The Deconstruction of Judicial Deference

In its tumultuous 2022 term, the Supreme Court rebalanced the separation of powers, again. A tradition of self-restraint has evolved through case law and statutes when the judiciary reviews the actions of the other branches of government. The judiciary often accepts congressional judgments as to whether laws are necessary and proper and defers to executive agency interpretations of those congressional acts. The historical notion of judicial deference, however, earned criticism due to concerns about the potential unchecked decision-making power of unelected executive agency bureaucrats. The emerging alternative system might be worse. History offers parallels. During the New Deal, a core group of Supreme Court justices known as the “Four Horsemen” often struck down agency actions or legislative acts, apparently based upon their views of economic policy. But during the “Switch in Time that Saved Nine” that followed, a changing majority of the Court exercised judicial restraint, upholding policy judgments by Congress and the executive agencies. The clock seemingly rewound in 2022, as a new conservative majority of justices declared statutes insufficient and struck down agency actions, embracing a logic akin to their New Deal predecessors. By deconstructing judicial deference, these justices can now impose the Rule of Six and selectively choose the applicable interpretive doctrine to achieve their personally preferred policy outcomes. The fundamental question of American governance is “Who decides?”. In 2022, the unelected Supreme Court expanded its power over both unelected agency experts and elected officials. Inevitably, history will echo, and debates over court reforms will remerge. But for now, in our extraordinary era of emergencies, epidemics, and a climate crisis, six robed riders on horseback have appeared.

Discursive Strategies and Sequenced Institutional Change: The Case of Marriage Equality in the United States

Building on historical and discursive institutionalism, this article examines the agent-based dynamics of gradual institutional change. Specifically, using marriage equality in the United States as a case study, we examine how actors’ ideational work enabled them to make use of the political and discursive opportunities afforded by multiple venues to legitimize the process of institutional change to take off sequentially through layering, displacement, and conversion. We also pay special attention to how the discursive strategies deployed by LGBT advocates, religious-conservative organizations and other private actors created new opportunities to influence policy debates and tip the scales to their preferred policy outcome. The sequential perspective adopted in this study allows problematizing traditional conceptualizations of which actors support or contest the status quo, as enduring oppositional dynamics lead them to perform both roles in subsequent phases of the institutional change process.

What Remains of Kokesh After Liu?

This paper addresses two questions that emerge from Liu v. SEC, 2020 WL 3405845 (U.S.). The first concerns the status of a disgorgement order in an SEC enforcement case that fails to satisfy the equitable limitations the Court discussed in the opinion. The second concerns the application of the five-year limitations period in 28 U.S.C. § 2462 to a disgorgement order complying with the Liu requirements. First, a disgorgement order that does not comply with the equitable restrictions described in the opinion would not be valid because courts do not have power to issue a disgorgement order in an SEC case unless the terms of the order meet those limitations. The question before the Court was whether a statute authorizing equitable relief in SEC cases allowed disgorgement orders, and the Court found that it did but only if the disgorgement order stays within the bounds of three traditional principles of equity. An award that does not comply is not equitable relief and lacks statutory authorization. Second, Liu nullified Kokesh v. SEC, 137 S. Ct. 1635 (2017), where the Court held that disgorgement in an SEC enforcement case imposed a penalty for purposes of applying the five-year limitations period in 28 U.S.C. § 2462. Liu found equitable relief to be incompatible with a penalty. Because a properly limited disgorgement award is equitable relief, equity does not enforce a penalty, and section 2462 applies only to claims for a fine, penalty, or forfeiture, the limitations period does not govern a disgorgement order that conforms to the equitable principles in Liu. The SEC may seek and a court may order disgorgement in a case commenced more than five years after the enforcement claim first accrued. Freeing a government enforcement claim from any limitations period is not the preferred policy outcome, but it appears to be the better reading of Liu.

Advocacy in an Authoritarian State: How Grassroots Environmental NGOs Influence Local Governments in China

AbstractWhile many NGOs in China are seen mainly as service providers working to fulfill state goals, in this article we show that Chinese grassroots environmental NGOs (ENGOs) regularly employ a variety of advocacy strategies to influence local-level government policy. Based on in-depth interviews with ENGOs active in Guangdong, this study examines these groups’ advocacy efforts and considers their implications for the further development of Chinese civil society. Our analysis finds that these groups employ three main advocacy strategies: (1) cultivating a stable, interactive relationship with the government using existing institutional means to communicate their concerns; (2) carefully selecting the “frames” used to present their preferred policy goals and outcomes; and (3) obtaining media exposure to mobilize societal support for their goals in order to put pressure on the local state. ENGOs use these strategies concurrently, though their concrete choices vary case by case. Taken as a whole, such pract...

Rethinking Collective Action: The Co-Evolution of the State and Institutional Entrepreneurs in Emerging Economies

Why do groups form to influence policy outcomes? Classic notions of collective action tell us that a small number of homogeneous individuals are more likely to organize and thus achieve their preferred policy outcomes. Yet, this is not always reflected in the empirical record as external factors, such as the state, influence the costs of organizing. Instead, the traditional collective action literature largely assumes a purely rational or passive state. While the institutional entrepreneurship literature highlights the key role these actors can play in shaping institutions and, at times, organizational fields, it does not seek to explain why change agents appear in some instances and not others. This article seeks to fill this theoretical gap by drawing on the co-evolution literature, which helps explain the variation in group formation by underscoring how the state and institutional entrepreneurs shape one another. Utilizing rich qualitative data from the microfinance industry in Brazil and Mexico, this research asserts that the formation of microfinance associations is a function of actors’ ability to access the state, which results in distinct processes: co-evolution by isolation or co-optation. This process has subsequent implications for institutional change, policy outcomes, and, ultimately, the distribution of power and prospects of development within emerging economies.

Movement and Empowerment: Explaining the Political Consequences of Activism

In follow-up studies of activists, activism has been observed to have long-term positive effect on political participation. However, little attention has been paid to the conditions under which the theory applies. I examine how the personal consequences of participation in three different protest movements in Sweden depended upon movement success and procedural justice. The results support previous findings suggesting that activism has positive long-term effects on individual political participation. However, several of the activists interviewed did not follow this general pattern, especially those who suffered unfair and discriminatory treatment from the authorities. The results imply that the effect of activism on political participation is determined by the perceived procedural justice, whereas reaching the preferred policy outcome is of less importance. External political efficacy is indicated to be a potential mechanism explaining the relation between activism and long-term political participation.

The Policy Dystopia Model: An Interpretive Analysis of Tobacco Industry Political Activity.

BackgroundTobacco industry interference has been identified as the greatest obstacle to the implementation of evidence-based measures to reduce tobacco use. Understanding and addressing industry interference in public health policy-making is therefore crucial. Existing conceptualisations of corporate political activity (CPA) are embedded in a business perspective and do not attend to CPA’s social and public health costs; most have not drawn on the unique resource represented by internal tobacco industry documents. Building on this literature, including systematic reviews, we develop a critically informed conceptual model of tobacco industry political activity.Methods and FindingsWe thematically analysed published papers included in two systematic reviews examining tobacco industry influence on taxation and marketing of tobacco; we included 45 of 46 papers in the former category and 20 of 48 papers in the latter (n = 65). We used a grounded theory approach to build taxonomies of “discursive” (argument-based) and “instrumental” (action-based) industry strategies and from these devised the Policy Dystopia Model, which shows that the industry, working through different constituencies, constructs a metanarrative to argue that proposed policies will lead to a dysfunctional future of policy failure and widely dispersed adverse social and economic consequences. Simultaneously, it uses diverse, interlocking insider and outsider instrumental strategies to disseminate this narrative and enhance its persuasiveness in order to secure its preferred policy outcomes. Limitations are that many papers were historical (some dating back to the 1970s) and focused on high-income regions.ConclusionsThe model provides an evidence-based, accessible way of understanding diverse corporate political strategies. It should enable public health actors and officials to preempt these strategies and develop realistic assessments of the industry’s claims.

The Political Economy of Corporate Tax Avoidance

We exploit exogenous variation in turnovers of China’s municipal political leaders to study how political incentives affect firms’ strategic tax avoidance behavior. We document robust cycles in corporate tax compliance corresponding with the timing of political turnovers. Specifically, we find that firms avoid less tax in the early period of local politicians’ terms, but more in the remaining terms. The magnitude of the political cycles varies across municipal city, politician, and firm characteristics. Entirely different from channels such as the political uncertainty, the political connection, and the potential collusions between local politicians and firm in their jurisdictions, our further analyses suggest local politicians’ timing tax enforcement efforts to achieve their preferred policy outcomes is an important channel through which political process affects tax avoidance outcomes.

Testing Inferences about American Politics: A Review of the “Oligarchy” Result

In a well-publicized study, Gilens and Page argue that economic elites and business interest groups exert strong influence on US government policy while average citizens have virtually no influence at all. Their conclusions are drawn from a model which is said to reveal the causal impact of each group’s preferences. It is shown here that the test on which the original study is based is prone to underestimating the impact of citizens at the 50th income percentile by a wide margin. In addition, descriptive analysis of the authors’ dataset reveals that average Americans have received their preferred policy outcome roughly as often as elites have when the two groups have disagreed with each other. Evidence that average citizens are effectively ignored by the policy process may not be as strong as is suggested by the authors.

Policy Narratives and Public Opinion concerning Charter Schools

According to the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) approach, anecdotes about policy can be used to clarify whether and how policy narratives impact individual public opinion, which in turn shapes aggregate public opinion. This study focuses on the effect of narratives in shaping opinions regarding charter schools, one of the most controversial policy alternatives in the school‐choice debate. This policy lends itself well to being examined using an NPF approach, since both the supporters and skeptics use strong and distinct narratives to present their case and to advocate for their cause. To examine whether different policy narratives on charter schools influence individuals' opinions and attitudes and preferred policy outcome, a quasi‐experimental design is used to compare baseline and follow‐up opinion data for individuals who read policy narratives reflecting different positions. The results indicate that policy narratives influence public opinion, and that congruence and issue familiarity matter in the nature of the change.Related Articles Shanahan, Elizabeth A., Mark K. McBeth, and Paul L. Hathaway. 2011. “.” Politics & Policy 39 (): 373‐400. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00295.x/abstract Delshad, Ashlie B. 2013. “.” Politics & Policy 41 (): 213‐240. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12009/abstract Post, Lori Ann, Amber N. W. Raile, and Eric D. Raile. 2010. “.” Politics & Policy 38 (): 653‐676. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2010.00253.x/abstract Related Media Video . 2013. Panel titled “Storytelling Is Serious Business: Narratives, Research, and Policy.” October 16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5ubezaJwN8 Podcast Claudio Sanchez, Claudio. 2013. NPR News podcast. “The Charter School vs. Public School Debate Continues.” July 16. http://n.pr/12tzU6q Blog Post Cairney, Paul. 2014. “” Web blog post. April 7. Paul Cairney: Politics & Public Policy. https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/tag/narrative-policy-framework/

Rethinking Collective Action: The Co-Evolution of the State & Institutional Entrepreneurs in Emerging Economies

Why do groups form to influence policy outcomes? Classic notions of collective action tell us that a small number of homogeneous individuals are more likely to form a group and thus achieve preferred policy outcomes. Yet, this is not always reflected in the empirical record as external factors, such as the state, influence the costs of organizing. While the institutional entrepreneurship literature highlights the key role these actors can play in shaping institutions and, at times, organizational fields, it does not seek to explain why change agents appear in some instances and not others. Moreover, traditional perspectives in the collective action literature either assume rationality or a passive state. This article seeks to fill this theoretical gap by drawing on the literature on coevolution, which helps explain the variation in group formation by underscoring how the state and new industries shape one another. Drawing from the case of microfinance in Brazil and Mexico, this research asserts that the formation of microfinance associations is a function of actors’ ability to access the state, which results in distinct processes: co-evolution by isolation or co-optation. This process has subsequent implications for institutional change, policy outcomes and, ultimately, the distribution of power and prospects of development within emerging economies.

Innocuous Time-Saver or Counter-Majoritarian Loophole? The Cert Pool and Policy on the U.S. Supreme Court

Since 1972, the certiorari petitions that arrive at the Supreme Court are randomly assigned for review to one of the five to eight justices who are members of the Supreme Court cert pool. Justices who are not members of the pool still review each petition. Thus, some petitions for review are evaluated by as few as two justices (or their clerks), and the rest of the Court relies on the recommendations of these justices. This practice has been criticized for its potentially counter-majoritarian implications. Formalizing the communication between the better-informed justices who review a petition and the rest of the Court as a sender-receiver game, I assess the circumstances under which the Court median's preferred policy outcome is subverted. Then, I analyze the decision to opt out of the cert pool. In some equilibria, the cert pool can move policy away from the median justice; in others (specifically, those in which one justice on each side of the median opts out of the cert pool) it is predicted to have no influence. Empirical patterns of cert pool membership in the last eleven natural courts are consistent with equilibrium predictions.

When Does Ballot Language Influence Voter Choices? Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Under what conditions can political elites influence elections to favor their preferred policy outcomes by strategically crafting the language printed on the ballot? Drawing on psychological and political theories of voter cognition, we design a survey experiment to assess the degree to which ballot text can influence voter behavior in direct democracy elections and identify factors that may moderate such effects. We show that the language used to describe a ballot measure does indeed have the potential to affect election outcomes, including measures dealing with contentious social issues affecting individual rights. We also find, however, that exposing individuals to basic campaign information—in our case, endorsements from prominent interest groups—greatly attenuates the framing effects of ballot text. Our results suggest that the extent to which ballot text matters depends on the vibrancy of the campaign environment and other information available to voters.

The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership. By Matthew N. Green

The Speaker of the House: A Study of Leadership. By Matthew N. Green. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. 292p. $30.00.In his book, Matthew N. Green investigates Speakers' purposive goals, tactical options, and legislative influence. The overriding thesis: Speakers' actions do not simply reflect “the majority of the majority's” interests and preferences, but rather emerge from a more diverse set of goals. As Green argues: “Speakers may exercise legislative leadership on behalf of the preferences of others besides the majority party in Congress [including] representing his or her own district … achieving his or her own preferred policy outcome … helping the party's president, the institutional presidency, or the House as a whole” (p. 17).

The Relation among Voice Value, Policy Outcomes, and Intensity of Support on Fairness Assessments of Tax Legislation

ABSTRACT: We conduct a quasi-experiment to determine whether the value placed on a taxpayer's opinion by an elected representative (valued or not valued) has an impact on the taxpayer's procedural and outcome fairness perceptions. We also examine how the taxpayer's intensity of support for the tax legislation interacts with both the value the elected representative placed on the taxpayer's voiced opinion and whether the taxpayer's preferred policy outcome is ultimately passed in a representative democracy. We recruited 92 participants from graduate accounting classes and assigned them to four experimental groups based on whether the elected officials valued their opinion, and whether their desired legislation was passed. As predicted, perceptions of fairness are more positively associated with receiving a desired outcome as intensity of support for an issue increases. Further, we find that taxpayers who do not have a strong intensity of support for a particular legislative position react favorably to having their voice valued by legislators. However, for those taxpayers who feel most passionate about a legislative issue, having their voice valued may provide limited benefits, if any at all. Data Availability: Data are available from the authors on request.

Why does the majority party bother to have minority party members on committees?

Why would a generic parliament have committees with minority party members? If the majority party considers minority party committee members a burden, then it could choose to exclude minority party members entirely from the committee system. This, however, has rarely happened in history. In this paper, I provide an informational rationale for the bipartisan committee system through a simple signaling model. I show that, in equilibrium, the majority party on the floor can extract better information and, therefore, enact more preferred policy outcomes by forming committees with members of both parties.

Committee jurisdiction, congressional behavior and policy outcomes

The literature on congressional committees has largely overlooked the impact of jurisdictional fights on policy proposals and outcomes. This paper develops a theory of how legislators balance the benefits of expanded committee jurisdiction against preferred policy outcomes. It shows why (a) senior members, and junior members in safe seats, are most likely to challenge a committee’s jurisdiction; (b) policy proposals may be initiated off the proposer’s ideal point for jurisdictional gains; (c) policy outcomes will generally be more moderate with jurisdictional fights than without these turf wars. We empirically investigate these results examining proposed Internet intellectual property protection legislation in the 106th Congress.

The politics of television policy: The case of digital switchover in the United Kingdom

Over the last twenty years, the nature of UK television policy-making has been transformed. Key developments, such as the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union and the development of digital broadcasting technology, have led to the emergence of a much more complex system of policy-making, incorporating numerous new policy stakeholders and political institutions. This article highlights how recent research within political science on the so-called shift from government to governance can be used to gain a greater understanding of contemporary television policy-making. Specifically, using digital switchover policy in the United Kingdom as a case study, the main issue to be addressed in this article is the extent to which the shift from government to governance can be seen as synonymous with reduced government power. Essentially, a detailed analysis of the making and implementation of UK digital television policy suggests that although increasingly challenged, the UK government remains able to achieve most, if not all, of its preferred policy outcomes.