Quota Implementation Research Articles

Local government competition and centralised urban growth management policy implementation: evidence from China

Chinese central government uses top-down land quotas as a key tool for limiting urban expansion. Faced with the benefits of land development, how will local governments respond to centralised quotas? We established a framework for multidimensional local government competition to explain quota implementation. This framework includes vertical competition for fiscal revenue and quotas, horizontal competition for economic growth and political promotion, competition between former and subsequent local leaders for recognition of their leadership and temporal distribution of land finance revenue and government debt and competition with landowners as well as developers for land appreciation income and tax revenue. We argue that these types of competition and their spill-over effects drive local governments to strengthen land-centred urbanisation, resulting in the failure of quotas to restrain urban expansion. Our findings help to improve the understanding of local governments’ strategies for urban spatial development and centralised urban growth management.

Backlash after Quotas: Moral Panic as a Soft Repression Tactic against Women Politicians

Abstract Advocates of gender quotas emphasize their transformative potential for women’s political participation. Yet evidence on the symbolic effects of quotas remains inconclusive, with some studies uncovering significant backlash after implementation. Although elite resistance to quotas has been posited as an explanation, the underlying mechanisms generating negative effects remain underexplored. This study proposes the utilization of “moral panic” by elites as a mechanism of resistance. By leveraging their media influence and employing conservative moral rhetoric, elites engineer moral panic, framing women’s political engagement as detrimental to social order and gender hierarchies. Such panic aims to incite public opposition and rationalize elite resistance to progressive changes. Notably, this tactic is more prevalent in countries with reserved-seat quotas, where elites possess limited control over electoral outcomes. Using an original dataset encompassing politician names and genders, I analyze over 150,000 news articles from 2000 to 2021 across 10 sub-Saharan African countries. The findings indicate that quota-induced gains in women’s representation are followed by significant increases in conservative ethical language in news coverage of women politicians, particularly in countries with reserved-seat quotas. These findings bear important implications for gender equality in politics and shed light on the dynamics of backlash after quota implementation.

A synthetic control approach to estimate the effect of total allowable catches in the high seas

AbstractTotal allowable catch restrictions (hereafter referred to as catch quotas) play an important role in maintaining healthy fish stocks. While studies have identified a positive relationship between catch quota implementation and improved stock status, these methods are subject to selection bias as catch quotas are typically applied to stocks that are depleted. We address this challenge using the synthetic control method, which estimates the causal effect of catch quotas on fishing mortality and biomass by predicting a synthetic counterfactual outcome. We focus on high seas stocks (tunas, billfishes, and sharks) managed by tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (tRFMOs), first providing an overview of stock status and current management measures in place. We find that implementation of catch quotas by tRFMOs has more than doubled over the past decade. Second, we predict the hypothetical fishing mortality and biomass trajectory for seven high seas quota‐managed stocks in absence of a catch quota. These “synthetic non‐quota stocks” are predicted using a weighted selection of high seas non‐quota stocks. Credibility of the synthetic non‐quota stocks is evaluated through diagnostic checks, and robustness tests assess sensitivity to study design. Five credible fishing mortality synthetic controls are predicted: three add support to the hypothesis that catch quotas successfully reduce fishing mortality, while two find that catch quotas increase fishing mortality. While our analysis is limited in scope, given that all seven quota‐managed stocks are managed under a single tRFMO, we highlight the potential for the synthetic control method in fisheries management evaluation.

Beyond Quota, Towards Women’s Representation In Indonesia: Quo Vadis?

This paper scrutinizes the effect of gender quota on women’s representation in the political landscape of Indonesia. By using the institutional analysis approach, the logic behind lethargic increases, even though such quota has failed to meet in Indonesia, is highlighted in the paper. This study further discusses the complex roles of various political and non-political actors that later affect the representation of women, including the political party, elected government and legislatures, and Commission for General Election (KPU). The institutional shift of gender quota implementation in Indonesian politics creates a tendency of disorientation of the main purpose of creating gender quota. As regulatory changes on the gender quota since its first implementation, this study examines the journey of quota and women representation in Indonesia which include the case of underrepresentation of women in politics and the controversy of women policy, as part of the initial virtue of implementing gender quota.

Gendered Pathways to the County-level People's Congress in China

AbstractWomen are underrepresented in legislature almost worldwide, and China is no exception. Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) implemented its first gender quota in 1933, gender quotas and women's representation in China remain understudied. This study fills the literature gap by examining the subnational variation in gender quota implementation and women's representation in the county-level people's congresses (CPC). Through a comparison of four county-level units in Hunan and Hubei with similar socioeconomic features yet contrasting results in the numbers of female representatives elected in the 2016 CPC election, this study argues that women's access to CPCs is affected by the CCP's adoption and enforcement of grassroots quotas. The fieldwork shows that although all cases introduced a 30 per cent gender quota, only CPCs in Hunan province were able to meet the quota requirements. This was because the grassroots quota threshold was raised in Hunan and strictly enforced, partly as a response to the 2013 Hengyang vote-buying scandal. In contrast, CPCs in Hubei province nominated a large number of “first hands” (yibashou) candidates, very few of whom were women.

Angela Merkel and the CDU Quota Curse

During the 2019 centennial celebration of women’s suffrage in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel conceded that gender quotas are important and that the ultimate goal must be gender parity. Merkel’s legacy in terms of advancing women within her own party, however, is mixed. Surrounding herself with a tight circle of women professionals and arguably modelling success for fellow women party members, she nonetheless remained noncommittal on parity. Her support for the ‘quorum’, a 33 per cent inner-party ‘quota light’ adopted in 1996, appeared muted and inconsequential. Throughout Merkel’s chancellorship, the CDU failed to adhere to this quota in party offices and among parliamentarians. Analysing gender-disaggregated party and electoral data with insights gleaned from semi-structured interviews with party members, this article sheds light on CDU quota implementation challenges. We assess inner-party politics and policies within the context of the CDU’s struggle to attract female voters, to respond to an increasingly progressive Women’s Union, and to accommodate its Bavarian sister party, the CSU. We find that despite a reframing of its gender equality agenda and strong inner-party mobilisation, the CDU majority still resists quotas. The mismatch between party statutes and electoral system, moreover, obstructs quota implementation, making gender parity in the CDU an elusive goal.

Attentional role of quota implementation

In this paper, we introduce a new role of quotas, e.g. labor market quotas: the attentional role. We study the effect of quota implementation on the attention allocation strategy of a rationally inattentive (RI) manager. We find that quotas induce attention: a RI manager who is forced to fulfill a quota, unlike an unrestricted RI manager, never rejects minority candidates without acquiring information about them. We also demonstrate that in our model quotas are behaviorally equivalent to subsidies. In addition, we analyze different goals that the social planner can achieve by implementing quotas. First, quotas can eliminate statistical discrimination, i.e. make the chances of being hired independent from the group identity. Second, when the hiring manager has inaccurate beliefs about the distribution of candidates' productivities, the social planner can make the manager behave as if she has correct beliefs. Finally, we show how our results can be used to set a quota level that increases the expected value of the chosen candidates.

THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION OF TURKISH WOMEN IN POLITICS (1980S TO THE PRESENT)

In Turkish modernization, important steps were taken under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk so that women could reach the level of contemporary civilized peoples. For this purpose, women who have lagged behind the society in education, training and social life, especially gender equality, have been granted political rights before some European countries. Turkish women, who obtained the right to vote and be elected in 1934, were included in the political life, and they went to the polls for the first time in the elections held in 1935. For many years, the place of women in political life has decreased due to many reasons such as the fact that political parties do not allow quotas for female deputies, democracy cannot be fully ensured within political parties, sexism, politics are seen as men’s work, women’s education problem, while the women’s movements have increased in the period from the 1980s to the present. Its power has increased due to reasons such as quota implementation based on changes in electoral systems. Although the number of women in politics has not reached a sufficient level even today, as the sexist approach in society and the obstacles placed in front of women are overcome, the effectiveness and success of Turkish women in political life will increase. Although it is difficult for women to take part in the male-dominated structure in politics, it is seen that women are not willing enough and they struggle less. It is possible to say that women have made important strides in the political arena in the Turkish society led by a female prime minister, Professor Tansu Çiller.

Efficiency Power Plant Implementation Decision-Making Based on the Profit Function and Its Numerical Simulation

The efficiency power plant (EPP) is a kind of virtual power plant with zero emission, zero pollution, and low cost and exhibits a high-quality low-carbon production behavior in input-output analysis. In the process of implementing EPP, enterprises not only save electricity but also reduce carbon emissions, while increasing the cost of R&D and equipment. Therefore, it is very necessary to study relationships between carbon quota and EPP implementation decision. In this paper, we build the profit functions of three different types of enterprises implementing EPP and analyze the relationship of main parameters, such as the probability of implementing EPP, electricity saving, income, cost, and carbon quota, and obtain nine relative results. Then, we use ‘Maple’ software to simulate the results by drawing images of parameters, and all the above nine results passed the simulation test verification. At last, we collect the actual survey data and use VC++ programming to carry out an empirical study in China to prove the practicability of the model and the results. The results show that, under the carbon quota trading system, enterprises should tend to implement EPPs and increase investment in R&D and acquisition of EPPs and are needed to adjust the intensity of implementing EPPs according to the change of carbon quota and unit carbon quota income, to obtain higher income.

Changes in Length - Weight Relationships of 3 Commercial Sea Cucumber During Processing and Estimation of Fisheries Productions

In this study, the length and weight changes of 3 commercial sea cucumbers (Holothuria tubulosa, Holothuria polii, Holothuria sanctori) during the freezing and drying processes were investigated. 200 individuals from each species were sampled with SCUBA diving from Ildır Bay, Izmir, in 2019. Gutted weights and length of each individual were measured after each processing stage (boiling, freezing and drying). Average weight losses between the gutted weight and frozen weight of H. tubulosa, H. polii and H. sanctori were 68.3 %, 59.5 % and 67.7 %, respectively. While the average weight losses between gutted weights and dried weights were 91.3 %, 88.6 % and 92.6 % in the same order. H. tubulosa, H. sanctori and H. polii lost their total length after freezing and drying with 48.7 % and 63.6 %, 55.3 % and 64.9 %, 39.8 % and 48.3 %, respectively. Total production of gutted weight in Turkey was recalculated based on the yield of drying and freezing as 4.705.275 kg. All results obtained were directly used for the sustainable management of sea cucumber stocks and quota implementation in Turkey waters.

Behaviours of Multi-Stakeholders under China’s Renewable Portfolio Standards: A Game Theory-Based Analysis

China has implemented both quantitative and policy incentives for renewable energy development since 2019 and is currently in the policy transition stage. The implementation of renewable portfolio standards (RPSs) is difficult due to the interests of multiple stakeholders, including power generation enterprises, power grid companies, power users, local governments, and the central government. Based on China’s RPS policy and power system reform documents, this research sorted out the core game decision problems of China’s renewable energy industry and established a conceptual game decision model of the renewable energy industry from the perspective of local governments, power generation enterprises and power grid companies. The results reveal that for local governments, the probability of meeting the earnings quota or punishments for not reaching quota completion are the major determinants for active participation in quota supervision. For power grid firms, the willingness to accept renewable electricity quotas depends on the additional cost of receiving renewable electricity and governmental incentives. It is reasonable, from the theoretical perspective, to implement the RPS policy on the power generation side. Electricity reform will help clarify the electricity price system and increase the transparency of the quota implementation process. Policy implications are suggested to achieve sustainable development of the renewable energy industry from price incentives and quantity delivery.

Women in Legislative Committees in Arab Parliaments

Extant studies have predominantly focused on women's numerical presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)'s legislatures, yet, research examining the role played by female politicians continues to be limited. To bridge this gap, we study one of the most important, albeit overlooked, bodies within these assemblies: legislative committees. Using an original dataset on committee memberships (n=4580), our data show that females are significantly marginalized from influential committees and tend to be sidelined to social issues and women's committees. To explain this, we develop a theory of provisional gender stereotyping. We argue that the duration of quota implementation shapes women's access to influential committees. We focus on two mechanisms to support our argument: a redistribution of power dynamics within legislative bodies and women's political expertise.

Implementing Inclusion: Gender Quotas, Inequality, and Backlash in Kenya

AbstractExtensive research has affirmed the potential of gender quotas to advance women's political inclusion. When Kenya's gender quota took effect after a new constitution was promulgated in 2010, women were elected to the highest number of seats in the country's history. In this article, we investigate how the process of implementing the quota has shaped Kenyan women's power more broadly. Drawing on more than 80 interviews and 24 focus groups with 140 participants, we affirm and refine the literature on quotas by making two conceptual contributions: (1) quota design can inadvertently create new inequalities among women in government, and (2) women's entry into previously male-dominated spaces can be met with patriarchal backlash, amplifying gender oppression. Using the ongoing process of quota implementation in Kenya as a case to theoretically question inclusionary efforts to empower women more generally, our analysis highlights the challenges for implementing women's rights laws and policies and the need for women's rights activists to prioritize a parallel bottom-up process of transforming gendered power relations alongside top-down institutional efforts.

Construction land quotas as a tool for managing urban expansion

This paper examines the effectiveness of construction land quotas as a tool for managing urban expansion in China. Applying a difference-in-difference approach to panel data from 2006 to 2010 in 243 Chinese cities, it was found that construction land quotas were not always enforced. Although one-third of the Chinese cities exceeded their quota limits, quotas were effective in reducing annual urban expansion in all cities by an average of 70 ha. This effect was most pronounced in cities where quotas were binding. In the 72 cities with binding quotas, urban land expansion was reduced by an average of 269 ha annually after quota implementation. In total, quotas were attributed with the protection of 26,530 ha of land from urban expansion during the study period.

Attentional Role of Quota Implementation

This paper introduces a new role of quotas, e.g., labor market quotas: the attentional role. We study the effect of quota implementation on the attention allocation strategy of a rationally inattentive (RI) agent. Our main result is that an RI agent who is forced to fulfill a quota never hires the candidates without acquiring information about them, unlike an unrestricted RI agent who in some cases bases her decision on prior belief only. We also show that in our context quotas are equivalent to other types of affirmative policies such as subsidies and blind resume policy. We show how our results can be used to set a quota level that increases the expected value of the chosen candidate and also decreases statistical discrimination and discrimination in terms of how much attention is paid to each applicant. At the same time, quota implementation could be destructive if the social planner has imperfect information about the parameters of the model.

Empowering Women? Gender Quotas and Women’s Political Careers

Women’s representation in executive office continues to lag behind that of their female peers in legislatures, and several studies find women face an executive glass ceiling. One way to shatter this executive glass ceiling is through the adoption of legislative gender quotas. However, scholars know little about how legislative quotas affect women’s access to executive office. Previous research has been unable to determine whether once elected through quotas, women advance to executive office at similar rates to men. Using data on the future career paths of nearly 2,000 Mexican legislators, I find women face a glass ceiling in winning nomination to executive office. Using career data before and after quota implementation, and exploiting lax enforcement in the district component of the mixed electoral system, I find quotas have done little to increase the advancement of women into executive office, although they have increased opportunities for women in other legislative positions.

Index system to assess implementation of strategic land use plans in China

The strategic land use plan is an effective tool to implement new ideas and strategic adjustments in land use policies in the context of the economic transformation of China. This study designs an index system for quantifying the success of the implementation of strategic land use plans. The proposed index system consists of two independent dimensions as quota implementation and task implementation. The indices for assessing quota implementation were directly obtained from planning quotas and quantified by conformance analysis. We determined the extent to which the output of the quotas had met expectations. The indices for assessing task implementation were obtained through questionnaires and quantified by performance analysis. We divided the indices into several scenarios for scoring. This framework was applied to a medium-term evaluation of China's Land and Resource Plan of 2016. The results reveal the advantages and defects of the planning implementation. Four provinces, mostly concentrated in the east, were praiseworthy in implementing the plan in the two dimensions but four others, mostly concentrated in the west, were failed. There was a positive correlation between the comprehensive conformance values and the performance scores and were weak correlations between the conformance of four quotas and the performance of seven tasks. This study has practical value for quantitatively monitoring the implementation of strategic land use plans. The results can provide suggestions for new ideas and strategies in land use policies during the economic transformation in China, including optimizing ecological protection, improving farmland quality and people's livelihood within rural land requisition, and strengthening law enforcement.

Electoral Gender Quotas and Women's Rights

Electoral gender quotas, which aim to increase either the proportion of women candidates or political representatives, are currently used in over 100 countries around the world. In most cases quota measures have been adopted over the past two decades. This chapter shows that the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action fundamentally changed the international discourse on the diagnosis of women’s under-representation in politics and thus the solutions to it. As opposed to waiting for women to incrementally ‘catch up’ with men, quotas represent a fast track approach to increasing women’s representation in politics. Significantly, the use of electoral gender quotas means that the Global South has now overtaken the Global North as world leaders in women’s parliamentary representation. This is a rapid turnaround on the situation just 20 years ago where the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands were at the top of the world rankings for women’s representation. Despite there being resistance to their adoption and implementation in most contexts, this chapter argues that electoral gender quotas have significantly advanced women’s access to parliamentary politics at a global level. The use of proportional representation (PR) continues to advance women’s representation to a much greater extent than plurality/majoritarian systems and PR systems are generally more facilitating of quota implementation. Voluntary party quotas can be as effective as legal quotas if the right institutional and ideological factors are present. When properly implemented, quotas obstruct highly male-dominated recruitment patterns by encouraging or requiring parties to select increased numbers of women candidates or representatives.

Public Policy of Gender Equality in Albania in the Contexts of New Institutionalism

The core of this paper is to analyze the public policy of gender equality in Albania, particularly on policy areas of political participation, in the context of new institutional approaches. Having done a research, this article attempts to explain the effects of mechanism as gender quota to the level of women’s participation in politics and decision-making in Albania. At the same time, examines the challenges of gender quota implementation in Albania. In this paper, it is understood that the interpretation of “the gender inequality problem” determines the equality policies applied on this issue and the structure of formal institutions in that policy. That is, how the gender equality policy has been formed and applied as a public policy in Albania. Besides, equality policies and formal institutional structure on that issue is being formed depending on how “the problem of gender inequality” is perceived by policy-maker actors. In this paper, using the concept of gender as a process analysis, we find evidence that the implementation of gender quotas increased the number of women’s participation in politics and decision-making and brought in a more diverse group of women. We also find that women in Albania still continue to face inequality and discrimination, and there is still a lot to be done, to enjoy their rights de facto and to have effective protection against gender discrimination.

Consequences of an uncertain mass mortality regime triggered by climate variability on giant clam population management in the Pacific Ocean

Despite actions to manage sustainably tropical Pacific Ocean reef fisheries, managers have faced failures and frustrations because of unpredicted mass mortality events triggered by climate variability. The consequences of these events on the long-term population dynamics of living resources need to be better understood for better management decisions. Here, we use a giant clam (Tridacna maxima) spatially explicit population model to compare the efficiency of several management strategies under various scenarios of natural mortality, including mass mortality due to climatic anomalies. The model was parameterized by in situ estimations of growth and mortality and fishing effort, and was validated by historical and new in situ surveys of giant clam stocks in two French Polynesia lagoons. Projections on the long run (100 years) suggested that the best management strategy was a decrease of fishing pressure through quota implementation, regardless of the mortality regime considered. In contrast, increasing the minimum legal size of catch and closing areas to fishing were less efficient. When high mortality occurred due to climate variability, the efficiency of all management scenarios decreased markedly. Simulating El Niño Southern Oscillation event by adding temporal autocorrelation in natural mortality rates increased the natural variability of stocks, and also decreased the efficiency of management. These results highlight the difficulties that managers in small Pacific islands can expect in the future in the face of global warming, climate anomalies and new mass mortalities.