Home  About us  Contact
 

Party Control (party + control)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences60%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting40%

Selected Abstracts

STOP US BEFORE WE SPEND AGAIN: INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS ON GOVERNMENT SPENDING

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 3 2006
DAVID M. PRIMO
A distributive politics model establishes that the presence of exogenously enforceable spending limits reduces spending and that the effect of executive veto authority is contingent on whether spending is capped and whether the chief executive is a liberal or conservative. Surprisingly, when spending limits are in place, governments with conservative executives spend more than those with more liberal chief executives. Limits are welfare improving, as is the executive veto when it leads to the building of override coalitions. Using 32 years of US state budget data, this paper also establishes empirically that strict balanced budget rules constrain spending and also lead to less pronounced short-term responses to fluctuations in a state's economy. Party variables like divided government and party control of state legislatures tend to have little or no direct effect, with political institutions and economic indicators explaining much of the variation in state spending. [source]

The Appointment and Removal Process for judges in Argentina: The Role of Judicial Councils and Impeachment Juries in Promoting Judicial Independence

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2007
Rebecca Bill Chávez
ABSTRACT This article explores the conditions that allow judicial councils and impeachment juries to promote judicial autonomy. In theory, these bodies intervene in the appointment and removal of judges in order to reduce executive control over court composition, thereby promoting judicial independence. Using the case of Argentina at the federal and the subnational levels, this study demonstrates that competitive politics enhances the capacity of judicial councils and impeachment juries to bolster judicial autonomy. Interparty competition provides incentives for the executive to develop a meaningful system of checks and balances, which includes an independent judiciary that can check executive power. In contrast, monolithic party control,defined as a prolonged period of unified government under a highly disciplined party,permits the executive to maintain a monopoly on power and thereby control judicial appointments and removals. [source]

The Politics of Peace in the GDR: The Independent Peace Movement, the Church, and the Origins of the East German Opposition

PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 3 2001
Steven Pfaff
Comparative research offers some insights into the genesis of movements under highly repressive conditions in which dissident groups are systematically denied the organizational and political resources necessary to mount a sustained challenge to the state. During the 1970s and 1980s there were circles of dissidents in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany), but most grievances were not expressed in an organized form, and there were few opportunities to mobilize protest against the Communist regime. State repression and party control of society meant that opposition had to be organized within institutions that were shielded from state control. Religious subcultures offered a rival set of identities and values while generally accommodating the demands of the regime. Within the free social space offered by the church, a peace movement developed during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The effort to build an independent citizens' peace movement based in the church played an important role in linking together various groups committed to nonviolent protest, peace, ecology, and human rights into a coherent, if still organizationally weak, opposition during the East German revolution of 1989. [source]

Experimenting With the Balancing Hypothesis

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2004
John G. Geer
The reasons why divided government is on the rise in the United States remain unclear. Of the explanations offered, Fiorina's (1992) balancing hypothesis,the idea that voters intentionally cast their ballots in a way that would increase the prospects of split party control,has drawn the most attention. This study gathered empirical evidence to test the hypothesis; its focus was not on whether citizens want divided government, but rather on whether they collectively act in a way consistent with balancing. In September 1900, during the national election campaign, a sample of undergraduates responded to one of five versions of a newspaper article (similar to actual articles about the campaign) that varied with respect to reported polling data on the competitiveness of the congressional and presidential races. The results cast doubt on the merits of the balancing hypothesis. [source]

DOES POLITICAL CHANGE AFFECT SENIOR MANAGEMENT TURNOVER?

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2010
AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF TOP-TIER LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN ENGLAND
In many political systems the political neutrality of senior managers' tenure is often cherished as a key part of the politics-administration dichotomy and is subject to formal safeguards. We test hypotheses about the impact of political change on senior management turnover drawn from political science, public administration and private sector management theory. Using panel data to control for unobserved heterogeneity between authorities, we find that changes in political party control and low organizational performance have both separate and joint positive effects on the turnover rate of senior managers. By contrast, the most senior manager, the chief executive, is more sheltered: the likelihood of a chief executive succession is higher only when party change and low performance occur together. Thus the arrival of a new ruling party reduces the tenure of senior managers, but chief executives are vulnerable to political change only when performance is perceived as weak. [source]