scholarly journals Can Mandated Political Representation Increase Policy Influence for Disadvantaged Minorities? Theory and Evidence from India

2003 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 1132-1151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Pande
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Basic Premise ◽  
Policy Influence ◽  
Disadvantaged Groups ◽  
Institutional Features

A basic premise of representative democracy is that all those subject to policy should have a voice in its making. However, policies enacted by electorally accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities. This paper exploits the institutional features of political reservation, as practiced in Indian states, to examine the role of mandated political representation in providing disadvantaged groups influence over policy-making. I find that political reservation has increased transfers to groups which benefit from the mandate. This finding also suggests that complete policy commitment may be absent in democracies, as is found in this case.

What Drives Unequal Policy Responsiveness? Assessing the Role of Informational Asymmetries in Economic Policy-Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (14) ◽  
pp. 2213-2245
Author(s):  
Mads Andreas Elkjær
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Macroeconomic Policies ◽  
Data Set ◽  
State Of The Economy ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms

Recent scholarship on inequality and political representation argues that economic elites are dominating democratic policy-making, yet it struggles to explain the underlying mechanisms. This article proposes that unequal responsiveness reflects asymmetries in information about fiscal policy across income classes, as opposed to being a structural bias inherent in capitalist democracy. I test the argument in a pathway case study of economic policy-making in Denmark, using a new data set that combines preference and spending data spanning 18 spending domains between 1985 and 2017. I find that governments that pursue standard macroeconomic policies coincidentally respond more strongly to the preferences of the affluent, owing to a closer adjustment of preferences to the state of the economy among citizens in upper income groups. These findings have important democratic and theoretical implications, as they suggest that unequal responsiveness may not reflect substantive misrepresentation of majority interests, but rather differences in information levels across groups.

scholarly journals Constructivism and the Logic of Political Representation

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (3) ◽  
pp. 824-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS FOSSEN
Keyword(s):  
Political Representation ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Revolutionary Movements ◽  
The Difference

There are at least two politically salient senses of “representation”—acting-for-others and portraying-something-as-something. The difference is not just semantic but also logical: relations of representative agency are dyadic (x represents y), while portrayals are triadic (x represents y as z). I exploit this insight to disambiguate constructivism and to improve our theoretical vocabulary for analyzing political representation. I amend Saward’s claims-based approach on three points, introducing the “characterization” to correctly identify the elements of representational claims; explaining the “referent” in pragmatic, not metaphysical terms; and differentiating multiple forms of representational activity. This enables me to clarify how the represented can be both prior to representation and constituted by it, and to recover Pitkin’s idea that representatives ought to be “responsive” to the represented. These points are pertinent to debates about the role of representatives, the nature of representative democracy, and the dynamics of revolutionary movements.

Changing Role of Agriculture in Income and Employment, and Trends of Agricultural Worker Productivity in Indian States

2020 ◽  
pp. 183-189
Keyword(s):  
Green Revolution ◽  
Positive Trend ◽  
Worker Productivity ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Agricultural Worker ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Changing Role

The productivity of land has been often discussed and deliberated by the academia and policymakers to understand agriculture, however, very few studies have focused on the agriculture worker productivity to analyze this sector. This study concentrates on the productivity of agricultural workers from across the states taking two-time points into consideration. The agriculture worker productivity needs to be dealt with seriously and on a time series basis so that the marginal productivity of worker can be ascertained but also the dependency of worker on agriculture gets revealed. There is still disguised unemployment in all the states and high level of labour migration, yet most of the states showed the dependency has gone down. Although a state like Madhya Pradesh is doing very well in terms of income earned but that is at the cost of increased worker power in agriculture as a result of which, the productivity of worker has gone down. States like Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura, though small in size showed remarkable growth in productivity and all these states showed a positive trend in terms of worker shifting away from agriculture. The traditional states which gained the most from Green Revolution of the sixties are performing decently well, but they need to have the next major policy push so that they move to the next orbit of growth.

The SORS Decision-Making Support System: A statistical tool for better policy making in the Republic of Serbia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Miladin Kovačević ◽  
Katarina Stančić
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Monitoring And Evaluation ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Statistical Tool ◽  
The Public ◽  
System A ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Trusted Data

Modern society is witnessing a data revolution which necessarily entails changes to the overall behavior of citizens, governments and companies. This is a big challenge and an opportunity for National Statistics Offices (NSOs). Especially after the outbreak of COVID-19, when the public debate about the number of mortalities and tested and infected persons escalated, trusted data is required more than ever. Which data can modern society trust? Are modern societies being subjected to opinion rather than fact? This paper introduces a new statistical tool to facilitate policy-making based on trusted statistics. Using economic indicators to illustrate implementation, the new statistical tool is shown to be a flexible instrument for analysis, monitoring and evaluation of the economic situation in the Republic of Serbia. By taking a role in public policy management, the tool can be used to transform the NSO’s role in the statistical system into an active participant in public debate in contrast to the previous traditional, usually passive role of collecting, processing and publishing data. The tool supports the integration of statistics into public policies and connects the knowledge and expertise of official statisticians on one side with political decision makers on the other.

Agricultural Policy Networks of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland

1995 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 664-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Collins
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Agricultural Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Policy Networks ◽  
Republic Of Ireland ◽  
European Literature ◽  
The Republic

This paper provides an analytical framework within which to understand the contrasting way farmers' interests are aggregated and articulated in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The analysis draws on the dominant European literature on state-farmer relations which emphasizes the role of policy networks and explores whether the concepts of pluralism or corporatism best characterize policy making in the two states.

Legislators, Bureaucrats, and Canadian Democracy: The Long and the Short of It

1977 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Sigelman ◽  
William G. Vanderbok
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Substantial Proportion ◽  
The Political ◽  
Annual Average ◽  
Canadian Politics ◽  
Strategic Role

The bureaucratization of the political process that characterizes twentieth century politics in many countries has not bypassed Canada—as evidenced by skyrocketing rates of government employment and expenditure and, even more dramatically, by the ever-expanding policy-making power of Canadian bureaucracy. One observer sees the civil service as occupying an increasingly strategic role in Canadian politics, a condition thatreflects in part the expanding role of modern government into highly technical areas, which tends to augment the discretion of permanent officials because legislators are obliged to delegate to them the administration of complex affairs, including the responsibility for drafting and adjudicating great amounts of sub-legislation required to “fill in the details” of the necessarily broad, organic statutes passed by Parliament. Some indication of the scale of such discretion is found in the fact that, during the period 1963–8, an annual average of 4,130 Orders-in-Council were passed in Ottawa, a substantial proportion of which provided for delegating authority to prescribe rules and regulations to ministers and their permanent advisers. By contrast, the number of laws passed annually by Canadian federal parliaments is rarely over one hundred.

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