Political Institutions, Policymaking Processes, and Policy Outcomes in Mexico

AbstractWe maintain that political institutions’ policy objectives are best met under conditions when they are unified, and also when their administrative leadership is effective. We apply this argument to the understanding of how unified Democratic and Republican governments in the American states have influenced the incomes of affluent citizens. We find that affluent income gains occur under unified Republican state governments when compensation to executive agency heads is sufficiently high. These income gains are notable relative to both divided and unified partisan control of state governments. The evidence highlights the asymmetric role that bureaucratic leadership plays in attaining policy outcomes consistent with political institutions’ policy preferences, while underscoring the limits of electoral institutions to shape policy outcomes of their own accord. Efforts to lower the capacity of the administrative leadership constrain unified political institutions from converting their policy objectives into policy outcomes.

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4. The Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policies

Global Political Economy ◽

10.1093/hepl/9780198820642.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 76-108

Author(s):

Michael J. Hiscox

Keyword(s):

Exchange Rates ◽

Political Institutions ◽

Domestic Politics ◽

Policy Outcomes ◽

The Political ◽

Economic Policies ◽

Political Analysis ◽

Competing Demands ◽

Domestic Sources ◽

The Impact

This chapter examines the domestic sources of foreign economic policies. Different people in every society typically have different views about what their government should do when it comes to setting the policies that regulate international trade, immigration, investment, and exchange rates. These competing demands must be reconciled in some way by the political institutions that govern policy making. To really understand the domestic origins of foreign economic policies, we need to perform two critical tasks: identify or map the policy preferences of different groups in the domestic economy; and specify how political institutions determine the way these preferences are aggregated or converted into actual government decisions. The first task requires some economic analysis, while the second requires some political analysis. These two analytical steps put together like this, combining both economic and political analysis in tandem, are generally referred to as the political economy approach to the study of policy outcomes. The chapter then considers the impact of domestic politics on bargaining over economic issues between governments at the international level.

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Who Does What Work in a Ministerial Office: Politically Appointed Staff and the Descriptive Representation of Women in Australian Political Offices, 1979–2010

Political Studies ◽

10.1177/0032321719853459 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 68 (2) ◽

pp. 463-485 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Marija Taflaga ◽

Matthew Kerby

Keyword(s):

Political Institutions ◽

Career Paths ◽

Descriptive Representation ◽

Policy Outcomes ◽

Political Elites ◽

Data Set ◽

Systematic Data ◽

Representation Of Women ◽

Policy Work ◽

First Time

Women are underrepresented within political institutions, which can (negatively) impact policy outcomes. We examine women’s descriptive representation as politically appointed staff within ministerial offices. Politically appointed staff are now institutionalised into the policy process, so who they are is important. To date, collecting systematic data on political staff has proved impossible. However, for the first time we demonstrate how to build a systematic data set of this previously unobservable population. We use Australian Ministerial Directories (telephone records) from 1979 to 2010 (a method that can notionally be replicated in advanced democratic jurisdictions), to examine political advising careers in a similar manner as elected political elites. We find that work in political offices is divided on gender lines: men undertake more policy work, begin and end their careers in higher status roles and experience greater career progression than women. We find evidence that this negatively impacts women’s representation and their later career paths into parliament.

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Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies

World Politics ◽

10.2307/2010534 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 43 (4) ◽

pp. 479-512 ◽

Cited By ~ 211

Author(s):

Thomas Risse-Kappen

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

Public Opinion ◽

Political Institutions ◽

Policy Making ◽

Public Attitudes ◽

The United States ◽

Policy Outcomes ◽

Liberal Democracies ◽

Policy Making Process ◽

The Impact

The paper discusses the role of public opinion in the foreign policy-making process of liberal democracies. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, public opinion matters. However, the impact of public opinion is determined not so much by the specific issues involved or by the particular pattern of public attitudes as by the domestic structure and the coalition-building processes among the elites in the respective country. The paper analyzes the public impact on the foreign policy-making process in four liberal democracies with distinct domestic structures: the United States, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Japan. Under the same international conditions and despite similar patterns of public attitudes, variances in foreign policy outcomes nevertheless occur; these have to be explained by differences in political institutions, policy networks, and societal structures. Thus, the four countries responded differently to Soviet policies during the 1980s despite more or less comparable trends in mass public opinion.

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Political Support

Comparative Political Studies ◽

10.1177/0010414006292117 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 40 (12) ◽

pp. 1511-1532 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Henar Criado ◽

Francisco Herreros

Keyword(s):

Political Institutions ◽

European Social Survey ◽

Political Support ◽

Policy Outcomes ◽

Attribution Of Responsibility ◽

Data Set ◽

Social Survey ◽

Individual Variables ◽

The Government

The analysis of the causes of political support for political institutions has been focused either on one-case studies that stress the relevance of individual variables or cross-national studies that stress the role of institutions. In this article, the authors suggest that to understand the logic of political support, it is necessary to combine both types of explanations. Using evidence from 17 European countries of the 2002 to 2003 European Social Survey data set, the authors show that the effect of the performance of the institution on political support is higher in majoritarian democracies, where the attribution of responsibility for policy outcomes is clear, than in proportional democracies. They also show that the effect of ideology on political support depends on the type of democracy: Those citizens ideologically far from the government will show higher levels of political support in proportional democracies than in majoritarian ones.

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Political Institutions and Fiscal Policy Outcomes in Japan

Pacific Focus ◽

10.1111/j.1976-5118.1994.tb00167.x ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 47-63

Author(s):

Sung Deuk Hanm

Keyword(s):

Fiscal Policy ◽

Political Institutions ◽

Policy Outcomes

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Political Institutions, Policymaking Processes and Policy Outcomes in Paraguay, 1954-2003

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.1814755 ◽

2006 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

José Molinas ◽

Anibal Pérez-Liñán ◽

Sebastian M. Saiegh ◽

Marcela Montero

Keyword(s):

Political Institutions ◽

Policy Outcomes

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Intersectional Stereotyping in Political Decision Making

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.773 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Erin C. Cassese

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Political Institutions ◽

Academic Disciplines ◽

Policy Outcomes ◽

Power Dynamics ◽

Race And Gender ◽

Wide Range ◽

And Gender ◽

Voter Decision Making

Intersectionality is an analytic framework used to study social and political inequality across a wide range of academic disciplines. This framework draws attention to the intersections between various social categories, including race, gender, sexuality, class, and (dis)ability. Scholarship in this area notes that groups at these intersections are often overlooked, and in overlooking them, we fail to see the ways that the power dynamics associated with these categories reinforce one another to create interlocking systems of advantage and disadvantage that extend to social, economic, and political institutions. Representational intersectionality is a specific application of intersectionality concerned with the role that widely shared depictions of groups in popular media and culture play in producing and reinforcing social hierarchy. These representations are the basis for widely held group stereotypes that influence public opinion and voter decision-making. Intersectional stereotypes are the set of stereotypes that occur at the nexus between multiple group categories. Rather than considering stereotypes associated with individual social groups in isolation (e.g., racial stereotypes vs. gender stereotypes), this perspective acknowledges that group-based characteristics must be considered conjointly as mutually constructing categories. What are typically considered “basic” categories, like race and gender, operate jointly in social perception to create distinct compound categories, with stereotype profiles that are not merely additive collections of overlapping stereotypes from each individual category, but rather a specific set of stereotypes that are unique to the compound social group. Intersectional stereotypes in political contexts including campaigns and policy debates have important implications for descriptive representation and material policy outcomes. In this respect, they engage with fundamental themes linked to political and structural inequality.

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Conceptualizing Policy Change

10.1093/oso/9780198803683.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas C. Guiney

Keyword(s):

Policy Change ◽

Political Institutions ◽

Theoretical Framework ◽

Historical Study ◽

Policy Outcomes ◽

Early Release ◽

Mediating Role ◽

History Of ◽

Science Methodology ◽

Social Science Methodology

The chapter sets out a theoretical framework for the systematic and historically grounded analysis of early release in England and Wales between 1960 and 1995. It reviews the existing criminological literature on the history of criminal justice and reflects upon the tendency to conceptualize policy change as the product of individual action or the socio-economic shifts associated with late twentieth-century modernity. It goes on to consider the mediating role of political institutions in shaping complex policy outcomes and presents a theoretical framework for the analysis of early release based upon the broad tradition of historical institutionalism. The chapter concludes with an honest appraisal of the challenges facing a criminologist doing historical study and reflects upon the largely untapped potential of archival research as a criminological and social science methodology.

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The “Law” and Economics of Judicial Decision-Making

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199684267.013.017 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Emerson H. Tiller

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Political Institutions ◽

Law And Economics ◽

Policy Outcomes ◽

Judicial Decision ◽

Judicial Decision Making ◽

Game Theoretic ◽

Executive Action ◽

The Law ◽

Context Specific

Over the last three decades, the economics of judicial behaviour has revealed itself most prominently in the field now known as Law and Positive Political Theory (Law and PPT). Instead of the traditional focus of ‘law and economics’ on the normative efficiency of legal rules, Law and PPT identifies the role of competition among legal and political institutions for policy outcomes, with these outcomes usually taking the form of legislative enactments, executive action, judicial opinions, or administrative agency pronouncements (regulations). This article illustrates the ‘law’ features of Law and PPT, while keeping the economics of judicial decision-making — especially the efficiency-driven, game-theoretic, utility maximization features — at the forefront of the analysis. It begins by summarizing basic elements of Law and PPT as relevant to judicial decision-making. It then discusses context-specific applications of Law and PPT where the craft of law is revealed as strategy.

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