scholarly journals Political Agency, Oversight, and Bias: The Instrumental Value of Politicized Policymaking

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian R Turner
Keyword(s):  
Political Agency ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Investment Incentives ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
Incentive Effects ◽  
Managerial Strategies ◽  
Quality Policy

We develop a theory of policymaking between an agent and an overseer, with a principal whose welfare is affected by agent-overseer interactions. The agent can increase the quality of policy outcomes through costly capacity investments. Oversight and agent bias jointly determine optimal agent capacity investments. We show that when oversight improves agent investment incentives the principal always benefits from an agent with biases opposite the overseer. Competing agent-overseer biases translate into higher quality policy outcomes than the principal could induce were she monitoring the agent. Effective oversight is necessary for these incentive effects. The results imply that political principals ought to consider the nature of the broader policymaking environment when appointing agents to make policy on their behalf and when designing managerial strategies aimed at motivating agents.

scholarly journals Political Agency, Oversight, and Bias: The Instrumental Value of Politicized Policymaking

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 544-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian R Turner
Keyword(s):  
Political Agency ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Investment Incentives ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
Incentive Effects ◽  
Managerial Strategies ◽  
Quality Policy

Abstract We develop a theory of policymaking between an agent and an overseer, with a principal whose welfare is affected by agent-overseer interactions. The agent can increase the quality of policy outcomes through costly capacity investments. Oversight and agent bias jointly determine optimal agent capacity investments. We show that when oversight improves agent investment incentives the principal always benefits from an agent with biases opposite the overseer. Competing agent-overseer biases translate into higher quality policy outcomes than the principal could induce were she monitoring the agent. Effective oversight is necessary for these incentive effects. The results imply that political principals ought to consider the nature of the broader policymaking environment when appointing agents to make policy on their behalf and when designing managerial strategies aimed at motivating agents. (JEL D73, D82, H11)

scholarly journals Does direct democracy increase communicative responsiveness? A field experiment with Swiss politicians

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316801770073 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anouk Lloren
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiment ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
Quality Of Democracy

Many argue that direct democracy improves the quality of democracy. In particular, many scholars claim that it increases the representation of the public’s preferences by fostering communicative responsiveness between politicians and citizens. While studies have come to mixed conclusions about the effect of direct democracy on policy outcomes, little is known about how direct democratic processes affect politicians’ responsiveness. Using a field experiment, this study examines whether direct democracy increases the responsiveness of Swiss state legislators to citizen-initiated contacts on policy concerns. Contrary to popular belief, our results show that direct democracy does not enhance politicians’ responsiveness to policy requests.

Representation, Bicameralism, Political Equality, and Sortition: Reconstituting the Second Chamber as a Randomly Selected Assembly

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arash Abizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Many ◽  
Treat All ◽  
Legislative Review ◽  
Political Turn

The two traditional justifications for bicameralism are that a second legislative chamber serves a legislative-review function (enhancing the quality of legislation) and a balancing function (checking concentrated power and protecting minorities). I furnish here a third justification for bicameralism, with one elected chamber and the second selected by lot, as an institutional compromise between contradictory imperatives facing representative democracy: elections are a mechanism of people’s political agency and of accountability, but run counter to political equality and impartiality, and are insufficient for satisfactory responsiveness; sortition is a mechanism for equality and impartiality, and of enhancing responsiveness, but not of people’s political agency or of holding representatives accountable. Whereas the two traditional justifications initially grew out of anti-egalitarian premises (about the need for elite wisdom and to protect the elite few against the many), the justification advanced here is grounded in egalitarian premises about the need to protect state institutions from capture by the powerful few and to treat all subjects as political equals. Reflecting the “political” turn in political theory, I embed this general argument within the institutional context of Canadian parliamentary federalism, arguing that Canada’s Senate ought to be reconstituted as a randomly selected citizen assembly.

Hospital downsizing and workforce reduction strategies: some inner workings

2003 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas P. Weil
Keyword(s):  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Direct Patient Care ◽  
Workforce Reduction ◽  
Minimal Impact ◽  
Physician Practices ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
Managerial Strategies

Downsizing, manpower reductions, re-engineering, and resizing are used extensively in the United States to reduce cost and to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of various functions and processes. Published studies report that these managerial strategies result in a minimal impact on access to services, quality of care, and the ability to reduce costs. But, these approaches certainly alienate employees. These findings are usually explained by the significant difficulties experienced in eliminating nursing and other similar direct patient care-oriented positions and in terminating white-collar employees. Possibly an equally plausible reason why hospitals and physician practices react so poorly to these management strategies is their cost structure-high fixed (85%) and low variable (15%)-and that simply generating greater volume does not necessarily achieve economies of scale. More workable alternatives for health executives to effectuate cost reductions consist of simplifying prepayment, decreasing the overall availability and centralizing tertiary services at academic health centres, and closing superfluous hospitals and other health facilities. America's pluralistic values and these proposals having serious political repercussions for health executives and elected officials often present serious barriers in their implementation.

The Health and Safety Concerns of Immigrant Women Workers in the Toronto Sportswear Industry

1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlene M. Gannagé
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Occupational Health ◽  
Immigrant Women ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Apparel Industry ◽  
Safety Concerns ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Managerial Strategies ◽  
Conditions Of Work

Immigrant women's conditions of work have worsened with new government and managerial strategies to restructure the Canadian apparel industry. Changes in occupational health and safety legislation have both given and taken away tools that immigrant women workers could use to improve the quality of their working lives. The author outlines a methodology for eliciting the health and safety concerns of immigrant women workers.

scholarly journals The Location Premises Of FDI In Poland. The Case Of The Lodz Province

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 157-178
Author(s):  
Tomasz Dorożyński ◽  
Janusz Świerkocki ◽  
Wojciech Urbaniak
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Foreign Capital ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
Questionnaire Study ◽  
Investment Incentives ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Foreign Investors ◽  
Costs Of Production

This paper aims to study the role of various factors in attracting foreign capital to the Province of Lodz. Conclusions are based on the direct questionnaire study conducted among 188 companies with foreign capital which invested in the region. The obtained results indicate that specific Lodz Province (voivodeship) characteristics were of little importance to foreign investors. Both in Poland and in the voivodeship, they were looking for relatively cheap and skilful labour in order to lower their total costs of production. We confirmed that investment incentives were of little importance for the inflow of FDI to the communes and counties of the Province of Lodz. The factors which most discouraged investment in the region were poor transport infrastructure and an uninteresting social infrastructure decisive for the quality of everyday life. Our conclusion is that the inflow of FDI does not eliminate intra-regional disproportions; on the contrary it probably deepens them.

scholarly journals Alkisti Efthymiou in Conversation with Athena Athanasiou: Spectral Publics and Antifascist Eventualities

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 102-113
Author(s):  
Alkisti Efthymiou ◽  
Athena Athanasiou
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities

This text is a conversation between Athena Athanasiou and Alkisti Efthymiou, drawing from Athena Athanasiou’s new book, Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). The conversation discusses the critical potency of collective subjectivities such as the Women in Black and expands on issues that include political agency, vulnerability in resistance, spacing appearance, performing public mourning, or the traveling of social movements, associating them with contemporary feminist and antifascist urgencies. Central to the text is the concept of non-sovereign agonism, a form of political agency that addresses (or takes into account) the dispossessed quality of subjectivity and pays attention to the relationality through which we are constituted as subjects. Author(s): Alkisti Efthymiou and Athena Athanasiou Title (English): Alkisti Efthymiou in Conversation with Athena Athanasiou: Spectral Publics and Antifascist Eventualities Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 16, No. 1-2 (Summer - Winter 2019) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 102-113 Page Count: 12 Citation (English): Alkisti Efthymiou and Athena Athanasiou, “Alkisti Efthymiou in Conversation with Athena Athanasiou: Spectral Publics and Antifascist Eventualities,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 16, No. 1-2 (Summer - Winter 2019): 102-113.

It's Our Environment: Two Terms of SNP Environmental Policy

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Hinde
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Governance Strategies ◽  
Food And Drink ◽  
Scottish Government ◽  
The Government

Under the SNP, Scotland has sought to develop a reputation for itself as a renewables powerhouse and a counterweight to the perceived anti-green Conservative party in Westminster. From the ‘Saudi Arabia of Renewables’ to ‘the land of food and drink’, the last eight years have seen the development of a self-consciously Scottish environmental framework. This article is intended as a brief critique of the SNP's environmental record in government in both rhetorical and policy terms, looking not only at policy outcomes but the discursive limitations within which the Scottish Government has constrained itself. It argues that nationalist governance strategies are limited in their ability to fully deal with both local and global environmental challenges. It concludes that, although the SNP have a fair record on ‘shallow’ environmentalism, there is still no policy agenda present within the government to radically modernise Scotland in the way that is necessary to protect the environment and guarantee higher quality of life for its people in the long term.

11. Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 294-306
Author(s):  
Peter John
Keyword(s):  
Executive Power ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Effective Policy ◽  
The Common

This concluding chapter presents a summary of the common themes and key points about British politics, which help make sense of current events, such as whether turbulence and instability now characterize British politics, and whether democracy can work well in these conditions. It provides a table containing summaries of each chapter, which relate to the themes of the book: party government and executive power, political turbulence, blunders/policy disasters, and the difficulties of achieving agency. With these and other insights, it is possible to assess whether there is anything left for traditional understandings of British democracy or whether the country is in uncharted waters, without any clearly understood democratic mechanisms and not capable of producing effective policy outcomes. Overall, how does Britain fare as a democracy with its old and new features? The chapter then looks at the debate about the quality of UK democracy.

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