The Future of LGBT Politics

This chapter summarizes the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in national policymaking. In the United States there exists a nationally shared set of beliefs, values, and customs, or cultural universals. However, these shared attributes vary according to place and political affiliation. Extending the right to marry to same-sex couples through judicial means precipitated a backlash in which religious groups and individuals turned to legislative solutions to contest the court's decision and their obligation to recognize marriage equality. As the final arbiter of law in the United States, the nine unelected justices of the U.S. Supreme Court play a significant role in policymaking, and their attitudes and decisions regarding policy are tied to the political selection of justices. In the future, decision making from the court to further extend the rights of LGBT citizens may be directly tied to the increasingly partisan selection process for justices.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the role of the U.S. Supreme Court as a national policy-making institution. As the final arbiter of law in the United States, the nine unelected justices of the Supreme Court contend their attitudes and decisions are tied to the political selection of justices. Extending the right to marry to same-sex couples through judicial means ignited a backlash in which religious groups and individuals turned to legislative solutions to contest the court's decision and its obligation to recognize marriage equality. Today, the same types of claims that once justified anti-LGBTQ laws are being used to advocate for religious and moral exemptions from laws designed to protect the dignity of LGBTQ people. With this turn back to religion, the cycle of subordination has come full circle. Future decision making from the court to extend the rights of LGBTQ citizens is directly tied to the changing composition of its members.

Political (Over)Representation of Public Sector Employees and the Double-Motive Hypothesis: Evidence from Norwegian Register Data (2007-2019)

Countries have widely diverging regulations regarding the eligibility of public sector employees for political office, and the stringency of such regulations remains fiercely debated. Building on a demand and supply model of political selection, this article contributes to such debates by studying whether and how the incentives of public employees as both consumers and producers of public services (their ‘double motive’) affects their descriptive political representation. Our analysis employs population-wide individual-level register data covering four Norwegian local elections between 2007 and 2019 (N>13 million observations). Using predominantly individual-level panel regression models, we find that public employees are strongly overrepresented on election lists and have a higher probability of election (conditional on running). Looking at underlying mechanisms, we provide evidence consistent with the ‘double motive’ of public employees inducing their self-selection into standing for elected office (at higher-ranked ballot positions). Demand-side effects deriving from party and voter selection receive more limited empirical support. We discuss ensuing concerns about the potential substantive representation of policy self-interests by elected public employees.

The Political Dynamics of Corporate Tax Avoidance: The Chinese Experience

In China's political selection system, officials capable of growing local economies are reward-ed with promotions. Eager to demonstrate economic achievements, newly appointed local lead-ers may raise tax revenues to expand fiscal expenditures on infrastructure projects. Against this backdrop, we study how political appointments influence local firms' tax planning. Based on a sample of locally administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs), we find firms decrease their tax avoidance after new leaders take office. The political-turnover effect on these firms' tax positions is more evident when the incoming leaders have more political clout over SOE managers, the incentives to divert resources are stronger, or politician-manager networks are present, and subsides following the launch of the anticorruption campaign. Furthermore, firms with higher post-turnover tax payments subsequently receive more government contracts or subsidies. Overall, our findings suggest political incentives shape the tax-planning activities of SOE managers in a "two-way favor exchange" manner.

The Price of Probity: Anticorruption and Adverse Selection in the Chinese Bureaucracy

Fighting corruption is often seen as a crucial step toward building better institutions, but how it affects political selection remains less well understood. This article argues that in systems where corruption functions as an informal incentive for government to attract talent, anticorruption initiatives that curb rent-seeking opportunities may unintentionally weaken both the quality and the representativeness of the bureaucracy. The authors test this argument in China using an original nationwide survey of government officials and an identification strategy that exploits exogenous variations in enforcement levels created by the recent anticorruption campaign. The study finds that intensified enforcement has generated two potentially negative selection effects: a deterrence effect that lowers the average ability of newly recruited bureaucrats, and a compositional effect that discourages the entry of lower-class individuals in favor of those who are affluent and well connected. These findings highlight important hidden human capital costs of corruption elimination in developing countries.

Election by Community Consensus: Effects on Political Selection and Governance

This paper evaluates the effects of encouraging the selection of local politicians in India via community consensus, as opposed to a secret ballot election. Using village-level data on candidates, elected politicians, government budgets, and workfare employment, I show that incentives for consensus elections lead to politicians that are more educated but less likely to be drawn from historically marginalized castes, and increase how regressively workfare employment is targeted. These results are supported by qualitative evidence that shows that consensus elections are prone to capture by the local elite, which may reduce the need for clientelistic transfers to the non-elite.

Terrorism and the Varieties of Civil Liberties

How do government protections, and violations, of its citizens’ civil liberties influence the country's exposure to terrorism? Existing research remains divided. We contribute clarity to these debates by examining the distinct effects of specific types of civil liberties: physical integrity (e.g., freedom from extra-judicial torture and killing), political liberties (e.g., freedom of expression and assembly), and private liberties (e.g., freedom of thought and religion and property rights). We distinguish these civil liberties dimensions from the role of institutions for political selection (e.g., elections) and horizontal accountability (e.g., checks and balances, executive constraints). We argue physical integrity rights decrease terrorism, by reducing grievances against and increasing trust in the state, while political liberties increase terrorism, by both incentivizing violence among those with extremist goals and protecting their ability to organize. Empirically, we measure a country's exposure to terrorism using the Global Terrorism Database. We isolate the effects of government actions on these civil liberties dimensions from each other, and from the effects of the state's political institutions, by leveraging the Varieties of Democracy data. Our sample covers 177 states from 1970 to 2018. We find evidence consistent with our hypotheses regarding the effects of the distinct component dimensions of civil liberties.