Mandate matters: evaluating the effects of electoral mandates in Western Europe

This chapter explores the implications of mandate theories of democracy through the lens of agenda-setting, looking at the impact of priorities emphasized in party manifestos on the legislative agenda. It examines the respective impact of the priorities in the manifesto of the party of the prime minister, the parties in the government coalition (where applicable), and all parliamentary parties (systemic attention). Using panel negative binomial regressions of legislative and electoral priorities, the conclusion is that mandate priorities do affect government policies to a greater extent than scholarship has so far acknowledged. And this does not seem to have changed over time. The agenda-setting impact of mandates is supported by qualitative observations on promises and policy in France and Germany. The only exception to this effect is the UK, which is surprising in view of arguments on institutional capacity, clarity of responsibility, and enhanced accountability in majoritarian systems—a paradox examined in Chapter 7.

Do Public Consultations Reduce Blame Attribution? The Impact of Consultation Characteristics, Gender, and Gender Attitudes

Can public consultations—gatherings organised to solicit constituent opinions—reduce the blame attributed to elected representatives whose decisions end up backfiring? Using two pre-registered survey experiments conducted on nationally representative samples of US respondents, we examine whether the effectiveness of consultations as a blame avoidance tool may be shaped by: (1) consultation characteristics, especially regarding whether or not representatives align their policies, either actively or passively, with constituent opinion; and (2) elected representative and constituent characteristics, especially regarding a representative’s gender and constituents’ gender attitudes. Results suggest that public consultations are indeed liable to decrease blame attribution, just so long as constituent opinion is not explicitly opposed to the representative’s decision. Active alignment with constituent opinion, however, does not appear to be a requirement for decreased blame attribution—and effects related to gender and gender attitudes are also largely absent. These findings are important for scholars seeking to better understand blame attribution, clarifying how public consultations might help politicians to pre-empt blame by reducing clarity of responsibility.

Effective local government council leadership: reassessing the facilitative model of leadership

PurposeThis paper utilizes Svara's facilitative leadership model to examine local government council/board effectiveness in Michigan, United States.Design/methodology/approachThis study performs a binary logistic regression to assess the influence of four independent variables–consensus building, cooperative relationship, clarity of responsibility and existence of factions/partisanship on five measures of council/board effectiveness (long-term goal setting, administrative, financial, addressing citizen expectations and overall performance), while controlling for other variables.FindingsOverall, the findings of this study have serious theoretical and practical implications. Specifically, the findings revealed that cooperative relationships, clarity of responsibility, discussion of public issues and partnership influence council/board effectiveness. The findings further support Svara's (2003) model on facilitative leadership and the model's usefulness in understanding local government leadership, i.e. council/board leadership effectiveness.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, survey data contains desirability bias which can affect the results presented in this study. Second, the data does not include socio-demographic variables of the respondents.Originality/valueThe study is original because it utilizes a data set that is not commonly used in understanding local government council/board effectiveness. Furthermore, the study also shows the usefulness of Svara's facilitative leadership in local government.

Factors Affecting Implementation of ISO 9001:2015 in manufacturing Sector

ISO 9001 mainly thrust on the commitment of top management of the organization as far as quality management system is concerned, as per the guidelines it is the duty of top management to define a crystal clear polity for quality maintenance and also there should be clarity of responsibility and authority among the people involved in the same. Main objective of this paper is to identify the significant factors which barriers in implementation of ISO 9001:2015. In depth literature was conducted from where 29 general factors were found. A survey (Qualitative) was conducted from top managerial officials from manufacturing sector to determine significant factors. On basis of mean value total 11 significant factors were found which were related to manufacture sector in Pakistan. This study will be helpful for the managerial staff and officials to control identified factors for implementation of ISO.

Factors Affecting Implementation of ISO 9001:2015 in Manufacturing Sector

ISO 9001 mainly thrust on the commitment of top management of the organization as far as quality management system is concerned, as per the guidelines it is the duty of top management to define a crystal clear polity for quality maintenance and also there should be clarity of responsibility and authority among the people involved in the same. Main objective of this paper is to identify the significant factors which barriers in implementation of ISO 9001:2015. In depth literature was conducted from where 29 general factors were found. A survey (Qualitative) was conducted from top managerial officials from manufacturing sector to determine significant factors. On basis of mean value total 11 significant factors were found which were related to manufacture sector in Pakistan. This study will be helpful for the managerial staff and officials to control identified factors for implementation of ISO.

Retrospective Voting and the Polarization of Available Alternatives

Government cohesiveness is known to moderate retrospective voting. While previous work on this topic has focused on characteristics of the government, we build on the literature on clarity of responsibility and the literature on valence to argue that the extent to which government and opposition are ideologically distinct also moderates retrospective voting. Two alternative expectations follow from these two theoretical perspectives. While the clarity of responsibility framework leads to the expectation that a larger difference between government and opposition will strengthen retrospective voting, the valence literature presumes that retrospective voting is stronger when ideological differences are small. Using the data of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project, we find evidence that is in line with the clarity of responsibility framework: the higher the degree of ideological polarization between government and opposition, the larger the effect of retrospective performance evaluations on the vote.

Open for Politics? Globalization, Economic Growth, and Responsibility Attribution

Previous literature suggests that economic performance affects government approval asymmetrically, either because voters are quicker to blame incompetence than to credit ability (grievance asymmetry) or because they understand that the degree to which policy-makers can affect the economy varies depending on economic openness (clarity of responsibility asymmetry). We seek to understand whether these asymmetries coexist, arguing that these theories conjointly imply that globalization may have the capacity to mitigate blame for bad outcomes but should neither promote nor reduce credit to policy-makers for good economic outcomes. We look for evidence of these asymmetries in three survey experiments carried out in the USA and Canada in 2014 and 2015. We find ample experimental evidence in support of the grievance asymmetry, but our results are mixed on the impact of economic openness on blame mitigation, with some evidence of this phenomenon in the USA, but not in Canada.