Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Participatory Budgeting: Diffusion and Outcomes Across the World

Brian Wampler et al. — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:03:20 PDT

In this special issue of the Journal of Public Deliberation, multiple faces of Participatory Budgeting programs are revealed. The articles demonstrate that there is no standardized set of “best practices” that governments are adopting, but there are a broader set of principles that are adapted by local governments to meet local circumstances. Adopt and adapt appears to be the logic behind many PB programs.

Participatory Budgeting: Core Principles and Key Impacts

Brian Wampler — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:58:32 PDT

This essay is a reflection piece. I identify key principles at the core of how PB functions and to discuss the scope of change we might expect to see generated by these institutions. I move beyond the idea that there is a specific model or set of “best practices” that define PB. Rather, it is most fruitful to conceptualize PB as a set of principles that can generate social change. The weaker the adherence to these principles, the less social change generated. The second purpose of the essay is to reflect on the impacts generated by PB. How do these institutions matter? My assumption is that ordinary citizens are more likely to be supportive of new democratic processes if they are able to clearly identify positive changes created by their participation in the new democratic institutions. Ordinary citizens are unlikely to continue to participate in new political institutions unless they perceive that these institutions produce tangible, positive changes in their lives. In this short reflection piece, I analyze how PB may affect democratic legitimacy, social well-being, and civil society.

Revisiting the Protest Paradigm: The Tea Party as Filtered through Prime-Time Cable News

David A. Weaver et al. — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:21:03 PDT

Legislative Politics in the States

Keith Hamm et al. — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:07:23 PST

State legislatures fascinate students of institutions as well as students of individual behavior. As institutions, state legislatures present an array of organizational and structural arrangements. Indeed, there is probably more variation among state legislatures than any other institution of state government. For example, some legislatures are very large (the New Hampshire House four hundred members), and others are quite small (the upper chamber in Alaska is composed of twenty senators, and the Nevada and Delaware Senates have twenty-one). The districts represented by individual legislators range widely in size as well. Representatives in Maine. Vermont, and Wyoming -- and many representatives in New Hampshire -- are from districts with fewer than 10,000 members, whereas each member of the Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Washington lower chambers represents more than 100,000 people.¹ In fact, state senators in Texas (815,000) and California (930,000) represent more people than any member of the U. S. House of Representatives.

Character-in-Chief: Barack Obama and his Pop Culture Predecessors

Justin S. Vaughn — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:01:58 PST

At some point during the 2008 presidential election between Barack Obama and John McCain, it became fashionable for various journalists and essayists to craft articles on the notion that the genesis of now-President Obama's success was owed not to the Illinois Democrat's impressive 2004 DNC convention speech but rather to a handful of African American actors that had come before him. In particular, writers credited figures like Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman, and Sidney Poitier with preparing broad swathes of the white electorate to imagine black executive leadership as not only possible but also positive. Actor Dennis Haysbert further gave voice to this position, arguing that his own work portraying a black president in the hit television program 24 was instrumental in Obama's election.

The Policy Czar Debate

Justin S. Vaughn et al. — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:23:53 PST

Presidential policy czars have been an important and powerful component of President Barack Obama’s approach to management and leadership in the first part of his time in office. By using czars, the President has been able to demonstrate the importance of policy issues, both to his own agenda and to the broader political system. In this chapter, we find that performance outcomes for these czars have been a mixed bag, with as many stories of success to report as tales of frustration and failure. As such, we posit that the cost of czars, in political and organizational terms, has outweighed the benefits they have brought to the Obama Administration. Thus, we conclude that the rhetorical and institutional resistance to czars has increased to a point where it seems no longer pragmatic to utilize them, at least in the high-profile manner that this president and several of his predecessors have in recent decades.

Manager-in-Chief: Applying Public Management Theory to Examine White House Chief of Staff Performance

David B. Cohen et al. — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 11:24:11 PST

In an effort to examine the causal determinants of performance dynamics for the administrative presidency, the authors apply empirical public management theory to White House administration to explain managerial performance. Utilizing original survey data that measure the perceptions of former officials from the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton administrations, we conduct quantitative analyses to determine the extent to which a chief of staff’s background, relationship with the president, and internal as well as external management approaches shape overall perceptions of White House administrative efforts. The authors find that managerial dimensions matter considerably when explaining the dynamics of White House organizational performance.

The Family's End

Scott Yenor — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:19:55 PST

Family decline appears to be inevitable when viewed with a long perspective. The family has been progressively differentiated from institutions that now accomplish what was formerly within the provenance of the family. The city's gods, and eventually the Church, replaced ancestral gods. The marketplace, and eventually the modern economy, replaced the family as the unit of economic production. The city replaced primitive patriarchy. Slowly, and more controversially, the state has come to fulfill increasing portions of the family’s educational mission. Even the family’s "provision of social services" has come, more and more, to be a state concern. This "loss of functions" is a rational application of the division of labor, as functions extraneous to family life devolve in the presence of institutions better suited to accomplish these goals. As the family loses more and more functions, its purposes become thinner but, it is hoped, truer to the reality of what a family is.

The Family: What is to Be Done?

Scott Yenor — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:53:29 PST

We have seen how the logic of contract and the movement to conquer nature have resulted in a triumph of autonomy and the demise of family. The family thus stands in need of a defense. Defense of the family means defense of an institution, and that defense requires some defense of the nature that these institutions react to and reflect. This is where contemporary advocates have focused their attention. Both the modern principles—the principle of contract and the move to conquer nature—are partial truths, and it is best to understand how they each fit into a proper understanding of married life. We can see the partial truth of these principles by seeing how today’s defenders of marriage and family life appeal to anatomy, on the one hand, and love, on the other hand. The defense of marriage and family life in the name of love must ultimately supplement the defense in the name of anatomy.

Participatory Publics: Civil Society and New Institutions in Democratic Brazil

Brian Wampler et al. — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 12:51:24 PST

Brazil is home to some of the most successful experiences in participatory local government. The proliferation of civil society organizations in Brazil during the transition to democratic rule was accompanied by the development of new political values and strategies that fostered institutional renewal at the municipal level. Brazil's 1988 constitution decentralized political authority, thereby granting municipal administrations sufficient resources and political independence to restructure policymaking processes. Coalitions of civil society organizations and political reformers have taken advantage of this flexibility to experiment with new institutional types. The political strategies of civil society organizations are often driven by the need to find immediate solutions to dire social problems and by a broader interest in increasing the access of ordinary citizens to key decision-making venues. The strategies of the political reformers, often led by the left-of-center Workers' Party (PT), have been based on transforming how and to whom public goods are distributed.

From Petista Way to Brazilian Way: How the PT Changes in the Road

Benjamin Goldfrank et al. — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 12:38:59 PST

When Luiz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva won Brazil’s presidency in 2002, he and his Workers' Party (PT) had most observers convinced that this was a watershed moment for the country’s democracy. After all, the PT had built a reputation for over twenty years for good government and ethics in politics. Yet Lula's government has been severely undermined by corruption scandals, which surprised the most cynical PT-watchers and fostered broad disillusionment among many long-time PT supporters. This article lays out four interweaving strands of explanation for the PT's fall from grace, involving: the high cost of Brazilian elections, the strategic decisions of the party's dominant faction, economic constraints on an eventual Lula administration, and the difficulties of multi-party presidential systems.

A difusão do Orçamento Participativo brasileiro: ‘boas práticas' devem ser promovidas?

Brian Wampler — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 11:43:03 PST

The "third wave" of democratization has been accompanied by the spread of new institutions that allow citizens to deliberate and decide policy outcomes. Leading international organizations, such as the World Bank and the United Nations, have disseminated "best practice" programs identified with "good government" policy reform efforts. One of the most well-known programs, Participatory Budgeting (PB), was first adopted by Brazil's Workers' Party (PT) in 1989 as a means to promote social justice, accountability, and transparency. There has been widespread adoption of PB in Brazil, led by the PT. Yet, by 2001, nearly half of PB programs had been adopted by non-PT governments. What explains why municipal governments in Brazil, especially non-PT governments, would adopt PB programs? This article estimates the probability that a municipality would adopt PB using logistic regression analysis to test a model that included electoral, economic, regional, and policy network variables. This article concludes by briefly analyzing whether governments that adopt PB are able to produce policy outcomes similar to the initial results that inspired the "best practice" label. This introduces the question: When should best practice programs be promoted for possible adoption?

Participation, Representation, and Social Justice: Using Participatory Governance to Transform Representative Democracy

Brian Wampler — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 15:26:14 PST

The direct incorporation of citizens into complex policymaking processes is the most significant innovation of the "third wave" of democratization in the developing world. Participatory governance (PG) institutions are part of a new institutional architecture that increases the connections among citizens and government officials. This article draws from a single case of participatory governance to explore how its particular mechanisms work to transform representative democracy. In the cases examine here, PG institutions are grafted onto representative democracy and existing state institutions. These are state-sanctioned venues that require the intense involvement of citizens and government officials, without which the programs would grind to a halt. These features can expand citizen participation, enrich political representation, and enhance social justice.

Politics or Policy? How Rhetoric Matters to Presidential Leadership of Congress

José D. Villalobos et al. — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:26:00 PDT

In this article, we examine the linkage between presidential policy proposal messages and legislative success. Employing a data set on presidential legislative proposals that covers the years 1949-2010, we find that politics matters less than policy. Purely political messages that reference the electoral logic of mandates or appeal to a sense of bipartisanship appear to have no impact on presidential legislative success, nor does policy signaling, though highlighting the role of agency-based policy experts in crafting legislation does. From these results, we conclude that although the way presidents communicate their messages to Congress represents an important component of presidential-legislative relations, it is instead the perceived quality of the legislation that more strongly shapes congressional support of presidential policy efforts.

Entering the State: Civil Society Activism and Participatory Governance in Brazil

Brian Wampler — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 11:51:19 PDT

Participatory governance programs, which institutionalize government–civil society interactions through the promotion of public deliberation and decision making, are being adopted by local governments to harness a wide range of outcomes believed to be positively associated with citizens' and civil society organizations' active involvement in public life. This article draws from an original survey administered to 833 individuals elected to leadership positions in Brazil's municipal-level participatory budgeting program. Analysis of these data using a series of outcome variables and a set of individual- and municipal-level variables demonstrates that civil society organization (CSO) leaders now engage in direct negotiations with other CSOs, form alliances with other CSOs and carry these practices into other institutional venues, which helps to undercut traditional clientelistic practices while also empowering citizens and enhancing the quality of democracy. Further, citizens living in communities that directly benefit from public works won through participatory budgeting are empowered by credible state commitment. Citizens not directly affiliated with a CSO continue to rely on their direct connections to government officials, thus demonstrating that individuals' type of involvement in civil society has a significant impact on how participatory governance arrangements can affect basic state–society relationships.

Federal Judicial Appointments: A Look at Patronage in Federal Appointments Since 1988

Troy Riddell et al. — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:44:30 PDT

The article investigates whether the new screening system introduced by the federal government in 1988 for appointing judges (below the Supreme Court level) has reduced the influence of patronage in the federal judicial appointment process. To analyse this question, we examined whether judicial appointees from 1989 through 2003 donated to a political party, particularly the party that appointed them, up to five years prior to their appointment. We found that almost one-third of appointees had donated to the party in power and that these numbers were relatively consistent between the Mulroney and Chrétien governments. The number of party donors and the fact that so few appointees had donated to parties other than the one in power suggest that the screening-committee system has done little to curtail patronage in the appointment process. In addition to reporting on political donations by candidates, the article summarizes their gender and legal background characteristics. The article places the discussion of patronage and judicial appointments in the larger context of the role of courts in Canada's system of governance and, in doing so, discusses the relationship between judicial appointments and judicial independence. Our findings and the more general discussion are placed in a comparative context.

Federal Judicial Selection: Examining the Harper Appointments and Reforms

Troy Riddell et al. — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:35:47 PDT

Participative Institutions in Brazil: Mayors and the Expansion of Accountability in Comparative Perspective

Brian Wampler — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:37:29 PST

Citizens and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) play a more prominent role in Latin America's new democratic regimes than under previous democratic experiences. Efforts to promote transparency, accountability, and participation have led citizens, community organizations, social movements, and nongovernmental organizations to demand a more expansive role in decision-making venues. Brazil, Latin America's most populous and most decentralized democracy, has witnessed the proliferation of participatory institutions at the municipal level, granting citizens access to decision-making venues as well as the right to engage in oversight activities. Participatory institutions, such as participatory budgeting (PB), represent an effort to devolve and broaden decision-making venues with the potential to place a check on the prerogatives of mayors.

Contrasting the American and Canadian Subnational Legislatures

Gary F. Moncrief et al. — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:36:38 PST

In a recent (Autumn 1988) issue of this Review, there appeared an article entitled, "Full-Time House, Part-Time Member?"¹ It argued that Canadian MLAs are undergoing the stress of trying to reconcile the public image of their job as a part-time legislator with the fact that the demands of the job are full-time. This situation is not unlike what we find in American state legislatures and it spurred us to think about the types of people who serve in the subnational legislatures of both countries. Are they similar? Do they share similar backgrounds? Or do the differences between the subnational political systems of these two countries yield different types of participants?

A Note on Election Financing in Canada and the United States

Gary Moncrief — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:34:24 PST

Some Canadian provinces were well ahead of most American state legislatures in enacting campaign finance laws. Because of the relative importance of political parties in the Canadian political system, most of the research on campaign financing concentrates on the contribution and expenditure patterns of the parties. This article focuses instead on the candidates' expenditures, and compares the situation to that in several American states. Among other things, it asks whether incumbents enjoy a financial advantage in electoral campaigns.