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This book captures the critical role of taxation in shaping government responsiveness and accountability in developing countries.
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The 1986 pre-election year in the Federal Republic of Germany was an interesting one. Starting with the communal elections in Schleswig-Holstein in March, the parties began to prepare themselves for the big upcoming event - the general election in January 1987. The governing Christian Democrats (CDU) suffered a severe vote loss in this March election as part of their most loyal supporters - the farmers - decided to abstain due to a general dissatisfaction with EEC regulations and agricultural government policies. In order to avoid further farmers' boycotts for the next 'Lander'-elections in Lower Saxony in June, Bavaria in October and Hamburg in November, the federal government sprang into action. A 500 million DM programme was passed in the beginning of June, which reduced the farmers' contributions to the agrarian social security system with retrospective effect to January 1986. As a result of the reactor accident in Tschernobyl another 500 million DM were promised to cover the losses of agricultural products because of radio activity. In order to appease the farmers even more, a special election gift of 100 million DM to subsidize fallow land was given to Lower Saxony's farmers one week before the election took place. At the same time the parliament increased veterans' benefits by 2,15% from July onwards, further increases being promised by January 1987. The predominant social policy issue, however, concerned old age pensions, more precisely, the question of adopting a so-called 'baby year' in pension law. The coalition government in Bonn decided to give all women born before 1921 a monthly payment of 25 DM for each child. The programme will start in October 1987 and will gradually include all female pensioners with children by 1990. Described by Chancellor Kohl as a new dimension in social policy, the programme will cost 3,3 billion DM per year by 1990.
Participatory Budgeting—the experiment in democracy that could redefine how public budgets are decided in the United States. Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation. This global phenomenon, which has been called "revolutionary civics in action" by the New York Times, started in Brazil in 1989 but came to America only in 2009. Participatory budgeting empowers citizens to identify community needs, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on how to spend public funds. Democracy Reinvented places participatory budgeting within the larger discussion of the health of U.S. democracy and focuses on the enabling political and institutional conditions. Author and former White House policy adviser Hollie Russon Gilman presents theoretical insights, indepth case studies, and interviews to offer a compelling alternative to the current citizen disaffection and mistrust of government. She offers policy recommendations on how to tap online tools and other technological and civic innovations to promote more inclusive governance. While most literature tends to focus on institutional changes without solutions, this book suggests practical ways to empower citizens to become change agents. Reinvesting in Democracy also includes a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that come with using digital tools to re-engage citizens in governance.
Conventional wisdom holds that legislators who bring “pork”—federal funds for local projects—back home to their districts are better able to fend off potential challengers. For more than four decades, however, the empirical support for this belief has been mixed. Some studies have found that securing federal spending has no electoral effects at best or can even cost incumbent legislators votes. In Pork Barrel Politics, Andrew H. Sidman offers a systematic explanation for how political polarization affects the electoral influence of district-level federal spending. He argues that the average voter sees the pork barrel as an aspect of the larger issue of government spending, determined by partisanship and ideology. It is only when the political world becomes more divided over everything else that the average voter pays attention to pork, linking it to their general preferences over government spending. Using data on pork barrel spending from 1986 through 2012 and public works spending since 1876 along with analyses of district-level outcomes and incumbent success, Sidman demonstrates the rising power of polarization in United States elections. During periods of low polarization, pork barrel spending has little impact, but when polarization is high, it affects primary competition, campaign spending, and vote share in general elections. Pork Barrel Politics is an empirically rich account of the surprising repercussions of bringing pork home, with important consequences in our polarized era.
Empirical results from India suggest that politicians exert greater effort in managing public works during election years. Surprisingly, there is no evidence of a populist spending spree to sway voters just before elections.
Endogenous election timing allows leaders to schedule elections 'when the time is right'. The author proposes and tests an informational theory of endogenous election timing that explains when leaders call for elections and the consequences of their decisions. In particular, he argues that, if all else is equal, leaders announce elections when they anticipate a decline in their future performance. As a consequence, early elections signal a leader's lack of confidence in future outcomes. The earlier elections occur, relative to expectations, the stronger the signal of demise. Using data on British parliaments since 1945, the author tests hypotheses related to timing of elections, electoral support and subsequent economic performance. Leaders who call elections early (relative to expectations) experience a decline in their popular support relative to pre-announcement levels, experience worse post-electoral performance, and have shorter campaigns.
The paper provides evidence that fiscal rules can limit the political budget cycle. It focuses on the application of the Italian fiscal rule at the sub-national level over the period 2004-2006 and shows that: 1) municipalities are subject to political budget cycles in capital spending; 2) the Italian subnational fiscal rule introduced in 1999 has been enforced by the central government; 3) municipalities subject to the fiscal rule show more limited political budget cycles than municipalities not subject to the rule. In order to identify the effect, we rely on the fact that the domestic fiscal rule does not apply to municipalities below 5,000 inhabitants. We find that the political budget cycle increases real capital spending by about 35 percent on average in the years prior to municipal elections and that the sub-national fiscal rule reduces these figures by about two thirds.