Search results

The article investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated and deepened the presidentialization of politics in Italy. It examines how a series of innovative rules and procedures adopted by the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to face the extraordinary event are part of a permanent presidentialization dynamic.

This study analyzes the role of prime minister in coping with the pandemic in Italy within the analytical framework of the personalization of politics. Section 1 investigates how the prime minister has resorted to autonomous normative power through intensive use of the Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers (DPCM). Section 2 observes the establishment of a more direct relationship with citizens through extensive use of digital communication and high engagement. Section 3 analyzes the “personal task force” appointed by the prime minister and highlights a new balance between technocratic/private roles and politics undermining democratic accountability.

By examining three main aspects of the personalization of politics, the article observes that the COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated the movement to presidentialization of power in Italy. It argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has strengthened political and institutional trends already in place before the crisis.

The article expands the comparative research on the presidentialization of politics. The Italian case clearly underlines how the pandemic crisis represented a further step of progressive dominance of the “executive” over the other branches of government. The article suggests an agenda for future cross-institutional and cross-national analysis.

There is no comparative research into the Chinese (PSB) police and the Indian police generally and none on police corruption in particular. This paper aims to show what police corruption and malpractices look like in China and India and offer up some suggestions as to why wide spread malpractices persists.

Horses’ mouth qualitative research is supported by primary public and police survey data.

There are many similarities in corruption “tricks of the trade” in both the countries, as well as in the reasons for its persistence. However, petty police corruption is more pervasive and less subtle in India. But both the forces suffer from politicization of policing, criminalization of politics, culture of tolerance towards substantive justice over procedural justice and master/servant attitude towards the public. In China, the police have administrative powers beyond criminal legislation, and Indian corruption is underscored by the culture of “Jugaad”.

This is largely a qualitative research, so the usual arguments regarding limitations on its generalization applies. However, the insights in this article may provide some understanding of this under-researched topic and may stimulate further research in this field. It may also offer pointers to potential solutions for practitioners and policymakers.

By providing data on what corruption looks like and why it persists, policymakers can use the findings of this study to develop measures to address them. In so doing they would create a police service in India and China that is less prone to corruption and misconduct, thereby increasing public trust in these institutions.

Peace and security is a prerequisite condition for economic and social modernization through the rule of law. Reform of the police is a critical success factor in this process. Therefore, by reforming the police, India and China stand a better chance of eradicating poverty and reducing inequality.

There is little in the way of research into the Chinese Police and none into Chinese police corruption. There is also no comparative study of the Chinese and Indian police generally and none on police corruption in particular.

After direct elections were instituted in Hong Kong and the sovereignty was transferred from Britain to China, politicization inevitably followed democratization. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the pro-democratic political parties’ politics in Hong Kong in recent history.

The research was conducted through a historical comparative analysis, within the context of Hong Kong after the sovereignty handover and the interim period of crucial democratization.

With the implementation of “One country, Two systems,” political democratization was hindered in Hong Kong’s transformation. The democratic forces have no alternative but to seek more radicalized politics, which has caused a decisive and ineluctable fragmentation of the local political parties.

This paper explores and evaluates the political history of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region under “One country, Two systems” and the ways in which the limited democratization hinders the progress of Hong Kong’s transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the underpinning ideas of public procurement allowed for broader outcomes – a more strategic form of public procurement – to emerge. The paper contributes to the literature on public procurement by empirically addressing the evolution of procurement as a government policy lever in New Zealand so as to demonstrate how policy pragmatism can ensure a shift without a complete overhaul of a complex system.

The paper has used a single country case study to examine a recent development in procurement policy. The objectives of the paper are achieved by adopting a unique conceptual framework connecting ideas, sensemaking and bricolage.

The paper provides empirical and conceptual insights about how bricolage, or policy pragmatism, aids in dealing with the constraints of ideational legacies. It demonstrates a particular form of targeting in procurement, common in public administration but not well understood in the procurement field.

Single country case studies lack scientific generalizability. However, they add to the canon of knowledge that is lacking in the field of public procurement in this case. They also provide a stronger starting point for further research especially with respect to comparative studies.

The paper provides an excellent example of the development of procurement policy that is useful for procurement officials from other countries undergoing change or looking to update or create procurement policies. It shows a high-level process of implementation for government priority outcomes from a country well-known for its quality of public management and governance.

New Zealand has significant equity issues especially as related to its indigenous population. Procurement is being used increasingly as a lever to improve equity. This article includes information about New Zealand's uptake of social procurement.

This paper fulfils a need for greater understanding of how policy is “put together” and the dynamics at major points of change or the implications of policy changes. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this case study of procurement policy in New Zealand is original, and the author is aware of no other similar work emanating from New Zealand in the academic journals.

Recent literature on housing studies (Batley, 1977; Bolaffi, 1983) fail to explain why the post‐1964 authoritarian regime in Brazil allocated a vast proportion of federal expenditure on housing to the urban middle classes concentrated in the South East region of Brazil. Since the creation of the National Housing Bank in 1964 state involvement in housing provision has been enormous. Housing has been one of the areas of general personal consumption in which successive governments for the past twenty years have been keenly concerned. Several million dwellings have been financed by the Federal Housing System since 1964. Currently there are a variety of programmes requiring direct public expenditure, including the provision of state and municipal housing, payments to trade union housing associations and state financed mortgages.

The study aims to establish that religiosity has a positive link with government trust, making the secularization trend all the more likely to further erode this already fragile resource.

Through the use of data from the World Values Survey and European Social Survey the link between religiosity and trust in government is examined.

Religiosity and trust in government are positively linked in aggregate data.

The analysis is based on aggregated data, not individual countries, and religiosity is a complex concept to measure.

Secularization will have a long-term negative effect on government trust. Low levels of trust in government in the West are likely here to stay, or even worsen, as populations continue to secularize.

With less trust in government, it will be more difficult to govern effectively.

The author has not yet seen a full test on how secularization will impact trust in government. In fact, this study makes clear that the trend goes a long way explaining why trust in government has been falling in the developed world for decades.

Existing attempts to assess national development and processes of democratization suffer from conceptual and measurement challenges. This paper proposes a comprehensive concept of democratic development and develops a more inclusive concept of democracy to provide a common set of categories to evaluate its depth and quality.

In order to measure the depth and health of democracy, democratic development incorporates four categories of human progress, each measured by multiple variables. The four categories deemed important for human progress are general development, democratic health, democratic inclusiveness, and human capital. Components of democratic development incorporate existing measures of political and economic development to create a comprehensive and accessible measure of democratic development.

The comparative tables based on multiple goals of development clearly reveal that neither the GDP index nor the HDI are adequate measures of development. Democratic development can be more fully captured by four perspectives: development, democratic inclusiveness, democratic health, and human capital, providing a framework to measure progress in reform, democracy, and development, from public agencies up to the national level. This concept incorporates aspects and orientations of the capabilities approach to create a concept that is amenable to use as a self‐assessment tool and as a basis for comparison of development, broadly conceived.

This inclusive concept is particularly well suited for analyzing citizen satisfaction and democratic stability.

Rather than focusing on singular measures, the approach presented here offers a balanced set of measures aimed at providing a comprehensive view of the gamut of democratic and economic development processes relative to existing models that is more appropriate for self‐assessment/planning purposes than traditional measures, which may be more appropriate for statistical modeling purposes.

Political analyses of the East Asian welfare state development often stress the importance of the power resource model, in which vibrant coalitions between the leftist party, interest groups, civil society and working-class unions have become driving factors in producing generous welfare outcomes. Challenging such analyses, this article discusses the convergence of the political attitude between political actors who are increasingly homogeneous (supportive) when it comes to the universal welfare state notion by focussing on childcare in South Korea.

By using desk review of the peer-reviewed literature and reports, this article investigates the causation for why political parties with different political ideologies were keen on extending childcare programs and its outcome in addressing the existing demographic problems in Korea.

Although the collective movement, especially in the 1990s and 2000s, had given important contributions to the early development of childcare in South Korea, more breakthroughs in childcare features were precisely and rapidly developed after politicians from different spectrums of political affiliations converged in their supportive attitude of the universal welfare. The driving factors of political convergence itself are not merely due to electoral competition or political activism; furthermore, it can be linked to the increased global institution involvement in domestic policy with extensive permeability, which, have ruined domestic policy development maintained for ideological reasoning and bring in more popular policy setting.

This article contributes to the growing literature on the political aspect of East Asian social policy studies, which goes beyond the traditional power resource analysis and makes a novel contribution to the childcare policy studies.

This paper investigates the internal factors driving public-private partnership (PPP) adoption for water services in South Korea and Singapore.

This study utilizes a comparative cross-national case study of PPPs in the area of water services by focusing on the similarities and differences between the two countries.

The findings show that while South Korea has employed the PPP model mostly to expand and modernize their sewage systems, Singapore has used PPPs to build and operate desalination facilities that produce potable water through the treatment and filtration of wastewater. The study also demonstrates that fiscal stress and political incentives stemming from socio-economic pressures are the respective critical factors in South Korea and Singapore’s execution of PPP-driven water infrastructure.

Through exploring why and how PPPs have been adopted in the specific context, this paper might be helpful to enhance our understanding of the variations and common factors in the policy adoption process within the Asian context.