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This paper argues that decentralization reforms in Colombia, implemented since the 1980s, have led to the decentralization of political clientelism rather than its demise. Clientelism is a system of political and economic institutions that turns every local democracy into an extractive political institution. The authors theoretically demonstrate that an increase in public resources will increase corruption.

The authors develop and test a subnational public choice model, where clientelism in elections and corruption in public administration constitute a stable long-term institutional equilibrium. The model comprises two linked subgames: electoral tournament and corruption in public policy. The model makes two predictions that currently oppose predominant approaches: (1) increasing the severity of jail sentences to electoral crimes increases their price and the predominance of machine politics, instead of improving the quality of electoral tournaments and (2) increasing local governments' public finance increases clientelism in elections and corruption in public administration.

The authors find evidence in favor of the theoretical model of curse of public resources, using difference-in-differences estimation with a database 2016–17 of Colombia's 1,034 municipalities. This country is well-suited for our analysis because it has a long-term commitment to formal democratic processes (since 1958), while plagued by endemic corruption and clientelism problems.

(1) The theoretical approach is innovative and disruptive of current models on the problem, (2) the model builds upon the Colombian situation, a country with prominent corruption and political violence problems regardless of its relatively long-term commitment with free elections (since 1958) and (3) the theoretical discussion is tested using a comprehensive set of difference-in-differences estimations.

This study applies theoretical perspectives from urban, environmental, and organization studies to examine if “smart growth” represents an ecological restructuring of the political economy of conventional urban development, long theorized as a “growth machine” (Molotch, H. (1976) The city as growth machine: Toward a political economy of place. American Journal of Sociology, 82, 309–332; Logan & Molotch, 2007); the purpose is to determine if there is a “smart growth machine.”

Nine smart growth projects (SGPs) in four cities in California and Oregon were identified and semistructured interviews were held with the respective developers, architects, and civic officials involved in their implementation process. Comparative, descriptive, and grounded approaches were used to generate themes from interviews and other data sources.

The findings suggest that an ecological modernization of urban political economy occurs through the coordination of entrepreneurial action, technical expertise, and “smart” regulation. Individual and institutional entrepreneurs shift the organizational field of urban development. Technical expertise is needed to make projects sustainable and financially feasible. Finally, a “smart” regulatory framework that balances regulations and incentives is needed to forge cooperative relationships between local governments and developers. This constellation of actors and institutions represents a smart growth machine.

The author questions whether urban growth can become “smart” using an original study of nine SGPs in four cities across California and Oregon.

This paper develops a new theory arguing that party change results from ruptures in political parties’ ties to civil society organizations. I demonstrate the utility of this approach by using it to explain why the Rhode Island Democratic Party (RIDP) changed from a hierarchical machine to a porous political field occupied by multiple interlegislator cliques and brokered by extra-party political organizations and professionals. While others attribute party change to bureaucratization, electoral demand, or system-level changes, I analyze historical, observational, and interview data to find that a severance in the RIDP’s relationship with organized labor prompted party change by causing power to diffuse outward as leadership lost control over nominations and the careers of elected office holders. In the spaces that remained, interest groups and political professionals came to occupy central positions within the party field, serving as brokers of the information and relationships necessary to coordinate legislative activity. This analysis refines existing theories of party change and provides a historically-grounded explanation for the institutionalization of interest groups and political professionals in American party politics.

The political campaigns of Una Clarke and Major Owens show an interesting display of ethnic politics. In this paper, I argue that the presence of a Caribbean population in Brooklyn New York presents itself as a challenge to the already present African-American structure. The Caribbean politicians do not subscribe nor fully ally with the African-American politicians, and instead, seek to carve out a niche for themselves and utilize their ties to home in an effort to cajole the Caribbean populace for support. Through the purview of a political campaign in Brooklyn between an African-American incumbent and a Caribbean insurgent, I attempt to contribute to the transnationalist literature through illustrating the concept of the nation−state, which can be explained as an immigrant’s continual bond to their home country while living abroad.

Comprehensive basis to measure civil servants’ neutrality in the effectuation of concurrent regional head elections, valid basis to determine the most appropriate strategy to enhance civil servants’ neutrality in the governance.

This research is a normative or doctrinal research. Secondary data are retrieved from the literature in the forms of legal documents and regulations concerning civil servants’ role in general elections. In this research, two products of law were analyzed as follows: first, the one related to the urgency of civil servants’ neutrality in regional head election and second, the one related to the synchronization of legal norms about civil servants’ neutrality during regional head elections. Data analysis was done using a juridical qualitative analysis model.

The urgency of neutrality is real in the implementation of concurrent regional head elections due to 3 reasons as follows: Historically, state civil apparatus neutrality and regulations. There is a synchronization of the neutrality of the civil state apparatus in the legislation concerning civil state apparatus with the laws and regulations concerning the implementation of concurrent regional head elections including the following: Act Number 5 of 2014, Act Number 10 of 2016 and Act Number 8 of 2012.

The study investigated the neutrality of civil servants during the concurrent regional head election in Indonesia. The objectives of this research were investigating, comprehending and analyzing the urgency of civil servants’ neutrality in regional head election, and describing and analyzing the synchronization of civil servants’ neutrality based on the laws related to civil servants and laws related to the effectuation of concurrent regional head election.

Although information technology has been at the centre of attention of political branding for some time, research has traditionally focused mainly on its role in the facilitation of communication. This paper aims to unpack the role of information technology in the emergence of new cyber political brands.

This research uses a dual case study approach that focuses on the relationship between branding, politics and information technology. The analysis focuses on two successful political cyber brands: the Italian Five Star Movement and the Czech Pirate Party. Data collection covering the time frame between their emergence and their political success occurs through netnographic methods.

Cyber political brands emerge and materialize in different forms. The present analysis allows for a delineation of three conceptual elements that characterize the constitutive interrelationship of information technology in the emergence of cyber political brands. The first conceptual element, organization, refers to how political brands become structured around linked activities. The second conceptual element, orientation, describes how the activities of a political brand are directed to build a specific path and legitimize courses of action. The third conceptual element, operation, delineates the processes that anchor and stabilize the political brands in its “own” culture, establishing specific base activities.

Information technology and the techno-culture emerging around the two cyber party brands can be seen as the possible delineations of new “cleavages” in the form of “information technology-culture” which enables potential electoral success.

The present study by offering the conceptualization of the cyber political brand shows how political brands can reflect a type of performative cultural branding where they become able, as a networked-medium, to assemble a specific techno-culture. In terms of political brand development, the current analysis offers a framework that allows us to consider the process of political party development in a new fashion.

This article provides a historical literature review and exploratory descriptive case study of one U.S. Federal agencyʼs efforts to design an appropriate government-wide leadership development curriculum for incumbent top or senior civil servants. The U.S. Federal Executive Institute was founded in 1968, it spans the 20th and 21st centuries, it illustrates changes in the compact that exists between government and its top civil servants over time, and it illustrates challenges this agency confronts addressing the task of interagency leadership development. The main findings are three continuities and three discontinuities between curriculum development then and now. Conclusions outline issues for future interdisciplinary research to inform the intellectual roots for 21st century curricula aligned to emerging roles and the challenges top career executives actually confront.

To examine China's reforms and successes could have been replicated to other transition economies.

The applicability of the Chinese process as an alternative for transition economies involves an analysis of the necessary reforms regarding price liberalisation‐stabilisation; privatisation; institutions; monetary policy and the financial system; fiscal policy; international trade and foreign aid and social policy.

The transition process in China has maintained political‐ideological authoritarianism and state control of the whole economy. Therefore, it was not the “special initial conditions” of China that made the model inappropriate but, rather, the switch to a democratic political‐ideological‐economic structure in transition economies.

The paper contributes to the transition literature by demonstrating that the strategy was only rendered workable in China, as the governments of transition economies neither had the mandate nor wanted to reimpose tight state direction of the politics, ideology and economy.

The purpose of the research was to develop a measure of the phenomenon referred to as organisational culture. The study addressed the following questions: (1) What are the essential facts which define the metaphor, Organisational Culture?, and (2) How can these facts be ascertained systematically in a given organisation? This article describes the procedures used in the development of an instrument, called the Organisational Culture Assessment Inventory (OCAI), designed to address these questions. A previous article specifies the theoretic assumptions on which the OCAI is constructed.