Search results

This chapter examines the range of possible effects of ethics laws enacted by state legislatures. One objective of ethics law, to reduce corruption, cannot be demonstrated. Other objectives, to placate the media, defend against partisan attack, and permit the legislature to move on, have mixed results, while a final objective, to restore public confidence, is not achieved. Nevertheless, ethics law does affect the process, by somewhat discouraging legislator recruitment and retention, by raising the consciousness of legislators, and by changing the cultures of state capitals.

The purpose of this study is to explore legislative kleptocracy, specifically, budget padding, in Nigeria’s budding democracy, using systems thinking approach for a positive social change. Nigeria’s legislature is not free from the problem of kleptocracy inasmuch as some legislators have been charged with kleptocratic activities. The multifariousness of kleptocracy rooted in its differential coefficient in the Nigeria’s legislature does not underplay its sophistication.

In this qualitative analysis, the author generated data through a systematic analysis of documents.

The findings show that unexplored organismic factors or forces within the living being such as the inability of legislators to control their mind, low self-control, cheating propensity, identity crisis, etc., play vital roles in contributing to legislative kleptocracy.

The main limitation of the study is that it is not generalizable.

The practical implication of the study is that implementation of the study recommendations is pragmatic, cost-effective and time-effective, and it would ensure legislative transformation and mitigate kleptocracy.

The social implication of the study is if the Nigerian legislature implements the recommendation(s) of the study, there will be a legislative positive social change because financial crimes would have been mitigated.

This study filled the lacuna in the financial crime literature because it is the first of its kind in the discipline, and hence its originality cannot be disputed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of budgeting in the monitoring functions of the Tanzanian Parliament, specifically the monitoring functions of the Parliamentary Budget Committee (PBC).

The paper uses Burchell et al.’s (1980) accounting “machines” framework and its development as a theoretical lens to interpret the research findings. Interviews, document analysis and observation were used for data collection.

The findings reveal that budget documents were used as learning and answering machines, as they served as the basis for questioning, for checking variances, for reviewing and for conducting monitoring visits. Budgeting procedures were utilized as ammunition machines, as they were used as the basis for expressing legislative officials’ positions and understanding the logic of executive officials’ actions.

The paper investigates the role of budgeting in a parliamentary setting. However, comparative analysis is missing. Nevertheless, the results provide a foundation for future studies and the opportunity to investigate the role of budgeting in the monitoring functions of other parliaments, especially in emerging economies.

The study has practical implications directed toward governments, especially in emerging economies. This study suggests that budgeting documents and procedures can be used to overcome the complexities of the PBC monitoring functions. Budgeting is, therefore, essential in the monitoring functions of the PBC, especially in emerging economies.

The study contributes to the understanding of the role of budgeting in monitoring functions in a parliamentary setting in emerging economies, where such research is lacking. The study also contributes by introducing an “ammunition” role to the theoretical literature on budget use (Simons, 1990, 1991; Abernethy and Brownell, 1999), which is argued to be relevant to politicians and organizations of a political nature, including parliaments.

Much of the budgeting literature has focused on the questions of “how” budgets are prepared and “how” budget decisions are made. Minimal attention has been directed to “how” budgets are executed. This paper focuses on this issue with special emphasis on state government budget execution processes. The paper provides an overview of the similarities and differences of state and federal budget execution follows by an assessment of how state balanced budget requirements place special responsibilities on state budget offices to monitor “within” budget execution year expenditures and revenues. Actions which may be taken to insure that state budgets are balanced are discussed. These actions are enumerated and analyzed in terms of legislative and executive branch authority and responsibility shifts.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the sources and qualities of information on climate change commissioned by the US Congress from its affiliated research bodies.

Cited material in reports commissioned by Congress from three legislative research bodies were categorized and tallied for the years 1990‐2005. Qualities of cited material, such as indicators of primary‐level data analysis and references to peer‐reviewed academic scholarship were considered.

Of the three agencies, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) makes reference to peer‐reviewed academic scholarship most often. Nevertheless, only around a quarter of all cited material in CBO reports are from academic journals and comparatively few cites are to articles in top‐tier journals. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) cites its own past publications more often than it cites peer‐reviewed scholarship.

Refereed academic journals are not the only source of rigorous scientific information in the reference materials used by the three legislative research bodies. Primary‐level data are found in governmental gray literature, and these data are analyzed by the legislative research bodies in their reports to Congress. The research bodies also make use of peer‐reviewed research by private research organizations, though these latter materials may not be published in academic journals. Further research is needed to determine whether and to what extent the legislative research bodies' reports are consequential in shaping lawmakers' deliberations versus other sources of information and persuasion, e.g. reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, news reportage, constituent perspectives, witness testimony in hearings, campaign contributions, etc.

Legislative research organizations are official conveyors of policy‐relevant information to Congress. It is reasonable to expect these organizations to provide competent analyses derived from peer‐reviewed science. The present paper suggests that commissioned reports by these organizations vary in terms of the range of source materials relied on, but reference materials are seldom derived from top‐tier academic journals. At least one research body, the CRS, frequently refers to its own reports as a major source for information on climate change. Two out of three of the legislative support bodies make greater use of governmental gray literature versus academic scholarship.

References to purported shortcomings in the legislative research bodies' technical/analytical capacities exist in the public affairs literature, but are anecdotal. The present paper offers an empirical exploration of this concern, focusing on the most important environmental problem of the time.

Legislation plays an essential role in addressing climate change in China. However, many barriers to formulating national legislation to address climate change have so far prevented its enactment. The bottom-up approach adopted in the international climate regime sets a good example. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the regional legislation to address climate change in China through exploring the following two questions: whether it is necessary to enact climate change legislation at regional level first and whether it is feasible to develop such regional legislation in the absence of national climate change law.

This paper analyses the necessity and feasibility of regional legislation to address climate change. Section 2 introduces the current legislative framework on climate change in China. Section 3 investigates whether it is better to push the legislative agenda at regional, rather than national level. Section 4 analyses the feasibility of establishing regional legislative systems. Section 5 explores the key issues in formulating and promoting regional legislation.

This paper concludes that it is necessary and feasible to pilot regional legislation before enacting national legislation. Under these circumstances, local governments can take the initiative to begin formulating regional legislation.

Addressing climate change needs immediate action and effective measures. It is, thus, necessary to reconsider the approach that China should adopt when developing legislation on climate change. This paper contributes to broadening current knowledge of regional climate change legislation in China.

This paper proposes that if a political system is more like to facilitate a unified government, to establish a strong executive body and to respond to the needs of the majority, financial reforms are more likely to emerge from the policymaking process and produce positive results. On the contrary, political systems that discourage those governing features are less likely to produce reforms. This chapter compares financial reform processes in China, Taiwan and New Zealand. All of them performed low level of financial reforms in the early 1980s but resulted in different situations later. In the mid-2000s, New Zealand heralded the most efficient and stable financial system; while Taiwan lagged behind and China performed the worst. Evidence showed that China’s authoritarian system may be the most superior in forming a unified government with a strong executive, but the policy priority often responds more to the interests of a small group of power elites; therefore the result of financial reform can be limited. Taiwan’s presidential system can produce greater financial reform when the ruling party controls both executive and legislative bodies, but legislative obstructions may occur under a divided government. New Zealand's Westminster system produces the most effective and efficient financial reform due to its unified government and a strong executive branch with consistent and stable supports from the New Zealand Parliament.

The inconsistency between the appearance of incoherence and chaos in the US policymaking process bringing about a historic record of legislative achievements in the 1960s and 1970s, on the one hand, and the emergence of hierarchical order bringing about a prolonged period of legislative impotence in the early 2000s, on the other hand, has led legislative scholars to revisit strongly held prior beliefs about legislative organization. Similar reevaluations of the garbage can model that emphasize the potential for conflict-ridden and chaotic organizations to be adaptively rational are ongoing in organizational theory. This paper adapts recent research on organizational design to explore the conditions under which decentralized, chaotic decision making facilitates more desirable legislative outcomes than centralized decision making controlled by a benevolent dictator. The author demonstrates that normative claims about legislative organization – much like normative claims about organizational design – should vary depending on the task environment faced by the legislature. In the face of rugged uncertainty in the mapping from policies to outcomes, decentralized decision making among modestly polarized legislators with fluid participation in decisions facilitates a functional mix of exploitative and exploratory search.

This study intends to explore the configuration that affects the active degree of written questions in the Macau Legislative Assembly.

This study takes the members elected by the sixth Legislative Assembly of Macau as samples and uses the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method. Five conditional factors are discussed, including multiple concurrent factors and complex causal mechanisms, which lead to the difference in the active degree of written questions.

The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Not Serving in the government is a necessary condition for a high active degree of the written question, and (2) The driving mechanism of a high active degree of written question can be divided into two paths. Among them, direct election into the Legislative Assembly is the crucial factor.

Traditional research mainly uses quantitative research methods. This study uses qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), which is a hybrid method designed to bridge the qualitative (case-oriented) and quantitative (variable-oriented) research gap.

This paper attempts to explain the phenomenon that Macau has a parliament (Legislative Assembly) and mass suffrage but no political parties.

This paper reviews the development process of “parliament – mass suffrage – political party” in Hong Kong and Macau and tries to explain why Macau does not have a party using comparative research methods.

The political party development of Hong Kong and Macau was influenced by both the (former) colonial power and China, and whether there were political parties in these two regions was the result of the game between China and the (former) colonial power. China hoped to limit the development of party politics in the two regions. Since Britain felt reluctant to cooperate with China, political parties in Hong Kong developed. At the same time, Portugal chose to defer to China, which led Macau not to have a political party.

Existing studies have yet to explain why there are no political parties in Macau, and this paper is the first attempt to do so.