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This article analyzes the extent to which public administrators make use of expert knowledge (i.e., research or evaluation reports) when they prepare policy advice, and the extent to which politicians deliberate on the information provided to them by the administrators. The study is based on original, quantitative data from local politics in Sweden. We find that expert-informed policy advice from the administrators and critical reflection by the politicians are more pronounced when there is a lot of public attention. Furthermore, administrators use expert information more when they operate in a context in which there are large political disagreements. However, politicians deliberate less on the administrators' policy advices in such environments. Thus, conflict seems to generate a pressure on the administrators to search for expert knowledge. But at the same time, within a context of political disputes, politicians make less effort to understand and critically reflect over the information provided to them by the administration, and are less inclined to change their opinions even if good arguments are presented to them. Thus, the empirical analysis indicates that what role expertise gets in policy making is very much a consequence of the local political environment. Adapted from the source document.

The fortunes of local, regional and provincial economies have often been linked to geographical variation in electoral outcomes, and nowhere more so than in Canada. This article examines economic localism in Canadian voting behaviour by estimating a model of voters' decisions in the 1993 and 1997 federal elections. Individual-specific determinants of the vote measured in the Canadian Election Study are supplemented by measures of voters' local economies and of the local impacts of policy changes. Voters punish the federal government for bad times in their locale and for policy changes that hurt the local economy. This effect is independent of what voters think about their own finances and about the provincial and national economies. The electoral impact of the local economy does not depend on whether government is acknowledged as a potent economic actor, or on the voter's level of political information. However, the relevance of the local economy for national-level electoral behaviour can be "primed" by campaign events, just like any other criterion of voting choice. The response to local economic conditions is part of a broader explanation for geographic patterns of electoral support in Canada.

AbstractTo what extent does the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) apply to local policy issues? The scholarship developing the NPF as a theoretical framework has focused on national, state, or regional policy problems with very little attention to local ones. This article contributes to the literature on policy narratives, finding that the use of narrative elements by coalitions is more nuanced in highly localized policy settings than the current theory suggests. In particular, the depiction of characters and assignment of blame differs more in local settings than the NPF would indicate. Hypotheses about key narrative elements of characters, causal mechanisms, narrative story type, and policy solutions are tested using data from a content analysis of 202 policy narratives about the residential water shutoffs in Detroit during 2014. Findings support the use of the NPF for local policy issues and the importance of depicting characters as beneficiaries rather than villains or victims.

Local policy issues usually exhibit a high degree of complexity and uncertainty and are often characterized as "ill-structured" problems. Problem Structuring Methods (PSMs) rely on stakeholder representation and workshop format procedures to support policy making processes. We consider public participation as a way to reduce uncertainty and to improve the democratic legitimacy of those processes, and we propose a new model for e-participation (information and communication technology supported public participation), employing collaborative writing processes to produce agreed documents. These documents may then be used as formal input into the policy making process, thereby incorporating the citizens' views on those issues. A public participation support system has been developed according to this model. ; http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V8S-4KH47KK-1/1/c502afcb47e9b3e23188f5e39d369301

Greater partisan alignment among lawmakers enhances their ability to respond rapidly to adverse shocks, but it also undermines the quality of checks and balances and encourages excessive governmental intervention in local areas aligned with the ruling party. We investigate how this form of local policy risk affects IPO underpricing. One standard-deviation increase in political alignment between local politicians and the federal government translates into an extra $1.58 million being left on the table, which corresponds to 5.39% of the average valuation discount. This effect is concentrated in firms that are vulnerable to legislative interventions and has important long-term implications. Our robustness analysis also shows that our baseline results are not sensitive to the inclusion/exclusion of influential states and years with high IPO activity.

Greater partisan alignment among lawmakers enhances their ability to respond rapidly to adverse shocks, but it also undermines the quality of checks and balances and encourages excessive governmental intervention in local areas aligned with the ruling party. We investigate how this form of local policy risk affects IPO underpricing. One standard-deviation increase in political alignment between local politicians and the federal government translates into an extra $1.58 million being left on the table, which corresponds to 5.39% of the average valuation discount. This effect is concentrated in firms that are vulnerable to legislative interventions and has important long-term implications. Our robustness analysis also shows that our baseline results are not sensitive to the inclusion/exclusion of influential states and years with high IPO activity.

USING DATA ON 470 REFERENDUM ELECTIONS HELD IN A VARIETY OF US CITIES, POLITICAL DECISIONS REACHED VIA THE REFERENDUM MECHANISM ARE SHOWN TO BE OFTEN DEPENDENT UPON THE DIFFERENTIAL RATES OF PARTICIPATION BY CITIZENS WITH DISSIMILAR POLICY PREFERENCES. THE INFLUENCE OF TURNOUT ON ELECTORAL OUTCOMES IS EXAMINED FOR EFFECTS ATTRIBUTABLE TO PARTICIPATION BY ALIENATED VOTERS. THE RESULTS FAIL TO CONFIRM, & IN SEVERAL INSTANCES CONTRADICT THE PREDICTIONS OFFERED BY THE ALIENATED VOTER MODEL. FURTHER ANALYSIS, HOWEVER, SUPPORTS AN INTERPRETATION OF DIFFERENCES IN RATES OF PARTICIPATION AS DEPENDENT BOTH ON SES & WITHIN SE STRATA, ON MORE RATIONAL COMPUTATIONS MADE WITH REGARD TO THE UTILITY OF VOTING. 3 TABLES. AA.