| 1. |
- Ade, Florian, et al.
(författare)
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Divided government versus incumbency externality effect : Quasi-experimental evidence on multiple voting decisions
- 2013
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Ingår i: European Economic Review. - : Elsevier: 24 months. - 0014-2921. ; 64, s. 1-20
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores the interdependency of political institutions from the voter's perspective. Specifically, we are interested in: (1) Does the partisan identity of the mayor influence the voter's decision in the subsequent town council election?; (2) Does this partisan identity influence the vote in ensuing higher level elections?; and (3) Do voters condition their vote for the mayor on the result of the last council election? We rely on a regression discontinuity design focusing on close election outcomes based on municipal level data for Germany. We find (1) that the party of the mayor can receive a bonus of 4-6 percentage points in vote share in the next town council election (depending on the timing of the local elections). (2) The mayor partisan identity does not affect federal or European election outcomes within the same municipality. And (3), we show that voters punish mayor candidates of parties that performed strongly in earlier council elections. Throughout the paper, we explore how the findigs can be related to an incumbency externality effect and to the theory of voter preferences for divided government.
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| 2. |
- Ade, Florian, et al.
(författare)
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Incumbency effects in government and opposition : Evidence from Germany
- 2014
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Economy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0176-2680 .- 1873-5703. ; 36, s. 117-134
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Do district incumbents in an election have an advantage, and if so, do these advantages depend on which party is in government? We estimate the incumbency effect for the direct district candidates in German federal and state elections using a regression discontinuity design (RDD). When studying the heterogeneity in these effects, we find that incumbents from both large parties, the center-right CDU and the center-left SPD, have an advantage only if the SPD is in government. This effect is robust and shows even in state elections that are unrelated to federal elections.
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| 3. |
- Ade, Florian, et al.
(författare)
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When can we trust population thresholds in regression discontinuity designs? : a comment on Egger and Koethenbuerger
- 2010
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A recent literature has used variation just around deterministic legislative population thresholds to identify the causal effects of institutional changes. This paper reviews the use of regression discontinuity designs using such population thresholds. Our concern involves three arguments: (1) simultaneous exogenous (co-)treatment, (2) simultaneous endogenous choices and (3) manipulation and precise control over population measures. Revisiting the study by Egger and Koethenbuerger (2010), who analyse the relationship between council size and government spending, we present new evidence that these three concerns do matter for causal analysis. Our results suggest that empirical designs using population thresholds are only to be used with utmost care and confidence in the precise institutional setting.
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| 4. |
- Bruns, Benjamin, et al.
(författare)
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Finding Your Right (or Left) Partner to Merge
- 2015
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Ingår i: SSRN Electronic Journal. - Berlin, Germany : German Institute for Economic Research - DIW Berlin. - 1556-5068.
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We study political determinants of municipality amalgamations during a boundary reform in the German state of Brandenburg, which reduced the number of municipalities from 1,489 to 421. The analysis is conducted using data on the political decision makers as well as fiscal and socio-economic variables for the municipalities. We ask whether party representation in the town council influences the merger decision. To identify the effect, we follow a dual approach and make use of different stages in the reform process. First, municipalities were initially free to choose partners. In a later phase of the reform the state legislature forced municipalities to amalgamate. We can, thus, compare voluntary to forced units. Second, we simulate potential mergers from the map of municipalities and compare voluntary mergers to those simulated units. Both approaches show that political representation matters significantly during the voluntary stage of the merger reform
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| 5. |
- Freier, Ronny, et al.
(författare)
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Do parties matter? Estimating the effect of political power in multi-party systems
- 2015
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Ingår i: European Economic Review. - : Elsevier BV. - 0014-2921 .- 1873-572X. ; 80, s. 310-328
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- When there are more than two parties, policy outcomes are typically the result of a bargaining process. We investigate whether changes in political power for various parties have an effect on tax policies. We use an instrumental variable approach where close elections provide the exogenous variation in our variable of interest: voting power. In order to isolate close elections in a proportional election system, we develop a new simulation algorithm. Using data from German municipalities in the state of Bavaria, our estimation results suggest that political power does matter for policies. Somewhat surprisingly, the center-left party SPD is found to lower all three locally controlled taxes, whereas The Greens increase both property taxes considerably. These results remain robust across a range of specifications. Our partisan effect for the SPD is also confirmed by a simple regression discontinuity estimation using mayoral elections.
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| 6. |
- Freier, Ronny, et al.
(författare)
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Do parties matter? : Estimating the effect of political representation in multi-party systems
- 2011
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper estimates the casual effect of political representation in local governments on tax policy in municipalities under a proportional election system. The main challenge in estimating the causal effect of parties on policy is to isolate the effect of representation from underlying voter preferences and the selection effect of parties. We use an instrumental variable approach where close elections provide the exogenous variation in our measures of representation: seat shares and voting power. Using data from German municipalities our estimation results suggest that representation does matter. The effects are mostly small, but statistically significant. Somewhat surprisingly, representation of the center-left party is found to lower the local taxes, whereas The Greens increase the property tax considerably. These effects remain robust to weighting voting power by the likelihood of coalitions and different definitions of close elections and the instrument.
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| 7. |
- Freier, Ronny
(författare)
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Incumbency as the major advantage : The electoral advantage for parties of incumbent mayors
- 2011
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper provides empirical evidence on the party incumbency advantage in mayoral elections in Germany. Using a regression discontinuity design on a data set of about 25,000 elections, I estimate a causal incumbency effect of 38-40 percentage points in the probability of winning the next mayor election. The electoral advantage is larger for fulltime mayors, increasing in municipality size, independent of the specific partisanship of the mayor and constant between 1945 and 2010. Moreover, it increases with local spending hikes and it is independent of municipal debt. I also illustrate the causal dynamic effects of the incumbent status on distant future elections and therefore evaluate the global properties of the LATE estimate. Finally, I show that the total effect is due to an effect on the probability that the party participates in the next election (about 40% of the total effect) and an effect on the vote share (about 60%).
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| 8. |
- Freier, Ronny
(författare)
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Incumbency, divided government, partisan politics and council size : Essays in local political economics
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis comprises four empirical papers, each devoted to a specific topic in local political economics. Paper one and two evaluate the importance of the mayor position to the future electoral success of the mayor’s party. In the first paper, the focus is on the party’s electoral outcome in subsequent mayoral elections, while the second paper is concerned with the interdependencies between the mayor’s office and elections on other levels of government. The third paper investigates the causal effect of individual parties on policy in the context of German town council politics. The objective is to measure the impact of political representation in a proportional election system on core fiscal decisions of the municipalities. The final paper studies the specific concerns when using population thresholds in regression discontinuity designs for causal inference (in the German case). The analysis reviews the German evidence on the link between the size of the legislation and government spending.
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| 9. |
- Freier, Ronny, et al.
(författare)
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Juridification and regulative failures. The complicated implementation of international law into national schools
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of education policy. - 0268-0939 .- 1464-5106. ; 39:1, s. 83-104
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper starts with the increasing discussions on juridification in education. Concerning theorizing on such processes, we examine the poor implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD (2008) in the school sector of Germany. The paper considers the reasons for this failed endeavor by analyzing the complex, multilevel relations between policy and law in different national and historical contexts. With this, aspects of juridification as a process in education policy can be illuminated. In this regard, we suggest crucial aspects regarding juridification in public education: a focus on regulative failures in juridification processes, juridification's contexts, the mandate for putting it into action, the allocation of resources, and finally, its objective and subjective rights dimensions, i.e. how an individual can claim rights within the machinery of public education.
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| 10. |
- Wermke, Wieland, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Framing curriculum making : bureaucracy and couplings in school administration
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Curriculum Studies. - : Routledge. - 0022-0272 .- 1366-5839. ; 55:5, s. 562-579
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article aims to undertake a comparative investigation of school administration to understand further the frames of curriculum making. School administration is an under-illuminated aspect of curriculum research. The paper commences from the notion that, in mass education, a school system is operationalized by many schools, which are coupled to each other and to political decisions. Here is the curriculum vital. Building on the classic work of Stefan Hopmann, a curriculum is part of the administrational structure of the school system. The Article suggests several categories that can describe the nature and function of school administration in various contexts. There are external matters of schooling, such as school buildings, school food, etc. and internal matters of schooling, such as curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation. Individual schools and school administration are coupled via licences, and programmatic, professional, and procedural supervision. The article employs these categories with a comparison of a decentralized Sweden and a centralized Germany. The comparison investigated 290 Swedish municipality school administrations and 45 state education authorities in 4 German federal states. In this comparison many interesting similarities between both contexts can be hightligthed.
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