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This article provides new evidence on how students choose a country of destination to conduct their academic studies. Based on a multinomial logistic model, it examines the contribution of the quality of education, institutions and the host country's economic factors to the choice of the destination country. The results indicate that quality education and institutions in the host country are the reasons why students show preference for Western countries—North America and the EU. On the other hand, China is chosen as a destination country for its quality of education—compared to Benin—and not because of its institutional infrastructure. Furthermore, the results do not confirm the hypothesis that African student migration is poverty-driven, as economic factors do not affect the choice of any destination country.

This article provides new evidence on how students choose a country of destination to conduct their academic studies. Based on a multinomial logistic model, it examines the contribution of the quality of education, institutions and the host country's economic factors to the choice of the destination country. The results indicate that quality education and institutions in the host country are the reasons why students show preference for Western countries - North America and the EU. On the other hand, China is chosen as a destination country for its quality of education - compared to Benin - and not because of its institutional infrastructure. Furthermore, the results do not confirm the hypothesis that African student migration is poverty-driven, as economic factors do not affect the choice of any destination country.

Lifestyle-related factors are responsible for a huge burden of disease (Yoon et al. 2014). Many people have responded to this fact by urging regulation as a means of improving health. Such regulation might be imposed by government (say through laws governing serving sizes), or through the actions of corporations (say reducing sugar in their products). Opposing such measures are a group of individuals who believe that individuals should make healthy choices for themselves, without such handholding from paternalistic institutions. The motivations for opposition to paternalism are diverse, ranging from a libertarian opposition to interference in the sphere of individual choice in general through to worries about institutional overreach. They are unified (to the extent they are) by the conviction that people ought to take responsibility for their own health.

We use an institutional rational choice approach to help us understand how prime ministers in the UK make cabinet appointments and the implications for prime ministerial power. Assuming that prime ministers attempt to form a cabinet so as to get an overall package of policies as close as possible to their ideal, we show why the trade-offs they face are so complex, why apparently common-sense rules for making appointments might not always work well and why apparently strange choices made by prime ministers might actually be rational. Acknowledging the power prime ministers derive from their ability to appoint, we argue that the literature commonly fails to distinguish between power and luck, where lucky prime ministers get their way because they happen to agree with colleagues.

Why do some elected governments impose short-term costs to invest in solving long-term social problems while others delay or merely redistribute the pain? This article addresses that question by examining the politics of pension reform in Britain and the United States. It first reframes the conventional view of the outcomes – centred on cross-sectional distribution – demonstrating that the politicians who enacted the least radical redistribution enacted the most dramatic intertemporal tradeoffs. To explain this pattern, the article develops and tests a theory of policy choice in which organized interests struggle for long-term advantage under institutional constraints. The argument points to major analytical advantages to studying governments' policy choices in intertemporal terms, for both the identification of comparative puzzles and their explanation.

The causal logic behind many arguments in historical institutionalism emphasizes the enduring impact of choices made during critical junctures in history. These choices close off alternative options and lead to the establishment of institutions that generate self-reinforcing path-dependent processes. Despite the theoretical and practical importance of critical junctures, however, analyses of path dependence often devote little attention to them. The article reconstructs the concept of critical junctures, delimits its range of application, and provides methodological guidance for its use in historical institutional analyses. Contingency is the key characteristic of critical junctures, and counterfactual reasoning and narrative methods are necessary to analyze contingent factors and their impact. Finally, the authors address specific issues relevant to both cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons of critical junctures.

Neoclassical Economics dealt with political analysis since the fifties. In this way, Public Choice presented policy-maker as homo-economicus & introduced the notion of political market. Moreover, James Buchanan & the Virginia School constructed Constitutional Political Economy. But, its economical character & the lack of empirical analysis of the Public Choice prevented the broad resurgence of political economy. We had to wait until the last two decades of the 20th Century to contemplate this resurgence, propelled by New Institutional Economics, which is based on the coasean notion of transaction costs & the northian notion of institutions. This theoretical framework takes on a multidisciplinary perspective & generates Transaction Cost Political Analysis, which turn into indispensable reference for positive political theory. Tables, Graphs, References. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the relationship between pact-making and

democratic transitions in Nicaragua (1988–1997) and El Salvador (1990–1997).

We argue that the process of elite bargaining about regime change affects
the
prospects for the consolidation of democracy. We emphasise three factors:
(1) the
choices key actors make as they bargain about bargaining, (2) their willingness
to
'under-utilise' their power and (3) the influence of historical
and structural
contingencies upon the key choices made. Essential to our discussion of
historical
and structural contingencies is the interrelation of domestic and international

actors and the importance of demilitarisation and institutional reform.
We argue
that these three factors favoured El Salvador more than Nicaragua, although

neither nation has overcome the political polarisation characteristic of
transitional
regimes.

Because New Zealand's majoritarian political system presents few institutional barriers to change, social choice theory would predict that it should experience frequent change in governments and policies. Although some periods in New Zealand history confirm this expectation, a striking exception is the Liberal era of 1890–1912. To explain the anomaly, this article applies Riker's concept of heresthetics, the strategic manipulation of decision processes and alternatives. The Liberal leader, Richard Seddon, masterfully exploited four main heresthetic devices that offer enduring insight about how to sustain a popular majority. While extending the scope of heresthetics as an explanatory principle, the article rebuts Riker's normative dismissal of populism. In terms compatible with social choice theory itself, Seddon's strategies can be interpreted as having enabled the will of the majority to prevail.

AbstractThe aim of this special feature is to reflect theoretically and normatively on consociational power‐sharing, take stock of its empirical record in Lebanon and Iraq, and interrogate its potential utility for other postwar states and societies in the Arab World following the popular uprisings. Allison McCulloch and Joanne McEvoy open the collection by deploying the 'lifecycle' heuristic to explain consociationalism's mixed record as an institutional strategy to manage ethnic or sectarian conflict in different contexts. This process‐oriented approach allows them to shift the consociational debate towards greater sensitivity to contexts: how macro‐institutional types such as liberal and corporate consociation interact with formal and informal micro‐institutional rules in determining the success or failure of consociational power‐sharing arrangements. Paul Dixon and Ibrahim Halawi follow with critical evaluations of consociationalism's embedded violence against alternative political economic choices. Dixon's radical critique is chiefly aimed at how consociationalism precludes the emergence of alternative identities, political choices, and socioeconomic struggles. Halawi magnifies this critique and considers elite consociational arrangements in the Arab World to be exclusionary and counter‐revolutionary. The contributions by John Nagle and Toby Dodge converge on how the institutional architecture of consociational power‐sharing as observed in Lebanon and Iraq – whether through formal or informal rules, corporate or liberal arrangements – creates a host of distortions that ossify identities, shape modes of political mobilization, and eviscerate state institutions by turning them into clientelist platforms. Finally, Steven Heydemann and Simon Mabon explore prospects for consociational power‐sharing in Syria and Bahrain, respectively, with implications for postwar Libya and perhaps Yemen. Although in both cases prospects for power‐sharing may appear remote, both authors suggest that the reality is far more complex, and that ultimately some kind of consociational power‐sharing may prove necessary to secure postwar reconstruction and reintegration into the international community in Syria, and genuine representation and peace in Bahrain.

From the 1990s, French priority education policy entrusts 'resource centres' with the task of facilitating the development and dissemination of useful working tools for practitioners. While such activities require policy choices, the first of these centres, the Alain Savary Centre, is run by researchers between 1993 and 2004. The article shows the successive positions of the Science and Policy Centre. It shows that, in the deconcentrated and instrumentalised field of public action of priority education, mobilising science for and through the circulation of resources only gives rise to an agreement in principle: in practice, over a decade, researchers and politicians do not find a lasting arrangement to define the desirable arrangements for their collaboration. Behind the apparent institutional continuity of the Centre, 'expertise', understood as a way of involving researchers in public action, thus takes various and precarious forms, sensitive to politico-institutional contexts. ; International audience ; From the 1990s, French priority education policy entrusts 'resource centres' with the task of facilitating the development and dissemination of useful working tools for practitioners. While such activities require policy choices, the first of these centres, the Alain Savary Centre, is run by researchers between 1993 and 2004. The article shows the successive positions of the Science and Policy Centre. It shows that, in the deconcentrated and instrumentalised field of public action of priority education, mobilising science for and through the circulation of resources only gives rise to an agreement in principle: in practice, over a decade, researchers and politicians do not find a lasting arrangement to define the desirable arrangements for their collaboration. Behind the apparent institutional continuity of the Centre, 'expertise', understood as a way of involving researchers in public action, thus takes various and precarious forms, sensitive to politico-institutional contexts. ; À partir des années 1990, la ...

This paper argues against prevailing explanations of public management change in Mexico that rely on analysis of "momentous" decisions and short term explanations of reform. In contrast, there is an explicit attempt to explain changes in the public sector by long-term developments in the political economy. Specifically, I will show how different processes of change have taken place in the Mexican public sector as a gradual adaptation to the processes of economic liberalization and democratization, punctuatted by specific reform efforts. The main hypothesis is that changes in the size and economic scope of the public sector are explained by changes in the government's economic strategy, whereas the changes in structure and public management policy choices are better explained by the process of political democratization. The overall objetive of this research is to improve our understanding of the dynamics of institutional change in government structures, by emphasizing the distinction between deliberate reform and incremental change, and by linking both processes to broader developments in the political and economic spheres. ; Este texto ofrece una visión distinta de las explicaciones usuales del cambio en la gestión pública en México, las cuales se basan en el análisis de decisiones "trascendentales" y explicaciones de corto plazo. Contrario a ello, hay un esfuerzo explícito por explicar los cambios en el sector público en función de procesos de largo plazo en la economía política. En concreto, muestro cómo diferentes procesos de cambio han tenido lugar en el sector público mexicano en forma de adaptaciones graduales a los procesos de liberalización económica y de democratización, con episodios específicos de reforma. La hipótesis central es que los cambios en el tamaño y el alcance económico del sector público se explican por cambios en la estrategia económica del gobierno, en tanto que los cambios en la estructura y la selección de políticas de gestión pública se explican por el proceso de democratización ...

While the statistical link between residential and school segregation is well-demonstrated, in-depth knowledge of the processes or mediating mechanisms which affect the interconnectedness of the two phenomena is still limited. By focusing on well-functioning schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, our article seeks to scrutinise whether reputation can be one of the key mediators of the connection between residential and school segregation. Our study combines qualitative ethnographic interviews from four (pre-)primary schools with quantitative segregation measures in four urban neighbourhoods in the Finnish capital city of Helsinki to understand the connections between lived experiences and socio-spatial segregation. The results show that there appears to be a clear link between neighbourhood and school reputation, as schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods are strongly viewed through the perceptions attached to the place. Despite the case schools' excellent institutional quality and high overall performance in educational outcomes, there is a consistent pattern of the schools struggling with negative views about the neighbourhoods, which seep into the schools' reputation. Since school reputation is one of the central drivers of school choices and is also linked to residential choices, the close connection between neighbourhood and school reputation may feed into vicious circles of segregation operating through schools. The results highlight the need for integrated urban policies that are sensitive to issues concerning school reputation and support the confidence and identity of pupils, reaching beyond simply ensuring the institutional quality of schools.