Chris Hanretty

Measuring the formal independence of regulatory agencies

While the literature on delegation has discussed at length the benefits of creating independent regulatory agencies (IRAs), not much attention has been paid to the conceptualization and operationalization of agency independence. In this study, we argue that existing attempts to operationalize the formal political independence of IRAs suffer from a number of conceptual and methodological flaws. To address these, we define what we understand by independence, and in particular formal independence from politics. Using new data gathered from 175 IRAs worldwide, we model formal independence as a latent trait. We find that some items commonly used to measure independence – notably, the method used to appoint agency executives and the scope of the agencys competences – are unrelated to formal independence. We close by showing that our revised measure partially changes conclusions about the determinants and consequences of formal independence.

Explaining the De Facto Independence of Public Broadcasters

Institutions operating beyond direct control of government, such as central banks, constitutional courts and public broadcasters, enjoy guarantees of de jure independence, but de jure independence is no guarantee of de facto independence. This is especially so for public broadcasting, where cultural variables are often assumed to be decisive. In this article, the de jure and de facto independence of thirty-six public service broadcasters world-wide are operationalized, and de jure independence is found to explain a high degree of de facto independence when account is taken of the size of the market for news. Other variables considered in previous literature – such as bureaucratic partisanship and the polarization of the party system – are not found to be significant.

The Decisions and Ideal Points of British Law Lords

Policy-sensitive models of judicial behaviour, whether attitudinal or strategic, have largely passed Britain by. This article argues that this neglect has been benign, because explanations of judicial decisions in terms of the positions of individual judges fare poorly in the British case. To support this argument, the non-unanimous opinions of British Law Lords between 1969 and 2009 are analysed. A hierarchical item-response model of individual judges’ votes is estimated in order to identify judges’ locations along a one-dimensional policy space. Such a model is found to be no better than a null model that predicts that every judge will vote with the majority with the same probability. Locations generated by the model do not represent judges’ political attitudes, only their propensity to dissent. Consequently, judges’ individual votes should not be used to describe them in political terms.

Areal interpolation and the UK’s referendum on EU membership

ABSTRACT I show how results from the United Kingdoms referendum on membership of the European Union can be remapped from local authority level to parliamentary constituency level through the use of a scaled Poisson regression model which incorporates demographic information from lower level geographies. I use these estimates to show how the geographic distribution of signatures to a petition for a second referendum was strongly associated with how constituencies voted in the actual referendum.

Media outlets and their moguls: Why concentrated individual or family ownership is bad for editorial independence

This article investigates the levels of owner influence in 211 different print and broadcast outlets in 32 different European media markets. Drawing on the literature from industrial organization, it sets out reasons why we should expect greater levels of influence where ownership of individual outlets is concentrated, where it is concentrated in the hands of individuals or families and where ownership groups own multiple outlets in the same media market. Conversely, we should expect lower levels of influence where ownership is dispersed between transnational companies. The article uses original data on the ownership structures of these outlets and combines it with reliable expert judgements as to the level of owner influence in each of the outlets. These hypotheses are tested and confirmed in a multilevel regression model of owner influence. The findings are relevant for policy on ownership limits in the media and for the debate over transnational versus local control of media.

Independence, Accountability and Perceived Quality of Regulators

A specific EU model for national regulatory authorities (NRAs) has evolved in the course of the liberalization processes in network industries (electronic communications, energy and others). It rests on two broad lines: NRAs are independent and accountable.The CERRE Report on Independence and Accountability of national regulatory authorities (NRAs) provides empirical backing for that model, using a sample of NRAs from three sectors (energy, telecommunications and rail) plus the national competition authorities, and five member states (Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany and the United Kingdom).In their report, CERRE researchers compile an index of independence, towards market parties and most importantly towards the legislative and executive powers. They also develop a new index of accountability, comprising the main elements that define accountability towards market parties, the legislative and executive powers, the European Commission, the courts and peers. These two indexes are then analysed against an index of perceived quality of the work of NRAs.The CERRE Report shows that the EU model works: the more independence and the more accountability, the better the perceived quality.It also corrects some common misunderstandings: the EU model goes beyond independence of NRAs alone, it also requires accountability. Furthermore, independence and accountability do not need to contradict each other. They can be reconciled.

Political brands: can parties be distinguished by their online brand personality?

This paper investigates whether five English political parties are differentiating themselves based on the brand personality they are communicating through their websites. The relative brand positions of five English political parties are analyzed using Aakers brand personality scale. The text from each party website is analyzed using content analysis and a dictionary-based tool. The results are plotted in relation to one another on a correspondence analysis map. We find that the two main dimensions on which parties’ brand personalities differ relate to the trade-offs between communicating competence and communicating sincerity and between communicating sophistication and communicating ruggedness. We find that parties’ brand personalities are distinctive, with the exception of the Green Party, and that the position of one party, the United Kingdom Independence Party, is particularly distinctive. Our research uses Aakers existing framework for thinking about brand personalities, rather than creating a new framework for politics. By using an existing framework, we are able to use tools developed in other disciplines and show their usefulness for the study of political marketing.

Political Independence, Accountability, and the Quality of Regulatory Decision-Making

Recent decades have seen a considerable increase in delegation to independent regulatory agencies, which has been justified by reference to the superior performance of these bodies relative to government departments. Yet, the hypothesis that more independent regulators do better work has hardly been tested. We examine the link using a comprehensive measure of the quality of work carried out by competition authorities in 30 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries, and new data on the design of these organizations. We find that formal independence has a positive and significant effect on quality. Contrary to expectations, though, formal political accountability does not boost regulatory quality, and there is no evidence that it increases the effect of independence by reducing the risk of slacking. The quality of work is also enhanced by increased staffing, more extensive regulatory powers, and spillover effects of a more capable bureaucratic system.

What makes for prize-winning television?

We investigate the determinants of success in four international television awards festivals between 1994 and 2012. We find that countries with larger markets and greater expenditure on public broadcasting tend to win more awards, but that the degree of concentration in the market for television and rates of penetration of pay-per-view television are unrelated to success. These findings are consistent with general industrial organisation literature on quality and market size, and with media policy literature on public service broadcasting acting as a force for quality. However, we also find that ‘home countries’ enjoy a strong advantage in these festivals, which is not consistent with festival success acting as a pure proxy for television quality.

Haves and Have-Nots before the Law Lords

One important characteristic of justice, and thus of our judicial system, is impartiality. One type of judicial impartiality is impartiality between litigants who command status and material resources (‘haves‘) and those who do not (‘have-nots’). I investigate the success of ‘haves’ in appeals to the House of Lords between 1969 and 2003. I investigate two separate paths by which ‘haves’ might succeed more: relative status advantage over other litigants, and being able to hire more experienced and more successful counsel. My innovative operationalisation of relative status advantage shows that while relative status advantage does exist, it is largely a matter of governmental actors having significant advantages over all others; businesses and associations have no advantages over individual litigants. Instructing more experienced counsel also increases the chances of a litigant succeeding. This effect holds when accounting for the relative number of counsel and their relative win rates in previous cases.