Toni Makkai

Trust and compliance

When regulatory inspectors trust industry, is this trust abused in a way that reduces regulatory compliance? Or does trust foster the internalization of regulatory objectives by regulated managers? Does trust build goodwill that translates into improved voluntary compliance? Data on compliance by Australian nursing homes with quality of care standards supports the latter interpretation. Nursing homes experience improved compliance after regulatory encounters in which facility managers believe that they have been treated as trustworthy. This finding commends a dynamic regulatory strategy of dialogue and trust as a first choice followed by escalation to more punitive regulation when trust is abused. Responsive versus static regulatory strategies and communitarian versus hierarchical fiduciary conceptions of guardianship are advanced as implications for resolving the dilemmas of trust and compliance.

In and Out of the Revolving Door: Making Sense of Regulatory Capture

The concept of regulatory capture is multidimensional according to data from Australian nursing home inspectors. There are three empirically distinct forms of capture: identification with the industry, sympathy with the particular problems that regulated firms confront in meeting standards, and absence of toughness. Inspectors who have prior senior management experience in the industry tend to be less tough in their attitudes to regulatory enforcement. For the other two types of capture, it is not coming in the revolving door (from an industry job), but aspirations to go out of the revolving door (to an industry job) that predicts capture. Captured regulatory attitudes and revolving door variables have little power, however, in explaining the toughness of actual enforcement practices. We do find that over time tougher inspectors are more likely to leave the regulatory agency than softer inspectors. These data are used to inform a policy analysis of capture and corruption. It is concluded that there is limited analytical merit in a conception of capture as an enduring unitary character trait that is structurally determined by a history of interest group affiliations. Capture, we attempt to show, is instead a situational problem that requires situational solutions. Constraining the free movement of the revolving door by restricting regulatory appointments from or to the regulated industry is an example of a flawed policy grounded in an overdrawn structural determinism.

Institutions, society or protest? Explaining invalid votes in Australian elections

Abstract Australia has one of the highest levels of invalid votes among the established liberal democracies. Three hypotheses have been put forward to account for variations in turnout—that it results from institutional factors, differing patterns of social structure, or reflects political protest by voters. These hypotheses are used to explain informal voting in Australias compulsory voting system. The data are national polling booth results for the 1987 and 1990 federal elections, and polling booth results from New South Wales matched to the 1986 census. The results reject the institutional and protest hypotheses, but support the social structural hypothesis. In particular, immigrants who are recently arrived and have poor English skills are significantly more likely to spoil their votes. Australias high level of invalid votes is therefore explained by the interaction between compulsory voting, the complexity of the electoral system, and by the presence of large numbers of immigrants within the electorate. The results have significant implications for the design of electoral systems in the newly-emerging democracies of Eastern Europe.

Resource and Social Learning Theories of Political Participation: Ethnic Patterns in Australia

Political participation is central to liberal democracy, yet there are substantial variations in the levels of participation observable among different social groups. Empirical theories explain these variations by the different socio-economic resources individuals possess and by their resulting levels of trust and efficacy in the political system. By contrast, social learning theories see these differences in participation as stemming from the values that individuals absorb from the political culture. This article uses Australia—an established liberal democracy with a large immigrant population—as a case study to evaluate these two theories. The results show that immigrants socialized in countries lacking continuous democratic traditions have greater political trust, but also display more authoritarian values. Differences emerge not only in the type of participation being analyzed, but among ethnic groups. The findings support the view that the resource and social learning theories are complementary rather than exclusive explanations for political participation.

Procedural Justice and Regulatory Compliance

This is a study of perceptions of the procedural justice of a business regulatory process among 341 Australian chief executives of small organizations. Only mixed support is found for the notion that procedural justice perceived by chief executives explains changes in the compliance of the organizations they run. A factor analysis suggests that five facets of procedural justice—consistency, correctability, control, impartiality, and ethicality—can be combined to form a single measure. The decision accuracy facet was not part of the general procedural justice factor. It is just one of these facets, control, that is significantly associated with changing compliance. As the chief executives perception that they have had some control over the enforcement process increases, organizational compliance improves. The procedural justice measures correlate more strongly with regulatee satisfaction for this regulatory regime than do regulatory outcomes.

Correcting for the Underreporting of Drug Use in Opinion Surveys

Survey data is one of the major mechanisms for measuring patterns of drug use across populations. But because drug use can be both a legal and an illegal activity, the accuracy of self-reported measures of use has been a continual problem. The sealed booklet questionnaire overcomes these problems by guaranteeing the respondent some degree of anonymity. This paper reports results from a modified booklet method used in a drug use survey with a national population sample. The method produces better estimated than direct questions, yet guarantees the respondent anonymity. In addition, the analysis shows that underreporting for different drugs is behaviorally motivated rather than drug-specific. The results suggest that adults are more concerned about potential use, while adolescents are more concerned about past use.

Measuring social indicators in opinion surveys: A method to improve accuracy on sensitive questions

Asking sensitive questions, without risking a terminated interview or response bias, is a major problem in deriving accurate social indicators based on public opinion surveys. This problem has become particularly acute as the topics that interest researchers have become more personal in nature. Mail and telephone surveys, and methods such as the randomized response technique, have all been used to try and overcome this problem, with varying degrees of success. In this paper, we describe an alternative approach using a sealed booklet. We report results from a question-format experiment that asked respondents the same sensitive questions in a sealed booklet, completed in the presence of the interviewer, and in a standard face-to-face interview. The survey used for the experiment was a personal interview survey of drug use based on a national population sample. The sealed booklet format was found to produce more accurate estimates of drug use compared to direct questions. In addition to assuring the respondent greater anonymity, the sealed booklet permits a wide range of questions to be asked and does not limit the analyses that can be conducted on the data.

The Formation and Development of Party Loyalties: Patterns among Australian Immigrants

The loyalties voters feel towards political parties are central to the stability of democratic systems. Political socialisation theories explain these loyalties through parental inheritance. This paper analyses the consequences for party loyalties when parental in heritance is absent, through an examination of partisanship among Australian immigrants. Three hypotheses to explain immigrant par tisanship — withdrawal, economic self-interest, and re-socialisation are tested using a large national survey conducted among immi grants in 1988. The results support the withdrawal and economic self-interest hypotheses, but reject the re-socialisation hypothesis. The relative periods of time spent in the donor and host societies do not appear to have any influence on partisanship. Lacking the affect ive bond to parties provided by parental political socialisation, immigrants appear able to change their party loyalties relatively easily, as studies of ethnic voting in Australia have shown.

Changing Australian opinion on defence: Trends, patterns, and explanations

(1991). Changing Australian opinion on defence: Trends, patterns, and explanations. Small Wars & Insurgencies: Vol. 2, Defence and the Media in time of Limited War, pp. 195-235.

Can resident-centred inspection of nursing homes work with very sick residents?

This paper seeks to address the issue of whether a resident-centred inspection process can be effective in a nursing home environment dominated by residents who require high levels of care. Two fundamental criticisms of the current Australian monitoring process are its reliance on standards that are subjective resident-centred standards and its reliance on the views of residents concerning the quality of care provided in the home. These criticisms are becoming all the more important as survival rates for the aged increase and the average level of disability of nursing home residents continues to worsen. Our data suggest that the resident-centred process, despite some difficulties, is both reliable and practical, regardless of the care needs of residents in the home. Data collected from inspection teams show that inspectors use a variety of sources to validate information, with residents being one component. These sources vary little in importance between homes with different levels of care needs or behavioural problems. Perhaps of more importance is the finding that a homes overall performance across 31 resident-centred standards is not affected by either the homes average level of total care needs or the number of residents with severe behavioural problems. There are some significant effects (in both directions) of resident disability on compliance with particular standards. Most notable is the finding that the standard requiring appropriate use of restraint is less likely to be met when there are large numbers of residents with high levels of disability or behavioural problems.