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Research on government effectiveness usually focuses on two issues: how to measure it, and what factors influence it. We focus on two questions: what is government effectiveness, and how countries compare in terms of perceived effectiveness. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hallmark of democratic systems of governance is the requirement that bureaucrats reveal private policy-relevant information they hold when they make public decisions. Equally important are procedures that require bureaucrats to reveal information they collect about the private sector that has important implications for public health and safety. This paper examines the determinants of the discretionary choice in political systems to impose information-revelation requirements on agencies to provide that information to the public. I argue that in making this choice systems balance democratic preferences for disclosure, the institutional design of revelation procedures, and political responsiveness to core constituencies. I test hypotheses about this balancing act in the case of state-level compliance with federal requirements to expand the public’s right-to-know in environmental policy. I estimate a bivariate probit model of the choice to adopt right-to-know, and the choice to impose significant fees to support that institutional design. I find that constituency characteristics drive institutional design and fiscal support for that design, but that fiscal support is also supported by broad environmental characteristics. Together, disclosure, procedure, and constituency balance and support one another in the institutional design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the demand for federal grants-in-aid to the states. Specifically, we analyze the flow of funds from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the states as a function of the structure of state political institutions, the political preferences of citizens and elected officials, the state's economic characteristics, and presence of several types of pollutants. We simultaneously model two dependent variables: the flow of EPA funds, and state environmental and natural resource budgets. Our statistical approach identifies the independent causation of the two processes. Our results show that the flow of federal funds to states is greater under Democratic control of the state legislature and when the state has pro-environmental members in Congress; Republican control decreases the flow of federal funds to states. The total state environmental and natural resources spending is demonstrated to be greater under Democratic control of the state legislature and when there are more conservation group members in the state. Republican control of the legislature, a larger manufacturing sector, and higher per capita income all lower state spending. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]