Polihot

PAR — 2026-04-21 Original Conditional Embeddedness: Local Government Attention Under Institutional Incentives Jiali Wang, Junming Zhu, Huibin Du Abstract ABSTRACT Government attention is crucial to policy change and outcome. For local agents, their attention is explained by various factors, and a thorough understanding is needed to integrate diverse perspectives. Combining vertical, horizontal, local, and personal influences, we formulate a conditional embeddedness framework for local agents. The framework explains that agents' attention is primarily directed by principals, but this directed shift is horizontally and locally shaped by political and economic contexts, conditional on agents' traits. Empirically, we test attentional responses of 328 prefecture‐level governments to an environmental reform in China. Results corroborate our hypotheses, showing that local government attention generally increases following a reform, but the increases vary due to promotion competition and firm dominance and are further moderated by mayors' education and work experience. The findings demonstrate the importance of interactions between contextual and individual features in the shifts of local government attention and their responsiveness in a principal‐agent relationship.

JCC — pp. 1-15 2026-04-21 Original China Plans for ‘Total War’: Developing the Capacity to Defeat the ‘Strong Enemy’ of the United States

PAR 86/5 pp. 1447-1461 2026-04-21 Original An Unstable Hierarchy: Departmental Dynamics in Local Government Organizations Bradley M. Johnson, Kimberly L. Nelson, Mary Beth Spoehr Abstract ABSTRACT Local governments offer untapped insights into public organizational change. Despite their large number and variety, internal departmental dynamics are poorly understood, with implications for information processing, service delivery, and democratic accessibility. Using data from 272 municipalities collected 5 years apart (2014–2019) analysis finds that 88% changed at least one department name and 69% experienced an increase or decrease in the total number of departments. To understand what contextual elements may lead to these changes, capacity and institutional triggers are explored. Findings indicate that turnover of executive leadership increases the likelihood of change, while population and employment change affect the scale of change. Other commonly discussed conditions such as changes in financial resources, the turnover in legislative bodies, and the independence of executives are not significantly associated. For public administration, the consequences of continuous change in organizational hierarchies could affect assumptions of bureaucratic stability, democratic responsiveness, administrative burden, and organizational legibility.

JOP — 2026-04-20 Original The Point of Attack: Where and Why Does Oil Cause Armed Conflict in Africa? Graeme Blair, Darin Christensen, Michael Gibilisco

PMR — pp. 1-27 2026-04-20 Original Escalation of commitment in the public sector: the impacts of electoral effects and visualization aids on blame avoiding behavior

JOP — 2026-04-20 Original DC On My Mind: Voter Evaluations of Nationalized Policy Positions in State and Local Elections Derek Edward Holliday, Aaron Rudkin

PMR — pp. 1-26 2026-04-18 Original Framing quality (management systems): private providers and the promotion of self-serving evaluations in Swedish eldercare Peter Edlund Abstract I examine how private service providers deploy framing processes to influence the activities of public sector regulators. Studying Swedish eldercare, my findings indicate private providers launched three frame types in response to regulations requiring that all providers devise quality management systems (QMSs) for evaluation purposes. Over and above regulations, private providers promoted their own QMSs by self-servingly framing them as tools emphasizing problems with current quality measurements, offering solutions to inaccurate measurements, and outlining actions through specific measurements. These findings advance management scholarship by highlighting how private providers deploy framing processes as largely self-serving responses to influence regulators’ activities.

GOV 39/3 2026-04-17 Original Trust Me, I'm an Expert: Evaluating the Relation Between Expertise and Trust in Regulators Bastiaan Redert, Edoardo Guaschino, Ixchel Pérez‐Durán, Yannis Papadopoulos, Koen Verhoest, Juan Carlos Triviño‐Salazar

PSJ — 2026-04-17 Original Public Nuclear Preferences in the United States in the Context of Climate Change: Exploring Inter‐ and Intra‐Group Variations

JOP — 2026-04-17 Original Meritocracy and Autocratic Power-Sharing: A Historical Perspective Clair Yang, Yasheng Huang, Zhaomin Li Abstract This paper proposes meritocracy as a power-sharing institution in authoritarian regimes, particularly in weakly institutionalized environments. Contrary to what Enlightenment scholars believed, our evidence shows that meritocratic institutions were not uncommon in historical states and were often associated with absolute rulers. Using a formal model, we demonstrate that meritocracy benefits rulers by enabling them to co-opt high-ability agents, and it can remain credible even without third-party enforcement mechanisms. Unlike other power-sharing institutions, such as parliaments, which function more effectively under weaker rulers, meritocracy is more likely to emerge endogenously under strong rulers and remains self-reinforcing over time. We test these theoretical predictions using historical case studies and empirical analysis of a panel of 289 historical polities. The results confirm a positive association between meritocracy and autocracy. We believe that meritocracy can fill the gap in the literature to explain power-sharing in many historical absolute regimes.