Attitude Responsiveness and Partisan Bias: Direct Experience with the Affordable Care Act

This study evaluates the competing influences of motivated reasoning and personal experience on policy preferences toward the Affordable Care Act. Using cross-sectional and panel survey data, the findings reveal that healthcare attitudes are responsive to information that individuals receive through personal experience. Individuals who experienced a positive change in their insurance situation are found to express more positive views toward the health reform law, while individuals who lost their insurance or experienced an otherwise negative personal impact on their insurance situations express more negative views. The results point to personal experience as a source of information that can influence individuals’ preferences. However, although attitudes are responsive to the quality of one’s personal interactions with the healthcare system, the results also suggest that partisan bias is still at work. Republicans are more likely to blame the health reform law for negative changes in their health insurance situations, while Democrats are more likely to credit the law for positive changes in their situations. These motivated attributions for their personal situations temper how responsive partisans’ attitudes are to information acquired through personal experience.     

Providing justice and reconciliation: The criminal tribunals for Sierra Leone and Cambodia

The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the Extraordinary Chambers for Cambodia (ECC) represent a departure from the model established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yygoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The SCSL and the ECC have often been referred to as “mixed” or “hybrid” tribunals in which there are significant domestic and international components. The tribunals include a combination of domestic and international judges, utilize domestic and international laws and are administered by a prosecutorial team composed of domestic and international lawyers. Many of these institutional changes have been brought about because of criticisms of the ICTY and the ICTR. The fundamental question of this article is whether these mixed tribunals are a more effective mechanism for providing justice and reconciliation than purely international solutions. This is an important question because both the international community and states are moving in the direction of mixed tribunals.     

Designing policies that intentionally stick: policy feedback in a changing climate

Policy feedback is a widely used concept, but many who use it only focus on the positive and/or unintentional feedback effects of certain types of policy. The literature as a whole is therefore poorly equipped to make sense of the negative policy feedbacks that often appear in more regulatory areas such as climate change, where target groups are put under pressure to shoulder concentrated costs. Advocates of the ‘new’ policy design have an opportunity to address this gap by exploring how policy makers approach the design of policies that intentionally generate positive policy feedbacks and/or are resilient to negative ones. This paper contributes to that effort by identifying the conditions under which specific instrument designs are likely to have opportunity enhancing and/or constraining effects. It relates these expectations to a design situation where positive feedback seemed unlikely, and hence, the challenge of designing locked-in policies was correspondingly greater. It concludes by drawing on the findings of this exploratory case to investigate what the ‘new’ policy design can do better to explicate the temporal aspects of design.     

PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES,PUBLIC SERVANTS AND DUE PROCESS

Abstract: The parliamentary system of government in its Australian form has a number of unresolved problems, notwithstanding its many virtues. One such problem is that of the role of public servants when called before parliamentary committees as witnesses. The current guidelines are mainly advice to public servants as to how they should avoid or defer questions which neither the minister nor the departmental secretary has authorised them to answer. Of course, this is useful and proper within its limits. However, it fails to address many of the dilemmas and career-threatening choices which can face public servants who find themselves being questioned in an aggressive, hostile manner by members of a parliamentary committee. Unfair treatment of witnesses is not a trivial matter and there are more than isolated instances. This article deals with an episode involving the Joint Parliamentary Committee of Public Accounts in 1982. The case is now some years in the past, but it is still worth examining for what it teaches about gaps in our constitutional conventions. At the end of the article we suggest action in four areas. Intensive training and retraining is needed, first in the upper ranks of the public service, and secondly for chairpersons and members of parliamentary committees. Thirdly there is a need for MAB-MIAC to revisit yet again their guidelines on accountability and to instigate a review of the government's guidelines for public servants appearing as witnesses. Both sets of guidelines are anachronisms. Finally, we suggest that, in any future review of government policy in this area, consideration be given to the amendment of relevant legislation to bring due process and the protection of witnesses more closely into line with the rights available to persons appearing before a court.     

Private Sector Imprinting: An Examination of the Impacts of Private Sector Job Experience on Public Manager's Work Attitudes

What are the attitudes of public managers who have had full‐time private sector work experience? Public managers with private sector work experience report different perspectives when compared to their counterparts who have spent their entire careers in the public sector. Though private sector work experience negatively correlates with job satisfaction, it only does so for the “new switcher,” whose last job was in the private sector. As careers advance, the negative impact seems to wane, leaving a public sector workforce that, in part as a result of their private sector work experience, are relatively more intrinsically motivated and involved in their jobs. We conclude with discussion of implications for human resources management.     

Prejudice against Gypsies among Spanish adolescents

This article examines the attitudes of Spanish adolescents towards Gypsies, the most discriminated group in Spain, by looking at two distinct attitudinal components: the first, the cognitive component, was studied by measuring a willingness to extend twelve rights to Gypsies; the second, the affective component, by assessing a liking for this group. The research demonstrated that the adolescents' willingness to extend rights to Gypsies was greater than their liking for them. Furthermore, the adolescents were more willing to extend social rights than political ones. Older adolescents, females, those with higher self-esteem, greater political experience, a more resolute endorsement of democratic norms and a stronger identification with a group of friends presented more positive attitudes towards Gypsies. On the other hand, adolescents who were more supportive of violent groups, more strongly identified with the Catholic Church, other religious groups or a soccer team showed more negative attitudes towards Gypsies.     

Terrorist attacks and Europeans’ attitudes towards immigrants: An experimental approach

Over the past several years an increasing number of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Islam and targeting civilians have taken place in many Western democracies, calling for more research on the impact of these exogenous events on citizens’ attitudes towards immigrants. Using a quasi-experimental design, this study examines the short-term effect of the Paris attacks of the night of 13 November 2015 on the attitudes towards European Union (EU) and non-EU immigrants across 28 EU countries. Employing Eurobarometer 84.3 survey data collected in 28 European countries between 7 and 17 November 2015, the design allows the testing of individual attitudes before and after the Paris attacks and the spillover effects of this event in all European countries. It is found that the Paris attacks had a significant negative effect on attitudes towards immigrants, especially among educated and left-wing individuals. Moreover, the negative effect was stronger in countries where the national political-ideological climate was more positive towards immigrants. These findings are explained by theorising that first emotional reactions to the attack are the results of coping mechanisms whereby individuals are confronted with disconfirmation/confirmation of their previous beliefs: individuals who experience stronger stereotype disconfirmation are the most negatively affected by the terrorist attack. Overall, the study holds important implications for understanding the short-term impact of terrorist attacks on public attitudes towards immigrants.     

Prime ministers in the age of austerity: an increase in the personalisation of voting behaviour

This article tests the personalisation thesis in Portugal (2002–2015), as well as its causes, focusing on changes in the level of party identification and perceptions of the economy. Portugal is an interesting example given its recent experience of a harsh economic crisis, as well as a decline in party identification. Results confirm a growing exogenous impact of leader evaluations on voting over the period but not in a linear fashion. During the crisis, the growing trend of leader effects for the incumbent party continues for those voters who have a positive perception of the economy. Conversely, for the main opposition party, leader effects are greater for those who perceive the economy as being worse. Thus the crisis operates as a catalyst for leader effects. The impact of leaders is also greater among the de-aligned, the numbers of which rise considerably during the period under analysis. It is voters with no party identification, who use leaders as proxies to a greater extent. These conclusions may extend to further studies on leader effects in Western democracies and help to shed light on the process through which leaders are becoming more relevant in voting decisions.     

Politicians,professionalization and anti-politics: why we want leaders who act like professionals but are paid like amateurs

Why are politicians so unpopular? One common explanation blames a professionalized political class that is increasingly detached from ‘ordinary citizens’. But, there is very little empirical investigation of what it is about the professionalization of politics that engenders distrust. This article uses 12 focus groups and 15 interviews with civil servants from the Australian Public Service—‘insiders’ with first-hand knowledge and experience of the political system—to reflect on political professionalization and its impacts. As a group, civil servants’ views on this question remain largely unexplored yet their proximity to the political process gives them a distinct vantage point from which to reflect on current explanations for rising anti-political sentiment. We find both positive and negative attitudes towards professionalization that destabilize prevailing explanations: on the demand side, civil servants share first-hand experience and knowledge of how the political process works but remain cynical about politicians, whilst on the supply side, they value governing competence more than demographic representation yet still want more ‘amateur’ politicians. Our reflections on these findings highlight contradictory expectations: we want politicians who act like professionals, but who are paid like amateurs.     

成长中的磨砺——解析乔伊斯·卡罗尔·欧茨的《狐火:一个少女帮的自白》中“狐火”的象征意义

乔伊斯·卡罗尔·欧茨的《狐火:一个少女帮的自白》是一部美国少女的《哈克贝利.费恩历险记》,"狐火"是女孩们立志结盟的纹身,它象征着解脱,怒火与毁灭,它伴随了主人公成长的艰辛历程。这部成长小说深刻探索了女性面对现实问题时的解决方法,为女性成长小说的研究提供了最佳素材,了解"狐火"的象征意义对理解小说非常有益。     

Effects of the IMF and World Bank on public expenditure accountability in Jamaica

This article analyses the positive and negative effects of IMF stabilization programmes and World Bank structural adjustment programmes on the accountability of public expenditure management in Jamaica in the period 1980–1992. Particular attention is given to the negative accountability effects of IMF budget deficit reduction targets imposed on a Government uncommitted to meeting such targets. Many of the arguments presented in this article relate to expenditure accountability problems more generally and it cannot be proved that IMF conditionality was the sole cause of these problems. It is argued, however, that IMF conditionality contributed. This argument is based on a large number of semi-structured interviews conducted in 1993 with Jamaican bureaucrats, politicians, donors, academics and private sector representatives, many of whom were involved in Jamaica's budget formulation process, and on analysis of the existing literature and data. The conclusion reached is that donor-guided reform programmes have complex and often conflicting impacts on the accountability of the Government's budgetary practices. A major question that arises is the relative importance that donors such as the IMF place on budget conditionality as against accountability. The conclusion based on the Jamaican experience is that the IMF placed greater emphasis on the former. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How governing experience conditions winner-loser effects. An empirical analysis of the satisfaction with democracy in Spain after 2011 elections

Research has shown that those who win an election are more satisfied with democracy than those who lost. The current study explores this winner/loser gap using survey data from the 2011 Spanish general election. The study assumes that there are different losers. The results indicate that citizen satisfaction with democracy shows a negative relationship with parties that are consistently unable to obtain office. The implication is that the effects of the winner-loser effects are much smaller within the group of parties that have previous experience in government. Finally, I report and independent effect that citizengovernment policy proximity boosts satisfaction with democracy.     

'When We Wanted to Talk About Rape': Silencing Sexual Violence at the Special Court for Sierra Leone

This article explores the legal and psychological ramificationsarising from the exclusion of evidence of sexual violence duringthe Civil Defence Forces (CDF) case at the Special Court forSierra Leone. Using empirical findings from post-trial interviewsconducted with the ten victim-witnesses who were originallyto testify, we juxtapose what the Special Court allowed thewomen to say, and what the women themselves wanted to say. Froma legal perspective, we then critique the Trial Chamber's reasonsfor excluding the evidence and question the legal bases uponwhich the women were silenced, arguing that wider and widercircles of the women's experience were removed from the Court'srecords despite there being ample authority at an internationallevel to support inclusion. We further look at the genderedbiases in international criminal law and how expedience andefficiency usurped the significance of prosecuting crimes ofsexual violence in this instance. From a psychological perspective,we discuss the consequences that the act of silencing had forthe witnesses, and argue that a more emotionally sensitive understandingof the Court's notion of ‘protection’ is required.     

Negativity in political perception

The tendency for negative information to have more weight than equally extreme or equally likely positive information appears in a variety of cognitive processing tasks, but has rarely been documented empirically in politics. This paper provides evidence for two types of negativity effects in electoral behavior: negativity in the formation of impressions (of Humphrey and Nixon in 1968, of McGovern and Nixon in 1972, and of Carter and Reagan in 1980), and negativity as a consequence of impressions (in the 1974 and 1978 congressional elections). Both post hoc rationalization and the nonequivalence of the positive and negative information were examined and ruled out as artifactual explanations for these results. Discussion centered around two possible explanations for negativity, a cost-orientation hypothesis (which holds that people are more strongly motivated to avoid costs than to approach gains) and a figure-ground hypothesis (which holds that negative information stands out against a general positive background).     

Which among twin deficits hypothesis,twin divergence,and Ricardian's equivalence hold in a developing country?

South Africa witnesses the perpetual increase in budget deficit that hampers its ability for inclusive economic growth while on the other hand facing trade balance instability. To realise stability in the economy and sustainable yet inclusive economic growth, the two deficits, namely, budget and trade deficits, should be closely monitored. The study examined the empirical relationship between budget deficit and trade deficit in South Africa in the postapartheid era, employing time series data from 1994 to 2016. The autoregressive distribution lag approach was employed to examine the existence of a cointegration between the set of variables, both in the short‐ and the long‐run relationships and together with the error correction model. It was found that there is a significant and positive relationship between budget deficit and trade deficit in the short run. However, in the long run, the Ricardian's equivalence holds in South Africa. The study recommends that policies aimed at reducing budget and trade deficits should take into account inflation and aim to increase some macroeconomic variables such as fixed investment to ultimately achieve sustainable economic growth.     

The Italian party system in transition: The end of polarised pluralism?

This article examines Giovanni Sartori's polarised pluralist model and its application to the Italian party system. It suggests a more appropriate alternative method for testing the model's applicability to present‐day Italy. This modification, far from changing the model of polarised pluralism, improves its empirical usefulness. The suggestion then is put forward that Italy, rather than being an example par excellence of polarised pluralism, as Sartorisees it, is neither characterised by increased polarisation nor by centrifugal competition. Instead, Italy today witnesses the prevalence of depolarisation and centripetal electoral competition.     

Explaining Media Attention for Norwegian MPs: A New Modelling Approach

This article provides a new perspective on why the quantity and tone of media coverage vary between groups of politicians. The analysis makes three key distinctions: first, between the volume of reporting and its tendency; second, between attention‐seeking politicians and blame‐avoiding politicians; and third, between attention due to characteristics of media outlets and those of politicians. These distinctions, along with a comprehensive dataset and a multilevel analysis approach, comprise the building blocks of an empirical analysis of press coverage devoted to Norwegian parliamentarians between 2001 and 2005. The results suggest that politicians who appear regularly in the newspapers, such as party leaders and long‐serving MPs, face a greater amount of negative media coverage than those who do not. Female MPs receive less, but more positive, coverage. Reporting by the tabloids is more negative than that of other newspapers, especially with regard to party leaders.     

The Spectre of Crime: Photography,Law and Ethics

A grainy series of surveillance photographs was tendered into evidence at the trial of a young Aboriginal man accused of robbing a bank. Two police officers testified that they recognised him from the photographs. On appeal to the High Court of Australia, the judges thought that the hooded bandit in the image looked like the spectre from Hamlet. This article uses the discourse of “spectrality” to explore the consequences for law and ethics when haunted by the transgressive image. It examines the confrontation between the foundational illegality of the Australian nation, and the indigenous man who is accused of a crime against property.     

Framing policies to mobilize citizens' behavior during a crisis: Examining the effects of positive and negative vaccination incentivizing policies

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the issue of mobilization policies, that is, government practices directed at making the mass public voluntarily perform various behaviors for the collective benefit during a crisis. As COVID-19 vaccinations became accessible, governments faced the challenge of mass vaccination mobilization in order to achieve herd immunization. Aiming to effectively realize this goal, policy designers and regulators worldwide considered various mobilizing tools for vaccination compliance, including rewards and penalties, as they targeted vaccine opposers and hesitators, while trying to avoid the crowding-out effect among individuals who were intrinsically motivated to get vaccinated. However, the unique circumstances of the Coronavirus pandemic may have eliminated the crowding-out effect. Thus, our study explored the effect of regulation in the form of positive and negative incentivizing tools (i.e., rewards and penalties) during the coronavirus pandemic on vaccination intentions of 1184 Israeli citizens, prior to the national vaccination campaign. Results indicate that (1) both negative and positive incentives have a similar positive effect on individuals who declare they will not get vaccinated and those who hesitate to get the shot; (2) both positive and negative incentives induce the crowding-out effect; and (3) negative incentives generate a larger crowding-out effect in individuals who report preliminary intentions to get vaccinated, compared to positive ones. This emphasizes the need to avoid the crowding-out effect during the current and similar crises, and suggests considering applying a gradual and adaptive policy design in order to maximize regulatory efficacy and compliance.     

PART in Retrospect: An Examination of Legislators' Attitudes Toward PART

This research adds insight into the congressional reaction to the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) by exploring the influence of individual legislators' personal experiences and ideological position on their attitude toward PART. Specifically, the factors explored include ideological position held by legislators, level of business experience, level of campaign financing received from political action committees (PACs), years spent in Congress, seniority, and congressional chamber. The results indicate that legislators with higher levels of business experience generally were more supportive of PART and that the length of time they had served in Congress and the amount of campaign contributions they had received from PACs were negatively related to PART support. The study also provides insights into legislators' overall exposure and sentiment toward PART. The data indicates that only a small proportion of legislators clearly expressed positive or negative opinions toward PART, despite widespread exposure to the tool. These findings are important in that they contribute toward a more comprehensive understanding of the congressional reaction to PART and offer further insights into the challenges of securing congressional buy‐in for executive performance budgeting initiatives.