Correction to: Gender,Race, and Intersectionality in Campaign Finance

Political Behavior - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09693-y     

Get in line: Do part-time legislatures use sunset laws to keep executive agencies in check

Sunset provisions are clauses embedded in legislation that cause a piece of legislation or a regulatory board to expire on a certain date unless the legislature takes affirmative action to renew the legislation or board. Supporters and legislators offer several reasons why sunset laws are valuable and useful. An article by Baugus and Bose (2015), reported on the king-and-council model of Congleton (2001), suggests that sunset laws are a key tool legislatures use in asserting themselves against an executive branch that often dominates state government. We investigate this possibility using empirical analysis, which suggests that part-time legislatures, specifically, a form of part-time legislature referred to as hybrid legislatures, are more prone to use sunset legislation as a tool to keep the executive preferences in check.     

Assessing the Potential of ICTs for Participatory Development in Sub-Saharan Africa with Evidence from Urban Togo

As mobile phones are rapidly spreading across Sub-Saharan Africa, scholars and development practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in participatory, information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled initiatives to address the challenges of governance in the region. For such efforts to succeed, ICT interventions need to be custom-tailored to the characteristics of the politically marginalised groups they seek to empower. To advance the generation of the necessary empirical data, we surveyed 1498 respondents in Togo. Findings suggest that sociodemographic factors limiting political participation partially overlap with factors that limit access to ICT and the development of digital skills. Based on these findings, we formulate policy recommendations for the design of ICT-enabled projects that proactively seek to increase the participation of marginalised groups.     

Can Knowledge of Islam Explain Lack of Support for Terrorism? Evidence from Pakistan

In this research note we employ the work of Wiktorowicz who suggests that persons who are knowledgeable of Islam may be more capable of critically evaluating the claims of militant recruiters and ideologues and thus be more resistant to their appeals than those who are not knowledgeable. This gives rise to an interesting research question: Does knowledge of Islam reduce support for Islamist militancy? To evaluate this research question, we employ data derived from a nationally representative survey fielded among 16,279 Pakistanis in 2011. Using several survey items, we construct a “knowledge index” to measure respondents’ basic knowledge of Islam, which is our principal independent variable. To operationalize support for militancy we use two survey items that query respondents about their support for two prominent Islamist militant groups based in and from Pakistan: the Afghan Taliban as well the sectarian group, Sipah-e-Sahaba-e-Pakistan (also known as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat). We use ordinary least squares regression to evaluate the impact of our independent variables upon support for these two groups, controlling for other relevant factors. We find that knowledge of Islam does predict less support for these two groups; however, other variables such as sectarian organization and ethnicity have greater predictive power.     

Scale economies in local public administration

A renewed interest in decentralisation has profoundly affected local public governance around the world. Faced with an increasing number of tasks, Dutch municipalities have recently sought physical centralisation, merging into larger jurisdictions in order to target new policy areas more effectively and cost efficiently. Is such a policy of physical centralisation wise? We study economies of scale in local public administration, and find – given transfer payments from central government and current cooperation between municipalities and after controlling for geographical, demographic and socioeconomic variables – substantial unused scale economies of 17% for the average municipality. Between 2005 and 2014 the optimum size of municipalities increases from around 49,000 to 66,260 inhabitants, pointing at an increased importance of fixed costs relative to variable costs in local public administration.     

Different Kinds of Lonely: Dimensions of Isolation and Substance Use in Adolescence

Social isolation is broadly associated with poor mental health and risky behaviors in adolescence, a time when peers are critical for healthy development. However, expectations for isolates’ substance use remain unclear. Isolation in adolescence may signal deviant attitudes or spur self-medication, resulting in higher substance use. Conversely, isolates may lack access to substances, leading to lower use. Although treated as a homogeneous social condition for teens in much research, isolation represents a multifaceted experience with structurally distinct network components that present different risks for substance use. This study decomposes isolation into conceptually distinct dimensions that are then interacted to create a systematic typology of isolation subtypes representing different positions in the social space of the school. Each isolated position’s association with cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use is tested among 9^th grade students (n?=?10,310, 59% female, 83% white) using cross-sectional data from the PROSPER study. Different dimensions of isolation relate to substance use in distinct ways: unliked isolation is associated with lower alcohol use, whereas disengagement and outside orientation are linked to higher use of all three substances. Specifically, disengagement presents risks for cigarette and marijuana use among boys, and outside orientation is associated with cigarette use for girls. Overall, the adolescents disengaged from their school network who also identify close friends outside their grade are at greatest risk for substance use. This study indicates the importance of considering the distinct social positions of isolation to understand risks for both substance use and social isolation in adolescence.     

Do Social Rights Affect Social Outcomes?

While the United Nations and NGOs are pushing for global judicialization of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCRs), little is known of their consequences. We provide evidence of the effects of introducing three types of ESCRs into the constitution: the rights to education, health, and social security. Employing a large panel covering annual data from 160 countries in the period 1960–2010, we find no robust evidence of positive effects of ESCRs. We do, however, document adverse medium‐term effects on education, inflation, and civil rights.     

Advances and Opportunities in the Study of Political Communication,Foreign Policy,and Public Opinion

We review contemporary research at the intersection of political communication and foreign policy, highlighting four themes: 1) new, more realistic and psychologically-nuanced approaches that account for limited information and issue framing; 2) the question of whether the flow of communication between the state and the public is best conceived as a closed system, or one that is open to outside influences such as foreign elites; 3) how variations in political or governmental structures, patterns of media access or ownership, and other institutional factors can alter the relationships between foreign policy and communication processes; and 4) whether or not it is useful to distinguish between foreign and domestic policymaking when analyzing the role of political communication. We also suggest avenues for further research in each section and conclude by summarizing these opportunities for continued theoretical development.     

How Conditioning on Posttreatment Variables Can Ruin Your Experiment and What to Do about It

In principle, experiments offer a straightforward method for social scientists to accurately estimate causal effects. However, scholars often unwittingly distort treatment effect estimates by conditioning on variables that could be affected by their experimental manipulation. Typical examples include controlling for posttreatment variables in statistical models, eliminating observations based on posttreatment criteria, or subsetting the data based on posttreatment variables. Though these modeling choices are intended to address common problems encountered when conducting experiments, they can bias estimates of causal effects. Moreover, problems associated with conditioning on posttreatment variables remain largely unrecognized in the field, which we show frequently publishes experimental studies using these practices in our discipline's most prestigious journals. We demonstrate the severity of experimental posttreatment bias analytically and document the magnitude of the potential distortions it induces using visualizations and reanalyses of real‐world data. We conclude by providing applied researchers with recommendations for best practice.