Who Inherits the State? Colonial Rule and Postcolonial Conflict

Postulating grievance‐based mechanisms, several recent studies show that politically excluded ethnic groups are more likely to experience civil conflict. However, critics argue that endogeneity may undermine this finding since governments' decisions to include or exclude could be motivated by the anticipation of conflict. We counter this threat to inference by articulating a causal pathway that explains ethnic groups' access to power independently of conflict. Focusing on postcolonial states, we exploit differences in colonial empires' strategies of rule to model which ethnic groups were represented in government at the time of independence. This identification strategy allows estimating the exogenous effect of inclusiveness on conflict. We find that previous studies have tended to understate the conflict‐dampening impact of political inclusion. This finding suggests that grievances have been prematurely dismissed from conventional explanations of conflict, and that policy makers should consider conflict resolution methods based on power sharing and group rights.     

Growing Sovereignty: Modeling the Shift from Indirect to Direct Rule

Drawing on theories of historical sociology, we model the emergence of the territorial state in early modern Europe. Our modeling effort focuses on systems change with respect to the shift from indirect to direct rule. We first introduce a one-dimensional model that captures the tradeoff between organizational and geographic distances. In a second step, we present an agent-based model that features states with a varying number of organizational levels. This model explicitly represents causal mechanisms of conquest and internal state-building through organizational bypass processes. The computational findings confirm our hypothesis that technological change is sufficient to trigger the emergence of modern, direct-state hierarchies. Our theoretical findings indicate that the historical transformation from indirect to direct rule presupposes a logistical, rather than the commonly assumed exponential, form of the loss-of-strength gradient.     

Anticipated Transition to Adulthood: The Effect of Educational Track,Gender, and Self-Evaluation on Finnish and Polish Adolescents' Future Orientation

In Finland and Poland, a total of 352 (192 boys and 160 girls) 17-year-old general secondary and vocational school students participated in a study investigating their anticipated transition to adulthood. In times of large sociohistorical change in both countries, Finland (economic depression) and Poland (change from socialism to market economy), we investigated to what extent those changes were reflected in the students' probability estimations (for potential goal attainment in three future life domains; education, occupation and family life), generational comparison (attaining a life different from the life of parents), future time extension (for anticipated events in those life domains), and self-evaluations (self-esteem and control over future). The results showed that girls in both countries expressed a higher level of probability for success in education than boys did. As expected, vocational school students in both countries expressed a lower probability of success in future occupation than general secondary school students did. General secondary school students from both countries expressed higher levels of self-esteem and control over future than vocational school students did. Unexpectedly, no differences between boys' and girls' probability estimations for family life were found, in either country. However, girls from both countries anticipated an earlier and more rapid transition to adulthood than boys did, thus reflecting social time tables. The results suggested that the educational track remains a significant stratifying factor in times of societal change in both countries.     

Local government service production: The politics of allocative sluggishness

A partial adjustment model with endogenous speed of adjustment is developed to analyze how pressure from interest groups and mass media influence the adjustment process of local governments. A survey questionnaire to the local politicians is used to measure the pressure indicators. Based on a combined cross-section and time-series data base for Norwegian local governments, the sluggishness of the adjustment process is estimated. The dynamics of the adjustment process is shown to reflect the activity of interest groups and media pressure. Pressure groups related to primary education explain an important part of the sluggishness observed. Pressure groups promoting kindergartens and health care/care for the elderly stimulate reallocations.     

Public sector efficiency: the roles of political and budgetary institutions, fiscal capacity, and democratic participation

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether efficiency in public service provision is affected by political and budgetary institutions, fiscal capacity, and democratic participation. In order to address this issue we take advantage of a new global efficiency measure for Norwegian local governments. We find that high fiscal capacity and a high degree of party fragmentation contribute to low efficiency. In addition there is some evidence that democratic participation increases efficiency, while a centralized top-down budgetary procedure is associated with low efficiency.     

Swedish Police Officers’ Job Strain,Work-Related Social Support and General Mental Health

This study investigated the association between psychosocial job characteristics and general mental health among police officers and the extent to which social support at work plays a role in this association. The findings are based on a cross-sectional survey. A written questionnaire was assessed by 714 police officers volunteered to participate in the study. The participants completed a series of validated instruments assessing job demand, control and social support at work (JDCS); general mental health (GHQ); and sociodemographic characteristics. High job strain was associated with low levels of work-related social support. Moreover, poor mental health was associated with low levels of work-related social support, active work and high job strain. The joint effect of high job strain and low levels of work-related social support had a significant effect on poor mental health. Work-related social support buffered job strain to some extent. Workforce health promotion policies should attempt to reduce job strain and emphasise the importance of work-related social support. Knowledge about police officers’ general mental health and policymakers’ support for police officers may have positive effects on the performance of the police force.     

Conquest and Regime Change: An Evolutionary Model of the Spread of Democracy and Peace

Whereas the literature on the democratic peace tends to treat the phenomenon as a causal law, we follow Immanuel Kant in interpreting it as a macro-historical process that expanded from a small number of democracies to about 50% of all states. In order to account for this development, we introduce an agent-based model that combines a natural-selection logic with an adaptive mechanism of regime change. The latter is implemented as an empirically calibrated, contextual rule that prompts democratization as an S-shaped function of the democratic share of a state's immediate neighborhood. A similar transition rule governs regime change in the opposite direction. The computational results show that regime change and collective security are necessary to produce realistic trajectories of democratization at the systemic level.     

Aggregating Spending Preferences: An Empirical Analysis of Party Preferences in Norwegian Local Governments

To understand the role of political parties in public budgetmaking, we need separate data about spending preferences andbudgetary outcomes. In this paper we employ such data todiscriminate between different models of how competing partypreferences are transformed into policy outcomes. In the firststep of the analysis data on politicians' spending preferencesare used to estimate the desired allocation of each party. Inthe second step the desired allocations are used as inputs ina separate analysis of the decision-making process inNorwegian local councils.     

Economic and political determinants of fee income in Norwegian local governments

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of fee income in Norweigan local governments. The point of departure is a representative voter model emphasizing the effects of pure economic variables. The benchmark model is extended by including two aspects of the political system: ideology and strength. It is evident that increased socialist influence increases the size of the local public sector, while a strong political leadership has an advantage in opposing pressure to increase spending.     

Power Sharing: Institutions,Behavior, and Peace

Grievances that derive from the unequal treatment of ethnic groups are a key motivation for civil war. Ethnic power sharing should therefore reduce the risk of internal conflict. Yet conflict researchers disagree on whether formal power‐sharing institutions effectively prevent large‐scale violence. We can improve our understanding of the effect of power‐sharing institutions by analyzing the mechanisms under which they operate. To this effect, we compare the direct effect of formal power‐sharing institutions on peace with their indirect effect through power‐sharing behavior. Combining data on inclusive and territorially dispersive institutions with information on power‐sharing behavior, we empirically assess this relationship on a global scale. Our causal mediation analysis reveals that formal power‐sharing institutions affect the probability of ethnic conflict onset mostly through power‐sharing behavior that these institutions induce.