Globalization, secessionism, and autonomy

This paper analyzes the relationship between the persistence and growth of secessionist parties in democratic countries and economic globalization, controlling for political and economic factors. The implications of secessionist persistence for decentralization are also examined. The paper finds that globalization is positively related to secessionist vote growth, while there is some evidence that economic conditions also impact secessionist parties in systematic ways. Secessionist support is also substantially affected by policy changes. Central governments have offered autonomy more often to regions with secessionist parties than to regions without such parties, though often the offers take the form of symmetrical countrywide decentralization.     

Contractarianism, Liberal Neutrality, and Epistemology

This paper examines three arguments that attempt to justify liberal neutrality. Firstly the type of neutrality between conceptions of the good that is sought by the arguments is explained. Then the contractarian procedure that is one of the premises of each of the arguments is presented. The remaining sections then examine the arguments, which are Thomas Nagel's appeal to epistemic restraint, Brian Barry's appeal to the uncertainty thesis, and John Rawls's appeal to the burdens of judgement. The arguments attempt to show how the contractarian procedure results in liberal neutrality. They do so by trying to show how no conception of the good can be acceptable to everyone due to the epistemological status of conceptions of the good. It is concluded that none of the arguments succeeds.     

Constraints, states, and wars

Abstract. The rational choice assumption is already disputable at the individual level of decisionmaking. At the level of collective decision-making unitary rational action is an unrealistic assumption. It neglects the transitivity of collective preferences issue, the logic of collective action and freeriding, the agency problem, and the human tendency to agree with each other irrespective of the facts. While unitary rational action is rejected as a basis for theorizing on international relations and war, the idea of decision-making under constraints seems as valid in the interstate context as in economics. The most important constraints on national security decision-making are the anarchical character of the international system and the corresponding need for self-help, the security and the territorial delimitation dilemmas, the presence or absence of plausible blueprints for victory, and the presence or absence of domestic constraints on bellicosity. A simple explanatory model of war built on these ideas is suggested and tested with dyadic data for the 1962–1980 period. In addition, there is some discussion of why collective security is doomed to fail, and why hegemony rather than balance improve the prospects of peace.     

Mandates, Powers, and Policies

Elections provide a mandate to pursue a set of policies. Party label provides a concise ideological cue for voters to choose among candidates, and research on industrial democracies verifies a link between the parties voters elect and subsequent policy outcomes. The combination of inchoate party systems and economic vulnerability elsewhere may weaken the link between voter choice and policy. When examining economic policies in Latin America, there is some controversy as to whether governments carried out "reform by surprise"—promising one thing during a campaign while implementing another in office. We test whether the ideological reputations of executives' and legislators' parties explain whether they adopt market-oriented policies. We find that the future behavior of presidential candidates is difficult for voters to predict. However, the ideological reputation of legislators is a reliable predictor of policy outcomes, and the relationship is clarified by the prospects of collective action by legislative delegations.     

Blood,fecundity, and contraceptive usage

This work describes ethnographic and other evidence that lower class women in southern Brazil believe that the fertile period is simultaneous with or closely related to the menstrual period. Ethnographic reports from both rural and urban areas in southern Brazil, materials on the folklore of the area, and findings of an ongoing study of four lower class neighborhoods served by community health services indicate that nearly all lower class adults of both sexes believe that conception is possible if not most likely during the menstrual period. Menstrual blood is not viewed as actually a part of women, but as a fluid which remains in the uterus after fertilization or otherwise as something dirty that must be eliminated. The cultural model of the female body includes notions of opening to allow elimination of the menstrual fluid, closing after its departure, and states of wetness and heat. Numerous informants reported cases in which women became pregnant while using IUDs or in the interval between 21-day packets of oral contraceptive (OC) pills. The fact that OCs reduce the menstrual flow is viewed as problematic, because blood that should be eliminated is apparently retained. The IUD, which causes long menstrual periods and intermenstrual bleeding, is also viewed with suspicion since it appears impossible to prevent pregnancy when there is actually greater flow. Irregular and incorrect use of OCs and very limited acceptance of IUDs may be factors in the growing demand for female sterilization and in the very high rates of illegal abortion.     

Crowdfunding industry—History,development, policies,and potential issues

Crowdfunding has gained a great deal of attention from policy makers, researchers, and practitioners. This paper attempts to provide an overview of the history and development of the industry and discusses different types of crowdfunding and their public policies. It is identified that the operation of peer‐to‐peer lending and equity‐based crowdfunding is regulated by the Financial Authority; the reward‐based crowdfunding (RBC) and donation‐based crowdfunding (DBC) is yet to be regulated, neither in the United Kingdom or United States. The lack of rules and regulations in the latter two models highlights the burning issues such as potential fraud and malpractice. Therefore, we suggest that it is timely to consider regulating the two types of crowdfunding possibly by governance mechanism with reporting requirements to keep track of the fund and to provide timely information. Additionally, it is advisable that practitioners to work on an agreed framework to establish industry standard, so potential investors can compare and assess the quality of projects easily. Finally, the management of crowdfunding platforms especially the RBC and DBC platforms should be improved. The ease of launching campaigns has made it difficult for both initiators and investors to succeed in the crowdfunding process. Further research to develop some form of assessment framework would be useful to both parties.     

Apology,Recognition, and Reconciliation

The article examines the role of apology in a process of reconciling with historic injustice. As with so many other facets of the politics of reconciliation, official apologies are controversial, at times strenuously resisted, and their purpose and significance not always well understood. The article, therefore, seeks to articulate the key moral and practical resources that official apologies can bring to bear in a process of national reconciliation and to defend these symbolic acts against some of the more influential criticisms from the skeptics. The analysis is developed in relation to apologies offered in the context of state-indigenous reconciliation processes in the Americas, Australasia, and other regions of the globe.     

Pigou, Coase, common law, and environmental policy: Implications of the calculation debate

The implications of the calculation debate are explored for Pigouvian, Coasean, and common-law liability approaches to externality problems. There is no escaping Hayekian-Misean information problems, but the institutional setting within which environmental policies are resolved affects the domain of third-party calculation. The calculation required is likely to be significantly less under common-law arrangements than under administrative processes. The primary implication for environmental policy is that increased reliance on competitive market processes and the common law in copying with externality problems may be more effective than attempts to improve current administrative approaches.     

Prediction,Proxies, and Power

Many enduring questions in international relations theory focus on power relations, so it is important that scholars have a good measure of relative power. The standard measure of relative military power, the capability ratio, is barely better than random guessing at predicting militarized dispute outcomes. We use machine learning to build a superior proxy, the Dispute Outcome Expectations (DOE) score, from the same underlying data. Our measure is an order of magnitude better than the capability ratio at predicting dispute outcomes. We replicate Reed et al. (2008) and find, contrary to the original conclusions, that the probability of conflict is always highest when the state with the least benefits has a preponderance of power. In replications of 18 other dyadic analyses that use power as a control, we find that replacing the standard measure with DOE scores usually improves both in‐sample and out‐of‐sample goodness of fit.     

Monetary Sovereignty: Nature,Implementation, and Implications

Monetary sovereignty is a central concept of Modern Money Theory (MMT). The paper explores the characteristics of monetary sovereignty, the means used to implement it, and some of its theoretical and policy implications. Herein, it is shown that monetary sovereignty involves a high degree of coordination between the central bank and the national treasury. The paper also argues that monetary sovereignty is not special to the United States, does not require direct monetary financing of the treasury, does not tell us anything about the optimal size of the fiscal balance, and is not dependent on the willingness of foreigners to hold the domestic currency.     

Extremism, suicide terror, and authoritarianism

This paper studies extremist behaviour, and its connection to authoritarianism. I divide extremists into two groups, leaders, who demand extremist acts such as assassinations, suicide terror or other forms of political violence from followers, who supply them. I assume that both the leaders of extremist groups and their followers are rational. The paper looks at three examples: Communism, Nationalism and Islamic Fundamentalism. I show that leaders with extreme ideologies also tend to adopt violent methods when there is an indivisibility between the intermediate goal of the group and its ultimate goal. Turning to followers, the most important innovation of the paper is a simple model which explains how it is possible for a person to rationally commit suicide to further the goals of a group. The most important policy implications of the paper are, firstly, that one should look at the goals of extremist group in order to understand their actions. If one can un-bundle the goal or make the indivisible divisible, then there may be ways to provide these goals in a way which satisfies some of the potential supporters of the group and thus dries up support for the grander ambitions of the leaders of extremist groups. Secondly, the provision of programs which foster social cohesion tends to dry up an important motive for extremist activity: the desire for solidarity. Thirdly, policy towards terrorists should combine the use of “carrot” and “stick”. Finally, I argue that authoritarian regimes rather than democracies or totalitarian regimes are the most likely sources of suicide terror. So democracy is indeed part of the solution to the problem of suicide terrorism.     

Competition, Marketisation, Public Services and Public Ethics

The topic I address provides an embarrassment of scope. At the same time, it allows the development of a theme that is worthwhile discussing. When in the public sector is it worthwhile to import private sector concepts, principles and practices and when would the adoption of a private sector model be injurious to the state's constituents? The theme is worthwhile discussing, in part because some of Australia's jurisdictions appear to be adopting what they consider to be private sector practices, without an adequate framework to guide them. Because there is no proper framework, mistakes are made which could have been avoided. There is also some evidence that the public is uneasy about the loss of ‘public’ from the term public services. It would not be in the public’s own interests to resist, for no good reason, the adoption of private sector principles where that would allow more cost-effective services. The topic also allows a discussion on the influence on public sector ethics of the trend to place senior public servants on contracts that can be disposed of without a reason or prospect of appeal.     

Pedagogues,Periodicals, and Paranoia

Over the past year, several published volumes have argued that American politics is careening out of control, toward a slippery slope of twenty-first century theocracy. Most of these books present tendentious interpretations of contemporary politics as matter-of-fact analysis. The reader is assumed to hold the same interpretive bias and warned of the dangers of a new and powerful American “fundamentalism.” The current article explores a historical parallel to today’s trend. Nearly a century ago, the Progressive Education movement sought to undermine the pedagogical dominance of traditional, literature-based education, preferring a more socially-conscious curriculum. The striking similarities between John Dewey’s anti-traditional approach and the present-day anti-theocracy faction are multitude—and worth our consideration. The seeds of Progressive Education are now producing weeds of anti-religious sentiment across America’s political landscape—a cultural phenomena that is constricting the growth of a much needed civil discourse.

Economics,democracy, and Spanish elections

The argument is advanced that economic conditions have played an important role in Spanish elections but, until recently, one secondary to the establishment of democracy itself. First, the Spanish economy's development at the time of these elections and the Spanish public's response to it are considered. Next, Spain's three national elections and significant economic policy activities and conditions are analyzed. Unemployment is then considered as the central economic influence on recent Spanish elections. Finally, Spain's politics of consensus is presented as an explanation for the initial lack of influence of economic conditions on elections.     

Democratic Order,Autonomy, and Accountability

Accountability is a principle for organizing relations between rulers and ruled, and making public officials accountable is a democratic achievement. There are, however, competing claims about what is involved in demanding, rendering, assessing, and responding to accounts; what are effective accountability institutions; and how accountability regimes emerge and change. This article provides a frame for thinking about institutional aspects of accountability regimes and their cognitive, normative, and power foundations. A distinction is made between accountability within an established regime with stable power relations and role expectations and accountability as (re)structuring processes in less institutionalized contexts and in transformation periods. A huge literature is concerned with the first issue. There is less attention to accountability as (re)structuring processes. The article, therefore, calls attention to how democracies search for, and struggle over, what are legitimate accountability regimes and political orders.     

Crisis Management in Hindsight: Cognition, Communication, Coordination, and Control

This article argues that cognition is central to performance in emergency management. Cognition is defined as the capacity to recognize the degree of emerging risk to which a community is exposed and to act on that information. Using the case of Hurricane Katrina to illustrate the collapse of the standard model of emergency management without a clear focus on the role of cognition, the author reframes the concept of intergovernmental crisis management as a complex, adaptive system. That is, the system needs to adjust and adapt its performance to fit the demands of an ever-changing physical, engineered, and social environment. The terms of cognition, communication, coordination, and control are redefined in ways that fit the reality of practice in extreme events. A reframed intergovernmental crisis management system may be conceived as a dynamic interorganizational system that is characterized by four primary decision points: (1) detection of risk, (2) recognition and interpretation of risk for the immediate context, (3) communication of risk to multiple organizations in a wider region, and (4) self-organization and mobilization of a collective, community response system to reduce risk and respond to danger.     

Supplementary vote; analysis, applications, and alternatives

The Supplementary Vote (SV) was invented as a compromise between the two-round runoff system and the alternative vote. This paper shows that in many ways it is not. Under SV voters rank order a limited number of candidates. If one candidate is supported by over 50% of the voters he/she is declared the winner. Otherwise, all but the top two candidates are eliminated from the contest. Then, all second preferences of voters are taken into account. The candidate winning most first and second votes is declared the winner. SV violates fundamental criteria used to evaluate electoral systems and is difficult for voters. The paper discusses an alternative to SV which avoids at least some of its most apparent flaws.     

Psychopathy,sociopathy, and crime

He is a past president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, and in 1990 he received the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychology in the Public Interest. Dr. Lykken is the author of A Tremor in the Blood: Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector(1981) and of The Antisocial Personalities(1995).     

Federalism, Republicanism, and the Northwest Ordinance

The Northwest Ordinance, enacted by the Congress of the Confederationon 13 July 1787, addressed in its own way the two crises facingthe Framers in Philadelphia: the crisis of the Union and thecrisis of republican government. It gave government to the NorthwestTerritory, which had been created for the sake of the Unionand with an eye to the security of republicanism. That territorywas destined to be a matrix of new states, equal members ofthe Union and republican in form. The working out of those principles,commanded by the Declaration and foreshadowing the Constitution,is traced from Jefferson's plan of 1784 to the Ordinance of1787. The uncultivated and intractable character of the frontiersman,making his attachment to the Union and his capacity for self-governmentdubious, presented a special problem. It is seen how the NorthwestOrdinance, establishing government, procuring certain socialand economic conditions, and inducing proper habits and opinions,sought to make the expansion of the Union an extension of republicanism.