Strategic Ticket Splitting and the Personal Vote in Mixed‐Member Electoral Systems

This article examines ticket splitting in five different mixed‐member electoral systems—Germany, New Zealand, Japan, Lithuania, and RussiA—and indicates the shortcomings inherent in any analysis of such ticket splitting that does not take into account the presence of the personal vote. We find that the personal vote plays a central part in shaping ticket splitting in all of our cases except for Germany, a heavily party‐oriented system in which we find evidence of only a weak personal vote but evidence of substantial strategic voting.     

Electoral Influences on Legislative Behavior in Mixed‐Member Systems: Evidence from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada

Abstract: This article addresses how mixed‐member systems that combine proportional representation (PR) and single‐member districts (SMD) into a single election can influence legislators' voting behavior. Scholars have generally extended standard expectations of behavior to mixed‐member systems by assuming that legislators occupying PR seats in mixed‐member parliaments should be more cohesive than those occupying SMD seats. I argue that controlling for seat type alone does not take into account the interaction between PR and SMD in mixed‐member systems. Using voting data from Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, I show that controlling for dual candidacy and the “safety” of the deputy's district or list position increases our understanding of the factors motivating legislative cohesion.     

Partisan Turnout Bias in Midterm Legislative Elections

Abstract: Lower salience elections present greater opportunities for representational bias at the polls than do elections with higher levels of political interest. We hypothesize that turnout bias is most likely to occur during midterm congressional elections in which there are clear short‐term forces that exploit the low turnout setting. The effects of these forces are more likely to be observable among registered nonvoters than citizens who are not registered to vote because registrants have access to the polls and are likely to have voted in previous presidential contests. Using midterm National Election Study data from 1978 to 1998, we find that registered nonvoters are frequently more Democratic than midterm election voters, particularly in 1994 and 1998. The historic 1994 congressional election seat losses for Democrats may be partially explained by the finding that voters going to the polls were clearly more conservative than registered nonvoters.     

Constitutional‐Electoral Reforms and Politics in Singapore

Abstract The existence of a dominant one‐party system in Singapore makes legislative passage of constitutional and electoral system reforms easy. Such a system has enabled the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) government to formulate and implement sweeping reforms with little difficulty, however controversial they are. Since 1980, the Singapore government has instituted nonconstituency MPs, nominated MPs, group representation constituencies, and an elected presidency. Although not necessarily intended, one consequence of these reforms has been the consolidation of the government's power.     

Selection and Incentives in the Electoral Security‐Constituency Communication Relationship

The relative importance of selection and incentives is essential for understanding how elections structure politicians’ behavior. I investigate the relative magnitudes of these two effects in the context of US House members’ constituency communication. Consistent with previous research, I find that there is a negative cross‐sectional relationship between electoral security and the intensity of constituency communication. The negative relationship holds in a panel‐data setting where only within‐legislator variation in electoral security is used to identify the effect of electoral security on legislator behavior. Due to the likely presence of myopic voters, the impact of electoral security increases as the election approaches. Point estimates suggest that the total effect is almost entirely driven by incentives, and I am able to reject the hypothesis that the incentive effect is zero at conventional levels of statistical significance.     

The Single‐Party Dictator's Dilemma: Information in Elections without Opposition

The literature on authoritarian institutions points to nationwide elections as a mechanism for learning about the preferences of citizens. In using elections in this way, however, authoritarians face a trade‐off between gathering reliable information and guaranteeing electoral victory. In this article, we explore how single‐party regimes manage this trade‐off and the particular types of information available to them. Using candidate‐level data from Vietnam, we demonstrate that single‐party regimes, in particular, forsake information on overall regime support and strength of opposition in favor of information on the popularity of local notables and the compliance of local officials with central mandates. In addition, we show that ex ante electioneering is less risky than ex post fraud at achieving these goals.     

The Limits of Electoral Control: Evidence from Last‐Term Politicians

In modern democracies, politicians' accountability is often linked to the disciplining mechanism of electoral control. For politicians in their final term, this mechanism is impaired. Using a novel data set covering 910 members of the UK House of Commons active within the period 1997–2010, we investigate how reduced electoral control affects last‐term MPs' trade‐off between work effort inside parliament, leisure, and outside interests. Our main contributions lie in providing the first explicit consideration of (1) MPs' final‐term intra‐/extraparliamentary work balance and (2) MPs' reasons for leaving parliament (i.e., retirement, career change, electoral defeat). These extensions provide important fresh insights concerning the boundaries of elections' disciplining power.     

The Impact of District Magnitude on Voter Drop‐Off and Roll‐Off in American Elections

This study demonstrates that multimember districts (MMDs) complicate ballots, reduce voter information, and increase incentives for strategic voting in ways that reduce voter participation. Using data from three states that elect members of at least one legislative chamber from both single‐member districts (SMDs) and MMDs, we test hypotheses about the impact on MMDs on ballot drop‐off (selecting fewer candidates for an office than permissible) and roll‐off (not voting in down‐ballot races). We find support for both sets of hypotheses, with the strongest results related to ballot drop‐off. The results have broad implications for voter participation, representation, and election administration in the many states and localities that use MMDs to elect public officials.     

The Cost of Majority‐Party Bias: Amending Activity under Structured Rules

All major legislation in the House necessitates a special rule from the Rules Committee before it can be brought to the chamber floor. These rules often strictly limit floor amendments to bills considered by the House. Scholars of political parties have argued that the House majority party can bias policy output away from the floor median through its usage of restrictive rules. In this article, we argue that in order to secure the passage of restrictive rules, the majority often makes concessions to centrist legislators through the amending process. We examine this theory using a newly collected data set that includes all amendments considered by the Rules Committee during the construction of structured rules in the 109th, 110th, and 111th Congresses (2005–2010). Our results are mixed, but they do suggest that moderate members of the majority party often receive concessions via amendments for their support of the majority party's agenda‐setting regime.     

Measuring Disorder: Observer Bias in Systematic Social Observations at Streets and Neighborhoods

Objectives

The present study focuses on Systematic Social Observation (SSO) as a method to investigate physical and social disorder at different units of analysis. The study contributes to the aggregation bias debate and to the ‘social science of ecological assessment’ in two ways: first, by presenting a new model that directly controls for observer bias in ecological constructs and second, by attempting to identify systematic sources of bias in SSO that affect the valid and reliable measurement of physical and social disorder at both street segments and neighborhoods.

Methods

Data on physical disorder (e.g., litter, cigarette butts) and social disorder (e.g., loitering adults) from 1422 street segments in 253 different neighborhoods in a conurbation of the greater The Hague area (the Netherlands) are analyzed using cross-classified multilevel models.

Results

Neighborhood differences in disorder are overestimated when scholars fail to recognize the cross-classified data structure of an SSO study that is due to allocation of street segments to observers and neighborhoods. Not correcting for observer bias and observational conditions underestimates the disorder–crime association at street segment/grid cell level, but overestimates this association at the neighborhood level.

Conclusion

Findings indicate that SSO can be used for measuring disorder at both street segment level and neighborhood level. Future studies should pay attention to observer bias prior to their data collection by selecting a minimum number of observers, offering extensive training, and collecting information on the urban background of the observers.

     

Party Voting Cohesion in Mixed Member Legislative Systems: Evidence from Korea and Taiwan

How do mixed‐member legislative systems influence legislator voting? While the literature remains inconclusive, this article suggests party influence as an intervening variable. Through an analysis of roll‐call data from Taiwan and Korea, no deviation is evident between district legislators and legislators elected by proportional representation. Further disaggregation of what it means to vote against one's party again finds little evidence of a tier distinction, while party variables remain significant. The findings are suggestive of a contamination effect between tiers, consistent with the influence of parties.     

Just Cognition: Scientific Research on Bias and Some Implications for Legal Procedure and Decision‐Making

Common law judges have traditionally been concerned about bias and the appearance of bias. Bias is believed to threaten the administration of justice and the legitimacy of legal decision‐making, particularly public confidence in the courts. This article contrasts legal approaches to bias with a range of biases, particularly cognitive biases, familiar to scientists who study human cognition and decision‐making. Research reveals that judges have narrowly conceived the biases that threaten legal decision‐making, insisting that some potential sources of bias are not open to review and that they are peculiarly resistant to bias through legal training and judicial experience. This article explains how, notwithstanding express concern with bias, there has been limited legal engagement with many risks known to actually bias decision‐making. Through examples, and drawing upon scientific research, it questions legal approaches and discusses the implications of more empirically‐based approaches to bias for decision making and institutional legitimacy.     

Juvenile Justice in Pennsylvania: Mission‐Driven; Performance‐ Based; Outcome‐Focused

Since 1995, Pennsylvania's Balanced and Restorative Justice Mission has been the driving force behind Pennsylvania's reform and system improvement efforts. Pennsylvania has made strong and steady progress towards advancing this statutory mission and the related operational goals through policy, practice and programmatic enhancements over these past 20+ plus years. Three key events spurred forth this advancement: the legislative passage of Act 33 in 1995 that statutorily established the goals of Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ), the Models for Change Juvenile Justice Reform Initiative–Additional Reform Momentum (2004) and the Juvenile Justice System Enhancement Strategy–Evidence‐based Approach to the Reforms (2010).What follows is the story of how it all unfolded.     

Measuring Legislative Power: An Expert Reweighting of the Fish‐Kroenig Parliamentary Powers Index

The Parliamentary Powers Index (PPI) developed by Fish and Kroenig (2009) is the most important effort to date to measure legislative power in cross‐national perspective, but it has been criticized on both theoretical and methodological grounds. We build on the 32‐item PPI to develop an alternative indicator of legislative strength that is based on an expert survey of 296 political scientists in 2014. We reweight each of the powers by expert opinion, creating a new Weighted Legislative Powers Score (WLPS) for the 158 national legislatures in the Fish and Kroenig data set. In addition, the article reports the expert‐assigned weight factors for the entire set of 32 powers contained in the original PPI, thus allowing researchers to innovate alternative, disaggregated indicators of legislative power.     

Testing for Potential Contextual Bias Effects During the Verification Stage of the ACE‐V Methodology when Conducting Fingerprint Comparisons*

Abstract: This study was conducted to assess if fingerprint specialists could be influenced by extraneous contextual information during a verification process. Participants were separated into three groups: a control group (no contextual information was given), a low bias group (minimal contextual information was given in the form of a report prompting conclusions), and a high bias group (an internationally recognized fingerprint expert provided conclusions and case information to deceive this group into believing that it was his case and conclusions). A similar experiment was later conducted with laypersons. The results showed that fingerprint experts were influenced by contextual information during fingerprint comparisons, but not towards making errors. Instead, fingerprint experts under the biasing conditions provided significantly fewer definitive and erroneous conclusions than the control group. In contrast, the novice participants were more influenced by the bias conditions and did tend to make incorrect judgments, especially when prompted towards an incorrect response by the bias prompt.     

Electoral Strategy,Committee Membership,and Rent Seeking in the Taiwanese Legislature, 1992–2001

While the electoral system undoubtedly influences legislative behavior, it does not necessarily have a uniform effect on all legislators. In this article, I argue that the different strategies that candidates choose in the quest for office result in differing incentives once the candidates have been elected. In the Taiwanese context, candidates who adopt a campaign strategy based on organization will tend to engage in more rent‐seeking activities once in the legislature, in order to offset the heavy financial burden of this strategy. From 1992 to 2001, Taiwanese legislators whose votes were highly concentrated in a small number of precincts tended to serve significantly more time on committees with the most rent‐seeking opportunities than did legislators with far less concentrated support. Legislators whose votes were spread more evenly across the entire electoral district and legislators elected from the party lists tended to serve more time on committees with little rent‐seeking potential.