Drug use and AFDC participation: Is there a connection?

Drug use and welfare are two serious social problems that have received widespread public attention. Recently, it has been suggested that illicit drug use is a major cause of welfare, although there is only anecdotal evidence to support such a claim. This article provides the first systematic analysis of the issue by examining the relationship between illicit drug use and welfare participation among a nationally representative sample of young adults. The results indicate that past year drug use, predominantly marijuana use, is positively related to future welfare participation for both nonblack and black women. The magnitude of the drug effect, however, is modest: If drug use among welfare participants were reduced to the levels of nonparticipants, welfare participation would decline by approximately 3 to 5 percent.     

Political polarization,voting and democratic representativeness: Too much or too little?

This contribution evaluates the mediating role of different political contexts and levels of democratic consolidation on the effect of party system polarization on ideological vote and discusses how this relationship enhances democratic representativeness. The influence of party system polarization on ideological voting is analyzed in two areas: the voters' competence in identifying parties' ideological positions; and the voters’ tendency to vote for the most ideologically proximate party, which is one of the key features of the spatial theories of voting. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) from 1996 to 2019 and multilevel modelling techniques, the paper compares how those features vary across different types of countries, particularly older and newer democracies, and different regions of the world.     

Public housing,health, and health behaviors: Is there a connection?

This paper explores the relationship between public housing, health outcomes, and health behaviors among low-income housing residents. While public housing can be a dangerous and unhealthy environment in which to live, the subsidized rent may free up resources for nutritious food and health care. In addition, public housing may be of higher quality than the available alternatives, it may provide easier access to health clinics willing to serve the poor, and it may link residents to social support networks, which can improve mental health and the ability to access higher-quality grocery stores. To test whether there is a "back-door" health benefit to the public housing program, we analyze data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. We minimize the effects of selection into public housing with controls and instrumental variables estimation and find that the results are somewhat sensitive to the instrumental variable used, and thus, we conclude that we are unable to detect a robust health benefit from public housing for our measures of health. However, we do find some evidence that public housing residency has mixed effects on domestic violence, increases obesity, and worsens mothers' overall health status.     

Is there a Southern European Healthcare Model?

Is there a typically Southern European model of healthcare? To answer this question it is not enough to find similarities between the Greek, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese health systems: it is also necessary that these similarities be in some way distinctive. For this reason the author compares these Southern European countries with other Western European countries, in particular those which, like the southern countries, have adopted a national health service. Notwithstanding the eccentricities of the Greek case, this comparison shows how the four healthcare systems share certain characteristics which effectively distinguish them from their Northern European counterparts. These traits are particularly evident in the birth of the national health service, the legacy of the previous health insurance system, the composition of healthcare costs, the rule of private hospitals, the entitlements of patients, and patients' level of satisfaction with the healthcare system.     

Is there such a thing as a Muslim vote?

This contribution explores to what extent there is such a thing as a distinct Muslim vote in flexible proportional list systems. We test in a new and reliable way whether the religious belonging and behavioural dimension of Muslim voters play a role in their decision-making process when casting preferential votes in a secular democracy. To achieve this, voter and candidate characteristics are modelled simultaneously in cross-classified multilevel analyses where the decision-making process of voters (the demand side) is studied while taking into account the list composition in terms of individual candidates (the supply side). We use data of an exit poll related to the local elections of 2018 in Belgium, especially at oversampled locations. The analyses show that voters who belong to Muslim faith are more likely to vote for Muslim candidates. Contrary, the behaviour dimension of Muslim voters – measured in mosque attendance - has no effect on voting primarily for Muslim candidates.     

Is there a friends-and-neighbors effect for party leaders?

The friends-and-neighbors effect, which refers to voters' tendency to support politicians near hometown areas, has not yet been tested systematically for party leaders. Linking a built-for-purpose dataset on 266 leaders to a sample of 380,208 voters from 50 country elections in 19 parliamentary democracies drawn from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project, this article examines the effect of party leaders' local proximity on voters' leader evaluations and voting intentions. I hypothesize that leaders receive more positive evaluations and electoral support from voters in the district where they run for election. The results show that shared district increases voters' sympathy for leaders and their inclination to vote for the party of ‘near’ leaders. While the location of party leaders affects voters in all electoral systems, I find that the friends-and-neighbors effect on leader evaluations and party vote choice is stronger in systems with personalized, preferential and combined ballots.     

Is Political Consulting Going Digital?

Every four years consultants all over the world look at American presidential elections trying to unveil new techniques that can be adopted in their own countries. In 2012 databases and metrics become the cornerstone for a successful campaign and therefore, there is a need for new professionals, and for a new way of approaching the profession. The campaign for the re-election of Obama residential is a turning point not only for political communications but also for political consulting: digital revolution will open doors for a new generation of consultants not only in the United States, but also in Europe and South America.     

Agenda trees and sincere voting: a response to Schwartz

Schwartz (Public Choice 136:353–377, 2008) has identified a controversy within the voting theory literature pertaining to the representation of agenda structures and the consequent definition of sincere voting. This note responds to Schwartz’s remarks by arguing that the kind of agenda tree he uses does not adequately represent some common parliamentary agendas, and that consequently his definition of sincere voting cannot always be applied.     

Is there a key to the normative budgeting lock?

This article explores how to answer the normative question: What is a good budgetary process? It proposes that a deliberative process involving practitioners and academics could identify and justify achievably ambitious standards for budgetary processes, and the best practices for attaining those standards. In hopes of beginning that deliberation, the article sets out a prototype model, and then applies the model to the federal budgetary process.     

Is there a theory of the subject in Georges Canguilhem?

Although there is no clear-cut doctrine of the subject in the work of Georges Canguilhem, nevertheless there is a sense in which the subject functions as a kind of operator in his work. This article delineates three aspects of such an operative function: a quasi-ontological discontinuity separating the living from the non-living; a discontinuity separating technique from science; and an ethical discontinuity that can be exemplified in the case of medicine. It is at these points of discontinuity that the notion of the subject effectively comes into operation in Canguilhem's work.     

Garcia and the Political Safeguards of Federalism: Is There a Better Solution to the Conundrum of the Tenth Amendment?

In Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (1985),Justice Harry Blackmun held that the Tenth Amendment does notprevent the Congress from subjecting state and local governmentsto the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, concludingthat the "political safeguards offederalism" are generally adequateto protect state interests on the national scene. This articleexamines the intellectual foundations of the "political safeguardsof federalism" and finds them inadequate. It then surveys thepost-Garcia scholarship to ascertain whether an alternativetheory of the Tenth Amendment has emerged. Concluding that ithas not, the author suggests the need for afresh approach inview of the hints contained in Justice Sandra Day O'Connor'sopinion in Gregory v. Ashcroft (1991) that five justices maybe ready to reexamine the central thesis of Garcia.     

Is compulsory voting habit-forming? Regression discontinuity evidence from Brazil

Voting in one election increases one's propensity to vote in the future. It remains unclear, however, whether this pattern holds when voting is compulsory – as is the case in a quarter of all democracies. Is compulsory voting habit-forming? I address this question using a regression discontinuity design and administrative turnout data from Brazil, where voting is voluntary at age 16 and compulsory at age 18. I find no evidence that compulsory voting instils voting habits. Instead, the evidence points to a first-time compulsory voting boost, which gradually dissipates as voters grow older. I show that targeted mobilisation of first-time compulsory voters is a plausible mechanism behind the turnout boost. Alternative explanations find less support in the data. The results clarify the scope conditions of prior research on voting habits, and have important implications for the debate over the second-order effects of compulsory voting.     

Is referendum voting distinctive? Evidence from three UK cases

The study of referendum voting follows much the same format as for general election voting. Influences on vote, however, are likely to differ significantly. Referendums decide issues, while general elections determine which party or parties will form the government. Parties are often divided on referendum issues and these issues tend to be of low salience. General elections, however, are contested by long-established parties on highly salient issues. Using panel data from the British Election Study and the 2011 Alternative Vote Referendum Study, we find that voters place different weights on party identification, issue positions, government and leader evaluations when voting in general elections and referendums, but the evidence for differential campaign effects is limited.     

Is the Relationship Between Political Responsibility and Electoral Accountability Causal,Adaptive and Policy-Specific?

Political Behavior - Will voters hold an incumbent more electorally accountable for the quality of a policy outcome if the incumbent’s political responsibility for the underlying policy...     

Between Devolution and Direct Rule: Implications of a Political Vacuum in Northern Ireland?

It is over a year since the collapse of the devolved administration at Stormont, which left one region of the United Kingdom without a functioning executive. Reluctance to introduce direct rule from Westminster reduced Northern Ireland to a desiccated form of governance. This article examines the nature and form of government in this political vacuum. The consequences of this system are examined in terms of the absence of legislation, mechanisms for scrutiny, and participation in intergovernmental relations. In the absence of devolution and direct rule, the potential for greater involvement of the Irish government in the affairs of Northern Ireland is also considered.     

Police Bribery: Is Corruption Fostering Dissatisfaction with the Political System?

The increasing salience of security concerns after democratization processes in the developing world has put scholars to explore the effects of police corruption as a key issue impeding the consolidation of the rule of law. Using data taken from surveys conducted in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, this article contributes to such literature by questioning whether cases of police corruption have an effect on the trust in the political system. The research finds that citizens can support the democratic order even if they have experienced bribery. The article unveils, however, that another type of police corruption—police protecting criminals—is a robust and statistically significant theory of variance in the confidence in the political system.     

Is approval voting an ‘unmitigated evil’?: A response to Brams,Fishburn, and Merrill

Brams, Fishburn, and Merrill (1988) contend that the indeterminacy of approval voting (AV), introduced in our paper (1988), is not a vice, but a surpassing virtue of AV. They do not compare the negative versus the positive features of AV, so their assertion remains a conjecture. Our response emphasizes the need to determine the costs of AV and to evaluate them against any merits. Moreover, by correcting and answering BFM's comments, the argument against AV becomes much stronger. This is because we show that AV's region of indeterminacy is quite large; it includes most profiles. Some of the consequences of this instability are that the AV outcome can negate the voter's true wishes, that the AV outcome can be volatile even to minor fluctuations of voter's decisions, and that AV is one of the most susceptible systems to manipulation by small groups of voters (for example, small, maverick groups could determine the AV outcome). Under specific circumstances, AV may be appropriate. To identify these situations we propose the more accurate name of the "Unsophisticated Voter System."     

What Is Political Science? What Should It Be?

This paper examines the five myths that govern political science: that it studies politics; that it is scientific; that one can study politics cut off from the other social sciences and history; that the state is neutral; and that the bulk of the work in the discipline furthers the cause of democracy. Within political science, there have been three main approaches to criticizing these myths: a moderate one that treats the elements in these myths as more or less disconnected; a radical one that sees a systemic connection between these elements; and a Marxist one that names this system "Capitalism" and privileges the role of the capitalist state in explaining both politics and political science.