Who will vote quadratically? Voter turnout and votes cast under quadratic voting

Who will vote quadratically in large-N elections under quadratic voting (QV)? First, who will vote? Although the core QV literature assumes that everyone votes, turnout is endogenous. Drawing on other work, we consider the representativeness of endogenously determined turnout under QV. Second, who will vote quadratically? Conditional on turning out, we examine reasons that, in large-N elections, the number of votes that an individual casts may deviate substantially from that under pure, rational QV equilibrium play. Because turnout itself is driven by other factors, the same determinants may influence how voters who do turn out choose the quantity of votes to cast. Independently, the number of votes actually cast may deviate dramatically from pure QV predictions because of the complex and refined nature of equilibrium play. Most plausibly, voting behavior and outcomes would be determined predominately by social and psychological forces, would exhibit few of the features emphasized in the analysis of hyper-rational equilibrium play, and would have consequential properties that require a different research agenda to bring into focus. Some of our analysis also has implications for voting behavior under other procedures, including one person, one vote.     

How much insecurity in East Asia?

Paul Dibb Towards a New Balance of Power in Asia, New York: Oxford University Press; London: International Institute for Strategic Studies (Adelphi Paper No. 295), 1995: 93pp., maps, tables. £13.99. ISBN 0–19–828069–6; ISSN 0567–932X.     

Homeownership counseling performance: How can it be measured?

Abstract

Homeownership counseling encompasses several educational activities. Early approaches focused on reducing the risk of default and foreclosure among participants in government‐assisted mortgage programs, but more recent approaches have focused on increasing homeownership opportunities among low‐income and minority households. Unfortunately, little is known about the effectiveness of these approaches in terms of the number of new homeowners and the mitigation of default risk. To address that gap, this article presents a theoretical and methodological framework to evaluate counseling efforts.

A successful counseling program is defined as one that assists a household with a low long‐term probability of ownership in buying a home and reducing its default risk. We concede that the methodological requirements for evaluating counseling are somewhat restrictive. However, if we establish an evaluation procedure using these goals as a framework, we can more accurately determine the effects of counseling on the sustainability of low‐income homeownership.     

Can we explain the Santa Clara county housing market?

Abstract

Santa Clara County has recently had the highest house prices of any large housing market in the nation. Part of the explanation lies in the extraordinarily low user cost of housing caused by the interaction of high incomes and the tax deductions available to homeowners. But this article also evaluates whether changes in stock wealth have been responsible for the recent increase in housing prices in Santa Clara County.

Although three different stock market measures add explanatory power to a model of housing prices in the region, none of these indexes predicts the housing price increases seen in 1999 and 2000. In fact, the within‐sample models have .R‐squares of only 0.22, and even the best model (based on the Standard & Poor's 500) does not forecast well out of sample. Still, the market is unusual in that stock prices seem to have some impact on house prices.     

Intelligence in war: how important is it? How do we know?

The role of intelligence in determining outcomes of battles and wars has varied dramatically across conflicts and time, contributing to wide differences in judgments about the importance of intelligence in war. Some analysts minimize the importance of intelligence while others argue it is essential. Opposing perspectives often do not engage each other’s points and generalize from small samples of conflicts. The result is a disjointed discussion of the roles and importance of intelligence in armed conflicts. This article’s aim is to partially rectify this situation by deriving an analytic framework that links intelligence to military operations and strategic outcomes.     

Declining voter turnout in Taiwan: A generational effect?

Taiwan's voter turnout has declined nearly fifteen percentage points since the early 2000s. All ages voted less in 2016 than before, but the drop was particularly severe among younger voters, who turned out at rates up to twenty percentage points lower than in 2004. Thus Taiwan resembles other mature democracies like the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Finland, where declining turnout has been shown to afflict the young disproportionately. However, we argue that this youthful disaffection with voting is more difficult to interpret than usually believed, and that it may not represent an inherent attribute of younger cohorts.     

How does turnover affect turnout? Government alternation and voter participation in parliamentary democracies

A crucial difference between political systems is the nature of government alternation: that is, whether when a government changes, all parties now in government were previously in opposition (‘wholesale alternation’) or whether just some parties were (‘partial alternation’) (Mair 1997). Bergman and Strøm (2011) suggest that wholesale alternation gives voters a clear choice between alternative governments and allows them to hold the government accountable, while partial alternation is associated with one (centre) party becoming a (near-) permanent government party who can govern with either the parties to its right or to its left. However, this relationship has not been tested. We propose to examine the effect of partial and wholesale alternation on turn-out in a large-N cross-country study, showing that there is an interaction effect between disproportionality and wholesale turn-out. Wholesale decreases turn-out but only when it when disproportionality is high.     

How much income redistribution? An?explanation based on?vote-buying and?corruption

This paper studies how income tax rates are determined and how they are related to government corruption in the form of fund capture. A?model is presented where rich voters can block redistribution by buying the votes of some poor voters. In equilibrium there is only limited redistribution and income tax rates are a negative function of government corruption. When rich voters can bribe the government, an additional equilibrium with zero taxation is possible. The link between corruption and tax rates is tested using cross country data; the empirical evidence is fully consistent with the predictions of the model.     

How can we better align private security with the public interest? Towards a civilizing model of regulation

How can we better align private security with the public interest? This question has met with two answers in the literature on private security regulation, one seeking to cleanse the market of deviant sellers, the other to communalize the market through the empowerment of buyers. Both models of regulation are premised upon a limited neoclassical economic conception of how market transactions map onto the public interest. This article makes the case for a new model of regulation, one that seeks to civilize the market. Drawing upon the insights of economic sociology, our model regards the market for security as a moral economy in which commodity and non‐commodity values jostle and collide. On this basis, we propose a regulatory architecture where buyers and sellers are cast not only as economic actors but also as moral actors, revealing new avenues through which to encompass private security within the democratic promise of security.     

Anomie at public organizations: How can the quality of work life help?

Will enhancing the quality of work life impact the reduction of anomic behaviors at work in public sector organizations? To answer this question, we examined the impact of three structural, managerial, and social dimensions of the quality of work life, including the employees' anomie behaviors at the workplace. A cross‐sectional survey data were collected from 250 employees working in the public sector organizations located in the Kerman Province, (southeast) Iran. Our findings support the negative effects that the three dimensions of quality of work life have on employees' anomic behaviors. The results of this study highlighted the importance that the quality of work life has on reducing unethical and immoral behavior among employees in public organizations.     

Community acceptance of recycled water: can we inoculate the public against scare campaigns?

Without improved water resource management, it is predicted that water shortages will affect two‐thirds of humanity by 2025. One solution that has traditionally faced fierce public resistance is recycled waste water. This study investigates the extent to which public communication strategies can influence community acceptance of recycled water, using the framework of Inoculation Theory. A four‐phase experimental design was conducted. Participants completed an initial questionnaire and were then randomly assigned to a control group, a manipulation check group or a treatment group. A final follow‐up survey measured changes in the dependent variable: stated likelihood of using recycled water for different uses. Results indicate that communication strategies based on Inoculation Theory are limited in their effectiveness for this product category. Findings do, however, identify a clear recency effect, indicating that continuous public communications are key to ensuring that community scare campaigns do not prevent implementation of water augmentation projects. This study differs from previous applications of Inoculation Theory because of the challenges associated with marketing a monopoly commodity, which is a necessity to support life. This empirical study uses fictional marketing stimuli to test the theory in a context, which is growing in global importance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is the Median Voter a Clear-Cut Winner?: Comparing theMedian Voter Theory and Competing Theories in Explaining LocalGovernment Spending

This paper attempts to test the power of the median model againstthe respective strength of other alternate models based onredistributive, political-institutional and interest group theoriesin explaining the demand for public spending in New York statecounties during 1990, 1980 and 1970. To execute the comparison ofthe performance of median voter model with that of each of thenonmedian voter ones, various nonnested tests such as J and JAtests, N-tilde, W and encompassing tests have been employed.Results of the study show that although the median voter model hasa marginal edge over the rival models based on the alternativetheories, it may not be relied upon solely when many otherinstitutional, redistributive and interest group factors are alsorelevant for explaining public spending. The results of this studydiffer from those in Congleton and Bennett (1995). We do not findthat interest group models are substantially weaker than the medianvoter model.     

What can a party say? How parties' communication can influence voters' issue ownership perceptions

Research has documented that issue ownership is an important aspect of voter behaviour. Therefore, issue ownership is an important asset for parties and one that they might try to improve on in order to enhance their electoral chances. Using survey experiments on a representative sample of Danish voters, the paper investigates what messages a party can convey to voters in order to improve its issue ownership – communicating its emphasis on the issue, its position on the issue, its links to the issue constituency, or its performance on the issue – across both valence and position issues. The results show the effectiveness of the latter two communication strategies thereby documenting that parties through their communication may affect voters' perceptions of their issue handling competencies.     

British intelligence and the middle east, 1900–1918: how much do we know?

Primary sources available in British and Israeli archives (first and foremost – the Public Record Office) allow serious study of the British intelligence apparatus in the Middle East and its contribution to the military operations and diplomatic-political process there, prior to and during the First World War. Yet, existing knowledge focuses on military intelligence, as documentation on the Secret Service and the Security Service (both in the form of EMSIB) as well as on army and naval signal intelligence operations in the region is barely available – destroyed or still classified. Examination of hitherto unexplored foreign depositories may serve as an indirect approach to overcome this paucity of material, owing to the close wartime cooperation between British, French, Russian and Italian intelligence on the Ottoman Empire.     

What Drives the Swing Voter in Africa?

What makes African voters “up for grabs”? Existing approaches to the swing voter have several liabilities. This article introduces a new measure enabling a more comprehensive assessment of swing voting, including the differentiation between clientelistic and collective goods motivations. The issue of swing voting is then brought to an environment where voters are rarely considered persuadable: Africa. Using a count‐model estimation technique and original survey data from Ghana's critical 2008 elections, the analysis challenges the near consensus in African politics on clientelism as the only electoral strategy. When voters perceive politicians as providing collective, developmental goods, the efficacy of clientelism as a tool to win over voters is reduced. Many persuadable voters can also be won over by both clientelistic and collective goods, thus contradicting the literature presenting these as mutually exclusive. Finally, the analysis shows that incumbents do better when they provide collective goods even in highly clientelistic environments.