New evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic growth

It is often maintained that democracy is a luxury which comes at a price in terms of subsequent slower increases in national living standards. However, various recent cross-section studies on economic growth have found evidence that lack of civil and political liberties is negatively correlated with economic growth. Using a new measure of democracy, which is based upon the number of years that a country can be regarded as a democracy, the robustness of this relationship is examined. Both direct and indirect effects of lack of democratic liberties are analysed. Our main conclusion is that the relationship between democracy and economic growth is not rubust.     

Further evidence on the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth

Much of the literature on the power of elected officials and bureaucratic agencies argues, from an empirical perspective, that bureaus appears to exercise autonomy. In this paper, a theoretical model sets out the conditions under which the Congress, the President, and one agency (we use the U.S. Federal Reserve as an extended example) can dictate policy outcomes. The results of the paper include the “Congressional Dominance” theorem: If more than 2/3 of House members, and more than 2/3 of Senate members, agree on something, they get it. The theorem is obvious (the “proof” is in the U.S. Constitution), but often forgotten in the substantive literature. More realistic results are derived for situations where the preferences of members of Congress are more diverse. Powers of the President to influence policy with, and without, appointments are also analyzed.     

Crime Story: The role of crime and immigration in the anti-immigration vote

Some scholars have found that mass immigration fuels the success of anti-immigration parties, whereas others have found that it does not. In this paper, we propose a reason for these contradictory results. We advance a set of hypotheses that revolves around a commonly ignored factor, crime. To test these hypotheses, we examine a setting where an anti-immigration party, the LPF, participated in simultaneous elections in all Dutch municipalities, which form a single constituency. According to our results, the impact of immigration rates on the individual vote for the LPF only manifests itself among those voters who are very ‘tough on crime’. In addition, we demonstrate that high local crime rates make an anti-immigration vote more likely, but only among voters who are very ‘tough on immigration’. This suggests that immigration and crime rates do not make all citizens more likely to cast an anti-immigration vote, but only those who perceive a link between the two issues. Thus, if one wishes to reduce anti-immigration leaders’ electoral support, countering their criminalization of immigrants may be a more fruitful strategy than trying to stop immigration – if at all possible.     

After the immigration shock: The causal effect of immigration on electoral preferences

The influx of immigrants to Norway over the last decades is a large-scale natural experiment. This paper exploits municipal-level variations in the immigrant population (1977–2011) to estimate the causal effects on voter support for the right-wing, anti-immigration Progress Party.The results indicate that voters keep incumbents accountable for permissive immigration policies. Immigration from non-Western countries (Africa, Asia, Latin America) has increased electoral support for the Progress Party. However, the effects are quite modest and noticeable only in the initial phases of immigration. Survey data covering ten elections (1989–2011) indicate a similar development in anti-immigration attitudes. The primary immigration shock tends to burn out quite fast as people get direct experience of immigrants on a daily basis.     

Public pensions and voting on immigration

In a recent paper, Scholten and Thum (1996) analyze the impact of a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension system with a fixed replacement ratio on the immigration policy in a democracy. We extend the analysis of median voter's choice in two respects. First, in contrast to Scholten and Thum (1996) who assume myopic voting behavior, our paper considers fully rational agents and provides a solution under this more complex behavioral assumption. Voting with rational agents yields a more liberal immigration policy than with myopic voters. Second, we examine a different decision structure with a fixed contribution rate to the pension system. In this case the majority rule leads to a completely different solution.     

A note on the political economy of immigration

In this note it is shown that the different attitudes towards immigration can be explained in terms of economic interest, although the public immigration debate is dominated by moral and political arguments. On the one hand, immigration supporters are mainly found among those who may expect economic gains from immigration – skilled workers and especially members of certain professions. On the other hand, unskilled workers who stand to lose economically because they can be easily substitued for by immigrants are for the most part opposed to immigration.     

Unanimous constitutional consent and the immigration problem

This paper utilizes the cross-cutting cleavages approach to evaluate the probability of a unanimous constitutional consent and, based on these results, discusses the implications of immigration on an existing constitutional consent. It is shown that previous conclusions of beneficial effects stemming from a multitude of political dimensions for a unanimous constitutional consent crucially depend on the assumption of an extreme mode of intrapersonal compensation of constitutional majority and minority preferences. These conclusions are reversed once you consider more restrictive schemes of such intrapersonal compensation. Since, furthermore, the probability of constitutional consent unambiguously falls with a growing size of the collectivity, only a policy of selective and controlled immigration will be able to guarantee with regard to the existing cleavages of a society that the existing constitutional consent will not be damaged or destroyed, whereas uncontrolled immigration, possibly based on ethical norms, will risk the breakdown of any constitutional consent in a society.     

On David Miller on immigration control

David Miller offers a liberal realist defence of immigration control grounded in cosmopolitan ideals of self-determination, fairness and integration. But a commitment to liberal values requires a commitment to more open borders than he admits. A part of the problem is that the notion of open borders Miller criticises is under-theorised. A deeper problem is that immigration control itself is inconsistent with important liberal values – notably the values of freedom and equality. This is a concern because it is the freedom and equality not only of immigrants but also of citizens that is threatened by the closing of borders.     

Black on black crime

He has published extensively on health and social welfare policy issues and is coauthor of Urban America and Public Policiesand The Chronically-Limited Elderly: The Case for a National Policy for In-Home and Community-Based Services.     

A note on crime and punishment

The models developed here are intended to convince the reader that Tsebelis' results — that increased punishment leaves the equilibrium level of crime unchanged — is an example of what is possible rather than a general result. To recap the argument in words: it is true that raising the penalty on a crime may cause the enforcing agency to divert attention away to other matters, so that theexpected penalty facing the prospective criminal is not as high as it would have been had the agency not adjusted; but it is not generally true that enforcing agencies will choose to lower their probabilities of enforcement just enough to exactly offset the increased penalty, leaving the expected penalty unchanged, hence the equilibrium level of crime unchanged.⁸ this result sounds unusual when stated in words and it is when modelled using the theory of games too.This work was supported by NSF grant SES-9022882.     

民主:在信任与不信任之间——兼论民主与信任的关系

民主总是处于"信任"与"不信任"之间。本文从政治社会学的视角出发,探究了民主何以总是处于信任与不信任之间,并提出并不是所有类型的信任都有益于民主,信任与民主之间存在着一个悖论。     

心理学与高校德育工作关系探析

高校德育工作是一项极其复杂的系统工程,是进行思想道德教育的主渠道、主阵地和主课堂。在市场经济与多元文化影响下,高校德育工作从外在视角对人施加影响的传统教育方式受到冲击,导致高校德育工作显得苍白无力,实效不佳。因此将心理学原理和方法与高校德育工作相结合成为时代背景下新的探索方向。     

Protest and property crime: political use of police resources and the deterrence of crime

This article investigates the claim that the political use of police resources promotes crime. Using a panel of South Korean metropolitan areas, we show that (1) the reallocation of police resources toward the control of political protests reduces arrest rates for crime and (2) the resulting reduction in criminal arrests significantly increases the incidence of crime. Overall, the impact of the reallocation of police resources works mainly through tradeoffs with arrest rates. Our findings imply that it is not the size of the police per se, but the allocation of police resources toward crime control that deters crime.     

大学生自我控制与心理健康的相关研究

采用SCL-90症状自评量表和自我控制量表修定版对180名枣庄学院大学生进行测量,结果发现:大学生心理健康情况和自我控制能力不存在显著性差异。同时,大学生自我控制能力与心理健康情况显著正相关,对心理健康有显著的预测作用。     

Beyond reason: the philosophy and politics of immigration

In this paper, I critically address the role of arbitrary and contingent features in philosophical debates about migration. These features play a central role, and display the importance of ‘unreason’ in the debate and the limits of rational criticism. Certain elements of political thought have to be taken as given, as essential starting points or indispensable building blocks. As such, they cannot be exposed to rational criticism. Political arrangements such as national borders, nation-states and national identities constitute these building blocks, and justify coercive borders in order to sustain them. If we are to subject these arrangements to critical examination, then we move beyond the limits of liberal political philosophy. I examine theorists who take this kind of approach to the ethics of immigration: Michael Blake, Samuel Scheffler and David Miller. I argue that such approaches ask us to balance arbitrary and contingent features of the political world against the non-contingent moral equality of the migrant. If we are to recognize the migrant as an equal reason-giver in the moral contestation of borders, then we are compelled to theorize beyond these limits, and to theorize instead about a global community of equals, a post-national world made up of transnational belonging.     

高校思想政治教育与心理健康教育的关系研究

大学生是十分宝贵的人才资源,是民族的希望、祖国的未来。必须加强和改进大学生思想政治教育和心理健康教育,提高他们的思想政治素质,健全他们的心理素质。思想政治教育是高等学校育人的政治方向,也是心理健康教育的基础,必须用中国特色社会主义理论体系武装大学生的思想头脑;心理健康教育是大学生成长、成熟、成才的重要保障。思想政治教育和心理健康教育是相辅相成、良性互动的,必须把思想政治教育和心理健康教育有机结合起来,为中国特色社会主义事业培养高素质人才。     

Organized crime and the 1960 presidential election

It has been asserted that, based on a pre-election agreement promising them favorable federal treatment, the Chicago Mob (known as the “Outfit”) was responsible for John Kennedy’s election in 1960. An examination of these claims indicates that the sources generally lack credibility and their accounts are implausible. Additionally, there is no evidence Outfit controlled wards/suburbs around Chicago or members of Outfit influenced labor unions voted unusually heavily Democratic in the 1960 presidential election. Therefore, if anything the Outfit “double crossed” the Kennedys by not delivering the promised votes, as opposed to vice-versa. “Someone forgot to tell the horse.” – An old saying in horse racing.     

实践与真理的关系

实践与认识是对立的统一体，实践是认识的来源和基础，又是认识的目的，人们要想不断获得新的认识，正确地认识客观事物，找到真理，必须通过实践。实践是检验认识真理的根本手段，但由于实践本身的变化性，相对性，特别是在阶级社会里，对立的双方会进行完全相反的实践，因此如何检验实践却需要一个标准。而只有真理本身是客观的，确定的，实践正确与否要由真理来判断，而真理又是具体的，相对的，指导实践的真理也是相对真理，只有在相对真理指导下进行实践才能产生新的更多的真理认识，实现相对真理到绝对真理的转化。