What does “Political” Mean to You?

How do regular people define the term “political”? This original study gives Americans and Canadians an opportunity to express their interpretations of the concept. It identifies a great deal of inter-personal variation in terms of how many and what kinds of topics people perceive as the stuff of politics. And this variation comes in predictable patterns: the findings reveal correlations between socio-political attributes (such as gender, nationality and ideology) and the boundaries people draw around the political domain. The study also provides insight into the ways people distinguish the political from the non-political in their minds. And importantly, individuals’ interpretations of the term “politics” relate systematically to other measures of self-reported political behavior including political interest and frequency of political discussion. These results can be used to refine survey analysis and to broaden knowledge of day-to-day citizen politics.     

Ideologically Sophisticated Donors: Which Candidates Do Individual Contributors Finance?

Individuals are the single largest source of campaign contributions, yet we know little about their motivations. For instance, the existing literature questions whether individual contributors sophisticatedly differentiate among candidates according to policy positions, particularly among same‐party candidates. We analyze this issue by combining data from a new survey of over 2,800 in‐ and out‐of‐state donors associated with the 2012 Senate elections, FEC data on contributors’ professions, and legislative records. Three major findings emerge. First, policy agreement between a donor's positions and a senator's roll calls significantly influences the likelihood of giving, even for same‐party contributors. Second, there is a significant effect of committee membership corresponding to a donor's occupation; this holds even for donors who claim that other motivations dominate, but it does not appear to be motivated by an expectation of access. Third, conditional upon a donation occurring, its size is determined by factors outside a legislator's control.     

Would You Volunteer?

Being motivated to volunteer is a crucial condition for both the volunteers and those seeking their services. Yet the reigning conceptual model of volunteering in the field of nonprofit sector studies—an economic one based on the idea that the first may be defined as people engaged in unpaid labor—offers at best a superficial explanation of the motives encouraging them to altruistically offer their time. In light of this conceptual deficiency another definition of volunteering (and hence volunteer) has, of late, been gaining acceptance. Sometimes referred to as a volitional definition, it roots in sociology and social psychology: volunteers feel they are engaging in a leisure activity, which they have had the option to accept or reject on their own terms.

Which Nonprofit Organizations Borrow?

The tax benefit, bankruptcy value, and pecking-order theories of corporate capital structure are discussed in context of nonprofit organizations. A bivariate probit model shows that coefficients differ between models meaning mortgages and tax-exempt bonds are not equivalent forms of debt. Organizations with proportionally more program revenues, contributions, total assets, total revenues, and executive compensation are more likely to have a mortgage. Nonprofits that rely on special event fund-raising or contributions have a lower probability of using bond financing. The use of debt is also influenced by the nature of the organization's mission as measured through the NTEE classification.     

Do the Joneses Help You Keep Up? A Natural Experiment in Exposure to Nonpoor Neighbors

This study capitalizes on a natural experiment in Montgomery County, Maryland, where low-income applicant families are randomly assigned to public housing that is either (a) clustered within seven public housing developments or (b) scattered into market-rate subdivisions via the county's inclusionary zoning policy. Through a survey of 453 public housing residents, we find that adults who lived in scattered public housing reported a lower proportion of low-socioeconomic status (SES) social ties generally and a lower proportion of low-SES neighbors specifically in their social networks. They also counted more high-SES individuals in their social networks, and this effect was related to the amount of time they lived in the neighborhood. Living in scattered public housing had no adverse effect on feelings of neighborhood belonging or satisfaction. The socioeconomic composition of respondents' social networks was associated with two health outcomes for respondents (smoking and depression) and modestly associated with respondents' household income.     

Which Rectangle?: An Extension

This note examines the social cost of rent seeking when firmsseek rent by obtaining government subsidies as well as bysecuring a monopoly position. The social cost of rent seekingproves to be represented by the new Tullock rectangle.     

Why Do Experienced Challengers Do Better than Amateurs?

Politically experienced challengers are more successful in seeking political office than amateurs. The relationship is found so regularly that political experience has become the standard ex ante indicator of challenger quality in studies of American elections. Despite this, little work has investigated why experienced challengers are so successful. Many scholars attribute the relationship to inherent differences between experienced challengers and amateurs: experienced challengers have stronger electoral skills and greater access to material resources. I argue that these differences play a role, but an indirect one. Rather, experienced challengers are lead by both their resource advantage and the high amount of risk they are exposed to in seeking office to run in races in which their party has a good chance of winning. Thus, the direct cause of the experienced challengers’ success is self-selection into winnable races. Empirical analysis supports the self-selection model over a model in which resources directly lead to success.

Do elections bring optimism?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of elections on economic sentiment. Using monthly data from 14 EU countries over the 1985–2011 period, we show that there is a significant improvement, statistically and economically, of sentiment of the month that elections take place, but this effect is rather short lived, lasting on average less than two months.     

If You’re a Critical Theorist,How Come You Work for a University?

How can we deal with the apparent contradiction between the normative ideals of critical theory and the practice of the current university system? To answer this question, I consult three classical criticisms of the university system: At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the French educator Joseph Jacotot formulated a pedagogical critique of the disciplinary effects of the educational system; at the beginning of the twentieth century, German historian Franz Rosenzweig articulated an ethical critique of the hegemonic educational system’s distance from life; and at the beginning of the twentyfirst century, British feminist Sara Ahmed proposed a political critique of the oppressing functions of academic institutions. Taken together, these critiques can serve as an orientation for critical intellectual practice even within the academic system. Finally, I try to describe the relation between critical theory and the university thus evolving by utilising Stefano Harney’s and Fred Moten’s concept of the “undercommons”.