A Scaling Model for Estimating Time-Series Party Positions from Texts

Recent advances in computational content analysis have provided scholars promising new ways for estimating party positions. However, existing text-based methods face challenges in producing valid and reliable time-series data. This article proposes a scaling algorithm called WORDFISH to estimate policy positions based on word frequencies in texts. The technique allows researchers to locate parties in one or multiple elections. We demonstrate the algorithm by estimating the positions of German political parties from 1990 to 2005 using word frequencies in party manifestos. The extracted positions reflect changes in the party system more accurately than existing time-series estimates. In addition, the method allows researchers to examine which words are important for placing parties on the left and on the right. We find that words with strong political connotations are the best discriminators between parties. Finally, a series of robustness checks demonstrate that the estimated positions are insensitive to distributional assumptions and document selection.     

Conflict,Accommodation, and Bargaining: The Implications of Using Politically Buffered Institutions for Contentious Decision Making

One type of new public management reform has been the devolution of services to quasi‐autonomous single purpose governments. This research examines the implications of using a particular type of single purpose government, known as a public authority, in a politically contentious policy setting. Public authorities are generally observed to be highly effective in accomplishing their desired ends in the face of political controversy. However, in examining cases of New York State public authorities siting and developing landfills and incinerators, this research found that they were far less effective than their general purpose government counterparts. The cases suggest that the public authorities created a paradox of power and professionalism. Many public authorities were created to protect professional decision making from political influence, but as a result, they had few resources to bargain in the political process. However, if a public authority had political resources, they had less need to be professional.     

Using Bayesian Aldrich‐McKelvey Scaling to Study Citizens' Ideological Preferences and Perceptions

Aldrich‐McKelvey scaling is a powerful method that corrects for differential‐item functioning (DIF) in estimating the positions of political stimuli (e.g., parties and candidates) and survey respondents along a latent policy dimension from issue scale data. DIF arises when respondents interpret issue scales (e.g., the standard liberal‐conservative scale) differently and distort their placements of the stimuli and themselves. We develop a Bayesian implementation of the classical maximum likelihood Aldrich‐McKelvey scaling method that overcomes some important shortcomings in the classical procedure. We then apply this method to study citizens' ideological preferences and perceptions using data from the 2004–2012 American National Election Studies and the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Our findings indicate that DIF biases self‐placements on the liberal‐conservative scale in a way that understates the extent of polarization in the contemporary American electorate and that citizens have remarkably accurate perceptions of the ideological positions of senators and Senate candidates.     

Leadership and Meaningful Work in the Public Sector

There have been many important studies on leadership in the public administration discipline; however, scholarly inquiry still lags behind related disciplines such as psychology and business administration. This article helps fill that gap by analyzing the role that public leaders play in making work more meaningful for their employees, which, in turn, has a positive influence on employee job outcomes. Specifically, the authors analyze the mediating role of work meaningfulness in the relationships between leader‐member exchange and organizational commitment, work effort, and work‐to‐family enrichment. Samples from education, health care, and local government are used. Results show that leadership strongly influences work meaningfulness, which, in turn, influences job outcomes. In addition, the impact and extent of leadership and work meaningfulness are higher in health care and education than in local government. The results emphasize the importance of leadership and meaningful work in the public sector.     

Deception and Fear in Politically Oppressive Contexts: Its Trickle-Down Effect on Families

The mystified reality, restricted options, and inherent risks of living in countries under a repressive political regime trigger survival tactics that reduce individual's reliance on social support, as well as semantic and cognitive restrictions and alternative codes, and silences that translate into symptoms. While this is the case for the average citizen, it is even more pronounced in individuals and families directly touched by the repressive apparatus. These processes are discussed and two clinical examples are provided to illustrate them.     

Politically Significant Events and Their Effect on the Image of Political Parties

Abstract

This article begins by arguing that the image of a political party is of strategic importance in its pursuit of electoral success. More specifically, it is argued that important influences on party image are ‘politically relevant’ events. The paper then develops a conceptual model of how the images of political parties are influenced by such events. It considers internal and external factors that influence the power of a given event to affect party image. Next, the process of image transfer itself is discussed along with the factors that influence the way credit/ blame is apportioned from an event. Then, ways of dealing with ‘negative’ events are considered. The overall model is used to analyse a specific political event (the Iraq war) and assess its likely impact on party image. The article concludes by assessing the model's efficacy and limitations in analysing the case used and with events per se. Finally, future research ideas prompted by the paper are discussed.     

Three Decades of Policy Layering and Politically Sustainable Reform in the European Union's Agricultural Policy

The study of policy reform has tended to focus on single‐stage reforms taking place over a relatively short period. Recent research has drawn attention to gradual policy changes unfolding over extended periods. One strategy of gradual change is layering, in which new policy dimensions are introduced by adding new policy instruments or by redesigning existing ones to address new concerns. The limited research on single‐stage policy reforms highlights that these may not endure in the postenactment phase when circumstances change. We argue that gradual policy layering may create sustainability dynamics that can result in lasting reform trajectories. The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has changed substantially over the last three decades in response to emerging policy concerns by adding new layers. This succession of reforms proved durable and resilient to reversal in the lead‐up to the 2013 CAP reform when institutional and political circumstances changed.     

The 'Bad Mother' in Media and Legal Texts

Mothers who kill or injure their children highlight crucial disjunctions between the status ‘mother’ and the practices and expectations of mothering. Failures of ‘mothering’ reconstruct the meaning of the maternal, while being themselves given meaning by it. Violent mothers may be pathologised and excused, demonised and condemned, but the explanatory narratives that are used draw centrally on notions of the maternal and, more broadly, the feminine. These discourses are reproduced in legal proceedings and sentences, and in the media reports of these proceedings. This paper will analyse the construction of the bad mother in legal proceedings in one prominent recent Victorian case, and in the print media reports of this case.     

Office and Policy at the Expense of Votes: Plaid Cymru and the One Wales Government

This paper will examine Plaid Cymru's experience in government from 2007 to 2011. Drawing on literature on autonomist parties, parties in government for the first time, and Strøm and Müller's policy/office/votes framework, the paper examines where strategic 'trade-offs’ were made and what the consequences of such trade-offs were. The paper takes a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interview and documentary data. The paper finds that Plaid Cymru valued the policy-seeking potential of office at the expense of vote-seeking ones because of the importance of 'autonomist' goals, namely the 2011 referendum which saw primary law-making powers granted to the Welsh Assembly. Furthermore, the experience of governmental office exposed organizational vulnerabilities in the party's leadership structures which undermined the ability to construct an effective vote-winning strategy at the 2011 Welsh election, where the party lost four seats.     

Politically connected independent supervisory boards and corporate performance during COVID-19: Evidence from Indonesia

This study aims to examine the relationship between the political connections of companies' independent supervisory boards (PC-ISB) to these firms' performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. This study used 1515 observations of companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) for the years 2018–2021. The test was carried out using moderated regression analysis. Additional tests were also conducted, such as market performance tests and endogeneity tests using the System Generalized Method of Moments (the System GMM) and the difference-in-difference (DID) regression analysis. Results confirm that PC-ISB has a significant positive effect on company performance. Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company's performance got worse. However, we did not find that pandemic conditions moderated the relationship between PC-ISB and company performance. Our results remained consistent after testing using the System GMM and the DID to address the issue of endogeneity.     

Party,Constituency, and Representation: Votes on Abortion in the British House of Commons

Public Choice - To whom do British Members of Parliament respond when votingin the House of Commons? Using a series of votes on abortion,the revealed preferences of MPs are estimated. The...     

Information Technology and Its Social Dimensions

Books reviewed in this article:
Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene, Powering Up: How Public Managers Can Take Control of Information Technology
G. David Garson (ed.), Social Dimensions of Information Technology: Issues for the New Millennium
Pippa Norris, Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide