Dynamic estimation of ideal points for the US Congress

Theories of candidate positioning suggest that candidates will respond dynamically to their electoral environment. Because of the difficulty of obtaining “bridge votes”, most existing approaches for estimating the ideal points of members of Congress generate static ideal points or ideal points that move linearly over time. We propose an approach for dynamic ideal point estimation using Project Vote Smart’s National Political Awareness Test to construct bridge votes. We use our dynamic estimates to measure aggregate change, to measure individual-level change, and to study the institutional and structural factors that explain the changing positions of House candidates and members of Congress. We demonstrate that while the Republican Party has been selecting increasingly extreme candidates, Democratic incumbents have become more extreme while in office. We also find that the congruence between elected members of Congress and their constituents is mostly explained by the selection as opposed to the responsiveness of the candidate. Nonetheless, we find evidence of dynamic responsiveness of incumbents in specific circumstances. We find that competitiveness, midterm elections, and sharing the president’s party affiliation are associated with greater responsiveness. Conversely, retirement is not associated with a change in responsiveness. We find no evidence of responsiveness of challengers. Finally, we find that close elections draw challengers who are more in line with the district’s ideology.     

Dissent in Iberia: The ideal points of justices on the Spanish and Portuguese Constitutional Tribunals

In this article, the non‐unanimous decisions of the Portuguese and Spanish Constitutional Tribunals for the periods 1989–2009 and 2000–2009 are analysed. It is shown that judicial dissent can be predicted moderately well on the basis of judicial ideal points along a single dimension. This dimension is equivalent to the left–right cleavage in both Portugal and Spain. The characteristics of the recovered dimension are demonstrated by analysing both the properties of the cases and the properties of the justices who decided them.     

Gated communities: The new ideal way of life in natal,Brazil

Abstract

Gated communities have been growing quickly in Brazil's urban and suburban areas since the 1980s, bringing challenges to society through their privatization of public space, conflict with planning norms, and interference with the integrated planning of the cities in which they are built. My article analyzes this phenomenon to establish a clear basis for purposeful public policies in Brazil. The analysis is based on a case study of the first three closed condominiums in Natal. It involves 31 semistructured interviews focusing on legal, urban/architectural, and segregational factors and their implications.

Federal and local governments have contributed, deliberately or unwittingly, to the development of such enclosed complexes, which have social and spatial impacts and guarantee that the upper class will remain wealthy. There also seems to be a close relationship between the spread of fortified residences and the promotion of a “culture of fear.”     

The preconditions for successful evaluation: Is there an ideal paradigm?

The dominant paradigm in evaluation research is undergoing serious challenge. This article explores the ideal role of evaluation in decisionmaking, the methodologies for conducting evaluations, the congruence between evaluation methodology and actual organizational behavior, and the relationship between evaluators and program managers. We conclude that although there are serious disparities between the ideal and the actual in each of these four areas, and especially in the congruence between evaluation methodology and organizational behavior, there is not likely to be a change in the dominant paradigm because it is difficult for practitioners to use the language and values of new organizational perspectives.     

Increasingly unequal turnout in Eastern European new democracies: Communist and transitional legacies versus new institutions

Unequal turnout, namely that educated citizens are more likely to vote, has been a long-standing pre-occupation of scholars of political participation and has been shown to exist across established democracies in varying degrees. Using pooled cross-sectional individual level data covering the period from 1990 to 2007 across 12 post-communist new democracies, this paper examines the applicability of existing explanations for unequal turnout in the Eastern European context. The paper shows that while voting procedures explain some cross-national variation in unequal turnout, turnout inequality is likewise shaped over time by processes related to the transition from communism, primarily the fading of initial excitement with democratic elections. The mechanism of learning among mature voters rather than generational replacement dominates the latter process.     

正义的社会:是现实的批判还是理想的建构——从马克思和罗尔斯的自由平等的正义观谈起

马克思与罗尔斯对正义社会的要求是自由平等的,但是二人对于自由平等观的正义社会是不同的,马克思是从现实社会出发,是一种批判的正义观,而罗尔斯是根据一种社会契约来建构正义的社会,建构的是理想社会的正义观,通过对二人正义观的比较,我们能够得出对于现行社会的启示。     

A method for measuring and decomposing electoral bias for the three-party case, illustrated by the British case

The measurement of bias in election results, whereby one or more parties are advantaged in the translation of votes into seats at the expense of others, is attracting increasing attention. So far, almost all of the analytical work – aimed at both identifying the extent of bias in an election result and establishing its causes – has focused on either two-party systems or on the largest two parties in multi-party systems. Building on the firm foundations of one such approach, this paper introduces an original procedure for analysing bias in three-party systems using a readily-appreciated metric for both evaluating the degree of bias and decomposing it into the various causal factors. This is illustrated using the example of the 2005 British general election and a comparison of the results from two-party and three-party analyses of six recent elections there.     

Maximizing shareholder value: a new ideology for corporate governance

The decade-long boom in the US stock market and the more recent boom in the US economy have fostered widespread belief in the economic benefits of the maximization of shareholder value as a principle of corporate governance. In this paper, we provide an historical analysis of the rise of shareholder value as a principle of corporate governance in the United States, tracing the transformation of US corporate strategy from an orientation towards retention of corporate earnings and reinvestment in corporate growth through the 1970s to one of downsizing of corporate labour forces and distribution of corporate earnings to shareholders over the past two decades. We then consider the recent performance of the US economy, and raise questions about the relation between the maximization of shareholder value and the sustainability of economic prosperity.     

Coordination, focal points and voting in strategic situations: a natural experiment

This paper studies coordination in a multi-stage elimination tournament with large monetary incentives and a diversified subject pool drawn from the adult British population. In the tournament, members of an ad hoc team earn money by answering general knowledge questions and then eliminate one contestant by plurality voting without prior communication. We find that in the early rounds of the tournament, contestants use a focal principle and coordinate on one of the multiple Nash equilibria in pure strategies by eliminating the weakest member of the team. However, in the later rounds, contestants switch to playing a mixed strategy Nash equilibrium.     

Toward a new constitution for a future country

This paper outlines a preliminary radical plan for a constitution based primarily on recent contributions on mechanisms for choice of public goods and on constitutional rules and concepts, but based also on experience with present constitutions, corporate charters, and private arbitration procedures. It uses the standard economic perspective, disregarding such motives as herd instincts and the desire to serve the public interest. The result is markedly different from existing constitutions.