The Electoral Sweet Spot: Low‐Magnitude Proportional Electoral Systems

Can electoral rules be designed to achieve political ideals such as accurate representation of voter preferences and accountable governments? The academic literature commonly divides electoral systems into two types, majoritarian and proportional, and implies a straightforward trade‐off by which having more of an ideal that a majoritarian system provides means giving up an equal measure of what proportional representation (PR) delivers. We posit that these trade‐offs are better characterized as nonlinear and that one can gain most of the advantages attributed to PR, while sacrificing less of those attributed to majoritarian elections, by maintaining district magnitudes in the low to moderate range. We test this intuition against data from 609 elections in 81 countries between 1945 and 2006. Electoral systems that use low‐magnitude multimember districts produce disproportionality indices almost on par with those of pure PR systems while limiting party system fragmentation and producing simpler government coalitions.     

Everything to Everyone: The Electoral Consequences of the Broad‐Appeal Strategy in Europe

Parties often tailor their campaign message differently to different groups of voters with the goal of appealing to a broader electorate with diverse preferences and thereby winning their votes. I argue that the strategy helps a party win votes if it can convince diverse groups of voters that the party is ideologically closer to their preferred positions. Using election data from nine Western European democracies, I first show that parties gain votes when they appeal broadly. Analysis of individual‐level survey data suggests that voters perceive broadly appealing parties as ideologically closer to their own positions, a finding that identifies a plausible mechanism behind the aggregate positive effect of this strategy on party election performance. These findings not only help explain the behavior of some European parties, but they may also offer a potential recipe for electoral success in multiparty democracies.     

The sun safety metanarrative: Translating science into public health discourse

A case study examining the relationship between ozone depletion, UV radiation and skin cancer shows how scientific uncertainty is reduced and, through consensus building, translated into certainty in public health messages. Using narrative analysis we examine Canadian consensus statements on the dangers of UV and reconstruct the supporting logical claims and scientific evidence. Though considerable uncertainty remains about the relationship between the environment and skin cancer, both public health messages and the UV-Index formalize uncertainty and risk; concern then shifts from the less-certain, scientific realm into the apparently more-certain arena of public health messages. In this process the distinctions between science and policy become blurred. The case can be interpreted in two ways: as the result of various players acting in their self-interests or as a moral drama based on the importance of simple, clear messages to allow correct actions.     

Voter Engagement,Electoral Inequality and First‐Time Compulsory Voting

This paper reviews the problem of declining turnout and proposes as a solution a system whereby each elector would be legally obliged to vote in the first election for which they were eligible. Popular attitudes toward first‐time compulsory voting are measured and probed by means of UK data. The main findings of the paper are that first‐time compulsory voting is a politically and administratively feasible proposal that appears tentatively to command popular support and has the potential to help address a number of the problems associated with declining turnout, and in particular low rates of electoral participation among younger citizens.     

Congressional Intelligence Oversight: The Electoral Disconnection

This article seeks to reconcile congressional oversight models in theory with oversight realities in intelligence. For nearly three decades, political scientists have argued that Congress controls the bureaucracy – and in surprisingly efficient ways. Yet the history of intelligence oversight suggests the opposite. We take a fresh look at the logic and empirics of police patrol and fire alarm models and find that neither explains intelligence oversight well. Both rely on assumptions, such as the presence of strong and plentiful interest groups, which characterize domestic policy but not US intelligence policy. Our data – comparing committee hearing activities, legislative productivity, and interest groups across different policy domains between 1985 and 2005 – reveal that oversight varies dramatically by policy issue, and that intelligence almost always ranks at the bottom. Ironically, the same electoral incentives that generate robust oversight in some policy areas turn out to be far weaker in intelligence.     

The Politics of Electoral Reform Abolition: The Informed Process of Israel's Return to Its Previous Electoral System

This article examines the process that led to the repeal of Israeli electoral reform (1992–2001) and compares it with that of reform adoption (1987–92). The most significant difference between the two processes is in the kinds of information that were available in them. In the politics of reform adoption, information was susceptible to manipulation and its supply was a crucial part of the struggle itself. In the politics of reform abolition, the real consequences of reform were constantly unfolding. This substantial difference resulted in other differences – not in type but in extent. First, while both were ongoing processes in which coalitions of supporters and opponents had to be built and then rebuilt several times, the cohesion of the camps throughout the struggle for reform abolition was higher than in the struggle for reform adoption. Second, while office-seeking successfully served as a basis for understanding the behavior of most parliamentary actors, the actual perceptions of its exact contextual meaning was dependent upon different available information. The two processes also had two common characteristics: power was diffused in both arenas of the politics of reform and in both instances the selection of the right timing proved to be necessary for successfully promoting the initiatives against veto players who were interested in preserving the status quo.     

Housing Voucher Take‐Up and Labor Market Impacts

Low participation rates in government assistance programs are a major policy concern in the United States. This paper studies take‐up of Section 8 housing vouchers, a program in which take‐up rates are quite low among interested and eligible households. We link 18,109 households in Chicago that were offered vouchers through a lottery to administrative data and study how baseline employment, earnings, public assistance, arrests, residential location, and children's academic performance predict take‐up. Our analysis finds mixed evidence of whether the most disadvantaged or distressed households face the largest barriers to program participation. We also study the causal impact of peer behavior on take‐up by exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the timing of voucher offers. We find that the probability of lease‐up increases with the number of neighbors who recently received voucher offers. Finally, we explore the policy implications of increasing housing voucher take‐up by applying reweighting methods to existing causal impact estimates of voucher receipt. This analysis suggests that greater utilization of vouchers may lead to larger reductions in labor market activity. Differences in take‐up rates across settings may be important to consider when assessing the external validity of studies identifying the effects of public assistance programs.     

Votes for Sale: The Logic of Power in Joint-Stock Companies

The joint-stock company as an institution rests on two major principles. On the one hand, it embodies the logic of collective choice. The ultimate rights to power are vested in a constituency composed of the stockholders. The constituency elects a board which in turn appoints an executive. Decisions are usually taken by majority rule. In these respects, the joint-stock company resembles the democratic polity. On the other hand, it also includes important elements of market exchange. Unlike many other instances in which the logic of collective choice applies, the rights to power can be freely exchanged on a stock market. This paper examines the power implications of this combination of principles using illustrations drawn from the corporate world of Sweden. It argues that although there are similarities between the situation of stockholders and that of voters, the incentives to participate in the exercise of control are rather different. Whereas a model based solely on instrumental rationality is insufficient to explain the participation of voters, it does well in accounting for that of stockholders. Further, the prerequisites of the emergence and maintenance of participatory norms are favorable with respect to voters but unfavorable with regard to stockholders. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the results for the alleged autonomy of managers vis-à-vis the owners and by examining the importance of the exit mechanism as a means of power for minor stockholders.     

The Electoral Politics of Housing

This article surveys the territorial politics of housing policy with particular reference to the Conservative Party. It examines the how attempts to establish a new planning framework under the previous Coalition government came unstuck and sets out the implications of the planning impasse for home ownership and ‘generation rent’. The territorial and tenure dimensions of the 2015 General Election are considered and possible future Conservative conflicts over land release are explored.     

The Fly Ball Effect: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Impacts of Short‐Term Seed Grants

The federal government has long used grants‐in‐aid to encourage state and local governments to carry out federal policies. Little research has been done that examines how short‐term seed grants affect program continuation. We propose the “fly ball effect” as a theoretical framework for understanding how seed money should impact program maintenance. Our theory suggests that short‐term seed grants by themselves should result in considerable funding uncertainty and program eliminations or stagnation once the initial grant money expires. We use data from drug court start‐ups in four states to provide empirical support for our theory. We argue that understanding the logic of the fly ball effect can help granting governments to improve the effectiveness of their grant funding systems, at least as measured by strong program continuation and expansion.     

The Electoral Effectiveness of Party Organization: Norway, 1945–1977*

Latent Variable Partial Least Squares analysis has been used to model the impact of political party organization on stable and changing patterns of party vote in Norway from 1945 to 1977. For the Norwegian Labor Party, the elaboration of a strategy of organizational encapsulation is at least as important as the economic base for maintaining the stability of the party's electoral support; it also depresses support for the opposition parties. Short-run fluctuations around the long-run stability, however, are more influence by economic changes than party organizational strategies, with the exception of the divisive 1973 election, when party organization was important for maintaining the party vote. For the non-Labor parties, party organization is less important than economic variables.     

The Impact of Electoral Reform: "Open Elections" and the Louisiana Party System

This article examines effects of the "open-elections" law passedby the Louisiana legislature in 1975. The law eliminated traditionalclosed party primaries, creating instead, an open-electionssystem that requires all candidates, regardless of party affiliation,to appear on the same ballot. By and large, the new system hasnot had a significant effect on party competition, party success,or voter turnout in Louisiana.     

The Cost‐Effectiveness of Welfare‐to‐Work Programs: A Meta‐Analysis

This article uses the tools of meta‐analysis to assess cost–benefit studies of 50 mandatory welfare‐to‐work programs that were targeted at Aid for Families with Dependent Children recipients and evaluated by random assignment. The findings suggest that the costs of a typical evaluated welfare‐to‐work program probably exceeded its benefits from the perspective of the government, but those assigned to the program, and possibly society as a whole, may reap small positive net benefits. However, there are individual programs that are very cost‐beneficial. Further analyses of the determinants of the cost‐benefits of welfare‐to‐work programs to government and society as a whole show that some services are cost‐neutral, but others entail net costs, which are sometimes substantial. The findings suggest that less successful programs might be made more cost‐beneficial by dropping vocational training and basic education as program components, leaving mainly lower cost components, such as mandated job search and sanctions, but also possibly the more costly financial incentives.