Voter Partisanship and the Effect of Distributive Spending on Political Participation

Do distributive benefits increase voter participation? This article argues that the government delivery of distributive aid increases the incumbent party's turnout but decreases opposition‐party turnout. The theoretical intuition here is that an incumbent who delivers distributive benefits to the opposing party's voters partially mitigates these voters’ ideological opposition to the incumbent, hence weakening their motivation to turn out and oust the incumbent. Analysis of individual‐level data on FEMA hurricane disaster aid awards in Florida, linked with voter‐turnout records from the 2002 (pre‐hurricane) and 2004 (post‐hurricane) elections, corroborates these predictions. Furthermore, the timing of the FEMA aid delivery determines its effect: aid delivered during the week just before the November 2004 election had especially large effects on voters, increasing the probability of Republican (incumbent party) turnout by 5.1% and decreasing Democratic (opposition party) turnout by 3.1%. But aid delivered immediately after the election had no effect on Election Day turnout.     

Testing the Reciprocal Effects of Campaign Participation

Questions persist regarding the robustness of cross-sectional estimates of effects of variables that are themselves endogenous to the participation process. On one hand, the consequences of working on a campaign have interesting implications for democratic society. Less benign, however, is the possibility that failure to control for reciprocal processes leads to biased estimates of the causes of campaign participation. I use a panel of Democratic and Republican contributors interviewed following each of the past three presidential elections (1996, 2000, and 2004) to explore the relationships between campaign participation and three variables typically parameterized as predictors of participation: receiving a contact, ideological extremism, and strength of party identification. The effect of strength of party identification on campaign participation proves robust; however, I find that nearly all of the associations between contacts and participation and ideological extremism and participation appear to extend from, not into, participation and past participation.

Testing a Predictive Model of Voter Behavior on the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election

Abstract

Utilizing a predictive model of voter behavior, this study identified the motivations behind a sample of voters who cast a ballot for George W. Bush and AI Gore in the 2000 presidential campaign. The motivations of the voters were differentiated on the basis of the “value” they sought in a president. In other words, just as companies in the “commercial marketplace” have to create value to attract customers, so does a candidate in the “political marketplace” who is seeking to carve out a niche for himself that separates him from his competition. Pairwise discriminant analysis is used to identify the motivations behind the choice behavior of voters at both the candidate and party level. The results reveal the complimentary roles that the political party and each candidate's campaign organization played in their respective marketing strategies.     

Affect,Social Pressure and Prosocial Motivation: Field Experimental Evidence of the Mobilizing Effects of Pride,Shame and Publicizing Voting Behavior

Citizens generally try to cooperate with social norms, especially when norm compliance is monitored and publicly disclosed. A recent field experimental study demonstrates that civic appeals that tap into social pressure motivate electoral participation appreciably (Gerber et al., Am Polit Sci Rev 102:33–48, 2008). Building on this work, I use field experimental techniques to examine further the socio-psychological mechanisms that underpin this effect. I report the results of three field experiments conducted in the November 2007 elections designed to test whether voters are more effectively mobilized by appeals that engender feelings of pride (for reinforcing or perpetuating social and cultural values or norms) or shame (for violating social and cultural values or norms). Voters in Monticello, Iowa and Holland, Michigan were randomly assigned to receive a mailing that indicated the names of all verified voters in the November 2007 election would be published in the local newspaper (pride treatment). In Ely, Iowa voters were randomly assigned to receive a mailing that indicated the names of all verified nonvoters would be published in the local newspaper (shame treatment). The experimental findings suggest shame may be more effective than pride on average, but this may depend on who the recipients are. Pride motivates compliance with voting norms only amongst high-propensity voters, while shame mobilizes both high- and low-propensity voters.     

Prices,Devices, People,or Rules: The Relative Effectiveness of Policy Instruments in Water Conservation1

Water conservation policy is a natural laboratory for addressing general issues of relevance to policy analysis and public administration, particularly the relative effectiveness of policies in changing human behavior. Using multivariate regression analysis of a dataset comprised of more than 200,000 monthly observations of more than 19,000 household accounts over six years, this paper makes three main contributions. First, it contributes to the substantive area of water conservation policy by analyzing what works. Second, it contributes to our understanding of generic policy instruments. Third, it raises an important issue regarding standard assumptions about selection bias. The results support earlier work warning that offsetting behavior can negate engineering solutions to policy problems, but further indicate that adding communication to engineering solutions can create cooperation that overcomes offsetting behavior. They also provide evidence that appropriate regulation can be effective, and that pricing can be effective even when price elasticities of demand are low.     

Are Patriots Bigots? An Inquiry into the Vices of In‐Group Pride

One view in the study of intergroup conflict is that pride implies prejudice. However, an increasing number of scholars have come to view in-group pride more benignly, suggesting that such pride can be accompanied by a full range of feelings toward the out-group. In this article, we focus on a substantively interesting case of in-group/out-group attitudes—national pride and hostility toward immigrants. We explore the relationship in two fundamental ways: first by examining the prejudice associated with various dimensions of pride, and second by embedding these relationships in a comprehensive model of prejudice. We find that national pride is most validly measured with two dimensions—patriotism and nationalism—two dimensions that have very different relationships with prejudice. While nationalists have a strong predilection for hostility toward immigrants, patriots show no more prejudice than does the average citizen.     

Voter turnout at the British General Election of 1992: Rational choice,social standing or political efficacy?

Abstract. Analyses of turnout in British general elections fall broadly into two camps: those based on constituency–level data, and those based on survey data. The former stress the importance of local context, while the latter stress personal characteristics and viewpoints. Underlying both are a range of theories purporting to explain turnout. However, to date, there has been little systematic attempt to analyse turnout in the round. In this paper, we combine survey and constituency data to study the individual and contextual correlates of turnout at the British general election and 1992. Constituency level analyses seem to confirm the importance of local context, though it declined during the 1980s. However, and contrary to analyses which employ constituency data only, while individual electors' decisions on whether or not to turn out are influenced by their personal circumstances, they are not influenced by local context.     

东北经济发展相对缓慢:比较与分析

对于东北经济增长相对缓慢的原因,我们可以从不同角度进行分析.由于东北地区在改革之初即有与东部沿海地区大体相同甚至更好的工业基础,因此,东北地区与东部沿海的发展情况有很大的可比性,以东部沿海经济发展较快的省份为参照系,对东北经济发展的基本脉络进行梳理,有助于找出东北经济发展相对缓慢的原因.     

Concurrent Elections and Voter Turnout: The Effect of the De-linking of State Elections on Electoral Participation in India's Parliamentary Polls, 1971–2004

This article examines the effect that the decoupling of state and national elections has had on voter turnout in India's national parliamentary polls since 1971. According to conventional wisdom in the comparative literature on electoral turnout, separate elections to multiple levels and/or branches of government should depress turnout relative to co-temporal polls, ceteris paribus . The evidence from Indian elections provides strong confirmation for this hypothesis. This suggests that political decentralization through separate national and local elections may actually weaken citizens' incentives to participate in the democratic electoral process.     

An Empirical Test of the Relative Education Model in Sweden

Numerous studies show that education has a positive effect on political participation at the individual level. However, the increase in aggregate levels of education in most Western countries over the last decades has not resulted in a corresponding increase in aggregate levels of political participation. Nie et al. (Education and democratic citizenship in America, 1996) propose the relative education model as a possible solution to this paradox. According to this model, it is not the skills promoted by education that have positive effects on political participation. Rather, education influences individuals’ social status, which in turn influences political participation. The relative education model expects that the individual-level effect of an additional year of education will decrease as the mean level of education in the environment increases. This article evaluates this theory using Swedish election surveys (1985–2006) and it thus provides the first in depth evaluation of the relative education model outside the US. On voting and political participation related to political parties, support is found for the relative education model.     

Performance and Management in the Public Sector: Testing a Model of Relative Risk Aversion

Research has demonstrated that management influences the performance of public organizations, but almost no research has explored how the success or failure of a public organization influences the decisions of those who manage it. Arguing that many decisions by public managers are analogous to risky choice, the authors use a well‐validated model of relative risk aversion to understand how such choices are influenced by managers’ perceptions of organizational performance. They theorize that managers will be less likely to encourage innovation or give discretion to employees when they are just reaching their goals relative to other performance conditions. Analyses of responses to the 2011 and 2013 Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys provide considerable support for these assertions. The findings have significant implications for our understanding of the relationship between management and performance in public organizations.     

民主行政视野下的公民参与浅析

民主行政作为后现代社会为适应迅速变化的环境而设计的公共行政模式,它以公民积极的参与行为为典型特征和重要的管理运行方式。但是从我国的具体行政环境来看,民主参与的实现还受到经济发展状况、公民参与热情、制度保障、既得利益集团等等因素的限制,认清障碍是发展的第一步,本文试从民主行政的本质入手分析这些显见的阻却因素,并为排除这些因素提供几点措施。     

信息公开、公众参与和开放型政府建设

传统行政管理组织的不透明性、严格的等级制度等,造成了一系列的政府问题。要解决这些问题就必须建立一种新型的政府,即"开放型政府"。开放型政府是一个信息输入与输出的循环体,公众参与即输入的过程,信息公开则是输出的过程,而"开放"就是由一个输入和输出构成的不断互动的环路。建设开放型政府是全球化和知识产业化的必然要求,是民主的必然要求,是世界各国政府建设的必然趋势,它对中国意义更加重要。目前开放型政府建设还存在诸如信息公开不足、公众参与不够等问题,因此,要加强开放型政府建设应该从这两方面入手:通过转变观念、加强立法等促进信息公开;从扩大基层民主、拓宽公民参与渠道等推动公众参与。     

诱发腐败的相对剥夺心理:分析与比较

公职人员腐败诱发的社会心理随着经济社会的发展而变化.在经济增长迟缓的发展中国家,福利价值的相对剥夺是公职人员腐败的主要诱因;在一国的经济高速增长阶段和转型社会,获取财富的多寡容易成为衡量权力价值的主要尺度;在发达国家和地区,诱发腐败的动机则主要在于时权力本身的地位、荣誉和影响力的追逐.处于不同发展阶段的国家或一国经济的不同发展阶段,公众心理对腐败的容忍程度有所不同.在经济增长迟缓的发展中国家,公众大多认为腐败可以容忍;在转型国家,公众对腐败的态度由容忍逐步转变为不容忍;在发达国家和地区,绝大多数公众都一致谴责腐败行为,并希望在原则的基础上对之予以惩罚.     

铁路警务信息化追逃效能探析

在当今跨地区、流动性犯罪活动日趋突出的新形势下,大量在逃人员利用铁路作为交通工具或违法犯罪的场所逃匿或作案,严重影响了铁路运输安全和社会治安秩序。铁路公安机关应针对在逃嫌疑犯的不同类型和特点,结合实际情况,采取有针对性的追逃策略,将传统的查堵方法与信息化追逃举措相结合,充分利用情报信息实施信息化追逃,以提高查获在逃嫌疑犯的效能。     

四万亿投资拉动就业效果的实证研究

利用投入产出法,通过一系列指标,综合测评了目前我国各行业的就业吸纳能力,并估算出我国政府实施的四万亿投资一共可以拉动多少人就业,同时通过对各行业的就业吸纳能力的比较,为政府实现充分就业提出了一系列政策建议.     

An Examination of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and New Political Participation

The mobilisation of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) on New Years Day 1994 in Mexico attracted considerable attention from those concerned with the democratic deficits of neoliberal globalisation and the increasing sense of individual powerlessness as states synchronise economic and public policy with the ideas and institutions of global capital. The paper argues that as a critical social movement the EZLN explores the meaning and practice of economic, political and social democracy. The EZLN practises a politics of radical democracy that incorporates a variety of strategies for enriching the democratic project. However, the EZLN's democratic project has little in common with the inclusive democracy project and yet the EZLN's project of radical democracy does cultivate a useful way of rethinking the site and nature of democracy in an age of globalisation when such institutions seem so increasingly inept.     

基于扎根理论的城市基层社会治理公众参与有效性研究——来自北京市垃圾分类治理经验的证据

公众有效参与基层社会治理既是中国特色社会治理体制的重要内容,也是推进国家治理体系和治理能力现代化的题中应有之义。以北京市垃圾分类治理为例,运用扎根理论对深度访谈转录文本和政府官方文本进行编码,提炼出六个主范畴和一个核心范畴,构建了“意识—能力—保障”归因模型,并进行实证研究。研究表明：个体身份特征、社会文化环境、其他参与主体、公众参与意识、公众参与能力和公众参与保障等共同构成了公众参与有效性的影响因素集,其中公众参与意识、公众参与能力和公众参与保障对公众参与有效性起决定作用;公众参与有效性类型可划分为互动合作型、自主探索型、被动参与型和无参与状态等四类,北京市垃圾分类治理公众参与有效性较强,趋于互动合作模式。提出对策建议：培养公众参与意识,促进公众主动参与;提高公众参与能力,促进公众深度参与;健全公众参与制度,促进公众有序参与。     

我国异体行政问责制存在的问题与对策探讨

与同体行政问责制相比,异体行政问责制是一种更有效、更符合民主政治要求的问责方式.目前我国异体行政问责制存在问责主体缺失、客体不清、信息缺失、法律法规缺失等问题.应通过构建异体行政问责体系,规范问责客体的范围,完善政务公开制度,建立健全法律法规体系等举措,确保异体行政问责制的有效实施.     

Scraping by: Income and Program Participation After the Loss of Extended Unemployment Benefits

Many Unemployment Insurance (UI) recipients do not find new jobs before exhausting their benefits, even when benefits are extended during recessions. Using Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) panel data covering the 2001 and 2007 to 2009 recessions and their aftermaths, we identify individuals whose jobless spells outlasted their UI benefits (exhaustees) and examine household income, program participation, and health‐related outcomes during the six months following UI exhaustion. For the average exhaustee, the loss of UI benefits is only slightly offset by increased participation in other safety net programs (e.g., food stamps), and family poverty rates rise substantially. Self‐reported disability also rises following UI exhaustion. These patterns do not vary dramatically across household demographic groups, broad income level prior to job loss, or the two business cycles. The results highlight the unique, important role of UI in the U.S. social safety net.