Are Voters Mobilized by a ‘Friend-and-Neighbor’ on the Ballot? Evidence from a Field Experiment

In his seminal work on Southern politics, V.O. Key observed that voters disproportionately support local candidates at the ballot box. While empirical analyses have confirmed “friends-and-neighbors” voting across numerous electoral contexts, no one has directly examined voter turnout as the mechanism linking place of residence to vote choice. We argue that place of residence is a social identity that incentivizes citizens to turn out to vote on behalf of the local candidate. We test this mobilization mechanism using a randomized field experiment conducted during a 2014 state legislative primary election. Our results show that county ties between candidates and voters likely boost turnout. Our findings contribute to our understanding of the importance of place identity for turnout decisions in low-information elections.     

The North Korean abduction issue: emotions,securitisation and the reconstruction of Japanese identity from ‘aggressor’ to ‘victim’ and from ‘pacifist’ to ‘normal’

Abstract

After Kim Jong-il's confession in 2002 that North Korean agents had abducted thirteen Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, North Korea has become the most detested country in Japan, and the normalisation of bilateral relations has been put on the back burner. The abduction issue has taken precedence in Japan even over North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. It has also grossly overshadowed the atrocities for which Imperial Japan was responsible in the 20th century. Why has there been such strong emphasis on an issue that could be disregarded as comparatively ‘less important’? This article understands the ascendency of the abduction issue as the epitome of an identity shift under way in Japan – from the identity of a curiously ‘peaceful’ and inherently ‘abnormal’ state, to that of a more ‘normal’ one. The differentiation of North Korea as ‘abnormal’ emphasises Japan's own (claim to) ‘normality’. Indeed, by incarnating the perils of Japan's own ‘pacifist’ ‘abnormality’, which has been so central to the collective sense of Japanese ‘Self’ in the post-war period, the abduction issue has become a very emotional argument for Japan's ‘normalisation’ in security and defence terms. The transformation from ‘abnormal’ to ‘normal’ is further enabled by Japan trading places with North Korea in the discourse, so that Japan is defined as ‘victim’ (rather than former aggressor) and North Korea as ‘aggressor’ (rather than former victim). What is at stake here is the question whether Japan is ‘normalising’ or ‘remilitarising’, and the role of the abduction issue discourse in enabling such foreign and security policy change.     

Japan’s approach toward Asian regional security: from ‘hub-and-spoke’ bilateralism to ‘multi-tiered’

This article argues that Japan’s growing activism in promoting multilateral regional security arrangements since the early 1990s stems from the country’s adoption of the ‘multi-tiered approach’; a new policy perspective that packages different types of coordination among region states, including bilateral, multilateral, and minilateral or subregional, in a layered, hierarchical manner. The significance of the approach explains why Japan has retained its enthusiasm for promoting multilateral arrangements, despite continuous criticism of their effectiveness and significance, as well as the marked decline in Japan’s economic power to support financially the country’s activism in regional institution-building. Meanwhile, the multi-tiered approach also explains Japan’s effort to maintain and strengthen its bilateral security relationship with the United States during the last decade. Four factors – a perceived change in the regional security order, growing self-recognition of major-power status, the legacy of history, and constitutional constraints – worked essentially to lead Japanese policy-makers to settle on a multi-tiered approach as a desirable policy choice in shaping the country’s security policy in post-Cold WarAsia.     

China’s ‘New-Type’ Private Think Tanks: Is ‘New’ Better?

Journal of Chinese Political Science - China’s public policy research community has long been dominated by large state-run research institutes, but in recent years financially and...     

When do political parties benefit from incumbents’ personal votes? Comparative analysis across different electoral systems

Do political parties benefit electorally from the personal votes cultivated by their incumbent candidates? How do these benefits vary across electoral systems? This paper offers the first systematic, comparative analysis of parties' electoral gains from fielding incumbent candidates. The paper provides a theoretical argument on how the parties' gains from running incumbents vary across electoral systems and examines it empirically using district-level election data in eleven established democracies. The results suggest that the gains are largest in the multimember district systems that allow voters to determine the intra-party rank of candidates, but these gains decline as district magnitude grows. There are also gains in the single-member district systems, but no gains, or small gains if any, in the multimember district systems that don't allow voters to determine the candidates' rank or allow it only partially. The findings have implications for the cross-system variation in the balance between the collective and individual accountability in democratic elections.     

Who was ‘Venona's’ ‘Ales’? cryptanalysis and the Hiss case

One of the most notable messages in ‘Venona’ is No.1822, which the NKGB's Washington station sent to Moscow on 30 March 1945. As the message describes an agent of the GRU who circumstantially resembles Alger Hiss, it has strengthened the position of those scholars who have argued that Hiss was a Soviet spy. John Lowenthal, Hiss's lawyer, urges that an alternative reading of No.1822 exonerates his client. A review of the evidence shows that factual considerations exclude Lowenthal's reading of the cable. ‘Venona’ also contains another cable, hitherto unnoticed, that further strengthens the case against Hiss.     

Will working from home become the ‘new normal’ in the public sector?

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled large sections of the workforce out of their workplaces and into their homes to work. Many commentators suggest this has forever changed how and where we work. This article analyses how Australia's biggest employers – state and federal governments – approached the transitions to working from home, and back into regular workplaces. It considers the timing of policy responses to the pandemic as one indicator of resistance to, or acceptance of, widespread working from home. The article also demonstrates previous resistance to working from home for public servants, and questions widespread conjecture that it will become the ‘new normal’.     

‘Perceived social citizenship’: a comparative study between two different hukous

In China, there are immense barriers to inclusive social citizenship because of the failure to overcome the institutional fragmentation of social security across the hukou division. The hukou system continues to be important in determining how social citizenship is granted in China; not only does it facilitate dual social citizenship, it imposes perceptions of deservingness that bolster these divisions. The aim of this paper is to build a social-citizenship-based framework, drawing upon the strengths of the capability approach, which is applicable to the complexity of the rural–urban divide in China. Referring to several data sources, the paper examines social citizenship as a subjective phenomenon. The paper highlights the social exclusion mechanisms embedded in the hukou system that might have an effect on social citizenship as a state of self-awareness.     

中国电子市场在‘收缩’吗?

最近,海外对大陆电子市场是否“收缩”表示关切。对此,记者日前走访了中国电子工业部。电子工业部新闻发言人对记者说:中国电子市场正在日益扩大,对外经济技术交流将进一步扩大不会“收缩”。     

Is ‘competitive’ corporatism an adequate response to Globalisation? Evidence from the low countries

The Dutch practice of negotiated wage restraint and welfare state reform is often held up as a model for effective labour market adjustment. This article examines the distribution of adjustment costs under the Dutch model to determine whether it is stable in the long run ‐ both directly and by analogy with the situation in Belgium. The conclusion is that while the Dutch have succeeded in effecting a remarkable adjustment in the distribution of value‐added, the costs of this adjustment have been skewed against increasingly large sections of society. Should these groups outside the distributional coalition find representation at the national level, the Dutch model for negotiated wage restraint and welfare state reform is likely to revert to political alternation and tit‐for‐tat economic competition.     

我们能够闯过‘廉洁关’吗?

我们目前要准备过两个关:一个是“价格关”,一个是“廉洁关”。过“价格关”是为了将我们的经济引上商品经济的大道,这个“关”虽然不好过,是改革的一大难关、险关,但我相信我们是有办法过得去的,只要把必要的准备工作(包括抑制通货膨胀)做好。比较起来,人们还是担心“廉洁关”难过,阻力太大。 “克服腐败现象,保持党政机关的廉洁”——是为保证治理经济环境全面深化     

‘Marching from all governorates’: labour lacunae in Mubarak’s Egypt

Abstract

Starting in 1991, Egypt undertook ‘structural adjustment’ reforms at the behest of international financial institutions and the country’s foreign donors. These reforms have often been included in a larger discussion of economic reforms and the withdrawal of the state from the Egyptian market. While certainly market-based, these reforms were interpreted and implemented in a uniquely Egyptian context and moved forward not through a market logic but with a specific understanding of political feasibility. Despite these local peculiarities, Egypt experienced a backlash familiar to researchers of structural adjustment internationally. How did Egypt’s structural adjustment and other ‘liberalizing’ reforms produce spatialized and sectoral backlash and drive workers from quiescence to militancy? Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted in 2011–2013, this paper argues that the choices made by the Egyptian regime from 1991 to 2010 generated ‘labour lacunae’ – spaces in the political-economic structure where methods of interest aggregation were replaced by coercion or neglect – allowing militancy to flourish. I explore how labour entrepreneurs exploited these ‘lacunae’ to redefine ‘local’ protest in the run-up to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.     

Towards the Vernacular,Away from Politics? Political History after the ‘New Political History’

This article considers how modern British political history has changed since the ‘new political history’ of the 1990s. It focusses on the ‘vernacular’ histories which have emerged in the last decade or so. The vernacular ‘turn’ is frequently framed by its proponents in opposition to the new political history, with its focus on the rhetoric of politicians and subsequent tendency to reproduce the perspectives of political elites. This article, however, identifies continuities between these approaches, noting their shared interest in advancing a more complex understanding of the relationship between politics and people in the past. It argues that the real challenge posed by the vernacular lies in the necessary reckoning with the ‘apartness’ of politics from the perspective of ordinary people. Yet here too, this piece suggests, the vernacular turn can be seen as the latest stage in a continual rethinking of the relationship between political, social and cultural history.     

Are Reemployment Services Effective? Experimental Evidence from the Great Recession

We examine an experimental‐design reemployment program implemented in Nevada during the Great Recession that required Unemployment Insurance (UI) recipients to: (1) undergo an eligibility review to confirm they were qualified for benefits and actively searching for work and, if deemed eligible, (2) receive job‐counseling services. Our results show that the program expedited participant exit from UI, produced UI savings that exceeded program costs, and improved participant employment outcomes. Analyses of program effects on the UI exit likelihood show that the program's effects are partly associated with increased participant exit up through the time when program activities were scheduled, reflecting voluntary exit of participants from UI to avoid program activities and disqualifications of participants who failed to meet eligibility requirements. In addition, the program induced substantial participant exit from UI in the period after participants fulfilled requirements and their interactions with the program had ended, suggesting that the job‐counseling services offered by the program may have helped participants to conduct more effective job searches. Our findings provide evidence that reemployment programs that combine an eligibility review with mandatory participation in job‐search services can be effective during recessions.     

‘A quite natural and moderate defensive feeling’? The 1945 Hampstead ‘anti-alien’ petition

In October 1945 an ‘anti-alien’ petition was launched in the London Borough of Hampstead that, under the pretext of securing homes for returning ex-servicemen, campaigned for the removal of the district's predominantly Jewish refugee population. By examining the nature of support and opposition to the petition Macklin's local case study provides further evidence to suggest that reactions to those who had fled Nazi terror remained complex. Those who did find sanctuary were characterized by the local press not as ‘deserving victims’, but as the cause of the problems created by their Nazi persecutors. A detailed examination of the rhetoric of the petition movement reveals how this defence of local amenities against ‘alien‘ encroachment can rightfully be defined as ‘antisemitic’. Following an analysis of the role of the local press, Macklin examines its impact on, and interaction with, local and central government policy regarding reconstruction and immigration, which continued to be dominated by the dogma that harmonious race relations necessitated the strict control of immigrants, regardless of the desperation of their plight. He concludes by examining the media's symbiotic relationship with extremist and fascist politics.     

What Sort of Science is ‘Economics’?

This essay is a general defense of Etzioni’s argument in The Moral Dimension. I explore three areas that others have questioned and show them (from my neo-Etzioni position) to be false. The result is a resounding vote of confidence for socioeconomics over neo-classical economics.     

达赖是去布拉格‘坐禅’吗?

捷克斯洛伐克总统哈维尔不顾中国方面的严正交涉,执意邀请长期流亡国外从事分裂祖国活动的达赖喇嘛访捷,这是对中国内政的粗暴干涉。对此,中国政府提出了抗议,中国人民表示极大的愤慨。     

Drawing policy implications from the ‘Operational Code’ of a ‘new’ political actor: Russian President Vladimir Putin

Policy Sciences - The task of both foreign policy makers and foreign policy scholars is complicated by the appearance on the international stage of a ‘new actor,’ about whom little...     

Why change party finance transparency? Political competition and evidence from the ‘deviant’ case of Norway

This article focuses on the development of a key type of regulation ensuring public surveillance of political finance: party finance transparency rules. It makes two contributions to the emerging theory on the evolution of political finance regulation. First, using previous research, it conceptualises the underlying causal mechanisms that explain when and why party finance transparency regulation changes. Second, it presents the first detailed study of party finance transparency reforms in Norway, which is a deviant case for the introduction of such reforms. It is found that, in the absence of major scandals, an intense political discourse on corruption and political competition are sufficient factors to launch transparency reforms. Whether reforms are enacted depends on the interaction of several factors. Parties that predominantly rely on state funding and grassroots support push for and adopt more constraining transparency regulation, while parties that are close to business oppose it. Experience of regulation in similar contexts and intense discourse on corruption – stimulated by domestic or international events – are necessary for the reform to succeed. Norwegian cooperation with the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) further demonstrates that the success of party finance transparency reforms initiated by a foreign actor is a function of the existing tradition of party regulation, the policy position of a governing party and the international reputational costs of non-compliance.