How Ireland Voted 2007: The Full Story of Ireland's General Election

The European Union views the spread of economic prosperity and rule of law to countries emerging from dictatorship as among its primary goals when considering countries as candidates for membership. Existing literature often suggests that EU membership confers significant benefits on the accession countries, and these countries are willing to undergo costly and difficult reforms to reap these benefits. Through strict membership conditions, member states force accession countries to commit to democracy. Drawing on theoretical work in the fields of law, politics, and economics, this article reassesses the conventional wisdom. It argues that, under certain conditions, the reforms required of would-be members could have the perverse effect of undermining the establishment of legitimate law in transitional democracies. Using an agent-based model, the article elucidates a theory in which placing laws on the books around which no societal consensus exists can create perverse incentives for citizens and government officials and may lead to an erosion of the rule of law.     

How I learned to stop worrying and love polarization

This paper presents theoretical and experimental evidence of increased voter satisfaction due to moderate candidate platform divergence. The formal model combines the traditional proximity treatment of voter satisfaction with a disutility stemming from the likelihood of “incorrect” voter decision-making. The result is a voter utility function for the candidate field which is non-monotonic in platform divergence. I confirm the main result of the formal model through a voter survey where hypothetical candidate positions were varied from very moderate to very partisan. Respondents preferred moderate policy divergence to both minimal and extreme divergence. In tandem, these results recast moderate ideological differentiation as a desirable, rather than pejorative, element of politics and campaigning.     

The scientist who came in from the cold: Heinz Barwich's flight from the GDR

The arms race between the superpowers made spying on science and technology very important during the Cold War. However, whether Western secret services managed to recruit valuable sources in the research laboratories of the Soviet Union is a subject about which very little is known. This article shows that in the early 1960s the distinguished East German physicist Heinz Barwich did indeed spy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) within the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, near Moscow. It also demonstrates that the Berlin Wall, built in 1961, had a considerable impact on Western espionage in East Germany.     

State Budgetary Processes and Reforms: The California Story

This paper analyzes state budgetary processes and reforms to inform California budgetary policy. We consider key institutional provisions, including budget periodicity, tax and expenditure limitations, balanced budget and reserve requirements, and supermajority vote requirements, and analyze the extent to which changes are likely to advance procedural norms. Our analysis suggests that empirically unproven assumptions and poorly articulated linkages between budgetary processes and outcomes have undermined the state's ability to understand the budgetary problem and identify effective reforms. We recommend a focus on procedural norms and related reforms that promote effective budgeting processes as a less partisan framework for reform.     

Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemonic Project: The Story So Far

This paper seeks to do two things: first, to map out in a broad way Laclau and Mouffe's intellectual development, since the publication of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy in 1985, and how they have created a following within academia; and second, to evaluate their 'hegemonic' endeavours so far. I argue that there is a place for a post-structuralist approach to the study of political ideologies and the 'political', but that the project as a whole is unlikely to achieve its intellectual and political ambitions.     

How to Operationalize Two-Partyness

Because of the prominence of Duverger's law, a great deal of work has focused on assessing whether or not given election outcomes can be regarded as exhibiting two-party competition. The most common metric for assessment is whether the effective number of parties is close to two. We introduce two statistics that better measure conformity to two-partyness, briefly survey their logical properties, and then demonstrate their utility with data on parliamentary elections in England.     

探索自觉增强党性的途径和基本规律 --读任弼时《关于增强党性问题的报告大纲》

任弼时的党建理论非常丰富。他的《关于增强党性问题的报告大纲》阐述了自觉增强党性的途径和基本规律。重 温任弼时的有关论述,对于我们自觉缯强党性具有重要现实意义。     

非法刑事证据的存在与杜绝

运用非法手段获取口供等非法刑事证据的现象大量存在于刑事诉讼之中.非法刑事证据产生既有立法上的原因,也有实践和认识方面的原因.杜绝非法刑事证据的出现要着眼于诉讼制度和诉讼体制的改革.