City size and citizens' satisfaction: two competing theories revisited

Abstract. The Reform Theory and the Political Economy Theory postulate contradictory effects of government size on citizens' satisfaction with urban services. The former asserts that citizens' satisfaction increases with increasing size of urban governments because large units are more efficient and allows citizens to participate effectively in public policy-making. The latter postulates that citizens are more satisfied in the smaller jurisdictions because small units are more homogeneous, efficient and democratic. A series of tests performed in this study overwhelmingly supports the Political Economy Theory: citizens in small jurisdictions hold more favourable attitudes towards participation and democracy, and the smaller units are more homogeneous and more efficient in the provision of services. This in turn leads to more favourable evaluations of public services.     

Campaign Advertising and Democratic Citizenship

Concern about the state of American democracy is a staple of political science and popular commentary. Critics warn that levels of citizen participation and political knowledge are disturbingly low and that seemingly ubiquitous political advertising is contributing to the problem. We argue that political advertising is rife with both informational and emotional content and actually contributes to a more informed, more engaged, and more participatory citizenry. With detailed advertising data from the 2000 election, we show that exposure to campaign advertising produces citizens who are more interested in the election, have more to say about the candidates, are more familiar with who is running, and ultimately are more likely to vote. Importantly, these effects are concentrated among those citizens who need it most: those with the lowest pre-existing levels of political information.     

Explaining cross‐national variation in the relationship between priority congruence and satisfaction with democracy

Previous research has shown that citizens tend to be more satisfied with the functioning of democracy when their ideological positions are more proximate to representatives'. This article argues that congruence in policy priorities between citizens and political elites should have a similar effect: citizens whose concerns are shared by elites should perceive them to be more attentive and responsive to public concerns and societal needs. Yet, the relationship might vary with differences in expectations towards democracy and representation. Specifically, it should be stronger in more democratic countries and older democracies. The hypotheses are empirically tested in a multilevel regression framework, where voter survey data from the 2009 European Election Study is linked with candidate survey data. The results indicate that citizens are indeed more satisfied with democracy if elites share their concerns, and the effect increases with democratic experience.     

论世纪之交经济与文化“一体化”发展

在未来时代,“化力”日益成为经济发展和社会进步的内在驱动力。科技创新促进新产品开发的速度,也使得现代产品中的化含量和化附加值越来越高。化和科技投入产出中的贡献率越来越大,人们物质生活水平的提高要求企业的生产和服务更加重视消费的审美要求。国际间贸易往来和营销活动中的化融通越来越重要。这些新的变化,都显示出经济化发展的一体化趋势。     

Electoral cycles in the administration of criminal justice

Based on an analysis of over one million felony charges disposed in North Carolina courts during the 1990s, this paper describes the effects of district attorney elections on criminal case outcomes. Defendants face a higher probability of conviction and a lower probability of having all charges dismissed in an election year. The results suggest that in election years, DAs are more likely to prosecute cases that might otherwise be dismissed. The estimated effects are more pronounced for defendants charged with property or drug crimes than for defendants charged with violent crimes, and more pronounced in districts with more electoral competition.     

Reconsidering individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting

This paper proposes a general theory of individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting based on the perspective that the strength of the relationship varies with factors that influence the relevance of the economic evaluation to the vote choice. We posit that the electoral relevance of the economic evaluation increases with the strength of partisanship as well as political sophistication. Given the strong correlation between partisanship and sophistication, this theoretical perspective casts doubt on extant evidence that more sophisticated voters are more likely to hold the incumbent party electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance since this result might be an artifact of failing to control for the economic evaluation being more relevant to the vote choice of stronger partisans. Our statistical investigation of this question finds no significant evidence that sophistication conditions the economic voting relationship once the conditioning effect of partisanship is included in the model. This finding suggests that individual-level heterogeneity in the strength of the economic voting relationship is largely due to stronger partisans voting more consistently with their national economic evaluation than to more sophisticated voters being more policy-oriented by holding the incumbent party more electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance.     

新时期高校奖学金激励机制研究

激励是管理中一项十分重要的内容,随着我国高等教育已由精英教育过渡到大众化教育,由各高校大规模扩招使得学生学习积极性呈现明显下降,而且随着经济危机等社会因素,学生间的竞争越发激烈,这二者之间的矛盾显得越发突出,如何有效激发学生学习积极性成为高等教育亟待解决的问题。建立与优化高校激励机制,充分挖掘学生的积极性、创造性,使得高校的资源能够充分利用,提高高等教育的效能,是本文研究的切入点。     

Less is more: The paradox of choice in voting behavior

How does the number of candidates competing in an election affect voting behavior? In theory, as the number of candidates running for office increase, citizens’ utility from voting also increases. With more candidates, voters are more likely to have candidates that are close to their ideal points. Practically, however, more candidates also means a higher cognitive burden for voters who must learn more during campaigns in order to find their “ideal” candidate. In this paper, we examine how choice set size affects voting behavior. Using a survey experiment, we show that subjects presented with many options learn less about candidates, are more likely to vote based on meaningless heuristics, and are more likely to commit voting errors, when compared with subjects who choose between only a few candidates.     

Trade and Industrial Policy as Levers for Sustainable Energy Technology Adoption? Experiences from Urban Latin America

Debates abound regarding the link between trade and industrial policy and the adoption of sustainable energy technologies in developing countries. Some purport that open trade regimes support technology diffusion, while others indicate that more interventionist regimes are more conducive. This paper uses empirical evidence from Mexico City and São Paulo to argue that sustainable energy technology uptake can be more prevalent in settings with partially open trade policy regimes. These regimes have afforded countries more opportunities to develop local capabilities, which, in turn, has had knock‐on effects on sustainable energy technology uptake. Specifically, having more local technology sources (equipment, expertise) brought quicker access to these technologies, created more perceptions of technology “ownership,” fostered more effective mobilization, and helped create well‐established standards, which in turn contributed positively to sustainable energy technology uptake, while taxes and tariffs were less influential.     

The Legacy of Political Violence across Generations

Does political violence leave a lasting legacy on identities, attitudes, and behaviors? We argue that violence shapes the identities of victims and that families transmit these effects across generations. Inherited identities then impact the contemporary attitudes and behaviors of the descendants of victims. Testing these hypotheses is fraught with methodological challenges; to overcome them, we study the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 and the indiscriminate way deportees died from starvation and disease. We conducted a multigenerational survey of Crimean Tatars in 2014 and find that the descendants of individuals who suffered more intensely identify more strongly with their ethnic group, support more strongly the Crimean Tatar political leadership, hold more hostile attitudes toward Russia, and participate more in politics. But we find that victimization has no lasting effect on religious radicalization. We also provide evidence that identities are passed down from the victims of the deportation to their descendants.     

Controlling Federal Agencies: The Contingent Impact of External Controls on Worker Discretion and Productivity

ABSTRACT

Previous scholarship has investigated why legislatures sometimes choose to delegate policy choice to executive agencies, but there is little research on the consequences of the choice to delegate or not. Using a multiple principal-agent framework, this paper provides empirical evidence regarding the impact of legislative delegation and agency discretion on the work of U.S. government employees. Findings suggest that delegation directly reduces employee discretion only in client service agencies; its direct effects on employee productivity are more evident but varied. Legislative delegation is also associated with more executive political appointees, whose presence reduces both employee discretion and productivity. Whether employees with more discretion are more productive than those with less depends on their commitment to the job: employees who like their work more than their pay use their discretion to enhance productivity, while employees who like their pay more than their work use their discretion to reduce productivity.     

Institutional Anticorruption in China: Effectiveness on Bribery Incidence

This article investigates the effectiveness of anticorruption practices against bribery incidence, highlighting top‐down and bottom‐up approaches. A random survey of local residents is used in conjunction with institutional anticorruption indicators. Findings suggest that the top‐down approach works, but with substantial variation across practices. More intense top‐down anticorruption deters bribery incidence within citizens' dense networks, and more judicial convictions directly suppress citizens' bribery experience and willingness. The bottom‐up and combined approaches yield both deterrence and signaling effects, contingent on institutional parameters. More public whistle‐blowing deters citizens' bribery experience and willingness, yet, when coupled with more intense top‐down anticorruption, it signals severe government corruption and predicts more bribery incidence. On the contrary, more grievance filings predict more bribery incidence via signaling effects, but, when bundled with more intense top‐down anticorruption, they deter citizens' subsequent bribery experience and willingness. The article concludes with a discussion of the research findings and theoretical and practical implications.     

Prejudice against Gypsies among Spanish adolescents

This article examines the attitudes of Spanish adolescents towards Gypsies, the most discriminated group in Spain, by looking at two distinct attitudinal components: the first, the cognitive component, was studied by measuring a willingness to extend twelve rights to Gypsies; the second, the affective component, by assessing a liking for this group. The research demonstrated that the adolescents' willingness to extend rights to Gypsies was greater than their liking for them. Furthermore, the adolescents were more willing to extend social rights than political ones. Older adolescents, females, those with higher self-esteem, greater political experience, a more resolute endorsement of democratic norms and a stronger identification with a group of friends presented more positive attitudes towards Gypsies. On the other hand, adolescents who were more supportive of violent groups, more strongly identified with the Catholic Church, other religious groups or a soccer team showed more negative attitudes towards Gypsies.     

Interest groups and policymaking in the American states

States in which candidates endorsed by liberal interest groups are more successful at the election polls tend to have higher Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits and to enact more consumer protection legislation. In addition, states where interest-group-endorsed candidates are more successful at the polls tend to spend more on highways.     

Network Structure,Strength of Relationships,and Communities’ Success in Project Implementation

Studies of network effectiveness in the collaborative public program setting commonly have found that actors with more organizational partners, more indirect (bridging) ties to other partners, and more cohesive relationships among partners have greater success in implementing projects. This article contributes to this literature by developing and testing hypotheses about how strength of relationships, measured by frequency of contacts, moderates these results. In the context of community water supply projects in Nepal, the article shows that greater frequency of contacts between communities and organizational partners enhances the impact of having more partners and more cohesive relationships among partners but decreases the impact of having more indirect connections. For practitioners and network theorists, these findings highlight the importance of strength of relationships in the link between networks and performance.     

Economic inequality,winner-loser gap,and satisfaction with democracy

This study analyzes how economic inequality affects electoral winners and losers' satisfaction with democracy. We posit that both the poor and the rich have more at stake in elections when inequality is high. Electoral losers, whether they are the poor or the rich, are more likely to be dissatisfied with democratic systems when facing greater disparity in wealth. In contrast, electoral winners confronting higher inequality are more likely to express satisfaction with democracy. Employing a multilevel analysis of Comparative Study Electoral Systems (CSES) data, we find that the gap in satisfaction with democracy between electoral winners and losers widens as income inequality increases. Broadening the conventional wisdom that electoral systems mediate the effect of citizens' winner-loser status on their democratic attitudes, we demonstrate that the mediating effects of economic inequality are more critical than the institutional effects.     

Ballot Structure and Satisfaction with Democracy

This article analyses the influence of ballot structure over satisfaction with democracy. In line with previous literature, we hypothesize that some ballot structures – such as preferential ballots – generate more satisfaction with democracy than closed ones. Yet, we expect these differences to be especially relevant among the more knowledgeable electorate, since any open ballot structure requires more sophisticated voters. Using CSES surveys, our results do not show a clear and simple relation between ballot openness and satisfaction with democracy as some previous research seems to suggest. Our findings rather suggest a more limited effect. Preferential ballots and open lists are the only ballot structures that generate more satisfaction, when compared to most of the remaining ballot structures. Yet, this relation is restricted only among the more knowledgeable electorate. The liberty of choice that ballot structure offers only concerns a reduced portion of the electorate, namely the more politically sophisticated one.     

网络极化现象研究——基于四个中文BBS论坛的内容分析

本文试图把"极化"这一概念引入网络政治传播的考察中,主要针对四个中文BBS论坛(强国深水、猫眼看人、天涯杂谈和新浪杂谈)政治讨论中的极端化态度分布状态进行描述与比较。结果显示,态度极化现象与论坛群体和特定的议题类别紧密相关。其中激进派聚集的论坛更容易出现极化;涉及"政府"的议题更容易在激进的论坛中出现极化,而在温和派占据主流的论坛则呈现非极化状态。同时,发帖积极性越高的ID越容易出现态度极化的现象;而且,网民的意见同质化程度越高,则群体极化的程度也就越高。     

The invisible hand plays dice: multiple equilibria in sects markets

Religious participation is much more widespread in the United States than in Europe, while Europeans tend to view sects more suspiciously than Americans. We propose an explanation for these patterns without assuming differences in preferences or market fundamentals. We study a religious market where both demand and supply of spiritual services are endogenous. Such markets may have multiple equilibria. Further, equilibria with more sects result in higher welfare and lower membership costs, as secular societies tend to host on average more demanding sects.     

Distance,services, and citizen perceptions of the state in rural Africa

In most poor countries, basic services in rural areas are less accessible and of lower quality than those in urban settings. In this article, we investigate the subnational geography of service delivery and its relationship with citizens' perceptions of their government by analyzing the relationship between service access, satisfaction with services and government, and the distance to urban centers for more than 21,000 survey respondents across 17 African countries. We confirm that access to services and service satisfaction suffer from a spatial gradient. However, distant citizens are less likely than their urban peers to translate service dissatisfaction into discontent with their government; distant citizens have more trust in government and more positive evaluations of both local and national officials. Our findings suggest that increasing responsiveness and accountability to citizens as a means of improving remote rural services may face more limits than promoters of democratic governance and citizen‐centered accountability presume.