The European Union as a global climate leader: confronting aspiration with evidence

In rhetoric and action the European Union has attempted to be a global leader in forging solutions to confront the problem of climate change. Using unique survey data collected at five consecutive UN climate summits from 2008–2012, this article provides evidence on the extent to which the EU is actually recognized as a leader in the UNFCCC climate negotiations, investigates how perceptions of EU leadership have evolved overtime, and helps make sense of the role that the EU has played in recent negotiation outcomes. The survey’s findings show that recognition of the EU as a leader dropped sharply in 2009 at the COP 15 summit in Copenhagen, but has climbed again in subsequent years. The results reveal a fragmented leadership landscape in which the EU must share or compete for leadership with other actors, such as the USA and China, who hold drastically different institutional design preferences and leadership visions than those promoted by the EU. The article’s findings provide insight into the dynamics that both foster and frustrate the EU’s aspiration to lead the effort to reach a deal on a binding post-2020 climate change agreement in Paris at COP 21.     

From uninformed to informed choices: Voters,pre-election polls and updating

Pre-election opinion poll results for U.S. presidential contests have large variation in the early parts of the primary campaigns, yet pre-election opinion polls later in the campaign are typically within several percentage points of the actual outcome of the contest in November. This paper argues this trend demonstrates that voters are beginning to poll “correctly” – that is, to ascertain their most-preferred candidate. This convergence process is consistent with boundedly rational voters making decisions with low information. We examine the process by which voters can use opinion polls to guide their candidate choice. We undertake a series of laboratory experiments where uninformed voters choose between two candidates after participating in a series of pre-election polls. We demonstrate that voters update their beliefs about candidate locations using information contained in the opinion polls. We compare two behavioral models for the updating process and find significant evidence to support a boundedly rational Bayesian updating assumption. This assumption about the updating process is key to many theoretical results which argue that voters have the potential to aggregate information via a coordination signal and for their beliefs to converge to the true state of the world. This finding also indicates that uninformed voters are able to use pre-election polls to help them make correct decisions.     

The Politics of “Fracking”: Regulating Natural Gas Drilling Practices in Colorado and Texas

This article focuses on the politics of regulating natural gas fracking operations in Colorado and Texas. Between‐state differences in the economic importance of natural gas production, political traditions, environmental impacts of drilling activities, and local governmental responses to risk reduction, and entrepreneurial activities are discussed in relation to policy‐making initiatives. In the concluding section, I suggest that Colorado's regulatory approach offers a greater degree of environmental protection than Texas. Key reforms adopted in 2007–8 can be largely attributed to electoral victories that ensured unified party control over state government and the determined efforts of the proenvironmental governor to make changes in both the regulatory commission and in the substance of natural gas drilling policies.     

Statistical Modeling of the Case Information From the Ohio Attorney General's Sexual Assault Kit Testing Initiative

The Ohio Attorney General's Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) Testing Initiative has resulted in nearly 14,000 kits being processed since the initiation of the project in 2012. A logistic regression model was fit to the data from 2500 SAKs in order to determine the probability of obtaining at least one Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) eligible DNA profile based on a number of predictor variables. The probability of obtaining at least one CODIS eligible DNA profile from an SAK varied as a function of (i) days to kit collection following a sexual assault; (ii) years to kit submission to the laboratory for testing following kit collection; (iii) the age of the victim; and (iv) the occurrence of victim‐reported consensual sex around the time of the assault and/or kit collection. These findings demonstrate the utility of the statistical modeling of data obtained from the “forklift” testing approach of sexual assault kits.