Political Corruption and Institutional Stability

This article is the first to statistically examine the reciprocal relationship between formal political institutions and political corruption. We argue that political corruption is an informal institution that allows nondemocratic leaders to build political support, act as a substitute for liberalizing concessions in the formal institutions of the state, and thereby extends the longevity of non-democratic regimes. Yet, whereas high corruption level will prevail in nondemocratic regimes, we expect the electoral constituency in democratic regimes to have the formal power to curb political corruption. We demonstrate that these expectations hold by estimating a dynamic multinomial regression model on data for 133 countries for the 1985–2008 period. Our model shows that high-corruption autocracies and hybrid regimes are more stable than their low-corruption counterparts, but that low-corruption democracies are more stable than high-corruption ones. For autocratic and hybrid regimes, the stability is due both to corruption making the formal institutions more resistant to democratization and that the formal institutions prevent reductions in corruption. Consistent democracies, on the other hand, are able to reduce corruption and become more stable as a result.     

Non-Suicidal Self-Injury and Depressive Symptoms During Middle Adolescence: A Longitudinal Analysis

Previous research has shown a consistent positive association between non-suicidal self-injury and depressive symptoms. However, the direction of the effects has not been examined. To understand whether non-suicidal self-injury predicts depressive symptoms or vice versa, we examined the relations between non-suicidal self-injury and depressive symptoms across three waves of self-report data collected 1 year apart from 506 Swedish adolescents (47 % girls; M age = 13.21; SD = .57) who were attending 7th grade at the onset of the study. The results suggest that depressive symptoms predict increases in non-suicidal self-injury 1 year later between the first and second waves of the study. Between the second and third waves of the study depressive symptoms and non-suicidal self-injury were significantly correlated indicating co-occurrence with no direction of effect rather than depressive symptoms predicting non-suicidal self-injury or vice versa. Group comparisons revealed no differences for boys and girls. The findings help clarify the relationships between non-suicidal self-injury and depressive symptoms during middle adolescence.     

Publishing while editor: Transparency and behaviour in public administration journals

Journal editors serve as gatekeepers of knowledge, a role critical to preserving the quality and standards of good research. Some scholars have questioned whether editors have taken advantage of their position to publish their own work. To understand the extent to which editors of public administration journals self-publish, we examined publishing patterns over a 20-year period. We collected the names of editors from the mastheads of 13 generalist public administration journals from 1997 to 2016 and used data indexed from Web of Science to look at articles published in those journals during the same time. We found that while self-publishing behaviour is not common across the entire field, it is a trend for certain journals and individuals. We also found the practice of self-publishing is influenced by whether an individual served in a primary editorial role (e.g., editor-in-chief), length of editorial service, and overall scholarly productivity. We discuss appropriateness and ethical implications of the practice.     

The determinants of democracy: a sensitivity analysis

Public Choice - Numerous studies—operating with diverse model specifications, samples and empirical measures—suggest different economic, social, cultural, demographic, institutional and...     

Strikes are more common in countries with majoritarian electoral systems

Strikes are more common in those OECD countries where the legislature is elected in single member districts (SMD) than in those where it is elected by proportional representation (PR). Furthermore, more working days are lost due to industrial conflict in countries with SMD. I suggest a politico-economic explanation for these rarely noticed empirical regularities. Further empirical testing – including controls drawn from previous strike research – reveals that they hold up in a variety of econometric specifications.     

A Matter of Fact? Knowledge Effects on the Vote in Swedish General Elections, 1985–2002

What would have happened in general elections if all voters had more closely approximated the democratic ideal of a ‘fully informed’ voter? Earlier analyses have demonstrated politically consequential effects of political information on American voters’ political preferences. In an effort to expand the validity of these results, the author of this article performed counterfactual analyses of aggregate election outcomes in six Swedish general elections from 1985 to 2002. The analyses show that the aggregated gains for right‐wing parties average +2.1 percentage points during the period. In two elections, the outcome would have resulted in a different government majority. The findings challenge a widespread idea that voters’ extensive use of cognitive heuristics can compensate fully for their lack of factual knowledge. This article demonstrates that factual knowledge can indeed have significant effects in places where one would least expect it – in a Northern European multiparty context where voters are renowned for making extensive use of cognitive heuristics.     

Mapping the Nordic Party Space

The left-right positions of the political parties in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland are compared from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s. To locate the parties, survey data on the voters' self-placements along the left-right continuum are used. In order to study changes in the left-right polarity and the degree of consensus along the left-right continuum in each of the countries, we use the mean party positions to calculate three different measures of party distances. The wing party distance is that between the party farthest to the left and the party farthest to the right. The rival party distance is that between the Social Democratic Party and the traditional Conservative Party. Finally, the mean party distance is the average distance between all pairs of parties. One of the main conclusions is that in Sweden and Iceland the left-right continuum seems to contract, whereas in Norway and Denmark the left-right polarity and the distances between the parties are increasing. In today's Nordic party space, the distance between left and right is longest in Denmark and shortest in Norway. Eventually, 39 Nordic parties are brought together on the same left-right scale. The analysis reveals that there are some clearly distinguishable clusters of parties or party families in the Nordic countries, such as, for example, the socialist parties, the social democratic parties and the conservative parties. Other party groups differ greatly in left-right position, like the progressive parties, the liberal parties and the centre parties.