Frequency of paradox in a common n-winner voting scheme

This paper investigates the extent to which a commonly used electoral scheme — voting for n candidates when there are n vacancies to fill — is likely to lead, in practice, to paradoxical results. Two types of paradox are investigated. One occurs when an increase in the number of vacancies causes a candidate to drop from the list of winners. The second occurs when the Condorcet candidate fails to win. Using a Monte Carlo study, we show that the likelihood of paradox can be substantial and depends critically on the degree of homogeneity of voters' preferences and on the number of voters.     

Reviews

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa & Alex Pravda, eds, Perestroika: Soviet Domestic and Foreign Policies. London: Sage Publications, 1991, xxi+276 pp., £27.50 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

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Uri Ra'anan & Igor Lukes, eds, Gorbachev's USSR: A System in Crisis, London: Macmillan, 1990, xxi+154 pp., £35.00.

Martin McCauley, ed., Gorbachev and Perestroika. London: Macmillan, 1990, xii+222 pp. £35.00 h/b, £14.99 p/b.

Pawel Dembinski, The Logic of the Planned Economy: The Seeds of Collapse. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, xii+249 pp., £30.00.

Mildred Turnbull, Soviet Environmental Policy and Practice. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1991, xiv+215 pp., £35.00

Chandran Kukathas, David W. Lovell & William Maley, eds, The Transition from Socialism: State and Civil Society in the USSR. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991, vii+227 pp., $24.99.

Vladimir Tismaneanu, In Search of Civil Society: Independent Peace Movements in the Soviet Bloc. London: Routledge, 1990, x+191 pp., £30.00.

John Feffer, Beyond Detente. New Options on East‐ West Relations. London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1990, xviii+238 pp., £14.95

Robert Hall, Soviet Military Art in a Time of Change: Command and Control of the Future Battlefield. London: Brassey's (UK), 1991, xix+203 pp., £22.50, $40.50 h/b.

Alfred D. Low, Soviet Jewry and Soviet Policy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, 249 pp., $37.50     

Decision-making in the federal cabinet

Abstract. The growing interest in federal government decision-making likely flows from increasing scepticism about decisions reached in secret. Decision-making under Mackenzie King largely followed the oral tradition. Proposals went first to full cabinet; only if disagreement resulted were they referred to the usually ad hoc committees. Interdepartmental committees of officials were prevalent. These features persisted under St-Laurent and Diefenbaker, although under them decision-making centred more in the prime minister than before. Under Pearson, efforts were made to develop the cabinet committee system and to require advance notice and documentation before items appeared on the agenda. The Trudeau cabinet has been characterized by the application of the principle of collegiality. Detailed scrutiny of proposals is the rule. Documentation includes full discussion of alternatives, of financial and federal-provincial implications, and of caucus consultations. Generally, proposals go first to committee. Where there is consensus, the prime minister ascertains at a subsequent cabinet meeting whether there is any disagreement. An important innovation is the priorities exercise, which, contrary to the usual process, establishes a general course to be implemented subsequently by particular proposals. The Trudeau approach requires ministers as never before to become knowledgeable about their own and other departments. The result is less dependence on civil servants for policy guidance. It is erroneous to view this reinforcement of collective responsibility as centralization of power in the prime minister's hands. The systemization of government decision-making, in which caucus consultation is more important than before, requires a parallel systemization of the procedure of the final decision-making body, Parliament. Sommaire. L'intérêt grandissant à l'égard du processus de décision du gouvernement fédéral tient sans doute à la montée du scepticisme qu'inspirent les décisions prises à huis clos. Sous Mackenzie King, les décisions, le plus souvent verbales, n'étaient pour ainsi dire consignées nulle part. Les propositions, d'abord présentées au cabinet, étaient renvoyées à des comités spéciaux qu'en cas de désaccord. Or, à l'époque, les comités interministériels de fonctionnaires dominaient la scène politique. Les gouvernements St-Laurent et Diefenbaker conservèrent les mêmes pratiques, mais en renforçant le rôle du Premier ministre. C'est sous l'administration Pearson que furent jetées les bases du système des comités du cabinet et que l'on commença à exiger préavis et documentation avant de porter une question à l'ordre du jour.     

The Moral Minority: Evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland and Their Political Behaviour

It has long been asserted that strong evangelical religious beliefs underpin strong unionist and loyalist political attitudes in Northern Ireland. Although recent literature has argued for a wide diversity of political attitudes amongst evangelicals, this has not been quantified. Based on analysis of the 1991 Northern Irish Social Attitudes Survey and the 1998 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, this article argues that evangelicals are attitudinally different to other Protestants in Northern Ireland. However, their distinctiveness arises from their conservative moral attitudes and not, as widely claimed, from stronger unionist political values. Indeed, in terms of party identification, in 1991 evangelicals were less likely than other Protestants to support the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). And although there has been a small shift towards the DUP over the course of the 1990s, it is not due to any strengthening of the unionism of evangelicals, but rather the increasing importance of moral conservatism in predicting voters' party choice in Northern Ireland.     

Beyond Territorial Contiguity: Issues at Stake in Democratic Militarized Interstate Disputes

Scholars of international politics have been slow to address the fundamental issues that ground interstate conflict. Territory has frequently been cited as a primary source of contention among states, but it remains only one issue and not even the one most prevalent in the post–World War II time period. We take the first step toward understanding the broader theoretical link between regime type, issues, and militarized conflict by collecting new data on the issues in dispute between democracies from 1946 to 1992. We findthat (1) a large proportion of the militarized disputes between democracies in the post-WWII period involve fisheries, maritime boundaries, and resources of the sea, (2) well-established democracies are able to remove territory as a contentious issue among them, (3) disputes between democracies have become less severe and shorter in duration over time, and (4) a majority of the post-WWII militarized disputes between democracies are not resolved. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these empirical findings for the democraticpeace literature.     

It's About Time: The Lifespan of Information Effects in a Multiweek Campaign

I advance a theoretical and empirical framework that puts time and thus the temporal dynamics of candidate evaluation front and center in order to advance our understanding of the lifespan of information effects while enhancing the external validity of our experimental approaches. With these temporal properties in mind, I designed a “panel experiment” with research conducted over 12 weeks. This represents the first experimental approach to combine control over information exposure with attention to information processing throughout the course of a multiweek campaign. Against the backdrop of partisanship, empirical tests assess the ability of transient exposure to issue and character information to produce effects that endure beyond the moment the information is encountered either via memory‐based or on‐line processes. Findings reveal a remarkably limited role for enduring information effects and suggest a “rapid displacement” model of information processing where new information quickly displaces the accumulated stockpile of old information.