A welfare simulation of mixed-member electoral systems

This paper considers welfare properties of mixed-member electoral systems. In a mixed system, voters may elect high-quality district representatives without excessive campaign fundraising. Simulation results reveal that the optimally mixed electoral system can be welfare-enhancing, but a poorly targeted electoral reform can do worse than a PR system or plurality rule.     

Atrial natriuretic peptide signal pathway upregulated in stomach of streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice

AIM:To investigate atrial natriuretic peptide(ANP) secretion from gastric mucosa and the relationship between the ANP/natriuretic peptide receptor type A (NPR-A)pathway and diabetic gastroparesis. METHODS:Male imprinting control region(ICR)mice (4 wk old)were divided into two groups:control mice, and streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice.Eight weeks after injection,spontaneous gastric contraction was recorded by using physiography in control and streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice.The ANP-positive cells in ...     

De-Europeanization by Default? Germany's EU Policy in Defense and Asylum

Since the end of the Cold War and unification, Germany's policy toward and within the European Union (EU) has undergone significant changes. Once a model "Europeanist," Germany has become increasingly reluctant to support the progressive implementation of key projects of European integration. Neither an instance of a planned strategic change nor a result of an inevitable adaptation to structural shifts at the systemic level, these changes in German foreign policy, incremental yet significant as they are, evade both deterministic and voluntaristic accounts of foreign policy change. Integrating insights from foreign policy analysis, integration theory, and social theory, the article develops an innovative framework for analysis that is applied to Germany's European asylum and refugee policy as well as its security and defense policy. The origins of both policy fields at the European level can be traced back to initiatives that were supported by or even originated in Germany. However, as the 1990s progressed Germany increasingly obstructed further institutionalization. While in the field of asylum and refugee policy the Amsterdam summit marks a clear turning point in Germany's position, the transformation of German policies on European security and defense proceeded rather as an incremental decrease in material support, aggravating substantive progress in the policy field more broadly. An unanticipated consequence of earlier initiatives, in both cases Germany has found it increasingly difficult to live up to the expectations it has helped to raise.     

论韩国民法对所有权的限制——以坟墓基地权为视角

作为韩国独有的坟墓基地权是一种与地上权类似的物权,关于其慨念、性质、基本内容以及其与所有权之间的冲突和矛盾一直是韩国理论界和司法实践关注的焦点.结合立法与司法,对困扰学界的坟墓基地权的慨念、性质、内容、产生原因以及效力做出阐释,以求澄清、解决问题.     

The INSPIRE Framework: How Public Administrators Can Increase Compliance with Written Requests Using Behavioral Techniques

Public administrators rely on written communications to send information to citizens and stakeholders, and they are among the heaviest users of the postal service. Behavioral science research has identified several techniques that public administrators can use to increase compliance with written requests and, in turn, increase effectiveness. Currently, however, many written communications from government bodies are not written in a manner that utilizes these techniques. It remains an ongoing challenge for public administrators to identify, understand, and use these techniques in the written communications sent by their organizations. This article presents a framework capturing seven prominent techniques in a simple mnemonic—INSPIRE—that is already being used by several government bodies in Australia. It also provides practical examples of how to use each technique and demonstrates that using these techniques could result in large aggregate improvements in effectiveness and socially desirable outcomes of public administrators' written communications.     

Loyalty or Competence: Political Use of Performance Information and Negativity Bias

This article explores how political principals weigh loyalty and competence in public personnel decisions. Exploiting the abrupt shift in political leadership following the impeachment of President Park Geun‐hye of Korea, the authors examine how the newly elected president made the decision to retain or dismiss 118 agency heads appointed by the previous administration. The evidence shows the importance of loyalty in managerial survival: those who had a political patronage relationship with the ousted president were less likely to survive in the new administration. However, the authors also demonstrate the relevance of competence, as measured by the outcomes of agency performance evaluation. Further, the article shows the existence of negativity bias: the punishment for low performance is greater than the reward for high performance. Finally, the authors provide support for the idea that political principals reward loyalists, but only if they show acceptable levels of competence.     

Direct Democracy and Women's Political Engagement

What are the conditions that promote gender equality in political participation? In this article, I propose that the presence of direct democracy expands gender equality in political participation by signaling the system's openness to women's voice, confirming their political competency, and highlighting their stake in political decisions. To test this argument, I leverage a quasi‐experiment in Sweden in the aftermath of the introduction of universal suffrage, where the type of municipal political institutions was determined by a population threshold. My findings lend strong support to the effect of direct democracy on the political inclusion of women. I find that the gender gap in electoral participation was smaller in municipalities using direct democracy than in similarly sized municipalities that only had representative institutions.     

Correction to: Traditional Versus Internet Media in a Restricted Information Environment: How Trust in the Medium Matters

Political Behavior - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The gender dummy variable was mistakenly coded in reverse order. The interpretation treated it as (0 =...     

Self-control,Mental Health Problems,and Family Functioning in Adolescence and Young Adulthood: Between-person Differences and Within-person Effects

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescents’ self-control develops in the context of mental health and family functioning, but it is unclear how the interplay of self-control, mental...