Ideologically Sophisticated Donors: Which Candidates Do Individual Contributors Finance?

Individuals are the single largest source of campaign contributions, yet we know little about their motivations. For instance, the existing literature questions whether individual contributors sophisticatedly differentiate among candidates according to policy positions, particularly among same‐party candidates. We analyze this issue by combining data from a new survey of over 2,800 in‐ and out‐of‐state donors associated with the 2012 Senate elections, FEC data on contributors’ professions, and legislative records. Three major findings emerge. First, policy agreement between a donor's positions and a senator's roll calls significantly influences the likelihood of giving, even for same‐party contributors. Second, there is a significant effect of committee membership corresponding to a donor's occupation; this holds even for donors who claim that other motivations dominate, but it does not appear to be motivated by an expectation of access. Third, conditional upon a donation occurring, its size is determined by factors outside a legislator's control.     

The European Court of Justice and its political impact

This article reviews recent advances in the study of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and its political impact at the European and member state levels. New quantitative as well as qualitative analyses show with great empirical precision that member state preferences guide the Court. The article summarises these findings, but argues that greater attention needs to be given to the (over-)constitutionalisation of EU law in order to fully capture the political impact of ECJ jurisprudence. Even if European judges are less activist than is often assumed and individual decisions are more restrained in the face of member state opposition, incrementally, case law evolves in a highly expansive fashion. And, exercising caution regarding unrealistic expectations about quasi-deterministic judicial law-making, it is found that the Court’s constitutionalised jurisprudence impacts heavily on European and member state policy-making.     

Exploring frontline work in China

This study of the state frontline workforce breaks new ground by conducting an institutional analysis of rule abidance in the People's Republic of China (PRC). We draw upon a survey (n = 1,721) of Chengguan officers, the main players in regulatory enforcement of civil law in urban China, to explore the influence of autocratic one‐party rule on the meaning of and variation in rule abidance in China. The majority of Chengguan officers are rule followers, and demographic differences show little deviation from this norm. However, institutional factors associated with one‐party rule, particularly upward accountability, the privilege of administrative rank, and unequal access to power and resources, are significant in shaping differences in rule following among Chengguan officers. We conclude with a discussion of the similarities in institutional pressures on urban regulatory policing in China and the United States.     

Doctrine and violence: The impact of combatant training on civilian killings

Military theorists and practitioners have long argued that training shapes how combatants treat civilians during war. Yet there is little systematic evidence regarding the impact of training on wartime behavior, and almost none for non-state armed groups, despite the fact that such groups intensively train their fighters in order to shape their behavior towards civilian populations. This article argues that among insurgent groups that emphasize the strategic and tactical importance of restraint towards civilian populations, political training can reduce civilian killings. We test the observable implications of our theory in the case of Colombia, using survey data on former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgents and sub-national data on civilian killings. We find support for our hypothesis, with results that are robust to a range of model specifications and controls, including alternate sources of combatant discipline and obedience, such as military training and punishment.     

How Measurement Error in Content Analysis and Self-Reported Media Use Leads to Minimal Media Effect Findings in Linkage Analyses: A Simulation Study

In the debate on minimal media effects and their causes, methodological concerns about measurement are rarely discussed. We argue that even in state-of-the-art media-effects studies that combine measures of media messages and media use (i.e., linkage analyses), measurement error in both the media content analysis and the media use self-reports will typically lead to severely downward-biased effect estimates. We demonstrate this phenomenon using a large Monte Carlo simulation with varying parameters of the content analysis and the survey study. Results show that measurement error in the content analysis and media use variables does indeed lead to smaller effect estimates, especially when the media messages of interest are relatively rare. We discuss these findings as well as possible remedies and implications for future research.     

Internal borderlands: architectures of force and state expansion in India’s central ‘frontier’

India’s Maoist insurgency, a conflict in the geographic heartland of the country, is often portrayed as symptomatic of the underdevelopment and weak governance of the region. Rhetorically, the state has pursued a counter-insurgency strategy premised on a tandem of ‘security’ and development, while emphasising the conflict zone’s rootedness in the nation. This discourse ignores that historically the state has treated the region as a hostile ‘borderland’. This paper argues that the Indian state’s counter-insurgency is structured around a set of strategies of absorption. Drawing on James C. Scott’s examination of Zomia, as well as Henri Lefebvre’s theories of the state and space, this paper examines processes of militarised state expansion. Focusing on the construction of roads, government-controlled resettlement camps, forward operating bases and militarised schools, this paper conceptualises these particular state spaces as ‘architectures of force’: material manifestations of a larger project of highly militarised and acutely violent state-building.     

The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: social process methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty

Agroecology has played a key role in helping Cuba survive the crisis caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe and the tightening of the US trade embargo. Cuban peasants have been able to boost food production without scarce and expensive imported agricultural chemicals by first substituting more ecological inputs for the no longer available imports, and then by making a transition to more agroecologically integrated and diverse farming systems. This was possible not so much because appropriate alternatives were made available, but rather because of the Campesino-a-Campesino (CAC) social process methodology that the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) used to build a grassroots agroecology movement. This paper was produced in a ‘self-study’ process spearheaded by ANAP and La Via Campesina, the international agrarian movement of which ANAP is a member. In it we document and analyze the history of the Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement (MACAC), and the significantly increased contribution of peasants to national food production in Cuba that was brought about, at least in part, due to this movement. Our key findings are (i) the spread of agroecology was rapid and successful largely due to the social process methodology and social movement dynamics, (ii) farming practices evolved over time and contributed to significantly increased relative and absolute production by the peasant sector, and (iii) those practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change.