Policy-Specific Alienation and Indifference in the Calculus of Voting: A Simultaneous Model of Party Choice and Abstention

This article aims to combine the spatial models of candidate/party choice and abstention/participation choice in a single decision model and to provide empirical reaction functions. The starting point of this study is the hypothesis of a sequential ordering of candidate choice and participation choice (Riker and Ordeshook, 1973). The proposed model simultaneously considers the choice among n≥ 2 parties and the abstention option. It differentiates between policy-specific effects of alienation and indifference. The models are estimated with nested multiattributive discrete choice models which are theoretically founded on random utility theory.     

Federalism, Preemption, and Implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act

This essay provides a positive analysis of regulatory federalismin the dynamic telecommunications industry since the 1996 federalTelecommunications Act. While the 1996 legislation clarifiedsome contentious issues, and established a framework for resolvingothers, implementation by the FCC has not been as smooth asmany participants originally assumed. State regulators havecontinued to play an important role in the industry, which courtdecisions have often upheld. As some jurisdictional issues doget resolved, others that were not anticipated in the legislationare emerging, largely related to regulation of Internet services.     

The empirical application of the spatial theory of voting in multiparty systems with random utility models

Spatial models of voting predominate in the formalization of political decisions and continue to be a growth industry in political science. But strict empirical applications of this theory have been rare. Only recently, conditional discrete choice models have been proposed to fill the gap between formal and empirical models and to predict the individual voting decision in multi-candidate/multiparty contests on the basis of the spatial model. This article highlights several flexible features of these models that are well known in transportation economics and applied marketing science but not yet discussed in the electoral studies community. Empirical illustrations are provided on the basis of (nested) multinomial logit.     

Trusting and Joining? An Empirical Test of the Reciprocal Nature of Social Capital

This article tests a key hypothesis of the social capital literature: voluntary memberships and generalized trust reproduce one another. Panel data from the Michigan Socialization Studies from 1965 to 1982 are used to test the contemporaneous and lagged effects of interpersonal trust on joining groups and the contemporaneous and lagged effects of joining groups on interpersonal trust. We find no evidence supporting the hypothesis that interpersonal trust encourages group memberships and only limited evidence suggesting that belonging to groups makes individuals more trusting.     

Robust governance for the long term and the heat of the moment: Temporal strategies for coping with dual crises

Today the world is confronted with dual crises: creeping and acute threats unfolding at the same time—for example, the manifestation of extreme weather events such as drought and flooding and the creeping crisis of climate change. To cope with dual crises, this article develops a novel temporal perspective that offers policy actors a repertoire of interrelated strategies for enhancing the robustness of institutional efforts. The repertoire consists of five temporal strategies that policy actors can use to navigate the twin challenges of immediate and latent threats in conjunction: strategic coupling of short-term shocks and creeping crises, crafting time horizons, molding the pace of public problem-solving, mobilizing anticipatory capacity through futuring techniques, and adaptive iteration of policy decisions. We illustrate the practical application of these strategies in an exploratory case study of adaptive water management in the Netherlands.

Samenvatting

De wereld wordt geconfronteerd met duale crises: sluipende en acute dreigingen op hetzelfde moment, zoals extreme weersgebeurtenissen als droogte of watersnood tegelijkertijd met de sluipende crisis van klimaatverandering. Om te reageren op duale crises, ontwikkelt dit artikel een nieuw repertoire van vijf temporele strategieën voor beleidsmakers om de robuustheid van overheidssystemen te vergroten. Dit repertoire bestaat uit de volgende strategieën: strategische koppeling van onverwachte korte termijn schokken en sluipende crises, tijdshorizonnen creëren, het tempo aanpassen van implementatie, het mobiliseren van anticiperende capaciteit door middel van scenariotechnieken, en de adaptieve iteratie van beleidsbeslissingen. We illustreren de werking van deze vijf strategieën aan de hand van een uitgewerkt voorbeeld van adaptief watermanagement in Nederland: de invoering van het programma Ruimte voor de Rivier.     

ACCès à information et reassignments personnel's: le précédent qéuébcois

Sommaire: En 1982, l'Assembly e nationals du Québec a jumele, sous me seule loi, l'acces a I information et la protection des reassignments personnel. Elle a mandate un organism nouveau, la Commission d'acces a I information (cai), pour assurer la surveillance de ce regime. Vingt ans plus tard, un premier bilan permit de saisir la faqon dont ce mandat a &b mis en muvre, tout en degageant les raisons et les circumstances de I'Clargissement des tlches assumées par la cai. Comme la plupart des assembltks legislatives du Canada ont imité le «modele» qubbkois dans ce domaine en crbant le poste de Information and Privacy Commissioners, les questions qui dkoulent de cet examen revCtent une portbe plus large. Ces questions portent notamment sur la co‐existence de plusieurs mandats et sur la responsibilities de cet organism a l'egard du sedeur privb en matiere de reassignments personnel. Elles visent aussi le sens du reattachment de cette Commission a l'Assemblee nation ale en tant que « chien de garde » de l'administration publique. Abstract: In 1982, the Quebec national assembly brought access to information and the protection of personal information together under one piece of legislation. It created then a new independent body, the “Commission d'acces a l'information (cai)” (information and privacy commission), to ensure the monitoring of this legislation. Twenty years later, a first assessment of the path taken by Quebec reveals how the cai has been fulfilling its mandate and identifies the reasons and circumstances for extending the scope of the cai's responsibilities. As most of the legislative assemblies in the rest of Canada have imitated the Quebec “model” by creating the position of information and privacy commissioner, the questions that arise from this examination have a broader scope. These questions bear mainly on the co‐existence of several mandates and on the commission's accountability to the private sector with regard to personal information. Moreover, they focus on the meaning of the relationship of this commission to the national assembly as the watchdog of the public administration.     

Secret Intelligence And Escape Clauses: Australia and the Indonesian Annexation of East Timor, 1963-76

In September 2000 the Australian government declassified thousands of pages of documents concerning the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1975. Some 68,000 pages of documents were released. About 2,600 pages of diplomatic documents were withheld, along with Cabinet papers, intelligence materials, and Defence Department records. The documents cover only the period from early 1974 to mid-1976 and do not document the Indonesian war and its human costs. What they do document is the process whereby Australia acquiesced in the Indonesian annexation of East Timor. Above all, they show that secret briefings by the Indonesians kept the Australian government closely informed of Indonesian intentions and operations at every step. In the light of these secret briefings and related documents, it is clear that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's claim that he wanted to see a “genuine act of self-determination” by the East Timorese is and always was hollow. This was a fig leaf covering his desire to see East Timor incorporated into Indonesia as West Papua had been in the 1960s. Its patina of moral responsibility and legal respectability were his alibi or, as Richard Woolcott put it in late 1974, “escape clause,” if and when Indonesian actions led to accusations of Australian complicity with Jakarta. Mr. Whitlam was complicit. The record is clear.     

COVID-19 and Historical Global Rupture in Latin America

This article contrasts two significant ruptures in globalisation. World War I in 1914 was a significant break from the Latin American export-oriented development that was firmly connected to economic globalisation. This article uses the Argentine case study to reveal the ramifications of the post-1914 global breakdown for the republic's internationally dependent development. It draws comparisons with the current COVID-19 crisis as a significant departure from rapid globalisation. Both events altered the trajectory of international activity. Analysis of the 1914 rupture exposes the parallels with COVID-19 and its potential severity for Latin America's internationally connected development.