What if Everyone Voted? Simulating the Impact of Increased Turnout in Senate Elections

The conventional wisdom among journalists and politicians is that higher turnout would benefit Democrats, although extant scholarly research suggests otherwise. We adopt a new approach to assessing the partisan impact of higher turnout. We use state-level exit polls and Census data to estimate the partisan preferences of nonvoters in Senate elections and then simulate the outcome of these elections under universal turnout. While nonvoters are generally more Democratic than voters, the dearth of close races means that very few election outcomes would have changed had everyone voted. Other scenarios—full turnout among registered voters, equal turnout rates for whites and African-Americans, and equal turnout rates across income groups—generate similar results: although Democrats fare better in each scenario, few outcomes would have changed. However, the gap between voters and nonvoters' partisan preference varies considerably across states and across years, suggesting that this "partisan differential" warrants further examination .     

Suicide in pregnancy

The difficulty in establishing the cause of death of a pregnant woman emphasizes the necessity for the careful gathering of evidence. Especially in the case of motor accidents along lonely stretches of road involving a solitary motorist the possibility of suicide should be taken into consideration. Since a televised suicide had apparently served as model for the method of suicide, mention has been made of the "Werther effect". A literature review reveals that little has been written on the subject-suicide during pregnancy.     

The Military,the media and the invasion of Grenada

The article begins by discussing trends in official U.S. information policies before the invasion of Grenada (1983), describing the tendency towards secrecy and limited disclosure. The immediate political background to the invasion is outlined, including an examination of attempts to produce a plausible justification for military intervention. The management of the media both immediately before and after the invasion is detailed and the article concludes by assessing the lessons and aftermaths of the information war fought during the Grenada episode.The Grenada ban is not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern ... (Time, 7 November 1983)     

Political independence in America,III: In search of closet partisans

This study uses the 1980 NES questions on partisanship to investigate the question of the attributes of closet partisans, using a typology of partisans and independents developed from an alternative (PST) set of survey items to the usual ones. The study explores the application of four criteria to those learners most suspected of being undercover partisans. What is found is that those learners who are most like strong partisans on the criteria of political involvement and partisan commitment are nonetheless least like strong partisans on two further criteria: independence attitudes and affective response to the substantive content of elections. Thus, theAmerican Voter analysis, which assumes leaners are Independents, and the Wolfinger et al. critique ofThe American Voter, which concludes that leaners are partisans, both turn out to be oversimplifications of political reality.This is a revision of a paper, Political Independence in America III: On Detecting Closet Partisans, presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, San Francisco, March 10–13, 1988.     

Reviews

Paul Dukes, The Last Great Game: USA Versus USSR. Events, Conjunctures, Structures. London: Pinter Publishers in association with John Spiers, 1989, xii + 209 pp., £35.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b

Walter C. Clemens, Jr., Can Russia Change?: The USSR Confronts Global Interdependence. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1989, xxix + 384 pp., £38.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Neil Malcolm, Soviet Policy Perspectives on Western Europe. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs/Routledge, 1989, viii + 117 pp., £7.95 p/b.

R. A. Longmire, Soviet Relations with South‐East Asia. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1989, x + 176 pp., £35.00.

Geoffrey Roberts, The Unholy Alliance: Stalin's Pact with Hitler. London: I. B. Tauris, 1989, xviii + 296 pp., £19.95.

Anthony Jones & William Moskoff, eds., Perestroika and the Economy. New Thinking in Soviet Economics. Armonk, NY, London: M. E. Sharpe, 1989, xxii + 277 pp., $45.00.

Kristian Gerner & Stefan Hedlund, Ideology and Rationality in the Soviet Model: A Legacy for Gorbachev. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xii + 455 pp., £30.00.

J. L. Porket, Work, Employment, and Unemployment in the Soviet Union. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, St. Antony's/Macmillan Series, 1989, xv + 250 pp., £37.50.

Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private Life of the Soviet People. Changing Values in Post‐Stalin Russia. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 281 pp., $24.95.

David Joravsky, Russian Psychology: A Critical History. Oxford and Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989, xxii + 583 pp., £45.00.

W. O. McCagg & Lewis Siegelbaum, eds., The Disabled in the Soviet Union. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989, 304 pp., $34.95.

Thomas F. Remington, ed., Politics and the Soviet System: Essays in Honour of Frederick C. Barghoom. London: Macmillan, 1989, 235 pp., £35.00.

Julian Graffy & Geoffrey Hosking, eds., Culture and the Media in the USSR Today. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan in association with SSEES, University of London, 1989, viii + 168 pp., £35.00 h/b, £14.99 p/b.

Carlo Frateschi, ed., Fluctuations and Cycles in Socialist Economies. Aldershot: Avebury, 1989, xiii + 157 pp., £25.00.

Martin Myant, The Czechoslovak Economy 1948–1988: The Battle for Economic reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, xii + 316 pp., £30.00, $54.50.

Michael Simmons, The Unloved Country: A Portrait of East Germany Today. London: Abacus, 1989, viii + 184 pp., £4.99 p/b.

David Childs, Thomas A. Baylis & Marilyn Rueschemeyer, eds., East Germany in Comparative Perspective. London: Routledge, 1989, xvi + 238 pp., £35.00.

David Turnock, Eastern Europe: An Economie and Political Geography. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xiv + 360 pp., £35.00.

David Turnock, The Human Geography of Eastern Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xii + 345 pp., £35.00.

Theodore H. Friedgut, Iuzovka and Revolution. Volume 1: Life and Work in Russia's Donbas, 1869–1924. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989, xviii + 361 pp., illustrations, tables, $45.00.

Graham Smith, Planned Development in the Socialist World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, vi + 106 pp., £10.95 h/b, £5.95 p/b.

Lynn Turgeon, State and Discrimination. The Other Side of the Cold War. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989, xii + 169 pp., $32.50.

Gerald D. Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labor, Society, and Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989, xvii + 456 pp., $45.00.     

Intrametropolitan financial flows under tax increment financing

Under tax increment financing (TIF), the property tax revenues of county, school and other local governments are used to finance the development expenditures of cities. This paper examines the tax shifting that results when TIF is used by numerous cities in a single urban area. Development subsidies for governments and individuals are distinguished and TIF is shown to have potential negative financial impacts on some taxpayers within a metropolitan area unless two important conditions are met. Data for cities in Milwaukee County, Milwaukee are used to demonstrate the potential tax shifting that results when TIF is used in a large urban area.     

How Financial Managers Deal with Ethical Stress

This article explores the way public-sector financial managers cope with ethical challenges created by undue political pressure and demands for special treatment. A nationwide survey of financial managers revealed that fiscal stress exacerbates ethical pressure for most financial managers, including chief financial officers (CFOs) and those who report to CFOs. Financial managers do not work in an ethical vacuum; they respond to supervisors who encourage ethical action and to coworkers who demonstrate high standards of personal integrity. Supervisors of CFOs who emphasize political responsiveness in employee evaluations can threaten the ethical behavior of CFOs, while timely feedback can mitigate ethical pressure. In turn, CFOs as supervisors can temper the harsh work environment in fiscally stressed times by encouraging ethical action and by giving adequate feedback to those who report to them.     

Chinese university patents: quantity,quality, and the role of subsidy programs

Chinese university patenting has gained importance in recent years. Using a comprehensive dataset of university patents by 155 leading Chinese universities from 1991 to 2009, our study pursues two objectives: First, we analyze the quantity and quality of patents filed by leading Chinese universities. Second, we analyze the role of subsidy programs with regard to university patenting in China. With regard to the first objective, our results show that university patents witnessed rapid growth in terms of quantity while patent quality did not increase to a similar degree. Regarding the second objective, we find that a subsidy program to promote research excellence at selected universities is a significant driver of patent quantity and quality. In contrast, a subsidy program that decreases the costs of patent applications seems to enhance patent quantity but not patent quality. We conclude that innovation policies which aim to stimulate patents of higher quality should focus primarily on increasing university R&D, and to a lesser extent on decreasing the costs of university patenting.     

The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding Ten Years on: Critical Reflections and Stimulating Ideas on an Evolving Scholarship

ABSTRACT

The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. This special volume opens up with a selection of nine of the most influential articles published in the journal. JISB's editorial team has asked the authors for their reflections on their original articles, telling us more about the writing process at that time, what they would do differently (with hindsight), or how they see their articles contributing to current debates on intervention and statebuilding. We have selected one article per volume, and we have ordered the contribution starting from volume 1 (2007) to volume 9 (2015). The articles will be made open access for the year, and we highly recommend (re-)reading the original articles along with the comments from the authors.     

Gang Activity and Overall Levels of Crime: A New Mapping Tool for Defining Areas of Gang Activity Using Police Records

In this note, a new method for defining gang activity areas based uponpolice records is illustrated using the Chicago Police Department's1996 incident files. This method is based upon standard geographictechniques and uses a uniform grid that divides the city into 150-msquares. It is shown that this technique may be useful both in describinggang activity areas and in describing the spatial distribution of crime inlarge cities. A strong relationship is found between the number of gangsthat are active in an area and the general level of criminal activity.