Choosing the Right Candidate: Observational and Experimental Evidence that Conservatives and Liberals Prefer Powerful and Warm Candidate Personalities,Respectively

A comprehensive literature relates voters’ electoral decisions to their perceptions of candidates’ personalities. Yet the mechanisms through which voters are attracted to certain candidates and not to others remain largely unresolved. To answer this question, this article integrates two recent interdisciplinary insights. First, leader and candidate preferences are found to be strongly dependent on levels of contextual conflict. Second, individual differences in political ideology are shown to be rooted in psychological orientations leading conservatives and liberals to perceive society in fundamentally different ways: Conservatives tend to perceive the social world as dangerous and threatening, whereas liberals to a larger degree see society as a safe place characterized by cooperation. Based on this, it is predicted that conservatives and liberals will also prefer different candidate personalities. Specifically, conservatives are predicted to value candidate power and “strong leadership” more than liberals, whereas liberals are predicted to value candidate warmth more than conservatives. The prediction is supported observationally using the 1984–2008 American National Election Studies and experimentally in two original experiments conducted in the United States and Denmark. Consequences and scope conditions for trait-based voting are discussed.     

Decomposing the Relationship Between Candidates’ Facial Appearance and Electoral Success

Numerous studies show that candidates’ facial competence predicts electoral success. However, a handful of other studies suggest that candidates’ attractiveness is a stronger predictor of electoral success than facial competence. Furthermore, the overall relationship between inferences from candidates’ faces and electoral success is challenged in two ways: (i) non-facial factors in candidate photos such as clothing and hair style as well as (ii) parties’ nomination strategies are suggested as potential confounds. This study is based on original data about all 268 candidates running in three local elections in 2009 in Denmark and supports a two-component structure of the relationship between candidates’ facial appearance and their electoral success. Facial competence is found to mediate a positive relationship between candidates’ attractiveness and electoral success, but simultaneously facial competence also predicts electoral success over and above what can be accounted for by attractiveness. Importantly these relationships are found when seven different non-facial factors, parties’ nomination strategies and candidates’ age and gender are controlled for. This suggests that the two-component structure of the relationship between candidates’ facial appearance and electoral success is highly robust.     

Real and perceived effects of changing the grant system from specific to general grants

The paper is based on a study of the 1993 Finnish grant reform, changing from a system with earmarked matching grants to a system with general, non-matching grants. The analysis of cross-sectional data confirms the “fly-paper effect” and also that matching grants have a stronger stimulating effect than non-matching grants on local expenditure. The fly-paper effect is then modified to take account of the distribution of power inside local government. The change to general grants without central government supervision might mean more power to the central management in the local government and a diminished power for sector officers and groups dependent on the sector services. Perceptions of principal actors in the local government budget process were that the reform changed the distribution of power, in some municipalities to the disadvantage of locally small weak groups that could benefit under the old system of earmarked matching grants.     

Winning Faces Vary by Ideology: How Nonverbal Source Cues Influence Election and Communication Success in Politics

Not just the content of a communication but also the source of the communication shapes its persuasiveness. Recent research in political communication suggests that important source cues are nonverbal and relate to the physical traits of the source such that attractive- and competent-looking sources have better success in attracting votes and policy support. Yet, are all nonverbal source cues similarly received irrespective of audience, or does their reception vary across audiences? Specifically, we ask whether some physical traits are received positively by some audiences but backfire for others. Utilizing research on ideological stereotypes and the determinants of facial preferences, we focus on the relationship between the facial dominance of the source and the ideology of the receiver. Across five studies, we demonstrate that a dominant face is a winning face when the audience is conservative but backfires and decreases success when the audience is liberal. On the other hand, a non-dominant face constitutes a winning face among liberal audiences but backfires among conservatives. These effects seemingly stem from deep-seated psychological responses and shape both the election and communication success of real-world politicians. If the faces of politicians do not match the ideology of their constituency, they are more likely to lose in the competition for votes and policy support.     

Public orchestration,social networks,and transnational environmental governance: Lessons from the aviation industry

This article contributes to current debates on the potential and limitations of transnational environmental governance, addressing in particular the issue of how private and public regulation compete and/or reinforce each other – and with what results. One of the most influential approaches to emerge in recent years has been that of “orchestration.” But while recent discussions have focused on a narrow interpretation of orchestration as intermediation, we argue that there is analytical traction in studying orchestration as a combination of directive and facilitative tools. We also argue that a social network analytical perspective on orchestration can improve our understanding of how governments and international organizations can shape transnational environmental governance. Through a case study of aviation, we provide two contributions to these debates: first, we propose four analytical factors that facilitate the possible emergence of orchestration (issue visibility, interest alignment, issue scope, and regulatory fragmentation and uncertainty); and second, we argue that orchestrators are more likely to succeed when they employ two strategies: (i) they use a combination of directive and facilitative instruments, including the provision of feasible incentives for industry actors to change their behavior, backed up by regulation or a credible regulatory threat; and (ii) they are robustly embedded in, and involved in the formation of, the relevant transnational networks of actors and institutions that provide the infrastructure of governance. © 2017 JohnWiley & Sons Australia, Ltd     

Challenges for Effective Counterterrorism Communication: Practitioner Insights and Policy Implications for Preventing Radicalization,Disrupting Attack Planning,and Mitigating Terrorist Attacks

Growing concerns about small-scale, low sophistication terrorist attacks, and the difficulties they present for security services, make public coproduction of security increasingly necessary. Communication to ensure that the public(s) is aware of the role they can play will be central to this. This article, based on interviews with thirty expert practitioners, explores challenges associated with communication designed to prevent radicalization, interdict attack planning and mitigate the impacts of a terrorist attack in the United Kingdom and Denmark. The interplay between these challenges and the contemporary terrorist context are analyzed, highlighting that new, or adapted, communications and approaches may be necessary.     

Increased adrenaline to noradrenaline ratio is a superior indicator of antemortem hypothermia compared with separate catecholamine concentrations

The significance of urinary catecholamines and small gastric mucosal bleedings, Wischnewsky's spots, in postmortem diagnosis of hypothermia deaths was evaluated. Autopsy cases (n=358) were divided into hypothermia, suspected hypothermia, and control groups. The catecholamine levels did not correlate with the length of the postmortem period. The adrenaline to noradrenaline ratio was most effective in detecting hypothermia (68.9% sensitivity, 78.1% specificity). The median adrenaline concentrations were significantly higher in hypothermia than in control groups. The control group containing mostly sudden cardiac deaths with no cold exposure had a noradrenaline level comparable to the hypothermia groups. The sensitivity and specificity of determining Wischnewsky's spots in hypothermia deaths were 63.9% and 88.3%, respectively. The adrenaline to noradrenaline ratio is more suitable in proving antemortem cold stress than either of these independently, and its diagnostic value is comparable to that of Wischnewsky's spots.