Historical systems and social systems

Studies in Comparative International Development -     

No exit and the organization of voice in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals

Although leadership is typically seen as coming from the leaders of governments and major institutions, a strong case can be made that concerned citizens first articulate important issues and policies that official leaders then pick up and promote. In a market-based society dominated by large corporations, Hirschman's framework of exit, voice, and loyalty can be used to relate consumer and grassroots movements to markets, when participants believe there is no exit and loyalty (or acquiescence) is not an option. While "voice" is usually applied to the individual or consumer level, this article develops the concept of organized voice and illustrates how it has exhibited leadership in the controversial relations between the biotech and pharmaceutical industries and society as a whole. The essay concludes by urging more research on organized voice as a source of leadership and by outlining some important dimensions for researchers to consider.     

The impact of ideological positions and personal attributes of candidates in intraparty competition: A study under the Swiss open-list PR System

Intraparty preference voting systems offer different incentives for candidates to cultivate a personal vote, but little is known about how the candidates' policy positions affect their electoral success in intraparty competition. This article analyses the effect of candidates' ideological positions and personal attributes on their preference vote share in the 2015 and 2019 Swiss Lower House elections. We used candidate survey data combined with official election statistics. Our findings demonstrate that the ideological distance between candidates' positions and their party's median position is of minor importance for their electoral success when compared to their personal attributes. However, ideological distance between candidates and their party's median position reduce their preference vote share.     

Performance measures in tax administration: Chile as a case study

The article proposes a set of tax administration performance measures and contrasts them with measures actually used by the Chilean tax administration agency. The goals assumed for the tax administration agency (TA) are to maximize tax revenue collection and provide quality services to taxpayers. Ideal performance measures (PMs) would measure the deviation of actual outcome from a best‐practice standard, given the value of all variables affecting organisation performance that are outside management control. The key challenge is to build and calculate these best‐practice outcomes. In Chile the PM in use, for the first goal, is the ratio of actual to potential tax revenue collection. This PM does adjust revenue collection for variations in the tax structure and rate, but it fails to control other variables that affect performance such as the TA budget and per capita income. The PM in use, for the second goal, is taxpayer satisfaction measured through sample surveys. This seems the appropriate PM, as quality of taxpayer services depends directly on the TA efforts to improve them. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How management team composition affects academic spin-offs’ entrepreneurial orientation: the mediating role of conflict

This research has been designed with the purpose of analysing the influence of both the composition of academic spin-offs’ management teams and the potential conflict emerged within such teams on the degree of entrepreneurial orientation exhibited by academic spin-offs. To this end, we have used the upper echelon theory as theoretical background and have analysed the impact of the proportion of non-academic managers within management teams, the heterogeneity of such teams with respect to the age and main educational area of their managers, as well as the potential mediating role of the conflict emerged. Drawing on a database of 167 Spanish academic spin-offs, results show, on the one hand, that the presence of non-academic managers within management teams is a key factor in the academic spin-offs' exhibitions of higher levels of entrepreneurial orientation and, on the other hand, that conflict fully mediates the relationship between management teams' age heterogeneity and entrepreneurial orientation.     

Bite Mark Analysis in Foodstuffs and Inanimate Objects and the Underlying Proofs for Validity and Judicial Acceptance

Even though one of the first bite mark cases was Doyle v. State in 1954 (a bitten cheese case), the research has focused on bite marks inflicted in human skin. As published Papers, Case Reports, or Technical Notes can constitute precedents which are relied upon in making the legal arguments and a considerable amount of case law exists in this area, we present a systematic review on bite mark analysis in foodstuffs and inanimate objects and their underlying proofs for validity and judicial acceptance according to Daubert rulings. Results showed that there is vulnerability in these procedures, and it is essential to demand for focus scrutiny on the known error rates when such evidence is presented in trials. These kinds of bite marks are well documented; however, there has been little research in this field knowing that the protocols of analysis and comparison are the responsibility of the forensic odontologists.     

Is the Left-Right Scale a Valid Measure of Ideology?

In order to measure ideology, political scientists heavily rely on the so-called left-right scale. Left and right are, however, abstract political concepts and may trigger different associations among respondents. If these associations vary systematically with other variables this may induce bias in the empirical study of ideology. We illustrate this problem using a unique survey that asked respondents open-ended questions regarding the meanings they attribute to the concepts “left” and “right”. We assess and categorize this textual data using topic modeling techniques. Our analysis shows that variation in respondents’ associations is systematically related to their self-placement on the left-right scale and also to variables such as education and respondents’ cultural background (East vs. West Germany). Our findings indicate that the interpersonal comparability of the left-right scale across individuals is impaired. More generally, our study suggests that we need more research on how respondents interpret various abstract concepts that we regularly use in survey questions.     

Independent Professional Bureaucracies and Street-Level Bribery: Comparing Changes in Civil Service Law and Implementation in Latin America

Using cross-sectional data, studies of the relation between merit-based bureaucracies and corruption usually find that nations with more professional and politically independent bureaucracies have lower corruption. However, cross-section designs cannot test this policy claim. This study adopts a pre-test?post-test design using lagged data comparing changes in civil service laws and implementation in eight Latin American countries from 2004 to 2012 and data reporting subsequent change in bribe requests by the bureaucrats that the laws are intended to affect. Raising questions about the validity of previous results, it is found that improved laws and implementation were associated with no or increased bribe requests.