Retrospective voting: An experimental study

This essay reports on some experiments designed to study two candidate electoral competition when voters are ‘retrospective’ voters. The experiments consist of a sequence of elections in which subjects play the part of both voters and candidates. In each election the incumbent adopts a policy position in a one-dimensional policy space, and voters are paid (on the basis of single peaked utility function over that space) for the position adopted by the incumbent. Neither voters nor candidates are informed of the voter utility functions, and the only information received by the voter is the payoff he has received from the present and previous incumbent administrations. Despite the severely limited information of candidates and voters, we find that, generally, candidates converge toward the median voter ideal point.     

A general constitutional possibility theorem

Arrow's Impossibility Theorem shows that there exist no transitive social preferences in nonoligarchic societies for all possible profiles of individual preference orderings. Similarly, a generalization of Sen's Theorem of the Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal implies under the same conditions that non-Pareto-optimal outcomes may be present in the resulting cyclical preference relations. This essay changes the customary perspective. It demonstrates that, for any profile of individual preferences, we can always find a nonoligarchic assignment of rights to different subsets of society, to decide between pairs of outcomes, together with adequate decision rules, which escapes these problems. This assignment of rights can be a purely liberal one even for each profile, but not one in which everybody participates in all decisions and which uses simple or qualified-majority voting (Total Direct Democracy). The adequate purely liberal constitution, on the other hand, may imply an oligarchy if too few outcomes are present.     

About pigs?: Decisions,outcomes and project planning

At the heart of a misleading conceptualisation of policy practice is what we refer to as the ‘common-sense’, ‘mainstream’ or ‘linear’ model of public policy. This model represents public policy as a dichotomous linear process, of two distinct but sequential phases. The process begins with a decision or a sequence of activities which culminate in a decision. The decision also constitutes a ‘policy’. Then there is a break. On the other side of the divide is ‘policy implementation’ … the unthinking acceptance of the mainstream model in policy analysis has … important and dangeous consequences (Clay and Schaffer, 1985, p.3).     

Trends in policy sciences research: determinants and developments

Abstract. The policy sciences have been evolving as a discipline over the past thirty years, but the development has been less than clear, its directions somewhat uncertain. Still, the founding characteristics, as set forth by its early proponents, have remained relevant and relatively constant. The policy sciences have been defined by their multidisciplinary perspective, their problem-oriented, contextual approach, and their treatment of normative standards. This paper reviews the development of the policy sciences in light of these three hallmarks and observes how each has experienced great variations. Finally, the paper suggests six emerging conditions which could have a significant effect on the future development and practice of the policy sciences.     

Models of Post-Incorporation Judicial Review: 1985 Survey of State Constitutional Individual Rights Decisions

In 1985 state supreme courts issued the largest number of decisionsto date in which protections of individual rights were basedupon provisions of state constitutions. With increasing frequency,state high courts have held that certain constitutional minimumsof rights protection set by U.S. Supreme Court interpretationsof the U.S. Constitution do not satisfy more demanding preceptsof state constitutional law. Although much of this activityremains reactive rather than systematic, there has been a slightmove toward greater systematic analysis. Furthermore, statecourt decisionmaking can be understood in terms of five modelsthat reflect judicial perceptions of varying degrees of equivalenceor nonequivalence between rights provisions in the U.S. Constitutionand state constitutions. At the same time, however, the U.S.Supreme Court has clearly indicated an interest in monitoringthe individual rights decisions of state high courts, whilelower federal courts have begun to place greater reliance onstate constitutional law to preclude U.S. Supreme Court review.     

State High Courts, State Constitutions, and Individual Rights Litigation Since 1980: A Judicial Survey

In 1985, state courts of last resort issued more decisions thanin any year since 1950 in which they extended rights protectionsto individuals beyond those recognized by the U.S. Supreme Courtby basing rights protections solely or independently upon stateconstitutional grounds. A survey of state high court judgesand justices reported here indicates that there has been a nationwideincrease in the number of individual rights cases litigatedunder state constitutions since 1980. Significant-to-moderateincreases, however, were more likely to be reported by justicesfrom the Northeast and West, from states having a moralisticpolitical culture, and from courts whose members are appointedby the governor and/or legislature. State constitutional rightsclaims are more likely to be raised in criminal than noncriminalcases, though in both types of cases and in most states, stateconstitutional rights claims are raised less frequently thanfederal constitutional rights claims. Majorities of judges andjustices favor the ideas of teaching state constitutional lawin law schools and of testing for knowledge of state constitutionallaw on bar examinations.     

The spatial character of Russia's new democracy

To date, virtually all research on Russian elections, beginning in 1991, have used tools and methodological approaches akin to voting research from the 1950s and 1960s. Researchers have relied either on public opinion polls that try to tease out correlations between a standard menu of socio-economic characteristics, attitudes about candidates, and self-reports of voting history; or on journalistic assessments of aggregate election returns, coupled with substantive expertise of Russian politics. Here, then, we try to gain an understanding of those elections in more contemporary theoretical terms – in terms of the spatial analysis of elections and voting. Although our analysis relies on a less-than-optimal source of data – election returns aggregated up to the level of individual rayons (countries) – we are able to draw a spatial map of those elections that is not too dissimilar from what others infer using less explicit methodologies. Specifically, we find that throughout the 1991–1996 period, a single issue – reform – has and continues to dominate the electorate's responses to candidates and parties. On the other hand, we find little evidence of the emergence of nationalism as an issue, but conclude that to the extent we can detect this issue in the 1996 presidential contest, one candidate, General Alexander Lebed, did succeed in differentiating himself from other nationalist candidates (most notably, Vladimir Zhirinovski) without abandoning the reformist camp. In general, then, this preliminary analysis suggests that the same tools used elsewhere to uncover the spatial map of elections and the connection between basic and actionable issues (individual level thermometer score rankings of candidates and parties) can be applied to Russia with the promise of coherent, understandable results.