The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing

Why are some parties more likely than others to keep the promises they made during previous election campaigns? This study provides the first large‐scale comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with common definitions. We study the fulfillment of over 20,000 pledges made in 57 election campaigns in 12 countries, and our findings challenge the common view of parties as promise breakers. Many parties that enter government executives are highly likely to fulfill their pledges, and significantly more so than parties that do not enter government executives. We explain variation in the fulfillment of governing parties’ pledges by the extent to which parties share power in government. Parties in single‐party executives, both with and without legislative majorities, have the highest fulfillment rates. Within coalition governments, the likelihood of pledge fulfillment is highest when the party receives the chief executive post and when another governing party made a similar pledge.     

Young men’s friendships: inclusive masculinities in a post-university setting

When Eric Anderson published inclusive masculinity theory (IMT), it was largely situated in relationships he observed with first-year undergraduate students. Here, he noticed a striking difference in behaviours and attitudes between the adolescent heterosexual men in the United States, compared to those in the UK. Since IMT’s inception, there has been a great deal of further enquiry into the social lives of young heterosexual men in both of these nations. What is undertheorized, however, is whether the intense emotional and physical tactility of homosocial relationships described in this literature will occur with current and future generations. Nor do we know if men described as exhibiting inclusive masculinities at university continue to do so – and to what degree – as they enter the workplace and develop family ties. This research utilizes 10 semi-structured interviews with the same participants from Anderson’s initial studies, showing that they continue to strive for the same emotional intimacy with male friends that they achieved during their time at university. Half also carried this behaviour into the friendships developed with other men since graduating from university. Thus, this research contributes to IMT as it offers preliminary analysis into the friendships of inclusive men, after their time at university.     

Exact solutions to Bayesian and maximum likelihood problems in facial identification when population and error distributions are known

The reliability of traditional photogrammetric identification techniques using a small number of facial landmarks has recently come in for criticism. However, the transformation of parameters into a new face space in which the error distributions are orthogonal, yields a maximum likelihood solution to the problem of identifying a photographed face from a small, known, population which, in a simulated example, raises the success rate from 20% to 93%. A full transformation yielding simultaneously independent population and error distributions can be derived from raw population and error data using a straightforward computer procedure. Such a transformation facilitates computations for the situation where a single suspect is held in custody and the likelihood ratio of his being identical with a photograph is desired. It seems premature to condemn photogrammetry until the more efficient data-analysis approach outlined in this paper has been applied and tested.     

Determinants and consequences of university spinoff activity: a conceptual framework

The characteristics and behavior of university spinoff activity is an important subject in economic and management studies literature. Such studies merit research because it is suggested that university innovations stimulate economies by spurring product development, by creating new industries, and by contributing to employment and wealth creation. For this reason, universities have come to be highly valued in terms of the economic potential of their research efforts. The aim of this paper is to offer a framework for the study of academic entrepreneurship that explains different aspects of university spinoff behavior in a coherent way. We suggest that the existing literature on this topic can be categorized into six separate streams and synthesized in a framework that captures the determinants and consequences of spinoff activity.      

Selection bias in human rights tribunals: an exploratory study

Abstract: Quasi-judicial tribunals are bound by the principle of natural justice, including the obligation to avoid bias or the apprehension of bias in the selection of adjudicators, as was affirmed for human rights commissions in the McBain case. This paper statistically analyses all decisions rendered by Canadian human rights tribunals, both federal and provincial, in the years 1956 to 1984. The main conclusion is that there is a tendency toward the reappointment of adjudicators whose decisions are favourable to complainants. This calls into question the neutrality of the appointment procedures used in these years, namely appointment by a minister or by a human rights commission. The system recently adopted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, involving appointment by the chairman of a panel of adjudicators, is proposed as a model worthy of imitation to the extent that it minimizes the apprehension of bias. Sommaire: Les tribunaux quasi-judiciaires sont tenus d'appliquer le principe de la justice naturelle, y compris l'obligation d'éviter de soulever une crainte raisonnable de partialité lors du choix des arbitres, comme l'arrêt McBain l'a affirmé en ce qui concerne les commissions des droits de la personne. Cet article comporte une analyse statistique de toutes les décisions prises par les tribunaux canadiens des droits de la personne, tant provinciaux que fédéraux entre 1956 et 1984. Il conclut qu'on a eu tendance à renouveler le mandat des arbitres dont les décisions étaient favorables aux plaignants. Cette conclusion interpelle la neutralité du système de nomination en vigueur durant cette période, en particulier lorsque c'était un ministre ou une commission des droits de la personne qui nommait les arbitres. Le système, récemment adopté par la Commission canadienne des droits de la personne, en vertu duquel c'est le président d'un tribunal d'arbitres qui noninie chaque comité d'arbitre, est proposé comme modèle digne d'être imité dam la mesure où il réduit la crainte raisonnable de partialité.