Reprecincting and Voting Behavior

Despite the expansion of convenience voting across the American states, millions of voters continue to cast ballots at their local precincts on Election Day. We argue that those registered voters who are reassigned to a different Election Day polling place prior to an election are less likely to turn out to vote than those assigned to vote at the same precinct location, as a new precinct location incurs both search and transportation costs on reassigned voters. Utilizing voter file data and precinct shape files from Manatee County, Florida, from before and after the 2014 General Election, we demonstrate that the redrawing of precinct boundaries and the designation of Election Day polling places is not a purely technical matter for local election administrators, but may affect voter turnout of some registered voters more than others. Controlling for a host of demographic, partisan, vote history, and geospatial factors, we find significantly lower turnout among registered voters who were reassigned to a new Election Day precinct compared to those who were not, an effect not equally offset by those voters turning to other available modes of voting (either early in-person or absentee). All else equal, we find that registered Hispanic voters were significantly more likely to abstain from voting as a result of being reassigned than any other racial group.     

Are Voters Mobilized by a ‘Friend-and-Neighbor’ on the Ballot? Evidence from a Field Experiment

In his seminal work on Southern politics, V.O. Key observed that voters disproportionately support local candidates at the ballot box. While empirical analyses have confirmed “friends-and-neighbors” voting across numerous electoral contexts, no one has directly examined voter turnout as the mechanism linking place of residence to vote choice. We argue that place of residence is a social identity that incentivizes citizens to turn out to vote on behalf of the local candidate. We test this mobilization mechanism using a randomized field experiment conducted during a 2014 state legislative primary election. Our results show that county ties between candidates and voters likely boost turnout. Our findings contribute to our understanding of the importance of place identity for turnout decisions in low-information elections.     

Thinking Friendship With and Against Hannah Arendt

This essay interrogates Hannah Arendt’s different notions of friendship, their weaknesses and strengths, with a view to establishing the basis for a more adequate discussion. After examining her conception of friendship first among the ancients, and then in “dark times”, the essay asks how are we to understand friendship among the moderns when times are not particularly dark. This requires a critical reading of her conception of private intimacy and social association in order to construct a more plural understanding of friendship, and of the criteria by which it can be judged, as it is differentially instituted within, and traverses, the private, civil and political realms.     

In-between liberal authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism: Hong Kong’s democratization under Chinese sovereignty, 1997–2016

On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the handover, Hong Kong’s transition towards a full democracy remains unsettled. Drawing upon the contemporary theories of hybrid regimes, this article argues that manipulations adopted by electoral authoritarian governments have become increasingly common in Hong Kong today. As Hong Kong’s elections, opposition activities, and media have been increasingly put under electoral authoritarian-style manipulations, the city-state is now situated in the “political grey zone” in-between liberal authoritarianism and electoral authoritarianism and its transition into a full democracy remains nowhere in sight. The case study of Hong Kong will help enrich the existing comparative literature on hybrid regimes by developing a new “in-between category” and offering an interesting case of democratization of sub-national polity.     

Why does it happen? Explanations for men’s violence against women by women with interpersonal victimization histories

Men’s violence against women (MVAW) has been identified as a critical sociocultural problem. Gaining a better understanding of perspectives on the etiology of violence held by women with histories of male-perpetrated interpersonal violence provides insight into the processes of victimization and recovery. Furthermore, emerging research suggests that feminist beliefs may facilitate recovery and impact how survivors of MVAW perceive it. In this study, we aimed to explore, in women with histories of interpersonal violence, (1) the ways they explained the high prevalence of MVAW and (2) associations between the strength of their feminist beliefs and the participants’ explanations. Female college students (N = 32, ages 18–22) participated in qualitative interviews in which they were first presented with published statistics about the frequency of MVAW, then asked to provide explanations for the high prevalence of this phenomenon. Individual responses clustered into one or more of four factors: (1) societal influences, (2) blaming women, (3) familial influences, and (4) characteristics of men and women. The extent to which participants identified with feminist beliefs was associated with how they perceived their own victimization. Women who endorsed strong feminist beliefs more frequently cited societal influences on MVAW, whereas women who endorsed feminist beliefs less strongly were more likely to blame women for it and offered stereotypical views of women as passive and fragile.     

Is Bigger Really Better? A Comparative Analysis of Municipal Mergers in Australian and Japanese Local Government

While structural reform by means of municipal mergers has been employed in many different countries, council consolidation has been especially marked in Australian and Japanese local government. This suggests that much can be learned by examining amalgamation through the analytical prism of comparative analysis. In this article, we investigate structural reform through municipal amalgamation in Australian and Japanese local government by examining the aims of amalgamation, the methods employed by public policy makers and the outcomes which were achieved. From this comparative analysis, we attempt to draw some broader lessons for local government policy making aimed at local government reform.     

How Should Governments Make Risky Policy Decisions?

Public policy-making does not follow the long-established and well-recognised principles of rational decision analysis under risk. Public views of risk are often inconsistent and seemingly irrational, and a gulf exists between risk perceptions and attitudes of the public and those of 'experts'. On the other hand, experts often claim unjustifiably high levels of confidence in their predictions of policy choice outcomes, creating a lack of public faith in their recommendations. While risky policy choices deserve more systematic decision analysis, many challenges remain to effective implementation of such analyses. Among the suggestions for improvement that we offer is the need for more effective interaction between policy-makers, decision analysts and the public.     

School Engagement Among Urban Adolescents of Color: Does Perception of Social Support and Neighborhood Safety Really Matter?

In this study we examined the effects of risk factors (perceived neighborhood crime/delinquency problems, neighborhood incivilities) and protective factors (teacher support, family support, peer support) on the school engagement of 123 urban adolescents of color. Age and gender were also examined to determine if different ages (younger or older) or genders (male or female) significantly modified the relationship between the risk factors and school engagement. Results indicated that perceived neighborhood incivilities was uniquely predictive of school engagement. Contrary to hypotheses, different levels of the perceived social support variables did not modify the effects of risky neighborhood conditions on adolescent’s perceived school engagement. Age, but not gender, significantly modified the relationship between perceived family social support and perceived neighborhood crime on adolescents’ reported levels of school engagement. The implications of the results for prevention and intervention programs that address school engagement among early adolescents of color are considered.

Inefficient redistribution and inefficient redistributive politics

This paper examines the effect of inefficient redistribution in Myerson’s (American Political Science Review 87:856–869, 1993) model of redistributive politics. Regardless of the absolute levels of the efficiency of political parties’ transfers to different voter segments, parties have incentive to (stochastically) shift resources away from voter segments with large relative efficiency gaps between the two parties’ transfers towards voter segments with smaller relative efficiency gaps. Because of this dependence on relative, and not absolute, levels of efficiency, the parties’ optimal strategies may lead to large discrepancies between the sum of the budgetary transfers and the sum of the effective transfers.