Markets vs. polls as election predictors: An historical assessment

Prediction markets have drawn considerable attention in recent years as a tool for forecasting elections. But how accurate are they? Do they outperform the polls, as some scholars argue? Do prices in election markets carry information beyond the horserace in the latest polls? This paper assesses the accuracy of US presidential election betting markets in years before and after opinion polling was introduced. Our results are provocative. First, we find that market prices are far better predictors in the period without polls than when polls were available. Second, we find that market prices of the pre-poll era predicted elections almost on par with polls following the introduction of scientific polling. Finally, when we have both market prices and polls, prices add nothing to election prediction beyond polls. To be sure, early election markets were (surprisingly) good at extracting campaign information without scientific polling to guide them. For more recent markets, candidate prices largely follow the polls.     

Capacity to Sustain Sustainability: A Study of U.S. Cities

Why do some governments implement more sustainability practices than others? Based on a national survey of U.S. cities, this article finds moderate levels of sustainability efforts and capacity in U.S. cities; about one‐third of the sustainability practices identified in this article have been implemented. The authors conclude that, first, capacity building is a useful conceptual focus for understanding sustainability implementation in U.S. cities. Capacity building involves developing technical and financial support and increasing managerial execution. Second, sustainability is strongly associated with managerial capacity, which includes establishing sustainability goals, incorporating goals in operations, and developing a supportive infrastructure. Third, getting stakeholders involved furthers the capacity for sustaining sustainability efforts. Citizen involvement is strongly associated with securing financial support for sustainability.     

Voting when the economy goes bad,everyone is in charge,and no one is to blame: The case of the 2009 German election

The economy was a major issue in Germany’s 2009 election. The global economic crisis did not spare Germany, whose economy is tightly integrated into the global economy. So when the German economy experienced a historical shock, did voters connect their views of the economy with their vote choice? Or did they, as some research has suggested, recognize Germany’s dependence on global markets and cut the government slack, especially when the government consists of the country’s two major parties? Using pre- and post-election panel surveys from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we investigate the weight that voters gave to the economy, relative to other considerations, when casting their ballot and whether governing parties were disproportionately judged based on the state of the economy.     

Social learning and self-control: assessing the moderating potential of criminal propensity

Social learning theory is one of the most prominent general theories of crime. Yet recent research has called into question its applicability to all offenders. Specifically, the influence of antisocial peers has been found to exert a stronger effect among those individuals evincing higher levels of criminal propensity (deemed social amplification), whereas other components of the theory have either not been shown to interact with criminal propensity or not been tested. This study examines several social learning theory components to determine whether its influence is dependent on an individual's level of self-control. Results suggest little support for the social amplification hypothesis as the components of social learning theory were found to operate similarly across individuals regardless one's level of self-control. Implications for criminological theory are discussed.     

Detecting Feigned PTSD Using the Personality Assessment Inventory

Research generally supports the use of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey 1991) to detect feigned PTSD, although this support has been somewhat mixed. There is also evidence that coaching individuals on the presence of PAI validity indicators may not affect their ability to avoid detection as feigners (Bagby et al. in Journal of Personality Assessment 78:69–86, 2002), although this question has not been specifically addressed with regard to PTSD. Additionally, a new PAI validity indicator, the Negative Distortion Scale (NDS), was developed that may have utility in detecting feigned PTSD, but this has not been tested. The purpose of this study was to further test the operating characteristics of the PAI validity indicators to detect feigned PTSD among naïve and coached respondents and to examine the newly developed NDS for this purpose. Individuals with genuine PTSD were compared to individuals instructed to feign PTSD on PAI validity indicators. Results suggest that: (a) coaching had minimal influence on the ability of the PAI to detect feigned PTSD, (b) the PAI validity indicators all significantly differentiated genuine from feigned PTSD, and (c) the NIM and NDS indicators were particularly effective for detecting feigned PTSD.     

A study of DNA transfers onto plastic packets placed in personal bags

The ability to detect low level DNA brings with it the uncertainty of whether the detected DNA is a result of transfer. To address this uncertainty, a simulation study was conducted in which a mock illicit drug packet was placed into the personal bags of individuals. When the average transit time of the packets was increased from around 2 h to more than 14 h, the percentage of the DNA profiles recovered from the packets which could be attributed to the individuals increased greatly from 5.3% to 48.6%. We found that drug packers who were poor shedders could not be included as contributors to the DNA profiles from the drug packets at all and there was a higher chance that individuals other than themselves could be included as contributors to the DNA profile recovered from drug packets. We also found that it was equally likely that the drug packers who had direct contact with the drug packets and bag owners who did not, could be included as contributors to the DNA profiles recovered from the packets. The results in this study highlight the importance of taking into consideration the transit time of drug packet, the shedder status of the alleged packer and the history of an item, when evaluating DNA evidence in the context of illicit drug activities.     

The Impact of Pro-Government Militias on Human Rights Violations

New data show that between 1982 and 2007, in over 60 countries governments were linked to and cooperated with informal armed groups within their own borders. Given the prevalence of these linkages, we ask how such links between governments and informal armed groups influence the risk of repression. We draw on principal-agent arguments to explore how issues of monitoring and control help understanding of the impact of militias on human rights violations. We argue that such informal agents increase accountability problems for the governments, which is likely to worsen human rights conditions for two reasons. First, it is more difficult for governments to control and to train these militias, and they may have private interests in the use of violence. Second, informal armed groups allow governments to shift responsibility and use repression for strategic benefits while evading accountability. Using a global dataset from 1982 to 2007, we show that pro-government militias increase the risk of repression and that the presence of militias also affects the type of violations that we observe.     

Editors’ introduction: critical terrorism studies: practice,limits and experience

The articles in this special issue are drawn from papers presented at a conference titled Critical Terrorism Studies: Practice, Limits and Experience. The conference was organised by the Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group of the British International Studies Association (BISA). The event was supported by both a BISA workshop grant and by Loughborough University’s Centre for the Study of International Governance (CSIG) and was held at Loughborough University from 9–10 September 2013. The conference aimed to explore what we know about terrorism and counterterrorism and importantly to ask how we know it. Reflecting the recent “materialist”, “everyday”, “experiential” and “narrative” turns in the fields of International Relations (IR), Geography and Cultural Theory, the event brought together scholars and practitioners to reflect on practices of research and knowledge production in Critical Terrorism Studies and related fields. The articles in this special issue reflect those aims.