Rehumanizing Birth and Death in America

THESIS: Despite spending more on medical care than any other country in the world, the United States still boasts some of the worst patient outcomes of any developed nation. This disparity is especially true of how Americans give birth and die.  These natural human transitions have become catastrophically expensive and leave patients and their families traumatized from unnecessary interventions. This article examines the costs and outcomes associated with the medicalization of birth and death and argues that alternatives exist that improve patient outcomes while lowering costs. Access to these alternatives will require changing current regulatory and reimbursement structures and providing trained support staff to help families navigate beginning- and end-of life decisions.     

Using Data Combination of Fundamental Variable-Based Forecasts and Poll-Based Forecasts to Predict the 2013 German Election

In this paper I present an election forecasting approach to predict the vote share of the governing coalition in German national elections. The model is composed of two independent prediction components: the first is based on poll data, the second on fundamental variables. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages when used in isolation. The basic idea is to use both and find a better informed overall forecast. The predictions are combined using a shrinkage estimator, where the predictions are weighted by their respective prediction uncertainty. The uncertainty of the poll prediction is modelled time-dependent. The result is a dynamic model allowing for predictions longer before the elections highly relying on fundamental variables. With the elections coming closer predictions rely more and more on the polling data.     

Strategic or Principled? The Engagement of Civil Society Organizations with the EU

This article links the literature on the Europeanization of civil society organizations (CSOs) with the literature on the contribution CSOs can make to democracy in the EU. To do so, it asks which are the pull factors that support CSOs’ Europeanization: are they mostly strategic and linked to where law-making and the money are? Or are they likewise linked to a desire to contribute to EU democracy? To explore this question, the article looks at agricultural, environmental and anti-poverty groups and combines fresh qualitative with quantitative data. The findings suggest that we need to distinguish strategic Europeanization, on the one hand, from the identification with supranational democracy, on the other. They also show that the most Europeanized organizations need not be the most interested in EU democracy, whereas organizations with a comparatively low degree of Europeanization can still be interested in EU democracy.