Economic Integration,Party Polarisation and Electoral Turnout

Recent research provides evidence that economic integration has a negative effect on electoral turnout. Taking up these recent findings, this article explores the causal chain in more detail. Specifically, it argues that one way by which economic integration affects the calculus of voting is through the positioning of political parties. The expectation is that the polarisation between parties on an economic left–right scale is lower the more integrated an economy is. Consequently, electoral turnout should be lower with less polarisation in the party system. The article employs aggregate-level data from legislative elections in 24 developed democracies. Using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project, evidence is found not only that economic integration has a negative effect on party polarisation as measured on an economic left–right dimension, but also that this in turn exerts a negative effect on electoral turnout.     

The use of expensive health technologies in the era of managed care: the remarkable case of neonatal intensive care

The use of neonatal intensive care (NIC) continued to rise rapidly in the 1990s despite the concerns of observers about its cost effectiveness and its successes being mostly in facilities with high volume and capabilities. The objective of this study is to test the effects of insurance type, competition among hospitals, and market pressure from managed care plans on the supply and cost of NIC. The analysis uses logistic and linear models with techniques to avoid bias from (a) market area definitions based on actual patient flows and (b) self-selection of hospitals by patients with unmeasured risk of needing NIC. The data source contains all births in short-term hospitals in New Jersey during 1990 and 1994. Both the number of days and charges for NIC are reported. Key findings are that the decision of a hospital to offer NIC was associated with teaching status, the proportion of infants in the market area with documented high risk, and the market concentration of major competitors. The market share of managed care plans and the concentration of enrollment were not associated with either NIC being offered or with the standardized charges. Whether a particular patient was given to a NIC depended on patient risk factors and whether a NIC unit was present, but not on payer group. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that young insured parents (with the advice of their obstetricians) prefer hospitals with NIC and also are relatively profitable enrollees for health plans. In conclusion: using the results here and in other research, public and private policy makers may consider several ways to strengthen the incentives for health plans to contract for cost-effective birth-related services. The results also raise questions for a number of regulatory and payment policies and call for better public data on costs and outcomes for NIC.     

Cerebral ischemia or post traumatic thrombosis of the A. carotis occuring to a car driver (author's transl)]

A short while after leaving a public-house a 71 year old man as the driver of his car was involved in a head-on collision with another car. On admission to a hospital he was unconscious with a distinct debility for the left side of his body and showed a changing anisocoria. Angiography of the right carotid artery revealed an occlusion. It was suspected that this was the terminal state of a generalized arteriosclerotic occlusion which was considered being the reason for the accident. The autopsy-findings showed, however, a posttraumatic thrombosis (whiplash-trauma of the cervical vertebral column) of the right arteria carotis and of the right arteria vertebralis with thromboembolia in a small pontine artery with an infarct-like ischemic softening. The differentiation from an apoplexia is of importance for the differential diagnosis.     

Decentralisation and poverty: conceptual framework and application to Uganda

In order to shed further light on the discussion about decentralisation‐poverty linkages in developing countries, this article introduces a conceptual framework for the relationship between decentralisation and poverty. The framework takes the form of an optimal scenario and indicates potential ways for an impact of decentralisation on poverty. Three different but interrelated channels are identified. Decentralisation is considered to affect poverty through providing opportunities for previously excluded people to participate in public decision‐making, through increasing efficiency in the provision of local public services due to an informational advantage of local governments over the central government and through granting autonomy to geographically separable conflict groups and entitling local bodies to resolve local‐level conflicts. Based on the experience with decentralisation in Uganda, it is shown that these channels are often not fully realised in practice. Different reasons are singled out for the Ugandan case, among them low levels of information about local government affairs, limited human capital and financial resources, restricted local autonomy, corruption and patronage, high administrative costs related with decentralisation and low downward accountability. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Putting fault back into products liability: A modest reconstruction of tort theory

This paper postulates that the proper function of tort law is to provide protection from, and redress of, non-consensual invasions of individual rights of person and property. It then proceeds to analyze and criticize, in that context, several theories of the law of unintentional torts including traditional English negligence law and the models of Posner, Fletcher and Epstein. That analysis proceeds in terms of the answers of each theory to a uniform set of questions which must be answered by any theory of the law of unintentional harms. The paper concludes that none of the theories examined is rights-based or, indeed, consistent with the existence of individual rights of person and property.The paper goes on to elucidate a theory of liability which is rights-based. That theory turns out to be variant of traditional English negligence law in which reasonable foreseeability of harm to legally recognized rights or interests is the sole criterion of liability, the burden of precautions on the agent of the harm being explicitly excluded from consideration.Finally, the rights-based theory is applied to the area of products liability. It is demonstrated that this area of the law of unintentional harm does have the same moral foundations as the general law of negligence so that resort to the anomalous, and amoral, constructs of fictitious warranties, strict liability, enterprise liability and the deep pocket is neither appropriate nor necessary.     

Punishment within Prison: An Examination of the Influences of Prison Officials’ Decisions to Remove Sentencing Credits

Despite considerable research directed toward understanding the factors that affect punishment decision‐making leading to imprisonment, few studies have examined the influences of punishment decisions within prisons. Punishment decisions made within prisons can affect an individual's liberty during their imprisonment and/or the timing of their release from prison if the punishment results in the loss of sentencing credits or influences parole decision‐making. Moreover, if punishment disparities result from these decisions, then some offender groups may endure a greater loss of liberty relative to others. In this study, we examine the factors that influence prison officials’ decisions to remove sentencing credits in response to prison rule violations. Analysis of collected data from a Midwestern state prison system reveal that prison officials are primarily influenced by the seriousness and type of the rule violation, along with an inmate's violation history. Other relevant factors include those proximately connected to an inmate's risk of subsequent misbehavior such as gang membership and those that are linked to practical consequences and constraints associated with the organizational environment and particular inmates such as the proportion of their sentence an inmate has served and whether an inmate has mental health problems.     

Populistische Demokratiekonzeptionen und die Wahl der AfD: Evidenz aus einer Panelstudie

This contribution studies the effect of populist conceptions of democracy on voting for populist parties drawing on the case of the “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD). Building on dominant definitions of populism, we conceptualize a populist orientation towards democracy via three elements–the privilege of the majority will over minority rights, the demand for absolute responsiveness from representatives to the majority will and negative views of political pluralism–and propose a corresponding measurement model. Our empirical analysis shows that such populist conceptions of democracy are particularly strong among AfD supporters. Moreover, they exhibit significant and substantial effects on voting intentions for the AfD in multivariate analyses and, leveraging the panel structure of the data, are able to predict changes in party preferences towards the AfD over time.     

Konkordanztheorie und Abstimmungsdaten: eine explorative Aggregatsanalyse auf Bezirksebene

Bei Überprüfung der Konkordanztheorie für die Schweiz stellt sich immer wieder das Problem, wie sich die Konfliktlinien zwischen den Sprachgruppen, Konfessionen, sozialen Schichten und Stadt‐Land in der bundesstaatlichen Geschichte seit 1848 tatsächlich entwickelt haben. Es bleibt unklar, wie sich die Intensität dieser Konfliktlinien und das Ausmass an Konkordanz wechselseitig beeinflusst haben. Stimmt die Vermutung, dass die Konfliktlinien an Bedeutung verloren haben und dass die schweizerische Gesellschaft insgesamt homogener geworden ist? War Konkordanz in diesem Prozess eher die Ursache oder die Folge verminderter Konfliktintensität? Regionalisierte Daten der Volksabstimmungen bieten zusammen mit weiteren Quellen der amtlichen Statistik reiches Material, um die Bedeutung von Sprache, Konfession, sozialer Schichtung und Stadt‐Land in der bundesstaatlichen Geschichte zu bestimmen. In explorativer Weise werden in diesem Aufsatz 51 Abstimmungen in der Zeitspanne von 1992 bis 1997 auf der Basis von Aggregatdaten auf der Bezirksebene untersucht. Die Studie dient der Entwicklung eines geeigneten Modells, das in einer späteren Längsschnittanalyse auf alle eidgenössischen Abstimmungen angewendet werden soll.