Turnout and presidential coattails in congressional elections

Estimating the impact of turnout on House election results is problematic because of endogeneity and omitted variable bias. The following study proposes an instrumental approach to correct for these problems by using a series of fixed effects two-stage least squares panel-data regression models covering three congressional apportionment cycles (1972–1980; 1982–1990; 1992–2000). The analysis tests whether voter participation decreases the House incumbent’s electoral support, regardless of the level of competition in the district. The study also aims to determine if an increase in participation benefits Democratic candidates and whether this effect is constant across apportionment cycles. The results show that the influence of turnout on incumbency vote share is conditional on the level of presidential support in the district. This finding is explained by the surge and decline thesis of Campbell (1960).     

Discourses of war,geographies of abjection: reading contemporary American ideologies of terror

This article critically details the strategies and ideologies that inform three key post-9/11 volumes on the politics of terror, war making and national security in the USA. These texts, by renowned American ‘masters of statecraft’ Robert Kaplan, Victor Davis Hanson and Michael Ledeen, encourage the USA's political and military leadership to embrace terror and violence and to be continuously at war against alleged American enemies. The article argues that these writings are representative of what French post-structuralist and gender scholar Julia Kristeva has called abjection. Indeed, these literatures require their readers to be one with hatred and destruction, and to violently reject anything that appears to be un-American. Their ideologies—which have been immensely influential in post-9/11 American national security circles—aim to prepare and condition American citizens for years of ongoing violence, war and possibly terror. They encourage hatred towards enemies that may not even have been named yet. By openly propagating these kinds of discourse, these scholars' texts render the prospect for peace (in Iraq, the Middle-East and everywhere else) in the 21st century ever more difficult to achieve.     

Implementing the Borda outcome via truncated scoring rules: a computational study

This study is an attempt to empirically understand the likelihood of choosing the Borda outcome through a truncated scoring rule when n voters are asked to report only part of their linear preferences over m alternatives. We run Monte Carlo simulations through a grid search algorithm as we employ an impartial culture model to sample voters’ preferences. Given the range of parameter values we consider, we report the truncated scoring rules that maximize the likelihood of implementing the Borda outcome and how the maximum likelihood changes with m and n. We also present our results on the relative performances of some popular truncated voting rules, such as plurality and approval voting, in implementing the Borda outcome and demonstrate that two-level approval voting performs significantly better than the plurality rule. Moreover, we propose the expected Borda rule as a good proxy for the best implementor of the Borda rule among all truncated rules.     

Raising the Threshold,Fighting Fragmentation? Mechanical and Psychological Effects of the Legal Electoral Threshold in Belgium

Many proportional representation systems are characterised by a legal electoral threshold. Such a threshold reserves the allocation of seats for those parties that reach a minimum share of the votes. In order to fight fragmentation, a 5 per cent threshold has been introduced for both federal and regional elections in Belgium. This article seeks to explore the mechanical and psychological effects of this legal threshold after five elections. It is shown that the threshold has had limited mechanical and psychological effects on voters but some psychological effects on party elites. Moreover, while in the short term the average number of lists dropped and several pre-electoral coalitions formed, in the longer term the legal threshold has not prevented further fragmentation.     

Religion and Fundamental Rights in European Politics: Convergences and Divisions at the European Parliament

European legislators must increasingly deal with issues related to fundamental rights. Religion is a frequent topic obliging them to do so. It is not directly part of the EU’s competences but is a source of values underlying policy choices and a tricky political object. Relying on the findings of a survey about what Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) believe and what they do with these beliefs, the article analyzes potential tensions created by religion in the implementation of human rights by the EU. A first part shows how and to what extent European law meets religion, and how it leaves ample room for flexibility but also for divergent interpretations. A second part states that MEPs agree largely on the principle of separation between politics and religion, but may be divided when it comes to drawing boundaries between the two domains. The conclusion points out the limits of the rule of law to prevent conflicts and suggests that human rights may inspire support as well as cause resistance to Europeanization.     

Of Rebels and Disobedients: Reflections on Arendt,Race, Lawbreaking

Hannah Arendt valued the unprecedented, the unexpected, and the new, yet in essays crafted at the end of the rebellious 1960s, struggled to square this valuation with a palpable desire for law and order. She lamented that criminality had overtaken American life, accused the police of not arresting enough criminals, and charged ‘the Negro community’ with standing behind what she named black violence. At once, she praised ‘the white rebels’ of the student movement in the United States for their courageous acts of disobedience. This essay explores how differential Arendt’s treatment of lawbreaking action was in an effort to understand how ‘certain sections of the population’ in the United States could appear to stand for criminality rather than civil disobedience to her mind. It examines how Arendt’s reflections on the ostensibly non-racial subjects of civil disobedience and lawbreaking were underwritten by racial, when not racist, ways of thinking. The essay also raises a larger question: to the extent that the concept of civil disobedience involves limits, how are those limits drawn to the exclusion of certain kinds of actors and their particular claims in the public realm? Pondering this question through Arendt, it concludes that in her theorization of civil disobedience, Arendt was profoundly limited by the fabulous tale that the United States is an exceptional land of freedom and democracy in the world.

     

Dealing with cross-sectoral policy problems: An advocacy coalition approach to climate and water policy integration in Northeast Brazil

Policy Sciences - The governance of several cross-cutting challenges, such as food security, climate change, and sustainable development, calls for integrative policy approaches. However, efforts...     

Identification of acepromazine in hair: an illustration of the difficulties encountered in investigating drug-facilitated crimes

After a drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA), a woman was found in a drowsy state at home. She remembered having drunk an unknown beverage by the accused. Blood samples (collected 8 hours after the DFSA), two glasses, and a teaspoon seized by the police were analyzed. Acepromazine, a phenothiazine tranquilizer used in human and veterinary medicine, was detected in the residue of one of the glasses. In spite of acepromazine absence in the victim's blood, the possible use of acepromazine in the DFSA was reported to the police. Two weeks later, a suspect admitted having orally administered acepromazine to the victim. Using a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method, this compound was subsequently detected (31 pg/mg) in a sample of the victim's hair collected a month and a half after the DFSA. A potential short elimination half-life in humans and/or the well-known in vitro degradation of acepromazine could explain the negative blood result. DFSA toxicological investigations are challenging and can be complicated when a rather unusual substance is concerned. In particular, special care should be taken when interpreting the results, taking into account elimination and/or instability data, when available.