Effect of Media Environment Diversity and Advertising Tone on Information Search,Selective Exposure,and Affective Polarization

This paper examines the effects of our modern media environment on affective polarization. We conducted an experiment during the last month of the 2012 presidential election varying both the choice of media sources available about the major presidential candidates, and the tone of political advertisements presented to subjects. We posit that voters in a high-choice, ideologically-diverse media environment will exhibit greater affective polarization than those in a “mainstream” ideologically neutral environment. We also hypothesize that subjects who are exposed to negative rather than positive political advertisements will show increased affective polarization. We provide causal evidence that the combination of a high-choice ideologically diverse media environment and exposure to negative political ads, significantly increases affective polarization. We also find that both overall information search and selective exposure to information are influenced by our experimental manipulations, with the greatest amount of search, and the most biased search, conducted by Romney supporters in the Negative Ads, Diverse Media condition.     

Commission Impossible? A New Approach To Workplace Relations in the PSMPC

This is a short story about turning commitment into action. It tells how the Public Service and Merit Protection Commission negotiated with its employees to create a certified agreement under the new Workplace Relations Act 1996. The authors conclude that a careful, consultative process has built greater trust within their organisation.     

Population,resources, and technology: political implications of the environmental crisis

An examination is made of the political and potentially conflicting implications of the current global predicament with regard to population growth, finite resources, and the negative environmental influence of technological development. The problem is borken down and discussed in the following manner: 1) the international implications of population dynamics, resource constraints and distribution, and technological developments; 2) the interdependencies and reverberating effects associated with efforts to cope with any one dimension singly; and 3) the ways by which the conduct of research in the academic community can address itself more clearly to environmental problems. A prime objective is to highlight the implications for the developed as well as the less developed world. Thus, the empirical analysis centers around Japan, the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union, and the U.S.     

Prenatal diagnosis,genetics and reproductive decision-making

Recent developments in genetic science will potentially have a significant impact on reproductive decision-making by adding to the list of conditions which can be diagnosed through prenatal diagnosis. This article analyses the jurisdictional variations that exist in Australian abortion laws and examines the extent to which Australian abortion laws specifically provide for termination of pregnancy on the grounds of fetal disability. The article also examines the potential impact of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis on reproductive decision-making and considers the meaning of reproductive autonomy in the context of the new genetics.     

A Universal Test of an Expected Utility Theory of War

Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman's version of an expected utility theory of war has become one of the most widely cited theories of international conflict. However, the testing of the theory has lagged behind its theoretical development. In its most sophisticated formulation, the theory has been tested on only 707 dyad-years, all drawn from Europe between 1816 and 1970. We present a test of the expected utility theory of war (as developed in War and Reason ) on the international system from 1816 to 1984. Specifically, we examine the relationship between the main equilibrium variables derived under the "domestic variant" of the international interaction game and behavioral outcomes using multinomial logit. We find that the equilibria correlate with actual behavior in both the set of all dyads and a subset of politically relevant dyads, even after including a set of control variables. The relationship is somewhat less clear among the population of all interstate-directed dyads, however, with key equilibrium variables having smaller effects at increasing the odds of interstate conflict among all dyads. We also present a new software program, EUGene , which generates expected utility data and can serve as an important data management tool for international relations researchers.