Activating voters in congressional elections

This paper shows that one of the consequences of electoral campaigns is activation. Much research in the last decade has shown that campaign spending is related to electoral outcomes, but nearly all of this research has been conducted on district-level data, so we do not know how campaigns influence individual voters. This research returns to the theoretical framework offered inThe People's Choice and shows that at least part of the effect of campaigns is due to the increased likelihood of people voting when campaigns are more intense.     

A Fast, Easy, and Efficient Estimator for Multiparty Electoral Data

Katz and King have previously developed a model for predictingor explaining aggregate electoral results in multiparty democracies.Their model is, in principle, analogous to what least-squaresregression provides American political researchers in that two-partysystem. Katz and King applied their model to three-party electionsin England and revealed a variety of new features of incumbencyadvantage and sources of party support. Although the mathematicsof their statistical model covers any number of political parties,it is computationally demanding, and hence slow and numericallyimprecise, with more than three parties. In this paper we producean approximate method that works in practice with many partieswithout making too many theoretical compromises. Our approachis to treat the problem as one of missing data. This allowsus to use a modification of the fast EMis algorithm of King,Honaker, Joseph, and Scheve and to provide easy-to-use software,while retaining the attractive features of the Katz and Kingmodel, such as the t distribution and explicit models for uncontestedseats.     

Deception Detection Expertise

A lively debate between Bond and Uysal (2007, Law and Human Behavior, 31, 109-115) and O'Sullivan (2007, Law and Human Behavior, 31, 117-123) concerns whether there are experts in deception detection. Two experiments sought to (a) identify expert(s) in detection and assess them twice with four tests, and (b) study their detection behavior using eye tracking. Paroled felons produced videotaped statements that were presented to students and law enforcement personnel. Two experts were identified, both female Native American BIA correctional officers. Experts were over 80% accurate in the first assessment, and scored at 90% accuracy in the second assessment. In Signal Detection analyses, experts showed high discrimination, and did not evidence biased responding. They exploited nonverbal cues to make fast, accurate decisions. These highly-accurate individuals can be characterized as experts in deception detection.     

美国的地域管辖权制度

2.1界定问题很多学生都认为地域管辖权(personal jurisdiction)是民诉中最难的内容。主要原因就是:在你们进入法学院之前对该概念一无所知。在1.1节中我们提到过,相对于法学院一年级的其他课程而言,民事诉讼对于你们而言已是非常陌生。然而,民事诉讼中的地域管辖权却又是该课程中最为神秘的内容。鉴于很多教授都从历史的角度研究该问题,进一步加剧了理解地域管辖权基本含义的困难。现今,花费大量的时间去理解地域管辖权是什么确实有点让人扫兴。但历史方法确实不赖。在我看来,这实际上是正确理解地域管辖权的     

Does Country-Level Social Disorganization Increase Terrorist Attacks?

This study examines the effects of a measure of country-level social disorganization on levels of terrorist attacks and fatalities in 101 countries from 1981 to 2010. We measure social disorganization as the presence of state instability: revolutionary and ethnic war, adverse regime change, and genocide. The classic social disorganization perspective posits that individuals experiencing these types of rapid social change will be freed from the institutional and informal restraints that bind them to society, and keep them conforming to social norms and laws. We examine the extent to which this reasoning applies to the number of terrorist attacks and fatalities from terrorist attacks occurring in countries. To control for the possibility that better functioning states are better able to prevent terrorist attacks, we include two measures of state capacity. We find that controlling for state capacity and a wide variety of other variables, social disorganization is consistently associated with increases in terrorist attacks and fatalities. We consider implications of the results for future research and policy.