Quadratic voting in the wild: real people,real votes

Since their introduction in 1932, Likert and other continuous, independent rating scales have become the de facto toolset for survey research. Scholars have raised significant reliability and validity problems with these types of scales, and alternative methods for capturing perceptions and preferences have gained traction within specific domains. In this paper, we evaluate a new, broadly applicable approach to opinion measurement based on quadratic voting (QV), a method in which respondents express preferences by ‘buying’ votes for options using a fixed budget from which they pay quadratic prices for votes. Comparable QV-based and Likert-based survey instruments designed by Collective Decision Engines LLC were evaluated experimentally by assigning potential respondents randomly to one or the other method. Using a host of metrics, including respondent engagement and process-based metrics, we provide some initial evidence that the QV-based instrument provides a clearer measure of the preferences of the most intensely motivated respondents than the Likert-based instrument does. We consider the implications for survey satisficing, a key threat to the continued value of survey research, and discuss the mechanisms by which QV differentiates itself from Likert-based scales, thus establishing QV as a promising alternative survey tool for political and commercial research. We also explore key design issues within QV-based surveys to extend these promising results.     

“El pájaro de cuatro notas”: the reception of Argentine women writers and artists’ work in avant-garde magazines (1920–1930)

This article assesses the reception of Argentine women writers and artists’ work within vanguard magazines. Taking as case studies the work of Norah Lange and Norah Borges, I identify four key tropes that emerge in reviews of their creative output published between 1920 and 1930. This article brings to light original archival material in order to expose how women’s peripheral position in the artistic sphere of early twentieth-century Latin America was enacted at a discursive level. In so doing, I propose that the gendered dynamics evident within avant-garde magazines represent a microcosm of women’s experiences within the vanguard more broadly. This article aims to contribute to a thorough investigation into how marginalisation is enacted and enforced, exposing the extra-literary processes which construct an artistic sphere that is inhospitable to women practitioners.     

Reform,Openness and Public Health: on the economic and social determinants of HIV/AIDS in China

China's HIV/AIDS epidemic today is seen by policy-makers primarily as a biomedical problem. Yet according to many researchers this conceptualization of what causes HIV/AIDS epidemics is restricted, focussing on individual behaviour to the exclusion of the broader economic and social determinants. This paper, therefore, illustrates how considering such determinants, including income and gender inequalities, may complement our understanding of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in China. It does so by using two different examples: the development of commercial sex work and long-distance migration patterns.     

Transnational Partnerships: Conditions for Successful Service Provision in Areas of Limited Statehood

Transnational public–private partnerships (PPPs) are external governance actors in the field of development cooperation and vary in composition, potentially including nonprofit and for‐profit organizations, state and public agencies, and intergovernmental organizations. This article analyzes the conditions under which PPPs have been successful in providing access to basic services (water, sanitation, and food) in areas of limited statehood in Bangladesh, India, and Kenya. We focus on 10 projects carried out by two PPPs that differ in two key respects: legitimacy and institutional design. We show that partnerships with high empirical legitimacy and an appropriate institutional design are best able to fulfill complex tasks in contexts of limited statehood. A participatory approach can promote legitimacy and thus success; projects that lack legitimacy are prone to failure. Additionally, a project's institutional design must address problems that commonly affect areas of limited statehood: It should provide access to resources for capacity development, ensure adequate monitoring, and be tailored to local needs.     

Don't Mention the War: The Court of Appeal,the Criminal Cases Review Commission and Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland

Despite the vast transitional justice scholarship relating to prisoner release, amnesties and prosecutions when conflicts end, there is a significant gap in practice and academic literature regarding wrongful convictions. Uniquely amongst post‐conflict societies, Northern Ireland has a body for investigating miscarriages of justice, albeit one designed for ‘ordinary’ appeals. In the absence of a formal truth‐recovery process, criminal appeals are becoming a proxy for addressing the role of the state during ‘The Troubles,’ as well as remedying individual injustices. This article examines the approach of the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal during the conflict. It charts the developments in its decision‐making following the cease‐fires and the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. It concludes that the current system is unsatisfactory as it ignores the effects of the conflict on the appeal process and offers no insights into the role of the Court during the conflict. Alternative models are suggested.