Business responses to environmental and social protection policies: toward a framework for analysis

This conceptual paper seeks to advance neo-institutional work that has traditionally portrayed environmental and social protection policies as constraints followed by businesses. Drawing from the policy sciences literature, we propose that in the United States, businesses tend to show increasing resistance as the protective policy process moves from initiation to selection and growing cooperation thereafter. Most importantly, we also contribute to the neo-institutional theory literature by positing that this inverted U-shaped policy process–business response relationship proposed for the U.S. context may be moderated by variations in the level of democracy, system of interest representation, regulatory approach, and national income.

How Should We Estimate Public Opinion in The States?

We compare two approaches for estimating state-level public opinion: disaggregation by state of national surveys and a simulation approach using multilevel modeling of individual opinion and poststratification by population share. We present the first systematic assessment of the predictive accuracy of each and give practical advice about when and how each method should be used. To do so, we use an original data set of over 100 surveys on gay rights issues as well as 1988 presidential election data. Under optimal conditions, both methods work well, but multilevel modeling performs better generally. Compared to baseline opinion measures, it yields smaller errors, higher correlations, and more reliable estimates. Multilevel modeling is clearly superior when samples are smaller—indeed, one can accurately estimate state opinion using only a single large national survey. This greatly expands the scope of issues for which researchers can study subnational opinion directly or as an influence on policymaking.     

Stephen Noakes,The Advocacy Trap: Transnational Activism and State Power in China

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

The elimination paradox: apportionment in the Democratic Party

To award delegates in their presidential primary elections, the US Democratic Party uses Hamilton’s method of apportionment after eliminating any candidates (and their votes) that receive less than 15% of the total votes cast. We illustrate how a remaining candidate may have his or her delegate total decline as a result of other candidates being eliminated; this leads to a new elimination paradox. We relate that paradox to the new states, no show, and population paradoxes and show that divisor methods are not susceptible to the elimination paradox. We conclude with instances in which the elimination paradox may occur in other contexts, including parliamentary systems.

     

Eastern Africa’s tobacco value chain: links with China

Abstract

While debates continue about China’s role in sub-Saharan Africa, there is growing consensus that China is a different kind of development partner. One distinct feature of Chinese partnerships is that they include support for the tobacco industry, a sector other donor states and institutions shun. Not only is tobacco a primary agricultural export in a number of Africa states, the state-owned Chinese National Tobacco Corporation is the largest tobacco company in the world. This paper analyses Chinese support for the tobacco industry in three states – Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia – documenting how co-operation is shaped by Chinese state capitalism and assessing the development and governance implications. Following an introduction situating the analysis within the context of China–Africa co-operation and tobacco’s global value chain, Chinese engagement in each country is analysed. Findings indicate that, despite differences across case studies in terms of development outcomes, common governance implications are apparent. African elites initiated tobacco-related co-operation to meet their interests, but Chinese interests dominated implementation. Consequently, Chinese investments have maintained hierarchal governance of an exploitive and harmful industry. Analyses of Chinese African co-operation need to move beyond public–private paradigms and interrogate the nuances of Chinese state capitalism in Africa.     

The Electronic Pillory: Social Time and Hostility Toward Capital Murderers

In early modern Europe, popular hostility toward criminals could be expressed through the use of the pillory (a device in which offenders were restrained and publicly displayed). Modern electronic communications have facilitated the emergence of contemporary versions of the pillory. One such example is prodeathpenalty.com , a Web site created by supporters of capital punishment that permits members to post comments about particular executions. Most such comments are markedly hostile toward the convicted offender. But is the hostility random or patterned? A new theory by Donald Black predicts that hostility will increase with changes in social space, or the movement of social time. Testing Black's theory, we find that the number of online comments hostile to the killer and supportive of the execution increases with the degree to which the murder was a movement of relational, vertical, and cultural time. Moving beyond the electronic pillory, we argue that Black's theory has much to offer to law and society scholars.     

Juror gender and confession evidence: an exploratory study of effects on empathy and trial outcomes for juvenile defendants

Journal of Experimental Criminology - We explored how relations among juror gender, confession evidence, and empathy impacted verdicts for a juvenile defendant accused of a serious crime....