Plus ça change: Electoral law reform and the 2008 Romanian parliamentary elections

Romania reformed the law governing its parliamentary elections between 2004 and 2008, shifting from a complex proportional representation system based on county-level party lists to a complex uninominal system in which each district for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate elects one representative. The change in law emerged after more than a year of heated political controversies, including partisan and personal animosity between President Basescu and Prime Minister Tariceanu, a failed attempt at impeachment, a deadlocked special electoral commission, a failed popular referendum, an unfavorable constitutional court ruling, and a confusing final accord brokered under deadline. Qualitative comparison of the 2004 and 2008 laws reveals that the heralded reform merely added an additional layer of calculation to the previous electoral system. Quantitative analysis using counterfactual estimation reveals that the new law had absolutely zero effect on the partisan outcome. In the conclusion, we explore the implications of these findings for Romanian politics and the politics of electoral reform more generally.     

Political Institutionalization as Political Development in China

Contrary to many doubts, the institutionalization of political leadership survived the succession process in China between 2002 and 2003. In 2004, Jiang Zemin attempted to override the institutionalized political leadership but was unsuccessful. These episodes demonstrate the level of political institutionalization that has been steadily undertaken since the reform and opening of China. After theoretically defining institutionalization as the first significant stage of political development, this article examines the current progress in political institutionalization at two distinct levels: external and internal. This article argues that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership intended to establish political stability directly and facilitate economic development indirectly under the goal of sustaining the political legitimacy of the CCP's rule of China. Finally, this article examines whether China would follow the ideal sequence of political development, i.e. institutionalization leading to participation leading to contestation. Though China has achieved considerable political institutionalization and conducted many experiments of expanding political participation, public contestation is still confined solely to within the party. Thus, it remains to be seen whether or not China will follow the ideal sequence.     

Strategic Defiance and Compliance in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Why do lower courts treat Supreme Court precedents favorably or unfavorably? To address this question, we formulate a theoretical framework based on current principal‐agent models of the judiciary. We use the framework to structure an empirical analysis of a random sample of 500 Supreme Court cases, yielding over 10,000 subsequent treatments in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. When the contemporary Supreme Court is ideologically estranged from the enacting Supreme Court, lower courts treat precedent much more harshly. Controlling for the ideological distance between the enacting and contemporary Supreme Courts, the preferences of the contemporary lower court itself are unrelated to its behavior. Hence, hierarchical control appears strong and effective. At the same time, however, a lower court's previous treatments of precedent strongly influence its later treatments. The results have important implications for understanding legal change and suggest new directions for judicial principal‐agency theory.     

The Effect of Distributive Politics on Electoral Participation: Evidence from 70 Million Agricultural Payments

Political Behavior - Policy feedbacks take place when public policies change mass participation and mobilize key constituencies. This can influence future rounds of policymaking and solidify...     

Regulatory reform in the era of new technological development: The role of organizational factors in the public sector

What is the role of organizational factors in fostering regulatory reform in response to new technological development? Existing studies provide useful frameworks to understand regulatory reform in rapidly changing circumstances but still lack a systematic analysis of how organizational factors affect regulatory reform in the public sector. To fill this gap, we examine the impact of several institutional elements that are central to defining organizational characteristics, such as job tasks, bureaucratic autonomy, and organizational culture. We theorize that regulatory reform is more likely when public sector organizations are more receptive to external changes, which are determined by these characteristics. We leverage original surveys from over 1,000 civil servants in Korea, one of the front runners in new technological development, and find support for our prediction. We find that the implementation of regulatory reforms is more likely when (i) organizational tasks are relevant to scientific and technological development, (ii) higher levels of bureaucratic autonomy are granted, (iii) agency heads demonstrate stronger leadership, and (iv) organizational culture is less authoritarian. Our study makes clear contributions to the literature on public management and regulation theory, and has important implications for regulatory reform in the face of new technological development.     

Credible Empowerment and Deliberative Participation: A Comparative Study of Two Nuclear Energy Policy Deliberation Cases in Korea

What factors make deliberative participation of public policy effective? Why, in some cases, are participants in deliberation more motivated than others, and reach their final judgment in a timely manner, based on systematic processes of opinion gathering and consensus building? By comparing and investigating two recent cases of public participation in energy policy deliberation in Korea, we argue that deliberative participation is more effective when the prospect that the outcome of their activities might be accepted by decision makers is high. The two cases, the public deliberation committee (PDC) on the nuclear waste issue which operated from 2013 to 2015, and the PDC on the nuclear power plant construction issue which operated in 2017, show that they went through similar courses of action, and used similar methods for deliberation. However, while the 2017 PDC has produced clear‐cut policy recommendations, and the government have accepted these, the 2013 PDC failed to reach conclusions on the given critical issues. We argue that the difference in the results is caused by credible empowerment along with two other factors––the sensitivity of issues and the learning effect. Participants of deliberation tend to judge the possibility of the government’s acceptance of their opinions based on either the government’s direct announcement or its inclusiveness in the past policy history. If governments are willing to consult the public to increase legitimacy and transparency, they should send explicit signals to the public on its inclusiveness in the short term, and also should increase credibility in the long term.     

Distribution of methamphetamine and amphetamine in drug abusers’ head hair

In order to aid the interpretation of hair results from methamphetamine (MA) abusers the MA and amphetamine (AP) concentrations in 2070 hair samples were statistically evaluated. The MA and AP concentrations in hair were put into three groups arbitrarily representing low, medium and high ranges and the metabolite-to-parent drug ratios of each group were examined. The concentration ranges proposed here were also applied to the interpretation of five authentic cases. The low, medium and high ranges of MA were 0.5–4.2, 4.2–24.5 and 24.5–608.9 ng/mg and those of AP were 0.1–0.4, 0.4–1.7 and 1.7–41.4 ng/mg. The AP-to-MA ratios showed large variation but a tendency that it decreased as the MA ranges increased. This evaluation was very useful to presume the severity of individuals’ MA abuse and to provide law enforcement agencies more understandable information. It could also facilitate the court's decision regarding specific circumstances surrounding the drug-related crimes.     

Taming the Beast: The UK Approach to the Management of Behavioral Investigative Advice

The goal of this paper is to reflect on the pertinent issues surrounding the effective management of behavioral investigative advice, by making explicit the experiences, developments, learning and achievements of such endeavors from a UK perspective. Specifically, the issues of national regulation of professional and ethical standards, working conditions for behavioral investigative advisers, audit and evaluation, strategic development, and learning and development of profiling skills are explored. Some broad observations regarding evaluation of the UK approach are discussed and consideration is given to the future challenges facing the field of behavioral investigative advice provision to major crime investigations.

Age estimation of Korean children based on dental maturity

The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between age and dental maturity and to establish the standard database of dental maturity based on the Demirjian's stages, which can be used for the age estimation of Korean children. For this purpose, dental maturity was measured by the Demirjian's stages on a randomly selected sample of panoramic radiographs taken from 2706 patients between 1 and 20 years of age and analyzed by multiple linear regression analysis based on the method of least squares. The results showed that, except for the third molars, the development of permanent teeth in Korean children was more advanced in females. The Demirjian's stage G of the second molar appeared last in both male and female subjects by age 18, showing 95th percentile at age in the male and female subjects between 16.7-17.4 years and 17.1-17.3 years, respectively. Coefficients of determination (r(2)) of the Demirjian's stages relative to age in regression analysis were 0.9721 in male and 0.9740 in female subjects. The standard error was 0.63 years in male and 0.62 years in female subjects. The estimated age according to regression analysis was within +/-1.0 year of the actual age in 92.0% of male and 92.5% of female subjects. Collectively, the data of the present study can be used as a reference for dental maturity and a standard for age estimation of Korean children.     

Development and validation of videotaped scenarios: a method for targeting specific participant groups

Researchers using scenarios often neglect to validate perceived content and salience of embedded stimuli specifically with intended participants, even when such meaning is integral to the study. For example, sex and aggression stimuli are heavily influenced by culture, so participants may not perceive what researchers intended in sexual aggression scenarios. Using four studies, the authors describe the method of scenario validation to produce two videos assessing alcohol-related sexual aggression. Both videos are identical except for the presence in one video of antiforce cues that are extremely salient to the young heterosexual men. Focus groups and questionnaires validate these men's perceptions that (a) the woman was sexually interested, (b) the sexual cues were salient, (c) the antiforce cues were salient (antiaggression video only), and (e) these antiforce cues inhibited acceptance of forced sex. Results show the value of carefully selecting and validating content when assessing socially volatile variables and provide a useful template for developing culturally valid scenarios.