Party system stability and conflict initiation

The study of interstate conflict has yielded a voluminous literature to date, yet much of the recent work has only just begun to underscore the importance of domestic factors in predicting conflict initiation in democracies. In short, some of these studies find that when electoral accountability is greater—measured in a variety of ways—interstate conflict becomes less likely. Despite this burgeoning literature, scholars have spent far less time analysing the role linkage institutions, such as stable party systems, have played in foreign policy discussions. To address this gap, we argue that in more stable party systems conflict initiation becomes less likely due to the greater accountability present in these systems. This conjecture is supported by the results of a time-series cross-sectional analysis of 48 democracies from 1978 to 2000 that uses multiple measures of conflict initiation and party system stability.     

Interpreting the dynamics of public housing: Cultural and rational choice explanations

Abstract

This article uses culture of poverty and rational choice theories of poverty to explain how quickly nonelderly household heads leave public housing. Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics serve as the basis for the analysis.

Although a significant proportion of all household heads have public housing spells lasting five or more years, the majority have spells lasting less than five years. The availability of other housing options has a strong impact on how quickly individuals move out of public housing. Family structure and human capital play a more modest role. To the extent that one's childhood experiences affect the likelihood of exiting public housing, they appear to do so mostly through their effect on the acquisition of human capital. Finally, the evidence presented is inconsistent with the notion that public housing is a trap from which it is more difficult to escape the longer one lives in it.     

Adaptive management and adaptive governance in the everglades ecosystem

The Everglades is an intensively managed ecosystem where control of the water has allowed agricultural, urban and economic development, while struggling to meet biodiversity conservation goals. The over 100 year history of control began in response to a disastrous series of floods and droughts followed by environmental crises at an ecosystem scale. Each of these events precipitated technological fixes that extended control of water resources. Institutional structures have been continually reorganized over the last century to meet shifting social objectives, the latest of which is ecosystem restoration. However, the basic response, which employs engineering and technological solutions, is a type of social trap, where governmental mandates, planning-based paradigms and vested interests all interact to inhibit the resolution of chronic environmental issues. Experience from other resource systems indicates that in such an inherently complex system wrought with multiple uncertainties, restoration must be discovered through experimentation and learning embraced by adaptive management. Though minimal steps towards adaptive management have been made, we argue that adaptive forms of experimentation and governance are needed to resolve chronic resource issues and achieve restoration goals.     

Voters in a multi-member constituency: The 1977 Auckland election

Voters in multi-member constituencies typical of local government elections must decide how to allocate the votes at their disposal. The secrecy of the ballot has hitherto prevented study of how these preferences are distributed or of the composition of the vote received by individual candidates.Access was gained via a computer printout to the actual behaviour of voters in a five member constituency of the Auckland Regional Authority (New Zealand) in the 1977 local elections. It was contested by two full tickets and three distinctive independents.A computer programme which scanned over 12,000 combinations enabled the vote to be analysed for partisan and other forms of voting. It revealed that 80 per cent of voters were essentially partisan, 62 per cent being Citizens and 37 per cent Labour inclined. However, there was widespread refusal to vote the full ticket, but the ‘spare’ votes were given to independents rather than the opposition.There was little sign of feminist or alphabetical voting, but a weak local notables vote may have existed. The successful candidates depended less on their own partisan supporters.     

The application of Markov chains to demographic projections in smaller geopolitical areas

"This article deals with the use of Markov chains to project population in smaller geopolitical areas. The method consists of projecting only the relative distribution which, applied to a previous demographic projection, gives figures for the population by subregion. An algorithm is worked out, allowing for an estimate to be made of the transitional probabilities of the chain based on easily available data: the total population residing in two or more regions or states in only two specific moments. Once those probabilities have been determined, the projection of the probabilities and of the relative distribution is direct. This method is applied to the metropolitan zone of Mexico City, for which population and territorial extension are projected." (SUMMARY IN ENG)