Advancing the study of political cleavages through experimentation: Revisiting regionalism and redistributive preferences in Canada

The maintenance of welfare state policies requires citizen support for the provision of a social safety net through taxation and redistribution. Research has shown that a diverse political polity presents a risk to the welfare state; however, Canada bucks the trend and does not see citizen support for economic redistribution decline in response to immigration-based population diversity. Using Canada as our case, we argue that scholars of welfare state politics and redistribution should turn their attention to other sources of population heterogeneity in an effort to better understand how different political cleavages affect citizens’ redistributive preferences. We use an online experimental survey to manipulate the in-group identity of 500 Canadians. The survey enables respondents to identify with other in-group identities along regional, linguistic, income-group, and urban/rural characteristics. Our results find that while Canadians do have a strong baseline preference for redistributive behaviour, regional and linguistic cleavages moderate this outcome.     

Does Reacting to the Past Increase Student Engagement? An Empirical Evaluation of the Use of Historical Simulations in Teaching Political Theory

Within the teaching of political theory, an assumption is emerging that Reacting to the Past simulations are an effective tool because they encourage greater student engagement with ideas and history. While previous studies have assessed the advantages of simulations in other political science subfields or offered anecdotal evidence of their effectiveness in political theory courses, less attention has been paid to the empirical assessment of simulations in political theory. This study uses data — in the form of presimulation and postsimulation surveys, as well as focus groups — collected from two political theory courses in order to gauge levels of student engagement inside and outside of the classroom. We ask if students’ levels of engagement increase during the simulation in their political theory courses. We also explore the mechanisms involved in driving higher levels of student engagement during the simulation. We conclude by arguing that it is the liminal nature of the Reacting to the Past simulations that most likely explains increased levels of student engagement.     

Innovation and Alliances

Explanations for national success in science and technology typically focus on domestic institutions and policies. However, that line of research has yet to identify any particular set of institutions or policies that explain variation in national innovation rates across cases or over time. This article offers new evidence that the problem with domestic institutions approaches stems from their failure to consider international security factors. Specifically, this article finds a positive effect for U.S. security alliances on innovation. This finding is robust across different specifications and periods of analysis. While countries that ally militarily with the United States are found to realize benefits in economy‐wide, indigenous innovation, such an effect is not observed in military technologies. This suggests that alliances may substitute for being on the frontier in military technologies. Therefore, this article contributes not just to debates over S&T competitiveness, but also to alliance formation.     

Complex Contracting: Management Challenges and Solutions

Governments at all levels buy mission‐critical goods and services whose attributes and performance requirements are hard to define and produce. Many governments—and the public managers who lead them—lack experience and knowledge about how to contract for complex products. The contract management counsel provided to public managers is thin. Missing is a conceptual managerial framework to guide purchasing the complex products that are often so critical to public organizations' core missions. Drawing on perspectives from across the social sciences, the framework presented in this article provides guidance on how managers can harness the upsides of complex contracting while avoiding its pitfalls. The framework helps identify conditions that increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for the purchasing government and the vendor—the win‐win. To illustrate the framework, the article provides examples of successful and failed acquisitions for complex products such as transportation projects, social service systems, and information technology systems.     

Bridge Over the River Qua: Using Simulations to Span the Divide Between Prelaw and Political Science Students

Undergraduate public law courses often attract students with competing expectations. Some students enroll in these courses to prepare for law school, while others enroll in the courses to gain a broader understanding of courts in the American system of government. These differing student constituencies can create a dilemma for instructors. A course designed to cater to students with a general interest in the judiciary may not afford prelaw students with an appreciation for the demands of the legal profession. Conversely, a course narrowly tailored toward prelaw students risks alienating the majority of students for whom this class may be their only look at the judiciary. As a means to promote pedagogical balance and to appeal to varied student constituencies, we profile five public law simulations in this article that engage students in active learning and promote a greater understanding of law and courts.     

Public and elite opinion on international human rights law: Completing the causal chain of the domestic compliance mechanism

Why do states comply with international human rights law? Scholars have looked to domestic politics to suggest a constituency-driven domestic compliance mechanism. However, it is unclear if strong public support for compliance leads to greater willingness to comply among elected officials. This study is the first to empirically demonstrate the complete causal chain of a constituency-driven domestic compliance mechanism. Using a survey experiment, this study first finds that a strong state commitment to UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations (RTNC) increases public support for compliance. Using a parallel lab-in-the-field experiment of sitting legislators, the study then finds that a strong state commitment to RTNC is similarly associated with increased elite support for compliance. Finally, the study finds that public demand for compliance is associated with even greater elite support for compliance. Public demand for compliance seems to elicit elite willingness to comply by raising reputational concerns.