Elections and Representation in Local Government: A Victorian Case Study

This article examines the application of different views of representation in the electoral systems at local government level: interest, corporate and mirror representation. The electoral framework underpins the process of representation, influencing both who are eligible to become voters and how their votes are collected and counted. The paper examines the interrelationship between representation and the electoral framework in local government in Victoria. We use a historical analysis, and identify a long period of interest representation; a short, relatively recent period of corporate representation; and an attempt to introduce some elements of mirror representation. We conclude by arguing that local electoral reform needs to take into account the multiple meanings of representation.     

Issue Importance and Performance Voting

Issue importance mediates the impact of public policy issues on electoral decisions. Individuals who consider that an issue is important are more likely to rely on their attitudes toward that issue when evaluating candidates and deciding for whom to vote. The logic behind the link between issue importance and issue voting should translate to a link between issue importance and performance voting. Incumbent performance evaluations regarding an issue should have a stronger impact on the vote choice of individuals who find that issue important. The analysis demonstrates that there is a significant interaction between performance evaluations and issue importance. People concerned about an issue assign more weight to their evaluations of the government's performance on that issue when making up their mind.     

Sustained Outcomes? an Exploratory Study of Juvenile Drug Courts and Long-Term Recidivism

This exploratory study examined juvenile drug courts’ effect on adulthood recidivism. Utilizing a twelve-year average follow up time, adult recidivism rates were compared between previous juvenile drug court participants and a comparison group of juveniles who participated in traditional probation. Linear regression models indicated limited recidivism effects of drug court on arrests or convictions into adulthood. The findings suggest that gender and race may play a role in how justice-involved juveniles interact and experience juvenile drug court, highlighting the need for gender-responsive and culturally responsive policies, practices, and programs within juvenile drug courts. Recommendations are made regarding future research areas and ways to potentially improve long-term juvenile drug court outcomes.     

Access and allocation in global biodiversity governance: a review

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - Access and allocation is one of the five analytical themes of the science plan of the Earth System Governance (ESG) project....     

Funding,capabilities and the use of child soldiers

Recent years have seen increased scholarly attention given to the issue of child soldiering. Primarily dedicated to the decision-making calculus of rebel groups, this body of work has generally emphasised supply-side versus demand-side arguments. We contribute to this growing literature by explicitly investigating a previously untested aspect of the latter. Prior scholarship has made vague references to a potential association between economic endowments and child soldiering, including natural resource wealth, but scant empirical attention has been given. We argue that the specific type of endowment has important consequences for the decision to utilise child soldiers. We argue access to and exploitation of lootable natural resources (e.g. gemstones) to be especially likely to promote the use of child soldiers due to their ease of access, the low skills required to harness them and the heightened likelihood that groups will become more profit-oriented. A systematic cross-national investigation of rebel groups provides robust evidence that lootable resources such as diamonds and gemstones are strongly associated with the use of children, while non-lootable resources such as oil are not.     

we say what we are and we do what we say: feminisms in educational practice in Aotearoa New Zealand

From four countries (Canada, England, New Zealand and the United States of America) and five disciplines (Counselling & Guidance, Adult Education, Early Years Education, Indigenous Education and Human Development), five feminists in academia come together to share how feminism affects their practice. Ranging in reflections on teaching, research, service and scholarship, this article describes a cooperative enquiry into feminism in action in Aotearoa, New Zealand.     

A Model of Spoils Politics

Accounts of state failure in the developing world frequently highlight a logic of "spoils politics" in which a government and an opposing faction vie for control of the state and the accompanying spoils. Attempts to buy the opposition off play a key role in this logic, and an informational problem often complicates these efforts. Because of limited transparancy, the government generally has a better idea about the actual size of the spoils than the opposition does. We formalize this aspect of spoils politics as a signaling game in which the government has private information about the size of the spoils and tries to co-opt the opposition by offering a share of the spoils. The opposition can accept the offer or reject it by fighting. Consistent with the strong empirical finding that the probability of civil war is higher when income is low, the probability of breakdown increases as the size of the spoils decreases. We also study the effects of uncertainty, the opposition's military strength, the cost of fighting, and power-sharing agreements on the probability of fighting.     

从反核威慑战略到最低核威慑战略:中国核战略演进之路

当前学者们对中国核战略的争论焦点在于,没有任何一种现有核战略定义能够完全涵盖中国核政策的特点。本文认为,正确理解中国核战略,需要摆脱现有核战略理论概念体系的束缚。只有从中国核战略产生和发展的具体时代背景中寻找线索,才能认识到,中国核战略经历了从反核威慑战略到最低核威慑战略的巨大转变,而中国长期大规模备战核战争遗留下来的物质遗产和思想基础,仍然对中国核战略产生着巨大的影响力。中国学者应从中国核战略实践出发,参与构建主流话语体系,为核战略学科建设做出自己的贡献。