Parliamentary Voting Procedures in Comparison

Increasingly, scholars of legislative politics propose comparative analyses of parliamentary voting behaviour across different countries and parliaments. Yet parliamentary voting procedures differ dramatically across parliamentary chambers and ignoring these differences may, in the extreme, lead to meaningless comparisons. This paper presents a first glimpse at a comprehensive data collection effort covering more than 250 parliamentary chambers in 176 countries. Focusing on European legislatures it assesses what explains the differences in the rules among chambers. It is found that incentives linked to MPs’ visibility contribute to explain the transparency of the adopted voting procedures.     

Xenophobic Rhetoric and Its Political Effects on Immigrants and Their Co‐Ethnics

Though political scientists generally understand the origins of native‐born reactions to foreigners, less is known about how anti‐immigrant contexts trigger a political response within immigrant groups. I address this question by studying the connection between xenophobic rhetoric and Latino politics. I claim that xenophobic rhetoric raises the salience of ethnic identity and impugns its worth. This identity threat leads high‐identifying group members to engage in political efforts that assert their group's positive value, whereas low identifiers shun political opportunities to bolster their group's devaluation. I test these claims with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative opinion survey of Latino adults. In light of xenophobic rhetoric, I find that relative to low identifiers, high‐identifying Latinos become less politically trusting, more ethnocentric, and increasingly supportive of policies that emphasize ingroup pride. These results clarify xenophobic rhetoric's role in amplifying the influence of ethnic identity on immigrant politics.     

Chief Justice Roberts's Health Care Decision Disrobed: The Microfoundations of the Supreme Court's Legitimacy

The 2012 challenge to the Affordable Care Act was an unusual opportunity for people to form or reassess opinions about the Supreme Court. We utilize panel data coupled with as‐if random assignment to reports that Chief Justice Roberts's decision was politically motivated to investigate the microfoundations of the Court's legitimacy. Specifically, we test the effects of changes in individuals' ideological congruence with the Court and exposure to the nonlegalistic account of the decision. We find that both affect perceptions of the Court's legitimacy. Moreover, we show that these mechanisms interact in important ways and that prior beliefs that the Court is a legalistic institution magnify the effect of updating one's ideological proximity to the Court. While we demonstrate that individuals can and did update their views for multiple reasons, we also highlight constraints that allow for aggregate stability in spite of individual‐level change.     

Authoritarianism,socioethnic diversity and political participation across countries

It is argued in this article that threatening stimuli affect political participation levels among non‐authoritarians more than among authoritarians. Focusing on socioethnic diversity, which is known to be particularly threatening to authoritarians and to relate negatively to political participation in the general public, analyses of individual‐ and macro‐level data from 53 countries is presented which supports this thesis. Participation levels among authoritarians are largely static, regardless of a country's level of socioethnic heterogeneity, while non‐authoritarians participate considerably less in countries with relatively high levels of socioethnic heterogeneity. This suggests that authoritarians participate to a proportionately greater degree in the most diverse countries.     

Complaints of group-stalking (‘gang-stalking’): an exploratory study of their nature and impact on complainants

Stalking primarily concerns the actions of individuals. However, some victims report stalking by organised groups, this being known as ‘group-’ or ‘gang-stalking’. This phenomenon has not been subject to systematic study. An anonymous questionnaire was completed online by self-defined victims of stalking. One thousand and forty respondents met research definitions for stalking, of which 128 (12.3%) reported group-stalking. One hundred and twenty-eight individually stalked cases were randomly selected as a comparison group. All cases of reported group-stalking were found likely to be delusional, compared with 3.9% of individually stalked cases. There were highly significant differences between the two groups on most parameters examined. The group-stalked scored more highly on depressive symptoms, post-traumatic symptomatology and adverse impact on social and occupational functioning. Group-stalking appears to be delusional in basis, but complainants suffer marked psychological and practical sequelae. This is important in assessment of risk in stalking cases, early referral to psychiatric services and allocation of police resources.     

Till Immigration do us Part? Public Opinion and the Dilemma between Immigration Control and Bilateral Agreements

As a result of the initiative against mass immigration (MEI) Switzerland faces a dilemma between control of immigration and the continuation of bilateral agreements. This contribution raises two questions: First, have Swiss citizens' perceptions regarding the incompatibility between immigration control and bilateral agreements evolved since the vote on the MEI in February 2014? Second, what would Swiss citizens decide if they had to choose between the implementation of the MEI and the continuation of the bilateral strategy? We ground our analysis on data from the VOX surveys regarding the MEI and the more recent vote of November 2014 (Ecopop initiative). While Swiss voters still seem to be uncertain about the issue of compatibility, they nevertheless show support for the continuation of the bilateral agreements. Our analyses highlight the importance of age, trust in government and left‐right orientation for individual opinions towards the bilateral way.     

Livelihood recovery after disaster

A lack of monitoring and evaluation on the outcomes of livelihood recovery programming has typified many post-disaster recovery initiatives. This article uses a case study of the 2006 Yogyakarta, Indonesia earthquake to analyse longer-term impacts of livelihood programming after disaster. The article includes an overview of the programming implemented in five case study villages and the perspectives of impacted populations on the livelihood interventions. Results indicate the importance of longer-term programming, early interventions, local leadership, and an integrative strategy focusing on replacing assets, providing capital and credit to jumpstart entrepreneurial activities, capacity and skills building, and developing markets and networks.