Effects of Insurance on Child Labour: Ex-Ante and Ex-Post Behavioural Changes

In this paper we analyse possible effects of insurance on child labour. First, we develop a theoretical model that separates effects of insurance with and without a shock taking place. We then empirically test the hypotheses derived from the model by analysing the extension of a health insurance product in urban Hyderabad in Pakistan. Consistent with the theoretical model we develop in this paper, the reduction in child labour caused by the extension is largely due to an ex-ante feeling of protection as opposed to an ex-post shock-mitigation effect.     

Measuring subnational democracy: toward improved regime typologies and theories of regime change

Social scientists have been limited in their work by the paucity of global time series data about subnational institutions and practices. Such data could help scholars refine regime typologies, improve theories of democratization and regime change, better understand subnational democracy, and illuminate issues of development, conflict, and governance. This article addresses the lack of data by introducing 22 subnational measures from a new dataset, Varieties of Democracy. Validity tests demonstrate that the measures’ strengths outweigh their weaknesses. The measures excel in covering all subnational levels for most countries, capturing different elements of subnational elections, and including a variety of dimensions of elections and civil liberties. The measures also offer unmatched global and temporal coverage. The article demonstrates how these strengths can provide scholars with the benefits described above.     

International democracy promotion and democratization in the Middle East and North Africa

This article offers an overview of the literature on international democracy promotion in relation to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It draws on the criteria of process tracing to evaluate the mechanisms, processes and episodes of democratization associated with international democracy promotion in the region. It finds that the literature lacks a clear account of how international democracy promotion relates to conditions for democratization and could pay greater attention to the role of media in either supporting or counteracting democracy promotion activities which impact democratization processes in the region.     

Changing Owners,Changing Content: Does Who Owns the News Matter for the News?

The press is essential for creating an informed citizenry, but its existence depends on attracting and maintaining an audience. It is unclear whether supply-side effects—including those dictated by the owners of the media—influence how the media cover politics, yet this question is essential given their abilities to set the agenda and frame issues that are covered. We examine how ownership influences media behavior by investigating the impact of Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in August 2007. We collect data on every front-page story and editorial for 27 months, and we compare the difference in political coverage between the New York Times (NYT) and WSJ using a difference-in-differences design. We show that the amount of political content in the opinion pages of the two papers were unchanged by the sale, but the WSJ’s front-page coverage of politics increased markedly relative to the NYT. Similar patterns emerge when comparing the WSJ’s content to USA Today and the Washington Post. Our finding highlights potential limits to journalists’ ability to fulfill their supposed watchdog role in democracies without interference from owners in the boardroom.     

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

An increasing number of citizens change and adapt their party preferences during the electoral campaign. We analyze which short-term factors explain intra-campaign changes in voting preferences, focusing on the visibility and tone of news media reporting and party canvassing. Our analyses rely on an integrative data approach, linking data from media content analysis to public opinion data. This enables us to investigate the relative impact of news media reporting as well as party communication. Inherently, we overcome previously identified methodological problems in the study of communication effects on voting behavior. Our findings reveal that campaigns matter: Especially interpersonal party canvassing increases voters’ likelihood to change their voting preferences in favor of the respective party, whereas media effects are limited to quality news outlets and depend on individual voters’ party ambivalence.     

Consequences of Forced Residential Relocation: Early Impacts of Urban Renewal Strategies on Forced Relocatees’ Housing Opportunities and Socioeconomic Outcomes

Policymakers have actively pursued urban renewal and dispersal programs to deconcentrate poverty in urban neighborhoods. Relocation strategies lead to new housing opportunities and may encourage employment opportunities for relocated residents if resourceful contacts and job information become more easily available after the move. This study provides an innovative evaluation of the early impacts of involuntary relocation programs in the Netherlands on the housing careers, earnings and employment rates of forced relocatees. It establishes a quasi-experimental design by employing unique longitudinal individual-level population registry data from Statistics Netherlands: forced relocatees are tracked and matched to a control group consisting of similar residents that were not forced to move. A difference-in-difference design shows that forced relocatees are living in less deprived neighborhoods after the move. However, we find no conclusive evidence that this upgrade in housing leads to more socioeconomic opportunities for the forced relocatees.     

Introduction: Ideology,Propaganda, and Political Discourse in the Xi Jinping Era

The ideology, propaganda, and political discourse of the Communist Party of China (CPC) have continued to function as key elements of the political system of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the post-Maoist period since 1978. In the first term of the Xi Jinping leadership (2012–2017), the CPC, for instance, elaborated on its guiding ideological concepts, devised inventive ideational framings of phenomena usually perceived as tangible (such as the “New Normal”), engaged in complex intellectual debates on crucial topics (such as “eco-civilization”), intensified and diversified its argumentation patterns and discursive strategies, and consolidated ideational governance over some citizens’ individual values, beliefs, and loyalties. Furthermore, it is often no longer possible to differentiate between the CPC’s internal and external propaganda, as seemingly exclusively domestic ideational and discursive issues increasingly correlate with international phenomena. However, the trends in the Xi era do not present paradigmatic shifts, but rather an overall reassertion-cum-innovation of previous Maoist and post-Maoist uses of ideology, propaganda, and political discourse, primarily aiming at strengthening one-party rule.