Assessing the psychological and mechanical impact of electoral rules: A quasi-experiment

The paper assesses the influence of electoral rules on vote choice and election outcomes using a quasi-experiment conducted during a recent Canadian provincial election. Respondents were invited to vote under three voting systems (first past the post, alternative voting and proportional representation) and to answer a short questionnaire. We examine how the distribution of votes and seats is affected, and we ascertain how much of the total difference is due to psychological and mechanical effects. We find that a PR system would have increased legislative fractionalization by the equivalent of one effective party and that the mechanical effect is much more important than the psychological effect. As for AV, its mechanical and psychological effects act in opposite directions.     

Participatory numbers for integrating knowledge and actions in development

This article discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of quantitative participatory methods and participatory numbers for integrating locals’ and outsiders’ knowledge, as well as actions from the bottom-up and top-down, in development. It places emphasis on the contribution of quantitative participatory methods and participatory numbers to foster dialogue between a wide range of stakeholders, for example, local people, NGOs, government agencies and scientists, who usually seldom directly engage with each other. The article draws on case studies that discuss remittances and disasters in Samoa, and disaster risk reduction in the Philippines.     

Public Beliefs in the Causes of Wealth and Poverty and Legitimization of Inequalities in Russia and Estonia

The article analyzes the attributions of the causes of poverty and wealth in Russia and Estonia in 1991 and 1996 and their determinants. Among the latter are the perceived actual justice of the society, the perceived size of the middle class, and the personal position in the system of inequalities. Despite the economic hardships and a rise in inequalities in both countries, individualistic explanations of wealth and poverty have increased over the 5 years between the surveys. At the same time respondents in both countries demonstrated a growing awareness of the importance of starting positions and connections to achieve wealth. The perceived middle class has a significant effect on attributions of poverty but not on wealth. Russians in Estonia have a particular bias against wealth, whereas non-Russians in Russia are more likely to justify wealth on the basis of individual merit. Explanations of poverty and wealth in Estonia are more rooted in the factors of socialization (age, education, and gender), whereas in Russia they are more rooted in the changes in the family financial circumstances between 1991 and 1996. There was a general increase in support for government intervention in distribution in both countries.     

Terrorism and Terrorist Leaders: Insights from Developmental and Ecological Psychology

A recent increase in terrorist actions where the terrorist's death is planned and intentional has raised interest in the psychological functioning, motivation, and reasoning of those who engage in terrorism and those who support it. No consensus exists among Western ¹ 1. That is, American or European. psychologists regarding terrorists who plan to die in their attack, and no Western psychological perspective has thus far contributed substantively to explaining or predicting it. Although most agree that groups engaging in such actions typically have a wider network of support, the psychology of supporters is also unexplained. This article proposes a developmental psychological model of the conditions that favor focused terrorist actions that have publicly discernible goals ascribed to a political or religious cause. The article describes a common pattern of cognitive complexity among terrorist leaders, using Osama bin Laden as a model, where entrenched cognitive simplicity in one key ideological domain (religious or political) is coupled with behavior reflecting the capacity for far greater complexity in other domains (organizational skills, planning, problem-solving.) This pattern, in specifiable historical and ecological context, makes terrorist tactics, including those in which the attacker intentionally dies, more likely, and increases the challenges associated with attempts at diplomacy or negotiated peace.     

Rethinking Caretaker Conventions for Australian Governments

Australia has well‐established conventions for caretaker governments. These conventions regulate how a government should operate once an election is called, and have been documented for some decades. Yet the current conventions date from an era when elections usually produced clear and immediate results. Can our caretaker conventions cope with the emerging reality of indecisive elections and long delays before a new government is confirmed? This paper canvasses the state of Australia's caretaker conventions and offers suggestions for an expanded, contemporary code.     

Regionalism's multiple negotiations: ASEAN in East Asia

This article explains East Asian regionalism as the product of two sets of negotiations. The first negotiation is between East Asia on the one hand and global forces and structures on the other. The second negotiation is intra-regional and includes a critical negotiation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-Southeast Asia and East/Northeast Asia, which also provides the primary focus of this article. This article details ASEAN's extensions into East Asian regionalism as part of interdependent efforts to adapt transitioning global and regional systems. Conceiving these regional negotiations to be not just economic and utilitarian but first and foremost normative, this article details the opportunities and dilemmas represented by ‘East Asia’ for ASEAN, ASEAN-Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia as a meaningful organizing principle. Dilemmas associated with the ASEAN Plus Three process, an East Asia free-trade area and the ASEAN Charter provide illustrations of East Asia's understood challenges for Southeast Asia in addition to the ways that Southeast Asian agencies have been shaping the form and content of recent East Asian efforts and also how regional-global and intra-ASEAN negotiations continue to provide key constraints.     

The Rationalities of European Border Security

Abstract

Any account of European security that ignores border security is incomplete, and any account of border security that disregards functional issues is unfinished. Border security is an empirical manifestation of a state's adaptation to its political environment, so a comprehensive analysis of European security requires that both the empirical and conceptual parameters of border management should be identified. However, this is problematic. Not only is functional security benignly neglected by the academy, but also border management is based on competing political imperatives, operational necessities, and social realities, rather than a coherent theoretical framework. Although the rationalities of European border security have yet to be systematically analysed, the Schengen accord is unlikely to provide the foundations needed for a comprehensive paradigm of European (border) security. This article focuses on the empirical and practical—rather than theoretical—dimensions of border security in order to rebalance the debate.     

Quantification of human mitochondrial DNA using synthesized DNA standards

Successful mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) forensic analysis depends on sufficient quantity and quality of mtDNA. A real-time quantitative PCR assay was developed to assess such characteristics in a DNA sample, which utilizes a duplex, synthetic DNA to ensure optimal quality assurance and quality control. The assay's 105-base pair target sequence facilitates amplification of degraded DNA and is minimally homologous to nonhuman mtDNA. The primers and probe hybridize to a region that has relatively few sequence polymorphisms. The assay can also identify the presence of PCR inhibitors and thus indicate the need for sample repurification. The results show that the assay provides information down to 10 copies and provides a dynamic range spanning seven orders of magnitude. Additional experiments demonstrated that as few as 300 mtDNA copies resulted in successful hypervariable region amplification, information that permits sample conservation and optimized downstream PCR testing. The assay described is rapid, reliable, and robust.