The “strange power of speech”: The unprecedented but limited success of telephone company First Amendment arguments

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 rendered moot recent successful telephone company constitutional challenges to the Cable Act ban on telephone company provision of video. The cases, however, suggest the “strange power”; of the First Amendment to shatter well‐established structural regulations and present evidence that well‐heeled actors can gain through the courts regulatory concessions not readily attainable from Congress or the FCC.

Neither precedent nor logic supports these court rulings, which eliminated economic regulation based upon speculative First Amendment gains rather than upon demonstrated abridgments of speech or changes in the video market     

Trial by media?: Media reliance,knowledge of crime and perception of criminal defendants

Previous research has linked extensive news media coverage of crimes and the criminal process to pretrial jury bias against defendants. Most research, however, has tested the effects of reading fabricated crime stories on mock jury decisions or general perceptions of crime. Using telephone interviews, this study examines whether perceptions of the defendant in an actual double homicide were related to reliance on local news media for news and information. The results provide clear evidence that potential jurors who are exposed to media coverage of crimes form biases against criminal defendants. Newspaper and television reliance were found to be positively related to perceptions of guilt. The results also show that newspaper reliant individuals knew significantly more facts about the case. Television reliant individuals judged the defendant's character as significantly more negative.     

The EU and Russia's conflicting regime preferences in Ukraine: assessing regime promotion strategies in the scope of the Ukraine crisis

This paper evaluates the competitiveness of the European Union (EU) and Russia's regime preferences in their foreign policies towards Ukraine in the scope of the on-going Ukraine crisis. It is argued that the underpinning geopolitical environment Ukraine currently resides in, wedged between two much larger powers (the EU and Russia), renders it a vulnerable target state for regime promotion from both sides. Indeed, since the 2004 Orange revolution in Ukraine, both the EU and Russia have had discernible regime promotion strategies in their foreign policies. The EU's regime promotion has focussed on facilitating democracy in Ukraine, along with more material interests (trade and strategic aims) while Russia has reacted with increasingly zero-sum policies which pursue its preference for having a loyal and Russian-facing regime in Ukraine. Ultimately, the increasing competitiveness of the EU and Russia has been a key factor in the onset of the Ukraine crisis, which offers important insight into the relationship between large powers and the smaller third states which lie in their overlapping spheres of influence.     

Bicameral bargaining and federation formation

This paper takes a political economy approach to fiscal centralisation through federation formation. We analyse a two-region model of federalism with inter-regional policy spillovers. Departing from a state of independence with decentralised provision of public policy, we analyse the proposed formation of a federation to internalise the spillovers. We consider equilibrium allocations under alternative institutional environments involving: simple majority voting, a restriction of uniform taxation, and regional bargaining through a bicameral legislature. Bicameralism facilitates federation formation for the largest set of parameter values of the model, which is consistent with the observation that bicameralism and federalism often appear together.     

From Laggard to Leader: Explaining the Belgian Gender Quotas and Parity Clause

One of the defining features of post-reunified East German political culture has been an enduring affinity for socialism. Although firmly opposed to the pre-1989 one-party state, a sizeable majority of East Germans nevertheless continue to value socialism. Whilst much scholarly research has investigated the strength and depth of socialist values, as well as their sources, comparatively little is known about their consequences, about if and how socialist values matter. This article seeks to redress this by examining linkages between socialist values and political participation, asking whether socialist values are merely passive, romanticised expressions, the effects of which are largely benign, or whether they have real-life behavioural consequences for democracy. Exploring this question using ALLBUS data from East Germany, five hypotheses are tested at the individual level. The results strongly demonstrate that socialist values impact upon social capital and electoral behaviour.     

State Revenue Forecasts and Political Acceptance: The Value of Consensus Forecasting in the Budget Process

Concerns about political biases in state revenue forecasts, as well as insufficient evidence that complex forecasts outperform naive algorithms, have resulted in a nearly universal call for depoliticization of forecasting. This article discusses revenue forecasting in the broader context of the political budget process and highlights the importance of a forecast that is politically accepted—forecast accuracy is irrelevant if the budget process does not respect the forecast as a resource constraint. The authors provide a case illustration in Indiana by showing how the politicized process contributed to forecast acceptance in the state budget over several decades. They also present a counterfactual history of forecast errors that would have been produced by naive algorithms. In addition to showing that the Indiana process would have outperformed the naive approaches, the authors demonstrate that the path of naive forecast errors during recessions would be easily ignored by political actors.     

Does Decentralization Improve Perceptions of Accountability? Attitudinal Evidence from Colombia

Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual‐level evaluations of the degree to which decentralization prompts citizens to view department government as more accountable. We estimate the effect of administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization, controlling for participation, political knowledge, confidence in government, education, and income on perceptions of accountability. Our results indicate that administrative and fiscal decentralization improve perceptions of accountability, while political decentralization does not.     

Failure of auditors: The lack of compliance for business combinations in China

This empirical study investigates the compliance of 344 Chinese listed companies with the Accounting Standard for Enterprises No. 20‐Business Combination, a mandatory reporting standard applicable to companies involved in business combinations. China has recently reformed its auditing sector, enabling private firms to provide auditing services. The results of the study show a low level of compliance by Chinese listed companies. While companies audited by Chinese domestic auditors have significantly lower compliance than companies audited by Big Four auditors on supplementary disclosure that is mandatory under the Chinese accounting standards, compliance remains low even after companies receive unqualified reports from these international auditors. There appears to be a lack of commitment, and possibly expertise, among Big Four auditors, in fully applying the reporting requirements of the business combination standard in a Chinese setting. This raises concerns about the independence of Chinese auditing in disclosing reliable information about business combinations. Broader theoretical contributions of the paper go beyond the Chinese context by problematizing whether well‐resourced international auditors uphold internationally expected standards or succumb to local non‐compliant practices.     

Is Differentiation of Frequently Encountered Foreign Bodies in Corpses Possible by Hounsfield Density Measurement?

Abstract:  The radiological determination of foreign objects in corpses can be difficult if they are fragmented or deformed. With multislice computed tomography, radiodensities—referred to as Hounsfield units (HU)—can be measured. We examined the possibility of differentiating 21 frequently occurring foreign bodies, such as metals, rocks, and different manmade materials by virtue of their HU values. Gold, steel, and brass showed mean HU values of 30671–30710 (upper measurable limit), mean HU values for steel, silver, copper, and limestone were 20346, 16949, 14033, and 2765, respectively. The group consisting of objects, such as aluminum, tarmac, car front-window glass, and other rocks, displayed mean HU values of 2329–2131 HU. The mean HU value of bottle glass and car side-window glass was 2088, whereas windowpane glass was 493. HU value determination may therefore help in preautopsy differentiation between case-relevant and irrelevant foreign bodies and thus be useful for autopsy planning and extraction of the objects in question.