Unresponsive and Unpersuaded: The Unintended Consequences of a Voter Persuasion Effort

To date, field experiments on campaign tactics have focused overwhelmingly on mobilization and voter turnout, with far more limited attention to persuasion and vote choice. In this paper, we analyze a field experiment with 56,000 Wisconsin voters designed to measure the persuasive effects of canvassing, phone calls, and mailings during the 2008 presidential election. Focusing on the canvassing treatment, we find that persuasive appeals had two unintended consequences. First, they reduced responsiveness to a follow-up survey among infrequent voters, a substantively meaningful behavioral response that has the potential to induce bias in estimates of persuasion effects as well. Second, the persuasive appeals possibly reduced candidate support and almost certainly did not increase it. This counterintuitive finding is reinforced by multiple statistical methods and suggests that contact by a political campaign may engender a backlash.     

Why do some international institutions contain strong dispute settlement provisions? New evidence from preferential trade agreements

To understand why some international institutions have stronger dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs) than others, we investigate the dispute settlement provisions of nearly 600 preferential trade agreements (PTAs), which possess several desirable case-selection features and are evoked more than is realized. We broaden the study of dispute settlement design beyond “legalization” and instead reorient theorizing around a multi-faceted conceptualization of the strength of DSMs. We posit that strong DSMs are first and foremost a rational response to features of agreements that require stronger dispute settlement, such as depth and large memberships. Multivariate empirical tests using a new data set on PTA design confirm these expectations and reveal that depth – the amount of policy change specified in an agreement – is the most powerful and consistent predictor of DSM strength, providing empirical support to a long-posited but controversial conjecture. Yet power also plays a sizeable role, since agreements among asymmetric members are more likely to have strong DSMs due to their mutual appeal, as are those involving the United States. Important regional differences also emerge, as PTAs across the Americas are designed with strong dispute settlement, as are Asian PTAs, which contradicts the conventional wisdom about Asian values and legalization. Our findings demonstrate that rationalism explains much of international institutional design, yet it can be enhanced by also incorporating power-based and regional explanations.     

The Role of Interface Shape on the Impact Characteristics and Cranial Fracture Patterns Using the Immature Porcine Head Model, ,

The forensic literature suggests that when adolescents fall onto edged and pointed surfaces, depressed fractures can occur at low energy levels. This study documents impact biomechanics and fracture characteristics of infant porcine skulls dropped onto flat, curved, edged, and focal surfaces. Results showed that the energy needed for fracture initiation was nearly four times higher against a flat surface than against the other surfaces. While characteristic measures of fracture such as number and length of fractures did not vary with impact surface shape, the fracture patterns did depend on impact surface shape. While experimental impacts against the flat surface produced linear fractures initiating at sutural boundaries peripheral to the point of impact (POI), more focal impacts produced depressed fractures initiating at the POI. The study supported case‐based forensic literature suggesting cranial fracture patterns depend on impact surface shape and that fracture initiation energy is lower for more focal impacts.     

Social Media and E-professionalism in Child Welfare: Policy and Practice

The professional child welfare literature offers little guidance to child welfare managers and agency policy makers about the use of social media to search for or communicate with clients. Ethical social media use relies upon e-professionalism, defined as the professional identity established by workers through the way they utilize digital communications. This article offers considerations for standards of e-professionalism in child welfare policy and practice. Specific considerations are outlined for social media policy and practice scenarios are offered, which can be used to prompt agency discussions with child welfare workers.     

A Nation of Immigrants or a Nation of Immigrant Cities? The Urban Context of Australian Multiculturalism, 1947–2011

The article documents the urban dimension of Australia's immigration experience that, since the 1940s, has seen the country become one of the world's most multicultural societies. The article argues that the greatest impact of immigration has been in the major cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne, which in recent decades have emerged as internationally‐significant immigrant hubs that, like similar immigrant‐receiving destinations across the globe, are increasingly demographically and culturally distinct from their host nation. Drawing on census materials, oral history interviews, local newspapers and other sources, we chart the demographic transformation of urban Australia from the 1940s to the present day and suggest that these changes have implications for how urban Australians — especially those resident in the two biggest cities — will understand and represent themselves and the nation into the future.     

Terrorist networks, support, and delegation

The paper presents a game-theoretic representation of a general terrorist organization (GTO) that delegates responsibility to local terrorist representatives in n countries. The GTO achieves a strategic advantage by deploying a more radical representative when the government is perceived to be weak and terrorist supporters are committed. When the government or terrorist supporters alter their posture, the GTO may regret its local representative. Outside assistance can change a besieged government’s posture, thereby removing the GTO’s delegation advantage. When both the GTO and the government delegate to surrogates, the delegators are worse off if the government appears to be weak.     

Strategic coalition voting: Evidence from New Zealand

Whereas the classic literature on strategic voting has focused on the dilemma faced by voters who prefer a candidate for whom they expect has little chance of winning a seat, we consider the dilemma faced by voters in PR systems who do not expect their preferred party to be in government. We develop hypotheses relating to strategic voting over multi-party governments that we test using the New Zealand Election Study (NZES) campaign study of 2002. We find evidence that expectations play a role in structuring vote choice. While there is clear evidence of wishful thinking there is also evidence that voters respond to expectations about government formation. These expectations may mobilize voters and lead them to defect from their first preference.     

Delegating Differences: Bilateral Investment Treaties and Bargaining Over Dispute Resolution Provisions

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have become the dominant source of rules on foreign direct investment (FDI), yet these treaties vary significantly in at least one important respect: whether they allow investment disputes to be settled through the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Through the compilation and careful coding of the text of nearly 1,500 treaties, we identify systematic variation in "legal delegation" to ICSID across BITs and explain this important variation by drawing upon a bargaining framework. Home governments prefer and typically obtain ICSID clauses in their BITs, particularly when internal forces push strongly for such provisions and when they have significantly greater bargaining power than the other signatory. Yet some home governments are less likely to insist upon ICSID clauses if they have historical or military ties with the other government. On the other hand, although host governments are often hostile toward ICSID clauses, particularly when sovereignty costs are high, they are more likely to consent to such clauses when they are heavily constrained by their dependence on the global economy. Our findings have significant implications for those interested in FDI, legalization, international institutions, and interstate bargaining.     

Can financial incentives reduce juvenile confinement levels? An evaluation of the Redeploy Illinois program

Purpose

Assessments of ongoing fiscal restructuring of juvenile justice system processes and the impact such restructuring has on juvenile incarceration rates are limited. When impacts of fiscal restructuring efforts have been assessed, researchers have focused on systemic, macro level changes in incarceration rates but avoided more focused, micro level impacts. This study fills this knowledge gap by examining the recent implementation of the Redeploy Illinois program in two pilot sites. In the Redeploy Illinois program, financial incentives were provided to select counties to develop community based alternatives to incarceration. The goal was to alleviate over reliance on state funded residential facilities for evaluation and confinement purposes.

Methods

Agency data were analyzed using qualitative methods to examine the effects of this change.

Results

Results of this study demonstrated that counties participating in the pilot test of the Redeploy Illinois program were able to reduce their levels of juvenile commitment to the state. Peoria County exceeded their reduction benchmark for all but two years, and St. Clair County well exceed their reduction benchmark for all full calendar years subsequent to implementation.

Conclusions

Findings are consistent with the limited literature exploring fiscal restructuring efforts designed to reduce county levels juvenile commitments.