The Influence of News Media on Political Elites: Investigating Strategic Responsiveness in Congress

News media play a central role in democratic politics, yet we know little about how media affect the behavior of policy makers. To understand the conditions under which news media influence political elites, we advance a theory of strategic responsiveness, which contends that elected representatives are more likely to heed their constituents' preferences when voters are attentive. Accordingly, news media's influence on legislative behavior should be most apparent near elections and dependent on the partisan composition of the constituency. We capitalize on the incremental rollout of the conservative Fox News Channel in the late 1990s to evaluate our theoretical predictions. Fox News caused both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to increase support for the Republican Party position on divisive votes, but only in the waning months of the election cycle and among those members who represent districts with a sizable portion of Republican voters.     

If I recall correctly. An event history analysis of forgetting and recollecting past voting behavior

The mechanisms behind vote recall inaccuracy are not well understood. The literature has been unable to separate inaccuracy due to the nature of the voter (such as non-attitudes) from inaccuracy due to interfering events after casting the vote (such as a change in vote intention). This paper employs event history analysis to disentangle time-invariant and time-variant explanations of recall inaccuracy. Using Dutch panel data on 20,936 respondents in 42 waves between 2010 and 2012 (and additional data collected between 2006 and 2010), we explain the likelihood of misreporting the 2010 vote during the subsequent electoral cycle. The analyses show that although both explanations play a role, voters’ general level of volatility before casting the recalled vote matters less than changes in vote intention after the vote. We conclude that accurate recall is affected mainly by events rather than the nature of voters. Our findings imply that survey measures of voting behavior could be improved by offering cues on the elections of interest.     

De-Europeanisation in Turkey: The Case of the Rule of Law

Abstract

This article investigates the political dynamics shaping the post-2010 ‘de-Europeanisation’ of Turkey’s judicial system, particularly regarding judicial independence and rule of law. The analysis suggests the limits of conventional Europeanisation accounts emphasising causal factors such as European Union (EU) conditionality and the ‘lock-in effects’ of liberal reforms due to the benefits of EU accession. The article argues that the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP’s) bid for political hegemony resulted in the reversal of rule of law reforms. De-Europeanisation is discussed in terms of both legislative changes and the government’s observed discourse shift.     

The emergence of a fourth pillar in development aid

Development co-operation has traditionally been the playing field of governments, multilateral institutions, and established development NGOs. In the past decade, however, other actors in Northern countries (such as businesses, migrants' organisations, professional groups, and schools) have shown active interest in development-related activities. Although they do not belong to the epistemic community of development specialists and are often overlooked in the discourse and literature on development co-operation, their number and importance are growing. These novel approaches to development co-operation give rise to some important reflections about their methodologies, potential impact, and fundraising. Based on the authors' experiences and research in Belgium, the article raises some issues about what they term the fourth pillar of development co-operation, with the aim of stimulating the academic and policy-oriented debate.     

Robert Manne's Wilfred Burchett: The Uses and Abuses of Biography

Robert Manne numbers amongst Australia's most influential public intellectuals. Though his politics have moved leftwards, Manne remains critical of the left's so‐called neo‐Stalinist interpretation of Cold War history. Of particular concern is the left's defence of the radical Australian journalist, Wilfred Burchett, who was widely regarded as a communist propagandist and traitor. Manne's 1985 Quadrant essay, “The Fortunes of Wilfred Burchett: A New Assessment”, lent considerable academic weight to this view. Though Manne has since acknowledged some errors, he still maintains that Burchett was a communist “hack” and traitor. But Manne's argument remains selectively based and erroneous. It uncritically accepts security‐based intelligence, while sidestepping the abuse of Burchett's civil liberties by Liberal governments. Manne uses and abuses Burchett's life to push his ideological agenda about Stalinism's evils.     

Does Moral Conviction Really Override Concerns About Procedural Justice? A Reexamination of the Value Protection Model

A large research literature on procedural justice demonstrates that people are more accepting of decisions that they do not feel are advantageous or fair when those decisions are arrived at using just procedures. Recently, several papers (Skitka, Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 28:588–597, 2002; Skitka and Mullen, Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 28:1419–1429, 2002) have argued that these procedural mechanisms do not have a significant influence when the decision made concerns issues about which those involved have strong moral feelings (“a moral mandate”). A reanalysis of the data in these two studies indicates that, contrary to the strong position taken by the authors, i.e. that “when people have a moral mandate about an outcome, any means justifies the mandated end” (Skitka, Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 28:594, 2002), the justice of decision-making procedures is consistently found to significantly influence people’s reactions to decisions by authorities and institutions even when their moral mandates are threatened.

Testing the predictive utility of the STATIC‐99: A Bayes analysis

Purpose. This study applies a Bayes analysis to the probability of a particular STATIC‐99 score and its associated re‐offence probability with recidivating for a sexual offence. We examine this probability over three time frames: within 5 years; within 10 years; and within 15 years. Methods. This study was conducted using the same data from Hanson and Thornton (1999) . This dataset is constituted from four different samples: Institut Philippe Pinel (Canada) sample; Millbrook Recidivism Study (Canada) sample; Oak Ridge Division of the Penetanguishene Mental Health Center (Canada) sample; and Her Majesty's Prison Service (UK) sample. The final sample for which sufficient information was available to score the STATIC‐99 includes 1,086 sexual offenders. Bayes statistic has been used to analyse the data. Results. Results are consistent with the STATIC‐99 as a useful assessment tool. The Bayes‐generated probabilities as well as odds ratios show a consistent increase in increased likelihood of re‐offence as the score value increases. Conclusions. The Bayesian analysis of the STATIC‐99 shows that this method is very interesting in the context of risk assessment tools. This approach to risk assessment instruments may be more appropriate in the communication of analytic results as it can offer clinicians a combination of probabilities and likelihood ratios resulting a readily accessible profile of risk.     

The Nordic governments' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic: A comparative study of variation in governance arrangements and regulatory instruments

Government responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in the Nordic states—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden—exhibit similarities and differences. This article investigates the extent to which crisis policymaking diverges from normal policymaking within the Nordic countries and whether variations between the countries are associated with the role of expertise and the level of politicization. Government responses are analyzed in terms of governance arrangements and regulatory instruments. Findings demonstrate some deviation from normal policymaking within and considerable variation between the Nordic countries, as Denmark, Finland, and to some extent Norway exhibit similar patterns with hierarchical command and control governance arrangements, while Iceland, in some instances, resembles the case of Sweden, which has made use of network-based governance. The article shows that the higher the influence of experts, the more likely it is that the governance arrangement will be network-based.