The Effects of Network Expertise and Biases on Vote Choice

Many citizens lack the political knowledge to make informed decisions partly due to the high costs of becoming informed. Previous scholars have argued that if individuals speak with political experts who share their preferences, they can vote as if they were informed without paying information costs. This view of citizens as single-minded seekers of low-cost information is unrealistic. Individuals often choose discussion partners for reasons unrelated to politics, and many communication networks have heterogeneous information levels and preferences as a result. This paper simulates the votes of hypothetical electorates with different individual and network information levels. It demonstrates that network expertise has an effect on vote choice, but this effect is not as large as the effect of individual expertise. Rather, the key contextual determinant of an individual's vote is the partisan composition of his or her discussion network.     

Inequity in the distribution of science and technology outcomes: a conceptual model

We propose a conceptual model to encourage systematic analysis of social equity issues of science policy. The model considers the relationships among several attributes of science and technology goods and services including the incidence of its impact, degree of concentration, and whether its consumption generates capacity for the individual or groups or is “hedonic,” that is, short term and diminishing rapidly in its effects. We discuss the implications of the model in terms of four quite different types of equity. We conclude by suggesting some respects in which the model could be employed to facilitate public policy and moral deliberations about the effects of science and technology.     

后西方世界秩序下的核武器与核威慑

全球国际社会正处于一个关键的变化时期。长期以来占主导地位的西方秩序在如下几个方面面临包围:霸权分散、全球资本主义危机日益加重、全球共同面临恐怖主义、大规模移民以及环境变化等带来的各种威胁。英国脱欧、特朗普当选美国总统这些事件表明,作为世界秩序核心的英语世界,已失去其主导力量。目前的发展格局将朝着多元化的后西方世界秩序发展。在此秩序下,没有超级大国,只有大国,并且这些大国大多比较自我封闭,因此,并不存在真正意义上的争夺全球霸权的现象。文化差异将比意识形态差异更为重要。文章首先将这一秩序的轮廓做一大致勾勒,然后探讨这一秩序对未来几十年核武器与核威慑所要扮演的角色来说将意味着什么。最为关注的着眼点是,全球格局从全球层面向区域层面的转变以及复杂的核扩散与核威慑态势。     

Election Laws,Mobilization, and Turnout: The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform

State governments have experimented with a variety of election laws to make voting more convenient and increase turnout. The impacts of these reforms vary in surprising ways, providing insight into the mechanisms by which states can encourage or reduce turnout. Our theory focuses on mobilization and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of election laws. We conduct both aggregate and individual‐level statistical analyses of voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The results show that Election Day registration has a consistently positive effect on turnout, whereas the most popular reform—early voting—is actually associated with lower turnout when it is implemented by itself. We propose that early voting has created negative unanticipated consequences by reducing the civic significance of elections for individuals and altering the incentives for political campaigns to invest in mobilization.