A typology of board design for highly effective monitoring in intergovernmental organizations under the United Nations system

The United Nations (UN) system comprises several intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that were established to contribute to the functioning of the overall transnational system of delivering global public goods. However, many IGOs under the UN system are criticized for their failure to accomplish their mandates. Research argues that IGO boards serve as a governance mechanism that should be designed in order to effectively perform the monitoring function to ensure fulfillment of IGO mandates. Thus, using an inductive fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, this study explores 13 IGO boards under the UN system to identify the board designs that are associated with highly effective monitoring. Our findings reveal a board design typology reflecting the interplay of the level of organizational complexity and the extent of the distribution problem in IGOs. This research contributes to our understanding of IGO governance by underscoring the relationship between board designs and highly effective monitoring to help researchers and practitioners improve IGO performance.     

Teaching Judicial Politics Through a Supreme Court Simulation

Abstract

This article describes various iterations of a Supreme Court simulation that we developed for undergraduate political science classes. We address when simulations should be used to introduce a topic to students, and when simulations should be used to develop students’ understanding of a topic after introducing it. In the simulations, we played the role of attorneys delivering oral arguments before the Supreme Court, while students played the role of Supreme Court justices. Students questioned attorneys, deliberated in groups, voted on the merits of the case, and explained their decisions. We varied when the simulation was conducted, with one class doing the simulation before a lesson on judicial decision making and two classes doing the simulation following a lesson on judicial decision making. We evaluate the simulation by using results from student questionnaires that assessed the students' interest in judicial politics, their knowledge of the Supreme Court, and their understanding of judicial decision making. We find that the simulation most effectively accomplished the intended learning outcomes when the simulation was conducted after a lesson on decision making in the Supreme Court, rather than before the lesson. In addition, our results demonstrate that the simulation increased students’ interest in the Supreme Court and their desire to learn more about the institution. Our results have implications for political scientists aiming to enhance student learning through simulations.     

Physical health and crime among low-income urban women: An application of general strain theory

Purpose

Although studies of General Strain Theory (GST) typically include measures of physical health in multi-item indices of strain, no work has investigated the independent influence of physical health on criminal offending. The current research explores the relationship between physical health and criminal offending among low-income women living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Methods

Using data from the Welfare, Children, and Families (WCF) project, criminal behavior is predicted over two years with measures of physical health, depression, anxiety, competing strain, and relevant background factors.

Results

Poorer physical health at baseline and declines in physical health increase the odds of offending onset among previous non-offenders and reduce the odds of decreased offending among previous offenders. In offending onset models, higher levels of anxiety and depression at baseline and increases in these symptoms partially mediate the effect of poorer baseline health and fully mediate the effect of the loss of physical health. In decreased offending models, increases in anxiety and depression fully mediate the effect of poorer baseline health and partially mediate the effect of the loss of physical health.

Conclusions

The data suggest that poor health and declines in physical health influence both offending onset and offending escalation directly and indirectly through increases in anxiety and depression.     

Social or political cleavages? A spatial analysis of?the?party system in post-authoritarian Chile

Lipset and Rokkan??s (Party system and voter alignments: cross national perspectives, Lipset and Rokkan eds., New York: Free Press, pp. 1?C64, 1967) sociological model of cleavages and the so-called ??freezing hypothesis?? dominate theorizing about party system formation. Torcal and Mainwaring (Br. J. Polit. Sci. 33:55?C84, 2003) show the relevance of a purely political cleavage for structuring the party system in the case of Chile, challenging the freezing hypothesis??s claims. They also dispute case-specific research that argues Chile??s party system still reflects a ??three-thirds?? division between Left, Right, and Center. Revisiting this debate, our study employs spatial maps of the party system. Such political-economy models are rare in studies of Latin American politics. The application here supports a democratic/authoritarian political cleavage in Chile.     

Timely shirking: time-dependent monitoring and?its?effects on legislative behavior in the U.S. Senate

We examine legislative shirking under conditions of imperfect constituent monitoring. Our core argument states that variation in information costs and constituent memory leads to systematic variation in constituent monitoring over time. Assuming that legislators are responsive to multiple cues, we expect to observe time-dependent legislative shirking. We develop a theoretical model of legislative behavior with time-dependent monitoring, which we test empirically using Senate roll call data. Our findings show that a substantial number of senators engage in systematic, time-dependent shirking, and that senators consistently move toward extreme positions when monitoring is low and toward moderate positions when it is high.     

Accuracy and Bias in Perceptions of Political Knowledge

Learning through social communication is promoted when citizens are able to identify which of their associates is likely to possess the necessary political information. This paper examines the factors that influence individuals’ evaluations of political expertise. Actual political expertise plays a large role in perceived expertise, but mistakes are made. These are largely the result of assuming that those engaged in politics must also be knowledgeable about politics. This paper uses the 1996 Indianapolis-St. Louis Study and the 2000 National Election Study to identify factors that bias levels of perceived political knowledge. The paper concludes by demonstrating that perceived expertise plays a larger role than actual expertise in the social influence process.     

Does a sixth mechanism exist to explain lightning injuries?: investigating a possible new injury mechanism to determine the cause of injuries related to close lightning flashes

Five mechanisms have been described in the literature regarding lightning injury mechanisms. A sixth mechanism is proposed in this article, namely, lightning barotrauma. A simple laboratory experiment was conducted using ordnance gelatin for ballistic studies. Lightning was simulated in a high-voltage laboratory using an 8/20-microsecond current impulse generator and discharged through ballistic gel. Temporary and permanent cavity formations were confirmed. The cavities formed were directly proportional to the currents used. Findings suggest that a sixth mechanism of lightning injury, namely, barotrauma, should be considered.     

Seniority and anti-competitive restrictions on the legislative common pool: tenure’s impact on the overall production of legislation and the concentration of political benefits

It is well established that geographic areas benefit, in terms of the share of government spending they capture, from having a legislator with longer tenure, holding constant the tenure of other legislators. However, the implications of this literature for how the total production of legislation changes if all members gained seniority is less clear. Increased levels and dispersion of seniority within Congress generate a cartel-like effect, whereby legislators restrict the quantity of legislation enacted and increase the average price of each passed bill. The analysis provides a natural experiment to gauge the impacts of the emergence of the congressional committee system.     

The Impact of Psychological Injuries on Sexual Harassment Determinations

Although a plethora of studies focus on jury decision making in sexual harassment cases, few studies examine damage award assessments in such suits, and even fewer explore the impact of psychological injury on jurors’ liability and damage award assessments. In the present study, 342 undergraduates read a hostile environment sexual harassment case that manipulated the plaintiff’s psychological injury level (severe vs. mild vs. control) to investigate whether males and females made different damage decisions. Males using a reasonable person standard found more liability as the severity of the plaintiff’s psychological injury increased. However, males using a reasonable woman standard found less liability with the addition of any psychological injury information. Similarly, for mild and severe injuries, males using the reasonable woman standard awarded lower damages than males using the reasonable person standard. Females tended to find more harassment than males, but psychological injury and legal standard had little impact on females’ legal decisions. We discuss these findings in light of the positive relationship often observed between the plaintiff’s injury severity level and pro-plaintiff verdicts.