Why Citizens Participate in Local Governance: A Case of Two Philippine LGUs

The well-established importance of citizen participation in local and community governance raises a number of problems, foremost of which has been the reduced level of citizens’ involvement and engagement in developing countries. Our study aims at exploring the factors that impact citizen participation in two local government units (LGUs) in the Philippines. We propose the models of LGU participation and regular attendance in meetings based on the regression results of our study and present policy implications and insights essential in designing strategies for a higher level of LGU constituents’ attendance in meetings and participation in local governance matters.     

Disagreeing about Disagreement: How Conflict in Social Networks Affects Political Behavior

At the center of debates on deliberative democracy is the issue of how much deliberation citizens experience in their social networks. These “disagreements about disagreement” come in a variety of forms, with scholars advocating different empirical approaches (e.g., Huckfeldt, Johnson, and Sprague 2004 ; Mutz 2006 ) and coming to different substantive conclusions. We address these discrepancies by going back to the basics: investigating the consequences of conceptual and measurement differences for key findings relating interpersonal political disagreement to political attitudes and behaviors. Drawing on the 2008–2009 ANES panel study, we find evidence that different measures of disagreement have distinct effects when it comes to individuals’ preferences, patterns of engagement, and propensities to participate. We discuss the implications for the study of social influence; as interpersonal disagreement can mean different things, scholars should think carefully about how to study it and should exercise caution when making pronouncements about its empirical and democratic consequences.     

India and Australia: Security Dynamics in the Asia Pacific

India and Australia are rediscovering the vast potentials of maximizing mutual benefits that are inherent in their complementary economies. There is also a great deal of convergence of interests in the strategic domain. As an emerging power, India's profile has attracted attention by countries in the Asia Pacific region, which tended to neglect it in the past. The rise of China and its assertive stances have created an element of uneasiness in the region. Its military modernization and beefing up of naval capability are suspected to be behind enhancing its power projection capability.

The strategic significance of the Indian Ocean for the region is huge. The region's growth is inextricably linked to the Indian Ocean. The littoral states in the region are home to 2.6 billion people, almost 40% of the world's population. The Indian Ocean is the world's third largest body of water, and the world's leading energy and trade seaway. The volume of global trade brings with it the re-emerging problems of terrorism and piracy, a shared policing challenge for all littoral states. The security of the Indian Ocean goes to the heart of both India's and Australia's national interests.     

Factors predictive of changes in the legal status of psychiatric inpatients

The objective of this study was to identify factors predictive of duration of involuntary hospitalization, i.e., factors that would predict early versus late conversion to voluntary status. Charts of 209 patients admitted involuntarily to an acute psychiatric inpatient unit were studied using a naturalistic, prospective design. Multivariate regression analysis was used to determine the effect of a number of variables in predicting duration of involuntary hospitalization. Of all variables studied, only smoking preference was found to be a statistically significant predictor of duration of involuntary hospitalization. Smokers were converted to voluntary status earlier than non-smokers. The authors concluded that clinicians may not be using commitment statutes as per recommended legal guidelines. Patients who smoke may be applying overt and covert pressure on clinicians with regard to conversion to voluntary status to gain smoking privileges.     

Viewing Spatial Consequences of Budgetary Policy Changes

While the research community is often very concerned with the distributional effect of public policy decisions, the geographic distribution of the affected populations is often overlooked. This paper argues that seemingly geographically neutral policies have spatial consequences and that the choice of how to measure them is important. We suggest that maps provide a powerful tool for communicating these ideas to policy makers and that geographical information systems supplemented by spatial statistics yield information that assist policy debates. We develop metrics to illustrate how geographic information provides insights into the spatial consequences of Medicaid expenditure changes in Ohio.