Gender Norms and Women's Political Representation: A Global Analysis of Cabinets, 1979–2009

What role does the international diffusion of gender norms play in determining recent increases in women's political representation? We argue that norm diffusion has larger positive effects on women's cabinet representation than on women's legislative representation. We also show that within cabinets, norm diffusion affects low‐prestige appointments more than high‐prestige appointments. We test these arguments using an original database of ministers from 1979 to 2009 and find that the association of women's representation with three separate indicators of international diffusion—levels of women's representation among neighboring states, levels of women's representation among intergovernmental organization partners, and time since ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women—is consistent with our arguments.     

Fatal accidental enflurane intoxication

Among reported cases of abuse of volatile anesthetics there is only one of enflurane intoxication. We report another fatal enflurane intoxication. A 21-year-old man found dead seemed to have experimented with enflurane. Three and one-half days after death high amounts of enflurane were detected in blood, brain, and subcutaneous fat. Gas chromatographic quantification revealed the following high enflurane concentrations: blood: 130 mg/l-1, brain: 350 mg/l-1, and subcutaneous fat: 100 mg/l-1. Histologic signs of drug-induced damage were lacking. No suicide intentions became known. It was concluded that the young man died of an accidental intoxication while abusing enflurane.     

Local Political Recruitment in Crisis? A Comparison of Finland and Norway

Beginning with the assumed problem of high turnover among local councilors in Norway, the article compares local political recruitment processes in Finland and Norway. Turnover in Norwegian local councils has proven surprisingly stable at 60–65 percent for a series of elections, whereas it has been significantly lower at 35–45 percent in the other Nordic countries, including Finland. Turnover among Norwegian councilors is mainly due to voluntary retirement. According to theories of political recruitment and representation, lack of motivation among candidates poses a threat to the democratic quality of political systems, because it undermines the voters' ability to exercise democratic control over politicians. The authors argue that rotation in office need not constitute a democratic problem. On the contrary, empirical evidence is presented to show that participation in political council work may in itself have a politically activating effect on the participants. Very few candidacies can be described in terms of political ambition. Instead, motivation is often created and cultivated through participation. Furthermore, rotation in office may lead to the diffusion of political competence and may therefore constitute an alternative source of democratic control.     

More on measuring budget-related rent-seeking: A comment

We wish to thank the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, Jerusalem, for supporting our work on this topic.     

Rent-seeking for pure public goods

In this paper we present a formal analysis of rent-seeking for public goods by two or more groups with different numbers of individuals. We begin by considering equally wealthy groups under risk neutrality, a case which constitutes our basic model. Several surprising and interesting results emerge from the analysis of this basic case. The problem is then extended to deal with (a) groups with different wealth levels, and (b) risk aversion. This last extension brings about a further crop of interesting and useful results.