Civic Hackathons: Innovation,Procurement, or Civic Engagement?

At all levels, governments around the world are moving toward the provision of open data, that is, the direct provision to citizens, the private sector, and other third parties, of raw government datasets, controlled by a relatively permissible license. In tandem with this distribution of open data is the promotion of civic hackathons, or “app contests” by government. The civic hackathon is designed to offer prize money to developers as a way to spur innovative use of open data, more specifically the creation of commercial software applications that deliver services to citizens. Within this context, we propose that the civic hackathon has the potential to act in multiple ways, possibly as a backdoor to the traditional government procurement process, and as a form of civic engagement. We move beyond much of the hype of civic hackathons, critically framing an approach to understanding civic hackathons through these two lenses. Key questions for future research emphasize the emerging, and important, nature of this research path.     

Media Consumption and the Dynamics of Policy Mood

Research has detailed the potential link between exposure to the mass media and the process of developing attitudes. Less examined, however, are the consequences of differing levels of media consumption on the nature of attitudes at both the individual and aggregate levels. This paper assesses the relationship between media consumption and public opinion in the U.S. (expressed through the macro concept of Policy Mood and an analogous micro concept we call policy liberalism). At the individual level, we find that increased levels of newspaper readership reduce variance in opinion, but that increased levels of television viewership do not. At the aggregate level, our results show that the opinions of media-consuming subgroups move in parallel for the most part, with similar causal dynamics. A slight exception to this parallelism lies with those who barely, if ever, read newspapers.     

Showing Restraint,Signaling Resolve: Coalitions,Cooperation, and Crisis Bargaining

How do coalition partners affect the dynamics of crisis bargaining? I analyze a model in which a potential coalition leader faces a trade‐off between signaling resolve to a target and retaining a partner's support by limiting the costs of war. The strength of the target conditions the partner's effect. When the target is strong, the need to ensure military cooperation reduces the probability of war by discouraging bluffing, though resolute types can signal resolve by foregoing coalitional support. When the target is weaker, a resolute coalition leader moderates threats to preserve military cooperation, foregoing the chance to signal resolve and increasing the chances of war, even as the partner successfully moderates the leader's bargaining posture. Thus, coalitions may face higher probabilities of war against weaker targets than stronger ones, coalitions are more likely against weak than strong targets, and partners can increase or decrease the probability of war.     

The genie in the bottle: The international regulation of genetically modified organisms

Abstract

This paper describes the circumstances surrounding charges laid against a retail vendor of Traditional Asian Medicinals under Canada's Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act (WAPPRI‐ITA). The vendor was charged with selling a product containing species listed as Appendix I under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).     

Judicial Independence: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

In this article, we directly test the presence of judicial independence by examining judicial recess appointees who have later been confirmed by the Senate to full‐time Article III judicial positions. Specifically, we compare the votes of recess‐appointed courts of appeals judges during their temporary appointment tenure with a similar period following Senate confirmation. We find substantial differences in pre‐ and postconfirmation voting, suggesting that the structural protections of the Constitution provide judges a certain amount of independence.     

Can Business Rights Alleviate Group-Based Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa? Understanding the Limits to Reform

Abstract

Africa’s indigenous minorities face unique constraints, particularly in terms of engaging in even the most basic business activities. They typically lack business rights, but, even where such rights have been extended, they have had scant impact on group poverty. This paper argues that the failure of business rights to meaningfully transform the livelihoods of marginalised minority groups stems from elite capture of resources, dependency on external validation, and a contradiction between a collective problem (group poverty) and an individualist solution (business rights). African states could alter conditions through active pursuit of affirmative action policies, but lack socio-economic and political incentives.     

Negotiation in legislatures over government formation

We question results claiming to extend non-cooperative models of legislative bargaining to the theoretically general and substantively typical case with an arbitrary number of disciplined parties. We identify problems with both the derivation of formal results and empirical evaluation of these. No empirically robust formateur advantage is observed in field data on bargaining over government formation. Given this theoretical and empirical impasse, we reconsider the substantive premises that should form the foundation for any new attempt to model this fundamental political process, arguing that models should be grounded in binding constitutional constraints on the government formation process in parliamentary democracies.     

Officer Attitudes and Management Influences on Police Work Productivity

Police officers are afforded a high degree of discretion in the exercise of their authority, and the control of this discretion is an important issue. While it is assumed that individual officer attitudes and preferences shape their discretionary activity, these officers are also members of a paramilitary organization with leaders appointed over them. The present study explored the influence of both officer attitudes and supervisor influences to explain variation in officer traffic citation issuing rates. Hierarchical linear modeling was used with a sample of 312 patrol officers and 60 supervisors from 21 municipal police agencies. The results revealed that both officer occupational attitudes and supervisor influences (through informal rewards and behavior modeling) significantly influenced the degree to which officers issued traffic citations. The findings emphasize the need for both the supervision of officers and the shaping of officer attitudes in the control of officer discretion.