Some effects and noneffects of campaign commercials: An experimental study

This paper addresses the question of how TV commercials can be used to build support for a candidate. Employing experimental methods, the authors tested the independent effects of several advertisement variables. Spot advertisements of an actual congressional candidate were produced by the authors and shown to groups of viewers who had no other information about the candidate. Evaluation of the candidate differed little among experimental groups, and the lack of extreme differences suggests that the extent to which voters can be manipulated by manufactured images is severely limited. The implications of these findings for candidates and campaign professionals are discussed.     

Yours,Mine, or Everyone’s Property? China’s Property Law in 2007

China’s passage of the Real Property Rights Law in 2007 undoubtedly marked a milestone of its economic transition to market economy. It delineates the boundary of property belongings and the authority of disposition by including or excluding specific individual and groups of individuals. The purpose of this paper is to trace the debate, deliberation, and decision of the law-making process to show the process of bargaining and compromise of various political interests in China’s complex and difficult economic transition.     

Validating the components of a taxonomic system for rapists: a path analytic approach

This study was part of a series designed to validate a classification system for rapists developed at the Massachusetts Treatment Center. This system (MTC:R2) determines subtypes according to three major dimensions: the meaning of the aggression in the rapist's offenses (expressive versus instrumental), the meaning of the sexual behavior (compensatory, exploitative, displaced anger, or sadistic), and the degree of general lifestyle impulsivity (low or high). A total of 201 rapists were subtyped using this system. A path analytic approach was used to relate family, juvenile, and adult histories to the main decisions of subtype assignment. The classification of an offender on each of the three dimensions was informed by a developmental perspective. Results provided support for the use of the discriminators used and highlighted the deficiencies in our current knowledge regarding developmental precursors. These results were integrated with the findings from other studies using MTC:R2 and suggestions for revisions to the current classification system were discussed.     

Voter preferences,simple electoral games,and equilibria in two-candidate contests

The fundamental assumption of spatial models of party competition is that voters possess cardinal utility functions defined on all combinations of issue positions which candidates may adopt. Furthermore, spatial theorists usually assume that utility functions have a shape common to all voters and that voters' most preferred positions are distributed in some regular manner. Employing these and attendant assumptions, the spatial theorist seeks to ascertain what deductions can be made about candidate strategies, i.e., the positions which vote or plurality-maximizing candidates should adopt in an election. It has been found that, in many situations, convergence to an opponent's positions and/or adoption of the median/mean of the most preferred positions of all voters is an important candidate strategy. In this context, two main problems have arisen: (1) difficulties of empirical or statistical analysis; (2) the abovementioned candidate strategy is generally not applicable to elections in so-called ‘plural’ societies. One path out of this latter problem has been formulated by Rabushka and Shepsle (1972). This article explores another potential solution by addressing the following question: If voters arenot characterized by cardinal utility functions, but some other type, what are the consequences for candidate strategies? The alternate assumption employed is that voters are characterized bylexicographic utility functions. The consequences for candidate strategies of this assumption are then determined for two plurality-maximizing candidates in some one- and two-dimensional, three-, five-, and seven-voter electoral games.