Explaining the electoral effects of public investments: The case of the expansion of the underground in Madrid, 1995–2007

According to the literature, governments have strong incentives to use the public budget tactically in order to either obtain the electoral support of new voters or strengthen the loyalty of their traditional supporters. Yet vote‐seeking strategies only become rational when voters follow their self‐interest and reward governments when their constituency benefits from public transfers. The literature has focused on the governments' incentives, largely ignoring the importance of knowing whether the electorate is responsive to public investments. This study tests empirically whether incumbents strategically use public investments to gather more electoral support; and whether voters take these investments into account at the polls. These two questions are pursued simultaneously by using as a case study the expansion of the underground network in Madrid, Spain. Only a little evidence is found to support the idea that regional governments constructed new metro stations in neighbourhoods where they had more to gain electorally. Also, the inauguration timing strictly followed the electoral cycle, something that indicates a strategic calculus on the part of the incumbent. However, the models are also consistent with the idea that the government's investments were primarily driven by motives of efficiency. Indeed, although governments are tempted to follow vote‐seeking strategies, they are also aware that they cannot deviate too much from an efficiency‐based allocation of public resources. From the perspective of the voters, robust evidence has been found to show that regional voters rewarded this policy at the neighbourhood level. Neighbourhoods that received new metro stations voted in higher numbers for the incumbent than those quarters without new investments. All in all, these findings may have some implications for normative democratic theory.     

Reliability and validity of the 2002 and 2006 Chapel Hill expert surveys on party positioning

This research note reports on the 2002 and 2006 Chapel Hill expert surveys (CHES), which measure national party positioning on European integration, ideology, and several European Union (EU) and non‐EU policies. The reliability of expert judgments is examined and the CHES data are cross‐validated with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, the 2003 Benoit‐Laver expert survey and the 2002 Rohrschneider‐Whitefield survey. The dataset is available on the CHES website.     

Beyond protest and discontent: A cross‐national analysis of the effect of populist attitudes and issue positions on populist party support

Studies on populist parties – or ‘supply‐side populism’ more generally – are numerous. Nevertheless, the connection with demand‐side dynamics, and particularly the populist characteristics or tendencies of the electorate, requires more scholarly attention. This article examines in more detail the conditions underlying the support for populist parties, and in particular the role of populist attitudes amongst citizens. It asks two core questions: (1) are populist party supporters characterised by stronger populist attitudes than other party supporters, and (2) to what extent do populist (and other) attitudes contribute to their party preference? The analysis uses fixed effect models and relies on a cross‐sectional research design that uses unique survey data from 2015 and includes nine European countries. The results are threefold. First, in line with single‐country studies, populist attitudes are prominent among supporters of left‐ and right‐wing populist parties in particular. Second, populist attitudes are important predictors of populist party support in addition to left‐wing socioeconomic issue positions for left‐wing populist parties, and authoritarian and anti‐immigration issue positions for right‐wing populist parties. Third, populist attitudes moderate the effect of issue positions on the support for populist parties, particularly for individuals whose positions are further removed from the extreme ends of the economic or cultural policy scale. These findings suggest that strong populist attitudes may encourage some voters to support a populist party whose issue positions are incongruous with their own policy‐related preferences.     

The opposition deficit in EU accountability: Evidence from over 20 years of plenary debate in four member states

Debates about the European Union's democratic legitimacy put national parliaments into the spotlight. Do they enhance democratic accountability by offering visible debates and electoral choice about multilevel governance? To support such accountability, saliency of EU affairs in the plenary ought to be responsive to developments in EU governance, has to be linked to decision‐making moments and should feature a balance between government and opposition. The recent literature discusses various partisan incentives that support or undermine these criteria, but analyses integrating these arguments are rare. This article provides a novel comparative perspective by studying the patterns of public EU emphasis in more than 2.5 million plenary speeches from the German Bundestag, the British House of Commons, the Dutch Tweede Kamer and the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados over a prolonged period from 1991 to 2015. It documents that parliamentary actors are by and large responsive to EU authority and its exercise where especially intergovernmental moments of decision making spark plenary EU salience. But the salience of EU issues is mainly driven by government parties, decreases in election time and is negatively related to public Euroscepticism. The article concludes that national parliaments have only partially succeeded in enhancing EU accountability and suffer from an opposition deficit in particular.     

Getting away with foul play? The importance of formal and informal oversight institutions for electoral integrity

Electoral integrity is increasingly being recognised as an important component of democracy, yet scholars still have limited understanding of the circumstances under which elections are most likely to be free, fair and genuine. This article posits that effective oversight institutions play a key role in scrutinising the electoral process and holding those with an interest in the electoral outcome to account. The main insight is that deficiencies in formal electoral management can be effectively compensated for via one or more other institutional checks: an active and independent judiciary; an active and independent media; and/or an active and independent civil society. Flawed elections are most likely to take place when all four checks on electoral conduct fail in key ways. These hypotheses are tested and supported on a cross‐national time‐series dataset of 1,047 national‐level elections held in 156 electoral regimes between 1990 and 2012.     

Motherhood and Extradomestic Work in Urban Mexico

Abstract— This article analyses the meanings attributed by Mexican women of different social classes to motherhood and extradomestic work, as well as life experiences of family planning and child care. Information for the study was provided by 79 in-depth interviews with women who were either married or living with a partner who contributed regularly to the family income. The findings suggest that cultural norms regarding motherhood change far more slowly in urban Mexico than child-rearing or fertility control practices. Many women from different social classes still consider motherhood as their main source of identity and only a very educated and privileged group speaks with ambivalence regarding their mother's role. In contrast, more women are ready to accept child-care substitutes, especially if they find satisfaction in extradomestic activities, or carry them out because of personal or family necessities. Finally, the analysis points out that most urban women in Mexico, particularly the younger and more educated cohorts, are very much aware of the costs involved in children's education and rearing, and have acted accordingly, using contraceptives and limiting their family sizes. 0 1997 Society for Latin American Studies     

REGULATORY RED TAPE AND PRIVATE FIRM PERFORMANCE

Regulation may obstruct dynamic adaptation, innovative power, and entrepreneurial activity. On the other hand, regulation could be interpreted as a phenomenon which society just has to learn to live with, and which otherwise does no real economic harm. This article explores both of these hypotheses. We study the impact of three dimensions of regulatory red tape on the performance of private companies: regulation cost, regulation change, and regulation inconsistency. We analyse unique survey data from 530 Dutch private companies. The results show that regulation cost, inconsistency, and change limit sales turnover growth, and that regulation change hampers market competition performance.     

China's Diplomacy Promotes a Human Community with a Shared Future

THIS year China celebrates the centenary anni-versary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC).Leading up to the commemora-tion,many international analysts have already started to debate Chinas new foreign policy and its impact on the international order.This debate has two motivating factors.The first and most important is the prediction that the Chinese economy will surpass the American economy before 2030.The other factor is the role of Chinese diplomacy in combating the pandemic,through which China has helped more than 100 coun-tries in COVID-19 prevention,control,and vaccination,in contrast to the U.S'.lackluster responses to the pan-demic.This is not a discussion about the world's lead-ership profiles but a global governance model for the     

TRAITS AND STATES: INTEGRATING PERSONALITY AND AFFECT INTO A MODEL OF CRIMINAL DECISION MAKING*

We propose and test a model of criminal decision making that integrates the individual differences perspective with research and theorizing on proximal factors. The individual differences perspective is operationalized using the recent HEXACO personality structure. This structure incorporates the main personality traits, but it carries the advantage of also incorporating Self‐Control within its personality sphere, and an additional trait termed Honesty‐Humility. Furthermore, the model offers a new perspective on proximal predictors, “states,” of criminal decisions by adding affect (i.e., feelings) to the rational choice–crime equation. The proposed model is tested using scenario data from a representative sample of the Dutch population in terms of gender, age, education level, and province (N = 495). As predicted by the model, personality was both directly and indirectly related to criminal decision making. Specifically, the traits Emotionality, Self‐Control, and Honesty‐Humility were mediated by both affect and rational choice variables. Conscientiousness operated only indirectly on criminal decision making via rational choice. Together, the findings support a trait‐state model of criminal decision making.