The Alternative Vote and Coombs Rule versus First-Past-the-Post: a social choice analysis of simulated data based on English elections, 1992–2010

This paper presents a social choice analysis, using simulated data based on English general elections from 1992 through 2010, of the properties of three voting rules: First-Past-the-Post, the Alternative Vote, and the Coombs Rule. More specifically, the paper examines (1) the plurality, anti-plurality, and Condorcet status of candidates in each election and the interrelationships among these statuses, (2) the effects of strict and partial single-peakedness of voter preferences, and (3) the identity of winners, Condorcet efficiency, and the relationship between votes and seats under the three voting rules. The analysis considers only the case of three candidates and, in the manner of basic social choice theory, the set of candidates and voter preferences over them are taken to be fixed.     

Conspiracy Endorsement as Motivated Reasoning: The Moderating Roles of Political Knowledge and Trust

Given the potential political and social significance of conspiracy beliefs, a substantial and growing body of work examines the individual‐level correlates of belief in conspiracy theories and general conspiratorial predispositions. However, although we know much about the psychological antecedents of conspiracy endorsement, we know less about the individual‐level political causes of these prevalent and consequential beliefs. Our work draws from the extant literature to posit that endorsement of conspiracy theories is a motivated process that serves both ideological and psychological needs. In doing so, we develop a theory that identifies a particular type of person—one who is both highly knowledgeable about politics and lacking in trust—who is most susceptible to ideologically motivated conspiracy endorsement. Further, we demonstrate that the moderators of belief in conspiracy theories are strikingly different for conservatives and liberals.     

Closeness matters: monotonicity failure in IRV elections with three candidates

A striking attribute of instant runoff voting (IRV) is that it is subject to monotonicity failure—that is, getting more (first-preference) votes may result in defeat for a candidate who would otherwise have won and getting fewer votes may result in victory for a candidate who otherwise would have lost. Proponents of IRV have argued that monotonicity failure, while a mathematical possibility, is highly unlikely to occur in practice. This paper specifies the precise conditions under which this phenomenon arises in three-candidate elections and applies them to a number of large simulated data sets in order to get a sense of the likelihood of IRV’s monotonicity problem in varying circumstances. The basic finding is that the problem is significant in many circumstances and very substantial when IRV elections are closely contested by three candidates.     

Doctors in the executive suite: should the U.S. and U.K. be putting M.D. licensure at risk for shortfalls in institutional quality of care?

As our healthcare system becomes further managed, delivery organizations are reincreasingly relying upon physician executives to administer the delivery of care by other individual providers. In both the United States and the United Kingdom, this has led to instances in which physician disciplinary procedures have been invoked with respect to physicians who are perceived to be responsible for institutional defiiciencies. The author examines and analyzes the contrasting approaches taken in the two countries, and recommends an activist approach for disciplinary agencies faced with these circumstances.     

US‐Japan joint workshop to avoid nuclear anarchy

Since 1992, experts and officials from the United States and Japan have been meeting regularly to discuss a wide range of ongoing, emerging, or unresolved issues relating to nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear power. Steven Miller of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and Ryukichi Imai, Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute for International Policy Studies, Tokyo, provide an account of this collaboration, a central focus of which has been concern about what would happen with the Soviet nuclear arsenal.     

Assessing excellence poorly: The bottom line in local government

Methods and outcomes of local governments' assessments of service excellence were examined in a meta-analysis of 261 citizen surveys administered during the last ten years to more than 200,000 U.S. residents who were intended to represent over 30 million Americans. Evaluations of local government services were calculated for good and bad assessment procedures. While assessment methods were poor whether or not applied by outside consultants, good survey methods tended to provide the same account of service delivery as did bad survey methods. Despite the meager correlation of method with outcome, improvement of assessment methods was recommended as a necessary, albeit insufficient, step in raising the enthusiasm of public administrators for meaningful outcome measures.     

Generational changes and party identification

The party identification of nonblack voters, separated by region, is examined within three broadly bounded cohorts or political generations consisting of those whose first votes were cast prior to 1932, those of the New Deal era whose first votes were cast between 1932 and 1964, and the post-New Deal generation who have come of voting age since 1964. Inter- and intragenerational comparisons are presented for three political eras reflected in NES data: 1952–60, 1964–76, and 1980–88. Outside the South, the post-New Deal generation was more pro-Democratic in the period 1964–76 than was the older New Deal generation. However, they also led the surge away from the Democrats and to the Republican party between 1980 and 1988. Nevertheless, in the latter period they were less dominantly Republican than were the members of the New Deal generation. In the South the better educated voters of the post-New Deal generation led the realignment that largely eroded the Democratic plurality between 1960 and 1988. Nationally, the policy preferences of the post-New Deal generation in the 1980s further polarized party differences between Democrats and Republicans. This occurred largely because of the substantially greater liberal cast of post-New Deal Democrats' preferences. On other issues, party differences were maintained, but Republicans as well as Independents and Democrats in the post-New Deal generation exhibited visibly more liberal preferences than did their older partisan counterparts in the New Deal generation.