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.     

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.     

Reading in Community,Reading for Community: A Survey of Book Clubs in Regional Australia

Worries about weakening community are central to assessments of modern Australia, yet it is easy to overlook the everyday ways we “do” and participate in community life. Book clubs are one area of community participation largely ignored by researchers despite the local and national proliferation of such clubs. Surveying twenty-two book groups and ninety-seven book club members, this study investigates the roles that book clubs play in the cultural and community life of a regional area of Tasmania. The results show that book clubs promote regular intellectual engagement and provide for a distinct female sociality that consolidates and creates new social connections and function as everyday “escape attempts” from the obligations of work and family. We suggest that the support and development of local book club programs may have considerable potential as a strategy for Australian governments and communities to foster a sense of community.     

The Production of Culprits: From Deportability to Detainability in the Aftermath of “Homeland Security”

In the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, the virtually instantaneous hegemony of a metaphysics of antiterrorism has radically reconfigured the politics of race, immigration, and citizenship in the United States. In the extended historical moment beginning with the United States' proclamation of a planetary “War on Terrorism” and encompassing our (global) political present, the US sociopolitical order has been racked by several interlocking crises—convulsively careening between heightened demands on citizenship and the erosion of civil liberties, imperial ambition and nativist parochialism, extravagant domestic law enforcement and global lawlessness. In relation to the parallel but contradictory hegemonic projects of “American” national identity and attachment, on the one hand, and the expansion or refortification of US empire, on the other, the cumulative crisis-as-opportunity for US nationalism that has ensued is replete with unpredictable dilemmas and unresolved possibilities for both citizens and denizens alike. This essay examines significant new deployments of migrant “illegality” as this sociopolitical condition has been significantly reconfigured in the United States in the aftermath of the proclamation of a purported War on Terrorism, and the concomitant implementation of draconian police powers domestically that the author calls the Homeland Security State.     

Book reviews

Ennio Di Nolfo (ed.), Power in Europe?II. Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy and the Origins of the EEC, 1952-1957. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992), DM238.

Simon J. Nuttall, European Political Cooperation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 343pp. £30, ISBN 0 19 827318 5.

Michael Smith and Stephen Woolcock, The United States and the European Community in a Transformed World (London: Pinter publishers for Royal Institute for International Affairs, 1993), 120 pp., £22.50 hb, £9.95 pb. ISBN 086187 0972/086187 0980.

Richard H. Ullman, Securing Europe (London: Adamantine Press, 1991), 175pp., £12.95. ISBN 0 7449 0036 0.

Cornelia Navari (ed.), The Condition of States: A Study in International Political Theory (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), 238pp.

Francine Friedman, (comp. and ed.) Yugoslavia: A Comprehensive English-Language Bibliography (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1993), xv + 547 pp., indices, US$ 120.

Richard Dean Burns (ed.), Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993), three vols., 1692 pp. inch index, US$280, ISBN 0 684 19281 0.     

Patents holders are not protected from US Government infringement by the Fifth Amendment

In a patent infringement action against the government, theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit interpreted28 USC section 1498 as rendering the government liable for theinfringement of a method patent only when every step of theclaimed method is practised in the United States and furtherheld that a plaintiff cannot allege patent infringement againstthe government as a Fifth Amendment taking.     

Strategic Coordination and the Law

We re-examine the relationship between coordination, legal sanctions, and free-riding in light of the recent controversy regarding the applicability of the coordination problem paradigm of law-making. We argue that legal sanctions can help solve coordination problems by eliminating socially suboptimal equilibrium outcomes. Once coordination has taken place, however, free-riding can not lead to the breakdown of coordination outcomes, even if sanctions may still be effective at increasing the equity of such outcomes. Finally, we argue that it is the choice of a legal or constitutional system rather than the choice of law that is paradigmatic of the coordination problem. This view requires a re-assessment of the normative status of sanctions attached to individual laws. We thank Catherine Hafer and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.