When Context Matters: Assessing Geographical Heterogeneity of Get-Out-The-Vote Treatment Effects Using a Population Based Field Experiment

The presence of heterogeneity in treatment effects can create problems for researchers employing a narrow experimental pool in their research. In particular it is often questioned whether the results of a particular experiment can be extrapolated outside the specific location of the study. In this article, we use a population-based field experiment in order to test the extent to which treatment effects for impersonal mobilisation techniques (direct mail and telephone) are sensitive to where they are carried out (geography) and the context of the election in which they were conducted. We find that on the whole it does not much matter where an experiment is conducted: the treatment effects are to all intents and purposes geographically uniform. This has important implications for the external validity of get-out-the-vote field studies more generally, especially where single locations are used. However, there is one important exception to this: experiments carried out in high turnout locations at high salience elections may show larger effects than those carried out in low turnout areas.     

Labour market risks and political preferences: The case of temporary employment

The political economy literature has gathered compelling evidence that labour market risks shape political preferences. Accordingly, insecurity fuels support for redistribution and left parties. This article analyses this argument for temporary workers, a so far neglected risk category which has increased dramatically in the past two decades. Temporary workers also have been in the focus of recent insider‐outsider debates. Some authors in this line of research have argued that temporary work leads to political disenchantment – for example, non‐instrumental responses such as vote abstention or protest voting. This contradicts risk‐based explanations of political preferences. The article discusses both theoretical perspectives and derives conflicting hypotheses for the empirical analysis of temporary workers' policy and party preferences. The review reveals considerable ambiguity regarding the questions which parties temporary workers can be expected to support and what the underlying motives for party choice are. Synthesising arguments from both perspectives, the article proposes an alternative argument according to which temporary workers are expected to support the ‘new’ left – that is, green and other left‐libertarian parties. It is argued that this party family combines redistributive policies with outsider‐friendly policy design. Using individual‐level data from the European Social Survey for 15 European countries, the article supports this argument by showing that temporary, compared to permanent, workers exhibit higher demand for redistribution and stronger support for the new left. Neither the risk‐based nor the insider‐outsider explanations receive full support. In particular, no signs of political disenchantment of temporary workers can be found. Thus, the findings challenge central claims of the insider‐outsider literature.     

Migrant workers and migrant entrepreneurs: changing established/outsider relations across society and space?

Drawing on Elias and Scotson's theory of established/outsider relations, in this paper we argue that migrants can be outsiders in one spatial context and established in another simultaneously. Our empirical focus is the situations and experiences of migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe in four towns across Wales. While their position as outsiders is reinforced in the occupational spaces of meat-processing factories, outside the workplace a small but growing number of migrants are engaging in entrepreneurial activities that create new spaces of cultural diversity. We argue that this is having a wider affective impact on established/outsider relations.     

Historical perspective and better regulatory governance: An agenda for institutional reform

Compared to economics, sociology, political science, and law, the discipline of history has had a limited role in the wide‐ranging efforts to reconsider strategies of regulatory governance, especially inside regulatory institutions. This article explores how more sustained historical perspective might improve regulatory decisionmaking. We first survey how a set of American regulatory agencies currently rely on historical research and analysis, whether for the purposes of public relations or as a means of supporting policymaking. We then consider how regulatory agencies might draw on history more self‐consciously, more strategically, and to greater effect. Three areas stand out in this regard – the use of history to improve understanding of institutional culture; reliance on historical analysis to test the empirical plausibility of conceptual models that make assumptions about the likelihood of potential economic outcomes; and integration of historical research methods into program and policy evaluation.     

Risky Firearms Behavior in Low-Income Families of Elementary School Children: The Impact of Poverty, Fear of Crime, and Crime Victimization on Keeping and Storing Firearms

This report examines possession and storage of firearms in low-income urban families with at least one child between 8 and 12 years of age. The data primarily consisted of responses to a survey administered to parents, but these data were supplemented by records obtained from discussion groups composed of children between 8 and 12 years of age. The data were collected from five low-income neighborhoods in a medium sized city in the Pacific Northwest as part of a larger study focusing on the presence of risk factors for substance abuse, violence, and gang activity. All five neighborhoods are known to be plagued by poverty, violence, substance abuse, and gang activity. To make our findings more understandable, we compared our findings from these neighborhoods to similar data from a middle-class neighborhood. Middle-class parents were twice as likely to have firearms in their homes, but were much less likely to keep them loaded and/or unlocked. High rates of victimization, fear of crime, self-protective behavior, and exposure to threats or attacks were associated with keeping firearms for protection and engaging in risky gun behavior in the home.     

Cognitive development in context: An investigation of practical problem solving and developmental tasks

Theorists interested in intellectual development have increasingly focused their attention on the problem-solving strategies individuals develop to meet the demands they face in the changing social contexts of the life course. Direct assessments of the relationship between contextual demands and problem solving strategies, however, have been lacking. The orientation espoused here is that progress through the life course is, in part, determined by individuals' ability to solve problems posed by the development tasks confronting them. In a preliminary ethnographic investigation, the developmental tasks of first- and fourth-year medical students were assessed. A follow-up study revealed (a) the everyday problem solving of students in both years was oriented toward completing the tasks associated with their year in school, (b) the styles students developed to interpret contextually relevant problems were associated with their social environments and developmental tasks, and (c) developmental tasks accounted for more variance of everyday problem solving than in interpretive styles. The findings provide more direct support than was previously available for a relationship between practical intellectual development and life course contexts.Received Ph.D. from West Virginia University. Research interests include contextual influences on cognitive development, social cognition, goal-directed reasoning, and practical intelligence.     

The unfinished village police unit: a contested local development initiative

Community self-help has been the principal strategy for creating social infrastructure in rural Malawi since independence. One rural community in Balaka district, southern Malawi, embarked on a project to construct a police unit as a response to rising incidents of crime. Begun in 1999, the project remains unfinished. There seems to be no interest in completing the work. This paper finds the explanation in the manner the project was initiated and how the village community was involved in its execution.     

Information exchange networks at the climate science‐policy interface: Evidence from the Czech Republic,Finland, Ireland,and Portugal

Scientifically informed climate policymaking starts with the exchange of credible, salient, and legitimate scientific information between scientists and policymakers. It is therefore important to understand what explains the exchange of scientific information in national climate policymaking processes. This article applies exponential random graph models to network data from the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal to investigate which types of organizations are favored sources of scientific information and whether actors obtain scientific information from those with similar beliefs as their own. Results show that scientific organizations are favored sources in all countries, while only in the Czech Republic do actors obtain scientific information from those with similar policy beliefs. These findings suggest that actors involved in climate policymaking mostly look to scientific organizations for information, but that in polarized contexts where there is a presence of influential denialists overcoming biased information exchange is a challenge.