On the empirical relevance of Condorcet’s paradox

Condorcet’s paradox occurs when there is no alternative that beats every other alternative by majority. The paradox may pose real problems to democratic decision making such as decision deadlocks and democratic paralysis. However, its relevance has been discussed again and again since the celebrated works of Arrow (Social choice and individual values, 1963) and Black (The theory of committees and elections, 1958). The discussion varies from one extreme to the other: from very relevant to practically irrelevant. This paper tries to bring more clarity to the discussion by reviewing the literature on the empirical relevance of Condorcet’s paradox. Since a definition of the paradox for even numbers of voters and alternatives, and for weak voter preferences is missing in the literature, we first define the paradox clearly and simply. Then, three topics are investigated, namely domain conditions, culture and the likelihood of the paradox, and the empirical detection of the paradox. Domain conditions express regularities in voter-preference profiles that prevent the paradox. Frequent observations of these domain conditions would make Condorcet’s paradox empirically less important. Cultures define probability distributions over the set of voter preferences. Observation of cultures might be a first step to indicate the relevance of the paradox. The empirical detection of the paradox speaks for itself; we will try to identify the number of observations of the paradox so far. The overall conclusion is that the empirical relevance of Condorcet’s paradox is still unsettled.     

China’s direct investment in the European Union: a new regulatory challenge?

While China is fast becoming an important outward direct investor, its companies are showing an increasing interest to locate in Europe and the European Union (EU). It has been suggested that this can partly be explained by the more lenient attitude of the European countries compared to the US, where some acquisitions were abandoned when they ran into political opposition based on security concerns. Yet, also in Europe, the media follow rather closely each new Chinese entry, and certain politicians have started to criticise the take-over of technology-oriented companies, especially by Chinese state-owned firms. Against the background of a very open foreign direct investment (FDI) policy as measured by OECD FDI Restrictiveness Index for the EU and the individual countries, an overview is given of the pre- and post-establishment obstacles to direct foreign investment. Also, the EU policy measures that directly or indirectly deal with incoming direct investment are discussed. Within the context of the EU competition policy and the merger regulation, the EU Commission has cleared five cases of take-over by Chinese state-owned enterprises. Although the Lisbon Treaty authorises the EU Commission to take charge of investment policy as part of the EU commercial policy, it will take time to realise this. If the announced negotiations about an investment treaty between China and the EU could work out the necessary balance, it would be an important step in achieving more reciprocity between their respective investment regimes.     

Joined-Up Government in The Netherlands: Experiences with Program Ministries

Over the last 15 years there have been many experiments with joined-up (also known as whole of) government practices, aimed at horizontal coordination to overcome the fragmentation of vertical governmental structures due to departmentalism and New Public Management. These practices were initiated to address wicked problems and to better interact with society at large. Now that there are signs that the rhetoric of joined-up government is winding down and many joined-up government developments are being dismantled, it is time to evaluate this approach. This is especially appropriate as some suggest that the overall impact of these developments may be relatively small, despite (overly) optimistic claims made in the past. In this article we take experiences with joined-up government in the Netherlands as the departing point for a critical discussion of this approach. By comparing the Dutch experiences with those in other countries, we will draw a picture of the challenges and dilemmas of horizontal coordination in the vertical world of government.     

Elite Ethics: Comparing Public Values Prioritization Between Administrative Elites and Political Elites

In this article, we compare how administrative and political elites in The Netherlands, the European Union, and the United States perceive and prioritize four key public values—responsiveness, expertise, lawfulness, and transparency. Our data from 94 in-depth interviews show that political elites and administrative elites differ most in their perception and prioritization of expertise and transparency and less in responsiveness and lawfulness. Interestingly, these politico-administrative value differences largely hold across the institutional settings we study. Theorizing on our results, we formulate eight propositions for future studies. Our study contributes to public values research by using qualitative methodology and including politicians.     

The Effects of Media and their Logic on Legitimacy Sources within Local Governance Networks: A Three-Case Comparative Study

Although theoretical and empirical work on the democratic legitimacy of governance networks is growing, little attention has been paid to the impact of mediatisation on democracies. Media have their own logic of news-making led by the media’s rules, aims, production routines and constraints, which affect political decision-making processes. In this article, we specifically study how media and their logic affect three democratic legitimacy sources of political decision-making within governance networks: voice, due deliberation and accountability. We conducted a comparative case study of three local governance networks using a mixed method design, combining extensive qualitative case studies, interviews and a quantitative content analysis of media reports. In all three cases, media logic increased voice possibilities for citizen groups. Furthermore, it broadened the deliberation process, although this did not improve the quality of this process per se, because the media focus on drama and negativity. Finally, media logic often pushed political authorities into a reactive communication style as they had to fight against negative images in the media. Proactive communication about projects, such as public relation (PR) strategies and branding, is difficult in such a media landscape.     

Towards an integrated information society policy in South Africa: an overview of political rhetoric and policy initiatives 1994–2000

Abstract

South Africa is considered one of the few developing countries that has fully embraced the concept of information society and has formulated and implemented policy inititives in order to change society accordingly. By 1995 the theme of the information society started to surface regularly in political discourse and policy documents. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and access to ICTs started to have prominence both in policy formulation and implementation. Although there was much talk about a Green Paper/White Paper process on the information society during 1996 and the beginning of 1997, such a policy process never materialised. To date, there is no document defining the government's view of the information society, no policy document outlining an integrated strategy to arrive there and no government department officially responsible for the coordination of policy initiatives. This article sets out to analyse the notion of the information society in South Africa and to analyse the broad evolution of South Africa's information society policy between 1994 and 2000.     

Size doesn't matter: emotional content does not determine the size of objects in children's drawings

Abstract

In Experiment 1 we examined whether children spontaneously alter the size of objects in their drawings of emotionally-laden events. To do this, we evaluated children's drawings of their own personal, past experiences. Children were asked to draw a picture of an event that had made them happy and an event that had made them sad. We found no differences in the size of object that children drew in their positive and negative emotional events. In Experiment 2, we asked adults with and without clinical training to discriminate children's drawings of happy events from their drawings of sad events. There was no difference in the accuracy of raters as a function of clinical expertise. Moreover, performance for both groups was at chance when we removed drawings with specific emotional indicators from the set (e.g. smiles or tears). We conclude that the emotional interpretation of drawings on the basis of the size of objects in that drawing is fraught with difficulty. We question the projective use of drawings in forensic and clinical practice.     

Gender dynamics in the sentencing of white-collar offenders

Theory and empirical research often have agreed that female and white-collar offenders benefit from leniency at the sentencing stage of criminal justice system processing. An untested research question emerging from these distinct bodies of literature is whether the greatest leniency is afforded to female white-collar offenders. We investigate the individual and interactive influences of gender and white-collar conviction on judicial leniency by analyzing Florida sentencing guidelines data from 1994 to 2004 using multinomial logistic regression to model the decision to incarcerate nonviolent economic offenders in jail or prison rather than sentence them to community control. Results indicate that female street offenders sentenced by male judges receive the most lenient sentences, while male offenders are punished the harshest regardless of the gender of the sentencing judge or type of crime. Theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed in terms of focal concerns, familial paternalism, and attributional perspectives on judicial decision-making.     

Building party organisations and the relevance of past models: The communist and socialist parties in Spain and Portugal

This article explores the development of the party organisations of the communist and socialist parties in contemporary Spain and Portugal. An attempt is made to answer the question of whether these parties resemble the western European mass party model of organisation, which is characterised by the representation and integration of a particular segment of society within the organisational structure. From the contrasting western and southern European paths towards democracy, a hypothesis is generated contending that the limited opportunities and the lack of necessity diminish the likelihood for southern European working‐class parties to build mass organisations. The empirical findings, analysing the nature and size of individual membership, as well as the nature of the linkages between parties and trade unions, reveal that, with the possible exception of the Portuguese communists, the classic mass party is not reproduced in southern Europe. At the same time, however, the model of the party as a membership organisation apparently has not lost its legitimacy.     

Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the European Union

News about the European Union (EU) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU‐15 (1999), EU‐25 (2004) and EU‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament (EP) elections. The analyses focus in particular on explanatory factors pertaining to media characteristics and the political elites. Results show that national elites play an important role for the coverage of EU matters during EP election campaigns. The more strongly national parties are divided about the EU in combination with overall more negative positions towards the EU, the more visible the news. Also, increases in EU news visibility from one election to the next and the Europeanness of the news are determined by a country's elite positions. The findings are discussed in light of the EU's alleged communication deficit.