The impact of closeness on electoral participation exploiting the Italian double ballot system

We investigate whether the degree of political competition affects electoral turnout by using Italian municipal election data from 1993 to 2011. Relying on elections held using a double ballot system, we apply an instrumental variable technique exploiting the actual closeness between the two leading candidates in the first round as an instrument for closeness in the second round. The use of this strategy to estimate the impact of closeness on turnout is new to the literature. Controlling for municipal fixed effects and candidates’ characteristics, we find that expected closeness significantly increases turnout, thus supporting the idea that the expected benefits of voting increase in tighter political races. The estimated effect is much larger than that found when measuring closeness with ex-post electoral results, suggesting quite a relevant endogeneity bias in previous studies.     

Land restitution and income generation in protected areas in Mpumalanga,South Africa

In many cases protected areas in South Africa have been established with little or no regard for communities living in or adjacent to them. The new challenge to protection of biodiversity is to find an equitable balance between conservation, beneficiation of the new land owners, and “balancing the books”. This article discusses the Blyde River Canyon Nature Reserve as a case study to illustrate some of the potential outcomes that co-management of protected areas can offer towards income generation, and highlights challenges towards success: it asks, can co-management be financially sustainable for both the conservation agency and the land claimants?     

Thermal Modifications of Root Transparency and Implications for Aging: A Pilot Study

Root transparency has proven to be related to age and has been considered by different odontological methods for age estimation. Very little is known concerning possible variations of root transparency with heat, although the applicability of the method to burnt remains depends on the possible modifications of this specific variable. This pilot study presents the results of an experiment performed on 105 teeth obtained from dental patients and autopsy material, heated in an industrial oven at 50°C, 100°C, 150°C and 200°C. Root transparency was measured before and after the charring experiment. The heating process proved to radically modify root transparency, which decreased in 20% of samples at 50°C, in 34.6% at 100°C, in 50% at 150°C, in 77% at 200°C. The overall correlation index (CI) between decrease in root transparency and increase in temperature amounted to 0.96. These results show that heat may modify root transparency and suggest caution in using methods based on root transparency for age estimation.     

A Knowledge Management and Organizational Intelligence Model for Public Administration

This study explores the development of a KM-OI model and empirically tests, using structure equation modeling (SEM), nine hypotheses related to the following research questions: RQ1: To what extent does organizational culture impact strategy structure learning with environment and information technology?; RQ2: To what extent does information technology impact learning with environment?; RQ3: To what extent does strategy structure, learning with environment impact policies and practices of KM?; RQ4: To what extent do policies and practices of KM impact organizational intelligence? Based on the results of a web survey applied in two of the six largest economies, Germany and Brazil, the article shows the importance of KM and OI for public administration and concludes that the KM-OI model is useful to identify influential factors that must be taken into consideration to improve the processes of creation (KM) and application of knowledge (OI).     

Municipal Amalgamations in the Low Countries: Same Problems,Different Solutions

Municipal amalgamations in Belgium took place some time ago and the local council elections of 8 October 2006 marked the thirtieth anniversary of this thorough overhaul of the local administrative landscape. The municipal amalgamations of 1976 were undoubtedly the biggest reform the local level in Belgium has ever faced. The Netherlands also underwent municipal amalgamations, but there the amalgamation process followed a different pattern, taking longer, with discussions conducted in a different way. This article examines the principal similarities and differences between these two countries with regard to municipal amalgamations. The first part of the article looks at the different scales of local government in several European countries; in the sections following, the Belgian and Dutch experience with municipal amalgamations is discussed in greater detail. In the last section an attempt is made to answer the question of why the processes in the two countries were so different.     

Examining Citizen Participation: Local Participatory Policy Making and Democracy

Citizen participation is usually seen as a vital aspect of democracy. Many theorists claim that citizen participation has positive effects on the quality of democracy. This article examines the probability of these claims for local participatory policymaking projects in two municipalities in the Netherlands. The article focuses on the relations between citizens and government from a citizens' perspective. The findings show that the role of citizens in these projects is limited, serving mainly to provide information on the basis of which the government then makes decisions. Nevertheless, the article argues that citizen involvement has a number of positive effects on democracy: not only do people consequently feel more responsibility for public matters, it increases public engagement, encourages people to listen to a diversity of opinions, and contributes to a higher degree of legitimacy of decisions. One negative effect is that not all relevant groups and interests are represented. The article concludes that for a healthy democracy at the local level, aspects of democratic citizenship are more important than having a direct say in decision-making.     

A Subnational Study of Insurgency: FARC Violence in the 1990s

This article examines the traditional political and economic factors that have been purported to explain the prevalence of insurgency. It tests the following hypotheses at the subnational level in Colombia: guerrilla violence is positively associated with exports; higher levels of insurgency are associated with low levels of GDP per capita or negative growth rates; guerrilla violence emerges in the context of weak state presence; and higher levels of state repression are associated with higher levels of insurgent violence. The analysis utilizes a zero-inflated negative binomial to capture dynamics of both intensity and onset of violence. The econometric analysis is supplemented with cartographic visualization and qualitative analysis.     

On facts and how to use them

This paper deals with the difference between reality and fantasy, and the way it is being obscured in the debate on terrorism that is presently taking place in the Federal Republic of Germany. Our central thesis is that society creates a certain human prototype by ignoring some facets of the complex reality. We base this view on the philosophy of the French anarchist Michel Foucault. As an illustration we discuss the Mescalero case. Finally, we formulate some criticism of Foucault's view, based on another French author—Baudrillard, with a brief explanation of his views on the distinction between reality and fantasy.     

Effects of pretrial juror bias,strength of evidence and deliberation process on juror decisions: new validity evidence of the Juror Bias Scale scores

This study examines the validity of the Juror Bias Scale scores in relation to the mock juror decisions reached in two real life homicide cases before and after the deliberation process. The judicial cases used varied in terms of the ambiguity of the evidence presented at both trials. The WLS methodology for statistical modelling of categorical data was used to analyse data. The findings indicated that the Juror Bias Scale scores successfully predict the verdicts and other related questions before and after deliberations in the case with ambiguous evidence. Furthermore, deliberations caused a generalisation effect on the pretrial juror bias in such a case, and enhanced the differences between defense-biased and prosecution-biased jurors in the verdicts delivered after deliberations. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the use of pretrial juror bias questionnaires in jury selection.