Assessing the Impact of Alternative Voting Technologies on Multi-Party Elections: Design Features,Heuristic Processing and Voter Choice

This paper analyzes the influence of alternative voting technologies on electoral outcomes in multi-party systems. Using data from a field experiment conducted during the 2005 legislative election in Argentina, we examine the role of information effects associated with alternative voting devices on the support for the competing parties. We find that differences in the type of information displayed and how it was presented across devices favored some parties to the detriment of others. The impact of voting technologies was found to be larger than in two-party systems, and could lead to changes in election results. We conclude that authorities in countries moving to adopt new voting systems should carefully take the potential partisan advantages induced by different technologies into account when evaluating their implementation.     

Fixers as Shadow “Public Servants”: A Case Study of Israel

Fixers can thrive in any level of political, bureaucratic, or institutional development. Paradoxically the academic research of the phenomenon of fixers is in its infancy. There exists no accepted definition of fixers; the boundaries between fixers and lobbyists remain murky, in terms of comparative administration only limited knowledge about the forces that breed different types of fixers in different political settings is available; and no deductive theory was articulated that might determine when and how fixing might become dysfunctional and corruptive. In an attempt to better understand the phenomenon of fixers more theoretically; this study analyzes fixers in view of three theories of bureaucratic corruption, and in view of the emerging theory of alternative politics. Using Israel as a case in point, the study shows that within certain national and local branches of government fixers not only create a shadow copy of official institutions, but also foster institutional corruption.     

The use of “security” jargon in sustainable development discourse: evidence from UN Commission on Sustainable Development

The premise of discourse theory in environmental policy is that realities are shaped by language. One discourse that is gaining popularity is the concept of environmental security, a discourse that presupposes environmental threats as urgent. The attempt to cast environmental issues as security issues has resulted in the common use of security jargon, idioms, and metaphors in policymakers’ and politicians’ statements. Various analyses attempt to identify why natural resources are discussed in terms and language of security. However, far fewer studies have attempted to identify differences in the manner in which different types of resources are incorporated into such a discourse by different actors and what variables contribute to this process. This study examines the construction of the security references, security arguments, and language in the statements of the Commission on Sustainable Development dealing with energy and water. We found that international organizations and Non-governmental Organizations were somewhat more likely than state actors to use security references to discuss sustainability issues. The issues securitized are not the traditional high political ones such as regime stability and conflicts, but rather issues more associated with human security, such as access to renewable energy, affordable food, and clean water. The fact that in many statements examined the use of security references was not associated with any existential threat and hence did not comply with the conditions of the Copenhagen School raises some doubts as to whether security language in these statements implies a true securitization move. We also examined whether the use of the term “security” by states was correlated with greater resource scarcity or vulnerability. In the case of water-related sessions, the evidence was mixed, depending on the choice of dependent variable. The results from energy security regressions, however, were inconsistent with the hypothesis that greater scarcity or vulnerability induces more use of security language.     

Long-term effects of the Moving to Opportunity residential mobility experiment on crime and delinquency

Objectives

Using data from a randomized experiment, to examine whether moving youth out of areas of concentrated poverty, where a disproportionate amount of crime occurs, prevents involvement in crime.

Methods

We draw on new administrative data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment. MTO families were randomized into an experimental group offered a housing voucher that could only be used to move to a low-poverty neighborhood, a Section 8 housing group offered a standard housing voucher, and a control group. This paper focuses on MTO youth ages 15–25 in 2001 (n = 4,643) and analyzes intention to treat effects on neighborhood characteristics and criminal behavior (number of violent- and property-crime arrests) through 10 years after randomization.

Results

We find the offer of a housing voucher generates large improvements in neighborhood conditions that attenuate over time and initially generates substantial reductions in violent-crime arrests and sizable increases in property-crime arrests for experimental group males. The crime effects attenuate over time along with differences in neighborhood conditions.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that criminal behavior is more strongly related to current neighborhood conditions (situational neighborhood effects) than to past neighborhood conditions (developmental neighborhood effects). The MTO design makes it difficult to determine which specific neighborhood characteristics are most important for criminal behavior. Our administrative data analyses could be affected by differences across areas in the likelihood that a crime results in an arrest.     

DNA profiling from heroin street dose packages

A large amount of heroin street doses are seized and examined for drug content by the Israel police. These are generally wrapped in heat-sealed plastic. Occasionally it is possible to visualize latent fingerprints on the plastic wrap itself, but the small size of the plastic item and the sealing process makes the success rate very low. In this study, the possibility of extracting and profiling DNA from the burnt edge of the plastic wrap was investigated. The idea was based on the assumption that epithelial cells might be trapped during the sealing process. The results show that there are sufficient quantities of DNA deposited at the "amorphic" burnt edges of sealed street doses for DNA profiling to be carried out. A controlled experiment using a known donor was performed. This subject carried out sealing of "street drug" packages and consequent DNA extractions were performed to show that known DNA profiles could be recovered from such packages, as a result of handling by the "packer." "Square-like" burnt edges did not yield DNA profiles, probably because of differences in the sealing process. It was also shown that DNA could be recovered from the plastic wrap itself and not only from the amorphic burnt edges. As heroin dealers and drug users are often involved in other crimes and run-ins with the law, the effective extraction and addition of their DNA profiles from such items of evidence to the newly established DNA database in Israel provides new avenues in the continued fight against crime and drug traffickers.     

Random Coefficient Models for Time-Series-Cross-Section Data: Monte Carlo Experiments

Jonathan N. Katz Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 e-mail: jkatz{at}caltech.edu e-mail: nathaniel.beck{at}nyu.edu (corresponding author) This article considers random coefficient models (RCMs) fortime-series–cross-section data. These models allow forunit to unit variation in the model parameters. The heart ofthe article compares the finite sample properties of the fullypooled estimator, the unit by unit (unpooled) estimator, andthe (maximum likelihood) RCM estimator. The maximum likelihoodestimator RCM performs well, even where the data were generatedso that the RCM would be problematic. In an appendix, we showthat the most common feasible generalized least squares estimatorof the RCM models is always inferior to the maximum likelihoodestimator, and in smaller samples dramatically so. Authors' note: We gratefully acknowledge the financial supportof the National Science Foundation. Katz also acknowledges thesupport of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.We are thankful to Jake Bowers, Rob Franzese, Andy Gelman, SandyGordon, Bill Greene, and Luke Keele for comments; to Larry Bartelsfor always reminding us that our judgment may outperform thedata; as well as to the anonymous reviewers of Political Analysis.