Voting May Be Habit-Forming: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

Habit is a frequently mentioned but understudied cause of political action. This article provides the first direct test of the hypothesis that casting a ballot in one election increases one's propensity to go to the polls in the future. A field experiment involving 25,200 registered voters was conducted prior to the November general election of 1998. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment conditions in which they were urged to vote through direct mail or face-to-face canvassing. Compared to a control group that received no contact, the treatment groups were significantly more likely to vote in 1998. The treatment groups were also significantly more likely to vote in local elections held in November of 1999. After deriving a statistical estimator to isolate the effect of habit, we find that, ceteris paribus, voting in one election substantially increases the likelihood of voting in the future. Indeed, the influence of past voting exceeds the effects of age and education reported in previous studies.     

The alternative vote and interethnic moderation: A reply to Fraenkel and Grofman

The alternative vote (AV) is a preferential electoral system that tends to reward political moderation and compromise. Fraenkel and Grofman have modeled the likely effects of AV in severely divided societies, in order to impugn AV as a tool of interethnic accommodation. In this response, I show that Fraenkel and Grofman’s model is based on extreme assumptions that bear no relation to party and voter behavior in such societies. Models based on realistic assumptions about strategic behavior and cross-national experience with AV both demonstrate that AV generally provides centripetal incentives that can contribute to interethnic coalition-building and accommodation.     

The universality of human rights: A Canadian perspective

In the following speech, delivered at the Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick, on 20 March 1998, Canadian Senator Donald Oliver urges the international community to commit itself to the universality of human rights. In an increasingly interdependent world, he says, nations will no longer be afforded the luxury of merely judging themselves. Their actions and progress in matters of human rights will be judged by the court of international public opinion, nongovernment organizations, and those standards that we have come to regard as representing the norms of civilized behavior. It is no longer possible to speak of world order without taking into account the protection of human rights and the remedy of human wrongs.     

The Structuring of Political Cleavages in Post-Communist Societies: the Case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Although sharing institutions for over seventy years, and transition pathways from communism, the two successor states of the former Czechoslovakia have faced distinct challenges in state-building and divergent economic fortunes. The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which these differing social economic problems have influenced the ideological bases of party politics and mass electoral behaviour in the two societies. Using data from national samples of the population of each country conducted in the spring of 1994, our analysis points to the existence of distinct issue cleavages dominating party competition in the two states: in the Czech Republic, partisanship relates mainly to issues of distribution and attitudes towards the West; in Slovakia, by contrast, these issues are only secondarily important in shaping voters' choice of party, while the main focus concerns the ethnic rights of Hungarians. The distinctive nature of the issue bases to politics in the two countries suggests one reason for the greater degree of political conflict evident in Slovak politics since the split and, more generally, provides evidence of the role of social conditions in shaping new political systems.     

Goal-Based Learning and the Future of Performance Management

All levels of government have begun to pursue results-based reforms, which assume that managers will use performance information to make better decisions. However, reforms have neglected the insights of a large and relevant literature on organizational learning. This article revisits this literature, treating results-based reform as an organizational learning mechanism and a deliberate structural effort to induce learning. From an organizational learning perspective, most results-based reforms target narrow process improvement (single-loop learning) rather than a broad understanding of policy choices and effectiveness (double-loop learning), even though the latter is more critical for long-term organizational success. Case evidence from state governments illustrates single- and double-loop learning and the importance of two frequently neglected aspects of organizational learning: learning forums—routines where performance information is deliberately examined—and the role of organizational culture in enabling or limiting learning.     

Political Trust, Ideology, and Public Support for Government Spending

This article analyzes the relationship between political trust, ideology, and public support for government spending. We argue that the political trust heuristic is activated when individuals are asked to sacrifice ideological as well as material interests. Aggregate- and individual-level analysis shows that the effects of political trust on support for government spending are moderated by ideology. Consistent with the unbalanced ideological costs imposed by requests for increased government spending, we find that the effects of political trust are significantly more pronounced among conservatives than among liberals. The analysis further demonstrates that ideology conditions the effects of political trust on attitudes toward both distributive and redistributive spending. Our findings suggest that political trust has policy consequences across a much broader range of policy issues than previously thought.     

Are non‐government policy actors being heard? Assessing New Public Governance in three Canadian provinces

This article is based on select results taken from a survey of NGO and provincial government policy workers. The purpose is to provide an empirically based assessment of how government and non‐government policy workers engage with one another in the policy process. The data suggest that policy co‐construction and co‐production are a significant feature of the process but there is some need for nuance. The data presented here indicate that the extent of policy engagement may not be as broadly inclusive as the proponents of New Governance suggest.     

Human Capital and Administrative Burden: The Role of Cognitive Resources in Citizen-State Interactions

One means by which the state reinforces inequality is by imposing administrative burdens that loom larger for citizens with lower levels of human capital. Integrating insights from various disciplines, this article focuses on one aspect of human capital: cognitive resources. The authors outline a model that explains how burdens and cognitive resources, especially executive functioning, interrelate. The article then presents illustrative examples, highlighting three common life factors—scarcity, health problems, and age-related cognitive decline. These factors create a human capital catch-22, increasing people's likelihood of needing state assistance while simultaneously undermining the cognitive resources required to negotiate the burdens they encounter while seeking such assistance. The result is to reduce access to state benefits and increase inequality. The article concludes by calling for scholars of behavioral public administration and public administration more generally to incorporate more attention to human capital into their research.