How to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters: Disaggregating data from voting advice applications versus modeling survey responses

Valid and reliable estimates of the policy preferences of political parties' supporters are essential for the study of political representation. However, such estimates are not directly available from standard surveys of public opinion, which are typically representative by design only at the national level and rarely ask questions about public support for specific policies. In this article, we explore the possibility to use data from voting advice applications (VAA) to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters. To do that, first, we identify 10 questions on preferences towards issues of public policy that were asked around the same time and with similar wording in traditional surveys of public opinion and in VAAs fielded in Germany and in the Netherlands. Then we compare the VAA data disaggregated by political affiliation of the respondents to the survey data adjusted via multilevel regression modeling with poststratification (MRP). We find strong positive correlations between the estimates derived from both methods, especially after weighting the VAA data. Yet, point estimates are not always very close, and the match is sensitive to the treatment of neutral and ‘don't know’ answers. Overall, our results bode well for the validity of using VAA data in empirical research on political representation.     

Degrees of influence: Educational inequality in policy representation

Education plays an important role in the political, social and economic divisions that have recently characterised Western Europe. Despite the many analyses of education and its political consequences, however, previous research has not investigated whether government policy caters more to the preferences of the higher educated than to the preferences of the lower educated. We address this question using an original dataset of public opinion and government policy in the Netherlands. This data reveals that policy representation is starkly unequal. The association between support for policy change and actual change is much stronger for highly educated citizens than for low and middle educated citizens, and only the highly educated appear to have any independent influence on policy. This inequality extends to the economic and cultural dimensions of political competition. Our findings have major implications for the educational divide in Western Europe, as they reflect both a consequence and cause of this divide.     

Explaining the immigration policy mix: Countries' relative openness to asylum and labour migration

Western democracies have developed complex policies to manage migration flows. Much of the scholarly literature and political discourse assume that countries have become increasingly selective and that they prioritise economic intakes. Despite clear efforts by policymakers to distinguish between refugees and migrant workers, we know surprisingly little about how countries combine different policy dimensions and which factors shape their relative openness to different target groups. In this article, we shed light on how countries combine two of the main admission channels, asylum and labour migration, by introducing the concept of the ‘immigration policy mix’. A comparative analysis of 33 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010 examines the pattern and drivers behind their immigration policy mix: Does the policy mix follow a pattern of convergence, is it subject to political dynamics or is it path dependent? The results reveal that despite a shift in political sympathies from asylum to labour migration, countries' immigration policy mixes have strongly converged into more liberal policies overall. The immigration policy mix primarily reflects governments’ limited room to manoeuvre due to competing political pressures. These insights demonstrate that the immigration policy mix serves to enhance our understanding of countries’ complex regulation of immigration.     

Is Differentiation of Frequently Encountered Foreign Bodies in Corpses Possible by Hounsfield Density Measurement?

Abstract:  The radiological determination of foreign objects in corpses can be difficult if they are fragmented or deformed. With multislice computed tomography, radiodensities—referred to as Hounsfield units (HU)—can be measured. We examined the possibility of differentiating 21 frequently occurring foreign bodies, such as metals, rocks, and different manmade materials by virtue of their HU values. Gold, steel, and brass showed mean HU values of 30671–30710 (upper measurable limit), mean HU values for steel, silver, copper, and limestone were 20346, 16949, 14033, and 2765, respectively. The group consisting of objects, such as aluminum, tarmac, car front-window glass, and other rocks, displayed mean HU values of 2329–2131 HU. The mean HU value of bottle glass and car side-window glass was 2088, whereas windowpane glass was 493. HU value determination may therefore help in preautopsy differentiation between case-relevant and irrelevant foreign bodies and thus be useful for autopsy planning and extraction of the objects in question.     

An optimal anti-drug law enforcement policy

This article presents a model for a drug law enforcement policy whose objective is harm reduction, including the net cost of law enforcement, social harm and surplus of agents. We consider a vertically organized distribution system with two levels, traffickers and retailers. The two questions concern which type of sellers have to be prosecuted and which law enforcement policy should be implemented that is, the probability of being caught and the severity of the punishment. We show that a trafficker-oriented law enforcement regime can avoid counter-productive policies. Moreover, decriminalization or depenalization is optimal under some conditions depending on the relationship between social harm and consumption.     

涉外继承案件专属管辖考

涉外继承案件是否属于专属管辖范围,从我国《民事诉讼法》的规定看,答案似乎是肯定的,但理论上存有相当大的争议,且实践中,这样的理解也难以变成实际操作。纵观大陆法系德日法等国家立法,将涉外继承案件列入专属管辖范围实属罕见。就国内层面而言,专属管辖可以从法院职能角度和案件特殊性角度进行广义理解,但在国际层面,尤其涉及司法裁决域外承认与执行问题的时候,专属管辖范围的限制就尤为重要;因此,有关不动产物权、法人清算或破产、知识产权诉讼等专属某国法院管辖的观点和做法,日益成为各国普遍认可的事实。从这个角度来看,我们更应审视我国现有规定,从而为涉外继承寻找出合理的法律地位。     

外汇储备:幻觉、偏好与陷阱

发展中国家由于长期受制于外汇短缺,因而特别注重外汇储备的累积,过分看重外汇储备的作用,从而形成了"外汇储备幻觉"和"外汇储备偏好",进而落入"外汇储备陷阱".中国在这一方面的问题尤其突出,这需要从国内和国外两种渠道寻求有效的途径来加以解决.     

查办职务犯罪如何贯彻宽严相济的刑事政策

在职务犯罪查办中贯彻宽严相济的刑事政策是一个比较新的课题,试从全面把握宽严相济刑事政策内涵出发,对职务犯罪查办如何在办案程序、实体认定和办案机制三方面落实宽严相济刑事政策进行较为深入的探讨,提出检察机关查办职务犯罪过程中落实这一刑事政策的具体方法和途径.     

宽严相济政策视野下假释立法之检讨

"宽"的理念是宽严相济刑事政策的重要内容.假释本是该政策中"宽"的理念体现,但因我国刑法对假释适用的条件和程序的规定存在诸多不足,"宽"的理念并未真正体现出来,为此,有必要在假释适用的条件和程序方面对假释立法进行改进.     

Family in Dutch migration policy 1945–2005

This article looks at how and why the concept of ‘family’ was used in Dutch migration policy in the period between 1945 and 2005. Throughout this period differences were made between migrant women and migrant men. Whereas the migration of men was associated with labour migration, the migration of women was equated with family migration. Migrant women were constructed as wives and mothers (and not as workers). This construction of women was combined with a victimhood discourse in which women were presented as victims of repressive religion (usually Islam), domestic violence, trafficking and prostitution, and discriminatory government policy. The victimhood discourse was successfully used to acquire rights for migrant women (mostly the right to stay), but as a result all migrant women came to be seen as vulnerable and in need of protection. In this article, I show how this combined family and victimhood discourse was used by governments, by (migrant) organizations and, to a lesser extent, in court cases to create differences between migrant men and women. The ‘success’ of the victimhood discourse is not only explained by the fact that it fitted (Western) ideas on femininity. It was also used to give a humanitarian face – albeit beneficial to women only – to an essentially restrictive immigration policy.