Cognizance and Consultation of Randomized Controlled Trials among Ministerial Policy Analysts

Consultation of scientific evidence by policy actors has been the foci of attention of knowledge utilization scholars for decades. The present study questioned the extent to which randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—generally seen as the gold standard of scientific research—are known and consulted by policy analysts in ministerial settings. Using cross‐sectional data collected in 17 ministries in Québec (Canada), our study showed that fairly high levels of policy analysts report never having heard of RCTs, thus possibly hindering effective communication of scientific results to relevant policy makers. Statistical analyses reveal the importance of cognitive factors in explaining both phenomena.     

Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators’ explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within‐subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between‐subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators’ roll‐call positions.     

Election observer effects: A field experiment in the Russian Duma election of 2011

The literature on elections and election monitoring is divided between those who take a skeptical view, suggesting that monitors are often political rather than objective in their judgments, and those who see monitors as a real force for cleaner, more honest elections. Studies that use field experiments to look for the effect of monitors generally support the optimists, indicating that the mere presence of election observers can have powerful effects. This is surprising given the extent of the resources available to incumbents who wish to conduct electoral fraud. We present the results of an experiment in which 768 observers were randomly assigned to polling stations in 21 cities in Russia in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Unlike most previous studies of election observers, our results suggest that observer effects on turnout and vote for the ruling party are small. The results suggest the need to study more carefully the circumstances that shape the impact of observation missions.     

Short-Term Forces and Partisanship

One of the most intriguing aspects of the debate regarding the persistence of party identification is that proponents of different schools of thought have each managed to use the same quasi-experimental data and similar state of the art techniques to defend their point of view. In this article we argue that this debate cannot be resolved with quasi-experimental data alone and propose another method that we believe can help us triangulate in on the correct answer: experimentation. Two experiments are performed and analyzed. The first tests the hypothesis that party identification is updated in response to the vote choice; the second tests the hypothesis that candidate evaluations influence party choices. The results of our experiments provide some additional support for the traditional conception of partisanship as the unmoved mover of American politics.     

在经验与规范之间:试验立法及其类型化——一种立法进路的提倡

立法理想与法律运行实践间背离的中国境遇,以文本法律不完全是能用之法,且立法承诺在执法中不能全部兑现之困局为现实表征。以进化论理性主义的哲学立场和无知论的知识假设为理论支撑,采取反复试错、吸纳建议、对话商谈等自发性工具,将实践证明可行的执法经验提炼与抽象,进而升华为普遍性规则的试验立法进路,是修正建构论唯理主义立法进路并撬动当前格局的一个支点。试验立法进路以采纳—辐射这个简式架构为运作逻辑。目前的试验立法主要有尝试探索型试验立法、落实测试型试验立法与示范效仿型试验立法三种模式。试验立法的实践性意味着多数立法活动将建立在证据或实证研究的基础上,也将具有方法论的意义,有望成为我国立法方法法定化的发展方向。     

一起毒鼠强食物中毒的调查分析及其实验室筛查探索

目的　探讨原因不明性食物中毒的检查策略。　方法　结合一起发生的原因不明性食物中毒案例 ,应用流行病学和简易急性动物试验等方法 ,对导致中毒的致病因素进行分析与判定。　结果　中毒案例的暴露时间为早餐时 ,平均潜伏期为 4 7.84分。中毒反应以神经症状和消化道症状为主。依病例的客观特征分层对其食谱分析 ,筛选出水煮豆腐是本次中毒的可疑食物。 7种剩余食物进行的急性动物试验中发现 ,水煮豆腐的小白鼠灌注量与中毒反应呈剂量反应关系 ,半数致死剂量为LD5 0 =1.68mg/ g。气相色谱 - -质谱仪分析确定水煮豆腐中的毒性性质为四次甲基二砜四胺。　结论　本案通过采用症状分析、急性动物实验和毒物分析测定方法确定了一起原因不明性食物中毒的中毒原因。这种检查策略有助于原因不明性食物中毒及其它突发中毒事件的性质判定。     

What is bad about clientelism? Citizen perceptions in poor communities in South Africa and Tunisia

The literature regards clientelism as a negative practice because of its particularism, informality, inequality, and inefficiency. At present, we know little about whether citizens in communities where clientelism is prevalent share this assessment. However, their evaluations are the ones that are critical for the persistence of clientelism. We explore the attitudes of citizens towards clientelism with conjoint experiments administered with respondents from two poor communities in South Africa and Tunisia, and a sample of academics that we use as benchmark. On average, Tunisian and South African respondents evaluate clientelism more favorably than academics. All groups see particularism and inequality as negative features but only academics care about informality. Clients are evaluated much more positively than patrons in the exchange. Our findings suggest that clientelism persists not only because communities fail to coordinate around a programmatic candidate but because clientelism is considered as a legitimate strategy to access resources.     

Collaboration or competition? Experimental evidence for coalition heuristics

Does coalition formation have a causal effect on the perceived ideological distance between the coalition members? Observational research shows that voters typically think of parties that form a coalition government as more ideologically similar than those that do not, holding everything else constant. Their many qualities aside, the existing studies are not able to establish a causal relationship between coalition formation and changing perceptions. It is quite possible that voters are reacting to concurrent changes in parties' stated policy and not the coalition information itself. In this paper, I present two survey experiments that isolate the difference between telling voters that two parties can cooperate and telling them that they cannot. In both experiments, I find evidence supporting the theory of coalition heuristics.     

The collateral consequences of GPS-LED supervision in hot spots policing

Hot spots policing is popular, yet little is known about officer receptivity to the tactic and its impact on internal procedural justice, organizational commitment, and self-legitimacy. The nature of the tactic means that officers must relinquish their discretionary powers so that they can be directed to crime and disorder locations at specific times and for regimented durations. This loss of ‘spatiotemporal autonomy’ is exacerbated by technological tracking devices. We examined the receptivity of British officers to hot spots patrols, where the deployment was tracked with individual GPS trackers, compared to parallel patrols without hot spots policing or tracking. In contrast to the comparison group, officers in hot spots disliked the routinization of their shifts; regimented patrols were detrimental for internal procedural justice and organizational commitment. The ramifications of the introduction of GPS-enabled systems include certain tracking of officers and their compliance, such as a Taylorist time and motion study. While hot spots policing remains an effective tactic, questions about sustainability may be raised if officers’ expectations, attitudes and receptivity are not managed.