The relation between cultural values and models of democracy: a cross-national study

The relation between democracy and culture is a long-lasting subject of interest in political science. In the contemporary approach to cultural analysis, value orientations are studied as fundamental manifestations of culture. The mainstream research has focused on finding a relation between the quality of a democratic system and the existence of essential values in a society. There is, however, an understudied question as to what the relation between cultural values and models of democracy in different countries exactly is. We know that there are different models or patterns of democracy (for example, majoritarian versus consensus and participatory versus spectator democracy) discernible in various countries. But what is the reason that a particular country, or set of countries, appreciates and accepts one type of democracy, while suspecting and discrediting other types? This article aims to find an answer to this question from the perspective of cultural differences. Using the empirical data derived from the operationalization of dimensions of democracy and dimensions of culture at the national level, we examine hypotheses regarding the relation between societal cultural values and the practice of different models of democracy in various countries.     

Differences in intergenerational fertility associations by sex and race in Saba,Dutch Caribbean, 1876–2004

This study examines the intergenerational transmission of fertility behavior in Saba, Dutch Caribbean from 1876 to 2004 using reconstituted genealogies. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients of several fertility measures and event-history models of age at first birth are used to explore relationships between the fertility of mothers and their children. The strength of intergenerational fertility ties varies by race and gender. Individuals that are better positioned to realize their fertility preferences have the strongest intergenerational associations, while individuals with the most limited reproductive options have the weakest intergenerational associations. This evidence supports hypotheses that posit the intergenerational transmission of attitudes, goals, and behaviors and the ability to act on those preferences as drivers of the presence or magnitude of links between the fertility of parents and their children.     

多元协作性治理:以草原为例的博弈模型构建和实证研究

多元协作性治理是解决集体行动困境问题的重要方法,但目前主流学术界还缺乏对这一问题的较深入的理论和实证研究。本文以草原治理为例,构建了一个可清晰描述多元协作性治理的简单博弈模型,讨论了多元主体的选择、多元共时模型、差序模型和混合模型的不同以及多元主体策略选择多样化等问题;同时以中国内蒙古自治区的草原治理为例,探讨了多元协作性治理在中国的实际应用及其所面临的问题。本文的探索为进一步推动多元协作性治理理论的发展和实证研究奠定了基础。     

Vote as you Think: Determinants of Consistent Decision Making in Direct Democracy

This study investigates the conditions under which Swiss citizens take consistent decisions, that is, decisions that reflect their argument‐based opinions, during direct‐democratic ballots. In line with recent work on cognitive political behavior, we expect the drivers of consistent voting to be found at the individual and contextual level. At the individual level, we argue that political knowledge positively affects consistent decisions. At the contextual level, we anticipate a positive effect for campaign intensity, complexity and negativism. We estimate hierarchical logistic models based on VOX survey data (1999‐2005) and original data that captures the nature of political campaigns. Our results support our expectations for the situational level and (partially) for the individual factors.     

Interest group networks in the European Union

Interest group networks are crucial for understanding European Union (EU) integration, policymaking and interest representation. Yet, comparative analysis of interest organisation networks across EU policy areas is limited. This study provides the first large-scale investigation of interest group information networks across all EU policy domains. We argue that interest groups prioritise access to trustworthy and high-quality information coming from partners with shared policy goals. Thus, interest organisations form network ties with other organisations if the latter are from the same country, represent the same type of interest, or are policy insiders. The effect of these three factors varies across policy domains depending on the extent to which the institutional setting assures equal and broad organisational access to decision-making. Our empirical analysis operationalises information ties as Twitter-follower relationships among 7,388 interest organisations. In the first step of the analysis, we use Exponential Random Graph Models to examine tie formation in the full network and across 40 policy domains. We find strong but variable effects of country and interest type homophily and policy insiderness on the creation of network ties. In the second step, we examine how the effect of these three variables on tie formation varies with policy domain characteristics. We find that shared interest type and policy insiderness are less relevant for tie formation in (re-)distributive and especially regulatory policy domains characterised by more supranational decision-making. Sharing an interest type and being a policy insider matters more for tie formation in foreign and interior policies where decision-making is more intergovernmental. The effect of country homophily is less clearly related to policy type and decision-making mode. Our findings emphasise the importance of institutional and policy context in shaping interest group networks in the EU.     

Mind the gap: How party–voter incongruence fuels the entry and support of new parties

This article examines to what extent ideological incongruence (i.e., mismatch between policy positions of voters and parties) increases the entry of new parties in national parliamentary elections and their individual-level electoral support. Current empirical research on party entry and new party support either neglects the role of party–voter incongruence, or it only examines its effect on the entry and support of specific new parties or party families. This article fills this lacuna. Based on spatial theory, we hypothesise that parties are more likely to enter when ideological incongruence between voters and parties is higher (Study 1) and that voters are more likely to vote for new parties if these stand closer to them than established parties (Study 2). Together our two studies span 17 countries between 1996 and 2016. Time-series analyses support both hypotheses. This has important implications for spatial models of elections and empirical research on party entry and new party support.     

Using Booking Data to Model Drug User Arrest Rates: A Preliminary to Estimating the Prevalence of Chronic Drug Use

Public policy is often concerned with the size and characteristics of special populations that are difficult to reach in household surveys. Chronic drug users, who often live outside conventional households, provide the illustration motivating this paper. An alternative to household surveys is to question chronic drug users where they congregate—jails, treatment programs, and shelters, for example. Using such opportunistic data for prevalence estimation raises difficult problems for statistical inference: Study subjects who arrive at the collection points cannot be deemed a random sample of the general population. However, if we could estimate the rates at which chronic drug users arrive at the collection points, then we could use those estimates to weight the sample to represent the population. This paper presents a modified Poisson mixture model used to estimate the stochastic process that accounts for how chronic drug users get arrested. It uses that model to estimate arrest rates for 38 counties using up to sixteen quarters of data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring survey.

Mortgage credit risk in EU countries: Constraints on exploiting the single currency market

The adoption of a single EU currency market raises questions about how individual country mortgage policies are likely to affect the gains that can be realized from this larger market. We use an option pricing model to provide some perspective on this issue. We address questions such as how does the risk exposure of a mortgage guarantee program in one country compare with those in other countries? What kind of effects do any such differences or varying legal restrictions on lender recourse have? Do the programs help complete financial markets? That is, are the programs structured as unsubsidized financial intermediaries which help allocate risks? Or, are the programs essentially wards of the state which encourage risk taking? In short, we aim to provide a simple, tractable way to think about how individual country policies affect the ability to exploit the potential offered by the larger market. Our conclusions are three. First, when correctly structured, mortgage default insurance can be expected to reduce non-price rationing at an actuarially fair price. It follows that to the extent that such programs lead to more complete markets without subsidies they are also more efficient than are the many schemes now used which rely on subsidies to address mortgage market incompleteness. Second, considerable care must be exercised in the development of such instruments. In a number of countries the pricing policies do not appear to be prudent. The program terms imply either that regulators often expect a much safer economic environment than seems likely, or, alternatively, the programs have been conveying either unbudgeted subsidies or incurring contingent liabilities. Such liabilities have already been realized in Sweden, and the current exposure in the Netherlands as well as with the restructured program in Sweden, appear to be large. Finally, we find that the potential geographical risk diversification provided by the single currency market can be expected to reduce mortgage rates and improve risk allocation. However, legal, fiscal, and regulatory issues with respect to credit risk limit the ability to exploit this larger market.     

Beyond assimilation and contrast: Information effects,ideological magnification,and the vote

Spatial voting models assume that parties and candidates advertise their ideological positions to maximize electoral support. Voters, however, view party locations through a distorted lens. The presence of these assimilation and contrast effects has been extensively described by the existing literature. Yet while many studies acknowledge the importance of information biases in survey responses, we lack the tools to explicitly incorporate them into existing spatial models of voting. This paper proposes a strategy that incorporates information effects in existing spatial models of the vote, using a heteroscedastic proximity model. We test the proposed model on data from eighteen democracies. Results demonstrate how information stretches or compresses the ideological space and open up new avenues for future work.     

论跨国并购模式的选择

近年来,随着经济全球化的不断深入,跨国并购已成为FDI的最主要力量。按企业扩展的组织形式分,跨国并购有三种模式,即横向并购、纵向并购和混合并购。我国跨国并购的模式也不外乎这三种。在进行跨国并购中,应在并购前进行可行性研究,遵守东道国有关企业并购的政策法规,注意跨国并购后的整合。