Partisan bias and redistricting in France

Decided by the executive, redistrictings in France have been claimed to have substantial partisan bias in favor of the right. We examine the evidence for this claim in terms of France's left bloc versus right bloc politics, combining information from both the first and the second round of France's two round electoral system. We also examine data at the constituency level to look at factors, such as malapportionment, that can affect bias. As France is characterized by a pattern of a limited number of redistrictings, population inequalities have grown in legislative constituencies between plans. Although the procedures used to draw constituency boundaries for the French Assembly are rather opaque, and under the control of political authorities, partisan bias appears as minuscule.     

强镇扩权背景下县镇权力配置、运行的偏差与优化--对于浙江省N市强镇扩权案例的实证分析

强镇扩权的核心内容是通过放权赋予试点镇与县级政府相同的经济社会管理权限,但从其权力下放过程来看,县镇之间的权力配置和运作与现实需要、制度文本之间均存在着偏差。引发权力下放中县镇权力配置、运行偏差的原因不仅有放权的法律限度、更有其利益动机及其所契入的地方治理权力架构等。优化强镇扩权背景下县镇两级权力配置及其运行,是一项系统工程,应以完善的分权制度安排为主要手段,以必要的监督约束机制为补充,改善包括分权逻辑、放权原则、考核体制机制在内的整体性制度设计。     

Partisan turnout bias and district magnitude

This article examines how the partisan turnout bias (i.e. turnout rate differences across districts that are linked to the partisan vote shares in those districts) changes over time in PR districted electoral systems. We argue that the bias after the founding election is the unintended consequence of parties and voters' strategic behaviors when they respond to the incentives provided by the electoral system. By looking at the case of Portugal, one of the countries with the largest variation in district magnitude, we find that the increasing asymmetry in turnout rates across districts makes the bias more severe as time goes by.     

Selection biases in Voting Advice Application research

This paper focuses on methodological aspects of Voting Advice Application (VAA) research. Self-selection into the treatment and self-selection into the sample need to be controlled for if the aim is to deduce causal effects from VAA use in observational data. This paper outlines omnipresent endogeneity issues, partly imposed through unobserved factors that affect both whether individuals use VAAs and their subsequent electoral behavior. Some research on VAAs has acknowledged the problems associated with selection biases, but practically none have taken steps towards improving these shortcomings. This paper introduces various approaches for handling selection biases and applies them to VAA data from Switzerland. These methodological considerations are of outmost importance for the relevance and validity of VAA research.     

紧急状态下的守法难题——以决策心理为视角

法治社会具有日常状态与紧急状态两幅面孔。当社会进入紧急状态,公民的行为策略会改变,遵守法律将变得困难。这是由人类的思维机制与认知倾向决定的。人类拥有快速但不准确的“系统一”与缓慢但可靠的“系统二”两套决策机制,在面对紧急状态时大量的情绪刺激会让“系统一”控制决策支配权,而信息过载也会限制“系统二”的监督与预警作用。因此,紧急状态下的个体决策者总是运用“系统一”进行行为选择。“系统一”采用启发式判断,有限时间内的决策往往存在各种认知偏差,导致人的行为与守法的要求背道而驰。正视这些违法行为背后的心理过程,通过事前建立完善应急措施与事中规范宣传报道,按照认知规律办事能够较好地减少违法行为。     

Crime,time, and punishment: An exploration of selection bias in sentencing research

The sentencing decision reflects the culmination of a long series of processing and, thus, selection decisions, with cases leaving the system at each decision point. Accordingly, the substantive implications of bias due to sample selection are of particular concern for sentencing research. In an effort to assess the existence and manifestations of selection bias, the sentencing decision is modeled for three samples, each of which was selected from different stages of the justice process. Event-history data on felony arrests in the State of California over a 3-year period are used, along with a relatively simple analytic technique which reduces such bias. Results indicate that biasis introduced when censored observations are excluded from the analyses. Also, the effects of certain exogenous variables on sentence length differ, depending upon the selection criteria. Of these, the influence of pleading guilty rather than going to trial is especially interesting. Overall, our findings are consistent with the possibility that selectivity bias has concealed effects of sentence bargaining in some earlier studies.The data utilized in this study were collected and made available by the State of California Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Statistics. The Department of Justice bears no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.     

Pretend It Doesn'T Work: The ‘Anti-Social’ Bias In The Maryland Scientific Methods Scale

The social constructs and methodological principles embodied in the Maryland Scientific Methods Scale (SMS), comprising part of the Campbell Collaboration in Crime and Justice assessment protocol, induce a series of biases in the evaluation of evidence of crime prevention policy interventions that focus on collective social phenomena, such as communities. Applying these principles leads to negative conclusions about effectiveness; yet their inherent ‘anti-social’ bias may induce Type II error with regard to the desirability of ‘social’ interventions to reduce crime. Policy-making is poorly served as a result. This point is illustrated, first, through a scrutiny of the social constructs used, including those that typify treatments, institutional settings and units of analysis. These are seen as being constructed in a way that is congenial to the underlying methodological issue of ‘control’ but that constitute nevertheless a distorted definition of the governance issues involved in crime reduction in community settings. A model more appropriate for evaluating voluntaristic action in civil society is needed. Second, it is suggested that this methodological bias arises particularly in policy interventions and change programmes that address issues concerning the ‘collective efficacy’ of local communities in reducing crime. An empirical exemplification of these arguments is presented with reference to a completed evaluation research study (Foster and Hope, 1993).     

Voter perceptions of coalition policy positions in multiparty systems

A growing body of research shows how voters consider coalition formation and policy compromises at the post-electoral stage when making vote choices. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how voters perceive policy positions of coalition governments. Using new survey data from the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES), we study voter perceptions of coalition policy platforms. We find that voters do in general have reasonable expectations of the coalitions' policy positions. However, partisan beliefs and uncertainty affect how voters perceive coalition positions: in addition to projection biases similar to those for individual party placements, partisans of coalition parties tend to align the position of the coalition with their own party's policy position, especially for those coalitions they prefer the most. In contrast, there is no consistent effect of political knowledge on the voters' uncertainty when evaluating coalition policy positions.     

Context Effects in Forensic Entomology and Use of Sequential Unmasking in Casework

Context effects are pervasive in forensic science, and are being recognized by a growing number of disciplines as a threat to objectivity. Cognitive processes can be affected by extraneous context information, and many proactive scientists are therefore introducing context‐minimizing systems into their laboratories. Forensic entomologists are also subject to context effects, both in the processes they undertake (e.g., evidence collection) and decisions they make (e.g., whether an invertebrate taxon is found in a certain geographic area). We stratify the risk of bias into low, medium, and high for the decisions and processes undertaken by forensic entomologists, and propose that knowledge of the time the deceased was last seen alive is the most potentially biasing piece of information for forensic entomologists. Sequential unmasking is identified as the best system for minimizing context information, illustrated with the results of a casework trial (n = 19) using this approach in Victoria, Australia.