Is referendum voting distinctive? Evidence from three UK cases

The study of referendum voting follows much the same format as for general election voting. Influences on vote, however, are likely to differ significantly. Referendums decide issues, while general elections determine which party or parties will form the government. Parties are often divided on referendum issues and these issues tend to be of low salience. General elections, however, are contested by long-established parties on highly salient issues. Using panel data from the British Election Study and the 2011 Alternative Vote Referendum Study, we find that voters place different weights on party identification, issue positions, government and leader evaluations when voting in general elections and referendums, but the evidence for differential campaign effects is limited.     

Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation: perverse effects,protectionism and Gemeinschaft

Abstract

Drawing upon Karl Polanyi's journalistic writings and unpublished lectures from the 1920s and 1930s, this article reconstructs the lineaments of his research programme that was to assume its finished form in The Great Transformation. It identifies and corrects a common misinterpretation of the thesis of that book, and argues that Polanyi's basic theoretical framework is best conceived as Tönniesian: market society is Gesellschaft, while the ‘protective counter-movement’ of The Great Transformation is Gemeinschaft, understood dynamically. It examines the two central mechanisms by which, in Polanyi's understanding, Gesellschaft broke down in the mid-twentieth century: the ‘clash between democracy and capitalism’ and the ‘perverse effects’ whereby political intervention in markets impairs profitability and saps the vitality of the market system.     

高校辅导员自我效能感调节与职业倦怠关系研究

自我效能感的原理是借助个体自我调节,能够积极地转变现状的理论.提升辅导员自我效能感,是清除和缓解辅导员职业倦怠的有效策略.文章通过对高校辅导员自我效能感同职业倦怠相互关系的探讨,由自我效能的角度阐述了高校辅导员职业倦怠现象的成因,同时提出了克服职业倦怠的相应对策.     

政治内容的生成过程

政治内容的确立并不在于它的自我宣称,而是取决于由发出、运作以及反馈等因素和环节构成的生成过程。这个问题对于政治学研究和政治运作都具有重要的现实意义。一方面,政治内容的生成同时也是一种功能实施的过程,预先设计的政治需要通过相应功能的运作和反馈才能获得、并体现出真实的或具体的内容含义;另一方面,功能实施需要相应的载体形式,不同载体承担着不同的职能或功能,并由相应的功能关系维系着政治的一般或常态运作机制。在政治内容生成的过程中,各种转换的主要根据都在于相应的实效反馈,也就是发出预设与运作效果的相互作用;然而从普遍性来讲,各种实效反馈对于政治内容生成的作用根据或运作机制,都在于专门政治与一般政治的转化。     

Do party leadership contests forecast British general elections?

When assessing election forecasts, two important criteria emerge: their accuracy (precision) and lead time (distance to event). Curiously, in both 2010 and 2015 the most accurate forecasts came from models having the longest lead time—albeit at most 12 months. Can we increase the lead time further, supposing we tolerate a small decrease in accuracy? Here, we develop a model with a lead time of more than 3 years. Our Party Leadership Model relies on the votes of MPs when selecting their party leader. We assess the forecasting quality of our model with both leave-one-out cross-validation and a before-the-fact forecast of the 2019 general election. Compared to both simple forecasting methods and other scientific forecasts, our model emerges as a leading contender. This result suggests that election forecasting may benefit from developing models with longer lead times, and that party leaders may influence election outcomes more than is usually thought.     

Do mayors matter? Reverse coattails on congressional elections in Brazil

In federal democracies, parties often invest in local politics as a strategy to improve their performance on upcoming national elections. In this study, I use the concept of reverse coattails to investigate how winning local elections affect upper-level electoral dynamics in Brazil. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD), I show that parties in Brazil boost their national performance, earning more votes on House elections in districts where their members control local offices. I discuss how access to ‘‘pork” controlled by co-partisan House members and mechanical information gains explain these effects. Additionally, I use a Bayesian LASSO algorithm to address data sparsity in RDD designs, and to demonstrate the existence of pro-large party bias on the coattail effects. By disentangling the various effects of winning local elections, this paper contributes to a greater understanding of how parties build electoral strength in fragmented democracies.     

Ballot position and election results: New evidence from a natural experiment

It is well-known that candidates listed first on the ballot paper tend to receive more votes than other candidates. However, experimental studies that confirm this truism mostly stem from first-past-the-post systems. Do we also find ballot position effects in PR systems where voters may vote for a party instead of a specific candidate? We investigate a natural experiment in Danish national elections involving more than 9,000 candidates on almost 100 different ballot papers. Our findings show that ballot positions, indeed, have a causal effect on election results in PR systems. Since Danish national elections constitute a least-likely case, our findings indicate that ballot position effects are much more empirically relevant than suggested by existing research.     

论优惠性货物原产地规则的双刃剑效应——兼及中国的实践

优惠性货物原产地规则可分为两大类,一为具体产品的原产地规则,另一为制度型原产地规则,前者主要包括CTC、VC及TP三种标准,后者主要包括微小含量规则、吸收规则、累积规则.其对区域经济发展具有双刃剑效应.中国已实施的七个优惠性原产地规则经历了由简单到复杂,由不完善到逐步完善的演变过程,在发挥应有的保护作用的同时,也在一定程度上限制了优惠待遇的利用.因此,在今后原产地规则的制订中宏观上要充分考虑原产地规则的双重效应;在微观标准设计上要充分发挥原产地规则的正面作用.     

The effect of EU structural funds on regional growth: assessing the evidence from Greece, 1990–2005

This paper brings empirical evidence on the impact of EU structural policy on regional income growth. The case of Greece over the period 1990–2005 is taken as an example. This period is characterized by the acceleration of the European integration process, with a central role assigned to the EU structural support to less prosperous regions. Regional growth is approached through the estimation of β-convergence equations using panel methods of estimation. The empirical results reveal a positive impact of structural funds support on regional growth while income convergence is enhanced. In addition, a significant influence of spatial income and unemployment spillovers on regional income growth is evidenced, illustrating the recent growth performance in Greece. Our results leave ample room for European regional policy to operate for the promotion of growth and the reduction of regional disparities.

无条件“调解优先”倾向应当刹车

随着民商审判中"调解热"的不断升温,无条件"调解优先"之风冲击着我国民商审判方式改革取得的成果,冲击着人们要求公开、公正、公平、透明的诉讼理念。本文对当前司法实务中出现的无条件调解优先倾向的态势和造成的负面影响进行了分析和批判,主张民商审判中调、判关系的定位,应当回归到最高人民法院提出的"能调则调,当判则判,调判结合,案结事了"的十六字指导原则上来。