Considering advances in neuroscience through the lenses of law and human?rights

Advances in neuroscience should be subject to a robust public dialogue that includes attention to the legal and human rights issues raised by both research and its applications.     

The future of crime data

Criminology lacks sufficient data for many types of crime that are of great concern to society. This lack of data poses significant problems for determining whether resources are adequate for responding to these crimes or whether programmatic, legislative, or target-hardening efforts to prevent or reduce their occurrence are effective. Inadequate data about crime also produces a selective and incomplete narrative about crime that makes it easier for political and vested interests to exploit public concerns about crime for their own ends. In this address, I discuss what is needed to resolve these gaps and the ways in which criminologists can support a significant expansion of the crime data infrastructure. Such work is necessary to help ensure the future relevance of criminological research.     

The opposition Pakatan Rakyat in the twelfth Malaysian parliament, 2008–12, and parliamentary behaviour on the budget process

In the post-2008 Malaysian general election, the opposition political parties the Parti KeADILan Rakyat, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party and the Democratic Action Party started to gain currency, especially when the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) government was denied its two-thirds of the majority in parliament. The 2008 result indicated that there was a substantial shift in support from the incumbent BN to the opposition parties. The opposition later on was formed into a coalition known as Pakatan Rakyat (PR). The minor victory of the PR in the 2008 election suggested that it had secured a considerable number of seats in the twelfth Malaysian parliament. This article argues that the 2008 electoral outcome exhibited substantial competitive parliamentary behaviour despite the authoritarian nature of Malaysia. The article examines PR behaviour in the twelfth parliament with reference to the budget process. Besides elections, the Malaysian parliament is a very crucial indicator of the development of democratic governance in Malaysia. This article argues that the opposition PR is still relevant in the way in which it has fully exercised its legal parliamentary capability, especially its de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim, in questioning and posing constraints on the ruling BN policies concerning the budget process.     

“完善‘一国两制’制度体系,落实‘爱国者治港’根本原则”专题研讨会综述

全国港澳研究会于2021年2月在北京举办"完善‘一国两制’制度体系,落实‘爱国者治港’根本原则"专题研讨会。夏宝龙同志在讲话中表示,习近平总书记关于"爱国者治港"的重要论述,是对香港回归以来"一国两制"实践经验的高度提炼,是对"一国两制"实践规律的深刻揭示,为推动"一国两制"实践行稳致远、保持香港长治久安指明了方向。"爱国者治港"是"一国两制"方针的核心要义,是推进"一国两制"事业的时代呼唤,要坚持"爱国者治港"的客观标准和要求,对相关制度进行完善。与会专家学者表示,"爱国者治港"是在香港特别行政区维护国家主权、安全、发展利益的重要前提。香港现行选举制度还不能为全面落实"爱国者治港"原则提供坚实的制度保障,需要尽快加以完善,修补漏洞。     

Confidence in an election authority and satisfaction with democracy: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment of a failed election in Sweden

Contemporary research on electoral integrity has focused on the functioning, evaluation, and legitimacy of electoral processes in emerging democracies. By contrast, this study investigates whether a failed election in a well-established democracy can affect individuals' evaluations of the electoral management body, the Election Authority, and whether those evaluations affect satisfaction with democracy. Using the case of a Swedish regional election in 2010 that had to be rerun due to procedural mistakes in the vote handling, we found that, in the short term, individuals’ confidence in the Election Authority was reduced after it was announced that the election had to be rerun because of the mistakes. Subsequently, this decreased confidence was strongly associated with less satisfaction with democracy at the regional and national level. As good news for the authority, after a successful rerun election, confidence rebounded to the levels prior to the failed election.     

Forecasting the 2015 British election through party popularity functions

To forecast the May 7, 2015 British General Election, we develop party popularity models based on Continuous Monitoring Survey (CMS) data from April 2004 to February 2015. Our models predict party vote shares three months prior to the election, using previous support levels, national economic evaluations, macro-partisanship and political measures. Our Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) methodology allows us to predict support for the Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats and “other” parties, separately, yet simultaneously, by constraining total support for all parties to 100%. Our model, estimated with data from February 2015, predicts that Labour will win the highest vote share in Great Britain, but that no party will win a majority of seats in parliament.     

Forecasting the 2015 British general election: The 1992 debacle all over again?

This article introduces and reviews a set of twelve academic forecasts of the 2015 British general election. Along with the vast majority of others including journalists and betting markets, they failed by a big margin to predict that the Conservatives would emerge with an overall majority of seats. Several suffered from the 1992 scale inaccuracies of the vote-intention opinion polls. Forecasts based on other data sources typically did a bit better, but also fell short. Nonetheless, this was not 1992 all over again. The dramatic collapse of the Liberal Democrats and rise of the SNP, UKIP and Greens were successfully anticipated. Also this collection includes numerous methodological advancements, with several new methods and developments to established approaches.     

Economic performance and presidential trait evaluations: A longitudinal analysis

Presidential traits (i.e. morality, intelligence, leadership) have generally been assumed to be idiosyncratic personal characteristics of the individual and are treated as exogenous from other political and economic factors. Prior literature has shown that presidential characteristics and economic performance are important elements of vote choice and approval. Using ANES data from 1984 to 2008, we demonstrate an important link between these factors, showing that objective and subjective indicators of economic performance are significant predictors of trait evaluations. Specifically, evaluations of the incumbent president at election time are directly related to changes in economic performance earlier in the year. The effects of economic performance are not isolated to retrospective policy evaluations, but also influence the overall evaluation of the president as a person.     

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.