Creating Stable Agreements in Marine Policy: Learning from the California South Coast Marine Life Protection Act Initiative

In this article, we examine the California South Coast Marine Life Protection Act Initiative stakeholder process, evaluate its shortcomings, and consider what could have been done differently. Our objective is to make recommendations to improve future multi‐stakeholder marine policy processes. In our view, while the South Coast stakeholder process had many positive outcomes, it failed to reach what we call here a “stable agreement.” Our analysis is based on two of the authors’ involvement (one as a facilitator and the other as a stakeholder representative) in the process and a post‐hoc survey of participants. We find that several ill‐advised process design and management choices significantly destabilized the negotiations, leading to an ultimately unstable agreement. We highlight four major problematic process design and management decisions, including the following: representation on the multi‐stakeholder group was imbalanced, the pre‐meeting caucuses were not paired with training in interest‐based negotiation, adequate incentives to negotiate toward a consensus agreement were not provided, and the use of straw voting at one point in the process was unclear and inconsistent. As a result of these and other process design and management flaws, many stakeholders believed that the process was biased and that their ends would be better achieved by anchoring negotiations and engaging in positional bargaining. Ultimately, this meant that near‐consensus on a single cross‐interest marine protected area proposal was not reached, the scientific guidelines put forth were not fully met, the process was not and is not viewed as fair by the stakeholders directly or indirectly involved, and the marine protected area regulations lack broad‐scale support. These pitfalls of the South Coast stakeholder process could have been avoided had the management and facilitation team consistently followed best practices in dispute resolution. We recommend that future marine planning processes learn from this example, particularly those occurring in highly complex, urban ocean environments.     

Voting void? Young South Africans,elections and the media

In May 2014, many of South Africa’s young citizens had the opportunity to vote in national elections for the first time. Youths who were born post-1994 (often referred to as the ‘Born Frees’) are the first generation of South Africans who live in a democratic country and hold no individual memory of life under apartheid. These young South Africans were born during a period of democracy, a time of transition and of great hope for the future. As a result of having been born outside the confines of apartheid racial segregation, they are expected to be racially integrated with their peers. The expectation which comes with the freedoms fought for by previous generations is that the youth will take up formal democratic practices, such as voting and engaging with parliament. However, during the recent national elections, the youth turnout revealed surprising differences amongst the 18–29-year age group. Young people aged 18–19 opted not to take up the right to vote – in fact, only 31 per cent of them had registered. This article interrogates the attitudes and actions of young South Africans within the political sphere, specifically by examining a group of young South Africans who are eligible to vote, as well as the role of the media in aiding or deterring voting engagement and perceptions. The central argument is that the local media fail to engage young people with content which advances their political identities. Despite high levels of media consumption, youths are engaging with formal politics as a result of pressure from family or due to socio-economic limitations, rather than a desire to add value to their citizenship.     

Local determinants of an emerging electoral hegemony: the case of Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey

“Party hegemony” is a macro-level characteristic of party systems, which is a product of persistent and overwhelming electoral victories that leads to domination of the parliamentary system by a single party. Party hegemony can only emerge through a collection of individual-level (albeit aggregated), lower-level structural, and macro-level institutional factors. This article intends to shed light on hegemonic party systems by incorporating all of these aspects. It analyses the case of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey as a hegemonic party in the making. Based on individual-level survey data as well as an original province-level dataset, the article examines the role of ideology, pork barrel politics, economic voting, demographics, and political institutions in AKP's rising hegemony. The replicable nature of the dataset enables further testing of these findings in comparable cases for generalizability.     

The 2016 Referendum,Brexit and the Left Behind: An Aggregate‐level Analysis of the Result

Why did Britain vote for Brexit? What was the relative importance of factors such as education, age, immigration and ethnic diversity? And to what extent did the pattern of public support for Brexit across the country match the pattern of public support in earlier years for eurosceptic parties, notably the UK Independence Party (UKIP)? In this article we draw on aggregate‐level data to conduct an initial exploration of the 2016 referendum vote. First, we find that turnout was generally higher in more pro‐Leave areas. Second, we find that public support for Leave closely mapped past support for UKIP. And third, we find that support for Leave was more polarised along education lines than support for UKIP ever was. The implication of this finding is that support for euroscepticism has both widened and narrowed—it is now more widespread across Britain but it is also more socially distinctive.     

UK Euroscepticism and the Brexit Referendum

This article shows that key to understanding the referendum outcome are factors such as a profoundly eurosceptic public, high levels of citizen uncertainty, divided mainstream political parties on the EU and lack of unity within the ‘Leave’ campaign. The Brexit referendum is more than just about domestic issues and government approval. Utilitarian concerns related to economic evaluations of EU integration coupled with support of or opposition to EU freedom of movement are very likely to influence vote choice. Those campaigns that focus on rational utilitarian arguments about the costs and benefits related to EU membership as a whole but also to EU freedom of movement are expected to swing voters.     

Change beneath the surface: the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election

Preceded by a string of institutional crises and sustained political wrangling, the Northern Ireland Assembly election held in May 2016 cemented the grip of the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin over the province’s power-sharing institutions, while certifying the impasse of their intra-bloc rivals. Eighteen years after the Good Friday Agreement, the electoral campaign continued to feature emotionally charged ethnic appeals. Nonetheless, socioeconomic issues were at the fore of the political debate, contributing to the limited yet significant advance of non-sectarian actors. Beneath the surface of a mainly unaltered Assembly makeup and unchanged ethno-political geography, the vote resulted in a decline in support for the traditional governing parties, particularly in the nationalist camp. In the aftermath of the vote, the formation of an officially recognized Opposition has opened uncharted political waters.     

The psychological roots of populist voting: Evidence from the United States,the Netherlands and Germany

What are the psychological roots of support for populist parties or outfits such as the Tea Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom or Germany's Left Party? Populist parties have as a common denominator that they employ an anti‐establishment message, which they combine with some ‘host’ ideology. Building on the congruency model of political preference, it is to be expected that a voter's personality should match with the message and position of his or her party. This article theorises that a low score on the personality trait Agreeableness matches the anti‐establishment message and should predict voting for populist parties. Evidence is found for this hypothesis in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. The relationship between low Agreeableness and voting for populist parties is robust, controlling for other personality traits, authoritarianism, sociodemographic characteristics and ideology. Thus, explanations of the success of populism should take personality traits into account.     

Racial Contexts and White Interests: Beyond Black Threat and Racial Tolerance

The impact of racial context on white voters' support for black candidates in biracial elections has drawn considerable attention from students of racial politics. Two major theories—black threat and social interaction—use different geographic units and provide conflicting explanations. The present study seeks to contribute to the resolution of the controversy by empirically examining white crossover voting at both election unit and neighborhood levels. Twenty-nine mayoral and councilmanic district elections in New Orleans from 1977 to 1998 are investigated. The findings are not consistent with the hypotheses derived from black threat and social interaction theories. Rather than a reflection of racial tolerance or hostility, the changes in white crossover voting in different racial contexts may indicate a rational and strategic adjustment on the part of white voters when they face the prospect of black electoral success.     

Impacting the Political Landscape: Who Registers and Votes Among Naturalized Americans?

Little is known about the voting behavior of naturalized Americans, primarily due to a lack of good quality data on the national level. Using data from the Voting and Registration Supplement to the November 1996 Current Population Survey (CPS), we examine whether region of origin and length of time spent in the United States affect the likelihood of registering and voting among naturalized citizens, net of other socioeconomic and demographic factors already known to influence electoral behavior. We find that naturalized citizens who have a longer length of time at current residence and in the United States, and those who are older, with more education and higher income are more likely to register and vote. Region of origin is not a major explanatory variable, but there are differences in registering and voting by country of origin among naturalized citizens from Asia and Latin America. Finally, being registered is a necessary but not sufficient condition that predicts voting among naturalized citizens from Asia and from Latin America.     

投票权信托的本土化方式探讨

肇端于英国的信托制度在美国获得了极大的发展,其弹性机制被运用于众多的领域,投票权信托就是信托制度在美国公司法中的一种发挥.它是享有投票权的股东根据协议将其股份转让给受托人,由受托人持有该股份并行使投票权.投票权信托的灵活机制在促进公司治理与保护中小股东利益方面有着独特的价值,故中国目前应着手引进该制度.