The European lavender vote: Sexuality,ideology and vote choice in Western Europe

In many European democracies, political punditry has highlighted the attempts of political parties on the left to court the ‘lavender vote’ of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. This article examines the presence of a gay vote in Western Europe with a focus on assessing the role of sexuality in shaping individuals’ political preferences and voting behaviour. Empirically, the effect of sexuality on both ideological identification as well as party vote choice is analysed. Using a cumulative dataset of eight rounds of the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2017, this article demonstrates that partnered lesbians and gay men are more likely than comparable heterosexuals to identify with the left, support leftist policy objectives and vote for left-of-centre political parties. The analysis represents the first empirical cross-national European study of the voting behaviour of homosexual individuals and sheds new light on the importance of sexuality as a predictor of political ideology and voting behaviour within the Western European context.     

Empowered and enraged: Political efficacy,anger and support for populism in Europe

This article addresses the psychological dynamics between internal political efficacy, emotions and support for populism. Contrary to the extended idea that populism is associated with low levels of political competence, it is argued that individuals’ self-competence beliefs enhance populist attitudes. Individuals who conceive themselves as able to understand and participate effectively in politics are more critical towards politicians and more prone to consider that citizens could do a better job. The article also hypothesises that internal efficacy enhances the likelihood of experiencing anger, which in turn promotes populist attitudes. Experimental and comparative observational evidence shows robust direct effects of internal efficacy over populism, as well as a smaller indirect impact via feelings of anger. These findings raise important questions regarding the nature of populism and how to fight it in our emancipated and information-intensive democratic systems.     

In pursuit of happiness: Life satisfaction drives political support

It is argued in this article that citizens in democracies use their subjective well-being (SWB) as an evaluative criterion when deciding how willing they are to support and comply with government dictates (political system support). When life is satisfactory, government authorities are rewarded with support, when it is not, citizens punish authorities by withholding their support. To make sense of the relationship, it is suggested that citizens act as if they have signed a happiness contract with ‘those in power’. In support of this argument, comparative survey data shows that SWB predicts attitudes on political system support across country contexts and under strong control conditions. Establishing that the relationship is causal, panel data documents that attitudes on political system support can be undermined following the termination of a close personal relationship, and that the causal effect is mediated via changes in SWB. Finally, as predicted, the happiness-support relationship is weaker among individuals who are high on spirituality/religiousness and attribute blame for external events to both worldly and non-worldly powers.     

“一带一路”背景下国际发展经济学学科综述

国际发展研究是反映现实世界变化的窗口之一。最近几年的发展经济学文献对诸如援助的动因、援助有效性等传统议题的研究更为深入,对新议题的探索也逐渐涌现。移民问题、局部地区的战争与恐怖主义活动与援助的相互关系,援助是如何塑造受援国行为及其所产生的效果,是反映援助国政治诉求的现实性研究。除此之外,源自其他学科的新研究方法也丰富了学者们对传统议题研究手段,补充了传统研究方法在诸如内生性等问题上存在的缺陷。     

Resource Extraction,Economic Growth,and the Climate Dilemma in Canada and Australia

Canada and Australia are two of the economic success stories of the last thirty years, enjoying rapid growth during the 1990s and 2000s and (unlike the UK and US) escaping the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. In both countries, however, economic growth has become highly dependent on commodities extraction, leaving them vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices, and imposing political constraints on tackling climate change. This article explores the economic and political challenges which the role of the natural resource sector has posed in Australia and Canada in recent years, and examines the contrasting ways in which Scott Morrison and Justin Trudeau’s governments deployed the climate issue in the two countries’ 2019 federal elections.     

Hurdles and Pathways to Regulatory Innovation in Digital Political Campaigning

Targeted online ads, algorithmic analytics tools, clickbait-y social media campaigns, big data voter databases—digital technologies have become a cornerstone of contemporary political campaigns in the United Kingdom. Candidates, party campaigners, and a multitude of other registered campaigners embrace digital campaigning for democratic engagement, mobilising voters and electioneering. Yet, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it has become clear that these technologies are vulnerable to abuse and deception. Pressing issues surrounding privacy, transparency, and human rights persist, and systems of electoral law have become ill-equipped to enforce good behaviour and compliance with the law. Drawing from empirical evidence ahead of the 2019 UK general election, this article examines systemic obstacles to regulatory innovation. The inquiry provides an analysis of key policy challenges affecting elections and democracy, and develops an analytical framework pathways to regulatory innovation in the digital domain across three dimensions: (1) Institutional structures; (2) organisational processes; and (3) regulatory functions. The article puts forward practical policy recommendations to promote regulatory innovation that is tech-savvy, evidence-based and future-proof.     

The Catalytic Effect of IMF Lending: Evidence from Sectoral FDI Data

Our study contributes to the search for the elusive catalytic effect of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent scholarship has found that the catalytic effect is conditional on political regime and program stringency. We contribute to this literature by developing and testing a theory which describes how the catalytic effect also varies by economic sector. This is a departure from existing studies, which have tended to focus on aggregate FDI flows after crises. Our findings corroborate previous research, which finds that in general IMF lending has a substantial and negative effect on FDI. However, we find that the negative effect is concentrated in sectors that are highly dependent on external capital and have low sunk costs in the host country. Our findings are robust to several alternative explanations common in IMF literature, namely the importance of IMF program design and the ability of governments to make credible commitments to reform. Substantively, our findings suggest that investors are more likely to use IMF lending as an escape hatch in countries where FDI is dependent on external capital and has low sunk costs.     

Terrorist violence and the enrollment of psychology in predicting Muslim extremism: critical terrorism studies meets critical algorithm studies

Discourse on terrorist violence has long facilitated an especially liberal form of securitisation. Originally evoked in reference to anarchists and communists, a rational consideration of terrorist violence, inaugurated by the concept, asks for deferred judgement about the nature of, or reasons behind, violence related to terror on the premise that state and international legal norms governing the legitimate use of violence fail to circumscribe the proper capacities of the state to regulate and explain terrorism. Where sovereign powers along with their military and civilian instruments of coercion are deemed unable to regulate violence effectively, analysts of terrorist violence and their readership are invited to consider and cultivate new sensibilities. Beginning in the 1980s, studies by psychologists found renewed urgency among a growing cadre of interdisciplinary terror experts who found religion, Islam especially, a key variable of analysis. I situate their contributions in a longer history of secular and racialising discourse about terrorist violence. Central to this history are practices of reading, translating, interpreting and archiving texts. Evidence for the argument is based on the analysis of an algorithm that allegedly predicts the likelihood of terrorist strikes by counting words spoken by al-Qa?ida leaders and correlating their frequency with over 30 psychological categories.     

Adaptive strategies of smaller foreign investors in the Russian agricultural sector: identity,narrative and performance

This paper utilises a qualitative narrative analysis approach to examine smaller foreign investors operating within the Russian agricultural sector as private farmers: the foreign versions of the krestyansko-fermerskiye khoziaistva (peasant farms) that were the early focus of agrarian reform. With difficulty experienced by foreign investment in Russian agriculture, and with the Putin administration shifting its focus to larger scale agriculture, interest lies in the fate of these smaller foreign investors, set in the broader question of: ‘Is there really a future for smaller foreign investors in Russia?’ The investors were aligned along a performance and narrative spectrum, and the construction of their identities – guided by their adaptive processes on the ‘Turnerian’ frontier – were found to shape their business conduct, and interactions with labour forces and regional authorities. Negative prejudgment of the labour force existed amongst the investors – with associated negative notions of trust, inefficiency, laziness, morality, and sexual deviancy – and they were involved in explicit or ambiguous forms of gift-gifting, drawing parallels to Soviet blat behaviour. This paper concludes that despite efforts to construct identity, the narratives of the investors betrayed themselves in certain aspects, with elements of ‘undoing’ in the identity process.     

Political Trust,Ideology, and Public Support in the United States for Government Spending on Health Care

The U.S. health-care costs have increased at a rapid rate over the last several decades. How much responsibility the government should bear with the increase in health-care costs is one of the main questions that lack consensus among the American people. Utilizing the 2016 General Social Survey data, this study shows that over two-thirds of Americans want to see more or much more spending on health care by the government. An ordered logit regression model shows that political trust and ideology are significant correlates in predicting attitudes toward government spending on health care. The policy implications of the findings are discussed in the “Conclusion” section.