An electoral calculus? Dual incentives and committee assignment in the UK’s mixed-member legislatures

Although mixed-member electoral systems offer an apparent opportunity to observe how different rules shape politicians’ behaviour, ‘contamination’ between the SMD and PR-list tiers has frequently confounded academic work. Investigating Scotland and Wales’ mixed-member legislatures by exploiting their different chamber sizes and an unusual dual candidacy prohibition in Wales, modelling of committee assignments uncovers a split finding. Controlling for membership of the lead governing party, list members have a higher committee workload than their constituency colleagues, and members with previous employment experience in justice and health are more likely to be assigned to the corresponding subject committee once elected. Elsewhere, expectations that members might seek assignments that best suit theorized re-election interests are not found. The hypothesized influence of electoral rules is strongly conditioned by the small size of the legislature in Wales.     

支持还是反对军事冲突？日本与邻国争端中民意的调查实验分析

近年来,东亚成为了世界政治中最不稳定的地区之一。日本与其邻国之间的领土问题是导致东亚区域不稳定的核心因素,愈演愈烈的中日钓鱼岛争端使两国处在军事冲突的边缘。当日本与邻国发生领土争端时,日本民众是否以及在什么情况下会支持政府发动军事冲突？为此,作者在日本进行了以民众为对象的调查实验。对调查实验结果所做的统计分析表明,如果目标国是美国的盟国、日本对目标国的经济依赖程度较高,那么日本民众倾向于反对政府向该国发动军事冲突,而目标国在二战期间是否曾受到日本的侵略这一因素并没有产生显著影响。同时,日本的年轻民众表现出了更强的和平倾向。这些结论为中国的对日外交提供了有益的政策启示。对于中日钓鱼岛问题等领土争端,在政治和安全领域,中国外交应进行必要的改革和创新,重新思考和构建中国的国际安全战略。在经贸领域,可以继续加强与日本的经贸合作以增加日本的退出成本,并灵活运用经济手段以增加日本国内的舆论压力。此外,有必要开展针对日本年轻一代的公共外交,由此促进中日关系的长远发展。     

Domestic migrants' responsiveness to electoral mobilization under authoritarianism: Evidence from China's grassroots elections

This study examines citizens' responsiveness to electoral mobilization under authoritarianism by studying the turnout of domestic migrants in China's grassroots elections. While a large literature on authoritarian elections has focused on coercion and material benefits as tactics dictators often use to promote turnout, we argue that social pressure from the community and its leaders plays a crucial role in mobilizing authoritarian constituents. Employing data from the China Labor Dynamics Survey (2012), we show that migrants who share traits with local residents, such as dialect, are more likely to be mobilized to vote, because they are more responsive to local cadres' mobilization efforts and feel more connected to the community. Conversely, we find no support for an explanation rooted in channels of communication. We confirm the findings using an instrumental variable approach. Our findings imply that street-level mobilization for authoritarian elections takes advantage of various social factors in more subtle and embedded ways than is typically assumed.     

Economic sanctions and the rhetorical responses of totalitarian regimes: Examining North Korean rhetorical strategies, 1949–2010

This study investigates the impact of economic statecraft on the North Korean Government. As a totalitarian regime, which is characterized by a controlled mass media, the North Korean Government tries to contain potential problems caused by sanctions by using three types of political rhetoric: appeasement, backlash, and surveillance. Using time-series data from 1949 to 2010 derived from a content analysis of the New Year's Day addresses by Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un, the empirical results suggests that the North Korean Government does alter its rhetorical strategies in response to external economic sanctions. Negative sanctions cause the regime to use appeasement strategies (or calls for reforms and internal changes). It tends to use backlash rhetoric (or blaming the sanctioning powers) in response to, interestingly, positive sanctions. Surveillance rhetoric, or the call for internal vigilance against enemies, on the other hand, does not have any statistical connection with sanctions, rather driven by other factors, such as the Korean War, external instability, and so on.     

From the provinces to the parliament: How the Ukrainian radical right mobilized in Galicia

This article traces the on-the-ground mobilization and recruitment strategies of Ukraine's radical right party, Svoboda (Freedom) in the years prior to its 2012 electoral breakthrough. Ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Svoboda party leaders and activists in Galicia show how party leaders strategically created an organizational structure aimed at recruiting young people, making linkages with pre-existing nationalist groups, and shifting the ideological focus away from cultural and toward economic issues. Interviews with party activists reveal how personal networks were key in the recruitment and radicalization process, showing that radical right activists were radicalized, or “made,” through political participation. Consequently, Svoboda's organizational capacity allowed the party to take advantage of a political opportunity – Yanukovych's unpopularity and weakened national democratic parties – in the 2012 parliamentary elections.     

Seeing the Lexus for the Olive Trees? Public Opinion,Economic Interdependence,and Interstate Conflict

Many scholars argue that economic interdependence and more extensive economic ties between countries decreases the risk of violent conflict between them. However, despite considerable research on the “capitalist peace” at the macro or dyadic level, there has been less attention to its possible individual-level microfoundations or underpinnings. We argue that public perceptions about economic ties with other states and the costs of conflict should influence the expected constraints on the use of force for leaders. Actual high interdependence and potential economic costs may not suffice to create political constraints on the use of force if people are unaware of the degree of interdependence or fail to understand the benefits of trade and the likely economic costs of disruptive conflict. We examine the linkages between individual perceptions about economic interdependence and their views on conflict and peace through a survey experiment, where we ask respondents in Japan about approval for belligerent actions in a territorial dispute with China and varying information about economic ties. Our findings indicate that greater knowledge and information about economic interdependence affects attitudes about territorial disputes and increases support for peaceful solutions with China.     

Political mobilization in East Central Europe

This article provides an introduction to the special thematic section on political mobilization in East Central Europe. Based on a brief presentation of the main arguments of the individual articles, the authors discuss the recent political volatility in East Central Europe. They highlight the tension between fierce political rhetoric and populist policies on the one hand, and low levels of voter turnout and overall political participation in the region on the other. The authors argue that recent cases of successful as well as unsuccessful political mobilization in East Central Europe point to structural re-alignments in the region’s political landscape. In particular, the parties that are successful are those that manage to communicate their visions in new ways and whose messages resonate with nested attitudes and preferences of the electorate. These parties typically rally against the so-called establishment and claim for themselves an anti-hegemonic agenda. The introductory essay also asserts that these developments in East Central Europe deserve attention for their potential Europe-wide repercussions – especially the idea of “illiberal democracy,” which combines populist mobilization and autocratic demobilization and finds adherents also in more established European democracies.     

对"大跃进"时期政治动员模式的浅析

政治动员作为一种比较成熟的行动策略,中国共产党在领导中国革命和建设中曾多次使用。在"大跃进"前期,政治动员在一定程度上发挥着正效用功能,在"大跃进"中后期,政治动员的负效用占有绝对支配地位,造成生产力的极大破坏。因此,理性分析"大跃进"时期政治动员的模式,对于我国的现代化建设具有重要的意义。     

Reconsidering The Counter-Mobilization Hypothesis: Health Policy Lobbying In The American States

Despite its widespread use since the concept was introduced by David Truman (1951. The Governmental Process. New York: Alfred A. Knopf), counter-mobilization by organized interests has remained theoretically ambiguous and rarely studied empirically. We more fully develop the concept of short-term counter-mobilization, distinguish it from long-term counter-mobilization, specify the conditions under which we might observe short-term counter-mobilization, and test the resulting hypotheses with data on health care lobby registrations in the American states during the late 1990s. We find little evidence of short-term counter-mobilization among health interest organizations, which leads us to more fully consider several null hypotheses about the limits of strategic behavior on the part of organized interests.An earlier version of this paper was prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 2004. This research was supported by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research (ID#047727).     

灾害救援中经济动员的流程再造

经济动员是灾害救援中的关键活动,直接影响救援效果。借鉴企业管理的流程再造理论,对灾害救援中经济动员流程的再造与重构,不仅提高了应对自然灾害和突发事件的能力,而且对提升战时经济动员能力也具有重要意义。运用流程再造理论改造灾害救援中的经济动员行动,应遵循有效性、保障性、平稳性、彻底性等原则。采用相对温和的流程管理模式有利于灾害救援中经济动员再造活动的顺利推行。