Do people want a ‘fairer’ electoral system? An experimental study in four countries

When judging how ‘fair’ voting rules are, a fundamental criterion used by both scholars and politicians is their ability or inability to produce proportional results – that is, the extent parties’ seat distribution after the elections accurately reflects their vote shares. How about citizens? Do citizens care about how proportional the outcome is? Or do they judge the outcome solely on the basis of how well (or poorly) their party performed? Taking advantage of a uniquely designed survey experiment, this article investigates the causal effect of proportionality on voter support for voting rules in four countries: Austria, England, Ireland and Sweden. The results show that proportionality drives support for the voting rules not above, but beyond party performance. There is little cross-country variation, which suggests that proportionality is appreciated in different contexts with little status quo bias. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the causal mechanisms linking electoral rules to voter support.     

Merging county administrations – cross-national evidence of fiscal and political effects

ABSTRACT

While many central governments amalgamate municipalities, mergers of larger county administrations are rare and hardly explored. In this article, we assess both fiscal and political effects of county mergers in two different institutional settings: counties act autonomously as upper-level local governments (Germany), or counties being decentralised branches of the state government (Austria). We apply difference-in-differences estimations to county merger reforms in each country. In both cases, some counties were amalgamated while others remain untouched. Austrian counties (Bezirke) and German counties (Landkreise) widely differ in terms of autonomy and institutions, but our results are strikingly similar. In both cases, we neither find evidence for cost savings nor for staff reductions. Instead, voter turnout consistently decreases in merged counties, and right-wing populists seem to gain additional support. We conclude that political costs clearly outweigh fiscal null benefits of county merger reforms – independent of the underlying institutional setting.     

刑罚正当根据论

传统的刑罚正当根据学说主要有报应论、预防论、折衷论和忠诚论,但这四种学说不能构成刑罚正当根据学说的科学阐述.刑罚正当根据学说之科学立论是统一论.     

《孝经》在巩固封建统治中的作用机制分析

在中国古代特定的经济基础和社会背景下,本是规范家族内部行为的“孝”成为历代君王统治人民的政治工具。集中体现孝治思想的儒家经典著作———《孝经》,成为历代的治国经典。孝治具有历史必然性。《孝经》虽然是古代特定经济与社会的产物,存有许多内在矛盾和缺陷,但也内含不少道德智慧的光芒。     

Ideological change and the economics of voting behavior in the US, 1920–2008

This paper tests the proposition that voters advance a more liberal agenda in prosperous times and turn more conservative in dire economic times. A reference-dependent utility model suggests that, with income growth, the relative demand for public goods increases and the median voter is more likely to vote Democrat. With slowing income growth, the median voter derives increased marginal utility from personal income—making taxation more painful—and is more likely to vote Republican. Ordinary and instrumented analyses of a new time series for the US median voter are encouraging of this income growth model. This work links voting behavior to economic business cycles and shows that ideological change is endogenous to income growth rates.     

新时代公安院校忠诚警魂培塑体系建构

立德树人是高校人才教育培养的根本任务。公安院校坚持"政治建校、政治育警"办学方针,以培养高素质应用型公安人才为靶向。公安院校人才培养不仅要强化过硬的专业素养,更要塑造信仰坚定的忠诚警魂,这是公安院校的人才培养主线。实现公安院校铸魂育警的人才培养目标,要以马克思主义为理论指导,以思政课为主渠道、主阵地,同时加强专业课协同教育,融合校园日常教育,完善校局合作机制,从而建构公安院校"三全"育人、多维协同的忠诚警魂培塑体系。     

Protecting the Continuing Duties of Loyalty and Confidentiality in Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claims

The success or failure of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim turns largely on the testimony of trial counsel. It is therefore common for the government to communicate ex parte with trial counsel in order to formulate its response to such a claim. But even after the representation has ended, trial counsel continues to be bound by duties of loyalty and confidentiality to their former client, as well as the attorney-client privilege, subject to a limited waiver relative to information that is reasonably necessary to respond to the ineffectiveness claim. Because of their interests in the litigation, however, neither trial counsel nor the government is positioned to objectively decide what information is covered by that waiver. In order to ensure that trial counsel respects their ethical duties to their former client and to protect the sanctity of the attorney-client relationship, post-conviction courts should prohibit trial counsel from communicating ex parte with the government. These courts should instead require that all such communications take place on the record—ideally at a deposition, but alternatively through affidavits.     

Exit, Loyalty, and Collective Action Among Workers in a Simulated Business Environment: Interactive Effects of Group Identification and Boundary Permeability

Past research on the effects of boundary permeability and tokenism (open boundaries with restricted access) suggests that when options for individual mobility exist, members of low status groups tend to exit their group and attempt to enter higher status groups. We hypothesized that the effects of boundary permeability on preferences for individual vs. collective action would depend upon prior levels of in-group identification, such that people who are more identified with their group would remain loyal and choose collective action, even under conditions of high boundary permeability. To test this hypothesis, a 2 (High vs. Low Group Identification) × 2 (High vs. Low Permeability) experimental design was employed to assess preferences for exit and loyalty in the context of a simulated business environment. For both rating measures and behavioral choices, the interaction hypothesis was supported. Implications for group loyalty and strategies of tokenism are discussed.     

A two-step approach to assessing composition effects of the National Voter Registration Act

Using aggregate level data from 1996 and 1998 this paper employs a two-step strategy to explore the impact of implementing the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) on the education, income, age, and racial/ethnic composition of state electorates. The results of the project suggest that implementation of the reform had a moderate effect on reducing the tendency of state registered electorates to be skewed toward higher education, income, and age groups. The implementation of NVRA procedures was also associated with reductions in the tendency of the voting electorate to be skewed toward higher socioeconomic groups and older Americans. The impact was indirect, however, in that changes in the voting electorate were a result of changes in the registered population, which were, in part, due to the implementation of the reform.     

Does voter polarisation induce party extremism? The moderating role of abstention

This article contributes to the literature on representation by examining how the ideological polarisation of the electorate affects parties’ programmatic positions in multiparty systems. The main argument is that parties face incentives to adopt more extreme positions when the electorate becomes more ideologically polarised and the share of non-moderate voters is higher. The reason is that by adopting moderate positions parties will prompt their non-moderate core constituents to sit out the election. This risk is conditioned by voters’ propensity to abstain. A higher (lower) propensity to abstain means that parties alienate a larger (smaller) share of their core constituents when adopting a moderate position. Parties therefore respond to greater voter polarisation by adopting more extreme positions, but the effect declines as voters’ propensity to abstain decreases. An empirical analysis of parties’ programmatic positions in 11 Western European countries between 1977 and 2016 strongly supports this expectation.