Explaining ethnic bloc voting in Africa

What explains bloc voting among ethnic groups in Africa? Using the Herfindahl Hirschman Index of Concentration on partisan preference data from the Afrobarometer, this article tests several hypotheses regarding the explanation as to why some ethnic groups: (1) express voting preferences as a bloc; (2) express voting preferences as a bloc for the governing party or the opposition. This article found that the geographic concentration of the group best explained general bloc voting. In terms of the direction of support, the degree to which a group is discriminated against and politically mobilized explains bloc voting against the governing party, whereas bloc voting for the governing party is explained by the extent to which the governing party is politically dominant. This suggests that the prospects for patronage helps explain voting as a bloc for most all groups, except those that face discrimination and are politically mobilized.     

The Effects of Network Expertise and Biases on Vote Choice

Many citizens lack the political knowledge to make informed decisions partly due to the high costs of becoming informed. Previous scholars have argued that if individuals speak with political experts who share their preferences, they can vote as if they were informed without paying information costs. This view of citizens as single-minded seekers of low-cost information is unrealistic. Individuals often choose discussion partners for reasons unrelated to politics, and many communication networks have heterogeneous information levels and preferences as a result. This paper simulates the votes of hypothetical electorates with different individual and network information levels. It demonstrates that network expertise has an effect on vote choice, but this effect is not as large as the effect of individual expertise. Rather, the key contextual determinant of an individual's vote is the partisan composition of his or her discussion network.     

Capacity-testing as a means of increasing political inclusion

Some competent political actors, primarily young people and the cognitively impaired, are excluded from political participation by modern liberal democratic states. This exclusion occurs because the means utilized by states to distinguish between competent citizens (who must be included) and incompetent ones (who may be excluded) are imperfect. They include age restrictions on enfranchisement and, commonly, legal restrictions on enfranchisement for those with cognitive disabilities. Capacity-testing provides a means to improve on these existing mechanisms for exclusion. It is not, however, often suggested, nor seen as viable. Here, I argue that we should utilize capacity-testing to more effectively include capable citizens in our democratic practice. I defend a particular scope and kind of capacity-testing against common objections.     

Immigrant-Serving Non-profit Voter Mobilization in Off-Cycle Elections: An Institutional Explanation of Differential Political Participation Patterns

Abstract

Immigrants in the USA tend to vote less than other groups, and immigrants vote at even lower levels during off-cycle elections. The aim of this article is to analyse whether these same patterns can be observed in the electoral activities of non-profit organizations that represent immigrants. I argue for a theory of reflective non-profit representation to explain how immigrant-serving organizations make decisions about electoral activities. By analysing original survey data collected in 2012 and 2013, the article finds that immigrant-serving non-profits are less likely to mobilize immigrants in off-cycle compared to on-cycle elections, and less likely to mobilize voters than organizations serving other communities. These findings suggest that immigrant voting could increase if non-profits increased their political involvement, reimagined their identities to include politics as a part of their mission, and generated new revenues to support these activities.     

Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe: Perceptions and Use of Contacts

Proceeding from mass society theory and the theory of social capital, this article discusses the effect of social isolation, social trust, and membership in voluntary organizations on radical right-wing voting in Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway, and Switzerland. By using data from the first and third rounds of the European Social Survey, a number of logistic regression models are estimated. The results indicate that social isolation and social capital, measured as active membership in voluntary organizations, are of marginal value for explaining radical right-wing voting, although there is some cross-national variation. Moreover, the results show that not even members of humanitarian aid and human rights organizations are less likely to vote for the radical right, which clearly questions the universalistic ambitions of Putnam's theory of social capital and its core idea that organizational membership fosters tolerance and civic virtues.     

析国家赔偿法

随着社会的进步、经济的快速发展,新的国家赔偿法确立的国家赔偿制度已经正式实施,文中结合新旧国家赔偿法几个相关问题的比较,说明新国家赔偿法在赔偿范围、赔偿程序等方面具有的鲜明特色。     

Compelled without direction: Compulsory voting and party system spreading

Much of the current literature on compulsory voting (CV) examines its effects by simulating complete turnout. We argue that these studies do not capture the full effects of CV, as there is something qualitatively different about compulsory voting rules as compared to only increasing turnout. Furthermore, CV and turnout have important, yet unexplored, interactive effects. To test this argument, we look at governments in 43 countries over the 1990–2006 period. Nine of these countries have some form of CV. We examine the effect of CV on the ideological position and range of governments, left party seat share, and the effective number of parties. We find that high turnout in the presence of CV laws spreads out the distribution of voters and leads to an increase in the effective number of parliamentary parties and a larger ideological range of governments. These results have important implications for how we study CV and its consequences for party strategy.     

Economic voting theory: Testing new dimensions

Classical economic voting theory has received considerable empirical support. Voters reward the incumbent for good times, punish it for bad. But the success of this paradigm, which views the economy as strictly a valence issue, has crowded out testing of other theoretical dimensions. In particular, positional and patrimonial economic voting have hardly been examined. The former concerns the different preferences voters have on economic policy issues, such as progressive taxation. The latter concerns the place of voters in the economic structure itself, not merely as members of a social class but as actual property owners. Through analysis of a special battery of economic items, from a 2008 US presidential election survey, we demonstrate that the economy was important to voters in three ways: valence, position, and patrimony. Taken together, these dimensions go far as an explanation of vote choice, at least with respect to the short-term forces acting on this political behavior.     

德国社会保障权法律救济制度及启示

德国是社会保障法制化比较完善的国家，制定了专门的社会法典和社会法院法，它们是社会保障权救济的法律保障。德国劳动局的复议处和社会保险机构复议处是社会保障权争议的复议机构，行政复议是诉讼的前置程序。社会法院实行三级审理制，审判成员由职业法官和非职业法官组成。德国的工会、企业委员和调节处在维护公民社会保障权方面发挥不可或缺的作用。在专门法律的制定，专门法院或法庭的设立，复议人员和审理人员的专业化和社会化以及社会组织的调解作用等方面，德国的经验对我国社会保障权救济制度的完善具有借鉴和指导意义。     

浅析我国检察机关未成年人分案起诉制度

未成年人是一个国家的希望和未来,针对未成年人犯罪有着自己特殊性,因此对于未成年人与成年人共同犯罪的案件应该分案起诉。本文在阐述分案起诉的涵义和必要性的基础上,从分案处理的标准和具体程序两个层面对我国分案起诉制度的改革和完善提出了立法建议。