Institutions,governmental performance and the rise of political newcomers

This article analyses the institutional and contextual factors that facilitate the election of political newcomers as heads of government in democratic regimes. Using data from 870 democratic elections between 1945 and 2015, it is found that political newcomers are more likely to be successful in presidential systems, in new democracies and when party systems are weakly institutionalised. The election of politically inexperienced candidates is also related to governmental performance. Political newcomers are more successful when the economic performance of the government is bad and when the government engages in high‐level corruption.     

The more the better? Cumulative issue ownership and intra-campaign party switching

We contribute to the literature on short term changes in voters' party preferences (or intra-campaign party switching), by advancing a factor that has been neglected so far: Voters' perceptions about parties' issue competence. We develop a model of party switching that includes both classic predictors and issue ownership considerations. Moreover, in contrast to the usual single issue ownership conception focusing on the party deemed most competent to solve the most important problem, we argue that voters base their party choice on their perceptions of parties' competence on a variety of issues, i.e. on cumulative issue ownership. We test our model on panel data from the 2015 Swiss election study. The change in competence perceptions appears as a strong predictor of party switching: The higher the increase in the number of issues on which voters see a party as most competent during the campaign, the higher their likelihood to switch to that party.     

Modeling unemployment volatility in America,Europe and Asia

Many government policies are being implemented to stabilize the economy. One of the policies necessary to achieve stabilization is full employment. However, the growth rate of unemployment in many countries is evident and seems more volatile in recent years. To counterattack the unemployment problem, the volatility of the growth rate of unemployment has to be known in order to launch appropriate policies correctly. Therefore, conditional volatility models are employed to estimate the volatility with symmetric and asymmetric effects. The monthly data on unemployment is downloaded to calculate the rate of change. The consistency and asymptotic normality of the QMLE are guaranteed by the moment conditions. The GARCH model shows that a shock to the growth rate of unemployment in most cases has long-run persistence, but relatively less for short-run persistence. The G JR model reports the asymmetric effects in 10 of 25 countries. The EGARCH model illustrates asymmetric effects in 12 of 25 countries, while 3 of them show leverage. VaR forecasts and counts of number of violations suggest that the univariate conditional models are practicable in most countries, and the G JR model seems to be preferable in cases with a large difference in the number of violations.     

Economic shocks and democratic consolidation: Historical evidence from party-level electoral volatility in France

The emergence of a stable party system is a central aspect of democratic consolidation. Building a novel historical dataset, we analyze how economic growth affected the party-level electoral volatility during the consolidation of the French democracy over the Third Republic (1870-1940). We document an asymmetric effect in that positive economic shocks produced electoral stability, while negative shocks had not the expected destabilizing effect. Moreover, a positive shock had a disproportionally stabilizing effect during economic prosperity, four times stronger than during an average economic conjuncture. As France experienced strong positive shocks over this period, our results imply that the party system consolidation may have been driven by a few exceptionally high growth episodes. We also find evidence suggesting that positive shocks developed voters’ support for institutionally stable parties.     

对目前我国社会中偏激政治态度的思考

在我国,某些社会成员的偏激政治态度曾给我们的事业造成过许多重大损失和严重的灾难.目前,在改革开放过程中,社会上仍存在着种种偏激政治态度,在某种程度上构成了对我国经济、社会正常发展的威胁.纠正的方法是加强改善党的领导,加大改革力度,铲除社会不良现象,完善意识形态的工作.     

冒险背后的社会心理浅析

随着生命感觉的萎缩，现代人越来越倾向于以一种极端的方式来寻求精神和心理的刺激。于是，各种冒险游戏或运动应运而生，那么在这些相对安全的味觉冒险、情色冒险和危险的生命冒险背后，又潜藏着怎样的深层动因呢？笔者试图用齐美尔的冒险理论来解读冒险活动背后深层的社会心理机制。     

由极端方式私力救济的现状看公力救济——对公力救济制度性缺陷的法律分析

公力救济的严格程序法定限制了私权保护,其所依据的法律的正当性决定了人们对私力救济的选择。法理上,法律本身的局限性,使公力救济无法提供正当的评判依据;法律实践上,实体法提供的评判标准不正当：适用法律不当,赔偿制度及赔偿标准的制定失当、缺乏客观公正的特别证明,致使人们抛弃公力救济。     

期货收益率极端波动离散间隔的实证研究

本文基于极值理论,以沪铜、大连大豆和郑州硬麦期货为研究对象,应用最大信息熵原理、广义极值分布和K－S拟合检验,实证分析了我国商品期货收益率极端波动的时间间隔的统计分布特征。引入离散的时间间隔来刻画极端波动特征在学术上是个新的尝试。实证结果表明：极端波动的确定是与阈值紧密联系的;我国商品期货收益率的极端波动间隔时间服从广义极值分布;期货收益率极端波动时间间隔序列具有集聚性;运用条件期望值--波动模型预测极端波动间隔是可行的。这些成果为监管层度量极端波动强度和控制风险提供了有效的方法。     

Motives and legacies behind 2008-2009 Hungarian Roma murders and apologies

This research analyzes as hate crimes the 2008–9 Hungarian Roma mass-murders by extreme nationalists. Pertinent questions are: ‘What motivated the Roma Murders?’ and ‘How do these motives intertwine with cultural-historical legacies to affect both the murders and later official apologies?’ In examining motives, the essay shows how cultural myths of an ill-fated nation and collective memory of real historic tragedies made Hungarians receptive to an extreme nationalist ideology that transforms a national vision of tragic fate into a vision of a victorious future (Volksgeist). How Hungarian cultural-historical heritage assigns vulnerability and disability to the Roma is explored, and why assigning the same vulnerability to victims when Hungarians apologize for their complicity in the Roma murders cannot restore social justice. The essay adds to previous research the identification of common dynamics in both the hate crimes and later apologies, demanding that a very specific apology addressed to the Roma–as equal citizens–should follow two apologies that position the Roma as less than equal Hungarians.     

Questioning generational replacement. An age,period and cohort analysis of electoral volatility in the Netherlands, 1971–2010

Political behavior has been changing all over Western Europe and electoral volatility is one of the facets of politics in which this change is apparent. Theories on stabilization of political attitudes and behavior in lifetime and the slow rate at which change in the electoral arena is found to proceed, have led to the assumption of generational replacement as the mechanism driving change. The Netherlands, however, provide a remarkably different case of this trend in electoral volatility. The country has shifted from an example of how cleavages stabilize politics to one of the most electorally volatile countries in Europe. The Dutch surge in electoral volatility thus contrasts with expectations of a slow process driven by generational replacement. Starting from this apparent contradiction between the evolution of volatility in the Netherlands and theories on generational replacement, this article investigates time effects of electoral volatility. The study is based on an age, period and cohort analysis on the repeated cross-sectional data of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies, 1971–2010. Based on characteristics of such repeated cross-sectional data, individuals are cross-classified in birth cohorts and election years respectively, which overcomes the identification problem inherent in cohort analyses. Results of a Cross-Classified Random Effects Model (CCREM) indicate that, contrary to the hypothesis of new generations causing the increase in volatility, the Dutch change can be attributed primarily to period effects. As such, the analyses indicate that a general shift in the Dutch electorate has caused the growth in volatility and that supply-side factors should probably be analyzed when trying to explain electoral volatility.