The Strategic Use of Legislative Voting Procedures

Legislative votes can be taken by roll call—noting the position of each individual member—or by some form of indication (sitting or standing, shouting yea or nay, etc.)—noting only an aggregate outcome. Cameral rules define one method of voting as the standard operating procedure and how to invoke any alternative voting methods. We develop a series of hypotheses related to position taking to explain why, when procedures would typically lead to a vote taken by indication, legislators choose to vote by roll call—a means that makes it much easier for actors outside the chamber to observe the positions taken by individual legislators and partisan blocs. With data from Argentina and Mexico, we test these hypotheses regarding the strategic choice of vote procedures and their relationship to observed party unity.     

FIFA/IOC‐Sanctioned Development and the Imminence of Erotic Space

Based on ethnographic research conducted since April 2014, this paper will examine the intersection between mega‐event security apparatuses, event‐led urbanism, and local geographies of desire. We argue that urban sanitisation strategies (particularly those derived from a constellation of foreign interests) threaten local geographies of desire but remain dependent upon erotic space and subjectivities in (trans)national exchange and everyday economic salvation. The erasure of sexual diversity is a case with which to examine the impact of FIFA/IOC‐sanctioned urban renewal, and the manner in which local bodies (particularly those deemed sexually ‘deviant’) are repeatedly forced to circumvent these globally determined processes of development.     

Cost Effectiveness Analysis and Transportation: Practices,Problems, and Proposals

Cost effective analysis (CEA) is used frequently in health and other fields in which controlled experiments are possible. The problem is, however, that for many activities that are outsourced in infrastructure finance, we have no comparison groups, and when comparison groups are present, we have no data on quality, presenting any interested researcher or decision maker with some serious dilemmas. In this article we establish some basic guidelines for the collection and use of quality data, and associate these with our own errors in attempting CEA with a lack of an existing quality measure.     

TRANSLATING AGENCY REFORM THROUGH DURABLE RHETORICAL STYLES: COMPARING OFFICIAL AGENCY TALK ACROSS CONSENSUS AND ADVERSARIAL CONTEXTS

This article directs attention to the role of ideational variables in shaping public management reform initiatives. It considers the contribution of both endogenous rhetorical styles and exogenous international fashions in explaining official agency talk in consensus and adversarial contexts. Departing from an earlier observation that convergence in talk across contexts is more likely than convergence in practice ( Pollitt 2001 ), this article demonstrates that symbolic convergence is also limited. It is found that agency talk is primarily a consequence of national styles of speaking, rather than the limited adoptions of a common international story. Secondly, the article demonstrates that rhetorical theories can enrich the concept of translation by providing tools for making explicit the rules through which international fashions are mediated in national contexts. It is found that financial officials have been responsible for the introduction of the similar (Anglo‐Saxon) stories that have achieved consensus in political administrative contexts, but that this has not brought about cultural homogenization.     

Institutionalising electoral uncertainty and authoritarian regime survival

Authoritarian incumbents routinely use democratic emulation as a strategy to extend their tenure in power. Yet, there is also evidence that multiparty competition makes electoral authoritarianism more vulnerable to failure. Proceeding from the assumption that the outcomes of authoritarian electoral openings are inherently uncertain, it is argued in this article that the institutionalisation of elections determines whether electoral authoritarianism promotes stability or vulnerability. By ‘institutionalisation’, it is meant the ability of authoritarian regimes to reduce uncertainty over outcomes as they regularly hold multiparty elections. Using discrete-time event-history models for competing risks, the effects of sequences of multiparty elections on patterns of regime survival and failure in 262 authoritarian regimes from 1946 to 2010 are assessed, conditioned on their degree of competitiveness. The findings suggest that the institutionalisation of electoral uncertainty enhances authoritarian regime survival. However, for competitive electoral authoritarian regimes this entails substantial risk. The first three elections substantially increase the probability of democratisation, with the danger subsequently diminishing. This suggests that convoking multiparty competition is a risky game with potentially high rewards for autocrats who manage to institutionalise elections. Yet, only a small number of authoritarian regimes survive as competitive beyond the first few elections, suggesting that truly competitive authoritarianism is hard to institutionalise. The study thus finds that the question of whether elections are dangerous or stabilising for authoritarianism is dependent on differences between the ability of competitive and hegemonic forms of electoral authoritarianism to reduce electoral uncertainty.     

MANAGERIAL GOALS IN A PERFORMANCE‐DRIVEN SYSTEM: THEORY AND EMPIRICAL TESTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Factors influencing managerial goals and decision‐making processes have been debated for decades among public administration scholars. Previous literature has explained goal setting through theories of performance gaps, bureaucratic control, and isomorphic rationality. However, there exists no direct empirical test of these theories to determine which theoretical expectation may have more or less weight with managers when setting organizational goals. Using an original survey of university presidents, this study tests how public managers prioritize competing performance goals. Findings suggest that the goal setting decisions of these public managers is primarily driven by political control mechanisms.     

Political parties, electoral systems and democracy: A cross-national analysis

Abstract.  The number of political parties and the type of electoral system may impact the level of democratic functioning within a government. Models are used to explore whether the number of political parties increases a country's democracy score on the POLITY IV measure of democracy, and whether countries with proportional representation electoral systems have higher democracy scores than those without. Multiple regression analysis reveals that countries with proportional electoral systems have higher democracy scores. Countries involved in the Third Wave of democracy may find the choice of an electoral system among the most important issues in structuring a democratic government.     

Legislating the Family: The Effect of State Family Laws on the Presence of Children in Same‐Sex Households

Faced with legal animus or outright legal prohibitions on adoption, fostering, or surrogacy, gay men and lesbians could be deterred from family formation. In this article, we use 2000 U.S. Census data to assess the validity of this assumption by examining the effect of positive and negative family laws on the presence of children in the households of same‐sex unmarried partners. In doing so, we seek to assess whether formal law plays a central role in family formation outcomes for gay men and lesbians. Employing a multilevel analysis, we find that formal law, particularly negative formal law, appears to play little role in outcomes involving family formation. Formal law might, however, play a greater role when defining property or other legal rights, such as through second parent adoption. These findings are compatible with the notion that individuals are less likely to consult formal law in their everyday lives—particularly with regard to family matters—but are more likely to do so with regard to family issues concerning wills and estates, transfers of property, or other “business” matters.