Victorian Voting: The Origins of Party Orientation and Class Alignment

Much of what we know about the alignment of voters with parties comes from mass surveys of the electorate in the postwar period or from aggregate electoral data. Using individual elector-level panel data from nineteenth-century United Kingdom poll books, we reassess the development of a party centered electorate. We show that (a) the electorate was party-centered by the time of the extension of the franchise in 1867, (b) a decline in candidate-centered voting is largely attributable to changes in the behavior of the working class, and (c) the enfranchised working class aligned with the Liberal left. This early alignment of the working class with the left cannot entirely be explained by a decrease in vote buying. The evidence suggests instead that the alignment was based on the programmatic appeal of the Liberals. We argue that these facts can plausibly explain the subsequent development of the party system.     

Information Aggregation and Optimal Structure of the Executive

We model two aspects of executives in parliamentary democracies: Decision‐making authority is assigned to individuals, and private information is aggregated through communication. When information is relevant to all policies and communication is private, all decisions should be centralized to a single politician. A government that holds cabinet meetings, where information is made available to all decision makers, outperforms one where communication is private: A multimember cabinet can be optimal; it need not be single peaked around the most moderate politician or ideologically connected. Centralization is nonmonotonic in the degree of ideological divergence. In a large cabinet, all power should be given to the most moderate politician. Even when uncertainty is policy specific and a single politician is informed on each policy, power should never be fully decentralized. Our model provides a justification for centralized authority and cabinet meetings that enhance the quality of policy.     

Gender effects in eyewitness accounts of a violent crime

Abstract

This research examined two aspects of gender effects in eyewitness accounts: whether there are gender differences in memory for a violent crime and how gender of perpetrator/victim affect witnesses' evaluations of perpetrator/victim behavior. Eighty male and 84 female university students saw a film showing a simulated manslaughter with either a male or female perpetrator stabbing a male or female victim. A female advantage was found in overall memory of the crime, and both a male perpetrator and a male victim were assigned more culpability than their female counterparts. It is suggested that females may have more elaborated categories for person information than males, which should facilitate female accuracy in person memory. Alternatively, the present findings may reflect a more general female advantage in episodic memory performance. Stereotype assimilation is suggested to account for the differential evaluations of a male and female perpetrator/victim.     

Women who kill: a comparison of the psychosocial background of female and male perpetrators

The purpose of this study was to compare the psychosocial background of female and male perpetrators convicted of homicide in Sweden between 1995-2001. All women (n=43) who were convicted for lethal violence during the period and a corresponding number of randomly chosen men (n=43) were examined. In total, information about 86 individuals was collected retrospectively. Areas of interest were psychosocial variables during childhood and at the time of the current crime. Results showed that both female and male perpetrators were psychosocially encumbered already at an early age. Homicidal women had more severe childhood circumstances, but less aggressive childhood behaviour than did their male counterparts. At the time of the crime, women had a more ordered social situation, had more often been exposed to violence and searched for help than had the men. These gender differences suggest that specific actions are needed for preventing women's homicidal behaviour.     

Validity in judgments of high‐ and low‐accurate witnesses of own and other ethnic groups

Purpose. Research has shown that people often have difficulties estimating eyewitness accuracy correctly. In most previous studies examining validity in credibility judgments, participants have assessed the accuracy of witnesses who have been homogeneous in their memory performance. This study investigated validity in judgments of witnesses who varied widely in memory. A further purpose was to examine whether judgmental validity was moderated by the witnesses' ethnic in‐group/out‐group status. Methods. Participants (N = 120) rated the reliability of videotaped testimonies of high‐ and low‐accurate in‐group (Swedish, N = 4) and out‐group (immigrants, N = 4) witnesses who were genuinely trying to recall a criminal event. Results. Participants assigned more reliability to high‐ than to low‐accurate in‐group witnesses, while out‐group witnesses received low reliability ratings regardless of their actual memory performance. Path analyses demonstrated that the subjective confidence of in‐group, but not of out‐group, witnesses predicted participants' accuracy judgments. Conclusions. The results indicate that the validity in judgments of in‐group witnesses can be better than has previously been implied. Investigators may have difficulty distinguishing high‐ and low‐accurate witnesses from other ethnic groups, and they may also systematically underestimate the reliability of ethnic out‐group witnesses. Implications for legal practices are discussed.