Political Brand Communities as Social Network Clusters: Winning and Trailing Candidates in the GOP 2016 Primary Elections

This study integrates a brand community theoretical framework and a social networks approach to the study of political marketing on social media. It analyzes Twitter activity by and about all Republican candidates during the month of January 2016 prior to the Iowa primary caucus. Specifically, it identifies key patterns of information flow and political brand community emergence surrounding each candidate as well as brand social mediators who play influential roles in content flow. Findings detect network clusters - subgroups of siloed users - who converse to exchange information with one another rather than with disconnected others in any given political brand community. We classify these clusters in two groups: direct communities that surround a brand – here, a candidate – and indirect communities that consist of users who talk about the political brands but are not directly connected to the brand. Within this fragmented community structure, brand social mediators have the power to bridge direct and indirect brand communities across the network. Among the winning and trailing brand communities, different sets of brand social mediators, patterns of information flow, and network structures emerge. The findings suggest that the more successful a political brand is in voter polls, the weaker the social ties and relationships are within the brand communities. The interactions between political brands and their direct vs. indirect communities also exhibit different patterns of information flow. While direct brand communities demonstrate a higher level of reciprocity, indirect brand communities show a higher level of density. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Entrepreneurship in the Policy Process: Linking Behavior and Context through a Systematic Review of the Policy Entrepreneurship Literature

How do different policy environments influence the choice of policy entrepreneurship (PE) strategies? Using data collected from a systematic review of the PE literature, the authors identify subcomponents of the three streams of the policy process and empirically test the relationship between dominance of each stream and PE strategies. Findings show that when the political and policy streams dominate, policy entrepreneurs focus on policy formation and policy implementation strategies and not on problem identification and policy evaluation strategies. Surprisingly, there is no correlation between dominance of the problem stream and PE strategies. This should lead to the normative claim that PE is not necessarily a positive phenomenon. The article concludes with suggestions for future research.     

The Controlling Shareholder Enforcement Gap

The regulation of controlling shareholder related‐party transactions is one of corporate law's animating concerns. A recent Chancery Court decision extends the double approval framework endorsed by the Delaware Supreme Court—independent director committees and a majority of the minority shareholders—to non‐freezeout transactions. This article explains why the Chancery Court's innovation does not decrease the risk faced by minority shareholders. Subjecting a transaction to the double approval framework is a voluntary decision. Transaction planners will willingly traverse this path if the benefits outweigh the loss in deal certainty and attendant costs. When almost every freezeout is challenged in court, the voluntary application of this framework is the logical outcome. The calculus in the non‐freezeout context leads to a different result. Non‐freezeouts must be challenged by a derivative lawsuit. The procedural hurdles inherent in the derivative mechanism affect both the demand for the ratification framework and the incentive to comply. Without a tangible threat of a lawsuit to coax voluntary compliance in the non‐freezeout setting, transaction planners have nothing to gain by subjecting the deal to the double approval gauntlet. This article's analysis reveals a large gap in the enforcement of self‐dealing transactions. Recent high‐profile litigation exposes questionable adherence to the double approval framework for obviously conflicted non‐freezeout transactions. The paucity of derivative lawsuits foretells a troubling fate for similar transactions at less enticing litigation targets. Worse yet, the superficial step toward improved minority shareholder protection stifles the discussion on additional reform.     

Turnaround Management Strategies in Local Authorities: Not Only for Poor Performers

In the past four decades, UK government policymakers have sought to improve the performance of local government by trying to achieve organisational turnaround and bring laggards up to the standards achieved by the leaders. Both the Conservative Party and New Labour led new public management reforms aimed at modernizing and improving local government authorities by adopting standards from the private sector. Given the pressure to improve, failing local authorities have been pushed to adopt a unique set of strategies known as turnaround management strategies (TMS). However, this paper, based on qualitative data and a survey of 126 senior local leaders, shows that TMS have been implemented to a high extent among both poor and excellent performers. The paper concludes that regardless of their objective performance ranking, English local authorities are characterised by a self-perception of underachievement. As a result, high performers continuously implement radical changes.     

The Constrained Instability of Majority Rule: Experiments on the Robustness of the Uncovered Set

Michael S. Lynch Department of Political Science, University of Kansas, 504 Blake Hall, Lawrence, KS 66044 e-mail: mlynch{at}ku.edu Gary J. Miller and Itai Sened Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1063, One Brooking Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130 e-mail: gjmiller{at}wustl.edu e-mail: sened{at}wustl.edu (corresponding author) The uncovered set has frequently been proposed as a solutionconcept for majority rule settings. This paper tests this propositionusing a new technique for estimating uncovered sets and a seriesof experiments, including five-player computer-mediated experimentsand 35-player paper-format experiments. The results supportthe theoretic appeal of the uncovered set. Outcomes overwhelminglylie in or near the uncovered set. Furthermore, when preferencesshift, outcomes track the uncovered set. Although outcomes tendto occur within the uncovered set, they are not necessarilystable; majority dominance relationships still produce instability,albeit constrained by the uncovered set. Authors' note: We thank Matthew M. Schneider for research assistance.We thank James Holloway, Tse-Min Lin, Jim Granato, Randall L.Calvert, Rick K. Wilson, faculty and students of the Juan MarchInstitute, and reviewers of Political Analysis for their veryhelpful comments and suggestions.     

The limited influence of competitive intelligence over corporate strategy in Israel: historical,organizational, conceptual,and cultural explanations

ABSTRACT

Strategic intelligence in national security enjoys an elevated status. Despite past failures and current challenges, its role in analysing the strategic environment is considered crucial for practising strategy. In the business world, competitive intelligence (CI) has evolved for a similar purpose: understanding the competitive environment, as a foundation for strategy. The current article focuses on the Israeli business world, where CI’s influence on corporate strategy is limited, reflecting the broader state of CI's immature academic and professional foundations. The article provides historical, organizational, conceptual, and cultural explanatory hypotheses for this minor impact of CI in Israel, a country where national intelligence is a highly influential institution. It thus broadens the scope of traditional intelligence studies and can contribute to CI scholarship.     

Framing policies to mobilize citizens' behavior during a crisis: Examining the effects of positive and negative vaccination incentivizing policies

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the issue of mobilization policies, that is, government practices directed at making the mass public voluntarily perform various behaviors for the collective benefit during a crisis. As COVID-19 vaccinations became accessible, governments faced the challenge of mass vaccination mobilization in order to achieve herd immunization. Aiming to effectively realize this goal, policy designers and regulators worldwide considered various mobilizing tools for vaccination compliance, including rewards and penalties, as they targeted vaccine opposers and hesitators, while trying to avoid the crowding-out effect among individuals who were intrinsically motivated to get vaccinated. However, the unique circumstances of the Coronavirus pandemic may have eliminated the crowding-out effect. Thus, our study explored the effect of regulation in the form of positive and negative incentivizing tools (i.e., rewards and penalties) during the coronavirus pandemic on vaccination intentions of 1184 Israeli citizens, prior to the national vaccination campaign. Results indicate that (1) both negative and positive incentives have a similar positive effect on individuals who declare they will not get vaccinated and those who hesitate to get the shot; (2) both positive and negative incentives induce the crowding-out effect; and (3) negative incentives generate a larger crowding-out effect in individuals who report preliminary intentions to get vaccinated, compared to positive ones. This emphasizes the need to avoid the crowding-out effect during the current and similar crises, and suggests considering applying a gradual and adaptive policy design in order to maximize regulatory efficacy and compliance.     

Ethical considerations on quadratic voting

This paper explores ethical issues raised by quadratic voting. We compare quadratic voting to majority voting from two ethical perspectives: the perspective of utilitarianism and that of democratic theory. From a utilitarian standpoint, the comparison is ambiguous: if voter preferences are independent of wealth, then quadratic voting outperforms majority voting, but if voter preferences are polarized by wealth, then majority voting may be superior. From the standpoint of democratic theory, we argue that assessments in terms of efficiency are too narrow. Voting institutions and political institutions more generally face a legitimacy requirement. We argue that in the presence of inequalities of wealth, any vote buying mechanism, including quadratic voting, will have a difficult time meeting this requirement.