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Academics and practitioners are increasingly interested in deliberative minipublics and whether these can address widespread dissatisfaction with contemporary politics. While optimism seems to prevail, there is also talk that the use of minipublics may backfire. When the government disregards a minipublic's recommendations, this could lead to more dissatisfaction than not asking for its advice in the first place. Using an online survey experiment in Belgium (n = 3,102), we find that, compared to a representative decision-making process, a minipublic tends to bring about higher political support when its recommendations are fully adopted by the government, whereas it generates lower political support when its recommendations are not adopted. This study presents novel insights into whether and when the use of minipublics may alleviate or aggravate political dissatisfaction among the public at large. ispartof: EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH vol:62 issue:1 pages:135-155 ispartof: location:Netherlands status: accepted

In Finland the use of public relations (PR) agencies and consultants in political decision making has increased in the last two decades. The development of the Finnish political realm has been similar to that of other Nordic countries where the PR industry has built a strong linkage to the political sphere. The present study analyses how Finnish PR consultants with a political background use and attempt to influence the news media as part of lobbying processes to advance their clients' causes. The chapter is based on 11 interviews with PR consultants that were conducted during November 2018. The main findings indicate that Finnish PR consultants consider the news media and journalists as an important part of lobbying. The media and journalists are considered supportive or alternative forums for advocacy and political debate. PR consultants use the media strategically to establish relationships and networks with journalists, and to advocate long-term political decision making and agendas. Overall, the study indicates that Finnish PR consultants want to be active political interpreters, who together with their clients engage in shaping the political agenda and discourses. This is done by taking advantage of previous political experience and networks, constructing the political agenda for media communication, organising a network of media representatives to influence and finally by framing political messages to the media. peerReviewed

Purpose is to identify the main trends and gaps in the research of foreign scientists on the topic “Game modeling of political space”.Methods. In this review, the authors used a semi-systematic method of researching the literature, in which at the first stage they used quantitative methods, and then the selected array of publications was investigated by the integrative method, revealing theoretical studies and practical results of the application of game political components.Results. Based on the selected foreign publication stream on the topic “game modeling of political space” by the method of semi-systematic analysis, six main trends in the study and application of game theory and game modeling in political discourse have been identified:considering the value of game modeling through the prism of interaction, not collision of actors;application of game modeling in the development and adoption of political decisions;development of new approaches to the analysis of the very methodology of game modeling in politics;game as a form of effective political communication;study of game theory on the basis of fundamental classical monographs of the mid-20th century as applied to the solution of pressing political problems;application of game modeling in predicting election results, especially in those political systems that are based on the theory of rational choice during voting.A lacuna in the studies of recent decades has identified the issue of using political game modeling in electoral processes. Despite the continuing relevance of the topic of elections around the world, no significant volume of publications was selected.Conclusions. Foreign researchers use the potential of game modeling in politics more often and more multifaceted than in domestic political science. Evolutionary game-theoretic models are used not only to model political and international processes themselves, but also to related social spheres, such as economics, religious and ethnic relations. Game theory is used to study a wide range of social and political problems and social phenomena: voting, fundamentalism, religious and ethnic conflicts, civil violence.

This study attempts to utilise Moral Foundation Theory-based framing to impact on attitudes and behaviours towards refugees amongst individuals residing in the UK.

Galeotti argues that we can gain a better understanding of political decision making by drawing upon the notion of self-deception and offers a rich articulation of what self-deception is, and how and why it exerts influence upon political decision making, especially in high-stakes contexts where the decision seems to be counter to rationality. But such contexts are also explicable from a different perspective, with different theoretical resources. In recent years the field of ‘virtue epistemology’ has discussed a wide range of epistemic vices – traits of character, and cognitive strategies, that stand in the way of gaining knowledge. This raises questions about how an explanation of political decision making in terms of self-deception relates to an explanation in terms of epistemic vice. Because the notion of epistemic vice applies to self-deception and to other cognitive deficiencies, it is argued that the broader notion of epistemic vice might be explanatorily richer, and more useful.

Across established democracies, citizens express high levels of support for decision making via referendums. What drives these preferences remains yet unclear. In this article it is argued that, first, process preferences are less stable than previously assumed but vary substantially across policy proposals. Second, it is suggested that instrumental considerations play an important role in shaping citizens' preferences for referendums. Specifically, citizens who favour the policy proposal or believe that they hold a majority opinion are expected to express more support for the use of referendums. An original survey was designed and conducted in the Netherlands (N = 1,289) that contains both between and within respondent variation across a range of policy proposals. The findings support these arguments: Both the desire for a specific policy change and the perception of being in the majority with one's policy preference relate to support for the use of referendums across policy proposals, levels of governance, and between and within respondents. This study contributes to a better understanding of process preferences by showing that these preferences have a non-stable component and that instrumental considerations play an important role in citizens' support for referendums. ispartof: EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH vol:59 issue:2 pages:312-330 ispartof: location:Netherlands status: published

Heuristics have rapidly become a core concept in the study of political behavior. The term heuristic stems from the ancient Greek heuriskein, which means “to discover.” In psychology and political science, the term is used to describe cognitive shortcuts in decision making under uncertainty. The key idea is that decision makers with limited time, information, or resources use such shortcuts, thereby bypassing a certain amount of information to reach appropriate decisions. In this sense, heuristics contrast with classical rational choice. Using heuristics allows efficient decision making but can lead to biases, errors, and suboptimal decisions. Heuristics allow decision makers to draw inferences, to fill in information gaps, and to form an impression of the decision at hand. Indeed, they may be the only way to come to grips with uncertainty, especially when a decision is urgent. In political science, the concept of heuristics, originating in mathematics, economics, and psychology, has long been hailed as a possible remedy to citizens’ lack of political knowledge. Citizens participate in democratic decisions, but these decisions often pose high cognitive and informational demands. Ideally, citizens with little information about a political issue or about a candidate could use heuristics in order to reach decisions resembling those of their more well-informed peers. More recently, however, the possible biases introduced by reliance on heuristics, in particular partisan bias and a lack of consideration of different alternatives, has received more attention. Moreover, some studies show that heuristics can be used most efficiently by voters who are relatively well informed and highly interested in politics. The question of whether, or under which circumstances, heuristics can be a useful tool for democratic decision making has not yet been answered conclusively.

Despite widespread public opposition to the Iraq War, numerous democracies joined the US-led multinational force. However, while some stayed until the end of coalition operations, and several increased their deployments over time, others left unilaterally. How to explain this variation? While some studies suggest that democratic defection from security commitments is primarily motivated by electoral incentives or leadership change, scholars have not reached a consensus on this issue. To account for the complex interplay between causal factors, this article develops an integrative theoretical framework, using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) on original data on the Iraq War involvement of 51 leaders from 29 democracies. The findings document the existence of multiple paths towards coalition defection. Among others, the results show that: (1) leadership change led to early withdrawal only when combined with leftist partisanship and the absence of upcoming elections; (2) casualties and coalition commitment played a larger role than previously assumed; and (3) coalition defection often occurred under the same leaders who had made the initial decision to deploy to Iraq, and who did not face elections when they made their withdrawal announcements.

Recent scholarship in security studies has started to explore the causes and consequences of various forms of national restrictions in multinational military operations (MMOs). This article makes a conceptual contribution to this literature by developing a theoretical framework of national restrictions in MMOs that distinguishes between structural, procedural, and operational restrictions. I argue that these types of restrictions are governed by different causal mechanisms. Structural restrictions are relatively stable over time and effect deployment decisions irrespective of other factors. Procedural restrictions, on the other hand, can constitute veto points against deployment only in combination with distinct political preferences. Finally, operational restrictions directly affect the rules of engagement of troop contributing countries. The article illustrates the three types of restrictions and their interaction with empirical examples from a range of countries and sketches their impact on MMO deployment decisions and mandates.

Expected utility theory is widely used to formally model decisions in situations where outcomes are uncertain. As uncertainty is arguably commonplace in political decisions, being able to take that uncertainty into account is of great importance when building useful models and interpreting empirical results. Expected utility theory has provided possible explanations for a host of phenomena, from the failure of the median voter theorem to the making of vague campaign promises and the delegation of policymaking. A good expected utility model may provide alternative explanations for empirical phenomena and can structure reasoning about the effect of political actors’ goals, circumstances, and beliefs on their behavior. For example, expected utility theory shows that whether the median voter theorem can be expected to hold or not depends on candidates’ goals (office, policy, or vote seeking), and the nature of their uncertainty about voters. In this way expected utility theory can help empirical researchers derive hypotheses and guide them towards the data required to exclude alternative explanations. Expected utility has been especially successful in spatial voting models, but the range of topics to which it can be applied is far broader. Applications to pivotal voting or politicians’ redistribution decisions show this wider value. However, there is also a range of promising topics that have received ample attention from empirical researchers, but that have so far been largely ignored by theorists applying expected utility theory. Although expected utility theory has its limitations, more modern theories that build on the expected utility framework, such as prospect theory, can help overcome these limitations. Notably these extensions rely on the same modeling techniques as expected utility theory and can similarly elucidate the mechanisms that may explain empirical phenomena. This structured way of thinking about behavior under uncertainty is the main benefit provided by both expected utility theory and its extensions.

Voters prefer political candidates who are currently in office (incumbents) over new candidates (challengers). Using the premise of query theory (Johnson, Häubl & Keinan, 2007), we clarify the underlying cognitive mechanisms by asking whether memory retrieval sequences affect political decision making. Consistent with predictions, Experiment 1 (N= 256) replicated the incumbency advantage and showed that participants tended to first query information about the incumbent. Experiment 2 (N= 427) showed that experimentally manipulating participants’ query order altered the strength of the incumbency advantage. Experiment 3 (N= 713) replicated Experiment 1 and, in additional experimental conditions, showed that the effects of incumbency can be overridden by more valid cues, like the candidates’ ideology. Participants queried information about ideologically similar candidates earlier and also preferred these ideologically similar candidates. This is initial evidence for a cognitive, memory-retrieval process underling the incumbency advantage and political decision making.

Research on policy agendas and agenda-setting has developed into an important subdiscipline of comparative politics, which seeks to understand how political actors allocate scarce attention. The theoretical origins of the field describe agenda-setting as a “conflict of conflicts,” that is the political struggle over the question of which issues receive attention. Modern scholars have expanded on these ideas and turned them into important theoretical models of the agenda-setting process. The most influential of these models are Kingdon’s multiple streams approach and Baumgartner and Jones’ punctuated equilibrium theory. The former analyses the emergence of issues in the separate streams of policies, politics, and problems, whose coupling is necessary for any issue in order to be considered for political decision-making. In contrast, the latter stresses the importance of negative and positive feedback mechanisms in order to explain long periods of incremental policy change and sudden radical changes, which characterize the policy process. Inspired by the second approach is the Comparative Agendas Project, which is a comprehensive and comparative data collection effort about policy agendas using a unified taxonomy. These data enable scholars to research the entire political process from media inputs via government throughput to legislative output. Studying governmental agendas, it is paramount to stress that—against common wisdom—political ideology does not play a decisive role in the agenda-setting process. Rather, both leftist and rightist governments seek to portray themselves as potent problem-solvers and respond to problematic societal condition in order to prove their competence. Looking at the media as one potentially powerful political agenda-setter, it turns out that newspapers and television channels’ power to steer the political agenda hinges on a variety of conditions. Generally, media outlets are most successful in setting the agenda if they report on issues that otherwise would not have been brought to the public’s attention. But even then, the media’s role appears to be restricted to narrowing down the issue menu from which politicians can choose when setting their agenda. The study of political agendas is by no means limited to these areas, as shown by the hundreds of articles that have been published in major political science journals over the past decades. While the agenda approach has not yet developed into a theory of politics, it has certainly become a major subdiscipline of comparative politics, which has helped make sense of the political world.

Does evidence help politicians make informed decisions even if it is at odds with their prior beliefs? And does providing more evidence increase the likelihood that politicians will be enlightened by the information? Based on the literature on motivated political reasoning and the theory about affective tipping points, this article hypothesizes that politicians tend to reject evidence that contradicts their prior attitudes, but that increasing the amount of evidence will reduce the impact of prior attitudes and strengthen their ability to interpret the information correctly. These hypotheses are examined using randomized survey experiments with responses from 954 Danish politicians, and results from this sample are compared to responses from similar survey experiments with Danish citizens. The experimental findings strongly support the hypothesis that politicians are biased by prior attitudes when interpreting information. However, in contrast to expectations, the findings show that the impact of prior attitudesincreaseswhen more evidence is provided.

Analyzing political text can answer many pressing questions in political science, from understanding political ideology to mapping the effects of censorship in authoritarian states. This makes the study of political text and speech an important part of the political science methodological toolbox. The confluence of increasing availability of large digital text collections, plentiful computational power, and methodological innovations has led to many researchers adopting techniques of automatic text analysis for coding and analyzing textual data. In what is sometimes termed the “text as data” approach, texts are converted to a numerical representation, and various techniques such as dictionary analysis, automatic scaling, topic modeling, and machine learning are used to find patterns in and test hypotheses on these data. These methods all make certain assumptions and need to be validated to assess their fitness for any particular task and domain.

Voters prefer political candidates who are currently in office (incumbents) over new candidates (challengers). Using the premise of query theory (Johnson, Häubl & Keinan, 2007), we clarify the underlying cognitive mechanisms by asking whether memory retrieval sequences affect political decision making. Consistent with predictions, Experiment 1 (N = 256) replicated the incumbency advantage and showed that participants tended to first query information about the incumbent. Experiment 2 (N = 427) showed that experimentally manipulating participants’ query order altered the strength of the incumbency advantage. Experiment 3 (N = 713) replicated Experiment 1 and, in additional experimental conditions, showed that the effects of incumbency can be overridden by more valid cues, like the candidates’ ideology. Participants queried information about ideologically similar candidates earlier and also preferred these ideologically similar candidates. This is initial evidence for a cognitive, memory-retrieval process underling the incumbency advantage and political decision making.

Legal democracies have been facing with the evolution of a system of administrative activity judicial review. Meanwhile the evolving of the Judicial Control over the Public Administration in different countries of civil law systems has produced even in Albania the possibility of a specific judiciary control over the Public Administration in an extended way. The new Albanian Law on Administrative Courts (Law 49/2012) provides the power of the Administrative Court of Appeal to judge as a Court of First Instance, in the cases regarding controversies on normative administrative acts. It is a new open door to judge political decision makers, with some implicit consequences on the entire system. Those acts are produced as a further explanation and specification of the Law. Meanwhile they also express the Government Political Direction and Political will. The most important issue which may rise in this case is: How can an Administrative Court judge on the Executive Political Decision? May a Court judge the political will of the Executive? This power, given to the court, if we refer to administrative normative acts produced by public authorities of political nature, is in substance in contrast to the right of exercising political powers. This power to judge the politics should be evaluated case by case, but also some guiding lines should be established. These should be some basic guiding criteria and limits to be followed by the judges in the evaluation of objectives, purposes, aims or proportionality to the situation that has imposed the law. In most of the judiciary systems, the limits of reciprocal control between powers of the state remain a never ending process of practice. It is usual that the law gives to the administration a wide margin of opportunity. The way how executive would use its discretionarily, should be judged in an appropriate way by courts. The limits of court interference in administrative decision making would produce a fair system of judiciary control but may be even an usurpation of government independence of political decision making or administrative flexibility.

Whether in multilateral negotiations or bilateral meetings, government leaders regularly engage in “two-level games” played simultaneously at the domestic and the international level. From the two-level-games perspective, executives are “chief negotiators” involved in some form of international negotiations for which they ultimately need to gain domestic approval at the ratification stage. This ratification requirement provides the critical link between the international and domestic level, but it can be based on formal voting requirements or more informal ways of ratification, such as public approval ratings. With its focus on government leaders as “gatekeepers” and central actors in international negotiations, the two-level games perspective constitutes a distinct approach in foreign policy analysis and serves to reintegrate the subfields of comparative politics and international relations. While there are similarities to a liberal perspective, two-level games emphasize that executives hold a certain degree of autonomy in their decision making that cannot be purely derived from their constituencies. Unlike realism, however, the approach recognizes the importance of domestic veto players and institutional constraints. Since its inception in the late 1980s, a vast body of literature on two-level games has evolved including refinements of its theoretical foundation and applications in various policy areas. Against this background, this essay engages with key controversies in two-level games and foreign policy analysis throughout the last three decades. The discussion is organized along six debates concerning the levels of analysis, domestic political institutions, the interaction between the domestic and international levels, relevant actors, their interests and preferences, and the relationship between comparative politics and international relations.

While parliaments have long been neglected actors in the analysis of security policy, recent studies indicate a slowly growing research literature on the subject. This introduction to a special issue on parliaments in security policy critically reviews this literature. It argues that current research is focused primarily on how parliaments, relying on formal legal competences, can constrain governmental policies and that this research needs expansion in three areas. First, informal sources of parliamentary influence on security policy deserve more systematic attention as the significance of parliaments in concrete cases often hinges on contextual factors and individual decision-makers. Secondly, we still lack a systematic understanding of the effects of parliamentary involvement on security policy and especially broader patterns that would be discernible across a wider variety of countries and policies. Finally, the role of parliaments for the politics of security is almost completely uncharted territory so far. When parliaments become involved in security policy, does this foster transparency and contribute to the politicization of security policy so that security policy becomes a “normal” political issue? The article reviews current research, derives findings from the contributions to this special issue, and spells out their wider implications for the study of domestic politics and international relations, before concluding with some avenues for future research.

What defines a Swedish university college? This is the overarching question in this archival study of the development of the Swedish university colleges during the past 35 years. The objective of the study is to explore the binary elements in the overall unitary Swedish university system. Departing from existing macro level research on the university colleges (UCs), this study focuses on one single UC. Development of the UC was conceptualized as a question of decision-making in the UC in interplay with political decisions. The UC was explored by taking an extensive inductive approach starting from the original Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice, a perspective on organizations that focuses on the temporal order emerging from decisions, rather than enduring orders. Nine decisions situations in the UC were identified as well as four political reforms. The study shows that the concept “streams” from the model are the phenomena occupying organization members mind over time, thus constituting a recurring element although not an enduring order, tying together the temporal orders. The streams are shared between the UC and political decision-making; the two decision-making entities both take part in forming the streams over time. The streams are: (1) the academic discipline; (2) the vocational education; (3) research as a means to enhance the quality of education; and (4) regional relevance. The study proposes the emergence of a fifth stream, the research profile, which is taken to be a unique stream for the UCs in general, that differentiates them from the universities. The analysis shows that the UC continuously adjusts the law to the organizational conditions rather than implements legislation when new, hence offering a perspective on organizational change as a persistent condition inherent in the organizational body rather than definable events. By using the concept stream the study suggests a conceptualization of the political influence on the UC organizational body as well as a conceptualization of how the UC influence political decisions. This conceptualization provides a novel perspective on the relationship between state and the universities. A perspective that can be explored in future research, focusing on mutual adjustments of the streams.

The article analyzes the question of whether career politicians differ systematically from the general population in terms of their attitudes toward risk. A written survey of members of the 17th German Bundestag in late 2011 identified their risk attitudes, and the survey data was set in relation to respondents to the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the survey year 2009 (2002 through 2012). Compared with the population surveyed in the SOEP, members of the German parliament display a considerably higher general risk appetite, which is highly significant. For different areas of risk, last surveyed in the SOEP in 2009, the members of parliament had significantly stronger risk-loving attitudes across virtually all indicators and risk categories surveyed than the comparison groups of SOEP respondents. In der Politik sind wie im Geschäftsleben oft riskante beziehungsweise gefährliche Entscheidungen zu treffen, bei denen die Ergebnisse nur schwer oder gar nicht prognostizierbar sind. Da Menschen in ihren Einstellungen gegenüber Risiken und Gefahren variieren, ist es vernünftig, dass in Lebensbereichen, die unterschiedlich riskante Entscheidungen erfordern, Menschen mit unterschiedlichen Risikoeinstellungen tätig sind. So wurde schon immer beobachtet, dass Unternehmer ein höheres Maß an Risikofreude zeigen als abhängig Beschäftigte. Für diesen Bericht wurde Ende des Jahres 2011 mit Hilfe einer statistischen Erhebung die Risikoeinstellung von Mitgliedern des Deutschen Bundestags (MdB) ermittelt. Demnach sind diese weit überdurchschnittlich risikofreudig; sie sind sogar deutlich risikofreudiger als Selbständige. Man kann dies kritisch sehen: Politiker sind bereit, höhere Risiken einzugehen, als es die Bevölkerung im Durchschnitt tun würde. Insofern sind Politiker keine repräsentativen Vertreter des Volkes. Wir interpretieren diesen Befund jedoch positiv, als eine gesellschaftlich sinnvolle "Arbeitsteilung" zwischen Bürgern, Wählern und Politikern im Rahmen einer repräsentativen Demokratie, die Risikofreude und Macht institutionell begrenzt.

We generalize the War of Attrition model to allow for N + K firms competing for N prizes. Two special cases are of particular interest. First, if firms continue to pay their full costs after dropping out (as in a standard-setting context), each firm's exit time is independent both of K and of the actions of other players. Second, in the limit in which firms pay no costs after dropping out (as in a natural-oligopoly problem), the field is immediately reduced to N + 1 firms. Furthermore, we have perfect sorting, so it is always the K - 1 lowest-value players who drop out in zero time, even though each player's value is private information to the player. We apply our model to politics, explaining the length of time it takes to collect a winning coalition to pass a bill.

The current state of research does not tell us much about citizens’ expectations of political decision making. Most surveys allow respondents to evaluate how the current system is working, but do not inquire about alternative political decision-making procedures. The lack of established survey items can be explained by the fact that radical changes in decision-making procedures have been hard to envisage, but also by a general scepticism regarding people’s ability to form opinions on these matters. Political processes are, without doubt, complex matters that do not lend themselves very well to simplistic survey questions. Moreover, previous research has convincingly shown that most people in general have difficulties forming single, coherent and stable attitudes even towards far more straightforward political issues. In order to determine if trying to grasp attitudes towards political decision-making in future empirical studies can be considered a fruitful endeavour, this study sets out to critically assess the extent to which people express coherent preferences on these matters, and if preferences are in line with expectations in previous, rather scattered research. The study is based on the Finnish National Election Study 2011; a study which, contrary to most other election studies, includes a rich variety of survey items on the topic, and utilises a combination of strategies in order to explore patterns in the opinions held by citizens.El estado actual de las investigaciones no nos dice mucho sobre las expectativas de los ciudadanos con respecto a la toma de decisiones políticas. La mayoría de las encuestas permiten que quienes las responden evalúen cómo funciona el sistema actual, pero no preguntan por procedimientos alternativos de decisión política. La falta de preguntas de encuesta contrastadas se puede explicar tanto por el hecho de que los cambios en los procedimientos de toma de decisiones han resultado difíciles de prever, como por el escepticismo general con respecto a la capacidad de las personas para formarse una opinión sobre estos asuntos. Los procesos políticos son, sin duda, asuntos complejos que no se prestan bien a preguntas simplistas de encuesta. Además, los estudios previos han demostrado convincentemente que la mayoría de la gente tiene dificultades en general para adoptar una actitud única, estable y coherente que tenga que ver con asuntos políticos incluso mucho más directos. Para determinar si el hecho de intentar captar las actitudes hacia la toma de decisiones políticas en futuros estudios empíricos es una empresa fructífera, este estudio pretende valorar críticamente hasta qué punto la gente expresa preferencias coherentes sobre estos asuntos, y si esas preferencias están en consonancia con lo que se esperaba en las dispersas investigaciones previas. Este estudio se basa en la Encuesta Electoral Finlandesa de 2011, un estudio que, a diferencia de la mayoría de los estudios electorales, incluye una rica variedad de preguntas de encuestas sobre este tema y utiliza una combinación de estrategias para buscar algún patrón en la opinión de los ciudadanos.

Introduction Cette contribution présente l’apport théorique d’une recherche-intervention évaluative commanditée. Celle-ci s’inscrit dans l’appel à projets lancé en 2009 par le Haut-Commissariat à la Jeunesse aux Sports et à la Vie Associative, devenu Fond d’Expérimentations pour la Jeunesse [FEJ]. Premier d’une série de trois, cet appel avait pour ambition de soutenir le développement d’expérimentations sociales à la condition qu’elles puissent être évaluées. Selon les termes du FEJ l’expérim...

Политические сети часто представляются наиболее адекватным инструментом для рекламирования централизованного, вертикального процесса принятия решений. Чаще всего политические сети ассоциируются в литературе с либеральными демократиями. В настоящей статье мы придерживаемся мнения, что данный феномен характерен сегодня для всех режимов, вне зависимости от степени их демократизации. Политические сети оказывают колоссальное влияние на процесс принятия решений и используют для этой цели как открытые, так и неформальные, теневые каналы воздействия на правительство. Мы предлагаем использовать термины открытых и латентных политических сетей, соответствующих тому или иному характеру их взаимодействия с официальной властью в стране. Оба вида сетей представляют собой существенный источник политического риска для частных инвесторов. В статье особое внимание уделяется вопросам отсутствия законодательного и административного закрепления принципов и процедур гражданского контроля над деятельностью сетей и опасности, которую их деятельность представляет для свободных экономических акторов. В то время, как открытые сети трансформируют саму природу политического риска, становясь мультипликатором его первоисточников, а также причиной возникновения все новых видов политических рисков, латентные сети опасны своей непрозрачностью и стохастическим характеров продуцируемых ими опасностей. Развитие латентных сетей делает политический риск все более непредсказуемым и в связи с этим существенным образом ограничивает эффективность традиционных методов корпоративного риск-менеджмента., Policy networks are often seen as the most adequate instrument for the reformation of centralised vertical policy-making process. Even though the concept is usually associated with liberal democracies, we challenge this position by demonstrating that policy networks also exist in less democratic regimes. In both liberal and authoritarian democracies they influence public decision-making process either through direct interactions with the government or through the use of informal, hidden means of pressure. Correspondingly, these forms of activity refer to open and shadow policy networking, and both represent a substantial source of political risk for commercial entities. This paper aims to demonstrate the legal and procedural insufficiencies of public control over policy networks and warns about the risks they bring to private investors. While open policy networks change the nature of risk by diversifying and multiplying its sources, shadow networks are all the more dangerous since their activity is generally non-transparent. With shadow policy networks the risk becomes almost unpredictable and therefore greatly limits the efficiency of traditional enterprise risk-management tools.

This study examines adolescents' evaluation of the fairness of three forms of democratic decision-making procedures (direct democracy, representative democracy and group representation) and one non-democratic procedure (oligarchy). Social dominance orientation-Egalitarianism (SDO-E), religious group identification and the countries' level of democracy are examined as predictors. The 2008 Europroject dataset was used, which contained 4441 native majority adolescents (mean age=16.1years) in 18 European countries. Adolescents evaluated direct democracy as most fair, followed by group representation, representative democracy and oligarchy. This rank order was found independent of the issue under consideration (moral or social), and of SDO-E and religious identification, and across the countries. In addition, adolescents scoring higher on SDO-E and on religious identification found group representation and non-democratic oligarchy fairer.

This study examines adolescents' evaluation of the fairness of three forms of democratic decision-making procedures (direct democracy, representative democracy and group representation) and one non-democratic procedure (oligarchy). Social dominance orientation-Egalitarianism (SDO-E), religious group identification and the countries' level of democracy are examined as predictors. The 2008 Europroject dataset was used, which contained 4441 native majority adolescents (mean age=16.1years) in 18 European countries. Adolescents evaluated direct democracy as most fair, followed by group representation, representative democracy and oligarchy. This rank order was found independent of the issue under consideration (moral or social), and of SDO-E and religious identification, and across the countries. In addition, adolescents scoring higher on SDO-E and on religious identification found group representation and non-democratic oligarchy fairer.

The arrival of the modern matron into the NHS acute setting in 2001 was in response to increased public and political concern regarding standards of nursing care and the quality of patient care. As a politically motivated initiative, the modern matron role and its relationship with the concept of the traditional matron has been extensively debated. The aims of this study were to explore: 1. How far the modern matron represents continuity between the traditional matrons of the mid 20th century and the present day. 2. What socio-political forces led to the development and establishment of the modern matron? 3. From the perspective of health professionals, what impact has the modern matron had on the quality of patient care? Adopting a case study design underpinned by realistic evaluation, the study involved interviewing patients and a carer, a focus group and interviews with staff and national policy leads. Documentary analysis was undertaken on a set of traditional matron archives. A number of key themes emerged from the research, including: the importance of uniform and visibility, patient expectations, the impact of policy processes and the political rationale for national policy change. Conflict between ensuring nursing quality and operational demands, which acts as a barrier to the modern matron role, was also found. Long-held assumptions about the functions and the positioning of the traditional matron are explored, with continuity and divergence between the traditional and modern matron roles revealed. Using a realistic evaluation approach, the findings were framed whilst considering the structural and generative elements, which resulted in social interplay or visible phenomena and provided an explanation for the predicament of the modern matron. The key conclusions were that national policy decisions appeared to be diluted once locally implemented. Modern matrons in part did positively impact on care quality. The introduction of modern matrons and the quality agenda may have been the start of a national discussion about how to continually improve patient care in an arena where intermittent care quality challenges which give concern. The effect of previous national policies that impacted on senior nurses may have diverted them away from their core purpose – patient care. The modern matron guidance may have been limited before publication by the inference within it about limiting the authority of the new post-holders. There was limited evidence of the modern matrons’ visibility to patients and this was reflected by the traditional matron’s accounts. The expectation of modern matrons’ physical presence may have been drawn from assumptions embedded in nostalgia and media portrayal of the traditional matron. The thesis concludes with implications for strategic nurse leaders and national policy leads to consider how the organisational arrangements for secondary care can best support and secure the ultimate aim of consistent provision of good quality nursing care.

Das Papier geht der Frage nach, ob sich Berufspolitikerinnen und Berufspolitiker in ihren Risikoeinstellungen systematisch von der allgemeinen Bevölkerung unterscheiden. In einer schriftlichen Befragung von Mitgliedern des 17. Deutschen Bundestags wurde Ende 2011 die Risikoeinstellungen ermittelt und die erhobenen Daten in Relation zu Befragten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP) aus dem Erhebungsjahr 2009 gesetzt (2004 bis 2012). Abgeordnete des Deutschen Bundestags weisen für die allgemeine Risikobereitschaft im Vergleich mit den Ergebnissen des SOEP eine hochsignifikante und deutlich höhere Risikobereitschaft auf. Für differenzierte Risikobereiche, die im SOEP zuletzt im Jahr 2009 erhoben wurden, weisen die Abgeordneten über nahezu alle erhobenen Indikatoren und Risikodomänen hinweg signifikant risikofreudigere Einstellungen auf als die Vergleichsgruppen der Befragten des SOEP. The paper seeks to answer whether career politicians differ systematically from the general population in terms of their attitudes toward risk. A written survey of members of the 17th German Bundestag in late 2011 identified their risk attitudes, and the survey data was set in relation to respondents of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the survey year 2009 (2002 through 2012). Compared with the population surveyed in the SOEP, members of the German parliament display a considerably higher general risk appetite, which is highly significant. For different areas of risk, last surveyed in the SOEP in 2009, the members of parliament had significantly stronger risk-loving attitudes across virtually all indicators and risk categories surveyed than the comparison groups of SOEP respondents.

*Bakırtaş, İbrahim ( Aksaray, Yazar ), Bu çalışmanın amacı politik karar alma sürecinde oylama gücünün ekonomik büyüme üzerindeki etkilerini incelemektir. Çalışmada politik karar alma sürecinde meclisteki partilerin oylama güçlerinde yaşanan değişimlerin ekonomik büyümeyi etkilediği ileri sürülmektedir. Partilerin oylama güçleri Normalize Edilmiş Banzhaf Oylama Güç İndeksi (NBI) tekniği ile hesaplanmıştır. 1987-2009 periyodunda 47 ülkenin parlamentolarında yer alan politik partiler için yıllık olarak üç farklı oylama güç indeks değeri hesaplanmıştır. Panel veri yöntemiyle yapılan analiz sonuçlarına göre; hükümetin veya hükümeti kuran politik partinin oylama gücündeki artış ekonomik büyümeyi pozitif yönde etkilerken; ana muhalefet partisinin oylama gücündeki artış ekonomik büyümeyi negatif yönde etkilemektedir., The purpose of this study is analyzing the impacts of voting power on the economic growth in the political decision making process. In the study; it is proposed that the changes of voting power, which the parties in the assembly have, affect the economic growth. Voting power of parties calculated by the Normalized Banzhaf Index of Power (NBI) technique. In the period of 1987-2009, three different voting power indexes were calculated for the political parties in the parlements of 47 countries. According to results of the analysis, which was done by the panel data method, the increase in the voting power of main opposition party affects the economic growth negavitely, while the increase in the voting power of the government or the party that forms the government affects the economic growth positively.

Which motives drive the decision of a voter to approve or reject a policy proposal? The Public Choice literature distinguishes between instrumental and expressive voting motives. We investigate the importance of these motives by analysing the patterns of neural activity in different voting situations. We conduct an fMRI-experiment which investigates neural activation at the moment of voting and use the altruism scale proposed by Tankersley et al. (2007) to differentiate between altruists and non-altruists. Non-altruists show neural activation patterns that are consistent with expressive voting motives. Among non-altruists, we also find activation patterns that point at egoistic instrumental motives. Both results are in line with the corresponding Public Choice literature. On the other hand, we find no evidence for expressive voting motives among altruists. Their neural activation pattern is generally much less conclusive with respect to the underlying motives.

This study aims to analyze the effect of government's voting power in political decision making process on stock exchange market in Turkey. Therefore, we hypothesize that the change in government's voting power in political decision making process significantly affects the composite index of Istanbul stock exchange market. To do so, we generated four distinct monthly voting power indices by using the normalized Banzhaf power index technique for the period of 1987:12-2007:7. Based on the results from multivariate OLS analyses we found that government's voting power index, voting power index of political party founding the government, and cumulative voting power index have statistically significant positive impact on the composite index of Istanbul stock exchange market whereas voting power index of main opposition party has statistically significant negative impact.

The low levels of scientific literacy among the general public in a society where technology penetrates all aspects of everyday life creates major citizenship problems. One of the main goals of education is increasing the civic scientific literacy of the citizens besides preparing students for science based vocations. Well educated human capital stock is important for informed decision making as well as the development of research and development activities. The quality of policy decisions is highly dependent on the level of interest, information and attitudes towards S&T. Making conscious decisions about S&T related developments is substantial for democratic participation of the public to policy making. Increasing complexity of science and technology related issues creates a gap between expert and citizen knowledge. Scientific literacy decreases this gap in terms of creating a knowledgeable approach to the controversies around scientific issues. The aim of this study is to make an operational model for explaining how civic scientific literacy affects public understanding of science and these in turn influence participation to political decision making. We analyse the effects of scientific literacy and other public understanding of science variables on participation to political decision making.

Målsättningen med uppsatsen har varit att åskådliggöra beslutsprocesserna på främst strategisk ochmilitärstrategisk nivå inför det svenska beslutet att delta i de militära FN-missionerna i Suez 1956,Kongo 1960 och på Cypern 1964. Men också att studera deployeringen vid den inledande insatsen.Uppsatsen har därmed syftat till att finna svar på varför det gick relativt fort att fatta beslut om insatssamt deployera förbanden – svar som kanske kan lära oss något inför framtida liknande beslut – tillexempel med EU Battle Group. Graham Allison’s teorier om Organizational Process ochGovernmental Politics har utgjort den vetenskapliga ramen för att hjälpa till att förklarabeslutsprocesserna. Metoden för att uppnå detta har varit att genomföra tre fallstudier över nämndainsatser med en kvalitativ granskning av olika av källor.Uppsatsen pekar på att det har funnits en stark politisk vilja att genomföra insatserna. I ett fall harregeringen förvisso varit mycket tveksam. Rent generellt har besluten fattats snabbt och effektivtinnan riksdagen gav sitt medgivande. Man kan därmed se regeringens ageranden som en syntes avbeslutsamma ledande politiker med ett tillhörande väl utvecklat regeringskansli med mycket godförmåga att koordinera sin vilja gentemot riksdagen och oppositionen i utrikesnämnden samt mot demilitära myndigheterna. I samtliga fall har delar av den militära ledningen var tveksam till insatsmed hänvisning till befälsbrist och att beredskapen skulle bli lidande. Krigsmakten har dock alltidvarit lojal och snabbt verkställt besluten.När det gäller deployeringen så pekar uppsatsen på att Sverige och FN varit beroende av främst USAnär det gäller strategiska flygtransporter. Allisons teorier har bidragit till ökad förståelse förbeslutsprocesserna The aim of this study is to reveal the decision-making process at strategic andmilitary strategic level that led to the Swedish military UN engagement inSuez 1956, Congo 1960 and Cyprus 1964. Moreover, the aim is to study thedeployment phase. The purpose is therefore to find answers, which canexplain why these decisions and deployments were made quite rapidly andwhy there were differences between and within the two levels. The historymay help us to make fasts decisions in the near future – for example, when theSwedish / Nordic EU Battle Group will be used. Graham Allison’s theoriesabout Organizational Process and Governmental Politics constitute thescientific frame. These theories help us to understand the processes and thedifferences. The method to achieve this has been to make three case studieswhere the primary and secondary sources from archives, diaries and booksetcetera have been examined.The thesis shows that there has been a strong political will in two of the cases.In the last case however, the government has been doubtful whether to takepart in the mission or not. But generally, the decisions have been maderapidly and effectively before the consent of Parliament. One could thereforesee the government’s actions as a synthesis of resolute leading politicians witha well developed cabinet, which had good ability in coordinating their willagainst Parliament and the opposition in the advisory council on foreignaffairs, as well as against the military authorities. In every case there hashowever been some reluctance from leading military generals. The lack ofenthusiasm was due to their objective during the Cold War: to keep as manyofficers and non-commissioned officers as possible in Sweden at high militarypreparedness on purpose. However, the military authorities have shown greatloyalty to the political level – they have therefore quickly executed thepolitical decisions.Furthermore, the thesis shows that both UN and Sweden have been dependenton the United States’ Air Force when it comes to strategic airlifts. Thisdependence has also been shown earlier. The Swedish Supreme Commanderasked for better airlift capacity for the benefit of the UN as late as in thesixties. Graham Allison’s theories have helped to understand both the processand the differences that have been identified. However, the theories cannotexplain all the perspectives and varieties of the decision-making process. Forexample, the role and impact of Dag Hammarskjöld 1956 and 1960 and thepressure of ”the super powers” in 1964. Avdelning: ALB - Slutet Mag 3 C-upps.Hylla: Upps. ChP 03-05

This paper surveys recent approaches towards lobbying if interest groups influence the decision of an incumbent government. It describes the two main channels of influence which mainly exist in parallel, namely contribution payments and the transmission of information through lobbying. Recent extensions to the two basic lobbying models are discussed in great detail. Thereafter follows a short overview over current research, which tries to consolidate the two distinct branches of literature into a general lobbying model. The survey concludes with a summary of the main insights and indicates promising directions of further research.

This study examines adolescents' evaluation of the fairness of three forms of democratic decision-making procedures (direct democracy, representative democracy and group representation) and one non-democratic procedure (oligarchy). Social dominance orientation-Egalitarianism (SDO-E), religious group identification and the countries' level of democracy are examined as predictors. The 2008 Europroject dataset was used, which contained 4441 native majority adolescents (mean age=16.1years) in 18 European countries. Adolescents evaluated direct democracy as most fair, followed by group representation, representative democracy and oligarchy. This rank order was found independent of the issue under consideration (moral or social), and of SDO-E and religious identification, and across the countries. In addition, adolescents scoring higher on SDO-E and on religious identification found group representation and non-democratic oligarchy fairer.