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This article analyses the political status of mothers whose children have been killed by members of the Brazilian military police and armed forces in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the course of the ‘war against drugs'. These mothers bear witness to the reality of state interference in the lives of their families. The loss of a child interrupts their intimate affective bonds and temporal linkages between the past, present and future, thereby requiring a resignification of the meaning and temporality of their lives. The war waged by the state and the mothers' struggle for justice gives rise to a social dynamic that positions these mothers in a reordering of space and a redefinition of time, creating a spatio-temporal existence of pain, despair and hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains how voter's emotional value perception of politicians affects their rational value perception and also trust in their policies, expectations for online communications and continuing political support. A research model connecting these factors is proposed with the cognitive path analysis determined by using structural equation model verification. The model verified that emotional value perception affects continuing political support. Furthermore, the emotional and rational perception of politicians by conservative voters is compared with progressive voters. For conservative voters, emotional perception has a strong influence on their rational perception and their trust in policies. For the progressive voter, communication expectation is a more important factor in garnering ongoing political support but the relationship is not statistically meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination into the influence of European integration on Swiss law making practices since 1992, highlighting differences in empirical statistics and rhetorical conceptions of the issue. Empirical data regarding trends in Europeanization between 1990 and 2010 are presented. Analysis of this data is offered in regard to time and policy field distinctions, to non-economic areas, and to distinctions between direct and indirect Europeanization.

Most measures of political decentralization seem to capture only specific facets of the concept. In particular, the excessive dependence on fiscal indicators has often been criticized since they seem unable to assess the degree of autonomy exerted by subnational governments. On the other hand, efforts directed at developing more encompassing indexes have had to rely on the aggregation of items developed by experts, a process that is prone to idiosyncratic errors. In this paper I propose the development of a measurement framework using a Bayesian factor analysis model for mixed ordinal and continuous outcomes. This model can efficiently combine multiple measures of decentralization regardless of their level of measurement, and in this way make use of both the rigour of fiscal indicators and the wider coverage of qualitative indicators. Applying this model to a set of 14 indicators I elaborate a more encompassing index of decentralization for 33 OECD countries. In order to illustrate the importance of using non-partial measures of decentralization, I use this index to replicate parts of De Mello and Barenstein (2001) exploratory analysis regarding the relationship between decentralization and corruption, showing that such relationship is practically non-existent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab is the property of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab is the property of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab is the property of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab is the property of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab is the property of Politica: Tidsskrift for Politisk Videnskab and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In typical political experiments, researchers randomize a set of households, precincts, or individuals to treatments all at once, and characteristics of all units are known at the time of randomization. However, in many other experiments, subjects “trickle in” to be randomized to treatment conditions, usually via complete randomization. To take advantage of the rich background data that researchers often have (but underutilize) in these experiments, we develop methods that use continuous covariates to assign treatments sequentially. We build on biased coin and minimization procedures for discrete covariates and demonstrate that our methods outperform complete randomization, producing better covariate balance in simulated data. We then describe how we selected and deployed a sequential blocking method in a clinical trial and demonstrate the advantages of our having done so. Further, we show how that method would have performed in two larger sequential political trials. Finally, we compare causal effect estimates from differences in means, augmented inverse propensity weighted estimators, and randomization test inversion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper introduces the mini-symposium on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and set-theoretic methods, both crisp sets and fuzzy sets, and situates the different contributions in a wider methodological debate concerning cross-case analysis. The paper argues that QCA is not just a set of techniques, but a distinctive research approach, with its own goals and set of assumptions. Concerning the wide methodological debate, special attention is paid to the added value of QCA and specific innovations introduced in the mini-symposium.This essay contrasts the conventional template for conducting social inquiry and the alternate template provided by configurational, case-oriented analytic methods, first formalized in The Comparative Method. The essential contrasts address the fundamental building blocks of social research, ranging from the definition of relevant cases to the understanding of social causation. The alternate template described in this essay provides a much stronger basis for the articulation of within-case and cross-case analysis than is offered by the conventional template.This article provides a first systematic mapping of QCA applications, building upon a database of 313 peer-reviewed journal articles. We find out that the number of QCA applications has dramatically increased during the past few years. The mapping also reveals that csQCA remains the most frequently used technique, that political science, sociology, and management are the core disciplines of application, that macrolevel analyses, medium-N designs, and a mono-method use of QCA remain predominant. A particular focus is also laid on the ratio between the number of cases and number of conditions and the compliance to benchmarks in this respect.QCA’s ability of addressing complex theoretical expectations and taking account of configurational relationships is rarely fully exploited. Assessing comparative welfare-state research, which has employed QCA, we find that only about half of the studies reviewed have expressed complex theoretical propositions in set-theoretical terms, revisited cases subsequent to the formal analysis, or subjected findings to robustness checks. We discuss the relevance of each of these three aspects and argue that carefully considering these will improve the quality of QCA applications.Contrasting insights that can be gained from large-N QCA and econometric analysis, we outline two novel ways to integrate both modes of inquiry. The first introduces QCA solutions into a regression model, while the second draws on recent work in lattice theory to integrate a QCA approach with a regression framework. These approaches allow researchers to test QCA solutions for robustness, address concerns regarding possible omitted variables, establish effect sizes, and test whether causal conditions are complements or substitutes, suggesting that an important way forward for set-theoretic analysis lies in an increased dialogue that explores complementarities with existing econometric approaches.This paper discusses five strategies to deal with five types of errors in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA): condition errors, systematic errors, random errors, calibration errors, and deviant case errors. These strategies are the comparative inspection of complex, intermediary, and parsimonious solutions; the use of an adjustment factor, the use of probabilistic criteria, the test of the robustness of calibration parameters, and the use of a frequency threshold for observed combinations of conditions. The strategies are systematically reviewed, assessed, and evaluated as regards their applicability, advantages, limitations, and complementarities.Current standard practices put sufficiency at the core of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), while the analysis of necessity is limited to the test for necessary conditions. Here, we argue that the possibilities of QCA in the latter domain are much greater. In particular, it can be used to ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this research note we briefly discuss the shortcomings of extant democracy indices such as Freedom House and Polity, upon which a good deal of social science and public policy relies. We then present the outlines of a new project, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), which takes a multidimensional, disaggregated, and historical approach to measuring democracy. When complete, the V-Dem database will provide more than 400 indicators of democracy for all countries from 1900 to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorists of international conflict argue that territory is an unusually salient issue to states and, by extension, their publics. Comparing competing insights from the 'rally-round-the-flag' literature and those derived from theories of the state, I examine which theory best explains the effects of external threats to territory on levels of domestic trust. Using information from twenty-eight Afrobarometer surveys of sixteen different countries between 1999 and 2004, I assess the relationship between external threat and political trust using cross-sectional, multilevel models. The results challenge the rally effect hypothesis and suggest that government approval moderates the effect of territorial threat on trust. These findings demonstrate the salience of territorial issues domestically and generate novel insights about approval and trust in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, the American states have implemented electoral reforms that make it easier for citizens to register and vote. This article examines the “equality effects” of these reforms: the degree to which reform serves to equalize or further skew participation rates between the rich and poor. Using the Voter Supplement to the Current Population Survey, the authors generate state-level estimates of income bias in registration and voting for elections from 1978 to 2008. Findings support their theory that some electoral reforms promote equality, while others further stratify the electorate—particularly when state registration rolls are already unrepresentative in terms of income groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Spatial diagrams of politics could and should be iconic for political science in much the same way as supply-and-demand curves are in economics. Many fundamental problems of political science can be connected with them, and many different concepts—such as ideological constraint, cross-pressures, framing, agenda-setting, political competition, voting systems, and party systems, to name just a few—can be illuminated through spatial diagrams. Spatial diagrams raise questions and provide insights. They suggest political maneuvers, possible realignments, and political problems. They provide us with revealing images that aid memory and facilitate analysis. They are a powerful way to think about politics, and we could not do better than to feature them in our textbooks, to use them in our research, and to exhibit them as our brand—as our distinctive way of thinking about how the world works [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on open-seat elections has focused on the individual attributes of a candidate and/or institutional arrangements. When a seat becomes an open contest could be a significant indicator as to how likely the incumbent party is able to maintain the seat. Examining data on open U.S. House seats from 1996 to 2008, we use OLS regression and logistic regression analysis, finding that time is a significant predictor for incumbent party fund-raising and seat maintenance. We conclude that political parties have an interest in encouraging members of Congress to announce their retirement early in the election cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide an overview of empirical evidence on the determinants of terrorism, in particular focusing on the origins and targets of transnational terrorism. We also assemble several broad theoretical families that relate terrorism to, e.g., economic, political and institutional and demographic factors. We provide a critical discussion of the existing empirical evidence and refer to a number of areas of future research before describing some modest policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions, if any, does the mass electorate hold congressional members accountable for their records on specific issues? We examine this question on the issue of crime, for which salience has varied substantially and opinion has favored Republicans, and the environment, for which salience has not varied much and voters have favored Democrats. Because different parametric specifications produce divergent findings, we utilize matching analysis in addition to ordinary least squares. The tests suggest that issue accountability exists even controlling for a member's overall record. However, such accountability depends crucially on issue salience and a member's partisan affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the relationship between informal institutions and public goods in failed states. The 2007 edition of the Failed States Index, published by the Fund for Peace, is incorporated into a mathematical formula which quantifies the impact of culture on state failure. Statistics related to judicial independence, proportional representation, and gross domestic product are cited, and the results of regression analysis using the Failed States Index as a dependent variable are presented. The formula indicates that informal institutions are more relevant to state failure than formal institutions.

The use of instrumental variables regression in political science has evolved from an obscure technique to a staple of the political science tool kit. Yet the surge of interest in the instrumental variables method has led to implementation of uneven quality. After providing a brief overview of the method and the assumptions on which it rests, we chart the ways in which these assumptions are invoked in practice in political science. We review more than 100 articles published in the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, and World Politics over a 24-year span. We discuss in detail two noteworthy applications of instrumental variables regression, calling attention to the statistical assumptions that each invokes. The concluding section proposes reporting standards and provides a checklist for readers to consider as they evaluate applications of this method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a seminal article, suggested that electoral systems with larger district magnitudes provide incentives for parties to advocate more extreme policy positions. In this article, we put this proposition to the test. Informed by recent advances in spatial models of party competition, we introduce a design that embeds the effect of electoral rules in the utility function of voters. We then estimate the equilibrium location of parties as the weight voters attach to the expected distribution of seats and votes changes. Our model predicts that electoral rules affect large and small parties in different ways. We find centripetal effects only for parties that are favorably biased by electoral rules. By contrast, smaller parties see their vote share decline and are pushed toward more extreme equilibrium positions. Evidence from 13 parliamentary democracies supports model predictions. Along with testing the incentives provided by electoral rules, results carry implications for the strategies of vote-maximizing parties and for the role of small parties in multiparty competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies in economics and political science include the concept of ethnic diversity as a key independent variable in empirical studies. To date, however, only single-dimensional measures of ethnic diversity, such as ethnic fractionalization, have been available. In this paper, I define and measure three multidimensional characteristics of social structure—cross-cuttingness, cross-fractionalization, and subgroup fractionalization—and present a new cross-national data set comprised of indices along combinations of five cleavages: race, language, religion, region, and income. After addressing important definitional and measurement issues, I discuss the data and show how their inclusion in economic growth regressions reopens the theoretical debate regarding the influence of ethnic diversity, indicating the potential for these new indices to shed light on the role of ethnic diversity (and social structure more generally) with regards to a number of phenomena of concern to political scientists. The data set is publicly available from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research data archives and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science Dataverse Network. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have facilitated an explosion of interest in Bayesian methods. MCMC is an incredibly useful and important tool but can face difficulties when used to estimate complex posteriors or models applied to large data sets. In this paper, we show how a recently developed tool in computer science for fitting Bayesian models, variational approximations, can be used to facilitate the application of Bayesian models to political science data. Variational approximations are often much faster than MCMC for fully Bayesian inference and in some instances facilitate the estimation of models that would be otherwise impossible to estimate. As a deterministic posterior approximation method, variational approximations are guaranteed to converge and convergence is easily assessed. But variational approximations do have some limitations, which we detail below. Therefore, variational approximations are best suited to problems when fully Bayesian inference would otherwise be impossible. Through a series of examples, we demonstrate how variational approximations are useful for a variety of political science research. This includes models to describe legislative voting blocs and statistical models for political texts. The code that implements the models in this paper is available in the supplementary material. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ordinal variables—categorical variables with a defined order to the categories, but without equal spacing between them—are frequently used in social science applications. Although a good deal of research exists on the proper modeling of ordinal response variables, there is not a clear directive as to how to model ordinal treatment variables. The usual approaches found in the literature for using ordinal treatment variables are either to use fully unconstrained, though additive, ordinal group indicators or to use a numeric predictor constrained to be continuous. Generalized additive models are a useful exception to these assumptions. In contrast to the generalized additive modeling approach, we propose the use of a Bayesian shrinkage estimator to model ordinal treatment variables. The estimator we discuss in this paper allows the model to contain both individual group–level indicators and a continuous predictor. In contrast to traditionally used shrinkage models that pull the data toward a common mean, we use a linear model as the basis. Thus, each individual effect can be arbitrary, but the model “shrinks” the estimates toward a linear ordinal framework according to the data. We demonstrate the estimator on two political science examples: the impact of voter identification requirements on turnout and the impact of the frequency of religious service attendance on the liberality of abortion attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political scientists have increasingly focused on causal processes that operate not solely on mean differences but on other stochastic characteristics of the distribution of a dependent variable. This paper surveys important statistical tools used to assess data in situations where the entire distribution of values is of interest. We first outline three broad conditions under which stochastic process methods are applicable and show that these conditions cover many domains of social inquiry. We discuss a variety of visual and analytical techniques, including distributional analysis, direct parameter estimates of probability density functions, and quantile regression. We illustrate the utility of these statistical tools with an application to budgetary data because strong theoretical expectations at the micro- and macrolevel exist about the distributional characteristics for such data. The expository analysis concentrates on three budget series (total, domestic, and defense outlays) of the U.S. government for 1800–2004. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Methods for descriptive network analysis have reached statistical maturity and general acceptance across the social sciences in recent years. However, methods for statistical inference with network data remain fledgling by comparison. We introduce and evaluate a general model for inference with network data, the Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) and several of its recent extensions. The ERGM simultaneously allows both inference on covariates and for arbitrarily complex network structures to be modeled. Our contributions are three-fold: beyond introducing the ERGM and discussing its limitations, we discuss extensions to the model that allow for the analysis of non-binary and longitudinally observed networks and show through applications that network-based inference can improve our understanding of political phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although a growing number of political scientists are conducting randomized experiments, many of them only report the average treatment effects and do not systematically explore the variation in treatment effects across subpopulations. This is unfortunate from a scientific point of view because heterogeneous treatment effects can provide additional substantive insights. This current state of affairs is also problematic from a policy makers' perspective since such studies do not identify subgroups for which treatments are effective. In this paper, we propose a formal two-step framework that first identifies heterogeneous treatment effects from a randomized experiment and then uses this information to derive an optimal policy about which treatment should be given to whom. Our proposed method avoids the risk of false discoveries that are likely in post hoc subgroup analysis routinely conducted in the discipline. We discuss our methodology in the context of get-out-the-vote randomized field experiments and show how the proposed two-step framework can be applied in real-world settings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Leaders face multiple threats to their political survival. In addition to surviving the threats to tenure from within the existing political systems, which is modeled using Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues' (2003) selectorate theory, leaders risk being deposed through revolutions and coups. To ameliorate the threat of revolution, leaders can either increase public goods provisions to buy off potential revolutionaries or contract the provision of those public goods, such as freedom of assembly, transparency, and free press, which enable revolutionaries to coordinate. Which response a leader chooses depends upon existing institutions and the structure of government finances. These factors also affect the likelihood and direction of institutional change. Tests of leader survival indicate that revolutionary threats increase the likelihood of deposition for nondemocratic leaders. Leaders with access to resources such as foreign aid or natural resource rents are best equipped to survive these threats and avoid the occurrence of these threats in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard model of political party system density combines two traditions to explain why some countries have more political parties than others, one tradition that emphasizes social cleavages and another that emphasizes electoral institutions, especially district magnitude. Despite its considerable success, there are several reasons to be less than fully satisfied with the standard model. We examine two of these problems associated with the scope of strategic voting and the functional form of the specification used to test the model. In doing so, we contrast the standard interpretation with an organizational ecology model that accounts for what the standard model did so well, but also accounts for important anomalies it ignores. We reexamine some of the key analyses that have been used to test the standard model to assess the severity of its limitations and the utility of the rival organizational ecology account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the influence of income inequality on the public's policy mood. Recent work has produced divergent perspectives on the relationship between inequality, public opinion, and government redistribution. One group of scholars suggests that unequal representation of different income groups reproduces inequality as politicians respond to the preferences of the rich. Another group of scholars pays relatively little attention to distributional outcomes but shows that government is generally just as responsive to the poor as to the rich. Utilizing theoretical insights from comparative political economy and time-series data from 1952 to 2006, supplemented with cross-sectional analysis where appropriate, we show that economic inequality is, in fact, self-reinforcing, but that this is fully consistent with the idea that government tends to respond equally to rich and poor in its policy enactments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a Bayesian latent variable approach, we synthesize a new measure of democracy, the Unified Democracy Scores (UDS), from 10 extant scales. Our measure eschews the difficult—and often arbitrary—decision to use one existing democracy scale over another in favor of a cumulative approach that allows us to simultaneously leverage the measurement efforts of numerous scholars. The result of this cumulative approach is a measure of democracy that, for every country-year, is at least as reliable as the most reliable component measure and is accompanied by quantitative estimates of uncertainty in the level of democracy. Moreover, for those who wish to continue using previously existing scales or to evaluate research performed using those scales, we extract information from the new measure to perform heretofore impossible direct comparisons between component scales. Specifically, we estimate the relative reliability of the constituent indicators, compare the specific ordinal levels of each of the existing measures in relationship to one another and assess overall levels of disagreement across raters. We make the UDS and associated parameter estimates freely available online and provide a detailed tutorial that demonstrates how to best use the UDS in applied work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents ACLED, an Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset. ACLED codes the actions of rebels, governments, and militias within unstable states, specifying the exact location and date of battle events, transfers of military control, headquarter establishment, civilian violence, and rioting. In the current version, the dataset covers 50 unstable countries from 1997 through 2010. ACLED’s disaggregation of civil war and transnational violent events allow for research on local level factors and the dynamics of civil and communal conflict. Findings from subnational conflict research challenges conclusions from larger national-level studies. In a brief descriptive analysis, the authors find that, on average, conflict covers 15% of a state’s territory, but almost half of a state can be directly affected by internal wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, UCDP recorded 36 active armed conflicts, down by one from 2008. Having remained fairly stable over the past few years, the number of armed conflicts is now substantially lower than during the peak years of the early 1990s. But compared to the early years of this decade, the figure has increased by 24%. Six of the conflicts reached the level of war (more than 1,000 battle-related deaths) in 2009, up by one from 2008. No interstate conflict was recorded, but seven intrastate conflicts were internationalized, in the sense that one or both of the conflict parties received troops support from an external state. The most intense war in terms of fatalities was that in Sri Lanka. Eight of the armed conflicts listed for 2008 were not active in 2009, but during the year, one entirely new conflict erupted in Myanmar (Kokang), two were restarted by previously recorded actors in Angola (Cabinda) and in Rwanda and four previously recorded conflicts were restarted by new actors in Central African Republic, India (Bodoland), Nigeria and Yemen. Only one peace agreement was concluded during the year, which is decidedly lower than the annual average recorded for the past 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-n studies of conflict have produced a large number of statistically significant results but little accurate guidance in terms of anticipating the onset of conflict. The authors argue that too much attention has been paid to finding statistically significant relationships, while too little attention has been paid to finding variables that improve our ability to predict civil wars. The result can be a distorted view of what matters most to the onset of conflict. Although these models may not be intended to be predictive models, prescriptions based on these models are generally based on statistical significance, and the predictive attributes of the underlying models are generally ignored. These predictions should not be ignored, but rather need to be heuristically evaluated because they may shed light on the veracity of the models. In this study, the authors conduct a side-by-side comparison of the statistical significance and predictive power of the different variables used in two of the most influential models of civil war. The results provide a clear demonstration of how potentially misleading the traditional focus on statistical significance can be. Until out-of-sample heuristics – especially including predictions – are part of the normal evaluative tools in conflict research, we are unlikely to make sufficient theoretical progress beyond broad statements that point to GDP per capita and population as the major causal factors accounting for civil war onset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important disconnect exists between the current use of formal modeling and applied statistical analysis. In general, a lack of linkage between the two can produce statistically significant parameters of ambiguous origin that, in turn, fail to assist in falsifying theories and hypotheses. To address this scientific challenge, a framework for unification is proposed. Methodological unification leverages the mutually reinforcing properties of formal and applied statistical analysis to produce greater transparency in relating theory to test. This framework for methodological unification, or what has been referred to as the empirical implications of theoretical models (EITM), includes (1) connecting behavioral (formal) and applied statistical concepts, (2) developing behavioral (formal) and applied statistical analogues of these concepts, and (3) linking and evaluating the behavioral (formal) and applied statistical analogues. The elements of this EITM framework are illustrated with examples from voting behavior, macroeconomic policy and outcomes, and political turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a survey-based method for conducting inference into the determinants of sensitive political behavior. The approach combines two well-established literatures in statistical methods in the social sciences: the randomized response (RR) methodology utilized to reduce evasive answer bias and the generalized propensity score methodology utilized to draw inferences about causal effects in observational studies. The approach permits one to estimate the causal impact of a multivalued predictor variable of interest on a given sensitive behavior in the face of unknown interaction effects between the predictor and the confounders as well as nonlinearities in the relationship between the confounders and the sensitive behavior. Simulation results point to the superior performance of the RR relative to direct survey questioning using this method for samples of moderate to large size. The utility of the approach is illustrated through an application to corruption in the public bureaucracy in three countries in South America. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Signaling models are ubiquitous in political science. An essential characteristic of these models is that actors can update their beliefs about their opponents. An actor observes the behavior of his opponent, and this behavior functions as a signal that allows the actor to learn more about his opponent's true “type.” As a result, the actor is able to adapt his own behavior. Current statistical models of strategic choice based on perfect Bayesian equilibrium, however, allow for very little, if any, belief updating. I explain why current models allow for little updating and offer in their stead a new, fully strategic choice estimator that calculates the correct amount of belief updating. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There has been no attention to circular (purely cyclical) data in political science research. We show that such data exist and are mishandled by models that do not take into account the inherently recycling nature of some phenomenon. Clock and calendar effects are the obvious cases, but directional data are observed as well. We describe a standard maximum likelihood regression modeling framework based on the von Mises distribution, then develop a general Bayesian regression procedure for the first time, providing an easy-to-use Metropolis-Hastings sampler for this approach. Applications include a chronographic analysis of U.S. domestic terrorism and directional party preferences in a two-dimensional ideological space for German Bundestag elections. The results demonstrate the importance of circular models to handle periodic and directional data in political science. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ideological heterogeneity is a key variable for the study of legislative and electoral politics. Scholars have long recognized that members with more ideologically heterogeneous constituencies behave differently than members with more homogeneous ones. Empirical tests of these theories, however, have typically been stymied by a lack of appropriate measures. We corrected this shortcoming by developing a measurement model for ideological heterogeneity, and we used our method to generate estimates for the 50 U.S. states and 435 congressional districts. Beyond the specific results presented here, a key contribution of our model is its flexibility: our technique can be used to produce similar estimates in a variety of contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although sample selection bias is a frequent problem of applied research, there has been no generalization of sample selection models with binary dependent variables of interest to data with temporal error correlations. We suggest a generalized estimating equation approach to panel data selection models, considering binary responses in both equations. We demonstrate the utility of this model by a simulation study and by analyzing highly unbalanced annual panel data taken from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study covering two decades of Green party support. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Cox proportional hazards model is widely used to model durations in the social sciences. Although this model allows analysts to forgo choices about the form of the hazard, it demands careful attention to the proportional hazards assumption. To this end, a standard diagnostic method has been developed to test this assumption. I argue that the standard test for nonproportional hazards has been misunderstood in current practice. This test detects a variety of specification errors, and these specification errors must be corrected before one can correctly diagnose nonproportionality. In particular, unmodeled nonlinearity can appear as a violation of the proportional hazard assumption for the Cox model. Using both simulation and empirical examples, I demonstrate how an analyst might be led astray by incorrectly applying the nonproportionality test. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We look at conventional methods for removing endogeneity bias in regression models, including the linear model and the probit model. It is known that the usual Heckman two-step procedure should not be used in the probit model: from a theoretical perspective, it is unsatisfactory, and likelihood methods are superior. However, serious numerical problems occur when standard software packages try to maximize the biprobit likelihood function, even if the number of covariates is small. We draw conclusions for statistical practice. Finally, we prove the conditions under which parameters in the model are identifiable. The conditions for identification are delicate; we believe these results are new. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The outcome of the 2007 elections in France raises a number of questions about the current state of democracy in that country. To put these elections into perspective, we examine the evolution of the French party system and electorate throughout the Fifth Republic. We look first at the pattern of party electoral movement over time. Then we evaluate the partisan cycle with respect to certain equilibrium conditions, namely stability, competition, and democratic rule. Based on these patterns, we arrive at a classification of French national elections using the Michigan school's theoretical framework. A key conclusion is that, in general, these Fifth Republic elections are in disequilibrium and often fail to express the majority partisan will. The 2007 results, which represent a return of the traditional right, are examined against the Iowa forecasting model, to see if they depart from these troubling conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the length of political tenure in Canadian federally elected parliamentary governments since 1867. Using annual data on tenure length, we categorize the distribution of governing tenures in terms of a hazard function: the probability that an election will arise in each year, given that an election has not yet been called. Structuring the election call as an optimal stopping rule, we test whether that distribution responds predictably to characteristics of the political and/or economic environment. The results of using the continuous Cox and Gompertz models together with the discrete semi-parametric proportional hazard model suggest that governing parties in Canada do engage in election timing and that the only economic policy measure that is used consistently in conjunction with election timing is fiscal expenditure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-standing results demonstrate that, if policy choices are defined in spaces with more than one dimension, majority-rule equilibrium fails to exist for a general class of smooth preference profiles. This article shows that if agents perceive political similarity and difference in 'city block' terms, then the dimension-by-dimension median can be a majority-rule equilibrium even in spaces with an arbitrarily large number of dimensions and it provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such an equilibrium. This is important because city block preferences accord more closely with empirical research on human perception than do many smooth preferences. It implies that, if empirical research findings on human perceptions of similarity and difference extend also to perceptions of political similarity and difference, then the possibility of equilibrium under majority rule re-emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In political science, there are two classes of spatial models: those which are based on a distance logic and those which are based on a directional logic. This distinction can be found in terms of diverse topics, as voting theory, coalition theory or legislative politics. While Tsebelis (Br. J. Political Sci. 25:289–325, ) among others discussed implications of distance models, the respective counterparts for directional models have not been explicitly derived in the existing literature. We try to close this gap by discussing discrepancies between both kinds of models and derive some of the most relevant tools for analyses based on directional models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine a fundamental problem of politics in authoritarian regimes: the dictator and the ruling coalition must share power and govern in an environment where political influence must be backed by a credible threat of violence. I develop a model of authoritarian politics in which power sharing is complicated by this conflict of interest: by exploiting his position, the dictator may acquire more power at the expense of the ruling coalition, which may attempt to deter such opportunism by threatening to stage a coup. Two power-sharing regimes, contested and established dictatorships, may emerge as a result of strategic behavior by the dictator and the ruling coalition. This theory accounts for the large variation in the duration of dictators' tenures and the concentration of power in dictatorships over time, and it contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of power sharing and accountability in authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work on voting behavior in Congress leads to an expectation of stability in roll-call voting. Yet, there remains a degree of unexplained variability in roll-call voting. Utilizing a unique set of data from the 103rd Congress of vote switching on revotes, we seek to account for the random component of congressional voting. We offer four categories of variables to explain this instability: leeway effects, error correction, reduction in uncertainty, and bandwagon effects. While these variables explain some of the variation in vote switching, our findings show that the individual random component of roll-call voting may be more significant than previous theory has indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question: What is the political analog to Homo economicus, familiar from economics. Difficulties arise in defining what community objectives are motivations for political man. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]