Search

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association 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.)

Recent literature argues that with ever‐increasing levels of supranational constraints governments have less 'room to manoeuvre'; therefore, voters will place less weight on policy outcomes in their voting decisions. The question that remains less explored is how voters fill this accountability gap. We argue that, in this context, voters may move away from outcome‐ to input‐oriented voting. Fulfilling their promises becomes less vital for incumbents as long as they exhibit effort to overturn an unpopular policy framework. We test this argument against a survey experiment conducted in the run‐up to the September 2015 election in Greece, where we find a positive impact of the incumbent's exerted effort to challenge the status quo of austerity on vote intention for SYRIZA – the senior coalition government partner at the time – despite the failed outcome of the government's bailout negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, evidence on the relationship between democratization and reductions in military spending has accumulated. This association has proven to be robust to a wide variety of specifications and samples. Nevertheless, there remain two important gaps in our understanding of this relationship. Firstly, while most studies argue that democratic political institutions constrain the incumbents' power to allocate resources to the military, there is still disagreement about which institution. Second, empirical evidence on causality is very scarce. Endogeneity remains a difficult problem to grapple with. To address these issues, I specify a clear set of channels of interaction linking democratic political institutions to military spending. Following previous work, I also argue that political accountability constrains allocations to the military. However, I distinguish three types of accountability: horizontal, vertical and diagonal. I find that diagonal accountability is the strongest mechanism. Furthermore, I use a country's accumulated experience with political accountability as an instrumental variable to tackle the endogeneity between political accountability and military spending. I find evidence suggesting that political accountability causes military spending as a share of GDP to fall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how and when institutional actors can shape overlap with other international organisations. Growing overlap either poses the threat of marginalisation to the incumbent organisation or offers opportunities for cooperation. Institutional actors should therefore be expected to try shape the relations with the overlapping organisation to protect their own. The article theorises that institutional actors can shape overlap if they possess sufficient institutional capacity and face a favourable opportunity structure. Whether institutional actors embrace or resist overlap, in turn, depends on their perception of the nature of the domain expansion of the other international organisation. Relying on 20 interviews with senior officials, the article probes the argument against the case of the growing overlap between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union resulting from the latter's recent security and defence initiatives. Contrary to most expectations, it finds that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization actors played a consequential role in restructuring the relationship with the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the execution of horizontal accountability mechanisms affect cabinet members' instability? This article analyzes distinct features of no-confidence motions (NCMs) in presidential systems, using a mixed-method research design that identifies elements of legislative control mechanisms in Peruvian and Colombian polities. Although the congress in presidential systems rarely approves NCMs, high salience policy shocks trigger their proposal, resulting in the dismissal or resignation of the cabinet member in question. Those results are subtle opportunities for opposition legislators to indicate the incompetence of the incumbent government in particular policy areas. This study contributes to understanding how contextual factors affect the effectiveness of the check and balance principle in presidential systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how Italian municipalities manage COVID-19 communication on their official Facebook pages. For this purpose, we apply an automatic topic modeling procedure on a sample of 76,139 posts published on the official Facebook pages of 103 Italian provincial capital municipalities from 1 March 2020 to 26 March 2021 of the COVID-19 pandemic period. We identify two topics related to COVID-19 consisting of restrictive measures and support measures. Using regression models with municipality and year-week fixed effects, we find that the prevalence of the topic on COVID-19 restrictive measures negatively affects the tone of the communication, computed through a sentiment analysis procedure, and it is negatively associated with the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the municipal area. In contrast, the prevalence of the topic on COVID-19 support measures positively affects the tone of the communication and it is positively associated with the number of positive cases. These associations are moderated by ideology, age, and political incentives of incumbent mayors. These results may reveal a strategic communication of municipalities to induce positive perceptions about the performance of municipal incumbents in responding to the pandemic and, therefore, enhance political consensus among voters. Finally, these findings may have practical implications for public regulators, public managers, and other followers of local governments on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We characterize outsourcing strategies and their interaction between the incumbent manufacturer and the new entrant in a supply chain with the common supplier. The incumbent manufacturer and the supplier can provide the critical components to the entrant, and we will investigate how the incumbent manufacturer competes with the new entrant and whether the common supplier can benefit from the new outsourcing. We find the incumbent benefits from the new entrant's outsourcing to a monopoly supplier, and it is rational and more profitable for the incumbent to cooperate with the new one. Then, we analyze the supplier's response to the incumbent's strategic behavior and reveal that a rational supplier would offer the incumbent a more favorable price. Counter-intuitively, the supplier may benefit if the entrant possesses more bargaining power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is an important mechanism used by financial systems to adapt to external shocks and to increase resilience. The current wave of financial innovation can be regarded as unprecedented, due to its technology-induced nature and because it is mainly stimulated from outside the incumbent financial industry. We study "regulatory sandboxes ", set up by regulators with the intention to foster financial innovation. Hitherto, some national regulators remain hesitant in relation to introducing regulatory sandboxes, partly fearing a "two-tier" system of start-ups with a potentially disparate treatment of market participants. We argue that many non-participating countries, including some of the 23 EU Member States, should reconsider their decision towards regulatory sandboxes which allow for a constant dialogue between operators and supervisory authorities during the testing of financial innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of COVID-19 sparked debates about whether incumbents should focus on saving lives or the economy. Politicians' decisions in this dilemma could determine whether they remain in office. "Saving the economy" is predicted to affect re-election chances positively in economic voting theory. However, a public health crisis can shift the electorate's preferences in favor of expanding healthcare support at the cost of the economy. We examine whether there is a trade-off between "saving lives" and "saving the economy" for the incumbent in receiving higher political support. Based on two experiments conducted in Russia, we measure if individuals are more likely to support, vote for, and extend the power of the incumbent based on their policies. Although both experimental factors encouraged support, the economy-driven policy had a larger effect on voting than the healthcare-driven one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the life and political career of Isaiah D. Clawson, a physician and politician from Salem County during the antebellum era. Topics include his shifts in political affiliation, including his association with the Whig, American (Know-Nothing), and Republican Parties, as well as his strategies to gain and retain political support amidst changing political dynamics.

The subsequent chapters are country case studies, focusing on Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe, in which the authors analyse the extent to which democratic backsliding has happened in various ways using legal and sovereignty strategies. It comprises 11 chapters including the introduction and conclusion, and contains six country case studies: Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The chapter on Ghana, written by Franklin Oduro, Lisa-Marie Selvik and Kendra Dupuy (pp. 112-136), delves into the legal strategies used to prevail against opposition parties, despite the country being known for its robust democratic consolidation. [Extracted from the article]

The development of the tourism industry in regional contexts has attracted significant interest from tourism geographers, in which the evolutionary economic geography (EEG) approach has been of interest over the last decade. Recent research on EEG has emphasised the role of institutions and particularly legitimacy in new path development, claiming that legitimacy is crucial for the development of emerging industries. Against this backdrop, this paper explores the role of legitimation and delegitimation in the development of the sharing economy in Innlandet, a tourism region in Norway. The article poses two research questions. How is the legitimacy of Airbnb expressed by key tourism stakeholders in a tourism region in Norway? Moreover, how can the shifting roles of legitimation and delegitimation among key stakeholders in the tourism industry inform the literature on new path development? These issues are explored in qualitative interviews with respondents from four key tourism stakeholder groups: consumers, Airbnb hosts, incumbent firms, and regional industry and policy actors. The findings reveal legitimacy issues mainly related to regulatory and normative ambiguities, described by biased regulations that result in economic leakages to other regions and countries and concerns about decreasing local value creation in the region. These findings indicate that the sharing economy lacks legitimacy among the stakeholders. The article concerns the role of legitimation and delegitimation in new path development processes, arguing that delegitimation prevents transformative changes and path development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a model of electoral accountability and selection whereby heterogeneous voters aggregate incumbent politician's performance data into personalized signals through paying limited attention. Extreme voters' signals exhibit an own-party bias, which hampers their ability to discern the good and bad performances of the incumbent. While this effect alone would undermine electoral accountability and selection, there is a countervailing effect stemming from partisan disagreement, which makes the centrist voter more likely to be pivotal. In case the latter's unbiased signal is very informative about the incumbent's performance, the combined effect on electoral accountability and selection can actually be a positive one. For this reason, factors carrying a negative connotation in every political discourse—such as increasing mass polarization and shrinking attention span—could have ambiguous accountability and selection effects. Correlating voters' signals, if done appropriately, unambiguously improves electoral accountability and selection and voter welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies local governments' decisions on public debt under the Financial Discipline Law for States and Municipalities (ldfem in Spanish) in Mexico. It implies distinguishing economic and political factors and their relevance within ldfem's legal framework that defines norms and limitations for Mexican subnational governments. Based on municipal data for 2017-2019, our results prove that political variables significantly impact municipal debt. This paper highlights the elections' proximity and the incumbent mayor's electoral support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market entry of new IPO firms adds to the competition of any industry, however, the impact on competitors may differ depending on several factors. Our study contributes to the literature on IPOs and incumbent performance by providing empirical evidence of the importance of firm-specific characteristics in determining performance. Using a sample of 232 firms, we found that the strategic content of an IPO firm's prospectus affects the short-term pricing of incumbents during an IPO. Specifically, our findings suggest that IPO firms that signal high levels of exploitative tendencies in their prospectus have a negative impact on incumbents' performance. Incumbent firms' high degree of involvement in the focal business segment of the IPO firm tends to negatively impact their performance. Finally, technologically diversity of incumbents attenuates the negative impact of new IPOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of exemption from serving a sentence with probation on the basis of Art. 75 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. In the article, the authors drew attention to the peculiarities of exemption from serving a sentence (Article 75 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), the peculiarities and terms of such an appointment; duties imposed by the court on a person released from serving a probationary sentence (Article 76 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The state of the current criminal legislation is considered on the example of court practice. Exemption of a person from serving a sentence with probation is used quite often by the courts, taking into account the conditions contained in Art. 75 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The first thing the court pays attention to is the term of the imposed punishment, namely, no more than five years, and the absence of specific criminal offenses specified in the article, taking into account the changes made on December 13, 2022. Equally important is the consideration of the identity of the culprit, namely: social status, demographic data, post-criminal behavior, criminal-legal characteristics, etc. And also the presence of mitigating and aggravating circumstances. An important point is the clarification of the Criminal Court of Cassation as part of the Supreme Court of Ukraine regarding exemption from punishment with probation for a criminal offense committed with complicity. A review of previous numerous studies on the subject under consideration and an analysis of the gaps that were pointed out in the conclusions of the studies were carried out. Special attention was paid to the draft of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and the norms contained in it regarding exemption from punishment in connection with probation. A comparison with the current criminal legislation was made, and positive points were identified, such as an increase in the term of the prescribed punishment from five to eight years, except for the one convicted of a crime of the 6th degree of gravity, related to the use of violence. There are also no restrictions in the project regarding a certain category of criminal offenses, for example, corruption or related to corruption, certain military criminal offenses (Articles 403, 405, 407, 408, 429 of the Criminal Code), torture (Part 3 of Article 127 of the Criminal Code). On the basis of the conducted research, meaningful conclusions were made with the indication of problematic points and measures to eliminate them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are transparency regimes, such as lustration, relatively rare? When some politicians have something to conceal, why would their opponents not press for transparency? To analyze transitional justice, we build a model that explains why uncompromised politicians might avoid a transparency regime, which could signal to voters that they are clean. We model the interaction between an incumbent, an opposition leader, a strategic blackmailer, and voters who know that the opposition politician may be compromised. The incumbent can implement a transparency regime, which by forcing out a compromised opponent would make blackmail impossible. We show that, because it is easier to defeat a potentially compromised opponent, she might strategically refrain from transparency and keep all skeletons of the ancien régime in the closet. We corroborate our results using original data from the Global Transitional Justice Dataset combined with data on elections, incumbency, and successor autocrat status in postcommunist Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new theoretical justification for the Cournot–Bertrand model to arise in equilibrium when firms have, at the outset, the same cost structure and sell symmetrically differentiated products. The Cournot–Bertrand model assumes some firms compete on price, adjusting their production to meet demand, while others set quantities and let their price adjust until market equilibrium is reached. We show that this may occur endogenously due to the possibility of entry, which may be deterred when some of the incumbents decide to set prices, while others free ride on this behavior and choose quantities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leveraging an asset‐sharing operating model, sharing economy platforms have disrupted incumbent firms in many industries. This research draws on the asset orchestration perspective to examine incumbents' asset orchestration (i.e., operational and governance actions) as they respond to threats from the sharing economy and the effectiveness of these actions in curbing a sharing economy firm's performance. We also analyze how the sharing economy firm's competitive moves counteract incumbents' asset orchestration responses. Our longitudinal empirical analysis in the accommodation industry demonstrates that the growth of sharing economy increases incumbent hotels' asset‐based operational actions, which reduce the sharing economy's performance. Although incumbents' asset governance actions increase as the local sharing economy grows, they do not seem to hinder sharing economy's performance. This research highlights the role of asset orchestration in the competition between incumbents and the sharing economy and contributes to the operations and sharing economy literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some societies embrace innovative technologies, policies, and ideas, while others are slow to adopt, and some even resist, them? Incumbent producers are most likely to be affected by certain kinds of innovations; they also wield a disproportionate influence in the design of institutions and policies that encourage or limit their adoption. We show formally that the elite has four cardinal policy options: to appropriate the innovation for itself; to encourage its adoption; to tax, regulate, or limit the innovation; or to block it. We show that six features of an innovation determine how it is received: (i) whether it is easy to replicate; (ii) whether it complements or competes with the elite's sources of income; (iii) whether its impact is broad or narrow; (iv) whether it is location‐dependent, and (v) concealable; (vi) whether it requires large fixed costs. While other works have occasionally considered one of these factors, we show where each feature comes from, and we assess them systematically and together. We provide illustrative evidence of the relevance and generality of the model to understand the fate of a variety of innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work on candidate campaign finance in list proportional representation systems has focused on differential electoral returns of spending for incumbent and challenger candidates. This article asks whether incumbents and challengers in these systems fund election campaigns from different sources. We hypothesize that incumbents receive more: (a) contributions from individual and corporate donors; and (b) financial support from party organizations, as party elites strategically deploy resources to constrain intra-party competition. The analysis is based on a dataset on campaign funding sources of candidates for two legislative elections in Colombia (2014 and 2018). The results confirm that party organizations transfer more financial resources to incumbents than to challengers. Contrary to expectations, parties do not specifically support the electorally most vulnerable incumbents. We also find that challengers receive higher levels of non-corporate private donations than incumbents. These findings provide insights into individual campaigns and demonstrate how parties coordinate intra-party competition through campaign funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explain the tenure of incumbent governors in Russia studying what conditions have accounted for their reappointment and dismissal in the period of 2008–12. Qualitative comparative analysis of 32 cases reveals that the ability of incumbent governors to deliver high voting results at national elections has not been necessary for their reappointment. In turn, low economic performance of the regions was one of the sufficient conditions accounting for gubernatorial reappointment, while regions' high economic performance was one of the sufficient conditions leading to their dismissal. These results suggest that instead of prioritizing governors' political loyalty over regions' economic performance, President Medvedev replaced incumbents in Russia's wealthiest regions, regardless of their performance, in order to establish federal control there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been an increasing body of scholarship analyzing the conditions under which incumbent presidents can launch successful attempts to evade existing term limits. It has generally been found that if presidents use multi-strategy approaches, the probability of their success is high. Failure of term limit evasion, on the other hand, is typically ascribed to opposition by judges or to popular disapproval. The case of Indonesia, presented in this article, challenges some of these assumptions. We show that President Widodo's attempts to achieve a revision of term limit regulations or to delay the next elections failed despite a determined multi-strategy approach, and they did so primarily because of sustained elite opposition, including from his own party. Judges played no role, and popular rejection was relevant only insofar as it aligned with elite attitudes. Widodo's failed term evasion attempts, then, highlight two contradictory trends in Indonesia's contemporary democracy: they demonstrated both the erosion of democratic culture that made the initiative possible and the continued resilience of democracy that ultimately thwarted the plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia’s 15th general election in November 2022 decisively ended the country’s dominant-party system. What might take its place, however, remains hazy—how competitive, how polarized, how politically liberal, and how stable an order might emerge will take some time to become clear. The opposition Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope), having secured a plurality of seats, but with a sharply pronounced ethnic skew, formed a coalition government with the previously dominant, incumbent Barisan Nasional (National Front) and smaller, regional coalitions. This settlement resolved an immediate impasse, but relied upon obfuscation of real programmatic, ideological, and identity differences, raising questions of longer-term durability or results. Examining this uncertainty, we broach three broad queries, with resonance well beyond Malaysia. First, we examine the fragmentation and reconsolidation of Malaysian party politics to explore how party dominance transforms or collapses. Second, we explore the extent to which its dominant party defined or confirmed Malaysia as electoral-authoritarian, and whether we should still consider it so. Third, we ask what possibilities Malaysia’s apparent party-system deinstitutionalization opens up for structural reform beyond parties. Does the deterioration of that system—more than simply the previous dominant party’s electoral loss—clear the way for more far-reaching liberalization? All told, we find that Malaysia’s incremental dismantling of its dominant-party system does not also spell the end of electoral authoritarianism. Party and party-system deinstitutionalization leave the system in flux, but illiberal reconsolidation is as plausible as progressive structural reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research indicates that law enforcement officers did not uphold optimal physical fitness. This study aimed to examine exercise motivations of incumbent officers. The EMI-2 was used to collect data. Kruskal–Wallis H tests and post-hoc Mann–Whitney U tests with Bonferroni-corrected p values were used to analyze the data. As a group, the officers were motivated to exercise for the positive health benefits. The results also indicated that building up strength/endurance and competition had influential impacts on their motivation to exercise. Police agencies may take these elements into consideration when planning and implementing a physical training program for the incumbent officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unexplained Wealth Orders, introduced in the United Kingdom in 2017, were designed to tackle the problem of transnational kleptocracy. However, our research on real estate purchases in the UK by elites from post-Soviet kleptocracies demonstrates that incumbent elites are invulnerable to attempts to question the legality of their wealth while exiles from these states often lose their property. From our original dataset of properties, we take a single exemplary case: one of incumbents Dariga Nazarbayeva and Nurali Aliyev, the daughter and grandson of Kazakhstan's first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev who were subject to one of the few UWOs issued and thereby had their properties frozen. In a close analysis of the legal documents from this case, this paper analyses how the properties were purchased and how the sources of wealth were subsequently explained as legitimate. We elaborate an exemplary case of transnational kleptocracy revealing how British legal services actively, passively, and structurally enable specific acts of money laundering. We further expose how they effectively explain kleptocratic wealth and why they are likely to continue to do so despite recent changes to laws and regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This, mainly conceptual, paper concerns the democratic backsliding process, focusing on specific and understudied actors whose actions (or non-actions) unintentionally contribute to the undertakings of autocrats or "would-be autocrats," instead of concentrating on often analysed incumbents. The authors propose in this regard a concept of "unintentional backsliders," including its definition, typology, and model of mapping actors who, due to recklessness or negligence, unintentionally support democratic backsliding. The spectrum of such backsliders has been additionally outlined in the case of Poland, the fastest de-democratising country recently — in order to demonstrate that the proposed conceptual framework can be translated into a political reality and has a potential to be applied in empirical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effect of digital capability on firm performance and firm growth. We apply the resource-based view and especially its expansion of the dynamic capabilities perspective to illustrate how digital capability is positively related to firm performance and firm growth, and how firm size is a relevant factor in explaining digital capability in incumbent SMEs. The context of this study is Finnish SMEs. The data were gathered from 242 SME owner-managers and analysed with structural equation modelling. The results show that smaller firms have less digital capability than larger SMEs and that smaller firms struggle with performance indicators. Digital capability is positively related to firm performance and firm growth. Our results indicate that although several factors explain and alter the course of firm growth, digital capability can boost the opportunity creation process, and aid survival in the face of competition. Digital capability is an important resource in SMEs and allows firms to safeguard the sustainability of their business model. We argue that digital capability is strongly related to SME's management practices and SME owner/manager's commitment to responding to digital transformation. This research sheds light on the importance of strategic leaders' perceptions of digital capability on incumbent SMEs' competitive advantage, and contributes both entrepreneurship theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Management & Organization Review is the property of Cambridge University Press 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.)

This study investigates incumbent firm responses to disruptive innovation in the rapidly evolving South Korean retail industry. The study explores the factors behind an incumbent firm's decision-making processes when responding to disruptive innovation and examines the reasons behind varied incumbent responses. It investigates the agents that influence a firm's decision by conducting the qualitative case study of a South Korean retail giant, Lotte. By collecting archival data from various sources, this paper was able to analyze different interviews and statements of the chief executive officer (CEO). From the analysis, it was determined that the firm's overall actions were aligned with the CEO's assertions. Thus, this paper asserts that Lotte's response to disruptive innovation was directly influenced by the CEO's attention. The results of this study further add to the discourse of disruptive innovation by highlighting the importance of CEO discretion in deciding a firm's direction and by further emphasizing the relationship between managerial leadership and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2021, the second attempt in California history to recall a governor ended in a resounding victory for the Democratic incumbent. Unlike the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003, auspicious political conditions helped enable Gavin Newsom's survival; these included a large Democratic advantage in voter registration and an all-mail-ballot election that reduced participation costs. Turning points in the process included an extension of the signature-gathering deadline and the emergence of a polemical candidate who helped energize Democratic voters. These developments re-exposed flaws in the state's recall process and have prompted calls to reform the qualification procedures and the dual ballot format, which permits the election of a potentially anti-majoritarian replacement who receives a small fraction of the plurality vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Double-bunked races (DBRs) are a rare type of election for the United States House of Representatives in which two incumbent members compete for the same seat following redistricting. Due to the rarity of these elections, DBRs remain widely undiscussed among political scientists. This research examines several variables distinctly observable in DBRs and assesses their impact on electoral outcomes. This paper’s findings indicate that higher campaign spending and ideological positions appropriate for a district’s partisan leaning correlates with greater electoral performance, while a representative’s legislative prolificity correlates with poorer electoral performance. Length of incumbency, conversely, has no correlation with electoral outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is prompted by the election of female legislative candidates in East Java's 2019 General Elections. The notable presence of women in the East Java Regional Legislative Assembly serves as a cause for celebration, as it has observed a commendable quantitative surge from a previous count of seven individuals in the 2014 election to a noteworthy tally of 21 individuals in the 2019 election. The research aims to investigate how these four female legislative candidates utilized their social capital to secure their positions as elected members in the 2019 General Elections. The primary informants selected for the study met certain criteria, including being the incumbent legislative member of their electoral area, being the representative of their respective regions, and having a top or early sequence number in the election. This study is founded upon Robert Putnam's social capital theory and is bolstered by Claudia Derich's, Andrea Fleschenberg's, and Momoyo Hustebeck's moral capital theory. The methodology employed in this study is qualitative, employing a case study approach centered around in-depth interviews with four female legislative candidates who were successfully elected as legislative members. The primary findings of this study highlight several key factors that contributed to the election of these four female legislative candidates. These factors include significant support from their family members (spouses and parents) as well as endorsements from various colleagues representing religious organizations, social organizations, and alumni networks. Additionally, their success in the elections can be attributed to the moral capital they possess, which derived from their professional backgrounds as advocates, businesswomen, retired civil servants, and academicians. This moral capital directly resonated with the public and influenced their voting decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a compensation problem for salespeople with learning potential. In our model, both the firm and sales agent are risk neutral and forward-looking; the agent can privately observe his skill, exert effort, and learn from experience; the firm can learn from the agent's choice and revise sales targets over time. The problem entails a dynamic tradeoff between exploiting learning, screening information, and maximizing efficiency. We find the optimal compensation plan differs substantially from the existing ones: it sets aggressive targets for expediting skill development, and pays the information rent for neutralizing the agent's misbehaving temptation over the entire relationship. We find learning drives the long-run outcomes; ignoring it can mislead compensation design and inflict substantial losses. Our results shed light on when and why firms distort sales, favor incumbents, and prefer long-term plans. By highlighting the critical role of learning in long-run performance, this study advances our understanding of salesforce theory and practice. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4509. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though many scholars find that incumbent party legislators benefit from higher access to distributive resources than opposition ones, there is less attention on how resources are distributed among opposition districts. In most contexts, opposition districts cannot be fully cut off from funds and opposition legislators get credit for spending in their constituencies, which harms the ruling party. I argue that, in such situations, the incumbent party will discriminate between its own legislators and opposition ones but this discrimination will be based on opposition swing districts being punished rather than opposition strongholds. Using data on federal development funds from Pakistan and fixed‐effects estimators, I show that the difference in funds between opposition and ruling party legislators is driven by opposition swing districts while their core areas have similar access as the incumbent party's own districts. The findings further our understanding of distributive politics and have potential implications for long‐term development patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electoral dominance of "quality" candidates—political insiders with a history of holding office—is well‐established. However, research on the recent rise in successful political neophytes is less studied. Despite longstanding trends in the predominance of experienced candidates in primary elections, nearly half of all quality candidates who ran in non‐incumbent races lost to a candidate without prior electoral experience in 2018. In this article, we investigate the success of political newcomers in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives by examining a topic often overlooked in the growing literature on primaries: campaign finance. We show that, from 2016 to 2020, political newcomers saw (1) greater success in future fundraising, and (2) an increased likelihood of primary election victory when they garnered more early contributions from outside their district. This contrasts with prior elections, where early money from inside a candidate's own congressional district served as the strongest predictor of future fundraising and electoral success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on detailed questionnaire data (including personal, religious and psychological factors) provided by 416 pairs of curates and training incumbents, the present study addresses two core research questions. The first research question develops and tests a new measure: the Smith Attitude toward Training Incumbents Scale (SATIS). The second research question explores the influence of personal, religious and psychological characteristics of both the curate and the training incumbent in predicting curates' positive attitude toward the training incumbent. The data demonstrated that religious factors (Catholic or Evangelical, Liberal or Conservative, Charismatic or not Charismatic) were not significant. However, both personal and psychological factors of the curates themselves were significant. The curates who rated their training incumbent more highly were older and more emotionally stable. Personal factors were also significant for the training incumbents, but not psychological factors. The curates rated more highly the experience of working with younger training incumbents. The most satisfactory experience of curacy was associated with older and emotionally stable curates working with younger training incumbents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do voters place their trust in tried and tested leaders when uncertainty is high or do they prefer a new slate of leaders who are arguably more competent? To study this question, we make use of hand‐collected data on 402,385 candidates who competed in open‐list local council elections (1996–2020) in Bavaria. The 2020 elections took place at the dawn of the Covid‐19 pandemic, a time of high uncertainty about the future course of events. Using local heterogeneity in Covid‐19 outbreaks and related school/daycare closures to proxy the degree of perceived uncertainty across Bavarian municipalities, we show with a difference‐in‐differences design that councilors' incumbency advantage declined more in exposed municipalities. This decrease in the incumbency advantage is limited to male and non‐university educated incumbents, resulting in shifted patterns of political selection. Overall, we conclude that voters select more competent politicians when they face uncertainty about the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier empirical research on party list proportional representation systems shows that women spend less on campaigns than men, particularly when quotas are applied. An analysis of the candidate campaign expenses for the 2014 and 2018 Colombian Lower Chamber elections provides a novel test of this gender gap and its underlying causes. The research design leverages Colombia's unique context of electoral institutions, with interdistrict variation in terms of quota rules, and the availability of detailed information on campaign spending and funding. The regression models show that the gender gap in campaign spending is limited to districts with quota rules and disappears among incumbents and candidates listed first on the ballot. As for funding, women candidates are most disadvantaged with regard to personal funds and corporate donations but attract as many individual donations as men do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]