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Although there has been extensive research on electoral system choice at the national level, we know relatively little about the dynamics of deciding the rules of the game for sub-state institutions. This article examines the factors that influenced the choice of a proportional electoral system for the new Scottish Parliament in 1999. Through the use of archival sources and interviews with key participants, we challenge the conventional rational choice explanation for the adoption of the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system. Although rational considerations on the part of the Labour Party were involved in the choice of MMP, our findings suggest that, as at the national level, theories of electoral system choice need to consider normative values as well.

The British Conservative Party and the Spanish Partido Popular have been hostile, at least at times, to devolving greater power to regions. Although both parties might be expected to support decentralisation on economically liberal grounds, in fact both have found it extremely difficult to reconcile their centre-right economic instincts with a deeply ingrained commitment to the integrity of the state. This article explores the tension in conservative and liberal ideology between supporting sub-state political responsibility through decentralisation and supporting strong central government able to take long-term (and potentially unpopular) decisions in times of economic crisis. We examine these two parties in light of Toubeau and Wagner’s (2015) framework, finding that market liberalism can be interpreted differently when it comes to decentralisation: both the Partido Popular and the Conservative Party have both at different times used economic justifications for a strong central state. The Partido Popular continues to hold a conservative view of decentralisation and the Conservatives have only recently started to link their market liberalism to a justification for decentralisation. Thus, whilst it is possible to construct a liberal economic case for devolving power away from the central state, one does not necessarily follow the other.

The 2011 British referendum on the electoral system offered voters a change within the majoritarian family from single-member plurality to the alternative vote. The alternative vote is not proportional, but the ‘yes’ campaign in the United Kingdom included small parties and ‘democracy sector’ organisations previously associated with advocating proportional representation. This anomalous behaviour can be explained by applying social movement theory, especially interpretations related to political opportunity structures and frame analysis. The Liberal Democrats, Electoral Reform Society and others had previously criticised the alternative vote, yet decided to campaign in favour of it. This led to an unclear framing of their objectives and, ultimately, their failure.

Both Scotland and New Zealand, small nations with a British political heritage, implemented mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral systems in the 1990s. Minority government characterises most of the New Zealand experience since the introduction of MMP in 1996, while Scotland's only such experience occurred between 2007 and 2011. The Scottish experience differed significantly from that of New Zealand because Scotland has a different party system (characterised by two major cleavages) and exists in a system of multi-level governance, resulting in a more conflict-laden relationship between parties. The centre-periphery cleavage in the Scottish case results from being part of the United Kingdom, while New Zealand is an independent state. Both nations introduced MMP as part of an effort to bring about a ‘new politics’, but the impact of institutional engineering upon the behaviour of politicians has been limited.

Many countries adopted mixed‐member (MM) electoral systems in the 1990s, but several switched to list proportional representation (PR) recently. Most switchers are post‐communist countries that used the semi‐proportional mixed‐member majoritarian (MMM) system, often associated with dominant parties. List PR was adopted under competitive conditions in some cases (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Ukraine), while in places where authoritarian control remains (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan), list PR appears to be used as a means of reducing competition and undermining multiparty democracy.

The May 2007 Scottish Parliament election used a different ballot format from the one used in the previous elections, one that combined the regional and constituency votes onto one ballot paper (two separate papers were used before). Because there were many more invalid votes in 2007, the problem was blamed on the two-vote ballot paper, which was recommended by the Arbuthnott Commission to prevent misunderstandings about what the two votes were for. Other places that use the mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system tend to use a two-vote ballot paper, with Germany and New Zealand seeing low levels of invalid votes. While the decision to revert to two separate papers in future Scottish Parliament elections might reduce the number of invalid votes, the price could be more confusion about the proportional nature of the electoral system unless public education improves significantly.

Using the UK Independence Party, we examine the effects of sudden electoral success on an Anti-Political Establishment (APE) party. The pressures of aspiring to government necessitate organisational structures resembling those of mainstream parties, while this aspiration challenges APE parties because they differ not just in terms of their policy profiles, but also in their more ‘unorthodox’ organisational make-up, inextricably linked to their electoral appeal. Robert Kilroy-Silk wanted to emphasise office-seeking goals while most members wanted the party to remain true to its APE status and not sacrifice its populist nature. This inevitably resulted in internal party conflict.

This article compares the use of people outside government to consider electoral reform in three countries using the single-member plurality electoral system. The composition of electoral reform bodies, ranging from commissions of experts (New Zealand) and ex-politicians (Britain) to assemblies of randomly selected citizens (British Columbia), appears to have influenced how well their recommendations were received by the public. Governments should be careful not to assume that they can retain control of the electoral reform process once they let it out of their hands, as the cases of New Zealand and British Columbia show, where majorities of the voters chose reform.

This article compares the constituency roles of the members of the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales to their counterparts in two German federal states using postal survey data and interviews. Representatives elected in single-member constituencies spend more time than their list-elected counterparts on constituency service, believing it to be important to their re-election effort, while list-elected representatives focus more strongly on interest groups. Competition between constituency and list representatives in Britain has caused more problems than in Germany. The results suggest that rational-choice considerations motivate the behaviour of politicians, and that the mixed-member electoral system contributes to role differentiation.

The additional member system used for elections to the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales has been controversial for electing two types of representatives, those elected by list PR in multi‐member regions and others elected by plurality ‘first‐past‐the‐post’ in single‐member constituencies. Members elected by list PR are taking on a constituency role, despite apparent institutional incentives to the contrary, although list members seem more inclined to ‘represent’ organised interests. The ‘shadowing’ of constituency members by regional party list members has been a source of strain in the relations between the two types of representative as they come to terms with the new electoral system.

About a decade after devolution in the UK created a Scottish Parliament elected by mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation, tensions between those representatives elected by the two different routes (single-member constituency and multimember region) remained. This article shows how controversies in 2008 over the level of office allowances, as well as the wording of the code of conduct, demonstrate that Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) held differing views on the constituency role of MSPs, and that the partisan animosity between the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Scottish Labour has been exacerbated by the competition at the constituency level facilitated by MMP. This deeply partisan outcome, while reflecting the successful operation of rational choice logic on the part of individual politicians, worked against the larger attempt to engineer a less adversarial post-devolution politics in Scotland.

An enhancement to the T-980 bent crystal collimation experiment at the Tevatron has been completed. The enhancement was the installation of a pixel telescope inside the vacuum-sealed beam pipe of the Tevatron. The telescope is comprised of six CMS PSI46 pixel plaquettes, arranged as three stations of horizontal and vertical planes, with the CAPTAN system for data acquisition and control. The purpose of the pixel telescope is to measure beam profiles produced by bent crystals under various conditions. The telescope electronics inside the beam pipe initially were not adequately shielded from the image current of the passing beams. A new shielding approach was devised and installed, which resolved the problem. The noise issues encountered and the mitigating techniques are presented herein, as well as some preliminary results from the telescope., 9 pp. 2nd International Conference on Technology and Instrumentation in Particle Physics 2011: TIPP 2011. 9-14 Jun 2011. Chicago, Illinois

The military have a considerable amount of experience from using robots for mine clearing and bomb removal. As new technology emerges it is necessary to investigate the possibly to expand robot use. This study has investigated an Army company, specialized in urban operations, while fulfilling their tasks with the support of a PackBot Scout. The robot was integrated and deployed as an ordinary component of the company and included modifying and retraining a number of standard behaviors to include the robot. This paper reports on the following issues: evaluation of missions where the platform can be deployed, what technical improvements are the most desired, and what are the new risks introduced by use of robots? Information was gathered through observation, interviews, and a questionnaire. The results indicate the robot to be useful for reconnaissance and mapping. The users also anticipated that the robot could be used to decrease the risks of IEDs by either triggering or by neutralising them with a disruptor. The robot was further considered to be useful for direct combat if armed, and for placing explosive loads against, for example, a door. Autonomous rendering of maps, acquiring images, two-way audio, and improved sensing such as IR were considered important improvements. The robot slowing down the pace of the unit was considered to be the main risk when used in urban operations.

Robots have been successfully deployed within bomb squads all over the world for decades. Recent technical improvements are increasing the prospects to achieve the same benefits also for other high risk professions. As the number of applications increase issues of collaboration and coordination come into question. Can several groups deploy the same type of robot? Can they deploy the same methods? Can resources be shared? What characterizes the different applications? What are the similarities and differences between different groups? This paper reports on a study of four areas in which robots are already, or are about to be deployed: Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT), Military and Police Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), Military Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear contamination control (CBRN), and Fire Fighting (FF). The aim of the study has been to achieve a general overview across the four areas to survey and compare their similarities and differences. It has also been investigated to what extent it is possible for the them to deploy the same type of robot. It was found that the groups share many requirements, but, that they also have a few individual hard constrains. A comparison across the groups showed the demands of man-portability, ability to access narrow premises, and ability to handle objects of different weight to be decisive; two or three different sizes of robots will be needed to satisfy the need of the four areas.

The elections to the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales were conducted using the mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system new to Britain, and some members of these bodies, elected in the two different ways, came into conflict almost right away. Problems arose as list-elected representatives began to ‘shadow’ their constituency-elected counterparts by performing constituency service functions. In Scotland, a panel study of 13 members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) noted the presence of friction between constituency and list members early on, often over who was entitled to casework (McCabe and McCormick 2000). Initially there was less of a problem in Wales, but after the second Welsh Assembly election in 2003, more attention was paid to the practice of shadowing performed by list Assembly Members (AMs). In 2005 the British government began the process of introducing a ban on dual candidacy, where candidates are allowed to stand in both constituency and regional list contests at the same time, for Welsh Assembly elections.

This chapter focuses on the constituency role of representatives in the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales. For the pur­poses of comparison, this chapter also investigates the roles of repre­sentatives in the two German state parliaments under investigation, the Landtag of Brandenburg and the Landtag of Hesse. Germany is important in this study as the archetypal example of the mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system. Along with contact between representatives and constituents, and constituency service in general, the partisan role of these legislators is examined. The electoral incentives hypothesis (that representatives will do what enhances their chances for re-election) is tested, along with the hypothesis that repre­sentatives from major parties behave like constituency representatives, regardless of how they were elected.

This concluding chapter will review some of the most important empirical findings of the surveys of representatives elected by the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system in Scotland, Wales, and Germany. Addressing the rational choice-inspired critique that list-elected members of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are ‘second-class’ representatives, as critics of list proportional repre­sentation (PR) in Britain maintain because such representatives are not directly elected in single-member constituencies, is an important part of this study, and some of the findings suggest that list representatives do have less of a focus on traditional constituency service. This does not mean, however, that list representatives are less important; on the contrary, they have broadened out the definition of constituency rep­resentation in Britain, as well as having contributed greatly to the par­tisan diversity of Britain’s new PR-elected bodies. Furthermore, because some list representatives have chosen to shadow their constituency counterparts, MMP has the potential to enhance constituency service by promoting competition between representatives.

This chapter explains the importance of the constituency role for elected representatives in Britain and how this role, plus the role as party representative, evolved over time in the context of a reactive legislature. It also examines the scholarly arguments surrounding constituency service that will be tested in later chapters of this book. Some scholars argue that it is the very weakness of Parliament as a policyinfluencing body that encourages so many of its members to perform large amounts of constituency service. The link between British Members of Parliament (MPs) and their constituents, while considered almost sacred by many British pundits and politicians, turns out to be far weaker than is commonly believed when subjected to critical ana­lysis, yet the myth of constituency service plays a major role in the country’s debate over electoral reform.

The new bodies introduced by New Labour’s devolution plans since 1997, plus Great Britain’s European Parliament (EP) seats since 1999, are elected by three different systems of proportional representation (PR): the single transferable vote (STV) for the Northern Ireland Assembly, closed-list PR for the EP seats representing nine English regions, Scotland, and Wales, and mixed-member proportional (MMP) represen­tation for the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Greater London Assembly (plus any future elected assemblies that might be established in the other English regions). MMP was the most controversial choice, and much of this controversy reflects a concern about how MMP affects the constituency role of elected representatives. As Chapter 1 pointed out, many British politicians, accustomed to the single-member plurality (SMP, colloquially known as ‘first-past-the-post’ in Britain) system, do not like the idea of sharing ‘their patch’ with anyone else. This belief, along with the ‘winner-take-all’ mentality that comes with it, caused problems in the early years of British MMP. Therefore, this chapter will focus on MMP as the most significant elec­toral model among the greatly increased diversity of British electoral systems, and its significant implications for the constituency role of elected representatives.

In 1997, a Labour government was elected in Britain after 18 years of Conservative rule. The new government quickly embarked upon a radical constitutional reform agenda that included devolution, the del­egation of power from Westminster to new assemblies to be elected in the ‘Celtic fringe’ of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Along with devolution came forms of proportional representation (PR). All forms of PR require some multimember constituency element — the basic principle is to reflect, usually on a partisan basis, the diverse voting preferences of as many people as possible. This multimember con­stituency component of PR differs significantly from the single-member constituency nature of British parliamentary elections, in which only one candidate is elected by a plurality — the most — votes, regardless of whether this is an actual majority — over half the votes cast. The elected candidate, almost always nominated by a political party in the British case, then is expected to represent his or her entire geographical area, the constituency, despite the fact that he or she will usually vote the party line, and against the preferences of several (and in many cases, actually the majority) of his or her constituents.

Robots have a potential to be a significant aid in high risk, unstructured and stressing situations such as experienced by police, fire brigade, rescue workers and military. In this project we have explored the abilities of today's robot technology in the mentioned fields. This was done by, studying the user, identifying scenarios where a robot could be used and implementing a robot system for these cases. We have concluded that highly portable field robots are emerging to be an available technology but that the human-robot interaction is currently a major limiting factor of today's systems. Further we have found that operational protocols, stating how to use the robots, have to be designed in order to make robots an effective tool in harsh and unstructured field environments.

This research has examined robot operators' abilities to gain situational awareness while performing tele-operation with video feedback. The research included a user study in which 20 test persons explored and drew a map of a corridor and several rooms, which they had not visited before. Half of the participants did the exploration and mapping using a teleoperated robot (IRobot PackBot) with video feedback but without being able to see or enter the exploration area themselves. The other half fulfilled the task manually by walking through the premises. The two groups were evaluated regarding time consumption and the rendered maps were evaluated concerning error rate and dimensional and logical accuracy. Dimensional accuracy describes the test person's ability to estimate and reproduce dimensions in the map. Logical accuracy refers to missed, added, misinterpreted, reversed and inconsistent objects or shapes in the depiction. The evaluation showed that fulfilling the task with the robot on average took 96% longer time and rendered 44% more errors than doing it without the robot. Robot users overestimated dimensions with an average of 16% while non-robot users made an average overestimation of 1%. Further, the robot users had a 69% larger standard deviation in their dimensional estimations and on average made 23% more logical errors during the test

The excimer laser has proven to be the laser of choice in various biomedical applications for both soft and hard tissues. The excimer laser-tissue interaction is vastly different from other lasers due to the high energies of each photon, the short pulse duration, and small volume of tissue effected. In addition to the particle ejection, heat generation and spectral emission, the interaction also produces acoustical disturbances in both the air and in the tissue. The plume dynamics were detected with a second laser (Nd;YAG at 532 nm) illuminating the particles and a CCD camera detecting the (90°) scattered radiation to form an image. A similar setup was used to detect the acoustical disturbances, but this time the forward scattered radiation off of the information about these acoustical disturbance we designed and built an ultrasonic probe to do so. The luminescence was measured with a time resolved spectroscopy system. The thermal effects were measured with a thermal camera. By measuring these different effects our understanding of the interaction is enhanced, the parameters for a specific medical laser application can be optmized for the best results, and each one can be used as a real-time (before the next pulse) feedback control system.

Operating robots in an outdoor setting poses interesting problems in terms of interaction. To interact with the robot there is a need for a flexible computer interface. In this paper a PDA-based (personal digital assistant, i.e. a handheld computer) approach to robot interaction is presented. The system is designed to allow non-expert users to utilise the robot for operation in an urban exploration setup. The basic design is outlined and a first set of experiments are reported.