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This article aims to explore the role that Bougainville's arrangement of self-government within Papua New Guinea has played for resolving the ongoing conflicts revolving around the island region's political status. First, I set out to unearth the main drivers for its current autonomy, which are geographical location, identity formation and the need at various points in history to address disputes around the status of Bougainville. Secondly, the article examines the relevance of autonomy for conflict resolution at two important turning points in Bougainville's history, namely the years 1976 and 2001. Thirdly, I assess to what extent autonomy can be regarded as more or less successful in resolving conflicts. Thereby, it will be crucial to look at both the legal framework of self-government and how it is actually put into practice. The concluding remarks put the article's analysis into the current political context of the 2019 referendum, which offered a choice between greater autonomy and independence, and highlight the specific challenges that this vote entails for Bougainville's status and the resolution of conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the politics of statistics and the transitions in rural development thinking in early independent Malawi. As was the case elsewhere in Africa, post-colonial development initiatives in Malawi relied on the production of quantitative knowledge about social and economic life. Historians and other scholars have shown that early statistical work was experimental in nature and often produced highly questionable numbers, a fact that was often lost as officials plugged the numbers into development plans. This article explores how Malawian officials and the World Bank put bad data to use amid national debates on hunger, agriculture and the future of development at a time of local and global economic uncertainty. It reveals that bad data reflected the nonchalance about numbers that prevailed in international development circles in the 1960s. The article then moves on to look at political controversies over the production, use and value of statistics, and shows that the World Bank seized on numbers that they knew to be dubious in order to advance free-market reforms in Malawi in the mid 1970s, laying the foundation for the structural adjustment programmes that swept the country and the rest of the continent in the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coleman power of a collectivity to act (CPCA) is a popular statistic that reflects the ability of a committee to pass a proposal. Applying the Shapley value to that measure, we derive a new power index—the Coleman–Shapley index (CSI)—indicating each voter's contribution to the CPCA. The CSI is characterized by four axioms: anonymity, the null voter property, the transfer property, and a property stipulating that the sum of the voters' power equals the CPCA. Similar to the Shapley–Shubik index (SSI) and the Penrose–Banzhaf index (PBI), our new index reflects the expectation of being a pivotal voter. Here, the coalitional formation model underlying the CPCA and the PBI is combined with the ordering approach underlying the SSI. In contrast to the SSI, voters are ordered not according to their agreement with a potential bill, but according to their vested interest in it. Among the most interested voters, power is then measured in a way similar to the PBI. Although we advocate the CSI over the PBI so as to capture a voter's influence on whether a proposal passes, our index gives new meaning to the PBI. The CSI is a decomposer of the PBI, splitting the PBI into a voter's power as such and the voter's impact on the power of the other voters by threatening to block any proposal. We apply our index to the EU Council and the UN Security Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary media culture frequently associates security with imitation. This essay theorizes critique of related textuality within the contemporary 'media/security nexus.' It advocates for enhanced usage of mimetic theory to critique media representation of security, as that condition is pursued through cultural practices of adaptation, disguise, and simulation. Two competing traditions of mimetic theory are reviewed, along with their appropriations in the fields of media studies and security studies. Four benefits are proposed for mimetic critique of 'media/security.' The essay concludes by considering the ethical and political stakes of this critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Political scientists have developed important new ideas for using spatial diagrams to enhance quantitative research. Yet the potential uses of diagrams for qualitative research have not been explored systematically. We begin to correct this omission by showing how set diagrams can facilitate the application of qualitative methods and improve the presentation of qualitative findings. Set diagrams can be used in conjunction with a wide range of qualitative methodologies, including process tracing, concept formation, counterfactual analysis, sequence elaboration, and qualitative comparative analysis. We illustrate the utility of set diagrams by drawing on substantive examples of qualitative research in the fields of international relations and comparative politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How can we start thinking about the link between indicators, international institutions and the law? This introductory note sets the scene for some of the crosscutting issues that emerge throughout the specific contributions, and proposes future venues of research. It focuses on four issues in particular, where the use of indicators challenges traditional narratives of international institutions and their use of the law: (a) Indicators as normative statements; (b) compliance with international norms; (c) the creation of new political spaces; and, (d) accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops new fundamental models for forecasting presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections at the state level using fundamental data. Despite the fact that our models can be used to make forecasts of elections earlier than existing models and they do not use data from polls on voting intentions, our models have lower out-of-sample forecasting errors than existing models. Our models also provide early and accurate probabilities of victory. We obtain this accuracy by constructing new methods of incorporating various economic and political indicators into forecasting models. We also obtain new results about the relative importance of approval ratings, economic indicators, and midterm effects in the different types of races, how economic data can be most meaningfully incorporated in forecasting models, the effects of different types of candidate experience on election outcomes, and that second quarter data is as predictive of election outcomes as third quarter data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sample selection models, variants of which are the Heckman and Heckit models, are increasingly used by political scientists to accommodate data in which censoring of the dependent variable raises concerns of sample selectivity bias. Beyond demonstrating several pitfalls in the calculation of marginal effects and associated levels of statistical significance derived from these models, we argue that many of the empirical questions addressed by political scientists would – for both substantive and statistical reasons – be more appropriately addressed using an alternative but closely related procedure referred to as the two-part model (2 PM). Aside from being simple to estimate, one key advantage of the 2 PM is its less onerous identification requirements. Specifically, the model does not require the specification of so-called exclusion restrictions, variables that are included in the selection equation of the Heckit model but omitted from the outcome equation. Moreover, we argue that the interpretation of the marginal effects from the 2 PM, which are in terms of actual outcomes, are more appropriate for the questions typically addressed by political scientists than the potential outcomes ascribed to the Heckit results. Drawing on data from the Correlates of War database, we present an empirical analysis of conflict intensity illustrating that the choice between the sample selection model and 2 PM can bear fundamentally on the conclusions drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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.

A combination of technological change, methodological drift and a certain degree of intellectual sloth, particularly with respect to philosophy of science, has allowed contemporary quantitative political analysis to accumulate a series of dysfunctional habits that have rendered much of contemporary research more or less meaningless. I identify these ‘seven deadly sins’ as: Garbage can models that ignore the effects of collinearity; Pre-scientific explanation in the absence of prediction; Excessive reanalysis of a small number of datasets; Using complex methods without understanding the underlying assumptions; Interpreting frequentist statistics as if they were Bayesian; A linear statistical monoculture that fails to consider alternative structures; Confusing statistical controls and experimental controls. The answer to these problems is not to abandon quantitative approaches, but rather engage in solid, thoughtful, original work driven by an appreciation of both theory and data. The article closes with suggestions for changes in current practice that might serve to ameliorate some of these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

The article discusses the development of Italian parliamentary politics and the history of the Italian parliament from 1848 to 1861. Reference is made to the establishment of a political class during this time. Topics discussed include the roles of political leaders in forming and maintaining administrative aspects of the country and the parliament, political conditions and statutes and laws passed during this period, and statistics on electoral and institutional representation in the parliament from various regions of Italy.

This article explores the role of the method of political arithmetic and political arithmeticians in the changing methods of raising finance during the Nine Years War. It discusses the actions of parliament-men in committees and their interaction with reports containing data, and the influence of projectors on the decision to introduce, and later abandon, the pound rate. Throughout this period, political arithmeticians were active participants, providing data, advice, and schemes to the treasury and parliament, and when they were not, ‘country’ MPs, in particular, were active in calling for data and leading its cross-examination. This article suggests that debates on public finance did not occur along party lines, with ‘county communities’ given fresh presence by the quantification of the inequality of the land tax burden. Political arithmetic is shown to have played an important role in the processes and negotiations that occurred over the setting of taxation policy in the ‘long eighteenth century’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Quantitative governance indicators are being increasingly used to investigate the quality of governance and to ‘measure what matters’ in local government. This article addresses the challenges of developing appropriate and accurate indicators and presents a model for assessing governance systematically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Comparative Manifestos Project ( CMP) data are the most popular source for parties' positions on the left-right and other ideological and policy dimensions. Over the past few years, several researchers have identified various methodological problems in the CMP data, but third-party users rarely acknowledge them. This article classifies the problems associated with the CMP into four areas: (1) theoretical underpinnings of the coding scheme; (2) document selection; (3) coding reliability; and (4) scaling. The article reviews each area systematically and concludes with a set of recommendations regarding the use of the CMP data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This article offers an analysis of basic trends in the post-1980 Turkish party system. How has the Turkish party system evolved during the last eight elections? How do these characteristics change with the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi)? Utilizing statistical methods informed by fieldwork conducted during the parliamentary elections of 2002, 2007, and 2011, the article suggests that Turkish elections exhibit unmistakable patterns of regionalization, which in turn have strongly contributed to the AKP's electoral ascendancy. Barring external shocks such as major economic crisis or leadership replacement, these regional patterns make it difficult for the opposition parties to effectively challenge the AKP. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The analysis of different social-economic phenomena is characterized by specific elements. Even the average level of a series can be determined in different ways, given the fact that time series can be either of intervals of time, or of certain moments of time. Also, estimating evolutionary trends is influenced by the real progress suggested by the considered time series. Thus, for an accurate analysis, it is necessary to determine indicators specific to the series of time, indicators that are summarized below. At the same time, in order to determine the set of specific indicators, a program was presented as a procedure that can be easily applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]