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Independent police oversight is a specific government delegated function that has been neglected by scholars of regulation. The main goal of this article is to understand the allocation of state resources to independent police oversight agencies (POAs) in the post delegation stage. We test whether the aim of delegation is better governance in complex areas to increase police agents' accountability ("policy complexity") or to avoid political costs of agencification ("agency losses"). A survey of 27 POAs in Europe and Canada shows that POAs tend to receive significantly fewer state resources when they have a high level of formal independence or strong legal empowerment. Resource allocation seems more congruent with an "agency losses" logic than with the goal of making regulation more efficient. Our findings have notable implications for international norm‐setting bodies (the UN, the Council of Europe), who have not sufficiently codified the allocation of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that intergroup conflict may result from two distinct human motives: the desire to obtain personal retributions from conflict (egoism), and the desire to sacrifice for the benefit of the ingroup (parochial altruism). Yet, the relative strength of these motives is open to debate. In this study, we compare behaviors in two Intergroup Prisoner's Dilemmas (IPD), which respectively capture altruistic and egoistic motives to generate conflict. Egoistic motives result in about 40% more conflict than altruistic motives. Yet, parochial altruism generates more conflict when three conditions are gathered: i) other ingroup members are parochial altruists, ii) the outgroup is aggressive and iii) the outgroup is rich. Implications regarding the diverging structural causes of terrorism and civil wars are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Independent police oversight bodies are advocated by human rights organisations to be the most credible and effective solution to address the misbehaviors and systemic malfunction. They have emerged in parallel with independent regulatory agencies in various economic sectors, thus signalling a new trend in governance interpreted as the rise of a 'fourth power.' Still, comparative knowledge is scarce about the nature of delegation of power to police oversight agencies (POAs) and their actions. By analyzing 25 POAs in 20 countries, this article seeks to precisely describe their features in Europe and Quebec (Canada): the timeline of their birth, the scope of delegation (remit, formal independence, powers, resources), and the variations in how they execute their mandate. We unveil a profound heterogeneity across countries. In terms of national patterns, the main divide is between specialised (police only, limited formal independence, more abundant resources) and non-specialised (all public administrations, strong formal independence, limited resources) agencies. The latter tend to act as a public fire alarm to compensate for their lack of resources. Our mapping also contrasts European countries' oversight mechanisms, which rely on professional agencies that are mostly established at the national or state/regional level, with local civilian oversight boards in the US. And, while our results confirm that the 1990s marked a watershed, they question the notion that agencification in the police sector has been a vector for revolution in its governance, since no POA incorporates all the traits required for them to be the fourth power just yet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manipulations checks are postexperimental measures widely used to verify that subjects understood the treatment. Some researchers drop subjects who failed manipulation checks in order to limit the analyses to attentive subjects. This short report offers a novel illustration on how this practice may bias experimental results: in the present case, through confirming a hypothesis that is likely false. In a survey experiment, subjects were primed with a fictional news story depicting an economic decline versus prosperity. Subjects were then asked whether the news story depicted an economic decline or prosperity. Results indicate that responses to this manipulation check captured subjects' preexisting beliefs about the economic situation. As a consequence, dropping subjects who failed the manipulation check mixes the effects of preexisting and induced beliefs, increasing the risk of false positive findings. Researchers should avoid dropping subjects based on posttreatment measures and rely on pretreatment measures of attentiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to a classic prediction of democratic theory, empirical studies do not find that democratic systems produce internal peace. This absence of relationship does not mean that democratic theory is entirely wrong. Indeed, democratic systems may have a negative effect on the support for revolution, as predicted by democratic theory, but a positive effect on opportunities for revolutions on the other part. Focusing on the support for revolution in 15 European democracies, this article re-examines the classic prediction that democratic systems reduce political grievances. This rests on three arguments: that (1) majority rule guarantees that the number of dissatisfied people is relatively low, (2) periodic elections allow dissatisfied people to hope for a change in the leadership within a reasonable period of time, and (3) power-sharing institutions diminish the negative impact of an unwanted government on people. We find empirical support for all arguments. In addition to shedding light on the reasons why democracy weakens revolutionary attitudes, our analysis provides some clues to understand the recent increase in the support for revolution in democratic countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]