scholarly journals Geography Matters: The Conditional Effect of Electoral Systems on Social Spending

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio Jurado ◽  
Sandra León

There is a large body of research showing that the provision of social policies is higher under proportional electoral systems than under majoritarian systems. This article helps advance this literature by showing that the geographic distribution of social recipients plays an essential role in moderating the impact of electoral institutions on social provision. Using data from twenty-two OECD countries, the results show that majoritarian systems increase the provision of social spending when recipients are concentrated in certain regions. When levels of concentration are high, social spending in majoritarian countries can surpass levels of provision in proportional representation systems.

2021 ◽  
pp. 104398622110016
Author(s):  
Sinchul Back ◽  
Rob T. Guerette

Criminologists and crime prevention practitioners recognize the importance of geographical places to crime activities and the role that place managers might play in effectively preventing crime. Indeed, over the past several decades, a large body of work has highlighted the tendency for crime to concentrate across an assortment of geographic areas, where place management tends to be absent or weak. Nevertheless, there has been a paucity of research evaluating place management strategies and cybercrime within the virtual domain. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of place management techniques on reducing cybercrime incidents in an online setting. Using data derived from the information technology division of a large urban research university in the United States, this study evaluated the impact of an anti-phishing training program delivered to employees that sought to increase awareness and understanding of methods to better protect their “virtual places” from cybercrimes. Findings are discussed within the context of the broader crime and place literature.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Ferree ◽  
Clark Gibson ◽  
Barak Hoffman

Scholars have long argued social diversity, and electoral institutions interactively shape party systems: diversity has little effect on the effective number of parties (ENP) in single member plurality (SMP) systems but increases ENP in proportional ones. We argue instead that where diversity is salient enough to generate demand for parties, it also hinders strategic coordination, preventing SMP rules from reducing the number of parties and producing a correlation between diversity and ENP. In contrast, non-salient forms of diversity have little impact regardless of institutional rules. We test this intuition using data from South Africa’s municipal mixed-member system and explore its highly salient racial cleavage and less salient ethnic one. We find racial diversity correlates with ENP in SMP systems while ethnic diversity correlates with ENP in neither SMP nor proportional representation systems. Our study contributes to mounting evidence questioning the interactive hypothesis and points to the importance of the salience of social divisions in shaping party systems.


2020 ◽  
pp. 088740342091948 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Casey ◽  
Jennifer E. Copp ◽  
William D. Bales

There is a large body of research that examines the impact of visitation on the likelihood of recidivism among released state prisoners. That research reveals that receiving any visits, and a greater number of visits, reduces the likelihood of recidivism. However, whether the recidivism-reducing effect of visitation operates within the jail setting remains unclear. Using data from a Florida jail, the current investigation examines the association between visitation and recidivism among a cohort of releases ( N = 6,565). Analyses also consider the extent to which the frequency of visits impacts the likelihood of recidivism. Findings from a series of logistic regression models reveal that inmates who received visits were no less likely to recidivate than their counterparts. Yet, among inmates who were visited, those receiving more frequent visits were less likely to recidivate. This departs from existing visitation research and underscores the importance of directing research attention to local jails.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jung-In Jo ◽  
Hyun Jin Choi

This study explores the multifaceted calculus behind engagement in protests using data from 45 countries in the World Values Survey Wave 6 (2010–2014), employing a hierarchical linear model. It expands the current scholarship on protest politics by investigating how individual subjective assessment and evaluation of income inequality, and redistributive preferences influence participation in protests. We found that protest is a powerful outlet used by highly educated citizens with strong grievances about economic inequality, and labor union networks, especially in advanced industrialized countries. The empirical analysis further reveals that the salience of redistributive preferences may effectively filter individual responses and become channeled into action in protests in a broader sample. Moreover, we show that the impact of grievances about inequality on protest becomes significant when government social spending is increased and the level of inequality is high. Conversely, conventional macro-level indicators on their own, such as the Gini coefficient of income disparity and social spending, did not explain variance in protest participation. Findings suggest that more systematic research is necessary to detect the precise mechanisms at play that link grievances about inequality and the exponential expansion of protest politics.


2004 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hix

Despite a sophisticated understanding of the impact of electoral institutions on macrolevel political behavior, little is known about the relationship between these institutions and microlevel legislative behavior. This article reviews existing claims about this relationship and develops a model for predicting how electoral institutions affect the relationship between parliamentarians and their party principals in the context of the European Parliament. The European Parliament is an ideal laboratory for investigating these effects, because in each European Union member state, different institutions are used to elect Members of European Parliament (MEPs). The results of this model, tested on four hundred thousand individual MEP vote decisions, show that candidate-centered electoral systems (such as open-list proportional representation or single-transferable-vote systems) and decentralized candidate-selection rules produce parliamentarians independent from their party principals. By contrast, party-centered electoral systems (such as closed-list proportional representation systems) and centralized candidate-selection rules produce parliamentarians beholden to the parties that fight elections and choose candidates: in the case of the European Parliament, the national parties.


Author(s):  
Michael FitzGerald ◽  
Melody E. Valdini

While there are many factors that drive women’s descriptive representation (i.e., the percentage of women in the legislature) the electoral institutions generate some of the most powerful and consistent effects. In the first breaths of this literature, the focus was firmly on the impact of majoritarian electoral systems versus proportional representation (PR) systems on women’s descriptive representation. Since then, the literature has grown to engage broader ideas regarding the complicated nature of analyzing institutions in different cultural contexts and under different social conditions. Particularly in the later decades of the 20th century, scholars found that structural factors, such as economic disparities between men and women and the balance of women in careers that are typical paths to political office, were important to consider in concert with electoral rules. More recently, as more women gain access to the economic elite, the literature has focused more on cultural factors such as the historical legacies of Communism and the general societal reactions to women’s leadership. These non-institutional factors are now widely engaged as an important component of understanding why and to what extent we can expect an electoral system to generate a certain outcome. Beyond the impact of the electoral system itself, there is also relevant literature that engages how electoral institutions such as gender quotas and candidate selection processes affect women’s descriptive representation. There is wide variation in the design of gender quotas as well as candidate selection processes, just as there is in the design of electoral systems, and therefore a fuller understanding of the relationship between electoral institutions and women’s representation requires consideration of the interaction of candidate selection procedures, gender quotas, and electoral systems. For example, the presence of a placement mandate (i.e., a requirement stipulating where on the list women candidates must be positioned) or a decentralized candidate selection process each has a different effect on women’s representation in an electoral system that includes a preference vote. The sections below highlight some of the existing literature on electoral institutions and their impact on women’s descriptive representation. This is by no means an exhaustive list but does offer insight into the general themes and research areas that are common in this field of study.


Author(s):  
Terry Husband ◽  
Chequita Brown

Over the past two decades, a large body of research has documented the effects of school disciplinary policies and practices on Black males. As a result of this overemphasis on the educational plight and experiences of Black males in schools, very few studies have examined the impact of school discipline policies and practices on Black females. Given the absence of discourse about this issue, it is often assumed or taken for granted by many researchers and teachers that Black females receive equitable educational opportunities as other student populations. Using data from five large urban school districts, this chapter argues that the formal and informal disciplinary policies and systems in many schools and classrooms in the United States have a disproportionately negative impact on Black girls. Recommendations for administrators, teachers, and other key school officials are presented.


Author(s):  
Brynne D. Ovalle ◽  
Rahul Chakraborty

This article has two purposes: (a) to examine the relationship between intercultural power relations and the widespread practice of accent discrimination and (b) to underscore the ramifications of accent discrimination both for the individual and for global society as a whole. First, authors review social theory regarding language and group identity construction, and then go on to integrate more current studies linking accent bias to sociocultural variables. Authors discuss three examples of intercultural accent discrimination in order to illustrate how this link manifests itself in the broader context of international relations (i.e., how accent discrimination is generated in situations of unequal power) and, using a review of current research, assess the consequences of accent discrimination for the individual. Finally, the article highlights the impact that linguistic discrimination is having on linguistic diversity globally, partially using data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and partially by offering a potential context for interpreting the emergence of practices that seek to reduce or modify speaker accents.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maykel Verkuyten ◽  
Kumar Yogeeswaran

Abstract. Multiculturalism has been criticized and rejected by an increasing number of politicians, and social psychological research has shown that it can lead to outgroup stereotyping, essentialist thinking, and negative attitudes. Interculturalism has been proposed as an alternative diversity ideology, but there is almost no systematic empirical evidence about the impact of interculturalism on the acceptance of migrants and minority groups. Using data from a survey experiment conducted in the Netherlands, we examined the situational effect of promoting interculturalism on acceptance. The results show that for liberals, but not for conservatives, interculturalism leads to more positive attitudes toward immigrant-origin groups and increased willingness to engage in contact, relative to multiculturalism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-460
Author(s):  
Mohd Imran Khan ◽  
Valatheeswaran C.

The inflow of international remittances to Kerala has been increasing over the last three decades. It has increased the income of recipient households and enabled them to spend more on human capital investment. Using data from the Kerala Migration Survey-2010, this study analyses the impact of remittance receipts on the households’ healthcare expenditure and access to private healthcare in Kerala. This study employs an instrumental variable approach to account for the endogeneity of remittances receipts. The empirical results show that remittance income has a positive and significant impact on households’ healthcare expenditure and access to private healthcare services. After disaggregating the sample into different heterogeneous groups, this study found that remittances have a greater effect on lower-income households and Other Backward Class (OBC) households but not Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) households, which remain excluded from reaping the benefit of international migration and remittances.


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