Geographically Targeted Spending in Mixed-Member Majoritarian Electoral Systems

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Amy Catalinac ◽  
Lucia Motolinia
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Large Party ◽  
Vote Trading ◽  
Geographically Targeted

ABSTRACT Can governments elected under mixed-member majoritarian (mmm) electoral systems use geographically targeted spending to increase their chances of staying in office, and if so, how? Although twenty-eight countries use mmm electoral systems, scant research has addressed this question. The authors explain how mmm’s combination of electoral systems in two unlinked tiers creates a distinct strategic environment in which a large party and a small party can trade votes in one tier for votes in the other tier in a way that increases the number of seats won by both. They then explain how governing parties dependent on vote trading can use geographically targeted spending to cement it. These propositions are tested using original data from Japan (2003–2013) and Mexico (2012–2016). In both cases, municipalities in which the supporters of governing parties split their ballots as instructed were found to have received more money after elections. The findings have broad implications for research on mmm electoral systems, distributive politics, and the politics of Japan and Mexico.

When Formulas Go Political: The Curious Case of Japan's Financial Index

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAYLOR C. MCMICHAEL
Keyword(s):  
Economic Indicators ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Significant Determinant ◽  
Intergovernmental Transfers ◽  
General Account ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Financial Index ◽  
Geographically Targeted

AbstractScholars of distributive politics in Japan have shifted from large items in the general account budget to more geographically targeted spending known as intergovernmental transfers. However, a portion of the funds sent to prefectural governments are ostensibly determined by the apolitical ‘financial index’. However, even though the financial index is included in most studies of intergovernmental transfers, only slight attention focuses on the financial index and its determination. Using prefectural level data on intergovernmental transfers, economic indicators and electoral support for the LDP, this research shows that the LDP possesses strong incentives to manipulate the index and that politics is a significant determinant of the financial index.

Digital Watermarking for Multimedia Transaction Tracking

2011 ◽  
pp. 52-86
Author(s):  
Dan Yu ◽  
Farook Sattar
Keyword(s):  
Signal Processing ◽  
Independent Component Analysis ◽  
Digital Watermarking ◽  
Side Information ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Watermark Embedding ◽  
Common Signal ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Watermarking Scheme

This chapter focuses on the issue of transaction tracking in multimedia distribution applications through digital watermarking terminology. The existing watermarking schemes are summarized and their assumptions as well as the limitations for tracking are analyzed. In particular, an Independent Component Analysis (ICA)-based watermarking scheme is proposed, which can overcome the problems of the existing watermarking schemes. Multiple watermarking technique is exploited—one watermark to identify the rightful owner of the work and the other one to identify the legal user of a copy of the work. In the absence of original data, watermark, embedding locations and strengths, the ICA-based watermarking scheme is introduced for efficient watermark extraction with some side information. The robustness of the proposed scheme against some common signal-processing attacks as well as the related future work are also presented. Finally, some challenging issues in multimedia transaction tracking through digital watermarking are discussed.

scholarly journals The influence of environmental microseismicity on detection and interpretation of small-magnitude events in a polar glacier setting

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (259) ◽  
pp. 790-806
Author(s):  
Chris G. Carr ◽  
Joshua D. Carmichael ◽  
Erin C. Pettit ◽  
Martin Truffer
Keyword(s):  
Data Stream ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Source Model ◽  
The Other ◽  
Detection Capability ◽  
Small Magnitude ◽  
Glacial Environments ◽  
Hybrid Data ◽  
Taylor Glacier ◽  
Two Degree Of Freedom

AbstractGlacial environments exhibit temporally variable microseismicity. To investigate how microseismicity influences event detection, we implement two noise-adaptive digital power detectors to process seismic data from Taylor Glacier, Antarctica. We add scaled icequake waveforms to the original data stream, run detectors on the hybrid data stream to estimate reliable detection magnitudes and compare analytical magnitudes predicted from an ice crack source model. We find that detection capability is influenced by environmental microseismicity for seismic events with source size comparable to thermal penetration depths. When event counts and minimum detectable event sizes change in the same direction (i.e. increase in event counts and minimum detectable event size), we interpret measured seismicity changes as ‘true’ seismicity changes rather than as changes in detection. Generally, one detector (two degree of freedom (2dof)) outperforms the other: it identifies more events, a more prominent summertime diurnal signal and maintains a higher detection capability. We conclude that real physical processes are responsible for the summertime diurnal inter-detector difference. One detector (3dof) identifies this process as environmental microseismicity; the other detector (2dof) identifies it as elevated waveform activity. Our analysis provides an example for minimizing detection biases and estimating source sizes when interpreting temporal seismicity patterns to better infer glacial seismogenic processes.

Differential privacy preserving clustering using Daubechies-2 wavelet transform

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 1550028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Reza Ebrahimi Dishabi ◽  
Mohammad Abdollahi Azgomi
Keyword(s):  
Wavelet Transform ◽  
Clustering Analysis ◽  
Differential Privacy ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Privacy Preserving ◽  
The Other ◽  
High Dimensionality ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Strong Notion

Most of the existing privacy preserving clustering (PPC) algorithms do not consider the worst case privacy guarantees and are based on heuristic notions. In addition, these algorithms do not run efficiently in the case of high dimensionality of data. In this paper, to alleviate these challenges, we propose a new PPC algorithm, which is based on Daubechies-2 wavelet transform (D2WT) and preserves the differential privacy notion. Differential privacy is the strong notion of privacy, which provides the worst case privacy guarantees. On the other hand, most of the existing differential-based PPC algorithms generate data with poor utility. If we apply differential privacy properties over the original raw data, the resulting data will offer lower quality of clustering (QOC) during the clustering analysis. Therefore, we use D2WT for the preprocessing of the original data before adding noise to the data. By applying D2WT to the original data, the resulting data not only contains lower dimension compared to the original data, but also can provide differential privacy guarantee with high QOC due to less noise addition. The proposed algorithm has been implemented and experimented over some well-known datasets. We also compare the proposed algorithm with some recently introduced algorithms based on utility and privacy degrees.

scholarly journals Thinking about elections and about democratic representation

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
LH ◽  
GvdS ◽  
WTE
Keyword(s):  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
Modern Representative

[Political representation] is the basis of modern representative democracy. Older and less sophisticated forms, such as direct democracy, subsist marginally, even if they keep exerting a certain attraction. But representative democracy does not carry the self-evident authority it once had. Like every modern institution it is under challenge and consequently needs to be defended. In actual politics, the defence often takes the form of discussion of the merits of one system over the other and of proposals for change. The part of this defence appertaining to constitutional scholarship is not concerned primarily with proposals and changes. It is, before all, to brush up the fundamentals underlying representative democracy, on the basis of topical issues.There are three current issues upon which we would like to draw attention. They are: equality in structuring electoral systems, the processes of electoral reform and the rise of non-majoritarian institutions versus parliamentary democracy.

scholarly journals Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary King ◽  
Richard Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Propensity Score ◽  
Causal Inference ◽  
Propensity Score Matching ◽  
Propensity Scores ◽  
Original Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Randomized Experiment ◽  
Random Matching ◽  
Popular Method ◽  
Matching Methods

We show that propensity score matching (PSM), an enormously popular method of preprocessing data for causal inference, often accomplishes the opposite of its intended goal—thus increasing imbalance, inefficiency, model dependence, and bias. The weakness of PSM comes from its attempts to approximate a completely randomized experiment, rather than, as with other matching methods, a more efficient fully blocked randomized experiment. PSM is thus uniquely blind to the often large portion of imbalance that can be eliminated by approximating full blocking with other matching methods. Moreover, in data balanced enough to approximate complete randomization, either to begin with or after pruning some observations, PSM approximates random matching which, we show, increases imbalance even relative to the original data. Although these results suggest researchers replace PSM with one of the other available matching methods, propensity scores have other productive uses.

Incentives in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (12) ◽  
pp. 1460-1485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian F. Crisp
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Incentive Structures

Mixed-member systems have been characterized as encouraging politicians to balance the activities that enhance their personal reputations and those of their parties. Another literature challenges that legislators from one tier are not likely to behave differently from those of the other. After summarizing this debate, data from Venezuela are used to look for evidence supporting either side in a series of behaviors that span the entire legislative process—from bill initiation to committee consideration to final vote. The author concludes that the “best of both worlds” versus “contamination” debate has led to a focus on mixed-member institutions, to the exclusion of other incentive structures confronting legislators and that we need to engage in more careful theorizing about when and where they should expect the electoral tier to have an impact on legislator behavior.

Interval Data Envelopment Analysis for Inter-Group Data Usage

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
Tomoe Entani ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Data Envelopment Analysis ◽  
Efficient Frontier ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Weight Vector ◽  
The Other ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Broad Perspective ◽  
Data Usage ◽  
Group Data ◽  
Multiple Groups

Organizations are interested in exploiting the data from the other organizations for better analyses. Therefore, the data related policies of organizations should be sensitive to the data privacy issue, which has been widely discussed recently. The present study is focused on inter-group data usage for a relative evaluation. This research is based on the data envelopment analysis (DEA), which is used to measure the efficiency of a decision making unit (DMU) relatively employed within a group. In DEA, establishing an efficient frontier consisting of efficient DMUs is essential. We can obtain the efficiency values of a DMU by projecting it to the efficient frontier, and including in the efficiency interval via the interval DEA. When the original data of multiple groups are not open to each other, the alternative is to exchange the information corresponding to the efficient frontiers to estimate the efficiency intervals of a DMU in such a manner that the alternative is in the other groups. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a method to replace the efficient frontier with a weight vector set, from which it is not possible to reconstruct the original data. Considering the weight vector sets of multiple groups, a DMU has three types of efficiency intervals: in its own group, in each of the other groups, and in the integrated group. They provide rich insights on the DMU from a broad perspective, and this encourages inter-group data usage. In this process, we focus on two types of information reduction: one is from the efficient frontier to the weight vector set, and the other is from a union of the groups to the integrated group.

scholarly journals Enhancing Democracy Through Legislative Redistricting

1994 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gelman ◽  
Gary King
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Methods ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
The Relationship

We demonstrate the surprising benefits of legislative redistricting (including partisan gerrymandering) for American representative democracy. In so doing, our analysis resolves two long-standing controversies in American politics. First, whereas some scholars believe that redistricting reduces electoral responsiveness by protecting incumbents, others, that the relationship is spurious, we demonstrate that both sides are wrong: redistricting increases responsiveness. Second, while some researchers believe that gerrymandering dramatically increases partisan bias and others deny this effect, we show both sides are in a sense correct. Gerrymandering biases electoral systems in favor of the party that controls the redistricting as compared to what would have happened if the other party controlled it, but any type of redistricting reduces partisan bias as compared to an electoral system without redistricting. Incorrect conclusions in both literatures resulted from misjudging the enormous uncertainties present during redistricting periods, making simplified assumptions about the redistricters' goals, and using inferior statistical methods.

scholarly journals Making the absent present: Political parties and emigrant issues in country of origin parliaments

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Østergaard-Nielsen ◽  
Irina Ciornei
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Issue Salience ◽  
Substantive Representation ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
The Right ◽  
Legislative Processes

A growing number of countries have granted their emigrant citizens the right to vote in homeland elections from afar. Yet, there is little understanding of the extent to which emigration issues are visible in the subsequent legislative processes of policymaking and representation. Based on an original data set of parliamentary activities in Spain, Italy, France and Romania, this article analyses why political parties pay attention to emigrants. To that end, we propose a conceptual framework which draws on both theories of issue salience and substantive representation. Bridging these two frameworks allows us bring in both parties (salience) and constituencies (representation) in the analysis of the linkage between electorates and parliaments at a transnational level. We test a series of hypotheses and find that parties are more likely to focus on emigration issues the stronger their electoral incentives and in the context of electoral systems allowing the emigrants to elect special emigrant representatives.

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