scholarly journals Is It Us? Is It Them? Or Is It This Place? Predicting Civility in State Legislatures

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Jaclyn J. Kettler ◽  
Luke Fowler ◽  
Stephanie L. Witt
Keyword(s):  
National Survey ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Elected Officials ◽  
Multilevel Regression ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Economic Anxiety ◽  
Partisan Competition ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Inter State

Abstract While many scholars and analysts have observed a decline in civility in recent years, there have been few examinations of how political, economic, and institutional structures may partially explain inter-state differences in these trends. We suggest three potential explanations: (1) institutional structures, such as legislative professionalism and gubernatorial power, have created different contexts in which legislators build and maintain inter-personal relationships; (2) partisan competition has led to less bipartisan cooperation and contributed to strained relationships between members of different parties; and, (3) economic inequity and change has contributed to economic anxiety among citizens, contributing to conflict in legislative bodies as elected officials attempt to navigate emerging policy challenges. To test these explanations, we develop an innovative measure of civility using a national survey of lobbyists and a partial Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) design. Findings suggest that there is some validity to all three explanations, and signifying that civility is at least partially a result of structural issues.

Political Competition and Right-Wing Terrorism: A County-Level Analysis of the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110067
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Nemeth ◽  
Holley E. Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
The United States ◽  
County Level ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Economic Anxiety ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Level Analysis

While many previous studies on U.S. right-wing violence center on factors such as racial threat and economic anxiety, we draw from comparative politics research linking electoral dynamics to anti-minority violence. Furthermore, we argue that the causes of right-wing terrorism do not solely rest on political, economic, or social changes individually, but on their interaction. Using a geocoded, U.S. county-level analysis of right-wing terrorist incidents from 1970 to 2016, we find no evidence that poorer or more diverse counties are targets of right-wing terrorism. Rather, right-wing violence is more common in areas where “playing the ethnic card” makes strategic sense for elites looking to shift electoral outcomes: counties that are in electorally competitive areas and that are predominantly white.

Capitalist Futures and Socialist Legacies: Urban Development in East Germany Since 1990

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartmut Häußermann
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Socialist Country ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Institutional Conditions ◽  
Western Model ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
German Model ◽  
Political Economic

Since unification, the political, economic, and institutional structuresin the new federal states have been patterned in accordance with theWest German model. This is due in part to the extension of theWestern legal framework to the eastern Länder. The fact that thepolitical and economic actors of the once-socialist country are nowsubject to the institutional conditions of the West encourages convergencetowards the western model. But questions have been raised asto whether the cities in the new federal states are also adaptingrapidly to the western model of urban development. Their layoutand architecture resulted, after all, from the investment decisionsmade by several generations and cannot be shifted or transformed asrapidly as legal or institutional frameworks.

Entangled Systems at the Energy-Water-Food Nexus

2017 ◽  
pp. 144-165
Author(s):  
Joseph Nyangon ◽  
Nabeel Alabbas ◽  
Lawrence Agbemabiese
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Food Resource ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Energy Economy ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Resource Systems

This chapter assesses energy, water, and food resource systems based on their inter- and intra-sectoral imperatives of large scale development investments at the institutional level (including private and public activities) and how to achieve security of resource supplies. It identifies key interrelated processes, practices, and factors that underpin integrated resource management (IRM) and their attendant benefits. Applying the E4 framework concerned with energy, economy, environment, and equity to identify the main threats to these systems, the chapter evaluates their institutional, political, economic, cultural and behavioral components, and characterizes the forces that drive each of them at different governance scales. The chapter is guided by political economy, economic, and sociological theories that suggest that institutional structures affect economic factors and processes (i.e. production, distribution, and consumption processes). A case study of energy, water, and food (EWF) conflicting sectoral imperatives in Delaware is discussed in detail to better understand how these policy and institutional processes occur, which forms they take, and in which ways they define the quality and quantity of EWF resource systems in the State. In order to verify these parameters, the analysis considered the advantages of a sectorally balanced, E4 framework, in particular to evaluate the valency and magnitude of cross-sectoral connections, balance competing needs, and identify policy options that address various trade-offs.

scholarly journals Regional Radio: A Response by the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation to Democratization and Competition

2001 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla W. Heath
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
The Political ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Fm Radio ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
First Time

Abstract: In 1992, constitutional governance was re-established in Ghana, and private broadcasting made legal for the first time. This paper explores one of the responses of the state-owned Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) to this novel situation, the opening of regional FM radio stations. Primary data for the paper was obtained from visits to six of the stations and interviews with station directors and other staff in July 1998. The political economic context in which the stations were established, their structures, and programming are examined. Evidence from this study indicates that with the new stations the GBC is expanding and enhancing its public service mandate. At the same time, institutional structures and scarce financial resources combine to prevent the Corporation from becoming independent of vested interests: government, commerce, or NGOs. Résumé: En 1992, on rétablit un gouvernement constitutionnel au Ghana et on légalisa la radiodiffusion privée pour la première fois dans ce pays. Cet article explore une des réponses à cette nouvelle situation de la part du radiodiffuseur d'état, le Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) : l'ouverture de stations de radio FM régionales. Les données de cet article furent recueillies lors de visites de six de ces stations en juillet 1998 et d'entrevues avec les directeurs des stations et d'autres membres du personnel. L'article examine le contexte politico-économique de la création, la structure et la programmation de ces stations. Les données recueillies pour cette étude indiquent que, grâce aux nouvelles stations, le GBC est en train de prendre de l'extension et de mieux remplir son mandat de service public. En même temps, cependant, les structures institutionnelles et les ressources financières peu abondantes de la Corporation empêchent celle-ci de gagner son indépendance par rapport à certains organismes intéressés : le gouvernement, les entreprises et les associations à but non lucratif.

scholarly journals Why Anti-Realist Views Persist in Communication Research: A Political Economic Reflection on Relativism’s Prominence

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yigal Godler
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Corporate Ownership ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Media Institutions ◽  
Political Economic

The article seeks to explain why denials of reality are tolerated and go largely unchallenged in communication research. It proposes that the acceptance of anti-realist views is related to communication theorists’ general hostility toward radical political economic critiques of media institutions and coverage. Unwilling to undertake research which lucidly exposes the central power relations in society, communication scholars sympathetic to corporate ownership and elite opinion resort to a particular form of obscurantism. This form of obscurantism does not only misrepresent uncongenial work, but espouses an apparently abstruse – though rather vacuous – anti-realist philosophy, which pre-empts consideration of ideas that threaten to expose the workings of existing institutional structures and communication scholars’ role in defending them.

AMERICAN ANTI-MISSLE SHIELD, EASTERN EUROPEAN ASSET TO DISCOURAGE BALLISTIC ATTACKS

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-91
Author(s):  
Valentin PETRESCU
Keyword(s):  
Military Power ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Defense System ◽  
Missile Defense ◽  
Military Alliance ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Ballistic Trajectory ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Political Economic

Abstract: Air-missile defense is a mission of anti-aircraft missile troops known in the field as anti-missile shield. It describes an anti-ballistic area intended for research, discovery, interception and combat of surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles with ballistic trajectory. The existence of the anti-missile shield implies the creation of a security zone of allied states, institutional structures and population that can ensure their functionality and existence, deployed on an alignment (territories of several states), in order to maintain a state of normalcy and security. This defense system must include the threatened states, members of the politico-military alliance, regardless of their economic and military power. The security environment also concerns both the population of those countries and the objectives of great political, economic, strategic, critical and military infrastructure importance.

scholarly journals Degrees of Support: State Spending on Higher Education and Public Postsecondary Degrees across State Legislatures, 2005 and 2014

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110099
Author(s):  
Kristen Shorette ◽  
Megan Thiele ◽  
Catherine Bolzendahl
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Generalized Least Squares ◽  
State Funding ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Least Squares Regression ◽  
State Spending ◽  
Structural Controls ◽  
Political Economic

U.S. state spending on higher education represents a sizable, but highly variable, portion of budget expenditures. Preliminary research supports a positive relationship between the percentage of state legislators who hold public degrees and state funding for higher education. In this study, the authors test whether this finding is consistent over time by using panel modeling to analyze the educational compositions of state legislatures in 2005 and 2014. Generalized least squares regression models with robust standard errors clustered by state- and year-specific intercepts indicate a significantly positive relationship between the proportion of publicly educated state legislators and state spending on higher education. This relationship is consistent across models with numerous robustness checks and political, economic, and structural controls. Given the smaller number of publicly educated legislators in 2014, the findings suggest that spending on higher education would have increased to a larger extent had the educational composition of the legislatures remained constant.

Do Policy Makers Listen to Experts? Evidence from a National Survey of Local and State Policy Makers

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
NATHAN LEE
Keyword(s):  
National Survey ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Elected Officials ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Expert Evidence ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Behavior Theories

Do elected officials update their policy positions in response to expert evidence? A large literature in political behavior demonstrates a range of biases that individuals may manifest in evaluating information. However, elected officials may be motivated to accurately incorporate information when it could affect the welfare of their constituents. I investigate these competing predictions through a national survey of local and state policy makers in which I present respondents with established expert findings concerning three subnational policy debates, debates that vary as to whether Republicans or Democrats are more likely to see the findings as confirmatory or challenging. Using both cross-subject and within-subject designs, I find policy makers update their beliefs and preferences in the direction of the evidence irrespective of the valence of the information. These findings have implications for the application of mass political behavior theories to politicians as well as the prospects for evidence-based policy making.

Entangled Systems at the Energy-Water-Food Nexus

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Nyangon ◽  
Nabeel Alabbas ◽  
Lawrence Agbemabiese
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Food Resource ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Energy Economy ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Resource Systems

This chapter assesses energy, water, and food resource systems based on their inter- and intra-sectoral imperatives of large scale development investments at the institutional level (including private and public activities) and how to achieve security of resource supplies. It identifies key interrelated processes, practices, and factors that underpin integrated resource management (IRM) and their attendant benefits. Applying the E4 framework concerned with energy, economy, environment, and equity to identify the main threats to these systems, the chapter evaluates their institutional, political, economic, cultural and behavioral components, and characterizes the forces that drive each of them at different governance scales. The chapter is guided by political economy, economic, and sociological theories that suggest that institutional structures affect economic factors and processes (i.e. production, distribution, and consumption processes). A case study of energy, water, and food (EWF) conflicting sectoral imperatives in Delaware is discussed in detail to better understand how these policy and institutional processes occur, which forms they take, and in which ways they define the quality and quantity of EWF resource systems in the State. In order to verify these parameters, the analysis considered the advantages of a sectorally balanced, E4 framework, in particular to evaluate the valency and magnitude of cross-sectoral connections, balance competing needs, and identify policy options that address various trade-offs.

Political‐Economic Cycles

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Franzese ◽  
Karen Long Jusko
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Economic Outcomes ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Economic Cycles ◽  
Electoral Cycles ◽  
Partisan Competition ◽  
Political Economic

This article provides a survey of the theoretical and empirical work on political-economic cycles, such as cycles in economic outcomes induced by electoral and partisan competition. It also reviews the literature on electoral cycles and emphasizes how electoral context may heighten or limit incentives to electioneer. Another survey, which focuses on the theoretical and empirical literature linking economic policy to partisan electoral motivations, is provided as well.

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