Early Statehood and Support for Autocratic Rule in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402110360
Author(s):  
Vladimir Chlouba ◽  
Daniel S. Smith ◽  
Seamus Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Survey Round ◽  
Separate Channel ◽  
Traditional Institutions ◽  
British Colonies

Recent work highlights the importance of pre-modern political practices for explaining persistent institutional features, including representative democracy. Typically, this argument is institutional in nature—pre-industrial practices are hypothesized to either bolster or retard the transmission of democratic institutions. This article proposes a separate channel through which legacies of early statehood continue to impact the prospects of democratic governance. Using survey data from Africa, we document a positive relationship between early statehood development and support for autocratic rule among ordinary Africans. This finding is robust to a wide range of pre- and post-treatment covariates, country and survey round fixed effects, as well as an instrumental-variable design. The identified relationship is particularly prominent in respondents from precolonially centralized ethnic groups in former British colonies, suggesting the importance of locally surviving traditional institutions for propagation of norms that owe their origins to precolonial autocratic socialization.

scholarly journals Cognitive ability and fertility among Swedish men born 1951–1967: evidence from military conscription registers

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1902) ◽  
pp. 20190359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kolk ◽  
Kieron Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Military Conscription ◽  
First Child ◽  
Parental Background ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intelligence Scores ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Educational Careers

We examine the relationship between cognitive ability and childbearing patterns in contemporary Sweden using administrative register data. The topic has a long history in the social sciences and has been the topic of a large number of studies, many reporting a negative gradient between intelligence and fertility. We link fertility histories to military conscription tests with intelligence scores for all Swedish men born 1951–1967. We find a positive relationship between intelligence scores and fertility, and this pattern is consistent across the cohorts we study. The relationship is most pronounced for the transition to a first child, and men with the lowest categories of IQ scores have the fewest children. Using fixed effects models, we additionally control for all factors that are shared by siblings, and after such adjustments, we find a stronger positive relationship between IQ and fertility. Furthermore, we find a positive gradient within groups at different levels of education. Compositional differences of this kind are therefore not responsible for the positive gradient we observe—instead, the relationship is even stronger after controlling for both educational careers and parental background factors. In our models where we compare brothers to one another, we find that, relative to men with IQ 100, the group with the lowest category of cognitive ability have 0.56 fewer children, and men with the highest category have 0.09 more children.

scholarly journals Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts: Executive Aggrandizement and Party-state Fusion in India

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarunabh Khaitan
Keyword(s):  
Good Governance ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Media ◽  
Democratic Norms

AbstractMany concerned citizens, including judges, bureaucrats, politicians, activists, journalists, and academics, have been claiming that Indian democracy has been imperilled under the premiership of Narendra Modi, which began in 2014. To examine this claim, the Article sets up an analytic framework for accountability mechanisms liberal democratic constitutions put in place to provide a check on the political executive. The assumption is that only if this framework is dismantled in a systemic manner can we claim that democracy itself is in peril. This framework helps distinguish between actions that one may disagree with ideologically but are nonetheless permitted by an elected government, from actions that strike at the heart of liberal democratic constitutionalism. Liberal democratic constitutions typically adopt three ways of making accountability demands on the political executive: vertically, by demanding electoral accountability to the people; horizontally, by subjecting it to accountability demands of other state institutions like the judiciary and fourth branch institutions; and diagonally, by requiring discursive accountability by the media, the academy, and civil society. This framework assures democracy over time – i.e. it guarantees democratic governance not only to the people today, but to all future peoples of India. Each elected government has the mandate to implement its policies over a wide range of matters. However, seeking to entrench the ruling party’s stranglehold on power in ways that are inimical to the continued operation of democracy cannot be one of them. The Article finds that the first Modi government in power between 2014 and 2019 did indeed seek to undermine each of these three strands of executive accountability. Unlike the assault on democratic norms during India Gandhi’s Emergency in the 1970s, there is little evidence of a direct or full-frontal attack during this period. The Bharatiya Janata Party government’s mode of operation was subtle, indirect, and incremental, but also systemic. Hence, the Article characterizes the phenomenon as “killing a constitution by a thousand cuts.” The incremental assaults on democratic governance were typically justified by a combination of a managerial rhetoric of efficiency and good governance (made plausible by the undeniable imperfection of our institutions) and a divisive rhetoric of hyper-nationalism (which brands political opponents of the party as traitors of the state). Since its resounding victory in the 2019 general elections, the Modi government appears to have moved into consolidation mode. No longer constrained by the demands of coalition partners, early signs suggest that it may abandon the incrementalist approach for a more direct assault on democratic constitutionalism.

scholarly journals Law, Governance, and the Ecological Ethos

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Butt
Keyword(s):  
Coercive Force ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Command And Control ◽  
The State ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Control

This chapter examines the limitations of both command-and-control and market-based legal mechanisms in the pursuit of environmental justice. If the environment is to be protected to at least a minimally acceptable degree, approaches that focus on the coercive force of the state must be complemented by the development of an “ecological ethos,” whereby groups and individuals are motivated to act with non-self-interested concern for the environment. The need for this ethos means that the state is dependent on the cooperation of a wide range of non-state actors. Recent work on environmental governance emphasizes the delegation of aspects of governing to such actors and supports efforts to increase popular participation in governmental processes. The chapter therefore advocates a governance approach that seeks to rectify some of the limitations of state-led environmental law, while encouraging popular participation in a way that can encourage the development of an ecological ethos among the citizenry.

scholarly journals Genetic instrumental variable regression: Explaining socioeconomic and health outcomes in nonexperimental data

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (22) ◽  
pp. E4970-E4979 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. DiPrete ◽  
Casper A. P. Burik ◽  
Philipp D. Koellinger
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Genome Wide Association Study ◽  
Body Height ◽  
Outcome Variable ◽  
Endogeneity Bias ◽  
Multiple Indicators ◽  
Instrumental Variable Regression ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Polygenic Scores

Identifying causal effects in nonexperimental data is an enduring challenge. One proposed solution that recently gained popularity is the idea to use genes as instrumental variables [i.e., Mendelian randomization (MR)]. However, this approach is problematic because many variables of interest are genetically correlated, which implies the possibility that many genes could affect both the exposure and the outcome directly or via unobserved confounding factors. Thus, pleiotropic effects of genes are themselves a source of bias in nonexperimental data that would also undermine the ability of MR to correct for endogeneity bias from nongenetic sources. Here, we propose an alternative approach, genetic instrumental variable (GIV) regression, that provides estimates for the effect of an exposure on an outcome in the presence of pleiotropy. As a valuable byproduct, GIV regression also provides accurate estimates of the chip heritability of the outcome variable. GIV regression uses polygenic scores (PGSs) for the outcome of interest which can be constructed from genome-wide association study (GWAS) results. By splitting the GWAS sample for the outcome into nonoverlapping subsamples, we obtain multiple indicators of the outcome PGSs that can be used as instruments for each other and, in combination with other methods such as sibling fixed effects, can address endogeneity bias from both pleiotropy and the environment. In two empirical applications, we demonstrate that our approach produces reasonable estimates of the chip heritability of educational attainment (EA) and show that standard regression and MR provide upwardly biased estimates of the effect of body height on EA.

U.S. Political Corruption and Audit Fees

2020 ◽  
pp. 0000-0000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anand Jha ◽  
Manoj Kulchania ◽  
Jared Smith
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Internal Controls ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Additional Risk ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The U.S

Using data on corruption convictions from the U.S. Department of Justice, we find that auditors charge higher fees when a firm is headquartered in a more corrupt district. This result is robust to a wide range of time and location fixed effects, using capital city isolation as an instrument, and propensity score matching. We also find that, relative to those in non-corrupt districts, firms in corrupt districts are more likely to have weak internal controls and to restate earnings and that their auditors exert greater effort. This evidence suggests that auditing firms in corrupt areas entails additional risk, which auditors price into fees.

scholarly journals Signals and Spite in Fluctuating Populations

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
Rory Smead ◽  
Patrick Forber
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Computational Methods ◽  
Social Behaviors ◽  
Small Populations ◽  
Stochastic Effects ◽  
Animal Populations ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Fluctuating Populations

AbstractSpite (in the biological or evolutionary sense) is behavior that harms others at a cost to the actor. The presence of spite in human and animal populations presents an evolutionary puzzle. Recent work has suggested small populations and pre-play signaling can have a significant effect on the evolution of spite. Here, we use computational methods to explore these factors in fluctuating populations that may go extinct. We find that the presence of spite can make a population significantly more likely to go extinct, but that this does not preclude the possibility of spite reliably evolving. Additionally, we find that the stochastic effects of small fluctuating populations allow for the evolution and predominance of signal-mediated conditional spite across a wide range of conditions. These results suggest that directed harm, even if costly, can play a significant early role in the evolution of social behaviors and this provides a possible origin for punishment.

Lazy thinking, lazy giving? Examining the effects of Norwegian aid on forests in developing countries

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristine Hermanrud ◽  
Indra de Soysa
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Bilateral Aid ◽  
Estimation Techniques ◽  
Step Selection ◽  
Climate Problem

The Norwegian government enthusiastically supports the protection of forests, which are important CO2 sinks. Given all the difficulty surrounding the reduction of greenhouse gases, funding the protection of forests is a sound proposition. Up to the present time, how well has Norwegian aid to forests and Norwegian bilateral aid affected the health of forests? Using World Bank data on forest degradation and change in forest area for roughly 130 developing countries from 1999 to 2013, we find that higher levels of Norwegian forest aid among recipient countries has generally had no effect on reducing degradation, while total Norwegian bilateral aid is associated with increased degradation, results that might very well be causal because they are robust to estimations using instrumental variable techniques. Two-step selection models show that forest aid also increases forest degradation, result that are quite unflattering of Norwegian aid. These results are robust to several alternative specifications of our models and to alternative estimation techniques including country fixed effects. Two clear lessons emerge from our findings; firstly, that Norwegian aid does not seem to be coordinated for addressing the problem of forest degradation; and secondly, aid as a means to solve the climate problem likely faces steep obstacles if even a non-strategic, aid-giving country, such as Norway, is capable of more harm than good.

Peer Tutoring and Cooperative Learning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith J. Topping
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Learning ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Peer Tutoring ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Implementation Fidelity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Peer Assisted Learning ◽  
Combining Data ◽  
Wide Range

Both peer tutoring and cooperative learning are types of peer assisted learning; they involve people from similar social groupings who are not professional teachers helping each other to learn and learning themselves by teaching. Peer tutoring usually involves pairs of students, one in the role of tutor and the other as tutee, with the more able or experienced member helping the other to learn material which is new to the tutor but not to the tutee. By contrast, cooperative learning is usually done in small groups of perhaps four students, often of mixed ability. The group works toward a consensus on a problem. Because it is easier to dominate or hide in a group, roles are often assigned to each group member. Earlier perspectives tended to use the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, perhaps with some consideration of Bandura and Dewey. Chi, King, and Graesser have been prominent in more recent work. However, a theoretical perspective is offered that integrates these elements with more practical issues. In general, both peer tutoring and cooperative learning “work”— in a wide range of curricular subjects and with a wide range of ages. Given the appropriate form of organization, cognitive gains ensue for both helpers and those who are helped. This is not the main research issue, which is exploring how and why these practices work, in order to improve effectiveness. There are several meta-analyses (a statistical procedure for combining data from multiple studies) which are relevant, and beyond this, key individual papers of specific importance are highlighted. Over the years, we have become wiser about some of the key issues. In peer tutoring, same-ability tutoring has appeared in recent years, sometimes reciprocal, and we need to know under what conditions it works. Cooperative learning has issues regarding the most effective roles for group members and how these integrate with student ability and personality. There has also been much recent work in online peer tutoring which raises different issues. The existing literature is well-developed since these are not new methods. Future research should include more tightly defined studies focusing on more minor variables of context and organization. Many teachers will say they use both peer tutoring and cooperative learning, but very often they overestimate how often anything like good practice takes place. Simply putting students together and hoping for the best will not do, although it might have mild effects. Teachers using these methods need to be clear about what organizational parameters are vital in their context with their type of peer assisted learning. These features then need to be maximized in practice and an eye must be kept on implementation fidelity throughout. Education administrators need to organize professional development for teachers which is thorough, including initial instruction and practice followed up by support and monitoring in the classroom.

scholarly journals The unity and diversity of the ciliary central apparatus

2019 ◽  
Vol 375 (1792) ◽  
pp. 20190164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Zhao ◽  
Yuqing Hou ◽  
Nathan A. McNeill ◽  
George B. Witman
Keyword(s):  
Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Protein Composition ◽  
Model System ◽  
Flagellar Motility ◽  
Phylogenetic Groups ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Central Apparatus ◽  
Cilia And Flagella ◽  
Eukaryotic Organisms

Nearly all motile cilia and flagella (terms here used interchangeably) have a ‘9+2’ axoneme containing nine outer doublet microtubules and two central microtubules. The central pair of microtubules plus associated projections, termed the central apparatus (CA), is involved in the control of flagellar motility and is essential for the normal movement of ‘9+2’ cilia. Research using the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii , an important model system for studying cilia, has provided most of our knowledge of the protein composition of the CA, and recent work using this organism has expanded the number of known and candidate CA proteins nearly threefold. Here we take advantage of this enhanced proteome to examine the genomes of a wide range of eukaryotic organisms, representing all of the major phylogenetic groups, to identify predicted orthologues of the C. reinhardtii CA proteins and explore how widely the proteins are conserved and whether there are patterns to this conservation. We also discuss in detail two contrasting groups of CA proteins—the ASH-domain proteins, which are broadly conserved, and the PAS proteins, which are restricted primarily to the volvocalean algae. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Unity and diversity of cilia in locomotion and transport’.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document