Striking a Balance between Contradictory Roles: The Overlapping Role Perceptions of the Deputies in China’s Local People’s Congresses

Modern China ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongya Huang ◽  
Quanling He

Recent studies have begun to pay increasing attention to congressional representation in China. Based on selected cases or surveys of one province or another, such studies seek to demonstrate that the deputies of local people’s congresses (LPCs) increasingly identify themselves as representatives of citizens rather than as state agents. This article, using data from a national survey conducted in 2014, explores how deputies at the county level perceive their role and what accounts for their different role perceptions. It argues that LPC deputies as a whole perceive that they have overlapping roles that could be defined as neither state agents nor citizen representatives. Rather, they try to strike a balance between seemingly contradictory roles. Deputies’ social background and political attitudes have a significant effect on their role perceptions while electoral incentives make little difference. A sense of congressional representation develops when deputies gradually come to grips with the tension between the different roles and choose to give up roles other than citizen representatives.

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-99
Author(s):  
Eduardo Alemán ◽  
Juan Pablo Micozzi ◽  
Pablo M. Pinto ◽  
Sebastián Saiegh

ABSTRACTAccording to conventional wisdom, closed-list proportional representation (CLPR) electoral systems create incentives for legislators to favor the party line over their voters’ positions. However, electoral incentives may induce party leaders to tolerate “shirking” by some legislators, even under CLPR. This study argues that in considering whose deviations from the party line should be tolerated, party leaders exploit differences in voters’ relative electoral influence resulting from malapportionment. We expect defections in roll call votes to be more likely among legislators elected from overrepresented districts than among those from other districts. We empirically test this claim using data on Argentine legislators’ voting records and a unique dataset of estimates of voters’ and legislators’ placements in a common ideological space. Our findings suggest that even under electoral rules known for promoting unified parties, we should expect strategic defections to please voters, which can be advantageous for the party’s electoral fortunes.


Author(s):  
Frederico Finan ◽  
Maurizio Mazzocco

Abstract Politicians allocate public resources in ways that maximize political gains, and potentially at the cost of lower welfare. In this paper, we quantify these welfare costs in the context of Brazil’s federal legislature, which grants its members a budget to fund public projects within their states. Using data from the state of Roraima, we estimate a model of politicians’ allocation decisions and find that 26.8% of the public funds allocated by legislators are distorted relative to a social planner’s allocation. We then use the model to simulate three potential policy reforms to the electoral system: the adoption of approval voting, imposing a one-term limit, and redistricting. We find that a one-term limit and redistricting are both effective at reducing distortions. The one-term limit policy, however, increases corruption, which makes it a welfare-reducing policy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 165-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan M. Bernick ◽  
Brianne Heidbreder

This research examines the position of county clerk, where women are numerically disproportionately over-represented. Using data collected from the National Association of Counties and the U.S. Census Bureau, the models estimate the correlation between the county clerk’s sex and county-level demographic, social, and political factors with maximum likelihood logit estimates. This research suggests that while women are better represented in the office of county clerk across the United States, when compared to other elective offices, this representation may be because this office is not seen as attractive to men and its responsibilities fit within the construct of traditional gender norms.


Author(s):  
A. Stefanie Ruiz ◽  
Lili Wang ◽  
Femida Handy

This study investigates the association between the integration of first-generation immigrants and their volunteering. Using data from a Canadian national survey, we examine three dimensions of immigrant integration: professional, psychosocial and political. General volunteering is not significantly related to integration; however, there exists a relationship between the different dimensions of integration and where immigrants choose to volunteer. Thus, the relationship between the type and degree of immigrant integration and volunteering is nuanced; it matters where volunteering occurs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 79-132
Author(s):  
Shane P. Singh

This chapter empirically tests the expectation that compulsory voting moderates the effects of orientations toward democracy on political attitudes, behavior, and sophistication. It first employs cross-national survey data from the AmericasBarometer and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems to estimate multilevel models. It also uses cross-cantonal data from the Swiss Election Study, and novel survey data from Argentina collected for this book. The analyses of the Swiss and Argentine data leverage age-based thresholds in the application of compulsory voting with discontinuity models. Results suggest that, in line with the predictions of the theory advanced in Chapter 3, compulsory voting polarizes behavior and attitudes, and broadens gaps in political sophistication levels, among those with negative and positive orientations toward democracy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (9) ◽  
pp. 1059-1078
Author(s):  
Angela A. Robertson ◽  
Zhou Fang ◽  
Doris Weiland ◽  
George Joe ◽  
Sheena Gardner ◽  
...  

Recidivism, and the factors related to it, remains a highly significant concern among juvenile justice researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Recent studies highlight the need to examine multiple measures of recidivism as well as conduct multilevel analyses of this phenomenon. Using data collected in a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded Juvenile Justice-Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System (JJ-TRIALS) cooperative agreement, we examined individual- and site-level factors related to 1-year recidivism among probation youth in 20 sites in five states to answer research questions related to how recidivism rates differ across sites and the relationships between individual-level variables and a county-level concentrated disadvantage measure and recidivism. Our findings of large site differences in recidivism rates, and complex relationships between individual and county-level predictors of recidivism, highlight the need for more nuanced, contextually informed, multilevel approaches in studying recidivism among juveniles.


Author(s):  
Lindsay A. Owens ◽  
Karen S. Cook

The effects of recessions on social and political attitudes are likely smaller than the effects on employment, income, and wealth, but relatively modest aggregate effects may be masking differences in attitudes between individuals who live in areas most and least affected by recessions. To investigate social and political attitudes in geographical context, we exploit a new data source that matches individuals to their county of residence to analyze whether changing economic conditions at the county level are associated with changing confidence in major social institutions and with changing levels of interpersonal trust. We find that individuals in particularly affected counties are more likely to decrease their support for organized labor and the federal government. County-level hardship does not appear to be associated with changes in interpersonal measures of trust, however, suggesting that two very different processes may be at play.


2020 ◽  
pp. 135481662092321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerrod Penn ◽  
Wuyang Hu

Bed bugs pose a nontrivial threat to the hospitality industry. Hotels often engage in reactive practices to protect their business from further economic loss due to bed bugs although proactive measures, such as housekeeping inspection, professional inspections, and mattress encasements, may be more appealing to travelers and cost-effective. Using data collected from a national survey of US travelers, this study shows that travelers have the highest willingness to pay for mattress encasements and professional inspections. Although this premium varies considerably based on traveler characteristics and attitudes, and not all of them prefer to know about the practices, a large proportion of travelers have positive willingness to pay for these proactive practices. Overall, for leisure traveling, individuals who have business travel experiences for the previous year are willing to pay significantly higher than those who have never traveled for business in the previous year.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 673-695
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Nowacki

The current study examined whether measures of structural gender equality conditioned the effects of defendant gender on incarceration decisions. Using data from the State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) database, multilevel logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between both case- and county-level variables on incarceration decisions on a sample of defendants sentenced in state courts. Results indicated that women were less likely to be sentenced to prison than men, but there was no gender difference for jail and noncustodial sentences; however, the structural gender equality measures exerted only slight influences over sentencing outcomes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-172
Author(s):  
Eileen M. Ahlin

There is relatively little literature examining risk factors associated with sexual victimization among youth in custody. The current study explored whether risk of forced sexual victimization among youth in custody differs by gender or perpetrator. Using data from a sample of 8,659 youth who participated in the National Survey of Youth in Custody, multivariate logistic regression models were employed to investigate gender differences in risk factors associated with overall forced sexual victimization and staff-on-inmate and inmate-on-inmate forced sexual victimization. Findings suggest that gender differences are more pronounced when perpetrator type is considered.


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