Emotion and Reason in Political Language

This paper studies the use of emotion and reason in political discourse. Adopting computational-linguistics techniques to construct a validated text-based scale, we measure emotionality in 6 million speeches given in U.S. Congress over the years 1858-2014. Intuitively, emotionality spikes during times of war and is highest in speeches about patriotism. In the time series, emotionality was relatively low and stable in earlier years but increased significantly starting in the late 1970s. Across Congress Members, emotionality is higher for Democrats, for women, for ethnic/religious minorities, for the opposition party, and for members with ideologically extreme roll-call voting records.

Say my name

This essay is a call out and a roll call of Black women scholars – Black Feminists, Critical Race Theorists, Intersectionality Theorists and co-conspirators – doing the work of the elder women and ancestors whose shoulders we stand on. I frame the research on African American Women’s Language around Hull, Bell-Scott and Smith’s (1982) seminal book All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave to shout out not only how language and linguistics researchers got it twisted and need to reckon with truth and say my (language’s) name: African American Women’s Language. And put some respeck on it while you’re at it.

Design of Bluetooth Automatic Check in System Without Operation Based on Cross Mobile Platform

Because the traditional way of sign in is not to call the roll, or sign in on the paper list, or sign in through fingerprint recognition and face recognition, on the one hand, it is cumbersome and time-consuming, on the other hand, it is non-human. The update of roll call sign in is a hot topic at present, and many new schemes rush out. This paper introduces the automatic sign in system based on Bluetooth technology, which does not rely on the mobile phone operating system, does not need the mobile phone installation software, as long as you bring a mobile phone, you can realize automatic sign in. This paper designs and implements the automatic check-in system, and compares it with other ways, proving that it is an innovative check-in method.

Jam-Barrel Politics

This paper studies the executive-legislative exchange of centrally-allocated benefits (jam) for legislative support in Colombia using data from road building projects, legislative roll-call votes, and a leaked database which uncovered the assignment of road contracts to individual legislators. We draw hypotheses from a model in which an executive spreads jam to sway legislators. We document that assigned projects had excess costs, legislators targeted were more likely to be swing voters in congress, and legislators increased their support for the executive after their contracts were signed. The results are driven by legislators representing remote regions and constituencies with weaker political institutions.

Voting behavior under outside pressure: promoting true majorities with sequential voting?

When including outside pressure on voters as individual costs, sequential voting (as in roll call votes) is theoretically preferable to simultaneous voting (as in recorded ballots). Under complete information, sequential voting has a unique subgame perfect equilibrium with a simple equilibrium strategy guaranteeing true majority results. Simultaneous voting suffers from a plethora of equilibria, often contradicting true majorities. Experimental results, however, show severe deviations from the equilibrium strategy in sequential voting with not significantly more true majority results than in simultaneous voting. Social considerations under sequential voting—based on emotional reactions toward the behaviors of the previous players—seem to distort subgame perfect equilibria.

Trigo y política: El proteccionismo cerealista en el Parlamento, 1886-1890

This paper studies the channels through which the agrarian crisis (1886-1890) arrived in the Spanish Parliament and, once there, centered the economic debate until an increase of protectionism was passed. The analysis of the roll-call votes on agrarian customs that took place in those years allows to identify, narrative and quantitatively, the line-up of congressmen according to partisan guides, but, also, according to the economic interests, agrarian interests here, of the provinces that they represented. Interestingly, the Parliamentary dynamics that the agrarian crisis revealed supports the idea of those who see in the Bourbon Restauration a regime where decision-making resulted from the interaction between the economic and political powers.

When Does She Rebel? How Gender Affects Deviating Legislative Behaviour

It is common wisdom that the increase in the number of women in parliament brought along a new diversity of perspectives presented in legislatures. So far, however, we know little about the implications of women's presence on party cohesion. Moving towards a more complete understanding of how women affect political processes, this article addresses the question, does gender affect vote defection from party lines, and if so, under what circumstances? We argue that the actual and perceived risk associated with vote defection in roll-call votes is gendered and that this is constraining the leeway of women to rebel. Analysing roll-call vote data of the German Bundestag (1953–2013) provided by Bergmann et al. (2018), we show that gender exerts a consistent effect only if electoral safety and policy content are considered: it is in feminine policy areas and at high levels of electoral security that women are more likely than men to rebel. This finding implies that taking different incentive structures into account is key if we want to understand gendered legislative behaviour.