A New Multiprocess IRT Model With Ideal Points for Likert-Type Items

For surveys of complex issues that entail multiple steps, multiple reference points, and nongradient attributes (e.g., social inequality), this study proposes a new multiprocess model that integrates ideal-point and dominance approaches into a treelike structure (IDtree). In the IDtree, an ideal-point approach describes an individual’s attitude and then a dominance approach describes their tendency for using extreme response categories. Evaluation of IDtree performance via two empirical data sets showed that the IDtree fit these data better than other models. Furthermore, simulation studies showed a satisfactory parameter recovery of the IDtree. Thus, the IDtree model sheds light on the response processes of a multistage structure.

Do violent teens become violent adults? Links between juvenile and adult domestic and family violence

Previous research exploring pathways into domestic and family violence (DFV) has primarily examined associations between early victimisation and future offending. Less is known about the relationship between adolescent DFV offending and adult DFV offending. This study examined the offending pathways of 8,465 young offenders aged 13–17, who were followed until age 23. Only seven percent of young people in the sample had been proceeded against for a DFV offence before the age of 18. However, relative to other offenders who had been proceeded against for other forms of violent or non-violent offending, adolescent DFV offenders were much more likely to become adult DFV offenders, and reoffended more frequently. These findings further highlight the need for interventions focusing on DFV offending among adolescents, and provide key evidence for identifying ideal points of intervention to prevent DFV in the community.

Assessment of International Competitiveness of AI Industry Based on Positive and Negative Ideal Points Weighting Method

China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other major AI superpowers as research objects, this paper establishes the assessment index system with the diamond model, weights the international competitiveness indexes of AI industry in the four countries based on positive and negative ideal points, and applies the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm to obtain the final weights. Then, the TOPSIS assessment method is used to score and rank their international competitiveness of AI industry. It is concluded that the United States is on the leading position in the human factor, knowledge factor, capital factor, enterprise strategy structure/competitors, and policy laws and regulations. China has a complete infrastructure system and huge market demand. The leading of these indicators is also the reason why China can catch up in the development of some industries when it participates in the global value division. Europe also performs well in knowledge factors, capital factors, strategic structure/competitors, and policies and regulations but needs to invest more in AI industry infrastructure. Finally, this paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the countries and reasons to provide comparative reference among different countries for AI industry.

Allies or Commitment Devices? A Model of Appointments to the Federal Reserve

We present a model of executive-legislative bargaining over appointments to independent cen-tral banks in the face of an uncertain economy with strategic economic actors. The model highlights the contrast between two idealized views of Federal Reserve appointments. In one view, politicians prefer to appoint conservatively biased central bankers to overcome credible commitment problems that arise in monetary policy. In the other, politicians prefer to appoint allies, and appointments are well described by the spatial model used to describe appointments to other agencies. Both ideals are limiting cases of our model, which depend on the level of economic uncertainty. When economic uncertainty is extremely low, politicians prefer very conservative appointments. When economic uncertainty increases, politicians’ prefer central bank appointees closer to their own ideal points. In the typical case, the results are somewhere in between: equilibrium appointments move in the direction of politician’s preferences but with a moderate conservative bias.

Parliament, People or Technocrats? Explaining Mass Public Preferences on Delegation of Policymaking Authority

While delegation of policymaking authority from citizens to parliament is the most defining characteristic of representative democracy, public demand for delegating such authority away from legislature/government to technocrats or back to citizens appears to have increased. Drawing on spatial models of voting, we argue that the distance between individuals’ ideal policy points, the status quo, experts’ policy positions and aggregated societal policy preferences can help explain whether individuals prefer to delegate decision-making power away from parliament and, if so, to whom. The effects of individual’s preference distance from these ideal points are likely to be stronger the more salient the policy issue is for the respective individual. We test this argument using survey experiments in Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The analysis provides evidence for the empirical implications of our theoretical arguments. The research presented here contributes to better understanding variation in citizens’ support for representative democracy and preferences for delegating policymaking authority away from parliament.

Debate Reaction Ideal Points: Political Ideology Measurement Using Real-Time Reaction Data

Ideal point models have become a powerful tool for defining and measuring the ideology of many kinds of political actors, including legislators, judges, campaign donors, and members of the general public. We extend the application of ideal point models to the public using a novel data source: real-time reactions to statements by candidates in the 2012 presidential debates. Using these reactions as inputs to an ideal point model, we estimate individual-level ideology and evaluate the quality of the measure. Debate reaction ideal points provide a method for estimating a continuous, individual-level measure of ideology that avoids survey response biases, provides better estimates for moderates and the politically unengaged, and reflects the content of salient political discourse relevant to viewers’ attitudes and vote choices. As expected, we find that debate reaction ideal points are more extreme among respondents who strongly identify with a political party, but retain substantial within-party variation. Ideal points are also more extreme among respondents who are more politically interested. Using topical subsets of the debate statements, we find that ideal points in the sample are more moderate for foreign policy than for economic or domestic policy.

Multiple Ideal Points: Revealed Preferences in Different Domains

We extend classical ideal point estimation to allow voters to have different preferences when voting in different domains—for example, when voting on agricultural policy than when voting on defense policy. Our scaling procedure results in estimated ideal points on a common scale. As a result, we are able to directly compare a member’s revealed preferences across different domains of voting (different sets of motions) to assess if, for example, a member votes more conservatively on agriculture motions than on defense. In doing so, we are able to assess the extent to which voting behavior of an individual voter is consistent with a uni-dimensional spatial model—if a member has the same preferences in all domains. The key novelty is to estimate rather than assume the identity of “stayers”—voters whose revealed preference is constant across votes. Our approach offers methodology for investigating the relationship between the basic space and issue space in legislative voting (Poole 2007). There are several methodological advantages to our approach. First, our model allows for testing sharp hypotheses. Second, the methodology developed can be understood as a kind of partial-pooling model for item response theory scaling, resulting in less uncertainty of estimates. Related, our estimation method provides a principled and unified approach to the issue of “granularity” (i.e., the level of aggregation) in the analysis of roll-call data (Crespin and Rohde 2010; Roberts et al. 2016). We illustrate the model by estimating U.S. House of Representatives members’ revealed preferences in different policy domains, and identify several other potential applications of the model including: studying the relationship between committee and floor voting behavior; and investigating constituency influence and representation.

Global Ideological Conflict

This chapter discusses the definition of institutions and then of ideology. Ideology is a set of widely understood more or less cohesive and stable ideas about how a set of issues should be resolved and who should resolve them. It is a vehicle not just for spreading values but also for transmitting information. This information is especially valuable in contexts where actors care deeply about the future intentions of others, including international institutional politics. The chapter then assesses how this definition differs from other treatments in the international relations literature, how ideology constrains policy positions, and what global ideological debates are about. It also outlines an approach to estimate the ideological positions of states from votes in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). It evaluates the validity of this measure. For example, changes in UNGA ideal points correlate strongly with various indicators of liberalism: such as changes in government ideology, regime type, and capital openness.

A Spatial Modeling Framework

This chapter proposes a simple spatial modeling framework to analyze how variations in interdependence and ideology shape incentives for cooperation and competition. The goal is to present a framework that is as simple as the prisoner's dilemma, coordination dilemma, battle of the sexes, and other two-by-two games that have served as mental models for rationalist analyses of cooperation. The spatial model easily accommodates multiple actors and distributive conflict and allows for analyses of how institutions structure choices. It starts from the assumption that actors have ideal points in a common low-dimensional ideological space. Yet their utilities are determined not just by their own policies but also by the policies of other actors. This interdependence creates incentives for cooperation. In this context, institutions may help actors achieve mutually beneficial outcomes, but they also have distributive implications. Institutions help shift policy status quos in particular directions.