Identifying control ensembles for decision-making within the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic circuit

During action selection, mammals exhibit a high degree of flexibility in adapting their decisions in response to environmental changes. Although the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic (CBGT) network is implicated in this adaptation, it features a synaptic architecture comprising multiple feed-forward, reciprocal, and feedback pathways, complicating efforts to elucidate the roles of specific CBGT populations in the process of evidence accumulation during decision-making. In this paper we apply a strategic sampling approach, based on Latin hypercube sampling, to explore how CBGT network properties, including subpopulation firing rates and synaptic weights, map to parameters of a normative drift diffusion model (DDM) representing algorithmic aspects of information accumulation during decision-making. Through the application of canonical correlation analysis, we find that this relationship can be characterized in terms of three low-dimensional control ensembles impacting specific qualities of the emergent decision policy: responsiveness (associated with overall activity in corticothalamic and direct pathways), pliancy (associated largely with overall activity in components of the indirect pathway of the basal ganglia), and choice (associated with differences in direct and indirect pathways across action channels). These analyses provide key mechanistic predictions about the roles of specific CBGT network elements in shifting different aspects of decision policies.

Can Conservatism Make Women More Vulnerable to Violence?

Violence against women (VAW) affects at least 35% of women worldwide. The need to combat VAW is seemingly noncontroversial: As existing work shows, ideology does not explain governments’ propensity to adopt anti-VAW legislation. Yet, effectively implementing anti-VAW legislation requires complex policy frameworks at odds with conservative values. Voters’ preferences can meaningfully influence policy outputs, so can electoral conservatism make women more vulnerable to violence? Employing data from 5570 Brazilian municipalities, we find that conservatism in the electorate is associated with the adoption of fewer anti-VAW policies. With data from a nationally representative survey of Brazilian respondents ( N = 2086), we then show that conservative voters are less likely to prioritize the need for tackling VAW. That is, the adoption of fewer anti-VAW policies in conservative municipalities reflects conservative voters’ policy preferences. Critically, our results suggest that in contexts where the electorate holds conservative preferences, policy responsiveness may incur costs to women’s lives.

Correlation: Registers of Change

Chapter 4 analyses how Correlation approaches maintain a knowing human subject and a world of patterned regularity amenable to policy intervention. Here, the island emerges as a ‘correlational technology’ where changes are seen as early indicators of climate change. Central however, is an (onto)epistemology of inter-relation and correlation rather than one of linear cause-and-effect: we move from a temporal and spatial line of movement to one of synchronicity. Correlational modes are deployed for sensing global warming, rising sea levels and other shifting planetary conditions. As islands are reinterpellated as ‘living laboratories’, the authors argue that the island is seen as enabling the generation of onto-epistemologies operating on correlative not causal principles. In addition to such correlational practices as the evolutionary patterns of island life, there is the widespread celebration of Indigenous islanders’ correlational abilities, useful in the ‘forecasting of extreme weather conditions’. Such approaches have received a high-tech boost in the Anthropocene, taking the algorithmic form of the, ‘if this … then that’ logic associated with Big Data, the Internet of Things and the trope of the ‘smart island’. Here, prolific use of Big Data combined with extensive networks of sensors or tracking social media on islands enables rapid policy responsiveness. The authors demonstrate how working with islands as sites for understanding relational entanglements and feedbacks plays an important role in the generation and exponential development of Correlational onto-epistemologies in broader Anthropocene thinking.

Issue Voting and Government Responsiveness to Policy Preferences

Does citizens’ voting behavior influence government policy? Conventional models of democratic representation assume that issue voting by citizens induces government responsiveness to citizens’ preferences. However, existing research has not tested whether voting behavior makes any difference to responsiveness. We present a theoretical model of issue voting and policy responsiveness. We leverage Swedish election study panels and a corresponding dataset on policy implementation to empirically evaluate the influence of issue voting on the adoption by governments of popular policies. We find that parties that enter government are more likely to implement popular policies if supporters of a policy shift their votes towards those parties. Thus, issue voting can lead to government responsiveness as long as it does not force parties to be inconsistent with their prior positions.

Personalised Representation in a Weak and Party-Controlled Legislature: Policy Responsiveness in the French Parliament

There is growing interest in personal representation and policy responsiveness in the European literature. The current scholarship mainly focuses on strong legislatures. This article aims to contribute to the discussion about policy responsiveness by investigating the least likely case, France. It asks whether French MPs engage in policy responsiveness, and if they do, how responsiveness interacts with party agenda and electoral vulnerability. Drawing on written parliamentary questions asked by French MPs from 1997 to 2007 ( N = 1172), the article shows that MPs’ behaviour is strongly affected by their district features. Moreover, the article shows that party agenda conditions the impact of district features. MPs are more likely to engage in policy responsiveness when the issue is also essential for the party. In other words, policy responsiveness is not independent of the party agenda. The article thus contributes to a better understanding of the personalisation of political representation and its relationship with political parties.

Can conservatism make women more vulnerable to violence?

Violence against women (VAW) affects at least 35% of women worldwide. The need to combat VAW is seemingly noncontroversial: As existing work shows, ideology does not explain governments' propensity to adopt anti-VAW legislation. Yet, effectively implementing anti-VAW legislation requires complex policy frameworks at odds with conservative values. Voters' preferences can meaningfully influence policy outputs, so can electoral conservatism make women more vulnerable to violence? Employing data from 5,570 Brazilian municipalities, we find that conservatism in the electorate is associated with the adoption of fewer anti-VAW policies. With data from a nationally-representative survey of Brazilian respondents (N=2,086), we then show that conservative voters are less likely to prioritize the need for tackling VAW. That is, the adoption of fewer anti-VAW policies in conservative municipalities reflects conservative voters’ policy preferences. Critically, our results suggest that in contexts where the electorate holds conservative preferences, policy responsiveness may incur costs to women's lives.

Can conservatism make women more vulnerable to violence?

Violence against women (VAW) affects at least 35% of women worldwide. The need to combat VAW is seemingly noncontroversial: As existing work shows, ideology does not explain governments' propensity to adopt anti-VAW legislation. Yet, effectively implementing anti-VAW legislation requires complex policy frameworks at odds with conservative values. Voters' preferences can meaningfully influence policy outputs, so can electoral conservatism make women more vulnerable to violence? Employing data from 5,570 Brazilian municipalities, we find that conservatism in the electorate is associated with the adoption of fewer anti-VAW policies. With data from a nationally-representative survey of Brazilian respondents (N=2,086), we then show that conservative voters are less likely to prioritize the need for tackling VAW. That is, the adoption of fewer anti-VAW policies in conservative municipalities reflects conservative voters’ policy preferences. Critically, our results suggest that in contexts where the electorate holds conservative preferences, policy responsiveness may incur costs to women's lives.