Race,class, and politics in the black community of Boston

Conclusion We found that there are indeed some slight differences in the electoral behavior of black voters when we separate them into high and low socio-economic areal categories based on the level of median income. These slight differences include turnout rates for primary and general elections and voter registration rates. The higher the socioeconomic status of the black electorate in Boston, the higher the turnout and registration rates for that area tended to be; however, this relationship was not found to be consistent among all the areas selected for study. Despite these differences in electoral behavior or “practices,” our areal model does not suggest any significant political schisms based on the sicioeconomic indicators used. Black voters tended to vote the same way on a number of city and state ballot questions, support the same candidates at both the city and state level, and vote the liberal preference on both issues and candidates regardless of socioeconomic background. In addition, there is some evidence that the higher a black voter is on the socioeconomic scale, the greater his or her tendency will be to vote the liberal position on various issues and candidates. Our model also suggests that black voters will tend to support black candidates regardless of some socioeconomic factors. If this model can be used as an indication of class differences in the black community, then our data show that socioeconomic criteria are not as salient as race in determining the political behavior and preferences of black voters.     

Did the New Deal solidify the 1932 Democratic realignment?

The critical election of 1932 represented a turning point in the future electoral successes of the Democrats and Republicans for over three decades. This paper seeks to measure the importance of the New Deal in facilitating the Democrats' control of the federal government well into the 1960s. We test whether long-differences in the county-level electoral support for Democratic presidential candidates after the 1930s can be attributed to New Deal interventions into local economies. We also investigate more narrowly whether voters rewarded Roosevelt from 1932 to 1936 and from 1936 to 1940 for his efforts to stimulate depressed local economies. Our instrumental variable estimates indicate that increasing a county's per capita New Deal relief and public works spending from nothing to the sample mean ($145) would have increased the long-run support for the Democratic party by 2 to 2.5 percentage points. We further find that the long-run shift toward the Democratic party after 1928 was not a function of the Roosevelt landslide victory in 1932. Roosevelt's ability to win over voters during the 1936 and 1940 elections with New Deal spending, however, did matter for the long-term.     

Does Voter Turnout Influence School Bond Elections?

This article investigates the role of voter turnout in school bond election outcomes. It is widely believed that turnout is negatively related to bond approval rates. Conclusions from previous empirical research, however, may be misleading because many sociodemographic factors and election parameters that influence bond support are also likely to influence voter turnout decisions. To account for the endogeneity of turnout, we employ an instrumental variable approach. We find that the persistent part of voter turnout plays a negligible role in explaining bond approval shares conditioned on election timing, past voting behavior, and district characteristics. Using first‐difference models, change in turnout has a negative and significant influence on change in approval share and probability of bond success. Our results support previous research and suggest that targeted voter mobilization strategies have the potential to influence school bond outcomes.     

AID US TO WIN THE ELECTIONS: FOREIGN AID AND VOTER TURNOUT

We use an innovative procedure to determine the effect of foreign aid on institutions of governance. We use voter turnout as an indicator variable which allows us to identify whether political competition in a country is based on private goods, such as vote‐buying, or on public goods. We suggest that the marginal effect of foreign aid on voter turnout depends on the wider underlying institutional setting. Contrary to popular belief, the theoretical model implies that a higher voter turnout in response to foreign aid can be undesirable when the increase is a consequence of vote‐buying in the electoral campaign. The empirical evidence we examine is consistent with private‐goods political competition, i.e., political parties use foreign aid for vote‐buying and similar electoral tactics, particularly when the underlying institutions are sufficiently bad. This is consistently estimated across specifications which address a range of endogeneity sources.     

Has Leviathan Been Bound? A Theory of Imperfectly Constrained Government with Evidence from the States

This paper develops a formal theory that combines power-maximizing “Leviathan” political parties with well-defined imperfections in the political process. The model implies that both parties tend to make government larger as their likelihood of electoral victory increases. Empirical tests on state-level data confirm this prediction. Racing the Leviathan hypothesis against alternative theories of party motivation indicates that both the Leviathan and the “contrasting ideologies” views have some degree of validity.     

The electoral college and voter participation: Evidence on two hypotheses

This paper empirically investigates the impact of the electoral college on voter participation rates across states. Two hypotheses are tested. The first argues that in states where either the Democratic or Republican party strongly dominates the other, voter participation rates are reduced the greater the degree of domination. The second states that in states where neither party overwhelmingly dominates the other, the smaller the majority of the dominant party over the minority party, the greater the voter participation rate.     

Spoils of War: The Political Legacy of the German hyperinflation

I study the link between monetary policy and electoral outcomes by linking new data on the 1923 German hyperinflation and the vote share of the main parties of Weimar Republic from 1924 to 1933. Exploiting cross-sectional variation in prices in over 280 cities, I find that inflation predicts the vote share of the Volksrechtspartei, an association-turned-party of inflation victims, and positively correlates with the Communists in the 1932 elections. Hyperinflation also leads to a decline in turnout, with a loss of confidence in the German institutions. However, contrary to received wisdom, areas more affected by inflation did not see a higher vote share for the Nazi party. Results are robust to a range of specifications, including models in differences, panel data with fixed effects, Coarsened Exact Matching estimation, Conley standard errors, and an instrumental variable strategy.     

Why are more redistributive social security systems smaller? A median voter approach

One of the stylized facts of unfunded social security programsis that programs are larger in size, measured relative to theGDP, the tighter the link between pension claims and past earnings.We provide a political economy explanation of this stylizedfact in a median voter model, where people vote on the socialsecurity tax rate. We compare pension systems with flat-rateand earnings-related benefit formulas. Only flat-rate benefitsredistribute within a generation from high to low income groups.If labor supply is endogenous, they also imply larger efficiencycosts than earnings-related schemes. Using data on eight Europeancountries, we find that the median voter is typically middle-agedwith high income. For these voters, earnings-related systemsare more attractive both because of less intragenerational redistributionand lower distortions in labor supply. The median voter modelis also able to account for a considerable degree of cross-countryvariation in contribution rates.     

Information and communications technologies in the two Koreas: Contrasts,commonalities, challenges

The purpose of this study is to review the relationship of electoral system and democracy in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. The study looks at the transformation process of the electoral system in each country, and performs a comparative study on post‐democratization electoral reforms using the concepts of competitiveness and fairness. It is found that electoral systems displayed low levels of competitiveness and fairness before democratization, but that their reforms have led to an increase in competitiveness and an improvement in fairness in all three countries. Also, while the post‐democratization electoral reforms have facilitated the above‐mentioned democratic virtues, there have been significant country differences in the details of their progress. The Philippines promoted the competitiveness of the electoral system by adopting a party list system and guest candidate system. Although Thailand and Indonesia showed competitiveness in their electoral systems, they prohibited the participation of non‐partisan candidates in elections for the sake of stability of party politics. The differences are reflections of their particular political histories and contexts.     

Greece’s Three-Act Tragedy: A Simple Model of Grexit vs. Staying Afloat inside the Single Currency Area

Against the backdrop of the Greek three-act tragedy, we present a theoretical framework for studying Greece’s recent debt and currency crisis. The model is built on two essential blocks: first, erratic macroeconomic policymaking in Greece is described using a stochastic regime-switching model; second, the euro area governments’ responses to uncertain macroeconomic policies in Greece are considered. The model’s mechanism and assumptions allow either for a Grexit from the euro area or, conversely, the avoidance of Greece’s default against its creditors. The model also offers useful guidance to understand key drivers of the long-winded negotiations between the Greek government and the “institutions”.     

Why did the electorate swing between parties during the Great Depression?

The Democratic Party's electoral success during the 1930s has long intrigued politicians and scholars. To gain new insight into that success, this paper examines the striking heterogeneity in county-level support for Roosevelt. Even though the Depression's effects and the New Deal's benefits were famously widespread, only some parts of the country responded with large and durable partisan shifts. One reason is that several factors, including pre-New Deal economic hardship, Dust Bowl conditions, and New Deal spending, appear to have had effects that were largely transitory (i.e., faded by 1940). A complementary reason is that swing electorates can, and did, swing both ways. By contrast, several other variables – notably economic and demographic factors discussed in the previous literature – are related to relatively durable shifts. Finally, heterogeneity in marginal responses may have mattered greatly to national-level Democratic success. By demonstrating which factors were transitory and which were more durable, this paper illuminates the New Deal Realignment and, more generally, the influence of economic conditions and distributive policy on voter behavior.     

Policy Makers' Preferences,Party Ideology,and the Political Business Cycle

We generate data on the relative preferences of policy makers for inflation and output stability and reexamine how policy makers and political parties behave for 24 countries by using this new approach. This behavior is essential in both the partisan cycle models and the opportunistic political cycle analysis. Our evidence suggests that right-wing parties exhibit a higher relative preference toward stabilizing inflation than left-wing parties. We obtain mixed results on the opportunistic behavior of incumbent parties. Finally, when we analyze the behavior of left and right ideologies separately, we find overwhelming support for party resemblance in the electoral year and strong evidence of opportunistic conduct by right-wing parties.     

Die Außenwirtschaft der UdSSR in der zeit von perestrojka

The study of divided government is one of important fields in public choice theory. American voters split their ballots as if intent on preserving divided party control. The U.S. House of Representatives has consistently been Democratic for much of the twentieth century. As indicated by Sprague, it is theoretically true that a number of significant consequences for partisan control of a legislature are entailed by the unequal distribution of seat safety under conditions of high levels of institutionalization. The problem is how to measure the institutionalization of partisan seat safety in a time‐series. The model proposed by Sprague is somewhat awkward and complicated in measuring it. This paper provides a more plausible model and tests empirical data.     

村委会选举中的贿选：两种信任的绞合

村庄信任资源存量高并不必然促进基层社区政治权力的正向分配,由非正式行为准则和互惠规范构建的乡村人际信任网络将选民与贿选者捆绑,形成道德共同体和利益共同体,为贿选提供非正式制度依托。制度信任被操纵成为贿选者规避风险的工具,加之它回应选民诉求的迟钝和乏力,迫使选民转而依附人际信任。高能的乡村人际信任不断挤占制度信任空间,形成纵容贿选的“加速数效应”。为此,培育新型农村社区组织,转变宗族式信任分配机制为制度化的信任分配机制可有效预防和遏止乡村贿选。     

Determinants of Geographic Voter Participation Rate Differentials: the 2014 Mid-Term Election

Voter participation rates vary widely across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This empirical study seeks, within the context of a broadened version of the “rational voter model,” to identify determinants of this geographic variation. Using the 2014 mid-term general election, it was found that the voter participation rate across states and the District of Columbia was positively related to whether there is a close governor’s race or a close U.S. Senate race, the female labor force participation rate, the percent of the population aged 65 and over, the number of referenda on the ballot, and the degree of voting-by-mail usage. In addition, it was found that voter turnout was negatively related to the percentages of the population that are either Hispanic or Afro-American.     

论《改造我们的学习》对当前学习型政党建设的经验启示

毛泽东于1941年延安干部会议上作了《改造我们的学习》的报告。从历史上看，该篇文献是延安整风运动的三大纲领性文件之一，对于统一全党全军的思想发挥了重要作用。从现实来看，《改造我们的学习》为当前学习型政党的建设也留下了许多宝贵经验：建设学习型政党要树立正确的学习态度；建设学习型政党要掌握科学的学习方法；建设学习型政党要找准合理的学习对象等。     

正确认识社会主义协商民主制度需要厘清的三个关系

正确认识社会主义协商民主制度,需要厘清三个关系：一是要正确把握中国协商民主与西方协商民主“不一致中一致”的关系,二是要正确把握协商民主与党内民主、人民民主、基层民主、社会民主“嵌入与优化”的关系,三要正确把握协商民主与选举民主“你中有我、我中有你”的关系,把这三个关系理清理顺,也就是找到了理解协商民主之门的“钥匙”。     

Rational Partisan Theory: Empirical Evidence for the United States

This paper presents two tests of the rational partisan theory (RPT) of business cycles. First, I develop and test an RPT model in which wage contracts are staggered and overlapping. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on the density and duration of wage contracts and estimates of the incumbent party's election-win probability are employed to calibrate partisan intervention variables entered in output growth regressions. Next, I perform a more “flexible” test of the RPT by comparing partisan output growth differences after elections in which the outcome was relatively surprising with partisan output growth differences after elections in which the outcome was widely anticipated. The two approaches produce the same conclusion: The RPT is not supported by the data.     

The misalignments in Chinese real effective exchange rate from 1994 to 2020: A counterfactual analysis

Using a novel panel data method proposed by Hisao, Ching and Wan (2012), we empirically evaluate the misalignments between the actual and counterfactual values of Chinese real effective exchange rate (REER, CPI-based) from 1994 to 2020, where “counterfactual” refers to the counterfactual scenarios that some major economic events had not happened. These events include China's accession to WTO from December 2001, the reforms of exchange rate regime in July 2005, June 2010 and August 2015, China's economic stimulus package in November 2008, and the US-China trade dispute started from March 2018. We calculate the counterfactual values for both real and nominal effective exchange rates (REER and NEER) in order to examine the channels of the misalignments. We find that the reform of China's exchange rate policy in July 2005 and August 2015 increased Renminbi's trade competitiveness in real term compare to foreign currencies, while other events decreased it or had no effects. The misalignments in REER are caused by the changes in both NEER and China's CPI.     

The Poll Results Hypothesis

This empirical study seeks to broaden the interpretation of the rational voter model so as to reflect the potential impact of the results of polls of likely voters’ Presidential candidate preferences on the expected benefits of voting and hence on the voter participation rate. This study introduces the poll results hypothesis: in any given state, given the existence of the Electoral College, the greater the lead of a principal Presidential candidate over his/her closest rival as revealed in polls of likely voters, the lower, for at least some portion of prospective voters, the expected gross benefits of voting in that state and hence the lower the aggregate voter participation rate in that state. In a cross-section study of the 50 states during the 2004 general election, it is found, after allowing for a variety of other factors, that the greater the lead (as revealed in polls of likely voters) of either of the principal Presidential candidates over the other in any given state, the lower the voter turnout rate in that state.