Redistribution and fairness: a note

The introduction of (inequity adverse) fair agents in a simple redistributive voting game reduces the political relevance of the middle class and increases the equilibrium level of redistribution. Interestingly, some of the predictions in Meltzer and Richard [J. Polit. Econ. 89 (1981) 914–927] are affected: a rise in the income inequality between poor and middle class may not decrease redistribution, because of the additional support for redistribution provided by the fair agents.     

Young People's Attitudes Towards British Political Advertising: Nurturing or Impeding Voter Engagement?

SUMMARY

This article presents findings from a national survey of ‘potential’ first time voters at the 2001 British General Election–specifically their attitudes towards the print advertising used by the main political parties during this election. In analysing the data, the authors were particularly interested in examining the claim that political advertising contributes to a sense of malaise–most acutely apparent among young people. While we found high levels of claimed advertising awareness, this was coupled with largely unfavourable attitudes towards most of the print advertising used in the election. Despite these judgements, most young people considered the advertising to be at least as persuasive as its commercial cousins. Not surprisingly the evidence provides a mixed picture in terms of the role political advertising plays in the political dispositions of young people. As a familiar discourse advertising offers the political classes an entry point to establish a dialogue with young sections of the electorate. However, for many young people, political advertising appears to help reinforce their predilection about politics being something one naturally distrusts.     

Can compensation save free trade?

When the median voter loses from trade reform, liberalization is blocked. Allowing the electorate to vote for compensatory subsidies may reverse this outcome. However, the order of the agenda may matter. The winners who pay the compensation may be sufficiently powerful to block compensation if trade is first liberalized. Seeing the inevitable outcome of sequential votes, the median voter realizes he will not be compensated for his losses and opposes liberalization. In contrast, liberalization can be achieved if compensation is placed first on the agenda. Finally, there is a significant chance that the least efficient compensation scheme will be chosen.     

An Exploratory Assessment of Voter and Governmental Interface on Pertinent Issues Facing American Children and Youth

SUMMARY

The strength of the social fabric of a country is determined, to a large extent, by the quality and potential of its children. While parents are expected to bear the primary responsibility for the well-being of their children, various other institutions including the government exist in a society to provide the support structure through which the quality of life for its children can be enhanced. In recent years, considerable attention has been drawn to the problems that children and young adults face in the U.S. However, more than ever, Americans view government-sponsored programs and their ability to help troubled youth of the country with skepticism. Using an open systems paradigm within the context of the resource exchange theory, this research empirically investigates the attitudes of the voting public towards the problems facing children and youth in a sample population of the U.S. It also evaluates the perceptions of the respondents regarding the efficacy of government-sponsored programs targeted at children as well as public-policy and social marketing implications of these findings.     

The break-up of municipalities: Voting behavior in local referenda

This paper examines the economic and political conditions that influence peoples attitudes regarding a municipality break-up. The theoretical model predicts intra-municipal differences in tax bases, political preferences, and population size to affect the expected gain from secession. The predictions of the model are tested using data on local referenda about municipality partitioning in Sweden. The data support one of the three effects; voters in municipality parts that are wealthy compared to other parts of the same municipality are more positive to secession.Received: April 2003, Accepted: September 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: H11, H73Anna Brink: I thank Henry Ohlsson, Lars-Erik Borge, Matz Dahlberg, Katarina Nordblom, Magnus Wikström, seminar participants at Göteborg University and Uppsala University, and two anonymous referees for useful comments. This research was financially supported by the Swedish Research Council and Ejnar Lindhs kommunalvetenskapliga stiftelse.     

几种数字图像增强算法的比较

文中针对灰度图像的特点,分别采用了直方图均衡化、图像平滑和图像锐化的增强算法对图像进行处理,由实验结果对比得出3种不同的增强算法分别适用的范围.     

Voter turnout and the principle of ‘one person,one vote’: empirical evidence from the constituency freeze in India

This article uses panel data from national and state elections in India during the period 1977–2007 to examine the effect of inequality in constituency population size on voter turnout. During this period, constituency boundaries in India remained fixed. As a result, differences in population size between constituencies increased, thus changing the value of a single vote. Using this large variation in population size and informative data, this article carefully distinguishes the effect of population size from other factors. We find that an increase of one million electorates decreases voter turnout by 12–27%. In addition, we find that the share of votes gained by national political parties is greater in small-population constituencies. This suggests that political parties direct their efforts in electoral campaigns preferentially to less populous constituencies; as a result, voters in small constituencies are more likely to participate in elections.     

Understanding voter orientation in the context of political market orientation: is the political customer king?

Abstract

This article develops a conceptual framework and measurement model of political market orientation (PMO). The relationships between different behavioural aspects of PMO and the attitudinal influences of such behaviour are analysed, and the study includes structural equation modelling to test several hypotheses. While the results show that political parties focus on several different aspects of market-oriented behaviour, especially using an internal and societal orientation as cultural antecedents, a more surprising result is the inconclusive effect of a voter orientation on PMO. This lends support to the argument of ‘looking beyond the customer’ in political marketing research and practice. The article discusses the findings in the context of the existing literature on political marketing and commercial market orientation.     

Political Marketing Strategies in Africa: Expert Opinions of Recent Political Elections in Ghana

This study focuses on expert views of the importance of political marketing and electoral victory in African nations with an emphasis on Ghana. There is a particular focus in this article on understanding political marketing communication issues pertaining to the 2008 Ghanaian presidential elections. Following Peng and Hackley (2007 Peng , N. , & Hackley , C. ( 2007 ). Political marketing communications planning in the UK and Taiwan: Comparative insights from leading practitioners . Marketing Intelligence and Planning , 25 ( 5 ), 483 – 498 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), we used “elite interviews,” dyadic depth interviews with highly regarded marketing and communication practitioners who were also MBA students at Ghana's premier business school. We also employed Butter and Collins' (1994 Butler , P. , & Collins , N. ( 1994 ). Political marketing: Structure and process . European Journal of Marketing , 28 ( 1 ), 19 – 34 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) political marketing structure model in eliciting and analyzing the study findings. We found that all four of the themes discussed by Butler and Collins (1994) played a role in the defeat of the incumbent party—New Patriotic Party (NPP). Product factors was the key theme followed by organizational, process, and market factors, respectively. This paper is an important initial step in highlighting the significance of political marketing to the fortunes of political parties in Africa.     

Stability of jurisdiction structures under the equal share and median rules

We consider a finite society with of individuals distributed along the real line. The individuals form jurisdictions to consume public projects, equally share their costs and, in addition, bear a transportation cost to the location of the project. We examine a core and Nash notions of stable jurisdiction structures and show that in hedonic games both solution sets could be empty. We demonstrate that in a quasi-hedonic set-up there is a Nash stable partition, but, in general, there are no core stable partitions. We then examine a subclass of societies that admits the existence of both types of stable partitions. Financial support through grants R98-0631 from the Economic Education and Research Consortium, # NSh-1939.2003.6 School Support, Russian Foundation for Basic Research No. 04-02-17227, and the Russian Science Support Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.