Abstract: This article explores the differences in radical right parties' voting behaviour on economic matters at the European Parliament. As the literature highlights the heterogeneity of these parties in relation to their economic programmes, we test whether divergences survive the elections and translate into dissimilar voting patterns. Using voting records from the seventh term of the European Parliament, we show that radical right parties do not act as a consolidated party family. We then analyse the differences between radical right parties by the means of different statistical methods (NOMINATE, Ward's clustering criterion, and additive trees) and find that these are described along two dimensions: the degree of opposition to the European Union and the classical left–right economic cleavage. We provide a classification of these parties compromising four groups: pro-welfare conditional, pro-market conditional, and rejecting. Our results indicate that radical right parties do not act as a party family at the E...

Abstract: Are some analysts ‘superstars’? Financial press coverage of analysts' performance suggests that there are superior financial analysts. One example of this coverage is the Institutional Investor ‘All American Research Team’, based on surveys of money managers, who nominate and rank analysts. In this paper, I explore the question of individual superiority by examining one aspect of analysts' services: earnings forecasting. Forecasts of future earnings are of interest to investors, as inputs to investment decisions, and also to researchers, as data on earnings expectations.

Abstract: For the last 40 years, Keith Poole has developed and curated a trove of basic data and measurements related to the United States Congress. He has made these resources freely available through his widely-used Voteview.com website since 1995. At Poole’s Voteview.com, scholars, students, journalists, and the broader public could download gold-standard historical and current roll-call voting data, member rosters, NOMINATE scores, and measures and visualizations of party cohesion and polarization, among many other useful things. In this article, we describe how we are preserving and continuing these vast public-goods contributions through the new Voteview.com. Developed and housed at UCLA, the new Voteview.com carries on the creation of basic roll-call data infrastructure, including the assignment of Poole’s widely-used ICPSR number-like identifiers to new members, data on every roll-call vote ever taken, NOMINATE scores and other standard roll-call vote-based measures such as party-loyalty scores. In addition to serving as a platform for the continuation and dissemination of this basic data infrastructure, the new Voteview.com also provides powerful tools for exploring the history of roll-call voting, the US Congress, and American politics and political history through a simple search interface and interactive visualizations.

Abstract: Liquid democracy allows members of an electorate to either directly vote over alternatives, or delegate their voting rights to someone they trust. Most of the liquid democracy literature and implementations allow each voter to nominate only one delegate per election. However, if that delegate abstains, the voting rights assigned to her are left unused. To minimise the number of unused delegations, it has been suggested that each voter should declare a personal ranking over voters she trusts. In this paper, we show that even if personal rankings over voters are declared, the standard delegation method of liquid democracy remains problematic. More specifically, we show that when personal rankings over voters are declared, it could be undesirable to receive delegated voting rights, which is contrary to what liquid democracy fundamentally relies on. To solve this issue, we propose a new method to delegate voting rights in an election, called breadth-first delegation. Additionally, the proposed method prioritises assigning voting rights to individuals closely connected to the voters who delegate.

Abstract: In a recent contribution to Party Politics, Kostadinova and Mikulska analyze women’s political representation by populist parties in Poland and Bulgaria. The presented findings for Poland suggest that the main right-wing populist party PiS (1) elected more women to parliament, (2) nominated more women to promising ballot positions, and (3) that voters of PiS were more likely to support women in the elections compared to leftists parties. We disagree with all three findings. While the first finding is due to an error in the descriptive statistics, we argue that the other two findings are the result of an inappropriate research design. We replicate the analysis based on an altered research design and show that PiS did not elect more women to parliament, did not nominate more women to promising ballot positions and that voters of PiS were not more likely to vote for female candidates.

Abstract: The request of Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, to allow a self-selected group of its past and present management known as the ‘partners’ the right to nominate a majority of the directo

Abstract: A recent change to the Labour Party’s nomination rules for leadership elections was the eighth such major modification of this brief clause in the party’s rule book since 1981. These changes have provided a barometer of factional conflict over this period and indicate the importance of gate-keeping powers in leadership selection. This paper recounts the history of these eight rule changes. It shows how the proportion of Labour MPs (and later MEPs) required to nominate candidates in leadership elections has oscillated markedly, as the left has tried to reduce it while centrists have sought to increase it. The most recent change in 2017, when the threshold was decreased to 10% of Labour MPs and MEPs, was a victory for the left. The paper argues that the changes to Labour’s nomination rules, while lower-key than the extension of voting rights from MPs to ordinary members, have been just as significant.

Abstract: Existing analyses of opposition pre-electoral coalition formation in autocracies emphasize the precariousness of bargaining between opposition elites to nominate a single challenger against the dominant incumbent. This paper argues that how opposition parties coordinate to send anti-regime signals exhibiting their unity and ideological compromise is equally if not more important. These signals aim to encourage opposition voters to engage in strategic voting - persuade opposition voters to vote for candidates from candidates from other opposition parties that they may disdain, rather than for the incumbent autocrat. I provide evidence of strategic voting through two sets of survey data from Malaysia, one of the most robust electoral authoritarian regimes in the world. First, a survey experiment finds that a coalition common policy platform increases opposition voter support for candidates from coalition partners. This effect, however, is limited to moderate and politically knowledgeable voters. Second, I present evidence from the Asian Barometer survey demonstrating that opposition voters exhibit stronger commitments to anti-regime issues as compared to incumbent voters.

Abstract: This study examined the qualitative differences between the types of strengths identified by satisfied versus distressed couples seeking a Marriage Checkup. We hypothesised that distressed couples would nominate less intimate strengths, while satisfied couples would nominate more intimate strengths. We found that distressed partners were significantly more likely to nominate items from a Parallel Support category, whereas satisfied women, but not men, were significantly more likely to nominate items from an Intimate/Affectionate category. These findings suggest that an indicator of developing couple distress is the point where couples begin to focus their attention on less emotionally vulnerable relationship aspects.

Abstract: Background The State Board of Education (SBOE) has legislative authority to adopt the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for each subject of the required curriculum. SBOE members nominate educators, parents, business and industry representatives, and employers to serve on TEKS review committees. This pag

Abstract: The closing of the United States to immigrants is arguably the most economically and socially significant policy shift in American history. The U.S. had virtually open borders until 1875, when the first of a series of federal laws prohibiting or limiting immigration of particular groups was passed. The first such group was Asian immigrants, mostly Chinese, who were excluded by a series of bills in the late nineteenth century. Using data from the U.S. Congressional record, I attempt to explain the policy shift in public choice terms: identifying voting patterns that can be explained by shifts in public and elite opinion, the incentives of policymakers, and changing economic conditions. Explanations of the policy shift from previous scholarship are evaluated in light of roll-call voting data and NOMINATE scores.

Abstract: Soliciting highly qualified reviews is one of the greatest challenges facing the scientific peer review process. In 2017, the Journal of Materials Science will have received over 8000 submissions. Around two-fifths of these go out for review, each requiring 4–6 invitations to ensure enough usable reports to take action on the manuscript. This works out at more than 16000 invitation emails per year. Certain times of the year are particularly problematic:weget our biggest increase in submission rate in July, right before many researchers (and thus reviewers) go away on vacation. We editors work hard to be fair and prompt in our decisions, but there’s evidence in some fields that submissions for which editors have a harder time getting peer reviews are reviewed less favorably [1]. As a result, many journals, including this one, ask their contributors to suggest suitable referees for their work. Over the last year, however, the Journal ofMaterials Science has conducted a small experiment in our submission process. We stopped enforcing our requirement that authors provide the names, affiliations, and email addresses of at least three suitable referees, together with a brief justification of their suitability. There is no consensus among our peer journals about requiring a list of suggested reviewers, and there have been mixed views about this change among this journal’s editors. Here are arguments for both sides from two of this journal’s longest-serving editors.

Abstract: This study addresses why small parties nominate candidates to run in the district elections and how nomination of district candidates could influence small parties’ share of party votes in Taiwan. Previous studies on party's strategic entry in the mixed electoral system demonstrate the existence of ‘contamination effect’ in various Western democracies. While ‘contamination effect’ suggests that party would gain more proportional representation (PR) seats by increasing its number of candidate nomination in the single-member-district (SMD) races, we contend that small parties should also take the strength of nominated candidates into consideration. Nominating strong candidates in SMD competitions could generate positive ‘spillover effect’ to party's PR tier. By focusing on the 2016 Taiwan legislative election, our findings suggest that first, small parties need to fulfill the institutional requirements in order to qualify for running in the party-list election; second, the ‘contamination effect’ exists in Taiwan, but it is conditional; and finally, candidates’ strength creates positive ‘spillover effect’ on party's proportional seats.

Abstract: Extensive theoretical literature and qualitative evidence nominate learning communities as a promising strategy to improve persistence and success among at-risk populations, such as students who ar...

Abstract: In this paper, we explain the nomination of ethnic minority candidates for lower house elections. We argue that these nominations are explained by the incentives that different parties face in different districts. Center-left parties reap greater electoral rewards when they offer descriptive representation, and that they also experience fewer difficulties in recruiting ethnic minority candidates. Therefore we argue that center-left parties have a greater incentive and ability to make their nominations more responsive to district demographics. More specifically, our hypothesis is that district-level ethnic diversity will increase the probability that any party will nominate an ethnic minority candidate, but this increase will be greatest for center-left parties. We look at multiple elections in Australia, the UK, and the US, and find consistent evidence in favor of this hypothesis. Even when center-left and center-right parties are nominating similar overall numbers of ethnic minority candidates, center-left parties’ descriptive representation patterns are more closely connected to district demographics. We argue that this helps explain how descriptive representation effects political competition more broadly.

Abstract: The European Parliament is one of most prominent substantive applications of NOMINATE to the study of roll call voting outside the U.S., yielding tremendous insights into the voting patterns of the world’s most important transnational parliament. However, this body of research cannot facilitate comparisons of ideological shifts over time, because it exclusively employs scaling models that are static. In this paper, I produce dynamic ideal point estimates for the first six European Parliaments from 1980 to 2009 that can be compared over time. These estimates show a significant amount of ideological shifting for some Members of the European Parliament. I explain the measurement strategy, and compare cross-sectional estimates to existing measures as a validity check. I also offer three applications highlighting the types projects that scholars of the European Parliament might wish to use these dynamic measures to study further.

Abstract: In this paper, we explain the nomination of ethnic minority candidates for lower house elections. We argue that these nominations are explained by the incentives that different parties face in different districts. Center-left parties reap greater electoral rewards when they offer descriptive representation, and that they also experience fewer difficulties in recruiting ethnic minority candidates. Therefore we argue that center-left parties have a greater incentive and ability to make their nominations more responsive to district demographics. More specifically, our hypothesis is that district-level ethnic diversity will increase the probability that any party will nominate an ethnic minority candidate, but this increase will be greatest for center-left parties. We look at multiple elections in Australia, the UK, and the US, and find consistent evidence in favor of this hypothesis. Even when center-left and center-right parties are nominating similar overall numbers of ethnic minority candidates, center-left parties’ descriptive representation patterns are more closely connected to district demographics. We argue that this helps explain how descriptive representation effects political competition more broadly.

Abstract: In 1968 E.W. Dijkstra wrote a letter to the editor of the CACM proposing that the goto statement be abolished from all "higher level" programming languages. Although this suggestion has not met with universal acceptance, we would like to nominate another well-known language construct as a candidate for abolition: the non-local variable.
We claim that the noon-local variable is a major contributing factor in programs which are difficult to understand. For the moment we wish to keep the phrase "non-local variable" somewhat vague. Roughly, however, we mean any variable which is accessed, and particularly modified, over a relatively large span of program text. More specifically, we mean any variable are contained in S> We always intend conceptual locality, rather than textual locality; it may be the case that a single conceptual unit, (e.g., control of a loop) has elements that are separated by a number of lines of other text, but that the interpspresed text can be treated as a single element and "collapsed" for purposes of understanding the surrounding unit. If the text is properly displayed (e.g. with proper indentation), the physical distance between such elements need not interfere with their (conceptual) locality.