Heuristics and political accountability in complex governance: An experimental test:

A growing body of empirical work suggests that identifying the actors formally tasked with implementing policy can focus attention away from incumbent politicians. We examine the effects on blame attribution and voting intention of (a) the identifiability of a responsible policy worker (administrator), and (b) the evaluability of the policy work or outcome (policy failure), in the context of programs at two federal agencies (loans by the Small Business Administration and inspections by the U.S. Department of Agriculture). Using a set of online survey experiments with 1105 US adults, we find that the evaluability of a (negative) outcome generally reduces voting intention, but that the identifiability of a policy worker (administrator) tends to shift blame away from the incumbent politician and thus to increase voting intention. These experimental findings provide at least partial support for our theoretical expectations

How Brexit can give Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland more policymaking power

As the result of last week's election begins to sink in, one thing on the minds of politicians in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is the fate of devolved authority after Brexit. Anthony M. Bertelli (Bocconi and Penn State) asks how Brexit can give them more policymaking power. Prime Minister Boris Johnson endorsed devolved authority during a September trip to Scotland: “We are going to maximise the power of the North. And we are going to make sure that it is people here who are in control over the things that matter to them.” Michael Russell, Scotland’s Secretary for Government Business and Constitutional Relations, saw things differently. He claimed that Westminster is “determined” to roll back devolution in favour of a “more centralised state.

Multi-Dimensional Ideology in the Multi-Member District: An Analysis of the Arizona Legislature

http://www.truman.missouri.edu/ipp/publications/index.asp?ViewBy=DateAmerican state legislatures provide considerable institutional variation for testing theories of legislative representation, and one such feature is the multi-member district system (MMD). Whereas the U.S. House and most American state legislatures use the single member district system (SMD) in which a single legislator represents one geographic district, several state legislatures still use a system in which more than one legislator is elected from the same district in the same election. Although there can be considerable variation in the rules for such MMDs, one structure common to many state legislatures is a situation in which multiplecandidates run against each other for two seats from one district, and the two receiving the most votes are elected. Clearly, the electoral game is quite different in a situation in which a candidate is likely to be running against not only members of other parties but also another candidate of the same party. The incentives inherent in such a system are quite different than those for a legislator in an SMD, and it likely that such incentives change legislative representation in a number of ways.Includes bibliographical reference

Hybrid governance and the attribution of political responsibility: experimental evidence from the United States

How does the mode of public service delivery affect the attribution of responsibility for public goods? Through a survey experiment on a sample of more than 1,000 Americans, we provide evidence of how the allocation of public goods shapes voters' support for incumbent politicians. We find that voters prefer a mixture of public-private financing and management when it comes to the delivery of infrastructure. However, once performance information is available, the mode of infrastructure delivery no longer influences their voting intention. The successful delivery of these infrastructure projects is what ultimately matters to voters. Moreover, this preference for a mixture of public and private involvement in public service delivery is stronger among citizens with high political knowledge, who are more likely to punish the incumbent for a failed first phase of the public service delivery. These findings deepen our understanding of how hybrid forms of public service delivery are perceived by voters and how performance information affects evaluations of the performance of public services and politicians alike

An agenda for the study of Public Administration in Developing Countries

Developing nations demand a different scholarly approach in the field of public administration. We advance an agenda for research that stands on four pillars. First, in the absence of easily accessible data scholars of developing world public administration must assemble it for themselves. Second, building and testing theory plays a paramount role because researchers face limited information. Third, in developing countries, multi‐national and non‐governmental organizations are often crucial and must be considered in studying public administration. Fourth, given the novelties and ambiguities researchers face, qualitative information must be integrated throughout the research process. Our article—and the articles in this volume—constitute a call for developing country research to contribute to the study of public administration writ large, informing our understanding of both developing and developed states.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162699/2/gove12520_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162699/1/gove12520.pd

Testing Formal Models of Direct Democracy

Presentation of voting statistics and democratic models

A Stromgren view of the multiple populations in globular clusters

We discuss a variety of photometric indices assembled from the uvby Stromgren system. Our aim is to examine the pros and cons of the various indices to find the most suitable one(s) to study the properties of multiple populations in globular clusters (GCs) discovered by spectroscopy. We explore in particular the capabilities of indices like m_1 and c_y at different metallicities. We define a new index delta_4=(u-v)-(b-y) to separate first and second stellar generations in GCs of any metal abundance, since it keeps the sensitivity to multiple stellar populations over all the metallicity range and at the same time minimizes the sensitivity to photometric errors. We detecte clear differences in the red giant branches of the GCs examined, like skewness or bi/multi-modality in color distribution. We connect the photometric information with the spectroscopic results on O, Na abundances we obtained in our survey of GCs. Finally, we compute the effects of different chemical composition on the Stromgren filters and indices using synthetic spectra.Comment: Accepted for publication on Astronomy and Astrophysics. Figures 1,3,5 degraded in resolutio

Stellar Evolutionary Models for Magellanic Clouds

We supplement current evolutionary computations concerning Magellanic Cloud stars by exploring the evolutionary behavior of canonical stellar models (i.e.,with inefficient core overshooting) with metallicities suitable for stars in the Clouds. After discussing the adequacy of the adopted evolutionary scenario, we present evolutionary sequences as computed following a selected sample of stellar models in the mass range 0.8-8 Mo from the Main Sequence till the C ignition or the onset of thermal pulses in the advanced Asymptotic Giant Branch phase. On this basis, cluster isochrones covering the range of ages from 100 Myr to 15 Gyr are presented and discussed. To allow a comparison with evolutionary investigations appeared in the recent literature, we computed additional sets of models which take into account moderate core overshooting during the H burning phase, discussing the comparison in terms of current uncertainties in the stellar evolutionary models. Selected predictions constraining the cluster ages are finally discussed, presenting a calibration of the difference in magnitude between the luminous MS termination and the He burning giants in terms of cluster age. Both evolutionary tracks and isochrones have been made available at the node http://gipsy.cjb.net as a first step of a planned ``Pisa Evolutionary Library''.Comment: 11 pages, 9 eps figures, A&A accepted, evolutionary tracks and isochrones available at http://gipsy.cjb.net at the link ``Pisa Evolutionary Library'

Spectroscopic Confirmation of a z=2.79 Multiply Imaged Luminous Infrared Galaxy Behind the Bullet Cluster

We report spectroscopic confirmation and high-resolution infrared imaging of a z=2.79 triply-imaged galaxy behind the Bullet Cluster. This source, a Spitzer-selected luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG), is confirmed via polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) features using the Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) and resolved with HST WFC3 imaging. In this galaxy, which with a stellar mass of M*=4e9 Msun is one of the two least massive ones studied with IRS at z>2, we also detect H_2 S(4) and H_2 S(5) pure rotational lines (at 3.1 sigma and 2.1 sigma) - the first detection of these molecular hydrogen lines in a high-redshift galaxy. From the molecular hydrogen lines we infer an excitation temperature T=377+68-84 K. The detection of these lines indicates that the warm molecular gas mass is 6(+36-4)% of the stellar mass and implies the likely existence of a substantial reservoir of cold molecular gas in the galaxy. Future spectral observations at longer wavelengths with facilities like the Herschel Space Observatory, the Large Millimeter Telescope, and the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) thus hold the promise of precisely determining the total molecular gas mass. Given the redshift, and using refined astrometric positions from the high resolution imaging, we also update the magnification estimate and derived fundamental physical properties of this system. The previously published values for total infrared luminosity, star formation rate, and dust temperature are confirmed modulo the revised magnification; however we find that PAH emission is roughly a factor of five stronger than would be predicted by the relations between the total infrared and PAH luminosity reported for SMGs and starbursts in Pope et al. (2008).Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted to Ap