What is Opposition Good For?

Democratically elected governments may sometimes give in to pressures from extreme constituents thereby failing to adopt policies congruent with the median voter\u27s preferences. This situation is exacerbated by the inability or the reluctance of voters to acquire information about the consequences of policy alternatives. Opposition parties, in principle, could help remedy this problem using the prerogatives at their disposal such as participating in legislative debates and proposing bills, amendments or no confidence motions. In practice, however, they may have incentives to mislead the voters for policy or election purposes. Given the critical role of opposition parties to remedy problems of incongruence, it is essential to gain theoretical clarity and empirical knowledge as to when and how opposition parties use the tools available to them in legislatures. My dissertation contributes to the recently growing literature that studies the behavior of opposition parties in different institutional contexts, and the implications of that behavior for democratic representation. In particular, I examine the conditions under which opposition parties provide the voters with accurate information, thereby inducing the government to act in accordance with voters\u27 demands and interests. My analysis reconsiders the conventional wisdom that the influence of opposition parties on policy making is commensurate with their electoral strength or seat share in the legislature.In the first paper, I develop a formal model that examines the interaction between a government with control over a policy proposal and an opposition party faced with the decision whether to attract voters\u27 attention to the proposal by objecting to its adoption. The model assumes that the government has incentives to pursue policies divergent from voter preferences and that voters face non-trivial costs in monitoring the government\u27s legislative proposals. Voters can use the objection of the opposition party as a signal to identify adverse government proposals. However, for the mechanism to work, the opposition party should be responsible, i.e. not alarm the voters too frequently. I show that confrontation between the government and the opposition party is more likely when the chances of election for the opposition party are sufficiently low and the opposition activists are sufficiently distant in terms of their ideological positions from the government (as well as the voter and the opposition party itself). In addition to providing useful signals, the presence of a responsible opposition party may increase voters\u27 welfare by inducing the government to preemptively adjust its policies.In the second paper, I propose a formal model that explores whether the voters can receive accurate information from the opposition party under further constraints. More specifically, the model assumes that the voters do not have the means to verify the accuracy of information they receive about the policy and furthermore they have limited information about the preferences of the government and the opposition party. I show that the opposition party can discipline the government to choose policies congruent with voters\u27 preferences if the reputation of the opposition is high and the benefit of policy to the government is small relative to the benefit of winning elections. Under the same conditions, however, misleading messages of the opposition party may cause a good government to implement policies that bring about bad outcomes for the voters.In the the third paper, I examine when legislators withdraw their support from the bills that they cosponsored using an original dataset of cosponsorship in the US House of Representatives. I argue that the legislators take into account the preferences of their constituency in their cosponsorship decisions. Since acquiring information about the bills is costly, legislators use the cosponsorship decisions of their counterparts as signals for the acceptability of the bill for their constituency. My analysis shows that there is a relationship between the partisan composition of cosponsors and the likelihood that he/she decides to remove his/her name from the bill later. More specifically, a legislator is less likely to remove his/her name from a bill that he/she cosponsored as the difference between the number of his/her partisans that cosponsored the bill and the number of his/her opponents that cosponsored the bill increases

SPATIAL MODEL OF ELECTIONS IN TURKEY: TRACING CHANGES IN THE PARTY SYSTEM IN THE 2000S

Abstract The Turkish political party system underwent significant changes during the first decade of the 21st century. While secularism and nationalism remained the defining issues of electoral politics, both the number and the ideological positions of parties in the political system changed considerably. In the 2002 elections, none of the parties from the previous parliament were able to pass the electoral threshold. The new parliament was formed by the members of the Justice and Development Party (AKP)-a new conservative party founded by the former members of Islamist parties-and the Republican People's Party (CHP)-a party with a strong emphasis on a secularist agenda. In the 2007 elections, AKP consolidated their power by receiving 46.6% of the votes while CHP increased their share of the vote by only 1.5 percentage points to 20.9%. In addition, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and independent candidates supported by the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) were able to win seats in the 2007 elections. In order to explain these changes, this paper applies the spatial model to the 2007 elections and compares the results to previous analyses of the 1999 and 2002 elections (Schofield et al. 2011. First, we run a pure spatial model to estimate the relative role of the ideological position and the valence of political parties in determining their electoral success. Second, we use simulations to determine whether a Nash equilibrium exists for the position of political parties. Finally, we supplement the spatial model with the demographic characteristics of voters

Roll-Call Vote Selection: Implications for the Study of Legislative Politics

Roll-call votes provide scholars with the opportunity to measure many quantities of interest. However, the usefulness of the roll-call sample depends on the population it is intended to represent. After laying out why understanding the sample properties of the roll-call record is important, we catalogue voting procedures for 145 legislative chambers, finding that roll calls are typically discretionary. We then consider two arguments for discounting the potential problem: (a) roll calls are ubiquitous, especially where the threshold for invoking them is low or (b) the strategic incentives behind requests are sufficiently benign so as to generate representative samples. We address the first defense with novel empirical evidence regarding roll-call prevalence and the second with an original formal model of the position-taking argument for roll-call vote requests. Both our empirical and theoretical results confirm that inattention to vote method selection should broadly be considered an issue for the study of legislative behavior

Clinical and demographic characteristics of children with familial mediterranean fever in Central Anatolia

PubMe

A validation of diagnostic score for molecular analysis of hereditary autoinflammatory syndromes with periodic fever in Turkish children

PubMe

Comparison of the efficacy of once- and twice-daily colchicine dosage in pediatric patients with familial Mediterranean fever - a randomized controlled noninferiority trial

Background: In this study, we examined the efficacy and safety of a once-daily dosage schema of colchicine compared with a twice-daily dosage schema in pediatric patients with familial Mediterranean fever (FMF). Methods: In this 24-week, multicenter, randomized controlled noninferiority trial, pediatric patients newly diagnosed with FMF carrying a homozygous or compound heterozygous mutation and not receiving any treatment were included. Patients were randomly assigned using a block randomization method to receive treatment with a once- or twice-daily dosage. Clinical and laboratory characteristics and medication side effects were recorded and compared between groups. The study was carried out in compliance with Good Clinical Practice and the Consolidated Standards for Reporting of Trials (CONSORT) statement. Results: A total of 92 patients were selected, and 79 patients completed the study. There were 42 patients in the once-daily dosage group and 37 in the twice-daily dosage group. The results indicated that the once-daily dosage was not inferior to the twice-daily dosage regarding decrease in attack frequency and duration as well as improvement in clinical findings and Mor severity scores. Alterations in laboratory findings indicating inflammation, such as erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein, and serum amyloid A, were similar in both groups. The rates of drug side effects were similar between the once- and twice-daily dosage groups, implying comparable safety of colchicine, with the exception of diarrhea, which was slightly higher in the once-daily dosage group. Conclusions: Using colchicine with either a once- or twice-daily dosage provides similar clinical and laboratory improvements. Considering both efficacy and safety, colchicine can be prescribed with a once-daily dosage. Trial Registration ID: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02602028. Registered 5 November 2015

The Turkish Version of the Juvenile Arthritis Multidimensional Assessment Report (JAMAR)

The Juvenile Arthritis Multidimensional Assessment Report (JAMAR) is a new parent/patient reported outcome measure that enables a thorough assessment of the disease status in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). We report the results of the cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the parent and patient versions of the JAMAR in the Turkish language. The reading comprehension of the questionnaire was tested in 10 JIA parents and patients. Each participating centre was asked to collect demographic, clinical data and the JAMAR in 100 consecutive JIA patients or all consecutive patients seen in a 6-month period and to administer the JAMAR to 100 healthy children and their parents. The statistical validation phase explored descriptive statistics and the psychometric issues of the JAMAR: the 3 Likert assumptions, floor/ceiling effects, internal consistency, Cronbach\u27s alpha, interscale correlations, test-retest reliability, and construct validity (convergent and discriminant validity). A total of 466 JIA patients (13.7% systemic, 40.6% oligoarticular, 22.5% RF negative poly-arthritis, and 23.2% other categories) and 93 healthy children were enrolled in four centres. The JAMAR components discriminated well-healthy subjects from JIA patients. All JAMAR components revealed good psychometric performances. In conclusion, the Turkish version of the JAMAR is a valid tool for the assessment of children with JIA and is suitable for use both in routine clinical practice and clinical research

The evaluation of malignancies in Turkish PID patients; A multicenter study

WOS: 00043131160017