Politicians’ perspectives on voice and accountability: evidence from a survey of South African local councillors

A growing body of research exists on democratic accountability. Much of this research focuses on citizen strategies for expressing their views, and on efforts to hold politicians and government service providers accountable. Despite this research, we in fact know little about how politicians in young democracies view these aspects of democratic governance. Given that accountability can be understood as a feedback ‘loop’ between citizens and elected representatives, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of the norms and values of politicians themselves, the pressures they face and the ways that they communicate with their constituents. This paper details findings from an original survey of approximately 1,000 South African councillors in 2016 and 2017 to explore what representation and accountability looks like from their perspective. How do they understand the various links in the accountability chain, including citizen input and deliberation, norms of good government and pressures from political parties, friends and family? The quality of democratic accountability, and the success of interventions to improve citizen representation, may depend on the norms and beliefs held by elected representatives. Findings state that even in a political context defined by strong parties, the descriptive representation of South African politicians has important substantive implications. Individual-level characteristics such as the race, gender, wealth and age of councillors meaningfully predict attitudes and perceptions on a range of important questions about voice and accountability.DFIDUSAIDSidaOmidyar Networ

Does Stigmatized Social Risk Lead to Denialism? Results from a Survey Experiment on Race, Risk Perception, and Health Policy in the United States

In this article, we report findings from an original survey experiment investigating the effects of different framings of disease threats on individual risk perceptions and policy priorities. We analyze responses from 1,946 white and African-American participants in a self-administered, web-based survey in the United States. We sought to investigate the effects of: 1) frames emphasizing disparities in the racial prevalence of disease and 2) frames emphasizing non-normative (blameworthy or stigmatized) behavioral risk factors. We find some evidence that when treated with the first frame, African-Americans are more likely to report higher risk of infection (compared to an African-American control group and to whites receiving the same treatment); and that whites are more likely to report trust in government data (compared to a White control group and to African-Americans receiving the same treatment). Notwithstanding, we find no support for our hypotheses concerning the interactive effects of providing both frames, which was a central motivation for our study. We argue that this may be due to very large differences in risk perception at baseline (which generate limits on possible treatment effects) and the fact that in the context of American race relations, it may not be possible to fully differentiate racialized and stigmatized frames.Princeton University. Center for Health and Wellbein

Taxation data as indicators of state-society relations: Possibilities and pitfalls

Cross-national research on taxation is a growth industry in political science. This article discusses key conceptual and measurement issues raised by such studies. First, it highlights the ways in which taxation has been studied as a rich and varied concept, including as a component of the state-building process, as a collective action problem, and/or as a problem of distributive justice. Second, the article identifies the central tradeoffs associated with the construction of taxation indicators used to measure such ideas. It discusses considerations such as which forms of revenue should be included and which should not, whether and how to standardize taxation measures, and how to fine-tune measures through a clear specification of units, universes, and measurement calibration. These choices have important implications for the "scoring" of countries, and for making valid inferences about the relationship between states and societies

Comparative morphology of male genital skeletomusculature in the Leptanillinae (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), with a standardized muscular terminology for the male genitalia of Hymenoptera

The male genitalia of the Insecta are famed for structural and functional diversity. Variation in this anatomical region shows ample phylogenetic signal, and this variation has proven indispensable for classification across the insects at multiple taxonomic ranks. However, in the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) the male genital phenotype is ancillary to the morphology of the worker caste for systematic purposes. Ants of the enigmatic subfamily Leptanillinae are an exception, as males are easier to collect than workers. Ongoing systematic revision of the Leptanillinae must therefore rely upon the male phenotype – particularly the spectacular morphological profusion of the male genitalia. To thoroughly illuminate this anatomical region and aid comparative morphological research on ant male genitalia, we present a comparative morphological study of the male genitalia in nine exemplar lineages spanning the Leptanillinae, plus three outgroups representing other major clades of the Formicidae. We use micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) to generate 3D volumetric reconstructions of male genital skeletomusculature in these specimens. Our descriptions use new muscular terminology compatible with topographic main-group systems for the rest of the pterygote soma, and applicable to all Hymenoptera. We find that male genitalia in the Leptanillinae show an overall trend towards skeletomuscular simplification, with muscular reduction in some cases being unprecedented in ants, or even hymenopterans in general. In several lineages of the Leptanillinae we describe derivations of the male genitalia that are bizarre and unparalleled among the Hymenoptera. We conclude by discussing the functional implications of the often-extreme morphologies here observed

Subtelomeric CTCF and cohesin binding site organization using improved subtelomere assemblies and a novel annotation pipeline

Mapping genome-wide data to human subtelomeres has been problematic due to the incomplete assembly and challenges of low-copy repetitive DNA elements. Here, we provide updated human subtelomere sequence assemblies that were extended by filling telomere-adjacent gaps using clone-based resources. A bioinformatic pipeline incorporating multiread mapping for annotation of the updated assemblies using short-read data sets was developed and implemented. Annotation of subtelomeric sequence features as well as mapping of CTCF and cohesin binding sites using ChIP-seq data sets from multiple human cell types confirmed that CTCF and cohesin bind within 3 kb of the start of terminal repeat tracts at many, but not all, subtelomeres. CTCF and cohesin co-occupancy were also enriched near internal telomere-like sequence (ITS) islands and the nonterminal boundaries of subtelomere repeat elements (SREs) in transformed lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) and human embryonic stem cell (ES) lines, but were not significantly enriched in the primary fibroblast IMR90 cell line. Subtelomeric CTCF and cohesin sites predicted by ChIP-seq using our bioinformatics pipeline (but not predicted when only uniquely mapping reads were considered) were consistently validated by ChIP-qPCR. The colocalized CTCF and cohesin sites in SRE regions are candidates for mediating long-range chromatin interactions in the transcript-rich SRE region. A public browser for the integrated display of short-read sequence–based annotations relative to key subtelomere features such as the start of each terminal repeat tract, SRE identity and organization, and subtelomeric gene models was established

Measuring the capability to raise revenue process and output dimensions and their application to the Zambia revenue authority

The worldwide diffusion of the good governance agenda and new public management has triggered a renewed focus on state capability and, more specifically, on the capability to raise revenue in developing countries. However, the analytical tools for a comprehensive understanding of the capability to raise revenue remain underdeveloped. This article aims at filling this gap and presents a model consisting of the three process dimensions ‘information collection and processing’, ‘merit orientation’ and ‘administrative accountability’. ‘Revenue performance’ constitutes the fourth capability dimension which assesses tax administration’s output. This model is applied to the case of the Zambia Revenue Authority. The dimensions prove to be valuable not only for assessing the how much but also the how of collecting taxes. They can be a useful tool for future comparative analyses of tax administrations’ capabilities in developing countries.Die weltweite Verbreitung der Good-Governance- und New-Public-Management-Konzepte hat zu einer zunehmenden Konzentration auf staatliche Leistungsfähigkeit und, im Besonderen, auf die Leistungsfähigkeit der Steuererhebung in Entwicklungsländern geführt. Allerdings bleiben die analytischen Werkzeuge für ein umfassendes Verständnis von Leistungsfähigkeit unterentwickelt. Dieser Artikel stellt hierfür ein Modell vor, das die drei Prozess-Dimensionen „Sammeln und Verarbeiten von Informationen“, „Leistungsorientierung der Mitarbeiter“ und „Verantwortlichkeit der Verwaltung“ beinhaltet. „Einnahmeperformanz“ ist die vierte Dimension und erfasst den Output der Steuerverwaltung. Das mehrdimensionale Modell wird für die Analyse der Leistungsfähigkeit der Steuerbehörde Zambias (Zambia Revenue Authority) genutzt. Es erweist sich nicht nur für die Untersuchung des Wieviel, sondern auch des Wie des Erhebens von Steuern als wertvoll. Die vier Dimensionen können in Zukunft zur umfassenden und vergleichenden Analyse der Leistungsfähigkeit verschiedener Steuerverwaltungen in Entwicklungsländern genutzt werden

Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between domestic political economy and interstate competition

Theoretical work on state formation and capacity has focused mostly on early modern Europe and on the experience of western European states during this period. While a number of European states monopolized domestic tax collection and achieved gains in state capacity during the early modern era, for others revenues stagnated or even declined, and these variations motivated alternative hypotheses for determinants of fiscal and state capacity. In this study we test the basic hypotheses in the existing literature making use of the large date set we have compiled for all of the leading states across the continent. We find strong empirical support for two prevailing threads in the literature, arguing respectively that interstate wars and changes in economic structure towards an urbanized economy had positive fiscal impact. Regarding the main point of contention in the theoretical literature, whether it was representative or authoritarian political regimes that facilitated the gains in fiscal capacity, we do not find conclusive evidence that one performed better than the other. Instead, the empirical evidence we have gathered lends supports to the hypothesis that when under pressure of war, the fiscal performance of representative regimes was better in the more urbanized-commercial economies and the fiscal performance of authoritarian regimes was better in rural-agrarian economie