Citizens’ opinions are represented more equally by elected officials in states that strictly regulate professional lobbying

In recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that citizens are not represented equally by their elected officials in Congress and in statehouses across the United States, and that wealthier individuals, represented by lobbyists, are more successful in having their preferences translated into policy. In new research, Patrick Flavin examines the role of lobbying regulations on political representation. He finds that as the number of lobbying restrictions in a state increases, the greater the level of political equality. He argues that those seeking to promote greater political equality in the United States should consider strict laws that regulate the conduct of professional lobbyists to ensure that citizens’ opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions

States with stricter campaign finance regulations spend moreon programs that aid disadvantaged citizens

Recent years have seen increasing concern over the role of campaign finance in elections. But do stricter campaign finance regulations actually drive ‘fairer’ public policies? In new research that combines nearly three decades of state spending data on public welfare programs with an index of state campaign financing laws, Patrick Flavin finds that those states that more strictly regulate campaign finance devote greater parts of their budgets to public welfare, often in the form of cash assistance programs. He argues that by promoting a wider section of contributors, and not just the wealthy, campaign finance regulations “democratize” elections by encouraging candidates that are less beholden to moneyed interests, and have more flexibility to prioritize laws and policies that benefit disadvantaged citizens

State mandatory collective bargaining laws can mean public employees are more likely to participate in politics.

In many states, Republican Governors have moved to end collective bargaining rights for public employees, with the aim of curtailing their ability to mobilize politically. In new research covering 34 states with mandatory collective bargaining laws, Patrick Flavin and Michael T. Hartney find that these laws can have a large effect on the likelihood that public employees will participate in politics. They say that with the rise of new laws to prevent collective bargaining for state employees, the membership and influence of labor unions is likely to decline

Citizens are happier in countries where the government intervenes more frequently in the economy

What types of public policy promote greater happiness among citizens? Patrick Flavin, Alexander C. Pacek and Benjamin Radcliff present results from an analysis of survey data across 21 industrialised democracies between 1981 and 2007. They find that in countries where governments intervene more frequently in the economy there is a higher degree of self-reported happiness among citizens. They note that while these findings cannot strictly be taken as evidence that social democratic policies are better in a normative sense overall, the results suggest that more research is required on the impact of a country’s political context on the happiness of its citizens

Bateson's "Naven" : Towards an anthropology of performance.

The thesis is an attempt to deal with two topics. The text consists of a detailed reading of Gregory Bateson's ethnography of the Iatmul of New Guinea, Naven (1936: 1958). In this classic work Bateson attempted to analyse a nexus of ritual and ceremonial activities among the Iatmul. The theoretical and methodological questions raised by Bateson in his book are of profound importance for anthropology in general, and for studies of "ritual" in particular. The tensions explored in Naven, between explanation and understanding, between action and interpretation and between intellectual coherence and social context, are crucial concerns for anthropologists working in the 1980s. Bateson's book was written at a time when structural-functional ism was the ascendant paradigm in British anthropology, and it dealt with problems which that paradigm was unable to formulate or to discuss. The thesis argues that many of the questions which anthropologists have raised about ritual would be better phrased as questions about performance, and it sets out to show that Naven can be read as a contribution to an anthropology of performance rather than as a contribution to an anthropology of ritual. This constitutes the second topic. The thesis considers critically the work of other scholars in this field, notably Edmund Leach, Clifford Geertz, Claude Levi-Strauss, Gilbert Lewis, Victor Turner and Richard Schechner. Turner and Schechner have recently been responsible for the development of a "dramaturgical" model of ritual and of broader social contexts, and the thesis concludes with a critique of some of the presuppositions implicit in their work. The notion of performance is not offered as an alternative category to that of ritual, for this would only replace one essentialism by another. It is suggested that the development of a theory of performance would constitute a useful strategy in contemporary concerns with the decentering and deconstruction of traditional anthropological categories

Toll-like receptor 3 blockade in rhinovirus-induced experimental asthma exacerbations:A Randomized Controlled Study

BACKGROUND: Human rhinoviruses (HRVs) commonly precipitate asthma exacerbations. Toll-like receptor 3, an innate pattern recognition receptor, is triggered by HRV, driving inflammation that can worsen asthma. OBJECTIVE: We sought to evaluate an inhibitory mAb to Toll-like receptor 3, CNTO3157, on experimental HRV-16 inoculation in healthy subjects and asthmatic patients. METHODS: In this double-blind, multicenter, randomized, parallel-group study in North America and Europe, healthy subjects and patients with mild-to-moderate stable asthma received single or multiple doses of CNTO3157 or placebo, respectively, and were then inoculated with HRV-16 within 72 hours. All subjects were monitored for respiratory symptoms, lung function, and nasal viral load. The primary end point was maximal decrease in FEV1 during 10 days after inoculation. RESULTS: In asthmatic patients (n = 63) CNTO3157 provided no protection against FEV1 decrease (least squares mean: CNTO3157 [n = 30] = -7.08% [SE, 8.15%]; placebo [n = 25] = -5.98% [SE, 8.56%]) or symptoms after inoculation. In healthy subjects (n = 12) CNTO3157 versus placebo significantly attenuated upper (P = .03) and lower (P = .02) airway symptom scores, with area-under-the-curve increases of 9.1 (15.1) versus 34.9 (17.6) and 13.0 (18.4) versus 50.4 (25.9) for the CNTO3157 (n = 8) and placebo (n = 4) groups, respectively, after inoculation. All of the severe and 4 of the nonserious asthma exacerbations occurred while receiving CNTO3157. CONCLUSION: In summary, CNTO3157 was ineffective in attenuating the effect of HRV-16 challenge on lung function, asthma control, and symptoms in asthmatic patients but suppressed cold symptoms in healthy subjects. Other approaches, including blockade of multiple pathways or antiviral agents, need to be sought for this high unmet medical need

Replication Data for: "Labor Union Strength and the Equality of Political Representation"

Amid growing evidence of “unequal democracy” in the United States, labor unions can play a potentially important role by ensuring that low income citizens’ opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions. To investigate this possibility, I evaluate the relationship between labor union strength and representational equality across the states and find evidence that states with higher levels of union membership weigh citizens’ opinions more equally in the policymaking process. In contrast, there is no relationship between the volume of labor union contributions to political campaigns in a state and the equality of political representation. These findings suggest that labor unions promote greater political equality primarily by mobilizing their working class members to political action and, more broadly, underscore the important role organized labor continues to play in shaping the distribution of political power across American society

Public Policies and Suicide Rates in the American States

Public policy, Social capital, Suicide, American state politics, Welfare spending,

Replication data for: When Government Subsidizes Its Own: Collective Bargaining Laws as Agents of Political Mobilization

Government policies can activate a political constituency not only by providing material resources to, or altering the interpretive experiences of, individual citizens, but also by directly subsidizing established interest groups. We argue that state laws mandating collective bargaining for public employees provided organizational subsidies to public sector labor unions that lowered the costs of mobilizing their members to political action. Exploiting variation in the timing of laws across the states and using data on the political participation of public school teachers from 1956 to 2004, we find that the enactment of a mandatory bargaining law significantly boosted subsequent political participation among teachers. We also identify increased contact from organized groups seeking to mobilize teachers as a likely mechanism that explains this finding. These results have important implications for the current debate over collective bargaining rights and for our understanding of policy feedback, political parties and interest groups, and the bureaucracy