Politics and preferences

The overall aim of this thesis is to better understand how politics and preferences influence policy outcomes. The thesis consists of two papers that examine two different policy outcomes in Swedish municipalities. Paper I analyzes the effect of income and education on the environmental policy performance of Swedish local governments. In estimating the effects of income and education we will also examine how they interact with political participation. To examine this I use panel data based on an environmental ranking of Swedish municipalities made every year between 1993 and 2001. The empirical results show that there is a positive relationship between income and the environmental policy performance. This relationship is however captured by controlling for the education level, which has a positive relationship with the environmental policy performance. Controlling for municipal fixed effects and relevant control variables does not change this result. Furthermore we find that political participation has significant interaction effects with both income and education. Paper II develops a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate the causal effect of political party power on the placement of refugee immigrants in Swedish municipalities. That Swedish municipalities have a proportional election system puts forward specific challenges for using a RD design, which this paper will provide solutions to. The identification strategy is based on the idea that a specific party getting one more seat or not in the municipal council can be considered as good as random if the party is close to a seat change. Even though this paper only looks at Swedish data the method could be applied to other countries with proportional election systems. The results of the paper show that the political party power has a large effect on the placement of refugee immigrants in Swedish municipalities

Mechanical and Psychological Effects of Electoral Reform

Duverger (1954) noted that changes in electoral systems will have two types of effects: mechanical effects, and reactions of political agents in anticipation of these, which he referred to as psychological effects. It is complicated to empirically separate the two effects since these occur simultaneously. In this paper we use a large set of counterfactual election outcomes to address this issue. Our application is based on a nationwide municipal electoral reform in Norway, which changed the seat allocation method from d’Hondt to modified Sainte-Lagüe. Even though this electoral reform is of a relatively small magnitude, we document substantial psychological effects.

Shades of brown and green: Party effects in proportional election Systems

Small parties play an important role in proportional election systems. For example, the emergence and electoral success of environmental and anti-immigration parties have constituted one of the central changes in the political landscape in Europe over the last three decades. But we do not know if this has actually had any implications for policy, since no methods exist for credibly estimating the effect of legislative representation in proportional election systems. Because party representation is not randomly assigned, both observable and unobservable factors influence policy outcomes as well as party representation. Using a part of the legislative seat allocation that is as good as random, I estimate the causal effect of party representation on immigration policy, environmental policy and tax policy in Swedish municipalities. The results show that party representation has a large effect on the first two policies, but not on the tax policy

Gender quotas and the crisis of the mediocre man

Quotas aren't anathema to meritocracy: they increase competence levels by displacing mediocre men, write Tim Besley, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson and Johanna Rickn

Gender quotas and the crisis of the mediocre man: theory and evidence from Sweden

We develop a model where party leaders choose the competence of politicians on the ballot to trade off electoral success against their own survival. The predicted correlation between the competence of party leaders and followers is strongly supported in Swedish data. We use a novel approach, based on register data for the earnings of the whole population, to measure the competence of all politicians in seven parties, 290 municipalities, and ten elections (1982-2014). We ask how competence was affected by a "zipper" quota, requiring local parties to alternate males and females on the ballot, implemented by the Social Democratic party in 1993. Far from being at odds with meritocracy, this quota raised the competence of male politicians where it raised female representation the most. We argue that resignations of mediocre male leaders was a key driver of this effect

Who becomes a politician?

Can a democracy attract competent leaders, while attaining broad representation? Economic models suggest that free-riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative advantage at entering political life. Moreover, if elites have more human capital, selecting on competence may lead to uneven representation. This article examines patterns of political selection among the universe of municipal politicians and national legislators in Sweden, using extraordinarily rich data on competence traits and social background for the entire population. We document four new facts that together characterize an "inclusive meritocracy." First, politicians are on average significantly smarter and better leaders than the population they represent. Second, this positive selection is present even when conditioning on family (and hence social) background, suggesting that individual competence is key for selection. Third, the representation of social background, whether measured by parental earnings or occupational social class, is remarkably even. Fourth, there is at best a weak trade-off in selection between competence and social representation, mainly due to strong positive selection of politicians of low (parental) socioeconomic status. A broad implication of these facts is that it is possible for democracy to generate competent and socially representative leadership

Guidelines for Perioperative Care for Emergency Laparotomy Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) Society Recommendations: Part 1—Preoperative: Diagnosis, Rapid Assessment and Optimization

BackgroundEnhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols reduce length of stay, complications and costs fora large number of elective surgical procedures. A similar, structured approach appears to improve outcomes, including mortality, for patients undergoing high-risk emergency general surgery, and specifically emergency laparotomy. These are the first consensus guidelines for optimal care of these patients using an ERAS approach.MethodsExperts in aspects of management of the high-risk and emergency general surgical patient were invited to contribute by the International ERAS Society. Pubmed, Cochrane, Embase, and MEDLINE database searches on English language publications were performed for ERAS elements and relevant specific topics. Studies on each item were selected with particular attention to randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and large cohort studies, and reviewed and graded using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system. Recommendations were made on the best level of evidence, or extrapolation from studies on non-emergency patients when appropriate. The Delphi method was used to validate final recommendations. The guideline has been divided into two parts: Part 1—Preoperative Care and Part 2—Intraoperative and Postoperative management. This paper provides guidelines for Part 1.ResultsTwelve components of preoperative care were considered. Consensus was reached after three rounds.ConclusionsThese guidelines are based on the best available evidence for an ERAS approach to patients undergoing emergency laparotomy. Initial management is particularly important for patients with sepsis and physiological derangement. These guidelines should be used to improve outcomes for these high-risk patients