Credibility and Agency Termination under Parliamentarism

We investigate the life span and risk of termination of 723 arm’s length agencies in the United Kingdom between 1985 and 2008, an under investigated question in parliamentary systems. We hypothesize that termination risk depends on three groups of factors: (1) factors relating to the rationales for initial delegation of responsibility to the arm’s length agency; (2) factors relating to the political and economic position of the government; and (3) factors relating to the institutional form of the agency. We find that agencies intended to generate credible commitments in regulation are less likely than others to be terminated in any given year. Agencies operating under right-wing governments and under heavily indebted governments are more likely to be terminated, although left-wing governments are more sensitive to the effects of debt. Agencies structured as executive non-departmental public bodies and non-ministerial departments are also longer lived than others. Contrary to expectations about arm’s length agencies in parliamentary systems with single-party government, partisan change does not affect the risk of termination

Shall the law set them free? The formal and actual independence of regulatory agencies

Regulation by independent agencies, rather than ministries, is believed to result in better policy outcomes. Yet this belief requires one to accept a complex causal chain leading from formal independence to actual independence from politics, to policy decisions and, ultimately, to policy outcomes. In this study, we analyze the link between the formal and actual independence of regulatory agencies in Western Europe. New data on the appointment of chief executives of these agencies is used to create a proxy for the actual independence of agencies from politics. The analysis demonstrates that formal independence is an important determinant of actual independence, but the rule of law and the number of veto players matter as well

Comparing Strategies for Estimating Constituency Opinion from National Survey Samples

Political scientists interested in estimating how public opinion varies by constituency have developed several strategies for supplementing limited constituency survey data with additional sources of information. We present two evaluation studies in the previously unexamined context of British constituency-level opinion: an external validation study of party vote share in the 2010 general election and a cross-validation of opinion toward the European Union. We find that most of the gains over direct estimation come from the inclusion of constituency-level predictors, which are also the easiest source of additional information to incorporate. Individual-level predictors combined with post-stratification particularly improve estimates from unrepresentative samples, and geographic local smoothing can compensate for weak constituency-level predictors. We argue that these findings are likely to be representative of applications of these methods where the number of constituencies is large

Reconciling to other forecasts

The assumptions behind various election forecasting models lead to different central predictions for the outcome on May 7th. In this post, Chris Hanretty, one of the team at electionforecast.co.uk, evaluates two assumptions that differ across three of the main academic forecasting projects for the election in 2015

Party system polarization and the effective number of parties

Polarization is a key characteristic of party systems, but scholars disagree about how polarization relates to the number of parties in a system. Different authors find positive, negative, or null relationships. This relationship is what one would expect if parties were drawn randomly from a super-population with an effective sample size somewhere between the effective and raw number of parties. I test this claim using multiple datasets which report party positions and seat shares, before extending my analysis to consider vote-level polarization, the range of positions, and polarization in presidential and parliamentary regimes. My work extends the Taageperaan research agenda of building interlocking networks of equations relating key quantities of electoral and party systems

The 2015 election has been described as the most disproportional ever – but it wasn’t disproportional everywhere

Disproportionality is the degree of mismatch between parties’ shares of votes and their shares of seats, with measures of disproportionality usually calculated for national elections. This year’s general election was criticised by many as the least proportional ever. Chris Hanretty acknowledges that on some measures, this is a valid claim, but demonstrates that calculating a measure for local disproportionality gives a better sense of how the mismatch varied across England, Scotland and Wales

The pork barrel politics of the towns fund: funding decisions were driven by party-political considerations, not by need

The Towns Fund is a scheme designed to support towns across England, particularly those with high levels of income deprivation. Chris Hanretty takes a look at the selection of towns invited to bid for funding under the scheme. He finds that the funding decisions were driven by party-political considerations, not by need

“Horse-race” coverage of elections is most common in polarised party systems in close electoral contests

What causes ‘horse-race’ coverage of electoral contests? Drawing on data from 160 different European print and broadcast outlets in 27 different countries at three different points in time, Chris Hanretty finds that this kind of electoral coverage is most frequent in polarised party systems with close electoral contests, and in large markets with professional journalists – findings which challenge the traditional view of horse-race journalism as a ‘low-quality’ form of news

The Decisions and Ideal Points of British Law Lords

Policy-sensitive models of judicial behaviour, whether attitudinal or strategic, have largely passed Britain by. This article argues that this neglect has been benign, because explanations of judicial decisions in terms of the positions of individual judges fare poorly in the British case. To support this argument, the non-unanimous opinions of British Law Lords between 1969 and 2009 are analysed. A hierarchical item-response model of individual judges’ votes is estimated in order to identify judges’ locations along a one-dimensional policy space. Such a model is found to be no better than a null model that predicts that every judge will vote with the majority with the same probability. Locations generated by the model do not represent judges’ political attitudes, only their propensity to dissent. Consequently, judges’ individual votes should not be used to describe them in political terms

Determinants of Doppler Flow Velocity Waveforms in the Uteroplacental and Umbilical Arteries

Non-invasive assessment of blood flow in the uteroplacental and umbilical arteries using Doppler velocimetry is a promising technique for the identification of fetal compromise and seems likely to be introduced widely into clinical practice. Nevertheless, many problems remain to be resolved regarding the potential use of Doppler in obstetrics. These problems arise in part from a lack of understanding of which indices are most appropriate for describing waveforms and of the factors determining abnormal waveforms. In a cross sectional study of 356 normal and complicated pregnancies the three most commonly used indices, the pulsatility index, resistance index and systolic/diastolic ratio were found to be highly correlated with each other and could be used interchangeably unless absence of end diastolic velocities was observed. The association between advancing gestational age and umbilical artery waveform indices, showing reduced placental vascular resistance, was confirmed although no such association was seen in uteroplacental patterns. Placental vascular pathology has been implicated in the production of abnormal uteroplacental and umbilical artery Doppler waveforms. It has been postulated that Doppler studies in mid-trimester might identify pregnancies at risk of later complications. Elevated maternal serum alphafetoprotein (AFP) in pregnancies with normally formed fetuses is also known to be associated with a high risk of perinatal complications and a placental pathology has recently been suggested as underlying this. To determine if Doppler might identify such a lesion, 40 patients with unexplained elevation of maternal serum AFP underwent Doppler studies in the mid trimester. Although there was a significant difference in the incidence of later complications from a matched group of control patients there was no difference from controls in Doppler indices from the uteroplacental or umbilical circulations. Consequently the hypothesis that Doppler might identify a placental lesion associated with later complications is rejected. Furthermore, despite a 40% incidence of complications in the elevated AFP group the values obtained were within previously published normal ranges for the gestation of study and the findings do not support a role for Doppler in screening in mid trimester for later complications. Abnormal waveforms have been reported in pregnancies in which the fetus is small-for-dates and in those complicated by hypertension but few controlled studies have been performed to determine the role played by these conditions in producing changes in waveform indices. A controlled study was performed to determine if uteroplacental and umbilical artery waveforms are altered in pregnancies in which the fetus is small-for-dates. Waveforms were obtained in 32 such pregnancies. No difference in uteroplacental waveform indices was identified. In contrast, the indices from the umbilical artery were significantly higher, though not necessarily abnormal, compared with matched controls. These data suggest that haemodynamic changes occur in such fetuses even when, as determined by Doppler, uteroplacental perfusion is maintained. It is known that in some small-for-dates fetuses blood viscosity is increased. From Pouseille's equation it is known that blood flow is dependent on blood viscosity and the need for intra-uterine intravascular transfusion in some cases of rhesus disease provided the opportunity to determine if an increase in blood viscosity following transfusion is associated with an increase in Doppler indices of resistance. Twenty women underwent a total of 35 percutaneous umbilical blood sampling procedures and on 22 occasions intra-vascular transfusion was indicated from the results obtained. The systolic/diastolic ratio was measured immediately before and 1 hour after sampling or, if performed, transfusion. A reduction in the systolic/diastolic ratio was seen whether transfusion was performed or not indicating that a reduction in resistance to blood flow occurred. This surprising finding suggests that umbilical cord puncture itself may result in the release of vasodilator substances and this must be investigated in further studies. To determine if pregnancy induced hypertension (PIH) and absolute levels of blood pressure influenced waveforms, a group of 48 untreated carefully defined patients were compared with an individually matched control group. In the hypertensive patients the Doppler indices of vascular resistance in the uteroplacental vessels were significantly higher than controls. In contrast, the results from the umbilical artery analysis showed increased resistance, reflected in higher values for waveform indices, only when significant proteinuria was present