Incumbency advantage is not restricted to established majoritarian systems

To date, most scholarly works have focused on incumbency advantage in the US and consider how it operates in majoritarian contexts. In a recent paper, Mert Moral, H. Ege Ozen and Efe Tokdemir drew on the case of Turkey to explore whether the incumbency operates in multi member district systems. They found that although it is not as marked as in the US context, considerable incumbency advantage persisted in the more proportional system

Sex difference and intra-operative tidal volume: Insights from the LAS VEGAS study

BACKGROUND: One key element of lung-protective ventilation is the use of a low tidal volume (VT). A sex difference in use of low tidal volume ventilation (LTVV) has been described in critically ill ICU patients.OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to determine whether a sex difference in use of LTVV also exists in operating room patients, and if present what factors drive this difference.DESIGN, PATIENTS AND SETTING: This is a posthoc analysis of LAS VEGAS, a 1-week worldwide observational study in adults requiring intra-operative ventilation during general anaesthesia for surgery in 146 hospitals in 29 countries.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Women and men were compared with respect to use of LTVV, defined as VT of 8 ml kg-1 or less predicted bodyweight (PBW). A VT was deemed 'default' if the set VT was a round number. A mediation analysis assessed which factors may explain the sex difference in use of LTVV during intra-operative ventilation.RESULTS: This analysis includes 9864 patients, of whom 5425 (55%) were women. A default VT was often set, both in women and men; mode VT was 500 ml. Median [IQR] VT was higher in women than in men (8.6 [7.7 to 9.6] vs. 7.6 [6.8 to 8.4] ml kg-1 PBW, P < 0.001). Compared with men, women were twice as likely not to receive LTVV [68.8 vs. 36.0%; relative risk ratio 2.1 (95% CI 1.9 to 2.1), P < 0.001]. In the mediation analysis, patients' height and actual body weight (ABW) explained 81 and 18% of the sex difference in use of LTVV, respectively; it was not explained by the use of a default VT.CONCLUSION: In this worldwide cohort of patients receiving intra-operative ventilation during general anaesthesia for surgery, women received a higher VT than men during intra-operative ventilation. The risk for a female not to receive LTVV during surgery was double that of males. Height and ABW were the two mediators of the sex difference in use of LTVV.TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was registered at Clinicaltrials.gov, NCT01601223

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

The story of electoral alliances

The so-called `Alliance Law' was enacted on March 13, 2018. Among many important amendments it introduced to the Election Law, perhaps the most important ones were regarding the formal pre-electoral alliances and related changes in how votes will be translated into seats. Shortly after the law's enactment, first the incumbent AKP, MHP, and BBP, then the main opposition CHP, IYI, SP, and DP announced the formations of two electoral alliances and contested the June 24 Parliamentary Election as part of them. Based on a number of simulation exercises that employ precinct-level data from the general elections since 2015 and aim to account for the changes in electoral institutions due to the April 2017 referendum and the Alliance Law, and increased numbers of electoral districts and members of the Turkish Parliament, this chapter investigates how the People's and Nation's Alliances had influenced the alliance and non-alliance parties' seat shares, and whether and, if so, how the electoral and legislative outcomes would differ in alternative scenarios. Several implications of the electoral alliances and examined institutional, constitutional, and statutory changes for the future of Turkish politics in terms of representation, disproportionality, and quantity and quality of party policy offerings are discussed in the concluding section

A comparative study of the individual and contextual determinants of invalid votes in Europe

Previous literature on political participation and voting behavior has often overlooked invalid votes as an expressive and rational act. Few comparative studies seeking to understand why some voters intentionally spoil their ballots, on the one hand, commonly employ aggregate data to empirically analyze their theoretical expectations. Even fewer studies employing individual-level data, on the other hand, only look into countries with high invalid vote shares, and with varied political and institutional characteristics. Based on an article investigating individual- and contextual-level determinants of casting an invalid vote in multiparty European democracies, this case study demonstrates the added value of employing survey data to examine individual behavior, ruling out alternative explanations via operational decisions, modeling distinct choices available to individuals using multinomial logistic regression, taking account of individual and contextual heterogeneity among examined cases, positing and testing interactive hypotheses, and investigating social and political phenomena from a comparative perspective

Politics as (un)usual? An overview of the June 2018 presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey

The concurrent parliamentary and presidential elections on June 24, 2018, show several elements of change and continuity in Turkish politics. The snap elections were the first elections after Turkey’s transition to an “alla Turca” presidential regime and marked the fragmentation of the dominant right-wing bloc due to the emergence of the center-right IYI and its and conservative SP’s electoral alliance with the main opposition CHP. Rapidly deteriorating democratic practices and economic conditions, while resulting in a significant decrease in the incumbent AKP’s electoral support in the general elections, did not, however, impede President Erdoğan from securing another victory in the presidential election. After a brief overview of the background of the two elections with a particular focus on the emergence of IYI, electoral alliances, presidential candidates, growing party, electoral and media polarization, election campaign, and electoral conduct, this chapter presents descriptive accounts of the systemic indicators of the Turkish party system and geographical distributions of the legislative parties and major presidential candidates’ electoral supports to answer whether the two elections reveal a departure from the “Turkish politics as usual.

Siyaset biliminde etkileşimli modeller üzerine

Sosyal bilimlerde sayıları özellikle son yıllarda hızla artan çalışmada öne sürülen koşullu kuramsal beklenti ve önermelerin nicel yöntemlerle tahlil edilmesinde etkileşimli modellerden kullanılmaktadır. Ancak etkileşimli doğrusal ve doğrusal-olmayan modellerden yararlanan çalışmaların birçoğunda kurucu bağımsız değişkenlerinin koşulsuz, koşullu ve marjinal etkilerinin hesaplanması ve yorumlanması hatalı ya da eksik yapılmaktadır. Çalışmamızda siyaset metodolojisi alanında etkileşimli modellere dair güncel çalışmalarda dikkat çekilen hususlar ve önerilen yöntem ve tanı araçlarının detaylı bir incelemesi yapılmaktadır. Çok sayıda kuramsal ve kurgusal örnek yardımıyla, etkileşimli doğrusal ve doğrusal-olmayan modeller için önerilen bu yöntemlerin uygulanmasında dikkat edilmesi gereken noktaların altı çizilmekte ve bu noktalar çalışmanın sonuç bölümünde özetlenmektedir. Bu sayede ülkemizde gelecekte yapılacak çalışmalarda koşullu kuramsal beklentilerin öne sürülmesinde ve bunların nicel yöntemlerle tahlil edilmesi ve yorumlanmasında ortaya çıkabilecek olası hataların önüne geçilmesi amaçlanmaktadır

Replication Data for: "Bringing the Incumbency Advantage into Question for Proportional Representation"

Moral, Mert, H. Ege Özen, and Efe Tokdemir. 2015. “Bringing the Incumbency Advantage into Question for Proportional Representation”. Electoral Studies 40: 56-65

The Bipolar Voter: On the Effects of Actual and Perceived Party Polarization on Voter Turnout in European Multiparty Democracies

Moral, Mert. "The Bipolar Voter: On the Effects of Actual and Perceived Party Polarization on Voter Turnout in European Multiparty Democracies." Political Behavior (Forthcoming