The politics of strategic budgeteering

This paper analyzes how opportunistic governments choose between alternative fiscal policies in order to increases their chances of re-election. To increase the provision of public goods shortly before elections – and thus, to generate a fiscal political business cycles – governments may either increase deficits or redistribute governmental resources from longterm efficient sources to short-term efficient public programs. We argue that incumbents who face highly competed elections principally have an incentive to spend more on public goods even though these investments are not efficient in the long term. In principal, they would do so by increasing the deficits (with re-balancing the budget after the election). However, our model demonstrates that incumbents would even electioneer at the cost of long-term investments if the extent of fiscal transparency does not allow them to finance the provision of public goods with higher deficits. In other words, if elections are close and voters may observe the governmental deficit, then governments tend to increase the provision of public goods – and consequently, their electoral prospects – by a redistribution of budget resources from long-term efficient investment to a short-term provision of public goods. We test the predictions with new data on the composition of government consumption for 17 OECD countries over 35 years. The preliminary findings suggest that governments indeed reshuffle resources from long-term efficient investment to short-term public goods before elections especially if elections are contested

The Domestic Politics of International Cooperation: Germany and the European Debt Crisis

AbstractInternational cooperation can fail even though governments have no distributional conflicts or incentives to free-ride, face no informational or credibility problems, and even agree on the policies that need to be implemented. Germany's refusal to cooperate with the Eurogroup members on the Greek bailout in 2010 until the crisis threatened to derail the entire Eurozone is puzzling in that regard especially because Germany is the main beneficiary of the euro. It was alleged at the time that this was a dilatory tactic designed to postpone a domestically unpopular decision until after crucial regional elections. But why would voters allow themselves to be misled like that? And why did Merkel agree to the bailout before the elections took place? To analyze how citizen preferences affect international cooperation, we develop a game-theoretic model of the four-way interaction between two governments that must coordinate a response to a crisis affecting both countries but who also must face the polls domestically with an electorate that might be uncertain whether a response is necessary. We find that, paradoxically, governments that stand to receive the greatest benefits from international cooperation face the greatest obstacles to implementing the required policies even when voters would want them to. We show how the model can rationalize Merkel's electoral strategy and why her party suffered at the polls when the strategy went off the rails.</jats:p

Campaign Promises, Political Ambiguity, and Globalization

Promissory representation is the idea that a significant part of representation consists of parties making promises to voters during election campaigns and keeping those promises if they hold enough power to do so after elections. In countries that are highly exposed to globalization, governing parties face significant challenges to fulfilling the promises they made to voters. At the same time, voters punish governing parties that fail to keep their campaign promises. This presents parties with the dilemma that while voters expect them to make ambitious promises during election campaigns, their capacity to deliver on those promises is undermined by the constraints of globalization. In response to this dilemma, parties rely on strategic ambiguity to avoid retrospective sanctioning by voters in future elections. Ambiguous campaign statements are reconcilable with a broad range of subsequent government policies and are therefore unlikely to be perceived as broken promises by voters. We analyze the use and effects of strategic ambiguity in a mixed-methods design consisting of a survey experiment and an observational study of 293 election platforms by 44 parties in six countries between 1970-2019. The findings shed new light on the widespread use of ambiguity in contemporary politics with important implications for democratic representation in a globalized world

The Political Economy of Organizational Expansion. Finding the Link Between Insider and Outsider in the European Union

Scholars often address the process of enlargement as one-sided argument. This work provides a general theory of organizational expansion by including strategies and actions of both, applicant states and members of international organizations. It is argued that dependent on the domestic characteristics of states an organization strategically implement a set of conditions to avoid the application and admission of states, which are either not able to conform with the rules or not willing to pay the costs of membership. This process incorporates two stages. I test this theory by utilizing a Heckman-Probit-Selection Model, which accounts for this two-stage procedure. The results confirm that conditions are important to avoid costs in the process of expansion

Interest coalitions and multilateral aid allocation

This paper analyzes multilateral aid allocation in the European Union (EU). We argue that EU members can influence the aid allocation process toward their national interests if they form powerful coalitions that bias the European Commission&apos;s development policies. When EU members&apos; preferences over aid allocation are heterogeneous, the Commission can implement multilateral aid according to its programmatic goals. Greater homogeneity of EU members&apos; goals, however, increases the likelihood that members can form powerful interest coalitions and induce the Commission to allocate aid according to their own national interests. The empirical analysis provides robust support for our theoretical argument, and the findings generally indicate that interest coalitions play an important role in multilateral aid allocation

Filling the void - enriching the feature space of successful stopping

The ability to inhibit behavior is crucial for adaptation in a fast changing environment and is commonly studied with the stop signal task. Current EEG research mainly focuses on the N200 and P300 ERPs and corresponding activity in the theta and delta frequency range, thereby leaving us with a limited understanding of the mechanisms of response inhibition. Here, 15 functional networks were estimated from time-frequency transformed EEG recorded during processing of a visual stop signal task. Cortical sources underlying these functional networks were reconstructed, and a total of 45 features, each representing spectrally and temporally coherent activity, were extracted to train a classifier to differentiate between go and stop trials. A classification accuracy of 85.55% for go and 83.85% for stop trials was achieved. Features capturing fronto-central delta- and theta activity, parieto-occipital alpha, fronto-central as well as right frontal beta activity were highly discriminating between trial-types. However, only a single network, comprising a feature defined by oscillatory activity below 12 Hz, was associated with a generator in the opercular region of the right inferior frontal cortex and showed the expected associations with behavioral inhibition performance. This study pioneers by providing a detailed ranking of neural features regarding their information content for stop and go differentiation at the single-trial level, and may further be the first to identify a scalp EEG marker of the inhibitory control network. This analysis allows for the characterization of the temporal dynamics of response inhibition by matching electrophysiological phenomena to cortical generators and behavioral inhibition performanc

The politics of double delegation in the European Union

Many international organizations channel financial contributions of their member countries through other international organizations to implement their programs and activities. In this context, the second step of the delegation chain is often costly and—at least seemingly—an easily avoidable duplication of a previous one. We examine the puzzling phenomenon of double delegation in the context of European aid. We argue that governments engage in double delegation in order to strengthen the role of the European Union (EU) as a multilateral donor agency. This leads to an increase in the flow of resources that, at times, exceeds what the Commission can effectively handle alone. Delegating aid to other organizations helps the Commission solve this capacity problem, but it also reduces its control over how the resources are spent. Consequently, the Commission must exercise judgment about which projects it delegates to other international organizations. Our quantitative and qualitative evidence shows that double delegation is more likely where the Commission's capacity as an aid donor is low and where EU members have no strategic interests at stake. We also show that the Commission tries to mitigate the loss of control by earmarking the delegated aid projects more tightly, notably when member preferences are heterogeneous. The results provide a new way of thinking about international delegation and bureaucratic politics in international organizations. Delegation problems may occur even if the interests between the principal and the agent align. Our approach highlights why this happens and how actors try to minimize the costs of this understudied type of agency slippage

Hierarchical super-structure identified by polarized light microscopy, electron microscopy and nanoindentation: Implications for the limits of biological control over the growth mode of abalone sea shells

Mollusc shells are commonly investigated using high-resolution imaging techniques based on cryo-fixation. Less detailed information is available regarding the light-optical properties. Sea shells of Haliotis pulcherina were embedded for polishing in defined orientations in order to investigate the interface between prismatic calcite and nacreous aragonite by standard materialographic methods. A polished thin section of the interface was prepared with a defined thickness of 60 μm for quantitative birefringence analysis using polarized light and LC-PolScope microscopy. Scanning electron microscopy images were obtained for comparison. In order to study structural-mechanical relationships, nanoindentation experiments were performed.Incident light microscopy revealed a super-structure in semi-transparent regions of the polished cross-section under a defined angle. This super-structure is not visible in transmitted birefringence analysis due to the blurred polarization of small nacre platelets and numerous organic interfaces. The relative orientation and homogeneity of calcite prisms was directly identified, some of them with their optical axes exactly normal to the imaging plane. Co-oriented "prism colonies" were identified by polarized light analyses. The nacreous super-structure was also visualized by secondary electron imaging under defined angles. The domains of the super-structure were interpreted to consist of crystallographically aligned platelet stacks. Nanoindentation experiments showed that mechanical properties changed with the same periodicity as the domain size.In this study, we have demonstrated that insights into the growth mechanisms of nacre can be obtained by conventional light-optical methods. For example, we observed super-structures formed by co-oriented nacre platelets as previously identified using X-ray Photo-electron Emission Microscopy (X-PEEM) [Gilbert et al., Journal of the American Chemical Society 2008, 130:17519–17527]. Polarized optical microscopy revealed unprecedented super-structures in the calcitic shell part. This bears, in principle, the potential for in vivo studies, which might be useful for investigating the growth modes of nacre and other shell types

Hierarchical super-structure identified by polarized light microscopy, electron microscopy and nanoindentation: implications for the limits of biological control over the growth mode of abalone sea shells

Background: Mollusc shells are commonly investigated using high-resolution imaging techniques based on cryo-fixation. Less detailed information is available regarding the light-optical properties. Sea shells of Haliotis pulcherina were embedded for polishing in defined orientations in order to investigate the interface between prismatic calcite and nacreous aragonite by standard materialographic methods. A polished thin section of the interface was prepared with a defined thickness of 60 μm for quantitative birefringence analysis using polarized light and LC-PolScope microscopy. Scanning electron microscopy images were obtained for comparison. In order to study structural-mechanical relationships, nanoindentation experiments were performed. Results: Incident light microscopy revealed a super-structure in semi-transparent regions of the polished cross-section under a defined angle. This super-structure is not visible in transmitted birefringence analysis due to the blurred polarization of small nacre platelets and numerous organic interfaces. The relative orientation and homogeneity of calcite prisms was directly identified, some of them with their optical axes exactly normal to the imaging plane. Co-oriented "prism colonies" were identified by polarized light analyses. The nacreous super-structure was also visualized by secondary electron imaging under defined angles. The domains of the super-structure were interpreted to consist of crystallographically aligned platelet stacks. Nanoindentation experiments showed that mechanical properties changed with the same periodicity as the domain size. Conclusions: In this study, we have demonstrated that insights into the growth mechanisms of nacre can be obtained by conventional light-optical methods. For example, we observed super-structures formed by co-oriented nacre platelets as previously identified using X-ray Photo-electron Emission Microscopy (X-PEEM) [Gilbert et al., Journal of the American Chemical Society 2008, 130:17519–17527]. Polarized optical microscopy revealed unprecedented super-structures in the calcitic shell part. This bears, in principle, the potential for in vivo studies, which might be useful for investigating the growth modes of nacre and other shell types

Validity of Medication Adherence Self-Reports in Adults With Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE To assess the validity of self-report measures of diabetes medication adherence and evaluate the effect of depression on the validity of these reports. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Adults with type 2 diabetes, treated with oral medications, completed a set of medication adherence self-reports that varied response scales and time frames, were administered structured clinical interviews for depression, and provided blood samples for HbA1c as part of a screening for an intervention study. A subsample of participants with HbA1c ≥7.0% and clinically significant depression received Medication Event Monitoring System (MEMS) bottle caps to record adherence. Analyses examined relationships between adherence measures and HbA1c and, in the subsample, MEMS. Moderated linear regression evaluated whether depression severity modified relationships with HbA1c. RESULTS Participant (n = 170, 57% men, 81% white, mean HbA1c 8.3% [SD, 1.7]) adherence self-reports were significantly (r = −0.18 to −0.28; P < 0.03) associated with lower HbA1c. In the subsample (n = 88), all self-reports were significantly (r = 0.35 to 0.55; P ≤ 0.001) associated with MEMS-measured adherence. Depression significantly moderated the relationship between three of six self-reports and HbA1c; at high levels of depression, associations with HbA1c became nonsignificant. CONCLUSIONS Results support the validity of easily administered self-reports for diabetes medication adherence. One-month, percentage-based ratings of adherence had the strongest associations with MEMS and HbA1c; those requiring the report of missed doses had weaker associations. One-week self-ratings and measures that require respondents to record the number of missed doses appear to be vulnerable to bias from depression severity