The Dangers of Diversity: Ethnic Fractionalization and the Rule of Law

Research linking ethnic cleavages to economic underdevelopment is a hallmark of recent efforts to explain economic growth. Similarly, the rule of law as a credible commitment to property rights and contract enforcement is also identified with economic development. Rather than treating these factors as rival explanations for economic development around the world, I propose the rule of law as the causal mechanism through which ethnic fractionalization (EF) influences growth in many countries. I argue ethnic diversity negatively impacts the rule of law due to the prevalence of ethnically-based patronage networks in developing countries. Public officials, I argue, face greater incentives to undermine the rule of law in societies with pervasive ethnic cleavages than in those without. I employ pooled cross-sectional, time-series data for 55 developing countries between 1996 and 2010 to test my theoretical argument. Ultimately, my research demonstrates ethnic fractionalization\u27s deleterious effect on the rule of law and provides a uniform framework linking demographic inputs to economic outcomes

Trapping the Tigers: Regulation of Market Entry and the Rule of Law in SE Asia

Recent research identifies high barriers to registering a business as critical impediments to economic development around the world. Similarly, the lack of credible commitment to the rule of law – especially in the areas of property rights and contract enforcement – is also connected to economic underdevelopment. Scholarship treats these factors as rival explanations for underdevelopment. However, I argue the rule of law is the causal mechanism through which barriers to entry in the marketplace influence economic outcomes. Specifically, I present evidence perceptions of the rule of law in Southeast Asia decline as the legal restrictions on registering a business increase because public officials use their gatekeeping positions to extract rents and raise the costs of formalizing private enterprises. High disincentives to register a business drive entrepreneurs underground, which in turn leaves them vulnerable to extortion or confiscation by public officials and undermines perceptions of the rule of law. I employ pooled cross-sectional time-series data for all countries in SE Asia between 1996 and 2010 to test my theoretical argument. I use Two-Stage Least Squares Instrumental Variables, Time Series, Cross-Sectional and OLS regression models to isolate causal mechanisms and causal directions among my variables. My analyses demonstrate the deleterious effect of legal barriers to entry on the rule of law and provides a new direction for scholarship on the topic

Campaigning for Capital: Fair Elections and Foreign Investment in Comparative Perspective

This paper addresses the question of what explains capital inflows. In so doing, it makes several contributions to the literature on political risk and the determinants of foreign investment. First, I clarify the relationship between capital flows and democracy’s constituent parts in a way that takes arguments beyond aggregate democracy indicators and static political institutional structures. Specifically, I argue that fair elections signal government respect for democracy and the rule of law in a highly visible manner that investors can access. I show how investors use the fairness of elections as a way to assess political risk and to inform their investment strategies. Furthermore, I show how the type of investment and the kinds of evidence of electoral misbehavior condition elections’ influence on capital flows. I also disaggregate capital flows into foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio investment. I argue that the logic of investing is different in the short-term (portfolio) vs. the long-term (FDI). When it comes to political risk, I provide evidence according to which portfolio investment is much more sensitive to risk factors than FDI due to the relative ease with which portfolio investors can extricate themselves from an increasingly risky market and seek safer returns elsewhere

The Benefits of Balance: Credibility, the Rule of Law, and Investment in Latin America

Research surrounding political institutions and credible commitment to the rule of law is integral to recent efforts to tie democracy to economic development. I identify the determinants of rule-of-law perceptions in Latin America and argue that constraining elected officials facilitates a commitment to democracy that makes government policies credible. I also argue that aspects of politics leading to deadlock might have a hidden upside in generating policy credibility. I test my arguments against pooled cross-sectional, time series data for twenty Latin American countries between 1996 and 2012. Ultimately, my research demonstrates the benefits of functioning checks and balances among elected officials for the rule of law and provides a uniform framework linking democratic inputs to legal and economic outcomes

Flipping the Classroom and Student Performance in Advanced Statistics: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment

I administer a quasi-experiment using undergraduate political science majors in statistics classes to evaluate whether “flipping the classroom” (the treatment) alters students’ applied problem-solving performance and satisfaction relative to students in a traditional classroom environment (the control). I also assess whether general student characteristics such as when and where students took the prerequisite course, grade point average (GPA), and gender influence performance. I find flipping the classroom gives students statistically significant advantages in difficult, applied areas emphasized in class. Furthermore, students in the flipped classroom feel they learned more and enjoyed the course more than those in a traditional classroom. I argue students’ affective preference for a flipped classroom is important for student motivation, recollection, and future use of quantitative data analysis. Flipping the classroom entails high start-up costs, but it can merit implementing to improve both effective and affective instructional outcomes

Interaction and Interdependency of Software Engineering Methods and Visual Programming

Visual Programming Languages and Visual Programming Tools incorporate non-procedural coding mechanisms that may duplicate, or perhaps even conflict with, the analysis and design mechanisms promulgated by the mainstream Software Engineering methodologies. By better understanding such duplication and conflict, software engineers can take proactive measures to accommodate and, ideally, eliminate them. Better still, there may be opportunities for synergy that can be exploited if one is looking for them. This research explored, documented and classified the interactions and interdependencies, both positive (synergies) and negative (conflicts), between two closely related and rapidly evolving Computer Science subdisciplines: software engineering and visual programming. A literature search was conducted to surface, evaluate, and build upon (where appropriate) recent and ongoing research in this area. A mechanism was created to capture observations of conflicts and synergies. This capture mechanism was applied to an experimentation test bed that was established to provide concrete examples of gaps, overlaps, conflicts, and synergies. In this regard, two relatively simple applications, one data-base oriented and one algorithm oriented, were designed and implemented using multiple software engineering methods and multiple visual tools/languages. A software prototype, which bridges one of the gaps discovered during the research, was built to underscore the importance of eventually merging Computer Aided Software Engineering and visual development tools. The overall results as well as anticipated trends and developments in the area of software engineering and visual programming were summarized. The synergy/conflict observations, in conjunction with the literature search results, were used to develop strategies and guidelines for successfully using visual programming languages and tools in concert with sound software engineering methods

The Brazilian experience: democracy, at its fullest, saves lives

Brazil is a deeply unequal democracy which enjoyed an economic boom in the 2000s – and is now suffering from a recession and the threat of austerity cuts. Michael Touchton, Natasha Borges Sugiyama and Brian Wampler analysed the factors that led to falls in infant mortality. They found that while competitive local elections were important, they alone were not enough. Citizen participation in how services are run, social welfare programmes and well-run local government mattered more

Captive Rearing Experiments Confirm Song Development without Learning in a Tracheophone Suboscine Bird

The origin of vocal learning in animals has long been the subject of debate, but progress has been limited by uncertainty regarding the distribution of learning mechanisms across the tree of life, even for model systems such as birdsong. In particular, the importance of learning is well known in oscine songbirds, but disputed in suboscines. Members of this diverse group (∼1150 species) are generally assumed not to learn their songs, but empirical evidence is scarce, with previous studies restricted to the bronchophone (non-tracheophone) clade. Here, we conduct the first experimental study of song development in a tracheophone suboscine bird by rearing spotted antbird (Hylophylax naevioides) chicks in soundproofed aviaries. Individuals were raised either in silence with no tutor or exposed to standardized playback of a heterospecific tutor. All individuals surviving to maturity took a minimum of 79 days to produce a crystallized version of adult song, which in all cases was indistinguishable from wild song types of their own species. These first insights into song development in tracheophone suboscines suggest that adult songs are innate rather than learnt. Given that empirical evidence for song learning in suboscines is restricted to polygamous and lek-mating species, whereas tracheophone suboscines are mainly monogamous with long-term social bonds, our results are consistent with the view that sexual selection promotes song learning in birds