More Is Not Always Better: An Experimental Individual-Level Validation of the Randomized Response Technique and the Crosswise Model

Social desirability and the fear of sanctions can deter survey respondents from responding truthfully to sensitive questions. Self-reports on norm breaking behavior such as shoplifting, non-voting, or tax evasion may therefore be subject to considerable misreporting. To mitigate such misreporting, various indirect techniques for asking sensitive questions, such as the randomized response technique (RRT), have been proposed in the literature. In our study, we evaluate the viability of several variants of the RRT, including the recently proposed crosswise-model RRT, by comparing respondents’ self-reports on cheating in dice games to actual cheating behavior, thereby distinguishing between false negatives (underreporting) and false positives (overreporting). The study has been implemented as an online survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 6,505). Our results indicate that the forced-response RRT and the unrelated-question RRT, as implemented in our survey, fail to reduce the level of misreporting compared to conventional direct questioning. For the crosswise-model RRT, we do observe a reduction of false negatives (that is, an increase in the proportion of cheaters who admit having cheated). At the same time, however, there is an increase in false positives (that is, an increase in non-cheaters who falsely admit having cheated). Overall, our findings suggest that none of the implemented sensitive questions techniques substantially outperforms direct questioning. Furthermore, our study demonstrates the importance of distinguishing false negatives and false positives when evaluating the validity of sensitive question techniques.

Fiscal Federalism and Tax Equalization: The potential for progressive local taxes

We construct an empirically informed computational model of fiscal federalism, testing whether horizontal or vertical equalization can solve the fiscal externality problem in an environment in which heterogeneous agents can move and vote. The model expands on the literature by considering the case of progressive local taxation. Although the consequences of progressive taxation under fiscal federalism are well understood, they have not been studied in a context with tax equalization, despite widespread implementation. The model also expands on the literature by comparing the standard median voter model with a realistic alternative voting mechanism. We find that fiscal federalism with progressive taxation naturally leads to segregation as well as inefficient and inequitable public goods provision while the alternative voting mechanism generates more efficient, though less equitable, public goods provision. Equalization policy, under both types of voting, is largely undermined by micro-actors' choices. For this reason, the model also does not find the anticipated effects of vertical equalization discouraging public goods spending among wealthy jurisdictions and horizontal encouraging it among poor jurisdictions. Finally, we identify two optimal scenarios, superior to both complete centralization and complete devolution. These scenarios are not only Pareto optimal, but also conform to a Rawlsian view of justice, offering the best possible outcome for the worst-off. Despite offering the best possible outcomes, both scenarios still entail significant economic segregation and inequitable public goods provision. Under the optimal scenarios agents shift the bulk of revenue collection to the federal government, with few jurisdictions maintaining a small local tax.

It's confusing when the Swiss go to the polls. Here are 6 surprising things about their elections

On Sunday, Switzerland votes on its federal parliament. The members of both chambers - 200 National Councillors and 46 Councillors of States - are directly elected, with the 26 Swiss cantons (or provinces) forming the districts. Seats in the National Council are distributed to the cantons based on their population size, while in the Council of States each full canton gets two seats and the six half-cantons get one each. Here are six things to look out for.

The 2015 Swiss elections: A landslide win for the right, despite limited changes in vote share

Switzerland held federal elections on 18 October, with the conservative Swiss People’s Party winning the largest share of the votes. Daniel Bochsler, Marlène Gerber and David Zumbach write that while the increase in vote share for the Swiss People’s Party was relatively limited, the party managed to significantly increase the number of seats it holds in Switzerland’s lower house of parliament, the National Council. Nevertheless, the party is unlikely to make substantial gains in the country’s upper house, the Senate, as it traditionally struggles under the two-round electoral system used in Senate elections.

Structural Changes and Formation of Rusta-shahr in Post-Revolutionary Rural Society in Iran

The following paper is based on the author's two-year research and fieldwork in Iran and examines the process of political and social changes since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent impact of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. This paper focuses on the transition of traditional, small villages into rusta-shahr or small rural cities and the first and second nation-wide elections of shoura or councils which were the first steps toward self-government. The author is guardedly optimistic regarding this democratic process but warns of possible future social unrest if changes are not more "balanced" between cities and rural areas and if the employment needs of the burgeoning younger generation are not met, political and social consequences may be catastrophic.

Election Studies in India

The election system is the pillar of Indian democracy. The system consists of various levels of elections to the Lok Sabha (the House of Representatives of the Union), State Legislative Assemblies, and Panchayati Raj Institutions (local self-governing bodies under State Governments). This article includes a review of studies related to the elections of Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies conducted up to the present time. Studies are divided into those based on aggregate data and those based on survey data of the individual electorate. This division has the advantage of providing data that may be used in different analytical areas. Voter turnout and votes polled by party are the two main variables to be explained. This review article thus shows what has been explained in voting behaviour in India up to the present time.

Political conditions for fair elections

Democracy is not necessarily consolidated simply by the introduction of formal democratic institutions. It is often observed in new democracies that democratic institutions are neglected and eroded in actual practice. Particularly, electoral fraud committed by a ruler is one of the main problems in this regard. This paper deals with two questions, (1) under what conditions does a ruler have an incentive to hold fair elections (or to rig elections), and (2) what makes a ruler prefer to establish an independent election governing institution? Assuming that a ruler prefers to maintain her power, basically she has an incentive to rig elections in order to be victorious in the political competition. A ruler, however, faces the risk of losing power if the opposition stages successful protests on a sufficiently large scale. If opponents are able to pose a credible threat to a ruler, she will have an incentive to hold fair elections. The problem is that information on electoral fraud is not shared by every player in the game. For the opposition, imperfect information deepens their coordination problems. Imperfect information, on the other hand, in some cases causes a problem for a ruler. If the opposition is sufficiently cohesive and have little tolerance of cheating, even unverified suspicions of fraud may trigger menacing protests. In such a case, a ruler has an incentive to establish an independent election commission to avoid unnecessary collisions by revealing the nature of the elections.

Cyber-networks, physical coalitions and missing links : imagining and realizing dissent in Malaysia 1998-2008

From September 1998 to March 2008, dissident cyber-networks in Malaysia developed connections with physical coalitions that contributed to the Opposition’s historic gains in the 12th General Election of March 2008. To succeed in entrenching a ‘two-coalition system’, however, the component parties of the Opposition coalition (Pakatan Rakyat) must establish its ‘missing links’, namely, extensive and deep organizational networks in society that would permit the coalition to move from imagining and realizing dissent to institutionalizing it meaningfully.

Presidentialism and political parties in Indonesia : why are all parties not presidentialized?

This paper analyzes whether the "presidentialization of political parties" is occurring in newly democratizing Indonesia, as argued by Samuels and Shugart (2010). In Indonesia not all parties are becoming presidentialized. Parties are presidentialized when they have a solid organizational structure and have the potential to win presidential elections. Parties established by a presidential candidate need not face an incentive incompatibility between their executive and legislative branches, since the party leader is not the "agent" but the "principal". On the other hand, small and medium-sized parties, which have few prospects of winning presidential elections, are not actively involved in the election process, therefore party organization is not presidentialized. As the local level, where the head of government has been directly elected by the people since 2005 in Indonesia, the presidentialization of political parties has begun to take place.

Political influence in commercial and financial oil trading : the evidence from US firms

International politics affects oil trade. But do financial and commercial traders who participate in spot oil trading also respond to changes in international politics? We construct a firm-level dataset for all U.S. oil-importing companies over 1986-2008 to examine how these firms respond to increases in "political distance" between the U.S. and her trading partners, measured by divergence in their UN General Assembly voting patterns. Consistent with previous macro evidence, we first show that individual firms diversify their oil imports politically, even after controlling for unobserved firm heterogeneity. However, the political pattern of oil imports is not entirely driven by the concerns of hold-up risks, which exist when oil transactions via term contracts are associated with backward vertical FDI that is subject to expropriation. In particular, our results indicate that even financial and commercial traders significantly reduce their oil imports from U.S. political enemies. Interestingly, while these traders diversify their oil imports politically immediately after changes in international politics, other oil companies reduce their oil imports with a significant time lag. Our findings suggest that in designing regulations to avoid harmful repercussions on commodity and financial assets, policymakers need to understand the nature of political risk.

Voting behavior in Indonesia from 1999 to 2014 : religious cleavage or economic performance?

In this study, we examine the voting behavior in Indonesian parliamentary elections from 1999 to 2014. After summarizing the changes in Indonesian parties' share of the vote from a historical standpoint, we investigate the voting behavior with simple regression models to analyze the effect of regional characteristics on Islamic/secular parties' vote share, using aggregated panel data at the district level. Then, we also test the hypothesis of retrospective economic voting. The results show that districts which formerly stood strongly behind Islamic parties continued to select those parties, or gave preference to abstention over the parties in some elections. From the point of view of retrospective economic voting, we found that districts which experienced higher per capita economic growth gave more support to the ruling parties, although our results remain tentative because information on 2014 is not yet available.

The stakes of politics and electoral administration : a comparative study of Southeast Asian democracies

Elections play a crucial role in political stability in post-democratization, and electoral administrations are the key to the electoral process. However, not all newly democratized countries have established reliable electoral administration. New democracies in Southeast Asia, such as the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, have independent election commissions which have different characteristics, especially in terms of neutrality. Based on three cases, this paper claims that the stakes of politics are the major determinant of the variations in neutrality. The high stakes of politics in Thailand brought about the partisan election commission, while the low stakes in Indonesia made the electoral system relatively neutral. Like Thailand, the high stakes of politics in the Philippines also cause political intervention in the electoral administration.

Use of Java Cards in a telematic voting system.

This paper presents a general view of the telematic voting system developed by its authors, with a special emphasis on the important role that smart cards play in this scenario. The use of smart cards as basic pieces for providing secure cryptographic operations in this type of voting scheme is justified. The differences and advantages of Java Cards in comparison with the ?classical? smart cards (those that completely conform to the ISO/IEC 7816 standard) are also discussed. As an example, the paper describes one of the applets implemented in the voting Java Card as part of the general telematic voting application.

VOTESCRIPT: Telematic voting system designed to enable final count verification

In this paper we present a global description of a telematic voting system based on advanced cryptography and on the use of smart cards (VOTESCRIPT system) whose most outstanding characteristic is the ability to verify that the tally carried out by the system is correct, meaning that the results published by the system correspond with votes cast. The VOTESCRIPT system provides an individual verification mechanism allowing each Voter to confirm whether his vote has been correctly counted. The innovation with respect to other solutions lies in the fact that the verification process is private so that Voters have no way of proving what they voted in the presence of a non-authorized third party. Vote buying and selling or any other kind of extortion are prevented. The existence of the Intervention Systems allows the whole electoral process to be controlled by groups of citizens or authorized candidatures. In addition to this the system can simply make an audit not only of the final results, but also of the whole process. Global verification provides the Scrutineers with robust cryptographic evidence which enables unequivocal proof if the system has operated in a fraudulent way.