The Blind Leading The Blind: Who Gets Polling Information And Does It Improve Decisions?,
2010
Duke Law School
The Blind Leading The Blind: Who Gets Polling Information And Does It Improve Decisions?, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins
Faculty Scholarship
We analyze whether and when polls help citizens to improve their decisions. Specifically, we use experiments to investigate 1) whether and when citizens are willing to obtain polls and 2) whether and when polls help citizens to make better choices than they would have made on their own. We find that citizens are more likely to obtain polls when the decisions they must make are difficult and when they are unsophisticated. Ironically, when the decisions are difficult, the pollees are also uninformed and, therefore, do not provide useful information. We also find that when polls indicate the welfare-improving choice, citizens …
The Rule Of Law Unplugged,
2010
Duke Law School
The Rule Of Law Unplugged, Daniel B. Rodriguez, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Barry R. Weingast
Faculty Scholarship
The "Rule of Law" is a venerable concept, but, on closer inspection, it is a complex admixture of positive assumptions, inchoate political and legal theory, and occasionally wishful thinking. Although enormous investments have been made in rule of law reformism throughout the world, advocates of transplanting American-style legal and political institutions to developed and developing countries are often unclear about what they are transplanting and why they are doing so. The concept of rule of law has become unplugged from theories of law. Scholars clearly have more work to do in understanding the rule of law and designing institutions to …
Doing Good By Doing Well? The Political Economy Of The Medical Biotechnology Industry In The United States,
2010
CUNY Graduate Center
Doing Good By Doing Well? The Political Economy Of The Medical Biotechnology Industry In The United States, Volker Lehmann
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This study is dedicated to the political economy of the medical biotechnology industry in the United States. The study combines interviews with more than 150 biotechnology actors with a historical analysis and evidence from publicly available data bases. The ascent of this new industry took place in the United States first and foremost, because there, scientific advancements coincided with the rise of supply-side economics, a policy shift that was part of a larger, neoliberal, ideological shift. Despite free-market rhetoric, specific clusters within the United States became the world's leading biotechnology clusters because of a history of targeted interventions to stimulate …
Globalization And The Politics Of The Welfare State,
2010
University of Kentucky
Globalization And The Politics Of The Welfare State, Hanbeom Jeong
University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations
The theoretical argument of this study is that economic globalization, by default, exerts a downward pressure on the social policies of states largely through the operations of transnational corporations. However, since globalization’s effect on social policy is conditional on endogenous political forces such as regime type, democratization, electoral competition and political participation, its proclivity to retrench the welfare state is averted by the preferences of political actors and institutions to expand social spending. This argument found consistent empirical support via a series of cross-section regressions that estimated the interactive effects of economic globalization and various measures of domestic political institutions …
Three Worlds Of Western Punishment: A Regime Theory Of Cross-National Incarceration Rate Variation, 1960-2002,
2010
University of Kentucky
Three Worlds Of Western Punishment: A Regime Theory Of Cross-National Incarceration Rate Variation, 1960-2002, Matthew Demichele
University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation offers an explanation of cross national incarceration rate variation for 17 industrialized countries for the second half of the 20th century. Both historical case studies and time-series cross-section analyses are used to provide an institutional explanation of incarceration rate differences. Borrowing from Weber’s Sociology of Law and comparative legal scholarship, it is suggested that three types of legal thinking exist among western democracies—Common, Romano-Germanic, and Nordic law. A regime approach commonly applied in political economic explanations of welfare state development is used to quantify the legal and criminal justice institutional differences between 1960 and 2002 to assert …
