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31. Model Changes of Polish Public Administration and Processes of Political and Structural Transformation

Author:
Agnieszka Lipska-Sondecka
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Polish Political Science Yearbook
Institution:
Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
Abstract:
The model transformations of Polish public administration after 1989 were the result of the necessary and inevitable consequence of events related to erosion and the collapse of the „real socialism” system. Its internal decomposition, as a result of social reality inadequacy, created a situation in which it was possible to undertake deep systemic reforms in Poland. Democratization of the government system in Poland was an extremely complex process generating numerous problems and showing the scale of adversity in all spheres of social life. All political and structural changes in Poland after 1989 were also possible due to propitious external, international conditions. Especially the collapse of the USSR brought certain possibilities for Poland and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe to regain full sovereignty, which was later expressed in membership in NATO, the Council of Europe, and then European Union accession. As a result of the systemic and political transformation process, the administration has become an extremely important cell in the democratic legal order and the entity responsible for the implementation of a significant part of public tasks at the local, supra-local and regional levels.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Governance, Social Services, Models, and Public Service
Political Geography:
Europe and Poland

32. Studying Political Violence Using Game Theory Models: Research Approaches and Assumptions

Author:
Mateusz Wajzer
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Polish Political Science Yearbook
Institution:
Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
Abstract:
The purpose of the paper is to concisely present basic applications of game theory models for a scientific description of political violence. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part discusses the key theoretical issues including: the assumption of the players’ rationality, the assumption of the players’ common knowledge of their rationality, the Nash equilibrium concept, Pareto optimality, the Nash arbitration scheme and the concept of evolutionarily stable strategies. The second and third parts contain examples of uses of selected models of classical and evolutionary games in the studies on political violence. The following two interaction schemes were used to that end: the Prisoner’s Dilemma and Chicken. The paper ends with a summary and discussion. The key feature of the discussed models is their methodological simplicity, as demonstrated by the lack of need to use complicated mathematical methods. This is why the paper is mainly addressed to individuals who had not studied game theory before or who have insufficient knowledge in the field to conduct own studies.
Topic:
Political Violence, Violence, Models, and Game Theory
Political Geography:
Global Focus

33. The Issue of Ideological Changes in the Context of the Polish Political Parties - Theoretical Models and Their Exemplifications

Author:
Michal Niebylski
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Polish Political Science Yearbook
Institution:
Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
Abstract:
The article aims to present and discuss five theoretical models explaining the issue of ideological changes in Polish political parties. The paper is to shed light on an ideology’s dynamic nature and the process of building ideology in the political parties’ environment. The article features a discussion on the circumstances favoring the implementation of ideological changes and the methods used by parties to implement changes in their ideologies. The paper adopts two research hypotheses: 1) party ideologies are developed and modified by political parties in response to the changing (social, political, economic) circumstances in the inter-party rivalry. 2) The process of ideological changes serves political parties to lead an effective inter-party rivalry. The paper establishes that the factors with scientifically documented impact on party behavior in ideological terms are as follows: electoral result (parties that achieved a result below their expectations are more eager to revise their ideologies), political competition’s activity (parties react to ideological changes of their direct rivals), electorate preferences (political forces can change their approach in crucial issues to reflect the dominant views in their electorates) and acceptance of free-market principles by the main political actors. An analysis of Polish parties’ behaviors and the gathered source material also demonstrates that the parties’ inclination to implement ideological changes depends on organizational factors.
Topic:
Politics, Ideology, Models, and Party System
Political Geography:
Europe and Poland

34. Diversity and perceptions of Immigration: How the past Influences the present

Author:
Lauren McLaren, Anja Neundorf, and Ian Paterson
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP)
Abstract:
Research on the relationship between immigration-related diversity and public attitudes to immigration generally focuses on contemporary levels of (or recent changes in) diversity. Drawing on the political socialization literature, this paper argues that by ignoring the effect of diversity during early socialization years, existing research fails to fully understand longterm trends in attitudes to immigration. Applying a generational change perspective to the British sample of the European Social Survey (2002-2017), along with two innovative approaches to modeling generational differences - generalized additive models (GAMs) and hierarchical age‒period‒cohort (HAPC) models - we are able to investigate attitudes among groups of birth cohorts socialized between 1935 and 2010. The findings show that younger cohorts are systematically more positive about immigration. These increasingly positive attitudes are related to a macro-context of higher diversity in younger cohorts’ early years. This effect may, however, be diminished by a context of high income inequality during the formative years.
Topic:
Immigration, Diversity, Social Order, and Models
Political Geography:
Britain and Global Focus

35. Fertility, Electricity, and Television: Is there a Link>? Evidence from Pakistan, 1990-2012

Author:
Luca Tasciotti, Farooq Sulehria, and Natascha Wagner
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
Pakistan has the second highest fertility rate in South Asia with every women giving birth to 3.4 children on average. This paper uses three waves of the Demographic Health Survey data to empirically analyse fertility trends in Pakistan between 1990 and 2013; accounting for wealth and the use of contraceptives and birth spacing, this paper looks at three additional pathways for reducing fertility: (i) electrification, (ii) access to TV and (iii) family planning commercials broadcasted on television. The pooled regression results suggest that the direct effect that the access to electricity has on fertility is limited. In contrast, access to television had a significant effect in reducing fertility rates, especially after the 2000s. To further disentangle the contribution of television to the fertility decline, we assess the role of family planning commercials broadcasted on television. We provide complementary qualitative evidence on the content and evolution of Pakistani soap-operas and we argue that the role models, the typology of households and the messages conveyed by the soap-operas are possible drivers of the fertility decline. We show that a similar conclusion cannot be drawn in the case of radio. Our findings suggest that in one of world’s most populous country access to modern role models via soap-operas might be one of the most powerful fertility- reducing interventions.
Topic:
Health, Electricity, Models, Fertility, and Telecommunications
Political Geography:
Pakistan and Middle East

36. Tourism as a Mechanism in Reducing Income Inequality in Developing Economies

Author:
D. Tan and Risa Morimoto
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
Although numerous studies have investigated the contribution of tourism to economic growth and development, much less attention has been paid to assessing whether tourism-induced growth and development contribute to the poverty alleviation and income inequality (Kinyondo & Pelizzo, 2015). This study emamines the statistical relationship between tourism activities and a suite of income inequality measures. Using a dynamic fixed country-level effects panel model and bootstrapped standard errors, we find strong evidence showing both tourism dollars and inbound tourism numbers have an adverse effect ion income equality. These findings are supported by the results of the fixed-effects panel and dynamic pooled OLS regressions. The results of this study suggest that more effort should be exerted to develop pro-poor tourism initiatives in order to mitigate the inequitable distribution of the benefits of tourism as well as to reduce possible environmental degradation caused by rural poverty.
Topic:
Development, Tourism, Inequality, Income Inequality, Economic Theory, and Models
Political Geography:
Global Focus

37. An Agent-Based Model of Counterfactual Opportunities for Reducing Atrocities in Syria, 2011 - 2014

Author:
Ian Lustick, Miguel Garces, and Thomas McCauley
Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
Computer-assisted agent-based modeling (ABM) allows us to examine not just history as it happened but history as it could have happened. This ability opens opportunities for causal analysis of variations in atrocities against civilians or in the conditions believed to make civilian atrocities much more likely. Once different pathways into the future from the same set of antecedent conditions are traceable, analysis of large numbers of stochastically perturbed model runs can aid in the evaluation of alternative causal stories. This technique has the potential to test arguments about which factors may have been crucial in determining outcomes, which junctures were critical, and which mitigation strategies would have been preferable, for what reasons. But in applying available ABM simulation technology to the problem of assessing opportunities for mitigating threats of large-scale civilian atrocities, how practical, direct, and useful would the results be? This general question was translated, in this pilot project, into an exploration of the extent to which an agent-based model of Syria, tuned to 2010, could illuminate the likely effects of plausible policies that the US government could have enacted or contributed to at critical junctures in the Syrian conflict. As described in part 2 of this report, we built an agent-based model of Syria tuned to 2010, allowing us to experiment with the state space of Syria’s past from 2011 to 2015. A key objective was to assess the reasonableness of a variety of contemporaneous policy prescriptions made by decision makers and strategies suggested by informed observers. The counterfactual scenarios for mitigating civilian atrocities in Syria were identified with critical junctures— episodes or states of affairs, at particular points in time, that have been identified as potentially significant bifurcation points leading toward or away from conditions liable to produce high levels of civilian atrocities. Particular attention was paid to the manner in which those junctures were or could have been influenced by US policy choices. However, given the limits of the model as a pilot project, which focused on Syria and not on the region or the world, considerable variation exists—across the five critical junctures examined—in the extent to which US policies (or their absence) can be understood as being potentially implicated in the path the “real” Syria followed.
Topic:
History, Syrian War, Atrocities, Counterfactuals, and Models
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

38. A Method for Agent-Based Models Validation

Author:
Mattia Guerini and Alessio Moneta
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
This paper proposes a new method to empirically validate simulation models that generate artificial time series data comparable with real-world data. The approach is based on comparing structures of vector autoregression models that are estimated from both artificial and real-world data by means of causal search algorithms. This relatively simple procedure is able to tackle both the problem of confronting theoretical simulation models with the data and the problem of comparing different models in terms of their empirical reliability. The paper also provides an application of the validation procedure to the Dosi et al. (2015) macro-model.
Topic:
Economics, Economic Theory, Data, and Models
Political Geography:
Global Focus

39. Let's Take the Bias Out of Econometrics

Author:
Duo Qin
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
This study exposes the cognitive flaws of ‘endogeneity bias’. It reviews how conceptualisation of the bias has evolved to embrace all major econometric problems, despite extensive lack of hard evidence. It reveals the crux of the bias – a priori rejection of causal variables as conditionally valid ones, and of the bias correction by consistent estimators – modification of those variables by non-uniquely and non-causally generated regressors. It traces the flaws to misconceived error terms in statistical modelling and estimation consistency. It highlights the need to shake off the bias to let statistical learning play an active and formal role in econometrics.
Topic:
Economics, Economic Theory, Models, and Bias
Political Geography:
Global Focus

40. Compulsory Schooling and the Returns to Education: A Re-examination

Author:
Sophie van Huellen and Duo Qin
Publication Date:
09-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
We re-examine the effect of compulsory school law on education in the US pioneered by Angrist and Krueger (1991). We show that the standard instrumental variable approach of the education variable not only yields empirically inconsistent estimates, but is conceptually confused. The confusion arises from the rejection of the key causal variable as a valid conditional variable. By route of a causally explicit model design we are able to identify the circumstances under which the formerly rejected variable can yield valid inference values. Our investigation demonstrates the importance of building data-consistent models over estimator choice in successful research designs.
Topic:
Education, Governance, Economic Theory, and Models
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America