Profit Over Public Good: The Impact of Investment Firm Ownership on Local News and Political Behavior

This article contrasts the national and local political knowledge of a random sample of 993 Philadelphians with the aim of enhancing the scholarly understanding of citizen competence. Empirical study of citizen competence extends back more than fifty years, but the survey data that have been brought to bear upon the topic are almost exclusively focused on national-level politics. Consequently, sweeping conclusions about the competence of the American public rest upon a narrow foundation. The comparisons in this article depict a slew of differences in the distribution of knowledge across national and local politics, many of which challenge established notions of who is politically knowledgeable. This, in turn, has implications for which members of society are seen as politically competent and how competent the public as a whole is thought to be.

O F ALL POSSIBLE POLITICAL ACTIONS the voting decision has received the most attention from behavioral political scientists. Probably we have compiled and analyzed more data on candidate choice and turnout than on any other form of political behavior. Of course, this heavy emphasis comes as no surprise. The voting act is the fundamental political act in a democracy. It is the most widespread political act. Furthermore, on the surface, at least, the voting act would appear to be one of the simplest (and therefore, most understandable) political acts. A heavy scholarly focus on the voting act follows naturally from these considerations. While our data base expands, however, our theoretical superstructure remains far from finished. It is fair to say that political science has relied chiefly on models rooted in the sociological, and later the social-psychological tradition.' These models hold that

Understanding the roots of political engagement has been one of the critical tasks performed by students of comparative political behaviour. This paper adds to the literature by examining the determinants of political discussion about local and national affairs in Europe. A series of multilevel logit models are fitted to the data (n = 28,563 from 31 European countries) to test the individual and country level determinants of political discussion about local and national matters. At the individual level, we find that gender, the type of community, the type of civil society organisations people are members of, and their level of education affect the type of politics they engage with. At the macro level, citizens from countries with a higher economic development are more likely to engage in discussions about national affairs, while the impact of local government autonomy does not seem to make individuals more likely to engage in discussions about local politics. The findings suggest that if local politics is considered the share of politically disengaged citizens can be smaller than is typically estimated. The full range of democratic practice may thus remain underappreciated if non-national politics is left out of the picture in the study of political engagement.

The decline of local newspapers has elicited broad concern about citizens' knowledge of and engagement with local politics. As newspapers struggle, many have retreated behind online paywalls---which limit access to political information that is essential for democracy. Does making local news free to access induce its consumption? And, if so, does that consumption produce salutary effects on citizen knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors? I provide evidence from a pre-registered randomized field experiment, which provided a probability-based sample of registered voters with a free digital subscription to a local newspaper for two months during the 2022 general election. The free subscriptions did not meaningfully increase consumption, nor produce meaningful changes in political knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors. Price is only one of several obstacles to news consumption, and disparities in citizen knowledge and engagement with local politics are unlikely to be addressed just by making some local journalism available for free.

Examining Voter Turnout Among Asian American College Students Hyun Kyoung Ro (bio), Frank Fernandez (bio), and Sanga Kim (bio) Studying voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election among Asian American college students (AACSs) is timely given that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has inflamed racism against Asian Americans. In the midst of this global pandemic, US President Trump incited racist attacks and led many to scapegoat Asian Americans for spreading the virus (Tavernise & Oppel, 2020). The negative national climate exacerbates racism against Asian Americans, which is particularly problematic, because AACSs tend to have lower voter registration and turnout rates in presidential elections than other racial or ethnic groups (Thomas et al., 2017). Yet, only a few studies have addressed AACSs' political engagement (Grim et al., 2019; Park et al., 2008). We sought to offer research findings on voting participation among AACSs and to help student affairs promote AACS voter turnout in 2020 and future national elections. Colleges and universities should prepare AACSs to be active democratic citizens by encouraging them to vote in national elections, which is part of higher education's responsibility to society (Colby et al., 2007). LITERATURE REVIEW Researchers have examined the influence of diverse learning experiences on civic outcomes (e.g., Bowman et al., 2016). Among AACSs enrolled in the University of California system, Wray-Lake et al. (2017) found that students who were actively involved in cultural and religious groups, in community service, and in academic learning (e.g., service-learning [End Page 373] courses) were the most politically engaged. While some scholars have found that college students' positive perceptions of campus climates promoted their democratic outcomes and citizenship engagement (Gurin et al., 2002), Wray-Lake et al. found that AACSs in California who reported a higher level of campus climate for diversity were less likely to be politically engaged. It may be that the relationship between campus climate and political engagement may differ for AACSs who attended universities where AACSs are relatively well represented (Grim et al., 2019). Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Factor Loadings and Reliability Estimates of Created Scales Voter turnout among AACSs has also been found to relate to social identities and backgrounds, such as ethnicity, gender, social class, and immigrant status (Park et al., 2008; Wray-Lake et al., 2017). For example, naturalized Asian American (AA) US citizens voted at a higher rate than US-born AAs (Krogstad & Lopez, 2017), but we do not know if this pattern held for AACSs. Those who came to the US at an early age or received prior schooling in the US may have fewer language barriers and more exposure to American political culture than recent immigrants. METHOD We analyzed data from six institutions where students completed the civic engagement module in the 2017 Student Experience in the Research University survey. We limited the sample to students who self-reported as Asian and were eligible to vote (N = 3,422). To address missing data, we used multiple imputation to generate 20 imputed data sets. We created voter turnout as a binary variable indicating whether the student reported having voted in the 2016 national election (0 = no, 1 = yes). To address diversity experiences, we used a single item to record whether students completed or participated in academic experiences with diversity, such as taking courses that addressed equity issues related to gender, race, or sexual orientation. We also created three variables to measure the frequency of diversity interactions: appreciation of different worldviews (α = .82), interaction with people who have different views (α = .77), and discussion of controversial issues (α = .70); see Table 1. We included three dichotomous items to measure cocurricular participation related to civic engagement; participation in a service-learning course, religious activities, and community service (0 = no, 1 = yes). For perceptions of institutional climate, we used five items to measure participants' agreement that students who shared certain characteristics were respected on campus (i.e., "Students [End Page 374] of my political beliefs are respected on this campus"); we used similar items for (a) race/ ethnicity, (b) socioeconomic status, (c) sex, and (d) sexual orientation. We included variables for social identities and backgrounds that relate to voter turnout. First, we included a binary sex...

The literature of Irish political studies suggests that Irish political party cleavages date from the ideological split that resulted in the Civil War of 1922-23. Ethnographic research in county Meath in eastern Ireland reveals a more complex picture, in which many individuals and families remember the events of the 1930S as the key ones in the determination of their party allegiances. Crucial to their initial choices of party membership was the patronage available from their local and national politicians. After the 1934 local government elections, however, both the government and political parties began to limit county councillor control of scarce goods and vital services. Councillors' roles as patrons quickly changed to those of brokers after the County Management Act of 1940. This investigation of the changes in local political patronage which can result from the processes of party and government centralization demonstrates the relevance of ethnohistory for the study of comparative European politics. Anthropological accounts of Irish politics have principally dealt with local politicians' roles as political patrons and brokers who act as mediators between local political actors and individuals and groups outside their communities. With few exceptions (such as Sacks 1976), these studies have lacked a historical perspective, a charge often made against the ethnography of Ireland in general (Gibbon I973). Ethnographers may review some salient moments in national political history in order to focus their community studies (see, for example, Bax 1976), but they present the institutions and organization of local politics in a way which suggests little of the dynamism of local political history. This is remarkable given the complex, often exciting history of local party politics throughout Ireland, a nation renowned for its obsession with all things political. In fact, the political Ethnohistory 37:2 (Spring 1990). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc ooI4-80oi/9o/$ .5o. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.53 on Thu, 01 Sep 2016 05:11:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Local Politics of Eastern Ireland anthropology of Ireland mirrors the state of the field throughout Europe; ethnographers seldom investigate party politics at the local, regional, and national levels. This essay is an initial step in the ethnohistory of party politics in Ireland; it explores some of the origins of traditional political roles in county Meath in eastern Ireland in order to focus attention on contemporary political parties and ideologies. It also addresses notions of local political studies done throughout Europe by ethnographers who, for over a generation, have been instrumental in placing patronage studies in the mainstream of political anthropology. The anthropological analysis of local politics in Europe was stimulated by such groundbreaking case studies as those of Kenny (I96I), PittRivers (I96I), and Silverman (1965), which in turn were part of a new anthropological interest in local communities' relations with institutions and people at more complex sociopolitical levels (see, for example, Bailey 1969; Barth 1965; Wolf 1966; Worsley 1968). Revisionist ethnographies which analyzed the political economy of European communities and regions continued the investigation of the definition, development, and evolution of political and cultural patronage and brokerage (Boissevain I965, 1966; Blok 1974; Campbell 1964; Hansen 1977; Schneider and Schneider 1976). But in their efforts to identify such people as noncorporate groups, secret societies, culture brokers, and merchant capitalists, in order to show that community studies cannot and should not be arbitrarily left at solely the local level, the institutions to which many of these patrons and brokers belonged took on secondary significance. Ethnographers became increasingly imaginative in the ways that they analyzed patrons and brokers, and network analysis (Barnes 1968; Boissevain 1974) was but one way to analyze the webs of social and political relations that, in the absence of kinship ties, bound community members both to themselves and to outsiders. The analysis of patrons' networks provided clues to the sources of their power and authority which narrowly focused community studies often missed. But the success of these revisionist patron-client studies in delineating the many noninstitutional and noncorporate ties that villagers and rural people had to the outside world made it more difficult to see the institutional aspects of their personal networks. In fact, the institutions that these people belonged to became an ethnographic backdrop, a political mise en scene to the more important and increasingly stylized and idealized personality cults of patrons and clients. With few exceptions (see, for example, Berger 1972; Cole and Wolf I974; Kertzer I980), local political studies in Europe have emphasized the analysis of the informal politics of brokerage in all its forms, furthering the view of patron and client as ideal types. This has resulted, in the I59 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.53 on Thu, 01 Sep 2016 05:11:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

INTRODUCTION: Surgical services could be faced with shifts in corporate management, restructuring, and incentives as trends such as private equity (PE) investment in healthcare continue to evolve. The number of surgical services acquired by PE firms has increased significantly over the last 20 years. Due to financial vulnerability and movement towards digital health, PE activity within healthcare has further grownsince the COVID pandemic. METHODS: PitchBook and Mergermarket were used to query deals involving neurosurgical practice within the United States at any time. Exclusion criteria consisted of non-neurosurgery practices and debt restructuring deals without a change in ownership. The company name, deal type, financing year, and state were extracted for each deal. Deal type was stratified by the following categories: angel investment, mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital (PE/VC), and corporate buyout. Internal debt refinancing such as leveraged recapitalization was excluded from the analysis. RESULTS: A total of 125 companies were discovered in the initial search. After further review, 63 companies were included in final analysis. The deals occurred between 1994 to 2022 and involved companies in 27 different states. Of the 63 companies, 36 (57.1%) involved mergers or acquisitions, 16 (25.4%) involved private equity or venture capital firms, 7 (11.1%) involved corporate buyouts, and 4 (6.3%) involved angel investments. CONCLUSIONS: PE is increasingly involved with neurosurgery practices, with an associated decline in mergers and acquisitions. Future qualitative investigation is required to help characterize physician attitudes of PE-run practices in comparison to non-PE practices.

There are many reasons why it is important to study local politics -- political culture, government, political process -- in Communist party states. As in all politics, local politics in Communist party states are the political articulation of the local community. This is the political arena where policies concerning local issues are formulated by the officials. This is where the officials are approached by citizens with their particular demands. This is where citizens articulate their preferences, aspirations, and values through political participation. And this is where officials, both elected and appointed, are recruited.In this volume, Daniel N. Nelson has assembled a team of international scholars to consider local politics in Communist party states including the U.S.S.R., China, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Together, they explore how local social and political forces are articulated in the national and party organizations; they also reveal how the study of comparative local politics provides vitality for the study of national politics. Rather than treating local communities as receivers and translators of national inputs, the contributors demonstrate that the local dimension and national politics mutually influence one another and illuminate the social reality in communist societies.

Private equity (PE) firms acquire and grow physician practices through add-on consolidation, generating outsized returns on the sale of the acquisition in 3-8 years ("exit"). Private equity's abbreviated investment timeline and exit incentives may deter long-term investments in care delivery and workforce needed for high-quality care. To our knowledge, there has been no published analyses of the nature or duration of PE exits from physician practices. We address this knowledge gap by using novel data to characterize PE exits from dermatology, ophthalmology, and gastroenterology, physician specialties with the largest number of acquisitions between 2016 and 2020. Of 807 acquisitions, over half (51.6%) of PE-acquired practices underwent an exit within 3 years of initial investment. In nearly all instances (97.8%), PE firms exited investments through secondary buyouts, where physician practices were resold to other PE firms with larger investment funds. Between investment and exit, PE firms increased the number of physician practices affiliated with the PE firm by an average of 595% in 3 years. Findings highlight the rapid scale of ownership change and consolidation under PE ownership and motivate evaluations by policymakers on the effects of PE ownership over the life cycle of PE investments.

Despite the rolling back of multiculturalism at government level, the realities of a diverse society remain very much visible at the local level. In the current context of globalisation and cosmopolitanism and as part of a broader effort to globalise London, the English capital still resorts to de facto multiculturalist policies to enhance its diversity in terms of ethnic groups. London’s Chinatown is one representative example of this phenomenon. The neighbourhood presents an important economic opportunity resulting from its cultural landscape. Thus, both public authorities and the corporate world seek to profit from the area’s cultural wealth, hence their attempts to negotiate Chinatown as a product by engaging a narrative that fits Western imagination. London’s Chinatown has thus been marketed and packaged for consumption through different branding strategies that focus on its cultural representation. The study of this ethnic enclave adds to the existing empirical and normative literature of multiculturalism by exploring the contrast in local and national politics in terms of integration and multicultural policies in the United Kingdom, thus participating in the debate on “Living together in the UK”.

ABSTRACTObjectiveLocal politics often features the patterns of conflict that do not resemble national politics, a fact that, under the right circumstances, could make local politics appealing as a counterpoint to the rancor of national politics. However, we know little about the way local politics are perceived by the mass public. In this article, we ask citizens whether they perceive local politics as less partisan than national politics.MethodWe draw on a novel survey of individuals in citizens in nine medium‐sized and large American metropolitan areas, considering both individual‐level traits and contextual features of the city's politics.ResultsWe find that a substantial number of individuals perceive local politics differently, although we clarify in a second study how these patterns are somewhat sensitive to question wording. We also find two explanations for differences in perceptions across individuals: the strength of an individual's municipal identity and the congruence between an individual's partisanship and the city's politics.ConclusionWe find that place identities and social contexts influence perceptions of partisanship; what people see when they view local politics can vary dramatically across people and places.

Place and participation in local elections

This chapter reviews what we know about local television news content with an eye on public affairs content in particular. It examines the relative attention devoted to different topics before turning how local TV covers public affairs and elections more specifically. The chapter also examines how campaigns rely on local television by examining the placement of their political advertising. If local television news becomes more ideologically slanted, its political content is likely to become even further focused on national politics and even more likely to focus on strategy. In fact, media reports in 2017 suggested that Facebook, recognizing the appeal of and strong potential for engagement in local news, was actively working with local news organizations to bring more local news information to its platform. Local news is produced by news stations operating under a variety of different structures and the individuals they employ.

The concept of “generation” constitutes a useful tool to understand the world of politics. Trends in political behavior typical for the youngest generation are indicative for future development. In a wider perspective, large differences between generations also reveal potential for intergenerational conflict and a shift in the entire political paradigm. Four important topics need to be addressed in order to properly understand the body of research studying specifics of political behavior across generations and the use of generation as an analytical tool: (a) conceptual definition of generation, (b) its distinction from other time-related concepts, (c) methodological challenges in applying the time-related factors in research, and (d) understanding the wider implications of these factors for individuals’ political behavior which has already been identified in the scholarship. A political generation is formed among cohorts who experience the same event(s) during their formative years and become permanently influenced by them. Therefore, members of the same generation share similar socialization experiences which create a sense of group belonging and shape the attitudes and behavior throughout their lives. This definition of political generation is distinctive among the three time-related factors—age, period, and cohort—each of which has a well-grounded and distinctive theoretical underpinning. However, a truly insightful examination of the time-related development in political engagement needs to utilize hybrid models that interact with age and period or cohort and period. This imposes a challenge known as identification problem—age (years since birth), period (year), and cohort (year of birth) are perfect linear functions of each other and therefore conventional statistical techniques cannot disentangle their effects. Despite extraordinary effort and outstanding ideas, this issue has not been resolved yet in a fully reliable and hence satisfactory manner. Regardless of methodological issues, the literature is already able to provide important findings resulting from cohort analysis of political engagement. This scholarship includes two major streams: The first focuses on voter turnout, exploring whether nonvoting among the youngest generation is a main reason for the turnout decline in contemporary democracies. The second stream examines the generational differences in political engagement and concludes that low electoral participation among the youngest generation may be explained by young people being more engaged with noninstitutionalized forms of political participation (e.g., occupations, petitions, protests, and online activism).

This study is about the influence of genes on political attitudes and behavior in the subfield of biopolitics. Genopolitics arose as a critique of the political science approach which was deemed insufficient to explain political attitudes and behavior both theoretically and methodologically. To find the origins of political attitudes and behavior, interdisciplinary studies are needed. It is genes that can explain the origin of individual preferences on which all rational choices are based. The method used in this study was a literature review to see the development of genopolitics, debates, and criticisms related to political attitudes and behavior from the point of view of political science and genopolitics. The literature used was derived from books, journals, magazines, and news on the internet. Regarding voter turnout, 32 different social factors can only be explained by 31% by differences in political behavior, while the remaining 69% of differences can be explained by genetic differences. This study concludes that genopolitics as a new approach used to see political attitudes and behavior can be applied in Indonesia to answer and complete the survey-based study of political behavior.