Mayoral Candidate Research Articles

What’s Inside a Black Hole’s Horizon?

New York City mayoral candidate Joe Lhota generated a public outcry when he indicated that he would not have shut down subway service for a pair of kittens lost in the tunnels. Even more outrage could have arisen from the discussions that took place at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics during a talk on the recent work of Joseph Polchinski and Donald Marolf, both at the University of Santa Barbara, California. Physicists discussed a thought experiment that involved locking up a cat in a sealed box containing a vial of poisonous gas that could be released at any moment, triggered by a random radioactive decay. What would happen if one threw this whole “Schrodinger’s cat” contraption into a black hole horizon (see Fig. 1)? The cat’s ultimate fate is sealed the moment it passes the horizon: it will be crushed at the singularity at the center of the hole. But if an in-falling observer jumped into the hole together with the box, he or she could open the box to determine whether or not the cat has been killed by the poison at a certain point of its travel between the horizon and the singularity. Marolf and Polchinski presented arguments, now reported in Physical Review Letters[1], suggesting that there is no well-defined quantum mechanical calculation that could predict the outcome of the in-falling observer’s measurement. According to the authors, the solution to this seeming inconsistency is to postulate that box and cat go up in a burst of flames the moment they pass the horizon by hitting a “firewall.”

Engagement in the electoral processes: Scaling laws and the role of political positions

We report on a statistical analysis of the engagement in the electoral processes of all Brazilian cities by considering the number of party memberships and the number of candidates for mayor and councillor. By investigating the relationships between the number of party members and the population of voters, we have found that the functional forms of these relationships are well described by sublinear power laws (allometric scaling) surrounded by a multiplicative log-normal noise. We have observed that this pattern is quite similar to those we previously reported for the relationships between the number of candidates (mayor and councillor) and population of voters [Europhys. Lett. 96, 48001 (2011)], suggesting that similar universal laws may be ruling the engagement in the electoral processes. We also note that the power-law exponents display a clear hierarchy, where the more influential is the political position the smaller is the value of the exponent. We have also investigated the probability distributions of the number of candidates (mayor and councillor), party memberships, and voters. The results indicate that the most influential positions are characterized by distributions with very short tails, while less influential positions display an intermediate power-law decay before showing an exponential-like cutoff. We discuss the possibility that, in addition to the political power of the position, limitations in the number of available seats can also be connected with this changing of behavior. We further believe that our empirical findings point out to an under-representation effect, where the larger the city is, the larger are the obstacles for more individuals to become directly engaged in the electoral process.

Responses to an opponent’s nonverbal behavior in a televised debate

This study examined audience perceptions of a political candidate’s credibility and likeability as a function of varying the candidate’s responses to an opponent’s nonverbal disparagement during a televised debate. 412 participants watched a purported televised debate between candidates for mayor in a small city in Utah. In all six versions, one debater engaged in strong nonverbal disagreement during his opponent’s opening statement. His opponent responded to the nonverbal behavior with one of six decreasingly polite messages. Results indicated that more direct (i.e., less polite) messages increased audience perceptions of the speaker’s expertise and character compared to providing no response. The results also showed a significant interaction between response type and audience member’s level of trait verbal aggressiveness. The “indirect” and “on-record with redress” responses led to stronger perceptions of speaker composure and extroversion for members high in verbal aggression and the “off the record” strategy led to higher perceptions of extroversion and composure for members low in verbal aggression.

Divided government versus incumbency externality effect—Quasi-experimental evidence on multiple voting decisions

This paper explores the causal relationship between vote outcomes in different elections. We ask: (1) Does the partisan identity of the mayor influence the voter's decision in subsequent town council elections? (2) Do voters condition their vote for the mayor on the result of the last council election? The analysis mainProd. Type: FLPly relies on a regression discontinuity design focusing on close election outcomes based on municipal level data for Germany. We find that the party of the mayor can receive a significant bonus in the next town council election. Moreover, voters punish mayor candidates of parties that performed strongly in earlier council elections. Throughout the paper, we highlight how these findings can be related to an incumbency externality effect and to the theory of divided government.

United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy: Questions to London Mayoral Candidates

In May 2012 London elected a new Mayor. In the run-up to the election the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy voiced its concern for the future of psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling in and outside of London by way of questions to the main candidates for Mayor of London. These “notes” are the questions put to the candidate and the answers from the three candidates who responded, namely Jenny Jones (Green Party), Ken Livingstone (Labour), and Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrat). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Tax Limits and Local Democracy

Based on a theoretical model where state limits on local government policy elicit a move from private value (position issue) to common value (valence issue) voting, I exploit exogenous variation in tax limitation rules in over 7,000 Italian municipalities during the 2000s to show that fiscal restraints provoke a fall in voter turnout and number of mayor candidates, and a rise in elected mayors’ valence proxy and win margins. The evidence is compatible with the hypothesis of hierarchical tax limitations fading the ideological stakes of local elections and favoring valence-based party line crossing, thus questioning the influential accountability postulate of the fiscal decentralization lore.

Play the Facts and the Truth: Disability in Documentary Film

This paper explores how film viewers, especially documentary film viewers, attribute a kind of “truth” to a subject’s body. Sam Sullivan’s body, throughout the film Citizen Sam , reinforces a certain cultural assumption about what a disabled body means . Sam Sullivan is not only the subject of the documentary, but is the fact of it. When one examines the very notion of a fact (scientific, poetic, artistic, etc.), the act of fact-making begs the question of what, in fact, is a fact ? And how do “facts” inform a viewer’s acceptance of filmic authenticity and veracity? At times, the facticity of this documentary film lies in the depiction of a disabled man struggling through various political and personal minefields and conquests. The film projects an underlying conventional view that corporeality does, still, verify. Much of the film concentrates on personal and intimate details of Sullivan’s daily operations, often focussing on how a mayoral candidate campaigning from a wheelchair involves added exertions. Diary techniques intimate that Sam is alone, that no one around him will view these “private” confessions: not his wife, not his opponents, not the voters, not the camera operator, not even the director; only the viewers. The fiction of such access creates intimacy and extends a titillating aura of illicit revelation. These personal “entries”—interjected into a fairly straightforward documentary film narrative— convince viewers they are getting the “inside scoop.” Citizen Sam ’s filmic construction is that Sam’s body (and any private moments deemed particular to that body) inherently belongs in the public eye.

Intra-party conflicts over gubernatorial campaigns in Japan

Why and when does party headquarters grant autonomy to its local branches, and what trade-offs ensue when providing such discretion? This article tackles these broader questions by focusing on a largely under-investigated area: the impact of directly elected governors and mayors on intra-party dynamics. To facilitate analysis, the article borrows from the ‘delegation’ and ‘franchise’ models, which seek to explain how party organizations adapt to multi-level electoral environments. Sources of intra-party conflict over gubernatorial campaigns derive from theories of party behaviour under presidential systems. Empirical evidence is provided by examining how Japan’s two major parties have dealt with gubernatorial campaigns in recent years. Select cases and data demonstrate how local units are driven by differing incentives from the national leadership, the consequent intra-party conflicts and the limited success of party headquarters in steering its local units. The article discusses the extent to which the ‘franchise’ or ‘delegation’ models successfully capture the way in which the two Japanese parties have engaged in gubernatorial campaigns. To illustrate generalizability beyond Japan, the article ends with a brief comparative counterpoint: intra-party conflict over the selection of the Greater London Authority’s mayoral candidate in 2000 and 2004.

Wilson's Cartoonist

Charles R. Macauley was the New York World's main editorial cartoonist from 1904 to 1914. This article examines his role in Woodrow Wilson's 1912 presidential campaign, including not only drawing laudatory editorial cartoons of him for the newspaper but openly providing cartoons for the campaign and writing a campaign film, The Old way and the New, that was designed to appeal to working and middle-class voters and encourage them to give money. This was well before the American Society of Newspaper Editors adopted the first national code of ethics for papers in 1923, and the World had no problem with what he was doing. Yet Macauley was fired in early 1914 for collecting campaign funds for a mayoral candidate in New York City because the publisher claimed he was helping to run a “secret campaign fond,” which the paper opposed.

Le primarie: democratizzazione interna ai partiti, partecipazione dei cittadini e istanze plebiscitarie

The article aims at showing the difficulties faced in introducing primary elections in the Italian representative democracy. The theoretical content of this contribution is twofold. First some questions concerning primary elections as a device for the selection of parties’ candidates will be discussed; then the impact of the primary vote on citizens’ participation resources to party-politics arena will be analyzed. These topics are dealt by following two paths. The first is devoted to briefly reconstruct the political consequences of different types of primary elections in the USA. The second path focuses on the development of the theoretical and political debate on primary elections in Italy, in a context characterized by crisis and transformation of political parties. According to the literature, when primary elections are pursued by party coalitions, then it is highly probable that they may lead to harsh conflicts among, and inside, the involved parties. The last part of this essay reports in fact two striking examples: the primary elections to select the centre-left coalition’s mayoral candidate in Palermo and Aversa in 2006. The outcomes of this analysis show that political parties do not become open and transparent organizations as an immediate result of the introduction of primary elections. As well, they prove that it is not possible to consider primary elections as the only way to improve openness, transparency, responsiveness and accountability of organizations, such as political parties and institutions in liberal-representative democracies.

스웨덴의 유아학급 설치 사례를 통해 살펴본 취학연령 하향화 대처 방안

When the Korean government announced the lowering of the school entrance age from 6 to 5 years in an effort to increase the fertility rate, one candidate for the Seoul mayor rode on the slogan, 'one dong, one public kindergarten'. This study attempted to show the introduction of a preschool class for six-year-olds being used as analternative to lowering school entrance age in Sweden. First, the current state of preschool class, the Early Childhood Education and Care, and the education system in Sweden were described. Next, the background for the introduction of the preschool classes was analyzed. Thirdly, the effects of preschool class were evaluated from the perspectives of 6 year-olds as well as the institutiona land social status of the ECEC. Results from this study imply not only that the lower school entrance age policy should be abolished but also preschool classes could be considered as an alternative.

Harassment from misguided mayoral candidate

The following four proposed roles for the acetylcholinesterase (AChE) of the superior cervical ganglion, where the localization of the enzyme is predominantly presynaptic, were studied: (1) limitation, temporally or spatially, of the transmitter action of acetylcholine (ACh) at the postsynaptic site, (2) hydrolysis of liberated ACh to provide an immediate source of choline for uptake and resynthesis to ACh by the terminals of the preganglionic fibers, (3) protection of the presynaptic nerve terminals against endogenously liberated ACh, and (4) prevention of the accumulation and action of ACh liberated during the resting state. Some of the findings reported previously by others which form the basis for the first proposal were confirmed. However, experiments designed to obtain more definitive evidence for this proposal and, particularly, to assess the degree of the intraganglionic spread of ACh were unsuccessful. No evidence was obtained to support the second proposal. Although the rate of failure of transmission produced by repetitive preganglionic stimulation was accelerated markedly by diisopropyl phosphorofluoridate (isoflurophate, DFP), the infusion of choline, over a wide range of concentrations, produced no antagonism of the failure of transmission either before or after DFP. Thus, it is suggested that the failure of transmission under these conditions was due to the accumulation of excessive concentrations of ACh rather than a temporary depletion of transmitter substance. Support for the third proposal was indicated by the findings that: (a) the mean threshold doses, for postganglionic activation, of carbachol were significantly (26-fold) higher in chronically denervated than in normal ganglia, and (b) although the mean threshold doses of ACh were the same in untreated denervated and normal ganglia, after DFP the thresholds were significantly (5-fold) lower in the latter as compared with the former. The mean threshold dose of ACh was 10 times that of carbachol in normal ganglia; however, in the three situations where AChE was inactivated or absent (<i>i.e.,</i> denervated ganglia before and after DFP, and normal ganglia after DFP), the mean threshold doses of ACh were only one-third to one-half those of carbachol. A limited number of similar experiments was conducted with butyrylcholine and tetramethylammonium. It is inferred from these observations that in normally innervated ganglia, threshold doses of carbachol, and possibly of ACh, activate only the presynaptic terminals, causing them in turn to liberate the neurohumoral transmitter, with consequent activation of the postsynaptic site. Hence, it is suggested that the primary role of ganglionic AChE is the limitation of the action of liberated ACh on the presynaptic nerve terminals themselves. Other possible interpretations are also considered. It was observed also that in denervated ganglia the mean threshold doses of both ACh and carbachol were reduced by DFP to the same extent. The possibilities that the butyrocholinesterase of the capsular glial cells, or some nonspecific group at the receptor site, plays a role in the potentiation of these agents by DFP are discussed. The finding that persistent asynchronous postganglionic firing occurred in acutely decentralized resting ganglia following the injection of larger doses of DFP provides support for the last proposal. Postganglionic firing following massive doses of DFP did not occur in chronically denervated ganglia.

Perceptions of Debater Effectiveness and Appropriateness as a Function of Decreasingly Polite Strategies for Responding to Nonverbal Disparagement in Televised Political Debates

Scholars' attention to televised political debaters' nonverbal behavior has grown in recent years. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of a variety of strategies, varying in degree of politeness, for responding to an opponent engaging in strong nonverbal disagreement during a televised political debater's speaking turn. Four hundred eight participants watched a purported televised political debate between candidates for mayor. In each of six versions, one debater engaged in strong nonverbal disagreement during his opponent's opening statement. The opponent then responded with one of six decreasingly polite attempts to stop the debater from engaging in the nonverbal behavior. In general, direct, but not personally attacking, responses resulted in higher levels of perceived argumentation effectiveness and appropriateness when compared to not responding to the nonverbal behavior. The results for debater effectiveness were moderated by audience level of verbal aggressiveness.

Mayoral candidate assails activist doctors

Doctors should not be advocating for the poor, says a Toronto, Ontario, mayoral candidate who filed a complaint that has a family doctor facing potential loss or suspension of his licence to practice. “A doctor is there to be a doctor, not to advocate for the poor, or to be the official

The Political Resource Curse

This paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a political agency model with career concerns and endogenous entry of candidates. The data refer to Brazil, where federal transfers to municipal governments change exogenously at given population thresholds, allowing us to implement a regression discontinuity design. The empirical evidence shows that larger transfers increase observed corruption and reduce the average education of candidates for mayor. These and other more specific empirical results are in line with the predictions of the theory. (JEL D72, D73, H77, O17, O18)

The Political Resource Curse

The paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a version of the career concerns model of political agency with endogenous entry of political candidates. The evidence refers to municipalities in Brazil, where federal transfers to municipal governments change exogenously according to given population thresholds. We exploit a regression discontinuity design to test the implications of the theory and identify the causal effect of larger federal transfers on political corruption and the observed features of political candidates at the municipal level. In accordance with the predictions of the theory, we find that larger transfers increase political corruption and reduce the quality of candidates for mayor.

Returning Deliberative Democracy to Athens: Deliberative Polling for Candidate Selection

Candidate selection in representative democracies is usually either by party elites or by mass primaries, an American innovation lately spreading on the rest of the democratic world. The choice between the two poses a dilemma for reform. Primaries allow mass participation, but by voters who are rarely well informed and or deliberative. Elites are generally well informed and may even deliberative, but decision making confined to them violates political equality. How then to provide for both deliberation and equality? A solution has lain in the dust of history for centuries the deliberative microcosm chosen by lot. An ancient version was common for many political processes in Athens. A modern adaptation is embodied in Deliberative Polling.This paper reports on the first use of Deliberative Polling for the official selection of candidates for office by a major political party anywhere in the world. In June 2006, Deliberative Polling was used to select a mayoral candidate in Marousi, one of the principal municipalities of the Athens area. PASOL, the Greek Socialist party, used a recruited a random sample hundreds of Marousi citizens to discuss the policy issues facing the city and the choice of a mayoral candidate to deal with them. At the end of the process, two rounds of secret balloting selected one of six candidates as PASOKs official candidate for the mayor ship of Marousi.This paper analyzes the changes in both policy attitude changes and candidate preferences. We consider the samples knowledge gains, the extent to which they drove the changes in candidate preference, and the extent to which the final secret ballot voting can be generated by the questionnaire results. The paper also considers the viability of Deliberative Polling for candidate selection based on this first effort.

Uspeh nestrankarskih kandidatov na lokalnih volitvah 2006

Večina novinarskih analiz rezultatov lokalnih volitev 2006, poudarja velik uspeh nestrankarskih županskih kandidatov in svetniških list. S pričujočo raziskavo smo želeli ugotoviti, ali omenjena trditev drži, ali pa je le posledica nepričakovano dobrih rezultatov nekaterih neodvisnih kandidatov in list v posameznih občinah. V ospredju našega zanimanja so bila naslednja vprašanja: Ali smo bili dejansko priče pomembnemu preobratu v slovenskem političnem prostoru? Ali se lokalne volitve 2006 glede zastopanosti nestrankarskih list in županov bistveno razlikujejo od prejšnjih volitev? Ali obstajajo pomembne regionalne razlike med posameznimi predeli Slovenije glede zastopanosti nestrankarskih županov in svetniških list?

Het IMBY-syndroom: de (on)zin van de Antwerpse districtraadsverkiezingen

Together with the city council elections, the citizens of Antwerp elected on 8 October 2006 for the second time their district councils. This new decentralised political level is primarily initiated to restore the confidence of the citizens in the city (and district) government(s). By analysing the results of the city and the district elections we try to find indications whether citizens feel closer to their new district governments or not. Firstly district elections resulted definitely not in less blank votes. Secondly, the number of list votes is higher on the district elections than on the city elections, while we would have expected a higher number of preferential votes. Thirdly, we see that the differences between the electoral results of the city elections and the district elections are becoming more pronounced. Although this last result seems to support the legitimacy of the decentralised district they merely reflect changes in the logic of the city elections. Mainly as a result of media coverage the city elections were direct elections of the mayor. Therefore voters used the district elections to vote for their preferred political party. This was not always possible at city level, because some parties did not have an eligible candidate for mayor. Generally spoken, we can conclude that the district elections do not give much proof of a closer connection between the citizens and the city government.

PLURALITY VOTING: THE STATISTICAL LAWS OF DEMOCRACY IN BRAZIL

We explore the statistical laws behind the plurality voting system by investigating the election results for the mayor in Brazil in 2004. Our analysis indicate that the vote partition among mayor candidates of the same city tends to be "polarized" between two candidates, a phenomenon that can be closely described by means of a simple fragmentation model. Complex concepts like "government continuity" and "useful vote" can be identified and even statistically quantified through our approach.