Roll Calls Research Articles

Messaging, policy and “credible” votes: do members of Congress vote differently when policy is on the line?

AbstractMany recorded roll calls in Congress each year are votes on bills that have no chance of becoming law, or are purely symbolic, or are procedural without policy content. Yet models of voting and measurement models of member preferences make assumptions that vote choices are largely about utility derived from policies. We consider the possibility that votes plausibly connected to policy and votes not plausibly connected to policy may have different data-generating processes and rely on different utility functions. Substantively, similarity across different contexts for policy change implies an importance of messaging over policy. Methodologically, similarity across these contexts is necessary to avoid biasing estimates of member preferences. We find that members’ voting patterns are highly stable across contexts in which policy change is credible and not credible. This indicates that existing measures of ideal points are likely not dramatically biased by the inclusion of policy-irrelevant votes.

Suicide versus Euthanasia in the American Press in the 1890s and 1900s: “A Man Should be Permitted to Go Out of This World Whenever He Sees Fit”

AbstractToleration of suicide and the campaign to legalize euthanasia, this article shows, are historically separate developments. From the early 1880s to the 1900s the American press featured moral discussions of suicide alongside gloomy roll calls and expressions of anxiety about an alleged increase in suicide. Focusing on an extensive discussion in the San Francisco Call in 1896, the article shows that Robert G. Ingersoll’s liberal individualist toleration of suicide clearly resonated with many Americans at the time. I trace the rise of suicide from private tragedy to public issue in the United States. Perhaps surprisingly, there was no crossover with euthanasia and no call whatever for assistance with suicide, despite the frequent employment of the plight of the terminally ill in the discussion. Finally, the article shows that those who called for euthanasia thought of it as a human utility and not a right.

Establish a Digital Real-Time Learning System With Push Notifications

This study proposes a push notification system that combines digital real-time learning, roll-call, and feedback collection functions. With the gradually flourishing online real-time learning systems, this research further builds roll-call and feedback functions for students to enhance concentration and provide opinions. Additionally, the lecturers can do a roll call irregularly and randomly through the push notification function, avoiding students logging in but away from the keyboard. Lecturers can also send questions to a specific student or invite all students to answer; the replies can show students' learning performance. The system will store each notification in a database and analyse messages automatically to record roll calls. Moreover, the system can record the time and intervals of student feedback, enabling lecturers to check students' attention and learning conditions. Currently, most online digital systems depend on the lecturer to be responsible for the entire system; taking a roll call and asking questions will consume the lecturer's teaching time and strength. The system developed in this article can do roll calls and feedback by push notifications, reducing lecturers' workload. Furthermore, the roll-call and automatic record functions can save the time of paperwork after a course.

Face Recognition Based Automated Attendance Management System

At the beginning and end of each session, attendance is an important aspect of the daily classroom evaluation. When using traditional methods such as calling out roll calls or taking a student's signature, managing attendance can be a time-consuming task. The teacher normally checks it, although it's possible that a teacher will miss someone or some students' answers many times. Face recognition-based attendance system is a solution to the problem of recognizing faces for the purpose of collecting attendance by utilizing face recognition technology based on high-definition monitor video and other information technology. Instead of depending on time-consuming approaches, we present a real-time Face Recognition System for tracking student attendance in class in this work. The suggested method included identifying human faces from a webcam using the Viola-Jones technique, resizing the identified face to the desired size, and then processing the resized face using a basic Local Binary Patterns Histogram algorithm. After the recognition is completed, the attendance will be immediately updated in a SQLite database with the relevant information. Many institutions will profit greatly from this endeavor. As a result, the amount of time it takes and the number of human errors it makes are minimized, making it more efficient.

State Policy and National Representation: Marijuana Politics in American Federalism

Members of Congress represent geographically demarcated districts embedded in subnational policy environments. Drawing on policy feedback literature and literature on congressional representation, I argue that, because of this institutional configuration, subnational policy adoption can affect national representation. More specifically, policy reforms in the states they represent can increase pressures members face from organized groups and individuals in their constituencies to promote aligned federal policies. Empirically, I examine the effects of state marijuana legalization. The inferential design leverages differences across the states in statewide citizen initiative institutions, which provides exogenous variation in legalization. Instrumental variables analysis indicates legalization influenced pro‐marijuana bill sponsorship and roll calls in the 116th Congress. The evidence points to growing influence of industry in legalizing states—including the ability to mobilize employees and customers—as the key mechanism, thus underscoring the importance of a political economy perspective for studying interdependencies in American federalism.

Parteienwettbewerb im Bundestag nach dem Einzug der AfD und während der Corona-Krise: eine Analyse namentlicher Abstimmungen

While party competition is generally dominated by the conflict between government and opposition parties, the analysis finds interesting variations between opposition parties . Over the last few electoral periods, a clear convergence in the voting behavior of the Greens and the Left Party can be observed, not between the Greens and the liberal FDP . There is a dis- tinct separation between the extreme-right populist AfD and all other parties during the most recent electoral period, as all AfD motions were unanimously rejected by all other parties . Second, the request of roll call votes mirrors the respective parties’ topical agenda . In particular, the AfD requested roll calls on their core issues (especially migration) and on topics that ranked high in popular salience (especially in the context of the Covid-19 pan- demic) . Moreover, the data indicate that a cross-party consensus on policy reaction to Cov- id-19 during the initial phase of the pandemic quickly gave way to typical patterns of gov- ernment-opposition conflict while also indicating some intra-party conflicts, especially within the Christian Democrats .

“School for Fools” by Sasha Sokolov and “Notes of Madman” by N.V. Gogol: Reflections and Roll Calls

“School for Fools” by Sasha Sokolov and “Notes of Madman” by N.V. Gogol: Reflections and Roll Calls

Структура субъекта «опыта сознания» и путь постижения духа в философии Гегеля: время, история, «воспоминание»

The object of investigation in this paper is the significance of the structure of the narrator in Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” for understanding the content of the basic concepts of the work – time, history, “recollection”. This structure is determined by the correlation between the consciousness of the author and that of the reader, consciousness itself as an object of consideration and its own object. Each of the narrators goes through the same path from the point of view of logical content (“сircle” of “experience of consciousness”) but at the same time, objectivity itself is constantly becoming more complex. Time, his­tory and “recollection” are the concepts of “experience of consciousness”, which act as universal object equivalents of experience, corresponding to the specified kinds of narra­tors. They reflect the movement of consciousness towards comprehending the spirit, this movement not only determines the main plot of “Phenomenology of Spirit”, but also re­tains its significance for the entire philosophy of Hegel. The need to recognize the dialog­ical nature of the “Phenomenology of Spirit” is determined by the fact that the meaning of the narrative as a whole is made up of roll calls that arise as a result of the reproduc­tion of the same plots of experience from different points of view, and on this basis there is an ascent to the spirit and the “recollection” that embraces it. The analysis of the con­sideration of time, history and “recollection” as forms of objectivity of “experience of consciousness” shows that Hegel also developed a “Phenomenology of History” that is fundamentally different from the well-known course “Philosophy of History”: the move­ment of images of consciousness acts as a deep layer of the historical process in it, which is reproduced in “recollection” as the historical equivalent of “Logic”.

Поэтика цвета в творчестве Н.В. Гоголя и М.М. Зощенко

In Zoshchenko’s early stories and short stories, Gogol’s traditions are felt clearly and many of their points of convergence are revealed: the image of the “little man”, the fantastic manner, the specifics of the plot, the motivational and plot roll calls, the nature of the comic. It is worth noting that in the context of literary work, color carries an important semantic load, and the coloristic art of Zoshchenko and Gogol is also close to each other in symbolic complexity. So, in this article, we will try to analyze the uniqueness of the color palette of writers.

Farmers and the Origin of the Welfare State: Evidence from 308 Roll Call Votes between 1882 and 1940☆

Studies of early social policy development highlight the progressive role of farmers, especially in Scandinavian countries. I argue that this notion does not match with the role played by farmer's representatives or the party in parliament. Being ideologically committed to more market‐oriented solutions, less exposed to labour market risks and fearing for their labour supply, Farmers as a social group and party, I argue, had strong incentives to resist welfare state expansion. This study moves beyond single events or a small selection of reforms used in previous studies, to ascertain preferences of farmers over all welfare reforms undertaken up to 1940. Using newly collected data on roll calls for 308 failed and successful legislative proposals in Norway between 1882 and 1940, totalling 24,791 votes this approach allows for greater precision in measuring the preferences of classes and parties on welfare policy. I find that farmer MPs as a class and later as a party consistently downvote generous welfare compared to the worker parties. Conservatives and Farmers turn out to be equally antagonistic to welfare proposals compared to Labour. This pattern is not substantially transformed during the period of Worker–Farmer coalitions of the 1930s. Further, considering the backgrounds of Members of Parliament (MP), farmers' representatives systematically vote against generous welfare proposals, even voting and vocally protesting coverage extensions to the rural sector. It is therefore doubtful whether the origins of Scandinavian universalism prior to 1940 can be found in the role played by farmers.

Legislative Behaviour of MPs in the Czech Republic in Times of Covid-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic has affected almost every aspect of our lives. While millions of people fought with the disease, economies, societies and institutions faced side-effects of government measures resisting the spread of the virus. This article describes the effects of the pandemic on the legislative behaviour of MPs in one of the worst-hit countries in the world, the Czech Republic. The results show that the number of bill proposals and roll calls substantially increased during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic times. Since the start of the outbreak, a third of roll calls and a half of bill proposals concerned the pandemic. Nonetheless, the outbreak did not substantially affect the voting unity of parliamentary party groups nor the opposition became more supportive of the cabinet. Still, while the liberal Pirates became more cooperative during the pandemic than the pre-pandemic period, the rightist antisystem party Freedom and Direct Democracy receded from the rest of the parties on the pandemic issues.

Students Roll Call at Vietnam Universities with Convolutional Neural Networks (Cnn)

In this article, we introduce the construction and training of a CNN model for student face recognition for automatic roll call. Collection of training and testing data, data preprocessing, model training and result evaluation are demonstrated and explained in detail. The model has been tested on the faces of students in a university in Vietnam and yields positive result, which can be applied in practice for automatic roll call. At the same time, the authors have built a learning management system for classes at a university in Vietnam, including automatic roll call.

How Teachers Conduct Online Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of Taiwan

Although online teaching has been encouraged for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic has promoted it on a large scale. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students at all levels (college, secondary school, and elementary school) were unable to attend school. To maintain student learning, most schools have adopted online teaching. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the design of online teaching activities and online teaching processes adopted by teachers at all levels during the pandemic. Online questionnaires were administered to teachers in Taiwan who had conducted online teaching (including during the formal suspension of classes or simulation exercises) due to the pandemic. According to a quantitative analysis and lag sequential analysis, the instructional behaviors most frequently performed by teachers were roll calls, lectures with a presentation screen, in-class task (assignment) allocation, and whole-class synchronous video-/audio-based discussion. Thus, there were six common significant sequential behaviors among teachers at all levels that were categorized into the four instructional stages of identifying the teaching environment, teaching the class, discussing and evaluating learning effectiveness. College teachers reminded students of some matters first and then called the roll after the students went online. Secondary school teachers were more likely to arrange practical or experimental courses and to use synchronous and asynchronous interactive activities. Finally, elementary school teachers were more likely to use homemade videos and share their screens for teaching and to arrange a large variety of teaching interactions. The differences among colleges, secondary schools, and elementary schools were identified, and suggestions were made accordingly.

Out‐of‐District Donors and Representation in the US House

US House members have become increasingly reliant on out‐of‐district individuals for fundraising. Yet we have little evidence on how such donations might affect representatives' policy decisions. Given the high partisanship known to dominate House roll calls, do the preferences of individual donors influence policymaking at all? And are members who rely on out‐of‐district contributions more responsive to the preferences of the national donor base? This article examines these and related questions, producing three main findings. First, even accounting for well‐established partisanship in House voting, representatives are responsive to the policy preferences of the national donor base. Second, this donor responsiveness is positively associated with electoral safety, including when redistricting exogenously induces the safety. Third, the higher a member's reliance on out‐of‐district donations, the greater is their responsiveness to the preferences of the national donor base. Together, these findings suggest that current fundraising dynamics skew representation in significant ways.

Government and Opposition in Legislative Speechmaking: Using Text-As-Data to Estimate Brazilian Political Parties’ Policy Positions

ABSTRACTThis research note explores whether the government-opposition dimension that emerges from voting records of Brazilian legislatures also arises in legislative speechmaking. Since the earlier stages of the legislative process are innocuous to policy outcomes, party leaders would have fewer incentives to coerce their copartisans’ behavior in speeches than in roll calls. To test this expectation, this study estimates Brazilian political parties’ policy positions, relying on a sentiment analysis approach to classify 64,000 senators’ speeches. The results suggest that the president and the party leadership exert significant influence not only over how legislators vote but also over how they speak. We speculate that these unforeseen findings are backed by the decisiveness of speeches in passing legislation, the importance leadership gives to party brand, and legislators’ need to signal their positions to leaders and the government.

НИКОЛАЙ СИДЕЛЬНИКОВ. ВОКАЛЬНО-ХОРОВОЙ ЦИКЛ «СЫЧУАНЬСКИЕ ЭЛЕГИИ» (ВТОРАЯ ТЕТРАДЬ): ДРАМАТУРГИЯ И СТИЛИСТИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ

The article is devoted to the analysis of the second notebook of the vocal and choral cycle "Sichuan Elegies" by Nikolai Sidelnikov, based on the poems by the VIIIth century Chinese poet Du Fu. The work reveals the stylistic constants of the composer's work. It is emphasized that though N. Sidelnikov does not strive for stylization, the use of special musical means gives the composition a specific Chinese flavor. This is manifested both in the choice of instruments and in the reliance on pentatonics, which consists of two trichordal chants-monograms, sounding in different combinations and becoming the leitintonations of the cycle. It is noted that the expansion of the instrumental composition influenced the increase in the role of episodes without chorus, which was expressed through the introduction of independent instrumental parts, as well as developed introductions and conclusions. In some cases, the composer uses tonal writing, highlighting it with key signs, while some numbers are rather tonic, emphasizing the reliance on the sustained bass pedals. Dramatic episodes are saturated with signs of expressive writing — polytonal overlays, chromaticisms and passages with increased and decreased intervals. The dramaturgy of the composition is formed thanks to thematic roll calls and reprise inclusions that form subcycles.

РОССИЙСКАЯ ЛАГЕРНАЯ ПРОЗА И КИТАЙСКАЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРА «ВЫСОКИХ СТЕН»: ОДИН ДЕНЬ ОДНОГО ЗАКЛЮЧЕННОГО В ПОВЕСТЯХ А. СОЛЖЕНИЦЫНА И ЦУНА ВЭЙСИ

The article examines the system of creative roll calls of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the сhinese writer Tsun Weisi, called by critics «Chinese Solzhenitsyn». The work of the writers is analyzed in the context of typologically similar trends in the russian and chinese literary process – russian prison camp prose and chinese literature of «wounds and scars» and «high walls literature», the fate of both writers is seen as an example of the complex confrontation between the individual and the totalitarian system. Comparing the works of Tsun Weisi and A. Solzhenitsyn the author reveals many motifs that are significant for the artistic world of the writers: rigid time localization and expansion of the time frame due to the introduction of heroes' memories into the narrative, description of the isolated world of the prison, the motive of physical and moral exhaustion, description of hard work and harsh realities of the surrounding nature, the motive of adversities and absurdity of the political system, motives of denunciation, betrayal and provocation. Along with this, the article considers significant differences in the reproduction of the main constants of prison camp discourse in Tsun Weisi and A. Solzhenitsyn’s works: relations among prisoners and between the authorities and prisoners, the ideological component of Tsun Weisi’s prison discourse, when the camp becomes a micro-model of the political system in the country, ideological and political priorities, determining the reduction of the object world and the poster character of the chinese writer, a high stone wall as a symbol of the Great Wall of China, impassable prison walls and the a priori doomed attempts to combat absurdity and injustice in an ever-changing brutal political reality.

Policy Regime Decay

This paper develops the concept of policy regime decay to examine what happens when the political foundations of public policies break down. Policy regime decay consists of an erosion of consensus over policy goals, an unraveling of support coalitions, and an exhaustion of institutional capacity to structure the policy process. These elements of decay have observable implications and they inform an empirical strategy for a case study of U.S. food and agriculture policy. Using content analysis of congressional hearings, analysis of legislative roll calls, and policy agenda measures, the paper finds evidence of elite disagreement over nutrition programs, a partisan divide on Farm Bill votes, and a diffusion of committee jurisdiction over food and agriculture issues in Congress. These findings have implications for understanding the policy consequences of polarization, policy feedback effects, and the dynamics of policy regimes.

Incongruent Voting or Symbolic Representation? Asymmetrical Representation in Congress, 2008–2014

The electoral connection incentivizes representatives to take positions that please most of their constituents. However, on votes for which we have data, lawmakers vote against majority opinion in their district on one out of every three high-profile roll calls in the U.S. House. This rate of “incongruent voting” is much higher for Republican lawmakers, but they do not appear to be punished for it at higher rates than Democrats on Election Day. Why? Research in political psychology shows that citizens hold both policy-specific and identity-based symbolic preferences, that these preferences are weakly correlated, and that incongruous symbolic identity and policy preferences are more common among Republican voters than Democrats. While previous work on representation has treated this fact as a nuisance, we argue that it reflects two real dimensions of political ideology that voters use to evaluate lawmakers. Using four years of CCES data, district-level measures of opinion, and the roll-call record, we find that both dimensions of ideology matter for how lawmakers cast roll calls, and that the operational-symbolic disconnect in public opinion leads to different kinds of representation for each party.

Reading Jeogbyeog-ga and Hwayong-do Based on Speech Act - A Study Focused on Soldiers’ Roll Call and Soldiers’ Moaning -

Reading Jeogbyeog-ga and Hwayong-do Based on Speech Act - A Study Focused on Soldiers’ Roll Call and Soldiers’ Moaning -