Extending an emerging body of work documenting the migration of technical production models into other domains of social activity, this article analyzes how “open source” works at the levels of both practice and ideology. Through interviews and analysis of public documents relating to Howard Dean’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2003–2004, this article reveals how many Intern...

Recent research in the arena of campaign advertising suggests that emotional appeals can influence political attitudes, electoral choices and decision-making processes (Brader 2006; Marcus, Neuman and MacKuen 2000; Redlawsk, Civettini and Lau 2007). Yet is there any evidence that candidates use emotional appeals strategically during campaigns? Is there a pattern to their use? For instance, are ...

This paper analyzes how US presidential candidates should allocate resources across states to maximize the probability of winning the election, by developing and estimating a probabilisticvoting model of political competition under the Electoral College system. Actual campaigns act in close agreement with the model. There is a 0.9 correlation between equilibrium and actual presidential campaign...

Existing research suggests that democracy fosters economic globalization by promoting trade liberalization in the developing world. We argue that democracy in developing countries generates a “skill bias” in trade protection where democratic incumbents have incentives to increase tariffs on high skilled goods but reduce trade barriers on low skilled goods. Our model analyzes how electoral compe...

This paper presents a theory of political competition with campaign contributions and informative political advertising. Policy-motivated parties compete by selecting candidates and interest groups provide contributions to enhance the electoral prospects of like-minded candidates. Contributions are used to finance advertising campaigns that provide voters with information about candidates’ ideo...

This study analyzes the effects of campaign expenditures on electoral outcomes in North Carolina using data from the 1998 and 2000 state House and Senate elections. Two hypothetical vote-production models are proposed and tested. Results reveal a statistically significant relationship between expenditure levels and vote totals. The appropriate vote production model and an estimate of the price ...

This paper studies the electoral effects of town hall meetings based on programmatic, nonclientelist platforms. The experiment involves the cooperation of leading candidates in a presidential election in Benin. A campaign strategy based solely on these meetings was assigned to randomly selected villages and compared to the standard strategy of clientelist rallies. We !nd that treatment reduces ...

In general elections in the Republic of Ireland 1948-1997, female candidates have received on average a lower proportion of first-preference votes than males. This disparity between male and female candidates is worsening over time. Female candidates have less electoral campaign experience than male candidates, and this helps to explain the gender gap. The declining importance of the “widow’s (...

Nevertheless, it is clear that some initial steps that will change the institutional foundations of health care financing have been taken. The introduction of the federal fund and the (however limited and contested) convergence between SHI and PHI point to an evolutionary change from competitive corporatism to the marketisation of health care (financing), accompanied by a changing role for stat...

BACKGROUND The stroke awareness raising campaign 'Act FAST' (Face, Arms, Speech: Time to call Emergency Medical Services) has been rolled out in multiple waves in England, but impact on stroke recognition and response remains unclear. PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to test whether providing knowledge of the FAST acronym through a standard Act FAST campaign leaflet increases accurate re...