EU legislative politics have changed dramatically during the past decade, and the British government has been a vocal and influential voice in shaping EU policies and processes. Based on an original dataset covering all legislative decisions by the EU governments since the enlargement to Central- and Eastern Europe in 2004, this paper provides detailed analysis to explain and elaborate on the British votes in the EU Council. It shows that the UK has opposed legislation more than other countries, and that this opposition has increased in recent years. However, advanced text analysis of formal policy statements from the Council records shows that the UK government should not be considered a policy outlier: a group of small- and medium-sized countries frequently side with the UK position in the Council records. They will likely miss the British position and outspoken voice as the EU embarks on a new phase in European integration. The results extend our existing knowledge about negotiation dynamics and voting behaviour in the Council, and are relevant to studies of other intergovernmental negotiation forums too.

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Sara Hagemann is Associate Professor in European Politics at London School of Economics and Political Science, which she joined in September 2009. In her work, Sara draws on a mix of academic and policy experience as she has held research and policy positions in Brussels, Copenhagen and London. Sara has published extensively on European affairs, in particular on transparency and accountability in political systems, EU policy-making processes, EU treaty matters, the role of national parliaments, and the consequences of EU enlargements.

Before joining LSE, Sara worked as a Policy Analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre (EPC), where she was responsible for its Political Europe programme. She has also held posts at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), and in the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She is the Co-Founder and General Editor of the LSE’s popular European Politics blog EUROPP, and Co-Founder and former Managing Director of VoteWatch.eu (www.votewatch.eu), an online initiative that monitors EU decision-makers’ voting records.

Sara has been awarded an ESRC Impact Accelerator Grant (from September 2016- April 2018) through the LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs. She was also an ESRC Senior Fellow as part of the UK in a Changing Europe programme in 2016, where she worked as an independent expert advisor to the UK government, parliament and public in the run-up to and aftermath of the UK’s referendum on EU membership.

Abstract:

What are the e ffects of mass media campaigns on the norms and behaviors of police officers as pertains to human tra fficking? Namely, can mass media campaigns be employed to induce shifts in knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and practices (KABP) of law enforcement officers, that might reduce the incidence of modern forms of slavery and assist victims of human traffi cking? Mass media, especially `entertainment education, (e.g. comic books, radio soap operas, and street theater) is frequently used as a tool for social change to convey messages around issues such as public health, gender rights, conflict resolution, or development strategies through stories that are both realistic and entertaining. Yet how can we know the e ffects of such campaigns? Specifically, do diff erences in message formats and content a ffect the impact of campaigns against human tra fficking? The research presented here shows that mass media entertainment campaigns can e ffectively convey messages around human traffi cking, influencing attitudes, norms and behaviors of law enforcement officers around the issue. It also demonstrates how messages whose content emphasizes victim empowerment appear to be more e ffective than negative, fear-inducing appeals.

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Abstract:

Throughout the world, voters lack access to information about politicians, government performance, and public services. Efforts to remedy these informational deficits are numerous. Yet do informational campaigns influence voter behavior and increase democratic accountability? Through the inaugural Metaketa Initiative, sponsored by the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) research network, we aim to address this substantive question and at the same time introduce a new model for cumulative learning that increases coordination among otherwise independent researcher teams. We present the cumulative results (meta-analysis) from six independently conducted but coordinated field experimental studies, the findings from a related evaluation of whether practitioners utilize this information as expected, and discuss lessons learned from EGAP’s efforts to coordinate field experiments, increase replication of theoretically important questions across contexts, and increase the external validity of field experimental research.

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Please send an email to sj1874@stanford.edu if you would like to be added to the wait list.

Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the country's troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putin's goals and the government's official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in World War II to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, and shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been.

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Shaun Walker is Moscow Correspondent for The Guardian and has reported from Russia for more than a decade. He studied Russian and Soviet history at Oxford University, and has worked as a journalist in Moscow for more than a decade.

Abstract:

Election forensics adds distinctive value to current efforts to promote the integrity of elections around the world by developing special forensic tools and techniques designed to detect the presence of election fraud and to estimate its magnitude based on the reported results of elections. By utilizing electoral data, election forensics provides statistical evidence, which could refute or support various sorts of accusations related to the presence of election fraud. What methods and techniques are currently used by election forensics? Can election forensics measures be validated by the auxiliary data, such as election observation? What election forensics tells us about election fraud at the Russian elections? To address these questions I’ll discuss election forensics methodology, and present key findings from the analysis of the Russian presidential and parliamentary elections 2000-2016.

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Abstract:

At their best, decentralizing reforms make government more accountable to citizens and empower local governments to invest in their own development. Yet, successful decentralization requires that local governments raise at least some revenue to finance new service delivery responsibilities, and the capacity of local governments to generate tax revenue varies. This variation is evident in the Philippines, where capacity to tax varies greatly across cities despite uniform tax powers. I argue that business associations contribute to this variation by endorsing tax increases to enable cities to spend on infrastructure, but only if they can sustain distributional consensus and forestall local officials from diverting revenues away from business-friendly projects. I present a controlled comparison of two cities, Iloilo and Batangas, to show that business associations resolve distributional conflict by dispersing benefits across members, and monitor public spending by participating in legislative hearings and jointly managing public projects.

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Societies with deep-seated ethnic or religious divisions pose a challenge for governance: how can a single set of political institutions govern a fragmented population peacefully and effectively? As the institution responsible for implementing and enforcing laws, the police are an especially critical piece of the governance puzzle. I explore the role of sectarian inclusion in the police forces in Iraq and Israel, two countries with legacies of violent conflict along identity lines. I argue that integrating minority groups into the rank-and-file of the police addresses common motives for anti-state violence by shaping citizens' expectations about how they will be treated by the state. I present survey, experimental, and observational evidence showing that citizens interpret police integration as a credible signal that the government does not intend to harm them, which in turn reduces citizens’ willingness to turn to violence.

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This talk focuses on the fundamental tensions inherent in governing China. Using examples from bureaucratic personnel management and social media controls, Prof. Zhou Xueguang will explore institutional responses and practices in state policymaking and implementation as governing entities in China have encountered changes and challenges of recent years. The talk will draw from Prof. Zhou’s recent book of the same title (published in Chinese, 中国国家治理的制度逻辑).

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One of Zhou Xueguang's current research projects is a study of the rise of the bureaucratic state in China. He studies patterns of career mobility and personnel flow among different government offices to understand intra-organizational relationships in the Chinese bureaucracy.

His recent publications examine the role of bureaucracy in public goods provision in rural China (Modern China, 2011), interactions among peasants, markets and capital (China Quarterly, 2011), multiple logics in village elections (Chinese Social Science 2010, with Ai Yun), and collusion among local governments in policy implementation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations 2011, with Ai Yun and Lian Hong; Modern China, 2010).

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China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.