Globalization,robotization, and electoral outcomes: Evidence from spatial regressions for Italy

Criticism of economic globalization and technological progress has gained support in Italy in the last two decades. However, due to the differentiated exposure of local labor markets to this process, electoral outcomes have varied considerably across the country. By observing the local impact of three global economic phenomena (flows of migrants, foreign competition in international trade, and diffusion of robots) alongside with the patterns of local electoral outcomes potentially associated with discontent, this study analyzes the economic forces driving the evolution of general elections in 2001, 2008, and 2013 in Italy. The analysis reveals that all these global factors had an impact on political outcomes associated with discontent, albeit in different ways and changing over time. All three factors are associated with increases in votes for far‐right parties in the period 2001–2008, but only robotization continues to have such an impact in the following period, while immigration is associated with an increase in votes for the Five‐Star Movement at the expense of far‐right parties. The results and extensions exploiting recent advances in political geography, political economy, and spatial econometrics make it possible to draw some general and methodological conclusions. Global drivers interact with elements pertaining to the political supply that empirical researchers should not be oblivious about. Political spillovers across neighboring areas add to the direct impact of locally mediated economic factors. Finally, the adoption of shift–share instrumental variables to identify the impact of robotization may lack robustness.     

Changing electoral politics: The local level

This article explores contemporary notions of Italian kinship—procreation, the family, biological and social relatedness—as they are shaped by programmes of gamete donation (these are programmes that require the use of third‐party egg and semen to achieve conception). The research was carried out in Italian clinics of assisted conception and presents the views of heterosexual couples suffering from impaired infertility. The overall material reveals the power of kinship as a cultural form.     

Refining the definition of cultural levels at Karabi Tamchin: a quantitative approach to vertical intra-site spatial analysis

The visual identification of archaeological levels can be difficult when stratigraphy is complex. This study emphasizes the importance of three-dimensional intra-site spatial analysis as a means of testing the integrity of archaeological levels, including the identification of palimpsest deposits. A geographical information system (GIS) is applied to a three-dimensional spatial analysis of lithic and bone distributions from Karabi Tamchin, a Middle Palaeolithic site from the Crimea, Ukraine. K-means statistical clustering is combined with a series of data transformations to identify and interpret the vertical and horizontal spatial organization of the site. The results indicate that K-means cluster analysis, used in conjunction with GIS, provides an exceptional method of identifying discrete clusters of archaeological materials in three dimensions. Through an analysis of cluster contents within levels, it is possible to reconstruct and compare patterns of spatial organization at Karabi Tamchin, contributing to current debates regarding the cognitive complexity of Neanderthal populations.     

The boundary value problem in spatial statistical analysis

"The primary objective of this paper is to investigate procedures for detecting and handling existing border biasing in spatial statistical analysis." Six conventional solutions to the boundary value problem are criticized, and three alternate statistical solutions are proposed.     

The compactness of federal electoral districts in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s: an exploratory analysis

Considerations of the compactness and aesthetics of electoral districts have loomed large in the litigation surrounding the last round of US redistricting. For a variety of reasons, we expect that there will be increasing pressure on Canadian electoral cartographers to provide opportunities for protected minorities to be represented in the country's federal legislature. As a result, we expect that future electoral maps may well embody a tradeoff between compactness and other representational and cartographic desiderata. We look for evidence of this in an exploratory analysis of the last two federal electoral maps (adopted in 1987 and 1996) and in so doing we offer the first country-wide assessment of the compactness of Canadian federal electoral districts (FEDs). The results demonstrate the importance of natural boundaries in the achievement of district compactness. Strong evidence of a decline in the compactness of FEDs between the two maps is not forthcoming, however. Thus there is relatively little sign that Canadian electoral districts will be open to the kind of aesthetically-based legal challenges that American Congressional Districts faced in the 1990s. However, the analyses we report establish an important baseline against which the next electoral map, to be produced following the 2001 census, can be compared.     

Continuous campaigning and electoral outcomes: The Liberal Democrats in Bath

From the 1950s onwards, David Butler and a number of co-authors of the Nuffield studies of British General Elections stressed the perceived futility of local campaigns, dismissing them as ritual, irrelevant exercises. During the 1990s, a new orthodoxy emerged. Using their own surrogate measure of campaigning, three groups of scholars found that the more intense a party's campaign in a constituency, relative to its opponents', the better its performance there. The significance of campaigning appears to vary across the country's three main political parties; however, it seems to be particularly important to the success of the Liberal Democrats. These findings are entirely consistent with arguments regarding the role and efficacy of local campaigning, but there remains a need for more direct evidence. If the traditionalists are correct, then local campaigning will have no impact on either turnout or the electoral performance of the party involved. If the ‘revisionists’ are correct, then where a party campaigns intensively it should be better able to identify and mobilise its core supporters, ensure that they turn out to vote, and thus improve its performance relative to its opponents. To evaluate these two arguments require data on where and how a party campaigns intensively, at local scales which can then be linked to electoral turnout data for those small areas. Such an evaluation is reported in this paper, using a case study of one ward in the City of Bath at the 1999 local government elections there.     

Pillars and electoral behavior in Belgium: The neighborhood effect revisited

This paper explores the processes behind the neighborhood effect in electoral geography. Studies on neighborhood effect have largely ignored the local institutions and cultural milieu within which people are socialized. By taking into account the spatially differentiated social embedding of individuals, we are able to highlight the impact of local institutions on electoral behavior and restore the temporal dimension that has shaped the political specificities of places. In the case of Belgium, we show that social embedding (which took the very accomplished form of pillars) affects voting behavior through two different channels: a direct effect, coming from the family transmission of pillar values, and a contextual effect captured by a measure of the local embeddedness of the pillar.     

The evaluation of electoral redistributions: the case of Western Australia*

Electoral boundaries may be delimited by electoral commissioners who are explicitly non-partisan but the consequences of their decisions are generally highly partisan. An evaluation of the State redistribution in Western Australia reveals that the Liberal Party was given a significant initial advantage for the 1983 State Election. Indicators used in the evaluation procedure include political party competition, shape, the integrity of political units, predictors of voting behaviour, as well as the re-aggregation of the 1983 election results by the pre-redistribution boundaries.     

The Road Not Taken. Effects of residential mobility on local electoral turnout

Although the effects of population stability on electoral turnout rates are relatively well-known, the role of the characteristics of hosting cities in this relationship are largely unexplored. This paper analyzes the moderating effect of city size on the relationship between residential mobility and electoral turnout. Residential mobility is known to depress civic engagement and political participation at the local level. We argue that this relationship is moderated by the characteristics of hosting cities, approached through city size. The main argument is that smaller cities offer better chances to newcomers to reconnect to the political process. Working with census data from more than 5500 different municipalities, we find that city size has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between residential mobility and turnout. On the one hand, residential mobility and city size do have separate negative effects on turnout, but on the other, the expected negative effects of mobility on turnout are actually stronger in larger than in smaller municipalities. Results indicate, therefore, that smaller communities not only provide more favorable conditions for political participation to their life-long residents, but they also seem to offer newcomers better chances to reconnect to the political process than larger cities.     

A spatial approach to upland vegetation change and human impact: the Aber Valley,Snowdonia

Abstract

Uplands have long been considered important ‘barometers’ for human-environment relationships. Five pollen sequences from the upper Aber Valley (Snowdonia), across an altitudinal gradient, reveal that human impacts have varied temporally on small spatial scales in the region. Woodland taxa persisted into the later Holocene at lower altitudes and sites located at higher altitude reveal a more open landscape history, possibly as a result of increased exposure limiting tree growth at high elevation. Continuous pastoral human land use is evident in the high upland (400 to >600 m AOD) landscape with evidence of clearing, burning and grazing indicators throughout the records covering the last ～6000 years, with increased activity apparent during the last 2000 years. There is no clear evidence to suggest that climate change (e.g. deteriorating climatic conditions from ～850 BC) resulted in land abandonment and it appears more likely that climatic shifts could have led to changes in human land management. The results demonstrate that pastoral land use varied at different altitudes across the Aber Valley upland, and have highlighted the value and potential of high/fine spatial sampling in providing insights into land use history and the mosaic of habitats that result.     

Importing and exporting spatial needs: A Dutch approach1

The increasing demand for space determines much of the approach to spatial planning in countries with a high population density like the Netherlands. In the next three decades more land will be needed for housing, work, traffic, leisure, nature and water. There is only one sector that will yield land: agriculture. The Dutch Minister of Spatial Planning has presented six intervention strategies to cope with the increasing demand for space: (1) priority setting; (2) export spatial needs; (3) reduce the need for space in accordance with policy; (4) intensify land use; (5) combine spatial needs; (6) transform spatial structures and buildings. Spatial planning in the Netherlands is becoming more and more geared to strategies 4, 5 and 6, which take the need for land as given. This paper seeks to explain that the first three strategies, and strategy 2 in particular, are also crucial for a country like the Netherlands, even though the policies associated with them would not generally be labelled spatial. For the spatial planner, however, the export of spatial needs is relevant as this determines the outcome of spatial planning to a large extent. This shall be illustrated by reporting on international residential migration, the use of leisure homes and second homes, international business migration and the restructuring of the agricultural sector. The Netherlands is not only exporting spatial needs, but also in the same time even imports needs at a larger scale, which puts spatial planning on a larger pressure. In the past the lack of space was solved by relinquishing land that was originally earmarked for water or nature. But the need for space for water and nature has increased recently and will continue to do so in the coming decades. This makes intervention strategy 2 even more relevant for the future. Spatial planners need to widen their horizons and include the import and export of spatial needs in their analyses.     

Regional paths towards Europe 2020 targets: a spatial approach

Europe 2020 is a 10-year EU strategy, promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Despite ambitious goals, its spatially blinded approach might seriously threaten its success. Actually, large territorial disparities still affect the EU, being the basis for a strong EU-wide cohesion policy and suggesting a general re-framing of sectoral policies on a regional basis. In this respect, the paper tackles the issue of regional disparities in achieving Europe 2020 Strategy targets. As the Strategy involves different targets, principal component analysis is applied to disentangle Europe 2020 domains and to describe major differences in EU-27 NUTS 2 regional performances. In particular, two components are returned: high-employment inclusive growth and smart growth. Territorial patterns of both components are analysed, by jointly considering some geographical features that may affect them. Both a rural and a spatial effect occur: rural and remote regions show poor performances whilst the presence of spatial autocorrelation may actually lock-in negative outcomes. When considering urban rural divides, also within-regions disparities matter. Results strengthen the idea that Europe 2020, as other sectoral policies, should be translated into a regional setting according to a place-based approach: although requiring large efforts, this represents the only way to fully achieve its own targets.