Forecasting Australian elections: 1993, and all that

The link between economic conditions and election outcomes is a pillar of social science. Voters prefer ‘better times’ to worse and reward or punish incumbents accordingly. We investigate the extent to which this truism holds in the Australian context, with particular emphasis on the 1993 result. While Australian election outcomes are generally not well predicted by prevailing economic conditions, we are impressed by the extent to which the 1993 election outcome is at odds with the state of the economy. In particular, we find Labor performed up to five percentage points better than expected in 1993, making this result one of the most exceptional election results ever observed in Australia. The sizeable electoral penalty typically accompanying large increases in unemployment was effectively nullified in 1993. We accurately predict the 1993 result (ex post) only if unemployment is considered electorally irrelevant. We conclude by suggesting a research agenda for better understanding the link between economic context and election outcomes in the Australian setting.     

Globalization,Recession and the Internationalization of Industrial Districts: Experiences from the Italian Gold Jewellery Industry

Abstract

Globalization and the recent recession crisis are significantly challenging Italian industrial districts (IDs), leading to deep transformations in their internationalization, innovation and organization strategies. With our empirical focus on a single industry (gold jewellery) and a specific country (Italy) and through the theoretical lenses of the global value chain (GVC) approach, the evidence in this article sheds light on the differences in how three IDs within Italy's gold jewellery sector (Valenza Po, Arezzo and Vicenza) compete in the global arena. Our comparative analysis reveals striking differences among these districts with regard to their upstream and downstream internationalization strategies in response to two industry shocks: increasing global competition in the early 2000s and the world economic recession of 2008–2009. Our explanation for the varied gold jewellery district responses to these two global crises involves both internal and external factors: (1) structural differences between the three IDs; (2) distinct business strategies; and (3) how these districts are linked to the gold jewellery GVC.     

Cooperation and Collective Action in the Cultural Evolution of Complex Societies

Investigations of the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation and collective action provide productive venues for theorizing social complexity, yet this multidisciplinary scholarship contains analytical and epistemological tensions that require reconciliation. We propose a course for integration of this diverse literature to investigate the emergence and developmental trajectories of complex societies. Greater attention to collective action problems, cultural mechanisms that promote cooperation, differentiation of human interests, and multiscalar research designs provide firmer conceptual underpinnings for a theoretically grounded cultural evolutionary framework. The case of agricultural intensification in pre-Hispanic highland Mexico is used to illustrate major points of the paper.