The impacts of extra-territorial voting: Swings,interregnums and feedback effects in New Zealand elections from 1914 to 2011

How are elections affected by the votes of people living abroad? The majority of states now allow extra-territorial voting in some form, but the research literature on this topic remains underdeveloped. Moreover, even though extra-territorial voting raises issues about the relationship between territory and political obligation that are relevant to political geographers, political geography has been under-represented in discussions on the topic. Against this background, this research examines a century of overseas voting impacts in New Zealand, a country with an unusually long recorded history of such activity. The study identifies three types of extra-territorial voting impact over the period 1914-2011, referred to as swings, interregnums and feedback effects.     

Frequencies of Rare Incisor Variations Reflect Factors Influencing Precontact Population Relationships in Mexico and the American Southwest

Mexican prehistory is characterized by migration and population isolation in its earliest phase, followed by later inter‐population cultural interactions, such as politics and trade. While shared, common morphological variants are often informative about recent population events, rare trait variants have not been widely investigated to see whether they might be informative about earlier events. Here, we consider populations that show several rare variants at frequencies high enough to warrant such an investigation. Examining past population structure can help us understand population interactions across different periods of time, levels of migration, and population isolation/drift. Multiple‐origin populations may have more variation, including more and higher rates of rare traits. We examined maxillary lateral incisors in 1117 dentitions from 76 samples of Preclassic/Classic and Postclassic pre‐European contact Mexico and the American Southwest for the prevalence of rare lateral incisor variants. Variants observed included barrel, congenital absence, interruption groove, mesial marginal bending, peg, reduced, supernumerary, and talon teeth. The most common variant overall is interruption groove. Central Mexico, Huasteca, and the Lowland Yucatan region samples present the highest overall number of incisor variants. Higher frequencies of single unusual traits are commonly found in samples from smaller populations, while samples from larger population centres show a greater range of these rare variants. We investigated to see whether the pattern of rare incisor variant frequencies reflected early or later population history by comparing similarity/distance matrices and factor model matrices using Mantel tests and Generalized Procrustes analysis. Results show a weak relationship with the Postclassic period and shared migration/language and trade interaction models. We suggest that later cultural interactions have acted to mask earlier population history. Research on serial founder effects should be approached multiregionally and across time, to avoid missing inter‐region biological relationships. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Breathless: Schools, Air Toxics, and Environmental Justice in California

The exposure of children to environmental disamenities has emerged as a key policy concern in recent years, with some analysts and activists suggesting that minority children are disproportionately impacted. Utilizing a dataset that combines air toxics at the census tract level with school-based demographic and other information, this article indicates disparate exposures for students of color in California schools and suggests that there may be negative impacts on one measure of academic performance, even after controlling for other factors usually associated with test scores. Policy implications include a special focus on school remediation and strengthening overall efforts to reduce emissions "hot spots."     

The role of waterways in the spread of the Neolithic

The causes and implications of the regional variations in the spread of the incipient agriculture in Europe remain poorly understood. We use population dynamics models to study the dispersal of the Neolithic in Europe from a localised area in the Near East, solving the two-dimensional reaction-diffusion equation on a spherical surface. We focus on the role of major river paths and coastlines in the advance of farming, to model the rapid advances of the Linear Pottery (LBK) and the Impressed Ware traditions along the Danube–Rhine corridor and the Mediterranean coastline, respectively. We argue that the random walk of individuals, which results in diffusion of the population, can be anisotropic in those areas and hence lead to an effective advection. The standard reaction-diffusion equation is thus supplemented with an advection term, confined to the proximity of major rivers and coastlines. The model allows for the spatial variation in both the human mobility (diffusivity) and the carrying capacity, reflecting the local altitude and latitude. This approach can easily be generalised to include other environmental factors, such as the bioproductivity of landscapes. Our model successfully accounts for the regional variations in the spread of the Neolithic, consistent with the radiocarbon data, and reproduces a time delay in the spread of farming to the Eastern Europe, Britain and Scandinavia.     

强制性制度变迁与明治维新的二元效应

日本19世纪进行的明治维新是一场自上而下的强制性制度变迁,这场深刻的社会变革使日本经济、社会面貌发生了翻天覆地的变化。从幕府末期发展的实际情况来看,日本社会产生了一种强烈的制度需求,这种需求使日本社会处于一种制度不均衡的状态,而明治维新提供了所需要的制度,实现了新的制度均衡,使日本走上富国强兵的资本主义发展道路。但是,政府主导的强制性制度变迁虽然使日本经济实现了跳跃式的发展,挤进了西方列强的行列,同时也在政治、经济制度中留下了不少封建因素,成为日后日本经济体制发展中的先天性缺陷。     

略论北宋前期之裁军

在北宋前期,伴随着冗军问题的滋生与日益恶化,不同形式的裁军渐次展开。本论述了北宋前期六朝裁军的措施、效果等,着重探讨了宋神宗裁军的过程、特点、成效及成因,并予以充分肯定。这对了解北宋军政之概况、评价王安石变法有所裨益,亦对今天的军政建设有借鉴作用。     

Social and political trust in Istanbul and Moscow: a comparative analysis of individual and neighbourhood effects

Aiming to bring local context into studies of social capital, our study uses samples of 4006 individuals in Istanbul and 3476 in Moscow using a comparable questionnaire. The stratification of each city's neighbourhoods on the basis of socio-economic characteristics provided the basis for the sampling. Using a multilevel modelling procedure, we show both that locality matters (neighbourhood effect proved significant) and that social capital may indeed be constituted in very particular ways in illiberal democracies such as Russia and Turkey. Social and political trust are frequently thought to contribute to social capital – that is, to provide social resources upon which individuals or groups may draw for their political efficacy. Trust in fellow citizens in Istanbul exhibits a positive relationship to associational activities (joining clubs etc.), while in Moscow social trust can be explained predominantly in terms of (lower) socio-economic status. At the same time, important similarities emerged between the two cases. For social trust, in both cities the 'cosmopolitanization thesis', which holds that those who associate more widely are also more trusting of fellow citizens, generally applied. Further, in both cities, residents with lower socio-economic status (though in Moscow this is complicated by education) and lower likelihoods of engagement in direct political action were more trustful of parliament . While this is the opposite of what we have been led to expect based on Western democratic polities, it is a reasonable outcome of illiberal democratic governance operating in these two cities.     

Watch out for the neighborhood trap! A case study on parental perceptions of and strategies to counter risks for children in a disadvantaged neighborhood

Neighborhood is seen as one of the many social contexts that shape children's cognitive, emotional and social development. However, the neighborhood context does not simply ‘imprint’ itself on children, but can be mediated or moderated by other social contexts, in particular the family context through parenting practices. Based on a case study in a low income neighborhood in The Hague, The Netherlands, this paper addresses the question of how living in a disadvantaged neighborhood context constitutes a risk for children and which strategies parents develop in response to the perceived negative neighborhood influences.