Suchergebnisse

Social loafing has been defined as a phenomenon in which people exhibit a sizable decrease in individual effort when performing in groups as compared to when they perform alone, and has been regarded as a state variable. In this study, we instead conceptualized social loafing as a habitual
response, given that many people have been found to be susceptible to social loafing in group tasks. We developed the self-reported Social Loafing Tendency Questionnaire (SLTQ) to measure individual variations in social loafing. In Study 1, the reliability and validity of the SLTQ were established
in a sample of college students. In Study 2, SLTQ scores significantly negatively predicted individual performance in the group task condition, but not in the individual task condition. Social loafing can also be considered a trait variable, as it was found to modulate group dynamics when
it was activated in a typical situation (i.e., being in a group).

Parties are the nucleus of modern parliaments. Therefore it is crucial to understand cooperation and competition within parties. In most parliaments, we can observe some form of cooperation, like cosponsorship. In this paper, cosponsorship is used to identify the relationships of MPs within their parliamentary party group, and to infer whether this relational position has an effect on their reselection. Are better embedded and connected MPs more likely to be reselected? Do peers matter in reselection? This question is also of theoretical interest in the light of competing principals (Carey, 2007). The empirical analysis first replicates the model of MP renomination by Baumann et al. (2017), adding a new data set from the German Bundestag, used to provide the relational independent variables of cosponsorship centrality. The key finding of the analysis is that cosponsorship closeness is a significant predictor of MP reselection and can be seen as a compelling complement to the model by Baumann et al. With cooperation shown to be significant when it comes to renomination, the understanding of peer-induced competition, competing principals theory can be further developed to aid our understanding of MP cooperation and competition, delegation, agency and collective principals in modern parties.

Retrospective voting is vital for democracy. But, are the objective performance metrics widely thought to be relevant for retrospection—such as the performance of the economy, criminal justice system, and schools, to name a few—valid criteria for evaluating government performance? That is, do political coalitions actually have the power to influence the performance metrics used for retrospection on the timeline introduced by elections? Using difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity techniques, we find that US states governed by Democrats and those by Republicans perform equally well on economic, education, crime, family, social, environmental, and health outcomes on the timeline introduced by elections (2–4 years downstream). Our results suggest that voters may struggle to truly hold government coalitions accountable, as objective performance metrics appear to be largely out of the immediate control of political coalitions.