Voting is a habit. People learn the habit of voting, or not, based on experience in their first few elections. Elections that do not stimulate high turnout among young adults leave a 'footprint' of ...low turnout in the age structure of the electorate as many individuals who were new at those elections fail to vote at subsequent elections. Elections that stimulate high turnout leave a high turnout footprint. So a country's turnout history provides a baseline for current turnout that is largely set, except for young adults. This baseline shifts as older generations leave the electorate and as changes in political and institutional circumstances affect the turnout of new generations. Among the changes that have affected turnout in recent years, the lowering of the voting age in most established democracies has been particularly important in creating a low turnout footprint that has grown with each election.
Economic conditions are said to affect election outcomes, but past research has produced unstable and contradictory findings. This book argues that these problems are caused by the failure to take ...account of electoral competition between parties. A research strategy to correct this problem is designed and applied to investigate effects of economic conditions on (individual) voter choices and (aggregate) election outcomes over 42 elections in 15 countries. It shows that economic conditions exert small effects on individual party preferences, which can have large consequences for election outcomes. In countries where responsibility for economic policy is clear, voters vote retrospectively and reward or punish incumbent parties - although in coalition systems smaller government parties often gain at the expense of the largest party when economic conditions deteriorate. Where clarity of responsibility for economic policy is less clear, voters vote more prospectively on the basis of expected party policies.
The analysis of issue politics has long suffered from a fragmentation between valence and positional conceptualisations, preventing the effective development of a general model of issue-based party ...competition. Building on an overview of the evolution of party competition in the Western world in recent decades, this article offers a theoretical development that builds on 'issue yield' theory to provide a conceptualisation of political goals that generalises across positional and valence issues. This in turn allows a common measurement strategy, offering the possibility to comparatively assess various characteristics (including the electoral potential) of both positional and valence issues. Finally, it describes the specific research design derived from this framework and its implementation in comparative perspective in six West European countries during 2017-2018.
Remyelination in multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions often remains incomplete despite the presence of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs). Amongst other factors, successful remyelination depends on ...the phagocytic clearance of myelin debris. However, the proteins in myelin debris that act as potent and selective inhibitors on OPC differentiation and inhibit CNS remyelination remain unknown. Here, we identify the transmembrane signalling protein EphrinB3 as important mediator of this inhibition, using a protein analytical approach in combination with a primary rodent OPC assay. In the presence of EphrinB3, OPCs fail to differentiate. In a rat model of remyelination, infusion of EphrinB3 inhibits remyelination. In contrast, masking EphrinB3 epitopes using antibodies promotes remyelination. Finally, we identify EphrinB3 in MS lesions and demonstrate that MS lesion extracts inhibit OPC differentiation while antibody-mediated masking of EphrinB3 epitopes promotes it. Our findings suggest that EphrinB3 could be a target for therapies aiming at promoting remyelination in demyelinating disease.
Why are party systems in modern democracies so essentially robust? We theorize patterns of electoral competition as the outcome of a struggle between entropy and structure. Forces of entropy entail ...idiosyncratic voting behavior guided by subjective evaluations, while forces of structure entail coordinated behavior emerging from objective aspects of party preference. Our model locates determinants of party preference on a continuum spanning subjective and objective concerns. Entropy is endemic but elections for nationwide executive office periodically prime objective concerns, reinstating structure in party systems. We demonstrate the cyclical pulse of national elections in a comparative analysis of pseudo-randomized survey data from the European Election Studies since 1989. We also show how feedback from differently-sized party systems consolidates different working equilibria.
Why has turnout in European Parliament (EP) elections remained so low, despite attempts to expand the Parliament’s powers? One possible answer is that because little is at stake in these second-order ...elections only those with an established habit of voting, acquired in previous national elections, can be counted on to vote. Others argue that low turnout is an indication of apathy or even scepticism towards Europe. This article conducts a critical test of the “little at stake” hypothesis by focusing on a testable implication: that turnout at these elections will be particularly low on the part of voters not yet socialized into habitual voting. This proposition is examined using both time-series cross-section analyses and a regression discontinuity design. Our findings show that EP elections depress turnout as they inculcate habits of non-voting, with long-term implications for political participation in EU member states.
It has long been realised that democratic governance requires a two-way flow of influence. Governments must be able to respond to what people want and people must be able to react to what governments ...do. These preconditions for democratic governance have been central to two research traditions on political representation. One of these, the responsible party approach, views policy change as a consequence of 'electoral turnover', while the other, the dynamic representation approach, focuses on policy change that occurs in 'rational anticipation' of electoral repercussions. The aim of this volume is to evaluate the state of political representation in contemporary Europe and to advance our understanding of the topic by presenting fresh insights both on the extent to which there exists issue congruence between voters and parties and the degree to which there is dynamic representation in the policy responses of representatives. This introduction describes in some detail the nature of the two approaches and then briefly summarises the contributions made in the remainder of the volume.
In the aftermath of a European Parliament (EP) election, there are normally two prominent aspects that receive attention by scholars and experts: the turnout rate and whether the Second Order ...Election (SOE) model proposed by Reif and Schmitt (1980) still applies. That model is based on the idea that, because EP elections do not themselves provide enough stimulus as to replace the concerns normally present at national elections, the outcomes of EP elections in any participating country manifest themselves as a sort of distorted mirror of national (Parliamentary) elections in that country. The mirror is distorted because those national concerns are modified, not so much by the concerns arising from the European context in which EP elections are held as simply by the fact that EP elections are not national elections. In particular, at EP elections, national executive power is not at stake. The same party or parties will rule in each country after an EP election as ruled there before.
Cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) is the most common spinal cord disorder and a major cause of disability in adults. Improvements following surgical decompression are limited and patients often ...remain severely disabled. Post mortem studies indicate that CSM is associated with profound axonal loss. However, our understanding of the pathophysiology of CSM remains limited.To investigate the hypothesis that axonal plasticity plays a role in the recovery following surgical decompression, we adopted a novel preclinical model of mild to moderate CSM. Spinal cord compression resulted in significant locomotor deterioration, increased expression of the axonal injury marker APP, and loss of serotonergic fibres. Surgical decompression partially reversed the deficits and attenuated APP expression. Decompression was also associated with axonal sprouting, reflected in the restoration of serotonergic fibres and an increase of GAP43 expression. The re-expression of synaptophysin indicated the restoration of functional synapses following decompression. Promoting axonal plasticity may therefore be a therapeutic strategy for promoting neurological recovery in CSM.
Habitual physical activity reduces coronary heart disease events, but vigorous activity can also acutely and transiently increase the risk of sudden cardiac death and acute myocardial infarction in ...susceptible persons. This scientific statement discusses the potential cardiovascular complications of exercise, their pathological substrate, and their incidence and suggests strategies to reduce these complications. Exercise-associated acute cardiac events generally occur in individuals with structural cardiac disease. Hereditary or congenital cardiovascular abnormalities are predominantly responsible for cardiac events among young individuals, whereas atherosclerotic disease is primarily responsible for these events in adults. The absolute rate of exercise-related sudden cardiac death varies with the prevalence of disease in the study population. The incidence of both acute myocardial infarction and sudden death is greatest in the habitually least physically active individuals. No strategies have been adequately studied to evaluate their ability to reduce exercise-related acute cardiovascular events. Maintaining physical fitness through regular physical activity may help to reduce events because a disproportionate number of events occur in least physically active subjects performing unaccustomed physical activity. Other strategies, such as screening patients before participation in exercise, excluding high-risk patients from certain activities, promptly evaluating possible prodromal symptoms, training fitness personnel for emergencies, and encouraging patients to avoid high-risk activities, appear prudent but have not been systematically evaluated.
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