Female Political Participation: A Cross-Cultural Explanation

In this paper I seek to understand societal-level mechanisms associated with gender-based inclusion and exclusion from political life. The analysis finds two conceptually and statistically independent forms of female political participation: involvement in decision making, and the existence of organizations and/or positions controlled by, or reserved for, women. A multivariate analysis of data from 90 preindustrial societies identifies social structural, psychocultural, and behavioral variables affecting female inclusion and exclusion, and their role in a theory of female political participation is discussed.     

Political Regimes,Political Ideology,and Self-Rated Health in Europe: A Multilevel Analysis

Background

Studies on political ideology and health have found associations between individual ideology and health as well as between ecological measures of political ideology and health. Individual ideology and aggregate measures such as political regimes, however, were never examined simultaneously.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Using adjusted logistic multilevel models to analyze data on individuals from 29 European countries and Israel, we found that individual ideology and political regime are independently associated with self-rated health. Individuals with rightwing ideologies report better health than leftwing individuals. Respondents from Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics report poorer health than individuals from social democratic, liberal, Christian conservative, and former Mediterranean dictatorship countries. In contrast to individual ideology and political regimes, country level aggregations of individual ideology are not related to reporting poor health.

Conclusions/Significance

This study shows that although both individual political ideology and contextual political regime are independently associated with individuals'' self-rated health, individual political ideology appears to be more strongly associated with self-rated health than political regime.     

Structural and Decision-Making Models: A Political Example

In this paper decision and structural models are distinguished on conceptual and empirical grounds. At one level of analysis the two models discharge different functions and apply to distinct logical universes. At another level, the two models apply to similar kinds of "reality." Political data from a village in India provides an example of the application of these models at both levels of analysis. Finally, propositions are formulated that clarify the employment of these models for other kinds of data.     

Political violence and child health: Results from Zimbabwe

This paper examines how the health of Zimbabwean children was affected by political and election-related violence and land reform in Zimbabwe during the period from 2000 to 2005. These events impacted Zimbabwean livelihoods and increased food insecurity in the country. Our study combines individual child data from the Demographic and Health Surveys that bracket these violent events with information on the location and date of violence from the Armed Conflict Location and Event dataset. To understand how the increase in violence impacted children’s health, the empirical analysis exploits temporal and spatial variation in child height across birth cohorts. Children born after the spike in violence in 2000 had lower height-for-age z-scores than children from earlier cohorts. The results are robust to a placebo test for parallel trends, alternative control groups, selective mortality, and migration. The paper adds to the literature on election-related violence, armed conflict, and land reform. Additionally, it provides guidance on differentiating between timing of violence during multiple political and electoral events, and estimating the impact on rural communities.