Studying the equity holdings of 31 U.S. state pension funds, we find evidence that the political leaning of their members and political pressures by state politicians impact funds’ investment decisions. State pension funds from states with Democratic leaning members tend to tilt their portfolios more strongly towards companies that perform well on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issu...

Information Technology, IT, may play an important part in any community as a supporting tool in the democratic process. The conditions for that to happen are primarily a genuine wish of the community members to take democratic action, having access to the technology and the skills to use it. The purpose of this paper is to establish the “Democratic Functions of IT” in what we call “The Swedish ...

Democratic Values -.07 (-1.77) -.04 (-1.06) Authoritarianism .04 (.91) .06 (1.47) Socio-Political (Control) Variables Education level -.16*** (-4.21) .01 (.34) Income in comparison to average -.03 (-.84) -.02 (-.48) Political orientation -.10* (-2.21) -.11** (-2.61) Religiosity -.01 (-.11) .10* (2.55) R (Adjusted) .54 (.53) .32 (.31) *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001. 115 Hatred as an Emotional ...

political participation is an important factor for political survival of the society and government. this concept is a symbol showing people’s presence at actions of government, and it is a substantial index for people’s satisfaction in democratic countries. election can be the most important symbol of political participation. this is why people’s presence in election is carefully investigated ...

How do domestic political institutions affect the outcomes of international trade negotiations? Specifically, are the aggregate trade barriers agreed upon by a democratic pair lower than those by a pair composed of a democracy and an autocracy? I revisit these important questions by highlighting some problematic aspect of the analysis by Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff (2000). Contrary to the...

The last three decades have witnessed the rise of a political gender gap in the United States wherein more women than men favor the Democratic party. We trace this development to the decline in marriage, which we posit has made men richer and women poorer. Data for the United States support this argument. First, there is a strong positive correlation between state divorce prevalence and the pol...

The number of political parties and the type of electoral system may impact the level of democratic functioning within a government. Models are used to explore whether the number of political parties increases a country’s democracy score on the POLITY IV measure of democracy, and whether countries with proportional representation electoral systems have higher democracy scores than those without...

The possibilities for promoting an expanded conception of democratic political participation through information and communications technologies (ICTs) have been widely observed. Potential synergies between ICT developments and democratic renewal arise from the two-way, interactive nature of new digital media, and their technical enhancement of citizen capacities to access, produce, distribute,...