{"id":233,"date":"2012-01-17T08:42:09","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T08:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=233"},"modified":"2012-01-17T08:42:09","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T08:42:09","slug":"spatial-theory-and-scottish-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=233","title":{"rendered":"Spatial theory and Scottish Independence"},"content":{"rendered":"

The plans for a referendum on Scottish independence<\/a> offer a nice opportunity for applying spatial analysis. The latest point of contestation is whether a third option (enhanced devolution) should be offered to the voters in addition to the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. The UK government is against including the third option, a Scottish movement is strongly in favor, and the major advocate of the independence camp Alex Salmond is undecided (as far as I can tell).<\/p>\n

Assuming that the\u00a0government in London prefers Scotland to remain in the UK (and enhanced devolution to full independence), why do they oppose the inclusion of\u00a0the third option in the referendum? That would only make sense if the UK government believes that more people would vote ‘No’ to independence when faced with the choice between the two extremes. At the same time, proponents of full independence will be better off including the third option only if they believe that they will lose a Yes\/No referendum.<\/p>\n

Trying to check the current estimates of support for independence, however, does not lead to a straightforward answer. According to Wikipedia<\/a>, the latest poll conducted in September 2011 places the two camps practically dead-even – 39% say they would vote ‘Yes’ and 38% say they would vote ‘No’. According to the betting markets<\/a> on the other hand, Scottish independence in the near future doesn’t stand\u00a0quite a chance.<\/p>\n

Obviously, London trusts the betting markets more than the polls. With the decision to oppose a third option in an eventual referendum, the UK government is betting that more people would oppose full independence rather than support it. If in the time until 2014 (when the referendum seems to be most likely) it turns out that this is not the case, the government\u00a0would wish it had\u00a0supported the inclusion of ‘enhanced devolution’ as the lesser of two evils.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The plans for a referendum on Scottish independence offer a nice opportunity for applying spatial analysis. The latest point of contestation is whether a third option (enhanced devolution) should be offered to the voters in addition to the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. The UK government is against including the third option, a Scottish movement is strongly in favor, and the major advocate of the independence camp Alex Salmond is undecided (as far as I can tell). Assuming that the\u00a0government in London prefers Scotland to remain in the UK (and enhanced devolution to full independence), why do they oppose the inclusion of\u00a0the third option in the referendum? That would only make sense if the UK government believes that more people would vote ‘No’ to independence when faced with the choice between the two extremes. At the same time, proponents of full independence will be better off including the third option only if they believe that they will lose a Yes\/No referendum. Trying to check the current estimates of support for independence, however, does not lead to a straightforward answer. According to Wikipedia, the latest poll conducted in September 2011 places the two camps practically dead-even – 39% say they would vote ‘Yes’ and 38% say they would vote ‘No’. According to the betting markets on the other hand, Scottish independence in the near future doesn’t stand\u00a0quite a chance. Obviously, London trusts the betting markets more than the polls. With the decision to oppose a third option in an eventual referendum, the UK…<\/p>\n

Continue readingSpatial theory and Scottish Independence<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18,38],"tags":[227,551,593,617,664],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-3L","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":52,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=52","url_meta":{"origin":233,"position":0},"title":"Governing by Polls","date":"October 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The study of policy responsiveness to public opinion is blossoming and propagating. Work published over the last two years includes\u00a0the 2010 book\u00a0by Stuart Soroka and Chris Wlezien (Canada, US and the UK),\u00a0this paper by Sattler, Brandt, and Freeeman on the UK, \u00a0this\u00a0paper on Denmark, my own\u00a0article on the EU, Roberts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Policy making"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":206,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=206","url_meta":{"origin":233,"position":1},"title":"Is unit homogeneity a sufficient assumption for causal inference?","date":"December 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Is unit homogeneity a sufficient condition (assumption) for causal inference from observational data? Re-reading King, Keohane and Verba's bible on research design\u00a0[lovingly known to all exposed\u00a0as KKV] I\u00a0think\u00a0they regard unit homogeneity and conditional independence as alternative assumptions for causal inference. For example: \"we provide an overview here of what is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Causality"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":102,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=102","url_meta":{"origin":233,"position":2},"title":"Veto players and policy making (UK style)","date":"October 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0The concept of 'veto players' (developed initially by George Tsebelis) plays a prominent role in research on policy making, legislative production,\u00a0policy implementation, etc. All these analyses need to be revised, however,\u00a0because the measure of the number of British veto players\u00a0has been revealed to be\u00a0wrong. Everyone forgot to include\u00a0..... Prince Charles.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Policy making"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":282,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=282","url_meta":{"origin":233,"position":3},"title":"Writing with the rear-view mirror","date":"February 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Social science research is supposed to work like this: 1) You want to explain a certain case or a class of phenomena; 2) You develop a theory and derive a set of hypotheses; 3) You test the hypotheses with data; 4) You conclude about the plausibility of\u00a0the theory; 5) You\u00a0write\u00a0a\u00a0paper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academic publishing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1041,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=1041","url_meta":{"origin":233,"position":4},"title":"Books on public policy","date":"October 26, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a list of recommended books on public policy, including introductory textbooks and more advanced texts, including handbooks and books on more specific topics within the field of public policy analysis. Introductory textbooks: Knill, C., & Tosun, J. (2012).\u00a0Public policy: A new introduction. Macmillan International Higher Education. Howlett, M.,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "public policy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":662,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=662","url_meta":{"origin":233,"position":5},"title":"Hyperlinks","date":"January 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"After a not-so-short hiatus during which I visited friends and family in Bulgaria, went through a couple of seasonal colds, and got a new workstation up and running (MacBook Pro with W7), I am finally back to the blog. As a warm-up, a bunch of interesting links you might have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hyperlinks"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/coral-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}