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The European Commission has recently announced two guiding principles for EU product policy: First, product policy shall ensure that the performance of front-runner products in terms of sustainability becomes the norm, and second, the effectiveness of the current Ecodesign legislative framework is going to be significantly improved. Within this paper, already existing front-runner approaches and recent and ongoing product policy-making processes were reviewed. Based on the results, an EU front-runner approach is outlined. The presented approach (i) refers to performance levels of the best products already available on the market, (ii) aggregates information in existing databases, and (iii) works semi-automated. Together, all three attributes have a high potential to facilitate and accelerate the specification of appropriate minimum requirements for products at the EU level. This way, EU policymakers can deliver on the core objectives of the Ecodesign legislative framework much better. The basic mechanism and its legal entrenchment of the approach are illustrated for the energy efficiency of energy-related products. In addition, the Front-Runner Approach can be applied to any product group in the scope of the upcoming Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and to a wide range of product-related minimum requirements, such as durability, reparability, or recycled content. The study’s objective is to suggest a tailor-made and dynamic approach to keep the EU product legislation up to date using innovative technology based on the investigation of current regulations and identify the gap. Experiences from three international case studies suggest that a front-runner approach to setting energy-performance standards can drive innovation and reduce energy consumption via promoting energy-efficient products; transparency about available products is one of the key factors and can be established by a database. The EU front-runner approach comprises extending the existing energy label database (or making use of the digital product passport) and introducing a legislative procedure that triggers changes in the energy efficiency requirements in the specific EU regulations if the database shows that a certain threshold value is reached. Challenges such as limited EU staff capacities and opportunities such as increased dynamic are discussed.

Roderick Hart may be among the few Americans who believe that what politicians say in a campaign actually matters. He also believes that campaigns work. Even as television coverage, political ads, and opinion polls turn elections into field days for marketing professionals, Hart argues convincingly that campaigns do play their role in sustaining democracy, mainly because they bring about a dialogue among candidates, the press, and the people. Here he takes a close look at the exchange of ideas through language used in campaign speeches, political advertising, public debates, print and broadcast news, and a wide variety of letters to the editor. In each case, the participants choose their words differently, and this, according to Hart, can be a frustrating challenge to anyone trying to make sense of the issues. Yet he finds that the process is good for Americans: campaigns inform us about issues, sensitize us to the concerns of others, and either encourage us to vote or at least heighten our sense of the political world. Hart comes to his conclusions by using DICTION, a computer program that has enabled him to unearth substantive data, such as the many subtle shifts found in political language, over the past fifty years. This approach yields a rich variety of insights, including empirically based explanations of impressions created by political candidates. For example, in 1996 Bill Clinton successfully connected with voters by using many human-interest words--\"you,\" \"us,\" \"people,\" \"family.\" Bob Dole, however, alienated the public and even undermined his own claims of optimism by using an abundance of denial words--\"can't,\" \"shouldn't,\" \"couldn't.\" Hart also tracks issue buzzwords such as \"Medicare\" to show how candidates and voters define and readjust their positions throughout the campaign dialogue. In the midst of today's increased media hype surrounding elections, Americans and the candidates they elect do seem to be listening to each other--as much as they did in years gone by. Hart's wide-ranging, objective investigation upends many of our stereotypes about political life and presents a new, more bracing, understanding of contemporary electoral behavior.

Both community ecology and conservation biology seek further understanding of factors governing the advance of an invasive species. We model biological invasion as an individual-based, stochastic process on a two-dimensional landscape. An ecologically superior invader and a resident species compete for space preemptively. Our general model includes the basic contact process and a variant of the Eden model as special cases. We employ the concept of a “roughened” front to quantify effects of discreteness and stochasticity on invasion; we emphasize the probability distribution of the front-runner's relative position. That is, we analyze the location of the most advanced invader as the extreme deviation about the front's mean position. We find that a class of models with different assumptions about neighborhood interactions exhibits universal characteristics. That is, key features of the invasion dynamics span a class of models, independently of locally detailed demographic rules. Our results integrate theories of invasive spatial growth and generate novel hypotheses linking habitat or landscape size (length of the invading front) to invasion velocity, and to the relative position of the most advanced invader.

This study reports the effects of viewing a Republican primary debate that took place December 2, 1999, in Manchester, New Hampshire, and includes six candidates: Gary Bauer, George Bush, Steve Forbes, Orrin Hatch, John McCain, and Alan Keyes. After viewing the debate, respondents' perceptions of candidate image changed, and candidate vote preferences also changed. Our results suggest that primary debate participation may have negative consequences for a campaign front-runner. This study also measures reactions to candidates' specific issue appeals and finds that appeals made by the large field of primary candidates vying for public attention—whom we label also-rans—tend to be evaluated more negatively by debate viewers than those appeals made by the better-known candidates. Finally, candidates who adopt the often employed debate strategy of attacking the front-runner might find that such a strategy is more successful if employed in moderation.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives is the most powerful partisan figure in the contemporary U.S. Congress. How this came to be, and how the majority party in the House has made control of the speakership a routine matter, is far from straightforward.Fighting for the Speakershipprovides a comprehensive history of how Speakers have been elected in the U.S. House since 1789, arguing that the organizational politics of these elections were critical to the construction of mass political parties in America and laid the groundwork for the role they play in setting the agenda of Congress today. Jeffery Jenkins and Charles Stewart show how the speakership began as a relatively weak office, and how votes for Speaker prior to the Civil War often favored regional interests over party loyalty. While struggle, contention, and deadlock over House organization were common in the antebellum era, such instability vanished with the outbreak of war, as the majority party became an \"organizational cartel\" capable of controlling with certainty the selection of the Speaker and other key House officers. This organizational cartel has survived Gilded Age partisan strife, Progressive Era challenge, and conservative coalition politics to guide speakership elections through the present day.Fighting for the Speakershipreveals how struggles over House organization prior to the Civil War were among the most consequential turning points in American political history.

「哀兵」指涉的是賽事中居於不利地位的個人或團體。近年來，在國內外的選舉過程中，常見有候選人為自己貼上哀兵的標籤，以此向選民訴求，這種候選人宣傳自身處於「劣勢」，俾引起選民注意當事人是哀兵且可能會落選的作為，究竟有何影響？而當「人人都是哀兵」的情況下，如何創造較佳的廣告效果？本研究旨在瞭解候選人透過手機傳送哀兵訴求簡訊時（相較於領先者訴求），所可能產生的利益和風險，經由兩個實驗的結果發現：(1)相較於哀兵訴求，領先者訴求會使選民產生較佳的廣告態度與候選人反應；(2)哀兵訴求會因所搭配的論點有異，而產生截然不同的廣告效果：若搭配「積極迎戰」型論點，則其效果較領先者訴求為佳，但若搭配「競選不公」或「悲情求救」型論點，則其效果不如領先者訴求；(3)選民性別與政黨傾向會干擾訴求類型的相對效果。本研究除了在學理上有助於釐清選舉活動的哀兵訴求以及政治簡訊的傳播效果外，在實務上並可提供候選人擬定選戰策略之參考。

Existing dwellings receive frequent attention in climate change policy given the wealth of cost-effective, but un-exploited, energy-saving potential within their walls. Policy attention also recognises the need for instruments that can navigate around barriers and maximise opportunities to achieve deep carbon reductions. However, there is a lack of evidence and knowledge about the instruments that can boast of success. In response to this knowledge gap, the instruments that form the main policy response to reduce energy consumed for space and water heating in existing dwellings in several front-runner European countries are assessed. Aims are to include, and to go beyond, an understanding of effectiveness based on reported reductions in CO 2 emissions and/or monetary savings on energy bills. Effectiveness is also judged on the basis of how instruments reflect policy instrument and energy policy concepts drawn from literature. Results show that the instruments that define action of front-runners differ significantly. Front-runners fail to reconcile all the identified concepts in their main instruments but some feature strongly. In this regard, selected countries established their main instruments over two decades ago, reflecting the concept of long-term instrument development and support. However, few front-runners adequately monitor and evaluate instruments to illuminate cause and effect. Front-runners struggle to diversify their core instrument approaches to capture ‘hard to reach households’ such as the private rental sector and lower-income households. The divergence in the instruments that form the main policy response of front-runners allows for the characteristics of a range of instruments to be analysed including regulations, information tools, taxes and incentives.

Policy attention to the energy saving and CO 2 emission reduction potential of the existing residential stock is heightening. Alongside this is an acknowledgement that creative policy instruments are needed for existing dwellings. However, a knowledge gap surrounds the type of instruments that can sufficiently improve the energy saving potential of existing dwellings. In this chapter, the instruments that dominate policy action to reduce energy consumed for space heating in the existing residential stock of several front‐running European countries are assessed. The assessment uses concepts to highlight how front‐runners deal with complexities of designing instruments for this sector. Results show that the instruments that dominate action of front‐runners differ remarkably. The instruments that dominate the action of front‐runners show some of the key elements that could maximise a portfolio of instruments for existing dwellings. Findings also demonstrate that the knowledge gap surrounding cause and effect continues as few front‐runners consistently monitor and evaluate instruments.