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Seemingly similar individuals often experience drastically different success trajectories, with some repeatedly failing and others consistently succeeding. One explanation is preexisting variability along unobserved fitness dimensions that is revealed gradually through differential achievement. Alternatively, positive feedback operating on arbitrary initial advantages may increasingly set apart winners from losers, producing runaway inequality. To identify social feedback in human reward systems, we conducted randomized experiments by intervening in live social environments across the domains of funding, status, endorsement, and reputation. In each system we consistently found that early success bestowed upon arbitrarily selected recipients produced significant improvements in subsequent rates of success compared with the control group of nonrecipients. However, success exhibited decreasing marginal returns, with larger initial advantages failing to produce much further differentiation. These findings suggest a lesser degree of vulnerability of reward systems to incidental or fabricated advantages and a more modest role for cumulative advantage in the explanation of social inequality than previously thought.

Since 2010, petitioner claims of shoulder injury related to vaccine administration (SIRVA) to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) have been increasing. To conduct a scientific review of clinical characteristics of SIRVA petitions to the VICP. We queried the VICP’s Injury Compensation System database for medical reports of alleged SIRVA and SIRVA-like injuries. Medical reports are summaries of petitioner claims and supporting documentation along with a VICP clinician reviewer diagnosis and assessment of criteria for concession. We conducted a descriptive analysis of SIRVA petitioner claims recommended by the VICP for concession as SIRVA injuries. We identified 476 petitioner claims recommended for concession. Claims per year increased from two in 2011, the first full year in the analytic period, to 227 in 2016. Median age was 51 years, 82.8% were women, and median body mass index was 25.1 (range 17.0–48.9). Four hundred cases (84.0%) involved influenza vaccine. Pharmacy or store (n = 168; 35.3%) was the most common place of vaccination followed by doctor’s office (n = 147; 30.9%). Fewer than half of cases reported a suspected administration error; 172 (36.1%) reported ‘injection too high’ on the arm. Shoulder pain, rotator cuff problems, and bursitis were common initial diagnoses. Most (80.0%) cases received physical or occupational therapy, 60.1% had at least one steroid injection, and 32.6% had surgery. Most (71.9%) healthcare providers who gave opinions on causality considered the injury was caused by vaccination. A minority (24.3%) of cases indicated that symptoms had resolved by the last visit available in medical records. Most conceded claims for SIRVA were in women and involved influenza vaccines. Injection too high on the arm could be a factor due to the risk of injecting into underlying non-muscular tissues. Healthcare providers should be aware of proper injection technique and anatomical landmarks when administering vaccines.

Four former slaves from North Carolina became the first African Americans to petition Congress in 1797. In the winter of 1799–1800, two of these black activists joined sixty-nine others in a second petition. Scholars have long recognized the symbolic importance of these petitions, but their background, creation, and reception remain poorly understood. Historians generally frame them in negative terms, mistakenly assuming that white abolitionists did not support the black petitioners and incorrectly asserting that Congress determined African Americans lacked the First Amendment right of petition. This article reevaluates the efforts and influence of these early black petitioners by drawing on previously unused manuscript evidence, including rough drafts of both petitions and congressional committee reports. The former slaves found allies in Philadelphia's autonomous black institutions and the Quakers’ Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings. Moreover, the House of Representatives formally received the second petition and addressed some of the black activists’ concerns by both passing the Slave Trade Act of 1800 and defeating or modifying proposals that would have eroded the rights of free black citizens. These episodes demonstrate the early abolitionist movement's interracial character and political influence despite racial prejudice and the Constitution's proslavery provisions.

This article proposes two explanations for why public confidence in China's central authorities has appeared high and stable since the early 1990s. Drawing on interviews with petitioners in Beijing, it argues that trust in the Center is resilient in the sense that individuals who might be expected to lose trust often manage to retain it by redefining what constitutes the Center and what is trustworthy about it. On one hand, they remain confident by excluding authorities they find untrustworthy from the Center. On the other hand, they remain confident in the Center's commitment even when they no longer trust its capabilities. Drawing on a local survey conducted in 2011, this article suggests that global and generic measures used in national surveys may overstate the amount of public confidence in central authorities by missing two subtle variations. First, people may sound confident about central leaders in general while they only trust one or some leaders. Second, people may sound fully confident about central leaders while they only have partial trust.

What precipitated the 2003–06 “high tide” of petitioning Beijing and why did the tide wane? Interviews and archival sources suggest that a marked increase in petitioners coming to the capital was at least in part a response to encouraging signals that emerged when Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao adopted a more populist leadership style. Because the presence of tens of thousands of petitioners helped expose policy failures of the previous leadership team, the Hu-Wen leadership appeared reasonably accommodating when petitioners arrived en masse in Beijing. Soon, however, the authorities shifted towards control and suppression, partly because frustrated petitioners employed disruptive tactics to draw attention from the Centre. In response to pressure from above, local authorities, especially county leaders, turned to coercion to contain assertive petitioners and used bribery to coax officials in the State Bureau of Letters and Visits to delete petition registrations. The high tide receded in late 2006 and was largely over by 2008. This article suggests that a high tide is more likely after a central leadership change, especially if a populist programme strikes a chord with the population and elite turnover augments confidence in the Centre and heightens expectations that it will be responsive to popular demands.

What is the significance of distinguishing trust in government's commitment from trust in its competence in understanding the relationship between political trust and political participation? Chinese farmers have more trust in the central government's commitment to protect their rights and interests than in its capacity to do so. Trust in the center's competence carries more weight than trust in its commitment in accounting for the propensity to petition. Petitioning tends to weaken trust in the center's capacity as well as trust in its commitment. Distrust in the center's commitment enhances the propensity to engage in more assertive forms of political participation.

Although litigants invest a huge amount of resources in crafting legal briefs for submission to the Supreme Court, few studies examine whether and how briefs influence Court decisions. This article asks whether legal participants are strategic when deciding how to frame a case brief and whether such frames influence the likelihood of receiving a favorable outcome. To explore these questions, a theory of strategic framing is developed and litigants' basic framing strategies are hypothesized based on Riker's theory of rhetoric and heresthetic as well as the strategic approach to judicial politics. Using 110 salient cases from the 1979–89 terms, I propose and develop a measure of a typology of issue frames and provide empirical evidence that supports a strategic account of how parties frame cases.

The role of constitutional courts in deeply divided societies is complicated by the danger that the salient societal cleavages may influence judicial decisionmaking and, consequently, undermine judicial impartiality and independence. With reference to the decisions of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article investigates the influence of ethno-national affiliation on judicial behaviour and the extent to which variation in judicial tenure amplifies or dampens that influence. Based on a statistical analysis of an original dataset of the Court's decisions, we find that the judges do in fact divide predictably along ethno-national lines, at least in certain types of cases, and that these divisions cannot be reduced to a residual loyalty to their appointing political parties. Contrary to some theoretical expectations, however, we find that long-term tenure does little to dampen the influence of ethno-national affiliation on judicial behaviour. Moreover, our findings suggest that this influence may actually increase as a judge acclimates to the dynamics of a divided court. We conclude by considering how alternative arrangements for the selection and tenure of judges might help to ameliorate this problem.

We know men's violence against women is costly. Yet, we know little about the costs—or benefits—of women's efforts to end it. This study investigates the temporal dynamics of women's earnings and petitioning for a Protection from Abuse (PFA) civil restraining order. Women's earnings might rise or fall at the time of petitioning but quickly return to pre-petitioning levels, a short-term boost or shock; or, petitioning might precipitate a longer-term stall or upward shift in women's earnings. To test for these effects, we use latent growth curve analysis and evaluate women's earnings trajectories over six years. We find overwhelming evidence that the period around petitioning is one of exceptional earnings instability for petitioners, many of whom experience both shocks and stalls. Virtually no one experiences a boost in the quarter of petitioning or an upward shift in earnings growth in the year after petitioning for a PFA. Welfare, however, buffers negative effects of petitioning on women's earnings growth. We also calculate lost earnings as the difference between women's counterfactual projected and estimated earnings. Our findings inform theoretical and policy debates about interventions intended to address poverty and violence against women.