Author guidelines for journals could help to promote transparency, openness, and reproducibility

We propose to change the default P-value threshold for statistical significance from 0.05 to 0.005 for claims of new discoveries. T he lack of reproducibility of scientific studies has caused growing concern over the credibility of claims of new discoveries based on 'statistically significant' findings. There has been much progress toward documenting and addressing several causes of this lack of reproducibility (for example, multiple testing, P-hacking, publication bias and under-powered studies). However, we believe that a leading cause of non-reproducibility has not yet been adequately addressed: statistical standards of evidence for claiming new discoveries in many fields of science are simply too low. Associating statistically significant findings with P < 0.05 results in a high rate of false positives even in the absence of other experimental, procedural and reporting problems.For fields where the threshold for defining statistical significance for new discoveries is P < 0.05, we propose a change to P < 0.005. This simple step would immediately improve the reproducibility of scientific research in many fields. Results that would currently be called significant but do not meet the new threshold should instead be called suggestive. While statisticians have known the relative weakness of using P ≈ 0.05 as a threshold for discovery and the proposal to lower it to 0.005 is not new 1,2 , a critical mass of researchers now endorse this change.We restrict our recommendation to claims of discovery of new effects. We do not address the appropriate threshold for confirmatory or contradictory replications of existing claims. We also do not advocate changes to discovery thresholds in fields that have already adopted more stringent standards (for example, genomics and high-energy physics research; see the 'Potential objections' section below).We also restrict our recommendation to studies that conduct null hypothesis significance tests. We have diverse views about how best to improve reproducibility, and many of us believe that other ways of summarizing the data, such as Bayes factors or other posterior summaries based on clearly articulated model assumptions, are preferable to P values. However, changing the P value threshold is simple, aligns with the training undertaken by many researchers, and might quickly achieve broad acceptance.

Voters in mass elections are notorious for their apparent lack of information about relevant political matters. While some scholars argue that an electorate of well-informed voters is necessary for the production of responsive electoral outcomes, others argue that apparently ignorant voters will suffice because they can adapt their behavior to the complexity of electoral choice. To evaluate the validity of these arguments, I develop and analyze a survey of California voters who faced five complicated insurance reform ballot initiatives. I find that access to a particular class of widely available information shortcuts allowed badly informed voters to emulate the behavior of relatively well informed voters. This finding is suggestive of the conditions under which voters who lack encyclopedic information about the content of electoral debates can nevertheless use information shortcuts to vote as though they were well informed.

Cabinet coalitions in multiparty parliamentary democracies lead a precarious existence. Legislative majorities can typically dismiss the cabinet at will and can sometimes force early elections through parliamentary dissolution. Since coalition termination can have substantial political consequences, it is important to understand when and why such decisions are made. To this end, we develop a model of coalition bargaining in a legislature with dismissal and dissolution powers. We use the model to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for both coalition termination and parliamentary dissolution. In contrast to several widely held maxims, we find that coalition terminations need not be the automatic consequence of exogenous shocks. Nor do opportunistic parties with favorable electoral prospects always dissolve parliament to enhance their power. Instead, decisions to terminate coalitions or call new elections result from party leaders' rational responses to the constraints of legislative and electoral institutions and the anticipated feelings of the electorate.

Until recently, direct democracy scholarship was primarily descriptive or normative. Much of it sought to highlight the processes' shortcomings. We describe new research that examines direct democracy from a more scientific perspective. We organize the discussion around four "old" questions that have long been at the heart of the direct democracy debate: Are voters competent? What role does money play? How does direct democracy affect policy? Does direct democracy benefit the many or the few? We find that recent breakthroughs in theory and empirical analysis paint a comparatively positive picture of the initiative and referendum. For example, voters are more competent, and the relationship between money and power in direct democracy is less nefarious, than many observers allege. More new studies show that the mere presence of direct democracy induces sitting legislatures to govern more effectively.