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This paper will examine how extreme partisanship in the United States Senate has prevented any significant collaborative efforts between the President Obama and Congress. I argue that the United States Senate is undergoing a modern era of disunion. The conditions in the Senate can be directly traced to the concerted efforts of Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to maintain ideological purity among his caucus members for the purposes ensuring that President Obama's has a failed presidency by asserting a Republican agenda that is aimed at undermining the legitimacy of Democratic initiatives. The Constitutional responsibility for shared governance has been severely compromised by conservative factions of the Republican Party. Subsequently, members of Congress who wish to find compromises across party lines are shut out of the political process. I propose that the restoration and continued health of the American democracy is dependent on the members' ability to reassert their influence collectively into the political process through engaging their colleagues and constituencies in the process of deliberative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Winthrop University used its location in the Charlotte metropolitan area to develop a course that combined academic content with an experiential component during the Democratic National Convention. This paper seeks to use a variety of measures of student performance to determine the relative value of experiential learning. Consistent with previous findings, the experiential component did not lead to new academic knowledge, or necessarily improve students' academic performance. However, the academic portion of the course did seem to provide students with the necessary context to understand the value of the experiential component. In addition, consistent with the literature, the experiential component did seem to be a meaningful and memorable experience that may encourage students to continue to be actively engaged citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the failure of the U.S. government in achieving good foreign intelligence that has led to the events of September 11, 2001. It informs that from the starting of the U.S. Republic, the need for good intelligence in wartime has been critical. The U.S. President George Bush mentioned that foreign intelligence forms the basic part of the constitutional authority.

Even before she came onto the national political screen, Sarah Palin, a former Governor of the State of Alaska and the former 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, was mentioned in The Washington Post Newspaper as a noteworthy politician. This commentary will attempt to discern why that was and still is the case, considering the fact she often ends actions soon after she starts them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the program of the 2023 Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference. It includes workshops, panels, roundtable discussions, and presentations on various topics such as converting research into policy change, securing collaborative and international grants, individual and household decision-making during disasters, learning from past elections, and the role of race and ethnicity in politics.

A conference paper about the adoption of school interventions for youth obesity prevention in the U.S. is presented. It utilizes cross-sectional probit analysis and fifty state data through 2007 to analyze the adoption in different categorical school interventions. The findings reveal that the state government is more likely to adopt the school intervention of setting competitive food nutritional standards.

Since the end of the Second World War, two political parties have dominated political activity in the Kurdish territory in Northern Iraq: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Recently, a new movement has begun to emerge that presents the first legitimate opposition to these ruling parties. The Change List, a splinter group formed by former PUK members, is mobilizing Kurdish voters on the platform of change. In the KRG's 2009 parliamentary elections, the Kurdistan Region's ruling parties took nearly 60% of the votes, leaving the Change List with a mere 25% of the open parliamentary seats. While still a loss for the new movement, this development illustrated an unprecedented shift away from the nearly seventy years of the patronistic rule that defined Kurdish politics. This paper hypothesizes that voter concerns regarding nepotism, patronism and lack of transparency with the ruling parties drove this ground-breaking development and that socioeconomic changes over the past two decades have allowed for this shift in voter preferences. The emergence of the Gorran-Change List indicates a challenge to the status-quo relationship between the parties and the voters. This study will use a historical-sociological single-case study of security and economic liberalization as possible causal mechanisms influencing the realignment of the party-voter relationship in the Kurdish Regional Government of Northern Iraq. Additionally, this paper will investigate the implications of this shift on the Kurdish nationalist and separatist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the politics in organizational design is presented. It looks at the design of the authoritative decision-making bodies. The design principles incorporated by classic intergovernmentalism are discussed, which include the first principle of sovereignty. The paper also explores the circumstances that may influence states to choose one institutional form over the other. Exmples of institutions are presented, including the United Nations Security Council and the European Commission.

This paper examines implementation of Reinventing Government (REGO) policies in US municipalities between 1997 and 2003. The data for the paper come from two ICMA surveys of city managers and chief administrative officers of US municipalities with populations over 10,000 conducted in 1997 and 2003. The data indicate that city managers are important actors in implementing REGO policies. The 1997 results show that the manager's attitude toward REGO is the most important predictor of making REGO policy recommendations. Several local government and community variables are also important predictors. The 2003 results show that local government and community variables have become more important than the manager's attitude. We conclude from this that REGO has taken on more of a local flavor over the six year time span. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a policy subsystem adapt to conflicting policies? What happens when the negative externalities of distributive policies are in conflict with regulatory policies? Will such conflict trigger subsystem change? These questions are important to our understanding of the "inner life" of policy subsystems. This paper examines the structural changes that occur in a policy subsystem when the negative externalities of distributive policies conflict with the goals of regulatory policies. Set against the backdrop of the Mississippi River watershed, the paper examines the region's navigation and flood policies; the negative externalities of wetland loss in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico's seasonal "dead zone"; and the regulatory policies that address these externalities. This study is longitudinal in nature with baseline data spanning six decades. Data is complied from congressional hearings, Environmental Impact Statements, and federal court records. I propose that the conflict between distributive policies and regulatory policies leads to an expansion of the policy subsystem, causing the system to mimic an issue network as opposed to the iron triangle model that characterizes the politics of distributive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we reconsider the Riker thesis on the emergence of the slavery issue. We understand the central proposition of Riker?s analysis in the same terms as does Weingast, who defines ?the Riker thesis? as: ?the political use of slavery to break up the intersectional [Democratic] coalition of NW [northwest] and S [south]? (Weingast 1998, 164). Unlike Riker?s severest critics, we are inclined to accept his theoretical claims regarding the potential for political instability in democratic regimes and the opportunities this instability may present for astute political leaders. However, we think Riker errs in systematically understating the importance of ideas as opposed to strategic interests or calculations of politicians in causing the emergence of the slavery issue and generating disequilibrium in the 1850s. In this paper our primary objective is to raise a series of questions that we believe pose major challenges to the Riker thesis and point toward the need to revise Riker?s theory of issue selection in democracies to incorporate greater attention to the importance of ideas, especially ideas about fundamental principles underlying democratic regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become fashionable in recent years for party scholars to complain how the Supreme Court has treated political parties. Party scholars have especially complained that the Supreme Court has ignored important political science literature in their decision in Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party (1997) (banning fusion candidacies) and the two political party-related campaign finance cases, Colorado I (1996) and Colorado II (2001). Yet rarely is this criticism coupled with any analysis of whether political science has been reaching the Court in the form of party and amicus briefs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to take a step back from this popular criticism to describe the role that political science materials have played in the Supreme Court?s jurisprudence relating to political parties. I examine twenty cases, stretching over four issue areas ? ballot access, internal party governance, party patronage, and campaign finance ? to see what role, if any, political science materials played in the party and amicus briefs presented to the Court. Since the Supreme Court relies primarily on the litigants and interested parties for information, it is imperative that before we criticize the Court for not using political science, we must first determine if political science is reaching the Court and, if not, what can be done to improve the situation. This paper is divided into four parts. Part I examines the literature from political scientists on the Supreme Court?s political party jurisprudence. Part II is devoted to explaining case selection and the methodology behind determining the role that political science played in the briefs. The longest section of the paper, Part III, dissects the twenty cases to determine the role political science played in the cases. Part IV serves as the conclusion, with words on where political science stands with the Supreme Court on cases involving political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about investigating the effects of political science education on the feelings of the students for the U.S. and its political system is presented. It discusses impact of political scientists' curricular practices and pedagogical approaches on students. It examines the political courses introduced by political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, and explores how learning about American politics in comparative perspective affected students' attitudes towards the U.S.

The International Republican Institute (IRI) has conducted political party building programs in developing democracies for twenty-five years. The historic and geographic breadth of the Institute's work in this area gives it a unique perspective, which can yield important lessons about strategies and activities that are most successful in strengthening and democratizing political parties. To identify lessons learned from this experience, IRI's Office of Monitoring and Evaluation undertook case study research of political party programs in eight countries. To frame the research, the team first developed six principles that describe attributes of a mature, fully-functioning political party. The research phase of the project included a desktop review of in-house documents, a review of political conditions on the ground and interviews with in-country partners, as well as IRI staff in Washington, D.C. and in the field. Using the collected data, the team then assessed the extent to which targeted parties had developed, and what role the Institute had played in that development, using the six principles to frame the analysis. Based on the findings of this research, this paper provides an overview of common strategies and activities employed by IRI to promote party development. This paper also makes some initial conclusions regarding how IRI's activities impacted party development in particular political contexts, including why some strategies may have been more effective than others. These conclusions are then distilled into a series of recommendations designed to inform and strengthen future party development efforts. The recommendations are elaborated on throughout the body of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While considerable attention has been devoted to institutional arrangements as a determinant of citizen coproduction (citizen participation in public services production), much less attention has been given to modeling the theoretically expected individual-level determinants and their interaction with the government initiatives that intentionally try to increase citizen coproduction. This leaves an unclear ground for empirical testing of the effects of both the individual-level factors and government initiatives. This paper proposes a number of theoretical models which combine the various suggested individual-level determinants of citizen coproduction. Moreover, the paper models the interaction of the individual-level determinants with the government initiatives in the explanation of citizen coproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the very beginning of Plato's Republic, Polemarchus and a few associates emerge to interdict the passage of Socrates and Glaucon as the two are returning home to Athens. When Socrates asks if he might persuade his interlocutors to let the two Athenians pass, Polemarchus says that his group simply will not listen, and that Socrates and Glaucon "better make up [their] mind to that (ο?τω διανο∊?σ&thetas;∊)." The present paper seizes upon this highly enigmatic phrase as a point of departure for interrogating the relationship between free thought and political power at the founding of political theory. The paper draws on the history of ancient Greek religious practices and a particular psychoanalytic topology put forward by Jacques Lacan, in order to demonstrate that this enigmatic and overtly politicized opening of the Republic memorializes a dialectical relationship, always present but repressed, between political forces and the "pure thought" of philosophical theory. Along these lines it is shown how Plato situates even the very philosophical high point of the Republic, the theory of forms, in a political topology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the paper highlighting the role of intra-group fighting in the dynamics of self-determination conflicts. It reflects on the commitment problems among the group which arises due to shifts in relative power. The paper will be presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana from January 5-8, 2011.

The article offers information on a paper highlighting improvements in theconceptualization of general theory of dyadic representation. It reflects on the two lines of theory on the bases of studies conducted to determine representational linkages between elected officials and constituents. The paper will be presented at the annual conference of the Southern Political Science Association to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana from January 5-8, 2011.

The study of the background and characteristics of legislators is among the oldest veins of literature in political science. These studies often use the attributes of individual members to assess their ability to be representative and the characteristics of the whole house to determine the legislature's ability to be effective. The term limit debate also brought this question back into the forefront as supporters of these restrictions placed less emphasis on understanding the institutional importance of legislative careers, but sought to indiscriminately kick incumbents out of office. More systematic analysis of the careers of state legislators is needed to gain a more sophisticated view of why people stay in office or depart. This paper seeks to explain the career choices of legislators as a function of the institutions in which they serve. Utilizing a novel data source, Project Vote Smart, data from all state legislators between 1996 and 2006 are examined to explain why some stay in office and others depart. First, this paper presents a clearer picture of state legislators, including their social backgrounds and career paths. Second, this paper uses institutional rules, such as the ability to gain institutional power and the paths by which members can gain internal professional development, to explain these various career choices. In more fully explaining why legislators make specific career decisions this analysis provides a clearer picture of who our elected representatives are, their motives for staying versus leaving office, and the implication of these variables on the composition of the legislature. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few decades, globalization has become a trendy topic among political scientists and government officials. Once thought to be seen as the key to westernization and the increased homogeneity around the globe, has now become a source of criticism. Instead globalization has increased the gap between North and South communities, disregarded environmental concerns, and has reduced the quality of health for those not members of the First World. In Richard Falk's Predatory Globalization, he offers a solution to the current problems associated to globalization. However, unlike other philosophers who determined that the best way to deal with globalization is to over throw it, Falk offers a solution that can be integrated with the globalization and solve the shortcomings it presents (Falk 1999). His solution comes in to different parts. Falk's argument discusses how globalization's negative effects can be corrected through two specific forms- bottom-up globalization and normative democracy. This paper analyzes Richard Falk's solution for the global issues that have risen out of globalization. It specifically addresses bottom-up globalization and what effects this could play on the future of globalization. As a result of examining Richard Falk's Predatory Globalization and comparing his solution to other political theorists, this paper shows in order to combat the ill effects of globalization, one must first accept that globalization is real and that through what Falk describes as "bottom-up globalization" globalization will not be repudiated, but rather the adverse effects and social injustices that occur as a result will be regulated. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How people evaluate their executive offices, both at national or local levels, has been a long term research interest in political science. Some scholars claimed that people's perception of their quality of life should play an important role on affecting executive official's approval. However, others pointed out that race did influence residence's satisfaction to government and officials as well. This paper examines the change of approval rates of Ray Nagin, an African American Major of the city of New Orleans, before and after Hurricane Katrina. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to figure out what factors influenced Nagin's approval and what difference in public opinion had been made after the city experienced the catastrophe. By taking advantage of the 2004 and 2006 Quality of Life Survey conducted by the University of New Orleans Survey Research Center, the findings indicates that some items of residence's perception of quality of life affected the approval to Mayor Nagin and race also play a important role on changing people's evaluation of their mayor drastically. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do parties that do not fight for controlling government, that do not behave in a traditional government-opposition dynamic, that do not have the incentive of forming coalition differ from traditional parties? How do parties that cannot offer to carry on specific policies campaign for votes? I will address these questions in this paper. More specifically, I argue that the studies of legislative behavior at the EU level need to understand this new actor and the role of them in the new Europe to come. In this paper, I develop a theoretical model of the European level political party. I argue that this party presents completely different characteristics from the conventional definition of parties used in political science. The European parties develop a technocratic profile given the EU institutional setting. Furthermore, I posit that this has implications for the European parliament as a whole, who has already developed a more technocratic profile. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Election boycotts are a common occurrence in unconsolidated democracies particularly in the developing world, with prominent examples from recent years occurring in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. Despite the frequent occurrence of boycotts, there are few studies available in the scholarly literature concerning the effectiveness of electoral boycotts, particularly as a strategy of opposition parties seeking to bring about the end of electoral authoritarian governments. This paper is based in the democratization literature, with a particular focus on the behavior and vulnerabilities of hybrid or electoral authoritarian regimes. Using an original dataset with global coverage including hybrid regimes from 1980 to 2006, this paper seeks to use event-history analysis to determine the efficacy of boycotts in national elections among other factors thought to undermine electoral authoritarian regimes as well as the possibilities for subsequent democratization occurring following both contested and boycotted electoral processes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collapse of the Soviet experiment and the country that embodied it, as well as the great success of Chinese economic reform and its short-lived democratic movement in the summer of 1989, have attracted much attention from lots of political scientists. The great changes were regarded as two different ways of democratization. However, 15 years later, things didn't turn out to be what the political scientists expected. Russia's backlash to a non-democracy and China's successful economic development without any solid political reform seriously question the conclusion. This paper compares the political and economic changes in the former Soviet Union (Russia) and China from a new perspective based on the additional information in the 15 years after the great events and tries to predict better the democratic future of these two big developing countries. The paper will proceed in three parts. First, I will compare the political and economic reforms of the former Soviet Union and China in the 1980's and the beginning of 1990's. I will explain why the reforms ended up differently in these communist countries. Next, I will review the literature and theories about the democracy, capitalism, and market economy from the perspectives of Western political scientists and Marxists. The interesting finding is that although different ideologies, both schools emphasize the significance of development of capitalist economy. Finally, I will demonstrate the importance of economic precondition of democracy and discuss the democratic prospect of Russia and China based on their economic development and social structure. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes and contrasts gubernatorial and legislative influence in agency rules and regulations in state administration overtime. In addition, it compares and contrasts the influence overtime of the two institutional oversight actors with state courts, professional associations, and clientele groups. Utilizing data from American State Administrators Project (ASAP) surveys administered in the 1978 to 2004 time-period, we describe and assess the level and pattern of influence of these policy actors in this central administrative function. Who is minding the store? Who has access to the store? We find remarkable stability in the extent and patterns of influence of these actors on agency rules and regulations. A partial answer to the question we pose is that the governor may have more of an oversight role in this area than is commonly credited to him. The remainder of the paper considers the impact of gubernatorial and legislative control, agency size, agency head tenure, and agency type on the influence of these institutional and non-institutional actors on administrative rule making. Our most prominent finding is that who is minding the store and how wide open for access the door is very much a function of the type of agency in question. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generating good and useful quantitative measures from qualitative information is almost never a simple endeavor. Although almost all researchers would agree that we should consider issues of measurement reliability and validity, there is little guidance on how we should consider them. This paper explores the theoretical defining characteristics of reliability, validity, accuracy, and precision drawing on various theoretical perspectives to delineate them as separate characteristics of measures. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates how and when scholars should present indicators of reliability in particular, drawing significantly from the psychometric and education research traditions. Finally, the paper tests how well political science scholars indicate reliability by empirically examining articles in prominent journals. This study promotes the use of reliability indicators to improve the verifiability of research in political science and increase the cumulatively and progress of findings and data creation. By incorporating reliability estimates, qualitative researchers will be able to justify their measures, and quantitative researchers can expand their research into areas outside clearly observable numerical units of analysis. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redistricting is the most nakedly partisan activity in American politics. Political science research and the courts generally acknowledge that redistricting undertaken in a partisan environment where one party completely controls the legislative process results in a perpetuation of the majority at the cost of the minority. The 2001 Georgia redistricting did precisely that, perpetuating a legislative majority that was a popular minority. The rejection of those maps by the federal courts in 2004 led to a politically-uncontrolled redistricting of the state legislature. In this paper, we examine the effect of changing legislative boundaries by court order on the political outcomes of the Georgia House of Representatives in 2004. By examining the changing partisan structure of the districts, the altered racial structure, and the treatment and placement of incumbents, we develop a multivariate analysis of the changing structure of seat possession in the Georgia House of Representatives. Our analysis indicates that there are significant political effects due to the unexpected redistricting. These changes were sufficient to change the control of the chamber, based on the assumption that the same relationships between predictor variables remained constant from 2002 to 2004. We also find, however, that there are changes in the relationship between predictor variables and the political outcomes, indicating that the remap alone does not explain the magnitude of political gains by the Georgia Republicans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislative delay has been overlooked as a signal of commitment to abide by the terms of an international agreement. Nations face varied international and domestic pressures to formalize international conventions. I argue that this struggle between competing pressures reveals the intentions of each nation to abide by the terms of the agreement. Previous studies of legislative delay neglect important variables, suffer from restrictive assumptions, and fail to frame legislative delay as part of a two stage game. This paper uses the case of the Basel Convention to support my hypotheses. I use Kaplan-Meier and Cox-proportional hazard models to estimate the proportional effects of international and domestic political pressures and resource constraints on legislative delay. After controlling for the type of ratification, legislative delay is a function of previous domestic regulations in the same policy space and the regulatory quality of the nation. These factors signal satisfaction with the convention and represent significant commitments to abiding by its terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that legislative-executive relations at the national level may be a function of individual entrepreneurial actions. Through a secondary analysis of Mayhew's (2000) data on MC actions, I suggest that individual MC's are in fact entrepreneurial actors engaging in behaviors that have institutional consequences as to the "locus" of power between the Congress and the presidency. Furthermore, I found that this behavior is historically contingent relative to "eras" of congressional versus presidential government. There are statistically significant differences in the amount of intstitutional empowering behavior between the the congressional era (1867-1904) and the presidential era (1933-1976) wherein the MC's engage in higher levels of institutional entrepreneurialism in the era when they are the "out-group" regarding the level of "institutional power overall." Also, I found that institutional entrepreneurialism is on the whole a common activity regardless of the "era" of government suggesting that MC'a are rational actors in pursuit of power (e.g. Fenno 1973, Mayhew 1974, Dodd 1986). Finally, I found that such activity is consistent with periodization schemes that guage "institutional power" like the beforementioned eras of congressional and presidential government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing rivalries between China and U.S. starting from economic issues, diffusing to political and military dimensions, reassure the rational solutions presumed by power transition theory. By examining the combined effects of international systemic structure, international context, the impact of Chinese democratization, the changing share of national capability, Chinese nationalism, and domestic politics, the paper builds an empirical model to analyze how these factors shape the patterns of Sino-American Conflict over time. The model identifies a new pattern of conflict due to the increasing interdependence of economy and specifies that comprehensive engagement enhances rather than threats to U.S. leading power. Therefore the model predicts more cooperation than confrontation in Sino-U.S. relations in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many researchers have argued that bicameralism is a key institution that increases legislative delays and gridlock. However, virtually no theoretical or empirical research to date has explored the effects of bicameralism in new democracies. This paper tests the effects of bicameral divergences and decision rules on lawmaking activities using original data from Brazil for the period 1988-2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Levels of trust in government vary dramatically over time, yet this variation has only recently been studied systematically. Instead, most analysts have looked at cross-sections of citizens to determine the factors that account for different levels of trust at a given point in time. In this paper, we combine these two lines of research. We account for changes in trust over time for citizens divided into partisan groupings. Further, we look at three different periods of time: a biennial series stretching from 1964 to 2002, a quarterly series from Fall 1991 to Spring 2002, and a weekly series that runs from July 2000 to January 2001. This analysis allows us to examine changes in the degree to which citizens of different political outlooks trust the federal government over time. We find that differences across Democrats, Republicans and independents are present, yet some factors move all three groups in similar ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that strategic voting in young democracies increases as voters become more experienced with the functioning of democracy. This proposition is tested with election results from Eastern European countries. The amount of wasted votes decreases with time, controlling for the number of lists running, the electoral system, the legal threshold, and the amount of votes for the leading list. The study contributes to the literature on strategic voting and democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the work of Downs and Mayhew, most theories of legislative politics assume that the participants are motivated only by electoral interests. Other theories, however, (like the work of Fenno and the conditional party government perspective of Aldrich and Rohde) posit that legislators have policy interests in addition to electoral ones. In this paper, we seek to ascertain whether it is possible to classify legislators according to these different motives, and to determine if the different measured motives are related to systematic differences in behavior. The focus of the study will be the set of Republican freshman representatives elected in 1994. It is our theoretical expectation that individuals with ideological motives will behave differently (ceteris paribus) from those with only electoral motivations. We use various information from the period before their initial election to the House to classify the motives of these legislators. The analysis controls for other factors (e.g., the political alignment of the district) that might enhance or work counter to the general theoretical expectations. Our results indicate that members are influenced by factors outside of their district preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, political psychology research has focused intently on the two major models of individual information processing: on-line and memory-based. A number of factors, including the venue in which citizens receive political information and the kind of political judgment at hand, have been shown to influence the type of processing that will be employed. This paper asks whether candidate similarity affects the likelihood that voters will use one type of processing over the other. Using an experimental design conducted with 263 subjects, we find that subjects who chose between two candidates with similar policy positions later recalled more factual information about the candidates than did individuals who chose between two ideologically polarized candidates. Controlling for levels of political sophistication, the results suggest that candidate similarity may trigger a tendency for memory-based processing. An on-line tally may be of little utility when candidates do not take distinct policy positions, forcing voters to search their memories for some way to distinguish between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce a model of policy adoption that incorporates hierarchical elements of the federalist system that previous models overlook. We emphasize the role of the national government as a senior policy partner that sends signals to a state to reveal its preferences on policy adoption. We suggest that both the integrity of the signal's dissemination and the vertical penetration of the federal government into a state's policy area influence the impact of these signals on a state's decision to adopt. We test these expectations by examining states' pursuit of a controversial environmental policy -- environmental audit protection. In several venues, the federal government has clearly expressed its disapproval of state adoption of environmental audit programs; however, some states have ignored the EPA's signals and adopted such legislation anyway. We apply our modified model of state policy adoption to explain why some states are more responsive to the signals that the federal government sends with regard to policy adoptions. The results suggest that signals sent by the federal government on policy adoption are differentially received by the states. States that resist policy adoption, despite federal pressure, do so either because the integrity of the signal was compromised by the federalist organizational structure or because the vertical penetration of the federal government in a state's policy area is weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several authors have used game theory to analyze the strategic interaction of the competing groups of democratic transition as an analytical tool to clarify the strategies and beliefs of the actors. Most prominently, Przeworski's game theoretic analysis of political liberalization in authoritarian regimes that models the strategic interaction of civil society and liberalizers has provided much of the theoretical groundwork. This paper demonstrates that by treating and solving his original game as one with incomplete information we may gain a better understanding of the role of uncertainty in the process of democratic transition. This examination highlights the subsequent game theoretic improvements to Przeworski's model and some of the critiques of the theories employed by his model. Employing equilibrium refinements to earlier models, we posit and solve a model of the game incorporating uncertainty. The game is then used as a model of negotiated transition in Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore some of the conceptual difficulties associated with explaining individual participation in extremist politics. Policymakers and scholars interested in the mo-tivating factors behind terrorism and extremism need to move beyond the limited assump-tions associated with traditional analyses that all too frequently presume that individuals are engaged in a constant struggle to accrue the greatest number of material goods. Certainly individuals do strive for pecuniary gain. Still, such a framework may be better apt to describe the employee who changes one workplace for a higher paying substitute or even the astute politician altering their party?s platform in a bid to appeal to the electorate?s sway. Conjec-tures that all people seek to improve their material lot fail to explain the sacrifices made while engaging in other activities, particularly politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the dimensionality of lobbying based on a survey of lobbyists in ten states. Lobbyists employ a variety of tactics in their interactions with legislators that can be characterized along two dimensions, one based on how personal the relationship is, and the other based on the extent that information is exchanged between these actors. The findings suggest that there are few good ole' boy lobbyists, who rely solely on personal appeal strategies. Instead, there is a mix of those who are amateurs, those that utilize information based appeal strategies, and those that appear to use both personal relationships and information-based appeals in their interactions with legislators. Also included is a discussion of the specific activities that lobbyists utilize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1996 there has been a dramatic growth in party soft money and interest group issue advocacy spending in competitive congressional elections. These campaign expenditures are unlimited and independent of the candidates. They are also often more negative in tone than candidate communications. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is intended to eliminate soft money and some forms of issue advocacy. One of the standards the courts have employed in the past to justify campaign finance regulation is to retain public confidence in elections and democracy. While studies have been done on public confidence more generally, this paper is the first research on how voters who have been exposed to substantial soft money and issue advocacy campaigns react to those campaigns. First, we establish that the competitive races do indeed see a significantly higher number of advertising of all types compared to non-competitive races that do not attract significant party and interest group activity. We use a three wave panel design to closely examine four of these competitive races in 2002. We also include a national baseline sample. This allows us to test for effects over both space and time. We find that on the standard general measures of trust and confidence that exposure to intense soft money and issue advocacy electioneering has little impact. However, when asked more specific questions about the fairness and truthfulness of campaigns, voters in the battleground races were much less confident in the campaigns truthfulness and fairness, more likely to see the campaigns as more negative than previous campaigns, and inclined to stop paying attention to television and mail ads and turn instead to trusted sources of information like newspapers and television news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent events have brought to light the effort of the US government to create a civil society based opposition to the current Cuban regime. Although it has received almost all the attention because of the dramatic arrests and prison sentences of individuals associated with effort, it is not the only ? nor the major trend in civil society development in Cuba. The 1990’s to the present has seen a huge increase in what we might call ?authentic? civil society groups in Cuba ? those self generated at the grass roots level. These associations ? of every kind, most non-political, struggle and survive and may truly form the bases of political change in Cuba. As this genre of civil society association grows, citizens hone their organizational and democratic skills that may prove important in the future. This paper will examine these effort as well as review those generated by US policy (with some comparison to like effort made in the 1980’s and 1990’s in Eastern/Central Europe). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we look again at the distinction between independent voters "leaners" and partisans. We find some important similarities between "pure" independents and independents classified as "leaners." We argue that although independent leaners may be similar to partisans on some measures, they are behaviorally and attitudinally distinct from partisans in important ways. Even more importantly, the behavioral similarity between partisans and leaners changes when there are more than two candidates on offer. The behavioral similarity of leaners to partisans emphasized in previous studies can thus be understood as a product of the forced choice between the two parties that typifies the American political system. When more options are available, independent leaners take advantage of those options and do not remain loyal to the two big parties in the same measure as partisans. The position of independent leaners in the US is thus loosely analogous to the position tactical voters in multi-party systems in that they are compelled by the party system to choose between the lesser of two evils. Our argument suggests that earlier results and interpretations of independents reflected the specific two party choice settings of the 1950s through the 1980s. Furthermore, even assuming a behavioral similarity to partisans, leaners have distinct attitudes towards politics and the political system that put them far away from being standard Michigan model-type voters. We begin by presenting a brief review of the sizable literature on this topic. From here we present some simple evidence that supports an alternative interpretation of leaners as neither partisans nor "pure" independents, but as "critical citizens." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand the Supreme Court's wartime jurisprudence. Previous work in political science has found that the Supreme Court curtails rights and liberties during war to rally support for the president (e.g. Epstein et al 2005). This project refines this work by evaluating the Supreme Court's decision-making during war as a function of public support for the president. Generally, the Court behaves strategically, keeping an eye toward public opinion, to ensure that the elected branches will enforce the decisions of the Court and maintain the legitimacy of the Court (e.g. Barnum 1985; Page and Shapiro 1983; Marshall 1989; McGuire and Stimson 2004). During conflict, the Court's legitimacy as it relates to the president is of even more importance. When the president is popular, the Court will support the president to avoid a conflict with the president. However, when the president and the conflict are not popular with the public, the Court will be more likely to vote against the president and limit the authority of the president. This allows the Supreme Court to curry favor with the public by breaking with an unpopular president. I test this theory using decisions made by the Supreme Court from 1941 to 2006. This shows that during war, as popularity for the president declines, the probability that the Supreme Court votes to curtail rights and liberties declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that the project of engaging non-Western thought in political theory must amount to more than just an enrichment of political theory, particularly if we are to figure that project as one of de-parochialization rather than mere inclusion. "Including" non-Western others means to assume that they share the same "evidentiary rules" that characterize defensible argument in political theory. However, effacing their difference in this respect would disable them from raising precisely those questions required to truly deparochialize the discipline--namely, questions about how and in what way knowledge as such can be produced and made intelligible. Many theorists have suggested, however, that acknowledging the evidentiary rules of other communities amounts at best to marking the exclusions inherent in our own knowledge production, rather than adopting those rules as our own. I suggest a more radical approach to these dilemmas, by examining a series of Chinese conversations dating from the late Qing dynasty on the possibility of bian fa, or "changing referents." Bian fa thinking raises the possibility of institutional, cultural, and other forms of social change to alter the production of knowledge, and so better recognize the thought of others on their own terms. I suggest we follow these Chinese thinkers to consider how we might "change referents" to adopt the evidentiary rules of communities not our own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extensive public communication efforts of James Madison to move the U.S. toward war with Great Britain in the War of 1812. Madison employed various techniques, including public letters and numerous pro-war commentaries that were published in his presidential newspaper. The research findings demonstrate that Madison was a far more active leader as president than is commonly thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, scholars have turned to examining non-material determinants of conflict outcomes; however, their studies are limited in that these determinants are discussed only at war level, and accordingly, the importance of the art of war at battle level is overlooked. In this respect, Biddle's (2004) attempt to overcome such a lacuna in the literature is of critical importance. "Modern system force employment", he argues, affects the outcome of battles by damping the effects of numerical and technological superiority. However the empirical test of this argument was limited largely because of the unavailability of battle-level data. Thus, I compile a new battle data set, which I call BMW (Battles of Modern Warfare). Using the BMW data set, this paper finds that when an attacker using modern system force employment fights against a defender not using it, the attacker/defender loss exchange ratio (LER) decreases. On the contrary, if an attacker without employing modern system force employment assaults against a defender using it, the LER increases. (This latter finding is not statistically significant, though.) In short, using modern system force employment helps to reduce the loss of either attacker or defender. This pilot study contribute to our understanding of military effectiveness and conflict outcomes by shedding light on the importance of human factors using tactics and operational arts in battlefield outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous factors such as majority party status, seniority and floor speeches have been found to influence how successful a member of Congress is in getting their legislative agenda passed. However, members of Congress are not unitary actors; instead they each have large staffs to help them achieve their goals. One understudied aspect of legislative success is the role that staff members play in helping their congressperson pass bills into law. This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining how staff retention rates and salaries influence legislative productivity. Analysis will show that representatives with more experienced staff members and higher retention rates see more bills passed into law than those with inexperienced staff. Additionally, higher staff salaries do not appear to be associated with increases in legislative effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use unique data gathered by Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences to measure the extent to which respondents are consistent in choosing some values as more important than others, and to explore the relationship between choice consistency, ratings, and rankings of political values. According to the assumptions inherent within ranking procedures, each value to be ranked should be equally differentiated from the others, even though the affect towards these values should decrease monotonically as one moves from the top to the bottom of a value hierarchy. While this line of thinking may seem intuitive, we cannot be certain of one's "true" level of differentiation between ranked values since some differentiation is inherently a product of the ranking procedure. We hypothesize that respondents are best able to differentiate those values which are most and least important to them, with those values falling in the middle being much less differentiated from each other. We compute and model value choice consistency as a measure of differentiation, and confirm the alternative hypothesis. Finally, we explore the relevance of this finding to the political psychology of the individual and and perceived political reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political science literature on voting for decades has been influenced by a rational-choice calculus, with a strong focus on socioeconomic variables including income and education. In recent years, however, I argue that the field has turned toward a significantly more Aristotelian conception of voting, with a renewed focus on youth and civic socialization, habit formation, the role of community, and a greater understanding of the limits of rationality (or as Aristotle would have it, the logos) to compel human behavior. Very recent reform proposals by several political scientists to consider mandatory voting in America, in part to help combat economic power disparities, have remarkable similarities to proposals raised by Aristotle thousands of years ago in his Politics. Yet despite (I argue) the strong contemporary relevance of Aristotle's virtue theories, almost without exception all the foundational and recent texts on voter turnout possess either no or the briefest of references to classical political thought. This paper aims to restore the balance by a fully-derived theory of voter turnout drawn from Aristotle's Politics, Ethics and De Anima. I reinterpret some of the rational choice literature and subsequent randomized experimental literature and argue that not only does Aristotle provide an ideal synthesis for many of the most famous findings about voter turnout, the strong economic influences on this subfield would in many ways have benefited (and avoided several mistakes) with a greater classical foundation, and that Aristotle's ghost may yet have further testable hypotheses to offer to voter turnout research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we synthesize and extend theoretical accounts of the solicitor general's (SG) influence on the votes of Supreme Court justices. In particular, we argue that the level of politicization exhibited by the SG can affect both the foundation of political support the SG enjoys from ideologically proximate justices and the strength of "outlier signals" offered in particular cases. When the SG exhibits increased politicization, outlier signals are likely to be especially useful to ideologically distant justices and, therefore, predictive of their behavior. When the SG is less politicized, outlier signal briefs should be more equivalent to mainstream briefs, and, therefore, relatively less informative. Analyzing justices' votes in civil liberties and civil rights cases, we find empirical support for our theoretical claims. In particular, we find that the effects of politicization in the Office of the Solicitor General and outlier signals contained in individual case briefs are conditional on one another and on the degree of ideological divergence between each justice and the SG. This study offers a more complete account of the ways that political dynamics shape executive branch litigation and linkages between the president and the Supreme Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]