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This paper addresses the question of how national party leaders set their party’s policy positions. Currently, the literature on this question exhibits a gap between theory and reality; spatial models predict convergence of party policy positions in a two-party setting, while empirical scholars found divergence in real world situations. Our paper is an attempt to fill in this gap. We do so by introducing two additional issues that have been relatively neglected in the existing literature. First, we stress the importance of establishing a party label for national party leaders as part of a strategy for the goal of seat-maximization in addition to the Downsian convergence strategy. Second, we address the issue that national party leaders are likely to adjust their party policy positions in response to heterogeneous preference distributions of voters across districts, in which the party has varying degrees of success. Incorporating these two issues, we show in a simple spatial model that in a two-party, single-member plurality system, two parties’ positions on a given policy issue are likely to converge if the given policy issue is at stake in closely competed districts, while two parties’ positions on a given policy issue are likely to diverge if the given issue is at stake in districts where one of the parties already has a secure majority. We use the case of the US party system (1945-2000) as the empirical test and find that the regression results are consistent with this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will assess the distinctive aims and dynamics of third parties in American politics by drawing from historical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconstructs the history and politics of the Mendez v. Westminster School District (1946) case and its impact on the NCAAP's strategy in the Brown case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of a theoretical and empirical analysis of the associational structures and patterns of competition, cooperation and coordination between important business associations in the U.S. information and communications sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a comparison of Japanese koenkai and American political machines in order to build an analytical framework with which to better understand reciprocal relationships between those in power and their constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an examination of the NRA's recent freedom of speech agenda, aimed at both the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and the Patriot Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative resource management institutions are growing in popularity in the U.S. While, a number of scholars have examined the emergence of local institutional arrangements for managing natural resources, such as watershed management partnerships, less attention has been paid to large-scale and complex resource settings. To advance our understanding of these institutional arrangements and to contribute to theories of collective action and policy change, this paper compares data on four regional governance institutions in the United States: the Northwest Power and Conservation Council?s Fish and Wildlife Program, the Chesapeake Bay Program, the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, and the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. Our findings speak to the importance of the role of science and information in defining the "problem-shed", which can serve as a key trigger for the emergence of collaboration in large-scale resource settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public-private partnerships have existed in the United States since the colonial period. However, in particular, government and nonprofit interactions?embedded in social, economic, and political structures?have taken different forms and have varied over time, among different fields of service, and in different contexts. In recent times, especially in the last two and a half decades, not only has there been an expansion in the types of human services once provided primarily by government agencies, but also the list of viable not-for-profit providers continues to broaden including a variety of organizations. Scholars note that in this era of devolution, the trend towards ?privatizing? human services is expected to continue the advancement of networks and network structures between the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors in public policy implementation. Even the widespread use of terms like ?cooperation?, ?collaboration,? ?strategic alliances,? ?joint ventures,? and ?partnership? across the sectors have become commonplace. Moreover, public discourse in policy circles, academic arenas and in practice seem to accept the taken-for-granted benefits of such alliances with the increasing popularity of such approaches to address America?s social problems, even though there is limited research evaluating the actual nature and process of the effects of existing partnerships in light of theory. The following paper attempts to begin to fill this gap by exploring collaboration between government agencies and faith-based organizations utilizing principal-agent theory. Such arrangements may pose serious legal and administrative challenges that may not be easily overcome. Providing government services through contracts with private organizations raises traditional management and accountability concerns and have implications for public management, in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting a new political party is always a costly endeavor, but it is a well-known fact that doing so and challenging the existing two-party system usually ends up in miserable electoral defeat under the first-past-the-post voting system, at least in most circumstances. If this is the case, why would anyone want to launch a third party in such a situation in the first place? Employing the concepts of organizational repertoire and organizational form, hitherto used primarily in sociological research on social movements, this paper seeks an answer to this question by investigating why a couple of reformist social movements, prohibitionists and labor reformers, began forming their own political parties several years after the Civil War. In the course of analysis, two subproblems to the original research question are addressed. First, why did the social movement leaders think creating a political party was better suited to achieve their reform than their previous mode of action? Second, even if forming a political party was superior to their earlier organizational form in terms of policymaking, why did they think that they could win elections once they formed a political party? My analysis, which treats these reformers as utility-maximizing actors rather than narrow-sighted zealots, reveals that the political experience of the immediate past, namely the rise of the Republican Party and its conduct of the war, served as an organizational model that changed their views on political parties and party system change in a positive way. This experience convinced the reformers to follow its course by starting a party founded on a reformist political issue, thereby realizing their reform through federal public policy after a party realignment, just as the Republicans did, in the reformers’ view, with the slavery issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a preliminary overview of the profile of Asian American nonprofit organizations in major U.S. metropolitan areas. The data comes primarily from nonprofit tax return Form 990 information available over the internet. Despite the tremendous growth of Asian American nonprofits in the 1990s, they remain a relatively small part of all nonprofit organizations. Religious organizations constitute the largest group among Asian American nonprofits, followed by cultural organizations, service agencies, and activist associations, in that order. Asian American nonprofits are overwhelmingly ethnic based rather than being organized on pan Asian American interests. Asian American nonprofits are increasingly located outside the central cities of major metropolitan areas. This profile indicates increasing Asian American community activism, especially in the 1990s, and posts challenges for greater political influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the policy proposals for improving life in U.S. metropolitan areas come from non-academic groups yet, collectively, these organizations have received little scholarly attention. Using approximately two hundred reports by citizens groups in Cleveland, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and St. Louis as well as on-site interviews with key participants in each group, this paper examines the issues they address, the policy cycle stages they emphasize, the processes they use, the geographic scale they cover, the units they seek to influence, the values they stress, the implementation tools they favor, the advocacy strategies they employ, and the impact they have had. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regime-based global governance is rapidly restructuring the logic of inter-state conflict and cooperation by accelerating the interconnections among the different territorial units through the mechanism of global markets, multilateral institutions, and non-governmental organizations. Nevertheless, different countries have responded varyingly to the impact and influence of regime-based global governance. Some states have strongly resisted, whereas others have eagerly sought to cooperate, and still others have attempted to limit or selectively engage with the global governance mechanisms. In this paper, I pose the question--why do states exhibit varying behavior towards the global human rights regime? I argue that the variations in state behavior towards the human rights regime stem from the differences in the domestic political structure and variations in the domestic social norms. The basic goal is to show how the mutually contingent relationship between regime-based global governance and domestic political structure-broadly understood as democracy and non-democracy-influences a country’s decision to cooperate or resist the influence of global governance institutions. Specifically, I contend that established democracies are more likely to resist cooperation with the global human rights regime not only because of cost-benefit calculations, but also because they believe that its domestic social norms, values, and laws trump global rules and norms. On the other hand, non-democratic states are likely to selectively engage with the human rights regime because it is worried that untrammeled sociopolitical openness might eventually lead to irrepressible domestic political demands. This proposition will be examined by conducting two types of tests: in-depth comparative case analysis. The comparative case studies will examine the political processes of resistance and cooperation of one democratic state (United States) and one non-democratic country (China) towards the global human rights regime. The focus will be at the level where the domestic (bottom-up) and top-down (global) demands collide and how the democratic and non-democratic countries mediate these conflicting social forces. Overall, this research project attempts to shift the theoretical logic from a narrow structural and unitary actor neorealist and neoliberalist interpretation of international relations and attempts to develop a rigorous theoretical framework that incorporates the central insights of the global governance theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the hypothesis that institutions have an impact on the ability of parties to carry out policy pledges. A total of 2,693 party pledges in American party platforms and British party manifestos over the period from the 1970s to the 1990s are examined; all domestic policy areas are included. For each pledge, a determination is made as to whether or not it was carried out. It is found that, as would be expected, the governing party in the UK generally fulfills more pledges than any party in the US; however, the performance gap in some years is quite narrow. Explanations for variance in pledge fulfillment over time in the US are explored; it is argued that party control of institutions alone does not provide a full explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The women and men who staff public sector agencies throughout this nation are arguably the most important cog in the machinery that keeps the United States functioning. Logically, it is in the interest of public sector organizations to recruit the best and the brightest into their ranks, and in the ongoing war for talent, the ability to offer wage rates on par with those in the private sector remains a key component of fulfilling this goal.Although much has been written on the gaps in wages between the public and private sectors, the predominant focus of this line of research has been on federal wage rates. Those studies that have expanded their analysis to state and local government, by far the two largest sectors of government, have been lacking in that they tend to treat both in the aggregate, disregarding variation between states and localities. This paper takes a first step in addressing this gap in the literature. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey, I will provide disaggregated estimates of public/private wage gaps at the state government level from 1987 to 2002, for all fifty states. Preliminary results suggest that there is considerable variation in public/private wage gaps across the states, and that estimates shift dramatically when separated by gender. Additionally, I will provide an explanatory model of public/private wage gaps across the states with particular attention paid to the influence of state government unionization rates and state political ideology. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors identified and reviewed 13 reference documents on Legionella and Legionnaires' disease prevention that can be characterized as either guidelines, recommendations, standards, or position papers. These documents were produced by professional associations and government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels. This paper does not include reference documents produced by individual companies because of the number of these documents and the potential for bias, nor does this paper review international guidelines on Legionnaires' disease. Rather, we compared US prevention guidelines on Legionella and Legionnaires' disease to characterize the application of these documents. This review should help industry professionals navigate a diverse and potentially confusing collection of recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work suggests that the most fruitful approach to accounting for variations in interest system diversity of any type lies in understanding variations in interest system density (Lowery, Gray and Fellowes 2005). We build on this insight by examining the sources of variation in the substantive diversity of health interests in the American states, focusing on how the densities of several sub-guilds of health interest organizations vary in their responses to changes in the sizes of the constituencies that give rise to them and variations in the policy and political energy supporting their mobilization. We discuss the concept of interest system diversity in the first section of the paper, highlighting its multiple meanings and the limits of prior research. This is followed by a close empirical examination of 14 sub-guilds of state health interest organizations. We conclude by discussing the inherent difficulties of understanding interest system diversity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well established that individuals who belong to voluntary associations are more likely to participate in democratic politics. For this reason, scholars have urged the revitalization of voluntary organizations as a possible means of boosting political participation. This paper examines the possibility that the participation-promoting aspects of voluntary organizations are not enjoyed equally by group members. Using data from the 1990 American Citizen Participation Study, empirical tests reveal that the benefits of group membership are enjoyed disproportionately by individuals who are already over-represented among the ranks of political participants. Not only are voluntary organizations biased in terms of their composition - with privileged Americans more likely to join - they are biased in terms of their effects. The participation-promoting benefits of membership accrue disproportionately to joiners who are white, male, wealthy, and better educated, thus reinforcing biases in political participation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate campaigning is a method, which alerts large capitalistic motivated companies to the environmental damage they are causing. It is a tactic, which aims to address the perils of the current system and offer sustainable choices for the future. The goal of corporate campaigns is to achieve systemic change in industry standards and effectively protect the environment. Market based campaigns are proving to be one of the most effective and efficient means to address the critical environmental and social issues of our time. Market advocacy campaigns mobilize the pressure of public opinion and consumer buying power to create market incentives that drive corporations to implement their own regulations and standards. Corporate campaigning is rapidly becoming a driving motivator for large corporations to change their environmentally destructive actions and is causing a shift in the global market place. One example of the effectiveness of corporate campaigning is a group called Rainforest Action Network (RAN). As RAN's Old Growth campaign attests -- they are on the cutting edge of the implementation of successful market campaigns. To date, RAN and allies have compelled over 25% of the U.S. wood market to adopt polices that protect old growth forests and the human and political rights of indigenous forest communities. RAN has also won market campaigns with Citigroup and Bank of America and convinced them to stop investing in environmentally destructive practices. Companies that respond to corporate campaigning are causing the economic shift that needs to take place in order to have a sustainable economy. I intend to present a paper that will attest to the success of market/corporate campaigning and present it as a part of the solution towards creating environmentally sustainable behavior by corporations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]