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How do people explain their behavior in socially unacceptable political situations? Exploring this question will give us insight into how the public responds to and frames collective decisions regarding controversial topics. We analyze accounts of the outcomes of racially sensitive statewide referenda in two states to understand the public responses to such political predicaments. Distinguishing four broad categories of these accounts—denials, justifications, excuses, and confessions—we find some clear-cut differences in their use between proponents and opponents of the ballot measures. These results have implications for political thought and dialogue regarding politically-sensitive issues and other heated policy issues. We also discuss how the different account dynamics in these two cases presaged subsequent political developments in these states, which might provide insights into why some such cases continue to be fiercely contested while others fade from public debate.

Recently, several studies of Congress and the state legislatures have found evidence to support the information theory of legislative organization, that is, that legislatures develop committees whose characteristics reflect those of the parent body so as to acquire unbiased policy and political information. However, most of these studies have been conducted on the lower, larger legislative chambers. Senates, as smaller bodies that often follow the lead of legislation originating in their lower chambers, may have less need for unbiased information, perhaps allowing those bodies to develop more outlying, unrepresentative committees. We test this hypothesis in 42 state senates and find that unrepresentative committees also tend to be the exception in these upper chambers. Furthermore, as shown in previous studies of state house committees, the frequency of committee outliers in state senates appears to be idiosyncratic, with cultural, political, and institutional variables being unable to account for their observed patterns. While results support the information theory of legislative organization, evidence of outliers among party delegations on committees in these senates provides some support for the party-dominant theory.

Previous research on the effects of constituency preferences on senators' voting behavior on judicial confirmations has been limited to geographic conceptions of constituency. We extend this literature by considering the effects of reelection constituencies. Using exit poll data from the 1986, 1988, and 1990 general elections, we estimate the percentage of each senator's reelection constituency composed of African Americans and then use these estimates to reconsider the confirmation vote for Justice Clarence Thomas. Our results show modest but significant improvements in fit and predictive capabilities over previous models, and they highlight the cross pressures facing many senators in this case. These findings suggest that more precise estimations of constituency composition can help illuminate the factors influencing legislators' voting behavior.

In this article the authors examine with greater precision the impacts of various constituencies in the struggle over the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Using multivariate logistical regression models, they challenge the conventional interpretation that racial constituency concerns "trumped" gender constituency concerns in the voting decisions of senators. Rather, their findings indicate that senators from states with more professionalized female workforces were more, not less, likely to vote in favor of Thomas's confirmation. In a concluding section, they provide an explanation for these findings and discuss their implications.

Previous research on parliamentary free voting, which has been confined exclusively to national parliaments and almost exclusively to the British House of Commons, has found relatively little constituency impact on members' voting decisions, even on the most contentious issues of social policy. Since sub-national parliaments tend to be smaller, less professionalised, and (arguably) 'closer to the people', it is possible that a more significant 'constituency connection' might be observed in these legislative arenas. This study extends the literature on this topic by empirically examining the fate of a recent homosexual rights bill in the Ontario Legislative Assembly. Contrary to expectations, none of the constituency characteristics used in logistical regression models generates a significant MLE coefficient, suggesting that Canadian provincial legislators may be even less sensitive to constituency preferences than their national counterparts.