Search

Legal reforms making judges independent from political pressures and empowering them with judicial review do not necessarily imply an effective judiciary. Something has to fill the gap between institutional design and effectiveness. When the executive and legislative are strong and ready to react to an objectionable judicial decision, the judiciary would tend to be weak and deferent towards those in power. But the reverse is also true. Hence, in this paper we argue that fragmentation of political power is a source for an effective judiciary: one able to rule against the interests of power holders without being systematically challenged or ignored. We test this argument analyzing the decisions of the Mexican Supreme Court against the PRI on constitutional controversies and actions of unconstitutionality from 1994 to 2002. Using a probit model, we show that the probability for the Supreme Court of voting against the PRI increased from .07 to .44 to .52 as the PRI lost the majority in the Chamber of Deputies in 1997, and the Presidency in 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

and gender differences in who is asked for identification. Using data from a 50-state study, we can determine variations in implementation across states with different identification requirements and also the ability of various populationsâ€"such as the elderly and the poorâ€"to produce readily such identification. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A detailed case study of the 2004 Iowa presidential election campaign. Part of a larger project organized by the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy targeting the impact of BCRA on selected House, Senate and Presidential battleground elections. The paper examines how campaign finance law effected the strategy and tactics of the campaigns, political parties and outside groups in Iowa. The paper explores how the closeness of the race throughout the campaign and the large amounts of money available to those involved led to an almost dead heat outcome where decisions about how to organize on the ground may have swung the state from a narrow Gore win in 2000 to a narrow Bush win in 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Staff turnover refers to the rate that staffers are replaced from election to election. This paper examines staff turnover in the 105th and 106th Congresses using primary data from CQ Politics in America. Specifically, the paper asks, do increased levels of partisanship in the House of Representatives lead to increased staff turnover, i.e. shorter staff careers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current formal models of elections assume that voters perfectly know their ideal points in the electoral dimensions. In this paper I show that this assumption violates the empirical evidence and outline a model with very attractive implications that avoids it. In particular, this paper focuses on the elegance with which this model accommodates abstention due to alienation. In this model abstention due to spatial competition is just a result of indifference and utility maximization. So-called abstention due to alienation is here just a result of the differential utility between candidates being too small to overcome the costs of voting. Satisfying strategies of the voters are therefore not required and abstention is completely accounted for in a well justified model fully consistent with rational choice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests a model of EP representation with a new measure of electoral outcomes. The major concern is how we understand the EP elections under multi-level European political system and by what factors the MEPs' voting behaviors are determined. National constituents are, in my model, assumed to reveal different levels of diversity and intensity of preferences by their electoral choices in EP elections. Moreover, the differences are assumed to be caused by their relative assessment of national representation. Under these assumptions, my model tests MEPs' responsiveness to their national constituents revealed by the election results. From the theoretical perspective of party representation, it is also considered whether MEPs' responsive voting behaviors function as policy alternatives in the EP elections. Methodologically, a simultaneous equation model is presented to reflect the endogenous relationship between European citizens' electoral choices and MEPs' responsiveness. The results reported in this paper find that MEPs tend to respond to the elected party disparity between the EP and national parliament. Absenteeism and seniority also have influence on MEPs'responsiveness. In addition, MEPs' responsive voting patterns work as clear policy alternatives to European citizens as well. However, because of the lack of data currently available, the endogenous relationship is not conclusive. The possible improvements of future results are discussed in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the recent eletoral rise of anti-establishment parties in Eastern Europe in terms of voter rejection of mainstream political elites in third-generation post-communist elections. Using survey data from the 2000 and 2004 Romanian parliamentary elections, the paper identifies the circumstances under which prospective or retrospective considerations dominate electoral choices of voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the reinforcing effect of mixed electoral systems on the linkage between electoral districts. The paper analyzes the linkage from the view of ideological constellation using survey data from Germany, New Zealand, and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislators exit from the legislature due to death, retirement or electoral defeat. This paper demonstrates what factors affect these risks. I argue that seniority system brings about decreasing electoral risk and professinalization of the legislature results in constant retirement risk. Also, I hypothesize that, when they expect to be defeated at the next election, legislators strategically retire so as to avoid cost of electoral campaign and losing face. In order to test these hypotheses, I propose a systematically dependent competing risks model of survival analysis and also consider non-random censoring and ordered risks structure. Using a Japanese Diet members' dataset from 1947 to 1990, this paper confirms my hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social network studies suggest that congruence in the social background of network members has effects on voting choices, but the research has not extended to the subject of the effect of congruence in political opinions within social networks. Incorporating social networks into congressional election studies, this paper suggests that besides partisanship and other demographic factors, the heterogeneity of opinion within social networks also has an effect on voting choices. Based on the logistic regression analysis of NAES 2000 dataset, the findings show the following: first, the low heterogeneity or high homogeneity of political opinion within strong-tie social networks (i.e. family and close friends) increases the likelihood of favoring House and Senate incumbents. Second, the access to political news in the newspaper has a positive influence on favoring the incumbents in the Senate election. This paper then discusses the limitations and implications of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the empirical support for Jacobson and Kernell's strategic politicians theory of seat change in U.S. House elections. The theory contends, in short, that a substantial part of the impact of national electoral forces on seat change acts indirectly through the intervening variable of challenger quality. District and aggregate level models of challenger quality are estimated using a new database of House challengers. Jacobson's district level model is estimated using pooled data from the 1946-2002 elections. Krasno and Green's district level model and a revised version of their model are estimated for each of the 1946-2002 elections. Jacobson's aggregate level models of relative challenger quality are estimated using data from the 1946-2002 elections. A new aggregate level model of challenger quality is developed in this paper. The overall performance of the new model as measured by explained variance is comparatively greater than for earlier models. The impact of national forces on challenger quality is moderate at best. A new seat change model including challenger quality as a causal variable is introduced and estimated for the 1954-2002 elections. Estimates of this model demonstrate that challenger quality is an important cause of seat change. In addition, the impact of both national and district electoral forces on seat change, acting through the intervening variable of challenger quality, is estimated using data from the 1954-2002 elections. The indirect impact of national forces on seat change is moderate. Finally, an alternative measure of challenger quality constructed from data originally gathered in order to construct Krasno and Green's measure of challenger quality is substituted for Jacobson's traditional measure. The substitution improves the overall performance of the new aggregate level model of challenger quality presented here, but the additional gain in the performance is small. In conclusion, the analysis presented here provides empirical support for Jacobson and Kernell's strategic politicians theory. However, the theory has limited explanatory power. The impact of national forces on seat change acting through challenger quality is not large enough to account for much of the observed seat change that occurs from one election to the next. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines electoral behavior of Seattle voters who supported a monorail costing $1.75 billion in November, 2002 with no state or federal support. This paper tests voter behavior using spatial analytic techniques [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this proposed paper we expand on the earlier research by Garand and Procopio (1995), who used data from the 1992 American National Election Study (ANES) to model popular support for term limits as a function of a variety of variables, many of which are found in the scholarly literature. However, unlike previous work Garand and Procopio include independent variables representing the effect of characteristics of U.S. House members, especially seniority. Garand and Procopio suggest that, controlling for the effects of other variables, citizens will respond to the characteristics of their representatives and adjust their support for term limits accordingly. For instance, they find that citizens represented by House members with high seniority are less supportive of term limits than citizens represented by junior members. We propose to extend this general model to data from the 1994 and 1998 ANES surveys. We also propose to consider whether public opinion on congressional term limits is shaped by the configuration of partisan identification and partisan control of Congress. With rare exception, previous research on support for term limits in the mass public has focused on the pre-1994 period in Congress, during which time both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate were controlled by the Democrats. Such a focus does not allow for a full longitudinal test of the connection between partisan attitudes and attitudes toward term limits. Specifically, previous research has found that Republican identifiers are much more likely than Democrats to support term limits, but it is unclear if this is an integral part of being a Republican or if support for term limits would change once the Republicans are in control of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. We speculate that Republican support for term limits in 1992 was based in part on self-interest, insofar as Republicans did not have majority status in the Congress at that time; on the other hand, we speculate that, once control of Congress shifted to the Republicans with the 1994 congressional elections, support for term limits among Republican citizens should have declined and support for term limits among Democrats should have increased. In this proposed paper we will utilize data from the 1992, 1994, and 1998 ANES surveys, which are the only ANES surveys that include items on support for term limits. We estimate a series of models to explain variation in individuals’ support for congressional term limits. Our core model includes demographic variables, as well as variables measuring political attitudes, system support, legislative support, and political knowledge. We also intend to include characteristics of respondents’ House members in our term limit model; these characteristics will include members’ seniority, the ideological distance between respondents and their House members, and estimates of grant funds brought to each district, among others. Moreover, we consider the mediating effect of political knowledge on the effects of these variables on support for term limits. Following Garand and Procopio, we suggest that high- and low-knowledge citizens use different kinds of information in shaping their attitudes toward term limits. Finally, we focus particular attention on how the effects of partisanship on support for term limits varies under periods of Democratic control of Congress (before 1994) and Republican control of Congress (after 1998). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic voting has been one of the enduring themes of political science for several decades (Dorussen et al. 2002: xxiii). A lot of literature on economic voting has examined how macroeconomic conditions shape election outcomes in western democracies and evinces that incumbents are rewarded or punished for their economic performance. (Jacobson, 1991: 33). Surprisingly, however, very few studies have examined if electorates of new democracies also assign the responsibility of economic performance to incumbents. One reason for the limited scope of the research is related to a conventional belief that electorates in the Third World are not “highly informed, policy-oriented economic voters” (Dorussen et al. 2002: 2). This paper is one of very few cross-national macro level studies on economic voting in the Third World. Even though there have been a couple of case studies based on survey data, cross-national studies analyzing elections in new democracies are very rare. This paper analyzes 70 legislative elections and 50 presidential elections in 35 new democracies. Using Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSEs) estimation method, this paper tests three controversial hypotheses: first, that economic conditions shape election results in new democracies (the economic voting hypothesis); second, that the economic impact on the vote share of incumbent parties is constrained by the level of institutional clarity that affect electorates’ perception of incumbents’ responsibility for economic performance (the clarity hypothesis); third, the economic impact also depends on other economic and socio-political conditions that affect the relative importance of economic issues in elections of new democracies (the relative importance hypothesis). The expansion of the research on economic voting to new democracies provides us important clues to the features of transitional societies because “economic voting as a mechanism of democratic accountability” is a useful indicator of democratic consolidation (Dorussen et al. 2002: 2). As Richard Rose (1999) argued, a fully democratic regime “must be accountable to the electorate” (p. 35). Therefore, research on the conditions under which electorates realize democratic accountability through economic voting may improve our understanding of the democratization processes in the Third World. Analyzing an original dataset, this study shows that the economic voting function is not consistent in new democracies and is strongly constrained by economic and socio-political conditions. Except for some poor countries, voters did respond to economic performance of incumbents in presidential elections. Furthermore, this paper shows that political contexts, which influence voters’ perceptions of incumbents’ responsibility for economic performance, were also important determinants of the economic voting function in new democracies; the bicameral system and the proportional electoral system reduce economic voting function. Lastly, the relative importance of economic issues determined by the level of economic development, ethnic fractionalization and the level of democracy also affected the economic voting function. However, the effect of economic conditions on the voting share of incumbent parties in legislative elections was very limited. No robust evidence that corroborates economic voting theory was found in the analysis of legislative elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting, Early Voting and Party Mobilization: Is Timing Everything? The adoption of many electoral reforms (e.g., election day registration, early voting and motor-voter registration) have been designed and justified in terms of increasing voter participation. Research has shown that the promise of these reforms has fallen far short of expectations in two particular ways. First, the effect of electoral reforms has had a limited direct effect on overall turnout levels. And, second, the effects appear to be concentrated among likely voters: the reforms simply enable election day voters to vote by mail or to vote early (thus not increasing the size of the electorate nor changing its composition as reformers argue is the case). We have demonstrated in previous research that one explanation for these findings is that scholars have ignored the important role of partisan campaign mobilization in linking the reform to overall turnout levels. That is, we find that early voting is associated with greater turnout when party elites use early voting as part of their campaign strategy. And we conclude that previous research has misspecified the basic causal factors in predicting overall turnout, resulting in incorrect estimates of the effect of electoral reforms on voter turnout. In this paper we extend this research agenda by exploring in greater detail whether reconceptualizing the dependent variable provides more leverage on the question of the impact of electoral reforms. More specifically, we test whether the availability of early voting increases the likelihood that a voter will vote early (as opposed to voting on election day or abstaining) and what types of voters are so affected. We explore the conditions under which candidates and party officials use early voting in Texas to mobilize voters to support their party’s candidates for Governor and U.S. Senator in the 2002 midterm election and whether such efforts yield a substantial effect on election day and early voting turnout. We draw upon a unique database that studies a panel of registered voters and matches their reported and validated voting behavior with partisan campaign activities in each voter’s respective county. Our measure of validated voting also includes the method of balloting for each voter: in-person early balloting, mail-in balloting and, in-person election day balloting. To measure county-level campaign activities we interviewed Texas county party chairs in all 254 Texas counties about the level and nature of their campaign activities. Specific questions are asked about how the party and their candidates emphasize early voting among target populations relative to other types or targets of campaign mobilization. We believe this paper will be an important second step in more accurately assessing the importance of electoral reforms to voter turnout in contemporary American elections. It should be of interest to scholars of electoral procedures and reform, voter turnout and party politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a population of a billion people, a rich diversity of religious, linguistic and caste identities and a federal system with 28 states, India represents only one case or observation point in cross-national research yet one that is full of potential for within-case variation analysis. As Kohli (1987) describes it, India is a virtual laboratory for a comparative political scientist. My paper exploits this variation to explore the important and interesting question of if and how political regime type is connected to economic growth. The paper is divided into three broad parts. In the first part, I review the literature on political regimes and develop a typology of democratic regimes that is both theoretically grounded and empirically driven. More specifically, I use statistical cluster-analysis techniques to analyze electoral data from state assembly elections from 1967 to 1996. For each state in each election year we have data on four dimensions: party fractionalization by votes, political participation, representation of underprivileged groups and women. Since each state had an average of 6 elections during this period, the analysis is based on approximately 110 observations. One noteworthy feature that emerges from the classification of 15 major Indian states into types of democratic regimes along these four dimensions is that most of the states stay in the same regime type during the 30 year period examined. The analysis in this part of the paper thus suggests that not only is there something intrinsically different between groups of Indian states in terms of their democratic functioning but also that these differences have persisted over a long period In the second part, I establish that state political regime type is strongly correlated with economic growth and will then go on to examine the ways in which differences in various aspects of regime types affect economic growth. In the third part, I will discuss the implications of my findings for both cross-national studies of growth and political regimes as well as those that focus on particular areas of the world, thus situating my research within the broader literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral institutions in democratic states produce incentives for politicians to manipulate economic policy for electoral gain. A growing literature on political institutions in non-democratic states has begun to focus on the effects of these institutions on political and economic systems. Recently, Gandhi and Przeworski (2001) have argued that democratic institutions function by giving support to the autocratic regimes in which they are embedded. If non-democratic institutions are functional, the natural question is whether or not they are consequential. Do democratic institutions have political and economic consequences in non-democratic states that are analogous to those of democratic institutions in democratic states? I argue that the answer to this question is yes, and build on the literature on political business cycles (PBCs) to explain how. Elections in non-democratic regimes bestow legitimacy on the ruling government by purportedly demonstrating its widespread popular support. Ruling parties in non-democratic regimes are interested in maximizing their perceived legitimacy among the population, as such legitimacy gives them free reign to pursue their policy objectives with a minimal amount of domestic opposition. Whereas some authoritarian regimes with a tight control over the press and the exchange of information can create the illusion of a wide popular mandate, other non-democratic regimes must resort to more subtle political means to garner high levels of popular support. I focus on the latter group, which Levitsky and Way (2002:53) refer to as “competitive authoritarian regimes,” where conditions are ideal for the manipulation of economic policy for electoral gain. With the significant informational asymmetry regarding macroeconomic policy in the government’s favor, I predict that non-democratic regimes manipulate fiscal policy to create popular support for the incumbent regime. I demonstrate the applicability of this reasoning with a study of fiscal decision-making accompanying the 1982 presidential elections in Mexico. Turning to a longitudinal study, I develop a more rigorous test of the hypothesis through a time-series analyses of the political and economic correlates of national account balances in Malaysia. Employing an autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model and adjusting for seasonal effects, I find a robust association between elections and lower quarterly budgetary surpluses from the years 1967 to 1997. At least in Malaysia, non-democratic regimes are characterized not simply by an unresponsive government, but rather by a dynamic political process. This paper contributes to comparative politics in two ways. By focusing on some of the more observable implications of economic policy manipulation in a well-defined population of states, this model lends itself to empirical verification, often difficult in the study of non-democratic states. My study also demonstrates ways in which researchers might conceive of the relationship between authoritarian regimes and the populations that they govern, illuminating directions in which the study of non-democratic governance might proceed in the future. References Gandhi, Jennifer, and Adam Przeworski. 2001. “Dictatorial Institutions and the Survival of Dictators.” Paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco. Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan A. Way. 2002. “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism.” Journal of Democracy 13(2). pp. 51-65. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on voter decision making has suggested that our old cognitive-based information processing approaches need to be updated to consider the role affect plays in the updating of candidate evaluations. In particular, the idea that voters can dispassionately evaluate new information about candidates for whom they already have developed evaluations (that is, whom they already like or dislike) has been challenged by evidence of motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoners seem to stick to their evaluations even in the face of countervailing information. Studies by Lodge and Taber, Steenbergen, Meffert and colleagues and my own work have all shown attitude strengthening or polarization when voters encounter negative information about a liked candidate. By rational updating standards, a liked candidate for whom something disliked is encountered should then be liked less. But instead voters often seem to become even more supportive, counterarguing or otherwise discounting the new information. This paper reports on a series of ongoing studies using dynamic process tracing in a laboratory setting where subjects engage in a simulated presidential campaign, during which the affective value of the information they examine is manipulated in order to assess its effects on evaluation and updating. While we know that attitude strengthening occurs, we do not yet understand the mechanism and conditions in which it operates. In particular, this paper focuses on the question of how much negative information about a liked candidate must be encountered before the attitude strengthening function is overcome and voters adjust their evaluations to more accurately reflect the information that is encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last two decades, far right parties have made increasing gains in electoral support at the national level in the member-states of the European Union. Previous research has looked at the state level conditions (e.g. the "effective" number of parties, immigration, unemployment) that have given rise to these parties. Prior findings and conclusions have been inconsistent on all of these conditions except immigration. The literature has also overlooked another possible condition in the rise of far right parties: crime rates. Thus far, crime rates have not been statistically analyzed despite the prominence of law and order planks in far right party platforms. I argue in this paper that high crime rates have helped far right parties gain electoral support. This paper examines the impact of crime rates (controlling for additional factors) on electoral support for far right parties in fifteen member-states of the European Union, between 1980-2002. Other models introduced in this paper will look at the interactions betweens these variables and their effect on far right party support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the consequences of permitting crossover voting in presidential primaries? Our paper addresses this question by investigating the extent, sources, and effects of crossover voting in the 2000 primaries. We employ data from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey, which permits close scrutiny of several primary electorates and an account of dynamics. The 2000 primaries challenge us to think of the primary electorate not as unitary but as nonetheless collective. Crossover voting, we find, was common in the 2000 presidential primaries. John McCain was its beneficiary, and the benefits came mainly at the expense of Bill Bradley. The extent of crossover varied from primary to primary, depending on the openness of the electoral rules and the electorate’s long-standing party commitments, but also on the relative appeal of specific candidates and on voters’ reckoning of each candidate’s chances of winning his party’s nomination. The impact of crossover in large numbers is to create a more centrist primary electorate, enhancing the chances of more moderate candidates. But beyond that, if an influx of crossover voters can change the character of a particular primary electorate, how does that affect the nature of the contest for the nomination? In particular, how does the potential for crossover voting influence the strategic choices of the candidates? The paper provides both an account of the dynamics of the 2000 primary seasons, Republican and Democratic, and a more general exploration of the political import of opening primaries to the participation of independents and members of the opposing camp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from exit polls conducted by the Voter News Service (VNS) and survey data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) to show that gay voters are very strong Democratic voters, and that identification with the Democratic Party is becoming an increasingly important factor in how voters feel about gay issues. The paper shows that the impact of sexual orientation on individual vote choice has become as important as the effect of race?and that it dwarfs other commonly cited factors in its impact on the vote. In addition, an examination of the opinion of the general public on gay issues over time finds that party identification has played an ever-larger role in the past two decades in determining how individuals feel about gay people and gay rights. As political elites?demonstrated by roll-call votes in Congress?show an increasing partisan divide over gay issues, so does the general public. More than ever, gay voters identify with the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party is identified with gay rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the causes of election boycotts, based on a new dataset covering all multi-party elections worldwide since 1990. My data reveal that, since 1990, political parties in fifty-three countries have boycotted a total of seventy-one national-level elections. In all of these cases, the parties involved announced explicitly and publicly that they were not participating in the election in question, urging voters to follow their lead. What explains why some countries have frequent boycotts while other, seemingly similar, countries have few or none? This paper is the first to model an election boycott as a strategic decision that political parties make, in light of both the possible benefits associated with a boycott and, perhaps more importantly, the potential costs. I focus in particular on whether the provision of public finance for political parties affects the decision to boycott. The central question I address is: Does the potential loss of state finance, typically awarded on the basis of vote shares garnered in the previous election, deter election boycotts? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on CDBG programs (Kettl 1980, Dilger 1989) focused on the policies and processes of program initiatives, rather than the calculated strategies of elected officials attempting to enhance their re-election prospects. This paper examines the allocation of CDBG funding in four Pennsylvania cities (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Altoona, and Sharon) from 1975 to 2002 to determine if CDBG allocations vary according to the electoral cycle. I propose that big city mayors often redirect huge sums of CDBG money from targeted, low-income neighborhoods to community-wide projects to gain popular support during and prior to election years. The projects funded with CDBG dollars tend to be highly visible and popular among a broad constituency, but are allocated at the expense of programs in poorer neighborhoods, which CDBG dollars were meant to support. This reallocation of CDBG dollars is not as prominent in smaller cities because the circumstances and issue areas surrounding these localities are organizationally and structurally different (Carsey 2000). This paper utilizes a gaming model (Gates and Humes, 1996) and a symbiotic or iron triangle approach to explain the big and small city mayors’ behavior and decision-making strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier studies have demonstrated that party system fragmentation rises with increasing country size, and that government stability declines with increasing party system fragmentation. This paper tests the assumption that the effects of fragmentation on stability are conditioned by size. The theoretical expectation is as follows: 1) There is a leveling-off of the effects of increasing size on the fragmentation of party systems. A country with ten million inhabitants may have ten parties in the parliament, but one would not expect a country with a hundred million inhabitants to have a hundred parties in parliament. Most electoral systems would prevent this, and the voters normally prefer not to waste their votes on chanceless parties. 2) In consequence, parties in larger countries contain a wider spectrum of preferences than parties in smaller states, all other things being equal. This, in turn makes for weaker governments in larger countries. Parties will, due to their internal heterogeineity, be less dependable as coalition partners in large than in small states. Consequently, the effects of party system fragmentation on stability should be stronger in larger states. The paper tests these hypotheses statistically in all democratic states with a parliamentary or semi-presidential form of government. The data originate from a panel data set covering the period 1960-2001 (N=350). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and pundits alike believe that presidential campaigning in midterm elections can and does make a meaningful difference in electoral outcomes. Moreover, since presidential resources are finite, scholars contend that presidents are strategic in their choices of where and for whom to campaign. Further, the overarching goal of improving future chances of the successful passage of the president?s agenda through Congress is assumed to be the key factor in the crafting of a president?s midterm strategy. Despite the overwhelming acceptance of this logic, little empirical evidence has been accumulated to determine if the president does indeed allocate his resources in such a way that would accomplish his goals, or whether such efforts pay dividends in subsequent sessions of Congress. In this paper, I test the contending explanations for presidential campaigning in midterm elections. I show that conventional scholarly explanations for presidential midterm behavior may be unwarranted, and suggest that we readdress our theoretical expectations for why presidents campaign in midterm elections. I also examine, albeit more casually, the relationship between midterm campaigning and subsequent support in Congress. The results of this analysis suggest that presidential midterm campaigning does not pay very great dividends in terms of subsequent support for the president?s agenda. Overall, the general implication of this paper is that, if presidents are attempting to approach midterm campaigning in a strategic fashion geared toward optimal allocation of their midterm resources and increased future support in Congress, they are not very successful at it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an application of conditional logit models for individual voting behavior at national elections in Denmark 1998-2001 including the effects of party sympathy, issue vot-ing and party identification. Although party sympathies explain a lot of individual variation in voting behavior they seem not to fully express the utility of the parties since they cannot predict the election results. The paper shows that there is no difference in the fit of a proximity model and a directional model for issue voting if they both include party intercepts. However, in the directional model the intercepts seem to clearly indicate the general popularity of each party, while this is not the case with the proximity model. Including the effect of party identi-fication enhances the fit of the model for issue voting and gives a clearer picture of the floating voters, but as less clear estimate of the general popularity of the parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting point for an empirical estimation of spatial voting models in mass elections is the construction of a party/candidate competition space. For more than thirty years researchers often have used the feeling thermometer scores among the other variables for this purpose. A basic assumption is thereby that the feeling thermometer scores deliver informations not only on the distance between the party and the respondent, but also on the (ideological) distance between parties. This assumption, however, has got neither theoretical nor empirical support which this paper aims to deliver. After approaching to historical and theoretical background of use of the feeling thermometer scores in survey, this paper delivers empirical evidence of the assumption above from USA, Germany and Japan. This paper assumes, like Enelow and Hinich (1984), that the feeling thermometer scores include not only the ideological distance, but also more components. one of the most important additional components should be the party competence. Differently from Enelow and Hinich, this paper assumes the heterogenity of the competence among voters. A preliminary empirical analysis supports these basic assumptions. This paper provides an important basis to a wide range of electoral studies, because the feeling thermometer scores have been used in various areas since its first appearance in the 60’s. As an implication the paper also proposes a new method for the estimation of a party competition space which is compatible with the assumption supported by the empirical evidences above. It finds a stable and reasonable solution of the party and the voter ideal points configuration. Reference Enelow, James and Hinich, Melvin J. The Spatial Theory of Voting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1984. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore conditions that contribute to a rare outcome in ethnic party systems: the election of a party with a moderate position on inter-ethnic relations. More specifically, I investigate why voters of the small, impoverished, and ethnically fragmented states of Bosnia and Macedonia, which share the same electoral system, elected parties with divergent positions on inter-ethnic relations in 2002. Theory on party competition that focuses on social cleavages (Lipset and Rokkan 1967) or the interaction of social cleavages and institutions in ethnically divided societies (Horowitz 1985) cannot explain why Macedonia elected a left party open to inter-ethnic cooperation. Research shows that ethnic party systems compel left parties to take up ethnic causes in order to remain viable (Horowitz 1985 and Mitchell 1995). While social democratic parties in Macedonia and Bosnia have done so, Macedonia’s social democratic party overcame ethnic outbidding by its rival party while Bosnia’s did not. Furthermore, Macedonia bucked Bosnia’s experience (Burg and Shoup 1999, Bose 2002) and a regional trend in which inter-ethnic violence radicalizes voters and encourages the election of ethnically chauvinistic parties. To understand campaign strategies and determinants of voting, I combine content analysis of 350 randomly selected articles on the elections from local newspapers; examination of electoral laws and survey data on mass attitudes about inter-ethnic relations; and statistical analysis of recent World Values Survey data on electoral preferences in Bosnia and Macedonia. Drawing on these data and research on party development in post-communist Europe (Lewis 2001) and party system change in India (Chhibber 1999), I demonstrate how ’founding’ elections, campaign strategies, and international intervention interact to allow Macedonia’s left party to downplay ethnic outbidding and influence the coalitions of voters that it can mobilize. This cross-national investigation makes two primary contributions. First, it sheds light on ethnic party systems in the post-communist states, which have received little attention. Second, it identifies factors that encourage inter-ethnic cooperation in ethnic party systems. This paper would fit well on panels on electoral competition in post-communist Europe, participation in post-communist Europe, ethnic party systems, and comparative ethnic conflict. Works Cited: Sumantra Bose, Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Steven L. Burg, and Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Armonk: ME. Sharpe, 1999. Pradeep K. Chhibber, Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Paul G. Lewis, ed., Party Development and Democratic Change in Post-Communist Europe: The First Decade, London: Frank Cass, 2001. Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York: Free Press, 1967. Paul Mitchell, Party Competition in an Ethnic Dual Party System, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 18, No. 4, October 1995, pp. 773-793. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper endeavors to answer the following question: to what extent does the Bolivian electoral system have an impact on executive-legislative dynamics? And how does the electoral system facilitate or undermine coalition building in this country? The study proposes that because the Bolivian mixed system of plurality and proportional representation (PR) for legislative elections, and the congressional election of the president due to the executive electoral formula, have categorically determined the allocation of power in the political system, the interaction between the executive and the legislative branches of government is profoundly influenced by it. The paper analyzes the period starting with the second half of the Quiroga administration until the resignation of President Sanchez de Lozada, and the coming to power of President Carlos Mesa in 2003 to 2004. The first part of the paper provides a brief assessment of the most significant electoral arrangements in Bolivia and of executive-legislative relations before 2000-2002. The second part deals with the period starting in 2000. This section specifically deals with (a) a brief analysis of the effects of the 1997 electoral reform on the ability of marginalized sectors of society to occupy prominent political spaces in subsequent electoral scenarios, and on the potential ability of legislators to better respond to social (local) demands and (b) the ability citizens had to openly question the status quo through the popular mobilization movements of 2000. An analysis of the President and Congress’ responsiveness to citizens’ demands in 2000 is provided. The third part of the paper analyzes the 2002-2004 period concentrating on the Sanchez de Lozada administration, and the electoral and governing coalition that temporarily helped sustain his regime. In this section, the impact of the electoral system on the formation of the coalition is analyzed. This is also evaluated against other factors that influenced the institutional interaction between Sanchez de Lozada and the 2002 Congress. This is done, starting in June 2002, using a model of executive-legislative relations that integrates a process-oriented approach along a confrontation-accommodation continuum. Similarly, the collapse of coalition governments and coalitional politics in Bolivia that took place in October 2003 is analyzed, as well as the first signs of the restructuring of the political system undertaken by President Mesa in the first part of 2004. The last section provides some conclusions and reflections based on the overall analysis provided through the paper. The project relies on research conducted by the author as a member of the Organization of American States (OAS) Electoral Observation Mission to Bolivia for the June 2002 elections. Data is also extracted from national and international newspapers and periodicals covering Bolivian current politics as well as the results of interviews with key political actors and experts in Washington, DC and La Paz, Bolivia. The paper also utilizes other secondary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the media cover political campaigns? We take a novel approach to this question that produces clear results on direct relationships between key variables. Using data from a content analysis of media coverage of Minnesota’s 2000 senate campaign, we explore different trends in television and newspaper coverage while holding potentially confounding variables constant, such as media market norms and election competitiveness. We begin by comparing the coverage provided by four local television affiliates with that of the two major newspapers in the Twin Cities area. Our results show that while newspapers include more coverage of the campaign, the content of the coverage is not substantially different from television. We then take advantage of an ideal opportunity to explore the possibility of biased coverage by looking at the reporting patterns of the two ideologically distinct newspapers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. We find that despite their clear partisan leanings, there is little evidence that either paper favored their endorsed candidate in their coverage of the campaign. We conclude by analyzing the impact of the media on public opinion with exit poll data collected on election day. This paper contributes to an on-going debate concerning the media’s role in campaign coverage by providing results from direct tests that are not confounded by factors such as election competitiveness, media market norms, and other effects generated by the temporal and geographic diversity inherent in multi-case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have studied South Korea elections in terms of regionalism, economic development, and political elite leadership. But few of them has tried to find out the relationship between people’s religious affiliation and their political behavior. In this paper, I will shed some light on how people’s religious background affects people’s voting behavior as well as people’s political attitudes. In terms of religious role in politics, many scholars suggest that religion plays a prominent role in politics, operating along three important pathways. First, religious beliefs often influenced politics directly, particularly when articulated and applied to contemporary problems by religious leaders. Second, religious organizations often supplied vital resources to political movements and to more durable party organizations, mobilized and directed by religious activities. And third, religious identifications were often a crucial source of political allegiance in the mass public. Moreover, religion had its greatest impact on politics when the pronouncements of leaders, the resources of activists, and the identifications of believers operated in a mutually-reinforcing fashion. In this paper, I will find out what are the role of religion in South Korean politics by analyzing the survey data conducted in Spring, 2003. The survey questionaires composes of three parts: people’s political attitudes and voting choice in 2002 Presidential election, Poeple’s religious affiliation and activities, and general demographic questionaires. By using multiple regression with the data, I will try to shed some light on the relationship between religion and politics in South Korea. Futhermore, I wll assess what is the impact of religion on political development (democratization) in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between electoral reform and change in voter registration and turnout rates in the American states. Using pooled cross-sections of state-level data, I assess the effects of various registration reforms on registration and turnout in national elections from 1972-2000. Earlier analyses that evaluated the potential impact of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) were based on a limited, pre-NVRA time-series ? as such, they suffered from two chronic weaknesses: 1). The sixteen (mostly southern) states that did not implement the NVRA until they were forced to in 1996 were omitted. 2). Lacking a sufficiently long time-series, previous work failed to capture the lag time between a state?s implementation of the motor-voter program and its effects on voter registration and turnout rates. By employing a more expansive time-series, this paper allows the effects of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act to be thoroughly investigated. Motor-voter and election-day registration exhibit a strong relationship with higher voter turnout, whereas mail-in registration and eased non-voting purge provisions do not. As a result, this analysis demonstrates more robust turnout gains due to the 1993 NVRA?s cost-reducing reforms than pre-NVRA forecasts suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does low voter turnout affect politics and policy? This paper examines how turnout fluctuations bring systematic changes to the composition of the electorate which in turn affects the political orientations of representatives being elected. More specifically, this paper looks at midterm House contests as a prototype of low-turnout elections and test whether members first elected in midterm years are more ideological or partisan in their orientations. If they are, voter turnout has serious implications to the partisan and ideological polarization of Congress. There is one highly consistent and recurring pattern of turnout fluctuation in the United States. Candidates run for the U.S. House of Representatives every two years. Within each redistricting decade, they run in exact same district (for the most part) election after election. However, they run in markedly different electoral environments every other election cycle. From 1960 to 2000, the national average turnout ( percent of VAP) for elections which included a presidential race was 55.1 percent . It was 40.6 percent for midterm (off-year) elections. The difference is highly statistically significant and this pattern of ups and downs has been remarkably consistent. The electorate is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different between presidential and midterm elections. One of the most significant and relevant characteristics of the midterm electorate is its composition in terms of partisan and ideological orientation. In low-turnout midterm elections, the active electorate becomes more partisan. The distributions of Democratic and Republican voters are expected to get respectively more skewed toward partisan extremes as strong partisans remain active at the polls but independents and leaners abstain. As a consequence, more extreme Democratic electorate is expected to produce more extreme Democratic candidates. The same is true for Republicans. To empirically test these propositions, first I examine whether the two median voters--one voting for Republican and the other for Democrat-- diverge to partisan extremes in midterm years. And secondly, if they do, partisan and ideological orientations of members who won their first term in midterm years are compared to that of members who first won in presidential years I focus on the 1990s U.S. House of Representatives and test the potential “midterm effects” on the partisan and ideological polarization of the members of Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's preservation and maintenance of its secular identity had traditionally been a profound point of tension vis-à-vis the so-called 'threat' of Islamization. The most recent example of this tension was the 'Republic Protests.' These protests aimed to block the election of an 'Islamist' presidency which would place the executive branch entirely under the control of the 'Islamist-leaning' ruling party (i.e. AKP). Secularists won the first round as AKP had to postpone the presidential election to a time after the parliamentary election that would be held in July 2007. Yet, this victory turned out to be short-lived because the movement was unable to sustain its solidarity in the parliamentary election which then marked the first time in 52 years that Turks have voted an incumbent party back into power with even more support than before. This paper seeks to answer how it would be possible to explain the dynamics of the recent 'pro-secular' demonstrations in Turkey and why the movement was unable to sustain participants' commitment. In their responses to the former question, cultural approaches to social movements prove to be more efficient than their rational counterparts. Regarding the second question, this paper proposes an alternative theoretical model explaining changing motivations in social movements. Accordingly, the model borrows both from the rationalist and the culturalist schools and argues that disengagement came about as a result of two conditions: First, ideological frames used for mobilization ended up to be no more valid because the participants realized that the 'Islamization' threat was no more a threat but a 'construction.' Second, inefficiency of framing was further crystallized as individuals' rational calculations required them to quit supporting the movement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution and characteristics of the Polish party system in the period 1991-2007, using the framework of institutionalization. Key moments in the development of the party system are identified by analyzing the results of six consecutive parliamentary elections. At the onset of the development of democratic politics, the party system was characterized by instability and under-institutionalization. By the end of the second decade, it displayed strong signs of structural stabilization and some evidence of the stability of interparty competition and party institutionalization, implying that the Polish party system is quasi-institutionalized. Moreover, the paper attempts to explain the results by focusing on elite behaviour and institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details the design and implementation of an Election Day field study targeting the operation of polling stations. This pilot study represents the first systematic attempt to determine how common lines are on Election Day, at what times of day lines are most likely to form, bottlenecks in the voting process, and how long it takes an average citizen to cast his or her ballot. We collected data during the 2008 presidential primary election in California measuring the efficiency of the operational components of 30 polling stations across three counties. During the Election Day, voter arrivals peaked twice: in the early morning and the early evening. Our data also suggest that experienced poll workers are not more efficient than first-time poll workers, even controlling for age. We also find that voters who used a DRE machine took a full minute longer to cast their ballot than voters marking paper ballots that were subsequently scanned. This study illustrates the need for further and more extensive data collection about the operation of polling stations. The study also shows how better data can help election officials make critical decisions on the allocation of capital, labor and other resources. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the sixth in a series of papers based on a project examining the interplay of party, interest groups and money and their influence on elections and health care policy in the state of Iowa. This particular paper will focus on the 2008 state legislative elections. It will examine the spending patterns of the Iowa Democratic and Republican Party legislative caucuses, as well as the six groups I have been following (The Iowa Federation of Labor, The Iowa Federation of Independent Businesses, The Iowa Medical Society, The Iowa Health Care Association, The Iowa Hospital Association, and Wellmark, Iowa's Blue Cross/Blue Shield Provider). Data will come from both campaign finance reports filed with the state and from interviews with legislative leaders, with a particular focus on the role of health care issues in the election and how the election results might impact the future of legislation in this area in the state. The research design for the project, which began with the 2004 state legislative elections, has this election as the endpoint of data collection. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper compares the similarities between the elections of 2008 and 1932, especially because each election was during an economic crisis. In the paper, I compare the various differences and the several common points between these two ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a quantitative content analysis of media coverage of ethanol appearing in the New York Times from 1998 to 2008, paying particular attention to changes overtime in the quantity, tone, and framing of coverage. The analysis also takes into account key political and economic events such as elections, economic downturns, and energy crises, and the role of various political actors. Lastly, the paper includes a discussion of the public opinion and policy implications of the trends in media coverage. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of information in elections can hardly be overstated: if voters are uninformed about candidates' or parties' policy positions, voters cannot express their policy preferences through voting, and politicians cannot derive a mandate for future policies from the vote (Alvarez 1997; Budge and McDonald 2006). In an era of rising education levels and increasing availability of information through mass media, voters should be ever more informed about politics. At the same time however, European party systems are increasingly fragmented, thereby increasing contextual complexity, rendering it more difficult for voters to perceive party policy positions (Dalton and Wattenberg 1993). Though the existing literature on voter information and perceptions of party/candidate positions seems to confirm that education, media exposure, issue salience, and incumbency increase voter information, the impact of contextual factors such as party system fragmentation has not been investigated yet (Sniderman and Levendusky 2007; Van der Brug 1997). This paper tests these dynamics by assessing voter uncertainty about party positions on the left-right dimension in 22 European democracies. The paper develops three different measures of voter uncertainty: not-knowing, ambiguity and inaccuracy and relates these to voter and party system characteristics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh assembly in 1999 brought a new electoral system to mainland Britain, mixed-member proportional (MMP). This paper examines the electoral effect of having two types of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). Lundberg (2006), using an elite survey in 2000 and 2003, has shown that MSPs elected through the constituency part of MMP spend more time doing constituency service than MSPs elected thought the list. This paper looks at the effect of these different types of incumbency on constituency vote totals in the 2003 and 2007 Scottish Parliament elections. While it finds that both types of incumbents have an incumbency advantage, this effect is small for list MSPs and is also affected by the party affiliation of the MSPs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, Barack Obama and John McCain will not be the only candidates running for president. Prominent third party candidates (Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader) as well as dozens of other less notable third party candidates will appear on some or all of the ballots across the fifty states and the District of Columbia. This begs the question, why do third parties nominate and run candidates for the presidency when they have little or no chance of winning? This paper looks at these candidates. Based on systematic research into the candidates, platforms, campaign organizations and finances, and voter support for these third party campaigns, this paper sheds light on the motivations of third parties, the campaigns they wage, and their ultimate "success" at the ballot box. Based on this descriptive analysis, this paper goes on to develop a broader typology of third party and independent candidacies, adding to existing theories about the role of political parties in representing interests in the electoral arena. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a lot of interest in how party primaries affect the characteristics of candidates, most work has focused on U.S. presidential candidates, limiting scholars’ ability to compare the effects of primaries across large numbers of candidates. The gap is understandable, as it is rare for parties to use different selection methods simultaneously across districts. In new democracies, more experimentation takes place. One such case is Mexico, where the two largest parties used a variety of selection procedures to choose their 2006 candidates for plurality district seats, from open primaries to designation by the national leadership. Since re-election is prohibited, there were no unopposed incumbents. This paper looks at how selection methods affect the candidates chosen, drawing on two surveys, of congressional candidates prior to the 2006 election and of congressional deputies in March 2008. Since the decision to hold a primary is separate from who wins the primary election, I use a Heckman two-stage model to control for selection sample bias. The paper analyzes whether candidates selected in primaries are systematically more moderate or more extreme than the median candidate for each party. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between government policy and public preferences is a core concern of democratic theorists. One particularly powerful method of relating policy to opinion is the 'dynamic representation' approach. Scholars in this tradition test to what extent current policy changes are a function of past public preferences. This paper derives hypotheses from the dynamic representation approach and tests them for the United Kingdom in a left-right context from 1976-2006. First, it is shown that government policy on the left-right scale changes as a consequence of changing public preferences (the direct mechanism of 'rational anticipation'). Second, a right-wing public results in the election of the Conservative Party, which consequently pursues right-wing policies in office (the indirect mechanism of 'electoral turnover'). Third, government responsiveness is found to be conditional on electoral vulnerability. Popular incumbents are less likely than unpopular incumbents to adjust their policy position to the public. While the Westminster system has received much criticism for its failure to reliably link rulers to the ruled, this paper finds that dynamic representation on the left-right scale in the United Kingdom functions quite admirably. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper traces the journey of political parties in Nigeria so far through the murky and turbulent waters of politics. In doing this,the paper seeks to examine the impact of the party system,as practised in Nigeria, on the current political engineering taking place in the country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the history of candidates' early primary state decisions, builds a model updating recent studies on Iowa and New Hampshire's importance to the eventual nomination, and provides a glimpse at strategies of likely 2008 contenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at local newspaper coverage of congressional politics in a sample of districts for each of the congressional elections since 2000. The districts chosen include a range of "fits" (good, middling and poor) with television markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the motivation of the framers on issues of slavery at the Constitutional convention and analyzes which types of constituent interests affected votes on slavery issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting "correctly" assumes an individual makes their vote decision the same way they would have under the conditions of full information. This paper examines whether or not individuals vote "correctly" in US House and Senate elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines support for sovereignty as expressed by voting in national and provincial elections and referenda at discrete locations in Quebec from 1976 to 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]