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In light of America’s increasing diversity, research into the impact of community heterogeneity on civic and political participation has burgeoned in recent years. To date, the literature on the subject has revealed an intriguing inconsistency about the participatory consequences of heterogeneity In his recent book Democracy in Suburbia, Oliver finds that people who live in communities with greater economic diversity have higher levels of engagement in localized political action, like voting in local elections and contacting local elected officials. Likewise, a forthcoming book by Gimpel et al argues that heterogeneity leads to greater political engagement. In contrast, a number of economists have found that economic, racial, and ethnic heterogeneity all lead to a decrease in participation. However, in a recent review essay surveying this literature, Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn note that fifteen recent papers by economists on the subject of community heterogeneity all conclude that heterogeneity reduces civic engagement. While at first glance the economic and political science literatures appear to be empirically incompatible, a closer look reveals that they are actually theoretically consistent with one another. It is important to note that these apparently divergent studies have examined different forms of participation. Mistakenly, the literature on participation often indiscriminately groups disparate activities together, notwithstanding considerable evidence that various forms of participation are qualitatively different from one another. Recently, Scott Keeter and his colleagues have conducted a massive study of participation in the United States, and upon analyzing an array of different activitiesconcluded that there are essentially three participatory dimensions (Jenkins et al. 2003). “Civic” activity, by which they mean non-political efforts like volunteering in the community, is a different dimension of participation than activity that communicates political preferences. This paper reconciles the seeming contradiction regarding the effect of heterogeneity on participation. It shows that civic activity, like volunteering, is facilitated in homogeneous places, while people are more likely to express political voice in communities that are heterogeneous. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the most theoretically coherent and analytically consistent type of heterogeneity is not racial or economic (the focus of the current literature). Instead, it is ideological heterogeneity. The analysis employs the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, which consists of representative samples drawn in 40 communities across the U.S. Because of the study’s hierarchical design, it is possible to construct aggregate measures of heterogeneity for each community in the sample, including the dispersion of political ideology (operationalized simply as the standard deviation of political ideology within the community). These data, however, also require attention to the statistical complexities of hierarchical data, and are thus modeled using hierarchical linear modeling. This method of estimation simultaneously accounts for individual- and contextual-level variables, ensuring that each of the model’s parameters is measured with the appropriate standard errors. In sum, this paper offers a theoretically-grounded explanation for an apparent contradiction in the literature on community heterogeneity and participation, thus helping to illuminate the impact of diversity on America’s civic landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on the problem of the proper constitution of the war powers has narrowly focused on legal reforms to promote inter-branch dialogue on the use of military force. The 2008 National War Powers Commission Report is a primary example of this approach and this paper will highlight its limitations and uncover alternatives. Instead of legal reforms - which have failed in the past - what is needed is a view towards the political regime as a whole; one that looks to material rather than legal checks on the use of force. This democratic approach works to develop and maintain a mobilized citizenry that constrains and directs military policy by serving as a check on elites. This paper demarcates the outlines of a theory of democratic war powers through the application of a range of political and legal theory to the proposals of the Commission. A regime approach provides a means to reestablish democratic accountability for the use of force through the political constitution of a tension between the people and their nation's use of arms. ..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]

What is the relationship between property rights and democracy? This paper attempts to historicize this question through a close examination of the way property rights shaped the governance of nineteenth-century American municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observers of democracy have long worried that it has the potential to degenerate into rule by the poor. Yet this has never happened in the United States. Is this because the U.S. has a relatively egalitarian class structure, or are there other reasons to be considered? For some of the ancient Greeks, democracy was a form of class rule, and the concern that poor majorities would threaten property rights has surfaced and resurfaced in democratic political thought ever since, including in the thinking of the American Federalists. In response to this concern, Aristotle suggested that an ideal democracy (or polity) would have a large middle class, and Alexis de Tocqueville believed that American democracy worked in part because there were no extremes of wealth here. However, if we wish to understand why democracy in America has never been a vehicle for rule by the poorer classes, class structure alone does not offer us an adequate explanatory framework. Ironically, the thinker who gives us the best clue as to why democracy does not become a vehicle for rule by the poor is Adam Smith, who understood the powerful grip that the dream of upward mobility can have on “poor men’s sons,” and who was aware of the peculiar admiration for the rich that seems to go with this dream. In short, what Smith recognized is power of ideology, culture, and class consciousness. The dream of upward mobility has had a powerful grip on the American imagination since at least the Jacksonian era, and today, according to one study, nearly 40 percent of all Americans believe that they either are in the top 1 percent of wealth-holders, or that they will be within their lifetimes. Under these circumstances, the concern that democracy will become rule by the poor seems moot—to say the least. But does not, then, a new concern arise? If such a large proportion of Americans identify themselves not just with the wealthy but with the extremely wealthy, how can the political interests of the non-wealthy be adequately represented? The dream of upward mobility would seem to cause citizens to vote not their own class interests, but the interests of a class of which they believe they will be a member some day. This paper traces the history of democratic thought about the implications of class structure for democracy. It then focuses on the rise of liberal populism in the United States in the early 19th century, and examines the continued power of the ideology of upward mobility. It considers explanations for the continued grip of this ideology on the American imagination, and it raises concerns about the future shape of democracy under these circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The domestic politics of challenging states is thought to convey information to target states about the credibility of deterrent threats. This paper analyzes a model similar to Schultz (1998 and 2001) of two parties in electoral competition in the context of an international crisis. The content and quality of the inferences the target can draw from the domestic politics of the challenging state are shown to be a function of the relative popularity of the parties prior to the international crisis and thus a function of the state of the economy and candidate locations on domestic issue dimensions. Several conclusions are drawn: (1) lack of support from a democratic opposition signals that an unpopular government is more likely to follow through on a threat; (2) oppositions sometimes support bluffs of unpopular governments; (3) unpopular oppositions sometimes fail to support government policies they believe will be quite popular. A case study of U.S. politics prior to the War of 1812 illustrates some of the dynamics predicted by the model. The opposition Federalists were consistently opposed to war with England even when it appeared the war might be popular. The most plausible explanation is that opposition along this important issue dimension provided the Federalists with their only chance at influence on national politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a vast literature on the possible causes of low and declining turnout in Western democracies. Most of these studies explicitly or implicitly argue that we should be concerned that fewer citizens go to the polls. The argument tends to be that low turnout is a problem because rich and better educated citizens are far more likely to vote than poor, less educated citizens and that this makes for unequal influence and representation. There are two related underlying assumptions here. The first is that rich and poor citizens in fact differ significantly in their policy preferences. The second is that if these non-voters were to turnout, election results would be significantly different from what they are at present. However, while the view that low turnout constitutes a democratic dilemma is widely held and oft stated (Piven and Cloward 1988; Verba et al. 1995; Lijphart 1997; Putnam 2000), few if any of these studies provide empirical evidence for the accuracy of these assumptions; even fewer examine the question outside the American context. We test these propositions using data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study. Our analysis entails two steps. First, we analyze differences in opinion between voters and non-voters across a wide spectrum of policy areas covering economics, social policy, national unity and others in order to assess the extent of divergent views between voters and abstainers. Next, we test the hypothesis that the outcome of the 2000 Canadian Federal Election would have been appreciably different if all citizens were to have voted by simulating universal turnout. The paper will make a significant contribution by providing an empirical assessment of some widely held but seldom tested propositions and also by extending the analysis of the consequences of low turnout beyond the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a recent renewal of interest, attempts to use the law as a tool of development have been considered a failure. This is particularly the case for attempts to transfer American legal instititutions. With few exceptions, however, scholars have placed the failure of institutional transfers squarely on the recipients of these efforts. The American legal system has remained a transparent and rational ideal all developing polities could benefit from if the barriers to reception could be lowered. I postulate that the constant tension in American legal culture between constitutionalism and democracy may help explain the difficulty in transfering our legal institutions. This widely recognized pair of absolutes is the basis of an equally widely recognized contradiction between constitutional restraints and popular control that is part of the way Americans see the workings of the law. The very familiarity and persistence of this contradiction is the reason Americans have not seen it as a major reason why transplanting American legal systems is so difficult. In this paper I use a critique of a popular American literary text, Steven Vincent Benet’s The Devil and Daniel Webster (1936), as a tool to reveal the nature and depth of this basic contradiction in American legal culture. I give a short synopsis of the story and a description of the use of “tall tales” to reveal cultural archetypes. I then present a discussion of how the absolutes and contradictions in American legal culture help explain how it works and some conclusions about difficulties attending efforts to transfer American legal institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper articulates the relationship between social science and critical theory in a problem-oriented approach and how that approach can best promote the end of racial democratization in the case of the US. I discuss the role of social science in identifying and constituting the publics to which critique is addressed and the relation of both dominant and subordinate racial groups to the possibility of racial democratization. In particular, I advocate that critical theory should give more attention to the sources of racial hierarchy within white practice and the contradictions experienced by racial elites within that practice. These instabilities within racial hierarchy, as experienced by agents, can provide practical reasons for elites to participate in a politics of racial democratization. This attempts to address the under-theorized questions of how dominant publics relate to critical theory?s practical interest in social change and how stable egalitarian advancements are achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on United States democracy promotion efforts and whether they have are successful or not. The United States has played an important role in democracy promotion efforts. Historically the U.S. “supported” democracy commonly through m ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The search for religious moderates preoccupies analysts of both American and international politics. However, much of this analysis is deeply flawed, seeking religious leaders from Kansas to Karachi who fit comfortably into a liberal-democratic mold. This paper examines the amorphous concept of the “religious moderate,” and distinguishes distinct forms of moderation that one could seek from religious civil society groups. Such a nuanced look at religious moderation is an important step in increasing social science’s grasp of the dynamics of religion in contemporary international politics. Religious moderation is heavily influenced by national-level variables, especially a state's tradition of religion-state relations. Thus, attempts to export "religious moderation" should be undertaken with great care. The distinct treatment of Muslim civic assocations in France and the United States demonstrates two quite different takes on moderation, and the implications that conceptions of moderation have on the make-up of religious civil society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scholarly debate over sovereignty at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 has focused on whether the American political system is best understood in federal or national terms. Instead of pursuing this question, this paper asks the more fundamental question of whether the United States Constitution is grounded on a single, coherent theory of sovereignty. An analysis of Madison’s Notes on the Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787, treating delegates individually and across time, illustrates that the Founders were committed to a single, multidimensional theory of sovereignty. The theory is multidimensional in that it separates sovereignty into two distinct concepts, principle sovereignty (the authority from which power is drawn) a derived sovereignty (the exercise of power). This theory relies on a principle/agent relationship which is created to deal with the practical problems associated with popular sovereignty. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low marginal cost of internet socializing offers a potentially huge cost-benefit advantage over participation in more traditional types of civic associations. If net communities offer similar existential benefits (e.g. social contact, validation, etc.) as do traditional associations, then those more traditional communities have a competitive disadvantage in maintaining their status as loci of social, and therefore political, discussion. Given limited time to spend on socializing, internet societies alter the subject matter, scope and quality of personal interactions; it may be expected similarly to alter the scope of what is considered to be legitimate political action. The growth of communities based not upon geography and other traditional conceptions of shared-interest but upon selected interests and self-ascribed identity changes any imputed “common good.” Such a shift can be seen as an outgrowth of Madison’s use of republicanism to limit the purview of democratic politics. My paper examines how such changes in the forms and mechanisms civil association as seen on the internet can be expected to alter the political plausibility structures of what people consider to be the proper purview of political action. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a relationship between internal time consciousness and our political lives? The study of time has a long and storied history (e.g., St. Augustine, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger), but with few exceptions these meditations are kept apart from the study of politics. Through a careful reading of Tocqueville’s work, this paper aims to close this gap. I will argue that in the democratic milieu of America, Tocqueville experienced a “democratic” way of thinking about time. This unique time-consciousness is not only a departure from the old-world, aristocratic time consciousness, but is also a necessary aspect of the epistemology of democracy, which in turn is necessary for legitimate and lasting democratic political regimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will examine the comparison of Athens and America. I will argue that the project of spreading democracy has always been seriously flawed, but the chauvinism of the West has reached new and dangerous heights under the leadership of the American Empire that make the project even more perilous. Contrary to their illusions, the neoconservatives are not the heirs of the Greeks. What they elicit from the Greeks is a dark legacy that has not only contributed to the decline of American power and prestige, but threatens world order, peace, and prosperity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze transitions to democracy (and semi-democracy) and democratic breakdowns in 20 Latin American countries between 1945 and 2005. We argue that domestic conditions cannot explain the region-wide wave of democratization that took place in 1978-95. Our transition models control for standard socio-economic predictors as well as for domestic institutional conditions (including the nature of the authoritarian regime in transition models, and the type of party system in breakdown models). We include a battery of additional predictors to capture the impact of international factors, including measures of diffusion (using spatial lags, and distinguishing short-term and long-term effects) and an original indicator of US support for democracy. Our results indicate that political leaders tend to emulate transitions in neighboring countries in the short-run, even though there is no evidence of a long-term equilibrium effect at the regional level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the increasing importance placed on the promotion of Democracy to developing nations as well as the increased occurrence of failing and struggling Democracies, gaining a better understanding of the weaknesses of American democracy promotion is needed This analysis will examine the cases of Haiti, Afghanistan, and Georgia in order to analyze the relationship between the promotion of political development and the success or failure of democratic consolidation in an attempt to test the prospects for a new, business-model of American democracy promotion. The primary objective of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of democratic transitions and consolidation in nations at various stages of democratization and the effect that they have on the overall success of Democracy promotion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal or “parchment” guarantees of government restraint and respect for human rights seldom ensure that such restraint will be observed in practice. One persistent and widespread example of such lack of restraint is that of official impunity, or the failure of governments to ensure that their agents are bound by the same laws that apply to the rest of the population. For this paper I have created a measure of impunity based on data from U.S. State Department Human Rights Country Reports for more than 155 countries; this indicator provides an additional dimension to other measures of “rule of law” and official respect for human rights. Preliminary analysis of this data suggests that official impunity is worse in polities facing domestic insurgencies and high levels of corruption, and that the prevalence of impunity decreases dramatically with press freedom. In fact, press freedom may be a more effective tool in curbing official impunity than formal democracy, which results in episodic rather than constant pressure on recalcitrant military and police forces. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since the idea of democracy became an aspiration rather than a fear or threat, political actors have argued that citizens must be knowledgeable for it to function well. Without challenging that aspiration, we question the degree to which the United States is serious about trying to create or maintain a knowledgeable citizenry. We first make a speculative argument cutting through a broad swath of American history, pointing to the paradox that every expansion of the franchise both has been understood to enhance democracy and has arguably reduced the politically-relevant knowledge of the median voter. That paradox sets us up for a more focused empirical examination of the degree to which elected officials seek to provide voters with factual knowledge relevant to their (re)election and actions in office. By examining members of Congress' constituent newsletters, we show that, while factual information about the society or polity is not irrelevant, it does not rank high on their list of priorities for what they want to communicate to voters. We also consider variation in the degree to which members of Congress convey factual information to voters in their newsletters, and suggest reasons for this variation. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of why citizens' factual knowledge should matter in a democratic polity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Certainly, one way for the will of the people to be expressed, in this modern world, is through voting. More recently, a place has been made in the democratic arena for public opinion polling data as well. How does public opinion fit within the literature of democratic theory? How is it used in practice? Does public opinion data reflect the will of the people better than voting? What are the limitations of survey research and of equating its results with the voice of the people? This paper seeks to propose answers to these questions and unite all of these perspectives into an initial examination and evaluation of the possibilities presented by public opinion data in both the American and generally democratic context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act share one thing in common: they represent the culmination of events that led to the creation of an American police state. In all of the research and publications that have been written about the government response to 9/11, there is a surprising historical disconnect when discussing the oppressive measures that were put into place during the Bush administration, as if measures taken during prior administrations had not happened. In this paper, I propose to examine in detail how the post-9/11 police state was linked to the overall historical trend in post-Revolutionary War America to expand state power at the expense of democracy. It was political movements, which delayed and resisted the expansion of state power during the 19th and 20th centuries. The United States government was able to undermine democratic movements and in so doing, set the stage for the police state, which has appeared in post-9/11 America. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the health of local democracy by analyzing the structure and content of citizen discourse at town council meetings held to discuss the merits of Wal-Mart development in cities and towns of varying size around the country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impacts of participation in a deliberative democracy process on minorities’ perceptions of internal and external political efficacy, and examines the impacts of diversity and social inclusion on external political efficacy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that ideology played a minor role in the early Cold War by demonstrating that containment was initially directed to halt the expansion of a potential hegemon rather than the expansion of a socio-economic system of government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the American tradition of individualism, which has been significant in recognizing and protecting individual rights, is singled out and critically examined for ways in which it could be leading citizens to disengage from the political process. This is a departure from previous research that has focused logistical concerns and external conflicts as the leading causes of disengagement. The primary causes discussed herein are ideological in nature, thereby suggesting internal factors.The United States Constitution is strongly rooted in classical liberalism. It has a commitment to liberal ideals of limited government, consent and individualism, and these ideals have been applied to all areas of American lifeâ??political, economic and socialâ??with varying degrees of success. The liberal ideal that has come into the most conflict with the principles of democracy and self-government, however, is individualism. The American political system requires the involvement of the people, and the liberal need for a limited government requires a neighborly concern for others in society. Unfortunately, individualism leads people away from both of these requirements by providing the justification and rationale for non-participation. Factor analyses of national datasets from the years 1960-2004 demonstrate a consistent relationship between individualistic attitudes and participation. The resulting factor scores consistently explain significant portions of the variance in other individualistic and communalistic attitudes and behaviors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the role of the US-led democracy promotion sector in enhancing and shaping opposition mobilization in several (former) semi-authoritarian countries in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Starting with an analysis of the electoral revolutions in Croatia, Slovakia and Serbia in the late 1990s, it seeks to determine the effect organizations such as NDI, IRI, the Soros foundation, and different USAID subcontractors had on the organization and political- contentious mobilization pattern in these countries. It is argued that the activities of these organizations coupled with strong and mature opposition movements, helped create a whole new culture and repertoire of electoral-contentious mobilization, instrumental in creating the political preconditions of an electoral revolution. The second part of the paper analyses the regional and contextual transposition of this repertoire from East Central Europe to the countries of Ukraine and Moldova and quite recently the Caucasian Republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. Higher or lower levels of semi-authoritanianism in these countries have given rise to at least some element of opposition activity, activity which in the last two years has been progressively influenced and styled both by agents of the democracy promotion sector, as well as former Serbian and Croatian opposition activists. The extent to which such influence has organizationally strengthened and strategically reoriented the opposition sectors in these countries, is argued to be one of the best indicators for the possibility of coming regime change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental question underlying theories addressing government reorganization and intergovernmental relations concerns the role of coordinated versus collaborative systems of government. The theoretical approaches present alternative hypotheses about the relative effect of a centralized versus participatory governmental systems on policy and program outcomes. Whereas centralized approaches generally focus on administrative or federal regulatory controls, participatory approaches increasingly identify the importance of state and local flexibility and accountability in policy and program design and implementation. These basic analytic frameworks also serve to focus particular attention on persistent debates over whether increasing coordination or increasing collaboration in intergovernmental relations results in greater efficiency and effectiveness in policy and program decision-making. This paper raises a general concern about the inherent issues of representative democracy in the U.S. system of federal government. This paper asserts that the role of associations in policy formation serves to synthesize if not reflect the diversity of perspectives is central to intergovernmental relations and representative democracy. The specific aim of this paper is to explore this question: what is the effect of professional associations on state and local public health officials in shaping the national bioterrorism policy? The methodology employed will use a case study approach to analyze the Homeland Security Act 2002. A qualitative review suggests that a fundamental shift in the overall legislative language, from a coordinated to a collaborative intergovernmental model, occurred along the continuum from policy initial framing of the policy issues, to policy design, amendment and enactment. This finding suggests that the professional association direct engagement in the legislation reflects as well, an increased state and local interest and involvement in strengthening their role in public health critical infrastructure capacity. The paper argues that the associations mediate diverse state and local stakeholder interests in influencing national policy. It further argues that the role of the professional associations served to ensure that the Department of Health and Human services (HHS) retained authority and jurisdiction over core public health functions including chemical biological, radioactive and nuclear (CBRN) homeland security concerns. These critical public health ‘dual’ functions remain squarely under the authority and jurisdiction of HHS. Significant is HHS’s collaborative institutional relationship to the newly established Department of Homeland Security (DHS). HHS remains, however, institutionally outside the DHS reorganization. The legislation as originally put forward emphasized a coordinated or more centralized intergovernmental relationship between HHS and DHS with respect to CBRN critical infrastructure capacity. The subsequently amended and enacted legislation shifted toward a collaborative institutional solution. The paper argues that this change in institutional norms reflects the historical relationships of national, state and local public health infrastructure. The collaborative participatory approach was not advanced directly by the stases, but rather emerged as the professional associations assumed a central role in framing the policy, designing the alternatives and promoting state and local support for enactment. The paper has significant theoretical and practical policy implications that touch on representative democracy, organizational theory, intergovernmental relations and federalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous observers have noted the recent trends of increased voter abstention, reduced confidence in politicians and political parties in decline. Such complaints are levied against the advanced democracies of Europe, their post-communist neighbors, the United States, and Latin America. Some use the term “anti-politics” to capture these apparently global phenomena that affect new and old democracies alike. This usage includes everything from relatively benign conditions of voter apathy to the more consequential loss of regime legitimacy. Whatever the specific symptom, they reflect varying degrees of negative public attitudes toward politics. Along with the rise of anti-politics, particularly in the 1990s, came a resurgence of populism. Several right-wing populists emerged in Europe, at times capturing surprisingly large shares of the popular vote. In Latin America, so-called neopopulists generated discussions of delegative democracy, hyperpresidentialism, illiberal democracy and so forth. Populist leaders of all stripes tend to exploit domestic problems to their own advantage. They play on the complaints of common citizens and blame the nation’s rulers from causing the hardships. As such, their efforts and rhetoric could be described as “anti-political.” Yet this raises an interesting question: what, exactly, is the relationship of anti-politics to populism? Are these merely two terms that describe the same phenomena, or are they analytically distinct? This paper attempts to clarify the relationship between populism and anti-politics. It enters into the conceptual discussion of populism—offering a new definition of populism as a political movement, rather than a style or strategy and so forth—and argues that anti-politics is best considered as a means of securing support. That is, if populism is not in itself a political strategy, then anti-politics must be the strategy populist leaders use. Although one can conceive of non-populists using anti-political strategies, it is difficult to conceive of populists not relying on anti-politics. Populists of all stripes rely on it. The classic populists in Latin America rose in reaction to the oligarchical parties that dominated politics at the time, and infused their messages with nationalist rhetoric. Neopopulists of the 1990s similarly reacted to the so-called political class that seemed aloof and removed from the problems of ordinary citizens. In these, as well as with the agrarian populism in the United States and the right wing populism in Europe, the effort to mobilize support includes the claim that the political system is not working properly, that the interests of ordinary citizens are ignored, and without some big changes the status quo will remain. In all of these cases the predominant argument in favor of the change is that the system needs fixing. Populists claim to offer an appropriate solution. This paper will present the logic behind this conceptualization and explore their relationships in the cases of Peru and Venezuela, with an eye toward providing an inter-regional comparative framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the extent to which candidates for elected office keep their campaign promises holds great interest for citizens and has important consequences for the quality of democracy, we know very little about whether candidates actually keep these promises, and the paucity of such information is particularly acute for congressional candidates. The proposed paper will examine the relationship between campaign promises and the subsequent legislative behavior of members of Congress in the area of environmental protection. The paper will seek to answer three questions: first, how prevalent is promise keeping behavior on the part of members of Congress?; second, do campaign promises improve our ability to predict congressional behavior after controlling for other factors known to explain this behavior?; and third, does the propensity to break campaign promises vary systematically across types of legislators? Methods: Responses to the National Political Awareness Test (NPAT) are matched with roll call data on environmental issues from the 104th to the 109th Congress. A series of bivariate probit models with selection are then used to assess the extent to which roll call votes are consistent with candidate policy statements in the NPAT. Two additional items regarding the proposed paper are worth noting. First, an earlier version of this paper is forthcoming in Social Science Quarterly. The SSQ article answers the three questions posed above using data from the House of Representatives in the 105th Congress; thus, the proposed paper is a significant extension both temporally (10 years) and spatially (2 chambers), and will substantially improve the generalizability of results on these topics. Second, my co-author on this paper is an undergraduate public affairs student at Indiana University, and if the paper proposal is accepted, he will accompany me to Chicago and deliver much of the presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American society is more divided than ever. Two of the major traditions, capitalistic and democratic value-systems seem to clash in a unique way. The present study sheds light on some of the underlying reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of the reasons leading Tocqueville to prefer the term "democracy" and of the several meanings conferred on this term in his analysis of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition is essential to U.S. democracy. When there is conflict, problems are defined, attention focused, alternatives judged, and decisions made. This study examines the consistency with which the same states have been competitive from one presidential election to the next. Competitive states are states where candidates win by 5 percent or less of the state’s popular vote. Competitive and non-competitive states were identified for presidential elections from 1844 to 2000. When discussing the biases of the Electoral College, researchers mention that competitive states seem to occur randomly without any further study or explanation. A statistical analysis illustrates that the identities of competitive states have become more unpredictable over time. In terms of representation, the fact that competitive states are not consistent means different states are in the presidential spotlight at different times. As opposed to any biases associated with the Electoral College, the changes in consistency seem to coincide with the rise of candidate-centered politics and the decreasing strength of parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizens of democratic societies are often asked to make political choices that require them to balance one desired goal against another. How much freedom is one willing to give up in order to achieve a more tolerant, moral, or secure society? The choices that citizens are asked to make can be difficult because they implicate conflicting principles or values. Such value conflicts occur when two distinct goal orientations?two distinct values?both personally important, have opposing implications for an opinion on a political issue. I distinguish between latent or potential value conflict and subjective or felt value conflict. I show that both forms of conflict are associated with attitude ambivalence (inconsistent feelings and beliefs about an issue), instability over time, and responsiveness to persuasion. My results challenge the widespread assumption that the weak attitudes often expressed by ordinary Americans in opinion polls are ephemeral, shallow, and otherwise poorly considered, suggesting instead that apparently weak attitudes are sometimes rooted in deeply held but conflicting core values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades significant parts of the world have embarked on a democratic path. At the start of the 1980’s, authoritarian regimes dominated throughout Central America, the Caribbean and South America. A decade later with the exception of Mexico, Cuba and Haiti, the entire region had begun to embrace democratic norms. The change that began at the level of the nation-state was increasingly reflected by support from regional and international institutions. Although long a supporter of democracy, the Organization of American States began to strengthen mechanisms designed to sanction undemocratic actions. The OAS also devoted increased resources to election monitoring. Strengthened support for democracy at the regional level has occurred at an uneven pace to say the least. With several important caveats, there appears to be growing evidence to support the claim that an international regime supportive of democracy or IRSD, is emerging in the Western Hemisphere. In this work, I attempt to bridge the gap between regime theory at the systemic level and the spread of democratic norms throughout the hemisphere. I examine the empirical support for such a claim by focusing on the cases of Peru 1992 and 2000, Guatemala 1993, Dominican Republic 1994 and Paraguay 1996. All of these countries experienced varying threats to nascent democracy throughout the 1990’s. I utilize realist, liberal and social constructivist theoretical approaches to explain the strengths and weaknesses of the regime in each of the cases. In some of the cases, the presence of an international democratic regime appears to have influenced the outcome, while in the remaining cases competing concerns minimized its influence [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores whether declining political engagement in American politics is the result of low civic engagement (social capital) or conversely high (and growing) racial and ethnic diversity. Claims that rich and dense networks of social interaction, social capital, are and have been central to U.S. democracy are echoed and strongly restated in major recent works (Putnam 2000). At the same time, American society has become more racially and ethnic diverse, and this diversity is argued to be a benefit as well. Many of the evils that have been attributed to America’s decline in social capital could very well instead be the inevitable result of our growing ethnic diversity. This research tests this hypothesis, by accounting for racial and ethnic diversity in modeling the relationship between social capital and political participation. The implications of this analysis are far reaching, questioning the beneficial effects of social capital on civic and political participation in America (Putnam 2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western democratic countries, especially the United States, are pouring billions of dollars into educational training programs for people from Eastern Europe, the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union (NIS) and other countries around the world. These training programs bring people to the United States and are intended to impart not only technical skills but to promote democratic values and pro-Western attitudes among the participants who are expected to return to their native countries where they will encourage democratic regimes and market economies. Very little empirical research has been aimed at determining if training programs achieve their specified goals of promoting democratic and free-market attitudes among participants. To address this dearth of research we studied the impact of five different training programs on participants from four different countries (Bosnia / Herzegovina, Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan) during the period between 2000 and 2003. The study uses a panel design with three waves of data collection based on face-to-face interviews with program participants both before and after taking part in the training program. The analysis reveals mixed results. There is little evidence demonstrating that training program participation fosters democratic values generally although it does appear to slightly promote opposition to limiting civil liberties and support for workplace democracy. Partaking in a training program also encouraged the program participants to be more favorable toward the involvement of Western countries in the economy of their own country. The greatest impact of training program participation, however, was that it sharply increased international communication which could lead to a higher level of appreciation for cultural diversity among those who participate in training programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the adoption in June 1991 of the Santiago Commitment to democracy, the Organization of American States (OAS) renewed its pledge to protect democracy in the region and established the institutional mechanisms for doing so. Despite reasonably successful responses to coups and democratic crises in the early 1990s (Haiti 1991, Peru 1992, Guatemala 1993), however, the last ten years (1993-2003) have presented the OAS with more pernicious obstacles to democratic stability in the region, whether among the smaller countries of the region (e.g., the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay) or the intermediate powers (e.g., Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela). To discern how deep and consequential the organization’s normative commitment to democracy is, this essay examines OAS action (and inaction) to democratic crises in Latin America from 1991 to the present. Utilizing both qualitative and quantitative data, the essay generalizes about when the OAS is most likely to intervene on behalf of democracy and assesses the impact intervention has had on democratic quality and sustainability in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their importance in formulating education policy, and their symbolic importance as the best instance of classical democratic theory, little is known about local school board elections. Between 1998 and 2001, voter turnout in Missouri averaged 22.7 percent but varied across school districts and across elections. Often school districts within the same county have vastly different turnout rates. Voter turnout is a result of at least four factors: demographic, electoral, cultural, and policy performance. Using official election results obtained from Missouri county clerks and school district demographic, resource and policy performance characteristics, I estimate the importance of demographic (SES, size, population density), school performance (standardized test scores and graduation rates), electoral competition (number of candidates per seat), cultural (turnout in other elections), incumbency, and ballot-measures for a 40-percent sample (N = 207) of school districts in Missouri. Preliminary findings from OLS regression analysis indicate that voter turnout is related to population, candidate competition, education and poverty characteristics of a district, and to school performance. I will use pooled-time series analysis to better understand these influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cartel Theory expertly explains the functioning of the U.S. Congress. However, as a theory originally developed to study a single legislature where the institutional context differs greatly from that found in other presidential democracies, its applicability to these democracies has been questioned. Between one extreme represented by the U.S. (where legislators control their own political future) and the other represented by centralized party systems (where the national party leadership controls legislators’ future), exists an intermediate group of democracies where sub-party bosses are the key actors, controlling the future of subsets of a party’s legislative delegation. We analyze one of these intermediate democracies, Argentina, and demonstrate the general applicability of Cartel Theory to an institutional context that differs notably from that found in the U.S. We highlight how the theory can be adapted to a political system where state-level or intra-party faction bosses, not individual legislators, are the most relevant political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If voters face uncertainty about the ideological positions of congressional candidates, then information contained in party labels will affect candidates’ vote shares. Specifically, two pieces of information about each party are known through the aggregation of party members’ roll call voting: the ideological center and spread of the distribution of ideal points in one dimension. Using a simple expected utility model of voter decision-making, we derive several explicit hypotheses. Using data on U.S. House elections between 1952 and 2000, we find support for two predictions of this model: that (when the center of the Democratic membership is to the left of the Republican center) a Democratic candidate’s vote share is (1) increasing in the location of the midpoint between party means and (2) increasing as the variance of the Democratic membership decreases and the variance of the Republican membership increases. We also find that Democrats’ vote share decreases as the parties become more polarized. Overall, this implies a link between the congressional parties and the electorate---but not necessarily a ``responsible’’ one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of motion is prominent throughout Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In the chapter on the real advantages that American society derives from the government of democracy, Tocqueville makes the following observation: "When one passes from a free country into another that is not, one is struck by a very extraordinary spectacle: there, all is activity and movement; here, all seems calm and immobile." Whether the activity and movement-the motion-of the people be a confused clamor, a thousand voices, a gathering of neighbors, an assembling of citizens, Tocqueville identifies this activity as one of the great benefits of democratic government. "This agitation, constantly reborn, that the government of democracy has introduced into the political world, passes afterwards into civil society. I do not know if, all in all, that is not the greatest advantage of democratic government, and I praise it much more because of what it causes to be done than for what it does" (DA I.2.6). The success of a democracy rests in large part on the motion of the people. Their active participation in township government, political and civil associations, jury service, and commerce provides opportunities for the people to learn to govern themselves and participate in a meaningful way in the governing process. Yet this constant motion of the people also has disadvantages that have an impact on many facets of the lives of those living in a democracy. For example the continual movement of the people breaks or relaxes the bond with prior generations. The individualism that originates in democratic societies can also lead to selfishness. To reflect further on the topic of the challenge that the motion of the people in a democracy presents, I propose first to explain how motion is present in Democracy in America, discuss how the motion of the people makes a positive contribution to democracy, identify the challenges that accompany this agitation in society, consider the ensuing consequences if the motion of the people is threatened, and finally to explore what type of balance can be struck between motion and rest in a democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political acculturation remains a topic of substantial interest to both scholars and policy-makers. In this article, we draw on data from the Democracy through U.S. and Mexican Lenses Project and the Latino National Political Survey to analyze the relative ?stickiness? of political attitudes among Mexican-origin people in the United States. We find that some differences in political attitudes and behavior are small or evanescent, but other differences persist even when demographic factors are taken into account. In general, political acculturation seems to be more thorough on elements of democratic process whose results are more tangible and whose operation is more easily understood. By contrast, large differences between the Mexican-origin population and non-Mexican Americans persist for more subtle or intensive elements of the political process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political institutions play an important role in shaping public policy. The literature presents robust empirical evidence linking policy differences with alternative constitutional structures for policy areas ranging from trade openness to environmental protection, yet not for the protection of human rights, which is our focus. In this paper we consider the effects of presidential constitution on human rights. .x000d.There are two sets of theoretical arguments and empirical findings in the paper. First, we argue that presidential systems are inferior for human rights practices. In the data we find that, indeed, worse practices of physical integrity rights (as well as other rights) are observed in presidential regimes. Second, we argue that the adverse effect of presidency on human rights is not an artifact of marginal democracies relying on presidency, but has systematic basis. To support that claim, we show that the difference between regime types in their ability to protect human rights increases as the quality of democracy improves and institutions play more important role. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How were Mexican American leaders able to successfully organize the largest mass demonstration in US history in May of 2006?This remains a puzzling question given the fact that the political participation literature and the turnout rates of these citizens have documented the fact that Mexican Americans had been amongst one of the groups scoring the lowest on political participation. Using the results of a survey conducted by the author in June 2006 this paper analyses the conditions leading to the two most successful Mexican American led demonstrations in California: those that followed Proposition 187 and antiimmigration bill HR4437. This paper finds -opposite to Huntington- that the success of these mobilizations can be attributed to the interaction between: the assimilation of Mexican Americans leaders in California into the mainstream political culture and the context of overt political hostility towards Mexican Americans/Latinos. The context provided the fuel to ignite ethnic group solidarity but receded afterward. Open ended probes were added to fixed survey questions to provide information on complex identity issues which, as the paper argues, lie at the heart of the surges in the political participation of this group. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 1948, when Truman's victory over Dewey surprised the public and the pollsters, public opinion polling faced a legitimacy crisis. As this paper shows, nascent survey researchers played an important role in helping pollsters to survive and prosper. In discussing academics' efforts to preserve polling for social science and democracy, this paper adds to scholarly knowledge about the growing legitimation and use of public opinion polls for measuring public opinion as well as shifts in political science and other social sciences. The paper draws from oral histories of academic survey pioneers and leading pollsters, as well as contemporaneous publications, reports, and unpublished letters and memos. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Madison has long been seen as a liberal thinker and in many respects an elitist one. More recently, some efforts (Banning 1995, Sheehan 2006, Gibson 2005) have been made to understand him as a consistent and even radical democrat, at least after 1790. This paper re-examines a classic source for Madison's early liberalism, the Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1785), to establish Madison's pre-1790, genuine commitment to and analysis of the popular element of popular government. As a result, the paper challenges elitist, conservative interpretations of a "Hamiltonian" Madison and those who chart a major philosophical shift in the 1790s. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to investigate the interaction between American society and Islamic theological thought in the United States, including its important institutions and representatives.The process of globalization has led to a powerful flow of both people and ideas among the countries of the world, and especially from the developing countries to the more developed ones. Traditional democracies have had to face challenges which they never had to cope with in the past. The active integration of people from distant places, has posed a serious challenge to the integrating societies. In the case of the development of Muslim communities in the West, the situation is apparently more difficult and more critical than in other cases. In many cases, Muslim communities are perceived as trying to introduce terror into the fabric of the integrating societies or states, either publicly or secretly. Due to the traumatic events identified with Islamic terror, democratic societies may choose to or be forced to take anti-democratic steps in order to defend democracy. There appears to be an increasing tendency for societies to face this possibility, posing significant internal contradictions for democratic practices. This paper is an attempt to investigate the interaction between American society and Islamic theological thought in the United States, including its important institutions and representatives. During the past two decades, after the first terror attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, and especially after September 11, 2001, special attention, at first unintended, but later, more concentrated and intensive, has been directed at the activities of the Muslim community in the United States. In this Abstract, mention might be made, for example, of the Islamic scholar, Taha Jabir Al-Alwani, the President of the Fiqh Council of North America. Alwani, who is involved in Islamic thought, education, and writing, and who is an instructor on suiting Islamic law to life in the United States , is often attacked by both sides. Americans who write about and study Islamic terror point to contacts between al-Alwani and organizations which finance and activate Islamic terror, that is, activity in opposition to the state and to the security of its citizens. On the other hand, there are those within and outside of the American Muslim community who view him as acting to advance cultural assimilation and as supporting governmental policy, even when it includes killing Muslims. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At what point did the United States become a government of law rather than a government of men? At what point did the authority of the law provide sufficient confidence in men to use it to delegate power in the National Constitution, but not in the state ones? A case study of the Pennsylvania Constitutions of 1776 and 1790 and the National Second Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention of 1787 (all in Philadelphia) examines these general changes from the transient nature of law in highly democratic Pennsylvania at the time of the Declaration of Independence to the greater stability of the mixed government created by the Constitution of 1790. A second consideration is the difference between the principle of legislative delegation in the National Constitution and the notion of plenary legislative power limited by rights in the two state constitutions. While the documents themselves are examined, the paper concentrates on the role of the five members of the nine-man Pennsylvania delegation to the National Convention who played a role in one of the important stages in state constitutional development, Benjamin Franklin, George Clymer, Thomas Fitzsimons, James Wilson, and Thomas Mifflin. Pennsylvania was chosen because of its exaggeration of some of the themes of the paper, principally in the democratic features of the 1776 Constitution, the watchful eyes of the national delegates to the Second Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia at critical moments in state constitutional development, and uniquely influential roles of revolutionary Benjamin Franklin and republican James Wilson. The historical analysis finds that of the five principals, only James Wilson seemed to guide his action consistently with an understanding of the role of constitutions in law and the differences in theory between state and national law. Benjamin Franklin, the president of the first state constitutional convention, was a major advocate for democracy in the first constitution by arguing for a unicameral legislature and an executive council with no governor. As a supporter of the radical movement nationally for independence (before most in the revolutionary Quaker Assembly of Pennsylvania would agree) , Franklin gave legitimacy to the revolutionary spirit of the Whig movement that displaced the old government and called for a constitutional convention. Pennsylvania is the only state in which the first constitution was written by those who rejected the existing legislature that supported the revolution. The actual document writing itself split even those Whigs into the Constitutionalists in favor of the constitution that gave virtually all of the legal power to the legislature and the Republicans who favored a more mixed new government that was similar to those found in most other states.. All of this was being done under the watchful eyes of the members of the Second Continental Congress that was meeting in the same building in Philadelphia (Franklin was moving between floors in the State House). The records of the convention are examined to find that George Clymer's politics illustrated the kind of change that we find in the constitution movement, as originally a leader of the Whigs, but later offering frequent amendments (that failed) by the end of the convention, most notably to form a bicameral legislature . Ironically, an otherwise highly democratic constitution that encouraged change in day-to-day politics, permitted no amendment for seven years until a two-thirds vote of a specially elected Council of Censors. Thomas Fitzsimons role in the failed attempts to amend the constitution in 1783-4 is used to illustrate the degree to which constitutional actors begin to be bound by rules of law through the use of a constitution... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how our collective choices about local political boundaries affect the quality of deliberation at local public meetings. How the characteristics of our polities - such as their size or their level of diversity - affect democratic life has been an important issue for Americans at least since the debate between the Federalist and Anti-Federalists. The key insight of this paper is that the characteristics of the metropolitan areas where most Americans live are the result of our own collective political decisions. Size and diversity are not exogenous shocks to our political system; they are, instead, determined by citizens and politicians making decisions about their political communities. In other words, the political boundaries that determine the borders of our communities are functions of the democratic system itself. I contend that the way we draw our political boundaries - and especially the ways in which we attempt to carve out and preserve small places in the midst of growing metropolitan regions - has meaningful effects for the nature of the deliberation that occurs in public meetings across the United States. Though they may reflect some of the genius of federalism, fragmented metropolitan regions composed of many smaller localities create a deep challenge for civic participation at institutions like town council meetings. Smaller jurisdictions may mean higher rates of participation, but they may also frustrate key democratic aims, such as allowing citizens to fully confront and contest the differing interests and perspectives across the metropolitan region. Town council meetings in small, fragmented places may have an increased quantity of participation, but the quality of their democracy may be lower, especially from the perspective of deliberative goals. To explore these hypotheses, I employ survey data from a variety of different sources, including both national-level surveys merged with place-level data as well as surveys collected systematically in cities and towns across the country. These data include self-reports of attendance at public meetings along with respondents' attitudes about the issues under consideration. With the help of these data, I find that the challenge for effective deliberation at local public meetings is not the citizens who do show up, but the political boundaries that separate citizens from each other. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ANES data from 1964 - 2000 we examine the impact of district-level competitiveness on political efficacy and trust in government. With an overwhelming number of the contests are uncompetitive, scholars have wondered what impact the lack of competition has had on voter attitudes. From a normative standpoint, many scholars have argued that competitive elections are essential to democracy because they make elected officials more responsive to the citizenry, raise awareness of important issues, engage voters in debates on issues of the day, and provide opportunities for turnover in representation, holding members of Congress accountable to the public. Theoretically, we should expect this to have a positive result on efficacy and trust.On the other hand, always being in a district where your co-partisan wins could increase satisfaction with your member of Congress while bitterly fought campaigns might become negative and turn voters off from the electoral process and both parties, resulting in lower levels of efficacy and trust. In this paper, we study the effects of electoral competition on citizen efficacy and trust in government by examining elections to the House of Representatives over the last 40 years. We find that competitive elections have both a positive and negative effect on efficacy, which has changed markedly over time. The time series data we employ and the different results by decade indicate that this issue is well worth re-examining. Although previous papers haven take up the relationship between competitiveness and efficacy or trust, few have asked whether the relationship has changed over time, let alone reversed. Our findings suggest this is the case. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]