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During the Zedillo administration in Mexico, the federal government established a formula for distribution to states and municipalities of resources for social infrastructure. The question this paper seeks to answer is wheather the political bias previously observed in PRONASOL is eliminated with the new scheme. This paper uses municipal level data on a Mexican decentralized social program to test for political manipulation in its municipal distribution by the state governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationwide, the Medicaid financing crisis is well-documented as federal and state governments struggle with increasing caseloads and skyrocketing health care costs. New York State is one of only two states that require local governments to make significant contributions to financing Medicaid. In New York State, the federal government match is 50 percent , while the state pays for 25 percent and the counties must contribute the remainder of total Medicaid costs. (Medicaid long-term care services have a different State/local share.) The combination of expanded eligibility through Child Health Plus and Family Health Plus, increased traditional Medicaid caseloads as a result of the recession, reduced local revenue and rapidly increasing health care costs has resulted in a Medicaid crisis. County governments are responding to this crisis by reducing other county-funded programs and by raising local property taxes. While counties contribute approximately 25 percent of the financing, they have essentially no control over eligibility requirements, what services are covered, or the pricing of Medicaid services. All of these are regulated by State (and federal) requirements. As a result, counties exert most of their discretion over Medicaid cost management through their organizational structure and program administration. Advocates of devolution argue that this type of local discretion results in improved policy outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the diversity in Medicaid program organization and administration in several counties in Upstate New York and to test whether or not policy implementation is improved as the result of greater county discretion. This paper employs both qualitative and quantitative approaches to examining the differences among counties. The authors made numerous site visits to each county, conducting interviews and collecting quantitative data. In addition, the paper uses publicly available data from the NYS Department of Health and the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide both intrastate and interstate comparisons. The research finds that despite the limits imposed by New York State’s version of Medicaid devolution, counties can exert some control over costs at the margins, thus reducing a portion of the Medicaid burden on local taxpayers. Diversity among counties in department organization and program administration results in considerable variations in average Medicaid expenditures in counties. The research for this project was completed this summer and an executive summary was released in September. Interim findings were presented at the New York State Association of Counties annual conference last spring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the handful of constitutional clauses central to recent interpretations of federalism is the Commerce Clause. The meaning and implications of that clause have been in dispute from the beginning. More recently, as then Justice Rehnquist noted in Hodel v. Virginia Surface Min. and Reclamation Association, 452 U.S. 264 (1981) (at 307), “(i)t is illuminating for purposes of reflection, if not for argument, to note that one of the greatest fictions of our federal system is that the Congress exercises only those powers delegated to it, while the remainder are reserved to the States or to the people. The manner in which this Court has construed the Commerce Clause amply illustrates the extent of this fiction.” Little did we know twenty years ago that the Court would end the century engaged in a debate over the nature of commerce, replicating much of a two-century debate over that definition. Almost always the debate was put in the context of the greater relationship between the National Governments and the states in a federal system. A favorite mechanism in that debate has been reference to “framer’s views” of the pertinent clauses on federalism. In this paper, I propose to examine the early views of the Commerce Clause. The Commerce Clause was a major reason for passing the Constitution. Its absence in the Articles of Confederation was widely believed to be a major problem and its passage involved little debate. But no clause has created more controversy or generated more cases, beginning with Chief Justice Marshall’s famous edict that the Clause “acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed in the Constitution,” and “among the states” permits the regulation of commerce within “the interior.” (Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824) ) In the paper proposed, I will look at the early debates over the Clause to search for the range of views on it held by the Framers, opponents, and other commentators on the Constitution in the first period of American history. I will start with the Constitutional Convention itself, but given the scarcity of debate on the Clause there, I will then look at the wider debate in the state ratifying conventions.. Moving on, I will examine the views expressed on the Clause in the Federalist Papers, that led to operationalization of the Clause in the early decades of the country. This culminates with Marshall’s landmark position in Gibbons. While my method is largely descriptive and analytical, it is based on thousands of pages of documents, including the records of the Constitutional Convention, the debates over ratification such as the Federalist Papers, the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, a collection of the records of the ratifying conventions, and numerous early court cases. The paper is part of a larger research effort by me with James Tubbs that looks into a variety of issues relating to federalism through American history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are federalism and decentralization similar phenomena? Do they necessarily correlate? Do they have an “elective affinity”? Or can they work in opposition to one another? Specifically, does decentralization to any level of subnational government favor all levels of subnational government, or do municipalities differ from higher levels of subnational government (usually “federal” entities such as states or provinces) in meaningful ways? In this paper, I argue that central governments often use the rhetoric and practice of municipal decentralization as a way to weaken federal units at the intermediate level of government. In a “three-level game”, central governments decentralize to the local level in order to strengthen the center’s position in negotiations with the states/regions/provinces. I demonstrate this by examining three case studies: Brazil, South Africa, and Peru. The causes of such occurrences are eminently political: increases in the electoral strength of opposition parties at the intermediate level are the triggers for municipalization. The paper focuses on an important political point too often overlooked in the literature on intergovernmental relations: most countries of interest have not two, but three interacting levels of government. The salience of each of the three levels of government – central, local, and an intermediate tier alternately called state, provincial, or regional – varies from country to country. Most academic studies of intergovernmental relations, federalism, and decentralization focus on dynamics between two layers of government, a dyadic set of political interactions. These approaches, however much they may simplify certain issues and make certain questions more tractable, often miss out on the crucial ways in which the three levels of government can interact. In particular, scholars have a tendency to lump local governments together with other subnational governments. Implicit assumptions are that what is good for one level of subnational government is good for the other. In fact, however, the preferences of municipalities may conflict with those of intermediate levels of government. Central governments, in many circumstances, find allies in the form of local governments. Decentralization to municipalities may actually run counter to some of the central principles of federalism. This paper will examine this possibility, using three quite different polities as case studies. In examining federal Brazil, quasi-federal South Africa, and unitary Peru, I will show that center-local political links can lead to an “hourglass” structure of government with a missing middle (as argued by Junaid Ahmad), reinforcing the center and localities at the expense of the intermediate layer of government. This case selection demonstrates that the strategic choices made by the center can have effects that are robust across different points on the federal-unitary spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project is motivated by two relatively straight forward historical observations about the institutional development of Congress from 1890-2000. The first is that the organizational structure in the House of Representatives throughout this period, like a pendulum, has swung back-and-forth between the strong party/strong Speakership model and the weak party/strong committee model. The second is that this transition toward either centralization or decentralization in organizational form has proceeded throughout the century within both the Democratic and Republican parties at the same time. That is, both the Democrats and Republicans, whether in the majority or minority, have both pushed party organization and chamber practices in the same direction. Far from considering the trajectory of institutional development outlined above as an accident of history, this paper will argue that this is precisely the pattern of institutional change one should expect in Congress both in the past and future. For a number of reasons, current theories on Congress cannot explain these observations. Although this paper considers current congressional theories inadequate to explain the pattern above, it by no means disregards the theoretical insights of pervious work. In fact, the theory of dynamic equilibrium in the House of Representatives builds off the foundations of both rational choice models of static equilibrium in congressional structure--distributive benefits (Shepsle and Weingast 1987), informational (Krehbiel 1987, 1991), and party cartel (Cox and McCubbins 1990, 1993)--as well as theories of institutional change in Congress--conditional party government (Rhode 1991, Aldrich 1995, Binder 1997), modernization(Polsby 1968, Polsby, et. al 1969), and mix models of institutional change(Schickler 2001, Fenno 1978, 2000). There are several critical differences between the theory being proposed by this paper and the above mentioned literature. For example, while the rational choice models each offer important insight into a particular mode of congressional organization the descriptions that each offer’s are static. That is, they do not assume as part of their theories that institutional change is a regular, even predictable, part of life in the House of Representatives. The theory offered in this paper takes seriously the notion of equilibrium in congressional organization, but it does not assume that there is only one equilibrium point or that these points are fixed. Additionally, unlike current models of institutional change, the theory of dynamic equilibrium does not assume that development in Congress is either unidirectional (like in the modernization theory), responds only to the short-term interests of members inside of party coalitions (like in conditional party government theory), or can only be made intelligible through a reliance on ad hoc explanation for each episode of structural adjustment (like in the mixed models of institutional change). Since David Mayhew published his seminal work in 1974 almost every author writing on Congress (including many of those listed above) has taken as their foundational assumption that members of Congress are motivated in their behavior by exogenously generated, electoral preference. In attempting to explain long-term institutional change, the theory of dynamic equilibrium does not begin from this starting point. Rather, the theory offered in this paper proceeds from the assumption that exogenously generated preferences interact in a reciprocal manner with endogenous congressional structures. In fact, in all but a few predicable instances it is assumed that member preferences will conform to an endogenous logic of congressional change. It is the interaction of these two forces over an extended period of time coupled with a new theory of equilibrium points in congressional organization that combine to offer an explanation of institutional development that can take into account the historical observations made at the onset of this proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how presidents balance the competing desires for both loyalty and competence in agencies in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) like the Office of Management and Budget, the Council on Environmental Quality, and the National Security Council. Presidency scholars historically have expressed concerns about presidents focusing too much on securing loyalty in EOP agencies to the detriment of bureaucratic capacity. In this paper I explain when presidents have incentives to place loyal political appointees into important bureaucratic posts formerly held by career professionals or in new positions over career employees as a means of gaining more control over administrative decision making. I summarize my claims into a series of general propositions and test them with data on EOP agencies from 1939-2002. I find that agencies in the EOP are becoming more politicized over time and that electoral turnover in the White House is a primary cause of politicization. I also find that presidents try to balance needs for both responsiveness and competence in their relationship with agencies in the EOP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will attempt to show that a strategy of flexible integration can be a superior alternative to other forms of statecraftâ€"especially on problems of self-determination which are at the center of many of the threats of terrorism, regional war, economic damage, loss of legitimacy, and nuclear proliferation that the U.S. now faces. Flexible integration refers to a way of making America secure by seeking to partially integrate select territories and/or countries whose real or potential conflicts threaten U.S. vital interests. In the past, the U.S. has helped induce various forms of integration between the territories of Europe; Germany; Bosnia; Northern Ireland; Sudan; and Iraq. In every case however the integration that results through this strategy involves two or more political communities that share and divide powers rather than one community becoming fully subordinate over another, as with the relations between an empire and a colony. This paper will proceed by (1) describing what flexible integration is, (2) deriving categories for comparison between competing forms of statecraft, and (3) explaining why flexible integration is a better alternative for the U.S. as compared to other American foreign policy strategies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the relevance of the study of Tocqueville's classic commentary, Democracy in America. While its status as a classic is generally accepted, it does not necessarily follow that the commentary is relevant to contemporary politics. As a classic piece of literature, it may simply reflect observations of a bygone era. From this point of view, studying Democracy in America would be beneficial for gaining a historical perspective; it would not be relevant to contemporary political discourse. Thus, the question is whether Tocqueville can be read only as a historical narrative or if it can substantively address contemporary political issues. In order to evaluate the relevance of Tocqueville's commentary, the paper examines portions of the commentary relating to the issues of equality, industrialization, religion, freedom, federalism, rights, and other elements germane to contemporary politics. In sum, this paper is not an effort to discern if Tocqueville's commentary should be read, but how it should be read regarding contemporary politics. There are three main challenges to reading Tocqueville as applicable to contemporary politics: selective usage, apparent contradictions, and an appeal to circumstance. Some scholars have selectively used various aspects of the text to attempt to connect Tocqueville's analysis to modernity or, alternatively, have rejected any use of Tocqueville by arguing that his assumptions and projections are fundamentally flawed. Setting aside selective usage issues, Tocqueville's commentary has apparent contradictions and an assumption that much of America's success is due to circumstance and good fortune. By assessing each of these three challenges, this paper evaluates whether or not Tocqueville is relevant to contemporary politics. In the end, the preponderance of evidence suggests that Tocqueville's work is still relevant based upon the questions that it raises. Tocqueville's commentary may be imperfect, but its challenges to our modern assumptions about politics seems to warrant its continued use. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the occasional corruption scandal or ethics violation, American state governors are increasingly professional and competent. They are younger, better educated, and better trained than the “good-time Charlies” of the past. For more than one-third of modern governors, the governorship is yet another rung on the career ladder. Consequently, governors are peppered throughout the national government, from the US Senate to cabinet positions to the presidency itself. From 1976 to 2004, each general election for president featured at least one candidate who had been governor. Of the governors who seek national office, nearly sixty percent are successful. However, nearly two-thirds of governors make no attempt to seek higher office, typically retiring to the private or nonprofit sectors. The purpose of this paper is to explain the conditions under which governors seek national office and the factors that contribute to success. This paper contributes to prior research, which focused primarily on candidate demographics and institutional experience, by examining the impact of election and campaign dynamics, state characteristics, and partisanship on governors who seek higher office. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant source of state income tax administrative strength lies in intergovernmental cooperation. The cornerstone of such cooperation is an active exchange of information between federal and state tax authorities. By adopting the tax structure in all relevant ways close to federal income tax structure, states may benefit from audit and other taxpayer return information generated by the federal government. The paper examines the federal-state cooperation in tax administration through the lens of several critical contingencies that determine the type of interorganizational relationships. The paper also attempts to evaluate the benefits of the joint federal-state program for the states and for the federal tax agency. Although there's a recent tendency to make the program a two-way street, benefits of cooperation accrue largely to the states. On the basis of information furnished to state revenue departments by the Internal Revenue Service states conduct piggyback audits thus saving considerable resources. In addition, such cooperation increases the efficiency of tax administration in general by reducing taxpayer compliance burden, and .by eliminating duplication of federal and state efforts in tax collection. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand how political ambition plays out in Mexico's federal system where incumbency does not exist because of the constitutional prohibition against consecutive reelection. Using a unique dataset of the prior career paths and ex- post political positions of almost 1,000 federal deputies, this paper finds that Mexico's federal system is much more like that of Argentina and Brazil, and much less like that of the United States in that political ambition (constrained by the nation's formal rules and informal relations) leads the professional politician to begin her political career in the local and state political arenas, and then return to her state when the single three-year term in the Chamber of Deputies concludes. Our empirical analysis estimates the effect of deputies' personal features, prior positions, district types, party labels, and electoral calendar on two types of career choices: the type of position (elected, bureaucratic, or party post) and the position level (municipal, state or national) with multinomial regression models. Results indicate that younger deputies from plurality seats systematically seek elected offices at local levels of government. Experience in local or national positions correspondingly leads to bureaucratic positions in the same political arenas. Partisan affinity with state governors affects the likelihood of getting a non-elected position but not its level, whereas local election calendars affect the future position levels but not its type. PAN deputies are more likely to get bureaucratic and national level appointments than PRI deputies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a much larger study that uses the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy as a window into understanding the influence of non-judicial and other non-governmental actors on the development of constitutional meaning. Using a de-centered or interpretive technique, the paper challenges the narrative that the rather drastic constitutional shifts that occurred in the areas of federalism in the mid-1990s can be attributed to President Ronald Reagan and an aggressive constitutional agenda pursued by his Counselor turned Attorney General Edwin Meese III. Using evidence drawn from an in-depth examination of the speeches and writings of actors associated with both the early Federalists and the Reagan Administration as well as data gathered from personal interviews, this paper presents a richer, more nuanced, and more complete narrative of the origins and real impacts of what many have referred to as the 'Reagan Revolution' in the law. In doing so, it makes a strong case for what I'll broadly refer to as an interpretive approach to the study of constitutional change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that imperial expansion and governance drove antebellum federal state-building in the U.S. Drawing on insights from the historical-comparative literature on state-formation in Europe, the paper claims that the acquisition, control and incorporation of new territories and the need to finance these endeavors led to the build-up of significant state capacities on the national level. Government officials chose to pursue territorial expansion through the application of military force and the projection of governing authority to constantly westward moving peripheries. This could not be achieved without significant administrative and extractive capacities. The federal government had to generate sufficient revenue to finance a military, capable of overpowering and controlling the Native population, asserting U.S. expansionism against Spain, France, Britain, and Mexico, and projecting governing authority to frontier regions. The U.S. Constitution concentrated the authority, needed to organize and finance territorial expansion, in the hands of the newly created federal government. Drawing on the model of British imperial rule, the federal government built administrative capacities in the executive to effectively push its national boundaries westward and to integrate the newly acquired territory into the American political system. After discussing the relationship between territorial expansion and state-building, empirical evidence for the theoretical claims is presented and discussed. An analysis of the federal budget in the period from 1789 to 1859 underscores the importance of territorial expansion to antebellum state-building. Showing striking resemblances to the British "fiscal-military" state in the 18th and early 19th century, federal expenditures were mainly concentrated on the military, navy, and the retirement of war-related debt. In addition the federal government spent a large share of its budget on the acquisition and administration of western territory. The federal government relied on custom revenues and the sale of the public domain to finance the rising costs of imperial expansion. While the federal government tended to leave social and economic policies to state and local levels of governance, it developed important administrative and military capacities to finance, organize, and conduct territorial expansion across North America. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts the concept of intersectionality, which is often used to explain interconnections between categories of difference, such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, to complicate the category of nation. The aim of this paper is two-fold: first, the paper uses intersectionality as an analytic tool to trace how specific forms of nation are positioned not just as different, but as subaltern; and second, the paper decenters the underlying assumptions associated with modernist conceptions of nation by challenging the conventional formulation of the intersection between nation and identity. The concept of intersectionality provides the theoretical framework to complicate the category of nation because (1) intersectionality argues for the new conceptualizations of categories and their role in politics, "rather than seeking an abolition of categories themselves;" and (2) intersectionality also sensitizes one to the hegemonic moves that legitimize the concept of a self-referencing, unified subject of modernity by emphasizing "that different dimensions of social life cannot be separated out into discrete and pure strands." The paper draws specifically on Avtar Brah's and Ann Phoenix's Ain't I a Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality, which defines the concept of intersectionality as "signifying the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects which ensue when multiple axis of differentiation - economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential - intersect in historically specific contexts." Brah and Phoenix do not limit the multiple axis of differentiation specifically to categories, such as, gender, race, class, and sexuality, thus leaving room for an analysis of other categories of differentiation, including the category of nation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents competing models of state power that incorporate both hard and soft power, with the assertion that such a model more completely portrays the power of a state than a model that examines only one aspect of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore in detail the conflicting views between the local and national governments within China as it deals with the Three Gorges Project, as well the Bush Administration's view on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores problems associated with the adoption of federalism in Iraq. I argue that federalism may calm conflict in the short term, but that it may facilitate the successful development of a secessionist movement over the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explain when politicization occurs in the U.S. federal government, focusing on the tradeoff between political control and bureaucratic competence. I analyze data on the percentage of political appointments among managers in 250 federal agencies over the 1988-2004 period. I show that politicization is neither increasing steadily over time nor caused by the actions of Republican presidents. Politicization increases when agency preferences diverge from those of the president and when agency outputs are relatively insensitive to changes in politicization such as when agency tasks are uncomplicated or when outside wages available to career managers are low. Politicization also increases during periods when Congress and the president share similar policy preferences. I conclude that politicization occurs in regular and predictable patterns and that understanding these patterns are essential for an understanding of American politics, public management, and the policy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines John C. Calhoun's engagement with the legacies of Jefferson and Madison in the course of Calhoun's own attempt radically to resolve two unresolved problems in the American political tradition: the disputed sovereignty relationship between federal government and states, and the continued existence of slavery in a nation committed to ideals of universal equality and liberty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper tests a number of prominent theories of oversized legislative coalitions using 300 Danish local governments as the empirical testing ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the jurisdictional interpretation of the religion clauses, which holds that at least one, if not both, of the clauses protects states' rights and not individual rights [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a theoretical model of policy decentralization that explicitly accounts for the fact that national and local governments may have preferences over patronage distribution, as well as over policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows why Cardoso was able to change the Brazilian federalism in a way that put an end of the so-called governor's politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By engaging with classical realist theory, this paper argues that ethics and power can be conceptually united by bringing out normative aspects of national security that have been depreciated in contemporary accounts of the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper statistically tests propositions that the Russian Constitutional Court favors some levels of government over others in making decisions on federalist issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competitive federalism and race politics have helped shape aid to the poor in the United States. In this paper, I investigate how the geographic distribution of population influences antipoverty policymaking in the states. Specifically, I test whether welfare benefit levels and time limits are affected by the presence of large poor or minority populations living near state borders. I estimate that doubling the black population living within fifty miles of the average state’s borders would decrease that state’s maximum annual welfare benefits by about $220. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the passage of The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996, America experienced a reemergence of the “new federalist” policies that began during the presidency of Richard Nixon and blossomed under Ronald Regan. Defined primarily by its emphasis on “devolving” federal influence over social policies to the states, the new federalism of the mid-1990s gave state governments more freedom to decide how to manage and implement social programs while simultaneously increasing pressure on state officials to make those programs work. An obvious effect of this move to shift power away from the federal government to the state level was the pushing of states to the forefront of the debates surrounding social policies. Rather than continuing to sing backup to the federal government’s lead, the states now had a greater role in determining the course of some of the most long-standing controversies in modern-American political history. The devolution of authority from the federal government to the states not only opened a door for state governments to have a greater say in policy choices, it also offered a situation for analyzing all fifty states as they respond to the same policy mandate during the same period of time. This rare occurrence in which the American states were opened up as a laboratory for policy analysis on the same set of policy choices within the same time period offers a chance to see not only the impact federal policy has across the states, but it enables a look into the specific political activities of state governments in the quest to shape policy outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to examine what effect governmental institutions have on the outcomes of policy within the states. More specifically, I will seek to assess what impact – if any – state executive offices have on determining policy outcomes. By going beyond studies that only focus on demographic influences on welfare policy outcomes, I hope to fill a significant gap that exists in the literature surrounding welfare reform, and that is what occurs between the devolution of responsibility of welfare policy from the federal government and the outcomes that result. Likewise, although there have been studies examining different determinants of welfare policy across the states, these studies do not take into account the role state executives play in shaping outcomes. I hypothesize that governors do have a significant influence on the outcome of welfare policy, and that the stronger the governor’s personal and political powers the more influence they will have on their state’s welfare policies. In order to show this, I offer a theory of gubernatorial power and its ties to policy, and use data from all fifty states over a period of four years to show just how much a governor’s power acts as a determinant of welfare policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational theorists contend that democracy rests on compromise between groups, however, recent evidence indicates that a large number of organizations lobby without encountering countervailing pressure. In this paper, I consider numerous institutional and organizational conditions that may create countervailing pressure in the public policy process. Hypotheses are tested with data collected from a survey of nearly 200 organizations that lobbied before the federal government in 2003. I find that countervailing pressure is more likely to occur when organizations: a) are labor unions; b) have highly visible lobbying agendas; c) lobby a government agency; or d) lobby against a policy that the public views favorably. These findings indicate that the expectations of organizational theorists for democracy are fully satisfied by institutional and organizational conditions that characterize the experience of only a minority of lobbying organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Administrative reform efforts in the federal government of the United States have been marked by different perceptions of “the people” by public administrators. Most of the classification schemes developed for types and periods of administrative reform efforts have held at their centers the structure or function of government, role of managers in government, or the relationship between the private and public sector. None until recently have held as their center the role of the citizen. This paper explores the theoretical bases of key administrative reform efforts in the context of how the people are perceived by public administrators. It also proposes a two dimensional framework of active citizenship and bureaucratization, within which is a classification construct containing four administrative approaches: administrative/law, reinvention/market, institutional participation, and post-modern participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effect of macroeconomic conditions on incumbent vote in Canadian federal elections during the 1953-2000 period. Building on the extant literature, it proposes an improved model of economic voting that takes into account party politics, suggesting that it affects the extent to which incumbents are punished for economic deterioration. The results of the analysis indicate that party politics does matter, as incumbent governments can (and do) manage to convince the electorate that they can effectively deal with rising inflation or unemployment, and be re-elected in the context of deteriorating economic conditions. We argue that Canadian political parties obtain such prospective support through efficient campaigning, but also as a result of their reputation at managing the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to accomplish the following: (1) provide a brief history of the evolution of earmarking within the federal government’s budgetary process, (2) explain the reasons for the current public salience of earmarks, (3) address the arguments surrounding the ethics debate on earmarks, (4) examine the recent politicization of earmarks, and (5) discuss the implications of the present and possible future actions taken on earmarks, including a possible major Constitutional crisis over the separation of powers in Washington. The empirical evidence suggests that current political posturing, media-focused attention and public concern over earmark reform is based on incomplete information; when comparing all federal budget spending programs and their effects both on the budget and society, earmarks really are much-ado-about-nothing, or at least very little. Yet, because earmarks function in what former Justice William Douglas might refer to as the “penumbra” of the legislative process they are an easy populist and political target for criticism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discover the dynamic relationships between trust in federal, state, and local governments focusing on the effect of civic engagement on the dynamics. Whether trust in these three levels of government move independently or influence each other has not been fully discussed. Previous literature suggests that each level of trust in government is differently shaped but related to each other. Additionally, civic engagement is supposed to work on each level government while the extent of the effect is different between three levels of trust in government. VAR and structural VAR models allow us to examine the mutual relationship and MCMC brings us efficient results. Discovering these relationships gives a clue to an understanding how the hierarchical structure of democratic society forms stability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008 national political conventions were both National Special Security Events -- a designation that triggered the implementation of an array of statutes, regulations, and presidential directives mostly created subsequent to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. This legal regime substantially redefined the relations between local, state, and federal government agencies as they discharge their respective repsponsibilities for protection public safety, security, and rights of political expression at presidentially designated NSSEs. This paper reports comparative research on how the cities of Denver and St. Paul sought to define and maintain their respective balance points between protecting public safety and security on the one hand and protecting rights of political expression on the other. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TThe first National and state constitutions were theoretically different. The National principle of delegated power is in sharp contrast with the state presumption of plenary legislative powers, limited by rights. But among the state constitutions there is considerable disagreement about the range of powers to be restricted and the consistency in theory in not delegating legislative powers. In five states, constitutions were written before the National Constitution and again just after the National Constitution -- New Hampshire, South Carolina, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. This paper compares those constitutions written before and after the National one to look closely at the theory of legislative power to see if the National Constitution's writing significantly altered the state theory of legislative power. While significant change is found to take place in those five later constitutions, apparently as a result of the National Constitution, there is little evidence of significant change in the theory of state legislative power. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States have taken the initiative to initiate major new policy reforms in many areas. In the area of global warming, progressive states have incentives to launch new reforms, often in concert with other states. As with other policies, the nationalization of these state policies has accelerated in recent years, thanks to changes in political and media systems. Those states taking the lead on their own also have incentives to champion the federalization of their policy initiatives. Such a dyanmic is unfolding in the global warming arena. However, the nationalization of such policies can rebound to the detriment of the states. Depending on the role played by the business community and other key interests, federal policy adoption can work against the interests of the states. How federal policy deals with first movers is a critical phase of policy design that needs more attention. In recent times, states have sometimes succeeded in gaining nationalization of their own initiatives on their own terms, including provisions that recognize and reward first movers. However, in other cases first movers are preempted, not rewarded. The paper suggests some factors that explain these differential outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling in the case of United States v. Morrison (529 U.S. 598), found that §13981 of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which provided a federal remedy for victims of gender motivated crimes, exceeded Congress’s power under the 14th Amendment and Article I, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution. In response to this decision, debates ensued over whether or not violence against women is an appropriate object of Congressional power. Such debates, however, miss the foundational ideology underlying the VAWA. An examination of the arguments made in support of the law, as well as the design and implementation of the law, reveals that the root issue behind the VAWA goes deeper than the question of whether crimes against women are an appropriate object for national power. For, as many proponents of the VAWA have clearly argued, the law represents an attack on the nature of federalism itself. In view of the VAWA's pending reauthorization in 2010, this paper seeks to examine how the ideology behind the design and implementation of the VAWA calls into question the very nature of a constitutional system of government and that system’s ability to advance the freedom and well being of women. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do Americans think the federal government allocates its budget? How do Americans think the federal government should allocate its budget? And what happens to individuals’ spending preferences when erroneous budget estimates are corrected? In a set of original survey experiments on a national sample, we randomize the information provided to respondents in order to obtain clean estimates of the effects of knowledge on opinions. We also randomize whether respondents are subject to a budget constraint when estimating federal budget spending and stating federal spending preferences..x000d..x000d.The results suggest profound “innumeracy” in the public’s estimates of the budgetâ€"in particular, underestimates of entitlement spending and overestimate of discretionary spending on foreign aid and aid to the poor. When the public is supplied correct information about how the federal budget is allocated, they manifest very different spending preferences. They prefer the status quo with regard to entitlements, but would allocate less money to national defense and more to the poor and foreign aid. .x000d..x000d.The paper would fit especially well on panels on information and public opinion, public opinion regarding public policy, or survey experiments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For nearly twenty years the federal government, states, courts, and society have debated the merits and protections of hate crime legislation, yet in spite of several Supreme Court decisions the proper balance has not yet been struck. Hate crime statutes seek to protect potential victims not only from crimes against their person, but against their group as well. The Supreme Court, in decisions in R.A.V. v. St. Paul, Wisconsin v. Mitchell, and Virginia v. Black, have created a judicial standard that is confusing in its protection against hate crime and untenable in its standard for protecting speech. This paper seeks to determine the necessary elements for the proper judicial standard: one where hate crimes are found illegal yet speech is afforded greater protection. The only constitutionally acceptable judicial approach for addressing hate crime is one where speech is targeted only insofar as it is intertwined with unlawful conduct. This judicial standard would lead to the creation of statutes where speech alone is not the basis for criminalization. Governments may only target action, and although speech may provide insight as to the motivation for that action, the government may not punish the speech itself. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has generally been framed as a global problem warranting an international policy response. But the growing reality of climate policy development suggests enormous variation among nations and surprisingly large roles for sub-national units. Ironically, both Canada and the United States took similar bargaining positions into Kyoto but only the former ratified this treaty. However, Canadian emissions growth has far exceeded American trends and neither its federal nor provincial levels have been active in policy development. In contrast, individual states and regional clusters have taken an ever-expanding role in this area. This paper examines key factors that explain this divergent pattern, considers whether provinces are beginning to engage in policy learning with neighboring states, and explores early signs of formal collaboration that cross the 49th parallel. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communitarians and civically minded democratic theorists alike have long argued for small communities and fellow-feeling based on actual interaction. What these thinkers have lacked is a political economy to match their political theory; they fail to think about what sort of economic and political structures might be required to create a space for such interaction. This paper suggests that the local food movement and its emphasis on local control, production and consumption of food, as well as the preservation of traditional foodways, provides such a political economy. It connects the growing urban studies literature on local food and farmer’s markets with current work in democratic theory, attempting to describe the sort of changes in American federalism required to invigorate a politics of local food systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although prison litigation reform has been out of the headlines for some time, the federal court takeover of portions of California's vast correctional system does not represent a new judicial trend. Rather, it is merely the latest iteration in a movement that began in the late 1960s and resulted in the widespread restructuring of numerous correctional institutions - and sometimes entire state systems. Because of this, there exists a rich body of philosophical, legal, and empirically-oriented literature that examines the concerns and consequences of these actions. Accordingly, there is much that has already been discussed with regards to judicial activism, expansion and enforcement of constitutional rights, federal-state relations, and the practical consequences of forced federal control of state correctional institutions. Nevertheless, the sheer size and scope of recent litigation in California raises unique concerns; therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the nature of these concerns - particularly those that have budgetary implications - and explore some possible avenues for future research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the European Council agreement on the Financial Perspectives 2007-2013, the European Commission must provide by the end of 2009 a review of the European Union budget. The purpose of the review is to better align the priorities and policies of the Union with its current challenges. Cohesion Policy, the second largest item in the EU budget, is often criticised for insufficient impact in reducing the gaps of development among the European regions. However, the Member States' positions expressed in the consultation process that preceded the review indicate that there is a general mood among the national governments to preserve Cohesion Policy's main objectives. Consequently, change is expected only on the edges.This paper argues that Cohesion Policy has been characterised by two lock-ins: the logic of solidarity and the logic of equity. The logic of equity, in particular, has given Cohesion Policy political dimensions, transforming the policy in a tool used as a catalyst for agreement among the Member States on budgetary issues. Using historical institutionalism, the analysis tracks the impact of the two logics from the creation of the policy to the present consultation on the EU budget review, in order to argue for the political dimensions of the policy and the limits of its reforms. Subsequently the possible reform scenarios are analysed. Despite its inefficiency, there will not be sufficient scope for Cohesion Policy reform, unless the European Commission manages to capture in its proposal new dimensions of national interests and to re-define the understanding of the logic of equity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virginia was the only state to have an independent judiciary in the federal conception of the institution prior to the U.S. Constitution of 1787. My paper traces the origins of the judicial institution in Virginia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine perceptions of the role of government (positivist or anti-statist) among street level bureaucrats and their perceived job discretion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of nanotechnology research funding through two federal agencies (NSF and NIH) and its relationship to science and technology innovation contained in the United States Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the promise of multi-state regional strategies to address global climate change, as well as the limits of regionalism in the absence of a common mission with the federal government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a general comparative framework to interpret the changes in the patterns of territorial governance in democratic Brazil, Spain and South Africa as a consequence of their respective processes of decentralization and federalization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I try to examine the dealing process in federal government with focus on two main actors, the US Department of Health, Education Welfare and House Education and Labor committee, accounting for the expansion of federal government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explain the rise of judicial policy-making in the United States, scholars look to legal culture, increased demand for “programmatic rights,” and institutional factors; namely federalism, separation of powers (and the resulting potential for divided government) and weak parties (see, for example, Kagan, Melnick, and Atiyah and Summers). It is hypothesized that, because American policy-making is pluralistic and frequently dependent on compromise between opposing parties, the resulting statute is often ambiguous or disjointed, leaving room for substantive court interpretation. This paper is part of a broader project evaluating the extent to which institutional fragmentation conditions policy-making at the state level and how, in turn, the resulting statute may encourage judicial policy-making. It analyses the effects of three principal sources of fragmentation in state government (the presence or absence of divided government, and party homogeneity and party polarization in state legislatures) on the consistency and clarity of statute produced (as indicated by an original coding scheme). Specifically, this paper will focus on statutes regarding mandated health care benefits enacted in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. I expect that while party polarization and homogenization will increase the clarity and consistency of statute, the effects of divided government will be mixed. The conclusions should contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the effects of governmental fragmentation on the nature of policy-making at the state level. [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]