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Why are female incumbents more likely than males to be challenged? Perhaps female incumbents confront greater challenger competition because they are more likely than males to be vulnerable. If this is the case, then the gender disparity in electoral competition does not necessarily signal discrimination â€" rather, it suggests that women attract strategic challengers on the lookout for targets of opportunity. Alternatively, female incumbents may be more likely to be challenged than males, not because they are disproportionately vulnerable, but rather by virtue of the fact that they are women. In contrast to the first explanation, this suggests something more normatively problematic -- that women are targets of discrimination. Unpacking these causal processes is significant because it illuminates the presence or absence of gender discrimination. But, previous research has not been able to distinguish between the two explanations because of the absence of an adequate measure of incumbent vulnerability. Using unique measures derived from a survey of informed district experts, I am able to control for this previously omitted variable. My results present a more troubling conclusion about gender equity in electoral politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When parties redraw their state's congressional districts, they must decide to either protect their incumbents or maximize their seats. Heretofore, there has been little work focused directly on understanding how parties choose between these competing goals. Utilizing prospect theory, I argue that parties' perceptions affect their willingness to accept risk; combined with the particular context they find themselves in, this leads to predictable changes in the competitiveness of the state's congressional districts. I use data collected from the last three redistricting cycles and find support for the important role perception plays in determining how congressional districts are drawn. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This manuscript demonstrates that voters have nothing to be afraid of when new hard budget constraint legislation is implemented. Our claim is that this kind of legislation reduces the asymmetry of information between voters and incumbents over the budget and, as a consequence, the latter have incentives to increase the supply of public goods. As a nationwide institutional innovation, the Fiscal Responsibility Law (FRL) is exogenous to all municipalities; therefore, there is no self-selection bias in its implementation. We show that public goods expenditure increases after the FRL. This increase occurs in municipalities located in the country's poorest region. Our findings can be extended to the supply of public goods because the higher the expenditure with health and education, the greater the probability of incumbents being re-elected. Finally, there exists a "de facto" higher supply of public goods in education (number of per capita classrooms) after the FRL. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between turnout and incumbency vote margin is simultaneously determined in congressional elections. A higher level of turnout may indeed affect an incumbent's vote share, but it is likely that this effect will depend inter alia on the level of competitiveness in the district. Thus, it is necessary to use a method to control for this simultaneous relationship. I proceed to do so in this paper by using a series of two-stage least squares panel-data fixed effect models covering three congressional apportionment cycles (1972-1980;1982-1990;1992-2000). These models employ an instrumental variable to correct for the simultaneous nature of the relationship between turnout and electoral competitiveness. In this analysis, I test whether participation decreases the incumbent's electoral support, regardless of the level of competition in the district. I also test whether an increase in participation can actually help Democratic House incumbent and challenger candidates. Finally, I test whether this effect is constant across apportionment cycles. The results show that the influence of turnout on incumbency vote share is strongest when a candidate is from the same party as a popular president. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies how the judiciary and the judicial processes have been used to control Islamist movements and organizations in the Muslim world. Through case studies of Egypt and Turkey, we observe that judiciaries are by no means insignificant political institutions in the Muslim world, as the rarity of scholarly work on the topic would suggest. We argue that the secular incumbents attempt to use the judicial process to suppress Islamist movements or close Islamist parties when a military action (e.g. a coup) becomes an unfavorable strategy due to domestic "audience costs," and the success of the attempt depends on the level of independence of the judiciary. It is significant that these regimes, even those which are labeled authoritarian by well established criteria, do worry about public opinion and choose strategies which will not turn public opinion against themselves. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

The ability to manage a crisis has become an acid test for contemporary leaders.During some crises political leaders step down,while during others political careers are rejuvenated.To explain the different outcomes,Boin et al. (2008) propose a crisis exploitation theory according to which the purposeful utilization of crisis-type rhetoric can significantly alter levels of political support for officeholders,and affect their political fates.In this paper,I hypothesize that in a significance frame contest in which political actors can maximize,acknowledge,or minimize the crisis,the conjunction of a minimization strategy of an incumbent and a maximization strategy of his or her rival causes the incumbent’s credibility to fall.In a causality frame contest in which actors can either exogenize or endogenize the causes of the crisis,an incumbent’s credibility falls when both the incumbent and his or her rival endogenizes the causes.Approximately 200 North American and West European crises are chosen from the Crismart,Syracuse,EM-DAT,and the DDP case banks.Additional data are collected through content analysis of major US and world news media stories and crisis inquiry reports.A multinomial probit model is employed to test the hypothesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some suggest that electoral competitiveness is good, since it fosters voter interest, turnout, and provides a mechanism to hold incumbents accountable. Others suggest competitive elections increase the number of voters ideologically distant from their representative, thereby increasing levels of public dissatisfaction with incumbents. We find evidence consistent with both perspectives of competition. Although voters are largely unaware of how districts are drawn, and they misperceive how competitive things are, increased competition is associated with more accurate perceptions about how close elections are. However, most people offer negative assessments of the effects of competition on representation. We find general dissatisfaction with politics a strong predictor of negative evaluations of electoral competition. Greater district-level competition is also associated with negative perceptions of how representatives behave, and less approval of ones' own representative. Our results present a paradox: some reform advocates value competition, but voters may not. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the few stylized facts in international relations is that democracies almost never fight.x000d.one another. We examine the sustainability of international peace between democracies.x000d.and autocracies, where the crucial difference between these two political regimes is whether.x000d.or not the leaders are subject to periodic elections. We show that the fear of losing office.x000d.can deter democratic leaders from engaging in military conflicts. Crucially, this disciplining.x000d.effect can only be at work if incumbents can be re-elected. This implies that democracies.x000d.in which the executives are subject to term limits should be more conflict prone. To assess.x000d.the validity of these predictions, we construct a large dataset on countries with executive.x000d.term limits. Our analysis of inter-state conflicts for the 1816-2001 period suggests that.x000d.electoral incentives are indeed behind the democratic peace phenomenon: while conflicts.x000d.in autocratic dyads are generally less likely than conflicts in autocratic and mixed dyads,.x000d.this result does not hold for democracies in which the leaders face binding term limits;.x000d.moreover, the likelihood of conflicts is higher in the executive’s last mandate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 2006 midterm elections there was a strong national tide running in favor of the Democratic Party. In this context redistricting may have affected voter preferences in the 2006 congressional elections. Drawing on previous research, it is expected that voters with a different incumbent (redrawn voters) as a consequence of redistricting, will be more likely to vote Democratic in the U.S. House contest. The theory is simple, incumbency serves to "anchor" the support that longtime constituents give to their representative, and thus in a short-term national political climate favoring the Democratic Party, redrawn voters should shift their support in favor of Democratic House candidates. We test this hypothesis with Georgia residents who participated in the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). We find that after controlling for other factors redrawn voters in Georgia were more likely to have voted Democratic in the 2006 U.S. House elections compared to individuals with the same incumbent. Our results are particularly notable because Georgia Republicans crafted the congressional map for the 2006 House races and since the 1990s the state has been strongly realigning in favor of the Republican Party. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the causes and dynamics of democratic consolidation. I develop a new, change-point model of democratic consolidation that avoids some of the pitfalls of existing empirical studies of consolidation. Specifically, rather than assuming that consolidation occurs, the present model estimates \emph{whether} and \emph{when} consolidation occurs as a function of covariates. I apply this approach to new data on democratic survival that distinguish between two processes by which an overwhelming majority of authoritarian reversals occurs: coups d'\'{e}tat and incumbent takeovers. I find that the risk of authoritarian reversals by each of the two processes differs in its dynamic as well as determinants: democracies consolidate against the risk of coups but do not consolidate against the risk of incumbent takeovers. I discuss the theoretical implications of these empirical findings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I develop and test a model which argues that support for democracy matters for transitions toward and away from democracy, as well as for democratic stability. The model identifies three parameters which drive regime outcomes. Net demand, the level of demand for democracy relative to the current supply of democracy, is the most important. It provides a resource for challengers in elite contests for power. Significant positive values of net demand allow a challenger to harness public antipathy toward the regime and channel it into protests and demonstrations in order to displace the incumbent. Thus positive net demand produces democratization, negative values allow incumbent elites to consolidate their control, and neutral values suggest that the regime will be stable. The effects of net demand are however, attenuated by the ability of the regime to engage in repression, and the presence of a "dictator's dilemma": the informational vacuum which surrounds the leadership in authoritarian systems. I test the model using two datasets: Latinobarometer panel data from Latin America and World Values Survey cross-sectional data for a broader group of countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do incumbent state legislators who introduce many bills or win passage of many proposals receive an electoral benefit? If so, where is such an electoral advantaged manifested? Is it a direct effect whereby voters are more likely to recognize and reward a legislator's productivity? Or is the effect more indirect whereby active incumbents are less likely to face challengers and receive a larger share of financial support? These questions are addressed in an analysis of legislative elections in 18 states. The findings indicate that within this low-information environment lawmaking activities do have some direct effects on voters. For example, higher rates of bill introduction increase an incumbent's general election vote margin. Indirect effects are present as legislative activities reduce the presence of primary challengers and the strength of general election opponents. The influence is greatest, however, on campaign fundraising where higher rates of bill sponsorship increase financial donations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazil's political system has long been considered to have two fundamental features: a high level of decentralization and a weakly institutionalized party system. I explore the interaction between these two phenomena by studying the incumbency advantage of political parties in Brazil's municipal mayor elections using a regression discontinuity design. Comparing municipalities where a party barely lost the 2000 mayor elections to municipalities where the party barely won, I find evidence of a strong negative effect of incumbency on both the vote share and the probability of winning in the following election. This is in sharp contrast to findings for the U.S., where the overall effect of incumbency has generally been found to be nonnegative. The results are robust to different specifications and estimation strategies, with excellent balance in observable characteristics. A decomposition of the overall effect suggests that the disadvantage is mostly explained by municipalities with lame-duck mayors. A possible interpretation of these results is that weak parties cannot control the rent-seeking behavior of their politicians, and voters punish the party for the behavior of the last incumbent ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are political consultants agents of legislative parties? The conditional party government hypothesis proposes that if the members of a legislative party become more homogenous and polarized from the opposition party, they will be more likely to select strong party leaders to pursue collective goals. In this case, which describes the current state of affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives, the leadership of the two parties have a strong incentive to sustain homogenous legislative caucuses. Campaign finance scholars point to the pressure on incumbents with surplus funds to transfer part of their warchests to party committees, as well as party spending in close House races, largely via independent expenditures (IE), as means to bolster legislative party ties. Another means of building party unity may be influence over the market for campaign services that political consultants provide, particularly as many consultants contract with parties for IE. Data from Campaigns & Elections magazine of which consultants worked for parties and/or House incumbents will be used to test if incumbents hiring party-contracted consultants enhance their party unity scores compared to incumbents who did not party-agent consultants. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the United Nations, among the fourteen most unequal countries in the world, half are in Latin America and the other half in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nine of them, including the top three, have been considered democratic for at least the past fourteen years. In this paper I propose a theory to understand the circumstances that are likely to make policies that promote higher equality difficult to arise in new democracies. I develop a theoretical model linking voters' preferences to representatives' policy choices where the ideological position of newly formed parties is not known to the public. This entails a learning process for voters that can slow down the adoption of effective inequality reducing policies. This includes the often observed pattern of poor voters electing non-left wing representatives. The model's implications for the evolution of different candidates' constituencies are empirically tested using individual level data for presidential elections in Brazil since democratization. Results suggest that the sorting out of voters into constituencies for specific incumbents is indeed a gradual process most likely shaped by the retrospective evaluation of policies adopted in practice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new method for consistently estimating incumbencyadvantage. We demonstrate that previous work which has usedredistricting to estimate incumbency advantage has compared thewrong potential outcomes and results in biased estimates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the role of incumbency, ideology, and gender diversity on how much U.S. Senators value their colleagues, empirically testing these predictions using data on leadership political action committee donations from the 1998-2006 elections. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study builds upon existing literature demonstrating the conditional effect of contextual and conversion factors on the relationship between money and votes in state legislative elections. Analysis of data from elections to the lower house of state legislatures in 9 states provides evidence that a district's political and institutional characteristics have a significant impact on the effectiveness of campaign spending. I also find that both the baseline effects of spending and incumbency and the conditional effects of political context vary significantly with the operationalization of the dependent variable. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for the study of money in politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study applies Functional theory to over 1000 non-presidential political ads from the 2004 campaign; functions, topics, incumbency, party, campaign phase, ad medium, ad sponsor, and outcome are considered. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines African incumbents' rationale for adhering to formal rules of power transfer. Specifically, it develops a quantal response equilibrium (QRE) model that can potentially tests how different patterns of patronage gives rise to divergent incentives to adhere to ignore constitution rules of political office transfer. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates how legislative behavior is affected by electoral demands using a dataset of House election results and incumbent votes (1972-2000). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates incumbency advantage without simultaneity bias by decomposing error term into analyst's error and player’s error. It also argues that incumbency vulnerability is caused by redistricting, lack of seniority and media campaigns. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having compiled a heretofore unavailable list of federal election contests involving at least one minority candidate between 1990 and 2006 (both challengers and victors), we now have a unique data set that includes a number of variables such as amount of money raised/spent by the candidates, incumbency status, racial makeup of districts, exit poll data, amount of news coverage, and degree of racialized news coverage. Based on these data, we provide a descriptive composite of minority candidate characteristics and an assessment of what factors tend to relate to minority candidates' success or failure between over the past sixteen years. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the strategic placement of women candidates in French legislative elections. The earliest studies of gender disparity in representative institutions argued that electors were systematically biased against women candidates. Women tend to be better represented in parliaments elected by proportional representation than by plurality rule. Incumbency advantage is another important factor affecting the electoral fortunes of women legislators.

Models of the sequential nature of Senate elections have been proposed suggesting that the outcome of the election for one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats affects the contest for the other seat. More specifically, these models predict that the winning party for the first Senate seat will receive fewer votes, holding other things constant, in the next election for the other seat. Using data on U.S. Senate elections from 1946-2004 and a regression discontinuity design (RDD), we find strong evidence that the outcomes of the elections for the two Senate seats are independent for close elections. In looking at the factors that do explain the existence of split-party delegations, we argue that incumbency advantage has not been given enough attention and explore preliminary data showing its importance vis-a-vis partisan shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Court-ordered reapportionment of congressional districts in the 1960s positively impacted the incumbency advantage by disrupting previously stable political jurisdictions, reducing the power of local party organizations to challenge incumbents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that cohort replacement accounts for part of growth in the incumbency advantage in U.S. elections: older, highly partisan voters were replaced by younger voters more inclined to support incumbents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we take advantage of newly collected historical elections data to test for the presence of an incumbency effect in the context of nineteenth century House elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present a two-period election model of incumbent campaign spending where the challenger may learn about incumbent strength through incumbent behavior and performance, and decide whether to enter. The results indicate that challengers will focus on incumbent performance rather than behavior. These results are consistent with empirical findings on challenger entry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will model both individual level variables analyzed by micro-level vote choice scholars and year level variables analyzed by election forecasters in a single equation to understand votes for president. This will be accomplished with the help of a Bayesian multilevel (or hierarchical) model. The primary goal is to come to a better understanding of the macro-level variables that explain significant year indicators in time series/cross-sectional data that predict the vote. Incumbency is found to have substantial explanatory power at the year level. The effect of incumbency is most pronounced among politically detached voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much work on the apparent ineffectiveness on incumbent spending in congressional elections has hypothesized that the productivity of incumbent spending is low because incumbents operate on the ?flat part? of their election returns function. Differences in campaign spending associated with state campaign finance laws allows for a test of this hypothesis. Exploiting cross-state variation in campaign finance laws, this paper tests whether campaign expenditures by state House candidates are more productive in increasing vote shares when candidates are subject to contribution limits. The results show that campaign expenditures by incumbents, challengers, and open seat candidates are more productive when candidates run in states with campaign contribution limits, as opposed to in states without limits. Further, in states with contribution limits, incumbent spending and challenger spending are equally productive, and spending by both candidates is quantitatively important in increasing their vote shares. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since it’s discovery, the increase in the incumbency advantage in US elections has been one of the most studied topics in American Political Science. While studies have documented the extent of this increase, there have only been loose characterizations of its causes. One such loose characterization has revolved around the influence of television; our study exploits the state blind nature of media markets to rigorously examine what effect, if any, television has had on the incumbency advantage. The increase in the incumbency advantage occurred around the same time as the rise of television and its use for political campaigns. Scholars such as Jacobsen have speculated on what role, if any, television has played in this increase. Generally, they have posited that, despite the tempting correlation, television causes a decrease in the incumbency advantage. Recently, Prior has postulated the opposite, namely that television is the cause of a large part of the rise. We exploit a feature of media planning and advertising in the US to make a strongly characterize the effect of television on the incumbency advantage. Alford, Campbell and Henry pointed out this feature in 1984. Media is bought and sold in local areas referred to as media markets. These markets are generally centered in an urban area, and contain the surrounding suburbs and countryside. Thus, in media markets that straddle a state border, it is possible for a small percentage of a media market’s consumers to live in a different state from where the media market is centered. These consumers will receive very little coverage of the campaigns that are relevant to them, even those for Senate and Governor. By estimating the difference in the incumbency advantage between counties in out-of-state dominated media markets, and those with in-state dominated media markets we can put a strong bound on television’s contribution to the incumbency advantage. Our findings are strikingly different from Prior’s. We find the link between the incumbency advantage and television to be generally small and statistically insignificant; sometimes television seems to increase the incumbency advantage, and at other times decrease it. Even at the high end, however, the coefficients imply that television accounts for only a small fraction of the total advantage. Our results therefore show that television was not a major cause of the rise in the incumbency advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops a model of redistricting based on Nash's model of bargaining and his solution concept for a theory of bargaining. The analysis provides analytical structure to an important area of legislative politics concerning how district plans are influenced by incumbency, partisanship, and voting rights law. Based on theories of bargaining, the framework is to establish how these factors influence the process of redistricting, while identifying some of the constraints. Reminiscent of Baumol's model on gerrymandering, the idea of implementing a neutral redistricting process has captured the imagination of scholars and practitioners alike since the apportionment cases (circa 1953 to 1969) changed state constitutional provisions allocating seats to local jurisdictions. The models formulated in this study accomplish this by a detailed analysis of three gerrymandering strategies. The role of the courts and legal criteria are built into the analysis of bargaining as constraints, and then as distinct models of negotiation and arbitration. The solutions derived reveal some of the conflicting tradeoffs in a majoritarian system with protections for minority voting rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First-time candidates for seats in the House of Representatives vary systematically in the extent their ideological positions reflect those of their sponsoring political party and the district they seek to represent. I posit that as the prospects for winning office increases the role of political party in shaping candidate ideology decreases, and that of district ideology increases. Opportunistic electoral circumstances, as opposed to prior electoral success, influences whether a challenger possessing an electorally appealing ideological profile emerges as the party?s nominee. More so than challengers to current officeholder and candidates in open-seat contests, incumbents typically hold ideological orientations less in line with their sponsoring party and more in tune with their district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous studies generally presume that voters engage in retrospective voting to evaluate an incumbent’s performance, another possibility is that voters are simply inclined to support the status quo when they feel personally satisfied or happy. We leverage a set of natural experiments to explore the extent to which personal happiness affects voting behavior. To do this, we examine events that government has nothing to do with and for which no government response would be expected: the outcome for the local college football team on the weekend before Election Day. We collected data on pre-election football scores between 1964 and the present, as well as local election returns for presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial elections. We find that a win for the local college football team in the weekend before the election can lead the incumbent to receive more than three additional percentage points in the election. We also examine the interaction between the football outcomes and a voter’s income, education, and gender. Our results show that voters’ choices depend significantly on events that affect their personal level of happiness even when those events are unrelated to government activity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We offer a new definition of critical elections that is linked to the volatility of inter-election shifts. To identify dates that mark critical elections/election periods in American politics, we argue that we should look for evidence of “dramatic and durable” change in party seat shares relative to the mean and variance of inter-election shifts that is typical for different political epochs, rather than using a uniform standard for all of U.S. history. Using this approach, and statistical tools such as nonparametric analysis of outliers and autoregression diagnostics, we look at seat shares in House, Senate, and U.S. Presidential elections over the years 1856-2006 to determine if there have been any post-1932 critical elections. We argue that the evidence that 1994 is a realigning election is just as strong or stronger than that for some earlier elections commonly accepted as critical realignments. We then seek to explain changes in the magnitude and volatility of inter-election shifts with a unified model that incorporates features of electoral competition such as marginal seats, swing ratio, the level of incumbency advantage, and presidential coat-tail effects. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop and test an integrated theoretical framework for understanding how two forms of rivalry shape risk assessments by firms active in developing countries (DCs). Political business cycle (PBC) theory suggests that incumbent politicians, particularly incumbent politicians with a left-wing orientation, have incentives to implement expansionary economic policies during election years even if such policies impair sovereign government finances and creditworthiness. Electoral rivalry and the PBC-related economic policies it prompts increase risk to firms, but strategy research suggests that PBC effects will be moderated due to rivalry among firms in the same DC market segment. We find support for this framework in analyses of 458 ratings of sovereign government creditworthiness published by five major credit rating agencies for 18 DCs holding 35 presidential elections from 1987-2000. We find that: 1) agency ratings decrease during election years in DCs with left-wing incumbents; but 2) this political rivalry effect on risk diminishes as the number of agencies vying for DC rating business increases. Competitive rivalry among agencies in DCs can negate risk effects related to electoral rivalry among politicians. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We build on Karol and Miguel’s (2007) study of the impact of local casualties on the 2004 presidential election to determine whether casualties play a similar role in congressional elections during the Iraq war. We hypothesize that incumbents incurred higher electoral costs, as measured by vote share, in districts with higher number of casualties controlling for other factors. We employ a model to determine whether the number of soldiers from each district who have been killed in the Iraq war is correlated with the incumbents’ vote share. Consistent with Gartner, Segura and Barratt (2003), we use spatially weighted regression to determine if casualties in neighboring districts also influenced vote share. This project will enhance our understanding of how foreign affairs influence domestic politics as well as contribute to the debate over the relative importance of local versus national factors in congressional elections. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests whether congressional special elections, and their closest counterpart, open seat elections, are leading indicators of the presidential vote share in a given district. Since special elections occur in effective isolation, they are thought to have little predictive value. Amending the candidate-constituency model advanced by Gaddie et al (1999), this project also tests if voters respond differently to the circumstances surrounding the vacancy, and if the proximity of the congressional election to the general election affects its predictive power. Since special elections and open seat elections lack incumbents they may be canaries in a coal mine, signaling trouble or tranquility for the incumbent president's party in the following presidential election. Using data collected from a variety of sources, including the House Clerk’s Office and the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report on all congressional special elections and open seat elections from 1977-2008, this paper hopes to expand our understanding of special elections and tests their predictive power on presidential voting behavior. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an extension of a statistical model of multiparty aggregate electoral data to conduct a truly comparative analysis of elections across different electoral rules. Such a fully comparative study requires the analysis of intra-party votes for electoral rules with intra-party competition (e.g., open-list PR) and the estimation of winning probabilities which are, unlike vote shares, directly comparable across SMDs and MMDs. The paper develops a model of intra-party vote shares and proposes a two-step estimation of inter- and intra-party vote shares to accommodate electoral rules with intra-party competition. It also uses a simulation of vote shares and seat distributions based on these models to estimate winning probabilities of seats and candidates. To demonstrate its utility, the paper applies the methodology to comparing incumbency advantage in UK and Finland which use, respectively, an archetype of electoral rules at the opposite end of the spectrum: the SMD without intra-party competition and the MMD with intra-party competition. The estimation results support the hypothesis that incumbency advantage is higher in Finland than in UK due to the difference in legislator’s incentives to pursue personal votes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new approach to modeling the relationships between PACs and House members. I combine information about the entire dynamics history of contributions between PAC-candidate pairs, with cross-sectional information about the portfolio of candidates/incumbents supported by each PAC. Prior approaches focus either on single election cycles, or a small set of elections to analyze relationship between candidates and PACs. No prior work has drawn on information about the portfolio of candidates supported by a PAC to consider the dynamics of replacing a previously supported candidate with someone new..x000d..x000d.Key results include showing that most money to incumbents comes from PACs who supported the member prior to their initial election, and offering new scaling results for PACs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the notion that wars occur most frequently when one or both sides are overly optimistic about the likelihood of success. Incumbent leaders are rewarded or punished after international conflicts not based on absolute outcomes, but rather on a comparison of popular ex-ante expectations about how the wars should have ended with actual performance. This suggests that leaders have incentives to avoid wars where the relevant population is overly optimistic about the likely outcome. Further, this gives some incumbents a freer hand to engage in wars where the likelihood of losing is relatively high..x000d..x000d.I base my theoretical argument off of a simple formal model and use large-n statistical analysis and case studies to support the results. The model used not only provides a counter-intuitive explanation for the onset of war, it helps explain anomalous cases in which previously defeated states initiate conflict against militarily superior opponents. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The variation in the magnitude of incumbency advantage is expected to be caused by the impact of different electoral rules on the incentives of MPs to seek personal reputation rather than collective party reputation. The incentives for personal vote are expected to be greater under electoral rules with intra-party competition than those without it. In addition, they are expected to be smaller as DM is greater when there is no intra-party competition, while they would be greater when DM is greater if there is intra-party competition (Carey and Shugart 1995). We expect that incumbency advantage varies across electoral rules accordingly. This hypothesis is tested by the estimation of incumbency advantage across four developed democracies with different electoral rules; namely, UK (with small DM and without intra-party competition), Austria (with large DM and without intra-party competition), US (with small DM and intra-party competition), and Finland (with large DM and intra-party competition). The estimation is based on the newly developed statistical model which is suitable to estimate and compare the impact of certain political factors on the winning probabilities of candidates across different electoral rules. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The incumbent senator’s ideological vulnerability tends to cause the emergence of the quality challenger. The quality challenger is characterized as strategic: she is more likely to enter the contest when her prospects for winning the election are most favorable. .x000d..x000d.This study asserts that the probability that the quality challenger enters the Senate election is dependent on the ideological congruence of the incumbent senator. The most fundamental aspect to discern the incumbent’s vulnerability is how acutely she has advanced constituency’s interests in terms of ideological representation on roll call votes. The ideological deviation of the incumbent senator from the ideological preference of constituency produces a favorable condition that enhances the challenger’s prospects for winning the election, facilitating the emergence of the quality challenger. .x000d..x000d.Using Senate elections where the incumbent senator runs for reelection from 1962 to 2006, this study reveals the relationship between the ideological distance of the incumbent senator and her probability of facing the quality challenger, shedding light on the conditional nature illustrating the strategic emergence of the quality challenger in Senate elections. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seminal work on the electoral connection was developed to explain the largely homogenous Congresses of the 1970s and 1980s. While more recent empirical work examines Congresses with greater gender diversity, much of it continues to ignore gender as an important analytic category. Given the changing demographics of the Congress, we know less and less about the relationship between members of Congress and their constituents. To correct this oversight, we develop and test a theoretical account of the electoral implications of gender and incumbent voting behavior. Based on voter stereotyping, we argue that men and women incumbents will face very different electoral consequences for being out of touch with their constituents. Using data from the 2000-2006 House elections, we find that women pay higher electoral costs than men when their voting behavior is more liberal than district preferences, but pay lower costs when their behavior is more conservative. We conclude that the electoral fortunes of women are closely tied to their responsiveness to constituents, providing an advantage when they closely mirror district preference but affording them less leeway in pursuing their own policy interests in Congress. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars studying incumbency advantages have focused on identifying and measuring variables that explain and enhance the good chances that incumbents enjoy (Hogan, 2000,2004; Erikson 1971; Mayhew 1974; King 1991;). However, until now, little research has considered the incumbent advantage outside the United States case. Moreover, almost no efforts have been made to investigate the effect that different electoral rules have on the matter. Here, I move beyond the American case and try to explain incumbency advantages in legislative elections under PR closed-list and open-list systems. Building on the premise that in preferential systems (PR-OL) electoral competition tends to be candidate-centric and in PR-CL it tends to be party-centric, I show that incumbency advantages are stronger in cases where voters are entitled to rank their preferences. Colombia offers an interesting scenario to test the previous premise given that in this context parties can choose whether to present open or closed candidate lists. Using electoral data from the 2006 legislative election, I compare the incumbents' advantage in open and closed lists, while controlling for other confounding factors such as length term, term limits and constituency services. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies explore explanations of electoral volatility, but most focus on country-level volatility, overlooking important and divergent explanations of volatility at the party level. In this paper, I first show that patterns of system and party level volatility do not parallel one another, and then use that finding to argue that the two types of volatility require different explanatory models. I find that while system-level volatility decreases with the age of party system, party-level electoral volatility increases with the age of the party. Moreover, while political scandals, neo-liberal economic reforms, and polarization/extremism do not affect system-level volatility, these variables do affect party-level volatility. The results also suggest a non-linear and interactive relationship between ideological extremism, incumbency, and volatility. I test these hypotheses on 24 legislative elections in 8 Latin American countries during the 1980s and 2000. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key studies of executive-legislative relations have focused primarily on the ability of a chief executive to obtain support for his proposals in the legislature, but have paid only scant attention to how chief executives choose their legislative proposals. In this study, I develop a measure of the extent to which a governor can credibly claim an electoral mandate. This measure is based on a governor’s winning electoral margin, his coattail effects, and whether he defeated a member of the incumbent party. I then examine whether the ability to claim an electoral mandate influences the number and type of economic development policies that a governor recommends to the legislature. I identify governors’ economic development policies by content analyzing their legislative addresses from 1997-2006. My preliminary results indicate that an electoral mandate has a large, but statistically insignificant, effect on the number or traditional economic development incentives a governor proposes. My next steps are to examine whether the effect of an electoral mandate on governors’ proposals is contingent on partisan control of the legislature and whether the effect diminishes over the course of a governor’s term in office. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not enough to have free and fair elections to have democratic elections. This argument might not be of importance in the West, but it is important in many Third World countries. This paper examines the following question: Which criteria best differentiate between democratic elections and non-democratic elections (or elections that incumbents claim to be democratic)? .x000d..x000d.Some estimate that more than a billion people in the world are casting their votes in elections to choose their rulers and representatives in parliaments. Yet few elections can be actually described as democratic and competitive elections, the rest cannot be depicted as democratic. Third World incumbents have manipulated the election process in order to achieve goals other than those derived from democratic elections, mainly to obtain legitimacy and to ease internal and external pressure for democracy and the respect for human rights. .x000d..x000d.In the Arab region, incumbents have used to have elections, but there is no single “democratic elections.” Based on the Arab experience in elections, this paper seeks to discuss criteria by which the distinction between “democratic, competitive elections” and “non-democratic elections” can be made. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]