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Many papers use regression discontinuity (RD) designs that exploit "close" election outcomes in order to identify the effects of election results on various political and economic outcomes of interest. Several recent papers critique the use of RD designs based on close elections because of the potential for imbalance near the threshold that distinguishes winners from losers. In particular, for U.S. House elections during the post-war period, lagged variables such as incumbency status and previous vote share are significantly correlated with victory even in very close elections. This type of sorting naturally raises doubts about the key RD assumption that the assignment of treatment around the threshold is quasi-random. In this paper, we examine whether similar sorting occurs in other electoral settings, including the U.S. House in other time periods, statewide, state legislative, and mayoral races in the U.S., and national and/or local elections in a variety of other countries, including the U.K., Canada, Germany, France, Australia, India, and Brazil. No other case exhibits sorting. Evidently, the U.S. House during the post-war period is an anomaly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Never waste a good crisis! This has become the mantra of politicians and civic leaders facing fallout of the recent financial crisis. It declares that crisis can prove fertile ground for positive change, opportunity can spring from ruin, and that infrastructure, processes and institutions can be rebuilt. Financial downturns affect municipalities and regional economies especially acutely. This paper investigates the responses of metropolitan regions to crisis and its effect on collective action to the "opportunities" of crisis. To what degree does a common challenge provoke or strengthen collective action and cooperation between governments in metropolitan regions? To what extent, and under what conditions, does it exacerbate tensions and increase fragmentation? To answer these questions this paper explores the experiences of three city regions - Toronto, Canada; Frankfurt, Germany; and Detroit, USA - in previous recessions as well as the current downturn. These cases exhibit different patterns of regional and local responses and an analysis of these experiences will inform a hypothesis about the effects of crisis on cooperation and metropolitan governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the theory-building portion of a larger project inquiring into the effects of war on the tendency of international rivalries to persist or terminate. The research design of the larger project, a comparative cases design focusing on the rivalry profiles of three different states (Germany, the United States, and Argentina) is discussed. Selected preliminary findings from the Argentine case are utilized in an effort to refine extant hypotheses regarding war and rivalry termination in an effort to build more nuanced theory in this area. The paper concludes with a discussion of one possible direction: a new categorization of rivalries, where different hypotheses regarding war and termination are expected to apply to different rivalry types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains variations in state compliance with the 1997 OECD "Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions."? In an initial phase of follow-up monitoring to evaluate each country's implementing legislation, this Convention's peer-review monitoring group found a surprising variation in the compliance records of the OECD's four largest members. While Germany and the United States 'satisfactorily' complied with the Convention, France only 'sufficiently' complied and the United Kingdom did not comply. Why did some states comply and others not? Given the Convention's optimal design, function, and normative basis from the point of view of compliance theory, this outcome is particularly surprising. Employing evidence from research in the fours countries, and focusing on the U.K. case in particular, the paper assesses three alternative explanations for the observed variations in compliance: unintentional non-compliance; strategic trade; and norms related to transnational bribery. The analysis finds that none of the explanations initially suggested by the evidence is complete, but that a combination of strategic trade interests and normative factors is at play. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study for compliance theory in IR, and theories of international politics in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in the middle of the last century, presidential debates in the U.S. have attracted significant interest from academics as well as the general public. But the United States is not the only country that televises debates during their general election campaigns. Germany, for example, saw its first debate in 1972, and with a few exceptions, has had at least one debate in every national election since. There is already a considerable amount of literature suggesting that debate performances have the ability to influence candidate evaluations. However, researchers generally assert that the most common impact of political debates is to reinforce partisan preferences. Scholars have shown that pre-debate supporters and strong partisans are highly likely to believe that their preferred candidate is also the debate winner. But reinforcement is not the only possible effect of presidential debates on their audience. An-other potential effect is known as activation. Many voters hold only weak attachments to the political parties. Further, they may not pay close attention during the political campaign, except for a few highly publicized events. For such weak partisans, debates may enhance or strengthen their tentative attachment to the party and its leader. Thus, they do more than simply reinforce preferences they activate loyalties and turn indifferent citizens into committed supporters. A final potential impact of debates is the so-called persuasion effect, in which voters are actually drawn to a candidate they would otherwise not have voted for as a result of watching the debates. Early research, particularly on American presidential debates, cast significant doubt on the ability of these events to influence voting decisions. More recent evidence, however, has shown that, under certain circumstances, debates can, in fact, alter election results. Moreover, such an impact has been documented in several countries, including, among others, the U.S., Germany, and Canada. What is largely missing from the debate literature is comparative and cross-national research. Our paper is an attempt to fill that gap. In our manuscript, we will analyze two countries that hold debates regularly, the U.S. and Germany. Using American National Election Survey (ANES) panel data, we will document changes in voters' attitudes toward the candidates, and establish a strong connection between voters' changed opinions and debate watching. We will then conduct similar analyses of German debates, using the German Longitudinal Election Survey, to compare and con- trast debate effects between the two countries. We will argue that, in general, the impact of debates is independent of political systems, and that the effects of debates in Germany and the United States are surprisingly similar. Further, we will argue that these effects stem not just from the informational content of the debates, but more importantly from the emotional reactions voters have to the candidates, their rhetoric, and their personal presentations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper which addresses the variance in the loss of functional control among states, citing Germany and the U.S. as example is presented. It gives focus on the outsourcing of military functions, which is said to be accompanied by a loss of control over the use of force. The strategies formulated by both countries resemble each other particularly when it comes to addressing the functional dimension of control on the political and social levels.

The paper offers a number of hypotheses for testing aimed at assessing to what extent references to civil liberties and human rights are used by the American and German media to frame articles on domestic counterterrorism efforts. We also seek to establish whether articles focused on measures targeting immigrants use different frames than articles focused on measures targeting the general population. Through content analysis of major newspapers, we provide preliminary evidence that the United States and Germany use appreciably different frames when discussing these issues. Furthermore, our data suggests that the U.S. media is less likely to employ civil liberties frames when discussing measures targeting immigrants than it is when discussing measures targeting the general population. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the inclusion of feminist movements -- and by implication all social movements -- inside the State. It makes two major arguments. First, that exclusion from the State is a continuous variable with many social movement actors having penetrated the State to some degree. We then argue that social movements' inclusion is a function of characteristics of the State, particularly the partisan control of the bureaucracy and mechanisms for building the civil service, and characteristics of movements, particularly ideology and their partisan allies. We examine these arguments by examining three cases of feminist activism inside the State: the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The U.S. and Germany have similar bureaucratic characteristics in terms of recruitment and partisan control but differ dramatically in the nature of the feminist movement. The women's movements of Germany and the United Kingdom share many characteristics but the pathways into the bureaucracy differ dramatically. We find that feminist insider participation through women's policy agencies is affected by partisan control and the organization of the bureaucracy (e.g. location of the women's policy agency). The participation of individual feminist insiders also appears affected by norms of partisan control and by the ideology of the women's movement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the reaction of mainstream political elites to acts of terrorism and quantitatively assesses whether opposition parties will rally around the flag, much like they do in the midst of military or diplomatic crises. A statistical analysis, conducted on 181 terrorist events in five countries (France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States) over the period 1990 to 2006, indicates that rallies around the flag are the rule. Overall, the results show that the repetition of acts of terror is a strong factor affecting political parties' responses to terrorist acts, as repeated attacks are more likely to prompt criticism. The magnitude of the act (i.e. number of fatalities) is also associated with a rallying effect as larger attacks are more likely to result in a unified front across parties. Country specific analyses indicate that Spain has the lowest rallying rate amongst the countries studied whereas the United Kingdom has the highest. Finally, this study suggests that massive rallies around the flag following acts of terror were relatively rare in the U.S. prior to 9/11. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the central concepts in political science is representation. It has been studied under theoretical as well as empirical lines of inquiry, both developing their own notions of the subject. Largely missing, however, is the actors' own perspective on this subject: how do politicians and citizens conceptualize political representation? In this paper, I will outline in what ways complex ideas like political representation can be studied empirically by discussing, first, general features of political concepts understood as cultural concepts. Second, I will ask how they match the methodology and methods of interpretive political science. Third, by using parts of my own study on actors concepts of political representation in Germany and the United States, the potentials of this approach will be considered. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several decades, political parties throughout the developed world have transformed their approach to election campaigning. This transformation manifests itself not only in campaign activities (market research, media management, internet campaigning, etc) but also in campaign organization. Specifically, campaign functions have increasingly been "outsourced": transferred away from party organizations and their full-time staffs into the hands of individuals and firms outside the political parties. In thus re-organizing their campaigns, parties are also re-organizing themselves. This paper turns to economic theories of the "boundaries of the firm" to suggest a theory of the determinants of the "boundaries of party" - that is, a theory of the outsourced campaign. It draws on evidence from campaigns in Germany, Britain, and the United States in assessing the plausibility of its account. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about sources of credible commitment in relation to politics is presented. It is argued that the credibility of commitments should be theorized as a matter of perception. A case is made for grounding the analysis of credibility in a cognitively plausible model of how decision-makers process information and form assessments of risk. The plausibility of the framework is tested through an analysis of multiple episodes of pension policy making in Germany and the United States.

An important ingredient in democratic politics is the realization of political disagreement through patterns of social communication and political discussion. If people fail to encounter contrary viewpoints, their own political views are never challenged, they are never forced to reconsider initially held preferences or opinions, and they are effectively excluded from democratic deliberation. This paper examines patterns of agreement and disagreement within the political communication networks of citizens in Germany, Japan, and the United States. Several questions are addressed. Are there cross-national differences in the patterns of agreement and disagreement that occur among citizens? To what extent are these patterns subject to individual characteristics, opinions, and attitudes? Are they dependent on the structure of citizens’ communication networks? Finally, to what extent are patterns of political agreement and disagreement affected by the levels of aggregate support for a citizen’s political preferences and opinions? The empirical analysis is based on cooperative election surveys conducted in each of the countries during the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we suggest new measures that gauge how district level party systems can be aggregated to the national level within a country. These can be used as measures of party linkage across districts. The degree of party linkage, which is the extent to which parties are uniformly successful in wining votes across districts, is an important but neglected issue to understand the nature of national level party system formation. We build on the party system inflation index introduced by Cox (1999), which measures the inflation from the district level to the national level party system size that occurs in the process of party system aggregation. We show that the Cox measure has undesirable properties and offer alternative measures. We first examine the concept of party linkage, followed by the discussion of Cox’s inflation index and its limitations. We then introduce our suggested inflation measures, and compare them with the Cox index by numerical simulation. We then apply our measures to the cases of Germany, India, Italy and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deciding how to finance multiple levels of government is a challenging task for all political systems. Federal states, in addition, have a constitutional contract to divide financial accountability across national and subnational governments. In comparison with unitary states, federal states are arguably more committed to fiscal decentralization precisely because of this constitutional contract. Nevertheless, a wide variation in the extent of fiscal centralization is observed even among developed federal states. This paper explores the political economy of fiscal centralization in six developed federal states, Australia, Canada, Austria, Germany, the United States, and Belgium, from 1961 through 1995. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy issues have inspired grassroots mobilization on both sides of the Atlantic. We examine the apparent paradox that activists have had a greater impact on national renewable energy policy in Germany despite the greater openness of U.S. political institutions. The German anti-nuclear movement became a focal point for critique of corporatist policy making and the growth of an advocacy coalition for renewables that included energy entrepreneurs, environmental groups, "counterexperts" and some government officials. With the entrance of the Greens into the Bundestag, renewables activists pursued a two-pronged approach of policy advocacy and mass mobilization. This approach has moved renewables forward despite a continued lack of citizen access opportunities. The U.S. movements lacked the broad framing and focused institutional target of their German counterparts. Further, easy access meant that countermobilization by traditional energy advocates stalemated their efforts at the national level despite the salience of the issue. Ironically, exclusion from the center of institutional power in Germany has resulted in a more fundamental challenge to that power from grassroots movements, who have been the main drivers of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explains that the conception of corporate governance as a politically constructed juridical nexus brings together comparative law and political economy. It discusses how corporate governance reform became integral to the regulatory framework of finance capitalism. It looks at the relationship between shifting interest group alignments and the strategies of state actors in partisan political conflict. It examines the political and coalitional underpinnings of U.S. and German corporate governance reform.

Re-linking political philosophy with empirical political science has become a major theme in the discipline. In this regard, we propose that researchers should take a prime focus on favorable institutional and cultural contexts that can build bridges from the "ideal" to the "real". We focus on two deliberative ideals - respect and argumentative agreement - in 55 parliamentary debates in Switzerland, the United States, Germany, and Great Britain. We find that especially consensus institutions (in the form of grand coalitions or "bipartisan" arrangements) have robust effects on respect and argumentative change. Veto power, in turn, did not yield any effects, while reflective institutions perform slightly better and make a difference for respect. Consensus culture, in turn, may play some role, but respective effects are far less clear. We conclude that institutions can build bridges between philosophical ideals and the real world of politics, regardless of the cultural context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudes to government responsibilities are compared in Sweden, eastern and western Germany, and the US, 1990-2006, using data from the International Social Survey Program. A substantial convergence in attitudes is found for the period 1996-2006, since Americans become more positive in their attitudes towards state intervention, while opposite trends are found for Sweden and eastern Germany. While attitudinal differences between countries diminish, class differences are fairly stable, as are the differences between men and women and between different labour market status categories. It is speculated that the 'great risk shift' from employers to employees may be part of the explanation for changing attitudes towards redistributive public policies in the US. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the events of September 11, 2001, the protection of public and private infrastructures has become a major public policy issue in the United States and other countries. They are deemed critical, because they are essential to the functioning of modern societies, and because they are large technical systems that are particularly vulnerable to disruptions. The assessment of vulnerabilities of these complex and interrelated systems is the subject of a plethora of programs, activities, and agencies within the U.S. However, there could be interesting differences in dealing with critical infrastructure protection. In particular, countries like Germany that are similarly advanced and dependent on information infrastructures, but have a different tradition of public-private sector relations, might provide a useful comparison. It is argued here that the recognition of the criticality of infrastructures for national security, economic security, public health and safety, and public confidence is altering the relationship between the public and the private sector in the United States. The change is not only temporary, but structural, and seems to be indicative of a system of coordination that is more akin to the continental European model of corporatist structures than the North American free market system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyyze corporate governance reform in the U.S., Germany, France, and Italy toshow that political actors and parties matter decisively in institutional and regulatory reform processes. By examining the country cases of the United States, Germany, France, and Italy, we seek to explain a striking political paradox of finance capitalism and corporate governance reform: center-left political parties are the driving force behind corporate governance reform and the institutional adjustment to finance capitalism, while the right of center parties tend to protect managerialism and organized capitalism while resisting reform. We confirm this general hypothesis and offer a number of explanations for this peculiar political dynamic. We combine theories of phases and varieties of capitalism with existing research on parties and interest groups to fashion a better understanding of the political dynamics underlying economic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German government needed to gain support from a majority in the Bundesrat to pass parts of the tax and retirement reform packages that were dependent on Bundesrat approval. However, the opposition parties opposed the reforms and sought to kill the bill in Bundesrat. Since the ruling coalition and opposition parties could not agree on compromises, the government made financial offers to a few state governments ruled by coalitions to change their voting behavior and thus secure a majority in Bundesrat. Not surprisingly, this strategy was quickly compared to U.S. style pork barreling. This article takes up this comparison and comes to the conclusion that the government used the prevalent Parteienlogik to secure passage in Bundestag. In Bundesrat, however, the federal government’s strategy of distributive politics providing pork projects to state coalition governments ran counter to the Parteienlogik. This dual strategy has serious potential of undermining two fundamental institutions in German politics - consensus-orientation of the system as a whole and objectivity (Sachorientierung) in Bundesrat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project combines social theories concerning communicative action and the influence of culture on states’ security policies to examine multinational crisis management in the Balkans through the 1990s. By examining how the United States, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, and France collaborated in response to the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo I have been able to isolate specific, security-related cultural incompatibilities that contributed to their inability to collaborate quickly and effectively. My central claim is that each state possesses a distinct ‘security-related culture? that provides state leaders with understandings about which actions are possible, appropriate, and favorable. How these understandings are articulated in different institutional settings account for whether collaboration will proceed effectively or contentiously.? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]