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This paper provides an explanation of changes in tax policy centralization taking the Argentine and Brazilian experiences during the 1980s and 1990s as the cases of analysis. We make use of two different measures of centralization: central government taxation weight and level. The former gauges the relevance of the central government with respect to the total amount of taxes collected; while the latter gauges at the capacity of the central government to collect taxes with respect to the economy as a whole. We base our explanation on a contingent application of veto players theory. This paper scopes the differential advantage, but not exhaustion, of central governments and partisan leverage in taxation matters in Argentina and Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s. It underscores the complexity of the subject of study and becomes suspect of automatic a priori expectations. Therefore, it strives to underscore relevant interaction and contingent characteristics (e.g., partisan alignment, discipline, and strength and leadership characteristics) embedded within a general theoretical framework. We demonstrate that a reduction in the number of veto players occurred in Argentina (1989) and Brazil (1986-88), which help us explain the concurrent behavior in taxation in both cases. Thus, by underscoring the prevailing interests during the reform events, executive-central government (Argentina) vis-୶is legislative-sub-national governments interests (Brazil), we are able to explain the greater Brazilian decrease weight-, but greater Argentine increase level-wise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

This paper presents a new panel dataset measuring non-market coordination in OECD countries across several spheres of the political economy. The paper uses the dataset to test hypotheses about the origins and maintenance of non-market coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critically examines four theorists who argue (explicitly or implicitly) that the power of one necessarily comes at the expense of the power of another, and who model the exercise of power on the practice of war. The paper argues that the descriptions of power offered by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault ring true in many respects, but all encounter difficulties in basing power relations on pure conflict when most actual power relations blend common and conflicting interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper critically assesses descriptive representation as a mechanism for representing marginalized groups in comparison to social movements and other mechanisms of political representation. The paper argues for a structural theoretical approach to thinking about political representation for marginalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

: Social movement scholars generally view movements as existing outside of government, and even interest group scholars, who acknowledge the revolving door between interest groups and government, have only explored how previous government experience influences outside lobbying. This paper examines feminist activists while they work for the government bureaucracy using historical documents and in-depth interviews with 40 government employees who were also activists in the women's movement. Feminist activists can be found within the federal government bureaucracy throughout the second wave of the women's movement from 1965-2000. This paper asks the question of how their access to government positions and their activism was affected by changes in presidential administrations. Social movement scholars focusing on political opportunities have generally argued that movements have greater access under sympathetic presidents. This paper explores that claim by asking three questions about feminist activists who work for the federal government: 1) when do these activists enter government service (that is, which presidential administrations gave feminist activists greater access to government positions); 2) what happens to bureaucrats who are feminist activists when an administration hostile to feminism takes over; and 3) does location within the bureaucracy influence the degree to which feminist activists must respond to presidential administrations? The results suggest that feminist bureaucrats below the appointment level often remain in hostile administrations. Several case studies explore how their activism changes under hostile administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though torture continues to be used, it provokes in people a unique moral disgust that even capital punishment does not elicit. But there is an equally strong and just as universal intuition that the use of torture would be acceptable in extreme circumstances. This paper seeks to ground that competing instinct in something more stable and claims that liberals must accept that the right to not be tortured is not unalienable after all. This paper first explores existing opposition to and defense of torture from the rights-based and utilitarian perspectives and finds them all wanting for different reasons. In response, it constructs two different non-consequentialist defenses of interrogational torture. Of the different purposes for torture, only interrogative torture warrants a serious defense, albeit a very grudging one made from utilitarian calculations about extreme cases, e.g. the ubiquitous ticking-bomb scenario. Such an approach is subject to highly speculative and inexact calculations about aggregate benefits and losses, however, and neither does it adequately protect individual liberties in difficult situations. A defense in the non-consequentialist vein is much more stable, as it allows for greater consistency of analysis while respecting the individuality and value of persons and their freedoms. Both defenses draw from the social contract tradition, deriving the right to not be tortured not from a priori rights belonging to every person, but rather from hypothetical consent to a certain political and social system, in which violations of that agreement result in the loss of the protections afforded under it. The first defense uses the Lockean model to argue that executive power in the state of nature includes the right to torture criminals for preventive purposes when they have forfeited their rights against interference, and this right to torture is transferred to governments when entering civil society. The second defense takes the Rawlsian framework of the two principles of justice and argues that the Priority of Liberty allows for tradeoffs within freedom of persons to permit interrogative torture under dire circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to test the plausibility of the homogeneity or parallel publics hypothesis (Page & Shapiro, 1992) using the agenda-setting model as a framework. One of the implicit assumptions of the agenda-setting model is that in the absence of a news story about a particular topic, such as stories about air quality, public concern about the topic is at equilibrium. In response to a media story or external events such as a public information campaign asking drivers to alter their driving behavior, concern about the topic of air quality may quickly diverge from the long-term equilibrium level of concern. This equilibrium state is similar to Downs’ (1972) pre-problem state or Baumgartner and Jones’ (1991; 1993) values consensus state. A focusing event or system shock punctuates the equilibrium state causing concern about air quality to rise. Eventually, after the media or the public becomes bored with the issue of air quality, concern will return to an equilibrium level of concern (Downs, 1972; Henry & Gordon, 2001; Neuman, 1990). This change in the level of concern about air quality in response to a system shock such as a news story or focusing event such as a public information campaign raises a fundamental question; do all members of the public respond similarly or in the parallel fashion predicted by Page and Shapiro to the system shock? That is, do men and women or do people who are college-educated or not college-educated respond in the same way at the same time to news stories or a public information campaign about air quality? The homogeneity or parallel publics hypothesis suggests that all groups respond similarly. The heterogeneity hypothesis suggests that groups may differ in their response to a system shock with the public either converging or diverging. The results from the models tested in this paper provide strong evidence that the homogeneity or parallel publics hypothesis is untenable. The initial analysis, correlating the aggregate means and variances gave strong indication that there were different processes at work. The results of the vector autoregression analysis show significant differences in response patterns to the media coverage and public information campaign based on sex and education. The results provided support for what we will call the convergent heterogeneity hypothesis, though the sex series was more consistent with what we called the divergent heterogeneity hypothesis. In an attempt to explain the disparate findings between the people and group models, we simulated the effects of a public information campaign to demonstrate that different groups responded in systematically different ways to the system shock with the overall effect washing out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a project in which I examine the impacts of economic globalization on democratic thought and practice and the predominant responses among democratic theorists to the changes produced by globalization. Among these responses, those which exhibit pronounced nostalgic streaks are the least analyzed and least well understood. Nostalgic responses can be seen in academics concerned with community and social capital (e.g., Bellah et al, Sandel, and Putnam), in popular writing (e.g., Wendell Berry and Michael Shuman), and in political movements, both right (e.g., those of Haider, Le Pen, and Buchanan) and left (e.g., some progressive elements of the ‘anti-globalization’ movement). The role of local politics and the spaces in which citizens live and work is of particular concern for many of these nostalgics. In contemporary political theory, labeling someone’s thought or politics as nostalgic is a rhetorical strategy for dismissing the seriousness of a person’s ideas. Liberal and postmodern thinkers are the most conspicuous in their employment of this rhetorical tactic of dismissal. As Peter Euben points out, “too often the critique of nostalgia is too impatient with the sense of loss that makes it attractive to many and compelling to a few.” Those of us troubled by nostalgic politics need to better understand that, even if manifested in ways we find unsavory, there are real concerns, needs, issues, and justice claims being expressed in much nostalgia. Further, we dismiss nostalgic politics at our own peril. We must address the real losses that provoke nostalgic political responses, especially the more xenophobic, racist, and reactionary of them. Nostalgia can also uncover some valuable political insights, needs, and resources. To neglect these nuggets through the dismissal of nostalgic politics forecloses possibilities of enriching our own political projects. We also need to recognize that even when we disagree with another’s thinking, we may still share with some nostalgics many of the same intentions and aims. Some contemporary nostalgic thinkers are genuinely committed to promoting a just polity of free people who have the resources needed to attend to and nurture that freedom and efficacy. Those of us troubled by aspects of nostalgic politics may find that we can be tense allies who need each other if we hope to rescue from some of the consequences of economic globalization aspects of the democratic project we may both cherish. At the same time, much democratic nostalgia—they are not alone—suffers a kind of utopianism by neglecting to realistically consider the causes of lost institutions and practices, and how we may retrieve the attractive fragments of those loses in ways relevant to today’s political economic conditions. This paper explores some of the attractive resources, institutions, and practices that have degraded or been lost, attempts to see if we can rescue those fragments from some of the more troubling aspects of past socio-economic and political arrangements and practices in manner which might realistically work in contemporary conditions, and considers mitigating institutions and practices as partial alternatives when this is not possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a preliminary exploration into the intersection of economics, religion, and politics with regards to development issues in Indonesia. In specific, this paper’s hypothesis is that the Indonesian government often acts through and with religious organizations (and not as much or in the same ways as with secular civil society organizations) for economic and social development. The paper includes several sections: 1) Introduction and thesis. 2) Literature review: definition of civil society, how religious organizations fit into “civil society,” information about the political role of civil society, types of civil society organizations in Indonesia, and the extent to which civil society is really “outside” of governmental control (i.e., autonomy issues). 3) Background information about non-governmental organizations and information about their potential role in democratization processes. 4) Background for religious organizations: types of religious organizations in Indonesia and what they do. Special attention is given to Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah (two of the largest and arguably most influential groups in Indonesia). 5) The nature of the relationship between the Indonesian government and civil society. 6) Information about religious organizations and economic development. Questions: a. Do religious organizations have a comparative advantage over secular organizations in supporting economic and social development? b. What does the government get in return for supporting (or controlling) religious organizations? c. Likewise, what do religious organizations obtain for supporting the government? 7) Conclusion and recommendations for future research. Each section by no means provides an exhaustive description or explanation of the topic, but rather instead serves to offer a general framework from which to start analyzing the aforementioned thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal Feminism, Gender and Montesquieu Mika LaVaque-Manty University of Michigan There are two familiar critiques of liberal feminism: (1) It has no account of gender as a social category only contingently mapped onto the biological category sex. (2) As a result, liberal feminism has particularly hard time dealing with the cultural variance of gender categories: its only responses to problematic gender practices in other cultures are quietist relativism or unsubtle imperialism. This paper offers a qualified defense of liberal feminism via an exploration of Montesquieu’s work. The paper shows, first, that Montesquieu offers us conceptual resources for a robust account of gender. Second, the paper connects Montesquieu’s style of inquiry with the practices of political judgment, which suggests an alternative to the relativism–imperialism dilemma. Finally, however, the paper identifies limits to what we can get out of Montesquieu and suggests the limits aren’t just limits in Montesquieu’s political imagination or a feature of his times, but theoretical constraints. Liberal feminism, the conventional complaint goes, has ready resources for addressing issues of sex discrimination because such discrimination allocates resources on the basis of contingent facts of birth. However, liberals’ commitment to the principle of “the self prior to its ends” means, according to critics, a commitment to take identities as they come, and internalized norms about social roles, for example, are beyond a political critique. This charge is true even of the paradigmatic liberal feminist John Stuart Mill, but it isn’t, I argue, true of Montesquieu. For him, all social roles and norms are, using a concept from philosopher David Wiggins, “essentially contestable.” Although Montesquieu’s conscious commitment to what we might call feminism is questionable and although he does not use the concepts of gender analysis, I argue his Persian Letters shows how the essential contestability of social meanings can be explicitly applied to the case of gender. The idea of essential contestability is at the heart of Montesquieu’s mode of social inquiry, and it also points to a way of escaping the relativism–imperialism dilemma liberal feminism faces. The approach (discussed by other Montesquieu scholars such as Tzvetan Todorov) is to pass political judgment only in contexts where one is on an epistemically sure footing — in one’s own culture — but to do it in a way that opens the possibility of cross-cultural political engagement. Despite these advantages Montesquieu’s theory offers for liberal feminism, the account is also ultimately limited by his conception of the boundary between the categories of natural and non-natural. Instead of claiming these are problems for Montesquieu but not for us, I argue that the problem is general and theoretical. (Paper submitted for panel #031038, Reinterpreting Montesquieu: Inheritances and Influences, proposed by Annie Stilz) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

At UIC we began four years ago to restructure our graduate program to include Preparing Future Faculty as one of four model programs in the U.S. with a grant from the APSA. Since then we have created two new PFF courses, offerred workshops on teaching techniques, and developed teaching portfolios for our students. Thirty students have now gone through the program which is conducted with 10 partner universities and colleges in Illionis. This paper discusses the creation of such programs at any university, evaluates the results of our program, and discusses the problems of institutionalizing such programs in times of budget shortfalls. If desired papers can be obtained from two other PFF programs at Indiana Univ. and Uhiversity of Colorado at Boulder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For five seasons, The West Wing has remained one of the most popular dramas on television. For a show that features no sex, little violence, and lots of fast-paced dialogue about arcane political issues of the day, the appeal of the show appears obscure. In this paper, we will see how TWW taps into particular American ideological narratives regarding duty, power, and their interrelation. TWW offers the viewer an idea of what duty means in the particular context of an American political ideology; furthermore, it attempts to work out how Americans demonstrate a commitment to their duties, and to whom or what that sense of duty is owed. Since the show exists within the scenery of the American presidency and politics more generally, it also addresses (albeit indirectly) the allure of power in public service, acknowledging that a sense of duty often proves insufficient to motivate individuals. But American attitudes and ideas of power, as American political figures from Washington to Lincoln to Lyndon Johnson have noted, contain much nuance and appreciation for the good of power, contrary to our popular (and perhaps populist) notions of the human corruptibility that comes from power. Such being the case, the paper unwinds the interweaving of duty and power, demonstrating how TWW’s creators and cast propound a theory of American politics that has deep roots in the history of our political ideology and that emphasizes familiar rhetoric while pointing to little remembered components of our shared ideological heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the political implications of language policy in Ethiopia. Clearly, language policy is not simply about administrative efficiency or pedagogical concerns. Language, since it is both the vehicle and subject itself of vital political goods for citizens, will always have a political nature. This work considers the types of political goods which language policy is meant to deliver in a multicultural society such as Ethiopia, as well as discusses the various ethical and institutional options available with respect to language policy, in particular assessing where Ethiopia’s current language policy fits. Finally, the paper includes a presentation of initial findings from a series of interviews and focus group sessions with government officials, school administrators, parents, teachers, and students in two Regional States of Ethiopia, particularly as these relate to the larger questions of language and ethnic identity. Attention is given to the theoretical issues which language identity and language choice have for our understanding of political culture and democratization in sub-Saharan Africa, where language choice in the multicultural, multiethnic polity is often a contentious policy issue. Despite what one might expect about the present language policy, there is surprisingly little of this type of assessment, from either Political Theory or Comparative Politics. Yet, the interesting thing is that most people in Ethiopia today will tell you right away that language choice is political. This is as opposed to purely pragmatic or pedagogical. Choices of language of instruction in education, for instance, are not only about what helps children learn best, but also about what their identity is, particularly what identity is recognized by the state. Therefore, in culturally diverse societies such as Ethiopia, language policy is a crucial indicator of the nature of the nation-state project, even when such a policy is informal or unspoken. However, political scientists and theorists have paid remarkably attention to the practical and normative dimensions of language policy itself, preferring instead to fold it into a more general discussion of federalism, ethnic conflict or multiculturalism. This gap in the literature means that our understanding of the role of language policy in the development of democratic political culture on the continent remains insufficient. Addressing this question requires careful attention not only to theories of language choice but also the specific political context in which language policy is executed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the nature of citizens’ perceptions of political parties, focusing on those who consider themselves political independents, or unaffiliated with the two major parties. I will attend to the following outstanding questions in the literature: (1) Is there a temporal component to this self definition (Blais et al. 2001; Timpone and Neely 1997)? (2) Is this disposition largely cognitive or affective (Burden and Klofstad 2003)? (3) To what degree do independents form a sense of belonging to that group (Greene 2002; Weisberg and Greene forthcoming; Neely 1997)? (4) To what extent is political party independence gendered (Norrander 1997)? (5) Are most independent identifiers merely closet partisans (Keith et al. 1992)? In addition, I examine the dimensions of an independent identification: autonomy, anti-partyism, variability, and neutrality (Dennis 1988). The research on party affiliation has relied largely on quantitative data from secondary survey sources and more recently from experimental designs. I make a modest first step at complementing those studies with a qualitative approach. I ran six focus groups in the spring of 2003 in order to gather data on this topic. Those participants were grouped by gender (men, women) and party disposition (true independent, Republican leaners, Democratic leaners). This paper will report the focus group results focusing on the above points of inquiry. This is the first stage of a larger project in which I hope to employ survey and experimental methods on the same topic. Therefore, this paper will also provide some comment on future empirical designs, both quantitative and qualitative, that may shed more light on the nature of political independents. I hope this work contributes to the academic literature by (1) extending and developing a theory of party affiliation and identity, and (2) testing hypotheses related to the points of inquiry above. Practically speaking, parties of all types stand to benefit from the application of this research. Understanding the orientations of political independents is a prerequisite for appealing to that group, and it informs the strategic deployment of party resources. If some independents are perennially pushed away from the concept of a party, then it is not apparent why parties would court them. On the other hand, if some independents find the current party choices lacking, identifying the missing ingredients could benefit both major and minor parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do voters acquire preferences for particular parties and candidates? What causes a citizen or political actor to prefer one policy proposal over another? These questions, of central concern in contemporary political science, are variations on the more general question of Where do preferences come from? that has propelled much theorizing and research in the social sciences (Druckman and Lupia 2000). Within political science, three competing theoretical approaches – rational-choice, contextual/institutional, and cultural – offer different accounts of the formation of preferences. All three approaches have contributed to the accumulated knowledge of preference formation, but there have been few attempts to objectively assess and compare the validity of explanations derived from each approach. This paper will test hypotheses drawn from the three approaches with data gathered by the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, which has conducted surveys of representative samples of the Russian population from 1991 to the present. The political preferences of Russians the ideal data for the study because a natural experiment in preference formation has taken place in their nation over the last decade. With the collapse of communism in 1991, Russian citizens acquired civil liberties and for the first time in their lives they were able to make genuine choices in competitive elections, to openly support or disagree with government policy, and even to consider what type of political order post-communist Russia should have. After ten years of making such choices, most citizens now possess a more or less stable political party preference, if not a firm party identification (Remington 1999). By exploring how individuals acquired their party preferences in the critical Russian case, the paper intends to establish the foundation for an empirically grounded model of political preference formation with considerable explanatory and predictive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative Politics: Cooperatives as an Institutional Vehicle for Social Transformation The purpose of this paper is to consider whether, and in what form, the cooperative movement has political salience as a vehicle for transformative social change. Currently, cooperatives, with some 750 million members in over 100 countries worldwide, comprise the largest and most extensive existing alternative to traditional capitalism. But while cooperative principles embody such central theoretical concerns as utility and democracy, cooperatives have received very little attention within the discipline, especially in the U.S. This paper is an attempt to begin to address that lack. The central question of this paper is whether the theoretical basis for cooperatives is such that they may be considered a vehicle for fundamental social change. Indeed, from a theoretical perspective, the basic premises of cooperatives?common interest and common property?are attractive to ideological approaches that seek to extend democracy into economic and social realms, and that are opposed to the individualistic and inegalitarian tendencies of capitalism. By definition, a cooperative is an organization that ?has for its object the economic and social betterment of its members by means of an enterprise based on mutual aid . . . an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.? Cooperatives in their modern form developed out of the cooperative socialist movement in Britain that was active in the first third of the 19th century. This paper focuses on the work of William Thompson, who has been recognized (by those who recognize him at all) as the principal theorist of cooperative socialism. Thompson was a friend and associate of Jeremy Bentham, and while Thompson asserts that utility?the greatest good for the greatest number?is the fundamental normative principle on which his work is based, the implications which he draws from it are fundamentally different from Bentham?s. Whereas Bentham assumes an opposition between security (as he refers to liberty) and equality, Thompson attempts to reconcile them. His conclusion?the ?natural laws of distribution??leads him to assert that the only rational economic system, that unites security and equality and that affords the distribution of wealth most in conformity with the principle of utility, is one that is based on mutual cooperation. Besides examining the theory of cooperative socialism as articulated by Thompson, the paper seeks to make connections between Thompson?s theory and cooperatives today. While many aspects of the cooperative movement have assimilated themselves within capitalism, the fundamental principles to which all cooperatives must agree (in order to be members of the International Cooperative Alliance) retain at least the flavor of cooperative socialism, and therefore rest on a base that is antithetical to traditional capitalism. This paper seeks to identify an ideological approach to cooperatives that would allow us to politicize them in such a way that they may be engaged in a project of fundamental social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper examines the growth of separatist nationalism, defined as a type of nationalism which aspires to transform a non-sovereign political entity into a sovereign nation-state, within two liberal-democratic polities at different periods of time. The cases considered are Ireland prior to 1918 (when Sinn Fein won a majority of Irish seats in a British election) and Quebec prior to 1976 (when the Parti quebecois won a majority of Quebec seats in a provincial election) There are some obvious differences between these two cases: Quebec already enjoyed limited autonomy within a federation, while Ireland did not, Quebec in 1976 was much more urban and industrialized than Ireland in 1918, Ireland actually became independent within a few years of the election while Quebec did not. Nonetheless there are numerous similarities: in both cases the separatist party replaced a moderate, non-separatist nationalist party which had previously been dominant, both had dominant and historically privileged minorities that resisted nationalism, but in both cases the majority group was narrowing the gap in terms of material wealth, education, and access to opportunity, in both cases there was increasing preoccupation with linguistic and cultural issues on the part of the rising middle class, and in both cases demands for greater autonomy without separation from the existing state had been frustrated. In both cases anxieties about cultural survival coexisted with a growing confidence in the possibility of forming and maintaining a viable state, as well as a sense of rejection by the larger entity to which they were attached. The paper uses these two cases to test a number of theories from the literature on nationalism that seek to explain the emergence of separatist nationalism, as well as more specific explanations that have been suggested for the emergence of the sovereignty movement in Quebec [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the protest literature, the effects of governmental structures have been largely ignored even by structural approaches mainly because of the implied assumption that democracy suffers less contentious politics. However, the frequency and size of protest varies among different forms of democratic government. The empirical evidence shows that the number of protesters in democratic countries with Semi-Presidential systems is greater than what we find in pure presidential or parliamentary systems. This paper identifies the variation of the scale of protests in democratic regimes including European countries and South Korea using daily interval data, and explains the variation by focusing on political institutions. Through theoretical reviews and data analysis this paper argues that citizens in democratic countries with semi-presidential systems find it more difficult to deliver their demands to government than citizens in other states. Presidents in semi-presidential system exercise relatively unchecked power due to the weakness of legislature and the presidential influence on judicial branch, which limit citizens’ access to political processes. Therefore, they are more inclined to protest than their counterparts in democratic countries without semi-presidential systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I present a model of bargaining under certainty to examine the effects that preferences over policy and office have on bargaining duration. In previous work I have shown that the importance of particularistic politics improves our ability to explain patterns of coalition formation cross-nationally. Simply put, the more important particularistic politics are the more politicians behave as office seekers (as opposed to policy seekers). The focus on particularistic politics thus provides a link between the two main strands of theorizing about coalition formation. The paper thus makes two types of contributions. First, it offers us insights into the factors determining the duration of coalition bargaining in a comparative perspective. Extended periods of coalition bargaining may prevent major policy decisions to be addressed and create uncertainty about the future for both political and economic actors. Furthermore, bargaining duration has occasionally been used as a proxy for the ideological divisions within the coalition. If bargaining duration, however, is influenced by the importance of particularistic politics then the proxy is not an appropriate one. The insight offered by modeling the duration of coalition bargaining does not only apply to the formation of coalition cabinets but can also be applied legislative bargaining more generally where the implications of bargaining delay may be more obvious and persistent. Second, the paper contributes to our understanding of coalition governance more generally and, in particular, provides additional support for my theory of coalitions and particularistic politics. In this paper I derive further hypotheses from that same theory but focus on a different dependent variable. By doing so I am both subjecting the theory to further testing as well increasing its scope. I test the empirical implications of the models on a sample of bargaining situations from 10 Western-European countries (although I am trying to increase that number) using an event history analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the causes of government change in Russia’s President-Parliamentary regime (1994-2003) and assesses three theoretical perspectives: 1) The view that the constitutional format of President-Parliamentary regimes causes government instability and conflict. 2) The proposition that Russia’s constitution creates such a powerful presidency that the incumbent can decide government changes unchecked. 3) The view that government change is the result of an institutionally structured bargaining process, in which the capability and willingness of actors to use their constitutional powers is shaped by election results, policy and public opinion shocks and government performance. The paper analyses opinion poll, economic and election data, the memoir literature, press reports and current event almanacs. This evidence suggests: 1) That the regime type perspective correctly identifies a tendency toward government instability in Russia’s president-parliamentary regime, but that it can neither account for the mechanisms of government change nor for variation in conflict and co-operation between president and assembly. 2) That the president was influential in many instances, but that major government changes had to be negotiated with the Duma, and that the president was not always able to secure his desired outcomes. 3) That government change in Russia appeared to be best understood as the outcome of an institutionally structured bargaining process, in which actors are influenced by election outcomes, public opinion and policy shocks and government performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the line item veto continually resurface. Most analysis focuses either on the potential for the item veto to reduce “pork” spending by legislators or on possible violations of the separation of powers structured by the Constitution. This paper argues that an important consideration in this debate should be the issue of outcomes that are representative of the will of the legislature. Drawing from results that indicate that the use of bundled bills can yield outcomes that are unrepresentative of the majority of legislators’ wishes, this paper examines the potential impact of the line item veto. The results indicate that rather than producing more representative outcomes – thereby “mending” flaws in the voting mechanism – use of the item veto can yield outcomes that are even less representative. Thus, the potential costs of the line item veto outweigh the potential benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“The scope of conflict is an aspect of the scale of political organization and the extent of political competition. The size of the constituencies being mobilized, the inclusiveness or exclusiveness of the conflicts people expect to develop have a bearing on all theories about how politics is or should be organized… Nearly all theories about politics have something to do with the question of who can get into the fight and who is to be excluded” (Schattschneider 1960: 20). Schattschneider’s emphasis on the linkage between participation and conflict has deeply influenced recent efforts to understand interest group participation in national policy debates. Scholars have examined the number and type of participants active in policy areas or on different policy issues; they have found evidence both of issue areas and issues characterized by conflict (as measured by high/ “broad” participation), and of issues and issue areas where conflict is presumed to be low (because of low/ “niche” participation) (Brown, 1990; Grey and Lowery, 1996; Heinz, et al., 1993). More recent research has considered how common both niche and broad participation are (Baumgartner and Leech, 2001), and how the structure of conflict varies across policy domains (Salisbury, et al., 1987). What unites each of these studies is the idea that conflict is assessed through focus on the type and diversity of organizations that are active in different policy areas or on different issues. Neglected in this research are additional dimensions of conflict – specifically, type, scope and intensity of opposition – that both provide opportunities for and place constraints upon organized interests in their efforts to articulate and pursue their public policy objectives. The paper I propose for the 2004 Midwest Political Science Association meeting will investigate the type, scope, and intensity of opposition that characterizes the debates on different issues as a function of the characteristics of the issues at stake (e.g., recurring versus non-recurring; small, medium, large scope of proposed change), and their institutional and political contexts (e.g., regulatory versus legislative venue; partisan versus bipartisan). In addition, I will study how opposition varies across the different types of organized interests involved in these debates (e.g., business/economic versus citizen, peak versus externality). Among my hypotheses is that there will be differences in the type and scope, but not the intensity, of opposition associated with issues that are primarily regulatory and those that are primarily legislative. I also anticipate that economic interests are more likely to be associated with issues that involve opposition of narrow scope, and that intensity of opposition encountered on issues of interest to citizen groups will differ from the intensity of opposition encountered on issues that draw primarily the attention of economic interests (e.g., citizen groups are expected to be relatively more likely than business interests to encounter opposition in the form of an insufficiently mobilized set of allies). My empirical investigation draws on data I have gathered (in collaboration with Frank Baumgartner, Jeffrey Berry, Beth Leech, and David Kimball) through hundreds of personal interviews and from various public sources (e.g., Lexis-Nexis, House and Senate websites, organization websites, Vanderbilt Television News Archives) about the advocacy efforts associated with 100 randomly selected issues (see http://lobby.la.psu.edu). In my paper, type of opposition will be measured by the source of opposition (e.g., other groups, members of Congress, the public, the president). Scope of opposition refers to the number and diversity of opposition sources, and intensity will be measured along a continuum to indicate the nature of the source’s opposition ranging from lack of support/interest to explicit hostility. I will use a combination of descriptive statistics, cross-tabular analyses, and difference of means tests to investigate the issue- and advocate-specific correlates of opposition type, scope, and intensity (the unit of analysis is the issue debate, and for some analyses, the issue-advocate dyad). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to systematically explore the religious rhetoric of recent U.S. President’s (Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush). Considerable effort has been spent reporting the religious rhetoric of Ronald Regan and George W. Bush. In response to this it has been noted that practically all U.S. Presidents have used religious rhetoric at various occasions (Dionne 2003). While the topic of the religious rhetoric of presidents has sparked this debate, to date no one has performed a systematic evaluation of the religious rhetoric of presidents. This paper will provide a more complete evaluation of the phenomenon of presidential use of religious rhetoric. It examines how presidents differ in this realm. It also will display the palpable difference in the use of religious rhetoric among the presidents. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, have used more religious language, as a total of all their spoken words, compared to other recent presidents. That fact is interesting, but what is more interesting is how the content of their religious rhetoric has differed from other presidents. A second goal of this paper was to see if the rhetoric differed between presidents of different parties. Questions answered by this paper are: Do Republicans use more religious language, as a percent of total language, than Democrats? And, is there an ideological/theological difference between the parties in the use of religious rhetoric? A primary accomplishment of the paper was the creation of a coding mechanism to help try to categorize religious language on a liberal/conservative spectrum. To do this, three dichotomies and were created. These dichotomies separate theological emphases into categories that could be considered liberal or conservative. The dichotomies are: (1) specific theological constructions / universal principles; (2) other-worldly focus / this-worldly focus; (3) good v. evil & universal sin / sin as the absence of good. The former sections of the dichotomies are considered conservative and the latter are considered liberal. The presidential speeches coded for this paper will be: the party nominee’s acceptance speech at the party’s nominating convention, the new president’s inauguration speech, and all of his State of the Union addresses. One advantage of using these speeches is that they are uniform. Another advantage is that if significant differences in the religious rhetoric used by presidents exist, those differences are more likely to be observed by examining speeches given on standard occasions of public ritual. By exposing the differences among the presidents and between the presidents of different parties, this paper will help scholars investigate such things as: differences in the worldviews of political elites, partisan ideology and its manifestation in political communication, and religious belief structures and the effect of such structures on political communication. My hope for this paper is that it will help lead towards an investigation into the reciprocal relationship between presidential rhetoric and American political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the transformations in party finance and party finance legislation in Germany and Italy. Specifically, I will ask what factors are responsible for the differences between the German and the Italian party finance (and party finance legislation). My argument is as follows. Differences between German and Italian party finance reflect differences in the party finance legislation enacted in the two countries, and that these legislative differences are a result of how the German and the Italian Constitutional principles were interpreted and implemented in the two countries. In the first part of the paper I present data concerning the transformation of party finance in Germany and Italy. I show that while in Germany the revenues generated by membership fees and state subventions have increased in both absolute and relative terms, in Italy the opposite has occurred. Meanwhile, the revenues generated by state subventions have increased in absolute as well as in relative terms. Building on this discussion, in the second part of this paper, I provide an explanation for these differences. I argue that the constitutionality of party finance legislation and public subventions to party finance is a necessary consequence of parties’ constitutional relevance. Building on this discussion, I show that the way in which the German Parliament translated the constitutional principles into actual legislative dispositions is very different from the way in which the Italian Parliament did so and that these differences in translation account for the differences between the financial outlook of the German parties and that of the Italian ones. In the third, and final part of the paper, I will draw some conclusions as to the significance of my findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did aggressive issue advocacy tactics become prevalent in the mid-1990s? One hypothesis is that political actors took time to ``learn’’ about the dimensions of election law. Election law is dynamic, however, sensitive to how statutes and regulations are interpreted, changed, or modified; thus political learning takes place in a evolving regulatory context. This paper is about the relationship between that context and the political actors charged with conforming to it, with a specific emphasis on interest groups. I examine all advisory opinion requests to the FEC between 1977 and 2003 (these are specific requests to the FEC about the permissibility of proposed campaign activity), and I make two key conclusions. First, political actors are dynamic participants that understand and respond quickly to changes in the regulatory environment. Second, approval or disapproval of these requests varies across time and type of petitioner. From this, I assert that one explanation for tactical emergence and diffusion lies in how regulatory watchdogs interpret (and change their interpretation of) election law. This paper makes a contribution to the literature by arguing that rules matter in understanding how groups and political actors choose their electoral tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that the United States is going through a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) has risen from a marginal place in the realm of U.S. military thinking to a central role in studies of the future of warfare. However, writing in academic political science has trailed in its recognition of the importance of RMAs for international security. RMAs can generally be defined as the synergistic combination of innovations in military technology and changes in thinking about how to organizationally use military force. RMAs give nations qualitative increases in military capabilities that change the nature and structure of international conflict, allowing them to conduct military operations faster, in a broader geographic area, and with greater intensity. This paper focuses specifically on the nuclear revolution, testing the empirical importance of nuclear weapons for the initiation and escalation of international conflict. Three advances in the literature are developed. First, the data setup allows for comparative hypothesis testing to begin empirically evaluating the Waltz/Sagan debate. Second, the paper uses newly collected data on chemical and biological weapons to conduct empirical tests of their relative importance for international conflict. Third, the paper incorporates measures of uncertainty regarding WMD possession to determine the way varying levels of certainty influence the escalation of conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideology and political maneuvers cloud even the smallest amount of controversy in the confirmation of judicial appointments in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Aside from the rare impeachment of a judge, the Judiciary Committee is the one venue that provides a valuable one-time in-depth check on the quality of lifetime appointments to the judiciary. This small window for a check on the vast power of the judiciary requires continual quantitative analysis to determine the status of the underlying criteria within the Senate Judiciary Committee. This project is aimed at putting forth a model that attempts explanation of varying criteria across congresses, appointees, and Senators on the Judiciary Committee. This study focuses on criteria in the 105th, 106th, and 107th Congresses extending the analysis proposed and applied by Guliuzza (1994). Guliuzza’s confirmation criteria are measured through the content analysis of questions asked by Senators on the Judiciary Committee to nominees to the Supreme Court. This paper applies the same schema to Circuit Court nominees. Questions are coded into three categories. Questions of character, competency, and constitutionalism are used to determine the criteria for confirmation used by the committee. The breakdown of these categories is then used in a multinomial logit to discern if there are effects from the issue positions of Senators, their support of the president’s legislative agenda, and the record of the circuit court to which the nomination is being made. This analysis shows to what extent ideology and political calculations affect the criteria the committee uses to send nominations to the Senate floor for full consideration. The Senate Judiciary Committee becomes an opportunity to frame the debate before the entire Senate begins to address the issue. This analysis does not address specific nominations and the arguments for or against nomination. Instead, this paper looks at how the political and legal landscape affects the criteria Senators use to advise and consent on Circuit Court nominees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how national party leaders set their party’s policy positions. Currently, the literature on this question exhibits a gap between theory and reality; spatial models predict convergence of party policy positions in a two-party setting, while empirical scholars found divergence in real world situations. Our paper is an attempt to fill in this gap. We do so by introducing two additional issues that have been relatively neglected in the existing literature. First, we stress the importance of establishing a party label for national party leaders as part of a strategy for the goal of seat-maximization in addition to the Downsian convergence strategy. Second, we address the issue that national party leaders are likely to adjust their party policy positions in response to heterogeneous preference distributions of voters across districts, in which the party has varying degrees of success. Incorporating these two issues, we show in a simple spatial model that in a two-party, single-member plurality system, two parties’ positions on a given policy issue are likely to converge if the given policy issue is at stake in closely competed districts, while two parties’ positions on a given policy issue are likely to diverge if the given issue is at stake in districts where one of the parties already has a secure majority. We use the case of the US party system (1945-2000) as the empirical test and find that the regression results are consistent with this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does public opinion respond to the production of major legislation? A central pillar of representative democracy is that elected officials are held accountable for their actions. There is a rich literature exploring the electoral effects for legislators who deviate from their district’s opinions, and there are numerous anecdotal arguments about the consequences of scandals and foibles for both legislators and executives. However, public policy is neither made by individual Members of Congress nor exclusively by executive actions. The most significant policies are enacted through laws passed by Congress and signed by the president. Scholars have very little understanding of how the public assigns credit or blame for the net output of the legislative system. This paper addresses this question directly. As part of a larger project, this paper will examine the impact of the passage of major legislation on congressional approval. Because approval ratings are collected from individuals but legislation is produced over time, the paper employs hierarchical statistical techniques to answer this question. This method has enjoyed some popularity in education and psychological research, but has not seen frequent use in political science. Concurrent research by the author indicates that while presidential approval is responsive to the production of the system, congressional approval is unaffected. Credit and blame for the joint activities of the political system are laid at the feet of the president, not Congress. This has implications for interbranch power dynamics as well as research on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the evolution of civil-military relations theory in the United States. Its central claims are that there are two traditions in American civil-military relations: the republican theory of the citizen soldier and the liberal theory of the neutral professional. These two traditions have their roots in two distinct periods of American history. The citizen soldier is a product of the anti-rationalism prevalent in founding political thought, while the liberal tradition was born of a new rationalism that characterized Progressive Era thinking. The following pages detail the birth and evolution of these two theories and conclude that this history reveals important conceptual difficulties in the now orthodox liberal view. First, contemporary calls to abandon the ideal of the citizen-soldier as an outdated concept ignore the important role first principles play in democratic legitimacy claims. Such an abrupt break with the founding beliefs threatens military democratic legitimacy in a country that embraces first principles as a kind of secular religion. This legitimacy problem is particularly troublesome in Samuel Huntington?s outright rejection of the Constitution as having failed to establish an appropriate civil-military relationship. The second problem with wholesale dismissal of the citizen-soldier tradition is the discredited assumption upon which liberal views like ?objective civilian control? rest. Observers of Public Administration have long demonstrated the neutral professional of Progressive Era lore to be fallacious. The actions of elected officials and their administrative executers are each fundamentally political. This has been particularly evident in recent U.S. military missions in which the army has increasingly assumed constabulary and state-building functions. Nevertheless, as many public administration theorists argue for a refounding of administrative legitimacy on the concept of representative bureaucracy, civil-military relations literature calls for an abandonment of its own longstanding version of representative bureaucracy: the citizen-soldier. In sum, the liberal vision of the military as a tool of society rather than a part of society is theoretically and practically flawed, as well as dangerously dismissive of legitimating founding principles and beliefs. This paper argues for the need to reengage the citizen-soldier tradition as a central concept in constructing a military that better reflects American society. The issue is determinative of the kind of army the nation will have and, indeed, the kind of democracy the nation will become. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will propose an interpretation of the way French political theory has become increasingly influenced by its American and Canadian counterparts to include notions of culture and identity in theoretical and sociological analyses of immigration and integration. While French authors have been extensively read and discussed in many fields of North American social and political sciences for quite a long time, France was until very recently suspicious, if not outright hostile, to ideas and theories developed on the other side of the Atlantic regarding the inclusion of minorities and their rights. A strict understanding of the French Republican model of integration and assimilation contributed to a widespread rejection of American and Canadian ideas regarding integration, and specifically multiculturalism and minority rights, which were often accused of leading to notions of communitarianism, and, by extension in a traditional French understanding, to racism. While it is true that such ideas were never unanimously accepted in North America, they were almost universally and strictly rejected in France, and not seriously taken into consideration and extensively discussed: ‘communitarianism’ was mainly used as a slogan, its philosophical underpinnings were not rigorously challenged. Yet, if it took 17 years to see John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice translated and discussed in France, the debate in the country has progressively opened to new considerations regarding identity and politics and the organization of pluralism. In this paper I will analyze the rise of this new acceptance, focusing particularly on the ongoing debate regarding secularism in French schools and the most recent stages of the Muslim veil controversy in the country. I will thus propose a discussion about the circulation of ideas and theories across the Atlantic, and see how images of North American theories are shaped and organized in recent French political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following methodology employed in the United States (Lieske 1993) this paper examines the existence of regional political cultures in Canada, the UK and Australia. Existing literature in all three cases suggests that political boundaries, whether provincial, regional or state, create political sub-cultures. An examination of existing data suggests, however, that these are not sub-cultures, nor are they created by sub-state politics. Rather, they are regional variant cultures encouraged by differing patterns of treatment from the parliaments in Ottawa, London and Canberra. Building on methodology adapted from Lieske’s article on “Regional subcultures in the United States” and presented at the recent Canadian Political Science Association Conference the analysis draws on aggregate data for constituencies and then identifies coherent cultural clusters. Data from election studies allow for an analysis of the dominant attitudes and behaviours in each cluster. The paper argues that such clusters operate across and within sub-State political boundaries and urges a conceptual distinction between political sub-cultures and regional variations of a dominant culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary political theory there is widespread agreement that we should recognize difference within our societies. However, the philosophical foundation for this recognition remains problematic. Attempts to ground recognition in various, traditional frameworks have been frought with difficulty. Therefore, in this paper, I try to examine what we specifically mean by providing recognition. I do so by considering two closely intertwined issues. First, I consider whether is recognition provided by one individual to another, or whether the state can provide recognitoin by some means. Second, I look at the debate between Fraser and Honneth over the difference between redistribution and recognition. Through this discussion I show that recognition is provided by individuals to one another. Because of this fact, it is difficult to imagine how the state can supply recognition to individuals or require individuals to give recognition to others. Due to these limits, recognition requires clearer moral grounding. The state cannot take simple, traditional actions to provide recognition. Instead, recognition of difference, as theorists like Honneth call for, can only be grounded in broader categories of political obligation than theliterature usually considers. Thus, recognition calls for strong philosophical support to justify fairly intrusive policies. Indeed, we should explore the possibility that the recognition called for by many political theorists requires a committment that is supererogatory in nature. I close my paper by suggesting that responsibility may be a good candidate for providing the strong moral grounding that recognition requires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of conducting ethnographic analysis alongside comparative casework. The paper describes the formulation of an ?ethnographic space? and compares its scholarly products with substantive findings from casework. The ethnographic space illumines the activities of ?light, decaffeinated? feminists in Spain and details how such feminists 1) have ?hidden? political goals 2) challenge notions of mainstream feminism and 3) alter the concepts of political allies, movement frames, and state-society relations. I argue that the intersection of diverse women?s activists and the triangulation of methods are useful. Although not without fault, triangulation provides for the elucidation of a new sector of women?s civil society and suggests a refashioning of concepts from the political process model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do researchers combine quantitative and qualitative research methods within the same research project? Using a dataset that includes all mixed-method books reviewed in the APSR from 1991-2001, we create a typology of mixed-method research designs that illuminates how work in this area has developed over the last decade and clarifies how these different design choices can influence political science research. Our paper 1) distinguishes quantitative and qualitative projects by type of data, analytical methods, and argumentative strategy; 2) identifies the ways in which political scientists have combined these research methodologies; and 3) explores the strengths and weaknesses of different design choices. In doing so, the paper both provides guidance for those seeking to conduct mixed methods research and illuminates the distinctions and similarities between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the functioning of the governing system of the United States by analyzing distributional outcomes from 1947-2000. The key question of this paper is whether public policy influences distributional outcomes. The macro politics model of the U.S. governing system (Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002) and the power resources theory of welfare policy (Huber, Ragan, and Stephens 1993) suggest that left policies should equalize the distribution of income. I utilize single equation error correction models to assess the impact of policy on income inequality through two mechanisms ? the manipulation of economic opportunity and redistribution. Since nearly every government action influences economic opportunity, I examine policy in the aggregate rather than focusing only on policies explicitly designed to redistribute income. The analysis indicates that policy influences inequality through both mechanisms, with left policy producing more equality. The results are consistent with power resources theory and strongly support the macro politics model, by demonstrating that political choices are an important determinant of distributional outcomes. Furthermore, the manipulation of economic opportunity is as important as, and works in tandem with, explicit redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper topic has emerged from preliminary research on African American women’s in politics. This analytic paper seeks to simultaneously catalogue and deconstruct the meanings and usages of the word political in the disciplines of political science, history and women’s studies. In the course of my preliminary research on Black women and politics the words political activism, political participation, and political agency have been invoked by scholars across disciplines to describe generally similar, but sometimes radically different kinds of behavior. I conclude the paper by pondering how conceptualizations of the political has prompted an explosion of studies of Black women in politics in the discipline of history while other disciplines (i.e. political science and women’s studies) have been much slower to generate a significant body of work on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I propose to examine Thomas Hobbes’s two works most closely associated with the English Revolution, Leviathan and Behemoth, in a somewhat non-traditional fashion. Leviathan and Behemoth are biblical creatures mentioned in the Book of Job. Behemoth is a land monster, as Leviathan is a sea creature (see Job 40, 15-24 and 41, 1-34). While Behemoth is clearly designed to be a history of the Revolution, Leviathan is rarely, if ever treated as one. However, I believe that useful and enlightening comparisons can be made between the two works. In this paper I will ask whether Hobbes’s analysis of the causes, effects and danger of civil strife remained the same in these two works or whether his views changed between the writing of Leviathan and Behemoth. I will consider what effect, if any, the changed political contexts between the writing of the two works (1651 and approximately 1668) affected Hobbes’s conclusions about the causes and effects of the English Revolution. I also ask whether or not, as Stephen Holmes suggested, Hobbes consistently applies the analytical framework for interpreting the breakdown of authority developed in Leviathan. I will also ask what effects any changes in Hobbes’s view might have for the larger enterprise of Hobbes scholarship. Area of expertise: Early modern political thought and American Political Thought [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aristotle’s Philia In Relation to Contemporary Theories of Human Cooperation Aristotle’s concept of friendship is important in the modern political context. For example, what I have in mind for this paper is the idea that friendship is an important political concept that is totally lost in that is totally lost in the modern political theorists such as Machiavelli and Hobbes. Although something like it is present in Rousseau with his notion that man is capable of natural pity toward others in the state of nature. It seems to me that today certain writers like Axelrod (i.e., Evolution of Cooperation) and Robert Frank (i.e., Passions within Reason) and Robert Solomon (i.e., Passion for Justice) are trying to get back to Aristotle’s political concepts, like friendship. For this paper, I will comment on these writers as their ideas relate to Aristotle’s idea of philia or friendship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhanced political competition is a crucial element of the “resurgence of the states,” and many American states are significantly more competitive than they were a generation ago. What effects have these changes had on their political processes? Since V. O. Key examined the American South a half century ago, scholars have celebrated the positive effects of political party competition. Strategic politicians in competitive states are expected to mobilize new participants into politics, leading to more responsive outcomes. Furthermore, because these formerly passive citizens are generally of lower economic status than those who are already active, such mobilization is predicted to result in greater economic redistribution. A generation of scholars has challenged these expectations, however. First, empirical tests have been largely inconclusive and suffer from methodological and substantive limitations. Second, the logic of this classic argument excludes important political realities. This paper is part of a larger project that alters the terms of this debate in several important ways. Its first contribution is substantive. Many studies link enhanced inter-party competition to policy outcomes, such as increased welfare spending. Assertions about why such changes take place are implicit in these accounts but rarely examined. To construct a convincing account of why competition matters, it is essential to look at this missing link. Scholars often speculate that policy changes result from shifts in the amount of electoral participation, the types of individuals that are mobilized into the process, and the responses of political leaders to these changes. In this paper, we examine this last domain. We test the hypothesis implied by theories of party competition that state legislators from more competitive districts are more likely to be involved in redistributive legislative activity. The second contribution of our paper is methodological. With few exceptions, studies of inter-party competition look exclusively at cross-sectional variation. In contrast, our paper looks intensively at developments over time within three states that have differed considerably in trends in party competition since World War II: Maryland, Massachusetts, and Texas. Texas represents a logical candidate for inclusion because the state has undergone a postwar transition from a state dominated by Democrats to one where Republicans hold the levers of power. In contrast, Massachusetts was once competitive but is now dominated by a very liberal Democratic Party. Maryland provides a control case, remaining solidly Democratic throughout the period. Therefore, at the state level, we assess if changes in competitiveness over time are linked to changes in redistributive legislative activity over time. This case selection allows us to account for two important challenges to hypotheses about the effects of party competition. First, many analyses fail to consider the role of race, a curious omission given the importance of the South in these discussions and the likely role of race in creating the new competitiveness within states. Second, the proponents of party competition often fail to address the nature of one-party states. The uncompetitive Southern states of the mid-twentieth century were ruled by conservative coalitions, and several studies link policy outcomes to liberal party control rather than competition. By looking at both Northern and Southern states that vary considerably in ideology and racial composition, we can account for these possibilities. Party competition plays a peculiar role in accounts of American politics. Textbooks note its desirable properties, and comparative politics scholars have incorporated these insights into their discussions of democratization. At the same time, the empirical record is actually quite ambiguous. This paper is a step toward the construction of a more compelling account of the role of inter-party competition in our political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper substitutes variables for countries in analyzing attitudes toward democracy in six Asian nations: Korea, China (Mainland), Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, and Thailand. The working hypothesis of the paper is that national differences in attitudes and opinions reflect underlying socioeconomic variations across nations, rather than inherent cultures within the nations. According to this hypothesis, urban-rural configurations of the populations should dominate opinion orientations, rather than idiosyncratic characteristics of these nations. The fundamental rural-urban cleavage will explain attitudes toward traditionalism-modernism which, correspondingly, will contribute to an explanation of attitudes toward democracy. The data for the study come from probability samples across the selected nations in a multi-nayion study using the same questionnaire in 2001. The analysis shows that rural-urban cleavages, seldom used in cross-national comparisons, are significant explanatory factors within nations. This study examines whether these within-nation associations are also significant for explaining attitudes and opinions in a cross-national analysis. The essential issue is: Is within-nation variance greater than variance among nations on the issues of interest? The inclusion of both developed and developing Asian nations permits examination of whether levels of development contribute to national profiles of public attitudes toward elements of democracy such as preference for democracy over authoritarian forms of government, satisfaction with democracy, desire for democracy, and other indicators of democratic support and consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I would like to present a paper, entitled “Policy and Coalition Patterns in the Scottish Parliament,” at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. For the first time since 1707, Scotland convened its own parliament, completing its first four-year session in early May 2003. This three-century hiatus was triggered by the 1707 Act of Union, which dissolved the Scottish Parliament and provided for Scottish representation in the House of Commons. Nevertheless, periodic expressions of nationalism kept the prospect of a Scottish Parliament alive, and once the Blair government embraced the concept of devolution, both Scotland and Wales opted to establish new parliaments. While Scots generally extended their support for a new parliament, many were skeptical. Some Scottish Nationals consider devolution to be a distraction from the real goal of independence, while others see it as a first step toward independence. In addition, Conservatives were almost always the strongest opponents of devolution, not to mention independence. Some even wonder whether or not a parliament is even necessary. After all, Scots are British, and political interests are certainly well represented at Westminster. However, politics in Scotland differs from that in England in at least two major ways. First, the Scots structured their electoral system for choosing MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament) in a manner that deviates considerably from the Westminster model. A little more than half of the MSPs are elected in constituency districts, while the remainder is decided on the basis of a variation of proportional representation. As a result, four major parties have substantial representation in Parliament, and, for that matter, three parties elected one member each. Second, the presence of the Scottish National Party has no counterpart in the House of Commons. Its platform and vision for the future of Scotland makes the SNP unique in British politics, and the fact that it is the second largest party means it is a force to be reckoned with. At present there is a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition government, but the Scottish National Party stands ready to form a government if the present one falls, underscoring the fact that the Conservative Party is not much of a player in Scottish politics. What I propose to do in this analysis is (1) to identify major policy dimensions underpinning the multitude of roll call votes cast during the first session of the Scottish Parliament, and (2) to map the political parties in ideological/policy space. I plan to employ a combination of factor analysis and multidimensional scaling analysis to achieve these two goals. I have constructed a database consisting of the roll call votes cast by each member of the Parliament, and will use that data set for the proposed analysis. As far as I know, I’m the only one with a clean data set of 1999-2003 Scottish roll call votes. In addition to uncovering dimensions of conflict and parliamentary voting coalitions, I shall discuss the implications of these findings for Scottish politics and government. I hope you find this paper suitable for one of your panels. Thank you for your careful consideration of my proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about variation in the form and scope of international commitments. Traditional studies emphasize credibility as a solution to bargaining and enforcement dilemmas. Because flexibility is commonly thought to cut against credibility, it is often believed that commitments should be firm and transparent. Why then are states’ observed commitments often flexible in the sense that the terms are left ambiguous or unspecified, obligations are qualified and sometimes weak, and provisions often leave the possibility for escape? Recent studies explain commitment flexibility by focusing on transaction costs of unforeseen contingencies, domestic political and organizational pressures, and bounded rationality. This paper argues that under certain conditions flexibility is deliberately introduced into the form and scope of international commitments in order to improve states’ chances of benefiting from cooperation. Specifically, the study identifies three important factors that often give rise to the optimality of flexible commitments including multiple player dynamics, the relative increase in bargaining capability, and the verifiability of performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I probe the first node in the micro-logic of my theory studying the impact of FDI on de facto decentralization in Vietnam. Work by Pauline Jones-Luong and David Zweig on other transition states has left the tantalizing conjecture that the proliferation of foreign direct investment has empowered local leaders vis a vis the center. Whereas during strict central planning, the central government could use its monopoly to control scarce resources and expenditure distribution, now that foreign investment projects can be approved locally, regions have become much more financially independent. Both could have further argued, that in many cases, the central government is in fact dependent on the revenue gleaned from these investments in order to transfer to poorer regions and doesn’t dare rock the boat. If these authors are right that provinces are empowered by FDI, we should find initial evidence for local economic reforms, before lobbying begins for change at the central level. This paper tests whether there is evidence in that speculation. The methodology is an analytical narrative merging case study work on the political economic choices of Vietnamese central and local leaders, with a time-series statistical analysis. Vietnam is chosen, because it is understudied transition country, which has won recent plaudits for the success of it economic reform program. Nevertheless, there is sharp disagreement among analysts and Vietnamese leaders about whether the impetus for reform in Vietnam was bottom-up from the sub-national level or top-down from central leaders between 1986 and 2000. Moreover, Vietnam’s 61 provinces offer wide variance for hypothesis testing and categorization. FDI is tested against a measure of autonomy, derived from a content analysis of Vietnamese state owned newspapers between 1990 and 2000. Every time a province is cited for violating central laws on economic policy by engaging in reform experimentation it is recorded. Using this approach, I find strong preliminary evidence for the impact of FDI on local autonomy and economic reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]