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Why do potentially transformative U.S. reforms often prove incoherent and incremental? In the U.S., the cultural and institutional barriers to enacting major reforms are high. After reforms are enacted, their opponents retain many institutional pathways to challenge reforms. This paper focuses on presidents in emergent partisan regimes as uniquely-positioned actors who broker design compromises throughout the reform process. During presidential campaigns, opposition candidates have incentives to promise transformative reforms which offer a decisive break from the past. Upon entering the legislative arena, however, presidents' incentives shift toward supporting moderating design compromises. Finally, as reforms are implemented, presidents face intense demands to make administrative decisions which appease the business community. Through the layering of design compromises, reforms are watered down and made less coherent. This paper explores this dynamic by analyzing the design and implementation of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. Existing scholarship explains the Federal Reserve System's design through reference to discrete critical junctures: a clandestine retreat at a Georgia resort; a broad congressional compromise; or a partisan-controlled implementation process. These explanations each describe the emergence of a more coherent "Fed" than the fragmented organization which began operations in 1914. To understand why potentially transformative reforms often disappoint, one must account for the shifting pressures presidents encounter when guiding reforms to fruition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives surrounding womanhood and motherhood provide important clues about the political citizenship of women in the U.S. today. In particular, narratives about motherhood and the public policies that accompany them have the ability to disrupt the potential of many women from becoming actively political in an electoral sense. This paper looks at post-partum and early parenthood policies including breastfeeding promotion and maternity leave policy affecting childbearing women in order to link such policies to women's underrepresentation in elected politics. Such narratives have a profound effect on nascent political activity of otherwise ambitious and qualified women, thus creating a cycle where women's representation is inextricably linked to embedded and even legislated social norms surrounding women as mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is both a political history as well as a methodological model for understanding the relationship between participation of religious actors and the continued existence of blue laws, which restrict alcohol sales on Sundays, in certain states but not in others. In order to do this, the paper will first review the history of the role of religion and politics in the United States with particular interest in regards to Sabbath laws and alcohol policies. Second, the paper will review the literature in regards to religion and political participation in order to demonstrate the role religious actors have had in regards to public policy. Finally, this paper will propose a model and method by which to explore the association between religious participation and the continuing existence of blue laws in some states but not in others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion and democracy in the United States have a long and uneasy relationship. While some scholars such as Tocqueville have praised religion as a force contributing to civic engagement and democratic citizenship, others have been less sanguine, viewing religion and religious persons as sources of political intolerance and a rigidity that weakens democratic discussion and debate. In this paper we address a fundamental question, namely, "Does religion tend to promote or inhibit democratic citizenship?" The paper begins with a theoretical discussion in which we consider the nature of democratic citizenship and its various dimensions. We then proceed to examine the relationship between religion and these dimensions. Dependent variables (measures of democratic citizenship) include political involvement, political knowledge, viewing the cheating of government as acceptable, political cynicism, voting turnout, and membership in voluntary organizations. Independent variables include religious tradition, religious orthodoxy, religiosity, socio-economic variables, and political variables.The primary data source used in this paper is a national pre-election survey conducted by the Paul Henry Institute in April 2008. This national survey (N=3007) is uniquely suited to the task at hand in that it contains a variety of important religious, political, and social variables. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do so-called 527 organizations represent a recent and different avenue for financial influence in federal elections, as conventional wisdom suggests? This paper seeks to answer that question by examining the political and regulatory development of 527s and political action committees (PACs). The paper employs a mixed methodology that utilizes historical analysis and descriptive statistics.Preliminary analysis of the data suggests that although 527s represent a unique regulatory creation, the legislative history of federal campaign finance law shows that concerns about transparency and "soft money"—often prominent in the debate over 527s—are not unique to 527s. In fact, similar arguments surfaced during the evolution of PACs a generation earlier. Data from recent elections suggests that 527s are more financially potent than were PACs during a similar period in their development, but 527s appear to be waning in ways not seen among PACs. The development and financial presence of 527s and PACs is therefore complex and multifaceted. Nonetheless, common themes emerge that can enhance the study of these two major forces in American campaigns. Although the study of PAC development faded by the 1990s, this paper suggests that lessons about the future of 527s, and potential regulatory considerations, can be discerned by examining PACs—a related but all-too-often separately examined source of campaign funding. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overview:One determinant of the parties' ability to resist the median voter may be constituency size. We test this proposition with a measure of legislator ideology that is directly comparable to voter ideology, using referenda votes as bridging observations.Abstract:At the state and local level throughout the United States, there is considerable variation in the power of parties to control nominations, structure legislative voting, and compel non-median behavior from elected officials. Some of this variation stems from the range of institutional arrangements that govern parties. For example, more stringent rules on primary participation may result in the nomination of more extreme candidates (Fiorina 1974; Gerber and Morton 1998). Long periods out of power may also cause parties to unify while nominating more centrist candidates (Bawn et al 2006). Lee and Oppenheimer (1999) suggest a role for constituency size in determining partisanship. They find that senators from larger states tended to be policy activists, while those from smaller states tended toward more centrist behavior.In this paper, we investigate the role of constituency size in inducing party strength. Masket's (2007) study on this phenomenon was hampered by an important methodological barrier; any study that tries to determine whether legislators are more or less partisan than constituents must make very strong assumptions about the ideological scales of those two populations. Even if we accurately measure preferences with legislative votes and with electoral returns, the scales from both measures are arbitrary, and not the same.This is a common problem in the literature, to which we offer a possible solution. We propose to bridge the two populations using referenda, on which the legislature and the electorate both vote. They thus serve as bridging observations between the two distributions (e.g. Bailey 2007). We explore several critical features of this strategy. First, legislators can only vote yea or nay, but electoral districts can pass or fail a measure by any margin. We develop strategies for using that additional information without compromising the goal of comparability. Second, any further application of this strategy will suffer, since referenda are scarce. So we attempt to quantify the additional leverage gained by adding more bridging observations, and the dangers of having too few. This paper would be appropriate for panels on methodology, political parties, state politics, representation and nominations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the function of gender in print political advertisements distributed during two 2002 US Senate races involving women candidates. In addition to examining the ads produced by the candidates, this paper also analyzes gender messages in the ads distributed by political parties and interest groups involved in the races. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent spate of scholarship has shown that it is taking longer for judicial nominees to be confirmed, at all levels of the federal judicial system. A number of these studies have also asked why some nominations move faster than others, finding that there are a number of personal and political factors that have an effect on how long it takes for a nominee to be confirmed. These studies obfuscate the question, however, of how these nominations are being delayed (or stopped completely) and for what reasons. In order to address these questions, we must turn our attention to the Senate and the actions of key senators. This paper therefore focuses its attention on two parliamentary maneuvers, senatorial courtesy and ?holds,? that individual senators may use to delay or kill particular judicial nominations. Examining all Court of Appeals nominations between 1987-2002 (the 100th-107th Congresses), this paper will begin by assessing the use of senatorial courtesy during this time period. It then concentrates the majority of its attention on analyzing the use of ?holds? as applied to Circuit Court nominations. It first discusses the history and application of holds and then address competing hypotheses for why holds might be used. This paper then examines the application of holds to Court of Appeals nominations between 1987-2002. Overall, this paper argues that the majority of nominees blocked by these procedural tactics are not stopped due to ideological objections but rather because of issues and disputes unrelated to their nominations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent news media attention, Appalachia - historically a culturally and politically unique region of the United States - has been effectively ignored by contemporary political scientists. This paper provides a systematic assessment of Appalachian distinctiveness in public opinion and political behavior in the 21st century. Using a unique set of variables coded specifically for this project, I argue Appalachian whites remain particularly resistant to a range of issues related to different aspects of modernization, both economic and cultural. This is partly explained in some cases by differential impacts of certain standard demographic and political variables like education and partisan identification in Appalachia relative to the rest of the country. The strongest variation emerges in the Central Appalachian counties of eastern Kentucky and its border states, where the greatest economic and educational disparities remain even today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 32 years, many U.S. representatives have tried to make the journey from the House floor to the Senate chambers. Previous research depicts representatives as the most frequent type of senatorial candidate (Copeland 1989; Brace 1994). However, our understanding of the motives behind these progressively ambitious representatives is relatively unknown. Application of ambition and strategic politician theories to lower-level races finds candidates are facing increased costs or liabilities are less likely to emerge as a candidate for higher office. This paper applies these theories across a longer range of elections than any previous study, and it evaluates factors that increase their probability of winning--i.e., ones increasing visibility and attractiveness as a senatorial candidate. Additionally, I analyze both sitting and former representatives to better understand the effects of representative status. This research design should help us improve our understanding of why some representatives run for the U.S. Senate, while most representatives do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious activists and social movement organizations have become a central feature of American politics and the study of American political behavior. These activists and organizations are frequently associated with conservative positions on cultural issues, and portrayed as reliable supporters of the Republican Party. However, some scholars and media outlets have recently turned their attention toward religiously motivated environmentalists. In this paper, I discuss the rhetoric and strategies of these "religious environmentalists," comparing them to other, more prominent, religiously based social movements in the United States. I will pay particular attention to the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), a generally conservative national religious group that has recently begun highlighting environmental issues. Using National Election Study data, I test claims that some religious environmental organizations have made that young evangelicals are more concerned with environmental issues than older evangelicals. Can this fledgling movement, as currently constituted, have the same impact other American religious groups have had in recent decades? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, land use governance is a fragmented and highly contextualized proposition whose practice has largely been devolved to the local government level. Each entity engages in its practice within different state enabling frameworks, political climates and with different elements of procedure and process. Regulating the built environment is a relatively new practice; beginning in earnest with the introduction of the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act of 1924. Since its introduction, local governments continue to adopt and amend comprehensive plans, zoning designations and land use ordinances. Both administrators and boards are tasked with judging the merits of individual project proposals and compliance with their codified land use plans.Public input in planning is solicited under the auspices of information provision; helping to ensure the health, safety and general welfare of the public, as well to exact a fair and equitable division of public goods. A recent study by The Wharton Business School of The University of Pennsylvania provides an new impetus to examine how political and structural frameworks affect public interest representation in local land use governance across the United States. This paper seeks to examine the premise that some governmental entities are more successful than others at creating a framework that enables effective public participation, and that commonalities exist across disparate types of jurisdictions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the relationship between constituency preferences and legislators' votes has been fundamental for empirical inquiry about representation. The most common approach to this type of research is dyadic and focuses on how members of Congress represent their geographic constituents. These studies account for member voting behavior with rationales including representational style, ideology, partisanship, and constituent preferences (e.g., Fenno 1978; Levitt 1996; Cox and McCubbins 1993; Canes-Wrone, Brady, and Cogan 2004). By also taking voter heterogeneity into account, however, Bailey and Brady (1998) present a unique empirical analysis for explaining representational linkages. Their analysis provides evidence that studies of representation based on analysis of roll call voting which fail to account for voter heterogeneity will overestimate the impact of the party and undervalue constituency influence. Bailey and Brady, however, measure voter heterogeneity with demographic variables which do not reliably indicate voter heterogeneity on the policy issue they assess (as I explain further in this paper).In this study I provide evidence that the connection between constituency interests and representative voting behavior is clearer when one accounts for voter heterogeneity specific to the legislation. As a research validation, I conduct ordered probit analysis of Senate voting on renewable energy legislation in the 110th Congress. As a research extension, I measure voter heterogeneity by accounting for each state's percentage of industry that generates non-renewable and renewable energy. I have collected all the data for this project and carried out extensive empirical analyses that confirm my argument above. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased numbers of women in political office and women running for political office have been shown to be connected to more political discussion among women and young women. These studies point to the cues that women in political leadership have on women in society as an encouragement that female political participation is legitimate (Atkeson, 2003) (Wolbrecht & Campbell, 2007). These analyses have focused more directly on the United States and Europe. A more encompassing cross-national analysis is needed to examine the connection between women in political positions and political discussion among women. A large cross-national study that examines the connection between female political discussion and female political representation will be able to show whether the connections found in the United States and Europe are the same throughout different political and cultural contexts. This paper intends to build upon the work of Wolbrecht and Campbell (2007) by doing a cross-national analysis of the relationship between political discussion in society among women and the percentage of women in the national legislatures. The data for this analysis will use a set of 47 countries from diverse political, cultural, and economic backgrounds. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisanship is a non-legal factor that could wield considerable influence over the judicial decision-making process of state court judges. This paper considers the effects of partisanship on judicial decision-making by examining Ralph Nader's ballot access litigation in the 2004 presidential election. Specifically, this study analyzes 109 votes cast by state trial, appellate, and supreme court judges from fifteen states regarding the question of whether Nader should be granted ballot access. I hypothesize that Democratic judges would be less likely to rule in Nader's favor compared to Republican judges. After controlling for several factors that could influence judicial decision-making, the preliminary probit analysis suggests that partisanship is not a significant factor that predicts a judge's ruling. Instead, state judges were more likely to defer to the initial ballot access decision of the state election authority when ruling in these cases. Thus, even in a highly partisan electoral environment, it appears that judges did not allow partisanship to influence their legal decisions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) voters are a distinctively liberal group in American politics whose members tend to affiliate with the Democratic Party and support its candidates at much greater rates than heterosexuals. To the extent that scholars have offered explanations for this distinctiveness, they have attributed it to mobilization efforts that focus on group benefits for LGBs. In this paper, I show instead that it is the life event of "coming out" as lesbian, gay or bisexual—above and beyond any subsequent mobilization efforts—that gives LGBs their political distinctiveness. I first show that LGBs are politically distinctive from the moment they come of age and begin participating in electoral politics, regardless of the extent of their contact with other gay people. I then demonstrate that among Americans who report having same-sex sexual partners, only a subset are politically distinctive: those who accept the morality of their homosexual behavior. These findings indicate that the adoption of gay identity is a catalyzing life event with major implications for individual political behavior and attitudes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Candidate support groups play an increasingly important role in the recruitment and funding of candidates to Congress. And, as candidate support groups flex their financial muscle in directing funds to races or candidates, these groups wield influence over the types of candidates who run under a given party's label. Once such example is the Club for Growth, a group that recruits, endorses and funds Republican congressional candidates with a proven commitment to fiscal discipline and reducing the scope of the federal government. One stated goal of the Club is to return the Republican party to its central tenets of fiscal conservatism and limited government. Comparatively less is known, however, about the behavior and preferences of contributors to the Club for Growth. This paper reports the results of a survey I conducted in the summer of 2006 of Club contributors to determine policy preferences of Club members and whether and/or how membership within the Club is linked to formal participation within the Republican party. Preliminary findings from my survey, the first known survey of Club for Growth contributors, suggest that Club contributors hold similar views on fiscal and economic matters but are more diverse in their opinions on social issues. Moreover, Club contributors are significantly more likely to identify as Republicans than as Democrats but are not active within the Republican party beyond identification and voting. My findings regarding the activity and preferences of Club contributors provides important insight into the relationship between this group and the Republican party. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, social scientists have asked how individuals of different racial and ethnic backgrounds feel about and act toward one another. Many have examined tolerance for diversity as a function of the racial composition of the community. This paper takes a slightly different angle on these familiar questions: Are democratic values, including political knowledge, participation and tolerance, found at higher levels in racially diverse environments as opposed to racially homogeneous ones? In other words, are whites living among other whites, and African-Americans among other African-Americans, and Latinos living in predominantly Latino communities more tolerant of diversity, more knowledgeable about politics, and more likely to participate than their counterparts in heterogeneous places? I examine the attitudes and behaviors of young people in grades 9-12 across the United States in conjunction with the racial make-up of the communities in which they are growing up. I expect to find that racial diversity has a positive influence on some values, but that environments of racial homogeneity give rise to other important democratic values. The discussion deals with two important but difficult issues: the balance of values that are important in a democracy but that are fostered by differing circumstances, as well as the feasibility of altering the racial make-up of communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper artgues that lobbying firms seek to expand horizontally (more services, international venues) and vertically (buyouts of lobbying firms both large conglomerate PR firms or venture capital firms). These trends reinforece each other for business reasons, and in the ne potential principal-agent problems are created when firms must answer to both their clients and their corporate bosses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore some of the conceptual difficulties associated with explaining individual participation in extremist politics. Policymakers and scholars interested in the mo-tivating factors behind terrorism and extremism need to move beyond the limited assump-tions associated with traditional analyses that all too frequently presume that individuals are engaged in a constant struggle to accrue the greatest number of material goods. Certainly individuals do strive for pecuniary gain. Still, such a framework may be better apt to describe the employee who changes one workplace for a higher paying substitute or even the astute politician altering their party?s platform in a bid to appeal to the electorate?s sway. Conjec-tures that all people seek to improve their material lot fail to explain the sacrifices made while engaging in other activities, particularly politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we look again at the distinction between independent voters "leaners" and partisans. We find some important similarities between "pure" independents and independents classified as "leaners." We argue that although independent leaners may be similar to partisans on some measures, they are behaviorally and attitudinally distinct from partisans in important ways. Even more importantly, the behavioral similarity between partisans and leaners changes when there are more than two candidates on offer. The behavioral similarity of leaners to partisans emphasized in previous studies can thus be understood as a product of the forced choice between the two parties that typifies the American political system. When more options are available, independent leaners take advantage of those options and do not remain loyal to the two big parties in the same measure as partisans. The position of independent leaners in the US is thus loosely analogous to the position tactical voters in multi-party systems in that they are compelled by the party system to choose between the lesser of two evils. Our argument suggests that earlier results and interpretations of independents reflected the specific two party choice settings of the 1950s through the 1980s. Furthermore, even assuming a behavioral similarity to partisans, leaners have distinct attitudes towards politics and the political system that put them far away from being standard Michigan model-type voters. We begin by presenting a brief review of the sizable literature on this topic. From here we present some simple evidence that supports an alternative interpretation of leaners as neither partisans nor "pure" independents, but as "critical citizens." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has found that men have higher levels of political knowledge than women, both in general and after the effects of various control variables are taken into account. In this paper we explore the contours and determinants of this gender gap in political knowledge. Using data from the 2000 American National Election Study (ANES) and the 2002 Louisiana Survey, we develop a series of models in which we depict political knowledge as a function of gender, socioeconomic and demographic attributes, political attitudes and engagement, media exposure, and political life circumstances. We find that gender effects in political knowledge persist, even in the face of statistical controls. Men and women differ on their mean values for a number of control variables, so the inclusion of a wide range of independent variables does result in a moderate reduction in the magnitude of gender coefficients. We also find that the gender gap appears to be somewhat stronger for national-level political knowledge rather than state-level political knowledge. Moreover, we consider the possibility that men and women differ in their relative propensities to give incorrect and don't know responses to knowledge questions, and our results from bivariate and multivariate analyses suggest that women are more likely to give both incorrect and don't know responses. Finally, we test a stereotype threat model of gender differences in political knowledge, and our results from these models are somewhat inconclusive. Overall, our findings suggest that gender matters for political knowledge, with women exhibiting consistently lower levels of political knowledge across a wide range of model specifications. The persistence of gender differences is somewhat perplexing, insofar as we account for several explanations for why men have higher levels of political knowledge then women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent GOTV experiments suggest that the decision to vote involves an intertemporal trade-off. Whereas the transaction costs of voting are incurred on or before Election Day, its expressive benefits are realized in the future. In this article, I draw on a vast literature in psychology and economics to propose a model and a measure of time discounting in political behavior. The ability to delay gratification predicts a myriad of desirable outcomes, including voter turnout. My model posits that it enhances the effects of political stimuli such as social norms when the rewards are deferred. As a result, more patient individuals are more likely to vote, and to lie afterwards if they do not vote. In the empirical analysis, I use an incentivized measure from a representative US panel (N=3,027). My results show that the effect of patience on self-reported turnout is robust to demographic controls, risk aversion, and measurement error. I leverage novel estimation techniques to demonstrate that monetary delay-discounting experiments provide reliable elicitations of time preferences that map onto political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite witnessing a slow and steady increase in the numbers of women serving in virtually all executive government positions across the country, we know little about the ways in which these women exert influence in national governance. Women who serve in presidential cabinets are particularly well positioned to shape the contours of public policy like few other executives in the country. Nonetheless, presidential scholars and those who study women and politics have left relatively unexplored the question of how media coverage may shape these women's ability to contribute to policymaking. This project forges new ground by examining a select group of male and female cabinet secretaries from the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. We conduct content analysis of media stories to estimate whether or not gender shapes the media coverage received by cabinet secretaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of American racial politics has long focused on the political conditions that activate racial animosity. A central line of research demonstrates that campaign messages that highlight negative stereotypes of African Americans can activate whites' racial attitudes. However, little is known about whether this activation can be overcome. I develop a theory of racial deactivation and test its predictions with four survey experiments conducted from 2011 to 2014. I find that while white candidates who call out the racial nature of a campaign attack succeed in neutralizing its effects, African American candidates who use the same rebuttal do not achieve the same result. However, African American candidates who offer a credible justification of the attacked action can recover by winning support from racially sympathetic whites. The results have implications for how race affects campaigns, citizens' ability to respond to reasons, and source credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organized labor has been a major mobilizer for the Democratic Party, increasing turnout for low-income union members as well as other potential voters. Yet as unions decrease in membership, are low-income people less likely to vote than they were previously? I argue that the decline of organized labor impacts demographic groups differently. Using a large-scale collection of individual level data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) on voter participation, I find that low-income whites drop out of the electorate when they were left without alternate mobilizing forces. In contrast, for low-income African Americans, consistent messaging from churches, race-based groups, and communities all point potential voters to the Democratic Party. The overarching consequence of changing political participation is to shift the racial composition of the low-income segment of the Democratic electorate, impacting how the party sees and relates to low-income people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues in the political sector in the U.S. as of January 2016, particularly mass partisan polarization, electoral accountability, and congressional representation. Also cited are the alleged negative effects of polarization on the quality and responsiveness of the country's representative government, the effect of social identity polarization on responsible party government theory, and the various types of representation like authoritative representation.

The article presents political issues in the U.S. as of January 2016, particularly the effects of context on vote choice. Also cited are the independent studies in the U.S. and Great Britain on the voting preference of various races and social status, a study on the negative effect of the African American population on white racial attitudes in the U.S., and the study on the role of racial context on political behavior.

The promise of social media in American politics has been democratization and equality of access, but there is little research into how social media is used to advocate for policy preferences. Morality politics and interest group theories provide a framework for this study which examines the use of 'insider' social media lobbying tactics by state LGBT interest groups. Using content and regression analyses, data collected from the Twitter output of fifty-nine state-level LGBT interest groups for the period January-May 2015 suggest that direct or 'insider' lobbying accounts for only a small portion of LGBT interest group social media activity; and, variation in the use of such tactics can best be explained by state partisanship, partisan competition, and the distributions of citizen and elite values -- not by institutional or environmental factors. This study also highlights a discrepancy in social media tactics within the LGBT movement, as the most significant source of variation appears to be a transgender-specific organizational mission. Finally, this study contradicts the idea that social media provides equality of access as interest groups with more resources are more likely to directly contact elected officials via social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand Muslim American political participation using data from the newly released 2007 Pew Muslim American Survey Whereas previous work has relied on less reliable sample designs, the 2007 Pew Survey gives us confidence that the results of our Structural Equation Model (SEM) should be more suitable for studying Muslim American political behavior. In order to better understand these dynamic patterns, we will employ SEM to capture various latent factors affecting the prospects for political participation. The use of SEM seems most appropriate in this research agenda as the dimensions of religion as well as many observable indicators display endogenous relationships, which cannot be captured with a recursive model. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the contemporary debate on the impact of voter identification legislation on political participation by exploring the question in a comparable historical context. I situate the subject within the story of the demise of the infamous Democratic political machineâ??Tammany Hall. Several electoral laws were adopted in Gotham in the early 20th century, including a literacy test in 1923 requiring reading and writing ability in English. I expect the test is negatively associated with turnout among immigrantsâ??the base of the political machine. I hypothesize turnout decreased among immigrant populations as a function of voting regulations. And consequently, Tammany was less likely to influence the vote for the Democratic candidate thereafter. My findings indicate a clear weakening in the electoral strength of Tammany-dominated districts after 1933. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the oldest and most enduring debates in American Politics involves the endogeneity of party identification to the issue preferences of American citizens. More recent interest in the nature of party identification has shifted the terms of the debate from whether one view or the other dominates individual decision-making to a consideration of factors that condition the direction of causality (Carsey and Layman 2006, p. 645). Carsey and Layman's research points to the need for more theoretical consideration of which factors condition the relationship between policy preferences and partisanship. In this paper, I seek to examine the heterogeneity in the issue-basis of party identification by drawing on another classic literature concerning the uncertainty that citizens have about politics. The empirical analysis will employ an estimation technique used by Alvarez and Brehm (1995, 1997) in which heteroskedastic regression is used to directly model the error variance of the respondent's own issue placement, which is used as a measure of individual uncertainty. After controlling for an extensive list of demographic characteristics, I argue that the error variance encompasses not only lack of knowledge about the respondent's issue position, but also the use of cues and shortcuts from the social environment. Uncertainty in this broader sense of within group variation in issue placement is expected to condition the issue-basis of party identification. The estimated error variances from the first stage regression are then interacted with the respondent's issue placement in a second-stage ordered logit regression of party identification. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The old adage is that war is how the world teaches Americans geography. In some ways it is also how we teach our political leaders international relations. Strangely the direct linkage between international conflict and the American political agenda has been given relatively little attention by scholars. This paper hopes to begin to remedy this. We seek to demonstrate the effect of international conflict on the domestic agenda of American political institutions. Research indicates that individuals and institutions process information serially and not in a parallel fashion (Jones 1994; Jones 2003; Baumgartner and Jones 2005; Jones, Sulkin, and Larsen 2003). Leaders and institutions are subject to attention limits and attention to one policy area inevitably results in less attention to other policy areas. Using data from the Correlates of War Project's Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) dataset and the Policy Agendas Project data documenting the agenda of the major political institutions of the US, this paper examines the connection between the frequency and severity of international conflicts and the relative importance of international affairs within the US political agenda. Our findings demonstrate that political leaders are bad at making trade-offs, and domestic policy attention is influenced by the degree to which the US finds itself involved in international conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the factors that shape women's evolving political behavior. While most of the extant research on women in politics has focused on the impact of sex as a political variable, this paper seeks to explain the growing importance of party identification on the political behavior of female elected officials. Building on previous research that suggests that Democratic men may be more likely than Republican women to support pro-feminist/women's issues, this research seeks to examine the effect of party on the political behavior of women in office. By using longitudinal data on female elected officials, this paper addresses whether marked differences exists between the responsiveness of Democratic and Republican women to the interests of their political parties concerning issues traditionally defined as important to women. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on the premise that voter turnout is declining in the United States. Using the United States 2000 primary elections, I test some hypothesis regarding variables that might foster voter participation. In particular, the paper argues that scheduling elections on a holiday day instead of a working day, and facilitating the registration procedures will have a positive effect. In order to test these hypotheses, I test if primaries held on a Saturday or a Sunday and that allow independents to vote experience higher levels of participation. The results are mixed and counterintuitive: while states allowing independents did experience significative positive results, scheduling an election on a weekend has significant effects on the opposite direction. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do people decide to turn out? More specifically, does the distance from a polling location increase or decrease their likelihood of voting? This central question guides the research I propose. Consistent with early work by Downs (1957), surveys indicate that the act of voting is not neutral; individuals must reallocate time from working, family, or leisure and exert energy to travel to a polling location, stand in line, cast a ballot, and proceed to the next destination. This process can inhibit the ability of some individuals to vote, implying that physical resources, in part, determine their likelihood of voting. Haspel and Knotts (2005) provide an excellent study addressing the effect of geographic distance on turnout in the Atlanta area during mayoral races. In this paper, I propose to expand on this work by examining voter roll information for much of the state of Mississippi, across several national and sub-national elections. These data allow for further heterogeneity in group characteristics to be explored, and indicate any change in turnout that may occur due to the type of election being held. Second, this paper will incorporate not only the distance that an individual lives away from their polling place, but the distance that they travel to work, including several other mitigating factors. This paper will further assess the impact of distance on voting and go beyond current studies to create more robust findings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sizable literature has demonstrated the importance of social networks for both electoral decision-making (e.g., Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995) and political participation (e.g., Mutz 2002). However, the question of how networks operate over time has been largely unexamined. Do voters discuss politics with the same individuals during a general election as during a primary? Moreover, how do the characteristics of an individual's network - in terms of density, composition, and the content of political discussion - change over time? And what are the potential behavioral consequences of such changes (or non-changes)?I address these questions using an original longitudinal study following a group of Franklin County, Ohio Republican primary voters. The sample of voters was first surveyed in the summer of 2006 after the gubernatorial primary; the follow-up survey was conducted in late 2006 after the general election. Given that both the original survey and the general election follow-up were specially designed to tap the frequency, content, structure, and context of interpersonal political discussion, the data are particularly appropriate for answering the questions posed. This paper makes several contributions to the study of voting behavior and public opinion. The county-wide network panel study is among the first to examine voters' social networks over time and across multiple electoral contexts, and therefore provides a first look at how people's social circles react to political developments. By thinking temporally about social influence, this paper provides a better understanding of how social channels enable (or inhibit) information flow and mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research concerning representative relationships between constituents and members of Congress has shown that the opinions of partisans within a district correspond highly with co-partisan representative roll-call voting behavior. However, this congruence, though strong, is rarely perfect. In fact, some legislators stray from their party and partisan opinion within their districts far more often than those who voted them into office would like. When it comes to holding a disloyal representative accountable, however, members of said representative's party within a district have few options; they cannot abstain in the next election or vote for another party for fear of losing the seat and guaranteeing even less opinion correspondence in the future. This paper explores the possibility that engineering and supporting primary challenges serves as one weapon partisans can wield to not only send a signal to their member of Congress that his or her votes do not align with partisan opinion as strongly as they should, but also to, should their member of Congress survive the primary challenge, encourage said member to return to the partisan fold in future terms, chastened by the electoral opposition faced. Using data on House and Senate members that captures ideology, experience, electoral success, and district opinion, this paper will determine whether members of Congress who act out of step with their party and partisans in their district are more likely to face primary challenges and, following such challenges, are more prone to moving back into line with the prevailing party ideology in future voting situations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert P. Steed (email: steedr@citadel.edu) will present this paper, if accepted. Abstract:Partisan change in the South over the past half century has been dramatic. Not surprisingly, research on the southern Republican Party has focused largely on those areas and electoral levels where growth has occurred. Much less attention has been given to those mountain areas of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee where the party historically enjoyed its main support. Traditionally, mountain Republican activists and organizations differed from their newly developing counterparts in urban/suburban areas of the South in terms of demographics, ideology, and party activity. Analysis of data from the Southern Grassroots Party Activists Survey I (conducted in 1991) suggests that these differences still exist as of the 1990s and still carry potential consequences for intra-party unity in the region (see Steed, Baker and Moreland 1995).The paper proposed here will extend our previous analysis into the early Twenty-first Century. Utilizing data from the Southern Grassroots Party Activists Survey II (conducted in 2001), the paper will compare mountain Republican activists with non-mountain Republican activists in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee with regard to personal and political backgrounds, activity patterns, ideological and issue orientations, and party perspectives and will examine whether or not there are continuing differences between these two groups of party officials with a view toward understanding the place of mountain Republicans within the southern Republican Party during a period of rapid partisan transformation. The paper will also address the larger issue of the nationalization of southern party politics as it relates to these mountain regions.The data for the paper come from the south-wide survey of local party officials (precinct officers and county chairs) funded by an NSF grant and directed by Charles Prysby and John Clark (for a description of the project, see Clark and Prysby 2004). References:Robert P. Steed, Tod A. Baker, and Laurence W. Moreland, "Forgotten but not Gone: Mountain Republicans and Contemporary Southern Party Politics," Journal of Political Science 23 (1995): 5-27.John A. Clark and Charles Prysby, Southern Political Party Activists: Patterns of Conflict and Change, 1991-2001, University Press of Kentucky, 2004). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wide variety of organizations attempt to influence the outcome of elections through canvassing, including candidate organizations, political parties, 527s, and interest groups. The experimental literature on voter participation confirms the intuition that face-to-face canvassing is the optimal mode of inducing voter turnout. However, that literature has done little to advance a theoretical understanding of why canvassing works, except to say that a personal approach is best. This paper seeks to contribute to the development of a theoretical understanding of how mobilization works. Do people respond differently to different types of canvassers (who vary on dimensions such as race, gender, being knowledgeable about the election, friendliness), or is personal contact the most important dimension? In this paper, I will present findings from a series of focus groups conducted around the United States in the summer of 2006 that will serve as the basis for future experimental work. In these groups voters will openly discuss their experiences with canvassing and will also react to a video simulation that will measure their implicit reactions to different types of canvassers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author reflects on objections imposed by political parties and leaders of the U.S. Senate regarding any legislative procedure. Topics discussed include issues related to the Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the falling of the Hatch Act Reform Amendments of 1988 and power of the U.S. Congress regarding enactment in laws. Also mentions the U.S. House of Representatives.

The article discusses a study on relationship between political religiosity and trust in the U.S. It mentions that political trust influences policy satisfaction, levels of incumbent support, and political participation. Also mentions that both political views and demographic characteristics have shaped the U.S. political trust.

The article offers information on a study to examine link between economic voting and strong incumbent showings during poor economic times in the U.S. Topics discussed include impact of non-partisan voters on election outcomes, recent partisan trends across the industrialized world, and national election surveys of Great Britain, New Zealand, and Canada. It further discusses micro-level factors affecting economic voting.

The article offers information on a study to examine non-political aspect of citizens' lives in the U.S. related to strength of their partisan identification, and also analyzes the attachment to their political identity and the attachment to their religious identity. It also contributes to the political science research by discussing a theory from the field of psychology and relating it to partisan strength. It also informs about social identity theory.

Legislative districts in the 50 states will be redrawn following the completion of the 2010 United States census. Thirty-five require that districts be compact, which is believed to make gerrymandering - designing legislative districts so as to advantage one party - more difficult (Chambers and Miller, 2009). Geographic compactness also affects how convenient it is for legislators to travel within their districts to meet with their constituents, how easy it is for election officials to administer elections, and for constituents to participate in the legislative process. When districts are compact neighbors having similar interests are more likely to live in the same district. There are now more than a dozen competing proposals for evaluating the shapes of legislative districts. This article clears away some confusion over area compactness measures by demonstrating that nine proposed measures of district compactness fail to reliably measure compactness, while at least four other proposed measures of district compactness are equivalent to one simpler measure of area compactness. By providing counterexamples, we show that nine proposed measures of area compactness assign the same value to shapes having different compactness levels, and thus are unreliable measures. Then, we provide a mathematical induction proof showing that all area-to-square-of-perimeter measures (or its reciprocal or square root) rank the compactness of any two sets of redistricting plans in the exact same order. This kind of index of compactness is conceptually and computationally simpler than others and should be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many scholars have illustrated the importance of political knowledge in shaping public opinion and vote choice, the measurement of political knowledge is still being refined. Office recognition questions are a common component of general political knowledge measures, and have appeared regularly in the American National Election Study time series. The 2008 ANES included redacted verbatim responses to the recognition questions, which allows us to determine the extent of "partial knowledge" about some public officials. Our coding of these responses reveals evidence of considerable "partial recognition," which is positively associated with other measures of political knowledge and with political behaviors associated with knowledge. These results paint a slightly more flattering portrait of American political knowledge than previous estimates have shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of women in politics has included the analysis of both elite women and the masses in regard to their voting, political activity, and attitudes. Research of the past three decades has shown that women usually hold different political attitudes than men and vote slightly more to the Democratic side than men, this gender gap has been explored in relation to a number of attitudes, few studies have analyzed whether the gender gap is still evident in an issue area that women might be torn in two hypothesized directions The purpose of this study is to conduct an analysis of the gender gap in individual's attitudes toward the appropriateness of torture to prevent future terrorist attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can engaging in politics online increase political participation? Using a unique panel study from the 2008 election, we examine whether increasing online engagement increased the likelihood of voting in the primaries, voting in the general election, and participating in other traditional forms of participation. Our change in online engagement measure is a new, robust way of investigating the internet's effect on political participation by tracking change over the course of an entire election. Since Obama's campaign heavily focused on the internet, we also test whether increased online engagement increased the likelihood of voting for him. We find that increased online engagement increased the likelihood of voting in the general election and of voting specifically for Obama. Increased online engagement also increases the likelihood of participating in our other measures of participation, but does not increase the likelihood of participating in the primary/caucus process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the discourses of citizen participation in local government decision-making process. This research has tries to understand the access of citizen in the context of the U.S. political system through critical discourse analysis (CDA). It states that local government agencies are promoting differences among citizens by defining the participation on certain matters by people of some place while some citizens are not allowed to participate in state matters.

This study investigates the role that the former Confederate States of America have on the entry of black-owned firms in the southern United States. Elected officials holding onto vestiges of southern slavery maintain a racist culture revealing a "taste for discrimination" and implement biased policy (Becker, 1971). Consequently, these biased elected officials who have some authority over the distribution of public contracts and policies continue to encourage anti-competitive and discriminatory practices in credit and capital markets. The results reveal that the former Confederate States of America through public policy create a market environment that has a significant and negative effect on black-owned firm entry. This suggests that among the various explanations for the dearth of black entrepreneurs, political entry barriers in the old south also appear to be important. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]