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The central topic of this paper is the measurement of one variable, civic duty. This variable has become a mainstay in empirical research on individual voting behavior since the 1960s and it is one of the chief explanatory saviors of the rational choice model of voting. Nevertheless, the measurement of civic duty on the American National Elections Study is prima facie substandard. Question wording is one concern, as a number of scholars have demonstrated that seemingly small changes in question wording can have large effects on the answers individuals provide and the conclusions scholars draw. My primary concern is measurement validity, commonly defined as "whether a variable measures what it is supposed to measure" (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). In survey research, the question is the instrument through which we measure a concept; if the wording is unclear, biased, or just plain bad, then any research that uses that indicator will also be flawed.In the paper, I will explain the controversies surrounding question wording and measurement validity; I will examine the existing body of work on civic duty; and I will empirical evaluate the validity of survey instruments that use different measures of civic duty in the United States and the United Kingdom. Possible explanations for the results, recommendations for further analysis, and the implications of these findings for research on voting behavior will also be discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How individual voters make their choices is a well-studied topic where candidate and officeholder elections are concerned. But voters in referenda cannot be assumed to make choices on the basis of the same determinants - group identity, self-interest and judgmental shortcuts - that citizens use to select candidates. This paper explores the nature of choice in referenda and the role that partisan and leader cues play in balloting on questions that are often, on their face, devoid of partisan and leader links. The paper uses British survey data from 2008 (N=17540) to construct a model of individual choice using a hypothetical referendum on denying benefits to illegal immigrants. To analyze partisan cues, a survey experiment was embedded in the Dynamics of Party Support in Britain follow-up survey to determine the relative effects of cues alone and cues placed in context by an individual's partisan identification and affect for the cue giver. We hypothesize that cues alone are suspect and uncertain messages for most voters, and thus would not be statistically significant. Cues in context are expected to produce statitically significant effects. Findings support both hypotheses. To determine other effects on voter choice, rival models are tested and a composite model of choice is constructed that suggests that attitudes held by individuals on immigration and immigration threats were the most powerful determinants of voter choice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

?The advantages of decentralization are realizable, however, only if there are good reasons for the players to believe that others will generally abide by the terms of the federation. That is, all must believe?that the center will not try to usurp power from the regions.? - Bednar, Eskridge, and Ferejohn (2001) As Bednar et al. assert in the quote above, federalism only works if there is trust among the players within the decentralized political structure. In particular, the political actors at the sub-national level must feel confident that the actors at the national level will not ?usurp (their) power? (223). Unfortunately trust is not a feeling currently being held by the sub-national actors in the higher education systems of both the United States and Europe. The American and European academic communities are feeling threatened by the recent policy proposals made by their national governments. These similar concerns voiced by the American and European higher education communities raise the question ? will any of the higher education systems be able to withstand this threat to their autonomy by their national government? I will attempt to answer this crucial question by using Jenna Bednar, William Eskridge, and John Ferejohn?s ?a political theory of federalism? (it will be referred to as the Bednar theory for the rest of the paper), which declares that federalism can only succeed if there are ?structural restraints? that force the national and sub-national units to respect each other?s authority (226). I will apply the theory to five higher education systems (France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, and the United States) and examine each one to see if it has the necessary ?structural restraints? to withstand the threats from the national government as prescribed by Bednar et al. My hypothesis is that the Bednar theory will prove accurate and only those higher education systems with strong structural restraints will have the capacity to protect their independence. To test my hypothesis, the paper will be divided into five main sections. The first section will be a brief explanation of the debate between President Bush and the American academic community, highlighting the positions of both sides. The second section will be a description of the Bologna Declaration, the problems that the Education Ministers believe it will address, and the response to the Declaration by the European University community. The third part of the paper will be a summary of the Bednar theory and an explanation on how it will be applied in this paper. The fourth section will be an examination of the six case studies. Particular attention will be on the relationship between the universities and their national government, and specifically how financial assistance is allocated to the institutions. The last section will look at the preliminary results of the Bologna Declaration and the Bush proposal. A brief overview at how successful (or unsuccessful in some cases) the national government has been in implementing its policies, and observing if my hypothesis has been proven accurate at this early stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a country's participation in a war change judicial behavior? This paper looks at U.S. Supreme Court and U.K. House of Lords decision making in the past 60 years. The empirical analysis and interviews with legal elites in both countries suggest that war effects are not idiosyncratic to the U.S. Furthermore, war impacts both the balance between rights and security as well as the degree of deference shown to the executive by the high courts in both countries, though the mechanisms may not be as straight forward as previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs formal stochastic models of the elections in Great Britain in 2005 and 2010. The models include various kinds of valence, where valence is de?ned to be associated with the non policy considerations involving perceptions of party leaders. Valences can be (i) exogenous, held by all members of the electorate, and empirically estimated by the intercepts in a spatial model (ii) sociodemographic, associated with the various propensities of subgroups in the polity to choose one candidate over another (iii) determined by the perception of leader character traits. We consider a set of nested logit models involving these valences, as well as spatial cmponents inving policy differences between voters and party positions. We show the models involving traits are statistically signi?cant. However, spatial models involving traits and the spatial component are also significant. We compare these models across the regions, England Scotland and Wales. We show first that a comparison of 2005 and 2010 indicates that all measures of Gordons Brown's valence was much lower than Tony Blair's valence in the earlier election. We also show that the vote maximizing equilibium positions of the parties were at the electoral origin in 2005. In 2010, however, the large traits differences between Brown and the other two leaders gives divergent equilibria, with Brown's equilibrium position relatively close to his estimated position. The higher valences of Clegg and Cameron suggest their equilibia are more or less symmetrically located in opposed quadrants of the policy space. We propose that the positions of the three major parties were influenced by the support offered by the activists to the parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wise superintendence of the imperial regime in the North American colonies was a fundamental problem that Edmund Burke faced as a legislator when he entered Parliament in 1766. Superintendence required composition of colonial distractions caused by a range of commercial arrangements, regulations, and tax schemes. At the same time, the supremacy of the constitutional order had to be preserved during the crisis of the American war. Burke argued that this was possible if shared sentiments, opinions, and common interests were cultivated in policy. Consequently, the colonies would be made dependent on the imperial legislature.This paper examines three ideas in Burke's imperial thought: 1) superintendence, 2) legislative supremacy, and 3) conciliation of colonial sentiments in conformity with general opinions. I argue that Burke's sustained engagement with the politics of the British Empire in terms of these ideas led him to define the "imperial regime." He worked out its basic logic and affirmed a structural commitment to empire. While Burke was a critic of imperial abuses - particularly in India and Ireland - his arguments concerning the problem of empire in America show an affirmative view of the regime as well as prudent insights into how to govern it with magnanimity and justify rule as providential. By reconsidering these ideas for imperial rule in North America, scholars can better understand answers to questions in current debates across many disciplines: how did Burke envision the empire as a whole and was his thought limited to criticism of British rule? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The group literature has invested heavily in explaining formation issues. Far less is known about life 'post-formation', specifically issues of group survival and maintenance. But the recent explosion of population ecology (PE) scholarship explicitly addresses mortality issues, highlighting that not all groups born do actually survive. However, it does not offer much beyond a 'head count' of group survival. Thus PE doesn't tell us - nor does it claim to -anything about variation among group populations with respect to organizational form. Further, activity between the two points of birth and death for individual groups is left largely unexplored. PE doesn't examine what, if any, organisational changes have been undertaken to achieve survival (or to prolong life and postpone of death) (but see Nownes and Kelly 2008). Yet, questions about (changeable) group form are important as they go directly to assessing the relative 'capacities' of groups in generating coveted resources - e.g. representation, research/information and policy implementation.In building on the thrust of PE, we take the advice of Lowery and Gray (2000) and pursue qualitative analysis of group histories. This paper analyses the 'group careers' of several UK interest groups over their life span. Emphasis is not simply on if groups survive challenging circumstances, but how they survive. What organisational forms are struck? At the population level we seek to identify the extent of variation in contemporary forms, and sources of that variation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the decline in election turnout seems to have abated in the United States, (McDonald and Popkin, APSR 2001) but it has been exacerbated in other advanced industrial democracies. For example, voter participation in Britain dropped from 75.3% in 1987 to 59.4% in 2001. While election officials, academics, and pundits in Britain and elsewhere agonize over the causes of the turnout decline, it is important to examine the political consequences of lower levels of turnout in these settings. In this paper, I simulate the effects of varying levels of turnout on partisan outcomes in the 2001 British election based on five different models. The results suggest that Labour would have won under almost any conceivable level of turnout (higher or lower), and the order of finish among the major parties would not have been affected. These findings raise further doubts about the conventional wisdom that higher turnout helps parties of the left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries have seen attempts at sweeping reforms of their consumer bankruptcy systems. Surprisingly, many of these reforms were either defeated or watered down. Most of these reforms include provisions that will make the discharge of consumer debts more difficult. This is especially true in English Common Law countries. Four countries, Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States, either passed or attempted to pass broad reforms in an apparent attempt to reduce the number of consumer bankruptcy filings. This paper will examine the reforms and the increases in consumer bankruptcy filings in these countries, by examining the histories of their bankruptcy systems and the resulting institutions, as well as the political factors involved in the reform attempt. The similarities and differences between these countries will be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the economy explain the long-term trend of party membership? Do positive economic conditions encourage the increase of party memberships? On the other hand, does negative economic condition lead to the decline in party memberships? Political scientists have studied what factors have an impact on party membership trend, and how the parties respond to the change of party membership trend (Dalton, Wattenberg 2000; Duverger 1954; Katz, Mair 1995; Kirchheimer 1966; Panebianco 1988; Rokkan 1960; Scarrow 1996). Studying industrialized democracy political parties, they have examined whether external factors such the economic transformation or political dealignment cause the decline of the party membership trends. However, political scientists have not considered whether economic factors, such as economic growth (GDP) or unemployment rate, can cause the increase or decrease of party memberships. Using Vector Autoregression (VAR) approach, in this paper I will examine the long-term relationship between the economic conditions and the party membership trends of the British Labour Party and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1945 to 1994. I hypothesize that in the long run, positive economic conditions are likely to encourage the increase of the party memberships whereas negative economic conditions are likely to discourage the increase of the memberships. By looking at the trend of party memberships, this paper aims to find the long-term relationship between economic conditions and people's political participation in political parties in terms of whether positive economic conditions encourage people to join the parties, and whether negative economic conditions discourage people to join the parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the relationship between national debt and inter-state political relations. The accumulation of national debt, and subsequent relations between debtor and creditor at the international level, are considered as unintended consequences of strategic choices. The paper wants to explain how both domestic and international factors contribute to the accumulation of national debt and how this process modifies relations amongst states in the international system. The research will focus particularly on the accumulation of national debt in the United States, performing a quantitative analysis of its recent trends on one side (debt holdings), and a historical comparison with the accumulation of national debt in the UK in the period between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. The paper argues that the shape of the debt relationship between nations can influence the transition of power in the international system, as it happened already in the case of the transition between the UK and the US as dominant/emerging hegemonic power. The paper also explores on the differences in the consideration of debt for different types of countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British Prime Minister David Cameron has brought youth, flair, and decidedly nontraditional attributes to his role as Conservative Party leader. His self-positioning as "compassionate conservative" stands in stark contrast to the use of the same term employed by President George W. Bush and his Administration. The claim of "compassionate conservative" vis-à-vis Cameron and his party is analyzed, with an eye toward assessing both the legitimacy of its position and the "compassionate conservative" claim as performative discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

In his 1867 essay "Shooting Niagara: And After?" Thomas Carlyle, inter alia, makes a proposal for establishing a military colony in the West Indies. I unwrap this proposal, and show that it represents Carlyle's last attempt to move for the regeneration of British moral and political life and the maintenance of empire, before Britain sinks into what he sees as the degenerative morass of democracy. It involves a restatement of Carlyle's views of race and class in the context both of the Morant Bay Rebellion and its aftermath in Jamaica and Disraeli's expansion of the suffrage in Britain. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realism has always been considered one of the safest foreign policy strategies that a nation can follow. Focusing on one's own self interest and the interests of their countrymen has always guaranteed a level of security and consistency that has earned the favor of so many U.S. officials. Now, some of the nations that provided the United States, Great Britain, and other European powers with the most economic or regional control years ago, are the same nations that monopolize our mass media as the plague of international security today.Some of modern histories most notorious revolutions and rebellions have spurred out of years of external meddling and oppression. The Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the 1979 revolutions in both Iran and Nicaragua are the direct result of U.S. intervention and realist tactics. The United States has never had a clear foreign policy except for the cries of liberty and democracy that have carried our nation against every enemy from Nazism to Communism, from Terrorism to Despotism. However, every conflict seems to end in the same confusion surrounding the actual objective of the United States government; is the main objective oil or freedom?The solution is a new look on the workings of the world, that actual promotion of liberalism and constant support for the will of the people, rather than using realist tactics, will eventually result in greater economic and political gain for the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cursory examination of the data concerning modern parliamentary systems suggests that women have acquired over time a greater proportion of representation in said systems. Is this necessarily so? A report from the Inter-Parliamentary Union of the United Nations in early 2001 reported that "Political parties (are) holding back women" from greater participation- "Political parties are the main obstacle to lifting the participation of women in national parliaments from a world average of 13 per cent…"- and the evidence of late suggests not much has changed in the last decade.This work examines the role parties play in women's representation at the state-parliament level. Specifically, I examine the role of the party in the context of party rule changes regarding gender, and whether or not parties that change their rules receive positive reaction from the electorate at the polls. I utilise the Katz and Mair data set (1992) to determine why seven of the eight countries mentioned (I exclude South Africa, ) in the IPU report have greater levels of inclusion. I also examine data from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Belgium, Ireland, and Italy to balance the model, with a total of seventy-seven parties eventually investigated and fifty-nine analysed. I also re-assess the level of membership to-date, using recent IPU and IFES data, to determine if the over-time trend offers any hope for substantive change in women's levels of representation, and to what extent parties have benefited from party-quotas, and what possible reasons there may be for not adhering to quotas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academicians, activists, and practitioners concerned about a "democratic deficit" have endorsed various adult-centered civic education and engagement ideas to address the problem. One generating enthusiasm recently is the citizens' assembly--a large group of citizens selected, funded, and empowered by government to learn, deliberate, and make recommendations that can trigger a binding referendum. The first Citizens' Assembly was held in British Columbia in 2004 followed by Ontario's in 2006-2007 with a referendum scheduled for October. These major undertakings have been lauded as a "higher order" form of deliberative democracy and role models for future exercises elsewhere. Indeed, a smaller-scale assembly took place in the Netherlands, assemblies have been proposed in several states, and the incoming British Prime Minister has endorsed the concept.However, full-fledged citizens' assemblies demand a major commitment of money, time, and effort, and a comparative analysis of the BC and Ontario experiences can be instructive, offering realistic insights for those contemplating future assemblies. Based on personal observation and interactions with assembly members in the Ontario CA and extensive video and archival records of both assemblies, we propose to generate premises about cause and effect, and develop propositions concerning the impact of ideological and accommodational behavior, the role of externally imposed empowering and constraining mandates, and the apparent impacts on civic knowledge, engagement, and trust within the assemblies and the citizenry, as well as assumptions made about citizens and politics in the design and implementation of these assemblies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) using institutional theory. The mechanisms that influenced France and Great Britain to change their position on the Court and forgo their veto power are explored. It is suggested that small states are able to use international institutions to shift the balance of power in their favor.

The article presents a cross-national study that examines the role of gender in judicial decision making in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain. It mentions that socialization of female lawyers with female judges within the respective judicial systems might affect the case outcome. The study examined appellate court decisions in each country from 1980 to 2000.

While recent attention has been given to the impact of political ideology on public sector performance measures, its effect on customer satisfaction with agency outputs has largely been ignored. Using novel ideology estimates, we examine the contribution of ideological orientation as well as congruence and dissonance within agencies and the executive branch to the way in which citizens view their public services. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK only adopted a uniform national minimum wage (NMW) in 1999. Given candidate Barack Obama's promise during the campaign to support a significant increase in the minimum wage as well as its indexing, it is a good time to canvass Britian's experience for lessons that might be learned. The economic lessons are that on the employment, inflation, and business profitability fronts, there is little to fear from a somewhat higher minimum wage. However, the real lessons are political, and the structure and operation of the Low Pay Commission point to both opportunities and pitfalls. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]