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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 ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

?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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

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]