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The conference paper on use of signing statements by the U.S. Presidents which are official statements issued at the time of a law's enactment is discussed. It refers to the usage of constitutional signing statements as an effective unilateral tool which can be use to combat a hostile Congress functioning in the nation. An overview of the controversies behind amount of scholarship devoted to the rationale behind signing statements is also included.

A conference paper about bad U.S. Presidents with reference to the core responsibilities of American chief executives is presented. It mentions that the presidential rating has started in 1948 by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger who asked respondents to assign presidents to categories from great to failure. It also discusses the attributes that determines Presidents' ranking.

A conference paper about political satire and candidate evaluations in the 2008 U.S. election is presented. It examines general models of candidate evaluation formation and discusses the role of added element of political satire into these existing models. It mentions that this model would explain the failure of American voters to remember specific details about candidates and their campaigns.

A conference paper discussing the ideological connection between members of the U.S. Congress and their constituents is presented. It examines the effect of partisan political polarization on several benefits that result from or coincide with seniority but are independent of ideology. It also discusses data from the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1990s and 2000s and found that partisan political polarization may not factor into members' electoral calculations.

This paper will examine how extreme partisanship in the United States Senate has prevented any significant collaborative efforts between the President Obama and Congress. I argue that the United States Senate is undergoing a modern era of disunion. The conditions in the Senate can be directly traced to the concerted efforts of Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to maintain ideological purity among his caucus members for the purposes ensuring that President Obama's has a failed presidency by asserting a Republican agenda that is aimed at undermining the legitimacy of Democratic initiatives. The Constitutional responsibility for shared governance has been severely compromised by conservative factions of the Republican Party. Subsequently, members of Congress who wish to find compromises across party lines are shut out of the political process. I propose that the restoration and continued health of the American democracy is dependent on the members' ability to reassert their influence collectively into the political process through engaging their colleagues and constituencies in the process of deliberative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the failure of the U.S. government in achieving good foreign intelligence that has led to the events of September 11, 2001. It informs that from the starting of the U.S. Republic, the need for good intelligence in wartime has been critical. The U.S. President George Bush mentioned that foreign intelligence forms the basic part of the constitutional authority.

A conference paper about the adoption of school interventions for youth obesity prevention in the U.S. is presented. It utilizes cross-sectional probit analysis and fifty state data through 2007 to analyze the adoption in different categorical school interventions. The findings reveal that the state government is more likely to adopt the school intervention of setting competitive food nutritional standards.

This paper intends to examine the Constitution of the Confederate States of America critically to assess its merits and demerits. The purpose of this paper is not to evaluate the C.S.A. Constitution or its framers in regard to slavery. Clearly, by refusing to recognize the injustice of slavery and the Declaration's assertion that "all men are created equal," the C.S.A. Constitution cannot be admired. However, in its changes to the basic structure of the federal government, the C.S.A. Constitution might provide actual and perhaps even preferable alternatives to the form of government established by U.S. Constitution. Jefferson Davis asserted that the C.S.A. Constitution was a light which revealed the "true meaning" of the founding fathers.1 This paper will assess Davis's claim. It will do so primarily by comparing the preambles of each Constitution and the supporting documents which help to explain the essential purposes of government therein stated (e.g., the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist papers, Alexander Stephens's "Corner-Stone" speech). Such analysis will indicate that Davis is incorrect; the C.S.A. Constitution does not represent what the founding fathers intended in the original U.S. Constitution; the preambles establish different visions of the federal government. Even though the C.S.A. Constitution does not appear to embody the "true meaning" of the founding fathers, nevertheless the ways in which it diverges from the U.S. Constitution deserve attention. These changes will be evaluated to discern whether they either improve upon or adulterate the U.S. Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

What is the relationship between theology and political theory? Specifically, how can theology inform members of a religious tradition about the purposes of politics and government in democracies? To answer these questions, this paper focuses on one aspect of this topic, the relationship between eschatology and expected political purposes among theological schools of contemporary Evangelical Protestant Christians in the United States. This paper examines the eschatological expectations derived from Dispensationalism in comparison with older Amillennial, Postmillennial, and Historic Premillennial theologies common to Christian denominations, and explores how these theologies inform its adherents about political purposes of civil society. The author concludes that adherents of Dispensational theology face an inherent contradiction between an expected dystopian future and the success of political initiatives and government to solve public problems, whereas Amillennial, Postmillennial, and Historic Premillennial theologies offer the possibility of a more positive outlook for the role of government in solving problems in society. As a result, a conservative, anti-government political view emerges from Dispensational theology that limits political activism to constrain evil rather than a positive approach to solve public problems. This paper takes a theoretical approach to examine the relationship between theology and political purposes. Furthermore, this topic is significant, because the relationship between theological expectations and political ends should be examined to better understand how certain members of society view the expected performance of democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) stands as the signature policy achievement of the Obama Administration. It signifies the adoption of omnibus legislation and the creation of new market and regulatory structures in healthcare that rival those established by Medicaid and Medicare fifty years ago. Like the development and implementation of those policies, the ACA has not been without controversy. Indeed the level of enduring criticism and controversy surrounding the ACA is perhaps its most distinguishing characteristic in political terms. As a political artifact, it may well serve future historians and political scientists as the embodiment of the hyper-partisan and divisive politics of the early 21st century. Subject to legal and constitutional challenges, permeating election cycles, and used by some as proof of the problems of the administrative state and regulatory power, the ACA serves as both an expressive and explanatory vehicle for those both in politics and those who study politics. While taking into account the broad-sweep of ACA's policy changes, this paper concentrates on the role that "navigators," "assisters" and others involved in outreach, enrollment, and retention activities associated with individual health insurance marketplaces and, by extension, Medicaid outreach and enrollment. While the ACA both mandates and supports these intermediaries, the law was not entirely clear on their role or function nor could it anticipate the realities of implementation that are only revealed through experience. What has emerged have been differing approaches to consumer assistance. This paper focuses on two general approaches that while not necessarily contradictory, have different assumptions and functions in consumer assistance. These are the: 1) the social services approach, and 2) the marketing approach. Based on a review of ten state experiences, it is argued that the former approach prevailed in the initial roll-out of the individual health insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion. It is also suggested that the latter approach might be more effective as new market arrangements mature and a greater emphasis is placed on informed policy coverage choices and consumer retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adverse weather events such as earthquakes, tornados and floods affect thousands of people around the globe every year. The responses to such adverse events by national governments differ from country to country. While some states protect their populations relatively well, in others people suffer tremendously. The goal of this paper is to explore the political sources of this variation. Political factors have been acknowledged to play a core role in determining the degree of damage to people's lives and personal properties caused by natural disasters. Surprisingly, however, there is a lack of empirical research on the role of political institutions in disaster prevention and mitigation. This paper addresses this research gap and tests the effect of democracy and institutional quality on the degree of natural disaster damage using time series cross section data from the International Disaster Risk database, Varieties of Democracy Project and the Quality of Government dataset. Democracy with its freedom of speech, participation and representation and quality of government, which improves provision of public goods and policy implementation, are believed to minimize the number of people affected by natural disasters. We posit that democratic principles and high institutional quality are both crucial for building resilience and neither of the conditions is sufficient for disaster prevention and mitigation. The results support our expectations and show that higher institutional quality is associated with fewer people suffering the consequences of natural disasters only when egalitarian democracy is high. Additionally, if institutional quality is low, more democracy is associated with more human suffering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the period of Southern politics when black-white Democratic coalitions dominated the political landscape. Our questions boil down to to testing three possible realignment outcomes associated with these black-white coalitions. Did they represent a separate and distinct party alignment, comparable to the New Deal and New Right alignments? Or alternatively, were they a symptom of the dealignment of New Deal party system? Or alternatively did they represent a failed party alignment? Using a vote-shares county level data for presidential and gubernatorial contests, this paper re-evaluates contested presidential and gubernatorial elections in all eleven former Confederate states between 1952 and 2012. We find that there was a failed black-white party realignment in Alabama and Mississippi, a successful black-white party realignment in Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and a long period of dealignment starting in 1964 or 1968 and ending during the Reagan presidency in Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic definition for wave elections, a concept which has been used frequently in discussions of congressional elections throughout history, but which has previously lacked a precise definition. Tracing the usage of the term "wave election" (and similar variations) since the mid-1800s, this paper details the frequency and manner in which this concept has been used in considerations of congressional elections over time. Subsequently, this paper offers a definition for wave elections that is based on the seat gain and seat-level for parties following an election. This definition can be used to classify House and Senate elections throughout American history, and can also be applied to state legislative elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congress established the Patent Cases Pilot Program in 2011 "to encourage enhancement of expertise in patent cases." Essentially, the program allows judges in 14 U.S. District Courts to specialize in patent litigation if they wish to do so. As such, it represents an ongoing natural experiment of sorts on specialization's possible implications for judicial policymaking. In this paper we offer an initial, primarily descriptive account of this ten year pilot program. In that account, we consider the characteristics of those judges who have opted into the program, assess factors that may help explain their self-selection into it, and discuss the program's possible implications for judicial efficiency and policymaking. Once sufficient case data has been accumulated, we plan to supplement the present paper with more refined quantitative analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tradition of prayer to open a legislative session extends to the English tradition that influenced so many aspects of colonial and American government. For Congress, prayer has been an integral part of daily opening rituals since the time of the Continental Congress. This paper begins an examination of opening prayers by guest chaplains in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2000. The paper begins with an overview of legislative prayers and the guest chaplain program. Then, an analysis of the demographic characteristics of guest chaplains and their sponsors is conducted. Finally, the paper concludes with a preliminary examination of the rhetoric of guest chaplains and their message to Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even prior to its publication in 1787, Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia" had an impact on the ratification debates surrounding the new Constitution. The view of constitutionalism promulgated in the "Notes", a theme which has often eluded scholars due to the difficulty of understanding the work as a whole, reveals Jefferson to be a critic and influential opponent of the argument for reverence put forward by Madison in his contribution to the second volume of the "Federalist Papers". We argue that the underlying structure of Madison's "Papers" (37-51) took shape as a theoretical and practical engagement with Jeffersonian theories being employed (with and without Jefferson's permission) by opponents of ratification, especially regarding the nature of republican constitutions. This argument points to significant disagreement between Jefferson and Madison, who otherwise were life-long political allies, at a crucial juncture in the American founding period. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do justices strategically think about the consequences of their decision on Cert? In this paper I analyze this question in light of material taken from Justices' private papers. The major source of information used here is documents produced by clerks for their justices and the general correspondence between justices and clerks. Several aspects of strategic behavior during Cert are demonstrated. First are strategic considerations that go way beyond One First Street N.E. At least when considering whether to review what they expect to be cases with weighty political ramifications, justices may think about the politics of appointment, the results of upcoming presidential elections, and the role of the Court in protecting certain groups in American society (e.g. women). The second facet of strategic behavior is in cases where justices would refrain from hearing a case for fear of the influence of the opinion written. Next, issues justices would like to see included in the opinion affect the choice of cases. This leads to the fourth facet of strategic conduct demonstrated here, in which justices' strategy is not limited to a single case. The result of their consecutive decisions to review a string of cases is the attrition of an objectionable precedent, which may even lead to the overturning of that precedent. Finally, when registering opinion dissenting from denial, it is not infrequent for Justices to lay out their view on the merits (both in terms of disposition and in terms of the doctrine that should result). Of particular interest are relisted cases, in which a dissent from denial had been registered following the first Cert vote, but the dissenter had an opportunity to actually influence the opinion when the case was granted full review in a second vote on Cert. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaboration ranks among the most significant buzzwords in US higher education. Faculty are encouraged to create courses delivered in team-teaching formats. Universities tout their collaborations with neighborhoods, non-profit organizations, and businesses in delivering powerful learning experiences. This paper documents the way in which one partnership among the authors (who are siblings) and a small agricultural community in North Central Iowa produced an ag policy course during a Furman University May term. Agricultural policy is not exempt from the polarization of contemporary American politics. By marshaling a broad array of community resources, the authors exposed students to many viewpoints on agricultural policy. The high level of trust among the siblings and the community provided students with unparalleled access to numerous farms and ag-related organizations. As a result, students were provided with a rich, finely textured portrait of ag policy, rather than the more typical one-sided view. The paper discusses the logistical and administrative challenges (from transportation and housing to food preparation and inclement weather) involved with this unusual type of collaboration. While creating this kind of partnership is labor intensive, it has enormous payoffs for students both in learning the impact of a complex array of policies on those being regulated and in seeing why individuals and organizations may take very different positions. The benefits do not solely accrue to the students. This kind of collaboration also has had the impact of recharging a professional career and spawning a more multi-faceted dialogue on ag policy among community partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper hopes to examine the way that US counter-drug policy affects nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago. The illegal drug trade has created a dangerous backdrop in everyday life. Recent publications have labeled Trinidad and Tobago not only as the newest narco-state, but have also claimed that it has become the "murder capital of the Caribbean." Arguably, US policies surrounding what has been called the most glaring threat to Caribbean security have an effect on individual Caribbean nations in regards to their self perception, perception of the other and self-projection. These three components which are adopted as the components of nationalism can either be strengthened, weakened or remain unchanged in response to the strong policy influence of the hemispheric hegemon. The pressure from the US coupled with domestic pressures to cohere with national ideals, can create dissonance between effective drug policies and national autonomy. Since it is accepted that the illegal drug trade cannot be resolved in a singular manner, developing nations must navigate this trade-off. As such, this paper will explore this policy relationship between the US and Trinidad and Tobago with the objective of determining whether or not US drug policies have shaped nationalism for the developing country, and why. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to build upon the current literature examining whether federal funding of R&D projects at U.S. universities acts as a complement or a substitute to private investment. The analysis begins by building upon the framework set forth by Payne (2001), which suggests that public funding acts as signal of institutional quality to private investors. This paper utilizes panel data on virtually every research university in the country from 1975 - 1999 to determine if investors receive signals stemming from the distribution of university resources. This paper also looks at whether the source of government funds matters in terms of the strength of the signals broadcast to private investors. Results from an OLS regression using institutional fixed effects support both hypotheses. Finally, possible issues resulting from non-stationarity and cointegration are explored using a Single Equation Error Correction Model. The results from this estimation suggest that federal and private funding may interact in a long-run equilibrium, but only when changes in federal funding are treated as the dependent variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the link between religion and politics in the U.S. has been heavily researched, the idea of religion as a voting cue in congressional elections warrants attention. This paper expands on the idea that religion can act as a voting cue signaling voters to cast their ballot for a candidate who shares their religious affiliation. Specifically, this paper answers the question of whether individuals vote for a congressional candidate who shares their religion. Data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2008 post-election survey, as well as data on candidate religion from Project Vote Smart's candidate biography dataset and the 2008 Almanac of American Politics, are used to gauge the extent to which religion acts as a voting cue in U.S. House elections. This paper finds that there is indeed a relationship between the major religious group of voters and the major religious group of House candidates. In other words, this paper suggests that there is a link between voter religion and vote choice, which gives insight into both voter behavior and the link between religion and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidential historians and baseball writers perennially debate who the best of all time were. Over the past three decades, baseball analysis evolved from a largely qualitative and impressionistic to rigorous and data-driven. Long scorned by "old-school" baseball writers, the new "Sabermetric" approach to baseball analysis is now recognized--albeit grudgingly by some--as a powerful and useful way to assess teams, players, and managers with precision and depth across time. Adapting the Pythagorean Expectations (PE) formula developed by Bill James (1982) to analyze baseball, this paper uses sabermetric analysis to assess American presidential success at winning legislative victories in Congress from Eisenhower to Obama. In particular, we observe that presidential-congressional relations, like baseball, is all about winning. What a baseball manager needs from his players is runs: his hitters must score runs; his fielders must prevent them. What the president needs from members of Congress is votes: he must get members to vote for his favored legislation and against legislation he opposes. But important as winning is, what professional observers (sports writers and political scientists) really find most intriguing is Wins Above Expectations (WAE)--did the team do better or worse than expected? Our analysis of presidential roll-calls from 1953-2014 shows that a sabermetric analysis formula predicts annual presidential success rates with 90 percent accuracy. Moreover, WAE variation across presidencies reveals clear patterns of presidential success in Congress, offering an objective means of determining who belongs in the presidential politics "Hall of Fame." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines competition in U.S. House primary elections through the lens of primary rules. Using a novel measure of party control over primaries, I test the relationship between increased party control over primary rules and the level of competition in these races. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of American foreign relations as it is traditionally told is the story of presidential power. While few doubt that the president is the dominant actor in foreign affairs, new work has called into question many assumptions about Congress's supposed weakness over executive actions in foreign affairs. Yet this scholarship tests congressional influence almost exclusively during the postwar era--a period in which the executive has had undisputed informational advantages and in which Congress has rarely exercised its formal powers to limit presidential action. Drawing on extensive archival research, this paper uses historical data from the American empire in the Philippines to investigate presidential power in an earlier age of congressional dominance. I find that fear of congressional sanction profoundly shaped the development of American colonialism, leading presidents and executive officials to design colonial policies to avoid congressional scrutiny and control. Ironically, it was the power of Congress, rather than its weakness, that increased the executive's power in American foreign affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A majority of American voters currently have a meaningful opportunity to vote before Election Day, whether in person or by mail. As such, voter mobilization experiments and observational studies of turnout need to consider voting as a dependent variable that occurs over time. This paper presents three statistical methods for estimating turnout across a multi-day voting period: binary logistic regression, multinomial logistic regression, and Cox proportional hazards survival analysis. Ultimately, survival analysis allows for the estimation of treatment effects over time and the potential to test for interactions between covariates and time. A discussion of the implications for researchers and campaign professionals is also included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present original data collected for over three dozen factors capturing constitutional provisions for judicial independence for all 50 US states, from statehood to 2015. Drawing on insights from research on comparative courts, this data set goes far beyond simple appointment procedures, and includes tenure, rule-making ability, removal procedures, and other factors affecting the relationship between the judiciary and political branches. I further discuss how this data could be used to address debates over the role of judicial elections, as well as how changes in political conditions affect the role of courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has political party and ideology changed in the Florida executive branch over the past 60 years? How have individual governors affected their party and the state? What have been the notable achievements of these governors and how do their personalities and ideologies compare? This paper traces the control of the governor's office through three phases: from the Democratic split over segregation and apportionment, through a period of progressive Democratic reunification, and to the current dominance by Republicans. It concludes by looking at the future prospects of both parties for controlling the executive branch in the Sunshine State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how two state-level Latino constituencies -- their percent of the population and their percent of voters -- influence the propensity of states to pass restrictive immigration policy, testing two competing theories. The racial influence hypothesis suggests that larger Latino constituencies will lead to fewer restrictive immigration policies, while the racial threat hypothesis suggests the opposite relationship. Using state-level data from 2009 through 2012, we find support for both theories depending on the constituency examined. States with larger Latino populations tend to pass more restrictive immigration policies, but when Latinos have greater electoral strength states tend to pass fewer restrictive policies. This relationship is interactive such that increases in Latino electoral strength act to mitigate the positive effect of Latino population size on restrictive immigration laws. Finally, we also show that the influence of Latino electoral strength on state immigration policy is indirect, meditated by their electoral influence on the partisan and ethnic composition of state legislatures. Our findings emphasize the importance of voting for minority substantive representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisan stability has received a lot of attention in American politics. MacKuen et al. and Green et al. disagree over the strength of partisan ties nationally. Less work has been done on the state level to judge if the stability of partisanship differs across states. Using data from Enns and Koch (2013), methodology from Green et al. (2002), and a random effects model, this paper shows that partisan stability varies widely across states. Confirming what others have found, the South does more permanently respond to shocks over time to macropartisanship. In addition to the traditional explanation of economic performance and presidential approval, ideology is introduced as another important factor in explaining macropartisan change. [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]

In this paper, I argue that political elites intend the popular women's issue label to serve as an issue frame. I evaluate how individuals, especially women, respond to this frame. An original theoretical framework explains how identities, specifically partisan and gender identities, influence conceptions of women's issues. The potentially distinct definitions of women's issues among Democratic and Republican individuals may serve as the cause for their disparate responses to the women's issue frame. A nationally representative public opinion survey containing questions about individuals' identities and their understanding of women's issues is used to test the theory. In this analysis, I find that Republicans and Democrats identify distinct sets of issues as women's issues. Additionally, women and Democrats possess a more developed understanding of women's issues than men and Republicans, respectively. These findings suggest that identities limit the success of the women's issue frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how intense policy minorities within the majority party in the House of Representatives affect House procedure, particularly the rules placed on legislation. Existing theories suggest that when an intense policy minority within the majority party exist party leaders will alter procedures and rules to benefit the intense minority instead of the party median. We apply the first empirical test of this theory by looking at legislation supported by the Congressional Black Caucus and the Blue Dog Democrats in the 111th session of the House of Representatives, as well as legislation from the Tea Party Caucus in the 112th session. Results suggest that majority party leaders do indeed allow special rules to deviate to the intense minority, on issues pursued by the intense minority, as long at the issues are not salient to the full caucus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I deal with whether candidates change their strategies during election campaigns, especially focusing on strategy balancing between the primary and general elections. Candidates for public offices may have incentives to change their strategies between the two elections because citizens who turn out at the primary elections have different characteristics from general election voters. I take up U.S. Presidential election in 2008 as a case and investigate whether and how candidates change issues they take up during campaigns, using texts of their speeches as data. Employing latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) models, I demonstrate that although (1) candidates cannot perfectly control issues to cover, (2) they tend to change issues between the primary and general elections so as to (a) avoid covering topics which work against them and (b) take up issues they have advantage over the other candidates, and so on. For example, I show that McCain spoke less on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the general election period compared to the period before the primary elections finished, and taking into account the public opinion at that time and other factors, this move can be interpretted as strategic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, there has been little -- if any -- analysis of how removing voter protections impacted provisional voting practices. This paper presents a statistical analysis of the probability of voters being given a provisional ballot and having it counted in Harris County, Texas in the 2014 election cycle based on Census-level demographics for race and income. Our novel approach uses Census block-level and group-level data for each voter to explore which demographic traits are associated with higher rates of being issued provisional ballots, and if racial or income variables predict whether those ballots will be counted. Our results suggest troubling patterns. Namely, voters in Hispanic neighbourhoods and low-income areas are more likely to be given provisional ballots; voters from Black and Asian communities, once given a provisional ballot, are less likely to have them counted. To further assess these patterns, we propose a more advanced statistical methodology to determine the impact of race and income on the kind of provisional ballot received during the early voting period versus Election Day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the absence of strong U.S. national climate policy, California and New York, among other states, have adopted relatively comprehensive and ambitious policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions, despite political-institutional barriers similar to those found nationally. This paper explains the adoption of climate policies in these two states by using a windows of opportunity approach, which describes how the convergence of problem and political streams produces policy windows and opportunities for advocacy coalitions to mobilize successfully for major policy change. This framework is used to explain two subcases in California: motor vehicle emissions and renewable-energy policy in 2002; and emissions reduction targets and trading in 2006-09. It is also used to explain two subcases in New York State: a renewable portfolio standard and emissions trading in 2001-03; and an energy efficiency standard and stricter renewable portfolio standard in 2007-10. The convergence of problem and politics streams, including focusing events, election results, political leadership, and interest-group mobilization, led to these bursts of innovation, which helped overcome structural barriers to climate policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades scholars and public opinion organizations have been conducting surveys of experts and the mass public alike that rate and rank American presidents. These surveys provide empirical evidence of at least one dimension of a president's legacy -their historical reputation. As the number of such polls has increased, scholars have learned that these reputations vary - sometimes quite significantly - over time, with ratings of some presidents declining over time while others slowly crawl up the rankings ladder. Similarly, some presidents exhibit relatively static reputations across decades, while public and even expert opinion swings wildly for others. In this paper, we first observe and then analyze the way presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush have performed in such polls after they left office. Upon identifying those that have changed significantly over time, we dig deeper, attempting to understand why. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public Policy as a social scientific discipline has developed in large measure by borrowing theories and methods from other social sciences. However, the political reality in which social science in general and public policy in particular is developed and implemented is constantly changing, and so what counts as policy reality evolves along with its political-economic-cultural context. At this stage in the development of the field of Public Policy, we lack the necessary theory to capture this evolving reality in a way that will enable us to exploit or employ it in promising and compelling policy recommendations. The underlying difficulty, not yet recognized sufficiently by policy scholars and policy practitioners alike, is the reification of political reality. Both scholars and policymakers generally assume that there is a reality "out there" that is independent of us, and especially is independent of our beliefs about its nature and changeability. This assumption--this reification--is a profound limitation on the compellingness and the practical promise of our work as policy scholars. The theoretical approach that offers the promise of de-reifying the reality in which and about which policy is made and studied is generally called Constructivism. However, while Constructivism has been developing in the field of international relations and foreign policy for several decades, and also more recently in comparative politics, it is still subject to substantial variation in its theoretical assumptions. The most common version, which might be called "Explanatory Constructivism" or "Insight Constructivism," emphasizes the importance and value of understanding the reality images or worldviews of policymakers (that is, the images of reality that they construct in their minds). But the more profound and more promising version of Constructivism attempts to de-reify the policy reality by uncovering and showing how what passes for policy reality is significantly determined (although to an extent yet to be discovered) by the beliefs about the nature of the policy reality held and employed by policymakers. This paper develops the case for employing this advanced version of Constructivism in studying the policy process and making policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates Chief Justice John G. Roberts's recent controlling opinions in cases involving federalism within the contradictions of Anti-Federalist political thought. Scholars have traditionally invoked Anti-Federalists--especially Brutus--to criticize the Supreme Court for acting "independent of heaven itself and for consolidating power in the federal government. Brutus, however, locates the problem of judicial independence not primarily in willful, self-interested judges but in the Constitution's broad statement of federal powers and its lack of substantive protections for states. In cases such as NFIB v. Sebelius, Shelby County v. Holder, U.S. v. Bond, and King v. Burwell, Roberts seeks to reconcile these contradictions by appealing beyond the text of the Constitution and congressional statutes to employ background principles of equity in order to mitigate the extent of federal power and protect state sovereignty. By exploiting textual ambiguity to preserve some role for states against federal consolidation, Roberts employs the very judicial latitude in interpretation Brutus fears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long found that public support for social welfare is influenced by the prevalence of racial minority groups, especially African Americans. Our recent study, however, shows that today's American welfare state is becoming "immigrationalized": immigration has had an important impact on public welfare support (Garand et al., 2015). In this paper, the mechanisms through which immigration has influenced public welfare support in the US are examined. Whether or not Americans' support for welfare spending is influenced by racial and ethnic heterogeneity induced by immigrants or immigrants' heavy reliance on welfare is examined. Furthermore, the possibility that immigration attitudes could condition both processes is assessed. In order to test these mechanisms, macro-level contextual data on the actual population size and welfare consumption rates of immigrants are merged with micro-level public opinion data from the Cumulative American National Election Survey (CANES) for an extended time period from 1996 to 2012. Multilevel models suggest that immigration attitudes and the degree of immigrant welfare participation in one's home state combine to influence one's welfare attitudes. Individuals who reside in states with greater immigrant welfare participation rates and at the same time hold negative attitudes toward immigrants will decrease their welfare support the most. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do presidents pursue their policy goals when they face a hostile Congress? In this paper, I develop and test the claim that presidents revise laws at the state level through waivers when legislation is not a viable option, provided that enough governors are willing to cooperate. Few scholars have seriously considered that presidents might pursue subnational strategies in lieu of more conventional, national-level policymaking strategies. But presidents have indeed granted waivers to instigate state-level policy change in Medicaid, welfare, and education. While the literature on executive authority has yet to investigate this strategy, I argue that the time is ripe to explore when and why presidents revise laws at the state level through waivers. Building on existing work, I develop a theoretical framework that identifies the president's motivation for pursuing this subnational strategy. With an original dataset of waivers approved in secondary education, welfare, and Medicaid from 1984 through 2012,I test my central hypothesis and find initial support for the core claim that the president approves waivers when he is far from Congress, contingent on the percent of governors in his party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The party duopoly in the United States necessarily constrains the policy space to a single dimension. Although this simplifies electoral choice, two parties are insufficient to represent the plethora of interests in the electorate. Many voters are either ambivalent or discontent with the major parties. The emergence of third parties reflects this discontentment, which can be represented by the difference between major and third party manifestos. In this paper, I analyze these manifestos to provide a more comprehensive model of the US electoral space. I utilize a combination of the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) and Laver, Benoit, and Garry's (2003) Wordscore to generate policy positions for 38 third parties. I then examine the dimensionality of the policy space and find that third parties tend to occupy the far-left and far-right. Additionally, third parties enter the electoral contest on a series of issues not addressed by the major parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research extends and updates previous state environmental management research in the American states. As much comparative state environmental management research in the 1990s examined determinants of variation in environmental problems, these efforts have waned in recent years. This is largely due to 1) data collection challenges and changes over time; 2) multiple approaches for determining (defining) state management efficacy; and, 3) little consensus on what best constitutes environmental management/protection success or failure. Though it is well beyond the scope of any one paper to attempt to address all of these issue areas, we hope to begin through an examination of critical factors associated with our understanding of comparative state environmental management based on the introduction of a new variable that captures states' regulatory capacity to do so. The maturation of research by environmental scholars in the subfield has, over time, led to a more specialized focus on environmental media and, as a result, attention has moved away from the overall characterization of state environmental efforts. Though other important questions are examined by scholars in closely related areas, comparative state environmental effort is ripe for renewed exploration. Our goal is to revisit state environmental efforts across a host of economic, environmental, political, and social indicators. In developing this research, we construct factors demonstrated in the literature as robust representations for depicting a state's environmental management efforts through regulation. Our goal in this research, which is somewhat preliminary in that we are exploring relevant factors generally, is to isolate those indicators that explicitly and accurately depict a state's environmental standing vis-à-vis other states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. executive depends upon organized civil society to help set policy and facilitate its implementation. There are currently over one thousand authorized Federal Advisory Committees (FACs) in which such consultation takes place, including 160 that address matters of national security. FACs offer outside organizations, including business firms, voluntary associations, relief organizations, universities, and other private enterprises an important opportunity to exert influence over the direction of foreign policy. I argue that this influence primarily involves covertly helping the administration plan and execute a political strategy for securing consent to pursue a chosen policy. This paper offers an analysis of FAC appointments between 1997 and 2012, based on data published by the General Services Administration, which I have extended in several ways. It has three core empirical findings. First, consistent with the literature on the "two-presidencies" thesis, these data show that congressional involvement is much lower in national security FACs than in other policy domains. Second, these data show that association appointments increase for FACs addressing the most contentious geopolitical issues when the opposition has a more powerful, unified caucus in Congress. Third, association appointments increase when the president is popular among the public. This supports the proposition that interest group access improves when the executive needs help with its political strategy, to mobilize the public as a means to overcome an oppositional Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present findings from a grant-funded initiative to replace a traditional, proprietary textbook with an open content textbook under a Creative Commons license in the introductory American government course (POLS 1101) at Middle Georgia State University. While open content does have considerable promise for reducing the financial costs to students enrolled in the course, our experiences suggest that there are substantial hidden challenges to the adoption of open content textbooks that may make their widespread use infeasible without considerable investments in supporting materials. We recommend that faculty and other decision-makers who are considering the adoption of open content in courses seriously consider issues of sustainability and instructional support, as well as student out-of-pocket costs, in their adoption decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lower-income citizens in the United States have distinct partisan and policy preferences from higher-income citizens. Lower-income citizens, however, have been numerically underrepresented in policymaking institutions throughout most of American history. This numerical underrepresentation of the working class is potentially problematic because members of Congress are consistently more responsive toward upper income constituents. This bias toward upper income constituents may be a result of the fact that members themselves are disproportionately wealthy. This paper seeks to determine what relationships actually exist on the basis of legislator wealth and how this compares to the general public. To ascertain this, we utilize data from Roll Call, which each year since 1990 has reviewed the financial disclosures of all 535 senators and representatives to determine the 50 richest members of Congress. For the first time, the report derived from forms covering calendar year 2014 went a step further by publishing a ranking of every single lawmaker by their minimum net worth. Our analysis finds that there is not a straightforward relationship with legislator wealth and ideology. There is, however, a strong relationship with the race and wealth of a legislator. The wealthiest members of Congress tend to be disproportionately white Democrats and the least wealthy members non- whites. Along with being more likely to be white, controlling for other factors relatively wealthy members of Congress tend to be more liberal, older, and tend to represent wealthier constituencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan as a civil theological contrivance written as a remedy for the social distress of his time and to compare Hobbes's construction with both Plato's Republic, a work rich in civil theological implications of its own. Moreover, the paper will examine recent trends in the United States that have seen civil theology become a significant factor in contemporary American political thought and practice. This factor can be viewed as an integral part of the conservative political agenda, particularly among a group of conservatives influenced by Leo Strauss, the neoconservatives. A critical question is thus posed: does this religious factor constitute a civil theology in the Hobbesian sense and, if so, to what degree? [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]

Although the literature on congressional change has established that both the House and Senate have become increasingly polarized along party lines over time, this conclusion is limited primarily to patterns of voting behavior. An exploration of another legislative practice, bill cosponsorship, reveals that while partisan polarization in the House has increased over time, the same is not necessarily true for the Senate. Using data on bill cosponsorship for the 93rd through 110th Congresses, this paper presents two conclusions. First, over time, House members have become more exclusive in their cosponsorship decisions, associating primarily with members of their own party. Second, and in contrast to this, the cosponsorship ties among senators have become more bipartisan; in recent years, more senators have adopted ?50-50 networks,? or cosponsorship networks composed of equal numbers of members from both parties. These results suggest that the increasing partisan polarization for which this era has become known may not be as prevalent as we have thought. Rather, when we scratch below the surface of roll call behavior and explore the informal relationship-building activities of legislators, we find that differences in the institutional structures of the House and Senate, such as membership size and length of term, may create different behavioral outcomes in each chamber. This paper contributes to our understanding of congressional development by examining the polarization story from a new angle and recognizing that the House and Senate are two unique institutions, each requiring its own theoretical framework to be understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on a research paper by Joshua C. Huder of the University of Florida, Florida which evaluates the U.S. Congress developmental history. This paper analyses public reform attempts in uncovering the larger patterns in congressional development. This paper also uses a content analysis of the articles newspaper "Washington Post" to analyze congressional reform in the public sphere.