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While complementary in many ways, the cartel and the conditional party government (CPG) theories of legislative party power have disparate expectations for the stability of the majority party’s negative agenda control. Cartel theorists contend that negative agenda control is relatively constant over time, while CPG proponents suggest that this type of veto power varies with intra-party preference cohesion and inter-party preference distinction. In this article, we enter this debate by considering an alternative and under-explored indicator of negative agenda control: participation in discharge petition efforts. Our findings demonstrate the instability of the majority party’s ability to control discharge efforts, with majority party (co)sponsors showing a significantly greater likelihood of ‘waffling’ during periods of stronger party unity and more vigorous leadership power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although discharge petitions lie at the confluence of personal preferences, committee prerogatives, and party leadership in Congress, these procedures have received little scholarly scrutiny. We capitalize on the public nature of petition signatures since 1993 to examine the behavior of the most cross-pressured members in discharge battles: bill sponsors and cosponsors belonging to the majority party who personally prefer the bills they have sponsored but who face party pressure not to sign the petitions that threaten the leadership's control of the legislative agenda. After controlling for personal preferences, we find a statistically significant partisan effect in the U.S. House, which further illuminates the "Where's the party?" debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, public support can play a crucial role in the decisions to initiate and terminate military action. Some scholars argue that the public holds "prudent" opinions regarding the use of the military—supporting efforts to stop aggression but not to engage in nation building. We argue that what seems like a "prudent" opinion may be driven more by the White House's rhetoric. Experimental tests show that the rhetorical complexity has a more powerful impact on the respondent's support for military action than the actual policy goal, although this result is substantially tempered by political awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern South is a thriving region that is increasingly like the rest of the United States; however, that has not always been the case. Indeed, the political history of the American South is one that has been focused on the integration of this historically underdeveloped region into the remainder of American society, economically (especially in terms of labor markets), politically, judicially, and socially. And, even as the South has become increasingly similar to the rest of the country, it remains an especially important region for the balance of national political power. In this essay, I describe a class I teach on Southern Politics, explaining how I have organized it around topics critical to an understanding of American political development, and I describe the innovative pedagogical perspective I bring to the class (rooting the course in the labor economics of slavery and the "peculiar institution's" long-term consequences). I also discuss in some detail the importance of this class for American students as they try to understand America's development as a nation and the lessons that can be learned by international students from the South's experiences, providing some qualitative evidence of the course's impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. In this article, we explore whether African-American state legislators have been able to translate election to office into positions of power, particularly as committee chairs. Methods. We cull data from all state legislative chambers that contained a black legislator during two time periods, 1989 and 1999. In doing so, we compare the observed numbers of African-American chairs with their expected numbers. We also examine each state's percentage of black chairs using multiple regression to determine what factors—political, partisan, institutional, cultural—influence the selection of black committee chairs. Results. Overall, our descriptive analysis reveals that blacks are underrepresented as chairs. They are not, however, significantly underrepresented as chairs of the most important committees and they are generally overrepresented as chairs of committees with jurisdiction over social services. Our multivariate analyses show that the prevalence of black chairs is driven primarily by factors related to partisan control of legislative chambers and size of the black legislative delegation, and that these dynamics have changed over time. Conclusion. Although the increase in African-American state legislators has led to an increase in substantive leadership roles, these positions have been limited almost entirely to chambers where the black caucus is a critical element of a Democratic majority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a 1996 pre-election survey, the causes and consequences of public approval of Republican congressional leaders in the 1990s are examined. Specifically, this article explores the extent of opinion formation regarding House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and then attempts to account for the sources of these attitudes using multivariate models. Comparing and contrasting these findings as appropriate with what is known regarding public attitudes toward other political entities, the article reveals in particular that economic evaluations work differently for congressional leaders than for either the president or Congress as an institution. In a second section, the electoral ramifications of public attitudes toward Speaker Gingrich in the1996 elections are examined, determining that even in the presence of a host of powerful controls public evaluations of the speaker exercised a significant influence on respondents' vote choice, not just in congressional races also far down-ticket, a finding that supports a party-oriented model of legislative organisation. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the ability of these results to be generalised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the growing empirical literature on filibusters by examining the factors that are associated with individual-level filibustering behavior. We focus particularly on the behavior of senators in the latter part of their careers, using impending retirement as analytical leverage to determine whether decisions to engage or not in dilatory parliamentary practices are driven more by narrowly drawn considerations of instrumental utility or by compliance with institutional norms of deference and cooperation. Using data from 1975 to 1993 and employing multivariate models that allow us to control for other relevant factors, we find only limited support for a narrowly rational model of Senate “followership.” In the course of our enquiry, we clarify the notion of legislative norms, integrate our study with recent interdisciplinary scholarship on the evolution of cooperative behavior and consider how leadership can be exercised in environments largely bereft of formal leadership resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on committee outliers in State Legislatures. This paper focuses on recent work exploring the prevalence of outlying committees in The U.S. state legislatures. Using an expanded sample of 45 states and measures of legislator preferences generated by a single, federated group, it has been found that most legislative committees are representative of the parent chambers from which their members are selected. Furthermore, multivariate models designed to account for theoretically relevant patterns in variations in outlier percentages among control and non-control committees have been tested

Examines the contact theory, community context, and public attitudes toward gay men and lesbians in the U.S. Alleviation of the problems by reconceptualization of the notion of contact; Effect of community context on citizen attitudes to homosexuals; Importance of public policies and group strategies on openness in sexual orientation.

Presents information on a study which examined the prevalence of committee outliers in the lower houses of a sample of 12 states in the United States. Methodology of the study; Results and discussion on the study; Conclusions.

Discusses the impact of African-American constituency preferences on the roll-call behavior of senators during Supreme Court confirmations by examining the 1967 vote on Thurgood Marshall. Previous research; Supreme Court nomination of Thurgood Marshall; Models and analyses.

Analyzes the confirmation vote by the United States Senate for the appointment of Justice Clarence Thomas using factors of ideological, demographic, and electoral measures of constituent pressures. Significance of racial and ideology variables; Development of mathematical models to analyze variable results; Future implications on the selection process for minority government figures.

Tests the hypothesis that members of the United States Congress are socialized into certain attitudes concerning interbranch comity or rivalry early during their tenures in office. Use of a multivariate regression model; Members of Congress' `socialized to opposition' mentality; Congress members as more amenable to leadership from presidents of their own party.

Discusses reelection constituencies and the politics of Supreme Court confirmation votes in the United States. Conceptualization of constituency; Impact of geographic and reelection racial race; Insights on cross pressures facing senators as they decide for Clarence Thomas confirmation.

Using a logistical regression model and an analysis of the legislative history of the nuclear freeze proposals in the U.S. House of Representatives, this paper disputes previous findings and argues that constituency preferences exercised considerable influence on the disposition of the freeze issue. This influence was visible at the roll-call stage in 1982 and at earlier stages of the legislative process in 1983. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using survey data from the 2008 election cycle, this article updates and extends analysis of public attitudes regarding various aspects of homosexuality. Continued expansion of public belief in a biological root to homosexuality is found, and variations in such opinions are explored. Public attitudes toward the emerging issue of gay adoption is also examined, finding both similarities with and important differences from attitudes toward same-sex civil unions, although both are profoundly influenced by underlying attitudes regarding the causes of homosexuality.