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In this paper, I argue that issues play an important role in determining many individuals' ideological identification. A wealth of research has been written on how ideological identification helps individuals form opinions about political issues. I argue that for some people the causal relationship works in reverse, fueled by a focus on cues from political elites and the media. The results of the analysis show that when taking into account a reciprocal relationship between self-reported ideology and positions taken on particular political issues, the link from issue positions to ideology is consistently significant for a number of different model specifications and the link from ideology to issue positions disappears. The data suggest that individuals use issue positions to structure their ideological orientations, and not the reverse. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the consequences of the ceding of agenda control to majority leadership in the U.S. House during the period of Democratic control. It focuses on the continuing consequences of strengthened political parties for decision making from the 1990s onward. It provides an outline of significant changes in the Democratic reform era, and of subsequent institutional developments.

We build upon Ragsdale?s theory of presidential speech by incorporating theories derived from the election timing literature, specifically the political surfing hypothesis. We use both real & perceived economic conditions as a means to predict speech [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the creation of theoretical predictions about how economic conditions should affect presidential speechmaking in the U.S. incorporating theories drawn from Ragsdale's election timing literature. Differences between election timing decision and speechmaking; Factors that influence the decision making of right-wing and left-wing governments on whether to call elections early; Findings on the role of economic factors when a president decides to deliver a public address.

In this paper we focus on a previously unexamined route for constituency preferences to influence Congressional voting behavior. Jacoby and Schneider (2001) find that public opinion (as measured through state partisanship) plays a strong role in determining state policy priorities. States allocate resources to meet societal needs in different ways. These allocations are variable across states (Gray 1999; Nathan 1996; Rivlin 1992), and when measured can give us a good idea about what types of programs specific states like to spend their money on. States that prefer certain groups of programs to others usually do so because there is a constituency base that prefers these groups of programs. We argue that these state policy priorities should have an effect independent of other variables on the voting behavior of state delegations to the US Congress.The measure of state policy priorities is calculated using state general expenditures in 15 policy areas. Jacoby and Schneider (2001) find that state spending tends to group into two different categories, particularized benefits and collective goods. We hypothesize that delegations from states which focus spending on collective goods will be more likely to support collective goods policies with roll call votes in Congress, while state delegations from states which focus spending on particularized benefits will be more likely to support policies addressing particularized benefits. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]