the european court of justice national governments and legal integration in the european union we develop a game theoretic model of the conditions under which the european court of justice can be expected to take adverse judgments against european union member governments and when the governments are likely to abide by these decisions the model generates three hypotheses first the greater the clarity of eu case law precedent the lesser the likelihood that the court will tailor its decisions to the anticipated reactions of member governments second the greater the domestic costs of an ecj ruling to a litigant government the lesser the likelihood that the litigant government will abide by it and hence the lesser the likelihood that the court will make such a ruling third the greater the activism of the ecj and the larger the number of member governments adversely affected by it the greater the likelihood that responses by litigant governments will move from individual noncompliance to coordinated retaliation through new legislation or treaty revisions these hypotheses are tested against three broad lines of case law central to ecj jurisprudence bans on agricultural imports application of principles of equal treatment of the sexes to occupational pensions and state liability for violation of eu law the empirical analysis supports our view that though influenced by legal precedent the ecj also takes into account the anticipated reactions of member governments

party systems and electoral volatility in latin america a test of economic institutional and structural explanations three different theoretical explanations are tested for the exceptionally high level of electoral volatility found in contemporary latin america economic voting institutional characteristics of political regimes and party systems and the structure and organization of class cleavages a pooled cross sectional time series regression analysis is conducted on 58 congressional elections and 43 presidential elections in 16 latin american countries during the 1980s and 1990s institutional variables have the most consistent effect on volatility while the influence of economic performance is heavily contingent upon the type of election and whether the dependent variable is operationalized as incumbent vote change or aggregate electoral volatility the results demonstrate that electoral volatility is a function of short term economic perturbations the institutional fragilities of both democratic regimes and party systems and relatively fluid cleavage structures

why democracies produce efficient results by applying the standard tools of microeconomic analysis i argue that democratic markets work as well as economic markets in particular i show that previous work has greatly exaggerated the existence of principal agent and informational problems in electoral markets and has drawn incorrect conclusions

policy rivalry among industrial states what can we learn from models of strategic trade policy the economic theory of international trade has changed dramatically over the last decade by admitting into its mainstream a body of literature that focuses on the implications of monopolistic and oligopolistic elements in international markets by applying the tools of the new industrial organization in an international context two new classes of models have emerged models of intra industry trade and models of strategic trade policy the policy implications of models of strategic trade policy were quite disturbing for the economics profession since these models demonstrated that the classical harmony between national and cosmopolitan welfare maximization does not exist if one assumes opportunities for strategic manipulation of oligopolistic international industries this article reviews two prominent models of strategic trade policy the brander spencer model and the krugman model and relates them to more familiar earlier concepts such as stackelberg s asymmetrical duopoly solution and the venerable infant industry argument for government intervention the primary purpose of this article however is to provide a synopsis of the large literature addressing the question of whether models of strategic trade policy can give guidance for government policy

less filling tastes great the realist neoliberal debate this essay examines and reformulates the realist neoliberal debate focusing initially on the issue of the attribution of goals to states we argue that not only are goals merely the epiphenomena of other things but also that their specification constitutes but a re description of strategic environments that is although an attribution of goals may contribute to our characterization of outcomes a discussion of them is not central to the development of a theory that explains and predicts the outbreak of conflict and the patterns of cooperation instead we argue that the realist neoliberal debate should be recast so that our central research agenda is the development of substantively specific models that allow us to ascertain how the equilibrium to a game in which states structure international affairs influences the types of issue specific subgames states play how countries coordinate to equilibria of different types how we can characterize the coordination problems associated with different equilibria how states can enhance the attractiveness of an equilibrium and how states can signal commitments to the strategies that are part of that equilibrium

legislative professionalism and incumbent reelection the development of institutional boundaries it is well established that legislators from highly professionalized bodies are more likely to win reelection than members of less professionalized legislatures we find that the effect of professionalization on incumbent electoral success is far more pervasive as the level of professionalism of a legislature increases the effects of external political and economic forces such as coattails from higher level elections and national economic conditions on a legislator s chances for reelection diminish in strength this implies that legislative professionalization promotes institutionalization by establishing boundaries that insulate members from external shocks we reach these conclusions by specifying and testing a district level model of state legislative election outcomes using as dependent variable the probability that an incumbent will win reelection the model is estimated with probit using data for more than 42 000 state legislators from 1970 to 1989 w hat determines whether a legislator seeking reelection will win we address this question by paying particular attention to the role of professionalization of legislatures in influencing the electoral success of members we know that american legislators are highly likely to win reelection garand 1991 jacobson 1987 king 1991 we also know that those from highly professionalized institutions have even better odds than those from less professionalized bodies as the former have greater resources for travel to their districts holbrook and tidmarch 1991 for casework cox and morgenstern 1993 1995 king 1991 and for devoting time and energy to campaign activities carey niemi and powell 2000 we maintain however that professionalism does more than boost the electoral prospects of incumbents it changes members relationships with the legislature s political and economic environment in particular professionalization promotes legislative institutionalization by

a broken public americans responses to the great recession did americans respond to the recent great recession by demanding that government provide policy solutions to rising income insecurity an expectation of state of the art theorizing on the dynamics of mass opinion or did the recession erode support for government activism in line with alternative scholarship pointing to economic factors having the reverse effect we find that public support for government social programs declined sharply between 2008 and 2010 yet both fixed effects and repeated survey analyses suggest economic change had little impact on policy attitude formation what accounts for these surprising developments we consider alternative microfoundations emphasizing the importance of prior beliefs and biases to the formation of policy attitudes analyzing the general social surveys panel our results suggest political partisanship has been central gallup and evaluations of government and society surveys provide further evidence against the potentially confounding scenario of government o

let the good times roll the economic expectations of u s voters increasingly the concept of expectation is utilized to explain political choices with voters being depicted as prospective rather than retrospective in their orientations this paper tests competing theories of economic expectations forecasts with data from consumer surveys 1960 91 forecasts of inflation confirm the hypothesis of adaptive expectations but forecasts of general economic conditions do not nor do those forecasts conform to rational expectations instead voter forecasts of economic conditions are prone to a significant asymmetry while good economic times tend to foster optimism in an adaptive fashion bad times do not similarly feed pessimism instead they trigger a reverse forecast we explore this remarkable behavior in the light of psychological economics

on the demand for natural gas in urban china abstract using a set of unbalanced panel data for chinese s cities during the period of 2006 2009 this study aims to estimate the price and income elasticities of residential demand for natural gas natural gas consumption is specified as a function of its own price substitute prices urban wages and other supply climate and housing characteristics using a feasible generalised least squares fgls technique which controls for panel heteroskedasticity and panel correlation we find that natural gas consumption is price elastic and income inelastic when other covariates e g the supply of natural gas pipeline and heating degree days are controlled in addition there are large variations in demand behaviours across china s regions there is a substantial income effect on demand for natural gas in southern china whereas the northern regions are found to have a higher price effect in addition the substitution effect between coal and natural gas is significant in north china but is not significant in south china these findings have several important policy implications for natural gas pricing and supply cost analysis in the context of china

testing economic theories of voter behaviour using micro data three hypotheses often encountered in economic analyses of voter behaviour are tested using an extensive data set derived from six consecutive national election studies in the netherlands in the period 1971 1986 these hypotheses are i the party choice and turnout decisions are taken sequentially and independently by voters ii social gorups play a central role in the decisionmaking processes in the political sphere iii the effect of individual level variables on party choice is stable over time the results provide support for the first hypothesis and partial support for the second where the specific categorization of individuals to be chosen is a matter that needs further investigation the third hypothesis is rejected by the data the relationship between the variables chosen and party choice proved to be unstable

general economic conditions and national elections the fact that economic conditions influence voters is a leading commonplace of conversation in election years the question is is this fact in fact a fact despite the overwhelming popularity of the fact it has received neither an explicit theoretical analysis presumably because it is so obvious that economic adversity should create political adversaries nor until recently a satisfactory statistical analysis gerald h kramer has presented a multivariate analysis of congressional elections which would strongly suggest that fluctuations in the rate of unemployment have no appreciable effect upon elections but that fluctuations in per capita real income are influential in the following pages i propose to 1 reaffirm his finding on the electoral unimportance of ordinary fluctuations in unemployment 2 argue that contrary to kramer fluctuations in real income also do not have important electoral effects and 3 present an argument based upon rational voter behavior for the unimportance of general economic conditions in national elections

power politics and international trade r recent literature attributes the relative scarcity of open international markets to the prisoner s dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade we argue that the prisoner s dilemma representation does not reflect the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in an anarchic international system namely their security externalities we consider these external effects explicitly doing so leads us to two conclusions 1 free trade is more likely within rather than across political military alliances and 2 alliances are more likely to evolve into free trade coalitions if they are embedded in bipolar systems than in multipolar systems using data drawn from an 80 year period beginning in 1905 we test these hypotheses the results of the analysis make it clear that alliances do have a direct statistically significant and large impact on bilateral trade flows and that this relationship is stronger in bipolar rather than in multipolar systems in the early 1970s students of international relations began what would become a long and heated debate about the political correlates of open international markets recently however an important element of consensus has begun to emerge most contributors to this debate now seem to agree that the prisoner s dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade explains the relative dearth of open international markets here we argue that what has become the standard prisoner s dilemma representation neglects the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in the anarchic international system namely their security externalities we consider these external effects explicitly in order to do so we construct and analyze a simple game theoretic model the results of this analysis demonstrate that tariff games between allies differ systematically from those played between actual or potential adversaries these differences imply that free trade is more likely within rather than across political military alliances however our analysis also suggests that the evolutionary prospects of alliances vary those that are the products of bipolar systems are more likely to evolve into free trade coalitions than are their multipolar counterparts less credible exit threats and clearer responsibilities for alliance stability explain the advantage of a bipolar system we test this argument using data drawn from an 80 year period beginning in 1905 the empirical analysis supports our argument it demonstrates that alliances have a direct statistically significant and large effect upon bilateral trade moreover it shows that on average alliances have a much stronger effect on trade in a bipolar than in a multipolar world 2

substituting the end for the whole why voters respond primarily to the election year economy according to numerous studies the election year economy influences presidential election results far more than cumulative growth throughout the term here we describe a series of surveys and experiments that point to an intriguing explanation for this pattern that runs contrary to standard political science explanations but one that accords with a large psychological literature voters we find actually intend to judge presidents on cumulative growth however since that characteristic is not readily available to them voters inadvertently substitute election year performance because it is more easily accessible this end heuristic explanation for voters election year emphasis reflects a general tendency for people to simplify retrospective assessments by substituting conditions at the end for the whole the end heuristic explanation also suggests a remedy a way to align voters actions with their intentions providing people with the attribute they are seeking cumulative growth eliminates the election year emphasis

the gains debate framing state choice the theoretical bifurcation of international relations theory into neo realist and neo liberal camps has resulted in a gains debate that says little about an empirical world in which states exhibit both relative and absolute gains pursuit this article deploys prospect theory in an attempt to move beyond the gains debate the intent here is synthetic by bringing the predictions of both perspectives under a single theoretical umbrella we can model a broader set of state behavior the thesis developed demonstrates that states in a gains frame pursue absolute gains and are risk averse while states in a losses frame pursue relative gains and are risk acceptant this hypothesis is assessed against the behavior of the european community in the formation of the montreal protocol a regime intended to protect the earth s protective ozone shield the new model accurately predicts the timing and content of shifts in ec preferences suggesting that a synthesis of realist and liberal approaches is possible

a dynamic model of voter behavior and the demand for public goods among social groups in great britain abstract a dynamic model of voter behavior is discussed explaining transitions in party choice by imputed party responsibilities with respect to public and private consumption possibilities the model uses a group framework to explicitly describe voter interests it allows for an estimation of the relative preference for public goods as determined by the revealed preference mechanism of voting the model is compared to popularity functions in their general form an empirical application to great britain is presented it appears that retired individuals have the highest relative preferences for public goods followed by housewives men manual workers self employed and non manual workers

uninformed votes information effects in presidential elections theory recent scholarship has emphasized the potential importance of cues information shortcuts and statistical aggregation processes in allowing relatively uninformed citizens to act individually or collectively as if they were fully informed hypotheses uninformed voters successfully use cues and information shortcuts to behave as if they were fully informed failing that individual deviations from fully informed voting cancel out in a mass electorate producing the same aggregate election outcome as if voters were fully informed methods hypothetical fully informed vote choices are imputed to individual voters using the observed relationship between political information and vote choices for voters with similar social and demographic characteristics estimated by probit analysis of data from national election study surveys conducted after the six most recent united states presidential elections results both hypotheses are clearly disconfirmed at the individual level the average deviation of actual vote probabilities from hypothetical fully informed vote probabilities was about ten percentage points in the electorate as a whole these deviations were significantly diluted by aggregation but by no means eliminated incumbent presidents did almost five percentage points better and democratic candidates did almost two percentage points better than they would have if voters had in fact been fully informed

bread and peace voting in u s presidential elections a simple bread and peace model shows that aggregate votes forpresident in postwar elections were determined entirely byweighted average growth of real disposable personal income percapita during the incumbent party s term and the cumulativenumbers of american military personnel killed in action as aresult of u s intervention in the korean and vietnamese civilwars the model is subjected to robustness tests against twenty two variations in functional form inspired by the extensiveliterature on presidential voting not one of these variationsadds value to the bread and peace model or significantly perturbsits coefficients

entrenching the yoshida defense doctrine three techniques for institutionalization japan s level of defense expenditure relative to tbe size of its economy bas long been uniquely low among the major industrialized countries as of 1995 japan s expenditures stood at 0 96 percent of gross domestic product gdp even adding to this tbe approximately 0 3 percent of gdp devoted to pensions for retired personnel the level of spending is considerably less than that of major westem states such as tbe united states united kingdom france and germany as well as industrialized asian states such as south korea taiwan malaysia and singapore furthermore these relative magnitudes have remained reasonably stable over tbe past few decades see table 1 defense expenditure as a percentage of gdp or gnp gross national product often referred to simply as defense burden has over tbe past few decades become the standard benchmark for measuring a state s relative contribution to international security because of this tbe appropriateness and consequences of japan s relatively low expenditure of national wealth on defense bave been hotly debated botb in japan and abroad critics accuse japan of unfairly exploiting a defense free ride to build its economic success and others worry that japan s lack of military capabilities prevents it from becoming a normal state whose political role is commensurate

partisan preferences electoral prospects and economic expectations research shows that economic expectations reflect partisan preferences those who support the current government tend to think the future will go well at least by comparison with those who oppose the government but there always is uncertainty surrounding the political future especially in the period before elections this article considers whether the uncertainty matters specifically it examines whether people s economic expectations are conditional on their own estimates of who will win the analysis relies on data from five election study panels in the united states and the united kingdom both majoritarian systems where the effects of partisan winning and losing are most likely the results imply that people in these countries do anticipate election outcomes that is economic expectations prior to elections reflect both the political present and future this tells us not only that expectations in these systems are substantially rational but that politics plays a much bigger role in our economic

benchmarking across borders electoral accountability and the necessity of comparison when the economy in a single country contracts voters often punish the government when many economies contract voters turn against their governments much less frequently this suggests that the international context matters for the domestic vote yet most research on electoral accountability assumes that voters treat their national economies as autarkic we decompose two key economic aggregates growth in real gross domestic product and unemployment into their international and domestic components and demonstrate that voters hold incumbents more electorally accountable for the domestic than for the international component of growth voters in a wide variety of democracies benchmark national economic growth against that abroad punishing rewarding incumbents for national outcomes that underperform outperform an international comparison tests suggest that this effect arises not from highly informed voters making direct comparisons but from pre benchmarking by the media when reporting on the economy the effect of benchmarked growth exceeds that of aggregate national growth by up to a factor of two and outstrips the international component of growth by an even larger margin implying that previous research may have underestimated the strength of the economy on the vote

expectations and preferences in british general elections t a te address two questions how do people form their expectations about the likely winner of the next general election and what are the links between expectations and votes using v v data collected by the gallup organization in great britain we find that the expectations formation process 1 has a significant inertia component but also a rapid adjustment to current information 2 reflects voters ability to translate economic expectations into political forecasts and 3 is time bounded possessing special characteristics immediately before and after a general election the analysis also confirms the existence of a small bandwagon effect whereby expectations that one party will win inflate that party s vote the ability of voters to make reasonable forecasts without being unduly influenced by their own preferences suggests that under normal circumstances voters are expressing real preferences and not simply following the crowd

rational choice and turnout turning out to vote is the most common and important act of political participation in any democracy voting is also less well understood and explained empirically than other political acts engaged in regularly by citizens turnout however presents a special problem for rational choice theories of politics for it is taken to be the paradigmatic example of the problem of collective action in which although all may benefit from voting it is rarely in the individual s self interest to vote this paper begins by examining the problem of explaining turnout a basic form of rational choice models of turnout is developed basic in the sense that it is common to all such models this basic model is shown to be incomplete and the two most important models the calculus of voting and the minimax regret model are illustrated as alternative ways to complete this basic model along with mention of game theoretic models their strengths and weaknesses are then assessed the remainder of the paper argues that rational choice accounts of turnout are possible the first step is to argue that turnout is not an especially problematic version of the collective action problem because it is for many a low cost low expected benefit decision a strategic politicians account of turnout and campaigns is examined next a reinterpretation of the intrinsic benefits of voting is then considered and is used to examine the most important substantive problem in the turnout literature its decline these steps i argue make theories of ordinary political decisions at once both more political and more integrated into the politics of the larger system

an economic analysis of voting in sweden using data from the swedish election studies between 1985 and 1994 supplemented with time series on inflation and unemployment i compare the impact of macro and microeconomic variables on the individual vote the principal finding is that macroeconomic variables influence the vote a bit more than microeconomic variables do in consequence both self interest and public interest appear to be important explanations of economic voting in sweden macroeconomic variables have however been much more influential in determining election outcomes since previous studies of economic voting have used cross sectional data only it is also worth noting that panel estimates indicate a much greater impact of macroeconomic variables on the individual vote than cross sectional estimates do

side payments versus security cards domestic bargaining tactics in international economic negotiations the literature on international economic cooperation has devoted relatively little attention to domestic bargaining tactics and their determinants recent scholarship has tended to stress the utility and frequency of side payments while discounting other prominent bargaining tactics and a broader understanding of tactical choice this article argues that policymakers choose among domestic bargaining tactics to garner support when faced with situations in which other government officials or societal interest groups block the ratification of international economic agreements focusing on offers of side payments and attempts at issue redefinition the article s findings suggest that differences in domestic resistance to proposals of material compensation and in external security threat may explain choices between those tactics in domestic bargaining

comparative economic voting britain france germany italy likelihood of a vote for the incumbent coalition in contrast personal economic circumstances no matter how measured demonstrate nonexistent to weak effects on vote choice overall economic conditions emerge as a relatively important vote determinant when a more properly specified general multi equation model of the vote is estimated economics shows itself to be as powerful as traditional factors used to explain the western european vote in particular economic variables exceed the impact of partisan identification in britain and roughly equal it in germany moreover the economic variables exercise more influence than the social cleavages of class and religion everywhere except italy

the geopolitics of cross border electricity grids the israeli arab case abstract countries often attempt to establish regional electricity grids however whereas research on natural resources frequently seeks to understand policy outcome through a geopolitical prism when it comes to electricity studies the prism is always economic or technical hence this study is a first attempt to identify the geopolitical dimension of cross border electricity grids the study argues that success in establishing electricity grids requires identifying how the geopolitical dimension interplays with the physical dimension to examine the role of these geopolitical bottlenecks the study examines negotiation protocols spanning over 15 years on establishing ten grid connections between israel and its arab neighbors it finds that electricity geopolitics has been used both as a platform for deeper international cooperation and as a stick against neighboring states when policies are driven by a peace dividend proposals for grid connection appear to evolve and overcome the dependency and the security economy bottlenecks when relations deteriorate proposals for grid connections appear to undergo reconsideration and to be held hostage by higher politics if when and how electricity grids materialize is a function of the nature of the electricity network as a twofold package and of the ability of the planning process to accommodate geopolitical uncertainty

the vp function a survey of the literature on vote and popularity functions after 25 years vp functions explain the support for the government at votes and polls by economic and political variables most studies analyze macro time series we also cover studies of individual voters socio economic groups and regional cross sections the theory starts from the responsibil ity hypothesis voters hold the government responsible for economic conditions it works in two party block systems but not else voters in most countries are found to be sociotropic egotropic voting also occurs voters myopia is well established voting is retrospective as expectations are static it costs the average government almost 2 of the vote to rule

what price accountability the lucas island model and the politics of monetary policy this paper develops a model of an electoral cycle in inflation and output based on rational inflation expectations and rational retrospective voting voters are heterogeneous and partially informed about aggregate macroeconomic variables they observe precisely how monetary policy stimulates their local economies but their observations of economic activity in other sectors are imprecise voters extract information about the incumbent policymaker s economic competence from cross sectoral spillover effects the incumbent has incentives to generate preelection monetary surprises that stimulate the local economies and generate cross sectoral spillover effects he thereby creates an impression of economic competence and furthers his reelection prospects his policy manipulations are the price of political accountability on a positive note the incumbent is more likely to survive voter scrutiny if he is more competent than the average political candidate

russian voting and the initial economic shock of hyperinflation this paper addresses the issue of economicvoting in transitional democracies using data from the russianfederal elections it argues that the shock of inflation thatfollowed the fundamental economic reform has a lastinginfluence on voters specifically it shows that in russia where inflationary policy led to hyperinflation and thewidespread loss of personal savings the magnitude of savingslost at that time continues to explain a significant portionof the variation in the regional support for the communistparty in parliamentary and presidential elections

a model of the political economy of the united states we develop and test a model of joint determination of economic growth and national election results in the united states the formal model which combines developments in the rational choice analysis of the behavior of economic agents and voters leads to a system of equations in which the dependent variables are the growth rate and the vote shares in presidential and congressional elections our estimates support the theoretical claims that growth responds to unanticipated policy shifts and that voters use both on year and midterm elections to balance the two parties on the other hand we find no support for rational retrospective voting we do reconfirm in a fully simultaneous framework the naive retrospective voting literature s finding that the economy has a strong effect on presidential voting we find congressional elections unaffected by the economy except as transmitted by presidential coattails

guns butter and anarchy a state in the international system implicit in realism must allocate its limited resources between satisfying its intrinsically valued ends and the means of military power i formalize this guns versus butter problem in a simple infinite horizon model in which two states must continually decide how to allocate their resources and whether to attack the other state the analysis establishes sufficient conditions to ensure the existence of an equilibrium in which neither state attacks shows that there is a strictly pareto dominant pair of peaceful equilibrium payoffs characterizes the unique peaceful markov perfect equilibrium that yields them and describes the comparative statics of the equilibrium allocations more broadly the analysis also suggests that the notion of anarchy has little if any substantive significance distinctively related to international politics and that the problem of absolute and relative gains is superfluous

revealed preferences for public goods applying a model of voter behavior most analyses of preferences for government supplied goods disregard the fact that in a democratic society these preferences are revealed by an individual choice the vote in this paper this is taken account of in a model explaining the dynamics in voting behavior in a multi party system the model assumes that voters may be categorized into k groups of individuals pursuing the same interests who remember how parties do in representing these interests given the level to which they are held responsible for government policy the model allows one to estimate party identification sensitiveness to economic performances time preference and relative preferences for public versus private goods all for each of the groups furthermore the model allows for an estimation of the level to which various parties are held responsible for government policies

partisan bias in inflation expectations we examine partisan bias in inflation expectations our dataset includes inflation expectations of the new york fed s survey of consumer expectations over the period june 2013 to june 2018 the results show that inflation expectations were 0 46 points higher in republican dominated than in democratic dominated us states when barack obama was us president compared to inflation expectations in democratic dominated states inflation expectations in republican dominated states declined by 0 73 points when donald trump became president we employ the blinder oaxaca decomposition method to disentangle the extent to which political ideology and other individual characteristics predict inflation expectations around 25 of the total difference between inflation expectations in democratic dominated versus republican dominated states is based on how partisans respond to changes in the white house s occupant partisan bias the results also corroborate the belief that voters misperceptions of economic conditions decline when the president belongs to the party that voters support

an information rationale for the power of special interests political decisions are often biased in favor of special interests at the expense of the general public and they are frequently inefficient in the sense that the losses incurred by the majority exceed the gains enjoyed by the minority this article explains the bias in terms of information asymmetries and the free rider problem first incumbents increase their reelection prospects by biasing policy toward groups that are better able to monitor their activities second because smaller groups are better able to overcome the free rider problem of costly monitoring policy will be biased in their favor third the effect of asymmetric monitoring on voter welfare is ambiguous the inefficiencies created by the policy bias are offset by a positively valued selection bias incumbents of above average quality are more likely to survive voter scrutiny than are low quality types

the security dilemma revisited robert jervis s article cooperation under the security dilemma is among the most important works in international relations of the past few decades in it jervis develops two essential arguments first he explains that the security dilemma is the key to understanding how in an anarchic international system states with fundamentally compatible goals still end up in competition and at war the security dilemma exists when many of the means by which a state tries 1 to increase its security decrease the security of others it provides the rational foundation for what jervis termed the spiral model which describes how the interaction between states that are seeking only security can fuel competition and strain political relations 2 second jervis explains that the magnitude and nature of the security dilemma depend on two variables the offense defense balance and offense defense differentiation 3 as a result the security dilemma can vary across space and time although states exist in a condition of international anarchy that does not vary there can be significant variation in the attractiveness of cooperative or competitive means the prospects for achieving a high level of security and the probability of war

absolute and relative gains in international relations theory the problem of absolute and relative gains divides neoliberal institutionalism and structural realism the former assumes states focus primarily on their absolute gains and emphasizes the prospects for cooperation the latter supposes states are largely concerned with relative gains and emphasizes the prospects for conflict existing work in international relations theory generally traces the differences between these two theories to different assumptions about states preferences using a simple game theoretic model this essay offers a reformulation of the problem of absolute and relative gains that links changes in the states behavior the feasibility of cooperation and especially the states concern for relative versus absolute gains explicitly to changes in the constraints facing the states many of the differences between neoliberal institutionalism and structural realism appear as special cases of the model

peasants or bankers the american electorate and the u s economy t he usual model of electoral reaction to economic conditions assumes the retrospective economic voter who bases expectations solely on recent economic performance or personal economic experience voter as peasant a second model assumes a sophisticated economic voter who incorporates new information about the future into personal economic expectations voter as banker using the components both retrospective and prospective of the index of consumer sentiment ics as intervening variables between economic conditions and approval we find that the prospective component fully accounts for the presidential approval time series with aggregate consumer expectations about long term business conditions in the approval equation neither the usual economic indicators not the other ics components matter moreover short term changes in consumer expectations respond more to current forecasts than to the current economy the qualitative result is a rational expectations outcome the electorate anticipates the economic future and rewards or punishes the president for economic events before they happen economics moves political behavior with hard times administrations lose support with good times they gain it we know this to be true but when we ask how by what processes the political translation of economic experience occurs the an

rationalist explanations for war realist and other scholars commonly hold that rationally led states can and sometimes do fight when no peaceful bargains exist that both would prefer to war against this view i show that under very broad conditions there will exist negotiated settlements that genuinely rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight popular rationalist and realist explanations for war fail either to address or to explain adequately what would prevent leaders from locating a less costly bargain essentially just two mechanisms can resolve this puzzle on strictly rationalist terms the first turns on the fact that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it the second turns on the fact that in specific strategic contexts states may be unable credibly to commit to uphold a mutually preferable bargain historical examples suggest that both mechanisms are empirically plausible

partisanship and economic behavior do partisan differences in economic forecasts predict real economic behavior survey data regularly show that assessments of current and expected future economic performance are more positive when a respondent s partisanship matches that of the president to determine if this is a survey artifact or something deeper we investigate whether partisanship is associated with behavioral differences in economic decisions we construct a new data set of county level quarterly taxable sales to examine the effect of partisanship on consumption consumption change following a presidential election is correlated with a county s partisan complexion a result consistent with partisans acting outside the domain of politics in accordance with the opinions they express in surveys these results support an expansive view of the role of partisanship in mass politics and help validate surveys as a method for studying political behavior

anyone for higher speed limits self interested and adaptive political preferences swedish survey evidence indicates that variables reflecting self interest are important in explaining people s preferred speed limits and that political preferences adapt to technological development drivers who believe they drive better than the average driver as well as drivers of cars that are newer and hence safer bigger and with better highspeed characteristics prefer higher speed limits in contrast elderly people prefer lower speed limits furthermore people report that they themselves vote more sociotropically than they believe others vote on average indicating that we may vote less sociotropically than we believe ourselves one possible reason for such self serving biases is that people desire to see themselves as socially responsible

scraps of paper agreements and the durability of peace in the aftermath of war what determines whether peace lasts or fighting resumes and what can be done to foster durable peace drawing on theories of cooperation i argue that belligerents can overcome the obstacles to peace by implementing measures that alter incentives reduce uncertainty about intentions and manage accidents a counterargument suggests that agreements are epiphenomenal merely reflecting the underlying probability of war resumption i test hypotheses about the durability of peace using hazard analysis controlling for factors including the decisiveness of victory the cost of war relative capabilities and others that affect the baseline prospects for peace i find that stronger agreements enhance the durability of peace in particular measures such as the creation of demilitarized zones explicit third party guarantees peacekeeping and joint commissions for dispute resolution affect the duration of peace agreements are not merely scraps of paper rather their content matters in the construction of peace that lasts

heterogeneity in perceptions of national economic conditions empirical findings concerning economic voting differ according to the level of analysis employed a widely accepted explanation for the inconsistency between macroand microlevel evidence of economic voting is the high degree of random variation that plagues survey data according to this explanation aggregation purges individual level noise from mass opinions on policy issues and outcomes building on the research of bartels 1996 we debate the validity of this explanation by demonstrating that public evaluations of the national economy vary systematically with information media exposure political attitudes personal experiences and demographic characteristics furthermore we show that these sources of subjective heterogeneity produce systematic biases when national economic evaluations are aggregated these findings challenge a widely accepted notion that because error in individual level measures or expressions of preferences is random the aggregation of these individual measures ensures that they correctly represent the collective preference mpirical findings concerning the influence of the economy on political behavior differ depending on the level of analysis employed using aggregate level data numerous studies have established a statistical relationship between economic conditions and election outcomes or executive popularity e g kramer 1971 mackuen erikson and stimson 1992 on the basis of the macro level evidence alone one would have little reason to doubt that the economy matters in contrast individual level studies using survey data have produced only mixed evidence that voters consider economic conditions when evaluating the incumbent government and its leaders e g fiorina 1978 1981 kinder and kiewiet 1979 1981 moreover the strongest survey evidence of economic voting suggests that voters primarily care about national economic conditions not their personal financial situation this finding contradicts the egocentric theory posited by early macro level research that national economic indicators matter because they are correlated with personal financial circumstances the micro macro dichotomy in economic voting research reflects a similar dichotomy in research on voter sophistication and representation aggregate level studies tend to indicate that voters are reasonably well informed about the economy and make forward looking rather sophisticated voting decisions e g alesina londregan and rosenthal 1993 suzuki and chappell 1996 palmer and whitten 1999 these studies infer that mass political decisions conform to rational expectations or at least limited information rationality e g mackuen erikson and stimson 1992 in contrast to this macro level image of the voter individual level survey research has shown that the public in general has low levels of political sophistication lacking much knowledge of and interest in politics e g

do intergovernmental organizations promote peace a basic debate in world politics involves the impact of intergovernmental organizations igos on international conflict liberals functionalists and others see igos as capable of transforming global anarchy while realists emphasize the essential irrelevance of igos in managing such fundamental processes as war and peace recent quantitative studies also yield disparate conclusions depending on particular econometric assumptions implying variously that igos foster pacific relations among states have no impact on dispute behavior or even increase dispute propensity at least part of the problem is a lack of theoretical and empirical specificity the authors apply bargaining theory to develop a middle path between the realist and liberal perspectives only some igos those with security mandates and the most sophisticated institutional structures are likely to influence dispute behavior the authors combine the theory with two improvements in research design first igos vary in capability mandate and cohesion the authors construct a dataset of igo institutional heterogeneity and member cohesiveness second states join igos for reasons that are not unrelated to why states fight the authors control for the level of international involvement among countries and find support for their arguments in initial tests

partisan cycles in congressional elections and the macroeconomy in the postwar united states the president s party has always done worse in the midterm congressional elections than in the previous congressional election republican administrations exhibit below average and democratic administrations above average economic growth in the first half of each term whereas in the latter halves the two see equal growth our rational expectations model is consistent with these two regularities in presidential elections voters choose between two polarized candidates they then use midterm elections to counterbalance the president s policies by strengthening the opposition in congress since presidents of different parties are associated with different policies our model predicts a spurious correlation between the state of the economy and elections our predictions contrast with those of retrospective voting models in which voters reward the incumbent if the economy is doing well before the election our model performs empirically at least as well as and often better than alternative models

strategic politicians and unresponsive voters t0 resolve the paradoxical finding that economic conditions and presidential popularity powerfully relate to quadrennial movement in the house vote but explain little individual voting variation jacobson and kernell have advanced their strategic politicians model of midterm elections purportedly the early year political environment helps determine how many of a party s strong potential contenders risk challenging incumbents voters in turn respond to the quality of candidates before them in november and thus indirectly reward the party favored by this early year environment despite its current prominence however the theory does not stand up to empirical investigation a time series equation of midterm outcomes regressed on early year national conditions does not fare particularly well when contrasted with comparable equations assuming direct effects voting furthermore challenger quality has only a weak influence on individual voters subordinate in fact to the effects of economic attitudes and presidential evaluations

the welfare state turnout and the economy a comparative analysis while the economic voting literature is voluminous comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of how or whether the economy affects turnout i address this issue by examining national elections in 29 countries using time series data the initial findings are replicated by a case study of american presidential and midterm elections since 1896 it is argued that the effect of economic adversity depends upon the degree of welfare state development this relationship is argued to be nonlinear so that mobilization occurs at either extreme while withdrawal obtains in the middle range the importance to democratic theory the study of elections and the politics of welfare policy are discussed

research bets and behavioral ir behavioral ir faces a fundamental challenge the actors in most ir models and theories are not individuals they are aggregates like states ministries interest groups political parties and rebel factions there are two broad approaches to attempting to integrate behavioral research about individuals the first a quasi behavioral approach makes nonstandard assumptions about the preferences beliefs or decision making processes of aggregate actors the second tries to build theories in which the key actors are individuals pursuing the former means that the assumptions about actors will be only weakly linked to the empirical findings propelling behavioral research the second approach faces formidable obstacles that international relations theory has confronted for a long time and for the most part has not overcome

it s the economy and then some modeling the presidential vote with state panel data using data for the 50 us states for presidential elections from 1972 to 2004 two theories for determining state voting outcomes are considered jointly the economy matters and home grown ness theories fixed effects regressions show that measures of the economy matters real income unemployment and a proxy for inflation have the predicted effects on state voting patterns for presidential elections the home grown theory receives mixed support there is weak evidence that incumbent party candidates garner greater support in their home states there is strong support however for the proposition that incumbent party candidates fare worse in the home state of rival party candidates

economics and elections revisited the economics and elections connection has been heavily investigated although mostly through single country studies the first comparative survey based research on economic voting by lewis beck

economics party and the vote causality issues and panel data conventional wisdom argues that national economic perceptions generally have an important impact on the vote choice in democracies recently a revisionist view has arisen contending that this link regularly observed in election surveys is mostly spurious according to the argument partisanship distorts economic perception thereby substantially exaggerating the real vote connection these causality issues have not been much investigated empirically despite their critical importance utilizing primarily american and secondarily british and canadian election panel surveys we confront directly questions of the time dynamic and independent variable exogeneity we find after all economics clearly matters for the vote indeed once these causality concerns are properly taken into account the impact of economic perceptions emerges as larger than previously thought as well the actual impact of partisanship is clearly reduced

rational choice theory and the paradox of not voting at least since downs s 1957 seminal work an economic theory of democracy rational choice theorists have appreciated the paradox of not voting in a large election the probability that an individual vote might change the election outcome is vanishingly small if each person only votes for the purpose of influencing the election outcome then even a small cost to vote like a minor schedule conflict or mildly bad weather should dissuade anyone from voting yet it seems that many people will put up with long lines daunting registration requirements and even the threat of physical violence or arrest in order to vote given the central place of voting within political economy the lack of an adequate rational choice model of large elections with costly voting presents an obvious problem for the most part theorists have bypassed the turnout problem either by eliminating voters as strategic actors or by assuming that the decision to vote is independent of other strategic choices the problem with the first approach is that the empirical literature on voting behavior provides considerable evidence of apparently strategic behavior in primary elections there is evidence that voters condition their vote choice on the viability of candidates abramson aldrich paolino and rohde 1992 in a seminal and comprehensive study cox 1997 shows that voting patterns and election outcomes are broadly consistent with patterns of behavior predicted by strategic voting models for example under plurality rule in which the candidate with the most votes wins the election

the ecological fallacy revisited aggregate versus individual level findings on economics and elections and sociotropic voting several aggregate level studies have found a relationship between macroeconomic conditions and election outcomes operating in intuitively plausible directions more recent survey based studies however have been unable to detect any comparable relationship operating at the individual voter level this persistent discrepancy is puzzling one recently proposed explanation for it is that voters actually behave in an altruistic or sociotropic fashion responding to economic events only as they affect the general welfare rather than in terms of self interested pocketbook considerations it is argued here that the discrepancies between the macro and micro level studies are a statistical artifact arising from the fact that observable changes in individual welfare actually consist of two unobservable components a government induced and politically relevant component and an exogenous component caused by life cycle and other politically irrelevant factors it is shown that because of this individual level cross sectional estimates of the effects of welfare changes on voting are badly biased and are essentially unrelated to the true values of the behavioral parameters of interest they will generally be considerable underestimates and may even be of the wrong sign an aggregate level time series analysis on the other hand will often yield reasonably good if somewhat attenuated estimates of the underlying individual level effects of interest thus in this case individual behavior is best investigated with aggregate rather than individual level data it is also shown that the evidence for sociotropic voting is artifactual in the sense that the various findings and evidence which ostensibly show sociotropic behavior are all perfectly compatible with the null hypothesis of self interested pocketbook voting

relative gains and the pattern of international cooperation many political situations involve competitions where winning is more important than doing well in international politics this relative gains problem is widely argued to be a major impediment to cooperation under anarchy after discussing why states might seek relative gains i demonstrate that the hypothesis holds very different implications from those usually presumed relative gains do impede cooperation in the two actor case and provide an important justification for treating international anarchy as a prisoner s dilemma problem but if the initial absolute gains situation is not a prisoner s dilemma relative gains seeking is much less consequential its significance is even more attenuated with more than two competitors relative gains cannot prop up the realist critique of international cooperation theory but may affect the pattern of cooperation when a small number of states are the most central international actors

unsuccessful success failed no confidence motions competence signals and electoral support if no confidence motions are primarily motivated by bringing down governments why do only approximately 5 of no confidence motions in advanced parliamentary democracies from 1960 result in the termination of government in this project the author addresses this puzzle by developing a formal model of the electoral benefits of no confidence motions and tests these hypotheses with the use of an original data set no confidence motions represent highly visible opportunities for opposition parties to highlight their strength or ability compared to the government in the hopes of improving their vote shares the author finds support for the signal based theory on a sample of 20 advanced parliamentary democracies from 1960 to 2008 although no confidence motions result in decreases for the government parties the opposition parties that propose the motion experience boosts in vote share this relationship is even stronger when the proposing party is an alternative governing possibility illustrated by the condit

the relative gains problem for international cooperation modern realism claims that the fear that others will enjoy relatively greater benefits frequently impedes international cooperation recent articles in this review by duncan snidal and robert powell modeled conditions under which the impact of relative gains varied joseph grieco criticizes snidal s model as based on assumptions that allow him to avoid rather than confront the realist arguments he also argues that powell s model while constructive ignores important additional sources of sensitivity to relative gains in response powell discusses the value of alternative assumptions about preferences and constraints in international relations snidal defends his analysis and presents an additional proof to support the independence of his central result the diminishing impact of relative gains with increasing numbers of states from assumptions of concern to grieco both responders emphasize their work as contributing to a contextually rich theory of international politics that builds on elements of both realism and neo liberalism

power and interdependence revisited ten years ago we published power and interdependence 1 the passage of a decade makes this an appropriate time to reread and reevaluate that book and to take stock of the research program to which it contributed in doing this we hope to deepen and enrich scholarly understanding of the politics of interdependence and to stimulate reflection on directions for the field of international relations over the next decade 2 such a reappraisal seems particularly opportune given the changes in world politics and especially in american policy that have marked the intervening years stanley j michalak commented in 1979 that the authors may cringe from the analogy but power and interdependence may well become the politics among nations of the 1970s 3 but from the perspective of the late 1980s the world may look different while the 1970s were seen as the decade of interdependence many observers regard the use of force and concern for security as characteristic of the 1980s indeed the view is widespread in some circles that the 1980s resemble the 1950s more than the 1970s and that hans j morgenthau s work is more relevant to contemporary issues of world politics than power and interdependence

don t stand so close to me spatial contagion effects and party competition in this article we bring together elements from the literatures on economic voting and spatial voting to gain theoretical leverage on the combined role of clarity of responsibility party policy positions and economic performance in elections building on evidence of voter knowledge we develop a theory of spatial contagion effects to explain how factors drawn from both of these literatures combine to shape changes in support for political parties we test this theory with a spatial autoregressive model of party competition in 23 nations from 1951 to 2005 as expected we find evidence of strong spatial contagion effects in elections with low clarity of responsibility

voting in open economies the electoral consequences of globalization what are the electoral consequences of global market integration although recent discussions of politics and markets have much to say on globalization s implications for policy outcomes the impact of market integration on representative democracy has received scant attention this article addresses this omission we extend the globalization literature to develop two competing hypotheses regarding the influence of open economies on electoral accountability predictions are tested using a new data set covering elections from 75 countries over 27 years results support a government constraint hypothesis exposure to the world economy weakens connections between economic performance and support for political incumbents by redirecting concerns from the policy implications of globalization and toward its electoral consequences findings highlight the influence of voter perceptions and of vote seeking politicians in the politics of globalization

support for free trade self interest sociotropic politics and out group anxiety although it is widely acknowledged that an understanding of mass attitudes about trade is crucial to the political economy of foreign commerce only a handful of studies have addressed this topic these studies have focused largely on testing two models both of which emphasize that trade preferences are shaped by how trade affects an individual s income the factor endowments or heckscher ohlin model posits that these preferences are affected primarily by a person s skills the specific factors or ricardo viner model posits that trade preferences depend on the industry in which a person works we find little support for either of these models using two representative national surveys of americans the only potential exception involves the effects of education initial tests indicate that educational attainment and support for open trade are directly related which is often interpreted as support for the heckscher ohlin model however further analysis reveals that education s effects are less representative of skill than of individuals anxieties about involvement with out groups in their own country and beyond furthermore we find strong evidence that trade attitudes are guided less by material self interest than by perceptions of how the u s economy as a whole is affected by trade

busy voters agenda control and the power of information t he correspondence between individual preferences and electoral outcomes is often affected by the existence of information asymmetries among electoral participants and the presence of individuals or groups who exercise some form of agenda control while the effects of agenda control in political decision making are widely recognized the effects of information asymmetries are not as well understood since information asymmetries are fundamental characteristics of most elections a deep understanding of the correspondence between individual preferences and electoral outcomes requires a serious consideration of the effects of information i develop a generalizable agenda control model that takes as given the observation that most voters are not naturally inclined to invest in political information the model allows me to provide a dynamic description of how voters and political elites can adapt to the information problems that characterize political decision making it also allows me to demonstrate the effect of these adaptations on electoral outcomes

employment insecurity incumbent partisanship and voting behavior in comparative perspective we argue that occupational unemployment rates by informing perceptions of economic insecurity serve as a salient and powerful heuristic for aggregate economic performance consequently high and

racism as rent seeking rules governing social and economic interactions among ethnic groups are modeled as public goods the publicness of social rules can explain why race has been so consistently politicized the potential gains from public provision attract political entrepreneurs into the field in the absence of some constitutional restraints upon such rent seeking race is bound to be politicized in addition the model can explain the existence of many government policies concerning race that are not apparently motivated by economic gain finally government enforcement of ethnic economic cartels can explain some of the persistent differences in earnings across ethnic groups