bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Disentangling the Roles of Ideology and Issue Positions in the Rise of Third Parties: The Case of Argentina
Authors: Seligson Amber L.
Published: January 2007

This article examines why, in a system of high voter turnout, voters defect from traditional parties to third parties, and is especially focused on disentangling the roles of ideology and issue positions in voters’ decision to switch allegiances. The empirical case that is examined is the emergence of the FREPASO coalition in Argentina. Multinomial logit regression is used to analyze the vote choice of respondents in an Argentine public opinion survey. The principal finding of this article is that the victories of FREPASO stem from its ability to fill a previously empty niche in the ideological spectrum of Argentine politics. Voters for FREPASO were left-of-center, and their left-wing ideology was in part an expression of their preference for greater government intervention in reducing differences between rich and poor people, but ideology had an impact beyond a mere expression of support for a stronger government role in the economy.
Feminist Organizational Structure in the White House: The Office of Women’s Initiatives and Outreach
Authors: Norton Noelle , Morris Barbara
Published: January 2007

In 1995, President Clinton established the first formally organized office for women’s issues in the Executive Office of the President (EOP): the Office of Womens Initiatives and Outreach (OWIO). The creation of the OWIO provides a unique opportunity to analyze the influence of gender on our governmental institutions. In this article, we explore feminist organizational theory and new institutionalism in organization theory using a longitudinal case study of the OWIO. We argue that a masculine organizational culture permeates the structure and processes of the EOP and that this culture ultimately shaped the success of the OWIO. This analysis not only helps us identify the gendered nature of the EOP, but also enables us to see how governmental institutions incorporate cultural and environmental experiences into their rules and daily routines.
StrategicVoting in Presidential Primaries: Problems of Explanation and Interpretation
Authors: Grafstein Robert
Published: January 2007

This note uncovers a serious flaw in Abramson et al.’s (1992) influential application of expected utility theory to the study of strategic voting in U.S. presidential primaries. Due to this flaw, it is not clear what theory their positive empirical results actually support. Rather than dismissing their findings as anomalous or simply as disconfirming expected utility theory, this note uses conditional expected utility theory, a basic revision of the standard approach to voting, to explain these and other results related to primaries.
Who Overvotes, Who Undervotes, Using Punchcards? Evidence from Los Angeles County
Authors: Sinclair D. E. “Betsy” , Alvarez R. Michael
Published: January 2007

In this study we examine over- and undervotes from the November 2000 General Election in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles County is the nation’s largest election jurisdiction, and it used a punchcard voting system in that election. We use precincts as our unit of analysis and merge the 2000 election data with census data and voter registration data; our dataset allows us to examine all of the countywide races in 2000 (including candidate and ballot measures). We use a multivariate statistical analysis employing negative binomial regression to test hypotheses regarding the relationship between precincts’ political and demographic characteristics and over-and undervotes. We demonstrate that both over- and undervotes vary systematically across precincts in Los Angeles County, a finding that we argue has important implications for the representation of political interests.
Disentangling Diffusion: The Effects of Social Learning and Economic Competition on State Policy Innovation and Expansion
Authors: Boehmke Frederick J. , Witmer Richard
Published: January 2007

When modeling regional policy diffusion effects, scholars have traditionally made appeals to both social learning and economic competition as causes of diffusion. In their empirical studies of policy adoption, however, they do not attempt to determine which of these two processes are at work. In this article, we argue that these two types of diffusion may have different implications for when a state first adopts a policy and subsequent changes in the extent of that policy and that these effects vary by policy area. In the specific policy area that we study, Indian gaming, we expect social learning diffusion to influence adoption but not expansion; economic competition should influence both policy adoption and policy expansion. Our empirical results confirm these predictions. To study both policy adoption and innovation, we apply models for event counts to state policy data, which allows us to model the extent of policy adoption over time, rather than just the timing of first adoption as is common with event history models.
Politics of Presence? Congresswomen and Symbolic Representation
Authors: Lawless Jennifer L.
Published: January 2007

Gender politics literature stresses the symbolic importance of electing more women to high-level political office. Despite references to the heightened legitimacy that women in politics bring to the political process, and the manner in which they affect constituents’ political attitudes and behavior, little empirical evidence exists regarding the actual benefits of symbolic representation. Using pooled National Election Study data from 1980 to 1998, I attempt to fill a void in the literature, exploring whether the presence of women officeholders affects constituents’ evaluations of their members of Congress, levels of political efficacy and trust in government, and propensity to participate politically. After controlling for party congruence between the representative and his/her constituent, I uncover little evidence of the independent symbolic effects scholars typically ascribe to women’s presence in Congress. Women represented by women tend to offer more positive evaluations of their members of Congress, but this difference does not consistently translate into political attitudes or behavior. The findings represent an initial attempt to use available survey data to explore the extent to which symbolic representation independently affects citizens’ political attitudes and engagement.
A Preference for Deference? The Supreme Court and Judicial Review
Authors: Howard Robert M. , Segal Jeffrey A.
Published: January 2007

The power of the Supreme Court to declare laws unconstitutional remains as troubling today as when first introduced in Marbury v. Madison. While the normative arguments will perhaps always remain unsettled, the empirical question of when and how often justices actually use this power also continues unanswered. Using data derived from briefs filed by litigants over ten terms, we develop systematic tests of how requests for judicial review of state and federal laws influence U.S. Supreme Court justices. We find that while many appear to base their decisions to strike or uphold state or federal laws on ideological considerations, the Court itself can be called restraintist in that it never appears to strike laws sua sponte, and most requests for the review are voted down. Finally, we find little evidence of strategic considerations in the justices’ decisions.
The Timing of Presidential Nominations to the Lower Federal Courts
Authors: Massie Tajuana D. , Hansford Thomas G. , Songer Donald R.
Published: January 2007

Presidents often move quite slowly to exercise their important power of judicial appointment. This study attempts to explain these delays by developing a strategic conception of the timing of presidential nominations to the lower federal courts. We argue that the judicial selection process may be best conceptualized by viewing presidents as strategic actors who prefer to select judges with policy preferences that are as close as possible to those of the president, given senatorial and temporal constraints. We test our argument by estimating a duration model of the length of time between vacancy and nomination for all vacancies in the U.S. District Courts and U.S. Courts of Appeals from 1977 to 1999. Our results indicate that the timing of presidential nominations is a function of both politics and institutional constraint.
A Neopluralist Perspective on Research on Organized Interests
Authors: Lowery David , Gray Virginia
Published: January 2007

We modestly challenge Baumgartner and Leech’s (1998) very pessimistic assessment of the state of interest group research by arguing that there has been a rich collaboration of theory and data during the 1990s, which at least points toward a new and more coherent theoretical perspective on interest representation, and one largely indigenous to political science. With some trepidation given its checkered history, we label this perspective as a neopluralist view. We explore this developing approach in three steps. We first provide a broad outline of three distinct approaches to the study of interest representation, identifying how each has understood the various stages on which organized interests have attracted the attention of scholars. We then identify six attributes of the emerging neopluralist approach that distinguish it from prior work on interest representation. Finally, we consider the appropriateness of our proposed neopluralist label and what must be done to further develop the neopluralist perspective.
Designing Tests of the Supreme Court and the Separation of Powers
Authors: Sala Brian R. , Spriggs James F.
Published: January 2007

While rational choice models of Supreme Court decisionmaking have enhanced our appreciation for the separation of powers built into the Madisonian Constitutional design, convincing empirical support for a Separation-of-Powers (SOP) constraint on justices’ behavior has been elusive. We apply a standard spatial voting model to identify circumstances in which Attitudinalist and SOP predictions about justices’ behavior diverge. Our reconsideration of the theory indicates that prior efforts to test quantitatively the two models have failed to select out cases for which the two models’ predictions do not differ. While our more focused test offers a fairer test of the SOP constraint, the results strongly reject the SOP model. Nonetheless, our analysis provides leverage on this issue by: (1) delineating and executing necessary research design protocols for crafting a critical test of the SOP model; and (2) rejecting the two exogenously fixed alternative SOP models and suggesting avenues for future research.
Citizen Participation and the Neighborhood Context: A New Look at the Coproduction of Local Public Goods
Authors: Marschall Melissa J.
Published: January 2007

In this article I examine citizen participation in the realm of local service delivery, addressing two fundamental questions. First, in what ways do individual- and neighborhood-level factors shape citizens’ perceptions of crime and education as serious problems? Second, what leads individuals to get involved in activities and organizations related to these two local public services? I examine these question by merging two distinct strands of research—the theory of coproduction and studies of political participation—and conduct an empirical analysis using survey data from the 1989 Detroit Area Study (Rosenstone 1989) and tract-level data from the 1990 Census of Population and Housing. My findings underscore the importance of formal recruitment, neighborhood context, and incentives in understanding why individuals participate in local efforts to improve schools and mitigate crime.
Mobilizing African-American Voters Using Direct Mail and Commercial Phone Banks: A Field Experiment
Authors: Green Donald P.
Published: January 2007

This essay summarizes the results of a large-scale randomized experiment conducted during the 2000 election campaign by the NAACP National Voter Fund, which sought to mobilize African-American voters. Focusing solely on the direct mail and phone banking components of the NAACP-NVF campaign, this study examines the voting behavior of 980,208 participants residing in single-voter households, 1.7 percent of whom were randomly assigned to a control group. The experiment permits us to estimate (1) the extent to which the National Voter Fund’s phone calls and direct mail increased voter turnout and (2) the approximate cost per vote. Within this sample, the NVF’s two pieces of GOTV mail, three live phone calls, and two recorded phone calls had modest effects, generating approximately 7,100 additional votes at $158 per vote. The upper bound of a 90 percent confidence interval puts these figures at 16,214 additional votes at $69 per vote.
Self-Selection Reconsidered: House Committee Assignment Requests and Constituency Characteristics
Authors: Frisch Scott A. , Kelly Sean Q
Published: January 2007

Distributive theory is perhaps the dominant paradigm for understanding committee organization and behavior in Congress. Central to distributive theory is the assertion that members will self-select to committees based on constituency related concerns; however, few studies have tested this assumption and those that have focus primarily on the behavior of House Democrats. We use committee request data from both Democratic and Republican members, combined with district-level census data, to determine whether committee requests are empirically related to district-level characteristics. Our findings suggest mixed support for the self-selection hypothesis. While there is some support for the self-selection hypothesis, members’ requests for committee assignments often are not related to district-level characteristics. In addition, we examine the degree to which the party committees-on-committees accommodate requests, finding that the degree of accommodation has been overestimated by previous studies.
The New Hampshire Effect in Presidential Nominations
Authors: Steger Wayne P. , Dowdle Andrew J. , Adkins Randall E.
Published: January 2007

In order to demonstrate challenges to conventional wisdom (Aldrich 1980a, b; Bartels 1985 1988; Orren and Polsby 1987), this article develops several forecasting models of the presidential primary vote to compare to a baseline model of the aggregate primary vote (APV) that uses pre-primary and New Hampshire primary data. The models indicate that candidates’ Gallup poll position and cash reserves are significant positive predictors of a candidates’ primary vote share, though there are differences between forecasting models of the primary vote in Democratic and Republican nomination campaigns. Parallel models incorporating results of the New Hampshire primary improve the predictive power of the baseline model, indicating that the bellwether primary has a “correcting” effect on the relative standings of some candidates seeking a presidential nomination. This effect is substantially greater for Democrats than for Republicans.
Collective Action, Pluralism, and the Legitimacy Tariff: Corporate Activity or Inactivity in Politics
Authors: Hansen Wendy L. , Mitchell Neil J. , Drope Jeffrey M.
Published: January 2007

Despite the fact that domestic and foreign corporations, along with trade associations, are some of the most politically active groups in the United States, earlier research has identified a substantial number of firms that are politically inactive. Using fresh data collected from the 2000 election cycle for the Fortune 1000 and the Forbes top foreign investors, we examine business soft money, lobbying expenditures, as well as PAC contributions, in exploring economic, institutional, and political factors that might explain the choice of political activity or inactivity. This article goes beyond earlier research in several ways. Previous research has focused on PAC contributions rather than a fuller range of activities, and it has not included association political activity in the analysis of firm-level behavior. Also, the influence of other actors in the political system, notably environmental and citizen groups, has not been systematically examined. Theoretically, these data allow us to examine the countervailing power thesis, the institutionalists’ arguments about the nature of foreign business behavior, and the unexplored collective action questions that business associational activity poses—are firm and associational activities complements or substitutes?
Habermas and Democratic Theory: The Threat To Democracy of Unchecked Corporate Power
Authors: Staats Joseph L.
Published: January 2007

In this article I explore the distance traveled by Jürgen Habermas from the pessimism expressed about the prospects for democracy in contemporary society in his early work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, to the optimistic resuscitation of democracy in a most recent work, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. I also discuss what I consider to be an inadequate treatment in the later work of the threat to democracy posed by the influence of the modern mass media allied with unchecked corporate power.
Political Opinion and Distinctiveness: The Case of Hispanic Ethnicity
Authors: Claassen Ryan L
Published: January 2007

Despite a proliferation of research treating Hispanics as a homogeneous political group, important questions regarding the nature and structure of Hispanic public opinion remain unanswered. Are Hispanic self-identifiers similar enough in their political preferences to be analyzed as a political group? As a group, are Hispanic preferences distinctive enough to be distinguished empirically from other racial and ethnic constituencies? Using National Election Studies data I evaluate intra-group similarity and inter-group differences. I find evidence of strikingly similar intra-group opinion, and I find Hispanic preferences are distinctive, relative to Anglos and blacks, even after controlling for socioeconomic status (SES). Moreover, SES variables impact Hispanic opinion and Anglo opinion differently. By exploring the statistical interactions between Hispanic ethnicity and the SES variables I am able to illustrate ways in which Hispanics’ shared experiences differ from those of Anglos and lead to distinctive political views.
Socialization for Participation? Trust, Membership, and Democratization in East-Central Europe
Authors: Letki Natalia
Published: January 2007

Citizens’ involvement in politics is essential for the credibility of institutions, as well as for the citizens’ articulation of their demands and the holding of their representatives to account. As such, it is of primary importance in new post-Communist democracies. The weakness of political society and low levels of citizens’ involvement in politics in East-Central Europe are usually linked to low levels of social capital (weak civil society and low levels of interpersonal trust) and the legacy of cooperation with Communism. Following the approach stressing the importance of participation in group networks as a school of democracy, this study tests the impact of interpersonal trust, membership in voluntary associations, and past Communist party membership on levels of political involvement in ten post-Communist countries in the mid-1990. This approach is complemented by the analysis of the impact of the change of political and economic structures on individual-level behavior.
A New Kind of Balancing Act: Electoral Certainty and Ticket-Splitting in the 1996 and 2000 Elections
Authors: Saunders Kyle L. , Abramowitz Alan I. , Williamson Jonathan
Published: January 2007

Using data from the 1996 and 2000 American National Election Studies, this article analyzes the behavior of voters who split their tickets, voting for one party’s presidential candidate and the opposing party’s House candidate, in presidential election years. We test the hypotheses that balancing behavior is likely to occur only when the outcome of the presidential election is relatively certain, and that balancing is most likely to occur among relatively sophisticated voters who have reservations about the policy positions of their preferred presidential candidate. The results of the study support the presence of this type of balancing behavior in the 1996 election and suggest that balancing can play an important role in producing divided government.
Latino Immigrants at the Polls: Foreign-born Voter Turnout in the 2002 Election
Authors: Barreto Matt A.
Published: January 2007

Research on voting and elections has generally found that Latino foreign-born citizens turnout to vote at lower rates than native-born Latinos as well as non-Latinos. Primarily as the result of lower levels of education, income, and English language skills, immigrant voters have demonstrated low levels of political participation. In addition, naturalized Latinos are rarely, if ever, the target of voter mobilization drives, further decreasing their likelihood to turnout. However, with extensive mobilization drives targeting naturalized voters in California in 2002, and low levels of political interest among the general electorate, higher rates of turnout among the foreign-born are anticipated. Probit models predicting turnout are explored here and the results reveal that in California in 2002, for the first time, Latino immigrant voters were significantly more likely to vote than were the native-born Latinos.
Congress Opens the Courthouse Doors: Statutory Changes to Judicial Review Under the Clean Air Act
Authors: Smith Joseph L.
Published: January 2007

Intervention by the federal courts in regulatory policymaking has increased markedly, in both quantity and level of intrusiveness, over the last 40 years. Scholarly commentators have concluded that this level of intervention is not appropriate. This suggests a question: Why are the courts so involved in regulatory policymaking? This article answers that question by examining congressional motivation to increase the rights of interested parties to take their policy battles into court. By analyzing three sets of amendment to the Clean Air Act, I show that members of Congress strategically manipulate statutory rules governing the role of courts in regulatory policymaking to help their political supporters and to advance their own policy goals. Thus, a primary explanation of the increased role of the judiciary in regulatory policymaking is that this increase has served the goals of members of Congress.
Why Do People Accept Public Policies They Oppose? Testing Legitimacy Theory with a Survey-Based Experiment
Authors: Gibson James L. , Caldeira Gregory A. , Spence Lester Kenyatta
Published: January 2007

The orthodox answer to the question posed in the title of this article is that the legitimacy of institutions has something to do with acquiescence to unwelcome public policy decisions. We investigate that conventional wisdom using an experiment embedded within a representative national sample in the United States. We test hypotheses concerning not only the effect of institutional legitimacy on acquiescence, but also the influence of partisanship, the rule of law, and simple instrumentalism on willingness to accept an objectionable policy decision. Our analyses reveal that legitimacy does matter for acquiescence, and that the Supreme Court is more effective at converting its legitimacy into acceptance than is Congress. Yet, many important puzzles emerge from the data (e.g., partisanship is not influential), so we conclude that Legitimacy Theory still requires much additional empirical inquiry.
The Rise of Partisanship and the Expansion of Partisan Conflict within the American Electorate
Authors: Brewer Mark D.
Published: January 2007

Recent research has outlined important changes in partisanship among political elites in the United States. Specifically, the effect of partisanship on politicians’ vote choice and other political behavior has risen, and the number of issue areas where partisan conflict is present has increased. This article examines whether similar changes have taken place among the general electorate. Using data from the NES Cumulative Datafile, the findings presented here do point to changes in partisanship among the mass public. Once thought to be in decline, mass partisanship has rebounded significantly in recent years. In a related development that is perhaps more important, partisanship has become more pervasive within the electorate, with partisan conflict now penetrating into a greater number of issue areas. Partisanship has become relevant in the areas of racial and cultural issues while retaining its importance for issues involving economic equality.
A New Measure of Party Strength
Authors: Ceaser James W. , Saldin Robert P.
Published: January 2007

In order to measure the strength of the parties in each state, the Major Party Index (MPI) was built by averaging the results of the six major elections that take place in the fifty states. This index allows us to describe the absolute and comparative partisan leaning of each state in each election and identify trends of party strength over time within individual states, among regions, and within the nation as a whole. The MPI sheds considerable light on three general developments: (1) a national change from Democratic dominance in the 1980s to a Republican edge by 2002, (2) significant regional realignments in the South and New England, and (3) a strong trend toward greater consistency between partisan voting at the federal and state levels.
Bill Sponsorship and Congressional Support for Policy Proposals, from Introduction to Enactment or Disappearance
Authors: Burstein Paul , Bauldry Shawn , Froese Paul
Published: January 2007

Research on policy change tends to focus on legislative successes (bills that are enacted), policies that are especially important or controversial, and the final stages of the policy process. This article attempts to show how to improve our ability to trace support for policy proposals through the entire legislative process, for failures as well as successes and for less-visible proposals as well as more visible ones. We refine the concept of a “policy proposal”—a particular proposed solution to a public problem—as a set of identical or nearly identical bills introduced into one or more congresses; show how to find such bills, and examine a stratified random sample of 60 considered by the U.S. Congress; describe how much support the proposals receive; show that, in line with some views of legislative activity, proposals are generally on the agenda for only a short time; and suggest that trends in sponsorship provide a good way to measure support for particular proposals for policy change. It is argued that the approach developed in the article will aid subsequent studies of the determinants of policy change.
Competing Constraints: State Court Responses to Supreme Court Decisions and Legislation on Wages and Hours
Authors: Hoekstra Valerie
Published: January 2007

This article examines state supreme court implementation of Supreme Court precedent when deciding cases challenging state legislation. While previous research provides a wealth of insight into how state contextual and institutional features constrain state court decisionmaking and how lower courts respond to Supreme Court precedent, very little research explicitly examines state court decisionmaking when both constraints are present. By integrating the findings of previous research, I develop and test hypotheses about the effect of these different actors on state court decisionmaking. The results show that state courts are indeed constrained by both state and federal actors. The results also suggest that there may be instances where policies are so salient to both state actors and to the U.S. Supreme Court that the influence of the state court’s own policy preferences may be minimal. The findings provide important evidence about the importance of competing constraints on state supreme court decisionmaking.
Information Flow and Voter Decision Making in the 2001 Australian Federal Election: The Role of International and Domestic Issues
Authors: Denemark David
Published: January 2007

This article examines the role of TV coverage in voter decision making during the 2001 Australian federal election campaign, called just weeks after a major asylum seeker incident and the September 11 terrorist attacks. It does so by exploring voters’ differential reliance on two distinct, high profile sets of issues that dominated media election campaign coverage: the domestic issues that had been the focus throughout the election year (especially health, education, and taxes) and the international issues that assumed centre stage just before the election was called (refugees and asylum seekers, terrorism, and defence and national security). Using an original content analysis of TV coverage and the 2001 Australian election survey, interaction effects models yield significantly different patterns of reliance on international and domestic for groups of voters. These effects are distinguished by the timing of individuals’ vote choice, and the level of their existing political interest and information. Moderately interested voters, who largely decided their vote choice about the time the election was called, were the most likely to cite international issues as the key to their vote choice. Voters with lower levels of political interest, deciding just before or on election day, were significantly more reliant on domestic issues. These patterns represent a variant on Zaller’s (1989) model of campaign information flow, and suggest a single, high-intensity campaign—especially in Australia’s compulsory voting system, which forces the participation of the country’s least interested and informed individuals—can sustain within it two distinct issue agendas which voters with different cognitive skills and responsiveness to TV cues differentially utilize to inform their vote choice.
Evidence of Group-Based Economic Voting: NAFTA and Union Households in the 1992 U.S. Presidential Election
Authors: Glasgow Garrett
Published: January 2007

Previous research has found no evidence of group-based economic voting. However, these studies relied on perceptions of general group economic well-being, a goal which voters could pursue through other economic information such as the state of the general economy. Here I test for group-based economic voting by considering perceptions an issue related to group-specific economic interests that cannot be met simply through an improved national economy. Controlling for other economic interests, I find that concern with job losses due to NAFTA influenced the voting behavior of members of union households in the 1992 US presidential election, with those who were most concerned with job losses due to NAFTA more likely to vote for Perot over Clinton. These concerns did not influence the behavior of non-group members. This demonstrates that there is evidence of group-based economic voting once we disentangle it from other types of economic voting.
The Impact of Political Advertising in the 2001 U.K. General Election
Authors: Sanders David , Norris Pippa
Published: January 2007

This article explores the extent to which advocacy and attack Party Election Broadcasts (PEBs) affected voters’ party preferences during the British general election campaign of 2001. The analysis uses an experimental design that involved conducting “media exposure” tests on a representative sample of Greater London voters (N = 919) during the final weeks of the June 2001 election campaign. Respondents completed a pre-test questionnaire before being exposed to a variety of different media stimuli. Their political attitudes were then measured again in a post-test questionnaire. The empirical findings suggest that, in general, PEBs exerted little direct effect on voters’ images of the main political parties in 2001. However, there were a series of “partial” exposure effects confined to particular sub-groups of voters. For example, for non-partisan voters, “attack” advertising appears to have been less effective than “advocacy” advertising. Indeed, in the U.K. in 2001 there were contexts in which negative campaigning was explicitly counter-productive in the sense that it appears to have actively stimulated sympathy for the target of the attack rather than strengthened the relative position of the sponsor.
Sources of Variation in the Frequency of Statewide Initiatives: The Role of Interest Group Populations
Authors: Boehmke Frederick J.
Published: January 2007

In this article I study the factors that determine the number of initiatives that appear on statewide ballots, with an emphasis on the characteristics of state interest group populations. In particular, I test whether the size of state citizen or economic group populations influences the frequency of initiative use. The relationship between these two categories of groups and initiative use is important in light of recent claims that the initiative process no longer benefits citizen groups and is now dominated by economic interests. In addition, I consider the role of other factors, including initiative regulations, state political characteristics, state economic performance and state demographic characteristics. My results indicate that states with more citizen groups have more initiatives overall and in specific issue areas and that the number of economic groups has a negative or negligible effect.
Hegemony and Hamburger: Migration Narratives and Democratic Unionism among Mexican Meatpackers in the U.S. West
Authors: Apostolidis Paul
Published: January 2007

This essay considers how the narrated experiences of immigrant workers in the United States could help promote organized labor’s participation in a transnational movement to democratize globalization processes. I draw on interviews with immigrant meatpackers working for the Tyson Corporation, who since the late 1990s have mounted an impressive and unusual effort to democratize their workplace and union as well as to improve worker safety and dignity. Although the union has elaborated an effective discourse concerning injustice in the workplace and the need for action to remedy these problems, it has not developed any comparable interpretation of workers’ migration experiences. Workers’ migration narratives often reinforce the liberal assumptions guiding the union’s campaigns as well as the U.S. labor movement in general. They occasionally intimate, however, how migration processes can aid in the formation of counter-hegemonic subjectivities, developing these workers’ practical orientations toward resisting mistreatment both individually and in solidarity with others. Thus, creating more institutionalized spaces for workers to communicate about their migration experiences not only could help unions achieve their organizational goals—it also could help shift the political orientation of the labor movement toward a more transnational, social-democratic approach to regulating immigration and capitalist production alike.
States Are Not People: Harold Laski on Unsettling Sovereignty, Rediscovering Democracy
Authors: Morefield Jeanne
Published: January 2007

This essay examines the relationship between democratic theory and historical critiques of state sovereignty by analyzing Harold Laski’s geneological approach to the history of political thought. This approach led Laski to conclude that the apparently “unified” character of soveriegn statehood made differences within states invisible, rendered similarities across states meaningless, obscured the liberal state’s connections to capitalism, and supported order and authority over the less predictable qualities of democratic freedom. Laski’s critique of sovereignty ultimately suggested that true democracy was impossible within the context of sovereingty and that real “international cooperation” could only happen under conditions in which individual states were prevented from speaking in the unified voice of their people. The esssay suggests that contemporary democratic theorists and international ethicists could have much to learn from Laski’s refusal to relegate democracy to the internal boundaries of states.
The Determinants of Economic Liberalization in Latin America
Authors: Biglaiser Glen , Brown David S.
Published: January 2007

Previous work on political institutions and economic reform provides a number of testable hypotheses that are rarely examined in a multivariate framework. Divided government, political polarization, fragmented legislatures, ideology, external factors, the strength of the presidency, and democracy itself have all been forwarded as possible constraints that influence the depth and speed of economic reform. Using time-series cross-sectional data, this research note provides a multivariate test of the impact these institutions have on different components of structural reform. Our findings suggest that specific institutional arrangements are important for achieving some specific kinds of economic reform. However, our main finding implies the kind of institutional and ideological constraints prominent in the literature do not constrain politicians from enacting reform.
Explaining the Emergence and Persistence of Class Voting for Presidential Candidates in Post-Soviet Russia, 1993-2001
Authors: Evans Geoffrey , Whitefield Stephen
Published: January 2007

Attempts to explain the effects of social class on electoral choices have focused on the relative impact of sociological, or “bottom-up,” versus political, or “top-down,” factors. We examine these contending approaches in post-Communist Russia, which has undergone both a significant economic transformation and major shifts in the politicization of class by its main electoral contenders, making it an informative context in which to examine competing explanations of the class-vote relationship. The analysis is based on data from five nationwide surveys conducted over the period 1993-2001 and provides evidence that an association between class position and presidential choice emerged in the mid-1990s in which the two largest classes, the working class and professional and managerial workers, provided a stable basis of support for the main free market versus interventionist axis of political division. These findings indicate the presence of rapid political learning among Russians and the resilience of class-based preferences despite Putin’s centrist political program
Explaining Recent Changes in the Partisan Identifications of Southern Whites
Authors: Knuckey Jonathan
Published: January 2007

Scholars of southern partisan change have been reluctant to proclaim a realignment among southern whites. Despite a Republican advantage in presidential elections, a Democratic advantage continued to persist in party identifications. However, in the 1990s a Republican advantage in party identifications emerged, one that has persisted throughout the decade. Indeed in 2000 a majority of southern whites held Republican party identifications, while only one in three southern whites held Democratic identifications. This article examines the causes of the changing party identifications of southern whites in the 1990s and focuses on four explanations that have been discussed by scholars: the role of racial attitudes, social class polarization, social and cultural attitudes and general ideological realignment. Using a multivariate analysis, the study finds that national forces, specifically an ideological realignment and class-status polarization played some role in producing changes in partisanship of southern whites. However, regional differences between the South and the rest of the nation remained evident, with racial attitudes and views on abortion exerting significant effects on party identifications in the 1990s. The findings suggest that the Republican advantage in party identifications that emerged in the 1990s is durable and, if anything, is likely to increase in future years.
Stability and Change: The Time Varying Impact of Economic and Foreign Policy Evaluations on Presidential Approval
Authors: Mcavoy Gregory E.
Published: January 2007

Most researchers studying presidential approval with time series analysis assume that foreign and economic policy have a time-invariant weight in citizens’ judgments of presidential performance. However, those studying presidential approval in cross-sectional analysis find that the weight of foreign and economic policy on job performance fluctuates as news about these issues changes. These competing views can be incorporated into a model of rational learning that makes it possible to test whether the public weighs foreign and economic policy differently over time in its evaluation of the president. The analysis presented here shows that foreign and economic policy exhibit different patterns in their relationship to overall approval—economic policy has a consistent impact over time, while foreign policy ebbs and flows.
Partisan Mobilization Campaigns in the Field: Results from a Statewide Turnout Experiment in Michigan
Authors: Nickerson David W. , Friedrichs Ryan D. , King David C.
Published: January 2007

Political parties have recently rediscovered grassroots tactics for voter mobilization. The only solid evidence for the effectiveness of such get-out-the-vote (GOTV) tactics is based upon non-partisan field experiments that may not accurately capture the effectiveness of partisan campaign outreach. In order to address this lacuna, during the 2002 Michigan gubernatorial election, a large field experiment across 14 state house districts evaluated the cost effectiveness of three mobilization technologies utilized by the Michigan Democratic Party’s Youth Coordinated Campaign: door hangers, volunteer phone calls, and face-to-face visits. Contrary to past non-partisan experiments, our results indicate that all three GOTV strategies possess similar cost-effectiveness.
Women’s Movements, Identity Politics, and Policy Impacts: A Study of Policies on Violence against Women in the 50 United States
Authors: Weldon S. Laurel
Published: January 2007

Scholars of social movements and democratic political theorists have argued that “identity politics” weakens social movements and undermines their influence on public policy. I offer a theoretical argument that at least some forms of “identity politics” likely have the reverse effects. In particular, when marginalized groups organize around ascriptive characteristics or “social location,” they generate knowledge about the social group, strengthen participants’ feelings of affiliation with the movement, produce more representative movement agendas, and create the building blocks for broader coalitions. In a study of the U.S., I find that separate organization by women of color strengthens women’s movements, and indirectly improves government responsiveness both to violence against women of color in particular and to violence against women in general.
Rights or Benefits? Explaining the Sexual Identity Gap in American Political Behavior
Authors: Schaffner Brian , Senic Nenad
Published: January 2007

Lesbians, gays, and bisexuals (LGBs) are far more likely than heterosexuals to support the Democratic Party and its candidates. But is this support due to the Democratic Party support for the civil rights agendas of historically disadvantaged groups, or is it based on other factors? In this article, we use the issue of same-sex marriage to attempt to explain the nature of the sexual identity gap. We demonstrate that a substantial portion of LGBs place a great deal of importance on winning healthcare and other employee benefits for their spouses, but that they are less concerned about having legally recognized marriages. Furthermore, we find that it is the goal of acquiring spousal benefits, not the right to marry, that influences the degree to which LGBs support the Democratic Party. We conclude that the sexual identity gap is generated more from LGB concerns about acquiring tangible economic benefits than from an interest in pursuing civil rights.
Punctuated Equilibrium and Congressional Budgeting
Authors: Robinson Scott E. , Caver Floun’say R.
Published: January 2007

Recent research has suggested that punctuated equilibrium models best describe the outputs of policymakers. While this literature has convincingly demonstrated that the distributions of policy outputs conform to the expectations of punctuated equilibrium theory, little attention has been paid to testing hypotheses related to the causes of punctuated equilibrium distributions. This research note illustrates a method for testing hypotheses related to punctuated equilibrium theory with a test of the effects of congressional reorganization. The results suggest that congressional reorganization has made the budgetary outputs of Congress less consistent with punctuated equilibrium theory.
Exploring the Bases of Partisanship in the American Electorate: Social Identity vs. Ideology
Authors: Abramowitz Alan I. , Saunders Kyle L.
Published: January 2007

This article uses data from the 1952-2004 American National Election Studies and the 2004 U.S. National Exit Poll to compare the influence of ideology and membership in social groups on party identification. Contrary to the claim by Green, Palmquist, and Schickler (2002) that party loyalties are rooted in voters’ social identities, we find that party identification is much more strongly related to voters’ ideological preferences than to their social identities as defined by their group memberships. Since the 1970s, Republican identification has increased substantially among whites inside and outside of the South with the most dramatic gains occurring among married voters, men, and Catholics. Within these subgroups, however, Republican gains have occurred mainly or exclusively among self-identified conservatives. As a result, the relationship between ideology and party identification has increased dramatically. This has important implications for voting behavior. Increased consistency between ideology and party identification has contributed to higher levels of party loyalty in presidential and congressional elections.
A Field Experiment on the Effects of Negative Campaign Mail on Voter Turnout in a Municipal Election
Authors: Niven David
Published: January 2007

This field experiment is used to expose a random sample of voters in a 2003 mayoral race to various pieces of negative direct mail advertising. Exposure to the negative advertising stimulus improved turnout overall about 6 percent over that of the control group. Results show that different topics and amounts of negative advertising had different effects on turnout. The results suggest that alarm bells sounded by some previous research and by public officials may be overheated, because the effects of campaign negativity may not be monolithic, and it would appear political negativity can have a positive effect on turnout.
Making Democracy Work More? Exploring the Linkage between Social Capital and Government Performance
Authors: Tavits Margit
Published: January 2007

This study considers the linkage between social capital and government performance. The latter concept is disaggregated into two dimensions: policy activism and administrative efficiency. Social capital may be related to government performance either because it increases the level of political sophistication and facilitates the cooperation within society, helping people to voice their policy demands better, or because social capital, being shared also by the bureaucratic elites of a polity, facilitates cooperation and helps to overcome the agency problem within the bureaucratic organization. The former argument links social capital to policy activism while the latter links it to administrative efficiency. Empirical tests with data from the German and American subnational governments provide support for the former but not for the latter argument.