bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Refutations Affirmed: Conversations Concerning the E-Euro-Barometer Values Battery
Authors: Clarke Harold D.
Published: January 2007

The present issue of the Political Research Quarterly includes a stimulating new contribution by Darren Davis to the debate concerning the Euro-Barometer (E-B) battery. Davis (2000) argues that the measure of materialist and post-materialist values provided by the battery (the MMP variable) has at best only very limited utility for understanding a variety of important political beliefs, attitudes, and opinions in the American electorate. The purpose of the present article is twofold. First, I will comment on selected methodological issues raised by Davis for enhancing understanding of the measurement of values and value change in advanced industrial and other societies. Second, as a party to the values debate, I will discuss my “conversations in context” critique of the E-B values battery and present new, hitherto unpublished, experimental evidence that buttresses the validity of the critique. Like Davis, I argue that the E-B battery is deeply flawed. My story of the failure of the E-B battery illustrates how the structure and content of a survey instrument can interact with the sociopolitical and economic contexts in which interviews occur to mislead analysts. A larger message is that if the history of science is a reliable guide, research questioning the validity of the E-B battery-however well grounded in fact and logic-is likely to have limited impact, until and unless a credible rival theory appears to challenge the value shift thesis.
Gender, Leadership and Choice in Multiparty Systems
Authors: Banducci Susan A. , Karp Jeffrey A.
Published: January 2007

While a significant amount of research seeks to explain the comparative number of women in national legislatures, there is little research that examines the effects of women's leadership of political parties on voting behavior. This article brings together research on leadership effects in parliamentary elections and female candidate effects in legislative races. Ideological, structural, and situational differences between men and women have been used to explain gender gaps in voting. We explore an alternative explanation-gender identity When women candidates are present, the gender identity hypothesis assumes that women voters are more likely to choose women candidates because of gender. While this hypothesis has been tested in legislative races, it has not been applied to party leaders in parliamentary elections. We test the gender identity hypothesis in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Britain. We find that leadership evaluations affect vote choice across all countries but the effects of gender and the combined effects of gender and leadership differ across countries.
Issue Evolution, Political Parties, and the Culture Wars
Authors: Lindaman Kara , Haider-Markel Donald P.
Published: January 2007

Using the issue evolution framework, our research examines partisan polarization on several culture war issues, including pornography, environment, gun control, and gay civil rights. We look for evidence of partisan polarization among political elites and citizens, as well as examine top-down versus bottom-up paths of influence among Republicans and Democrats. Data from the General Social Survey and congressional rollcall votes between 1970-1999 are analyzed. Our results suggest that although partisan elites have become increasingly polarized on culture war issues, mass partisans have not followed suit across all issues. Only on environmental and gun control issues do we find significant evidence of issue evolution, including a linkage between elite and mass opinion. We conclude that culture war issues may not be as prone to issue evolution as previous research has indicated, in part because these issues are not all equally salient to the mass public.
The Partisan Legacies of Preemptive Leadership: Assessing the Eisenhower Cohorts in the U.S. House
Authors: Price Kevin S.
Published: January 2007

Interrogating one case of what Stephen Skowronek calls the “preemptive” Presidency, I examine Dwight D. Eisenhower's New Republican project as it manifested itself in House elections and lawmaking. To that end, I assess the ideological characteristics, electoral dynamics, and roll-call behavior of the four cohorts elected to the House between 1952 and 1958. Synthesizing qualitative accounts and quantitative evidence, I determine that the Eisenhower years reshuffled party commitments in the House by leaving more-moderate but numerically decimated Republicans to battle ideologically galvanized and numerically strengthened Democrats in the 1960s. In short, Eisenhower affected the party system in identifiable ways, but he struggled to leave the legacies he envisioned when he took office. Beyond the specifics of the Eisenhower case, the methodology developed here is broadly applicable across Presidencies.
Viewers Like You: Community Norms and Contributions to Public Broadcasting
Authors: Kropf Martha , Knack Stephen
Published: January 2007

The logic of collective action (Olson 1965) suggests that public broadcasting may be underprovided, because non-contributors are not excluded from receiving the benefits. Why do so many individuals voluntarily contribute to public television, even though they can obtain the benefits of public television without contributing? We explore the hypothesis that giving to public broadcasting is determined in part by the strength of “civicnorms” that limit the opportunistic behavior of individuals in large-numbers prisoners’ dilemma settings. We also explore a variety of other explanations for charitable giving and collective action, including group size, tax deductibility, crowd out, and selective incentives. Our findings provide evidence linking civic norms and giving to public broadcasting. Education and income have indirect effects through strengthening civic norms. We find some evidence that selective incentives increase the average size of contributions among those who contribute.
Causal Attribution and Economic Voting in American Congressional Elections
Authors: Gomez Brad T. , Wilson J. Matthew
Published: January 2007

This article examines the ways in which political sophistication conditions economic voting in U.S. congressional elections. At the congressional level, evidence of economic voting has been generally mixed and sometimes contradictory. In our view, much of the inconsistency in existing studies may result from a tendency to overlook significant heterogeneity in voter decisionmaking. Specifically, we argue that an individual’s ability to attribute responsibility for economic outcomes to congressional actors is a function of political sophistication. According to our theory, less sophisticated voters tend to focus their attributions of responsibility on the President (the most obvious national political figure), ignoring the influence of Congress on the national economy. More sophisticated individuals, by contrast, are capable of more diffuse attributions. Thus, to the extent that conventional economic voting occurs in congressional elections, it should be confined to the more sophisticated portion of the electorate.
The Entrance of Women to the U.S. Congress: The Widow Effect
Authors: Solowiej Lisa , Brunell Thomas L.
Published: January 2007

This article explores what is perhaps the single most important method of entrance into Congress for women—replacing a deceased husband. As was evident with the death of Governor Mel Carnahan (D-MO) and his wife, Jean Carnahan (D-MO), who subsequently served in the Senate, the succession of dead congressmen by their widows has been treated popularly by the news media, but has not received too much scholarly attention. In this study we examine the dramatic differences between widows and non-widow females and find that the groups differ in statistically significant ways in terms of their characteristics, their length in office, and their manner of leaving office. We also look at the difference between southern widows and non-southern widows and find support for the theory that widows from the South are more likely to serve short terms—act as stand-ins—until the party can determine who the more traditional candidate ought to be. We theorize that widows are apt to run for these seats because they enjoy high name recognition, which makes running in an election less risky. This, as Bledsoe and Herring (1990) demonstrate, increases the likelihood for women to run for office. We model widow succession in terms of the theoretical basis for the widow effect and find that the more senior a House member is before he dies, the more likely the widow is to serve in his place.
Predicting Challengers in State Supreme Court Elections: Context and the Politics of Institutional Design
Authors: Bonneau Chris W. , Hall Melinda Gann
Published: January 2007

In this article, we answer two important questions about the role of challengers in elections to the states’ highest courts: (1) under what conditions do incumbents draw challengers, and (2) do these same conditions influence whether the challengers entering these races have sufficient experience to pose a threat to the officeholders (i.e., are they quality challengers). While the factors related to each electoral contest and the forces characterizing the overall political climate of the state should affect the type of challenge, if any, we also expect institutions to matter. Specifically, factors governing the attractiveness of supreme court seats, as well as the formal means by which judicial elections are organized, all should serve to enhance or inhibit competition. In an analysis of all 146 partisan and nonpartisan elections to state supreme courts from 1988 through 1995, we find that competition from both inexperienced and experienced challengers is predictable from some basic information about the incumbents, the states, and the institutional context. Like legislators, judges can influence their chances of being challenged only to a limited degree. However, the states can increase or decrease competition to some extent by manipulating electoral system characteristics and a variety of factors that make supreme court seats more or less valuable. In fact, under certain scenarios, state supreme courts may be more democratic in character and function than is generally recognized or perhaps preferred.
Examining Individual-Level Voting Behavior on State Ballot Propositions
Authors: Branton Regina P.
Published: January 2007

The intent of this study is to provide a broad examination of individual-level voting behavior on ballot propositions. This study seeks to extend the existing research on voting behavior in ballot elections in two ways: first, by examining a large number of issues across numerous states and second, by examining the “general” factors associated with voting choice. To examine individual-level voting behavior on state ballot initiative, I rely on Voter News Service (VNS) state-level exit poll surveys from three election periods (1992-1996). Overall, this study casts some light on the relationships between individual attributes and voting choices on different types of ballot propositions. The results generated herein lend support for expectation that there are some consistent patterns in voting behavior on ballot initiatives. Notably, the results indicate that individual-level party identification is consistently related to voting behavior across each of the various types of ballot propositions.
Multilateralism, Major Powers, and Militarized Disputes
Authors: Corbetta Renato , Dixon William J.
Published: January 2007

American foreign policy has been animated by public debate between multilateralism and unilateralism in recent years. Some strains of traditional realist thinking suggest that major powers like the U.S. will naturally tend to be less enamored of multilateral action precisely because they possess the capabilities to engage a wider range of unilateral options and they face fewer structural limitations than other states. We empirically investigate this intriguing potential connection between major power status and multilateralism through the lens of interstate conflict. Using Keohane’s (1990) definition of multilateralism as coordination among three or more states, we analyze states’ propensity to participate multilaterally in militarized disputes. Contrary to expectations, we find that major powers are substantially more prone toward multilateral participation than other states. These results p rove to be highly robust in the face of a number of potentially confounding factors and over time.
The “Swing Voter” Revisited: Justice Anthony Kennedy and the First Amendment Right of Free Speech
Authors: Schmidt Patrick D. , Yalof David A.
Published: January 2007

The prevailing definition of a “swing voter” on the Supreme Court, set out in a landmark 1990 article in The Journal of Politics and unchallenged ever since, establishes an unreasonably high standard for determining whether a Justice truly fits that critical role. This article critiques existing methods of identifying swing voting and advances a revised methodology, which is then applied to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decisionmaking patterns on the current Court. In the case of free speech decisions in particular, we find that Kennedy epitomizes an alternative form of the “swing voter,” veering off from his more natural bloc in that important subset of cases.
Tribal-State Relations Involving Land and Resources in the Self-Determination Era
Authors: Jarding Lilias Jones
Published: January 2007

This research focused on the nature of modern relationships between tribal and state governments in the land and natural resources arena. Surveys were completed by 49 states, the District of Columbia, and 77 tribal governments. The results indicated that neither tribes nor states had a high level of administrative capacity to deal with environmental issues on reservations, and that when states did develop such capacity it was often used against Native American interests. Perceptions of pollution on reservations varied between state and tribal governments. States with neighboring reservations—and especially elected officials—were more hostile to native interests than states without native neighbors. Bureaucratic relations appeared more cooperative. Tribal-state interactions, while not conforming to national-subnational or territorial models of federalism, conformed to the concept of relational federalism.
Exploring Gender Differences in State Legislators’ Policy Preferences
Authors: Poggione Sarah
Published: January 2007

While a great deal of research documents women elected officials’ more liberal policy attitudes and concludes that increased women’s representation will produce more liberal policies, I argue that the influence of gender and ultimately the influence of women’s representation remain unclear. First, constituency demands may explain observed gender differences. Second, the influence of gender may vary among legislators. I find that although constituency interests do have a significant effect, women continue to express significantly more liberal welfare policy preferences than men. In addition, I find that gender differences in legislators’ preferences are greater among Republican and conservative legislators than among Democratic and liberal legislators. Consequently, predicting the impact of increasing women’s representation on policy is likely to be more complex than previously thought.
The Question of Committee Bias Revisited
Authors: Parker Glenn R. , Parker Suzanne L. , Copa Juan C. , Lawhorn Mark D.
Published: January 2007

This study revisits the question of whether committees are biased in their policy outputs—pursuing policies at odds with noncommittee members. We find evidence that committees in the House are biased: Most committees are either more divided than the larger membership in the House, or there is a greater consensus within the committee than among noncommittee members. These patterns extend across all types of committees.
Political Knowledge and Issue Voting Among the Latino Electorate
Authors: Nicholson Stephen P. , Pantoja Adrian , Segura Gary M.
Published: January 2007

How informed is a Latino vote? Though recent scholarship has improved our understanding of Latino political participation, partisanship, and policy preferences, relatively little is known about how Hispanics make electoral decisions. In this effort, we evaluate the role policy issues, candidate affect, and symbolism play in the electoral choices of Latino voters. In particular, we are interested in how these factors affect the vote across voters with varying levels of political information. Using the 2000 Tomás Rivera Policy Institute pre-election poll, we explore the degree to which Latino voters relied on issue-positions to judge the two major party candidates and compare the effect of such considerations with symbolic and candidate-specific appeals. We find that policy issues played an important role in shaping voting preferences, but only among politically knowledgeable voters, while among uninformed voters, symbolism and long-standing partisan preferences matter most. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for political representation and Latino politics.
Local Government Autonomy and State Reliance on Special District Governments: A Reassessment
Authors: Carr Jered B.
Published: January 2007

The notion that local government autonomy has important implications for a state’s local government structure is fast approaching conventional wisdom. Negative binomial regression is used to analyze the link between the administrative, fiscal, functional, and structural autonomy permitted to municipal and county governments and the number of special districts in each state over the 1992-2002 period. This pooled analysis reveals that this relationship to befar more limited than previously thought. This study challenges the findings of previous studies showing that limitations on local autonomy strongly encourage a splintering of local government authority due to the creation of numerous special districts. Tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) were the only restrictions that were consistently related to a greater reliance on special district governments, and only when both municipal and county governments were both strongly restricted. For the most part, state reliance on special district governments was unaffected by the extent of restrictions placed on local general-purpose governments with regard to debt and permitted functions.
Changing Meanings of Electoral Marginality in U.S. House Elections, 1824-1978
Authors: Garand James C. , Wink Kenneth , Vincent Bryan
Published: January 2007

Gary Jacobson (1987a, 1987b) has suggested that increased vote proportions for incumbent House candidates during the 1960s and 1970s have not resulted in greater electoral safety, primarily because of greater observed volatility in interelection vote swings occurring during the same era. Using data on House elections from 1824 to 1978, we find that both "marginal" and "safe" incumbents are much more vulnerable to electoral defeat during the 19th century than during the 20th century. This pattern seems to be explained by greater homogeneity of interelection vote swings during the 20th century. Overall, our results lend strong support to Jacobson's assertion that the meaning of electoral marginality varies substantially over time.
Women's Council Representation: Measurement Implications for Public Policy
Authors: Alozie Nicholas O. , Manganaro Lynne L.
Published: January 2007

Previous accounts of the determinants of women's service on city councils focused on the degree of women's representation. In this paper we suggest that understanding women's representation on these legislative bodies requires that attention also be paid to potential differences between communities where women have been able to break the cycle of exclusion from those where they have not. This paper compares two different measures of women's council representation using both logit and the OLS regression. The results indicate that, alone, electoral structure is not a significant explanatory factor in understanding either the presence of women on city councils or the extent of women's representation on these legislative bodies. However, the size of the legislative body has a significant effect which, except among district election cities, largely improves the likelihood of electing a woman to the council (as compared to improving the degree of women's representation). Other results indicate significant regional disparities which favor the Midwest and West over the Northeast and South.
Gender as a Factor in the Attribution of Leadership Traits
Authors: Alexander Deborah , Andersen Kristi
Published: January 2007

The candidate evaluation literature has emphasized the contribution of both candidate characteristics and voter characteristics (e.g., party identification) to candidate appraisals. But the literature on attribution and sex role stereotypes suggests that women candidates may be evaluated differently than their male counterparts. This paper presents the results of a survey of 98 voters in which we explored the relationships among gender role attitudes, voters' attribution of leadership traits, and support for male and female candidates. The surveys were conducted in Syracuse, New York, during the 1990 campaigns, which included three male-female races. Our results substantiate the hypothesis that when candidate information is sparse, gender role attitudes are consequential in the initial evaluation of lesser known women candidates. Gender attitudes are important factors in candidate favorability when the candidates are women challengers. Secondly, we found that voters had a tendency to attribute particular leadership qualities and issue skills based on sex to hypothetical candidates, if no other information was available. In addition, we found that the more egalitarian the voters' gender role attitudes, the more likely they were to evaluate favorably actual women candidates. Finally, it was the case that all incumbents, male and female, were rated more positively on both "masculine" and "feminine" traits than were challengers.
News Coverage of Human Rights
Authors: Ovsiovitch Jay S.
Published: January 2007

News coverage of human rights is important for education, the protection of rights, and the development of foreign policy. The relationship between the media and human rights makes it essential to know how human rights are reported by the media. Previous studies on news coverage of human rights have examined only the amount of coverage, not its content. This study analyzes human rights coverage in the New York Times, Time magazine, and the CBS Evening News for a ten-year period, 1978-1987. An examination of the different indexes determined what rights and which countries received media attention. I found that the three news outlets present a similar view of human rights, focusing on civil and political rights; there is very little attention given to economic, social, and cultural rights. Geographical coverage focuses on a small number of countries primarily in two regions, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Shaping a Candidate's Image in the Press: Ronald Reagan and the 1980 Presidential Election
Authors: Covington Cary R. , Kroeger Kent , Richardson Glenn , Woodard J. David
Published: January 2007

We examined Ronald Reagan's 1980 election campaign to judge the effects of his Issue of the Day (IOD) media management strategy on his image as portrayed in the print and televised news media. The IOD strategy attempts to shape the content and tone of coverage by limiting press access to Reagan, formalizing the relationship, and conveying a single message over extended periods of time. Our analysis shows Reagan had success shaping the content of the press's coverage, but not its tone. We also found that the IOD strategy had greater effects on televised news programs than on the print media.
Bureaucratic Accommodation of Congress and the President: Elections and the Distribution of Federal Assistance
Authors: Hamman John A.
Published: January 2007

This article investigates whether elections provide bureaucrats with a means for accommodating political pressure from Congress and the White House. Specifically the article tests: (1) whether bureaucrats shorten the time they take to process applications from districts important to the agency and the White House in election years, and (2) whether such preferences are reflected in the resulting geographical distribution of assistance. An analysis of the administration and distribution of federal mass transportation discretionary capital assistance grants from 1966 through 1984 finds that agency officials adapted to White House but not subcommittee pressures in this way. The article concludes that the marginal influence of the presidency in the bureaucratic allocation of federal assistance needs further theoretical consideration.
Three Kinds of Constitutional Founding and Change: The Convention Model and Its Alternatives
Authors: Vile John R.
Published: January 2007

Constitutional regimes may be divided into three types, the Single Lawgiver Model, the Immemorial Customs and Usages Model, and the Constitutional Convention Model. Each type provides for change differently. The first type of constitution, common in ancient regimes, is typically founded by a single individual, justified by divine authority, and difficult to change. The second model, with less discrete beginnings, claims to be the product of the distilled wisdom of time and experience. While in some such systems, the legislature is technically sovereign and the constitution is therefore quite "flexible," typically change proceeds quite slowly, and major changes may prove difficult to accommodate. In the third model, a constitutional convention writes a constitution superior to ordinary legislation and provides for formal changes in discrete increments. This model, formulated in America, has not been instituted in pure form, and shares characteristics of the other two. The overlap among these models continues to explain and influence modem debates about constitutional change.
Expanding Possibilities in Local Development Policy: An Examination of U.S. Cities
Authors: Goetz Edward G.
Published: January 2007

Some local governments in the U.S. have expanded their economic development policy from the incentives and subsidies that have characterized the arena for 30 years to policy that is increasingly concerned with equity, the control and regulation of private development, and the direction of tangible growth-related benefits to low-income groups. This new development policy orientation provides an opportunity to test the explanatory power of competing models of local politics. Using cross-sectional data on a large sample of U.S. cities, I argue that the role of political actors and local political conditions are extremely important in explaining the variation in development policy across cities.
Ideological Extremity, Issue Distance, and Voter Defection
Authors: Lawrence David G.
Published: January 2007

The bulk of the literature rejects the argument that Democratic failure in presidential elections between 1968 and 1988 had an ideological basis. Analysis of the interplay of respondents' own issue positions with their perceptions of the parties/candidates suggests a different and rather complex picture. Between 1968 and 1980, the partisan/ideological cores of the two parties-liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans- behave quite differently: only moderately different defection rates between the most liberal Democrats and most conservative Republicans increase considerably as one moves from the relevant ideological extreme to the center. Placement of parties/candidates in issue space explains this asymmetry during this initial period of Democratic decline: the Democratic party/candidate is perceived as far to the left, with Demo cratic identifiers positioned midway between the electoral alternatives; Republicans identifiers, in contrast, are to the right of both parties/candid ates, but very close to their own. Beginning in 1980, the Reagan candidacy/administration push popular images of the Republicans to the right, eliminating their ideological advantage and forcing us to look elsewhere for the basis of continued Democratic losses.
The Psychology of Political Momentum
Authors: Kenney Patrick J. , Rice Tom W.
Published: January 2007

In this article we examine the psychological processes that lead people to display bandwagon behavior. Next, we test these theories against the momentum that got rolling for George Bush in the 1988 presidential prenomination campaign. The NES Super Tuesday panel data from that year provide the necessary data. Our results suggest that individuals switched to Bush for a variety of reasons. Some got caught up in the excitement of the momentum and threw their support to the vice president uncritically. Others backed him because they liked the feeling of supporting the favorite Still others reluctantly switched to him even though they liked another can didate better because they felt Bush had the nomination locked up. Finally, some people joined in the momentum because they became convinced that Bush had the best chance of carrying the Republicans to victory in November.
Congressional Attacks on Supreme Court Rulings Involving Unconstitutional State Laws
Authors: Meernik James , Ignagni Joseph
Published: January 2007

In recent years scholars of both the Supreme Court and the Congress have begun to devote increasing attention to congressional attempts to reverse Court decisions declaring federal statutes unconstitutional, while Court decisions involving state laws have not garnered nearly the same amount of attention. We know that the Court strikes down state laws with far greater frequency than federal laws and that many of the most contentious issues facing the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the nation have arisen at the state level. It is our purpose to develop a model of congressional decision reversal action regarding all state laws declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court from 1953 through 1990. Using both probit and regression models we find that the electoral concerns of members of Congress, the nature of the issue the Court addresses and the degree of federal govern mental impact of the Court decision are all significant predictors of both the likelihood of a response and the extent of the congressional response.
Influences on Reinvention During the Diffusion of Innovations
Authors: Hays Scott P
Published: January 2007

This study considers how states change policy innovations as they diffuse. This process, known as reinvention, has been the subject of recent innova tion diffusion research (Mooney and Lee 1995; Glick and Hays 1991). This paper examines the role of controversy in structuring the nature of reinvention, creating a more fully specified model of the causes of reinven tion. This research is a comparative analysis of the evolution of provisions of three policy innovations: child abuse reporting laws, crime victim com pensation law, and public campaign funding laws. The data show that vary ing levels of controversy affect the nature of policy reinvention and that reinvention results from a combination of social learning, political charac teristics, and contextual factors.
Estimating Racially Polarized Voting: A View From the States
Authors: Shaw Daron R.
Published: January 2007

In the aftermath of the 1990 United States Census, much attention is being paid to the drawing of electoral districts. Leaders of the black and Latino communities are among the most interested in these enterprises because they see districting as a way for white majorities to minimize the prospects for electing minority representatives. Decidedly less attention is being paid to the use of ecological regression in evaluating districting ar rangements. Ecological regression, long viewed with caution by social sci entists, is especially important in ruling on racial polarization in voting rights cases. The courts' reliance on ecological regression is a product of the lack of reliable district-level survey data on individual-level preferences. This study focuses on the potential pitfalls of using aggregate-level data to infer intergroup voting differences. The design compares ecological regres sion estimates of group voting behavior in each of the states with estimates gleaned from national tracking polls for the 1992 presidential election. The data show that the technique detects racial polarization in states, though the accuracy of ecological regression's point estimates is variable.
Political Expertise and Issue Voting in Presidential Elections
Authors: Goren Paul
Published: January 2007

Recent research on political expertise indicates that what citizens know and how much they think about politics affect the political choices they make. So it would seem for issue voting in presidential elections. Unfor tunately, prior work has yielded such conflicting results that we lack a clear understanding of how expertise affects the vote. Drawing on re search from social and political psychology, I argue that the accessibility of policy attitudes from memory depends on political expertise. Given greater accessibility of policy attitudes, issue voting should be more pro nounced at higher levels of expertise. In contrast to most previous work, this research measures expertise with interval-level knowledge scales and employs formal interaction tests. Data from the 1984 and 1988 National Election Study surveys are used to test my hypotheses. Results show that increasing expertise results in higher levels of sociotropic, ideological, and policy voting.
Executive Constraints and Success in International Crises
Authors: Partell Peter J.
Published: January 2007

Crisis outcomes have traditionally been explained by the participating states' relative power and relative ability to demonstrate resolve. Resolve has almost always been defined as the willingness of a state to go to war to obtain a favorable settlement and almost always operationalized in terms of the amount of force that a state uses in a particular crisis or dispute. However, a growing body of literature suggests that domestic political structures are an important source of resolve and therefore should be an important determinant of interstate crisis/dispute outcomes. This hypoth esis is tested using two distinct data sets and the results indicate that the hypothesis is not only correct, but that domestic political structures are a stronger predictor of interstate conflict outcomes than either relative ca pability or the traditional notion of relative resolve.
Fashionable Subjects: On Judith Butler and the Causal Idioms of Postmodern Feminist Theory
Authors: Kaufman-Osborn Timothy V
Published: January 2007

What conception of causality is presupposed when the discursive con stitution of identity is affirmed? Is the subject of late modernity "Pro duced?" "Generated?" "Inscribed?" "Constructed?" "Defined?" "Formed?" Indiscriminately employed in much recent feminist theory, these terms evoke quite different understandings of causal efficacy, and hence quite different accounts of how specifically gendered identities are fashioned. To indicate what is at stake here, I explore arguments advanced by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble and, more recently, in Bodies That Matter. In the former, Butler's unrecognized reliance on a mechanistic idiom of causal ity vitiates her genealogical critique of the humanist subject. In the latter, more elliptically than conclusively, Butler proposes a critical reappropria tion of the Aristotelian idiom of form and matter. Building on this sugges tion, I argue that an organic idiom of causality, although not without problems, is better equipped than is its Cartesian counterpart to make sense of the body's immanent implication in the processes by which it becomes a gendered subject. In closing, I ask about the implications of these two idioms of causality for our understanding of political agency
Stability in a Fragmenting World: Interstate Military Force, 1946-1988
Authors: Pickering Jeffrey , Thompson William R.
Published: January 2007

Six hypotheses, developed from arguments about the fragmentation of the international system, are applied to a data set encompassing 667 interstate uses of armed force between 1946 and 1988. Particular attention is paid to center-periphery and intra-peripheral interventions. The data suggest sup port for one perspective on fragmentation, imperial disintegration, but not for a model based upon eroding polarization. While center interventionary activity has declined over the 1946-1988 period, peripheral states, focusing much of their activities within regional subsystems, have become more interventionary, at least in terms of absolute numbers. Yet, despite the rela tively dramatic alteration of center and periphery intervention patterns, the overall portrait of interstate force supported by our findings is one of stability. When normalized for the increasing number of states in the international system, global levels of interstate military force have remained constant. And, in contrast to our collective perception of an increasingly violent periphery, the use of military force across state borders may not have become markedly more severe in that part of the world.
If Men Stayed Home ... The Gender Gap in Recent Congressional Elections
Authors: Winsky Mattei Laura R. , Mattei Franco
Published: January 2007

Inclusion of sex along with the core elements of the New Deal coalition has become more common in group-based analyses of partisan and vot ing blocs since 1980. We focus on the impact of sex on party identifica tion and congressional voting at both the individual and aggregate level; special attention is paid to the 1994 midterm. Using data from the Na tional Elections Studies (1980-1996), we show that like men, women in the total electorate were more likely to identify as Republicans in 1994 than at any other time. Although significant and stronger than in the past, the influence of sex on an individual's party loyalty still trailed that of membership in other groups. However, at the aggregate level, sex dif ferences were clearly the most powerful force in shaping the balance of partisan identification. The evidence also shows that women's alleged low turnout did not account for the 1994 outcome. Differences in congres sional voting behavior between women and men are observed most clearly in off-year, open-seat contests when the effects of incumbency and presi dential coattails are absent.
Organized Interests' Advocacy Behavior in Alliances
Authors: Hojnacki Marie
Published: January 2007

In this article I examine how the characteristics of a coalition can affect the incentives an organization has to contribute to a collective advocacy effort. Although groups working in coalition have opportunities to free- ride on the efforts of their allies, the opportunity to develop a reputation as an advocate may provide a selective incentive to contribute. Reputa tions are important because of the information they convey to potential allies about how groups are likely to behave in an alliance. But for repu tation to serve as a selective incentive, a group's advocacy contribution must be easy for its allies to observe. Thus, only in coalitions that are designed to make groups' advocacy contributions conspicuous will a de cision to free-ride be a costly strategy to employ Based on data I collected about organizations' coalitional advocacy activity on five issues, I show that groups in a coalition are less likely to free-ride when their advocacy activities are coordinated and when they interact often with their alliance partners.
Reading, Writing, and Regime Type: Democracy' Impact on Primary School Enrollment
Authors: Brown David S.
Published: January 2007

This study examines the relationship between democracy and the accumulation of human capital. Specifically, I examine regime type' impact on primary school enrollment in the developing world. The statistical analysis establishes that poor democracies enroll a larger percentage of the school-age population than do their authoritarian counterparts. Models using dichotomous and continuous measures of democracy indicate that the institutions associated with individual rights and electoral competition have an important effect on primary school enrollment. Estimates from a selection bias model that account for education' impact on democracy corroborate the results. One possible explanation is that democratic politicians, facing electoral pressures, are compelled to provide a minimum level of educational opportunity for their citizens. Democracy is often criticized for its inability to insulate politicians from the demands made by society To the extent that the accumulation of human capital generates economic growth, democracy' inability to withstand popular demands may be an important advantage.
Twirling through the Motions: Applying Motor Control Theory to Practice
Authors: Strachan Leisha , Weir Patricia
Published: January 2007

This paper provides a link between theory and practice in the sport of baton twirling. An in-depth analysis of motor control theory applied to this sport will give some insight into how knowledge of motor control can impact the type of psychological interventions that may be most effective. A number of motor control issues are relevant to the sport of baton twirling. Although manual dexterity is the most prominent ability underlying baton twirling skills, other abilities such as multi-limb and eye-hand coordination, timing, and tracking also contribute to the intricacies of the sport. In reviewing the motor control research, many insights into the complexities of baton twirling are identified; these may prove beneficial to coaches regardless of what sport they are teaching. This review illustrates the importance of being mindful of the complexities involved in a sport and how effective psychological interventions may be developed through a thorough evaluation of a sport Implications for coaching are also discussed.
Demographics of Deaf Education: More Students in More Places
Authors: Mitchell Ross E , Karchmer Michael A
Published: January 2007

We have witnessed important changes in the demographics of the deaf and hard of hearing student population receiving special education services during the past quarter century. The ethnic, intervention, and educational setting profiles are more diverse and dispersed. On top of the federal policy changes driving emerging intervention and continuing educational setting changes, there is now an increasing demand for deaf and hard of hearing students to participate in the general curriculum and school accountability systems. Over the same time period, stricter control over student data privacy and greater scrutiny of human subject protection have been incorporated into federal regulations. We highlight some consequences for deaf education research resulting from the convergences of these parallel trends in changing demographics, shifting school policy contexts, and regulation of federally funded research.
Chains of points in the Semple tower
Authors: Lejeune-Jalabert Monique
Published: January 2007

We introduce a proximity relation in the Semple tower over a nonsingular algebraic variety Z , and we prove a formula, relating the multiplicity of a curve C in Z at a point z with the multiplicities of its iterated Nash blowing-ups at the proximate points of z , parallel to a classical formula of Enriques. We also show that the Semple tower of a surface parametrizes its infinitely near points.
The Manifold Uses of the Epic Past: The Embassy Scene in Herodotus 7.153-63
Authors: Grethlein Jonas
Published: January 2007

In the Syracusan embassy scene (Hdt. 7.153â63), both the Spartan and the Athenian envoys invoke the epic past to buttress their claims to the chief command; against this, Gelon pits the youthful vigour of his recent superpower, calling his army the "spring of Greece." However, intertextual links undermine the claims of all three and evoke the later fights for hegemony. This analysis sheds light on the way Herodotus uses the widespread juxtaposition of the Trojan and Persian Wars and helps to assess the relation of his Histories to non-historiographical genres.
Globalizing 'Postsocialism:' Mobile Mothers and Neoliberalism on the Margins of Europe
Authors: Keough Leyla J
Published: January 2007

In recent years, women's transnational labor migration from Moldova has grown exponentially and their absence from families has provoked considerable anxiety over transformations in the social order. Few scholars of postsocialist states have explored transnational labor. Those who have focus on how new economic practices such as trading are anxiety-ridden because they index transformations from socialism to "postsocialism." These scholars have not detailed nor theorized the gendered nature of migrant labor, representations of it, and states responses to it. Using ethnographic research and interviews with Gagauz Moldovan migrant women who travel to work as domestics in Turkey and their village compatriots in Moldova, this paper illustrates a discourse of blame that employs the trope of "mothers as key to the social order," one complicated by notions of socialism, sexuality, ethnicity, work, wealth, and rurality. This trope plays a key role in blaming female migrant laborers for social disorder and in migrants' own justifications for going abroad. I argue that the migrants' gendered justifications constitute a new moral economy that aligns with global and Moldovan state neoliberal rationales. Drawing on a broad feminist and anthropological literature, this article problematizes claims about "postsocialist"
transnational labor experiences by specifying them in terms of other overlapping subjectivities, particularly gender. In so doing, it shifts the anthropological gaze from a narrow focus on "postsocialism" in this region to identify problems and processes of globalization that hold wider significance and questions our categorizations of states into "postsocialist," "postwelfare," "third world," "global south," and/or "postcolonial."
Allochthons, Colonizers, and Scroungers: Exclusionary Populism in Belgium
Authors: Ceuppens Bambi
Published: January 2007

This article analyzes the growth of autochthony in Belgium as an example of the increasing popularity of autochthony discourses in Western Europe. Autochthony discourses, which try to reserve the benefits of the welfare state to those who are said to really belong, tend to thrive in prosperous Western European welfare states with a strong Social-Democratic tradition that refuse to accept that they have become immigrant countries. In federalized Belgium, however, autochthony has a much stronger appeal in Flanders, which historically was dominated by Christian-Democratic parties, than in Wallonia, which remains a Social-Democratic bulwark. Analyzing Western European autochthony in terms of welfare chauvinism helps explain the ways in which prosperous Flemings, unlike impoverished Walloons, can afford to buy into the neoliberal rhetoric of choice and thus create themselves as autochthons.
Autobiographical Texts as Historiographical Sources: Rereading Fernand Braudel and Annie Kriegel
Authors: Aurell i Cardona Jaume
Published: January 2007

This article engages autobiographical texts by French historians Fernand Braudel and Annie Kriegal as historiographical sources that help us comprehend the intersection between personal lives and scholarly production. This perspective serves as a reference for comprehending the way historians construct our access to the knowledge of the past to increase our understanding not only of history, but importantly, of the writing of history.