bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Monica Lewinsky's Contribution to Political Science
Authors: Zaller John R.
Published: May 2006

The bounce in President Clinton's job ratings that occurred in the initial 10 days of the Lewinsky imbroglio may offer as much insight into the dynamics of public opinion as any single event in recent memory. What it shows is not just the power of a booming economy to buttress presidential popularity. It shows, more generally, the importance of political substance, as against media hype, in American politics. Even when, as occurred in this case, public opinion is initially responsive to media reports of scandal, the public's concern with actual political achievement reasserts itself. This lesson, which was not nearly so clear before the Lewinsky matter as it is now, not only deepens our understanding of American politics. It also tends, as I argue in the second half of this article, to undermine the importance of one large branch of public opinion research, buttress the importance of another, and point toward some new research questions.

Whatever else may have transpired by the time this article gets into print, the Lewinsky poll bounce is something worth pondering. In a half-dozen commercial polls taken in the period just before the story broke, Clinton's job approval rating averaged about 60%. Ten days later, following intensive coverage of the story and Clinton's State of the Union address, presidential support was about 10 percentage points higher.
National Health Reform: An Idea Whose Political Time Has Come?
Authors: Brown Lawrence D.
Published: May 2006

Health care, like many other arenas of social policy, offers plentiful evidence both to those who picture the policy process as highly dynamic and innovative and to those who prefer to portray it as beset by deadlock and stalemate. Over the last two decades federal policymakers have invented an array of programs designed to make the system more efficient—health maintenance organizations, peer review organizations, health systems agencies, certificate-of-need, a prospective payment system, resource-based relative-value-scale fee schedules, to name the most prominent—but they have been unwilling to extend health coverage to the 17% or so of the nonaged population that lacks it or to change the nation's mixed public-private health insurance system in basic ways.

This pattern is less paradoxical than it may seem at first glance. A diffuse concern about the rising costs of care could well support a string of (largely ineffective) programs that apply gentle brakes without disturbing the system deeply, but benefit-expanding measures and still more federally sponsored programs to achieve a better balance between benefits and costs have met solid political obstacles. The public, fairly content with the system but poorly informed about its workings, wants immediate access to good care at “affordable” rates and rarely cares to hear about tradeoffs among these goals.
Questioning the Conventional Wisdom on Public Opinion Toward Health Reform
Authors: Jacobs Lawrence R. , Shapiro Robert Y.
Published: May 2006

Ample evidence confirms that public opinion influences the policy-making process. Research suggests that public preferences are not simply translated into government policy; rather, policymakers' response to public opinion is conditioned or mediated by political and institutional processes (Jacobs, 1993a, 1993b, 1992a, 1992b; Jacobs and Shapiro, 1994a, 1994b; for discussion of this research see PS, March 1994, 9–38).

The passage and designing of health reform will depend in important respects on public attitudes toward health care and health reform. The interpretation of public opinion by the media and other political observers, however, is not a neutral process dictated by scientific methods; it is the product of institutional and political struggles for position and power.

Conventional wisdom regarding the public's health reform attitudes holds that Americans are narrowly self-interested, unambiguously antitax, and unwavering opponents of government regulation. Are these three sets of assumed attitudes supported by the available empirical evidence?

Here we take an historical approach to studying public opinion—one that identifies the patterns and trends of Americans' responses to identically worded questions asked in national opinion surveys.
Neglected Institutions: Politics, Administration, and Health Reform
Authors: Morone James A.
Published: May 2006

Americans have been debating national health insurance throughout the twentieth century. The content of this elusive reform has evolved far more than the tone of the debate. When Theodore Roosevelt championed health care reform (during the 1912 presidential campaign) he wanted to build a hardy stock of Anglo Saxons—health insurance would help deliver white America from race suicide (Dyer 1980; Ross 1913, 299–304). More than thirty years later, President Truman made health insurance the major domestic issue of his presidential campaign; his goal was an extension of the New Deal social welfare state (Starr 1982). Today, the reform that was once condemned as too costly is widely prescribed as cost control.

While the reform itself has changed, the debate that surrounds it remains entirely predictable. Theda Skocpol describes the contestants: On one side, self-confident, neo-Progressive experts touting rationalizing schemes. On the other, conservative critics deploying “ideological, emotionally charged arguments” (Skocpol 1994). The shrill rhetoric of opposition has alternately bemused and baffled observers. Compulsory insurance was “a dangerous device … announced by the German emperor” (in 1918), a force representing “social theory … socialism, even communism” (in 1932), “the keystone to the arch of socialism” and “a threat to every area of freedom as we have known it (by the 1960s).
The Usefulness of Senate Confirmation Hearings for Judicial Nominees: The Case of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Authors: Comiskey Michael
Published: May 2006

In the September 1993 pages of this journal, I asked whether senators can illuminate the political and legal beliefs of Supreme Court nominees by questioning them at confirmation hearings (Comiskey 1993). Many observers of the confirmation process believe that a nominee's testimony can produce insights into the nominee's views that go beyond what is available from the nominee's public record. While such testimony has often proved barren in the past, these observers often express the view that better questioning of nominees can bring forth greater insights in the future (Carter 1988; Melone 1991; Rees 1983; Ross 1987). By contrast, I concluded that the political context in which Supreme Court nominations occur, the motives of participants in the confirmation process, and the incentives facing these participants will likely continue to inhibit illuminating testimony by nominees.

Since my previous paper was written before last summer's hearings on the nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, this article examines those hearings. In some respects, her testimony resembled that of most recent nominees. In at least one respect—her candor on abortion—her testimony was a major departure from that of all recent nominees with the partial exception of Robert Bork.
Replication, Replication
Authors: King Gary
Published: May 2006

Political science is a community enterprise; the community of empirical political scientists needs access to the body of data necessary to replicate existing studies to understand, evaluate, and especially build on this work. Unfortunately, the norms we have in place now do not encourage, or in some cases even permit, this aim. Following are suggestions that would facilitate replication and are easy to implement—by teachers, students, dissertation writers, graduate programs, authors, reviewers, funding agencies, and journal and book editors.
Replication, Verification, Secondary Analysis, and Data Collection in Political Science
Authors: Herrnson Paul S.
Published: May 2006

Political scientists believe they ought to promote research as a social enterprise and develop a stronger sense of community within the discipline. They disagree on how to foster community and on the best way to promote research. The position taken in “Replication, Replication” (King 1995) is that these goals can be achieved by requiring researchers who collect data to surrender the products of their labor to others without compensation.
Evaluation Standards for a Slow-Moving Science
Authors: Sniderman Paul M.
Published: May 2006

Everything I have published, apart from some ghost-written school speeches for my children, I have written as a social scientist. Having persuaded myself that I had discovered something worth reporting, I have attempted to persuade others that it was worth knowing. I have taken this to be consistent with the spirit of science, perhaps naively; a spirit encompassing, among other things, the value of public argument based on publicly reproducible evidence.
On the Inadequacy and Inappropriateness of the Replication Standard
Authors: Maisel L. Sandy
Published: May 2006

Gary King has done a great service to the discipline in raising the question of how we meet appropriate standards for assuring that our published work advances the collective knowledge concerning government and politics that is in our mutual professional interest. He has done so in a truly collegial manner, stating his view, raising concerns, and inviting discussion. The editors of PS are using this publication in precisely the proper way by providing a forum in which this professional debate can be aired.
Our Brother's Keeper: Authenticity, Accountability, and the Social Science Quarterly Project
Authors: Lineberry Robert L. , Lineberry Nita A.
Published: May 2006

The Social Science Quarterly (SSQ) is the major interdisciplinary journal in the social sciences, typically receiving more than 400 manuscripts per year. We publish about 10% of these, so we are in the same ball park as the major disciplinary journals in sociology and political science. More than, perhaps, even the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), we publish empirical studies. Economic sociology, environmental studies, political behavior, ethnic studies, gender studies, urban affairs, and several other areas are among our specialties.
Response: Potential Research Policies for Political Science
Authors: Herrnson Paul S.
Published: May 2006

As evidenced by the thoughtful symposium participants, political scientists have a variety of opinions about verification, replication, and data archiving. I continue to have strong reservations regarding the proposed replication, verification, data relinquishment rules debated here. The symposium, however, has convinced me of one important thing: a still broader discussion is needed before editors or organizations change the norms governing research or publication. Walter Stone's (1995) proposal to survey political scientists to obtain their opinions on verification/replication is, therefore, a good one.
Gerrymandering: Out of the Political Thicket and Into the Quagmire
Authors: Rush Mark E.
Published: May 2006

The term gerrymandering always evokes spirited partisan debate and political controversy. Yet, when we begin to scratch at the surface, we see that there is more to gerrymandering than debates about cartographical aesthetics. The issue goes directly to the heart of theories of democracy and representation and is replete with controversy, irony, and inconsistency.

My key point is that resolving the gerrymandering issue is distinct from, and therefore may not result in, improving representation. This point is due to the fact that neither jurists nor scholars have been able to set forth a clear and consistent definition of representation.

Terminology:

The term gerrymander must be distinguished from redistricting. The latter is the process by which congressional and legislative district lines are redrawn in order to balance their populations in the wake of the decennial census. The former uses redistricting for partisan ends by dividing concentrations of voters to prevent their coalescing into a majority in a district, or by concentrating so many group members into a district that their electoral strength is diluted because the extra votes could have been used to help elect a sympathetic candidate elsewhere. It is this notion—the dilution of voting power as a result of partisan cartography—that has made the term gerrymander so controversial.
Democratic Transition? The 1997 Mexican Elections
Authors: Klesner Joseph L.
Published: May 2006

Mexico's 1997 midterm elections promise to democratize Mexico's autocratic and centralized presidentialist regime and thereby change Mexican politics profoundly. The electoral blow dealt the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI) by voters on July 6 brings an elected mayor to the world's largest city, places more non-PRI governors into Mexican state houses assuring that demands for decentralization will intensify, and takes from President Ernesto Zedillo the congressional basis for the six-year dictatorship that the Mexican presidency has been since the 1930s. Surely the struggle for democracy in Mexico is not over, but a critical battle has been won by democrats of all ideological persuasions. Zedillo himself claimed, in an address to the nation made shortly after the preliminary electoral figures appeared on election night, to be pleased by the progress made by his nation, saying that the day had been a “great democratic fiesta” (Zedillo 1997, 7).

Unlike most elections, the critical issues facing Mexican voters in 1997 had little to do with public policy. Although Mexico is a dozen years into a neoliberal economic restructuring program that has had great consequences for the distribution of income, for the number of Mexicans living in poverty, and for the penetration of foreign capital, goods, and services into the Mexican economy (see Otero 1996), neoliberalism was only peripherally an issue in this election. Both major parties of opposition campaigned on the issue of tax relief, specifically promising to lower Mexico's value added tax from 15% to 10% (Mayolo and Luna 1997, A1; Chacón Albarrán 1997).
“Nation” and “Nationalism”: The Misuse of Key Concepts in Political Science
Authors: Barrington Lowell W.
Published: May 2006

One of the essential atarting points of any branch of science is a consistent, broadly understood terminology. Generally accepted definitions of key terms within a discipline are important in order to judge claims by scholars about a given topic. Fortunately, among those who work on the topic of nationalism, there is a growing convergence of definitions of “nation” and “nationalism.” Unfortunately, both terms are often still misused, used loosely, or used inconsistently, especially among those in political science who discuss these terms in passing. Authors of introductory textbooks, who are careful in their usage of other terms, often use these two words in varying—and even contradictory—ways in different parts of the same book. Because of their importance for the discipline, however, political scientists should be very mindful of their use of the terms “nation” and “nationalism.”

In this article, definitions for “nation” and “nationalism” are proposed, with each definition followed by sections on common ways the terms are misemployed in political science. I provide examples of both misuses and “loose uses.” While the line between misuse and loose use is somewhat fuzzy (a point reinforced below in the discussion of nations vs. ethnic groups), I consider a misuse to be one in which the term is used in a way that is completely outside how the term is used by nationalism scholars. A loose use is one in which the author has captured only part of the concept or has stretched the meaning of the term to an extreme degree.
Reforming the House: Three Moderately Radical Proposals
Authors: Lijphart Arend
Published: May 2006

Most observers of the United States House of Representatives undoubtedly agree that in many respects, large and small, the House does not perform its representative function very well. Not being an expert on the details and intricacies of House operations, I shall leave the smaller matters—such as incremental steps to reform the financing of election campaigns—to the specialists. Let me focus instead on three major characteristics that makes the House insufficiently representative: (1) its election by plurality, which does not provide adequate representation for minorities and minority views; (2) its election by an unrepresentative electorate, especially in midterm elections when only about one-third of the eligible voters make use of their right to vote; and (3) its comparatively small size of only 435 members.
Making the House More Representative: Hidden Costs and Unintended Consequences
Authors: Rush Mark E.
Published: May 2006

Perhaps the most intriguing element of the current milieu of political reform is the fact that the United States Supreme Court seems to be standing in the way of many reform measures. In several recent decisions, the court has either struck down attempts to reform some element of the electoral process or upheld laws that reformers regard as problematic. For example, in response to the court's restricting the extent to which the Voting Rights Act can be used to draw majority-minority districts (Shaw v. Reno 1993; Bush v. Vera 1996; Miller v. Johnson 1995), Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) has introduced the Voters' Choice Act which would permit states to elect their congressional delegations by proportional representation (PR).
Democratic Responsiveness? Untangling the Links Between Public Opinion and Policy
Authors: Page Benjamin I.
Published: May 2006

Abundant evidence has been produced to demonstrate substantial empirical relationships between public opinion (in the sense of survey-measured collective policy preferences) and public policy in the United States and elsewhere. Policy outputs—what governments do—tend to correspond fairly closely with what surveys say their citizens want them to do. In my view, however, a number of important research questions remain largely open. Answers to some of them are crucial to deciding what, if anything, opinion-policy congruence has to do with democratic theory.

Open Questions

1. How much impact does public opinion actually have on policy making? In particular, how much of the observed relationship is causal rather than spurious, and how much causal impact proceeds from opinion to policy rather than the reverse? If public opinion simply tends to swing into line behind whatever policies decision makers come up with, or if some third force drives both opinion and policy, the implications for democratic theory are rather different from what they would be if public opinion exerted a powerful influence on government action.

2. Under what circumstances is this impact larger or smaller? What kinds of political systems are most responsive to their citizens? How much difference do free elections make? High levels of economic development, education, and communications? Vigorous party competition? Parliamentary versus presidential systems? Federalism?
Opinion and Policy: A Global View
Authors: Stimson James A. , MacKuen Michael B. , Erikson Robert S.
Published: May 2006

In a world where citizens desire to have their preferences reflected in public policy and, for instrumental reasons, policy makers share that desire, the linkage of opinion to policy still faces formidable problems. Chief among these is this: policy making is highly specific, detailed, and informed, while mass electorates choose not to attend closely enough to politics and policy to have preferences that are similarly specific, detailed, and informed. We now believe that many citizens have meaningful preferences over the general contours of government activity. At the level of whether “government should do more to …” deal with any number of problems, we now see individual citizen preferences in a somewhat more favorable light than we once did. More important, we now view change in aggregate preferences over time as expressive of real beliefs and values about public choices.

But this is not enough. Policy makers face no choices as simple as “do more” or “do less.” They deal at a wholly different level. They deal at a level of specificity where public attitudes are only infrequently measured, and for good reason; mass publics in the main do not have (real) attitudes over details they cannot reasonably be expected to attend to. And yet each of those choices, complicated and specific though they are, will reflect some measure of movement at the more general level where citizen preferences are engaged. The daily choices of the C-SPAN world are obscure and arcane to typical citizens. And yet the actors in that world feel bound by citizen preferences.
The Political Contingency of Public Opinion, or What Shall We Make of the Declining Faith of Middle-Class African Americans?
Authors: Hochschild Jennifer
Published: May 2006

Scholars who study the connections between public opinion and the policy process, and politicians who engage in making those connections, face the same two problems. First, determining what opinion the public actually holds is much more of an interpretive than a methodological exercise. Second, designing policies to respond to that (presumed) opinion is at best an inexact art and at worst a demonstration that making the wrong moves can produce more harm than good. This essay illustrates these points by examining race politics in America over the past three decades.

In order to move quickly to those illustrations, let me stipulate, with minimal evidence, several starting points. First, middle-class African Americans are better off now than middle-class members of their race have ever been; well-off African Americans are getting richer at a faster rate than well-off white Americans (though from a lower absolute starting point); and middle-class African Americans are gaining ground at the same time that poor African Americans are losing it.

Those points require much evidence to be completely persuasive, but they are all illustrated by a simple comparison of income quantiles by race over time (see Table 1).
Would Ross Perot Have Won the 1992 Presidential Election Under Approval Voting?
Authors: Brams Steven J. , Merrill Samuel
Published: May 2006

The answer to the question we pose in the title is by no means obvious. That it might be affirmative is suggested by the facts that Ross Perot:

• ran ahead of the major-party presidential candidates in several presidential preference polls at the height of his popularity in June 1992; and

• on election day in November received a higher proportion of the popular vote (19.0%) than any third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 (27.4%), who came in second to Woodrow Wilson that year.

More significant than Perot's relatively large percentage, however, is that he appealed to many Republicans because of his conservative economic policies, especially with respect to reducing the budget deficit, and to many Democrats because of his liberal social views on issues like abortion.

It is precisely this kind of wide-ranging appeal that favors candidates under approval voting (AV), whereby voters can vote for as many candidates as they like or consider acceptable in a multicandi-date election. (In a three-candidate race like the 1992 presidential election, this means voting either for one's top or one's top two choices.) Yet despite extensive research on AV (Brams and Fishburn 1983), comparisons of it that have been made with other voting systems (Nurmi 1987; Merrill 1988), and empirical studies of its actual use (reviewed in Brams and Fishburn 1992), it is no easy task to establish how candidates would fare under AV in a specific election.
Fair Division and Politics
Authors: Brams Steven J. , Taylor Alan D.
Published: May 2006

In the Hebrew Bible, the issue of fairness is raised in some of the best-known narratives. Cain's raging jealousy and eventual murder of Abel is provoked by what he considered unfair treatment by God, who “paid heed” to Abel's offering but ignored his (Gen. 4:4). Jacob, after doing seven years of service in return for Laban's beautiful daughter, Rachel, was told that his sacrifice was not sufficient and that he must instead marry Laban's older and plainer daughter, Leah, unless he did seven more years' service, which he regarded as not only the breaking of a contract but also flagrantly unfair.

Fairness triumphed, however, when King Solomon proposed to divide a baby, claimed by two mothers, in two. When the true mother protested and offered the baby to the other mother (whose baby had died), the truth about the baby's maternity became apparent, and “all Israel … stood in awe of the king; for they saw that he possessed divine wisdom to execute justice” (1 Kings 3:28).

Solomon's proposed solution is the first explicit mention of fair division that we know of in recorded history. But it is, of course, no solution at all. Solomon had no intention of dividing the baby in two. Instead, his purpose was to set up a game between the two women, described in Brams (1980, 118–23; 1990, 17–24), that would distinguish the mother from the impostor.

The solutions of the fair-division procedures we shall discuss are for two players.
Political Science and the 1994 Elections: An Exploratory Essay
Authors: Busch Andrew E.
Published: May 2006

To a substantial extent, political scientists continue to be in a state of shock, or even denial, over the results of the November 1994 mid-term elections. This degree of surprise has been largely attributed to the failure of the 1994 elections to conform to numerous models that have successfully predicted past election results on the basis of some combination of presidential popularity and economic performance. In a broader sense, it has become fashionable to argue alternately that the voters weren't really saying anything, or that they did not know what they were saying, or that they were saying things not fit for polite company—angry, mean, and even racist things. Such an interpretation does a disservice both to our profession and to our friends and neighbors, the real people who cast those votes.

It will be some time before we are able to untangle the factors that led to the Republican sweep and to see whether it was a short-term aberration or the beginning of a long-term trend in congressional elections. Nevertheless, I would like to offer a two-part explanation for the results and the consequent academic confusion: the election models that we use as both a tool and a crutch are at the same time not precise enough and too precise.

They are not precise enough because they do not capture all that needs to be taken into account even on the dimensions of the economy and presidential popularity.
STV and the Representation of Women
Authors: Hirczy Wolfgang
Published: May 2006

In an informative account of different electoral systems and their effects on representation Joseph F. Zimmerman (1994, 674) recommended the single transferable vote (STV) system on the grounds that it “provides […] broad representation with great accuracy.” Along with local jurisdictions in the United States the article mentions Ireland and Australia as countries that use STV, but fails to include Malta. This seemingly innocuous omission is not inconsequential; Malta squarely contradicts Zimmerman's conclusion that STV facilitates the “direct representation” of women.

Unfortunately, Wilma Rule did not remedy the neglect of Malta in her comparative overview of women in parliaments, which appeared in the same feature on “Election Systems and Representative Democracy” (1994, 690). Inclusion in the cross-national comparison would have revealed that this small island nation carries a dubious distinction: the lowest percentage of women in its unicameral parliament. As a result of the last elections, held in 1992, there is currently only one female MP. Nor did Prime Minister Fenech Adami's cabinet include a single woman, even though the number of ministries was expanded from 10 to 13 (Fenech 1992b, 1993). In the preceding parliamentary term, 3% of the seats (2 of 69) were occupied by women.

It may be argued that in social scientific inquiry and theory-building a single case does not warrant the rejection of a generalization that is otherwise sound.
Henry Jones Ford and the American Presidency
Authors: Edwards George C.
Published: May 2006

The Rise and Growth of American Politics (1898) provides a sweeping analysis of the American political system. In this short article, I will focus on Ford's understanding of the American presidency, showing how his thoughts presaged important orientations and foci of future presidential scholars and noting that, as influential as his work proved, he often got the story wrong.
The Christian Right and Republican Realignment in Oklahoma
Authors: Bednar Nancy L. , Hertzke Allen D.
Published: May 2006

On November 8, 1994, Oklahoma Democrats were stunned by an unprecedented GOP tide in the midterm elections. Just two years before, the Democrats still looked like the majority party: they held the governor's office, a 5-3 majority in the congressional delegation, and huge majorities in the state legislature. On Wednesday morning they woke up to a new reality. Republicans swept the offices of governor and lieutenant governor, picked up seats in the state legislature, and seized a remarkable 7-1 majority in the congressional delegation. Not since 1920 had the Republicans sent a majority to Washington, and never by such a margin.

Of equal significance is the nature of that congressional delegation. All five of the victorious Republican House members and both of the senators have ties to the Christian Right and received strong backing from conservative Evangelical voters. The lone surviving Democrat is conservative Representative Bill Brewster. From the standpoint of the Christian Right, therefore, the elections were a smashing success; Oklahoma's delegation to Washington will be highly sympathetic to their policy goals.

What produced this outcome was a fortuitous blend of discontent, resources, and opportunity. Successful social movements need resources to channel discontent and favorable opportunities to exploit. All of these came together in Oklahoma. Discontent with the drift of secular society, accentuated by deep displeasure with President Clinton (who embodied the “counterculture” in the White House), galvanized conservative Evangelicals. In turn, this discontent was channeled by sophisticated Christian Right leaders and fueled by expanding resources (money, media outlets, and a volunteer corps).
The Christian Right in the Old Dominion: Resurgent Republicans or Holy War?
Authors: Wilcox Clyde , Rozell Mark J. , Coker J. Bradford
Published: May 2006

In early 1994, Virginia Senator Chuck Robb appeared extremely vulnerable. Once touted as a potential Democratic presidential candidate, Robb spent much of his first term defending himself against charges that he had attended parties where drugs were used, had engaged in extramarital affairs, and had known that his aides had possessed illegally taped cellular telephone conversations of long-time rival Governor Douglas Wilder.

Robb's difficulties began soon before he launched his campaign in March 1994. He issued a letter to Virginia Democratic leaders and activists in which he admitted to having extramarital sex, although he consistently denied that this contact had ever included inter-course. This fine distinction made him no friends among moral conservatives, who disapproved of any extramarital activity, or among liberals, who found his behavior sexist and his account implausible.

Yet on election night, Robb survived a Republican tidal wave to win a surprisingly easy victory over Republican candidate Oliver North, of Iran-Contra notoriety. North spent approximately $20 million, more than four times Robb's total, and deployed a huge volunteer army that covered the state with placards. He had the strong endorsements of Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and could count on the organizational efforts of the Christian Coalition, the Family Foundation, and the National Rifle Association. In the home state of the former Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, however, North failed to carry Lynchburg (a stronghold of Falwell and the former Moral Majority), or Chesapeake, and only narrowly carried Virginia Beach (home of both Robertson and the Christian Coalition).
Rosy Scenario: The Republican-White Evangelical Alliance Holds in Iowa
Authors: Nesmith Bruce
Published: May 2006

Beginning with the 1980 presidential campaign, the Republican coalition became dramatically more heterogeneous by the incorporation of white Evangelical Protestants. Galvanized by the desire to promote traditional moral values, these new Republicans were characterized by lower social status and less libertarian values than many regular Republicans.

Thus, this Republican-white Evangelical alliance contained, from the beginning, a strong potential for conflict and division. Its success has depended on the ability of Republican candidates to manage these differences. Such management, in turn, depends on the issues raised, candidate strategies, media agenda-setting, and the underlying state of public opinion. Two opposite outcomes have always been possible.

One possibility might be termed the “rosy scenario,” where economic and social conservatives combine to pursue common electoral and policy goals (see Nesmith 1994, 129-32). Models for this scenario are Reagan's victories in 1980 and 1984, as well as George Bush's election in 1988. This scenario might mean Republicans could take advantage of a public climate combining a “reaction against modernity” and the “moral emptiness of the public square” with “a general renewal of confidence in the market” (Reichley 1986, 35; Hutcheson 1988). At a minimum it would require a measure of pragmatism by all party factions, accepting and supporting each other's candidates regardless of divisions over specific issues. The chance of overturning Democratic control, either locally or nationally, could cement such interfactional cooperation.
Television, Individualism, and Social Capital
Authors: McBride Allan
Published: May 2006

Students of political culture and political theory (Pool 1990; Postman 1985; Merelman 1984, 1989, 1991; Habermas 1975) hypothesize that values associated with individualism have become increasingly prevalent in recent years, with distressing consequences for politics and governance. Putnam (1995), in an article that appeared in these pages, observes that there has been a decline of “social capital” in the United States since 1972 as well, as measured by the number of visits Americans make to family and friends, the number of organizations to which they belong, the amount of trust they report having in other people, and the amount of involvement they report in politics. Ehrenhalt, in his discussion of the tenure of the late Mayor Daley of Chicago, notes that the United States has changed from a society that reveres obedience, authority, order, and a closed political system, to one that reveres freedom, choice, and an open political system.

To Americans of the baby-boom generation, authority will always be a word with sinister connotations, calling forth a rush of uncomfortable memories about the schools, churches, and families in which baby-boomers grew up. (1997, 85)

It is not only the case that social capital has declined, but political capital, as measured by partisanship and confidence in the institutions of government, has also declined over the past several decades (Luttbeg and Gant 1995). If individualism is a causal factor in the decline of social and political capital, the relationship can be explained by the fact that individualism is by nature loose-bounded (Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990); self-seeking behavior is the norm, as are self-negotiated relationships.
Searching for Government Performance: The Government Performance and Results Act
Authors: Radin Beryl A.
Published: May 2006

If there is a single theme that characterizes the public sector in the 1990s, it is the demand for performance. A mantra has emerged in this decade, heard at all levels of government, that calls for documentation of performance and explicit outcomes of government action. While this demand has emerged from governors' offices, state legislatures, and city and country governments, perhaps no activity better embodies this request than the federal Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993, the legislation that has structured expectations for performance-based management in the federal government (see Radin 1998).

The law that was enacted in August 1993 had its origins in legislation introduced by Republican Senator William Roth in 1990. Until Clinton's election in 1992, the legislation remained in the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. However, with the blessing of the Democratic White House, the legislation sailed through both houses of Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. Despite the breadth of support, there was very little real debate over its provisions, and the legislation that was enacted was framed in very general and often abstract terms. The final bill contained little more than the good government rhetoric familiar to students of public administration. The appropriations and authorizing committees, believed to be major users of the information generated by the law, gave little—if any—attention to the requirements.
Observations on a Post-Gingrich House
Authors: Andres Gary J.
Published: May 2006

The U.S. House of Representatives is in the midst of its second operational transformation in five years. Compared to the post-1994 “Gingrich-led revolution” (Drew 1996), Republican leadership strategies are considerably different in the 106th Congress under the direction of Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and his team.

This essay outlines five strategies the new House leadership team has implemented to correct past problems, shape members' behavioral norms (Weingast 1979), and manage their razor-thin majority. While it's still too early to gauge the ultimate success of these strategies, my conversations with members of the House Republican leadership, other members of Congress, House staffers, and political operatives involved with the day-to-day functioning of the U.S. House, reveal a pattern of strategic changes and accompanying modifications in member norms aimed at managing the legislative majority in the 106th Congress.
Scholar, Witness, or Activist? The Lessons and Dilemmas of an AIDS Research Agenda
Authors: Siplon Patricia
Published: May 2006

The study of AIDS, as a disease, a social problem, or, in my case, as a political phenomenon is necessarily difficult and invasive. Learning about AIDS requires invasion of the most private spheres of peoples' lives, involves watching people at their most vulnerable, and often requires becoming closely involved with people whose lives and circumstances are far away from the researcher's own comfort zone. As the title of this essay suggests, my research has led me to take on a variety of roles; first, in order to gather the information I sought and, later, because of the information I had gathered. Roughly speaking, these roles can be characterized with respect to the distance of the researcher from the subject matter. As a scholar, I endeavored, particularly in the early stages of my research, to hold myself apart from what I saw and to compare my findings against those of other researchers. However, as time moved on, I found myself increasingly playing two other roles, roles I have come to characterize as witness and activist. My efforts to lessen the distance between the subjects of my research and myself resulted from both practical and personal motivations. As a practical matter, like many other social scientists, I quickly discovered that I had far greater access to information—in the form of written documents, interviews, and observation opportunities—as an insider. Personally I found myself wanting to contribute what I could to help solve, or at least lessen the severity of, the problems unfolding all around me.

As I have moved closer to the subjects of my research, and to the perspectives they hold, I have been forced to confront head-on a perennial dilemma of scholars: objectivity. How does one study an issue “objectively,” particularly when the issue is fraught with controversy? Does taking a side render future observations invalid? Is there some magic line between researcher and subject that is not to be crossed? If so, where is it?

The findings presented below represent what I have discovered about interest organizing and political activism in the context of AIDS.
The New ‘U’
Authors: Lenz Timothy O.
Published: May 2006

Today's talk about tenure must be framed within broader discussions about the role of the university. Our university system is now over one hundred years old, the “Old-Time College” is gone, the “cold war” university is no longer viable, and the foundations of the modern “multiversity” are cracking, so it is time to talk about change. But change is not necessarily reform, and resisting change probably will not keep things the way they are, so academics must understand the forces reshaping the university. Whenever I listen to colleagues defend the status quo by saying that the United States has a university system that is the envy of the world, I hear echoes of the Detroit automobile industry's casual dismissal of foreign competitors in the early 1960s. The decision not to change did not preserve the auto industry, and it is unlikely to preserve public universities as we know them.

The current debates about tenure began with ideological attacks on “tenured radicals” who used their secure jobs to subvert conservative cultural values. The attack on tenure gathered steam as fiscal hawks in financially-strapped states looked for ways to save money and found huge state university systems with budgets to match. When asked why he robbed banks, the legendary Willie Sutton replied, “Because that's where the money is.” When asked why they are robbing tenure, legislators, regents, and administrators reply, “Because that's where the money is.” Personnel costs are a large share of university budgets and tenure ties the hands of administrators and legislators accustomed to using purse strings to control universities.
An Economic Perspective of Academic Tenure
Authors: Whicker Marcia Lynn
Published: May 2006

Today, tenure means many different things, including job security, merit reward, career motivator, protection for academic freedom, a multi-million dollar investment in a single professor, and the output of a legislative personnel process to colleges and universities (Whicker et al. 1993; p. 8–21). But increasingly, to the public and politicians, tenure is an unwarranted, unjustified, and unaffordable job perk that borders on a “rip-off” of innocent participants and bystanders in higher education (Naylor and Willimon 1996). Events at the University of Minnesota are but one example of several recent skirmishes over the practice of tenure (Sanchez 1996). Each side in the great tenure wars has interests which, if solidified in hardened positions, present an impediment to negotiating a compromise (Fisher et al. 1991; Crawley 1994). One approach is to draw from economics and its spillover into public choice to impute economic motivations—the maximization of various income streams—as the primary driving force behind parties debating the practice of tenure. This simplification of complex psychological motivations loses subtlety, a certain amount of realism, and contextual richness. It gains power, however, through simplistic theoretical eloquence that allows us to delve below the surface of positions to underlying interests.
Does Latin America Exist? (And is There a Confucian Culture?): A Global Analysis of Cross-Cultural Differences
Authors: Inglehart Ronald , Carballo Marita
Published: May 2006

Does Latin America exist?

Latin American studies centers (like African, or Middle Eastern or West European studies centers) are based on the assumption that Latin America (and Africa, the Middle East, etc.) are more than arbitary geographic expressions: they define coherent cultural regions, having people with distinctive values and worldviews that make them think differently and behave differently from people of other cultures.

The most powerful challenge to this view currently comes from the rational choice school, whose practitioners occasionally mention the importance of cultural differences but whose models almost always ignore them, implicitly assuming that in a given situation all people will make the same “rational” choices regardless of cultural perspectives. But if major differences exist between the worldviews and motivations of people in different cultural zones, a rational choice model that applies to the United States may not accurately describe the behavior of people in other cultures.

The existence of meaningful cultural areas has been challenged on other grounds as well. Modernization theory focuses on the differences between “traditional” and “modern” societies, each of which are characterized by distinctive economic, political, social, and cultural institutions. This perspective tends to attribute any differences between Latin American and highly industrialized societies to differences in their levels of economic development: with economic development, these differences will tend to disappear. Differences between various “traditional” cultures tend to be ignored.

The usefulness of “Latin America” as a meaningful cultural boundary could also be disputed on various other grounds.
Why Young Americans Hate Politics, and What We Should Do about It
Authors: Bennett Stephen E.
Published: May 2006

On the final day of her American Government class last spring, one of my wife's students approached her and said, “You're a really great teacher. It's too bad you're teaching this subject. I hate politics.” The young man had begun the course getting D's and F's, but gradually raised his grades to B's. Clearly he was diving into the work, but the dislike of politics that he brought into the course remained.

Professor Linda Bennett's experience at Wittenberg University typifies what many people tell me and my observations confirm. Today's young Americans on and off campus have a visceral dislike of politics, and it is expressed in many ways.

Like many Americans over 30, young people do not trust politicians, believing many to be corrupt and self-serving. Large percentages think government is unresponsive to people like themselves, and that government is too much in thrall to well-organized special interest groups. The 1994 National Election Study found, for example, that 77% of Americans under 30 said they trusted the Federal government to do the right thing only “some of the time” or “none of the time”; 79% thought that Washington was run to benefit just “a few big interests looking out for themselves”; and 54% believed that “quite a few” of the people in government are crooked. (Among those over 30, 79% said they did not trust the government in Washington to do the right thing; 80% thought it benefitted just a few big interests; and 51% said that quite a few people in government were crooked.) Large portions of young Americans do not think that they have any political clout or that national politicians are solicitous of their opinions.