bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Single-Member Districts and the Representation of Women in American State Legislatures: The Effects of Electoral System Change
Authors: King James D. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractThis study assesses the effects of changing electoral structure on the representation of women in American state legislatures. Specifically, how does converting from multimember districts (MMDs) to single-member districts (SMDs) affect the proportion of women serving in the state legislature? I use a quasi-experimental design, comparing election results from the four states that eliminated MMDs during the reapportionment following the 1990 census to those in eight states whose systems did not change during this period. The weight of the evidence suggests that abandoning MMDs for SMDs decreases the representation of women in state legislatures.
The Turnout Rate among Eligible Voters in the States, 1980–2000
Authors: McDonald Michael P. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractAggregate voter turnout rates in the United States have been used in many political science studies, as both a dependent and an independent variable. Most of these studies use the voting-age population as the denominator in their turnout rate measure. However, the voting-age population is not the same as the population of eligible voters. I demonstrate why this distinction matters and outline the steps to construct the voting-eligible population for each of the states from 1980–2000 to provide more accurate measures of state-level voter turnout rates.
Gubernatorial, Senatorial, and State-level Presidential Job Approval: The U.S. Officials Job Approval Ratings (JAR) Collection
Authors: Beyle Thad , Niemi Richard G. , Sigelman Lee 
Published: January 2011

AbstractJob approval ratings for state governors, unlike those for the United States president, have been relatively inaccessible to political scientists. We introduce the U.S. Officials Job Approval Ratings (JAR) dataset, a new compilation of gubernatorial job approval ratings—along with senatorial and state-level presidential ratings—that draws together many of these ratings, beginning with the first published rating in 1947 and extending through 2000. We describe some of the characteristics of these data, especially the kinds of rating scales used and their impact on overall approval assessment. We then show that 1993–2000 presidential approval levels varied widely from state to state and are correlated with state-level support for Clinton in the 1996 presidential election. Finally, we note that while gubernatorial approval often declines over time, many governors remain popular over the length of their term.
Fiscal Transparency, Gubernatorial Approval, and the Scale of Government: Evidence from the States
Authors: Alt James E. , Lassen David Dreyer , Skilling David 
Published: January 2011

AbstractWe explore the effect of the transparency of fiscal institutions in government on the scale of government and gubernatorial approval using a formal model of accountability. We construct an index of fiscal transparency for the American states from detailed budgetary information. With cross-sectional data for 1986-95, we find that—on average and controlling for other factors—fiscal transparency increases both the scale of government and gubernatorial approval. Our results imply that more transparent fiscal institutions induce greater effort by politicians, to whom voters give higher job approval, on average. Voters also respond by entrusting greater resources to politicians where fiscal institutions are more transparent, leading to larger government.
Gubernatorial Approval and Administrative Influence
Authors: Dometrius Nelson C. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractThe connection between the government and the governed is often evaluated using election results. This article explores this connection between elections using data on gubernatorial approval in the states. Specifically, I ask the question, Do governors with greater job approval ratings have greater influence over the state bureaucracy than governors with lower approval ratings? Measures of both gubernatorial influence and administrator contact with gubernatorial staff are regressed on gubernatorial approval ratings from state polling data, along with controls for other state characteristics. The results show that approval does affect a governor's influence with the bureaucracy, and as such, serves as an additional connection between the government and the governed.
Size Doesn't Matter: In Defense of Single-State Studies
Authors: Nicholson-Crotty Sean , Meier Kenneth J. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractDespite the bias against such studies in our discipline, we argue that research designs focusing on a single state are sometimes preferable to those employing data from all 50 states. Single state studies are appropriate when the researcher wishes to generalize to a unit of analysis other than the states themselves, when conditions in a given state provide a unique opportunity for the most rigorous test of a hypothesis, and when the measurement advantages of a single-state study outweigh the costs of limited generalization. We draw on a range of literature to reinforce our primary contention, that it is soundness of theory and rigor of analysis, rather than the number of states, that makes research valid and important.
Deservingness, Discretion, and the State Politics of Welfare Spending, 1990-96
Authors: Barrilleaux Charles , Bernick Ethan 
Published: January 2011

AbstractAre the politics of welfare policy for the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor the same? We use pooled cross-sectional time-series analyses of state government discretionary welfare spending on general assistance (GA) and Supplemental Security Income supplements (SSI-S) to address this question. We find that efforts to assist the GA population decline as electoral competition increases while efforts to assist the SSI-S population increase, providing evidence that only the deserving poor are favored by heightened political competition. We also find that SSI-S benefits rise with ideological liberalism, electoral competition, and the percentage of African Americans in a state. When considered in light of the negative effect of larger African American populations on states' SSI-S efforts, this suggests targeting of particular groups. Finally, we find that SSI-S enrollments are reduced, but the per-recipient payments are increased under state administration, suggesting that state administrators are more likely to provide more services to existing clientele than to expand their client base.
Enhancing Civic Engagement: The Effect of Direct Democracy on Political Participation and Knowledge
Authors: Tolbert Caroline J. , McNeal Ramona S. , Smith Daniel A. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractWhat is the impact of direct democracy on citizens' political participation and knowledge? Progressive Era reformers and normative theorists have argued that institutional procedures allowing citizens a more direct role in government decision-making will increase civic engagement, broadly defined. Using American National Election Studies data for 1996, 1998, and 2000, we test this hypothesis. Our multivariate analysis suggests that exposure to ballot initiatives increases the probability of voting, stimulates campaign contributions to interest groups, and enhances political knowledge. However, we find that the impact of the initiative process on political participation and knowledge varies with electoral context.
Postmaterialism and Post-Industrialism: Cultural Influences on Female Representation in State Legislatures
Authors: Camobreco John F. , Barnello Michelle A. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractIn the last 30 years, female state legislative representation in the United States has increased steadily and dramatically. While the cross-sectional variation in this representation has been studied at length, longitudinal changes have yet to be explained. We attempt to do this using two theories of large-scale cultural and political attitude change over the last several decades—postmaterialism and post-industrialism. Our empirical analyses are more consistent with post-industrialism theory than postmaterialism theory. We find that both cross-sectional differences and longitudinal changes in the percentage of state legislators who are female are explained primarily by college education and religious adherence, not age cohort or income. The effects of college education and religious adherence remain strong even in the presence of controls for other cultural and institutional variables that have been found to influence the sexual composition of state legislatures. Thus, our study suggests the existence of an education-religion cleavage on social issues among Americans.
Campaign Professionalism in State Legislative Elections
Authors: Abbe Owen G. , Herrnson Paul S. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractWe know that state legislative election campaigns have become increasingly expensive in recent years, but have they also become more professionally run? We assess the degree to which campaign professionals have proliferated in state legislative election campaigns and explain this development in terms of the institutional changes in state legislatures and the “congressionalization” of state legislative elections. Nearly one-half of all state legislative candidates answering our survey had hired professionals for their campaigns, using them mostly for direct mail, media advertising, campaign management, and polling. Open-seat candidates waged more professional campaigns than incumbents or their challengers. We find that campaign professionalism in state legislative elections is primarily a function of campaign spending, but that challengers hire professionals at lower spending levels. We also find that employing professionals improves the electoral performance of challengers, but not that of incumbents or open-seat candidates.
Public Attitudes toward the Policy Responsibilities of the National and State Governments: Evidence from South Carolina
Authors: Schneider Saundra K. , Jacoby William G. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractHow do Americans feel about the respective policy responsibilities of the national and state governments? This article addresses this question using data from a public opinion survey in South Carolina. The study has three major findings. First, people do seem to have meaningful opinions about national versus state government responsibilities, regardless of whether the issue is presented in policy-specific or general terms. Second, framing effects do not exist for these attitudes because the aggregate distributions of opinion do not change across the two presentations. Third, citizens' beliefs about specific programmatic activities appear to be derived largely from their more general comparative evaluations of the national and state governments. These findings have important implications for both scholarly theories of and practical political concerns about federalism in the United States.
The Political Economy of Gubernatorial Smokestack Chasing: Bad Policy and Bad Politics?
Authors: Turner Robert C. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractWhy do states persist in offering large financial incentives to induce firms to relocate to or expand in the state, a practice commonly derided as “smokestack chasing?” The conventional wisdom is that while these incentives have little effect on firms' business decisions in the long term, they are a good political strategy for governors seeking to improve economic conditions and political support in the short term. I test these hypotheses by examining the economic and electoral impact of industrial recruitment policies in Wisconsin, Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina, Maryland, Indiana, and Kentucky. I find, first, that these policies pay immediate dividends for governors by increasing county-level job growth and per capita income prior to the next election. Second, governors recruit firms strategically to relocate to counties that opposed them in the previous election. But, third, this industrial recruitment does not increase electoral support for the governor. In fact, the more success a governor has in recruiting firms or jobs to a county, the fewer votes he or she receives in it in the next election.
Not All Money Is Equal: The Differential Effect of Spending by Incumbents and Challengers in Gubernatorial Primaries
Authors: Bardwell Kedron 
Published: January 2011

AbstractWhat is the impact of campaign spending on the vote in gubernatorial primaries? Is spending by challengers and incumbents equally effective? Answering these questions could shed light on the effectiveness of incumbent spending in elections generally and on the impact of campaign finance reform. In a two-stage least squares analysis of primaries from 1980 to 2000, this study finds that spending by incumbent governors has no independent impact on their vote share. On the other hand, spending by challengers is effective in attracting votes, even after controlling for challenger quality and incumbent popularity. However, relatively few races are close enough for challenger spending to be decisive. This suggests that to improve gubernatorial primary competition, states would need to increase public campaign funding and spending limits substantially.
Strategic Candidate Decisionmaking and Competition in Gubernatorial Nonincumbent-Party Primaries
Authors: Kang Insun , Niemi Richard G. , Powell Lynda W. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractIn contrast to research on congressional and state legislative elections, strategic entry into gubernatorial contests has been largely unexplored. We examine the influence of incumbency, gubernatorial popularity, and other factors on candidate strategic decisions and the resulting level of competition in nonincumbent-party gubernatorial primaries between 1974 and 2000. We find that incumbency and gubernatorial popularity interact in their effect, with popular incumbents discouraging competition and unpopular incumbents encouraging it. The size of the potential candidate pool, the condition of the state economy, state partisanship, and state party endorsement practices also influence competition.
Improving the Harvest of State Legislative Research
Authors: Clucas Richard A. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractThe American state legislatures provide a unique opportunity for the study of lawmaking. This essay describes and analyzes state legislative research since 1990 and offers suggestions for future research. The discipline made significant gains during this period, expanding our knowledge on a wide variety of important topics and concerns. Despite these gains, many gaps in our knowledge remain unfilled and many questions remain unanswered. The field has been particularly weak in building theory. Scholars need to make a more concerted effort to develop our theoretical understanding of state legislatures for the field to develop greater direction and coherence.
Demographic Opportunities, Collective Action, Competitive Exclusion, and the Crowded Room: Lobbying Forms among Institutions
Authors: Gray Virginia , Lowery David , Wolak Jennifer 
Published: January 2011

AbstractTwo of the most notable changes in political interest communities in recent decades have been the rise of direct lobbying by institutions and the decline of collective lobbying via associations. These trends may be related to each other, since institutions can choose to lobby through either or both approaches. The shifting balance between direct and collective representation of institutional interests may signal important changes in how institutions perceive their interests, how those interests are pursued, and how diverse interests are aggregated in public policy. We present four theoretical perspectives—the demographic opportunity, collective action, competitive exclusion, and crowded room perspectives—to develop hypotheses about the relationship between these two forms of representation. We then employ both aggregate data on state lobby registrations and survey data on state lobbying by institutions to distinguish between these hypotheses. We find strongest support for the crowded room perspective, such that the relationship between direct and collective forms of interest representation tends to be one of mutualism rather than competition.
The Synergistic Effect of Campaign Effort and Election Reform on Voter Turnout in State Legislative Elections
Authors: Francia Peter L. , Herrnson Paul S. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractThis study assesses the impact of campaign effort and election reform on voter turnout in state legislative elections. It uses a nationwide survey of state legislative candidates to measure various campaign activities and combines this information with data on election laws, political conditions, and district-level demographics. The primary finding is that candidate expenditures, party get-out-the-vote efforts, and Election Day registration laws have a synergistic effect on turnout. Campaign efforts heighten citizen interest in politics close to the election, often after registration deadlines have passed. Unlike other election reforms, Election Day registration allows citizens' late-campaign interest to be translated into increased voter turnout.
Duration Dependence, Functional Form, and Corrected Standard Errors: Improving EHA Models of State Policy Diffusion
Authors: Buckley Jack , Westerland Chad 
Published: January 2011

AbstractDiscrete event history analysis (EHA) is the analytic tool of choice for many scholars of policy diffusion across American states. Unfortunately, the policy diffusion literature largely ignores several important specification issues for EHA models: duration dependence, choice of functional form, and the computation of standard errors corrected for temporal and spatial dependence. We use data from Berry and Berry's (1990) seminal study of state lottery diffusion to demonstrate ways to deal properly with these issues.
Partisan and Ideological Polarization in the California Electorate
Authors: Jacobson Gary C. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractThe textbook image of the California electorate as unusually independent, moderate, antipartisan, and prone to ticket splitting is badly out of date. As in Washington, DC, increased partisan polarization in California's state government reflects increased partisan polarization in the electorate. This study shows that, compared to other American voters, Californians are stronger party identifiers, more loyal to their parties' candidates, less likely to split their tickets, and more extreme ideologically. Moreover, the California electorate, like the national electorate, has become increasingly partisan, loyal, consistent, and prone to ideological extremity since the 1970s. These developments, combined with legislative district lines that have given the parties more politically distinct constituencies, have echoed and reinforced the increasingly polarized partisan divisions in California state government, just as they have at the national level.
Mayflies and Old Bulls: Organization Persistence in State Interest Communities
Authors: Anderson Jennifer , Newmark Adam , Gray Virginia , Lowery David 
Published: January 2011

AbstractMany conventional accounts of lobbying communities emphasize towering differences in political influence between for-profit and not-for-profit and public organizations and between institutions and membership groups or associations. A central cause of these differences in influence is said to be differences in the persistence of these types of groups in a lobbying system. We test this hypothesis by examining the short-term turnover of organized interests in state interest communities in the 1990s. While we find evidence of substantial year-to-year turnover in lobby registrations, we find little support for the conventional wisdom about the distribution of persistence among types of organizations. Contrary to expectations, institutions are markedly less persistent than membership groups and associations, and for-profit interests are no more persistent, on average, than not-for-profit interests.
Working Outside of the State House (and Senate): Outside Careers as an Indicator of Professionalism in American State Legislatures
Authors: Maddox H.W. Jerome 
Published: January 2011

AbstractI present a measure of legislative professionalism for 41 states based on the degree to which legislators hold outside careers while in office. Higher salaries and longer sessions alter the incentives and opportunities for legislators to maintain outside careers. Consequently, outside career activity provides a behavioral indicator of professionalism to supplement existing measures based solely on institutional characteristics. I use financial disclosure reports to assess outside interests. Aggregated to the state level, my indicator is highly correlated with institutional measures of professionalism; at the individual level, it varies by sex and age. These findings support hypotheses that outside career choices are influenced by labor market participation and the financial opportunity costs of legislative service.
Issue Networks, Information, and Interest Group Alliances: The Case of Wisconsin Welfare Politics, 1993-99
Authors: Heaney Michael T. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractInterest group scholars have long emphasized the importance of group alliances in the policymaking process. But little is known about how groups choose specific alliance partners; that is, who works with whom? Social embeddedness theory suggests that the social location of groups in issue networks affects the information available to them about potential partners and the desirability of particular alliances. To test this hypothesis, I use data from interviews with representatives of 57 interest groups and 46 other significant political actors involved in Wisconsin's 1993-99 welfare policy debate to model alliance formation with two-stage conditional maximum likelihood regression (2SCML). I find substantial support for my social embeddedness hypotheses that alliance formation is encouraged by previous network interaction, contact with mutual third parties, and having a central position in a network. In short, the placement of groups in networks serves to facilitate alliances among some pairs of groups and to cut off potential connections among others.
Making the National Local: Specifying the Conditions for National Government Influence on State Policymaking
Authors: Allen Mahalley D. , Pettus Carrie , Haider-Markel Donald P. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractThe national government can force or entice state governments to act on policy through a variety of actions, including providing monetary incentives and sanctions. We examine how and under what conditions actions of the national government influence the diffusion of policy across the states. We test our hypotheses on the cases of the diffusion of partial birth abortion laws, truth-in-sentencing laws, and hate crime laws using event history analysis on pooled cross-sectional data from the 50 states. Our results suggest that, in addition to fiscal incentives, the national government can influence state policymaking when it sends strong, clear signals to the states concerning its preferences and the potential for future action. But even national-level signals that are weak and ambiguous may influence state policymaking indirectly.