bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Separate Tables: Schools and Sects in Political Science
Authors: Almond Gabriel A. 
Published: May 2006

“Miss Cooper: Loneliness is a terrible thing don't you agree?Anne: Yes, I do agree. A terrible thing ….Miss Meacham: She's not an ‘alone’ type.Miss Cooper: Is any type an ‘alone’ type, Miss Meacham … ?”(From Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables, (1955, 78, 92)In Separate Tables, the hit of the 1955 New York theatrical season, the Irish playwright, Terence Rattigan, used the metaphor of solitary diners in a second-rate residential hotel in Cornwall to convey the loneliness of the human condition. It may be a bit far fetched to use this metaphor to describe the condition of political science in the 1980s. But in some sense the various schools and sects of political science now sit at separate tables, each with its own conception of proper political science, but each protecting some secret island of vulnerability.It was not always so. If we recall the state of the profession a quarter of a century ago, let us say in the early 1960s, David Easton's (1953) and David Truman's (1955) scoldings of the profession for its backwardness among the social science disciplines, had been taken to heart by a substantial and productive cadre of young political scientists. In 1961 Robert Dahl wrote his Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest reflecting the sure confidence of a successful movement, whose leaders were rapidly becoming the most visible figures in the profession. Neither Dahl nor Heinz Eulau, whose Behavioral Persuasion appeared in 1963 made exaggerated or exclusive claims for the new political science.
An Improved Model for Predicting Presidential Election Outcomes
Authors: Abramowitz Alan I. 
Published: May 2006

There is probably no subject which has been studied more thoroughly by political scientists than American presidential elections. A vast literature has developed examining the effects of attitudes toward the parties, candidates, and issues on voter decision-making in these quadrennial contests (for a comprehensive review of this literature see Asher, 1988). Despite the proliferation of literature on this topic, however, relatively little research has addressed what is perhaps the most basic question about presidential elections: who wins and who loses?A few scholars have developed models for predicting the national outcomes of presidential elections. Brody and Sigelman (1983) proposed a model based on the incumbent president's approval rating in the final Gallup Poll before the election. This extremely simple model yielded an unadjusted R2 of .71. Hibbs (1982) proposed a different bivariate model based entirely on the trend in real per capita disposable income since the last presidential election. This model yielded an unadjusted R2 of .63. Thus, neither of these bivariate models proved to be highly accurate.Lewis-Beck and Rice (1984) have developed a forecasting model which combines economic conditions and presidential popularity, Their model, which uses the president's approval rating in May and the change in real per capita GNP during the second quarter of the election year to predict the popular vote for president, yields an unadjusted R2 of .82.
Is the Pen Mightier Than the Word? Editorial Cartoons and 1988 Presidential Nominating Politics
Authors: Buell Emmett H. , Maus Mike 
Published: May 2006

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then 1988 presidential nominating politics was a gold mine for editorial cartoonists. Exaggeration and distortion are the cartoonist's stock-in-trade, Colin Seymour-Ure (1986, 168) tells us, and—with Gary Hart's dalliance, Joseph Biden's plagiarism, Pat Robertson's direct line to God, Robert Dole's tantrums, Jesse Jackson's ego, and George Bush's image problems—there was much to exaggerate and distort in the 1988 races.Like other journalists, editorial cartoonists follow and interpret campaigns for the public. Like columnists, cartoonists openly praise or condemn candidates and campaigns. But the power of pictures sets cartoonists apart from other editorialists. According to Doug MaHette of the Atlanta Constitution, the fundamentals of cartooning are distortion, hyperbole, and subjectivity. Cartoons, he writes (1988, 158), “distort and reflect reality like fun-house mirrors.” Seymour-Ure (1986, 170) agrees: “The comments and insults conveyed by the graphic imagery of a cartoon have a crudity and offensiveness that might well be unacceptable if spelt out in words.”As long as editorial cartoonists have caricatured politicians, politicians have feared for their public images. Thomas Nast helped topple Boss Tweed in the 1870s by repeatedly drawing him and his ring as corrupt. “Stop them damn pictures!” Tweed reportedly roared after an especially tough Nast cartoon appeared in 1871. Vice President Bush may have harbored similar resentment when he recently complained about Gary Trudeau's representations of him in “Doonesbury.” A particularly painful stab of the Trudeau pen was placing Bush's manhood in a blind trust.
Women at the 1988 Democratic Convention
Authors: Freeman Jo 
Published: May 2006

The activities of feminist and other women's organizations at the 1988 Democratic convention were driven by an over-riding desire to elect a Democratic administration in November. There was universal agreement that the Reagan years have been disastrous for women, and that four more years of Republican rule will, at the very least, result in a Supreme Court that will limit women's options for decades to come.This goal more than anything else explains the relative quiescence of the 15 organizations' that formed Women's Central and held the usual women's caucus every day of the convention. Indeed when Ellie Smeal and Molly Yard, past and current Presidents of NOW, expressed some mild disaffection with the amount of attention feminist issues and representatives received from the Dukakis campaign, it was quickly countered with a press conference by heads of six Women's Central organizations to extol the fact that women were now insiders. And Kate Michelman, executive director of NARAL, lauded Vice-Presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen's voting record on abortion even though he opposes federal funding.The sense of unity and common purpose these women expressed was not artificial, because, to a greater extent than ever thought possible, when contemporary feminists first made demands at the 1972 convention, women were insiders. The Dukakis campaign emphasized that women held a large number of the top positions—including campaign manager Susan Estrich. Texas Treasurer Ann Richards, a member of the NWPC, was a bit hit as the keynote speaker.
A Reply to Bennett
Authors: Piven Frances Fox , Cloward Richard L. 
Published: May 2006

Bennett is confused. That we advocate voter registration reform does not mean we are single-factor analysts. Bennett does not understand the distinction between our analysis of the complex causes of low turnout, on the one hand, and our analysis of the limited options for reform, on the other.As to the first, we wrote Why Americans Don't Vote because we thought the “party behavior,” “legal institutional,” and “social-psychological” schools were each inadequate, taken alone, as explanations of low turnout. The party system explanation rests too much of its historical account on the impact of the single election of 1896 in stifling party competition and increasing internal oligarchy and fragmentation, and it is evasive on the question of why the restoration of party competition in the 20th century did not raise turnout in 19th century levels. Legal-institutional explanations fail to provide an account of the political origins of legal arrangements, and of the uneven implementation of these rules by party organizations. And social-psychological explanations do not confront the anomaly that correlations between social traits and non-voting are unique to the contemporary United States. In fact, turnout was high in the 19th century when education levels were low, and then fell in the 20th century as education levels rose.
Political Science and the Savings and Loan Crisis
Authors: Brintnall Michael 
Published: May 2006

The savings and loan crisis is one of the more extraordinary developments in contemporary domestic affairs. It represents both public and private policy failures of major proportions, imposes costs on the public of between $100 and $500 billion, and creates exceptional new public management responsibilities. The Resolution Trust Corporation, created to “resolve” this crisis, is now the largest real estate agency in the nation, and, remarkably, the country's largest single employer of lawyers.This disaster has left the public angry and mystified: What is a savings and loan (also called a thrift) and how is it different from a bank? What is FSLIC, and why did we have it if it couldn't prevent the trouble? Why does fixing the problem cost so much, and where does all the money go? Whose fault was it? Does this portend the collapse of the entire financial system?Some reasons for the crisis are simple to see. Policy designed in the 1930s to create new financing opportunities for home mortgages was flawed and allowed to outlive its time. Thrifts were designed on the popular principle of local banks raising local funds to help local homeowners, and given a protected market. In their time, the thrifts created financing for housing where none existed before. Their capacity to do this was sustained by regulatory controls, tax policies, interest rate controls, and deposit insurance. But when interest rates rose in the 1970s, no amount of tinkering with the original scheme could protect an industry locked into long-term loans earning low rates, and paying out high rates to compete for new funds, and the thrifts could not survive.
What Did We Know and When Did We Know It? GAO's Role in Analysis of the Savings and Loan Crisis
Authors: Anderson Teresa 
Published: May 2006

As the taxpayers' bill for the cost of the savings and loan debacle continues to increase—recent estimates suggest total costs of about $500 billion—and the insurance fund for the nations' banks runs close to empty, many people are asking how and why we got here, and where is the accountability for such a disaster? What was the government doing while all of this was happening? While much has been written about who should be blamed and the lessons learned from this crisis, it is important for those of us in government to evaluate our contributions to the analysis of this issue and examine what we have learned.As an evaluator of the General Accounting Office (GAO), Congress' “watchdog” agency, I will focus on GAO's evolving role in the analysis of the savings and loan crisis. GAO combines the expertise of accountants, economists, and analysts familiar with the internal operations of the federal agencies to provide a unique and comprehensive analysis of major policy issues. The S&L issue is a particularly useful case study for GAO because it illustrates the dramatic growth in our expertise and ability to contribute to policy analysis over the last decade. In 1980 GAO issued no reports relating to the thrift industry, while in 1989 GAO issued 28 reports and testimonies specifically about thrifts.
Positive Spin: Senate Campaigning on the Web
Authors: Klotz Robert 
Published: May 2006

“I'm extremely excited to have a prescene [sic] on the Web.”The perpetual greeting from the campaign home page of Senator Carl Levin (1996) shows that as with the adoption of any new technology, Internet use by political candidates will undergo some early rough spots. The early stages of a technology also tend to prompt divergent claims about the merits of the new technology. Thus, while political scientist David Canon has praised campaign sites as a “positive development” for allowing the transmission of extensive information, Ted Becker, another political scientist, has been highly critical of the sites calling them “cyberfluff” (Skiba 1995). By systematically studying the content of 1996 Senate candidate home pages, this article offers some hope for reconciling the divergent claims about Internet campaigning.
Observations on the Transformation of the Political Science Community in Post-Soviet Russia
Authors: Shestopal Helen 
Published: May 2006

For at least the past decade, the international political science community has been debating the state of the discipline, the level of its maturity, and the challenges to it from realpolitik (Goodin and Klingemann 1996, chap. 1). One of the most serious challenges came from the implosion of the USSR and subsequent transformation of political systems in Russia and Eastern Europe. Political scientists appeared unable to predict these global changes or to elaborate explanatory models of current processes. Applications of classic models to the new democracies has proven insufficient. This puts a problem of universality versus national specificity of political science on the agenda (Lecca 1997).For Russian political scientists, this problem has some specific implications. First, the practice of political science is determined by its object—politics. It is well-known that perestroika, which started more than ten years ago, had no clear aims but was guided by the intuitive desire of Russia's political elite to modernize the country. Russian leaders wished to modernize the country by remaking the government in the model of a Western democratic system. But neither in the late 1980s nor now have political scientists or politicians worked out any clear means for achieving such a transition.
Sex, Politics, and Public Opinion: What Political Scientists Really Learned From the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal
Authors: Miller Arthur H. 
Published: May 2006

William Jefferson Clinton is only the second president to have been impeached by the House of Representatives. While he was not removed from office, roughly half of the Senate chamber voted him guilty on the perjury and obstruction of justice charges that the House formulated as articles of impeachment in early February 1999. Although Clinton remains in office, numerous politicians, political pundits, and media commentators continue to condemn his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky while she was a White House intern as immoral and reprehensible.Many outspoken Republicans have raised questions about how the American people could continue to have confidence in their political leaders, government institutions, or the rule of law when a president who lied to the public, lied under oath, and obstructed justice remains in office. Others ask how they can explain this immoral behavior and thwarting of the law to their children, especially in light of all the salacious details that were made public in Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr's report on the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.News of a possible extramarital affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky during the 1995–96 period surfaced in January 1998, coming to light in the course of investigations related to Paula Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit against the president. Tapes Linda Tripp made of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky and turned over to Starr's office confirmed the allegations. What followed was a year-long exposé as details of the affair gradually tumbled into the public domain. The year ended with the House voting for impeachment on December 19, 1998, and the new year began with the Senate voting not to remove Clinton on February 12, 1999.
Northern Bourbons: A Preliminary Report on the National Voter Registration Act
Authors: Piven Frances Fox , Cloward Richard A. 
Published: May 2006

Since January 1995, when the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) went into effect, people have been registering or updating their voting addresses at the rate of nearly one million per month in 42 states. Based on early figures, we expect that the rolls will rise by 20 million before the 1996 election and 20 million more by the 1998 midterm election when the full four-year drivers' license renewal cycle will be completed. The resulting increase would be far and away the largest among already eligible voters (as contrasted with the enfranchising of new groups, such as women and 18-year-olds) since the personal voter registration system was introduced in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.The NVRA requires that states offer to register people to vote when they get or renew drivers' licenses (called “motor voter”), or when they apply for AFDC, Food Stamps, Medicaid, WIC, and disability services (called “agency-based” voter registration). Roughly eight million enrolled or updated their voting addresses in the first nine months—four million of them in drivers' license agencies, one million in public assistance agencies, and three million by mail.
The Politics of SimCity
Authors: Kolson Kenneth 
Published: May 2006

Years ago, when Robert Caro's magisterial biography of Robert Moses was first published, I remember reading it with mixed emotions. On the one hand, it reinforced every lesson I tried to convey in my course on urban politics. On the other hand, it taught those lessons in a way that was so vivid, and so engaging, that it made my conventional textbooks and lectures seem hopelessly abstract and lifeless. There was only one thing to do: throw out the old texts and make The Power Broker (Caro 1975) the centerpiece of the course. I redesigned everything from scratch.Recently, one of the students in my course on the history of city planning (offered in the University Honors Program at the University of Maryland at College Park) ambled up after class. “Have you ever played sin city?” I thought I heard him ask. He set me straight—“SimCity” he said, enunciating carefully—and then offered a demonstration, during which I was reminded of Caro's book. Here we go again, I though to myself as I purchased the Windows version of the simulation.
Arab Democratization: A Poor Cousin?
Authors: Korany Bahgat 
Published: May 2006

If only two important features may be singled out to characterize the “New World Order,” they are the collapse of communism and the globalization of the demand for democracy. We have thus reached “the end of history.” Western democracy can travel across the globe without any entry visa and is welcome wherever it lands.Contrary to this “endism,” the view adopted in this short paper assumes that the democratization process in the Arab countries will be both long and costly. The contagion effect might transform governments' piecemeal concessions into substantive democracy, but this is less probable than a situation of democratic breakdowns and incumbent governments presenting formal pluralism and controlled multipar-tism as the real thing. The literature's overoptimism reflects the nascent state of research on Arab democratization. In fact, multiple published volumes bringing together worldwide and sophisticated research on democratization (Diamund, et al. 1988, 1989; O'Donnel & Schmitter 1986) do not analyze a single Arab case, or explain such absence.
The Russian Elections: Back to Square One?
Authors: Clark Terry D. 
Published: May 2006

In the fall of 1993 President Boris Yeltsin dissolved the Russian legislature and called for elections to a new assembly in the hope of getting a more pro-reform parliament. That parliament in turn would consolidate his position in the struggle with the republics and regions over the issues of autonomy and the distribution of power between Moscow and the provinces. Instead, the December 1993 elections to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian legislature, were a clear defeat for both him and the pro-reform forces.Much attention has been devoted to considering the extent of the defeat and its implications. Particular focus has been placed on ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's strong showing. Despite the electoral gains registered by Zhirinovsky and his party, the organizational activity of the Duma since the elections strongly argues that it was the communists and not he who won the contest for the lower house. Even so, focusing on the State Duma is as misplaced as focusing on Zhirinovsky if one is to fully appraise the results and likely fallout from the December elections. Having virtually swept the races to seats in the new upper house (the Federation Council), provincial elites are once again in a position to press Yeltsin on the issue of regional autonomy. Hence, Yeltsin is faced with much the same situation as before the decision to assault the Russian parliament building, the White House.
Political Consultants and the Extension of Party Goals
Authors: Kolodny Robin , Logan Angela 
Published: May 2006

Political consultants are seen as influential actors in American politics who may effect policy long after their service on an election has concluded. Many observers of the consulting industry (see, for example, Shea 1996; Sabato 1981) have suggested that the use of political consultants has been especially bad for political parties, contributing to their decline. Proponents of the party decline thesis maintain that consultants weaken parties by giving candidates independent support bases for conducting their campaigns, creating a campaign climate where individual candidates take the voting public's focus away from party platforms. But consultants have become prominent because the parties cannot always offer up-to-date technical services and close attention to local situations. Some political scientists suggest that political consultants can assist parties in attaining their goals by providing the highly professional and technical services to party candidates that party organizations themselves cannot (Luntz 1988). Further, political consultants tend to work in concert with political parties because they depend on the parties for a supply of clients (Sabato 1981; Luntz 1988). Here we explore another dimension of the consultant-political party relationship: the role political parties play in training political consultants. We hypothesize that contemporary political consultants are likely to have had close links (such as prior employment) with a political party since the 1970s, when parties began adopting new technologies and training their employees to use them.Consultant background vis-a-vis political parties can lead to two very different notions of the effect of consultant activity on our politics.
Health Care and the Hill: Why Is This Year Different From All Others?
Authors: Peterson Mark A. 
Published: May 2006

Before us is the question of whether or not the 103rd Congress will manage to do what no other U.S. Congress has ever accomplished: the enactment of a comprehensive reform of the way in which health care services are financed in the United States. Does a social science perspective give us a reason to believe that 1994 will be a legislative year that is different from all others? Conventional wisdom might well suggest a simple answer: “no.” Given what we know about the complexity of the issue, the enormous stakes in the system possessed by some of the most powerful private interests, the fragmentation of our governing institutions, the paralysis produced by deficit politics, and the general presumed enthusiasm in our system for caution and incrementalism, a large-scale transformation of health care financing by a legislature best known for parochialism, timidity, and gridlock would seem implausible at best. Can the institution that stimulated scholarly and popular assessments from Congress: The Electoral Connection (Mayhew 1974) to Hill Rat: Blowing the Lid off Congress (Jackley 1992) really overcome the well-known and thoroughly studied barriers to major policy change, especially in the wake of a health care reform proposal from President Bill Clinton that could legitimately prompt the estate of Rube Goldberg to sue for plagiarism (S 1757, HR 3600)?Rather than “no,” however, the answer really is that we simply do not know. President Clinton's proposed Health Security Act is typically introduced in the media as the most ambitious social policy initiative since the New Deal and social security.