bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Citizenship and Constitutionalism in Post-Communist Regimes
Authors: Elkin Stephen L. 
Published: May 2006

The recent events in Eastern Europe, and, for a brief moment, those last spring in China are initial steps in what may be the birth of stable democratic regimes. We are witnessing the early stages of great dramas in which whole peoples attempt to give shape to their political lives. These are the high moments of politics, an outpouring of energy from which enduring political institutions of popular control may be born. These are also times of enormous danger in which the seeds of future failures may be sown.By thinking of these events in broadly constitutional terms, we may not only gain some perspective on what is occurring, but we may also increase our understanding of constitutionalism more generally. This can only do us, i.e., Americans, some good, inclined as we are to think of constitutional matters as the specific concern of courts. The Eastern Europeans and the Chinese may increase our understanding of the connections between constitutionalism and the creation of democratic regimes, and why such regimes may fail to take hold. These recent events also may have the benefit of reminding American political scientists that the creation of democratic constitutional regimes is one of their most important subjects, one that cannot be left to lawyers. After all, much of what we study exists because of a successful act of political constitution.
Rejoinder to Piven and Cloward
Authors: Bennett Stephen Earl 
Published: May 2006

Piven and Cloward are right. Someone is confused. Readers of PS can decide who. Piven and Cloward claim they have been misunderstood. They say their goal, particularly in Why Americans Don't Vote, was to highlight the inadequacies of three “schools” of turnout studies, “party behavior,” “legal-institutional,” and “social-psychological,” and to suggest a “synthesis” of those approaches.“Misunderstanding,” it seems, is widespread. At least two reviews of their book (Wattenberg, 1989; Pomper, 1989) faulted Piven and Cloward for failing to explain why, if personal registration is the main reason for low turnouts, voting has fallen during a period of liberalized statutes and for a “quick dismissal of attitudinal variables” (Wattenberg). Pomper (p. 1398) noted that Piven and Cloward “contemptuously dismiss (socialpsychological) explanations as ‘normal science’ and ‘the witless use of multiple correlational analyses,’ asserting instead that ‘the political context determines whether these factors will have a significant effect on participation’ ([Piven and Cloward, 1988b:] 117–120).” Bastedo (1989) interpreted Piven and Coward's 1989 article as strictly an attack on registration laws.
“Not on My Watch”
Authors: Boster Ronald S. 
Published: May 2006

To fill in the “black hole” between remaining S&L assets and what is owed to depositors will cost about $200 billion in 1991 dollars. By any measure, this is a lot of money and is in fact about equivalent to the undiscounted $500 billion figure ineptly professed by the General Accounting Office and widely echoed in media reports, political speeches, and on talk shows.An important aspect of this cost is that it is history—gone for good. It will not come back as the result of an economic rebound, for instance. In fact, the longer it takes to pay off this bill, the higher it will go.I speak with less conviction about such non-dollar costs of the S&L crisis as the loss of public confidence in public institutions and their officials. I do, however, believe they too are significant, and I do not agree with the cynics who argue that there was little or no confidence left to lose.
Capitalism and Democracy
Authors: Almond Gabriel A. 
Published: May 2006

Joseph Schumpeter, a great economist and social scientist of the last generation, whose career was almost equally divided between Central European and American universities, and who lived close to the crises of the 1930s and '40s, published a book in 1942 under the title, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. The book has had great influence, and can be read today with profit. It was written in the aftergloom of the great depression, during the early triumphs of Fascism and Nazism in 1940 and 1941, when the future of capitalism, socialism, and democracy all were in doubt. Schumpeter projected a future of declining capitalism, and rising socialism. He thought that democracy under socialism might be no more impaired and problematic than it was under capitalism.He wrote a concluding chapter in the second edition which appeared in 1946, and which took into account the political-economic situation at the end of the war, with the Soviet Union then astride a devastated Europe. In this last chapter he argues that we should not identify the future of socialism with that of the Soviet Union, that what we had observed and were observing in the first three decades of Soviet existence was not a necessary expression of socialism. There was a lot of Czarist Russia in the mix. If Schumpeter were writing today, I don't believe he would argue that socialism has a brighter future than capitalism. The relationship between the two has turned out to be a good deal more complex and intertwined than Schumpeter anticipated.
Political Views from Below: A Survey of Beijing Residents
Authors: Zhong Yang , Chen Jie , Scheb John M. 
Published: May 2006

With the death of Deng Xiaoping, China's political future is once again in the spotlight. Debate over the viability of the current political regime in China started immediately after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown when the prospects for reform in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the fate of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) projected by China watchers were then overwhelmingly pessimistic (Ditmer 1989; Swaine 1989). Eight years after the Tiananmen Square events, the survival of the CCP against all odds (including the aftermath of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union) is in itself no small miracle. The post-Tiananmen political regime in China has by and large been stable. Not only has the CCP survived, it has made impressive economic progress in recent years. This new development has caused a major reassessment of the situation in the PRC among China watchers. Nicholas Kristoff, in the New York Times (1993), called the phenomenon of China's rapid economic growth in an authoritarian environment the “riddle of China.” One China specialist even posed the question whether China is where Samuel Huntington's “third wave” stopped and whether the PRC would be an exception to the fall of communism worldwide (Nathan 1993).The most often cited factors accounting for the political tranquillity in the PRC are its remarkable economic growth and its political oppression (Nathan 1993). These two factors are certainly indispensable in understanding developments in China after 1989.
Lessons of a Political Science Webcaster
Authors: West Darrell M. 
Published: May 2006

Until I developed a new web site, I had no idea how much personal information webcasters collected on visitors. I always had assumed that surfing the Internet was an anonymous experience. The net was a benign tool that made my job easier. It brought the latest information on politics and media to my fingertips and eliminated my need to dig through dusty old newspapers.In part, it was seeing how the web facilitated my political science work that convinced me to set up my own nonprofit site dedicated to state and national politics. If the Internet was such a positive force for public education, perhaps my site could inform people about political events, upcoming campaigns, and policy controversies.Now that I am a certified webcaster, however, I am astonished at the level of detail available to those running Internet sites. Every time you visit a web site, your behavior is monitored. Webcasters don't know your name, but we know your Internet provider. If you log on through a school, university, business, or governmental agency, we generally can identify your institutional affiliation. In addition, we know what files you look at and how long you spend viewing each item down to the second.This is an obvious goldmine for webcasters interested in catering to the tastes of their audience.
Of Time and Presidential Election Forecasts
Authors: Erikson Robert S. , Wlezien Christopher 
Published: May 2006

How far in advance can one predict the next presidential election? Forecasting as late as election eve is trivially easy, at least since the advent of polling. Forecasting as early as two or four years in advance is virtually impossible (see, e.g., Norpoth 1995). It is at some time between the previous midterm election and election day that electoral expectations come into focus.The evolving expectations of the 1996 election cycle offer a familiar example. A year ago, Clinton was widely considered unelectable. As of this writing (November 1995), Clinton is perceived as a mild favorite for 1996. By the time you read this essay in spring 1996, a new consensus may emerge. Expectations will harden by election day, when the verdict is not likely to surprise (Gelman and King 1993).“Trial heat” polls are one way to predict elections (see, e.g., Campbell and Wink 1990), but they are notoriously unreliable when conducted more than a year in advance. A year in advance of the two Reagan elections, for instance, Reagan trailed Carter in 1979 and Mondale in 1983 in the polls. We can, however, examine other early indicators of election “fundamentals.” These indicators include the results of another poll question that is asked regularly throughout the electoral cycle: the president's approval rating in the Gallup poll. Various earlier models of the presidential vote have incorporated a measure of approval (Sigelman 1979; Brody and Sigelman 1983; Abramowitz 1988; Lewis-Beck and Rice 1992).
The Politics of Middle East Politics
Authors: Green Jerrold D. 
Published: May 2006

The Middle East field is in a crisis within the broader discipline of political science. A review of major departments of political science reveals surprisingly few that have full professors with the politics of the Middle East as their primary research focus. This lacuna exists at such universities as Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Chicago, Ohio State, Emory, Brown, Dartmouth, North Carolina, Rice, Pittsburgh, Brandeis, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. Some of these departments have no Middle East faculty at all, others have denied tenure to deserving junior faculty, while still others have an interest in the region but claim to lack resources to make the necessary appointments.The situation is clearly better at institutions such as Columbia, NYU, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Johns Hopkins SAIS, Indiana, UCLA, Texas, Princeton, Georgetown, George Washington, Rutgers, and a few others. Nonetheless, there are problems here too. Some faculty are administrators and do not teach a full load. Others may be nearing retirement and are concerned that they will not be replaced by a scholar who also specializes in the Middle East. Although we can disagree about particular institutions or individuals (e.g., Is so-and-so “really” a Middle East scholar?), it is evident that this field is in danger of being marginalized both in professional recognition by the discipline as a whole, and in political science departments that may appreciate having Middle East politics courses on the books, but not the scholarship of the course instructor.Disregard for the Middle East field can be attributed to an array of political and disciplinary factors with which most of us are familiar. And one could reasonably expand the problem to include all area studies.
A Primary/Secondary Democracy Distinction
Authors: Werlin Herbert H. 
Published: May 2006

Just as sportsmanship is essential for competitive sports, statesmanship is necessary for competitive democracy. This obvious assertion, which I followed with a distinction between primary and secondary democracy, was greeted with some misunderstanding when it was presented at a 1993 American Political Science Association workshop on democratization headed by Gabriel Almond. Because this distinction appears to be controversial, let me defend it here as a way to overcome some of the quandaries found in the literature on democracy; to link democracy to development; and to suggest more fruitful approaches to encouraging democracy than elections.Professor Almond's response to my primary/secondary democracy distinction was to point out that those participating in his workshop had used a definition of democracy presented by Dahl (1971) in his book on polyarchy, emphasizing two dimensions: widespread participation and contestation (including competition and conflict). This seems to me a one-sided definition (focusing almost exclusively on what I call “primary democracy”), leaving out the aspects emerging from secondary democracy: a mutual respect among competing groups and between leaders and followers and consensus on governmental goals and procedures.Without secondary democracy, primary democracy tends to be meaningless, much like an Olympics without the necessary conditions for sporting events and rules for participating, competing, and officiating. Another way of making the distinction here presented would be the “two ideals of democracy” suggested by Mansbridge (1991, 7): “one based on conflict, the other on commonality.”
Consultants and Direct Democracy
Authors: Magleby David B. , Patterson Kelly D. 
Published: May 2006

Proponents of direct legislation maintain that the initiative and popular referendum empower ordinary citizens to set the agenda of politics. Some argue it shifts “ultimate authority from representatives in state legislatures, city councils, and even Congress to the people themselves” (Schmidt 1989, vii). Such elections, so the argument goes, produce greater voter interest in elections and higher voter turnout. Those in favor of the process also contend that it is an important check on special interests which exert too much control over elected politicians (Magleby 1984, chap. 2; Cronin 1989).Critics of direct democracy raise concerns about the quality of deliberation voters give to issues. Voters can be confused by ballot question wording or respond negatively to the length of the ballots. Moreover, because voters lack the simplifying devices of partisanship and candidate appeal, they may be more susceptible to the manipulations of campaign consultants.How well do these longstanding arguments for and against direct legislation reflect our actual experience with the process in the 1990s? Arguments for direct democracy depend largely on how the process is conducted. If the process can be manipulated by special interests or relies on questionable tactics, then many of the advantages claimed for the process disappear. In this article, we argue that political consultants play a significant role in the conduct of direct democracy. These consultants normally work directly for organized interests without the constraints imposed by candidates or parties.
Economists and Health Reform
Authors: Fein Rashi 
Published: May 2006

The design of a health care reform program requires contributions from many disciplines. While we know that all disciplines are equal, we are also aware that some are more equal than others. I believe the record would show that, at this time and in this nation, economics is one of the fields of study that is “more equal” than others. Why are economists so important? What impact does the presence of these economists have on the development of health reform legislation? What price—if any—do all of us pay for the under-representation of various other disciplines? Some of the answers to these and other questions can be found in the accompanying essays by persons whose knowledge and experience lies in the field of political science. I propose to try to address these matters from the vantage of the discipline in which I was educated—political economy, as it was known at Johns Hopkins when I studied there.It is not difficult to list some of the various factors that have propelled economists to the center of America's health care debate. Certainly it is the case that many of the issues raised by the health crisis and by proposals for health reform impinge on the economist's domain. Even without taking account of the imperialistic tendency of economists to view all of human behavior as that of rational economic actors and thus to lay claim to the study of virtually all human interactions, numerous matters do legitimately fall within the scope of economics and are of long-standing concern to economists.
Why Justice Ginsburg Is Wrong About States Expanding Abortion Rights
Authors: Nossiff Rosemary 
Published: May 2006

The growing strength of the pro-life movement in the 1980s and the escalating violence of parts of the movement in the 1990s have led many commentators to question the value of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. Had the Supreme Court not lifted first trimester restrictions on abortion in its 1973 decision in Roe, so the argument runs, the states would have gradually enacted laws to change their restrictive abortion laws anyway, thus avoiding the agonizing national controversy that ensued.One of the most prominent supporters of this position was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. During her confirmation hearings to the Supreme Court last summer, her views about the Roe decision re-entered the public arena. In the course of the hearings she asserted that like the guarantees of individual autonomy found in several Amendments, the right to an abortion should also be grounded in the equal protection provisions of the Constitution, thereby linking women's equality with the ability to control their reproductive function.
Computer Modeling Using Spreadsheets and Related Software
Authors: Grafton Carl , Permaloff Anne 
Published: May 2006

Computer models hold a continuing fascination for political scientists. Part of their attraction derives from being working miniatures like mechanical toys. They also hold the less enjoyable but more scientific promise of allowing something akin to laboratory experimentation—denied to political scientists in most circumstances because of cost or the nature of the subject matter.Spreadsheets are powerful tools for the construction of simple or complex models. At their core, spreadsheets are nothing more than cells arranged in columns and rows into which labels, numbers, or formulas can be placed. The numbers and formulas can be arranged in infinite variety, and in modern spreadsheets they are supplemented by such features as built-in formulas called functions, macro languages which are highly flexible programming environments, data query features, and graphics capabilities.Edith Stokey's and Richard Zeckhauser's clearly explained difference equation models lend themselves especially well to rendition on a spreadsheet (1978, 47–73). Stokey and Zeckhauser furnish the case of public housing units in a city deteriorating at the rate of 10% per year to the point of being uninhabitable. If 800 units per year are built, will the total number of public housing units reach an equilibrium and, if so, will it be stable?Such a problem is expressed in difference equation form as follows:Unitsn = Unitsn − 1 – .1* Unitsn − 1 + 800orUnitsn = .9 * Unitsn − 1 + 800The number of housing units in any year n equals .9 times the number of housing units in the previous year plus 800. The beginning of a spreadsheet solution to this problem is shown in Figure 1.
John C. Calhoun, Lani Guinier, and Minority Rights
Authors: Safford John L. 
Published: May 2006

Early in the first year of his presidency, Bill Clinton floated the name of Lani Guinier to be the Justice Department's chief civil-rights lawyer. Although Guinier never made it to Senate confirmation hearings, she was well qualified by education and professional training. Moreover, as a black Jewish female, it was evident to her that majoritarian democracy is often less than fair—and she was forthright about wishing to correct it by democratic means.Ironically, the minority veto, one of the alleged means by which Guinier wished to assure fairness, harkened back to the process of government advocated by John C. Calhoun (1782–1850). For Calhoun, constitutionalism or limited government was justified by epistemological nominalism, and was ensured by the concurrent majority and nullification.Like that of Aristotle, James Madison, and Karl Marx, Calhoun's political philosophy was based on class analysis. Indeed, the historian of American thought, Richard Hofstadter, subtitled a chapter on Calhoun, “The Marx of the Master Class.” As Hofstadter explains, in Calhoun,… there is discernible a rough parallel to several ideas that were later elaborated and refined by Marx: the idea of pervasive exploitation and class struggle in history; a labor theory of value and of a surplus appropriated by the capitalists; the concentration of capital under capitalistic production; the fall of working-class conditions to the level of subsistence; the growing revolt of the laboring class against the capitalists; the prediction of social revolution.
The Christian Right and the 1994 Elections: A View from the States
Authors: Green John C. 
Published: May 2006

In 1994 the news media rediscovered the Christian Right and came away perplexed. The movement seemed to contradict conventional wisdom at every turn. First, many observers were surprised that it was still strong and active, given the responsibility assigned to it for the Republican defeat in 1992. Second, its activities were neither all successes nor failures, making the story-line difficult to follow. How could a movement with such a controversial agenda contribute to unexpected Republican gains in places like Minnesota, while at the same time, candidates prominently identified with it, such as Oliver North, were defeated? Why was the Christian Right at once so strong and so weak?No doubt much of this confusion results from well-known proclivities of journalists, including a penchant for “horse race” coverage, a focus on controversy, and a poor sense of history. There is, however, also a deeper misunderstanding at work. It is widely assumed that religion is on the wane in modern societies. Thus, its repeated expressions in public affairs, such as the Christian Right, come as a great surprise. In response, many observers are ready to interpret such expressions as temporary aberrations that will quickly fade away. In fact, the Christian Right has been discovered and dismissed in the press at least four times since it emerged on the national scene with the Moral Majority in 1979. This pattern was difficult to replicate in 1994.