The study does not provide support for theories that claim that U.S. strategic and economic interests are important determinants of Japanese ODA decisions. But rarely has the social learning process, the theoretical underpinning of this effect, been examined critically. Furthermore, the statistical models used to assess this effect have been fundamentally flawed. In this article, I consider more fully the potential impacts of social learning on policy diffusion, and develop a simple approach to modeling these impacts more flexibly. Using this approach, I take a fresh look at data from two classic studies of state policy diffusion and demonstrate that the regional effect is more complex than previously believed.
Conventional accounts suggest that divided party control of government causes such stalemate.
I offer an alternative partisan model of gridlock that incorporates party polarization, party seat division, and the interaction between these two factors. Using an original data set of major legislative proposals considered between 1975 and 1994, I find that divided government does not affect gridlock once party polarization and party seat division are taken into account. Instead, I find that higher party polarization increases the likelihood of encountering gridlock on a given proposal, but that the magnitude of this increase diminishes to the extent that a party is close to having enough seats to thwart filibusters and vetoes. A majority of recent studies finds that black members of Congress are more supportive of blacks interests than are white members of Congress, even white Democrats. These results are limited exclusively to the contemporary period, however, as scholars have not studied how black members of Congress behaved during Reconstruction, the first era of blacks descriptive representation.