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Following methodology employed in the United States (Lieske 1993) this paper examines the existence of regional political cultures in Canada, the UK and Australia. Existing literature in all three cases suggests that political boundaries, whether provincial, regional or state, create political sub-cultures. An examination of existing data suggests, however, that these are not sub-cultures, nor are they created by sub-state politics. Rather, they are regional variant cultures encouraged by differing patterns of treatment from the parliaments in Ottawa, London and Canberra. Building on methodology adapted from Lieske’s article on “Regional subcultures in the United States” and presented at the recent Canadian Political Science Association Conference the analysis draws on aggregate data for constituencies and then identifies coherent cultural clusters. Data from election studies allow for an analysis of the dominant attitudes and behaviours in each cluster. The paper argues that such clusters operate across and within sub-State political boundaries and urges a conceptual distinction between political sub-cultures and regional variations of a dominant culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between the state and nonwhite civil society, specifically the connection between social policy regimes and the activities and ideologies that nonwhite organizations adopt. This paper conducts binary-logistic regression analysis of New York City Nonwhite Associational Dataset and the London Nonwhite Associational Dataset. This paper finds a relationship between governmental funding and the lack of a racial ideology in New York City and a relationship between governmental funding and the presence of a racial ideology in London. These findings reveal the influence of the neo-liberal social policy regimes of the United States and the United Kingdom, suggesting that the imperatives of the state more so than socioeconomic exigencies define the organizational tendencies of nonwhite communities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on the experimental findings of the motivated reasoning literature to numerous election studies in the U.S., Britain, and Germany. Conclusions inform both the information processing and campaign effects literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women’s chronic under-representation in both elected and appointed elite office has unfortunately been an enduring feature of many nations’ political systems. Comparative research in this field has concentrated largely on system-level factors or large-n quantitative studies to shed light respectively on which conditions tend to be more conducive to progress toward parity and both how electable women are perceived to be and how much they act differently than men once elected. We know for instance, that women are better represented PR list systems, particularly when they are affiliated with parties possessing internal quotas or target parity goals. I would argue, however, that this work although quite important tends in composite to treat women simply as a case upon which variables operate, thereby effectively removing women themselves from the politics of their political place. Similarly, it also largely ignores the role of women elites within their own party structures in any period, but particularly any time prior to the so-called second wave of feminist mobilization in the 1970s. This study hopes to address what I believe to be weaknesses in the literature by examining comparatively a previously neglected institutional component - namely the intial conditions of entry negotiated, accepted or imposed upon the first cadre of elite partisan women post-suffrage. Using data from primary research in women’s organization and party archives, private papers of notables and other sources, I will argue that the formation of separate and definitely unequal women’s divisions in all major parties of Great Britain and the United States, was to have lasting deleterious effects on partisan women’s ability to successfully pursue any distinct women’s agenda once they had formally joined men’s parties. I will also argue that this strategic error was compounded by an political landscape charged by sex antagonism and competition for the loyalities of millions of new voters. It was also in many ways, one from which partisan women have never fully recovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modernization signaled the de-alignment of traditional social cleavages in advanced industrial states. Implicit in this is a homogenization of electorates according to post-material, "new politics" values. Although the impact of traditional social cleavages may have weakened, electorates are not de-aligned; the traditional social cleavages remain important divisions which structure the electorate in significant and meaningful ways. This paper focuses on the impact of religious voting relative to the other traditional social bases of politics in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, comparing the modern electorates to the electorates of the early 1960s. Using election survey data and focusing on the social bases of conservative parties' support, the results show that while most of the social bases of electoral support have weakened, religious voting remains significant and has increased in the contexts of the United States and United Kingdom. This suggests that despite the decline in religious attendance, the traditional values shared by religious voters make them a tempting social basis of conservative parties’ voter coalitions, and that this may be occurring beyond these contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law and order is a collective good, enabling all groups to plan their lives, free from coercion. However, the police are also agents of the prevailing regime. As such they may target dissenting groups, particularly when socio-ethnic divisions threaten regime stability. Policing may therefore exacerbate conflict rather than contain it. The democratic response to this danger is to subject the police to the scrutiny of elected representatives. However, does this oversight encourage impartial policing, or do politicians seek protection for their own group(s), at the expense of minorities? This paper uses debates and questions from the UK and Canadian legislatures to determine the kind of policing demanded by politicians from Northern Ireland and Quebec - regions with deep divisions. Data is compared to the interventions of politicians from more homogenous regions. I therefore examine the reciprocal relationship between conflict and police accountability. Firstly, I detail the impact of inter-group conflict on the type of policing favoured by politicians. Secondly, I assess the likely effect of such demands - are the police cast as the defenders of one group to the exclusion of another, or do politicians co-operate to resolve conflicts over policing? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that in certain important yet understudied respects, unwritten constitutional rules play a similar role in the U.S. constitutional structure as they do in the constitution of the United Kingdom. It is also argued that there are three distinct sources of unwritten rules that are based on precedent, unwritten agreements, and generally accepted principles. These unwritten rules are made binding by custom, mores, and political difficulties and benefits.

Previous research demonstrates that legalization affects foreign policy preferences: voters and policymakers are more likely to oppose policies that violate international law than to oppose otherwise identical policies that do not trammel upon the law. This paper examines the mechanisms through which international law affects preferences. Drawing on experiments in several countries (including Argentina, Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States), the paper finds strong evidence that legalization increases the reputational cost of breaking international commitments, and that it heightens the probability foreign retaliation, as well. These mechanisms are evident at both the elite and the mass levels. The importance of these mechanisms varies across countries, however, with small countries proving especially sensitive to concerns about reputation and retaliation. Overall, the paper deepens our understanding of international cooperation by providing the first experimental, micro-level evidence about how international law works. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political disengagement of young people is a common theme across many of the mature democracies. One element of this disengagement is a cluster of characteristics and proclivities that might be termed "political inattentiveness." This inattentiveness among the young comprises three key elements: low levels of political knowledge, a relative lack of political interest and inattention to politics in the media. This paper seeks to advance our understanding of political inattentiveness among the young by assembling longitudinal data for six countries: Canada, the United States, Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway. The surveys are used to trace differences between young and old in political knowledge, interest and media attentiveness from the 1950s to the present day. This longitudinal and comparative analysis helps establish which dimensions of political attentiveness have changed most notably, the timing of these changes and the degree of cross-national divergence and convergence. In addition to the empirical contribution, the paper also assesses the implications of the findings for different theoretical accounts of political disengagement among the young. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the effectiveness of collective action clauses in restructuring sovereign debts between 1988-2000, as employed under UK, US and other governing laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will focus on how British ideas and groups that focus on race helped to form United States attitudes on race and racist practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will look at how party systems in Britain, the U.S., and Sweden have responded to the feminist movement. First, party pledges, as stated in platforms and manifestos, will be analyzed. To what extent do the parties make “feminist” pledges”? Different definitions of “feminist policy” will be analyzed and an argument will be made for one. Next, to what extent have such pledges been enacted into policy? What factors obstruct or encourage feminist policy success? The chosen cases allow us to analyze systems that are culturally and institutionally different. The U.S. and Britain are argued by Siaroff (1994) to be in the same “feminist family of nations”â€"“Protestant Liberal”â€"while Sweden is “Protestant Social Democratic.” A comparison of what parties say about feminist issues helps us to test whether this “family of nations” concept is useful. Comparing pledge enactment across countries also allows us to look at the impact of institutions on feminist policy; we will be comparing presidential two-party, parliamentary two-party, and parliamentary multi-party systems. This work will contribute to the literatures on comparative parties, comparative public policy generally, and comparative feminist policy specifically. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines homogeneity and heterogeneity in preferences for public policy, across income and education levels and party identification, and across policy domains in the US, UK, and Canada. Do preferences differ across segments of the public at particular points in time? What about over time â€" do we observe a uniform swing across different groups (parallel publics) or does the flow of opinion differ across party, income, and education? Our data on public preferences for government spending show cross-sectional heterogeneity across certain sub-aggregates in some domains, but overall very high levels of over-time homogeneity in trends across groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some scholars point to the establishment of International Criminal Court (ICC) as a testament to both the power of non-state actors in creating international institutions and the rise of the “individual accountability” norm. But this argument fails to explain why state leaders were unable to establish such a Court immediately following the Nuremberg trials, when the principle of individual accountability in international law was arguably at its apex. In this paper, I propose that the ICC became a viable option in the 1990s because leaders of the US and UK recognized that such a court might reduce their costly role as the “accountability police.” Specifically, a Court could relieve them of having to respond to an irreconcilable set of pressures: human rights advocates demanding that perpetrators be held accountable and foreign government leaders insisting that the sovereign immunity principle be upheld. The core argument is that the increased countervailing pressures led US and UK national executives to want to “outsource” prosecution authority to a third actor. To evaluate this argument, I will compare the 1990s establishment of the ICC with three earlier, failed attempts to create some form of an international criminal court. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hegemonic stability theory (HST) states that the international monetary and financial system requires a hegemon to solve problems of collective action, establish a reserve currency, and act as a lender of last resort. Charles Kindleberger's writings on HST focused on British decline in the interwar years. The decline of Britain, the end of the gold standard, a precipitous decline in international trade, a lack of aggregate demand, and the lack of a hegemon all led to the Great Depression. Currently the United States economy is suffering a crisis of confidence and liquidity. This paper asks three questions: 1. Is HST still valid in light of the modern global economy, which is characterized by the ability to transfer capital instantaneously? 2. Is the United States still the hegemon? 3. How will declining American hegemony affect the global financial system? I conclude that HST is still valid; the United States is still the hegemon, although its power has diminished greatly; and the global financial system still rests on American hegemony and the dollar as a reserve currency but the current system is untenable. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite limited electoral and governmental reward, third parties commonly contest elections under single-member-district plurality (SMD-p) electoral rules. Even under the strong party duopoly of the United States, third parties continually contest local, state, and national elections. In this paper, we relax the assumption that third party candidates are motivated solely by the rewards of office and examine the incentives for them to contest elections under variations in electoral volatility and competition. We propose a curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship between electoral competition and third party participation. When electoral competition is either very low or very high we expect the number of third party candidates to be high, due to increased opportunity to draw attention to policy issues or affect the election outcome. We expect a positive relationship between electoral volatility and third party candidacies, since high volatility signals a de-aligned electorate. We test our claims using district-level data in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States from 1980-2000. The results of negative binomial regressions indicate that third parties are more likely to contest elections when electoral uncertainty is high. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That black males are "endangered" is a common theme in popular and academic texts in the U.S. and the U.K. Central to these texts, alternatively referred to as black male crisis narrative texts, is the presumption that black males are in crisis. For many commentators crisis narrative texts are an important means of documenting black men's economic and other woes. Critics suggest that these texts have more to do with assumptions of blackness as a masculine construct. Absent in these explanations, however, is significant examination of how crisis narrative texts challenge established understandings of intersectionality - a concept pioneered by black feminists to illuminate black women's interlocking racial, gendered, and sexual oppression. I argue that crisis narrative texts presume black males to be marginalized neither as blacks nor as males but as heterosexual black males - a category comprised of but greater than the sum of black males' racial, gendered, and sexual identities. I further contend that in constructing black men in this manner, crisis narrative authors radically broaden the boundaries of the intersectionally oppressed to include heterosexual black men. Not only that, by suggesting that it is black men rather than black women who are oppressed because others are privileged, these authors use the concept of relational difference in a way wholly unforeseen by intersectional theorists. Section one of the paper explores crisis narrative authors' presumption that black men exist at the junction of interlocking racial, gendered, and sexual oppressions. The latter half of the section details these authors' contention that black men are intersectionally oppressed because others, including black women, are intersectionally privileged.Section two concludes that crisis narrative authors not only complicate but ultimately posit a new model of intersectionality. First, by blaming black women for black men's woes, these authors suggest that intersectional theorizing need not advance a feminist agenda. Second, in discounting the notion that certain interlocking categories, such as "heterosexual man," always generate privilege while others, such as "black woman," engender oppression, crisis narrative authors destabilize intersectional theorists' assumption of a social world neatly reducible to the advantaged or the disadvantaged. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is the public affected by terrorist attacks? Numerous scholars have posited that the public typically overreacts to threats, others contend that the public is rational in its opinions. In this paper, the role of the public in post-terror attack civil liberty abridgements will be discussed. In the end, it will be shown, through studying public opinion polls from the US, UK and Israel, that public fear levels jump up after terrorist attacks and that this jump is concomitant with a demand for action. The public is also more willing to cede liberties after attacks. These factors create an opportunity for the executive to act. However, public fears and the willingness to trade liberties-for-security fade, or decay, over time, thus eventually constraining executive action. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines changing conceptions of British citizenship among revolutionary-era Americans through the lens of patriot arguments about the British constitution. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares secessionist mobilization strategies in federal and unitary environments. The cases are Scotland, Quebec, and South Carolina. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes two cases of executive-led policy agendas, the USA and UK, seeking to find out how different executive agendas are from other agendas, and how different the institutions are from each other. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare factors within and outside of the legislative arena that influenced legislators' decisions to change party affiliations in Great Britain and the United States in 19th and early 20th centuries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A political cultuural overview of the links between British and United States racial attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clergy certifications come in 3 general forms. No certs. as in the U.S., limited certs as in England, and complete certs as in Malaysia. The statutes defining these certs can provide for curbs on extremism, but risk oppressing religious freedom. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of its divisiveness, rational political leaders should suppress immigration as a political issue. The normally do. When, why, and how does this suppression fail? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral competition has long been held as a required and essential component of a smoothly functioning democracy. This common wisdom suggests that representative responsiveness is likely to decrease as the level of general election competitiveness falls off. The closer the election the more uncertain the incumbent member of the legislature is about her ability to get reelected, which motivates her to work harder to win votes (i.e. campaign harder, spend more time in the district, secure more pork projects, modify voting behavior in the legislature, etc.). In turn these activities should increase voter satisfaction and efficacy. This final linkage is what we take up here. Namely, do voters in districts that have competitive elections demonstrate higher levels of efficacy and higher levels of satisfaction with the representative and with the legislature itself? Using survey data from the most recent elections in three western democracies with single member district systems (UK, Canada, and the U.S.) we find no such connection. Rather, the winner/loser dichotomy is primal. Electoral competitiveness has no measurable effect on voters either in terms of satisfaction with their representative or with more abstract variables like efficacy. This finding has important implications for democratic theory and for redistricting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can the national health service (NHS) model work in the United States? We examine various indicators to determine if the Veterans Health Administration has performed similarly to the experience with the NHS model abroad. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impact of terrorism in the U.S., UK and Israel on public opinions from 1979?2004. Does terrorism have a debilitating impact on a country?s morale or do attacks rally the public? Do the characteristics of an attack lead to differential impacts? ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers factors influencing the use of coercive foreign policies by France, the United Kingdom and the United States as a means to enforcement international human rights laws between 1990 and 1994, and the effectiveness of such policies. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like the U.S. today, the British Empire relied on cooperation from junior partners.  Institutions that gave influence to groups with relationship-specific assets in the settler colonies made Britain's self-restraint credible, and helped it keep allie ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study shows that massive shifts within national budgets occur and considers four sources of these shifts: institutional constraints, attention, partisan preferences, and veto players. The theory is tested via time-series data of four democracies. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used surveys and focus groups to determine the impact of the terrorism issue on the American and British electorates in the most recent national elections in each country (2004 and 2005, respectively). ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I take notice of two prominent features of party policy position taking, divergence and dynamism, and show that dynamic party position taking in the context of divergent party position taking is a desirable quality for democratic representation. However, because models of party position taking tend to concentrate on divergence or dynamism and because it is their combination that proves important for representation, I describe a model of party position taking that incorporates both features. I explore the plausibility of my descriptive model, mostly casually, by examining policy positions of the two-major parties in the United Kingdom and the United States from 1945 through 2001. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine movements for voting system reform at the time of suffrage expansion in France, the UK and the US. I argue that elites used these reforms to undermine popular participation. Outcomes vary with the degree of working class mobilization. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]