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When the Blackmun papers opened to the public, abortion dominated their press coverage. This missed Blackmun?s marginal role in "saving" the privacy right. I examine how ROE and the privacy right survived the demise of their strongest advocate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal reforms making judges independent from political pressures and empowering them with judicial review do not necessarily imply an effective judiciary. Something has to fill the gap between institutional design and effectiveness. When the executive and legislative are strong and ready to react to an objectionable judicial decision, the judiciary would tend to be weak and deferent towards those in power. But the reverse is also true. Hence, in this paper we argue that fragmentation of political power is a source for an effective judiciary: one able to rule against the interests of power holders without being systematically challenged or ignored. We test this argument analyzing the decisions of the Mexican Supreme Court against the PRI on constitutional controversies and actions of unconstitutionality from 1994 to 2002. Using a probit model, we show that the probability for the Supreme Court of voting against the PRI increased from .07 to .44 to .52 as the PRI lost the majority in the Chamber of Deputies in 1997, and the Presidency in 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trajectory of the Chinese nuclear program over the last decades of the twentieth century presents a puzzle that nuclear deterrence theory is ill-equipped to explain: Despite a strong commitment to a deterrent strategy and ample economic and technical abilities to build the necessary forces, China allowed its nuclear program to stagnate dangerously â€" perhaps beyond the point of second-strike survivability with respect to the major nuclear arsenals of the world. To explain the pattern of Chinese nuclear development, a richer understanding of the context â€" both domestic and international â€" is necessary, including improved (though still tense) superpower relationships, a shifted focus toward economic growth (for its own sake and as a source of power), and a reduced voice of military actors in policy-making. While not changing the fundamental implications of deterrence models, this context reduced the willingness of the Chinese leadership to make trade-offs when pursuit of nuclear modernization would have compromised objectives in other arenas. This paper suggests that deterrence theory must be broadened to incorporate a wider range of factors, both to reflect the decision-making process and to accurately predict outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper replicates and updates a study by Chamberlain and Haider-Markel in 2005 on regional policy diffusion. The results of the update show that the original results were incorrect, and diffusion did not occur with the policy issue studied. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social and political success of any municipal service lies within the attitudes and perceptions of its stakeholders. In the New Orleans public service realm, specifically the public transportation system of New Orleans, it could be argued that the stakeholders are riders and non-riders, and additionally, both locals and tourists. With an organization that is responsible for meeting the daily travel needs of many diverse individuals, the satisfaction of its riders should be of paramount concern. In addition, the opinions of non-riders and those who visit the urban area may be an appropriate indicator of expectations of customers and could serve as an index for policy implementation. Studying evaluations has theoretical implications relevant to urban politics literature, as well as yielding findings of importance to administrators of urban transit agencies. The previous research that laid the foundation for this present study of New Orleans’ public transit focused on multiple public services. In the earlier study, analysis showed that race and the composition of the respondent’s neighborhood had a significant effect on that respondent’s evaluation of some city services. The second key finding focused on how citizen’s evaluations differed across various services. This research narrows the focus and will advance the literature on citizen’ evaluations of urban services by examining a specific substantive area—that is, public transportation. The analysis, utilizing OLS regression, focuses on differing levels of customer satisfaction between ethnic groups and differences in levels of usage and satisfaction between males and females. This research of the public transportation system addresses the issue of evaluations of services using data obtained from three key research studies: customer satisfaction of New Orleans public transit, attitudes and attributes of downtown transit, and the University of New Orleans’ Quality of Life surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs on the 80th Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association from April 13 – 16, 2023 at the Palmer House Hilton Chicago, Illinois focusing on topics such as Covid-19 information, and anti-harassment policy.

Although I. Bernard Cohen has shown that the American founders were not appropriating the terms of Newtonian physics when using words such as "balance" and "equilibrium" to describe the institutional relationships delineated in the Constitution, it remains unclear why these terms recur throughout their writings. Following Cohen, it is the argument of this paper that the founders drew these and similar expressions from the organismic analogy of the state as a "corpus politicum" or a "body politic." In particular, I argue that James Madison's Federalist 10 relies upon an eighteenth-century medical metaphor that has been overlooked due to the transformation in the science of medicine that occurred between Federalist 10's initial publication and its rediscovery by Charles Beard in 1913. While Madison's invocation of the ancient analogy of the state as a body politic has occasionally been noted, what has thus far gone unnoticed is Madison's use of this analogy as a foundation for a more historically bounded biomedical metaphor integral to his argument. Relying upon an analogous relationship between health and justice traceable to the writings of Plato, Madison contends in Federalist 10 that the democratic analogue to sound bodily health - conceived by Hippocrates as the "krasis," or the proportionate mixture, of the humors - is obtainable only in an extended republic. Just as the krasis of the humors within the corpus humanum is the definition of health, the self-equilibrating balance of factions within the corpus politicum of an extended republic becomes the definition of political justice. Madison's use of the analogy of the state as a corpus politicum, implicit in his efforts to offer his readers a "remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government," is thus highly purposive, providing rhetorical support for his theoretical argument and a carefully chosen rhetorical frame for the ongoing debate over the proposed Constitution. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional understandings of policymaking as a state-centric process are being challenged by the appearance of a variety of new private, voluntary governance mechanisms. Institutions such as certification institutions are emerging in which civil society groups interact directly with other non-state actors like corporations to develop new sets of rules—rules which are neither created nor enforced by the state. The emergence of these private regimes raises interesting questions about the power of non-governmental advocacy groups in the policy arena. Without using the power of the state for leverage, how do advocacy groups encourage behavioral change among corporations? To what extent are corporations driven to comply with the demands of civil society groups? This paper addresses these questions by considering the extent to which pressure from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) drives company participation in environmental certification programs. Using the U.S. forest products sector as an example, the paper considers why firm responses to NGO pressures have been variable. Some firms have chosen to participate in the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which is the program preferred by the NGOs. Other firms have joined the American Forest and Paper Association’s Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the chief competitor program which is not endorsed by NGOs. Examining the evidence from four firm-level case studies, the paper argues that generalized NGO pressure against the sector does prompt firms to participate in some type of certification program. Surprisingly, however, an intense, direct NGO campaign against a particular firm actually drives that firm away from the certification option most preferred by NGOs. Thus instead of complying with NGO demands, directly targeted firms are more likely to resist civil society pressure and adopt the industry-sponsored certification program. Using a process tracing methodology, the paper demonstrates that other important independent variables such as high internal commitment to the environment, low transactions costs, and the presence of stringent and non-discretionary regulations on forest practices may encourage firm compliance with NGO demands; however, the addition of direct campaigns against the firm causes resistance and/or compromise. The paper explores the reasons behind this reaction, arguing that direct targeting by NGOs has critical, negative effects on policy network relations. Moreover, these effects are not confined to targeted firms, but spill over to impact the decisions of other firms in the industry. Thus while NGO campaigns may be effective in encouraging a general behavioral shift among U.S. forest products firms, NGOs will have more difficulty in provoking the particular behavioral response (participation in the FSC) that they most desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Midwest Political Science Association 79th Annual Conference to be held in Palmer House in Hilton, Chicago, Illinois, from April 7th to April 10th 2022.

A list is presented of papers and roundtables on topics including economic interests and elite preferences on race, social media use and electoral participation, and racial identity to be presented at the 75th Annual Conference of Midwestern Political Science Association from April 6-9, 2017.

This paper uses demographic and economic measures to examine the fiscal policies of special districts. By focusing on districts with borders coterminous with a county, this paper gives a new perspective on district behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature on local government cooperation and finds an over-reliance on environmentally imposed incentives and constraints as explanatory factors. By contrast, there is insufficient treatment of the actions, interactions, and reactions exhibited by the actors who govern local institutions. By conceptualizing local government actors as embedded in a larger social structure, it is possible to see the ways in which these actors, as parts of a whole, might interact to achieve regional objectives. This paper examines the metropolitan social structure of institutional actors, along with the social psychology of organizing, and proposes some specific avenues to a better understanding of how and why cooperation occurs in metropolitan areas. Rather than assume the fortunes of local governments are solely dependent on external initiatives, this view holds that actors help to create the metropolitan environment of which they are a part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A detailed case study of the 2004 Iowa presidential election campaign. Part of a larger project organized by the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy targeting the impact of BCRA on selected House, Senate and Presidential battleground elections. The paper examines how campaign finance law effected the strategy and tactics of the campaigns, political parties and outside groups in Iowa. The paper explores how the closeness of the race throughout the campaign and the large amounts of money available to those involved led to an almost dead heat outcome where decisions about how to organize on the ground may have swung the state from a narrow Gore win in 2000 to a narrow Bush win in 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addressees several questions about what the states spend on higher education, looking at the actual amounts spent in FY 03-04, the change in state budgets for the one, two and five years before FY 03-04, and the amount spent per capita in each state on higher education. The methodology compares the states graphically and in a multiple regression context, with standard state variables being used to explain the distribution of expenditures. In the case of the amount spent on higher education in FY 03-04, the study finds that expenditures closely accord with state populations, although states with highly professionalized (full-time) legislatures tend to spend an average of $200 million less than what their populations alone would predict. In the case of the change in state budgets over the last few years, the paper focuses on the two year change, from FY 2001-02 to FY 2003-04, finding per capita income and the percent growth in the 18-24 year old population seem to have no effect on the budget changes, but that the estimated deficit in the state is significantly related to the budget changes. The several political variables tested seem to have no effect on changes in the state budgets. In the case of per capita higher education expenses, the hypotheses were that these would relate to per capita incomes in the state and the percent increase in the 18-24 year old population; neither of these hypotheses receives any support. One of the several political variables is significant, but only barely so. In our next analyses we will be refining these models and examining other measures to help explain the conundrum of state spending on higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the asymmetric strategy of suicide bombing in the Israeli conflict. The paper shows the difficulty of defining an optimal strategy for dealing with the "unfair" advantage of suicide attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an explanation of changes in tax policy centralization taking the Argentine and Brazilian experiences during the 1980s and 1990s as the cases of analysis. We make use of two different measures of centralization: central government taxation weight and level. The former gauges the relevance of the central government with respect to the total amount of taxes collected; while the latter gauges at the capacity of the central government to collect taxes with respect to the economy as a whole. We base our explanation on a contingent application of veto players theory. This paper scopes the differential advantage, but not exhaustion, of central governments and partisan leverage in taxation matters in Argentina and Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s. It underscores the complexity of the subject of study and becomes suspect of automatic a priori expectations. Therefore, it strives to underscore relevant interaction and contingent characteristics (e.g., partisan alignment, discipline, and strength and leadership characteristics) embedded within a general theoretical framework. We demonstrate that a reduction in the number of veto players occurred in Argentina (1989) and Brazil (1986-88), which help us explain the concurrent behavior in taxation in both cases. Thus, by underscoring the prevailing interests during the reform events, executive-central government (Argentina) vis-୶is legislative-sub-national governments interests (Brazil), we are able to explain the greater Brazilian decrease weight-, but greater Argentine increase level-wise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Staff turnover refers to the rate that staffers are replaced from election to election. This paper examines staff turnover in the 105th and 106th Congresses using primary data from CQ Politics in America. Specifically, the paper asks, do increased levels of partisanship in the House of Representatives lead to increased staff turnover, i.e. shorter staff careers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current formal models of elections assume that voters perfectly know their ideal points in the electoral dimensions. In this paper I show that this assumption violates the empirical evidence and outline a model with very attractive implications that avoids it. In particular, this paper focuses on the elegance with which this model accommodates abstention due to alienation. In this model abstention due to spatial competition is just a result of indifference and utility maximization. So-called abstention due to alienation is here just a result of the differential utility between candidates being too small to overcome the costs of voting. Satisfying strategies of the voters are therefore not required and abstention is completely accounted for in a well justified model fully consistent with rational choice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we contrast the long-term consequences of incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium. We test what the impact of each of these types of policy change is on long-term budgetary outcomes for the American states. Policy scholars have applied both theoretical approaches to the study of budgetary spending as an extension of policymaking. Given the two contrasting paradigms of policy change, we develop the following line of inquiry: Does punctuated equilibrium create a different budget in the long term than incrementalism? We address this question through an analysis of American state budgets because the US states provide a rich variation in both budgetary outcomes and political institutions. Specifically, we examine budgetary data across all budget categories through a simple quantitative measure for the degree of budget punctuation based on the fourth l-moments score (Hosking 1998). We use budget data from all American states for the period between 1984 and 2002 to illuminate the consequences of incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium. We have three general findings: (1) state budgets are punctuated to varying degrees, (2) however this degree of punctuation does not influence long-term budgetary outcomes, and (3) allocational budget categories are more likely to exhibit punctuations. The strength of our approach is its sensitivity of variations in policy punctuations across time (16 years), across space (50 state institutions), and across issue space (10 budget categories) into account. The paper's theoretical contribution is linking budgetary evolution and punctuated equilibria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that park and recreation provisions and programming can be an important generator of social capital, particularly bridging social capital. It is further suggested that the degree to which park and recreation activities create social capital can be strengthened by advocacy from Park and Recreation Boards and that these voluntary citizen advisory boards can influence park and recreation policies in directions favorable to social capital formation. This paper is partly prescriptive, suggesting park and recreation policies that are likely to contribute to the development of social capital in local communities. It also recommends a research agenda, urging further study of the relationship between social capital formation, park and recreation policies and the role of advisory boards in local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in immigrant political incorporation in the social sciences has examined level of civic participation and partisanship among new immigrants. However, little attention has been focused upon another step in the political incorporation of immigrants historically, differentiation from Blacks as expressed in negative racial attitudes towards Blacks. Do new immigrants express negative racial attitudes towards Blacks similar to those expressed by earlier White ethnic immigrant groups, and if so, what accounts for these attitudes? Using the 1992-1994 Multi City Survey of Urban Inequality, this paper examines the content of immigrant racial attitudes towards Blacks and test the utility of existing theoretical explanations of negative racial attitudes that include: context, contact, and perceptions of group conflict. These models have been used primarily to account for the attitudes of Whites toward Blacks, and although potentially important to accounting for the attitudes of new immigrants, I argue that these models do not incorporate germane variables important to understanding immigrant racial attitudes. Thus, the paper also tests the utility of assimilation theory that incorporates salient independent variables such as: ethnicity, English proficiency, level of civic participation, length of residence, skin color, white contact, citizenship, and political participation which all could account for the racial attitudes of new immigrant groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic values lie at the heart of the 2004 election, and this paper explores their relevance for policymaking. This paper explores the values problems that afflicted the Democratic party during the 2004 presidential campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests a model of EP representation with a new measure of electoral outcomes. The major concern is how we understand the EP elections under multi-level European political system and by what factors the MEPs' voting behaviors are determined. National constituents are, in my model, assumed to reveal different levels of diversity and intensity of preferences by their electoral choices in EP elections. Moreover, the differences are assumed to be caused by their relative assessment of national representation. Under these assumptions, my model tests MEPs' responsiveness to their national constituents revealed by the election results. From the theoretical perspective of party representation, it is also considered whether MEPs' responsive voting behaviors function as policy alternatives in the EP elections. Methodologically, a simultaneous equation model is presented to reflect the endogenous relationship between European citizens' electoral choices and MEPs' responsiveness. The results reported in this paper find that MEPs tend to respond to the elected party disparity between the EP and national parliament. Absenteeism and seniority also have influence on MEPs'responsiveness. In addition, MEPs' responsive voting patterns work as clear policy alternatives to European citizens as well. However, because of the lack of data currently available, the endogenous relationship is not conclusive. The possible improvements of future results are discussed in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new panel dataset measuring non-market coordination in OECD countries across several spheres of the political economy. The paper uses the dataset to test hypotheses about the origins and maintenance of non-market coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the recent eletoral rise of anti-establishment parties in Eastern Europe in terms of voter rejection of mainstream political elites in third-generation post-communist elections. Using survey data from the 2000 and 2004 Romanian parliamentary elections, the paper identifies the circumstances under which prospective or retrospective considerations dominate electoral choices of voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critically examines four theorists who argue (explicitly or implicitly) that the power of one necessarily comes at the expense of the power of another, and who model the exercise of power on the practice of war. The paper argues that the descriptions of power offered by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and Foucault ring true in many respects, but all encounter difficulties in basing power relations on pure conflict when most actual power relations blend common and conflicting interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses whether state involvement in the economy reduces or increases violent ethnic conflict. Three contending perspectives on the question are discussed and tested using cross-national data. This paper also investigates how the risk of conflict depends on the interaction of the level of state intervention in the economy and political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to determine the scope and nature of competitive pressures which compel non-profit agencies to compete with one another for volunteers. This paper uses survey, interview, and GPS data from local non-profit directors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the reinforcing effect of mixed electoral systems on the linkage between electoral districts. The paper analyzes the linkage from the view of ideological constellation using survey data from Germany, New Zealand, and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines when states stop receiving US foreign assistance. Using duration models on all US aid recipients from 1948-2000, this paper examines the influence of realist, liberal, and economic explanations on when states stop receiving aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Zedillo administration in Mexico, the federal government established a formula for distribution to states and municipalities of resources for social infrastructure. The question this paper seeks to answer is wheather the political bias previously observed in PRONASOL is eliminated with the new scheme. This paper uses municipal level data on a Mexican decentralized social program to test for political manipulation in its municipal distribution by the state governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and empirically test transportation and communication infrastructure as important elements of international political economy and more specifically as important determinants of interstate trade. This paper is part of a larger research program which has developed a quantitative measure for these two forms of infrastructure for each state in the international system from 1840 until 1993. More specifically, this paper will examine two research questions: 1)What makes states more or less likely to build transportation and communication infrastructure? 2)How does transportation and communication infrastructure influence interstate trade? I will argue that the construction and development of infrastructure should play an important role in shaping the trade relations between states in the international system. These systems reduce transportation costs and coordination difficulties, thereby reducing the costs of goods and increasing profits, ceteris paribus. My findings support these claims; more transportation and communication infrastructure do increase the amount of bilateral trade between states. In addition, I argue that regime types, resources, and state population also play an important role in shaping how much transportation and communication infrastructure a state possesses. My findings indicate that there are significant regime and resource relationships at work in the construction of communication infrastructure. However, it initially appears that transportation infrastructure is largely determined by its previous values, and is largely unaffected by political or resource decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislators exit from the legislature due to death, retirement or electoral defeat. This paper demonstrates what factors affect these risks. I argue that seniority system brings about decreasing electoral risk and professinalization of the legislature results in constant retirement risk. Also, I hypothesize that, when they expect to be defeated at the next election, legislators strategically retire so as to avoid cost of electoral campaign and losing face. In order to test these hypotheses, I propose a systematically dependent competing risks model of survival analysis and also consider non-random censoring and ordered risks structure. Using a Japanese Diet members' dataset from 1947 to 1990, this paper confirms my hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social network studies suggest that congruence in the social background of network members has effects on voting choices, but the research has not extended to the subject of the effect of congruence in political opinions within social networks. Incorporating social networks into congressional election studies, this paper suggests that besides partisanship and other demographic factors, the heterogeneity of opinion within social networks also has an effect on voting choices. Based on the logistic regression analysis of NAES 2000 dataset, the findings show the following: first, the low heterogeneity or high homogeneity of political opinion within strong-tie social networks (i.e. family and close friends) increases the likelihood of favoring House and Senate incumbents. Second, the access to political news in the newspaper has a positive influence on favoring the incumbents in the Senate election. This paper then discusses the limitations and implications of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically assesses descriptive representation as a mechanism for representing marginalized groups in comparison to social movements and other mechanisms of political representation. The paper argues for a structural theoretical approach to thinking about political representation for marginalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines electoral behavior of Seattle voters who supported a monorail costing $1.75 billion in November, 2002 with no state or federal support. This paper tests voter behavior using spatial analytic techniques [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the empirical support for Jacobson and Kernell's strategic politicians theory of seat change in U.S. House elections. The theory contends, in short, that a substantial part of the impact of national electoral forces on seat change acts indirectly through the intervening variable of challenger quality. District and aggregate level models of challenger quality are estimated using a new database of House challengers. Jacobson's district level model is estimated using pooled data from the 1946-2002 elections. Krasno and Green's district level model and a revised version of their model are estimated for each of the 1946-2002 elections. Jacobson's aggregate level models of relative challenger quality are estimated using data from the 1946-2002 elections. A new aggregate level model of challenger quality is developed in this paper. The overall performance of the new model as measured by explained variance is comparatively greater than for earlier models. The impact of national forces on challenger quality is moderate at best. A new seat change model including challenger quality as a causal variable is introduced and estimated for the 1954-2002 elections. Estimates of this model demonstrate that challenger quality is an important cause of seat change. In addition, the impact of both national and district electoral forces on seat change, acting through the intervening variable of challenger quality, is estimated using data from the 1954-2002 elections. The indirect impact of national forces on seat change is moderate. Finally, an alternative measure of challenger quality constructed from data originally gathered in order to construct Krasno and Green's measure of challenger quality is substituted for Jacobson's traditional measure. The substitution improves the overall performance of the new aggregate level model of challenger quality presented here, but the additional gain in the performance is small. In conclusion, the analysis presented here provides empirical support for Jacobson and Kernell's strategic politicians theory. However, the theory has limited explanatory power. The impact of national forces on seat change acting through challenger quality is not large enough to account for much of the observed seat change that occurs from one election to the next. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR: The aim of this paper is to explain the roots and successes of contemporary anti- Europeanism in Great Britain. The contention is that the politics Euroskepticism provides a legitimate framework for otherwise explicitly racist and xenophobic attitudes. The past couple of years have seen a changing of the guard amongst extreme parties on the issue of immigration, from the racist politics of the British National Party (BNP) to the anti-EU xenophobia of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). The paper proceeds in explaining this change by way of three parts; part one examines the historical context of modern anti- Europeanism, looking specifically at institutions, traditional intergovernmentalism towards Europe and cultural protectionism as important historical themes. Given this context, part two seeks to explain what factors impel xenophobic voting. It tests the theory that economic and societal competition produce opposition to immigration (Money 1999) using cross-county descriptive statistics. Concluding that these factors are conditions, not explanations, part three asserts politics of perceived competition as bearing explanatory weight. Mechanism of politicization include the institutional characteristics of opposition in parliamentary democracy, newspapers and readership, and most importantly, campaigning. The paper conclude that anti-Europeanism heard on the continent is a projection of anti-immigrant voices politicized in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

: Social movement scholars generally view movements as existing outside of government, and even interest group scholars, who acknowledge the revolving door between interest groups and government, have only explored how previous government experience influences outside lobbying. This paper examines feminist activists while they work for the government bureaucracy using historical documents and in-depth interviews with 40 government employees who were also activists in the women's movement. Feminist activists can be found within the federal government bureaucracy throughout the second wave of the women's movement from 1965-2000. This paper asks the question of how their access to government positions and their activism was affected by changes in presidential administrations. Social movement scholars focusing on political opportunities have generally argued that movements have greater access under sympathetic presidents. This paper explores that claim by asking three questions about feminist activists who work for the federal government: 1) when do these activists enter government service (that is, which presidential administrations gave feminist activists greater access to government positions); 2) what happens to bureaucrats who are feminist activists when an administration hostile to feminism takes over; and 3) does location within the bureaucracy influence the degree to which feminist activists must respond to presidential administrations? The results suggest that feminist bureaucrats below the appointment level often remain in hostile administrations. Several case studies explore how their activism changes under hostile administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though torture continues to be used, it provokes in people a unique moral disgust that even capital punishment does not elicit. But there is an equally strong and just as universal intuition that the use of torture would be acceptable in extreme circumstances. This paper seeks to ground that competing instinct in something more stable and claims that liberals must accept that the right to not be tortured is not unalienable after all. This paper first explores existing opposition to and defense of torture from the rights-based and utilitarian perspectives and finds them all wanting for different reasons. In response, it constructs two different non-consequentialist defenses of interrogational torture. Of the different purposes for torture, only interrogative torture warrants a serious defense, albeit a very grudging one made from utilitarian calculations about extreme cases, e.g. the ubiquitous ticking-bomb scenario. Such an approach is subject to highly speculative and inexact calculations about aggregate benefits and losses, however, and neither does it adequately protect individual liberties in difficult situations. A defense in the non-consequentialist vein is much more stable, as it allows for greater consistency of analysis while respecting the individuality and value of persons and their freedoms. Both defenses draw from the social contract tradition, deriving the right to not be tortured not from a priori rights belonging to every person, but rather from hypothetical consent to a certain political and social system, in which violations of that agreement result in the loss of the protections afforded under it. The first defense uses the Lockean model to argue that executive power in the state of nature includes the right to torture criminals for preventive purposes when they have forfeited their rights against interference, and this right to torture is transferred to governments when entering civil society. The second defense takes the Rawlsian framework of the two principles of justice and argues that the Priority of Liberty allows for tradeoffs within freedom of persons to permit interrogative torture under dire circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to test the plausibility of the homogeneity or parallel publics hypothesis (Page & Shapiro, 1992) using the agenda-setting model as a framework. One of the implicit assumptions of the agenda-setting model is that in the absence of a news story about a particular topic, such as stories about air quality, public concern about the topic is at equilibrium. In response to a media story or external events such as a public information campaign asking drivers to alter their driving behavior, concern about the topic of air quality may quickly diverge from the long-term equilibrium level of concern. This equilibrium state is similar to Downs’ (1972) pre-problem state or Baumgartner and Jones’ (1991; 1993) values consensus state. A focusing event or system shock punctuates the equilibrium state causing concern about air quality to rise. Eventually, after the media or the public becomes bored with the issue of air quality, concern will return to an equilibrium level of concern (Downs, 1972; Henry & Gordon, 2001; Neuman, 1990). This change in the level of concern about air quality in response to a system shock such as a news story or focusing event such as a public information campaign raises a fundamental question; do all members of the public respond similarly or in the parallel fashion predicted by Page and Shapiro to the system shock? That is, do men and women or do people who are college-educated or not college-educated respond in the same way at the same time to news stories or a public information campaign about air quality? The homogeneity or parallel publics hypothesis suggests that all groups respond similarly. The heterogeneity hypothesis suggests that groups may differ in their response to a system shock with the public either converging or diverging. The results from the models tested in this paper provide strong evidence that the homogeneity or parallel publics hypothesis is untenable. The initial analysis, correlating the aggregate means and variances gave strong indication that there were different processes at work. The results of the vector autoregression analysis show significant differences in response patterns to the media coverage and public information campaign based on sex and education. The results provided support for what we will call the convergent heterogeneity hypothesis, though the sex series was more consistent with what we called the divergent heterogeneity hypothesis. In an attempt to explain the disparate findings between the people and group models, we simulated the effects of a public information campaign to demonstrate that different groups responded in systematically different ways to the system shock with the overall effect washing out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the decade of the 1990s the health care sector was indeed the healthiest among the 26 economic sectors we (Gray and Lowery) studied: it was among the fastest growing sectors, increasing by nearly fifty percent between 1990 and 1997. By 1997, health care had the largest number of registered lobby groups of any economic sector. Unlike other types of interests, health care groups are spread across all states: health professionals, hospitals, and nursing homes are organized everywhere, but even the insurance and the pharmaceutical industries lobby in nearly every state legislature. But states do vary in the types and diversity of health interests represented, in rates of growth of health groups over time, and in total number of health care groups. Theoretically, one would expect that health care groups would have a lot of influence at the state level due to the existence of the exit option for much of the industry. However, it is intriguing that health industry groups have been much less successful in blocking reform at the state level than at the national level. Reforms such as regulation of managed care and coverage of prescription drugs have been enacted at the state level, even as they have stalled in Congress. Our larger project will explain variation in state health reform in terms of state interest group structure. The first step in the project, the subject of this paper, is to study the structure of the health interest group community in each of the fifty states, why is it that way, and how is it different from the national level? We will employ our population ecology model, the Energy-Stability-Area (ESA) Model, to explain the density and diversity of health care groups as compared to groups in other guilds (economic sectors). We are recoding our health care groups into much finer categories so that we can distinguish among health interests likely to be pro-reform and those likely to be anti-reform. Our paper will address two limitations in extant analyses of the ESA model, one empirical and one theoretical. The empirical limitation is that thus far, the ESA model has been tested on highly aggregated subsets of interest organizations. The theoretical limitation is that the energy term of the model has incorporated Truman’s notion of disturbances but not his idea of counter-mobilization. This paper offers an intensive focus on a single interest guild of substantive and theoretical importance. The health guild contains a diverse set of organizations with inconsistent policy views, which allows an examination of mobilization and counter-mobilization. Overall, we expect our findings to be of interest to scholars of state politics, interest groups, and health policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposed here aims at unraveling the effects of political institutions on public’s support for democracy. Many students of democratization have regarded public support for democracy as one of the quintessential elements leading a country to democratic consolidation. Countries without substantial level of public support for principles and practices of democratic politics has been degraded as merely “electoral” or “delegative” democracies even though they have competitive elections. Consolidated democracy can stand only on the culture in which ordinary citizens habitually believe in and behave according to the norms and rules of democracy. Some students of new institutionalism argue that certain institutions can encourage breeding higher levels of public support for democracy than others (Anderson and Guillory 1997; Norris 1999). Focusing upon how institutions make winners and losers, their analyses show that more inclusive and consensus oriented institutions are better to produce more democratic support than majoritarian institutions. It is a very interesting finding broadening topics and knowledge of institutional engineering. However, previous studies have several problems. (1) Their cases are usually limited in western and matured democracies. (2) More significantly, they do not consider the recent achievement of the studies of democratic support: Public support for democracy is multidimensional and multidirectional. (3) Measuring institutional variable is very limited and too simplified. In this paper, using World Value Survey data and other the most recent datasets, not only do we increase the number of cases significantly including old and new democracies, but also we compose new indicators measuring institutions: executive systems, electoral systems and levels of decentralization. More importantly, we conceptually divide public support for democracy into four dimensions: supports for democratic principles, performance of democracy, democratic institutions and personnel in democratic government. Following Lijphart works (Lijphart 1999), we believe consensus oriented institutions due to their nature of inclusiveness are better tools to raise public support. Unlike previous works, however, we hypothesize that not only do each institution make diverse influences on public support but also they are differently embodied in each dimension of democratic support. Our project will reveals more complicated patterns of institutional impacts on democratic support, which has been hidden in the previous studies. Ultimately, it will contribute to enrich current theory and knowledge of institutional designing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1994 elections gave the Republicans majorities in both chambers of Congress for the first time since the 83rd Congress (1953-55). With this new Republican majority came not only a change in the institutional workings of the Congress, but a change in the voting patterns of the legislative body. This paper examines how the institutional change following the 1994 elections specifically affected voting and support for environmental legislation. This paper extends the existing research on environmental voting patterns in the Congress by examining relationships between partisanship and member support for environmental legislation from 1992 to 2002. Differing from previous analyses of environmental voting, we examine both houses of Congress and examine Congressional behavior over five different Congresses. We also extend the literature by developing a multivariate model of environmental voting behavior. Voting results obtained from League of Conservation Voter (LCV) scorecards serve as the dependent variable in this study. The League of Conservation Voters is a political interest group focusing on issues concerning the environment. The LCV scorecard targets votes on the most important issues of environmental health and safety protection, resource conservation, and spending for environmental programs. Relying primarily on bivariate analysis, the literature suggests that certain demographic variables associated with a Congressional District or state as well as a particular legislator influence his or her vote. These variables include party identification, race, gender, ideology, and membership on environmentally-related committees. At the district level, the literature shows that region of the country, percent urban, and median household income are potentially influential independent variables. We include these variables in our model. The data was collected on individual House and Senate members and state and district demographic data for the 103-107 Congresses. This ten-year period permits measurement of change in level of environmental support across time and more importantly this time period allows for measurement of a before and after level of environmental policy support relative to Republican Party control of the Congress. Including both Houses enables us to examine if the change in party leadership has similar or differing effects in each body. We examine environmental policy across two dimensions. First we examine Democratic and Republican mean LCV scores by year and by legislative body to examine whether changes in environmental support is a function of changing majority control. Second, we use OLS regression to incorporate voter partisanship and demographic factors into five separate multivariate models of legislator support for environmental policy representing each Congress in the study. This enables us to examine changes in the strength of these independent variables over successive Congresses and the similarities and differences across the House and Senate. We believe that the increased importance and visibility of environmental issues in American Politics makes this an interesting topic for study. The presence of the Green Party in the 2000 election and its influence on the election highlights how important environmental issues are to the electorate. Moreover, the change in majority party status allows us to address questions about the substantive nature of environmental votes in our study and changes in individual and party behavior within each institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using never-before-published/cited historical materials from archives holding deceased legislators’ papers around the country, this paper compares the amount and quality of oversight performed by Congress in relation to CIA during the Truman/ Eisenhower presidencies. McCubbins and Schwartz suggested in the 1980s that legislative oversight varies in relation to events/conditons in the American political environment, and that oversight resembles a fire alarm process, rather than systematic police patrols. This paper shows such variation in comparing three years: 1950, 1955, and 1958, with the oversight being by far the most vigorous in 1958, but confirms that congressional oversight in that era was never systematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a revision of previous paper that was presented in MPSA, April 2003. In that original paper, the author (in line with Lowi’s idea: the typologies of policy) identified four different types of federal agencies and try to find their distinct organizational characteristics in terms of internal structure of agencies (e.g.,the degree of professionalism, the hierarchical structure, the proportion of employees whose works are associated with law/rule, the proportion of political appointees, the ratio of supervisor to employee, etc). According to the empirical data analyses (data source: the U.S. Office of Personnel Management), some of distinctive characteristics of each agency were: 1) Regulatory Agency: rule-bound, low autonomy, high proportion of colonels, high lateral entry by lawyers, high ratio of political appointees, etc; 2) Distributive Agency: high professionalism, more autonomy, lateral entry of professionals (e.g., Ph.Ds), etc; 3) Redistributive Agency: rule and administrative routine bounded, very low professionalism, weak autonomy, very high ratio of high ranking personnel in field offices, low political appointees, etc; and 4) Constituent Agency: rule bounded, weak autonomy, low professionalism, low ratio of high ranking officials in fields, large proportion of lower educational degree holders, high proportion of political appointees, high employee diversity, etc. In this revised paper, based on the above findings the author strengthens and elaborates theoretical aspects. That is, in order to explain the different structures of federal agencies, he adopts the ideas of “contingency theorists” in the field of organizational theory, such as Joan Woodward (1965), James Thompson (1967), Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), and others. Thus, this paper argues that the different types of federal agencies face different (policy) environments and in turn adopt different kinds of structures so that they can adapt to their own task environments (e.g., redistributive agency has the high proportion of clerical workers in order to process citizen’s demands effectively). In addition, the author considers policy (or agency) goal as a factor that leads to different organizational structure (e.g., since regulatory agency’s one of primary goals is to control the behaviors of citizens, the agency tends to emphasize rules and regulations, as a result, it has the high proportion of law professionals). In short, this paper seriously questions the traditional Weberian style bureaucracy, which argues a single best form of organizational structure, and suggests that the structures of federal agencies differ depending on their policy (i.e., regulatory, distributive, redistributive, and constituent policy) environments and policy goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this proposed paper we expand on the earlier research by Garand and Procopio (1995), who used data from the 1992 American National Election Study (ANES) to model popular support for term limits as a function of a variety of variables, many of which are found in the scholarly literature. However, unlike previous work Garand and Procopio include independent variables representing the effect of characteristics of U.S. House members, especially seniority. Garand and Procopio suggest that, controlling for the effects of other variables, citizens will respond to the characteristics of their representatives and adjust their support for term limits accordingly. For instance, they find that citizens represented by House members with high seniority are less supportive of term limits than citizens represented by junior members. We propose to extend this general model to data from the 1994 and 1998 ANES surveys. We also propose to consider whether public opinion on congressional term limits is shaped by the configuration of partisan identification and partisan control of Congress. With rare exception, previous research on support for term limits in the mass public has focused on the pre-1994 period in Congress, during which time both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate were controlled by the Democrats. Such a focus does not allow for a full longitudinal test of the connection between partisan attitudes and attitudes toward term limits. Specifically, previous research has found that Republican identifiers are much more likely than Democrats to support term limits, but it is unclear if this is an integral part of being a Republican or if support for term limits would change once the Republicans are in control of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. We speculate that Republican support for term limits in 1992 was based in part on self-interest, insofar as Republicans did not have majority status in the Congress at that time; on the other hand, we speculate that, once control of Congress shifted to the Republicans with the 1994 congressional elections, support for term limits among Republican citizens should have declined and support for term limits among Democrats should have increased. In this proposed paper we will utilize data from the 1992, 1994, and 1998 ANES surveys, which are the only ANES surveys that include items on support for term limits. We estimate a series of models to explain variation in individuals’ support for congressional term limits. Our core model includes demographic variables, as well as variables measuring political attitudes, system support, legislative support, and political knowledge. We also intend to include characteristics of respondents’ House members in our term limit model; these characteristics will include members’ seniority, the ideological distance between respondents and their House members, and estimates of grant funds brought to each district, among others. Moreover, we consider the mediating effect of political knowledge on the effects of these variables on support for term limits. Following Garand and Procopio, we suggest that high- and low-knowledge citizens use different kinds of information in shaping their attitudes toward term limits. Finally, we focus particular attention on how the effects of partisanship on support for term limits varies under periods of Democratic control of Congress (before 1994) and Republican control of Congress (after 1998). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although over the past years scholars have emphasized the need for legislative professionalism in developing democracies’ political science literature on this issue has not substantially increased. This paper is an attempt to enhance our knowledge of the factors that produce legislative professionalism in developing democracies by examining the case of Mexico. This paper analyzes the impact of minority governments on legislative professionalism in the assemblies of the Mexican states. The hypothesis of the paper is that under minority government the divergence of preferences between the legislature and the executive promotes a heterogeneous environment that makes it necessary for both branches to engage in negotiations over policy. Therefore, when legislators face a powerful executive with divergent preferences, they will have more incentives to increase the level of professionalism in the chamber. Thus, we should expect an increase in the level of a legislature’s capacity to perform its role in the policy-making process when minority government becomes more prevalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a project in which I examine the impacts of economic globalization on democratic thought and practice and the predominant responses among democratic theorists to the changes produced by globalization. Among these responses, those which exhibit pronounced nostalgic streaks are the least analyzed and least well understood. Nostalgic responses can be seen in academics concerned with community and social capital (e.g., Bellah et al, Sandel, and Putnam), in popular writing (e.g., Wendell Berry and Michael Shuman), and in political movements, both right (e.g., those of Haider, Le Pen, and Buchanan) and left (e.g., some progressive elements of the ‘anti-globalization’ movement). The role of local politics and the spaces in which citizens live and work is of particular concern for many of these nostalgics. In contemporary political theory, labeling someone’s thought or politics as nostalgic is a rhetorical strategy for dismissing the seriousness of a person’s ideas. Liberal and postmodern thinkers are the most conspicuous in their employment of this rhetorical tactic of dismissal. As Peter Euben points out, “too often the critique of nostalgia is too impatient with the sense of loss that makes it attractive to many and compelling to a few.” Those of us troubled by nostalgic politics need to better understand that, even if manifested in ways we find unsavory, there are real concerns, needs, issues, and justice claims being expressed in much nostalgia. Further, we dismiss nostalgic politics at our own peril. We must address the real losses that provoke nostalgic political responses, especially the more xenophobic, racist, and reactionary of them. Nostalgia can also uncover some valuable political insights, needs, and resources. To neglect these nuggets through the dismissal of nostalgic politics forecloses possibilities of enriching our own political projects. We also need to recognize that even when we disagree with another’s thinking, we may still share with some nostalgics many of the same intentions and aims. Some contemporary nostalgic thinkers are genuinely committed to promoting a just polity of free people who have the resources needed to attend to and nurture that freedom and efficacy. Those of us troubled by aspects of nostalgic politics may find that we can be tense allies who need each other if we hope to rescue from some of the consequences of economic globalization aspects of the democratic project we may both cherish. At the same time, much democratic nostalgia—they are not alone—suffers a kind of utopianism by neglecting to realistically consider the causes of lost institutions and practices, and how we may retrieve the attractive fragments of those loses in ways relevant to today’s political economic conditions. This paper explores some of the attractive resources, institutions, and practices that have degraded or been lost, attempts to see if we can rescue those fragments from some of the more troubling aspects of past socio-economic and political arrangements and practices in manner which might realistically work in contemporary conditions, and considers mitigating institutions and practices as partial alternatives when this is not possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal Feminism, Gender and Montesquieu Mika LaVaque-Manty University of Michigan There are two familiar critiques of liberal feminism: (1) It has no account of gender as a social category only contingently mapped onto the biological category sex. (2) As a result, liberal feminism has particularly hard time dealing with the cultural variance of gender categories: its only responses to problematic gender practices in other cultures are quietist relativism or unsubtle imperialism. This paper offers a qualified defense of liberal feminism via an exploration of Montesquieu’s work. The paper shows, first, that Montesquieu offers us conceptual resources for a robust account of gender. Second, the paper connects Montesquieu’s style of inquiry with the practices of political judgment, which suggests an alternative to the relativism–imperialism dilemma. Finally, however, the paper identifies limits to what we can get out of Montesquieu and suggests the limits aren’t just limits in Montesquieu’s political imagination or a feature of his times, but theoretical constraints. Liberal feminism, the conventional complaint goes, has ready resources for addressing issues of sex discrimination because such discrimination allocates resources on the basis of contingent facts of birth. However, liberals’ commitment to the principle of “the self prior to its ends” means, according to critics, a commitment to take identities as they come, and internalized norms about social roles, for example, are beyond a political critique. This charge is true even of the paradigmatic liberal feminist John Stuart Mill, but it isn’t, I argue, true of Montesquieu. For him, all social roles and norms are, using a concept from philosopher David Wiggins, “essentially contestable.” Although Montesquieu’s conscious commitment to what we might call feminism is questionable and although he does not use the concepts of gender analysis, I argue his Persian Letters shows how the essential contestability of social meanings can be explicitly applied to the case of gender. The idea of essential contestability is at the heart of Montesquieu’s mode of social inquiry, and it also points to a way of escaping the relativism–imperialism dilemma liberal feminism faces. The approach (discussed by other Montesquieu scholars such as Tzvetan Todorov) is to pass political judgment only in contexts where one is on an epistemically sure footing — in one’s own culture — but to do it in a way that opens the possibility of cross-cultural political engagement. Despite these advantages Montesquieu’s theory offers for liberal feminism, the account is also ultimately limited by his conception of the boundary between the categories of natural and non-natural. Instead of claiming these are problems for Montesquieu but not for us, I argue that the problem is general and theoretical. (Paper submitted for panel #031038, Reinterpreting Montesquieu: Inheritances and Influences, proposed by Annie Stilz) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]