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The notion of policy diffusion has recently come under closer scrutiny as researchers tried to disentangle the various channels through which policies diffuse across jurisdictional boundaries (e.g.: learning vs. competition). At the same time, researchers became interested in the question of how to differentiate between genuine diffusion and common exogenous shocks. What has been largely overlooked so far is the way in which diffusion influences interact with political and institutional conditions within jurisdictions. This paper argues that the same diffusion influence can exert different effects depending on the political and institutional conditions in the jurisdiction subject to this influence. I thus propose modeling the effect of diffusion processes as conditional upon the political and institutional specifics of jurisdictions. As an example of this approach, the paper studies diffusion influences and their conditional effects in the context of smoke free air legislation and tobacco taxation in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Using data for the time from 1970-2007, I show that effects of diffusion change considerably if state-level political conditions (control of state legislature) are taken into account. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using multiple drafts of presidential addresses from the archives of the Kennedy and Ford presidential libraries, this paper tracks changes in presidential rhetoric as these speeches work their way through the White House staffing process. Rod Harts DICTION software is used to generate quantitative scores that track changes to draft speeches over time. This study suggests that the speechwriting process is a unique window on the struggle for power within the presidency. This struggle extends beyond the personalities of White House staff and the partisan or bureaucratic interests represented by the various offices within the Executive Office of the President. The battle over presidential rhetoric is also a struggle between the roles of the office described by Edward Corwin and Clinton Rossiter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to accomplish the following: (1) provide a brief history of the evolution of earmarking within the federal government’s budgetary process, (2) explain the reasons for the current public salience of earmarks, (3) address the arguments surrounding the ethics debate on earmarks, (4) examine the recent politicization of earmarks, and (5) discuss the implications of the present and possible future actions taken on earmarks, including a possible major Constitutional crisis over the separation of powers in Washington. The empirical evidence suggests that current political posturing, media-focused attention and public concern over earmark reform is based on incomplete information; when comparing all federal budget spending programs and their effects both on the budget and society, earmarks really are much-ado-about-nothing, or at least very little. Yet, because earmarks function in what former Justice William Douglas might refer to as the “penumbra” of the legislative process they are an easy populist and political target for criticism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiential learning offers students opportunities to learn in real-world settings outside the classroom. In political science, such experiences have been found to enhance knowledge of the political process, positively impact subsequent academic performance, and develop more robust understandings of civic values. While these research findings have led universities to increasingly mandate service-learning courses, many experiential learning opportunities such as internships and study abroad programs are voluntary and demand student initiative. The purpose of this paper is to explore why students choose to engage in such voluntary experiential opportunities in order to identify how more students might be persuaded to take the initiative as well. The two-part research question that guides this study asks: Why do students take the initiative to participate in voluntary experiential learning and what do they hope to gain through their participation? This question is addressed through a grounded theory analysis of the application essays of sixteen Bryant University students who participated in a ten-day experiential learning program on the 2009 Presidential Inauguration at The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We content code news coverage of the 2008 presidential primaries in the top circulating newspapers in the 29 earliest primary states and DC. We analyze the tone, issue emphasis, and framing of the coverage and compare across papers and campaigns. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature suggests that policy network structures are driven by a process known as “belief homophily,” where participants in the policy process actively seek to form collaborative networks with ideologically-similar partners. Recent empirical evidence focuses on the correlation of policy network structures with shared belief systems, treating beliefs as exogenous to networking behavior. But networks are also likely to drive belief change by imposing constraints on information exchange and learning. Thus, policy-relevant beliefs are likely to co-evolve with network structures. This paper posits several explicit models of this co-evolutionary process, and tests these models using longitudinal data on the changing beliefs and networking behavior of risk policy professionals in Washington, D.C.. The original dataset (N = 223), gathered in 1984, was the foundation for The Risk Professionals (Russell Sage Foundation, 1987) by Dietz and Rycroft. A follow-up study was completed in 2002 (N=50). This paper employs recently developed statistical models of evolving network structure that are based actor-oriented computer simulation to examine the co-evolutionary process over 25 years. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will examine through a survey and interviews the presence of old-boys networks and stereotypes about women lobbyists in Washington DC. Both aspects are expected to prevent a woman from performing her job in a competent manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During my five years in the Clinton White House, I came to understand the unique perspective that presidential aides carry to the political world. At the institutional pinnacle of American political power, staffers approach their work with a variant of political realism. It is a political metaphysic that sees the world as inherently chaotic, always in need of leadership, and it is entirely opposite to the premises of idealist thinking. Staffers have to make sense of the Hobbesian chaos around them. Because the modern White House inevitably finds itself at the center of the nation’s most intense controversies, staffers are selected for their ability to cope with seemingly intractable problems or, if they do not have that propensity at the outset, the skill is imposed upon them by the demands of the job. Among these pressures is a requirement that staffers set aside personal comfort in favor of team loyalty – a formula for burnout at the individual level. This paper is a narrative exploration of the staffer’s psyche. It is based on my own professional experience as well as ongoing interviews with selected White House staffers (1981 to the present). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will be based on the third wave of an ongoing study of a sample of parents enrolled in Washington DC charter schools and traditional public schools. We have been studying the effects of charter school enrollment in building school based communities and in developing involvement in school events and broader political activities. The work draws on a host of political science theories relating the design of political and policy institutions to citizenship and participation. The longitudinal panel design allows us to identify the extent to which any changes are transitory (a honeymoon effect), which are cumulative, and which relationships never appear at all. As in all our work, we also pay very close attention to the issue of selection biases that can result from the voluntary nature of charter schools. In addition, we are currently interviewing children of the parents in our sample. These new student data will be linked to the existing parent data to measure the effect of schools on student political attitudes and community participation, controlling for parental factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In postwar America, bipartisanship over foreign policy on Capitol Hill has long been characterized by politics stopping at the water’s edge. Much attention has been paid to party polarization over social and cultural issues, but few studies have examined the nature of foreign policy disputes as a source of party polarization. This paper focuses on the party politics of the Reagan defense buildup and analyzes roll-call vote decisions by liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats over military spending in the 1980s. Echoing Roberts and Smith (2003), the review of party conversion over foreign policy during the Reagan years results in a reevaluation of the timing of changes in party polarization. As congressional deference to the president over foreign policy has been no longer the norm since the early 1980s, congressional parties have found it easy to agree to disagree. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper stems from a study that was initiated by an undergraduate research methods course as a means to help students practice survey design skills and gain knowledge through experiential learning in collecting survey data. The study came as a result of the cartoon controversy depicting the Prophet Muhammad and the subsequent global protests and boycotts. A small unscientific survey was conducted around the Washington, DC metro area to seek greater understanding of the social significance, the reaction to protest, ideas of censorship, and the political significance of this event. The study utilized both qualitative and quantitative approaches in a triangulated effort to address this complex issue. The study found that people in Washington, DC had varying opinions on the cartoon controversy and that religious affiliation impacted their opinion. It was also found that this study mirrored other studies and polls conducted around the world with regard to the controversy. These findings both confirm and confront many of the assumptions arising out of the cartoon controversy demonstrating problems and challenges facing multicultural pluralistic societies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the quantitative analysis of changes to presidential speech drafts to provide insights into the institutional conflicts within the modern White House. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ethnographic data collected before and during evangelical crusades in Connecticut and Washington, DC in 2001 and 2005, this paper shows how local organizers channel their social and political concerns into helping plan evangelistic crusades. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on fieldwork in the suburban Washington, DC area in 2003-2004, this paper explores racial/ethnic mobilization among Koreans, Chinese and Latino immigrants in the absence of racial propinquity. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will explore whether competitiveness on which women lobbyists rank themselves lower to men lobbyists is an important personality trait for lobbyists in Washington DC. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of approximately 326,000 traffic citations acquired from the Seattle Municipal Court focuses on the motorists’ race, age, reason for the stop, and grounds for the court dismissal. Preliminary findings indicate African Americans are more likely than Whites and Asians to be the recipients of a citation for not having motor vehicle insurance or a driver’s license; however, they are less likely to be cited for committing a traffic violation. Police officers are two times more likely to misidentify African American drivers than Asians and four times more likely to misidentify African Americans than Whites when cases come to court. African American drivers also were more likely than Whites to have their case dismissed due to a lack of probable cause. Policy implications and theoretical rationales are offered. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of political communication lack comprehensive methods to efficiently measure the priorities political actors emphasize in statements. To address this limitation, I derive a statistical model that attends to the structure of political rhetoric when measuring expressed priorities: statements are naturally organized by author. The expressed agenda model exploits this structure to simultaneously estimate the topics in the texts, as well as the attention political actors allocate to the estimated topics. I apply the method to a collection of over 24,000 press releases from senators in 2007: an ideal medium to measure how senators explain their work in Washington to constituents. A set of examples validates the measures of priorities and demonstrates the model's ability to test theories of how legislators explain work in Washington to constituents. The statistical model is available in a free software package for the R computing language. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-level executive staff is critical to the enactment of a president’s policy agenda. While these staffers will often stay for the duration of a president’s full term, sometimes they are replaced. Previous explanations describe retention rates electorally, or as features of the working environment. We model staffing as an ongoing institutionalization of the choosing executive’s desires. Staffing is thus a strategic state of affairs that begins at appointment and occurs during the continuous decision to retain or terminate an individual staff member. This decision is often driven by the introduction of public opinion into the White House decision-making cycle. We thus hypothesize that staff turnover will increase as presidential approval ratings diminish. When tested empirically, our findings support the theoretical notion that public opinion shapes presidential staffing decisions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some individuals or organizations choose to join interest groups while other potential members do not? Not only do I examine why members, in this case charter schools, choose to join a group, but I also examine those who chose not to join. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am an undergraduate student in my senior year at the College of Wooster. I am working on a year-long independent study thesis project which combines my two major fields of study, political science and art history. As a double major, I seek to combine art history and political science in my study of the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC and the politics of its time (1929-1935). The form of the building, a latter-day Roman revival, was somewhat outmoded by the twentieth century. I will be examining whether the choice of a traditional style for the Supreme Court building reflects a fundamental conservatism (as evidenced by the Court’s major decisions) in the period of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Through my research, I hope to ascertain the significance of the Neo-Classical form of the building by 1) framing it within the broader context and meaning of early 20th century American art and architecture, and 2) considering its commission within the political and judicial climate of Depression-era America. My working hypothesis is that the appearance of two contemporary and conflicting styles (Neo-Classicism and Social Realism) in America may indeed indicate a disconnect between the socio-political values of the Supreme Court and those of the mainstream public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do institutional arrangements affect police-public interactions? Is civility better maintained under administrative systems of government, or is democratic policing more peaceful under systems of political control? I examine the impact of council-manager, mayor-council, and commission systems on police-caused homicide using data from twenty-nine cities in twenty states and the District of Columbia selected at random from metropolitan statistical areas with populations over 100,000 from 1994 to 2004. I argue that council-manager systems manage civic relations in a manner that minimizes the extent to which the police use violence in their interactions with the public. I show that council-manager systems contribute to significantly fewer police-caused homicides. This study of the impact of city structure on democratic policing provides evidence that management by administrative professionals allows the police to peacefully uphold the rule of law rather than simply responding to political control. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter, we present an overview of the history, accessibility, and integration of regional public transportation systems in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Portland, Washington D.C., and Phoenix, and analyze whether regional public transportation improves the regional quality of life by fulfilling personal and collective physiological, financial, safety, health, and environmental needs, and building social capital.his study presents the history, problems, and policies of public transportation in six regions, how public transportation can improve quality of life, and collaborative and competitive efforts between governments. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses qualitative data drawn from over 100 in-depth interviews collected in suburban Washington, DC between local public, private andnon-profit leaders to examine how local institutions respond to the issuesraised by immigrant groups. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A consideration of the politics of education in Washington, DC where the tax base has lead to surplus. Are schools being utilized politically as a redevelopmental pool? This is considered in the context of the Captiol Hill neighborhood. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results comparing 3 periods of Congressional bipartisan vote patterns in 1993 using Rice?s Index of Likeness and ANOVA indicated that group practice of The Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs in Washington, DC enhanced bipartisanship. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]