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This paper studies whether labor scarcity encourages technological advances, that is, technology adoption or innovation, for example, as claimed by Habakkuk in the context of nineteenth-century United States. I define technology as strongly labor saving if technological advances reduce the marginal product of labor and as strongly labor complementary if they increase it. I show that labor scarcity encourages technological advances if technology is strongly labor saving and will discourage them if technology is strongly labor complementary. I also show that technology can be strongly labor saving in plausible environments but not in many canonical macroeconomic models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates social learning in sequential voting systems. In the econometric model, candidates experience momentum effects when their performance in early states exceeds expectations. The empirical application uses daily polling data from the 2004 presidential primary. We find that Kerry benefited from surprising wins in early states and took votes away from Dean. Owing to these momentum effects, early voters had up to five times the influence of late voters in the selection of candidates, and this helps to explain the distribution of advertising expenditures. Finally, we use the estimated model to conduct two counterfactual experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study replicating the paper written by Robert Hayes in 1983 about library and information science studies in the United States. Use of the Social Sciences Citation Index; Examination of publishing and citation activity; Assessment of individual productivity and productivity by school.

This paper examines the litigation of patents relating to financial products and services. I show that these grants are being litigated at a rate 27-39 times greater than that of patents as a whole. The patents being litigated are disproportionately those issued to individuals and to smaller, private entities and those with features that may proxy for higher quality. Larger entities are disproportionately targeted in litigation. I discuss how the findings are in large part consistent with the theoretical literature on the economics of litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a discipline, anthropology has increased its public visibility in recent years with its growing focus on engagement. Although the call for engagement has elicited responses in all subfields and around the world, this special issue focuses on engaged anthropology and the dilemmas it raises in U.S. cultural and practicing anthropology. Within this field, the authors distinguish a number of forms of engagement: (1) sharing and support, (2) teaching and public education, (3) social critique, (4) collaboration, (5) advocacy, and (6) activism. They show that engagement takes place during field- work; through applied practice; in institutions such as Cultural Survival, the Institute for Community Research, and the Hispanic Health Council; and as individual activists work in the context of war, terrorism, environmental injustice, human rights, and violence. A close examination of the history of engaged anthropology in the United States also reveals an enduring set of dilemmas, many of which persist in contemporary anthropological practice. These dilemmas were raised by the anthropologists who attended the Wenner-Gren workshop titled "The Anthropologist as Social Critic: Working toward a More Engaged Anthropology," January 22-25, 2008. Their papers, many of which are included in this collection, highlight both the expansion and growth of engaged anthropology and the problems its practitioners face. To introduce this collection of articles, we discuss forms of engaged anthropology, its history, and its ongoing dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Rawls's Political Liberalism asserts that liberal politics can and should be conducted without engaging debates about the truth of its theoretical foundations. This paper argues that political liberalism is in fact far more concerned with questions of truth than Rawls was willing to admit. Once political liberalism's relation to truth claims is understood more clearly, it becomes evident that political liberalism is closer to its Enlightenment predecessor than Rawls claimed, and that affinity with the Enlightenment enables a reevaluation of political liberalism's position on the place of religious argument in political debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the fundamental findings in the congressional literature is that one or sometimes two dimensions can successfully describe roll-call voting. In this paper we investigate if we can reach the same conclusions about low dimensionality when we divide the roll-call agenda into subsets of relatively homogeneous subject matter. We are primarily interested in the degree to which the same ordering of representatives is yielded across these different groups of votes. To conduct our analysis we focus on all roll calls on the 13 annual appropriations bills across eight congresses. When we concentrate on these smaller issue areas, we find that voting is multidimensional and members do not vote in a consistent ideological fashion across all issue areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction and diffusion of personal computers are widely viewed as a technological revolution. Using U.S. metropolitan area-level panel data, this paper asks whether links between PC adoption, educational attainment, and the return to skill conform to a model of technological revolutions in which the speed and extent of adoption are endogenous. The model implies that cities will adjust differently to the arrival of a more skill-intensive means of production, with the returns to skill increasing most where skill is abundant and its return is low. We show that the cross-city data fit many of the predictions of the model during the period 1980-2000, the PC diffusion era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hollywood studio system-production, distribution, and exhibition vertically integrated-flourished until 1948, when the famous Paramount decision forced the divestiture of theater chains and the abandonment of a number of vertical practices. Although many of the banned practices have since been posited to have increased efficiency, evidence of an efficiency-enhancing rationale for theater ownership has not been presented. This paper explores the hypothesis that theater chain ownership promoted efficient ex post adjustment in the length of film runs-specifically, abbreviation of unexpectedly unpopular films. Extracontractual run-length adjustments are desirable because demand for a film is not revealed until the film is actually exhibited. The paper employs a unique data set of cinema booking sheets. It finds that run lengths for releases by vertically integrated film producers were significantly-economically and statistically-more likely to be altered ex post. The paper documents and discusses additional practices intended to promote flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, American workers have faced a rising college premium, a narrowing gender gap, and increasing wage volatility. This paper explores the quantitative and welfare implications of these changes. The framework is an incomplete-markets life cycle model in which individuals choose education, intrafamily time allocation, and savings. Given the observed history of the U. S. wage structure, the model replicates key trends in cross-sectional inequality in hours worked, earnings, and consumption. Recent cohorts enjoy welfare gains, on average, as higher relative wages for college graduates and for women translate into higher educational attainment and a more even division of labor within the household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One mystery of U.S. politics is why the president's party regularly loses congressional seats at midterm. Although presidential coattails and their withdrawal provide a partial explanation, coattails cannot account for the fact that the presidential party typically performs worse than normal at midterm. This paper addresses the midterm vote separate from the presidential year vote, with evidence from generic congressional polls conducted during midterm election years. Polls early in the midterm year project a normal vote result in November. But as the campaign progresses, vote preferences almost always move toward the out party. This shift is not a negative referendum on the president, as midterms do not show a pattern of declining presidential popularity or increasing salience of presidential performance. The shift accords with ''balance'' theory, where the midterm campaign motivates some to vote against the party of the president in order to achieve policy moderation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I first summarize how the U.S. Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) operates and describe the characteristics of recipients. I then discuss empirical work on the effects of the EITC on poverty and the income distribution and its effects on labor supply. Next, I discuss a few policy concerns about the EITC: possible negative effects on hours of work and marriage and problems of compliance with the tax system. I then simulate the effects of the recent expansion of the credit for families with three or more children that were part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. I also reexamine the key assumptions of past work on the labor supply effects of the EITC. Finally, I briefly discuss the likely effects of further expanding the credit to noncustodial parents, as has been recently done in two jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers a qualitative content analysis of the print news media coverage of Proposal 2, an anti-affirmative action ballot initiative that passed on November 7, 2006. Our purpose was to determine what type of information on the initiative and affirmative action was available to the public. Results indicate that little substantive information to inform voters appeared in the print news. We argue that an inclusive and deliberative democracy requires education researchers to link with media sources to provide citizens with rich, research-based information on education policy issues. Similar initiatives were debated in five states during the fall of 2008, and others are slated for the 2010 ballot, which suggests an urgent need for timely contributions from researchers and media sources alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008 presidential election can be said to suffer from an audacity of analysis, a rush to place the Barack Obama presidency in historical perspective before the Obama presidency actually makes history. Some historical facts are irrefutable, such as the election of the first African-American president and the smashing of campaign finance records. But other aspects of the 2008 election remain to be proven, such as whether a permanent Democratic majority has emerged and an electoral realignment has taken place. Another audacious aspect of the discussion of this election has been the crediting of a permanent shift in electoral and governing coalitions to the strategic efforts of a presidential candidate, that is, to link the presidency to structural changes in the vote and the formation of a new Democratic Party coalition. This paper identifies the questions that must be answered to prove such conclusions, and cautiously tenders some answers. First, what indications are there that the Obama coalition is a sustainable coalition or a permanent shift in the vote? Second, what might be the role of a presidential candidate and a sitting president in building and maintaining a majority party coalition?Polity (2009) 41, 388–407. doi:10.1057/pol.2009.8; published online 11 May 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent data on corporate tax losses present a puzzle this paper attempts to explain: the ratio of losses to positive income was much higher around the recession of 2001 than in earlier recessions, even those of greater severity. Using a comprehensive sample of U.S. corporation tax returns for the period 1982-2005, we explore a variety of potential explanations for this surge in tax losses, taking account of the significant use of executive compensation stock options beginning in the 1990s and recent temporary tax provisions that might have had important effects on taxable income. We find that losses rose because the average rate of return of C corporations fell, rather than because of an increase in the dispersion of returns or an increase in the gap between corporate profits subject to tax and corporate profits as measured by the national income accounts. Our analysis also suggests that the increasing importance of S corporations may help explain the recent experience within the C corporate sector, as S corporations have exhibited a different pattern of losses in recent years. However, we can identify no simple explanation for the differing experience of C and S corporations. Our investigation concludes with some new puzzles: why did rates of return of C corporations fall so much early in the decade, and why has the incidence of losses among C and S corporations diverged? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the moral work of a controversial psychiatric diagnosis-Borderline Personality Disorder-in an American eating disorder treatment center in the era of managed mental health care. Based on fieldwork at this clinic spanning more than 6 years, I consider how clinicians invoke aspects of Borderline Personality Disorder in everyday conversation, in a practice I call "borderline talk." I argue that borderline talk emerges in response to being caught between contradictory models of the subject entailed in managed care and psychodynamic discourses. Specifically, borderline talk enables clinicians to endorse a formulation of the subject that, although considered pathological, provides them with a clear path of ethical action in otherwise ethically ambiguous situations. These kinds of everyday ethical negotiations percolate throughout the American health care system and are key mechanisms through which notions of economic expediency become entangled with concepts of the healthy subject. As clinicians struggle out a course of action between competing ethical imperatives, they also struggle out the workability-and failures-of various articulations of the subject within contemporary American cultural ideologies of health and pathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of how best to balance the pursuit of security with the protection of civil liberties has been heavily debated in recent years. This paper challenges the conclusions reached in that debate. It argues that although theorists have identified important subsidiary causes of imbalance, they do not address the structural dilemma posed by state secrecy, which creates an information asymmetry that allows officials to manipulate safeguards meant to secure an appropriate balance. Since this asymmetry cannot be easily resolved, imbalance remains a perennial danger that often can be addressed only retrospectively. Unfortunately, retrospection too can be stymied by the executive's control over state secrets, and it can also be undermined by partisanship, even when the relevant information becomes available. With this in mind, the paper identifies mechanisms to limit the abuse of state secrecy and indicates institutional features that may temper the adverse effects of partisanship.Polity (2009) 41, 166–188. doi:10.1057/pol.2008.27; published online 19 January 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom holds that the American people are woefully ignorant about law and courts. In light of this putative ignorance, scholars and other commentators have questioned whether the public should play a role in the judicial process¿for example, whether public preferences should matter for U.S. Supreme Court confirmation processes. Unfortunately, however, much of what we know¿or think we know¿ about public knowledge of the Supreme Court is based upon flawed measures and procedures. So, for instance, the American National Election Study, a prominent source of the conclusion that people know little if anything about the U.S. Supreme Court, codes as incorrect the reply that William Rehnquist is (was) a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court; respondents, to be judged knowledgeable, must identify Rehnquist as the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (which, of course, technically, he was not). More generally, the use of open-ended recall questions leads to a serious and substantial underestimation of the extent to which ordinary people know about the nation's highest court. Our purpose in this paper is to revisit the question of how knowledgeable the American people are about the Supreme Court. Based on two national surveys¿ using more appropriate, closed-ended questions¿we demonstrate that levels of knowledge about the Court and its justices are far higher than nearly all earlier surveys have documented. And, based on an experiment embedded in one of the national surveys, we also show the dramatic effect of question-form on estimates of levels of knowledge. Finally, we draw out the implications of political knowledge for the degree to which people support the U.S. Supreme Court. Our findings indicate that greater knowledge of the Court is associated with stronger loyalty toward the institution. We conclude by reconnecting these findings to ''positivity theory,'' which asserts that paying attention to courts not only provides citizens information, but also exposes them to powerful symbols of judicial legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distinction between ideas and discourse remains ambiguous in ideational theories of political choice. In addition, the role of rhetoric, or the strategic choice of language to represent a given idea, in ideational theories of political decision making is promising but underspecified. To explore these issues, this paper studies the impact of a specific discourse (i.e. an “ensemble of ideas”) about risk—often presented rhetorically as “the precautionary principle”—in a prominent political controversy: the regulation of Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs). Widely used chemical compounds that improve fire resistance in many commercial products, BFRs have been measured in the fatty tissue of animals and human beings in increasing concentrations. The resulting concern about the safety of BFRs has led to regulatory action in a number of U.S. states. Although some have argued that a discourse of precaution facilitates the enactment of new environmental policies, we find that the rhetoric of the precautionary principle was an impeding factor for these BFR regulations. At the same time, we find that while political actors avoided the precautionary principle by name, they relied on certain ideas often attributed to the principle. Thus, the causal role of specific ideas in politics, we conclude, is significantly contingent on their precise rhetorical presentation.Polity (2009) 41, 189–210. doi:10.1057/pol.2008.31; published online 26 January 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have investigated the diffusion of public policies, often focusing on the ways in which learning among governments influences that process. We know relatively little, however, about those policies that diffuse very rapidly, rather than in the familiar S-shaped distribution associated with policy learning, or about what causes variation in temporal diffusion patterns. This study focuses on policy characteristics as a way to develop a priori expectations about the diffusion patterns of public policies. It argues that the salience and complexity of an issue condition lawmakers' willingness to discount long-term consequences in favor of short-term electoral gain and, thus, to forgo policy learning in favor of immediate adoption. It tests those expectations in an analysis of 57 previously studied policies that diffused between 1850 and 2001 and finds evidence that salience increases the likelihood of rapid diffusion, particularly in noncomplex policies. The paper also explores the causal mechanisms behind these empirical findings in a case study of two policy adoption decisions in California. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, this paper investigates the characteristics of white Southern constituencies that reelected racial liberals to the U.S. House in the period between the 1948 Democratic Convention and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. In doing so, it tests theories of Southern politics and the electoral connection. Further, it also addresses several methodological issues regarding inferences made from comparative-historical research. Ultimately, it reveals that racial liberals from the Peripheral South and the cities of the Deep South were able to establish bonds between themselves and their constituents that were sufficient to win reelection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that presidential leadership tends to exacerbate partisan disagreement in Congress on the issues the president champions. The argument starts from the president's role as highly visible party leader. Because of this role, members of Congress of both parties have a collective political stake in the disposition of presidential initiatives: members of the president's party tend to benefit politically from presidential successes, while members of the opposing party receive few political benefits and may suffer costs. These political incentives are likely to drive the parties in Congress farther apart on presidential initiatives than they would be in the absence of presidential leadership. To test for these effects, this paper controls for variation in issue content and isolates for separate analysis votes involving ideologically divisive issues. Analysis reveals that the parties are systematically farther apart on presidential agenda items, controlling for issue content and other factors affecting voting partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of information literacy in the art classrooms in the U.S. It stresses the significance of collaboration among librarians and art educators to provide a more fluid connection between art assignments and library-based research and critical thinking skills for students. The characteristics of art students at Western Carolina University highlights how the teaching and visual arts are influenced by the use of information.

This paper examines the politics of higher education diversity for both African Americans and Latinos, by investigating how the structure of the bureaucracy affects the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation. The key theoretical determinants of minority college enrollments are legislative representation, bureaucratic structure, university-level policies, and restrictions on affirmative action. A hierarchical linear model of 500+ universities over an 11-year period shows that each of these factors affects minority enrollments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political theorists and pundits often attribute the malaise that they argue hangs over U.S. politics to the omnipresence of political spectacle, where participants are reduced to spectator-voters rather than engaged as active citizens in the political process. The result, many conclude, is widespread cynicism that stymies collective action. We argue, however, that “spectacle” is not necessarily opposed to political participation, and indeed that the “actor–audience” dichotomy so often employed by political theorists is much too simplistic to describe political activism. In fact, groups such as the Billionaires for Bush use spectacle to advance their message(s) and to inspire political change. These groups have much in common with what media scholars call “culture jammers,” activists who deliberately subvert spectacular images in order to reclaim them. In this paper, we explore how groups we label political culture jammers combat cynicism by replacing the dominant images of politics with provocative counter-images. Through their use of ironic self-presentation and humor, political culture jammers offer an appealing alternative means of invigorating political praxis by complicating the citizen/spectator binary that so many critics invoke.Polity (2008) 40, 273–296. doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300104; published online18 February 2008 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional historical interpretations of Eleanor Roosevelt typically emphasize her idealistic yet practical approach to social and political problems. This analysis risks oversimplifying Roosevelt's understanding of political solutions and commitment to reform. A proponent of the arts and crafts, Roosevelt recognized the economic contributions of domestic handicrafts, but she insisted that their benefits surpassed social and economic improvement. Historians' emphasis on economic and social justice has obscured Roosevelt's faith in the aesthetic and cultural power of the arts, which was a significant factor in her involvement in three craft-related projects: Val-Kill Industries, Arthurdale Homestead, and the New Deal cultural projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the manner and extent to which differences in militaristic orientations occupy an important front in the much ballyhooed American "culture war." In particular, we posit that belief in biblical inerrancy engenders a "messianic" militarism. We further suggest that this relationship occurs not only directly but also indirectly, through a heightened sense of nationalism. We compare the predictive capacity of such traditionalistic Christian "believing" to other elements associated with it: (1) cognitive dogmatism, (2) hierarchical visions of authority, (3) devotionalism, and (3) immersion within the traditionalistic Christian culture. Finally, we demonstrate the relevance of these dynamics to understanding "red/blue" cleavage structures in the United States, by showing that as belief in the authority of the Bible increases, so does the perceived electoral salience of foreign policy issues, relative to domestic issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide evidence of advantageous selection in the Medigap insurance market and analyze its sources. Conditional on controls for Medigap prices, those with Medigap spend, on average, $4,000 less on medical care than those without. But if we condition on health, those with Medigap spend $2,000 more. The sources of this advantageous selection include income, education, longevity expectations, and financial planning horizons, as well as cognitive ability. Conditional on all these factors, those with higher expected medical expenditures are more likely to purchase Medigap. Risk preferences do not appear as a source of advantageous selection; cognitive ability is particularly important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When women run in general elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, they win at approximately the same rates as their male counterparts. With the exception of studies of selected congressional districts in particular years, however, scholars have virtually ignored the gender dynamics of the congressional primary process. In this paper, we fill this void, analyzing data from 1958 to 2004 to test hypotheses about women's victory rates and levels of primary competition. Our analysis results in an additional explanation for women's underrepresentation: the congressional primary process. Although women generally do not win primaries at lower rates than their male counterparts, women in both parties face more primary competition than do men. Gender neutral victory rates, then, are not the result of a gender neutral primary process. Women have to be "better" than their male counterparts in order to fare equally well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An enduring and controversial debate centers on whether there exist "two presidencies," that is, whether presidents exercise fundamentally greater influence over foreign than domestic affairs. This paper makes two contributions to understanding this issue and, by extension, presidential power more generally. First, we distill an institutional logic that both supports the two presidencies thesis and implies that Congress has incentives to delegate foreign policy powers to the president. Accordingly, the logic suggests that empirical analysis should incorporate these incentives. Our second contribution, then, is to test for the existence of two presidencies in a domain that Congress cannot delegate, budgetary appropriations, and a domain that explicitly incorporates delegation, agency creation. Consistent with expectations, we find presidents exercise considerably greater influence over foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I use the Bush Administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) scores—a numerical measure of federal program performance—to analyze the relationship between political appointees and management. I find that federal programs administered by politically appointed bureau chiefs get systematically lower PART evaluations than programs run by bureau chiefs drawn from the civil service. I find that career managers have more direct bureau experience and longer tenures, and these characteristics are significantly related to performance. Political appointees have higher education levels, more private or not-for-profit management experience, and more varied work experience than careerists but these characteristics are uncorrelated with performance. I conclude that reducing the number of appointees or increased sensitivity to appointee selection based upon certain background characteristics could improve federal bureau management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between bad weather and lower levels of voter turnout is widely espoused by media, political practitioners, and, perhaps, even political scientists. Yet, there is virtually no solid empirical evidence linking weather to voter participation. This paper provides an extensive test of the claim. We examine the effect of weather on voter turnout in 14 U.S. presidential elections. Using GIS interpolations, we employ meteorological data drawn from over 22,000 U.S. weather stations to provide election day estimates of rain and snow for each U.S. county. We find that, when compared to normal conditions, rain significantly reduces voter participation by a rate of just less than 1% per inch, while an inch of snowfall decreases turnout by almost .5%. Poor weather is also shown to benefit the Republican party's vote share. Indeed, the weather may have contributed to two Electoral College outcomes, the 1960 and 2000 presidential elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The requirements of presidential nomination and Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominees present two anomalies: under what circumstances can ideologically extreme nominees win confirmation and, given political polarization and the possibility of a filibuster, how are any nominees successful? This paper employs a simple unidimensional spatial model to explore these anomalies. The principal results show that little change in Court policy is possible with a single appointment, and this fact interacts with certain contexts to give the president a relatively free hand in choosing extreme nominees. Less firm conclusions are reached about the second anomaly, but the analysis sets the stage for further work on that aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For too long, research on retrospective voting has fixated on how economic trends affect incumbents' electoral prospects in national and state elections. Hundreds of thousands of elections in the United States occur at the local level and have little to do with unemployment or inflation rates. This paper focuses on the most prevalent: school boards. Specifically, it examines whether voters hold school board members accountable for the performance of their schools. The 2000 elections reveal considerable evidence that voters evaluate school board members on the basis of student learning trends. During the 2002 and 2004 school board elections, however, when media (and by extension public) attention to testing and accountability systems drifted, measures of achievement did not influence incumbents' electoral fortunes. These findings, we suggest, raise important questions about both the scope conditions of retrospective voting models and the information voters rely upon when evaluating incumbents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mandatory disclosure requirements placed on publicly traded firms constitute the core of U.S. securities regulation. Despite their importance, few empirical studies have been done on the impact of mandatory disclosure requirements on the capital markets. Using a unique database created for this study, this paper examines the impact of the 1964 imposition of mandatory disclosure requirements on the over-the-counter (OTC) market in terms of volatility and stock returns. The effect of the 1964 regulatory change has never been examined prior to this paper, despite its being the only fundamental change in disclosure regulation since the original 1930s securities acts. This study finds that mandatory disclosure is associated with both a dramatic reduction in the volatility of OTC stock returns and with OTC stocks enjoying positive abnormal returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses individual-level data to examine the impact of unions on turnout and assesses the consequences of dramatic changes in union strength and in the composition of union membership since 1964 for the composition of the U.S. electorate. We first estimate individual-level models to test for the distinct effects of union membership and union strength on the probabilities of members and nonmembers voting and then test whether the effect of individual union membership and overall union strength varies across income levels. We find that unions increase turnout of both members and nonmembers. By simulating what turnout would be were union membership at its 1964 level, we show that the decline in union membership since 1964 has affected the aggregate turnout of both low- and middle-income individuals more than the aggregate turnout of high-income individuals. However, while class bias has increased as a consequence of the decline, the change is surprisingly small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to clarify Tocqueville's view that a political order premised on the primacy of individual reason over moral authority can be detrimental to genuine intellectual liberty. Beginning with Tocqueville's famous comment that Americans are Cartesians without having read Descartes, I compare Tocqueville's assessment of American intellectual life to Descartes' hopes for future political societies. I describe their disagreement about the effect that moral authority and rational individualism have on the development of the mind and locate its source in two competing theories of mind. This reveals a debate about our human needs with echoes in contemporary political discontent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two reform acts, the Staggers Railroad Act of 1980 and the Railroad Revitali- zation and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976, represented big changes in U.S. policy toward railroads. An important welfare gain from these changes predicted by researchers was the efficiency gain from increased densities in rail freight traffic. However, few retrospective studies have analyzed the accuracy of these predictions. The present paper fills this gap by analyzing the effects of regulatory changes on freight traffic density, through simulation of the cost savings from gains in density, using a newly estimated rail cost function, and by comparison of these results with earlier predictions. Our results indicate net benefits of $7-$ 10 billion per year (as of 2001), stemming from cost savings from increased traffic densities relative to what would have occurred under regulation. These benefits are substantially higher than those predicted by researchers in the 1970s and early 1980s, for reasons explained in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents and investigates a prominent but little discussed pattern in U.S. politics, which is the decline of third-party electoral support over the past century. We find evidence consistent with the claim that electoral support for third parties—mainly left-wing third parties—declined because the Democratic Party co-opted the left-wing policy position beginning with the passage of the New Deal agenda. We note first that most of the third-party voting in the pre-New-Deal era was for left-wing third parties and that this declined sharply during the 1930s and 1940s. We then show that after the New Deal the Democratic Party's electoral support was higher in areas that had traditionally supported left-wing third parties. Contrary to some claims in the literature, we find little support for the hypothesis that the decline of third-party voting was immediately due to electoral reforms such as the introduction of direct primaries and the Australian ballot, except possibly in the south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critics of the “imperial judiciary” have accused the United States Supreme Court of usurping authority from legislators and executives by creating new rights that are found nowhere in the text of the Constitution. In this paper, I use two case studies to argue that unenumerated rights can be reconciled with democratic values. First, the protection of aggressive palliative care in Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) exemplifies a consensus-building decision whereby the Court holds that a broadly accepted norm or practice has constitutional underpinnings. Second, the invalidations of durational residency requirements for welfare benefits in Shapiro v. Thompson (1969) and Saenz v. Roe (1999) represent broadened-access decisions in which the state is required to extend a benefit to an excluded group yet retains the authority to define the benefit's content. These types of decisions are compatible with democratic norms insofar as they do not disable elected representatives from performing their quintessential task: deciding what policy values the state should pursue and how it should purse them. My argument suggests that a focus on Roe v. Wade (1973) exaggerates the ambitions and consequences of judicial protection for unenumerated rights and overlooks how such protection may enhance democratic politics.Polity (2007) 39, 103–124. doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300074 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the struggle between the legislative and judicial branches by focusing specifically on congressional influences on the behavior of federal judges. We argue that Congress may constrain individual judicial behavior by passing statutes containing detailed language. To test this thesis we borrow from the bureaucratic politics literature to introduce and test a new measure of statutory constraint. Using data from the U.S. Courts of Appeals we find that appellate court behavior is constrained significantly by statutory language, although this constraint is asymmetric across ideology. We discover substantial differences between Democratic and Republican appointees both in terms of statutory constraint and ideological voting. The data indicate judges appointed by Democratic presidents are constrained by statutory language in criminal cases. Similarly, Republican appointees are constrained by statutes in civil rights cases. Yet, neither Democrats nor Republicans are constrained in economic cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence on the economic significance of the predictability in U.S. stock returns using a real-time asset allocation framework. We examine the Performance of a Bayesian investor who relies on conditioning information (dividend yield, T-bill yield, default spread, and term spread) to forecast future returns and contrast it with that of an otherwise identical investor who believes in i.i.d. returns. We find that the relative performance of the information-based strategy is unstable over time, being noticeably poor during 1989-2002. In marked contrast, the strategy performs significantly better when it relies on a model-based approach based on the CAPM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States is undergoing dramatic demographic change, primarily from immigration, and many of the new Latino immigrants are settling in the South. This paper examines hypotheses related to attitudes of Latino immigrants toward black Americans in a Southern city. The analyses are based on a survey of black, white, and Latino residents (n = 500). The results show, for the most part, Latino immigrants hold negative stereotypical views of blacks and feel that they have more in common with whites than with blacks. Yet, whites do not reciprocate in their feelings toward Latinos. Latinos’ negative attitudes toward blacks, however, are modulated by a sense of linked fate with other Latinos. This research is important because the South still contains the largest population of African Americans in the United States, and no section of the country has been more rigidly defined along a black-white racial divide. How these new Latino immigrants situate themselves vis-à-vis black Americans has profound implications for the social and political fabric of the South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some critics of the confirmation process for U.S. Supreme Court nominees have claimed that the contentiousness of the contemporary process has induced presidents to nominate lesser known figures of lesser merit to the High Court, rather than first-rate legal scholars of well known and likely controversial views. This dynamic has led, in the words of one commentator, to a “Court of mediocrity.” This paper tests that thesis by analyzing the results of a survey of constitutional law scholars on the overall “quality” of the Court's twentieth-century appointees. The results place none of the justices appointed since the late 1960s in the survey's highest category: “Excellent.” However, the results indicate that the recent justices are, as a whole, just as able as the average justice of earlier in the twentieth century. A majority of the recent justices score above the mean rating of their earlier twentieth-century predecessors at a statistically distinguishable level. Moreover, the discussion of the survey results shows that the conditions for the appointment of great justices are still present.Polity (2006) 38, 295–313. doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300036 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of employment status on voting by formally modeling the effect of partisan government on workers’ economic interests. These interests are determined by model workers’ labor supply decisions, which are conditioned on their expected wage, unemployment benefits, and the probability of receiving a job offer or being laid off. Both probabilities are influenced by the party in power. The solution to the model implies that, relative to the employed, the higher the education level, the income, and the unemployment benefits of the unemployed the less likely they are to vote for the party associated with higher growth. The unemployment rate has the same impact. These hypotheses are successfully tested on NES 1972–2000 U.S. presidential elections data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs stochastic frontier cost and profit models to estimate the efficiency of multi-billion dollar European and U.S. banks. Empirical results suggest that both large European and U.S. banks have decreasing (increasing) cost (profit) returns to scale. Also, large banks in Europe and the United States similarly exhibit increasing returns to scale and decreasing (increasing) scope economies for the cost (profit) model. However, large U.S. banks have higher average profit efficiency than European banks on average. We conclude potential efficiency gains are possible via geographic expansion of large European and U.S. banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of U.S. foreign aid have firmly established that foreign policy and domestic considerations strongly influence allocations of military and economic development assistance. Uncharted, however, is the question of similar influences on U.S. humanitarian aid. Analyzing U.S. foreign disaster assistance data from 1964 through 1995, this paper concludes that foreign policy and domestic factors not only influence disaster assistance allocations but that they are the overriding determinant. This impact is, however, somewhat differential: the initial“yes/no” decision to grant disaster assistance is markedly political, but the subsequent“how much” decision is also not devoid of political considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the comparative history of International Science Congresses under Adolf Hitler's Germany, Josef Stalin's Russia and the Cold War United States. Modern scientific internationalism and views of scientists; Role of states in international scientific relations.

A common critique of school choice is that it will have the practical effect of further increasing racial and ethnic segregation in American education. Although most survey evidence indicates that the highest priority of parents in choosing schools is academic quality, with the race and ethnic composition of the student body being much less important, many critics doubt that private preferences are being publicly revealed. In this paper, we use an experimental design embedded in a survey to obtain an alternative measure of educational quality and racial diversity as considerations for household school choice. While both academic quality and race/ethnic diversity had an effect on preferences, academic quality was a more important predictor. We then examined the relationship between preference and actual choice outcomes. Race-related opinions were nonpredictive of outcomes, but a stress on high test scores by parents predicted school choice among students who are not“at risk.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the growing empirical literature on filibusters by examining the factors that are associated with individual-level filibustering behavior. We focus particularly on the behavior of senators in the latter part of their careers, using impending retirement as analytical leverage to determine whether decisions to engage or not in dilatory parliamentary practices are driven more by narrowly drawn considerations of instrumental utility or by compliance with institutional norms of deference and cooperation. Using data from 1975 to 1993 and employing multivariate models that allow us to control for other relevant factors, we find only limited support for a narrowly rational model of Senate “followership.” In the course of our enquiry, we clarify the notion of legislative norms, integrate our study with recent interdisciplinary scholarship on the evolution of cooperative behavior and consider how leadership can be exercised in environments largely bereft of formal leadership resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]