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The article offers information on paper terrorism, a neologism to refer to the use of false liens. Topics discussed include origins of the sovereign citizen movement, sovereign citizens' diverse beliefs and ideologies, and strategies for preventing sovereign citizens' harassment of public officials.

The article focuses on the specification of models of campaign finance and comments on papers which address the specific issues related to specification problems within a general model of Congressional voting in the U.S. The appropriate model within which to address the issues concerning the said papers is one which deals with the relationship between the voting behavior of Congressional representatives, the voting behavior of the constituents and the contributions of donors to campaigns.

This and the next two issues of LegisIative Studies Quarterly will publish a group of articles based on papers presented at the 1988 G. E. Hendricks Symposium on the United States Senate. Held on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in October 1988, this symposium brought together leading students of the U.S. Congress. Their articles fall into three large categories, and these categories will be used to divide the articles among the three issues (see Appendix). Following this introduction, three historically oriented articles will appear in this issue. The August issue d l contain five articles on the organization and operation of the Senate, and the November issue will present six articles relating to Senate elections. Collectively, these articles constitute an impressive portrait of current research on the Senate. Why is it important to obtain such a portrait? Of what value was our symposium and the papers it produced? What did we hope to accomplish, and did we do it? In this brief introduction to the Hendricks Symposium studies, we address these and related questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Understanding of the alcohol industry's means of influencing public policy is increasingly well established. Less is known, however, about the specific organisations that lead the political strategies of the alcohol industry. To fill this gap, this paper explores the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), a key trade association in the United States (US), which also operates internationally. Methods: This study explores how DISCUS is organised and the main political activities it pursues to advance its policy interests. The study triangulates data from several sources, including DISCUS documents, as well as federal lobbying and election expenditure data. Results: This study demonstrates that DISCUS is a key political actor in the US and global alcohol policymaking context. There are identifiable strategies used by DISCUS to shape alcohol policy debates, including framing and lobbying. We also find key synergies between these strategies and identify their operation at varying levels of policy decision-making. Conclusions: Generating more secure inferences about the nature of the alcohol industry's efforts to advance its interests, and with what success and at what cost, requires researchers to investigate other trade associations in different contexts, and use other data sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relative performance of voting technologies by studying presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial election returns across hundreds of counties in the United States from 1988 to 2000. Relying on a fixed-effects regression applied to an unbalanced panel of counties, we find that in presidential elections, traditional paper ballots produce the lowest rates of uncounted votes (i.e.,“residual votes”), followed by optically scanned ballots, mechanical lever machines, direct register electronic machines (DREs), and punch cards. In gubernatorial and senatorial races, paper, optical scan ballots, and DREs are significantly better in minimizing the residual vote rate than mechanical lever machines and punch cards. If all jurisdictions in the United States that used punch cards in 2000 had used optically scanned ballots instead, we estimate that approximately 500,000 more votes would have been attributed to presidential candidates nationwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party elite cues are among the most well-established influences on citizens' political opinions. Yet, there is substantial variation in effect sizes across studies, constraining the generalizability and theoretical development of party elite cues research. Understanding the causes of variation in party elite cue effects is thus a priority for advancing the field. In this paper, I estimate the variation in party elite cue effects that is caused simply by heterogeneity in the policy issues being examined, through a reanalysis of data from existing research combined with an original survey experiment comprising 34 contemporary American policy issues. My estimate of the between-issue variation in effects is substantively large, plausibly equal to somewhere between one-third and two-thirds the size of the between- study variation observed in the existing literature. This result has important implications for our understanding of party elite influence on public opinion and for the methodological practices of party elite cues research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polarization and participation are often connected in the political science literature, though sometimes the causality runs participation to polarization and sometimes the causality runs in the reverse direction. In some accounts there is an expectation that increasing participation and increasing polarization generate an ongoing spiral effect. In this paper we evaluate the over-time relationships between polarization and participation by assessing evidence in existing panel and aggregate data. We find that people with more extreme attitudes are more likely to participate in politics. However, only one particular form of participation—persuading others—appears to predict later levels of polarization. Therefore, only persuasion has the necessary correlation and temporal ordering for a feedback loop with more extreme ideology. The implication is that the discipline should pay more attention to interpersonal persuasion as a form of participation in American politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding trends. We focus our analysis on the years 1869- 1928, and we use the remaining years of data to look at changes over time. We find that newspapers have a robust positive effect on political participation, with one additional newspaper increasing both presidential and congressional turnout by approximately 0.3 percentage points. Newspaper competition is not a key driver of turnout: our effect is driven mainly by the first newspaper in a market, and the effect of a second or third paper is significantly smaller. The effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduction of radio and television, while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years. We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects. We find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents. (JEL D72, L11, L82, N41, N42, N81, N82) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1980s, the United States initiated an explicit policy of democracy promotion throughout the world. William Robinson (1996) more accurately described this initiative as "promoting polyarchy," whereby the United States supported moderate elite actors that promoted neoliberal economic policies to displace both right-wing and communist despots, such as General Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Soviet rulers in Eastern Europe. While much of Latin America remained characterized by polyarchies throughout the late 20th Century, Latin American citizens began to reject these political arrangements and to elect anti-neoliberal candidates that promoted participatory democracy by the turn of the 21st Century, particularly in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. How has the United States changed its democracy promotion strategies to respond to these new dynamics? The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the U.S. government, through agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID, has altered the main thrust of its foreign policy in Latin America, from promoting polyarchy and displacing despotic leaders, to supporting opposition actors to unseat democratically-elected far leftist leaders that promote participatory democracy. This paper deploys a case study method involving recent U.S. foreign policy in Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and it utilizes both U.S. diplomatic cables and interviews with U.S. state elites to illustrate this shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Learning through social communication is promoted when citizens are able to identify which of their associates is likely to possess the necessary political information. This paper examines the factors that influence individuals' evaluations of political expertise. Actual political expertise plays a large role in perceived expertise, but mistakes are made. These are largely the result of assuming that those engaged in politics must also be knowledgeable about politics. This paper uses the 1996 Indianapolis-St. Louis Study and the 2000 National Election Study to identify factors that bias levels of perceived political knowledge. The paper concludes by demonstrating that perceived expertise plays a larger role than actual expertise in the social influence process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that we should revisit the common assumptions in the administrative presidency literature about political appointments. Specifically, it contests the notions that presidential politicization of the executive branch is intended only to enhance political control of the bureaucracy and is successful at doing so. Instead, the author argues that politicization choices are driven by patronage concerns, and politicization of the bureaucracy ultimately can make it harder for presidents to control the bureaucracy. The paper illustrates how one might theorize more generally about patronage politics in the White House and the impact of appointments on performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Reformed clergy across two different settings - the United States and Scotland in an effort to determine how theological orthodoxy is related to political participation. The paper demonstrates that (1) clergy in both settings tend to be politically active (2) the level of clergy political activity tends to be greater in the United States than in Scotland (3) the relationship between orthodoxy and political activity is complex, varying by the specific type of activity examined and (4) while theological orthodoxy and modernist clergy tend to differ in the nature of their political activities, there is no longer a major "gap" in level of political activity between the two groups of ministers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The McFadden Act of 1927 was one of the most hotly contested pieces of legislation in U.S. banking history, and its influence was felt over half a century later. This paper studies the congressional voting behavior surrounding the act's passage. We find that congressmen in districts in which landholdings were concentrated and credit was costlier were significantly more likely to oppose the act. The evidence suggests that whereas the law and the overall regulatory structure can shape the financial system far into the future, they themselves are likely to be shaped by elites, even in countries with benign political institutions. This paper was accepted by Amit Seru, finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Latino National Political Survey, this paper tests the hypothesis that military service serves to stimulate electoral and nonelectoral political participation by Latinos. The results are compared with those for Anglos (non-Hispanic whites). The data show that Latino veterans, and particularly draftees, exhibited higher levels of voting and low-intensity nonelectoral political activities. Anglo veterans did not increase their participation to the same extent. Service in the volunteer army was a much less important explanatory factor of both Latino and Anglo political participation. Military experience therefore has a greater impact on Latinos than Anglos, and the draft experience was more important than volunteer service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies, theoretically and empirically, the role of overconfidence in political behavior. Our model of overconfidence in beliefs predicts that overconfidence leads to ideological extremeness, increased voter turnout, and stronger partisan identification. The model also makes nuanced predictions about the patterns of ideology in society. These predictions are tested using unique data that measure the overconfidence and standard political characteristics of a nationwide sample of over 3,000 adults. Our numerous predictions find strong support in these data. In particular, we document that overconfidence is a substantively and statistically important predictor of ideological extremeness, voter turnout, and partisan identification. (JEL C83, D03, D72, D83) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some corporations attempt to lessen their tax burden through involvement in the legislative process. We identify firms that contributed to congressional candidates who favor reductions in the U.S. corporate statutory tax rate. This support created a temporary incentive to manage effective tax rates (ETRs) up. We document that these firms increased their reported effective tax rate in the two calendar quarters preceding the 2012 election relative to adjacent periods and other firms supporting candidates in the same election. We find that the variation in upward ETR management is correlated with firm-level proxies for potential reputational costs, capital markets costs, and long-run tax burdens. The variation in upward ETR management is also correlated with firm-candidate-level proxies for strength of relationships and competitiveness of election races. Our findings provide new evidence on accounting choices in support of corporate political activity and on the political cost hypothesis in the tax setting. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2842. This paper was accepted by Shivaram Rajgopal, accounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational theorists and other management scholars have long recognized that business corporations operate in complex environments that significantly affect their performance. In recent years, with the federal government an increasingly salient contributor to the complexity of many firms' task environments, the management literature has begun to focus on the effects of this development (Alpin & Hegarty, 1980; Miles, 1982; Post, Murray, Dickie, & Mahon, 1983). Corporations have responded to growing federal intervention in several ways. Many have instituted or expanded formal multipurpose public affairs units to monitor and influence the political environment (Baysinger, 1984; Baysinger & Woodman, 1982; Post et al., 1983). One corporate response has aroused much public controversy--the burgeoning of corporate political action committees (PACs) through which firms channel money into the campaign coffers of candidates for federal offices. The PAC phenomenon has led to several useful studies in management and other disciplines (e.g., Epstein, 1980; Kau, Keenan, & Rubin, 1982). However, scholars have given scant theoretical or empirical treatment to the determinants of variations in corporations' abilities to raise PAC funds. The purpose of this paper is to test hypotheses concerning such variations within a theoretical framework. To our knowledge, the present study is the first comprehensive attempt to analyze this question. A tentative explanation of potential variations in corporate political power at the national level is implicit in its findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the nation's most respected advertising agencies have become reluctant to accept political campaigns as clients. And political candidates increasingly are choosing independent political consultants to direct their media campaigns. This paper analyzes the history of these trends and reports the results of a nationwide survey of 99 advertising agencies. Among firms that had not handled political accounts in five years or that planned to reduce political campaign involvement, the major reasons cited for avoiding political accounts centered on concerns that they may interfere with business client relations while creating an intolerable workload without commensurate profitability. The potential implications of replacing advertising agencies with political consultants are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the critical role of nursing in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic and various social challenges, emphasizing the importance of nursing innovations and solutions. It introduces Nursing Now USA (NNUSA) and presents three commissioned papers focusing on nursing practice, education, and leadership innovations and these papers highlight the impact of nurse-led initiatives and provide valuable insights for the future of nursing research, practice, and scholarship.

This paper provides a public choice analysis of the 2008 banking bailout in the United States. The paper introduces heterogeneity of congressional districts into the common agency problem in special interest politics. District heterogeneity implies district-specific electoral constraints on legislators' ability to collect rents from, and cast dissonant votes in support of, special interests. An empirical analysis examines legislative voting on the initial bailout proposal, using campaign contributions to legislators from special interest groups and the importance of financial services for employment within congressional districts as the main explanatory variables. The empirical analysis corrects for possible endogeneity bias, using valid instruments, and considers several intuitive sub-sample estimations as alternative methods for addressing the endogeneity issue. The paper provides empirical evidence that campaign contributions from the financial services sector influenced legislative voting on the banking bailout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The timing of message delivery in political campaigns is a key component of strategy. Yet studies that examine the impact of message timing on political behavior are surprisingly rare. Although one recent study finds that appeals delivered closer to Election Day will be most effective (Nickerson, American Journal of Political Science 51(2):269-282, ), methodological considerations render this conclusion tentative and suggest the impact of message timing remains an open question. In this paper I report the results of a randomized field experiment designed to compare the mobilization effects of nonpartisan messages delivered via commercial phone banks at different points during a campaign cycle. The results of the experiment, conducted during the November 2005 municipal elections in Rochester, New York, suggest calls delivered early on during a campaign cycle can also be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this study was to demonstrate how the segmentation of voters based on decision-making processes, using means-end laddering research innovations and real-time interactive online interviewing, can aid in the formation of political communications strategy, including theme and message development. Design/methodology/approach - To demonstrate the application of these innovations in a political context, the paper uses data from a sample of 114 voters who were interviewed during the 2004 US presidential election campaign. The paper draws on three recent innovations to the means-end laddering methodology: elicitation questioning techniques that allow for a decision equity analysis between targeted groups; decision segmentation analysis; and real-time interactive online interviewing; and applies them to an electoral context. It provides an interpretation of the identified decision segments and an exposition of how these common networks of meaning can serve as the basis for targeted theme and message development. Findings - These three innovations, in concert, were found to provide an efficient set of methods to serve as the foundation for the campaign message development process. Originality/value - This paper provides deterministic research techniques for campaign strategists who want to understand voter decision making and demonstrates a combination of methodological and technological innovations that addresses the time, cost, and geographic limitations often associated with conducting voter decision making research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that in his "Party Press Essays," James Madison expounds a psychology of public opinion that is identifiable, but less developed, in his earlier writings. In these essays, Madison explains how a territorial mean, or a "practicable sphere," contributes to a psychological mean that creates a context for the emergence of an enlightened majority capable of mobilizing against an abusive regime. Attending to Madison's psychology of public opinion highlights the political importance of affect in Madison's thought and clarifies his position regarding the appropriate role of the people in a republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of the present paper is that of putting forward an interpretation of the presence of the rhetoric component and of highlighting the theoretical values on politics that Barack Obama's political activity, as well as his speeches and autobiographic work, reveal. The subjacent implication of this approach is that there is an indissoluble unity among these three elements with a public character and that, at the same time, they project a unitary vision on politics. The paper is not an analysis either of the political activity or the speeches that Obama has made, but it seeks to highlight the overtones that are characteristic to his particular rhetoric and to single out some explicit axiological presuppositions of his political vision. Our assumption is that, once this vision on politics has been clarified, one can then distinguish the explicit motivations of his past, current and future political activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civic engagement can impact politics, health outcomes, support for new policies, and the like. Research indicates that the communication infrastructure and the strength of the storytelling network, influences civic engagement outcomes. Recent community building initiatives place the impetus of community change and civic engagement on the family unit. This paper places the family unit within the storytelling network and explores how family interaction is related to civic engagement. A telephone survey of 739 new immigrant Latinos in Los Angeles was used to test the effect of family interaction on civic engagement. Regression analyses, controlling for sociodemographic factors, were used. Results indicate that family interaction leads to higher levels of civic engagement and encourages more integration into the neighborhood storytelling network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), enacted in 1969, requires that agencies of the U.S. government or those seeking to use federal funds to construct projects study the environmental and social impacts of said projects. Under the provisions of NEPA, a first-level review must be conducted for all projects not otherwise exempted. If the entity conducting the review deems that the project will result in a significant impact on humans or the environment, an environmental impact statement (EIS) must be prepared. The decision about whether or not to prepare an EIS can be controversial due to the fact that the entity charged with preparing the initial review ultimately makes decisions regarding the necessity of the preparation of the EIS. This paper explains the NEPA review process and the controversy that may result when the entity preparing the EIS does not respond to public concerns that a proposed project has a significant impact on the environment. The legal history of Coliseum Square Ass'n, Inc. v. Jackson, 465 F.3d 215 (5th Cir. 2006), provides a glimpse of a growing concern that the standard of review employed in these cases undermines efforts to involve citizens in the public comment process. The paper concludes with a discussion of how NEPA might be modified to ensure that citizens are given an adequate opportunity to participate in NEPA review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the progressive, feminist critique of same-sex marriage as articulated by Claudia Card. Although agreeing with Card that the institution of marriage as we know it is profoundly morally flawed in its origins and effects, Callahan disagrees with Card's suggestion that queer activists in the United States should not be working for the inclusion of same-sex couples in the institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between House committee membership and campaign contributions from financial services industry political action committees (PACs) over the 1998–2002 election periods. Three significant pieces of banking legislation were passed during this time. Because members of the financial services industry were affected greatly by this legislation, it seems logical that PACs might attempt to influence the legislative process through the distribution of campaign contributions. We examine the relationship between PAC contributions to individual legislators for the 1998–2002 election cycle and membership on the House banking committee using a sample selection model. We find committee membership matters and the different financial services industry PACs give disproportionately more to representatives with the power to write legislation favorable to the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I show that, since 1960, an electoral cycle in US output growth can both be seen by the naked eye in the raw data and confirmed by a statistical analysis that allows for rational partisan effects as well as a wide range of control variables. That is, controlling for multiple lags of interest rate changes, inflation, money growth, energy prices, lagged output growth, government spending (or its growth) and temporary partisan effects, the timing of elections exerts a significant influence on quarterly real GDP growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Hispanic voting behavior in the 2004 Presidential election. Our research makes a significant contribution to the literature on Hispanic politics, as this is the first study to apply theories of issue and economic voting to a nationwide sample of Hispanic voters. We demonstrate that, similar to Anglos, issues and ideology were highly influential in the vote choice of Hispanics in the 2004 election. However, using the best available data on Hispanic voting behavior for this election, a statewide aggregation of the National Election Pool (NEP), we demonstrate that in this election Hispanic voters placed more emphasis on moral values issues and national security than on traditional domestic issues such as the economy and education. This accounted for Republican gains beyond the overall increase in Bush's vote share from 2000 to 2004. We also show that moral values and national security had roughly equal importance in Bush's victory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates when a runoff election is desirable and when a plurality result is good enough. A runoff election increases the likelihood that the Condorcet winner will be elected but also entails additional costs. The metric for determining whether a runoff election is desirable will be the probability that the winner of the plurality election would win an ensuing runoff. Statistical models of voter behavior are developed that estimate this probability, which are verified with runoff-election data from United States elections. The models allow governments to make more informed choices in creating rules to decide when to hold runoff elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of nineteenth-century voting behavior have focused on how economic variables influenced elections during this period. Employing underutilized individual-level data from the 1870s, this paper argues that such studies overstate the influence of economic variables upon electoral behavior. Specifically, Democratic voters principally cast ballots on the basis of economic issues and divisions, while Republicans were primarily concerned with religious and cultural issues. These results suggest that the Democratic and Republican parties attracted voters on the basis of different policy dimensions, indicating that both ethnocultural and economic considerations affected both political parties, albeit in divergent ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might we think about democratic governance? This paper distinguishes between system governance and radical democracy. System governance borrows the language of radical democracy while missing its spirit. It advocates increased participation through networks because new institutionalists suggest networks are an efficient means of service delivery. It advocates increased consultation to build consensus because communitarians suggest consensus is needed for effective political institutions. System governance is, then, a top-down discourse based on the alleged expertise of social scientists. Radical democrats concentrate instead on the self-government of citizens. Instead of the incorporation of established groups in networks, they promote a pluralism within which aspects of governance are handed over to associations in civil society. And instead of consultation prior to decision making, they promote a dialogue in which citizens play an active role in making and implementing public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the determinants and consequences of Latino political representation in the field of K-12 education. The first task is to examine the association between Latino population and the Latino presence on school boards. We then investigate if Latino representation is affected by the electoral structure of school boards, as scholars have reached differing conclusions on whether at-large and ward systems hinder or enhance minority descriptive representation. The next step examines the consequences of Latino representation, specifically whether board membership is associated with the share of Latino school administrators and teachers. The regression results show that Latino population positively affects Latino board representation, but that at-large systems hinder descriptive representation. The primary determinant of Latino administrators is Latino school board membership, and the primary determinant of Latino teachers is Latino administrators. In sum, at-large elections negatively influence Latino educational representation, which produces a ripple effect that ultimately reduces the share of Latino teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many observers suggest that white evangelical Protestant churches serve to mobilize their members into politics, while others argue that they encourage withdrawal from political life. This paper reconciles these two claims. I hypothesize that the time members of evangelical Protestant denominations spend in service to their church comes at the expense of participation in the wider community, contrary to the way mainline Protestant and Catholic churches foster civic activity among their members. However, I further hypothesize that the tight social networks formed through this intensive church activity can at times facilitate rapid and intense political mobilization. Data from the Citizen Participation Study supports the first hypothesis, while applying King's method of ecological inference to two elections in Alabama supports the second. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The paper examines the role of community-based participatory research (CBPR) within the context of social justice literature and practice. Methods: Two CBPR case studies addressing health inequities related to Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular disease were selected from a national cross-site study assessing effective academic-community research partnerships. One CBPR partnership works with African Americans in rural Pemiscot County, Missouri and the other CBPR partnership works with African American and Latinos in urban South Bronx, New York City. Data collection included semi-structured key informant interviews and focus groups. Analysis focused on partnerships' context/ history and their use of multiple justice-oriented strategies to achieve systemic and policy changes in order to address social determinants of health in their communities. Results: Community context and history shaped each partnership's strategies to address social determinants. Four social justice approaches (identity/recognition, procedural, distributive, and structural justice) used by both partnerships were identified. These social justice approaches were employed to address underlying causes of inequitable distribution of resources and power structures, while remaining within a scientific research framework. Conclusion: CBPR can bridge the role of science with civic engagement and political participation, empowering community members to become political agents who integrate evidence into their social justice organizing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses an econometric model to analyze the political and economic factors affecting the Senate voting patterns on the 1993 Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban. Results of a logit estimation procedure support the hypothesis that the political activities and presence of the National Rifle Association (measured as relative campaign contributions and membership) had a significant impact on the voting patterns by Senators on both bills. (JEL D72, Z10) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the rhetoric of the U.S. bishops' pastoral letter on the U.S. economy from two perspectives. Is the letter convincing? Does it conform to the "conversational norms of civilization?" The paper argues that the bishops' letter fails by both standards because it ignores serious research on the U.S. economy, it misstates important facts about the economy, and it sneers at professional economists. The paper concludes that the bishops' letter will not be convincing to well informed readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a graphical model to explain the relationship between majority voting and government growth in the U.S. Total government expenditure and GNP from 1929 to 1982; Assumption that government sets agendas to maximize expenditure; Numerical example of migration between two jurisdictions.

This paper describes the results of a comparative study of the factors which inhibited or facilitated the development of the issue of community control of schools in fiftyseven cities in the United States. The findings suggest that the degree to which blacks and the poor were mobilized for political action and the political characteristics of the city were important in determining whether or not the issue entered the political arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response on the comment made by Gordon Tullock about their article on the measure of the cost of rent-seeking in the U.S. They disagree on the observation of Tullock on the magnitude of the unobservable costs of political activity, which he apparently believes are enormous. They argued that hose deadweight costs may help limit the amount of potential transfers that are dissipated through rent-seeking activity. Other contentions relative to the matter are presented.

This paper examines the extent to which attention to television news impacted affective evaluations of presidential candidates during the last two months of the 1992 campaign. Our analyses show that attentiveness to campaign news significantly influenced evaluations in a manner consistent with the tone of news coverage for each candidate. We disaggregate the data by party and ideology, however, and discover this effect to be conditional, depending critically on the character and intensity of political predispositions. Throughout the paper we emphasize the interplay between political predispositions and the valence of network coverage, underscoring the contingent effect of media messages. We conclude with a brief discussion of our results and stress the importance of partisan reinforcement, which we found was a major consequence of news media reception during the fall 1992 campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two perspectives on a fundamental issue of elections as mechanisms of democratic accountability. One is the interelection floating voter hypothesis, which implies that it is the least informed segment of the electorate that contributes most to electoral change. The second perspective is from V. O. Key's argument that vote switching is rooted in rational policy concerns. A direct test of Key's formulation of the problem on the Reagan election victories of 1980 and 1984 adds to the evidence supporting Key's perspective. The reasons why some voters hold firm to particular parties and candidates while others switch support is well explained by their different positions on matters of party, policies, and judgments of the candidates. Vote switching is not simply the by-product of an ill-informed segment of the electorate responding to its meager grasp of the short-term stimuli of a campaign. Vote switchers appear to judge the policies and the performance of an incumbent against their best estimates of these qualities in the competing candidate. The data are from the 1980 and 1984 CBS/New York Times exit polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the empirical utility of a new theoretical model of elections developed by Enelow and Hinich (1982, 1984a, 1984b) and Hinich and Pollard (1981). At the heart of this model is the assumption that candidate positions on campaign issues can be reduced to a set of positions on a smaller set of predictive dimensions. Factor analysis can be used to test the empirical adequacy of this assumption. Further, factor scores can be used as estimates of each voter's linear translation coefficients, measuring the linkage between candidate positions on the underlying dimensions of the campaign and candidate positions on real campaign issues. To obtain estimates of these translation coefficients, we factor analyze six candidate variables, using voter perceptions of each candidate's issue positions in the 1980 Pre-Election NES Survey. We then assign scores to each voter-issue pair on each of two underlying factors and examine group differences in these scores. We find systematic differences in mean factor scores among racial, ideological, partisan, educational, and income groups. These differences are consistent with the results obtained from a direct examination of perceived issue differences between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the effect of disgruntlement among those primary voters who supported U.S. presidential nomination losers. It analyzes the general election voting behavior of primary voters in the last five presidential elections in order to determine if differences exist between those supporters of the winning nominee in each party and backers of other candidates who also sought the nomination. A multivariate analysis of the determinants of voter turnout shows significant results only for the Democrats in 1972, when primary voters who supported candidates other than George McGovern were more likely to abstain in the general election. Taking into account the option of defecting to another party in November, both parties appear to have been plagued by a considerable amount of disloyalty on the part of supporters of candidates who failed to win the nomination, although for the Republicans this type of response is confined to the 1980 election. The existence of a third party or independent candidacy may be an important variable influencing the behavior of these disgruntled primary voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although political discontent has risen substantially among Americans since the mid-sixties, there is considerable disagreement about the implications of this trend for individual political behavior and system performance. This paper develops a conceptual and theoretical framework within which this question can be examined. Two dimensions of political discontent, low diffuse support and external inefficacy, are hypothesized as motivations for political action when certain other conditions are met. In addition, because each of these orientations should be associated with different styles of political behavior, the mobilizing potential of political discontent may be greater than previous studies have indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the major econometric analyses of electoral behavior in the United States. After a discussion of the early works in this area, analysis focuses on the recent debate precipitated by Kramer's 1971 work. The most important econometric works are summarized so that political scientists not working in this area but still interested in understanding the economic influences on voting can become acquainted with the substantive conclusions of each work and learn something of the different variables and methodologies employed in the analysis. For scholars engaged in research in this field, the paper will serve as a useful summary of previous works. The conclusion discusses major points of controversy and suggests specific research questions toward which future work should be directed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports on a new methodological technique for estimating turnout in preelection studies of voters and brings a new approach to the allocation of undecided voters. The estimation procedure utilizes a smaller number of predictors than past research, providing a more efficient method which can be used with telephone as well as personal interviews. A comparison of estimates based upon a likelihood index and probability weighting results in equivalent predictive power, and appropriate applications for each technique are discussed.
Michael W. Traugott is Senior Study Director at the Center for Political Studies at The University of Michigan. Clyde Tucker was Assistant to the Director of the CBS News Election and Survey Unit at the time this research was conducted; he currently works in Washington. The data utilized in this paper were made available by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The data for the CPS 1980 American National Election Study were originally collected under a grant from the National Science Foundation. The data for the CBS News/New York Times surveys were originally collected by the New York Times and CBS News, and processed by CBS News and ICPSR under a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation. Neither the collectors of the original data nor the Consortium bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. Support from the computing facilities at The University of Michigan is gratefully acknowledged, as well as the research assistance of Frank Baumgartner. A version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Hunt Valley, Maryland, May 20-23, 1982. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]