Articles:

Presidential Approval and the Mixed Blessing of Divided Government
Stephen P. Nicholson, Gary M. Segura, Nathan D. Woods [Abstract]

Campaign Advertising and Voter Turnout: New Evidence for a Stimulation Effect
Ken Goldstein, Paul Freedman [Abstract]

Tocqueville's Tyranny of the Majority Reconsidered
Donald J. Maletz [Abstract]

The Dilemma of Financial Liberalization: State Autonomy and Societal Demands
Quan Li, Dale L. Smith [Abstract]

Political Parties and the Recruitment of Women to State Legislatures
Kira Sanbonmatsu [Abstract]

Public, Legislative, and Executive Constraints on the Democratic Initiation of Conflict
Dan Reiter, Erik Tillman [Abstract]

The Effect of Direct Democracy on the Size and Diversity of State Interest Group Populations
Fredrick J. Boehmke [Abstract]

Pork Barreling is Not Credit-Claiming or Advertising: Campaign Finance and the Sources of the Personal Vote in Brazil
David J. Samuels [Abstract]

Setting the Legislative Agenda: The Dimensional Structure of Bill Cosponsoring and Floor Voting
Jeffery C. Talbert, Matthew Potoski [Abstract]

Research Notes:

Ballot Initiatives and the Democratic Citizen
Mark A. Smith [Abstract]

The Impact of Campaign Appearances in the 1996 Election
J. Paul Herr [Abstract]

Abstracts:

Presidential Approval and the Mixed Blessing of Divided Government
Stephen P. Nicholson, Georgia State University
Gary M. Segura, University of Iowa
Nathan D. Woods, Claremont Graduate University
Divided government provides ambiguous and conflicting information about which branch of government to hold accountable for government performance. The implication for presidents, who are easy targets of blame, is that they are less likely to be held accountable for government's failures during periods of divided government because the public has a plausible alternative for affixing responsibility: the Congress. Because presidents are punished more heavily for negative outcomes than they are rewarded for favorable ones, we argue that a divided government context has the effect of increasing presidential approval relative to periods of unified government. At the individual level, using data from the 1972-1994 National Election Studies we show that divided government increases the probability that respondents approve of a president's job performance. This effect is even stronger among citizens who are knowledgeable about control of government. Examining approval at the aggregate level from 1949 to 1996, we find further evidence that divided government boosts presidential approval ratings.

Campaign Advertising and Voter Turnout: New Evidence for a Stimulation Effect
Ken Goldstein, University of Wisonsin
Paul Freedman, University of Virginia
Recent controversy over campaign advertising has focused on the effects of negative ads on voters. Proponents of the demobilization hypothesis have argued that negative ads turn off voters and shrink the size of the electorate. We argue that negative campaign charges are just as likely to engage potential voters, leading to a stimulation effect when it comes to turnout. Drawing on a new source of ad-tracking data from the 1996 presidential election, combined with the 1996 National Election Study, we generate estimates of the probability that voters were exposed to positive and negative political advertising. With this new, more precise approach, we find unambiguous evidence that exposure to negative campaign ads actually stimulates voter turnout.

Tocqueville's Tyranny of the Majority Reconsidered
Donald J. Maletz, University of Oklahoma
Tocqueville's famous argument about "majority tyranny" in Democracy in America begins from an analysis of the "real advantages" of democratic government. The advantages include the effective use of certain authoritative beliefs to reconnect the individual to society in an era when these ties are weakening. But these beliefs tend to deepen a commitment to majority power as sovereign and even "absolute." With this tendency in mind, Tocqueville presents two somewhat differing views of majority tyranny. The argument for the first and rather traditional view, direct majoritarian dominance of government, is weak though not entirely implausible. The more interesting and influential argument concerns the effects of modern majoritarianism on thought. The effects, especially a "soft tyranny" over the mind, are not a defect of democracy but its direct implication, if what is taken to be authoritative in the governing sense, majority rule, is not constrained by both constitutional measures and by a critique showing how majority power can be "absolute" in its sphere but prevented from claiming "omnipotence." Tocqueville's argument is a brilliant warning rather than a proven case, but it paved the way for a new understanding of the potential for harm latent in an unqualified commitment to democracy.

The Dilemma of Financial Liberalization: State Autonomy and Societal Demands
Quan Li, Pennsylvania State University
Dale L. Smith, Florida State University
Under what conditions do governments shift their capital control policies toward liberalization? Under what conditions do societal supporters influence that liberalization? We postulate that (1) the desire to maintain state autonomy leads all governments to prefer capital controls to their liberalization, but strong governments, regardless partisanship, are more able to act on that preference and more likely to maintain controls longer than weak governments; (2) strong partisan governments are influenced toward liberalization if their core societal constituency increasingly supports it - skilled labor for the left government, MNCs and commercial banks for the right government, and (3) skilled labor, MNCs and banks may also influence capital decontrol, regardless of whether its political party is in power, if the group has broad national significance and captures government policy making. Our theory extends existing pluralist and statist explanations. In an empirical test of 17 OECD countries for 22 years, the evidence largely supports our theoretical expectations.

Political Parties and the Recruitment of Women to State Legislatures
Kira Sanbonmatsu, Ohio State University
This paper analyzes the role of political parties in shaping women's representation across the U.S. states. Using data from 1971 to 1999, I analyze several hypotheses about how party affects women's recruitment to the lower houses of the state legislatures. I argue that the incentive structure facing potential women candidates is somewhat different for Democratic and Republican women. The social eligibility pool, legislative professionalism, and the partisan composition of the legislature affect women's representation differently by party. Rather than assuming a single path for women to elective office, this research implies that it is necessary to disaggregate women by party in order to understand the pattern of where women run for and hold state legislative office.

Public, Legislative, and Executive Constraints on the Democratic Initiation of Conflict
Dan Reiter, Emory University
Erik Tillman, Emory University
How do domestic political institutions affect the propensity to initiate international conflict? We improve theoretical understanding of and empirical knowledge on this question. We describe three major types of democratic institutional characteristics which have been hypothesized to increase the constraints on conflict initiation: public electoral participation, intra-legislative factors, and a stronger legislature in relation to the executive. Using a GEE model to analyze thirty-seven democracies in the period 1919-1992, we find that higher political participation levels decrease the likelihood of initiating an international dispute, and that neither the number of parties or the nature of the ruling coalition affect the likelihood of initiating a dispute. The evidence on whether variation in executive-legislative constraints makes initiation more likely is mixed. These findings highlight the significance of public consent for the formation of democratic foreign policy.

The Effect of Direct Democracy on the Size and Diversity of State Interest Group Populations
Fredrick J. Boehmke, University of Iowa
This paper studies the effect of direct democracy on the size and diversity of state interest group populations, providing an empirical test of a formal model of how access to the initiative process affects group formation and activities (Boehmke 2000). The model predicts that more groups mobilize and become active in initiative states; this prediction is confirmed by the regression analysis in this paper: direct democracy increases a state's interest group population by about seventeen percent. With an additional assumption, I also generate and test the hypothesis that the increase is disproportionately centered among traditionally under-represented citizen groups, relative to business and economic groups. This hypothesis is also empirically supported: citizen interest group populations are increased by twenty-nine percent whereas the increase is only twelve percent for economic groups, suggesting that direct democracy increases diversity in interest group representation.

Pork Barreling is Not Credit-Claiming or Advertising: Campaign Finance and the Sources of the Personal Vote in Brazil
David J. Samuels, University of Minnesota
Although observers of Brazilian politics commonly hold that voters reward incumbents for "bringing home the bacon," I provide reasons to question the direct link between pork and electoral success as well as statistical evidence demonstrating the lack of such a link. This generates a puzzle: if pork-barreling is ineffective, why do Brazilian deputies spend so much time seeking pork? The answer is that deputies do not trade pork for votes, they trade pork for money: pork-barrel success helps incumbents raise funds from private-sector interests that profit from government contracts. In turn, politicians' access to money, not pork, directly affects their electoral prospects. This paper provides a new understanding of the electoral connection in Brazil by showing that existing analyses have either overestimated pork's impact or are underdetermined because they have not included measures of campaign finance. The findings should also encourage comparativists interested in pork-barrel politics, clientelism, the personal vote, and campaign behavior more generally to focus attention on the role of money in elections.

Setting the Legislative Agenda: The Dimensional Structure of Bill Cosponsoring and Floor Voting
Jeffery C. Talbert, University of Kentucky
Matthew Potoski, Iowa State University
The shape of the legislative agenda varies through the legislative process. At the policy debate stage, where legislative proposals are introduced, packaged, and debated, members' bill cosponsoring patterns reveal a multidimensional agenda. At the decision stage on the legislative floor, members' voting patterns reveal a low dimensional agenda. This paper compares the dimensional structures of legislators' bill cosponsoring and floor voting activities during the 103rd and 104th Congresses. The analyses show that bill cosponsoring contains at least three and as many as five distinct dimensions, suggesting that pre-floor legislative activities play an important role in structuring the lines of conflict for floor decisions.

Ballot Initiatives and the Democratic Citizen
Mark A. Smith, University of Washington
Citizens' political attitudes are critically shaped by government institutions. Initiatives and referenda are one such institutional arrangement that may encourage the development of dispositions and skills that make for better citizens. Building upon tenets of participatory democratic theory, I hypothesize that voters who make choices on ballot measures will gain in civic abilities, but non-voters in the same states will see no increases. Moreover, the gains for voters should occur over multiple years rather then during any single election. Using the 1992 Senate Election Study that contains samples of approximately equal size from each state, I estimate the relationship between initiative use and political knowledge. The findings indicate that voters from states that heavily use initiatives show an increased capacity over the long term to correctly answer factual questions about politics.

The Impact of Campaign Appearances in the 1996 Election
J. Paul Herr, Indiana University, South Bend
This article investigates the differential impact of campaign appearances by Clinton and Dole on the outcome of the 1996 presidential election. The results of the 37 state analysis show that Clinton significantly affected the vote in the states by winning the support of voters who otherwise would have supported Dole or Perot. However, only appearances after October 1 had any impact on the state vote outcomes. Dole did not significantly affect the election outcome by his appearances in the contested states either early or late in the campaign. Neither of the major candidate's campaign appearances appeared to have any impact on voter turnout. The success by an incumbent in a strong economy suggests that campaigning can make a difference within limited parameters.