Notes from the Editor:

Concerns and Innovations
William G. Jacoby [Text, PDF format]

Articles:

Beyond the Demand-Input Model: A Theory of Representational Linkages
Patricia A. Hurley, Kim Quaile Hill [Abstract]

Reassessing the "Race to the Bottom" in State Welfare Policy
William D. Berry, Richard C. Fording, Russell L. Hanson [Abstract]

Pious Princes and Red-Hot Lovers: The Politics of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"
Jerry Weinberger [Abstract]

Domestic Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy: A Study of Cold War Conflict Behavior
Will H. Moore, David J. Lanoue [Abstract]

Why Do White Americans Support the Death Penalty?
Joe Soss, Laura Langbein, Alan R. Metelko [Abstract]

The Relationship Between Independence and Judicial Review in Post-Communist Courts
Erik S. Herron, Kirk A. Randazzo [Abstract]

The Incentive to Listen: Progressive Ambition, Resources and Opinion Monitoring Among State Legislators
Cherie Maestas [Abstract]

A Promise Fulfilled? Open Primaries and Representation
Karen M. Kaufman, James G. Gimpel, Adam H. Hoffman [Abstract]

Reexamining the Dynamic Model of Divided Partisan Government
Andrea McAtee, Susan Webb Yackee, David Lowery [Abstract]

Party Differences in State Budget Outcomes Are There After All: Response to "Reexamining the Dynamic Model of Divided Partisan Government"
James E. Alt, Robert C. Lowry [Abstract]

Investigating the Incidence of Killer Amendments in Congress
Jeffrey A. Jenkins, Michael C. Munger [Abstract]

You Take the High Road and I'll Take the Low Road? The Interplay of Attack Strategies and Tactics in Presidential Campaigns
Lee Sigelman, Emmett H. Buell, Jr. [Abstract]

A New Approach for Testing Budgetary Incrementalism
Hashem Dezhbakhsh, Soumaya M. Tohamy, Peter H. Aranson [Abstract]

The Power of Television Images: The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate Revisited
James N. Druckman [Abstract]

Political Violence and Presidential Approval in Peru
Moisés Arce [Abstract]

Abstracts:

Beyond the Demand-Input Model: A Theory of Representational Linkages
Patricia A. Hurley, Texas A&M University
Kim Quaile Hill, Texas A&M University
We offer a theory of the direction and nature of representational linkages between constituents and their elected representatives based on two attributes of issues: their complexity and their relationship to the lines of partisan cleavage. We show that the theory is compatible with the existing evidence on representation and then offer results of tests of new predictions from the theory for both simple and complex party-defining issues. For additional evidence of the dyadic basis of these findings we also show that the strength of the observed linkages varies in accordance with theoretical expectations about the seniority of members of Congress and, for senators, recency of election. We also explain how the theory can account for a number of seemingly contradictory empirical findings in the large literature on policy representation and how it allows scholars to make precise predictions about the characteristics of representational linkages.

Reassessing the "Race to the Bottom" in State Welfare Policy
William D. Berry, Florida State University
Richard C. Fording, University of Kentucky
Russell L. Hanson, Indiana University, Bloomington
On the assumption that poor people migrate to obtain better welfare benefits, the magnet hypothesis predicts that a state's poverty rate increases when its welfare benefit rises faster than benefits in surrounding states. The benefit competition hypothesis proposes that states lower welfare benefits to avoid attracting the poor from neighboring states. Previous investigations, which yield support for these propositions, suffer from weaknesses in model specification and methodology. We correct these deficiencies in a simultaneous equation model including a state's poverty rate and its benefit level for AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) as endogenous variables. We estimate the model using pooled annual data for the American states from 1960 to 1990, and find that a state's poverty rate does not jump significantly when its welfare payments outpace benefits in neighboring states. Neither is there any evidence of vigorous benefit competition among states; states respond to decreases in neighboring states' welfare benefits with only small adjustments in their own.

Pious Princes and Red-Hot Lovers: The Politics of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
Jerry Weinberger, Michigan State University
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is obviously a tragedy of impetuous young love. But it is also a play about politics, especially politics as conditioned by Christian morality and religion. The play's action is determined by the conflict between secular and priestly authority, and by the complex interaction among mercy, love, and punishment as practiced by Escalus, Prince of Verona, and Friar Laurence, the Franciscan. In the course of this action, the Veronese regime is transformed, and the common good determined, in ways more compatible with the friar's interests than with those of the Prince. Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare's pictures of the unique problems that determined modern, as opposed to ancient, political life.

Domestic Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy: A Study of Cold War Conflict Behavior
Will H. Moore, The Florida State University
David J. Lanoue, University of Alabama
This study re-examines an empirical claim that is broadly accepted in international relations: during the Cold War US foreign policy belligerence was influenced strongly by domestic factors. We develop a rational expectations theory that produces hypotheses that are at odds with that result. We test our hypotheses and report findings that are both consistent with our rational expectations theory and inconsistent with the ‘domestic effects' hypothesis. We thus conclude that international politics, rather than domestic politics, was the primary determinant of US foreign policy behavior during the Cold War.

Why Do White Americans Support the Death Penalty?
Joe Soss, American University
Laura Langbein, American University
Alan R. Metelko, American University
This paper explores the roots of white support for capital punishment in the United States. Our analysis addresses individual-level and contextual factors, paying particular attention to how racial attitudes and racial composition influence white support for capital punishment. Our findings suggest that white support hinges on a range of attitudes wider than prior research has indicated, including social and governmental trust and individualist and authoritarian values. Extending individual-level analyses, we also find that white responses to capital punishment are sensitive to local context. Perhaps most important, our results clarify the impact of race in two ways. First, racial prejudice emerges here as a comparatively strong predictor of white support for the death penalty. Second, black residential proximity functions to polarize white opinion along lines of racial attitude. As the black percentage of county residents rises, so too does the impact of racial prejudice on white support for capital punishment.

The Relationship Between Independence and Judicial Review in Post-Communist Courts
Erik S. Herron, University of Kansas
Kirk A. Randazzo, Michigan State University
Following the collapse of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, constitutional designers codified rules establishing independent judiciaries. To what degree do these constitutional and statutory guarantees of independence reflect the actual behavior of courts? Our analysis demonstrates that official judicial power does not predict expressions of judicial review – overturning legislation in whole or in part. Rather, exogenous factors influence the likelihood that courts will nullify laws, including economic conditions, executive power, identity of the litigants and legal issues. Our findings should caution both scholars and institutional designers. Both formal and informal factors create the parameters in which courts operate. Although courts have become more powerful institutions in the post-communist era, they face a diverse set of constraints on independent action.

The Incentive To Listen: Progressive Ambition, Resources and Opinion Monitoring Among State Legislators
Cherie Maestas, Texas Tech University
This paper argues that political ambitions combined with the resources offered by professional legislatures can enhance the prospects for representation of citizen interests because ambitious legislators have strong incentives to closely monitor constituent opinions while they wait for a strategic opportunity to run for higher office. The effect of ambition for higher office should be especially pronounced in professional legislatures that provide members with high salaries, staff, and office budgets to aid their efforts. The relationship between ambition, legislative professionalism and behavior are tested using data drawn from a survey of upper and lower chamber members in eight state legislatures. The results show that legislators who are progressively ambitious spend more time monitoring public opinion than legislators who are non-ambitious or statically ambitious and that legislative resources augment this effect.

A Promise Fulfilled? Open Primaries and Representation
Karen M. Kaufmann, University of Maryland, College Park
James G. Gimpel, University of Maryland, College Park
Adam H. Hoffman, University of Maryland, College Park
Academics and political practitioners alike have long concerned themselves with the representativeness of primary electorates. Hoping to moderate the ideological extremity of primary voters, state parties have increasingly adopted more open primary eligibility rules. This paper explores the extent to which open and modified-open primaries actually attract a more representative electorate than their closed counterparts. Using state-level exit poll data from 1988 through 2000, we compare the ideological, age and income representation of primary electorates with general election voters. We find that open primaries result in the ideological convergence of the parties' primary electorates, although the extent of this convergence is contingent upon the candidate choices within individual election years. Notably, open primaries are responsible for the inclusion of younger participants in both parties' primaries. And while reformed primary structure may weaken party control over the nomination process, it clearly results in more moderate and more representative primary electorates.

Reexamining the Dynamic Model of Divided Partisan Government
Andrea McAtee, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Susan Webb Yackee, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
David Lowery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
We reexamine the dynamic model of divided partisan government in the American states developed by Alt and Lowry (2000), a model that purports to provide strong evidence that patterns of partisan control of state government institutions have a substantial impact on state revenues. But given the complexity of the model, many of its key implications are not as obvious as they might be. Further, several of these nonobvious implications are, if not implausible, at least inconsistent in light of the larger theory Alt and Lowry explore. We argue, therefore, that the specification of the model is as yet incomplete and both needs and merits further work.

Party Differences in State Budget Outcomes Are There After All: Response to "Reexamining the Dynamic Model of Divided Partisan Government"
James E. Alt, Harvard University
Robert C. Lowry, Iowa State University
Alt and Lowry (2000) show that Democrats generally target more of state income for public budgets than do Republicans, though exact party positions vary from state to state, and unified governments adjust faster than divided. McAtee, Yackee and Lowery (2003) question these results. However, their estimated revenue changes ignore income shares, usually set independent variables equal to sample rather than subsample means, and omit some fixed effects. Modeling short run changes during transitions must take note of different conditions under which different partisan configurations assume power. When their estimates do this, predicted revenue changes relative to income line up as we expected. Their analysis raises other issues regarding polarization and the distribution of partisan configurations across space and time that merit further investigation.

Investigating the Incidence of Killer Amendments in Congress
Jeffery A. Jenkins, Northwestern University
Michael C. Munger, Duke University
While much empirical research has been devoted to the study of "killer amendments" in recent years, few studies have explicitly examined the theoretical foundations of the phenomenon. The goal of this paper is to investigate why some killer amendment attempts are successful, when theory suggests that they should always fail. More specifically, we examine the practical political constraints on legislators' abilities to neutralize the imminent threat of killer amendments through sophisticated voting. We also present two new cases, both occurring during the Reconstruction era, in which killer amendments were used successfully. In the end, our findings support previous research on all successful killer amendments detailed in the congressional literature: race was the issue under consideration at the amendment stage.

You Take the High Road and I'll Take the Low Road? The Interplay of Attack Strategies and Tactics in Presidential Campaigns
Lee Sigelman, George Washington University
Emmett H. Buell, Jr., Denison University
Formal models and conventional wisdom converge on the idea that the strategy and tactics of major-party opponents in presidential campaigns should vary as a function of the competitive situation in which the two sides find themselves. That idea forms the core of our interpretation of the circumstances underlying negative campaigning. We test it by analyzing the statements of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the campaigns of 1960 through 2000. The data are consistent with our interpretation. Strategically, tickets were most likely to go on the attack in races in which they were running far behind. Tactically, vice-presidential candidates were most likely to out-attack their presidential running-mates in races in which their ticket was running far ahead. Close contests in which neither side enjoyed a clear or enduring lead seemed to complicate strategic choices for both tickets and thereby to confound the tactics of presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

A New Approach for Testing Budgetary Incrementalism
Hashem Dezhbakhsh, Emory University
Soumaya M. Tohamy, Berry College
Peter H. Aranson, Emory University
We present evidence suggesting that the widely used regression method for testing budgetary incrementalism (Davis, Dempster, and Wildavsky, 1966a; 1966b; 1971) is not suited for U.S. Budgetary data that appear to be nonstationary. The method, moreover, cannot detect a nonincremental period following (or preceding) an incremental period. We offer an alternative method that is valid even in nonstationary cases. Our method exploits both the cross sectional and time series characteristics of the budgetary data to identify statistically the occurrence of incremental decisions (counts) and to estimate incremental cycles for various agencies. More importantly, the method lends itself to explanatory hypotheses testing. We formulate a set of hypotheses about how various political and economic factors may affect incremental budgeting. We test these hypotheses using the estimated counts in a Poisson regression context. Our results suggest that the Democrats' control over the political process, a switch in the party controlling the White House or Congress, and presidential election year promises (and political vulnerabilities) all cause departures from incremental budgeting. The public pressure resulting from a persistently large deficit has a similar effect. This work may contribute to our understanding of legislative choice.

The Power of Television Images: The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate Revisited
James N. Druckman, University of Minnesota
How does television affect political behavior? I address this question by describing an experiment where participants either watched a televised version of the first Kennedy- Nixon debate or listened to an audio version. I used this debate in part because, despite popular conceptions, there is no extant evidence that television images had any impact on audience reactions. I find that television images have significant effects -- they affect overall debate evaluations, prime people to rely more on personality perceptions in their evaluations, and enhance what people learn. Television images matter in politics, and may have indeed played an important role in the first Kennedy-Nixon debate.

Political Violence and Presidential Approval in Peru
Moisés Arce, Louisiana State University
Using monthly presidential approval data for the period between 1985 and 1997 for two presidencies, I analyze the impact of political violence on presidential approval in Peru. While controlling for variables commonly used in the economic voting literature, the results suggest that higher levels of political violence hurt left-leaning governments, but not necessarily right-leaning governments. It is likely that voters expect right-leaning governments to deal better with political violence in general, and thus are more supportive of their efforts.