Articles:

Patterns of Representation: Dynamics of Public Preferences and Policy
Christopher Wlezien [Abstract]

A Theory of Economic Sanctions and Issue Linkage: The Roles of Preferences, Information, and Threats
Dean Lacy, Emerson M.S. Niou [Abstract]

When Does Government Limit the Impact of Voter Initiatives? The Politics of Implementation and Enforcement
Elisabeth R. Gerber, Arthur Lupia, Matthew D. McCubbins [Abstract]

"Targeted" Advertising and Voter Turnout: An Experimental Study of the 2000 Presidential Election
Joshua D. Clinton, John S. Lapinski [Abstract]

Split-Ticket Voting: The Effects of Cognitive Madisonianism
Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Richard Nadeau [Abstract]

Care Ethics and Natural Law Theory: Toward an Institutional Political Theory of Caring
Daniel Engster [Abstract]

Constituency Building in Multimember Districts: Collusion or Conflict?
Brian F. Crisp, Scott W. Desposato [Abstract]

Consumer Demand for Election News: The Horserace Sells
Shanto Iyengar, Helmut Norpoth, Kyu S. Hahn [Abstract]

Political Transaction Costs and the Politics of Administrative Design
B. Dan Wood, John Bohte [Abstract]

Democratic Hopes in the Polycentric City
Loren A. King [Abstract]

Friends, Brokers, and Transitivity: Who Informs Whom in Washington Politics?
Daniel P. Carpenter, Kevin M. Esterling, David M.J. Lazer [Abstract]

Interdependence Theory and the Measurement of International Conflict
Jon C. Pevehouse [Abstract]

The Effects of Ballot Position on Election Outcomes
Jonathan GS Koppell, Jennifer A. Steen [Abstract]

Abstracts:

Patterns of Representation: Dynamics of Public Preferences and Policy
Christopher Wlezien, University of Oxford
Much research shows that politicians represent public preferences in public policy. Although we know that there is representation, we do not understand patterns of representation in different policy areas. We do not know whether and to what extent representation varies across domains. Even where we find representation, we do not know what policymakers actually represent. This manuscript explicitly addresses these issues, focusing on a set of nine spending domains in the United States. At the heart of the manuscript is a simple conjecture: Representation varies across domains and the pattern is symmetrical to the pattern of public responsiveness to budgetary policy itself. Analysis of the relationships between opinion and policy over time in the different spending domains supports the conjecture. The patterns fit quite nicely with what we know about the influence of different issues on voting behavior in American national elections. Based on this analysis, then, it appears that politicians' responsiveness to public preferences reflects the public importance of different policy domains.

A Theory of Economic Sanctions and Issue Linkage: The Roles of Preferences, Information, and Threats
Dean Lacy, Ohio State University
Emerson Niou, Duke University
A realistic theory of economic sanctions should be built on the facts that sanctions are a game of issue linkage involving two or more issues, players may not know each other's preferences for the outcome of the game, and threatening sanctions is as important as imposing sanctions as a strategy in international disputes. The threat and use of economic sanctions are modeled as a multi-stage game of two-sided incomplete information between a target and a coercer. The threat stage is critically important for understanding the outcome of sanctions, and current empirical studies suffer from a case selection bias. Economic sanctions are likely to be imposed when they are not likely to succeed in changing the target's behavior. Sanctions that are likely to succeed will do so at the mere threat of sanctions. Despite the unlikely success of sanctions, coercers must sometimes impose sanctions, even after the threat of sanctions has failed to change the target's behavior. The theory has implications for studies of other types of coercion, such as military coercion or coercive issue linkage..

When Does Government Limit the Impact of Voter Initiatives? The Politics of Implementation and Enforcement
Elisabeth R. Gerber, University of Michigan
Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan
Matthew D. McCubbins, University of California, San Diego
In many states and localities, citizens make laws by initiative. Many winning initiatives, however, are later ignored or altered substantially. Why? Our answer emerges from two underappreciated aspects of the initiative process. First, many initiatives contain policies that powerful governmental actors once prevented from passing via traditional legislative channels. Second, implementation can require these actors to comply with policies they once opposed. The question then becomes: When do governmental actors comply with winning initiatives? We use a model and examples to clarify the post-election politics of initiative compliance. Our findings defy conventional explanations of how initiatives change public policy.

"Targeted" Advertising and Voter Turnout: An Experimental Study of the 2000 Presidential Election
Joshua D. Clinton, Princeton University
John S. Lapinski, Yale Univesity
Scholars disagree whether negative advertising demobilizes or stimulates the electorate. We use an experiment with over 10,200 eligible voters to evaluate the two leading hypotheses of negative political advertising. We extend the analysis to also examine whether advertising differentially impacts the turnout of voter sub-populations depending on the advertisement's message. In the short term, we find no evidence that exposure to negative advertisements decreases turnout and little that suggests it increases turnout. Any effect appears to depend upon the message of the advertisement and the characteristics of the viewer. In the long term, we find little evidence that the information contained in the treatment groups' advertisements is sufficient to systematically alter turnout.

Split-Ticket Voting: The Effects of Cognitive Madisonianism
Michael S. Lewis-Beck, University of Iowa
Richard Nadeau, Université de Montréal
Split-ticket voting has recently received special attention, because it provides a possible micro-level explanation for institutionally divided government. Are split-ticket voters intentional, selecting one party for president and another for Congress, in order to somehow check and balance government? A general model of split-ticket voting is specified, taking into account the important but neglected interaction effects of party, candidate quality, and incumbency. Then, cognitive Madisonian variables are incorporated, and logistic regression models estimated on 1992 and 1996 national election data. Strong cognitive Madisonian effects are found. Model Madisonians, who seek to divide power and balance policy, make up over twenty percent of the electorate, and may be largely responsible for the observed patterns of division at the aggregate level.

Care Ethics and Natural Law Theory: Toward an Institutional Political Theory of Caring
Daniel Engster, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Feminist care ethics have generally been considered too particular and situational to provide the basis for an institutional political theory. However, a number of feminist authors have recently demonstrated the applicability of care ethics to general moral and political problems. Yet they have thus far failed to outline an institutionally-based caring political theory. This article outlines such a theory by drawing upon contemporary natural law theory. It is argued that contemporary natural law theory provides a framework for formulating a caring political theory, and, alternatively, that care theory provides a foundation for justifying a form of natural law theory.

Constituency Building in Multimember Districts: Collusion or Conflict?
Brian F. Crisp, University of Arizona
Scott W. Desposato, University of Arizona
The vast majority of what we know about building prospective electoral constituencies is confined to single-member district systems. Most legislators are elected in multimember districts. Given that multiple incumbents represent the same voters, how do legislators decide whom they should target as prospective constituents? We build a general model of this decision and test it with travel data for 100 legislators elected in a single, nationwide district. We find that incumbents protect their existing supporters and avoid bailiwicks dominated by others. We conclude by deducing hypotheses about party system effects on incumbents' decision making and the level of electoral conflict.

Consumer Demand for Election News: The Horserace Sells
Shanto Iyengar, Stanford University
Helmut Norpoth, SUNY - Stony Brook
Kyu S. Hahn, Stanford University
Reports on the state of the horserace and analysis of the candidates' strategies are pervasive themes in news coverage of campaigns. Various explanations have been suggested for the dominance of strategy-oriented over hard news. The most frequently identified factors are the length of the modern campaign, the built-in conflict between journalists and campaign operatives and the pressures of the marketplace. This paper provides a test of the market hypothesis. Given access to a wide variety of news reports about the presidential campaign the weeks immediately preceding the 2000 election, we find that voters were drawn to reports on the horserace and strategy. Strategy reports proved especially popular among readers with higher levels of political engagement. In closing, we consider what journalists might to make stories about the issues more relevant and marketable.

Political Transaction Costs and the Politics of Administrative Design
B. Dan Wood, Texas A & M University
John Bohte, Oakland University
We propose a political transaction cost theory of the politics of administrative design and then evaluate the theory using data on the initial design attributes of 141 federal administrative agencies created legislatively between 1879 and 1988. The theory posits that the enacting coalition attempts to strategically manipulate administrative design attributes, and therefore political transaction costs for future coalitions seeking to affect agency policy. Based on perceptions of the probability of political holdup and resulting losses, the enacting coalition alters political transaction costs to optimize expected benefits. We gauge the perceived probability of political holdup using measures of executive-legislative conflict, coalitional conflict, electoral turnover, and party hegemony. Using structural probit analysis, the results show that these factors significantly affect agency design attributes involving structure, process, and monitoring. Thus, the statistical analysis is consistent with the theory that the enacting coalition manipulates political transaction costs in designing U.S. administrative agencies.

Democratic Hopes in the Polycentric City
Loren A. King, Brown University
The polycentric model of municipal governance suggests that multiple jurisdictions may approximate an efficient market for local public services: citizens move to jurisdictions offering services they value at tax rates they are willing and able to pay. The model is appealing to political theorists for its emphasis on free association and responsive governance, but problematic insofar as institutions prescribed by the model permit exclusionary practices and objectionable inequalities. I argue for a revised conception of polycentricity: efficient spatial patterns of boundaries and services are acceptable only if they are consistent with (inter alia) fair opportunities for both mobility and loyalty to place. This suggests a vision of the polycentric city in which fairness and contestation are as important as freedom and efficiency.

Friends, Brokers, and Transitivity: Who Informs Whom in Washington Politics?
Daniel P. Carpenter, Harvard University
Kevin M. Esterling, Brown University
David M. J. Lazer, Harvard University
Why and how do groups share information in politics? Most studies of information exchange in politics focus on individual-level attributes, and implicitly assume that communication between any two policy actors is independent of the larger communication network in which they are embedded. We develop a theory stating that the decision of any lobbyist to inform another lobbyist is heavily conditioned upon their mutual relationships to third parties. We analyze over 40,000 dyadic relationships among lobbyists, government agencies, and congressional staff using sociometric data gathered in the 1970s health and energy policy domains. The results cohere with recent findings that lobbyists disproportionately inform those with similar preferences, and show in addition that political communication is transitive: holding constant the degree of preference similarity, a lobbyist is more likely to communicate with another lobbyist if their relationship is brokered by a third party.

Interdependence Theory and the Measurement of International Conflict
Jon C. Pevehouse, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discussions of trade interdependence and its political implications occasionally discuss the operationalization of interdependence in some detail, yet the measurement of the dependent variable - international conflict - has largely been taken for granted. Because of this absence, current studies ignore the possibility that realist and liberal interpretations of the political ramifications of interdependence could both be correct. Moreover, current measures of inter--state relations allow only a partial testing of interdependence theory. I argue that events data can provide a better measurement of conflict and cooperation in testing theories of interdependence. I highlight the key theoretical claims in this debate, arguing that their predictions are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Finally, I undertake an analysis of interstate political cooperation and conflict which shows that trade has little bearing on levels of cooperation and that increased trade dependence can spur conflict, yet keep these conflicts from become endemic between trade partners.

The Effects of Ballot Position on Election Outcomes
Jonathan GS Koppell, Yale University
Jennifer A. Steen, Boston College
This paper presents evidence of name-order effects in balloting from a study of the 1998 Democratic primary in New York City, in which the order of candidates' names was rotated by precinct. In 71 of 79 individual nominating contests, candidates received a greater proportion of the vote when listed first than when listed in any other position. In seven of those 71 contests the advantage to first position exceeded the winner's margin of victory, suggesting that ballot position determined the election outcomes.