Presidential Address:

The Transformation of the Southern Democratic Party
Merle Black [Abstract]

Articles:

The Least Dangerous Branch Revisited: New Evidence on Supreme Court Responsiveness to Public Preferences
Kevin T. McGuire, James A. Stimson [Abstract]

The Elusive Ideal of Equal Citizenship: Political Theory and Political Psychology in the United States and Great Britain
Pamela Johnston Conover, Donald D. Searing, Ivor Crewe [Abstract]

Comparing Floor-Dominated and Party-Dominated Explanations of Policy Change in the House of Representatives
Cary R. Covington, Andrew A. Bargen [Abstract]

Martialing Machiavelli: Reassessing the Military Reflections
Timothy J. Lukes [Abstract]

Racial/Ethnic Diversity and Academic Quality as Components of School Choice
Kent L. Tedin, Gregory R. Weiher [Abstract]

Who Gave Soft Money? The Effect of Interest Group Resources on Political Contributions
D.E. Apollonio, Raymond J. La Raja [Abstract]

Trade Still Follows the Flag: The Primacy of Politics in a Simultaneous Model of Interdependence and Armed Conflict
Omar M.G. Keshk, Brian M. Pollins, Rafael Reuveny [Abstract]

Candidate Strategies to Prime Issues and Image
James N. Druckman, Lawrence R. Jacobs, Eric Ostermeir [Abstract]

Quota Legislation and the Election of Women: Learning From the Costa Rican Experience
Mark P. Jones [Abstract]

The Politics of Latino Education: The Biases of At-Large Elections
David L. Leal, Valerie Martinez-Ebers, Kenneth J. Meier [Abstract]

Television news, Economic Perceptions and Political Preferences in Britain, 1997-2001
David Sanders, Neil Gavin [Abstract] [Supplemental Materials]

Relative Unemployment and Gubernatorial Popularity
Jeffrey E. Cohen, James D. King [Abstract] [Supplemental Materials]

Challenger Emergence, Incumbent Success and Electoral Accountability in State Legislative Elections
Robert E. Hogan [Abstract]

Abstracts:

The Transformation of the Southern Democratic Party
Merle Black, Emory University
The transformation of the Democratic party during the past century is an important institutional change in southern politics. Once the unchallenged majority party of the region, Democrats have declined to the level of a competitive minority party in the South as majorities of white conservatives and many white moderates have abandoned it. Even more consequential changes have occurred in its racial, ethnic, and gender composition. A party originally created by racist southern white men to enhance and maintain their perceived interests has now become the political home of African-Americans, liberal and moderate whites, and Hispanics.

The Least Dangerous Branch Revisited: New Evidence on Supreme Court Responsiveness to Public Preferences
Kevin T. McGuire, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
James A. Stimson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
With competing assumptions and alternative empirical models, scholars have come to rather different conclusions about the impact of public preferences on the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Some have found the justices to be attentive to mass opinion, while others have judged it to be irrelevant. Across this divide, however, one assumption is widely shared; that is, political scientists generally agree upon how best to measure the Court's outputs. In this analysis, we employ an alternative estimate of the justices' liberalism, one which we think better reflects the underlying ideological tenor of their policies. With data from 1953 to 1996, we compare time series models using different indicators of the Supreme Court's aggregate liberalism. Our results suggest that, in addition to being motivated by their own preferences, the justices are highly responsive to public mood, as well.

The Elusive Ideal of Equal Citizenship: Political Theory and Political Psychology in the United States and Great Britain
Pamela Johnston Conover, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Donald D. Searing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ivor Crewe, University of Essex
It is a fundamental ideal of liberal democracy that all citizens should enjoy fully equal citizenship. Yet many minorities are still routinely ignored, excluded, patronized and not regarded as full members of the political community. This denial of equal standing undermines their equal citizenship. Liberalism and Cultural Pluralism each advocate strategies to improve this situation. Their arguments build upon expectations about how citizens should, can and do understand membership in the political community. Our survey and focus group data from six matched communities in the United States and Great Britain show how citizens’ understandings of membership in the political community incorporate communitarian attitudes that impede the liberal and cultural pluralist projects.

Comparing Floor-Dominated and Party-Dominated Explanations of Policy Change in the House of Representatives
Cary R. Covington, University of Iowa
Andrew A. Bargen, University of Iowa
We test two explanations of the legislative process for their ability to account for the ideological pattern of policy change produced by bills enacted by the House of Representatives, 1953--1996. The Floor-Dominated explanation argues that the floor's median member largely determines legislative outcomes, while the Party-Dominated explanation claims that power for the majority party. We develop three measures of the ideological pattern of policy change and independent variables that reflect the predictions of the two explanations. While we find support for both explanations, the greater significance, both substantively and statistically, of the Party-Dominated explanation leads us to conclude that the House's agenda-setting process is largely controlled by the majority party.

Martialing Machiavelli: Reassessing the Military Reflections
Timothy J. Lukes, Santa Clara University
In Chapter 14 of The Prince, Machiavelli advises his protégé to "never lift thought" from the exercise of war. Yet he says in Chapter 19 that the people are now more formidable than the military and must be attended more energetically. This essay resolves what seems to be a contradiction of priorities. The resolution first requires an extraction of Machiavelli from two concepts of humanism, both of which oversimplify his reflections on war. The essay then demonstrates that Machiavelli so thoroughly integrates military and civil concerns that they become indistinguishable. To "think about the exercise of war" demands thinking about things outside conventional military affairs. Thus, rather than unsettling departures, Machiavelli's military reflections are helpful complements to his civil discourse.

Racial/Ethnic Diversity and Academic Quality as Compenents of School Choice
Kent L. Tedin, University of Houston
Gregory R. Weiher, University of Houston
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 of 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".

Who Gave Soft Money? The Effect of Interest Group Resources on Political Contributions
D.E. Apollonio, University of California, San Francisco
Raymond J. La Raja, University of Masachusetts
We consider the effect of various organizational resources on political contributions. Using a unique data set of soft money contributors from 1997-1998, our resource-based model examines how capital, membership, and experience influence the decision to give money to political parties. By observing decision-making in a relatively unconstrained regulatory environment typified by the soft money regime, we demonstrate the conventional wisdom that financial resources determine the size of political contributions. Financial wealth, however, does not predict whether an organization will make a contribution in the first place. Instead, we show that a lack of alternative resources makes it more likely that organizations will spend money on politics. These findings have important implications for determining who benefits under various campaign finance rules.

Trade Still Follows the Flag: The Primacy of Politics in a Simultaneous Model of Interdependence and Armed Conflict
Omar M.G. Keshk, The Ohio State University
Brian M. Pollins, The Ohio State University
Rafael Reuveny, Indiana University
While many scholars have posited a simultaneous relationship between trade and conflict, very few empirical studies have specified the relationship as such. Those that did employed samples that were relatively limited in spatial-temporal coverage. None have employed conflict indicators based on Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data due to the difficulty of including discrete dependent variables in a simultaneous equation framework. We overcome both limitations in this study and offer results with important theoretical implications. In line with the most recent, published studies, we design our model to "condition" the estimates on recent histories of dyadic trade and conflict. We apply Maddala's estimator which is designed for a two equation system in which one endogenous variable is continuous and the other is dichotomous. While the signs of all control variable coefficients match those reported in mainstream trade-conflict literature, our main result does not. We find what we call the "primacy of politics"; i.e., that conflict indeed inhibits trade while the effect of dyadic interdependence on the likelihood of conflict is statistically insignificant. Extensive sensitivity analyses show the results to be consistent across estimators as well as alternative model specifications and trade data sets. We conclude that Liberal claims about interdependence and conflict may be problematic.

Candidate Strategies to Prime Issues and Image
James N. Druckman, University of Minnesota
Lawrence R. Jacobs, University of Minnesota
Eric Ostermeier, University of Minnesota
A burgeoning literature shows that campaigns exert substantial influence on voters by priming selected policy issues. We extend this research by offering a framework that (1) incorporates a model of campaign image priming, and (2) describes the political conditions that shape campaign priming strategies. We test our framework in the context of Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign. Using internal campaign memoranda, Nixon's private public opinion polls, and a comprehensive content analysis of Nixon's public statements, we find that Nixon engaged in both issue and image priming. Specifically, White House polling reports of strong public support for particular domestic policy positions prompted Nixon to subsequently prime those issues and positions. Moreover, poll reports of negative evaluations of his personality traits led Nixon to emphasize foreign policy issues so as to convey an impression of his competence and strength. We conclude that candidates tailor issue and image priming strategies to the parameters of public opinion and the strategic opportunities offered by the political conditions of their time.

Quota Legislation and the Election of Women: Learning From the Costa Rican Experience
Mark P. Jones, Rice University
National quota legislation is theoretically unrivaled in its ability to substantially increase the number of women legislators elected. However, not all legislation is equally effective in achieving this goal. In order to improve scholarly understanding of the effect of quota legislation on the election of women, this study takes advantage of a unique quasi-experiment provided by Costa Rica, which over the past ten years employed three distinct forms of quota legislation. Evidence from Costa Rica suggests that to achieve optimal effectiveness, quota legislation must require political parties to place a minimum percentage of women on their lists, as well as mandate these placements be in electable positions.

The Politics of Latino Education: The Biases of At-Large Elections
David L. Leal, The University of Texas at Austin
Valerie Martinez-Ebers, Texas Christian University
Kenneth J. Meier, Texas A&M University
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.

Television news, Economic Perceptions and Political Preferences in Britain, 1997-2001
David Sanders, University of Essex
Neil Gavin, University of Liverpool
The paper seeks to establish a simple three-stage argument. It is argued, first, that the critical proximate economic source of party preferences is heavily valenced-- that what matters most to voters are the relative economic management capabilities of the main rival parties. Second, these ‘valenced' perceptions of party competence are themselves derived primarily from voters' economic evaluations, and in particular from their personal prospective evaluations. Third, these evaluations derive more from the way in which the media, and in particular television news programmes, present economic developments than they do from ‘objective' changes in the ‘real' economy. These propositions are tested against monthly time-series data drawn from the UK during the first period of New Labour government, 1997-2001. The dataset employed combines aggregate-level opinion poll data, ‘objective' measures of the macro-economy, and data derived from a systematic content analysis of television news coverage of the economy. The empirical results provide preliminary support for all three propositions.

Relative Unemployment and Gubernatorial Popularity
Jeffrey E. Cohen, Fordham University
James D. King, University of Wyoming
Considerable debate exists over whether the public holds the governor accountable for the state's economy. Part of the controversy stems from weak design and limitations in data, but part also stems from weakness in theory. We argue that voters recognize the limitations of state governments to affect the state economy and that they judge their governors on the state's unemployment situation relative to the unemployment situation of the national economy. To test this theory we use the Official State Job Approval Ratings (JAR) database. Our analysis finds that citizens grade the governor's job performance consistent with our theory: No matter the level of unemployment in the state, when state unemployment is lower than the national average, governors are rewarded, when it is higher than the national average, governors are punished with lower approval levels.

Challenger Emergence, Incumbent Success and Electoral Accountability in State Legislative Elections
Robert E. Hogan, Louisiana State University
This analysis examines the influence of state, district, and candidate-level factors on the re-election prospects of state legislative incumbents. Campaigns in 14 states over two election cycles (1996 and 1998) are used to determine how various conditions result in the likelihood that incumbents are challenged, the strength of the challenge they face, and the percentage of the vote they receive in contested elections. A major concern is determining the influence of policy responsiveness of incumbents relative to institutional characteristics (e.g., legislative professionalism) and district-level conditions (e.g., past winning vote percentage). What role does each set of factors play and at what point in the election process are their effects realized? Findings show that institutional and district factors are strong determinants of both the likelihood of a challenge as well as the strength of a challenge. Policy responsiveness of incumbents has a small influence, mostly on voter support. Overall, the findings provide insight into the factors responsible for incumbent success and electoral competition in state legislative elections.

Supplemental Materials:

The links shown below contain supplemental material for articles that appear in The Journal of Politics. The materials are presented exactly as they were provided by the authors. Neither The JOP Editor nor the Southern Political Science Association takes any responsibility for problems that may arise from the use of these materials (e.g., computer code, datasets, etc.). All inquiries and comments regarding these files and their contents should be directed to the appropriate authors.

Supplements for "Television news, Economic Perceptions and Political Preferences in Britain, 1997-2001"
David Sanders, Neil Gavin
Supplemental Appendix
Codebook
Data (Comma Delimited)
Data (Excel)