Articles:

James C. Garand, "Integration and Fragmentation in Political Science: Exploring Patterns of Scholarly Communication in a Divided Discipline"[More]

Jeffrey W. Ladewig, "Conditional Party Government and the Homogeneity of Constituent Interests"[More]

James N. Druckman and Michael Parkin, "The Impact of Media Bias: How Editorial Slant Affects Voters"[More]

Ernesto Calvo and Juan Pablo Micozzi, "The Governor’s Backyard: A Seat-Vote Model of Electoral Reform for Subnational Multiparty Races"[More]

Andrew J. Enterline and J. Michael Greig, "Beacons of Hope? The Impact of Imposed Democracy on Regional Peace, Democracy And Prosperity"[More]

Jeff Yates and Richard C. Fording, "Politics and State Punitiveness in Black and White"[More]

Arthur Lupia and Tasha S. Philpot, "Views from Inside the Net: How Websites Affect Young Adults’ Political Interest"[More]

Fredrick C. Harris, Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, and Brian D. McKenzie, "Macro-Dynamics of Black Political Participation in the Post-Civil Rights Era"[More]

M. Kent Jennings and Ning Zhang, "Generations, Political Status, and Collective Memories in the Chinese Countryside"[More]

Garry Young and William B. Perkins, "Presidential Rhetoric, the Public Agenda, and the End of Presidential Television's 'Golden Age'"[More]

John D. Griffin and Brian Newman, "Are Voters Better Represented?"[More]

Katherine Barbieri and Rafael Reuveny, "Economic Globalization and Civil War"[More]

Michael D. Martinez and Jeff Gill, "The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes in U.S. Presidential Elections 1960-2000"[More]

B. Guy Peters, Jon Pierre, and Desmond S. King, "The Politics of Path Dependency: Political Conflict in Historical Institutionalism"[More]

Abstracts and Files:

Integration and Fragmentation in Political Science: Exploring Patterns of Scholarly Communication in a Divided Discipline
James C. Garand, Louisiana State University
Address [PDF]
 

Political science is generally thought of as a discipline with strong divisions and often-intense patterns of disagreement, most of which are driven by political scientists’ subfield and methodological orientations. In this address I explore subfield and methodological cleavages in political science as they relate to patterns of scholarly communication—in particular, in how political scientists differ in the value that they give to various political science journals. Using survey data on political scientists’ assessments of quality, familiarity, and impact for 115 political science journals (Garand and Giles, 2003), I find that political scientists differ in their rankings of the elite journals in the discipline, depending on subfield and, to a lesser extent, methodological approach. However, based on correlations and factor analyses, there is strong coherence in how political scientists from different subfield and methodological groups rank the full range of political science journals. Finally, I model journal evaluations and familiarity as a function of subfield and methodology variables. These results suggest that there are moderate subfield and methodology effects in how political scientists evaluate political science journals, but there are stronger effects of these variables in terms of political scientists’ levels of familiarity with these journals. I conclude by discussing the implications of observed cleavages in scholarly communication for the fragmentation and integration of the political science discipline.

Conditional Party Government and the Homogeneity of Constituent Interests
Jeffrey W. Ladewig, University of Connecticut


The Impact of Media Bias: How Editorial Slant Affects Voters
James N. Druckman, Northwestern University
Michael Parkin, University of Minnesota


The Governor’s Backyard: A Seat-Vote Model of Electoral Reform for Subnational Multiparty Races
Ernesto Calvo, University of Houston
Juan Pablo Micozzi, Rice University
Model [PDF]
Program [PDF]
Program Info [PDF]
Data 1 [DTA]
Data 2 [DTA]
 
The conditional party government (CPG) theory posits that political parties will be strong when they are polarized and homogeneous. The homogeneity of the parties is generated from the homogeneity of constituent coalitions. However, these root causes of constituent interests have remained largely untested. By focusing on trade policy issues, we can provide one such test, albeit limited, because the level of factor mobility a priori defines constituent interests and the relative homogeneity of constituent coalitions. Using ideal point estimation and an originally compiled dataset of constituent economic demographics at the level of U.S. House districts from 1963 to 1992, I confirm the constituent foundations of the conditional party government theory for trade policy and add factor mobility to the secular trends that has contributed to the decline and resurgence of American political parties.

 We investigate how editorial slant – defined as the quantity and tone of a newspaper’s candidate coverage as influenced by its editorial position – shapes candidate evaluations and vote choice. We avoid various methodological pitfalls by focusing on a single Senate campaign in a single market with two competing, editorially distinct newspapers. Combining comprehensive content analyses of the papers with an Election Day exit poll, we assess the slant of campaign coverage and its effects on voters. We find compelling evidence that editorial slant influences voters’ decisions. Our results raise serious questions about the media’s place in democratic processes. 

Evaluating the fairness of electoral reforms is a critical requirement for electoral accountability in any democracy. There is, however, no research measuring the expected seat benefit for incumbent reformers in newly democratized countries. Much of this delay is due to the technical difficulties of generalizing previous seat-vote models to multiparty races, a problem that has limited both sub-national and cross-national comparisons of electoral regime change. Using a multi-level bayesian model we solve this analytical problem and produce comparable estimates of partisan bias and majoritarian bias across the Argentine provinces. Our model estimates the effect of reforms across many electoral regimes and can be applied to comparative analyses of electoral reforms within and across countries. In the particular case of Argentina, we show large seat premiums for incumbent parties initiating electoral reforms.

Beacons of Hope? The Impact of Imposed Democracy on Regional Peace, Democracy And Prosperity
Andrew J. Enterline, University of North Texas
J. Michael Greig, University of North Texas


Politics and State Punitiveness in Black and White
Jeff Yates, University of Georgia
Richard C. Fording, University of Kentucky
Appendix [PDF]
 

In 2003, American policymakers linked the democratization of Iraq with greater peace, democracy, and prosperity in the Middle East. We elaborate this regional-level policy argument theoretically and test it empirically on a global sample of states for the twentieth century. We differentiate the impact of fully and weakly democratic externally, imposed polities (“bright” versus “dim” beacons, respectively) on regional interstate war, democratization, and economic growth. We conclude that (1) bright beacons reduce, while dim beacons increase, war; (2) bright beacons do not stimulate democratization, while dim beacons undermine democratization; and (3) bright beacons stimulate prosperity, while dim beacons undermine prosperity.

 Recent findings from the literature on imprisonment policy suggest that in addition to traditional social and economic variables, imprisonment rates are also strongly related to changes in the state political environment. In this study, we extend this literature by testing a theory of state punitiveness which posits that (1) the political environment of states influences the degree to which they incarcerate their citizens, and (2) the political determinants of state punitiveness may be conditional upon the racial sub-population being incarcerated. Our results suggest that increases in state political conservatism in recent decades have contributed to increases in both the growth in black imprisonment rates and black imprisonment disparity (relative to whites), but that these effects are, to a degree, tempered by countervailing political conditions.

Views from Inside the Net: How Websites Affect Young Adults’ Political Interest
Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan
Tasha S. Philpot, The University of Texas at Austin


Macro-Dynamics of Black Political Participation in the Post-Civil Rights Era
Fredrick C. Harris, University of Rochester
Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, University of Rochester
Brian D. McKenzie, Texas A&M University
Research on black political life has demonstrated both the positive effects of black political empowerment and the negative effects of economic and social distress on black political participation. Using black respondents from the Roper Social and Political Trends data set, we estimate the effects of political, social, and economic factors on aggregate-levels of black civic activity in the time period from 1973 to 1994. We hypothesize that black political activity is stimulated by factors that enhance the political empowerment of black communities and is depressed by downward turns in the social and economic fortunes of black communities. We find that the positive influence of black political empowerment on macro-levels of black civic activity is countered by economic and social factors that swamp the benefits gained from black political success.

Generations, Political Status, and Collective Memories in the Chinese Countryside
M. Kent Jennings, University of California, Santa Barbara
Ning Zhang, University of California, Santa Barbara


Presidential Rhetoric, the Public Agenda, and the End of Presidential Television's 'Golden Age'
Garry Young , George Washington University
William B. Perkins, University of Missouri-Columbia
Appendix [PDF]
Data [XLS]
 
We use multiple methods to examine how individual websites affect political interest (i.e., citizens’ willingness to pay attention to politics at the expense of other endeavors). Our model clarifies necessary conditions for a website to increase political interest. A survey then reveals age-related and site-specific interest changes that are consistent with the model’s logic. Respondents of all ages report greater political interest after viewing sites that they rate as effective and efficient than they do after viewing other sites. Age-related interest effects occur because young and old disagree about which sites have these desired attributes. This work makes two contributions: our methods offer a template for understanding the influence of participatory appeals while our finding can help political entrepreneurs engage young adults more effectively.

 Interviews with a probability sample of villagers and with local cadres in four counties are used to explore their collective memories based on self-reports about the most important events over the past half century. As expected, public events dominate these memories, with the cadres citing party and state-related occurrences relatively more often than do the villagers. Generational effects reflecting the impact of events occurring during one’s formative years are especially pronounced among the villagers. The absence of marked generational differences with respect to memories about the reform era is due to the prolonged experiencing of the long era by virtually all extant birth cohorts. Specific memories are associated with relevant political attitudes, especially among the cadres. Comparisons with reports based on other countries illustrate both the commonalties and the singularities of the Chinese results.

 The rise of alternative viewing choices, brought about by the spread of cable television, has effectively reduced the audience for major presidential addresses. Has this change moderated the influence of major presidential speeches on public opinion? After examining the period from 1954-2002, we provide evidence that the impact of presidential rhetoric in State of the Union addresses on public opinion has diminished as cable has flourished.

Are Voters Better Represented?
John D. Griffin, University of Notre Dame
Brian Newman, Pepperdine University
Appendix [PDF]
 

Studies of political participation and representation often contend that elected officials respond more to the preferences of voters than those of nonvoters, but seldom test this claim. This is a critical assumption because if true, biases in who participates will lead to biased representation. Office holders might respond disproportionately to voters’ preferences because voters tend to select like-minded representatives, voters tend to communicate their preferences more, and only voters can re-elect representatives. We find that voter preferences predict the aggregate roll call behavior of Senators while nonvoter preferences do not. We also present evidence supporting the three explanations advanced to account for the preferential treatment of voters.

Economic Globalization and Civil War
Katherine Barbieri, University of South Carolina
Rafael Reuveny, Indiana University
Appendix [PDF]
Data 1 [XLS]
Data 2 [DTA]
Data 3 [DTA] 
 
In recent decades, the number of countries with ongoing civil wars, and the share of these countries in the international system have increased dramatically. At the same time, the scope of economic globalization has also increased. Are these trends related? The theoretical literature on the determinants of civil wars presents conflicting views about the effects of globalization on such wars. One view expects economic globalization to reduce the likelihood of civil wars, ceteris paribus. A second view expects the opposite. A third view implies that globalization does not necessarily affect the likelihood of civil war. Progress in assessing the validity of these arguments requires confronting them with data. However, so far economic globalization has been included as a control variable in a very small number of studies, and only trade was inspected. This paper statistically investigates the effect of several aspects of globalization on civil war from a large N, time-series, cross-sectional sample. The occurrence of civil war is measured in two ways: the presence of civil war (or, civil war prevalence) and the breakdown of civil war (or, civil war onset). Economic globalization is measured by the flows of trade, foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and Internet use. We find that economic forms of globalization reduce the likelihood of civil war; but that Internet use does not affect its likelihood. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of these findings for public policy and for future research.

The Effects of Turnout on Partisan Outcomes in U.S. Presidential Elections 1960-2000
Michael D. Martinez, University of Florida
Jeff Gill, University of California - Davis


The Politics of Path Dependency: Political Conflict in Historical Institutionalism
B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh
Jon Pierre, University of Gothenberg
Desmond S. King, St. John’s College, Oxford University

It is commonly believed by pundits and political elites that higher turnout favors Democratic candidates, but the extant research is inconsistent in finding this effect. The purpose of this article is to provide scholars with a methodology for assessing the likely effects of turnout on an election outcome using simulations based on survey data. By varying simulated turnout rates for five U.S. elections from 1960 to 2000, we observe that Democratic advantages from higher turnout (and Republica advantages from lower turnout) have steadily ebbed since 1960, corresponding to the erosion of class cleavages in U.S. elections.

 The conventional critique of institutional theory, and especially historical institutionalism, is that it is incapable of coping with change. We argue for the importance of political conflict as a means of initiating change in an institutionalist framework. In particular, conflict over ideas and the underlying assumptions of policy is important for motivating change. We demonstrate the viability of this argument with examples of institutional change.