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Full-Text Articles in Other Political Science

When Made To Choose: Cross-Pressured Republican Senators And George W. Bush’S Private Account Plan, José Villalobos Dec 2005

When Made To Choose: Cross-Pressured Republican Senators And George W. Bush’S Private Account Plan, José Villalobos

José D. Villalobos

President George W. Bush's "60 Stops in 60 Days" Social Security reform tour provides a best-test case study of high transparency where presidential persuasion, public opinion, and member self-interests clash amid continual media coverage. Whereas most research is limited to roll call voting, this study provides a thorough and unprecedented examination of representative attendance and position-taking by introducing a new unit of analysis -- the presidential stop. I focus on Republican Senators who are cross-pressured between growing negative public opinion and loyalty to the president. Utilizing fractional polynomial logit analysis, I re-test hypotheses about presidential and public opinion influence on …


Punctuated Equilibrium In Limbo: The Tobacco Lobby And U.S. State Policy Making From 1990 To 2003, Michael S. Givel Dec 2005

Punctuated Equilibrium In Limbo: The Tobacco Lobby And U.S. State Policy Making From 1990 To 2003, Michael S. Givel

Michael S. Givel

Since the mid-1980s, U.S. tobacco policy has been an intense and acrimonious issue between antitobacco advocates and the tobacco industry. In the United States, the tobacco industry has responded to heightened state antitobacco litigation, adverse public opinion, and public health advocacy by aggressively mobilizing against tobacco taxes and regulations. This article examines whether these tobacco policy trends can be generalized to punctuated equilibrium theory ideas that policy monopolies are stable over long periods and usually change because of sharp and short-term exogenous shocks to the policy system. From 1990 to 2003, there was a sharp mobilization by health advocates in …


How Society Makes Itself: The Evolution Of Political And Economic Institutions, Howard J. Sherman Dec 2005

How Society Makes Itself: The Evolution Of Political And Economic Institutions, Howard J. Sherman

HOWARD J SHERMAN

This radical account of the evolution of political, social, and economic institutions weaves together strands of anthropology, sociology, political science, history, and economics. In a highly readable text, Howard Sherman explains the interconnections of ideas and economic forces, and traces the evolution of social and economic institutions from primitive times to the present. Sherman focuses on the myth of "inevitable progress" in technology, and argues that it progresses only when social and economic institutions and dominant ideas encourage it to improve. He shows that throughout history technology, as a part of the economic forces, ebbs and flows to create or …