Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Piling On Palin, Hating On Hillary, Caroline Heldman

Caroline Heldman

No abstract provided.

Eloquence And Reason: Creating A First Amendment Culture, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This book presents a general theory to explain how the words in the Constitution become culturally salient ideas, inscribed in the habits and outlooks of ordinary Americans. "Eloquence and Reason" employs the First Amendment as a case study to illustrate that liberty is achieved through the formation of a common language and a set of organizing beliefs. The book explicates the structure of First Amendment language as a distinctive discourse and illustrates how activists, lawyers, and even presidents help to sustain our First Amendment belief system. When significant changes to constitutional law occur, they are best understood as the results …

Love Your Body Day, Caroline Heldman

Caroline Heldman

No abstract provided.

Poder Presidencial De Nominación Y Equilibrio Institucional, Javier Revelo-Rebolledo, Mauricio García-Villegas

Javier E Revelo-Rebolledo

No abstract provided.

The End Of The American Century, David Mason

David S. Mason

Cabinet Reshuffles And Ministerial Drift, Indridi H. Indridason, Christopher Kam

Indridi H Indridason

We model policy implementation in a parliamentary democracy as delegation between the prime minister and her cabinet ministers. We show that cabinet reshuffl#31;es can be pursued as a strategy to reduce the agency loss which occurs due to the different preferences of the actors. Our work thus explains why prime ministers would want to resort to reshu#31;ffles: cabinet reshuffl#31;es reduce the moral hazard facing ministers. This answer both augments and distinguishes our work from traditional perspectives on reshuffl#31;es that have emphasized the deleterious effects of reshuffl#31;es on ministerial capacity, and also from recent work that casts reshuffl#31;es as solutions to …

The George W. Bush Legacy, Caroline Heldman

Caroline Heldman

Book review of The George W. Bush Legacy. Bush will be known for his ideological polarization of the political parties, his expansion of presidential power, and his appointment of a more conservative federal judiciary. The 2006 election was a major turning point for the White House in terms of public opinion and the loss of a Republican majority in Congress, and only time will tell whether the last two years will shift the direction of the Bush legacy.

'Democratic Taxation' And Quantifiable Action: Scientizing Dilemmas, Mindy Peden

Mindy Peden

Against the easy presupposition that such a thing as 'democratic taxation' not only exists but is also practicable, this paper points to the dilemma posed by what I call 'quantifiable action.' The essay develops an approach to theorizing the place of taxation in political theory that counters trends in fiscal sociology, political science, and liberal theory by highlighting how taxation presumably violates the requirement that self-government includes an absence of instrumental rationality on the part of democratic citizens. For this reason, taxation presents a persistent problem for any concept of self-government, and may usefully be regarded as a technology of …

Settling The West: The Annexation Of Texas, The Louisiana Purchase, And Bush V. Gore, Mark Graber

Mark Graber

No abstract provided.

Clinton And Americorps: Attributes For Success, Donna Hoffman, Alison Howard

Alison Dana Howard

The Entrepreneurial Assumption: Thinking About Taxes In Contemporary Political Theory, Mindy Peden

Mindy Peden

This article argues that contemporary political theory often contains an obscured supposition that I call the entrepreneurial assumption. This assumption can be seen most clearly when political theorists who do not have economic expertise per se theorize the relationship between their political thought and taxation. In order to explicate the entrepreneurial assumption, the article engages in close readings of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Ronald Dworkin. By elaborating on each of these authors' views, the importance of preserving “talent” through a system of taxation, the centrality of the entrepreneurial assumption can be seen more clearly.

Entrepreneurs, Organizational Strength And The Pursuit Of Public Goods By Voluntary Organizations, Elizabeth Stiles

Elizabeth A. Stiles

Robert Salisbury has assumed that interest group entrepreneurs are profit-driven and make attempts to procure collective goods to increase their membership and revenue. This article's research question takes the reverse of Salisbury's claim: can interest group entrepreneurs increase the likelihood of procuring collective goods by increasing their organizational strength? Results of a study of statewide Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) organizations show that larger memberships are positively and significantly associated with success in procuring collective goals while increased budgets are significantly but negatively associated. The implications are twofold. First, the assumption that entrepreneurs pursue collective goods for reasons of …

Competition & Turnout: The Majority Run-Off As A Natural Experiment, Indridi Indridason

Indridi H Indridason

Run-off elections offer certain advantages for the study of political behavior over other electoral systems. This paper exploits the fact that run-off elections resemble a natural experiment to study the effects of competitiveness on voter turnout. The literature offers several explanations of the determinants of voter turnout. In run-off elections most of these factors can be assumed to be constant between the two ballots. Run-off elections, thus, provide an opportunity to evaluate the insights offered by rational choice theories of voter turnout. The results of the first ballot inform voters about the competitiveness of the race, which influences their propensity …

The Unitary Executive And Presidential Signing Statements, Cheryl Truesdell, Becky Byrum

Cheryl B. Truesdell

No abstract provided.

When To Run And When To Hide: Electoral Coordination And Exit, Indridi Indridason

Indridi H Indridason

Elections represent a coordination problem for voters and candidates for office. Electoral coordination is also the causal mechanism behind any explanation of the relationship between electoral systems and the number of parties. I present a dynamic model of electoral coordination with candidate exit. The model extends two important results from the literature to a dynamic setting. The extension of Duverger's Law and the median-voter theorem also offers a simultaneous prediction of the number of parties and their ideological positions. Coordination failure is shown to be possible in a mixed-strategy equilibrium.

The Effects Of Australian Ballot Rules On Constituent Spending And Committee Assignments In The U.S. House, 1885-1901, Jill Wittrock, Stephen Nemeth, Howard Sanborn, Brian Disarro, Peverill Squire

Stephen Nemeth

Katz and Sala linked the development of committee property rights in the late-nineteenth-century U.S. House of Representatives to the introduction of theAustralian ballot. If, as they posited, members sought personal reputations to carry them to reelection in the new electoral environment, the current article argues that behaviors with more imme diate political payoffs also should have changed inways their theory would predict. The article examines whether committee assignments, floor voting behavior, and the distribution of pork barrel projects changed in predicted ways and finds supportive outcomes, but usually only when the office bloc ballot, and not the party bloc ballot, …

Site Fights: Divisive Facilities And Civil Society In Japan And The West, Daniel Aldrich

Daniel P Aldrich

One of the most vexing problems for governments is building controversial facilities that serve the needs of all citizens but have adverse consequences for host communities. Policy makers must decide not only where to locate often unwanted projects, but also what methods to use when interacting with opposition groups. In Site Fights, I gather quantitative evidence from close to 500 municipalities across Japan to show that planners deliberately seek out acquiescent and unorganized communities for such facilities in order to minimize conflict. When protests arise over nuclear power plants, dams, and airports, agencies regularly rely on the coercive powers of …

Developing A Young Professionals Network For The Arts, Thomas Bryer, Kristin Stewart

Thomas A Bryer

The Young Professionals Network for the Arts simulation is an exercise that allows students to think through the process of creating a network from the ground up. The structure of the class session that includes the simulation consists of a lecture on the readings and an 8-Step network building process, followed by the simulation.

To Dissent Or Not To Dissent? Informative Dissent And Parliamentary Government, Indridi Indridason

Indridi H Indridason

Legislative dissent has detrimental effects for both party and legislator, i.e., legislators depend on their party label for re-election, which value in turn depends in part on the party’s reputation of cohesiveness. Commonly dissent has been attributed to “extreme” preferences. I provide an informational rationale for dissent. Costly dissent allows the legislator to credibly signal information about his constituency’s preferences to the Cabinet. As a result the Cabinet can better calibrate its policies with the electorate’s preferences. Dissent is shown to depend on policy preferences as well a the legislators’ electoral strength, electoral volatility, and the cost of dissent. Finally, …

The Janus-Faced Character Of Tourism In Cuba: Ideological Continuity And Change, Kathleen Adams

Kathleen M. Adams

No abstract provided.

Human Rights In The Arab World: Independent Voices, Anthony Chase, Amr Hamzawy

Anthony Chase

Human Rights In The Arab World: Independent Voices is an anthology of essays by learned authors about the unfortunate and longstanding marginalization of human rights in the Arab world, the obstacles that bar the way to implementing these rights, and pathways to improve human rights and welfare in the future. Individual essays also discuss the intersection of globalization and human rights, the especial plight of women's rights in the Arab world, case studies in Yemeni, Egypt, and Morocco, the difficulties faced by activists and NGOs pushing for human rights, and much more. A sober, serious-minded compilation of a vital current …

Interest In Politics, Cigdem Sirin

Cigdem V. Sirin

No abstract provided.

Out-Of-Body Image, Caroline Heldman

Caroline Heldman

On a typical day, you might see ads featuring a naked woman's body tempting viewers to buy an electronic organizer, partially exposed women's breasts being used to sell fishing line, or a woman's rear-wearing only a thong-being used to pitch a new running shoe. [...] Dove beauty products launched a much-lauded advertising campaign that used "real women" (i.e., not super-skinny ones) instead of models, but then Dove's parent company, Unilever, put out hypersexual ads for Axe men's body spray that showed the fragrance driving scantily clad women into orgiastic states.

Environment And Development In Uganda: Understanding The Global Influence On Domestic Policy, Christopher Gore

Christopher D Gore

No abstract provided.

Marital Status And Voting Behavior, Cigdem Sirin

Cigdem V. Sirin

No abstract provided.

Rebranding America : The Occidental Strategy, Derek Shearer

Derek Shearer

No abstract provided.

Healthy Urban Food Production And Local Government, Christopher Gore

Christopher D Gore

No abstract provided.

Electricity And Privatization In Uganda: The Origins Of Crisis And Problems With Response, Christopher Gore

Christopher D Gore

No abstract provided.

Sovereignty As Discourse, Robert Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This is a review of Howard Schweber's book, "The Language of Liberal Constitutionalism" (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Schweber argues that "the creation of a legitimate constitutional regime depends on a prior commitment to employ constitutional language, and that such a commitment is both the necessary and sufficient condition for constitution making." I critique the power and limits of this reformulated Lockean thesis, as well as Schweber's secondary claims that, for constitutional language to remain legitimate, it must increasingly become autonomous, specialized, and secular.

Balancing The Scales Or Tilting The Field? Assessing The Capacity Of Global Civil Society To Democratize The World Bank, Christopher Pallas

Christopher L. Pallas