Suchergebnisse

The book Continuity and Change in House Elections, edited by David W. Brady, John F. Cogan, and Morris P. Fiorina, is reviewed.

Given the recent events in the realm of presidential policymaking over the past decade, Kenneth R. Mayer has produced a timely book chronicling the use of executive orders that will be of considerable interest to political scientists, historians, legal scholars, and journalists alike. Existing research on the topic of executive orders has been largely addressed by constitutional legal scholars who possess little interest in emphasizing a generalizable understanding of this tool of executive authority. In recent years, a small yet growing-body of political science research has tried to obtain a social scientific–motivated portrait regarding the institutional and behavioral dimensions of executive order issuance by presidents. Mayer makes a strong case for using new institutional economics (NIE) as a "way of making sense of the wide range of executive orders issued over the years" (p. 28). The NIE theoretical approach that Mayer applies to presidential leadership takes a long-term view, compared to other works on presidential leadership, by positing "that presidents can achieve substantive (policy) results not simply by giving commands, but by creating and altering institutional structures and processes" (p. 29).

In recent years, political scientists have tested for the existence of rational expectations (RE) using survey-based aggregate data on subjective economic perceptions. These tests suffer from several conceptual shortcomings of a nontrivial nature. In this study, the meaning of RE is clarified, and also a test for strong rational expectations (SRE) where citizens possess heterogeneous information levels is set forth. These empirical tests provide insights into what kinds of information citizens use in forming expectations from that which they do not utilize but could employ to arrive at more accurate forecasts. Using inflation expectations data for the period January 1978—December 1993, the empirical findings indicate that citizens can benefit from greater reliance on objective economic and political conditions when formulating their inflation expectations. The broader implications of this work pertain not only to the execution of RE tests in political science, but also to distinguishing which types of information people do and do not (but could) incorporate in their decision-making calculus.