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ABSTRACTAdvocates for same-sex marriage have had much to celebrate. The last few years have shown that state after state and senator after senator have declared their support for full marriage equality. Such momentum suggests that their goals will be realized sooner rather than later. In this article, we analyze when senators announce their support for same-sex marriage. Contrary to the popularly held belief that their decisions will quickly snowball into filibuster-proof numbers, we find that most of the easy successes have already been achieved. The difficulty of securing the last few votes may take much longer.

This research examines how severing the electoral connection influences legislative behavior. Unlike previous studies of legislative shirking, we argue for a more nuanced conceptualization that takes account of members' electoral circumstances (beyond a dichotomous measure of term limited/nonterm limited) as well as the nature of the votes under consideration. This enables us to incorporate expectations of party influence into our model of legislative shirking. Our research demonstrates shirking among legislators leaving public office as they are no longer susceptible to party pressure, while those who face term limits and are seeking another public office may remain adherent to the party on votes most crucial to the party (i.e., procedural votes). Moreover, we find evidence that legislators who are no longer constrained by elections also exhibit a greater level of roll call abstention, although only those leaving public office demonstrate significant increases in abstentions on procedural votes. Thus, we may find very different shirking patterns among term-limited members depending on their future political ambition (or lack thereof) and also depending on the nature of the votes that we are examining. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

Kwasi Wiredu-one of the most prominent and influential philosophers on the African continent-reaches into the African traditional past in search of an alternative political paradigm to the currently conventional majoritarian democracy, which he sees as the likely cause of the exacerbating political conflicts on the continent. He faults the multi-party democracy as characterised by a competitive struggle for power, which is too adversarial, aggressive, and divisive-to the level of being harmful to Africa in the period under discussion. He observes that in the United States, for instance, the checks and balances can in fact become unbalanced, where opposition frequently becomes obstruction, giving rise to the phenomenon called gridlock in which the government is unable to carry through any meaningful policies. And since those who oppose government are often as numerous as those who support it, the result is a disenfranchisement of a relatively large section of the population. This is the result of a generally accepted constitutional provision, so that what we have is a pre-established disharmony. Wiredu thus sees majoritarian democracy as the quintessence of uncooperativeness, an epiphenomenon of colonialism, and antithetical to the spirit of communalism. Adapted from the source document.

Political parties seek information about public preferences to determine how much they need to change their policies as elections approach. We argue that opposition parties can use European parliamentary election results to inform themselves about public preferences. When opposition parties lose votes at the European level, they can use this information to infer that public opinion has shifted away from the party and change their national policy strategies. We also argue that not all European elections are the same and that parties should be more responsive to those European elections that are more informative about public preferences. Empirical results from 14 European Union (EU) member countries show that opposition parties use European election results and change their positions (a) when the turnout levels between national and European elections are similar and (b) when the European election is close in time to the upcoming national election. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

This review examines how legislators' race and ethnicity affect the representation of racial and ethnic minorities' interests and priorities in the mass public, how these legislators affect the political participation of these groups, how the presence of these candidates affects voter decision making, and how their prevalence impacts the composition of the parties and the nature of public policy. It also points to new directions and opportunities for scholarship on why minority legislators matter for American politics. Adapted from the source document.

Este articulo propone un modelo integral que identifica las variables que explican la toma de decisiones judiciales en Cortes Supremas de America Latina. Considerando como caso de estudio los votos individuales de los jueces de la Sala Fiscal y Tributaria de la Corte Suprema de Justicia del Ecuador, el articulo constata empiricamente que el tipo de litigante, el tiempo de permanencia de los jueces en los cargos, la fortaleza del gobierno y el estado de la economia constituyen buenos predictores del voto judicial. A diferencia de trabajos en los que se sostiene que los jueces votan sinceramente, acorde a sus propias preferencias ideologicas, la evidencia que el articulo ofrece permite inferir que tales actores deciden los casos de forma estrategica This paper proposes an integrated model that identifies the variables that explain judicial decision-making in Latin American Supreme Courts. As a case study considering the individual votes of the judges of the Fiscal and Tax Chamber of the Ecuadorian Supreme Court, the article finds empirical evidence that the characteristics of the cases, judges' time remaining time on the bench, the government's political strength, and the performance of the economy are good predictors of judicial vote. Unlike research suggesting that judges vote sincerely - according to their own ideological preferences - this article provides evidence that such actors decide cases strategically. Adapted from the source document.

Britain's 2010 National Security Strategy, published shortly after the coalition government took office, was entitled 'A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty'. It made no mention of the two existential challenges - the possible secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom, and the risk of a British withdrawal from the European Union. Yet either event would be a fundamental transformation in the very nature of the British state, with profound impact on its foreign and security policy. Adapted from the source document.

Historically, liberal democracy was born as a means to curb the power of kings and tyrants through mechanisms that would ensure accountability and consent of the governed. A system of checks and balances—two legislative chambers, executive and independent courts—were instituted to ensure power did not become too concentrated.Today's highly diverse, mass consumer societies, however, have presented another set of challenges. Power is so diffused governance is becoming ineffective. The short‐term mentality of voters and the lobbying of special interests undermine the ability of democracies to focus on the long‐term and the common interest. Because there are more checks than balances, gridlock has supplanted consensus.In this section, we compare Chinese and Western systems on their ability to deliver good governance. The editors of the Economist magazine put the debate in historical context.