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Presidential cabinets include on average more nonparty ministers than governments in any other form of democracy, and critics of presidentialism have argued that this compromises representativeness, accountability, and governability. Yet cabinet partisanship in presidential democracies remains poorly understood. Existing studies argue that the partisan composition of cabinets reflects the degree to which presidents prioritize building legislative support. We demonstrate that a better understanding of government formation requires attention to a second dimension of choice: agency risks. Focusing on the relationship between presidents and their own parties, which is at the core of every presidential government, we show that party-affiliated ministers are not always reliable agents for presidents and that presidents appoint nonpartisan ministers to limit agency loss. We test this argument using original data on the partisanship of single-party cabinets in 12 Latin American countries and find support for the key claims. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

TO WHAT EXTENT IS A GOVERNMENT'S LEGITIMACY AFFECTED BY THE REGIONAL BREADTH OF ITS SUPPORT? IN THE 1983 BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT WAS RETURNED TO OFFICE WITH A LARGE OVERALL MAJORITY IN THE COMMONS, BUT THERE WERE CONSIDERABLE REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN THE EXTENT OF ITS SUCCESS. THE CONSERVATIVES WON 70% OF THE ENGLISH SEATS BUT ONLY 37% OF THE SEATS IN WALES, 29% IN SCOTLAND AND NONE IN NORTHERN IRELAND. WITHIN ENGLAND THE CONSERVATIVES WON 86% OF THE SEATS IN THE SOUTH AND 70% IN THE MIDLANDS, BUT JUST 41% IN THE NORTH. THE EXISTENCE OF SUCH MARKED REGIONAL VARIATIONS IN THE LEVEL OF THE GOVERNMENT'S SUCCESS RAISES THE SPECIFICALLY TERRITORIAL ASPECT OF THE GENERAL QUESTION OF HOW FAR IT IS DESIRABLE FOR POLITICAL PARTIES, AND A GOVERNMENT PARTY IN PARTICULAR, TO HAVE BREADTH OF SUPPORT AS WELL AS DEPTH. THE PRINCIPLE OF MAJORITY RULE MEANS THAT "A MAJORITY OF ONE IS ENOUGH", BUT GOVERNMENT NORMALLY SEEK MORE THAN JUST A BARE MAJORITY. TO DISRAELI'S OBSERVATION THAT "A MAJORITY IS THE BEST REPARTEE" CAN BE ADDED THE RIDER THAT "A MAJORITY THAT IS LARGE AND BROADLY-BASED IS THE BEST REPARTEE OF ALL". CERTAINLY, DURING 1983 ELECTION CAMPAIGN THE PRIMKE MINISTER INDICATED THAT SHE ECT SOUGHT AS COMPREHENSIVT A VICTORY AS POSSIBLE AND WAS QUICK TO CORRECT THE (THEN) FOREIGN SECRETARY WHEN HE SUGGESTED THAT A LANDSLIDE WIN WAS NOT NECESSARILY DESIRABLE BECAUSE OF THE STIMULUS IT COULD GIVE TO TO BACKBENCH DISSENT.

Despite pervasive downward pressure on government policy from exogenous forces, the author argues that partisanship still exerts an effect on privatization in Latin America. When a country is indebted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a government of the right is in power, scholars can expect increased levels of privatization. However, when a country is indebted to the IMF and a government of the left is in power, electoral incentives will prompt these governments to ignore IMF pressure and reduce levels of privatization. The author tests this argument on a data set of eighteen Latin American countries, between the years 1984 and 1998.

CHANGE IN THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE HAS TRADITIONALLY BEEN STUDIES BY COMPARING THE NUMBER OF INDEPENDENTS TO THE NUMBER OF PARTISANS, AND COMPARING THE IMPACT OF PARTISANSHIP TO THE IMPACT OF ISSUE VOTING. STABLE NUMBERS OF PARTISANS AND STABLE CORRELATIONS BETWEEN PARTISANSHIP AND ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR ARE INTERPRETED TO MEAN CONTINUITY IN THE ELECTORATE. THESE COMPARISONS, THOUGH USEFUL, IGNORE THE POSSIBILITY THAT THE MEANING OF PARTISANSHIP AND THE REASONS BEHIND ITS IMPACT ON ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR MAY HAVE CHANGED AS WELL. AS THE POTENTIAL FOR INDEPENDENT BEHAVIOR AND POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION INCREASES IN THE UNITED STATES, THE MOST SOPHISTICATED AND RATIONAL PARTISANS ARE ABLE TO LAY ASIDE THEIR PARTY LABELS, LEAVING FEWER, LESS RATIONAL PARTISANS. THIS ARGUMENT IS TESTED AND SUPPORTED USING DATA FROM THE NATIONAL ELECTION SURVEYS OF 1952 THROUGH 1980.

We propose measuring group support for political parties by means of multivariate techniques that have become standard in other areas of political behavior. This approach yields improved insights into the marginal difference made by membership in each group and into the nature of a party's support coalition. As an example of this approach, we analyze the Democratic coalition since 1952. Our results differ from those of previous studies in a number of ways. Most significantly, differences with respect to the strength and timing of partisan changes lend support to Carmines and Stimson's conclusion that a realignment centering on race occurred in the mid-1960s. Our findings also indicate that the Democratic party is no longer so dependent on a few groups, as it was in the 1950s, but is now almost equally dependent on six groups.

Within the literature on Ghanaian partisanship, a healthy debate has arisen between those viewing Ghana's two dominant parties as cleaved along socioeconomic lines & those suggesting that this cleavage runs along ethnic lines. Using election results, constituency maps, census data, & a survey of voters' 'cognitive shortcuts', this article weighs in with the debate. The findings suggest that ethnicity matters in Ghanaian elections far more than socioeconomic variables. The findings do not, however, lead easily towards the gloomy predictions that often accompany ethnic politics. The relationship between ethnicity & partisanship in Ghana is far more complex. Data presented here suggest that Asante & Ewe voters are likely to vote for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) & National Democratic Congress (NDC), respectively, regardless of the candidates they select. Voters of other ethnic backgrounds, who make up the vast majority of Ghanaian voters, view the dominant parties as representative of Asante & Ewe interests but do not themselves vote as a block & base their evaluations of the 'Asante' & 'Ewe' parties ultimately on things other than ethnicity. It is this latter group of voters that makes Ghanaian elections unpredictable & discourages politicians from turning national votes into a zero-sum ethnic censes. Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

Comparative politics scholarship often neglects to consider how militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) shape political behavior. In this project, we advance an argument that considers voter responses to international conflict at the individual level. In particular, we consider how the well-known conditioning effects of partisanship manifest in relation to militarized international conflict. Examining individual- and macro-level data across ninety-seven elections in forty-two countries over the 1996–2011 period, we find consistent evidence of militarized conflict impacting vote choice. This relationship is, however, moderated by partisanship, conflict side (initiator or target), and conflict hostility level. Among non-copartisan voters, the incumbent benefits the most electorally from initiating low-hostility MIDs or when the country is a target of a high-hostility MID; the opposite scenarios (initiator of a high-hostility MID or target of a low-hostility MID) lead to punishment among this voter group. Copartisans, meanwhile, tend to either maintain or intensify their support in most scenarios we examine; when a country is targeted in a low-hostility MID, copartisan support erodes mildly.

What factors enable and motivate citizens to form partisan identities? Popular accounts, as well as several major theoretical approaches, attribute a central role for policy and ideological concerns in shaping the partisan orientations of voters. Information about the policy aims of parties should therefore, on average, make it easier for an individual to find a party that best fits her views, especially if she had previously been less familiar with the parties. The evidence for this is mixed, however. Plenty of studies find a robust correlation between policy views and partisanship. Yet there is mounting evidence that citizens look to parties to decide where to stand on policy issues, suggesting that partisan identification precedes policy preferences. We bring new evidence to bear by investigating directly the impact of substantive policy information on the partisan identities of ordinary citizens. To do this, we carry out a pair of original experiments across six countries, five of which are relatively young or unstable party systems. One experiment informs citizens about the policy goals of the major parties; we find little to no evidence that such information affects levels of partisanship. The other experiment tests the impact of inviting citizens to evaluate and compare their own position to the positions of the major parties, a more direct test of the sort of reasoning posited in some theoretical accounts. We find that this reflective task in fact depresses levels of partisanship, perhaps especially among those who knew less about politics and parties from the outset. This suggests that thinking about policy differences and proximities pushes citizens away from partisan attachments they form in the ordinary course of life, perhaps because such thinking generates fresh doubts or focuses attention on facets of partisan choice that matter less in typical processes of preference formation.