Suchergebnisse

The analysis by Ronald Keith Gaddie & Charles S. Bullock, III (1995) of the participation of women in the US Congress in 1992 as a function of various candidate factors is updated & extended here by examining female success in 135 open seat elections, 1994-1998. Multivariate analysis indicates no direct impact of candidate gender on election outcomes when candidate quality & district partisanship are controlled. The finding of a significant drop in the rate of female electoral success since 1992 is attributed to partisan politics, rather than to candidate characteristics. 2 Tables, 7 References. K. Hyatt Stewart

NATO has been so consumed with managing the Balkans & nascent EU security policies that it has largely ignored the much more serious defense challenge of managing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. US & European officials have divergent approaches that must be reconciled for the US to construct a national missile defense in the near term. The means for creating a common approach lie within reach: modifying the ABM Treaty if possible, including critical allies, assisting European ballistic missile defenses, sustained priority in NATO budgeting & programming, supporting EU strategic intelligence collection & assessment, & building US-EU "pillar two" links. Adapted from the source document.

In 1949, V. O. Key, Jr. published Southern Politics in State and Nation. In this masterpiece, Key argues that the failure of democracy in the South is linked to the absence of competition among parties & the resulting failure of an organized & sound party system to emerge. Fifty years later, it is evident that Key's arguments are sound. However, Key failed to predict one important point: that electoral competition alone would be insufficient to ensure the development & continuation of a successful & productive democracy. Perhaps the reason behind Key's deficiency is that he did not consider the fact that prejudice & racism would continue to perpetuate illiberal social attitudes well beyond the 1940s. The continuation of an illiberal southern society, which worked to withhold the rights of citizenship from the low-income white & black majority, should be heavily credited for defeating partisan competition in the South. As a result, the development of democratic practices was retarded during the entirety of New Deal Democracy. 4 Tables, 20 References. K. A. Larsen

This article reports findings from a survey of 257 state officials involved in public assistance policymaking in the American states during the early to mid-1990s. Respondents were asked to comment on the impetus for welfare reform, on methods employed to gauge public preferences, & on sources of policy ideas. These officials, including state legislators, social service agency directors, & senior advisors to governors, revealed a variety of forums for gathering public input. Although few respondents affiliated with elective office reported significant direct electoral challenges on welfare issues, they often cited constituent contacts regarding welfare reform. 4 Tables, 29 References. Adapted from the source document.

Past research investigating the relationship between politics of fiscal institutions & fiscal deficits has primarily focused on how different configurations of partisan control over the executive & legislative branches produce distinct policy outcomes. Such models rely on the strength of majoritarian parties in Congress & party affiliation of president, as reflected in the theory of divided party government. In this study, a simple, fluid unidimensional spatial framework based on the degree of ideological fragmentation among the President, Senate, & House is set forth to arrive at a richer understanding of fiscal policy. It is hypothesized that US fiscal deficits will rise as the degree of ideological fragmentation among these institutions increases because it is more difficult to reach compromise & reconcile conflicting preferences over fiscal policy. Using annual data from the post-war period from 1948-1995, strong consistent empirical support for this thesis exists across alternative empirical specifications that reflect different pivotal House & Senate members, institutional alignments, & measures of ideological fragmentation. These findings indicate that the degree of ideological policy divergence among political institutions, independent of divided partisan control of government, plays a notable role in explaining fiscal budget deficits in the US during the post-war period. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 69 References. Adapted from the source document.