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Intro -- Half title -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Part I. 1835 -- 1. Susan Paul -- 2. Mayor Lyman -- 3. Maria Chapman -- 4. Wendell Phillips -- 5. The Meeting -- 6. Last Bulwark -- 7. Sign of the Times -- 8. Great Escape -- 9. Truckman to the Rescue -- 10. All's Fair -- 11. The Gauntlet -- 12. Broadcloth Bystanders -- 13. Visitors -- 14. Jails and Rails -- 15. Black and White and Read All Over -- 16. Justice Gone South -- 17. Lessons and Reunions -- 18. Exit Thompson -- 19. Love and Marriage -- 20. Liberty's Bell -- Part II. 1855 -- 21. Howling Wolves -- Epilogue -- A Note on Sources -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- About the Author.

Survey researchers avoid using large multi-item scales to measure latent traits due to both the financial costs and the risk of driving up nonresponse rates. Typically, investigators select a subset of available scale items rather than asking the full battery. Reduced batteries, however, can sharply reduce measurement precision and introduce bias. In this article, we present computerized adaptive testing (CAT) as a method for minimizing the number of questions each respondent must answer while preserving measurement accuracy and precision. CAT algorithms respond to individuals' previous answers to select subsequent questions that most efficiently reveal respondents' positions on a latent dimension. We introduce the basic stages of a CAT algorithm and present the details for one approach to item selection appropriate for public opinion research. We then demonstrate the advantages of CAT via simulation and empirically comparing dynamic and static measures of political knowledge.

Government formation in multiparty systems is of self-evident substantive importance, and the subject of an enormous theoretical literature. Empirical evaluations of models of government formation tend to separate government formationper sefrom the distribution of key government pay-offs, such as cabinet portfolios, between members of the resulting government. Models of government formation are necessarily specifiedex ante, absent any knowledge of the government that forms. Models of the distribution of cabinet portfolios are typically, though not necessarily, specifiedex post, taking into account knowledge of the identity of some government 'formateur' or even of the composition of the eventual cabinet. This disjunction lies at the heart of a notorious contradiction between predictions of the distribution of cabinet portfolios made by canonical models of legislative bargaining and the robust empirical regularity of proportional portfolio allocations – Gamson's Law. This article resolves this contradiction by specifying and estimating ajointmodel of cabinet formation and portfolio distribution that, for example, predictsex antewhich parties will receive zero portfolios rather than taking this as givenex post. It concludes that canonical models of legislative bargaining do increase the ability to predict government membership, but that portfolio distribution between government members conforms robustly to a proportionality norm because portfolio distribution follows the much more difficult process of policy bargaining in the typical government formation process.