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Between 1990 and 2000 the population of Nevada increased by over 66 percent. Much of this growth was fueled by an influx of minorities and further concentrated the state's population in southern Nevada. These forces altered the state's political landscape and raised the stakes for the decennial redistricting of Nevada's assembly and senate seats. Employing a multi-methodological approach, this effort demonstrates how the 2001 Nevada redistricting maintained the pre-existing partisan divisions in the state legislature despite a number of factors that threatened to alter the status quo. At the same time, the analysis reveals that the desire of key redistricters to maintain the partisan status quo compromised the typical byproduct that results from bipartisan gerrymanders, incumbent protection.

Between 1990 & 2000 the population of Nevada increased by over 66 percent. Much of this growth was fueled by an influx of minorities & further concentrated the state's population in southern Nevada. These forces altered the state's political landscape & raised the stakes for the decennial redistricting of Nevada's assembly & senate seats. Employing a multi-methodological approach, this effort demonstrates how the 2001 Nevada redistricting maintained the pre-existing partisan divisions in the state legislature despite a number of factors that threatened to alter the Status quo. At the same time, the analysis reveals that the desire of key redistricters to maintain the partisan status quo compromised the typical byproduct that results from bipartisan gerrymanders, incumbent protection. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

Scholars seeking to examine the effect that campaign processes have on election outcomes have focused largely on the behavior of voters. In contrast, the behavior of candidates, particularly with respect to the information that candidates communicate to voters, has received limited attention. The dearth of this work in this area stems in part from a paucity of data that allows candidate behavior to be reliably & systematically measured. In this paper, I assess a data source that may be used to overcome this limitation: televised campaign advertisements. After discussing the strengths & weaknesses of these data, I offer a sample analysis using data collected from all available advertisements produced by candidates competing in US presidential campaigns, 1976-1996. Specifically, I examine the factors that influence these candidates' decisions to address concerns that are salient to the public in their campaign messages. 3 Tables, 1 Appendix, 40 References. Adapted from the source document. COPIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM: HAWORTH DOCUMENT DELIVERY CENTER, The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580

We use competing risks duration analysis to examine the role of ethnicity and governance institutions in executive turnovers of power in 47 sub-Saharan African countries between 1960 and 2008. Using measures that capture the politically important aspects of countries' ethnic divisions, we find that as compared to countries characterized by one, and only one, potential majority ethnic grouping, leaders' tenures are shorter in countries with a majority ethnic group that comprises a majority subgroup and that these leaders are at risk of losing power through both coups and elections. In contrast, leaders of countries with no ethnic majority group are better positioned to stave off coups, perhaps by undercutting rivals' efforts to coordinate among different ethnic groups. Our results, however, suggest that the effectiveness of this strategy wanes over time. Although the results also suggest that the type of regime matters, they do not indicate a monotonic relationship between democracy and elections and authoritarianism and coups.