A management science theory of leadership impact may be successfully applied to a legislative setting, despite differences between business & government dynamics. Members of the Wisc assembly & senate responded to questionnaires at the beginning of the 1975/76 session & were later interviewed. The sample of legislators represented the entire population, although some were not included. Questions concerned legislator perceptions of current chamber leaders & were borrowed from the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire, used widely in management science. Results suggest that the House path-goal theory of leadership can be applied -- using both indicators & concepts -- to legislative leadership. Concepts of leader consideration, initiating structure, & role ambiguity are applicable. Only minor modifications of indicators & measurements were required to make testing appropriate in the legislative setting. Relationships between leaders & legislators are comparable to those in nonlegislative settings & while the impact is not always the same, the variables involved are usually comparable. 5 Tables. L. Kamel.
Using data collected from a polling place survey with 1,279 voters in the 4 county metropolitan Milwaukee area, considered are how much cross-over voting took place in the 1976 presidential primary, the degree to which the cross-over vote was a mischief one, the social backgrounds of cross-over & consistent voters, & the reasons cited for the candidate choice of cross-over & consistent voters. Cross-over voting by Republican identifiers into the Democratic primary & by Democratic identifiers into the Republican primary was not widespread & had very little impact on either primary's outcome. Statutory reform to "close" the primary to prevent cross-over voting probably will not result in less dilution of the partisan vote unless independent identifiers are also prevented from voting in a party's primary. No evidence was found to document the contention that there was a widespread mischief vote which had a critical effect on the primary's outcome. Consideration of various explanations for cross-over voting indicates the importance of perceived affinity between voter & candidate choice. The differences between the group mean for each set of party identifiers & the candidate for whom they voted on the liberal-conservative dimension are the smallest for all groups except Republican identifiers who voted for Ford, Republican identifiers who voted for Carter, & Republican identifiers who voted for Udall. This substantial amount of perceived similarity in ratings suggests that some degree of perceived ideological consistency characterizes these groupings of voters. 9 Tables. AA.
EVIDENCE THAT LEGISLATORS ARE DIFFERENT PSYCHOLOGICALLY & DIFFER FROM THEIR CONSTITUENTS IN SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, & POLITICAL EXPERIENCES IS TESTED. THE SAMPLE INCLUDED 119 IOWA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE MEMBERS IN 1965 & 597 OTHER ADULT IOWANS. THE SAME QUESTIONNAIRE WAS GIVEN TO BOTH GROUPS & INCLUDED A STANDARD SERIES OF ITEMS MEASURING ALIENATION, FAITH-IN-PEOPLE, TOLERATION, MINORITY SEGREGATIONISM, & AUTHORITARIANISM. ITEMS WERE ARRANGED LIKE A STRUCTURED INTERVIEW SCHEDULE. VARIABLES OF THE 124 SEATS IN THE IOWA HOUSE INCLUDED: (1) THE USUAL DOMINANT REPUBLICAN PARTY HAD ONLY 23 SEATS, (2) 80 SEATS HAD NEVER SERVED A PREVIOUS LEGISLATURE, & (3) THE 1965 SESSION WAS THE 1ST TO OFFER FAIR UR AREA REPRESENTATION. MINORITY SEGREGATIONISM, ALIENATION, TOLERATION, AUTHORITARIANISM, & FAITH-IN-PEOPLE ITEMS WERE ANALYZED BY USING FACTOR ANALYSIS. INDEPENDENT VARIABLES INCLUDED THE R'S SE, DEMOGRAPHIC, & POLITICAL BACKGROUNDS & LEGISLATOR-PUBLIC STATUS. AN ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE STRATEGY WAS USED TO ANALYZE HOW THE FACTORS AFFECTED THE 4 PREDISPOSITIONS & DATA WERE SUBMITTED TO A 2 WAY ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE. LEGISLATORS WERE MORE PROMINORITY GROUP INVOLVEMENT, TOLERANT, & ANTIAUTHORITARIAN BUT LESS TRUSTING OF OTHER PEOPLE & SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT FROM THE PUBLIC ON MINORITY SEGREGATIONISM, TOLERATION-AUTHORITARIANISM, & FAITH-IN-PEOPLE. 4 TABLES, 1 FIGURE. MODIFIED HA.
Despite widespread and growing interest among students and faculty in using practical political involvement as an adjunct to formal classroom teaching, professional academic literature offers little guidance regarding such programs. As Professors Hirschfield and Adler point out, political science literature has largely ignored questions regarding the scope, structure and strategies of internship programs. Anyone concerned with how students respond in these settings or with what can be done to maximize student learning during internships would find little assistance in the journals, books and monographs of political science. Indeed, no central source even has access to the number of national, state and local political internship programs sponsored by institutions of higher education, public or private agencies, and professional organizations. Consequently, communication regarding internships is fragmented and haphazard. Interested persons must rely on informal channels of communication (e.g., correspondence, mimeographed evaluations and reports circulated among program directors), infrequent conferences (e.g., the 1971 Kentucky Conference on Students in Government and the 1972 APSA Conference on Political Science and State and Local Government), and prior experience with other internship programs (45 per cent of the past academic participants in the APSA Congressional Fellowship Program reported some type of subsequent involvement in other internships, with 91 per cent of these indicating that this later involvement was administrative or advisory). Such a communications network is hardly an adequate substitute for systematic exchange and rigorous analysis. The anomaly in this state of affairs is that any exchange of information and sharing of experiences has taken place. Hopefully, these two reports in PS, the scheduled publication of a book, Government Management Internships and Executive Development, and a new journal, Teaching Political Science, plus the formation of a center for disseminating internship information, the National Center for Public Service Internship Programs with their "Public Service Internship Newsletter," Indicate a new stage in the evolution of political science concern with internships.