Suchergebnisse

Americans are deeply cynical about both corporations and politicians. For the past several decades, Gallup has conducted regular polls of public confidence in various social and political institutions, with big business and Congress consistently ranking at the bottom of the list. Not surprisingly then, corporate political spending and lobbying are viewed with suspicion, further fueled by exaggerated rhetoric from reform-minded pundits, advocacy groups, and demagogues. In previous work, the author has explored the contrast between popular perceptions of the role of money in politics and the lessons of political economics. In this essay, he reviews more recent empirical research on how financial markets respond to political events with the goal of better understanding the nature and extent of corporate influence in American politics. The public and media attention currently focused on campaign contributions, independent expenditures, and lobbying might better be devoted to exposing and monitoring personal connections between politicians and firms. Adapted from the source document.

I examine the change in voter turnout across Indiana counties before and after the implementation of photo ID requirements. Overall, statewide turnout increased by about two percentage points after photo ID; further, there is no consistent evidence that counties that have higher percentages of minority, poor, elderly or less-educated population suffer any reduction in voter turnout relative to other counties. In fact, the estimated effect of photo ID on turnout is positive for counties with a greater percentage of minorities or families in poverty. The only consistent and frequently statistically significant impact of photo ID in Indiana is to increase voter turnout in counties with a greater percentage of Democrats relative to other counties. These findings run counter to some recent and prominent concerns that have been raised about voter identification reforms; however, these results are consistent with both existing theory on voter behavior and the most recent and reliable empirical evidence on the effects of voter identification requirements on turnout. ; Includes bibliographical references

When I was a boy, my family would occasionally receive tall baskets filled with fruits, nuts and jams, most often around the holidays. These gifts from business acquaintances of my father were not meant to be inducements for him to break the law; rather, they were little niceties intended to maintain ongoing relationships. Today, when my wife and I are invited to dinner, we usually bring flowers or a bottle of wine as a gift. This is not some crass attempt on our part to ensure that sanitary conditions are maintained during meal preparation; it is only a symbol of our appreciation for the kindness of our hosts. Not for a moment do I believe that we would be ostracized should we go to dinner engagements empty-handed, nor would my father have punished nongivers. As such, these gift exchanges can be seen as epiphenomena: they symbolize underlying relationships, but they do not constitute relationships.

Much empirical work on Congressional elections implicitly assumes that candidates are vote-maximizers; this may be a fair assumption for challengers, but it is not a good description of incumbent behavior. I present a general intertemporal utility maximizing model of candidate behavior, which includes vote-maximization as a special case. I then demonstrate that these models have important consequences for both the design & interpretation of empirical work. 2 Tables, 32 References. Adapted from the source document.

A fundamental property of any good theory is logical consistency. However, two common assumptions in the rational choice approach to political analysis (that induced preferences over policy are separable & that such preferences are independent of changes in exogenous factors) are not consistent with the archetypal assumptions of individual utility maximization. These particular pathologies of spatial models of politics have not been well recognized in the political science literature. 2 Figures, 58 References. Adapted from the source document.

Argues that "interested" money does not play a very influential role in federal elections and that the net effect on the democratic ideals of representation and participation is ambiguous; US.

Variations in state campaign finance regulations across states and over time provide an opportunity to test the effects of reforms on the electoral success of incumbent state legislators. We use the most recent state legislative election returns dataset to test whether state campaign finance reforms help or hinder incumbents. Our analysis of nearly 66,000 contests in 33 years reveals that campaign contribution limits and partial public financing have little impact on incumbent reelection prospects. However, full public financing and prohibitions on corporate independent expenditures significantly increase the probability of incumbent reelection.

The relationship between approval of the state legislature and political polarization in the legislature is investigated by matching responses from a large national survey to Shor and McCarty's ideological scores for state parties. In contrast to popular wisdom, citizens do not have a negative view of more polarized legislatures or more extreme majority parties, all else constant. Instead, legislative approval is filtered primarily through a partisan lens; partisans are more approving when their party is in control and more extreme (and less approving when the opposing party is in control and more extreme).