Suchergebnisse

Examines the phenomenon of extending electoral rights to expatriate citizens & to noncitizen residents. Why governments expand voting rights in this way is considered, finding a mixed bag of reasons. A nonterritorial conception of nationhood, often rooted in ethnic nationalism, is seen as a prime reason. Voting rights for noncitizen residents is less widespread but found in various forms around the world, & reasons for introducing this form of franchise are also mixed. Four contrasting ideal-typical positions for or against electoral rights beyond territory & citizenship are outlined & rejected, & an alternative principle, stakeholder citizenship, is proposed. 16 References. J. Zendejas

Among the least-researched American elections are those for seats on the states' supreme courts, arguably some of the most important political positions in the states. We know not only that campaign spending in these races has increased sharply in the past 20 years but also that there is great variation in spending among them. What factors cause campaign spending to vary among races for the states' highest courts? And what can an understanding of campaign spending in these races tell us about campaign spending for other offices? I use data from 281 state supreme court races in 21 states from 1990 to 2000 to answer these questions. I find that state supreme court campaign spending is driven by the characteristics of the race, institutional arrangements, & the electoral & state supreme court context. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 2 Appendixes, 42 References. Adapted from the source document.

Since 1990, the American states have adopted a variety of reforms to regulate lobbying in an attempt to address a host of ethical issues. Such regulation can have important impacts on a variety of aspects of the legislative process because it typically impacts the relationships between legislators & lobbyists. How does such lobbying regulation vary across the states & over time? I have developed a measure of state lobbying regulation from 1990-2003. This measure validly captures the laws that limit relationships between lobbyists & legislators &, as such, can be used to help assess a variety of hypotheses about the legislative process. 1 Table, 13 References. Adapted from the source document.

Following the problems with presidential voting in Florida in 2000, voters & political scientists became interested in election administration. While empirical studies have shown that different election equipment can produce different tabulation error rates, little is known about the factors that affect voters' perceptions of good election administration. Using a survey of voters in Georgia, we examine these perceptions of the voting process. We find that black voters & Democrats were significantly less confident than others that their votes were counted accurately & that they were also more likely to express concerns over the election equipment they used. In contrast, the actual voting environment, including the type of voting equipment used, appears to have no direct bearing on voters' trust in the process. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 32 References. Adapted from the source document.

Several recent studies have investigated the relationship between direct democracy & public policy outcomes, with mixed findings. These inconsistencies may stem, in part, from researchers' failure to recognize that direct democracy institutions are distributed nonrandomly across the American states. That is, certain factors may lead a state to adopt the initiative process & influence other policy choices. We revisit the question of how the initiative influences state fiscal policy using panel data from 1960-2000 & a full-information maximum likelihood estimator that explicitly accounts for the endogeneity of the initiative. Our findings suggest that failure to endogenize the initiative in empirical analyses leads to substantially biased estimates of its effects. In particular, we find that once factors that predict whether a state has adopted the initiative are controlled, the initiative has a positive effect on state revenue generation & spending. Tables, Figures, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document.

Since 1990, the standard statistical approach for studying state policy adoption has been an event history analysis using binary link models, such as logit or probit. In this article, we evaluate this logit-probit approach & consider some alternative strategies for state policy adoption research. In particular, we discuss the Cox model, which avoids the need to parameterize the baseline hazard function &, therefore, is often preferable to the logit-probit approach. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the Cox model can be modified to deal effectively with repeatable & competing events, events that the logit-probit approach cannot be used to model. Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

Reports that the Jobs Model forecast predicted well in 2004 showing more accurate results than other forecasts of the presidential election. 1 Table, 5 References.

Assesses the accuracy of a forecast model for presidential elections that incorporates economic variables & the incumbency of the president's party on voting behavior. 1 Table, 7 References.

How does minority racial & ethnic descriptive representation exert policy influence in majoritarian representative institutions? & how do non-representative majoritarian institutions, such as the citizen initiative, affect the degree of this influence? I use an event history analysis of state adoption of English Only laws from 1984 to 2002 to test a model of minority policy influence that is exerted through the possession of state legislative leadership positions. Unlike previous studies, I find that the size of the minority population & the level of descriptive representation in the legislature exert only an indirect effect on legislative policy decisions. Furthermore, the majoritarian rules of the initiative undermine the policy influence minorities gain through legislative leadership & can actually lead to a policy backlash. 5 Tables, 53 References. Adapted from the source document.