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For decades, the Democrats have been viewed as the party of the poor, with the Republicans representing the rich. Recent presidential elections, however, have shown a reverse pattern, with Democrats performing well in the richer blue states in the northeast and coasts, and Republicans dominating in the red states in the middle of the country and the south. Through multilevel modeling of individual level survey data and county- and state-level demographic and electoral data, we reconcile these patterns. Furthermore, we find that income matters more in red America than in blue America. In poor states, rich people are much more likely than poor people to vote for the Republican presidential candidate, but in rich states (such as Connecticut), income has a very low correlation with vote preference. Adapted from the source document.

Examines research on, and importance of, state courts, including dissimilitude of US state high courts; focuses on the case of abortion and judicial review of restrictive abortion legislation. Assesses factors associated with the duration of time between legislative enactment of a restrictive statute and the court docketing a case in which a constitutional challenge is made, and the forces affecting the individual justices' votes to invalidate or uphold that legislation.

In an age in which trading activities of the state are increasing everywhere, in which the economic progress of underdeveloped countries has become the object of international and national concern, but in which, on the other hand, the rights and legitimate expectations of alien investors have in many countries suffered more frivolous and alarming setbacks than at any other time—in such an age the problem of the state's international responsibility for losses arising out of contractual relations between states (or other international persons) and aliens is clearly of great actuality.

The international community has embraced an unprecedented approach to collapsed states — those that have lost their capacity to perform even the most basic functions. While historically such states simply disappeared, divided up into smaller units or were conquered by a more powerful neighbour, collapsed states are now expected to be rebuilt within the same international borders thanks to the intervention of multilateral organizations and bilateral donors. Furthermore, there is now the expectation that these states will from the very beginning be rebuilt as democracies with strong institutions. This article examines the model of state reconstruction currently adopted by the international community and some examples of its implementation. It concludes that the approach cannot be applied to all countries, that institution–building is often undertaken prematurely, and that there is a discrepancy between the donors' prescriptions and the resources they are willing to make available.

AbstractThis essay places state supreme courts in state politics by tracking some of the major lines of research on these important institutions, documenting the importance of state supreme courts, and illustrating important variations among state supreme courts on a host of factors, including docket composition, the exercise of judicial review, litigant patterns, and turnover rates. Through analyses of original data on separation-of-powers relationships in the abortion controversy, it also provides a brief empirical demonstration of how courts influence and are influenced by the political and policy processes operating in the states, and how comparative research helps resolve fundamental controversies in political science. We conclude that there is a remarkable and unfortunate asymmetry between the political importance of state supreme courts and the attention given to them by the research community. Moreover, by capitalizing on the analytical advantages of comparative state judicial politics scholarship, scholars will be able to solve some of the most complex puzzles in the study of state politics.

The widely shared perception in the Baltic societies about these countries being national homelands of respective ethno-nations is indispensable for understanding recent political developments in the region. Arguably, the outcomes of the transition from Soviet to European Union member-states have been by far and large positive, forging functioning state institutions and creating polities that are on the forefront of upholding European standards in a range of areas. Much of the debate on the region, my own past contributions included, has emphasised the importance of nation-state-building agendas that have facilitated the transformation of the Russian-speaking population of the region from a formerly dominant nationality of the Soviet Union (SU) into a group that is today a minority in nation-states of Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. Although there are plenty of assessments of how the change in minority members' opportunities has impacted their social, economic and political mobilisation strategies over the decades since the Soviet demise, this article looks at the framework for these groups' participation in public life.