The Elusive Search for Presidential Power

Unilateral presidential actions, such as executive orders, are widely cited as a key strategic tool for presidential power. However, is unilateral action evidence of unilateralism or might it represent executive acquiescence? We answer this by (1) specifying three competing models, each with a different presidential discretion assumption and generating alternative hypotheses; (2) extending the canonical item‐response model to best measure executive‐order significance; and (3) comparing competing theoretical models to data for 1947–2002. Theoretically, we show that legislative preferences may impact unilateral actions differently than previously thought and indicate how parties may be influential. Empirically, a model where the president is responsive to the chamber's majority‐party median fits the data better than models assuming responsiveness to the chamber median or no presidential acquiescence. Unilateral action appears not tantamount to presidential power, as evidence implies that legislative parties, or the judicial actors enforcing their will, are key conditioning factors.     

亚洲廉价航空前景展望

虽然廉价航空在美国、澳大利亚和欧洲有很大的市场占有率,但在亚洲国家,尤其是东盟国家,这个行业近来才刚刚起步。这种廉价航空方式不讲究排场,快速往返,应用廉价、网上订票和在飞行中饮食的方式直奔目的地,因此具有较大的市场发展潜力。以新加坡为例,仅2004年就创立了3个以新加坡为基地的廉价航空公司,即5月创立的惠旅航空公司,9月创立的虎航,12月创立的捷星亚洲航空公司。2005年7月,捷星亚洲和惠旅航空公司宣布合并成一家新公司。诚然,廉价航运的经济意义是明显的。首先,廉价航空公司是针对需求量越来越大的亚洲内部跨国旅行而出现的。亚…     

When Pivotal Politics Meets Partisan Politics

Recent years have witnessed many efforts to understand legislative productivity and gridlock. However, despite theoretical and empirical contributions to how preferences and institutions shape political gridlock's level (e.g., Krehbiel 1996, 1998 ) and empirical evidence about how parties may affect political gridlock (e.g., Binder 1999 ; Coleman 1999 ), we lack a comprehensive perspective theoretically and empirically examining preferences, institutions, and parties. We overcome this deficiency by modeling conditions for gridlock as a function of preferences and institutions—incorporating bicameralism and presidential influence—and of parties. By generating equilibrium gridlock intervals for empirical testing using Poole's (1998) common space scores, and showing that gridlock intervals associated with models in which parties have no effect or an agenda-setting role do not explain policy gridlock but that those linked to models with party-unity effects and strong presidential leadership do, we demonstrate the importance of accounting for party and leadership roles in explaining legislative choices.     

Validation of the InnoXtract™ DNA extraction method for bone,teeth, and rootless hair

Forensic casework samples often include human hairs, teeth, and bones. Hairs with roots are routinely processed for DNA analysis, while rootless hairs are either not tested or processed using mitochondrial DNA. Bones and teeth are submitted for human remains identifications for missing persons and mass disaster cases. DNA extraction from these low templates and degraded samples is challenging. The new InnoXtract DNA extraction method utilizes magnetic beads that are optimized to bind small DNA fragments, as small as 100 base pairs, to purify high-yield DNA from compromised samples. This validation study evaluates InnoXtract's ability to obtain amplifiable DNA from samples such as rootless hairs and skeletal remains. Studies performed include sensitivity, stability, repeatability, reproducibility, non-probative samples, and comparison to standard organic extractions. Sensitivity studies demonstrate average yield recoveries ranging from 53% to 100% and 73% to 85% for the InnoXtract hair and bone methods, respectively. Studies demonstrate consistent results across a range of sample types, such as insulted and un-insulted bone and teeth, as well as hair shafts from donors of various ages, gender, race, and hair characteristics. The InnoXtract bone method outperformed organic extraction. The method was successfully automated on a MagMAX™ Express-96, with recoveries over 70% relative to the manual version. InnoXtract has the potential as an automated high-throughput, high-yield bone extraction method with 6 h of total extraction time for up to 96 samples. The validation study results demonstrate that the InnoXtract kits produce high-yield and high-quality DNA from compromised bone, teeth, and hair shaft samples.     

Politics of alienation and polarization: Taiwan's Tangwai in the 1980s

Abstract

After a quarter-century power struggle on the Chinese mainland, in 1949 the Chinese Communists (CCP) defeated the Nationalists (the Kuomintang or KMT) and forced Chiang Kai-shek and his totally demoralized army and government to retreat to Taiwan, an island that had been returned to China in 1945 after fifty years of colonial rule by the Japanese. By 1949, the original residents of the island, the Taiwanese, most of whose ancestors had come from the mainland two or three centuries earlier, had already gone through the initial welcoming of the Nationalists and enthusiasm for going back to China in 1945, and the subsequent great shock, anger, and disappointment of the February 28, 1947 Uprising, and the suppression and massacre that followed it. The February 28 Uprising resulted from harsh and oppressive Nationalist policies that forced the generally passive Taiwanese people, particularly the intellectuals, to resort to a series of protest demonstrations, some of them violent. In response, the Nationalist army led by General Chen Yi carried out a bloody purge, a massacre of the Taiwanese sociopolitical elite. The Uprising has since been regarded by many Taiwanese as the most important historic event in contemporary Taiwanese history, a revolutionary fight against injustice and tyranny. The supporters of the Taiwan independence movement have looked upon it as the beginning, the source of inspiration and legitimacy for their movement. In 1949 the six million Taiwanese were no longer happy, and they were suspicious and resentful of the sudden influx of the one-million-strong Chinese mainlanders who had just been decimated and forced by the Communists to flee to Taiwan and were to rule over the Taiwanese as another colonial power.     

Comparing Legislators and Legislatures: The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock Reconsidered

Lawrence S. Rothenberg Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 e-mail: lrot{at}mail.rochester.edu (corresponding author) Although political methodologists are well aware of measurementissues and the problems that can be created, such concerns arenot always front and center when we are doing substantive research.Here, we show how choices in measuring legislative preferenceshave influenced our understanding of what determines legislativeoutputs. Specifically, we replicate and extend Binder's highlyinfluential analysis (Binder, Sarah A. 1999. The dynamics oflegislative gridlock, 1947–96. American Political ScienceReview 93:519–33; see also Binder, Sarah A. 2003. Stalemate:Causes and consequences of legislative gridlock. Washington,DC: Brookings Institution) of legislative gridlock, which emphasizeshow partisan, electoral, and institutional characteristics generatemajor legislative initiatives. Binder purports to show thatexamining the proportion, rather than the absolute number, ofkey policy proposals passed leads to the inference that thesefeatures, rather than divided government, are crucial for explaininggridlock. However, we demonstrate that this finding is underminedby flaws in preference measurement. Binder's results are a functionof using W-NOMINATE scores never designed for comparing Senateto House members or for analyzing multiple Congresses jointly.When preferences are more appropriately measured with commonspace scores (Poole, Keith T. 1998. Recovering a basic spacefrom a set of issue scales. American Journal of Political Science42:964–93), there is no evidence that the factors thatshe highlights matter. Authors' note: Thanks to Sarah Binder and Keith Poole for furnishingdata used in our analysis and to Chris Achen and Kevin Clarkefor advice. All errors remain our own. Online appendix is availableon the Political Analysis Web site.     

Purpose Trajectories During Middle Adolescence: The Roles of Family,Teacher, and Peer Support

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - While studies on youth’s purpose have flourished in the last two decades, the work was mostly cross-sectional and derived from Western settings. This...     

The Search for Comparability: Response to Binder

Lawrence S. Rothenberg Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 e-mail: lrot{at}mail.rochester.edu (corresponding author) Binder (n.d., Taking the measure of Congress: Reply to Chiouand Rothenberg. Political Analysis. Forthcoming) highlightsareas of agreement and disagreement with our discussion of preferencemeasurement and legislative gridlock. We now both agree thatW-NOMINATE scores—employed in Binder (1999, The dynamicsof legislative gridlock. American Political Science Review 9:519–33)to measure key independent variables, including bicameral differences—shouldnot be used when examining multichamber legislatures over time.We continue to disagree over whether Common Space scores orBinder's conference vote measure is superior. In this response,we show that, although several of the theoretical and statisticalobjections that Binder (n.d.) raises to our Common Space measuredo not apply, they are all relevant for her conference voteanalog. Additionally, we detail how, despite protests to thecontrary, the conference vote measure is plagued by insufficientdata. Finally, we demonstrate how new efforts to show that Binder's (1999)results continue to hold are not robust.     

Allelic alterations at the STR markers in the buccal tissue cells of oral cancer patients and the oral epithelial cells of healthy betel quid-chewers: an evaluation of forensic applicability

Although cancerous specimens are usually not used in forensic DNA typing, they might be forcibly employed under certain instances. On the other hand, though the oral epithelial samples have been applied to forensic identification, the great popularity of betel quid (BQ)-chewing in Taiwan, which is known to be a risk factor leading to an oral cancer, makes this application questionable. The DNA stability of nine short tandem repeat (STR) markers (the AmpFlSTR kit) was first investigated and then used to evaluate the forensic appropriateness of the oral samples of both healthy BQ-chewers and the archived clinical specimens from oral cancer patients. The analyses were performed on buccal samples from 100 BQ-chewers and 100 oral cancer patients, as well as their paired peripheral blood samples, and a group of 100 non-BQ-chewers were used for the control. In the group of 100 oral cancer patients, two types of DNA instability were found. They were major allelic imbalance, and allelic alterations including the expansion, the contraction and the un-classified type (i.e. can not be confirmed as the expansion or the contraction). The overall percentage of the cancerous subjects demonstrating DNA instability was 33% (five patients possessing both types of DNA instability). Both types of DNA instability showed a tendency of increasing with the severity of the pathological stage of oral cancer. Forty-four occurrences of major allelic imbalance were found from 21 cancer patients. The statistical result revealed that there was no significant difference in the allelic imbalanced occurrence among the nine STR loci. Allelic alterations were found in 17 patients, within which 12 individuals had the expansion, five had the contraction, and three were the un-classified type. Further, among these 17 patients, three were found to acquire multiple allelic alterations at multiple loci. In the group of 100 unrelated healthy BQ-chewers, two loci with major allelic imbalance were detected. However, the two imbalanced alleles were virtually half lost, and could still be recognized as heterozygous alleles. The statistical results of ANOVA, chi(2), and Scheffe tests indicated that the means of allelic imbalance at the nine STR loci of the oral cancerous group revealed a significant difference from those in the control group. Our results suggest that oral cancer tissues cannot be used as references for forensic purposes using the PCR-based STR systems, whereas the oral swabs from healthy BQ-chewers can be employed, but should be done with caution.