Evidence of a Local Incumbency Advantage

Incumbents are highly likely to win reelection at all levels of government, but scholars continue to debate the extent to which serving in office has a causal effect on winning. For city council elections it is unclear whether or not we should predict a causal effect at all. City councilors may not regularly seek reelection, and any apparent advantage could be entirely attributable to preexisting qualities rather than incumbency. This article uses a regression discontinuity design to provide evidence that city council incumbents are more likely to run and win their next elections because they served a term in office.     

Susannah Izzard and Nicola Barden,eds. Rethinking Gender and Therapy: The Changing Identities of Women.. Philadelphia: Open UP, 2001

Alice Walker, by Maria Lauret (New York: St. Martin's P, 2000).

Power, Race, and Gender in Academe: Strangers in the Tower?, edited by Shirley Geok‐Lin Lim and María Herrera‐Sobek (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2000).

Migrant Daughter: Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman, by Frances Esquibel Tywoniak (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000).

Just Anger: Representing Women's Anger in Early Modern England, by Gwynne Kennedy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000).

Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920, by Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1999).

States of Conflict: bender, Violence and Resistance, edited by Susie Jacobs, Ruth Jacobson and Jennifer Marchbank (London and New York: Zed Books, 2000).

The Hysteric's Guide to the Future Female Subject, by Juliet Flower MacCannell (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000).

The Sounds of Feminist Theory, by Ruth Salvaggio (Albany: State U of New York P, 1999).

Literary Feminisms, by Ruth Robbins (New York: St. Martin's P, 2000).

Women and Faith: Catholic Religious Life in Italy from Late Antiquity to the Present, edited by Lucetta Scaraffia and Gabriella Zarri (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999).

Disarming the Nation: Women's Writing and the American Civil War, by Elizabeth Young (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999).

Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit, by Suzanne Smith (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999).

Swinging Single: Representing Sexuality in the 1960s, edited by Hilary Radner and Moya Luckett (Minneapolis and London: U of Minneapolis P, 1999).

Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives, by Cynthia Enloe (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000).     

STRESS,GENES, AND GENERALIZABILITY ACROSS GENDER: EFFECTS OF MAOA AND STRESS SENSITIVITY ON CRIME AND DELINQUENCY*

In the current study, we extend the gene‐by‐environment interaction (cGxE) literature by examining how a widely studied polymorphism, the MAOA upstream variable number tandem repeat (MAOA‐uVNTR) interacts with distal and proximal stressors to explain variation in crime and delinquency. Prior research findings have revealed that MAOA‐uVNTR interacts with single indicators of environmental adversity to explain criminal behavior in general‐population and incarcerated samples. Nevertheless, the genetically moderated stress sensitivity hypothesis suggests that increased risk for criminal behavior associated with variation in the MAOA‐uVNTR can be best understood in the context of both distal stress during childhood and proximal stress in adulthood. Therefore, we employed Tobit regression analyses to examine a gene–distal–proximal environment (CGxExE) interaction across gender in a sample of university students (n = 267) and with data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; n = 1,294). The results across both sets of analyses demonstrate that variation in the MAOA‐uVNTR interacts with distal and proximal stress to lead to increased risk for criminal behavior in males. Although proximal life stress is associated with an increase in crime and delinquency, this effect is more pronounced among MAOA‐L allele carriers that have experienced distal stress.     

Surviving a Hangzhou Hair Salon

My first week in Hangzhou.It is an early spring afternoon and raining.I'm nervous as I walk in Nandu Street.     

The Government's Plans for Decentralisation and Localism: A Progress Report

This article assesses progress on the coalition government's ambitious agenda for decentralisation and localism against six actions set out in the government's own guide to decentralisation. It critically examines the government's case that the previous government's centralised approach failed. The six actions cover reducing bureaucracy, community empowerment, more local control of public funding, provider diversification, more public scrutiny and stronger local accountability. The paper concludes that accountability is the most challenging and that progress is hampered by tensions between the actions and between government departments. It argues that the government needs a clearer, shared vision for localism going forward.     

Issue Accountability and the Mass Public

Under what conditions, if any, does the mass electorate hold congressional members accountable for their records on specific issues? We examine this question on the issue of crime, for which salience has varied substantially and opinion has favored Republicans, and the environment, for which salience has not varied much and voters have favored Democrats. Because different parametric specifications produce divergent findings, we utilize matching analysis in addition to ordinary least squares. The tests suggest that issue accountability exists even controlling for a member's overall record. However, such accountability depends crucially on issue salience and a member's partisan affiliation.