Changes in the Location of the Median Voter in theU.S. House of Representatives, 1963–1996

We consider the degree of ideological polarizationwithin and between the parties in the U.S. House ofRepresentatives for the period 1963–1996, using theGroseclose, Levitt and Snyder (1996) adjustment method for ADA and ACU scores to ensure over timecomparability of roll call voting data. We focusespecially on the median House member, since webelieve that change in the median offers a bettermeasure of the impact of the change in party controlthan does changes in the mean roll-call votingscore. Our data analysis makes two general points. First andforemost, when we looked at the change in the locationof the House median voter, we found a dramatic changeafter the Republicans gained a majority in the House in1994. After the Republicans became a majority in theHouse, the ADA median in the House in 1995–1996 was at24, far closer to the Republican median of 4 than tothe Democratic median of 83. The shift in medianfrom 1993–1994 to 1994–1995 involved a change of over 25points in one election – far and away the greatestsingle shift in ideology of the modern era. Incontrast, the mean changed only 1 point overthis same period. Second, for the three decades weinvestigated, we found three historical epochs vis a visthe relative locations of the ADA (or ACU) floormedian and the ADA (or ACU) floor mean in the U.S.House of Representatives – two inflection points in1983 and 1994 which are related to trends in regionalrealignment.     

Something Alien? The Limits of U.S. Influence in UK Campaigns

The campaign consulting business in the United States is the largest in the world and has had some success in globally exporting its expertise in terms of both personnel and technique. This paper reflects on the so-called “Americanization” of British elections and draws attention to some of the significant landmarks in the relationship between strategists in the two countries. The discussion does, however, identify the limitations of this idea as an organizing concept for understanding how election campaigning has developed in the United Kingdom.     

Incumbent positioning, ideological heterogeneity and?mobilization in U.S. House elections

This article examines whether the need to mobilize citizens pushes incumbents to the ideological extremes in U.S. House elections. We test whether incumbents are more ideologically extreme as the ideological heterogeneity of the district increases and if turnout increases as incumbents become more extreme. These tests combined with the observation that divergence decreases with competitiveness suggest that candidates balance the need to attract swing voters with the need to mobilize supporters. The results also suggest that the growth in elite polarization is linked to the growing ideological heterogeneity in the electorate.     

Explaining variation in the competitiveness of U.S. Senate elections, 1922–2004

We develop and test predictions about the factors determining the competitiveness of elections to the U.S. Senate. To do so, we deliberately abstract away from candidate-specific conditions that have often been used to study political competitiveness in order to focus on basic structural features of the electoral landscape. In our framework, party-specific constraints on the ideological positioning of local candidates, linked to the national party organization and its contributors, interact with the heterogeneity of state electorates to determine the number of highly competitive Senate contests. Three hypotheses emerge from this model: (1) the greater the diversity of a party’s national legislative delegation, the more highly competitive Senate elections we will observe; (2) states in which the ideological heterogeneity of the electorate is relatively high will exhibit a greater number of highly competitive elections; and (3) highly competitive Senate contests will be more common in states with closed primaries than in states with open primaries. We provide strong evidence in support of the first two hypotheses and some evidence in support of the third.     

Is the U.S. Supreme Court's Legitimacy Grounded in Performance Satisfaction and Ideology?

Bartels and Johnston have recently presented evidence suggesting that the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court is grounded in the ideological preferences and perceptions of the American people. In addition, they offer experimental data purporting to show that dissatisfaction with a single Court decision substantially diminishes the institution's legitimacy. These findings strongly break with earlier research on the Court's institutional support, as the authors recognize. The theoretical implications of their findings are profound. If the authors are correct that legitimacy is strongly dependent upon satisfying the policy preferences and ideological predilections of the American people, the essence of legitimacy is fundamentally transformed. Consequently, we reinvestigate the relationships among ideology, performance satisfaction, and Court legitimacy, unearthing empirical findings that diverge markedly from theirs. We conclude with some thoughts about how the Court's “countermajoritarian dilemma” can be reconceptualized and recalculated, once more drawing conclusions sharply at odds with those of Bartels and Johnston.     

Shirley Chisholm： Unbought and unbossed An African American woman in U.S. politics

The article explores how an African American woman, Shirley Chisholm, was involved in American politics in the 20th century. Chisholm＇s political career took off in 1964, when she won the campaign for the New York State General Assembly. In 1968, after finishing her term in the legislature, Ms. Chisholm campaigned to represent New York＇s twelfth congressional district. She won the election and became the first colored woman elected to congress. During her first term in congress, Chisholm hired an all-female staff and spoke out for civil rights, women＇s rights, the poor and against the Vietnam War. In 1970, she was elected to continue a second term. She remarked that women in the United States must become revolutionaries and they must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes. On January 25, 1972, Shirley Chisholm announced her candidacy for president. Ms. Chisholm became the first African American woman to campaign for the presidency. Not surprisingly, she met a lot of resistance, even from the congressional black caucus and women＇s right groups. The Democratic National Convention in 1972 in Miami was the first major convention in which a woman was considered for the presidential nomination. Although she did not win the nomination, she received 151 of the delegates＇ votes. The whole aim of her campaign was not to win but enter the struggle and pave the way for the future. Ms. Chisholm believed her black colleagues in congress failed to rally around her because she was a woman. Shirley is one of the many African American women who have been denied their rightful place in American history, She fought for change and the article tries to remember the role she played in the United States politics in the 20th century.     

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission: What Role in the Administration of Elections?

What role in the administration of elections will the new U.S.Election Assistance Commission (EAC) play, and how does thatrole differ from past federal involvement? The answers are uncertainbecause delays in appointing the commission members and insufficientfunding severely handicapped early activities. This articleexamines the factors that influence the EAC's emerging role:the commission's background, structure, tasks and tools, start-upactivities, and recent issues. Because the principal impactof the EAC is indirect, affecting election administration throughthe states, we draw on the "tools of government" literatureto frame the discussion. Although the Help America Vote Actof 2002, which created the EAC, continues a long line of federalregulatory mandates in the elections arena, the EAC has almostno regulatory authority. Its principal tools are grants andinformation—instruments of cooperative, rather than coercive,federalism. Given that the major grant programs are ending,the EAC's long-term contribution will likely be to create anddisseminate information.     

Building climate-resilient cities： Examining climate change actions and hazard vulnerability in U.S. coast

The U.S. Gulf of Mexico＇s coastal counties have experienced many serious climate-related coastal hazards. It is important to identify how well local jurisdictions in gulf coast have prepared for climate change. The objective of this study is to exam how well the coastal jurisdictions have been aware of climate change and how well they have taken actions in climate change mitigation and adaptations. This study uses geographic information system （GIS） to identify the spatial variations of seventy-seven gulf coastal jurisdictions＇ climate change actions. The results show that only twelve coastal counties and their incorporated cities have made actions for climate change. The majority of coastal population in Gulf of Mexico are totally not be covered by local climate change initiatives or plans. The logistic regression results find that most of the contextual variables never show any statistical contribution to local climate change actions. The research suggests further coordination and education efforts to enhance local climate change awareness and actions.     

T.H. Marshall and his critics: reappraising ‘social citizenship’ in the twenty-first century

T.H. Marshall's concept of ‘social citizenship’, developed in the 1949 lecture ‘Citizenship and Social Policy’, remains a vital study of welfare in developed nations. However, Marshall's social citizenship has come under attack as undermining civil liberties, or falling short of offering real equality to marginalised groups. This article returns to Marshall's lecture to show that he was in fact aware of such problems, but nonetheless held the provision of social rights to be a valuable normative project. Furthermore, this article argues that a new social citizenship, incorporating collective rights claims, could present a strong challenge to neoliberalism in contemporary welfare debates.     

Why don't people vote in U.S. primary elections? Assessing theoretical explanations for reduced participation

Primary election participation in the United States is consistently lower than general election turnout. Despite this well-documented voting gap, our knowledge is limited as to the individual-level factors that explain why some general election voters do not show up for primary contests. We provide important insights into this question, using a novel new survey to examine three theoretical perspectives on participation never before empirically applied to primary races. Compared to general elections, we find that for U.S. House primary elections sizable segments of the electorate consider the stakes lower and the costs of voting greater, feel less social pressure to turn out and hold exclusionary beliefs about who should participate, and are more willing to defer to those who know and care more about the contests. Multivariate analysis reveals that these attitudes explain validated primary election participation. These findings point to new directions for future research.     

National Party Division and Divisive State Primaries in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1948–2012

In presidential nomination campaigns, individual state primaries and a national competition take place simultaneously. The relationship between divisive state primaries and general election outcomes is substantially different in presidential campaigns than in single-state campaigns. To capture the full impact of divisiveness in presidential campaigns, one must estimate both the impact of national party division (NPD) and the impact of divisive primaries in individual states. To do so, we develop a comprehensive model of state outcomes in presidential campaigns that incorporates both state-level and national-level controls. We also examine and compare several measures of NPD and several measures of divisive state primaries found in previous research. We find that both NPD and divisive state primaries have independent and significant influence on state-level general election outcomes, with the former having a greater and more widespread impact on the national results. The findings are not artifacts of statistical techniques, timeframes or operational definitions. The results are consistent—varying very little across a wide range of methods and specifications.     

Does the Ideological Proximity Between Candidates and Voters Affect Voting in U.S. House Elections?

Do citizens hold congressional candidates accountable for their policy positions? Recent studies reach different conclusions on this important question. In line with the predictions of spatial voting theory, a number of recent survey-based studies have found reassuring evidence that voters choose the candidate with the most spatially proximate policy positions. In contrast, most electoral studies find that candidates’ ideological moderation has only a small association with vote margins, especially in the modern, polarized Congress. We bring clarity to these discordant findings using the largest dataset to date of voting behavior in congressional elections. We find that the ideological positions of congressional candidates have only a small association with citizens’ voting behavior. Instead, citizens cast their votes “as if” based on proximity to parties rather than individual candidates. The modest degree of candidate-centered spatial voting in recent Congressional elections may help explain the polarization and lack of responsiveness in the contemporary Congress.     

What Does Credibility Look like? Tweets and Walls in U.S. Presidential Candidates’ Visual Storytelling

This study considers the social media visual messaging of four candidates in the 2012 U.S. Republican presidential primary campaign. The analysis is guided by symbolic convergence theory, its method of fantasy theme analysis, and visual rhetoric theory. Using a schema of visual attributes, this study analyzes a rhetorical strategy of candidates' campaigns: the pictorial “public diary” found on their official Facebook and Twitter pages. It reveals how the credibility character traits of trustworthiness and expertise appear in the candidates' visual narratives, what messages dominate, and how candidates differ in succeeding or failing to visually communicate credibility. This study has important implications for how political management can use images in crafting and assessing messaging strategies in a competitive environment.     

Identities of Competitive States in U.S. Presidential Elections: Electoral College Bias or Candidate-Centered Politics?

When discussing the biases of the U.S. Electoral College, researchersconclude that competitive states seem to occur randomly withoutany explanation. This study examines the consistency with whichthe same states have been competitive in presidential electionsfrom 1824 to 2000. It also identifies "spectator" states. Spectatorstates are those that have not been competitive for ten presidentialelections in a row. A statistical analysis illustrates thatthe identities of competitive states have become more unpredictable.In addition, few states have been spectators for long periods.In terms of representation, the facts that competitive statesare not consistent and that there are few spectators mean differentstates are in the presidential spotlight at different times.As opposed to any biases associated with the Electoral College,the changes in consistency coincide with the rise of candidate-centeredpolitics and decreasing voter loyalty to parties. The highlychangeable nature of competitive states strengthens the federalismargument for continuation of the Electoral College.     

Environmental Harm or Natural Hazard? Problem Identification and Adaptation in U.S. Municipal Climate Action Plans

A number of cities in the United States have devised climate action plans (CAPs) to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, few of these plans address strategies to adapt to the long term effects of climate change that will occur in the near and distant future. The research presented in this article examines why cities choose to embed adaptation provisions in their CAPs. Our study codes the content of CAPs for all cities (N = 98) in the United States with populations greater than 50,000. We find cities that frame problems associated with climate change in the language of hazards are more likely to include adaptation strategies in their CAPs than cities that focus on other types of environmental harm. Our findings suggest that more robust efforts to plan for climate change will require the activation of communities of interest beyond those that have been instrumental in setting the current climate agenda.     

Timely shirking: time-dependent monitoring and?its?effects on legislative behavior in the U.S. Senate

We examine legislative shirking under conditions of imperfect constituent monitoring. Our core argument states that variation in information costs and constituent memory leads to systematic variation in constituent monitoring over time. Assuming that legislators are responsive to multiple cues, we expect to observe time-dependent legislative shirking. We develop a theoretical model of legislative behavior with time-dependent monitoring, which we test empirically using Senate roll call data. Our findings show that a substantial number of senators engage in systematic, time-dependent shirking, and that senators consistently move toward extreme positions when monitoring is low and toward moderate positions when it is high.     

Giving the People What They Want? The Distribution of Earmarks in the U.S. House of Representatives

The common wisdom in journalistic accounts of earmarking is that Congress distributes earmarks on a purely political basis, without any consideration for the demand for federal spending. Academic accounts similarly argue that factors internal to Congress are preeminent in determining where earmarks go, even more than for other types of pork‐barrel spending. Using earmarks appearing in the fiscal year 2008 Appropriations bills, I search for both chamber‐based and demand‐side determinants of the distribution of earmarks. I find that both types of factors are significantly related to the number of earmarks that a House member receives. This result indicates that even while earmarking, members of Congress are at least minimally responsive to voter preferences and calls into question whether earmarks should be treated as an outlier within the universe of spending allocation mechanisms.     

The Anatomy of Retention in the U.S. Federal Government: Exit,Voice, or Money?

Employee turnover—due to retirement, moving from one work unit to another, or leaving an organization entirely—imposes considerable costs on organizations. While private organizations make use of several high-powered incentives to retain workers, public organizations typically lack comparable incentives. Fortunately, public employees frequently possess stronger intrinsic motives to stay. Our results indicate that employee voice is an especially useful tool in the U.S. federal government. Evidence is also consistent with a substantial “contagion” effect: when others in an agency seek to leave, individual employees in that agency are more likely to report turnover intentions than similar employees in agencies with more “stayers.”