Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections

A simple ``Bread and Peace'' model shows that aggregate votes forPresident in postwar elections were determined entirely byweighted-average growth of real disposable personal income percapita during the incumbent party's term and the cumulativenumbers of American military personnel killed in action as aresult of U.S. intervention in the Korean and Vietnamese civilwars. The model is subjected to robustness tests against twenty-two variations in functional form inspired by the extensiveliterature on presidential voting. Not one of these variationsadds value to the Bread and Peace model or significantly perturbsits coefficients.     

U.S.‐Style Leadership for English Local Government?

Significant changes in the political management of local authorities in the United Kingdom are now taking place as a result of legislation passed by the Labour government since 1997. The new political management models aim to modernize local governance by strengthening local leadership, streamlining decision making, and enhancing local accountability. These changes owe much to U.S. experience: They involve the introduction of a separation of powers between an executive and an assembly, and they allow local authorities to introduce directly elected mayors for the first time ever. Is U.K. local government beginning to adopt what might be described as U.S.‐style approaches to local governance? The evidence suggests the new institutional designs for U.K. local authorities represent a radical shift toward U.S.‐style local leadership and decision making. However, the U.K. central state remains heavily involved in the details of local decision making, to an extent that would be unthinkable in the United States.     

Tracking and Explaining Neighborhood Socioeconomic Change in U.S. Metropolitan Areas Between 1990 and 2010

This article addresses four fundamental questions about neighborhood change processes and outcomes among large U.S. metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2010: (a) Is it possible using census data and other secondary sources to come up with a consistent and robust method to measure gentrification and other forms of substantial neighborhood socioeconomic change (SNSEC) across all U.S. metropolitan areas? (b) To what degree are gentrification and other forms of SNSEC the result of metropolitan-scale economic and demographic forces versus more bottom-up and neighborhood-specific forces and dynamics? (c) To what degree are gentrification and other forms of SNSEC shaped by the actions of individual, and groups of, property owners, developers, and speculators versus the neighborhood service and location preferences of households? (d) To what extent are gentrification and other forms of substantial neighborhood change always accompanied by the displacement of existing residents?     

Explaining the Decision to Withdraw from a U.S. Presidential Nomination Campaign

We contend that a candidate’s decision to exit from a U.S. presidential nomination campaign is a function of three sets of considerations: the potential for profile elevation, party-related costs, and updated perceptions of competitiveness. We analyze data from eleven post-reform presidential nomination campaigns and find support for all three considerations. Specifically, our results suggest that in addition to candidates’ competitiveness, the decision to withdraw is a function of candidates’ closeness to their party and ability to raise their profile. At the same time, some of our results contradict the conventional wisdom regarding presidential nomination campaigns, as we find no evidence that media coverage or cash on hand directly affect the duration of a nomination candidacy.