Show Who the Money? Teacher Sorting Patterns and Performance Pay across U.S. School Districts

Pay for performance (PFP) remains one of the most controversial policy debates in the New Public Management reform era. Skepticism about PFP in the public sector is often grounded in theories of public service motivation that suggest a misalignment between PFP's focus on extrinsic market‐based pay incentives and intrinsically motivated government workers. Frequently missing from this analysis, however, is any consideration for whether PFP leads to positive “sorting” effects on the composition of a government agency's workforce through attraction, selection, and attrition processes. Using data from two waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey, the authors examine whether PFP influences the sorting patterns of K–12 public schoolteachers across U.S. school districts. Findings show that, on average, school districts that adopted PFP secured new teacher hires who had graduated from colleges and universities with average SAT scores that were about 30 points higher than the new teacher cohorts hired by districts that did not adopt PFP.     

Coalition formation on the U.S. Supreme Court: 1969–2009

We apply a fallback model of coalition formation to decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing on the seven natural courts, which had the same members for at least two terms, between 1969 and 2009. The predictions of majority coalitions on each of the courts are generally borne out by the 5–4 decisions, whereas the predictions of the Martin-Quinn (Political Analysis 10(2):134–153, 2002) model, which assumes a single underlying dimension along which the justices can be ordered, are not. The present model also provides insight into the dynamic process by which subcoalitions build up into majority coalitions and, in addition, identifies “kingmakers” and “leaders” on the natural courts. Furthermore, it provides evidence, from coalitional memberships, that a few justices shifted over time from one ideological camp to another.     

Judging the “Vapid and Hollow Charade”: Citizen Evaluations and the Candor of U.S. Supreme Court Nominees

Supreme Court confirmation hearings have been famously called a “vapid and hollow charade” by Elena Kagan. Indeed, perceptions of nominees’ refusal to answer questions about pending cases, prominent political issues, or give any hint of their ideological leanings have become a cornerstone of the modern confirmation process. We investigate the extent to which this reticence to speak of their ideological views, or candor, influences how individuals evaluate the nominee. To this end, we present the results of a survey experiment which examines how support for a hypothetical Supreme Court nominee is affected by information, especially when a nominee is presented to be very forthright or very reticent in answering ideological questions during the confirmation hearings. We find that while partisan compatibility with the president is the main determinant of support for a nominee, nominees who refuse to answer ideological questions can bolster support from respondents who would not support them on partisan grounds. We supplement these findings with observational state-level support data from real nominees over the last 40 years.     

Levels of Value Integration in Federal Agencies' Mission and Value Statements: Is Open Government a Performance Target of U.S. Federal Agencies?

The Barack Obama administration advanced open government initiatives to make federal administration more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. Yet a question remains whether federal administrators took notice. This article examines changes in the extent to which U.S. federal agencies have integrated the three core principles of open government—transparency, public participation, and collaboration—into their performance planning. By analyzing 337 annual performance plans of 24 major federal agencies from fiscal years 2001 to 2016, the authors found that, overall, the level of integration of open government into performance planning has been trending higher since the early 2000s. During the Obama presidency, integration initially rose sharply but later declined. Findings also show that agencies' stated core values regarding open government are not consistently integrated into their performance plans. The implications of these findings for incorporating democratic‐constitutional values into holistic performance management are considered.     

Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections?

In spite of substantial public controversy, very little reliable data exists concerning the frequency with which non-citizen immigrants participate in United States elections. Although such participation is a violation of election laws in most parts of the United States, enforcement depends principally on disclosure of citizenship status at the time of voter registration. This study examines participation rates by non-citizens using a nationally representative sample that includes non-citizen immigrants. We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections. Non-citizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.     

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.     

Does Performance Management Lead to Better Outcomes? Evidence from the U.S. Public Transit Industry

Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performance management practices comprising both strategy formulation and performance measurement in 88 small and medium‐sized local transit agencies in conjunction with comparative outcome data drawn from the National Transit Database maintained by the Federal Transit Administration. The results provide evidence that more extensive use of performance management practices does in fact contribute to increased effectiveness in this segment of the transit industry.     

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.     

Guess What Happened on the Way to Revolution? Precursors to the Supreme Court's Federalism Revolution

In recent years, the Rehnquist Court has been accused of usheringin a "federalism revolution." The Court's decisions have beencontentious and often viewed as assertions of the Court's anti-majoritarianpower. However, these assessments misunderstand the role ofthe Court in the American political system. Not only are theCourt's recent decisions relatively modest departures from existingconstitutional doctrine, but its rediscovery of federalism follows,rather than leads, developments in the elected branches. Effortsto rehabilitate federalism as a political value began in theelected branches as early as the 1960s. By 1980, federalismhad become an important cleavage issue between the parties;Republicans advocated a form of "fixed federalism" while Democratsadvocated a form of "flexible federalism." Despite the desireof the Reagan and Bush administrations to use the judiciaryto advance the GOP's view of federalism, confirmation hearingsfor members of the Rehnquist Court demonstrate that Democratsin Congress paid little attention to federalism. Attitudes aboutfederalism thus made their way onto the Court without noticeand without challenge, and the sharp disagreements that emergedon the Court during the late-1990s mirror the same party cleavagesthat developed much earlier in the elected branches.     

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.     

Is the WTO Dispute Settlement System a Disaster for the U.S.? An Evaluation of U.S. – China WTO Disputes

Since China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the WTO dispute settlement system (DSS) has resolved an impressive number of US–China trade disputes. Over the past few years, however, as tensions between the two have escalated over several trade issues, the WTO has been pushed toward irrelevance since the Trump administration. Alleging that the WTO is “a disaster” and its adjudication is very unfair to the US, former President Trump made no effort to hide his criticism of the WTO and its DSS in particular. Is Trump right about the WTO DSS? Based on an examination of US–China WTO disputes and the WTO adjudicators’ highly contentious interpretations of the concept of “public body” under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (the SCM Agreement) as an example, this article shows that the WTO DSS is not particularly unfair to the US. While the WTO adjudicators sometimes did not fully follow the positions advocated by the US, they have adhered to generally accepted rules of treaty interpretation and exercised great caution to remain balanced and flexible in reaching their conclusions, especially on ambiguous issues. Though not perfect, the WTO DSS works as it is intended to. Engaging in the reform of the WTO and its DSS, instead of abandoning or marginalizing the WTO, should be a wiser and more practical choice for the Biden administration.

     

Is the Left-Right Scale a Valid Measure of Ideology?

In order to measure ideology, political scientists heavily rely on the so-called left-right scale. Left and right are, however, abstract political concepts and may trigger different associations among respondents. If these associations vary systematically with other variables this may induce bias in the empirical study of ideology. We illustrate this problem using a unique survey that asked respondents open-ended questions regarding the meanings they attribute to the concepts “left” and “right”. We assess and categorize this textual data using topic modeling techniques. Our analysis shows that variation in respondents’ associations is systematically related to their self-placement on the left-right scale and also to variables such as education and respondents’ cultural background (East vs. West Germany). Our findings indicate that the interpersonal comparability of the left-right scale across individuals is impaired. More generally, our study suggests that we need more research on how respondents interpret various abstract concepts that we regularly use in survey questions.     

Is Leadership in the Eye of the Beholder? A Study of Intended and Perceived Leadership Practices and Organizational Performance

Leadership is a matter of both intentions and perceptions, which do not necessarily always match. Because employees’ motivation and commitment are only affected by leadership if they notice it, employee‐perceived leadership is expected to have a stronger correlation with organizational performance than leader‐intended leadership. This expectation is tested for transformational and transactional leadership, as both types of practices are expected to increase performance. Using a sample of 1,621 teachers and 79 Danish high school principals, the authors find that leader‐intended and employee‐perceived transformational and transactional leadership are only weakly correlated and that only employee‐perceived leadership practices (both transformational and transactional) are significantly related to objectively measured school performance. The results show that it is important to distinguish between intended and perceived leadership and that leaders should be aware of how their practices are perceived.     

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.     

Dollars on the Sidewalk: Should U.S. Presidential Candidates Advertise in Uncontested States?

Presidential candidates in the United States do not intentionally advertise in states without rigorous competition for electoral votes. However, in some areas of noncompetitive states, media markets overlap with battleground states, exposing these regions to political ads. These spillover advertisements allow us to examine the relationship between advertisements and individual campaign contributions, with data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project and the Federal Elections Commission. Using propensity‐score matching within uncontested states, we find that 2008 aggregate giving in zip codes exposed to political ads was approximately $6,100 (28.1% of mean contributions) more than in similar zip codes without advertisements.     

Geospatial intelligence and the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838–1842): reframing the history of U.S. Naval Intelligence

This paper reframes the U.S. Exploring Expedition (USEE, 1838–1842) as a naval/geospatial intelligence collection activity. By charting the Pacific, the USEE furthered U.S. commercial interests, while also building a picture of the ‘maritime operational environment’ on which all other forms of intelligence were (and are) based. Viewing the USEE in this light broadens the opportunities open to historians of U.S. Naval Intelligence and historicizes contemporary concerns about climate change and resource scarcity. It suggests that ‘knowledge of the environment’ has long coexisted with ‘knowledge of the enemy’ as a priority for the U.S. Navy.