Single-issue voting: Elite-mass linkages

In this paper we consider the abortion and E.R.A. issues as examples of single-issue politics, as well as the nature of single-issue politics in general. We argue that many single issues are what others have called easy issues but that hard-issue voting as well as easy-issue voting may be occurring on both issues. We test this hypothesis using both mass and elite data sets. Our findings suggest that political activists may be cuing the masses into a pattern of single-issue voting, and hence keeping the battle over abortion and the E.R.A. intense.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1981 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, September 3–6, 1981.     

Negative expectations and self-evaluations in dysphoria

In a sample of female college students, dysphoric and intermittently dysphoric subjects, in comparison to nondysphoric subjects, were expected to perform more poorly on a game requiring eye-hand coordination. Actual performance showed no differences between these three groups. Following performance, relative to nondysphoric subjects, dysphoric and intermittently dysphoric subjects evaluated their performance more negatively. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive theories of depression and recent research. Implications for future research are suggested.     

Intimate Partner Violence in Cohabiting Families: Reports by Multiple Informants and Associations with Adolescent Outcomes

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is common, particularly in families with children. Observing such verbal and physical aggression has consistently been linked to unfavorable outcomes for affected children. Although cohabiting families are becoming increasingly prevalent and preliminary data suggest that rates of IPV may be high in these families, little is currently known about IPV and its impact as experienced by adolescents living in cohabiting families. This study used data from low-income urban Black cohabiting families (N = 92) to (1) examine agreement of reports of verbal and physical IPV between the adolescent and the mother and between the adolescent and the male cohabiting partner (MCP) and (2) test associations between IPV and youth mental health. A higher percentage of adolescents reported the occurrence of IPV, particularly physical violence, than did mothers and MCPs. Relative to those living in minimally violent or verbally violent homes, adolescents living in verbally and physically violent homes reported higher rates of internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors. These youth also reported higher levels of self-blame for the conflict and a worse relationship with the MCP but not the mother.     

Understanding the Relationship between Health PACs and Health Lobbying in the American States

We examine how health PAC activity in the states is connectedto lobbying. Is the political money that health interest organizationsbring to the policy process a powerful, independent means ofinfluence or is it better understood narrowly as a tactic usedto support lobbying? We examine the relationship between campaigncontributions and lobby activity and the limited work that hasbeen conducted on them and raise a number of questions aboutthe process by which they are connected. We utilize 1998 dataon state lobbying and PAC activity, allowing us to answer causalresearch questions generated from existing studies at the nationallevel. We conclude that PAC activity is best viewed as an adjunctof lobbying rather than an independent form of political activity.     

Welfare-to-Work,Structural Injustice and Human Rights

This article discusses welfare-to-work schemes, places schemes with strict conditionality in the theoretical framework of structural injustice, and argues that they may violate human rights law. Welfare-to-work schemes impose obligations on individuals to seek and accept work on the basis that otherwise they will be sanctioned by losing access to social support. The schemes are often presented as the best route out of poverty. However, the system in the UK, characterised by strict conditionality, coerces the poor and disadvantaged into precarious work, and conditions of in-work poverty. Forcing people to work in these conditions creates and sustains widespread and routine structures of exploitation. The article further argues that a framework of ‘state-mediated structural injustice’ is the best way of explaining the wrong. It finally claims that this injustice violates principles that are enshrined in human rights law, which the authorities have an obligation to examine and address.     

The political management of managed care: explaining variations in state health maintenance organization regulations

In the 1990s, strong incentives for managed care organizations to control costs, once regarded as a fortuitous confluence of interests, came to be seen as antithetical to consumers' interests in quality of care. In response to this change in political climate, many states have greatly increased their regulatory control of managed care organizations since the mid-1990s. This activity is surprising in an era when public policy on health care issues is usually described as frozen, gridlocked, and/or stalemated as a result of intense activity on the part of organized interests. We take advantage of the variation in state regulations of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to discover why some governments are able to address policy problems that are often perceived as intractable in a political if not in a true policy sense. From the history of HMOs, the backlash against managed care, and state responses to that backlash, we first extract a number of hypotheses about state regulatory activity. We then test these hypotheses with data on regulatory adoptions by states during the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Last, we discuss the findings with special attention to the role of politics in health care.     

After Oslo,a paradigm shift? Redefining ‘peoples’, sovereignty and justice in Israel-Palestine

Since the Oslo Accords, conflict resolution regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict has been guided by two conjoined premises regarding (1) the identity and rights of the two ‘peoples’ involved, and (2) Israel’s sovereignty, or lack of it, in portions of Mandate Palestine. Although seemingly incontestable, in tandem these premises have paradoxically proved ruinous to the welfare of civilians under occupation by fostering notions that peace can be achieved through geographic partition to serve rival ethno-national projects for self-determination. Proposed here is that this approach is fundamentally flawed in accepting as legitimate the Jewish-settler ideology that ethnically dismembered the ‘Palestinian people’, as well as a form of Palestinian-Arab ethno-nationalism that has also become anachronistic in light of contemporary law and norms. Drawing on comparative politics regarding the construction of ‘peoples’ and constructivist international relations theory regarding sovereignty, this article proposes that these premises must therefore be reassessed and principles of collective rights be reinterpreted to suit the current condition of advanced settler colonialism in Mandate Palestine, which compels full political unification.     

Commitment to political tolerance: Situational and activity-based differences

Survey research on political tolerance has consistently found situational and activity-based differences in levels of support for the rights of political opposition. The present inquiry is based on three studies that explore these differences. These studies reveal two distinct factors related to situational and activity-based variation in tolerance. First, attitudinal tolerance tends to be less when the activity in question may affect a respondent's loved ones or home community, particularly in situations where there is relatively little consensus on whether an activity should be allowed. Second, attitudinal tolerance is less in situations where greater threat is associated with the consequences of the activity in question.