Interbranch Negotiations over Policies with Multiple Outcomes

Whereas presidents represent the entire nation, members of Congress serve districts and states. Consequently, presidents and members of Congress often disagree not only about the merits of different policies but also about the criteria used to assess them. To investigate the relevance of jurisdictional?and by extension criterial?differences for policymaking, we revisit classic models of bargaining under uncertainty. Rather than define uncertainty about the mapping of one policy into one outcome, as all previous scholars have done, we allow for every policy to generate two politically relevant outcomes, one local and another national. We then identify equilibria in which the president's utility is increasing in the value that a representative legislator assigns to national outcomes. As an application of this theory, we analyze budgetary politics in war and peace. We find that during periods of war, when members of Congress assign greater importance to the very same national outcomes that preoccupy presidents, congressional appropriations more closely reflect presidential proposals.     

Youth Gangs: Nationwide Impacts of Research on Public Policy

American Journal of Criminal Justice - This article examines the public policy benefits of gang research. In particular, the author highlights the benefits of longitudinal research on gang members...     

Short term forces and changing partisanship

This research stemmed from the growing realization that party ID is not purely the long-term force originally conceptualized. The current conception is that it is a combination of a standing decision and responses to political events. The research addresses two questions: For what proportion of partisan changers is party ID a lagging, stable attachment to be changed only after a period of disaffection from one's party? What is the relative power of the various time 1 short term forces to alter party ID time 2? Among the short term forces, time 1voting behavior showed the strongest relationship to future change in ID. Criteria were established to identify changers whose change was based in past attitudes or behavior. For these criteria a typology was created to categorize the possible time 1 reasons and motivations for changing partisanship. The distribution of changers among categories illustrated that past voting behavior is the major instrument of partisan change. Only a small percentage were motivated by attitudes alone. Thus, overall the distribution confirmed the conception of party ID as lagging and stable. However, a substantial minority, 31 percent, showed no prior signs of partisan change.     

Survey research and racially charged elections: The case of David Duke in Louisiana

Accuracy in measuring vote intention has become a particular problem in elections involving candidates who take conservative positions on racial issues and who emphasize these issues in their campaigns. Consistent understatement of support for such candidates in preelection polls would seem to indicate a reluctance on the part of some survey respondents to honestly express their vote intention, perhaps due to the fear that their intended action might be interpreted as an expression of racism. This research, which utilizes surveys conducted during the 1991 Louisiana governor's election in which David Duke was prominently featured, attempts to develop more accurate alternative measures of support for racially conservative candidates. The findings indicate that more accurate and valid vote intention measures can be constructed through the use of candidate image variables. The findings also call into question the practice of attempting to develop more accurate measures of vote intention through simple reallocation of undecided voters based solely on race.     

Chasing an elusive concept: Ideological identifications and candidate choice

This research examines the manner in which ideological identifications covary with candidate choice. Ideological ID is not purely an independent variable for evaluating candidates; evaluations of the candidates affect both individual identification and candidate placements. Prospective voters try to create a consistent cognitive system of candidate preference, ideological ID, and ideological placement of their candidate. Results demonstrate that candidate preference has a strong effect on less salient attitudes.     

Entertaining repression: Music and politics in postcolonial Cameroon

This article examines the relationship between musicians andpolitical power in Cameroon in order to make a case for understandingthe dynamics of agency and identity politics among musicians.It argues that politicians in Cameroon have tended to appropriatemusicians and their creative efforts as part of their drivefor power. Some musicians have refused to be at the beck andcall of politicians and have tended to criticize and ridiculethose in power. Others have seen in such invitations an opportunityfor greater recognition and respectability. Some have soughtto straddle both worlds, serving politicians while also pursuingtheir art in the interest of other constituencies. Their differentresponses notwithstanding, there is evidence that the fortunesand statuses of musicians have been transformed with changingpolitical regimes and notions of politics.