Turnout in gubernatorial and senatorial primary and general elections in the South, 1922–90: A rational choice model of the effects of short-run and long-run electoral competition on relative turnout

Using data on non-presidential-year elections for governor and U.S. Senators in eight southern states over the period 1922– 1990, we provide a rational-choice-inspired model of the factors that should be expected to affect the relative levels of turnout in primaries as compared to general elections. Both V.O. Key and Anthony Downs have argued that voters will be more likely to participate in the elections in which they can most expect to be decisive. V.O. Key (1949) proposed that when general elections are usually lop-sided because of one-party dominance of a state's politics the primary of the dominant party of the state should have a higher turnout than the general election. Downs argued that turnout should be higher in competitive elections. Our modelling combines these ideas. We use as our dependent variable the ratio of primary to general election turnout in each year. We posit that this ratio will increase (1) the greater the degree of within-party competition in the primary (especially that within the dominant party of a state, if there is one), and (2) the weaker the degree of between party competition in the general election. In addition to election-specific effects, we also posit long-run effects, such that the ratio for the offices of governor and U.S. Senator will be affected not merely by the degrees of competition within and between parties specific to any given election, but also by the long-run trends in party competition. This hypothesis leads us to expect that, (3) in the South, with the rise of the Republican party, the ratio of primary to general election turnout should decline over time. All of our expectations about the links between turnout and competition are strongly supported. We argue that rational choice models of turnout perform quite well when we view them in a comparative statics perspective, rather than using them to make predictions about who will and who will not vote in any given election.     

A latent variable model of the Family-of-Origin Scale for adolescents

The Family-of-Origin Scale (FOS) is a recently developed 40-item instrument originally designed to assess adults' perceptions of the family in which they were raised. A modified version of the FOS has shown promise for assessing adolescents' perceptions of the extent to which their family fosters autonomy and intimacy. The current study involved administration of the FOS to a large sample of adolescents currently residing with their family of origin. Confirmatory factor analysis supports the scale's original 13 theoretical constructs and establishes factorial validity. Follow-up hierarchical tests indicate the current confirmatory model provides a significant refinement over other plausible models proposed by several different authors finding a similar unitary factor employing exploratory factor analyses.     

B. Reviews: general

i. ISLAM IN THE WORLD. By Malise Ruthven. London, Penguin Books, 1984. pp.400. £3.95.

ii. ISLAM IN FOREIGN POLICY. Edited by Adeed Dawisha, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press in Association with Chatham House, 1983. pp.181 and index. £17.50.

iii. BAHA'U'LLAH: THE KING OF GLORY. By Hasan Balyuzi. Oxford, George Ronald, 1980. pp.539 with photographs and 1 colour plate. £9.00.

iv. THE GREAT ANATOLIAN REBELLION, 1000/1591–1611. By William J. Griswold. (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen Vol.83). Berlin, Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1983. pp.xxiv, 333, 12 maps.

v. CONSTRUCTION WORK IN OTTOMAN CAIRO. By Nelly Hanna. Supplement aux Annales Islamologiques, Cahier No.4). Cairo, Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 1985.

vi. REGIONALE REFORMEN IN OSMANISCHEN REICH AM VORABEND DER TANZIMAT. By Michael Ursinus. (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, Bd.73), Berlin, Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1982. pp.vii, 327.

vii. NORTH AFRICA, 1800–1900: A SURVEY FROM THE NILE VALLEY TO THE ATLANTIC. By Magali Morsy, London & New York, Longman, 1984. pp.356 with maps, tables and figures.

viii. LETTERS FROM EGYPT. By Lucie Duff Gordon. London, Virago, 1983. pp.xxiv, 383. £4.95.

ix. BRIDE OF THE RED SEA. A 10th/16th CENTURY ACCOUNT OF JEDDAH. (AL SILAH WA‐'L ‘UDDAH FI TARIKH BANDAR JUDDAH). Arabic text edited, translated and annotated by G.Rex Smith and ‘Umar Al‐Zayla'I. (Occasional Papers Series, No.22). Durham, University of Durham. Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 1984. pp.vi., 153, 4 plates.

x. ARAB HISTORIANS OF THE CRUSADES: Selected and translated from the Arabic sources by Francesco Gabrieli; translated from the Italian by E.J.Costello. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, reprinted 1984. pp.xxxvi, 362. £6.95.

xi. INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND THE MIDDLE EAST: OLD RULES, DANGEROUS GAME. By L.Carl Brown. London, I.B.Tauris, 1984, pp.xii, 363. Casebound £29.50., Paper £9.50.

xii. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN IRAN. Edited by Nikki R. Keddie. New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1983. pp.x, 258. 1 map. £20.00.

xiii. THE STATE AND REVOLUTION IN IRAN, 1962–1982. By Hossein Bashiriyeh. London, Croom Helm, 1984. pp.202. £16.95.

xiv. THE ARABIAN PENINSULA: ZONE OF FERMENT. Edited by Robert W. Stookey. (Hoover International Studies Series). Stanford, Stanford University, 1984. pp.xxxiii, 151, 4 maps. Casebound £20.80, Paper £9.40.

xv. THE PLO: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION. By Jillian Becker. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984. pp.x, 303, maps.

xvi. SUDAN AT THE CROSSROADS. By Charles Gurdon. London, Menas Press, 1984. pp.vii, 128, 1 map. £6.25.

xvii. THE STRUGGLE FOR SOUTH YEMEN. By Joseph Kostiner. London, Croom Helm, 1984. pp.194, map. £14.95.     

The Wrong Mental Image of Settlement

Negotiation participants usually think of settlement as the official end of a conflict; the author points out that this mental image is inaccuratein many situations, where a settlement is followed by additional eruptionsof conflict. He uses the recent Good Friday peace accord in NorthernIreland as an example of the continuing nature of many conflicts; theorizesas to why we have this incorrect mental image in general; and suggestsways we can present a more accurate representation of a conflict'slife cycle.     

Streetwork at the crossroads: An evaluation of a street gang outreach intervention and holistic appraisal of the research evidence

Spurred by the success of public health violence interventions, and accelerated by policy pressure to reduce violence without exacerbating overpolicing and mass incarceration, streetwork programs—those that provide anti-violence services by neighborhood-based workers who perform their work beyond the walls of parochial institutions—have positioned themselves as the most important non–law-enforcement violence prevention option available to urban policy makers. Yet despite their importance, the state of the field seems difficult to interpret for academics and practitioners alike. In this article, we make several contributions that bring forth new findings and deliver new perspectives on streetwork as a violence reduction strategy. First, we offer an extended analytic review of the streetwork evaluation literature that connects the study of contemporary public health violence interventions to a preceding tradition of criminologically inspired streetwork studies. Second, we present the results of an impact evaluation of StreetSafe Boston (SSB)—a multiyear streetwork intervention that served 20 Boston gangs. We find that the SSB intervention had no detectable effect on violence among the gangs that it served. We conclude by offering a framework for understanding a field at multiple crossroads: past and present, proclaimed successes and failures, help and harm.     

Racial or Spatial Voting? The Effects of Candidate Ethnicity and Ethnic Group Endorsements in Local Elections

With the growth of Latino and Asian American populations, candidates frequently must appeal to diverse electorates. Strategies for doing so include emphasizing candidates’ racial/ethnic identity and securing endorsements from racial/ethnic groups. While many scholars focus on candidates’ racial/ethnic attributes, ethnic group endorsements are understudied. Whether such endorsements induce voters to choose ideologically similar candidates (spatial voting), or choose based on race/ethnicity (racial voting) is unclear. We address this question by examining elections in multiethnic local settings. Using original surveys and exit polls, we create comparable measures of candidate and voter ideology, and examine how race/ethnicity and ideology affect voters’ choices. We also embed experiments that manipulate ethnic group endorsements. We find that ideology influences voters’ choices, but that ethnic group endorsements weaken spatial voting. The latter effect among whites is driven by racial/ethnic stereotypes. These reactions explain why some candidates seek such endorsements and why others might prefer to avoid them.     

Territorial Representation and the Opinion–Policy Linkage: Evidence from the European Union

A key feature of federal systems is the representation of subnational units by “territorial representatives” in policymaking at the federal level. How do such arrangements influence the linkage between public opinion and policy outputs? I argue that policymaking under territorial representation should be systematically skewed toward opinion in those states where citizens care about a policy issue and have a uniform view on it. This claim is tested using a novel data set of policy change in the European Union (EU), covering 211 policy issues and 6,506 observations of opinion–policy dyads. Results show that measures weighting opinion across member states by how much national citizens care about an issue are better predictors of policy change than EU‐wide mean opinion. Moreover, congruence between state‐level opinion and EU‐level policy becomes more likely, the more salient and clear‐cut opinion in a member state is. These findings refine our understanding of the opinion–policy linkage under territorial representation.