REPRESENTATIVE IDEOLOGY AND THE VOTE FOR WELFARE REFORM

This article examines the congressional vote for HR3734, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The primary concern is to identify the factors that had a significant influence over the voting decision, paying special attention to representative ideology measured by Americans for Democratic Action and American Conservative Union voting scores. An empirical model is developed and estimated using logistic regression. The model incorporates proxies for representative ideology, constituent ideology, constituent economic interests, and the potential for legislative shirking. The results indicate that representative ideology was an important factor in the vote, but that constituent ideology and interests were also influential. Knowledge of the pattern of voting on the original legislation should prove useful to policymakers as the need for further refinement of the welfare system becomes evident, as it almost surely will.     

Selection Bias and Continuous-Time Duration Models: Consequences and a Proposed Solution

This article analyzes the consequences of nonrandom sample selection for continuous-time duration analyses and develops a new estimator to correct for it when necessary. We conduct a series of Monte Carlo analyses that estimate common duration models as well as our proposed duration model with selection. These simulations show that ignoring sample selection issues can lead to biased parameter estimates, including the appearance of (nonexistent) duration dependence. In addition, our proposed estimator is found to be superior in root mean-square error terms when nontrivial amounts of selection are present. Finally, we provide an empirical application of our method by studying whether self-selectivity is a problem for studies of leaders' survival during and following militarized conflicts.     

Policy legacies and the potential for radical surgery on health‐care systerns

“Forces in the broader political arena have periodically opened windows of opportunity for major policy change in the health care arena. The systems that resulted were largely, if not entirely, ‘accidents' of the timing of their births.” Accidental Logics: The Dynamics of Change in the Health Care Arena in the United States, Britain, and Canada. Edited by carolyn hughes tuohy. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999. Pp. 312.     

Voluntary Narrative Disclosures by Local Governments: A Comparative Analysis of the Textual Complexity of Mayoral and Chairpersons' Letters in Annual Reports

Research on local government annual reports has been limited, particularly in relation to report narratives. This study aims to determine whether characteristics of narratives vary between the reports of local governments and listed companies. After considering the nature of the potential report audiences it was predicted that, if writers consider their audience, local government report narratives would be easier to read, less likely to be obfuscated, and use fewer passive sentences than those in corporate reports. The results suggest that mayoral letters exhibit higher reading ease and are less likely to be obfuscated than their corporate counterparts but they are also shorter and contain more passive constructions, making conclusions about readability and understandability ambiguous. This research acquaints readers with important aspects to consider when preparing or evaluating narrative reports.     

The Decline and Fall of Democracy in Venezuela: Ten Theses

This paper presents an argument about the causes of the decline and fall of the 1958–1999 system of democratic politics, commonly known in Spanish as puntofijista , in Venezuela. Competing explanations of this process are evaluated, and an interim assessment of President Hugo Chávez and his political project is offered.