Parole release decisions revisited: An analysis of parole release decisions for violent inmates in a southeastern state

In an attempt to discover the major predictors of parole decision-making in one southeastern state, this study examined the cases of 762 inmates under the supervision of the Alabama Department of Corrections who were eligible for parole from June 1, 1993 through May 31, 1994. Of the 762 eligible inmates, only 138 (18 percent) were granted parole. Using parole disposition (granted or denied) as the dependent variable, this study investigated the offense, offender, and general parole variables and their impact on parole decisions. Logistic regression findings indicated that the strongest predictors of parole release decisions were the length of the original sentence assessed for the offense, the total number of felonies for which the inmate was serving time, and the warden and senior officers' recommendations. These variables, which were also significant at the bivariate level of analysis, explained approximately 47 percent of the variation in the dependent variable. A major concern of the study was the generalizability of the findings.     

Oil Wealth and Regime Survival in the Developing World, 1960–1999

This article examines contrasting claims made by scholars of oil and politics that oil wealth either tends (1) to undermine regime durability or (2) to enhance it. Using cross-sectional time-series data from 107 developing states between 1960 and 1999, I test the effects of oil wealth on regime failure, political protests, and civil war. I find that oil wealth is robustly associated with increased regime durability, even when controlling for repression, and with lower likelihoods of civil war and antistate protest. I also find that neither the boom nor bust periods exerted any significant effect on regime durability in the states most dependent on exports, even while those states saw more protests during the bust. In short, oil wealth has generally increased the durability of regimes, and repression does not account for this effect. Future research focused on the origins of robust coalitions in oil-rich states is most likely to provide fruitful explanations to this puzzle .     

Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures: A Text Reuse Approach

This article proposes a new approach to investigating the substance of lawmaking. Only a very small proportion of bills become law in the U.S. Congress. However, the bills that do become law often serve as vehicles for language originating in other bills. We investigate “text reuse” methods as a means for tracing the progress of policy ideas in legislation. We then show how a focus on policy ideas leads to new insights into the lawmaking process. Although our focus is on relating content found within bills, the same methods can be used to study policy substance across many research domains.