Candidate Character vs. The Economy in the 1992 Election

The outcome of the 1992 U.S. presidential election has been explained largely as a function of perceptions of George Bush's economic performance. The economy submerged questions about Bill Clinton's character, awarding the advantage to the Democrat. In this article, we evaluate the effect of economic evaluations along with character attacks on candidate support in the 1992 presidential contest. Claims that the economy submerged character have been somewhat exaggerated. But while character remains an important issue in presidential evaluation, its role in judging candidates cannot be taken at face value. We show that both economic evaluations and character judgments are highly politicized. The findings indicate that those protesting Clinton's character turned almost exclusively to Bush. Those protesting Bush's economic record turned to both Perot and Clinton. Still, the economy did not trump character. The troubles of both major party candidates fueled a strong protest vote that contributed to Perot's strong showing.     

Book reviews

Stephen Chan and Andrew J. Williams (eds), Renegade states: The Evolution of Revolutionary Foreign Policy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994).

Adam Roberts and Benedict Kingsbury (eds), United Nations, Divided World. The UN's Role in International Relations 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)

G. Hastedt and K. Knickrehm, (eds), Toward the Twenty‐first Century. A Reader in World Politics (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1994).

A. J.R. Groom and Margot Light (eds), Contemporary International Relations: A Guide to Theory (London: Pinter Publishers, 1994).     

Evaluating adolescent decision making in legal contexts

Challenges the use by policy researchers of a model for comparing adolescent and adult decision making that is based on informed consent standards. An expanded decision-making framework designed to evaluate judgment in adults and adolescents can better test the empirical basis of paternalistic legal policies. The theoretical and empirical literature on the informed consent framework is critiqued and an alternative framework incorporating judgment factors is proposed. Three judgment factors—temporal perspective, attitude toward risk, and peer and parental influence—and their effects on decision making are explored. Finally, implications for future research are analyzed in several decision-making contexts.Several of the ideas in this article were originally presented by the first author and were published as part of a symposium on competence (see Scott, 1992). The current article expands and refines these ideas, provides a more substantial research base, and suggests several future research directions. We thank Joseph Allen, Richard Bonnie, Baruch Fischhoff, William Gardner, John Monahan, Edward Mulvey, Richard Redding, Paul Slovic, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Special thanks to Thomas Grisso for providing much constructive criticism and to Wendy Shang for outstanding research assistance. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the MacArthur Foundation, which supported this work in its early stages.